 Good morning, everyone. This is the February 16th meeting of the elementary school building committee and seeing that we do have a quorum, I am going to call the meeting to order and make sure that the members of the committee can hear and be heard. And I will just do what my practice has been. I will call on people based on their faces on the screen. In the order I'm seeing them. Jonathan? Morning. Morning, Paul? Present. Simone? Here. Deb Leonard? You have to unmute, Deb. You can hit the space bar and we'll unmute you. Good morning. Morning. Present. And I just want to welcome Deb Leonard. She is joining us as the member from the school committee. Her appointment came first from the school and then through Paul, through the council. So she is joining us and I spent a little time with her but as needed, we'll spend more just on making sure she knows where we are in the process. Jennifer? Good morning. Angelica? Good morning. Alicia? Here. Great, so as people join, I will make sure they hear us too. So Margaret, I'm turning it over to you for the agenda and we have a fairly packed and a diverse agenda this morning. So Margaret, you I'm... Yeah, so I'm going to quickly share the screen, talk through the agenda. OK, so I'm going to do my usual, start with looking at the overall schedule for the next three months. We're going to give you an update on permitting. So the good news is like all is good with permitting. Results of bidding, all is good with results of bidding. We're going to talk about the two playground equipment working groups meetings that we've had. The design subcommittee meeting did not happen because of the snow day. So that's been rescheduled. We're going to skip that item for now. We're going to talk about the proprietary items vote that is scheduled to be taken up by the school committee on March 19th. And we can go into a little detail on why that school committee, not building committee. And we have some invoices. So I'm going to take this down and I'm going to put up something else. Kathy, it looks like Rupert and Allison joined us. Thank you, Donna. So Rupert, I'm just going to call on both of you to make sure we can hear you and you can hear us. Rupert? Hi, everybody. Sorry, I'm late. Welcome. Allison? Hello, everyone. Thank you. As always, thank everyone for joining a Zoom meeting this early on a Friday. Thank you. On the Friday before vacation, when things get really crunchy to settle. OK, can everyone see the schedule screen with which hopefully you're now familiar? OK, so taking it from the top. So we're actually here in this column. But I want looking back a little bit because a lot happened since the last meeting. But you saw this week that we did send out the recommendation to the low bidder, which we'll talk about in the meeting. So looking backwards, we got the big documents went out for the early package. We got the bids back. We had some permitting meetings that were successful. Playground working group worked met twice. And we got comments from the MSBA on our 60% set. So looking forward on this line, this group has a meeting on March 15, which you should have a hold on your calendar. Deb, I need to check and make sure I've added you to these invites. And we have a meeting on April 26. So let me know if you don't have those in your calendar. The consultant team, we need to respond. The MSBA's comments were very minor. In fact, mostly involved asking for stuff we gave them in the past submission. We're about to start a really important part of the project, which is the pre-qualification for the building project. And we'll be talking about that more. We can give you an update March 15 meeting. And then we have a 90% CD submission to the MSBA in late April. The early site package. Well, we have a winner. They are we're in the process of getting their contract executed. They are going to be filing for their permits. We are coordinating messaging to parents. We expect them to be on site in mid, early to mid March. And we're in the process of scheduling a groundbreaking event. So we don't have a date for that yet, but it's in the works. Permitting, I'm going to leave that for later. But the news is all good. We'll be starting construction meetings with the Gagler-Ducci, the low bidder, in I think approximately in mid-April. In terms of design coordination, there's a couple. Well, Rick and Tim, I believe this is correct. We still have Hazmat sampling at Fort River going on during the school vacation. Is that right? Correct. Yeah. And then we've got this rescheduled building design subcommittee on, landed on February 28th and the third meeting of the playground working group on March 1st. In mid-March, we have a meeting with the school committee on the proprietary items, which we'll talk about during this agenda. And we are still trying to land a date for the next sustainability subcommittee. The MSBA, they are really at this point, they've gotten their comments back to us, we need to respond to them. So any questions about that before I take that down? I see Kathy taking it. Margaret, I want to make sure we send this out to everyone so that they have a paper copy of it. But the other thing is, are you going to be going over the early site visit packet in more detail? Or was that OK? Yes, we will. And similarly, my understanding from a brief conversation with you on the sustainability subcommittee, we're waiting on a few things to be able to schedule that. So are we going to be talking about that later? So I won't raise questions now. We don't have anything to discuss today about the sustainability subcommittee. OK, so my understanding, just so people know, the waiting to schedule it is we are looking at plug load analysis and a couple other items. So making sure it's scheduled at a time that makes sense is my understanding of why we're going to be proposed rather than an exact date. Is that correct? Yeah, well, that's I think that's we're all in agreement that's the key piece of the next meeting. And Thornton-Massetti is working on that, but it's not finished yet and ready for prime time. OK. I see Rupert's hand. Rupert and Paul's hand up. Rupert? I just want to, can you clarify for folks who would be attending the weekly construction meeting? Thank you. I believe, Paul, tell me if this is correct. I believe the intention is for Bob Parent to attend the weekly construction meetings on behalf of the town. And I apologize if I've got that wrong. No, I think that makes sense. We haven't had that conversation internally yet, but yeah. So sometimes if I could just interject, it might be great either Rupert or Tammy maybe to be involved as well, because there may be and stuff that's going on that might not be working or Tammy should be kept informed. But that's Bob Parent's position as well. But sometimes we like to invite the principal. But we can talk online. And we talk about any interface with the school first so they can scoot afterwards. That's great. Thank you. Yeah, two things. One is I do think someone from the school should be invited to those meetings just because it's on site on the same side of the school. There's going to be impact no matter what. So someone from the school should be present. The second thing is, Margaret, just make sure that I didn't really see this in the pack. But if this document, if we're sharing it, should definitely go into the packet. So it's a public document. Thank you. Yeah. Rupert, just so you know, we're looking at having those meetings on Tuesday, afternoons, the construction meetings. So take a look at your schedule and let us know if that works for you. I will say that typically what we would do is we would have an item at the beginning of the agenda that would be about coordination with the schools so that the folks from the schools can attend the beginning of the meeting and any sort of issues can get sorted out. And they don't have to stay for the whole meeting. OK, I'm not seeing any more hands. Sonia, hand this up, Margaret. Oh, sorry, Sonia. You have a picture like Angelica's, where it's really hard to see the background. Sorry, well, OK, I'll do this. So I'm organizing the meetings, and I will be reaching out to the contractor as we go into construction. I'll be more and more involved here. Someone from the school will always be invited to the meetings. I also want to say that when there is specific coordination needed, traffic pattern changes, any sort of interference with operations, any sort of specific issue of coordination needed, that will be highlighted so that the folks from the school know that that's a day that it's important to attend. And then there will be lots of meetings when it'll be, OK, we've got our pattern established. Week over week, no big deal. You could come or not come. So you will never not know that this is the time to talk. And if that meeting is not the convenient moment in that critical moment, we will set up a separate meeting topic specific to make sure that those operational impacts are managed well and well communicated. So Margaret will send what she just had on the screen directly to everyone, and as well as send it to Angela to post it. So one of the things that she went quickly over is, and we're about to talk about the early site package, is some kind of groundbreaking event. And I think, Margaret, she's going to try to coordinate with a few people to pick a date for that, that the town council has asked about it a few times that we would know about it in advance. Clearly, Deb, the school committee would know. So it's trying to pick a time that would work for as many people as want to who go out and say, this is the beginning of the project. It's pretty exciting. So that we will just email everyone once we find a date to make sure anyone of us who wants to come with children or depending on what time of day it is anyway. So it will be an event. So I'm turning it to the next piece, Margaret. Yeah, I think what we were going to do next was talk about permitting. And I'm going to turn this over to Dinesco, who have led and I have mostly listened into the planning, ZBA, and con-con discussions. Sure. We can expand upon the headline that everything is good, which it is. So we had a zoning board of appeals meeting, the waiver that we required to build and flip from Conservancy Pass. We had a few waivers in front of the planning board, which they have granted. The hearing was closed on February 7th. We are awaiting their final conditions. There were a few conditions, however, that made some changes to this. And I am going to share my screen and go through that with you. So the most impactful, where we had previously shown canopy-mounted PV over the parking lot in the southwest corner here, was a little bit into the property line setback, which happens to be doubled for educational use. So rather than seek that special permit or waiver, we have moved that collection of canopies in two pieces to over the van drop-off loop at the southern drop-off and the parent car drop-off immediately north of the main entrance. So here we have a couple of views of what that will look like. The PV canopy over the van drop-off will provide cover as you get out of the vans. And then looking across the main plaza toward the front entrance, this canopy was moved from the other side of the parking lot. And again, this offers a little bit of cover for parents as they pull past the door, as they will be directed to pull past the door by a school staff to make sure that everything flows on site. There were another few conditions related to the layout and details of the parking lot that the planning board would like to see revised. A couple we have included, and one we need to talk about the larger group because they left it to the discretion of the school building committee, whether or not we would make that change. So in these sketches, you can see changes that we are incorporating in our documents. One, the paved area under the relocated canopy will be expanded a little bit so that at least half biker acts will be under cover, which was a suggestion of the planning board, and we think is a beneficial move for the project. They also suggested that we add an island in the northern part of the parking lot. This is an opportunity for planting in another area where we could stripe or cross walk and break it up a little bit. But it does come with the drawback that it makes plowing a little bit more difficulty. And this island was the one that the planning board left to the discretion of the school building committee. I can just go through the other couple changes and maybe we can look back to that to talk about it. There was also some planting that was required, some screening along the edge, basically to block headlights from going into a neighbor's yards. And so we've agreed to plant, I believe it's 13 more red seeders along this line. There's already a change in grade that effectively blocks headlights from going into the yard here, but this is sort of belt and suspenders measure that we make sure that those conditions are satisfied. Here's a closer sketch of what that will look like. And then one more change, and this we are incorporating, there was a crosswalk across the southern bus loop with pedestrians coming in on the south side of the center, and so they would cross here to get to the school. And then the connection around the entire site continues, but this was a striped crosswalk with ramps to the curves. This is now going to be a raised table intersection. So there is going to be a bump. It will also come traffic, but it will be that much more obvious when pedestrian students are crossing, the traffic will have to slow down. And this is a limited traffic entrance, but every layer of safety we can add to the project. Tim, that really, that's just the bus drop off loop, right? That's just the bus drop off loop. So those changes we are making with the exception of this traffic islanding, which we told the planning board we would bring to the school building committee for an opinion on whether or not the pros, it's a little more opportunity for planting. It does break up a lot. If we do add it, we would not lose any spots. We would adjust the geometry of the curves at the north, but really it's a question of whether you think this is a benefit to the design. Kathy, do you have anything? Yeah, and actually I'm going to defer to Paul and Rupert because I listened in on the planning board discussion and at least one of their members raised how hard it is to plow, maintaining it, some other issues about it. And since it's left it at a hard discretion, Paul, I'm going to turn it back over to you, but it was raised as potentially not needed, but maybe rather than required. So I don't have an opinion about that. Kathy, I defer that to Rupert too. He's the one that's responsible for it. The question I had, it just reminded me, do we have any other traffic calming speed humps or anything in this? I don't remember. We do. And this Frostwalk in the center, going all the way east-west, is a raised platform. So that would minimize people sort of speeding through there? Yes. Good, thank you. Rupert. Cool, thank you. So once again, my concern with plantings is who's going to maintain them? How do we keep them looking good? And I guess the other concern I would have about an area like that is if a plow does hit something, are there plans for any lighting or water or anything like that there that we might damage if we do push a big pile of heavy snow into something? And then another point I should bring up, a member of the planning board is also a member of the solar advisory committee. I don't know that I have that name right in town, but she pointed out that the northern end of the parking lot is a prime location for future expansion of PV. If it will not be necessary to bring the school to net zero, but it is an opportunity in town. So if that were to happen at some point, this would obviously not be an opportunity for planning and just for full context of the discussion. Now, I guess my reaction, I'm just going to jump in. Rupert still got his hand up. So Rupert, do you ever want to comment on that? I guess I didn't really give a clear opinion. I raised some questions, but I could actually give an opinion that, I'd rather not see it there. I think it just makes maintenance, it's more load on maintenance, both for the planting and the plowing. Thank you. Thank you for doing the opinion, because it strikes me the same way and Sean had one point earlier raised potentially more canopies. It got raised again. I think we're going to have a brand new parking lot with an opportunity if we wanted to use outside money to do more canopies where we can't put them on right now in the high school parking lot or the middle school parking lot because parking lots have to be paved first. So I think not erecting barriers that would just be undone make sense to me. There were a lot of questions on how many parking places and the answer was basically the same answer that was given to us at the school building that the number, the count of parking places came from the schools. So we have this parking lot. So I think it makes sense not to do the island, but I'm waiting to see if there are any other reactions. Paul? I agree. Do you need us and Jonathan? Here's Jonathan. I don't see this as a particular need, that particular one. I think we could live without it. So do you need us to vote on it Tim or do you need us to basically say, keep the existing design? Don't put the island in. How do you want us to deal with it? I don't think we need to vote. You've spoken pretty clearly, but if you want to vote to make it official, but basically we're not making a change. So I don't know that we need a vote to not make a change. We also don't have a vote on the agenda. That'd be fine. Does anyone have a comment in favor of this, I guess, to just so we can then close off this discussion? To say in favor of putting the island in as opposed to not putting it in. I don't see anybody's hands up. Okay, so I think we don't have to make that change. That's great. Tim, just to follow up on that, do we need to go back to the planning board just to let them know we're not going to take action on that or we just keep going? We are having continuing discussions with the planning board about the conditions and that was the one last thing I was going to bring up. So one, I will let them know that we are not making this change so that there is no mention of it in the conditions. The one thing that is not resolved is their initial draft of the conditions for the building required more mechanical screening than is currently in the design. So this is a view that we created just to have a discussion with Chris Bresch about what is screened and what is not from where. So this is just an informational looking from what will be the bus entrance and about the intersection with Southeast Street. You're about 560 feet from the building. It's a little blurry picture so far away but this rectangle is the mechanical equipment that's on top of the gym that is screened. This is the stair that goes to the roof and this is where ductwork from other equipment on the high roof goes into the building but it has an architectural cladding. So that is screened. So from this entrance, from the public way where you can see it, the equipment on the roof is behind an architectural screen. And then we have had discussions with the building committee in the past early on if it was acceptable to see equipment from the site. So we're gonna go to some other views. So here we are. None of the playground equipment is modeled here but this view is taken from about the northern edge of the playground and you're looking at the cafeteria library classroom to the left. These rectangles that you see are the top of unscreened mechanical equipment. So you will see them. As you get closer to the building they will disappear behind the roof edge but as you go further back all the way to the, here we are, north of the softball field at the path that goes along the northern edge of the site. So here you are, over 600 feet away from the building and you're looking at the pretty old league angle but this is within a foot or two we don't know until we have the final design of the equipment, the height of what you will see from this angle. If you move to the right to the public way at the entrance of the site you won't be able to see anything but the very end of the building because it's blocked by neighbors and trees. So none of this equipment will be visible from the street. So this is the last thing that we need to negotiate or resolve the planning board and what their requirements are. We've given them a proposed language that basically complies with what we've presented so far saying that any equipment that's at X number of feet 25 from the roof edge doesn't need to be screened and that would accomplish these goals but we have not heard back from the planning board on that condition yet. So. Rupert. Tim, if we were to add more screening would that have an impact on the availability of space for TV panels and access for servicing equipment? It would have an impact on the availability for PV certainly if we were required for any reason to add screening we would design it such that access to equipment was not impacted but as it would decrease the area of PV it would also increase cost. So that's obviously something else we would have to consider. Thank you. Okay, I'll raise my hand and then call on myself so I don't see anyone else. When I looked at the part that's screened screening will also have a something higher than the rest of the building. So to me visually, I'm not sure if I'm 600 feet away and there's screening on top of the building versus equipment I'm not sure how much difference it makes to me visually because it's not another floor on top of the building. So I think of it, houses have chimneys on top of them. So Jonathan's more an architect. He'll be able to tell me but it's not clear to me what kind of visual impact not having screening versus having screening whether it's an improvement or not. Jonathan's hand is up. Yes, I agree with you. I think they've done a good job. My personal opinion is they've done a good job balancing screening from the public way. I think from on the site from 600, 700 feet away you're not gonna read a vast difference between what's screening, what's equipment. I personally don't think there's a value to the project for additional screening if we're really trying to protect something from that far away. Buildings have things on them, including PV which at 600 feet, you might catch some of that too. And I think they've done it. I think our design team has done a reasonable job. We'll see what the planning board has to say. Now, and Tim, I also think Rupert's question about PV and cost needs to convey back to them because if you're really not getting much of a difference spending more money on it and getting in the way of things that we know we wanna do and spend money on doesn't make sense to me. And I will say that the planning board was not adamant that everything be screened but there was a discussion and it was in their initial condition. So I think the opinion of the school building committee which they've deferred to on other things will certainly hold weight but I just wanted to present that it is still an issue. Yeah, and I just wanna chime in and say it was interesting to listen to because it was in the context of saying we expect this of private developers we need to apply the same standard. So that was where the conversation started. Jonathan, is your hand back up? Yeah, that was gonna kind of chime in on that notion. Is there absolutely something they expect of private developers? I think what might be an interesting conversation with them is that the scale here is different than and the type of thing they're trying to screen is different than what they would be asking of private developers. Most often this gets applied in the context of multifamily housing where you have what might be dozens and dozens of little tiny units helter-skelter along a roof that don't look particularly good whereas in a large building setting like this you're trying to screen, not a unit that's four or five feet tall but a unit that might be eight, 10, 12 feet tall and to me it gets to a point where the screening could get to a point where it's calling more attention to the object you're trying to hide than the object itself. I think the other issue is I struggle with these screening requirements because in the sort of common but they don't really say what the intention is. I mean, generally I think of the intention of this kind of screening as if you're in a more urban condition you're sort of screening it from views of adjacent folks. You're trying to make it so like someone who's in a building next door isn't looking at it and or it's about sound. So in this case, you know, they're distant views. You know, it's just, I feel as though they should go back to what the intention is a little bit in evaluating this. Yes, and by our reading of the zoning by-law it's not explicitly clear that, what Jonathan said about the intention sort of reads in the language of the by-law and it's not explicitly clear that it actually would apply to what we are doing here given the distances and the type of stuff that we're screening. But we, as soon as we know, we will certainly update this. Okay, so zoning, concom, concom is- Tree removal. We've had so many hearings. We forgot to mention a few. We did have a tree removal hearing. The two trees at the northern end of the site, Allen Snow, actually he said that if the hearing was a year or two there wouldn't even be a hearing they would just cut it down for safety issues. But those are going to be removed and we are going to move the site as originally discussed and concom we have the order of conditions and it was included in the early site package. So all of our permits regulatory issues that we have with the town, we are in good standing with these few minor issues to resolve with the planning board. So we do need to come back to the corkeen issue but I think we should do it as part of the playground conversation. So Tim, if that's your full report on that why don't we talk about the good news from the early site package? So Cassania, maybe would you like to kind of give the report on the bidding and where we landed? Of course, we had a very strong response, eight bidders very many of them very competitive of a bulk of them below budget although there were a couple of outliers one on budget and two above, one of a high bid was double below bid. So some spread but there were a lot of bidders that are clustered around the lower end and the low bidder stood out. They are around 600,000 below the estimated value for this package. They are Gagliarducci construction. They are local to the area, very excellent references, including references from the project team who have worked with them before but also references called from what they provided with their submission. Many of the other bidders were also very qualified reputable companies. So I think we were very fortunate in the bid response that we got and fortunate in landing both a competitive financially low bid and a very qualified company. We've provided a recommendation to award to Paul a little, a few days ago and I'm moving forward, we're getting them on board. I'll just say that the savings from this buyout will beef up the contingency, the sort of buyout pricing contingency and will cushion the bigger bid package that will be coming up this summer for the whole main building and the primary general contractor. So it's not necessarily savings that we should get immediately excited about spending but it's excellent news. So any questions about that? I'm not seeing any questions. Okay, okay, I've got a question. Lesson, question and more comment. I think this is terrific news including the news about savings it for me raised my confidence level in the cost estimators having recent enough data to give a pretty good estimate knowing that in terms of inflation factors and increasing the cushion on contingency we have in the larger project is terrific. So when I saw this, I wasn't sure it was local because the name, it doesn't say Springfield but it is a Springfield company as I understand it's a subdivision of Springfield. So I think the fact that they aren't driving here from Boston or somewhere else is a good thing since they're going to be bringing in dirt and taking dirt out. So it's a really good piece. So my main question is at the point this starts does the fence that goes up, is that the fence that will then stay up when building and everything else goes up? Is question number one. Question number two is we've had at least one public comment on the polls out by the current softball field. Will those polls be coming down during this and if there's an opportunity if someone wants to come and get them, I'm assuming there would be some way of doing that but just a sense, first just on the fence. So when this fence goes up, is that basically the fence we're going to be then seeing? So those are my- I'm going to let Rick answer that question because I think that's why he's got his hand up. So the fence that goes up will stay for the duration of the first phase of construction but also be adjusted. There was a desire that came up during the concom discussions that the Eastern bound of the ESP site disturbance be contained. So the fence, we used a portion of the existing softball fence there for construction fence, just so that the ESP contractor wasn't ripping up the whole area all the way to the extent there that that's the drawing. And then ultimately, the next contractor, the general contractor would push that extent out to the East. And then the section that's between the existing school site and the building, we specify to be movable so they can move that in and out as they need it and they can use it for when they have to fence off the demolition of the building for the next phase. So the answer is a lot of it remains. Some of it gets adjusted outward when there's somebody who has the capacity to finish the soil work and create final grades in the buffer zone which is the general contractor, not the ESP contractor. And this starts when it goes up. I know, Rupert, you've been in meetings but whatever traffic patterns will be changed. There is a plan for that and people will be notified about that, correct? Do it as a question. Yeah, Paul is nodding his head, yes. Yeah, that's true. And to see where that goes in, yeah. Before the fence goes up there's gonna be a bunch of stuff that'll be done first so that we can change the traffic pattern as smoothly as possible. And just a touch base on your question about the wood light poles. Yes, they are coming down during the ESP project as demolition, basically as demolition salvage, they are the property of Gagliaducci when we get to the job meeting part of the project, we can ask them if they'd like some place to take them because I do think that somebody was identified that would be interested in them. But at that point it would be helping Gagliaducci find a home for it if they didn't have it already. I see Rupert's hands up. Yeah, I think we already on a departmental level of school and the DPW decided that we didn't have a use for those poles. We were asked already and we said no, they're too old and too beat up to be functional for us. So we were offered them, we turned them down as my understanding. It's more of an interest in sustainability, reuse and repurpose rather than relocate. So thank you. So it will be in the contractor's hands. So we just need to accept there's that interest, there'll be an avenue. Yeah. Any other questions or comments other than excitement? This feels like a real beginning. I don't see any hands. So why don't we pivot to playground equipment working group? Tim, could you give us an update on that? We've had two really good meetings with the group. So Tim, you are muted. Thank you. I'm just gonna share a site plan to give context for discussion. Okay, so we had our second working group meeting, very good discussion. We sort of narrowed in on an option with some key edits from the staff and members of the working group to make it more conducive to accessibility for all and yet still provide the play that everyone can enjoy and use. Megan and Brian. Can I ask before you launch into the playground, can you just walk, particularly I think for Deb Leonard's benefit who hasn't seen this before, could you also give a kind of overview of the pieces of the overall playground? Yep. So the overall site, the working group is about the playground which is the equipment that will be in this area just north of the building. So this is the building, the existing building taken down in this dash footprint. The main entrance is here and then circling around, we can go to the other site features. As we go past the southern entrance of the building and the bus drop off loop, there are outdoor learning opportunities including a pavilion which is basically a group structure for a class size group of kids 24 plus teachers to be outside and covered from rain or sun and have an outdoor class meeting. Adjacent to that, there are planter gardens and offer two classes to be outside at one time with planting and beds as part of the science curriculum. Adjacent to that, there is also a pollinator garden with native species. And then moving around to the right of the site here is a micro forest floor garden. So it'll be saplings, native ground covered woodchips and logs that can be rolled around so that students can interact with plants and creepy crawly things under the logs. And then this is a rain garden which again will have native species, metal grasses and educational experience but it's also a storm water management system that retains water before it is eventually discharged offsite or infiltrated into the ground. And then interspersed with these outdoor educational opportunities there are lots of play areas including two basketball areas, two full size courts here and a couple of half size sports facing each other here. And then as we circle back, we get to the playground which would this would be a resilient soft surface that we will discuss today. And that will have structured play equipment throughout including swings, climbing structures, ranch structures and a few other items. North of that athletic fields that can be used for recess, gym class and as a community asset in general. And then the entire site is ringed with walking paths that connect all the southern entrance to Southeast Street to the connection that goes north across the border. And then at the playground meeting last week there was a discussion of similar to the way we will mark games on the asphalt four square, whatever the current game is that we choose we could use the same sort of to mark waypoints or distances on the path around to give something else for kids to interact with or walkers of the site. So that is the larger context for the playground which is just north of the cafeteria. Children exiting from the cafeteria at recess will become either here from the cafeteria door or the central building door to the north of this. And then for the playground meeting itself we continue to work on the design. I don't know that we need to share any of that because the design is not finalized yet but we will be meeting again on March 1st with a fully developed playground model that the group can comment on. And we will also be providing information images of individual pieces of equipment that members of the working group can sort of vote in or out so that we can get all of the pieces that they want and meet the budget and fit them in the space. Yeah, I just wanna add so the working group is made up of Angelica from the committee is representing the committee. And then there are a number of folks from the district who are involved with PE, several folks involved with special ed. The principals have not attended but Doug has attended. And oh, and there's a couple of parents and there's some overlap. There's some parents who are also involved in the district. I see Deb has her hand up. Hi, thanks for all of this is super exciting. Is there a track? There is not a track, a running track. There is not. There's not a running track. And what parts of the outdoor learning spaces are accessible or outdoor spaces are accessible to the students during recess? Obviously the playground in the fields. And I'm assuming the basketball courts, what about that outdoor learning center? The extent, well, the outdoor learning center is imagined as an educational so classroom so they would be supervised at any point in the day that they would go out with the teacher. The extent that students would be allowed to go all the way from the west end of the playground to the forest board garden would be the purview of staff and how far they let the kids go. But in terms of accessibility, it is all at the same level. There are no barriers to any of the playground to the basketball players as flush, same with the basketball courts. And then the rain garden here, there is a slope and there are rocks in there because it's a natural feature, but we've included a viewing area for people to see in from. Thank you. Kathy has her hand up. Tim, when Deb asked about a track, there is a, your cursor can show it, there's the hard surface right near the playground, everything connects to this trail that goes all the way around. And so I think one of the suggestions was markers where I don't know whether that's a mile all the way around or a half mile all the way around, but you would be able to say, if you start here and go all the way around the outside and come back, you've now gone a half a mile a mile. So you could potentially, it's not a track in quite the same way, but it's a fast walker. It's a distance metric. That's correct, right? Cause you could put, I guess along the trail, it would be more like wooden sticks saying you're now at point number, whatever, if we wanted to do something like that. Yep, that was well received at the playground working group when our landscape architect brought up that idea. So either it's markings on the path varies depending on where you are in terms of material weight markers or markings on the ground itself. And whether it's a distance so that you can count where you're going or pointing to a feature. I mean, the Thorpe River is to the east here or there are wetlands to the north of where the existing swings are now. So there are all sorts of features that could be pointed out as weight marker, weight finding points on this path that we can work on with the group. Again. So in the many schools, in the tradition of schools of sixth grade or I guess it would be fifth grade doing gifts, those might be nice gifts for the classes to present rather than a bench or a rock or something like that. Two things I wanna just bring up here. So one is we did get comments, I think very concerned comments about the lack of containment of the playground. Tim, could you maybe zoom in a little bit and expand on that conversation? So yes, one of the staff, several of the staff, you know, we were reviewing the playground design and currently there is no fence as there once was around the playground. And she deals with a sub-session of the population that is, sorry, I'm having trouble zooming in. Prone to a lope to run away and the lack of impediment to that was a concern for her and she wasn't advocating for a fully enclosed playground as we once had, but a barrier or something that would slow her having trouble zooming in here. And so in that meeting, and since we've had discussions about what would be the most appropriate place to start and stop that fence, a full loop around the playground is probably not necessary. A fence to the north is just gonna stop you from getting out of the field and the field is a good long ways before you're off site. And then a fence to the right of the playground is probably not necessary because there's more tried this way. Sorry, we're having a bad day with the plan. So yeah, a fence to the right of the playground is probably just keeping kids from using the multiple aspects of the playground that are there and designed for them to use. So we have to have further discussion to make sure that those needs are addressed. And we also have to acknowledge that accessibility and controlling the ability of a student to run away are sort of working at cross purposes. So there's a balancing act that we have to figure out here. So the other two other pieces that are worth mentioning. So one is the budget that the committee is working within is the budget that was established by the estimating process. So that value is $500,000. So I think we also kind of in the mix here is trying to balance the needs of the teachers who are managing kids to maybe eloping in the budget. So not to say that we won't add something but that's very much in everybody's minds. I think we should talk a bit about the corkeen situation. So you all remember this material being brought up. Oh, Alicia, I see your hand is up. Yeah, sorry. Is it okay if I just make a comment about the fencing before we move on to the corkeen? Okay, so yeah, just because I think I was one of, I might have been the only one who advocated very heavily against fencing at the playground. And I just want to be really clear about understanding some of the concerns that were voiced by the staff. And I do also want to share that I am parent of a child who has challenges with eloping. And so my kiddo is one of those kiddos in that programming and I would prefer that we look at alternatives to fencing such as like maybe additional equipment or things that could be used as a barrier as opposed to like a chain link fence, like maybe a safety net or like a climbing rope. I just think that there are other ways that we can create those barriers without putting fencing. And I would hope that the committee would be interested into looking into those things. That's helpful clarification, Alicia, to your perspective. Angelica's hand is up. Yeah, thanks Margaret. I think that from the discussion, the teacher that is in charge of the AIMS program and the building blocks program that is where that population concerns arise emphasize the same thing. That it's not so much about a link chain link fence, but really trying to figure out an alternative that would also be in keeping with the spirit of the playground and all this like we have the logs, we have imaginative play, something like that. But like Margaret said, it puts us on a challenge with the budget. So it's something that I would also love to bring to the committee because one of the concerns expressed in the committee in the working group is that the $500,000 is tight, very tight, especially when we're looking at now doing some edits. And those edits are some of them, we have a lot of agreement on those edits. And some of them maybe we can't edit because we need to figure out how to deal with your local issue in a creative way or we may need a new ramp for accessibility's purposes. So it would be just great to put forward the issue that it may be that we need to think a little, have a little flexibility just like we've had in other areas with the budget and the tightness of it. So we make sure that we are not sacrificing safety for students, accessibility and the beauty and the exciting aspect that this playground will provide because it will be a big feature, not just for the school, but for the community as well. Thanks Angelica, Deb. Hi, apologies for like adding my two cents as a brand new member, but going back to the previous playground, the one that was in existence before this one, this wooden structure, one of the great losses of losing, well, one of the great sadnesses of losing that structure was there was a platform where kids would perform and especially the younger kids did a lot of creative play just because they could put on shows. And so, you know, if that would serve both purposes, it may not be all that expensive because it is just a platform with seating, just an idea. Thank you for listening. So I do, Angelica, I appreciate your perspective. I just want to restate for the committee what the, how the budget was established. You know, we haven't, you will remember, we haven't ever made any value engineering changes to the budget for the equipment, the budget for the equipment that was established, not disagreeing that I think there have been comments about wanting to spend more within the playground subcommittee. The budget was established based on what comparable school projects, elementary school projects, is spent. So it was, it's sort of benchmarked against peers. It wasn't sort of conceived as a kind of a low number. Okay, so I want to take up the corkine issue, Tim, maybe if you could take this down. We, so background, I'm sort of leading up to asking Denisco to provide their perspective about this. So you all will remember that this was, the corkine material was brought up in public comment a few months ago. We've done some research on it. It was also brought to the attention of the conservation commission. As Rick noted earlier, they did provide us, the conservation commission didn't provide us the order of conditions for the larger site, which is allowing us to move forward with the early site package, but they held out, they have not yet signed off on the playground, because as it stands right now, the playground specifications use port-in-place rubber. So you all remember at the last meeting, I think it was, I sort of submitted a sort of summary of what the research I had been able to do in the packet and the materials I sent out yesterday. There is a document that Denisco provided. So Tim and Rick, could I ask you to talk about this issue? It's adjacent to the playground working group in the sense that they are really focused on equipment, but there are implications to equipment choices that are embedded in the potential for the use of port-in. Before you do it, Tim, I just wanna note that Doug has joined us. And Doug, can you just make sure that we can hear you if you want me for a second? Welcome. Absolutely. Sorry, I'm late, it was stuck in a different meeting. That's okay. Thank you. Welcome. Right. Rick, do you wanna... Doug, from a playground design standpoint, we're looking at desired features. One is universal accessibility of the entire surface, which is what the port-in-place rubber surfacing provides as does the corkine. The, from a playground equipment design standpoint, as we've been reviewing the testing data, some of which is European EN standards and not ASTMs that we're used to dealing with as far as resiliency and shock absorption. It appears that it would be advisable to consider the fact that corkine might be a little stiffer in cold temperatures and kids play all year round. And that might cause equipment selection and design to have a lower fall height. There are standards for what kind of cushion and you need under pieces, depending on what that piece is and how a kid might use it and how a kid might fall off of it. So limiting, making adjustment in heights would be a consideration for the equipment. And that's the one from a design standpoint. The other issues with corkine that are frankly simply not known is the longevity in this climate. And I don't know if you wanna get into the pros and cons or put the document up, Dana. I can share. Thanks, Tim. Rick, while she's doing that in terms of height, my understanding is most, if not all of the equipment we're looking at wouldn't be, is it eight feet? Not, you shouldn't be far that the weight feet. Are we lower on most of the equipment we're looking at so that height per se is not an issue? Well, this is a little out of my area of expertise but I have heard it said repeatedly that some things like swings are a piece of equipment where this could come into play. And then the suggestion is where you could make a change of material under the swings and then you get into the more practical discussion about changes, two things happen about that change of materials. And that's basically where materials can use attention, the accessibility, maintenance and failure. So optimally, you have a single surface that extends over everything. All the adjustments in both of these surfaces in cushioning, actually the cushioning layer is under what you see. And that thickness varies over the area, the whole playground where the kids could fall the farthest, it'd be deeper. So that's that. Rick, I think, yeah, I think, again, just to kind of trap this all of this, this is a new surface and around the United States, right? So I don't want to go all the way backwards but I think what we heard was we eight feet is the maximum, is that Margaret, what you had? Well, I mean, again, this is one designer's take because there's nothing to rely on. There's one designer who has designed and there is an installation going in, in Easton this spring, which is the first, I would say, significant use of corkein in this area of straight corkein, right? And it was that designer's analysis that they were not gonna go above eight feet based on the information that they reviewed. So, I mean, the problem is just to be clear to the building committee about the dilemma that the design team has here, they don't really have much to rely on here. The designer who is moving forward with this in Easton did her own analysis and came to that conclusion. So this is one of the, it's an issue with sort of using a new product. I think in this case, Inisco and Brown Sardina together would have to come to that conclusion but I brought that forward as a perspective from another designer. Angelica question. Yes, that's your questions. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit more about anything you know in terms of accessibility because I know that that was one issue is that with the wood composite it's just not a stable enough surface for things like wheelchairs and the place was. And I'm wondering about corkein. And the other one is about the climate resilience. I'm understanding what the corkein was something that had been first done in like colder climates in Europe. So do we have any data on how resilient it's been in those climates? So on the first topic of accessibility it's my understanding that that's one of its great features that it is equivalently, you know it is a different material in a similar binder and it's being put down in the same way. As poured in place. As poured in place, yeah. Right. The oldest installation in Europe was in 2016. That's as far as to use the material goes back which, you know, as Bill Brown has commented I can't remember he had this great line is like he wouldn't typically the landscape architect wouldn't typically specify something that hadn't been in use for much longer and have sort of eight to 10 comparable installations because there's risk associated for the design team. So 2016 and as far back as we can get with its use. And that's that was in Norway or something like that? And it is in cold climate so that- It is in cold climate. Right. I don't know what the climate and the location in Norway happens to be if it's coastal it may not be as severe as Amherst. So that's something that's beyond what we know what it was subjected to and how. Right. And so it's also not necessarily just the cold, right? It's the swings, it's the extreme colds and then you get pretty warm in the summertime. So, you know, for us and maybe Paul has his hand up I was gonna say we can just go through our position and we understand you all are being put in a difficult position as well. But maybe we'll just let Paul or Paul in first. Paul has his hand up. Kathy has your hand. Thank you. So I'm really eager to hear from the professionals advice on this one. I guess one of the questions is a more broad question. Can we instead of specifying a product specify performance standards that we wanna meet like must be able to withstand a fall from eight feet must be able to withstand weather conditions and things like that and let the bidders put in whatever surface they want. We could put some exclusions in. We may say we don't wanna put wood chips in or something like that. But I'm wondering if we should just let people compete on this in terms of what the and established performance levels that we'd like to see whatever the surface is meet. Does that make things way more complex? I'm afraid while it makes it way more complex it turns it into the wild west of determining what these bidders based their bid on. And the other thing is by statute, we have to if you give a performance specification it has to be able to be met by at least three manufacturers. And what we're saying right now is that of the monolithic surfacing all that we know right now is corkeen and port-in-place rubber. And we don't know that you could make corkeen perform like port-in-place rubber by telling them they have to do this. Okay. Thank you. Unfortunately. Kathy? So as I understand your brief summary of the conservation commission, they held this out because of their concerns. My question is do we, we left this up to the designer last time. We took a vote on it. Two people were against corkeen. We gave full permission to go to corkeen if needed to meet concom concerns. If their concerns are such that we can't use port-in-place rubber. So I'm asking this a question. Then our choices are some combination of engineered wood fiber and corkeen. And what I, when I walk around our swing sets now not just our swing sets but some other places they have some shredded wood under them sometimes. And every once in a while, there's a mat over the shredded wood, a rubber mat. But it looks like we're not very protected in most of our swings, you know, in terms of a deep. We've only recently been using port-in-place rubber in some of our playgrounds. So my question is, how much leeway do we have that if concom says you can't have port-in-place? And their concern was the water percolating through the underneath. It's not so much the fall protection. So that it's because of the wetlands that we've got near us and because of the Fort River. So this wouldn't be overall never use it. It's because of this particular site. So is that where, do we have a reading on them on, if we don't really have a choice, it looks to me like corkeen. I think corkeen is potentially an exciting option. And I understand all the concerns about new to New England, new to schools and new, et cetera, that you can't, you can't say we've done it in 15 schools and we love it. Dennis, go I completely understand that you've done it in no schools. And we found one school in Massachusetts that's about to do it, you know, so. And they don't have swings on that playground. And they don't have swings, you know, and Margaret did further investigation on there's a huge playground in Philadelphia. So again, a city, but it turns out they didn't do corkeen deeply. They did port-in-place rubber underneath corkeen, some combination of it, and it's new. So thus, if does concom, we need the concom permit. So are we up against concom is driving this decision, is my question. I see Rupert has his hand up and Paul. So Rupert, you first. I don't have, sorry, I don't have any answer to Kathy's question. Okay, that's all right. I have a different question which I suspect we don't have any answer to. I understand there are environmental concerns about the rubber content in the port-in-place rubber and cork is a natural wood substance. However, do we know anything about the composition of the binding agents that they use and any environmental concerns about whatever holds all that work together? It's polyurethane. It's pretty much the same material as what's the binder for port-in-place rubber. So that, what Rupert, where I was gonna say is it's the same on both surfaces was my understanding. Yeah. And also, can I just say, Rupert, you raised a question at a previous, in our previous discussion, I wanna come back to you, but let's hear Paul's comment slash question and I'll return to that. Yeah, so I just, and Kathy, you said the concom is driving this decision. I'm just wondering, is that in their decision written decision or are they, do they base it on evidence that this substance versus some other substances, worse or better and that there is actual evidence that this percolates to groundwater? Just to be, I haven't been following this very closely so I apologize if you're repeating things. Tim and they pulled it out. They haven't made a decision pull. They pulled it out. It's not, so Tim and Margaret can comment on it. They pulled it out as everything else is okay, but we want, we're concerned about this. So they... Yeah, they commented in the first hearing on their concerns about it, suggested that it was a real sticking point without voting on it. And because we were on a rigorous timeline for the early site package, we asked that they consider, at the second meeting, we asked that they consider separating the order of conditions from their opinion on the playground surfacing material. And that is what they did. They basically said, here's your order of conditions. It does not include our permission to proceed with the playground as it is currently designed. Angelica has a question. Just to comment, I see in the memo, it says that the design team is not in a position to recommend corkeen, but it sounds that for environmental reasons, we're also like in a situation we're not in place to necessarily go forward with pouring place rubber, right? So we're kind of stuck in a rock and a hard place. And I'm just wondering, so what are we going to use as a decision-making mechanism here like we have just so many trade-offs, but if I can just plug in my view, as a parent with kids who still go to the playgrounds a lot, the big, big issue that I saw with poured-in-place rubber that a lot of other parents expressed was the heat and the chemicals. If you have littles in Groff Park trying to go through in a hot day, it's really hot. And all of that, we were trying to mitigate it with color. And so that's a big, big, big concern. It's a big concern to have all that chemical being released and all that heat. And it looks like corkeen is addressing some of that as well as the accessibility issues. So what would we need to decide or what would be the factor? Given that it's such a new material, and yeah, it would be a huge risk, but maybe the benefits outweigh that risk. Well, let me ask a question of Dinesco very specifically. So my understanding of this memo is that you are not recommending this material and by implication, you are looking for direction from the committee on this. Is that correct? Yeah, it's correct. And Paul, I guess we would have to talk about this, but we are happy to go in the direction the committee is asking us to, but there has to be some form of waiver of responsibility should this fail. We can't take ownership or responsibility of this from a liability perspective. And we understand, like we totally, we understand Angelica, everything that you're saying, we, you know, in three years, this could be a different conversation, right? Like, but right now from a liability perspective, we have to somehow be covered because we can't be responsible if this fails in three, three, four or five years. So Donna, would the form of that be that you would draft a waiver and ask the town to sign it? Yeah, I'd have to talk to our insurance carrier to find out what it is that absolutely needs to be done, but yes. Okay. I think that's, that is clarity. So Jonathan, you had a comment? Yes, it's the support, you know, the design teams need for a waiver in this condition. Any responsible designer, you know, would be responding the same way. This is not in any way, you know, we shouldn't view this as in any way particular to our design team. I think they've done an excellent job of vetting the products, but given it doesn't have the, you know, typical in place experience in this country in similar climates, you know, personally, I'm not particularly worried that it failed, but it could fail from a product perspective. It could fail from an installer perspective. There's also a very limited pool of installers for this product. And while I like the advantages that it provides when it comes to accessibility and lower heat, I think we need to be understanding of our design teams perspective and their liability risk. And if we want to move forward with this, accept that. I also think we need the conservation commission ultimately to vote on this while I'm again, comfortable moving forward it, you know, they're somewhat in the driver's seat on this piece and they need to get, but we've formally gone on the record with a vote, they need to be on the record eventually with a vote as well. I know there's some other hands up. The only other comment that we just want to point out just so everyone can make an informed decision is that we don't know what the cost is. And so, you know, when we put it out to bid, that's great, you know, we have heard different things, but with the limited pool and availability and where the installers are coming from, et cetera, et cetera, we can't with confidence say what the cost of the product's going to be. We'll find out at bid day. Okay, I so many hands. Doug, let's take you next. Well, thank you. It's interesting that Donna just mentioned price because I was thinking that, Margaret, you had done a little bit of research and found a difference that you thought was about $100,000 more expensive for the corkeen. And so I guess the question becomes if, you know, do we shrink the square footage of the play space if the cost is higher or do we, you know, sort of move resources from a different place? So, you know, what are our trade off options if price is above what's expected? Because again, you know, I think that when they originally did design, they thought in terms of important place, much more history with that, much more, you know, sort of tight sense of what that's going to cost. And that's why, you know, it's this many dollars and you get 14,000 square feet and we don't have as much confidence in that. What are our options if the resulting bids on a corkeen, you know, are noticeably different? Yeah, so let me just make a comment about that. And then I'll pick on some of the other hands. So, you know, I think the key difference here is I spoke about the numbers that I mentioned at the last meeting were based on my conversation with the only contractor in Massachusetts who has bid on the installation of the material and he is subbing it out. He's a landscape contractor who is subbing out the installation of the corkeen to someone else. And the values I gave you his opinion, there is no estimating, our professional estimators have no estimating information on the stuff because it just hasn't been installed regionally. So, but your point is a good one. Rupert's hand is up. Thanks, I appreciate the memo there in terms of the cons, it's important to me to look at the long-term consequences beyond any warranty period of three years or five years or what have you. When it comes time to do repairs, there are also going to be very limited opportunities or avenues to get repairs done to something where the only licensed installer for corkeen is in New Jersey or wherever they are. So I think that's hoping to consider potential long-term costs. Sorry, if I could just also respond back to Doug's question, what if the price comes in much higher? You know, it really bottom line will be dependent on what the overall contractor's bid is. And we won't know until after we get the schedule of values from the contractor, the dollar value assigned with this product, right? They just give us a lump sum bid. So unfortunately, we won't know the double until later. We will have some construction contingency if needed to cover the cost, but we don't know, Margaret, correct me if you think there's a different way to approach this, but we won't know ultimately what the cost is until the contract's awarded when we get a schedule of values. I agree with that. Rupert, let me take Kathy and Paul's questions. Paul, maybe you go next. And I do want to circle back to the maintenance question you asked last time. Paul. I just want to clarify. So we are being asked as a committee to a, let me just clarify. So Dennis goes saying we can't recommend corkeen as a surface at this point. And you do, but just because you are recommending chrome rubber, chrome rubber. Port in place rubber. Port in place rubber. That you can't validate or confirm or refute the concerns expressed by the conservation commission and the Board of Health. But that, so as a company, you're saying we would do port in place rubber. You're asking the question to us is do we want to substitute our judgment for the design team's judgment in this particular case? And I think that that's the question. And I think my response is that if we're forced to by another committee who has voted to say don't do this by regulation or something that's very important to me as opposed to them expressing an opinion, which a lot of people have opinions in our community as we know. So I just, I think as a committee, as an elementary school building committee, we have to be very, take this question very seriously as to are we willing to substitute our judgment based on the information we have in front of us for the judgment of our professional designers? Is that, I think that's what the question is. Is that accurate, do you think? I think that is a way of stating it, yes. Kathy? Yeah, Paul, I would just, I would, as Margaret worded her response very carefully, that is a way of staying in it. I think when I went out and looked at Porden Place, it's just beginning to have any kind of science behind it in terms of been on around and what happens over time. And so the quarkine because it's quark is a natural substance. And what's underneath will not have the same properties. And the issue is the tires, that the tires, no one can tell you what tire went into the ground up rubber stuff. And there's a bunch of them out in our backyard cause a trucking company dumped all their tires back there. They're kind of forever doing whatever they're doing and not breaking down very much. So to me, what the design team has come back with is say there are a lot of risks in this cause we can't vet the material. We can't say we've installed it before. So we can't tell you what its properties are for school. And if Concom is worried about the risk of PIP and comes strongly for quarkine, we voted last time to allow that to drive the design team's decision. What I'm hearing now is if that's the group we go, we would, they'd be asking the town to sign a waiver and the waiver would govern the, are we sure five years? Now the manufacturer's giving you five years but above that the design team five years and installation. So the waiver as Donna said would have, the lawyers would have wording in it. And I'm actually comfortable with that because I think it's not always the worst thing to be first or among the first if there are reasons to do it. And I do, as Angelica said, the properties of quarkine in terms of surface temperature it drains really well. It has the same ability to cushion. It has an ability to cushion, not the same, depending on the depth. So I, in my world, am willing to make, be a risk taker on this kind of thing but I understand then Doug's piece, I've always thought on some level we've got a budget for this and if the quarkine folks wanna get into New England market they better come in really close to the price of PIP or the world is gonna say, we're just not gonna do it. So there is some market pressure on them to say, let's do it. So, but I do understand the consequences. So I always thought within some cost constraints. So I'm, I do think concom has been driving this in that they pulled it out as a concern based on, there aren't a lot of reports is what I'm saying when you go out and look at the research, they pulled it out and their concern was the drainage through it, not the surface quality. The performance of it, right? Yeah. Okay, so Deb, I'm gonna call on you and then on Jonathan. I hate to ask, but could somebody give me a brief explanation why turf is not an option, synthetic? I think there have been some local issues with synthetic turf. I live in a community that banned synthetic turf from our own projects because of the PFAS problems associated with it. Different chemical, same results. Yeah, but there's also a difference when you're thinking about the material, like what's the base underneath it, right? You have to have the fall components of it. So it's not like are we putting grass down versus synthetic turf? We need to have the depth and the cushion for falls and everything. So that would be a little, probably not the right application for a playground. Thank you. Jonathan. Yeah, I just kind of follow up a little bit to what Paul was saying. I think the only thing I would add to his description of it is that we have to acknowledge as a town, not just this committee or the school board that we're taking on the liability of choosing or going with a product that's not being supported by our design team. I'm not saying that I'm... Not recommending. Right, not recommending. And so that the liability there has to be acknowledged to be not just a failure down the line, whether that's from the material or the installation, but also potentially the liability of a lawsuit around an injury. I just wanna make sure that we all kind of acknowledge the decision that we're gonna be making. Down the line, other folks will have to deal with this potentially, man, probably not. I think honestly, when I look at the broad spectrum of where the industries are going, we're gonna be moving away from some of these nastier chemicals over time. But at this point in time, to choose something that our design team can't recommend means that we, the building committee, we, the town are taking on a liability. Angelica? So Jonathan, when you said that, that was exactly what my first thing that came to mind is what about lawsuits, what about the liability? But then my then thought was, do we have existing lawsuits or any, like we have a sense of current liability because as a parent who takes the kids to Mil River, for instance, where there is very little ground and it's constantly moving away because of the wood, it's like, the kids know it's like, you're on your own with that and be careful when you're going off the, so there's already like a sense of a high liability and I'm wondering if there's any presidents of any parents that have sued say, because of the liability in the Mil River playground or others that have the wood, where it's basically kids jumping into the ground and it's pretty not good for impact. Angelica, I'm, Rick, just to hold on that, hold you for a second. I mean, I think there, the answer is yes, but, I mean, I think the difference is, there's a different form of liability when you're doing something brand new than the maintenance of an existing facility and the responsibility for the brand new thing kind of rests with this group and with the town, I would say in a different way. Rick, calling on you. Yes. I'm doubling back on when we'd know what the price for a corkine might be and it just occurred to me. In the, I think in this setting, it was discussed the possibility of doing an alternate between the two products and the sticking point with that was always comparing corkine to a rubber surface that the conservation commission wouldn't allow so to what end could that happen? But it also occurred to me that the bidding statutes allows the awarding authority to make things other than the standard file sub-bid categories of file sub-bid and we could make corkine as a proprietary product, a file sub-bid and we have, so on bid day, we would be comparing that against our estimate for the surfacing for the playground and at that point in time, we have flexibility to say that it depends on how the bids come in but there is at least it's a, it should give us a number and when receiving bids, you have flexibility that you could say it's out of budget and we redesign and then you give the general contractor a number to carry and then the redesign simply could be reducing the area of the corkine and rebidding that to get that number closer to what we want. So that's an avenue that we could control the cost without waiting to find out who the general contractor bought it from when he gives us a schedule of values 30 days after he's been signed. Alisha? Thank you. So I think I definitely understand the design team's hesitation or just quite literal inability to recommend this and understanding that you all have not worked with this before and understanding why that would mean that there would be some sort of liability but I do think that in terms of the concom decision and also the weighing in of the Board of Health that there were experts and there were evidence those decisions were based off of expert advice and also evidence and that they do have a better understanding or ability to look at these things as they are and they're still developing so I also understand that. But I think considering the feedback that we've gotten from those committees as well as some of the different advantages that we've known and we've talked about that it would make sense for us to move forward and I think it would also make sense to just have the liability waiver to cover the design team since you all have not worked with this before but I would be in favor of seeing if we can move forward with the Corkine also understanding that there may be some cost differences but I know we talked about contingencies and the possibility of some of the bids coming in under anyhow and so I think that we can sort of address that on the other end. So I'm wondering, so I'm in favor of moving forward with Corkine but my question is, is there a date? Like does this decision have to happen today? And if not, when is the deadline that this needs to happen in order for us to not sort of delay any processes moving forward? So Alicia, I think the answer to that is complicated. Let me hear Paul's question and then let's go back and talk through the scheduled issue, Paul. Well, I support Alicia's question when do we have to make a decision on it? And I'm just sort of from my head is I'm on this committee because I'm the town manager and so the things I bring are three things. One is about liability. My job is to minimize liability and this is a concern for me because we are accepting, the designers are very explicit. You make a decision, you take on liability, are we comfortable with that? That's question one. Question two is about other things I consider as price. When you go to a proprietary product I don't buy, I mean, I don't think if they know that they're the only bidder, they're gonna come in with the price they wanna put on it. There's not an option and there's only one company, there's one installer in New Orleans or wherever they're from. I think that that's a concern for me in terms of whenever you choose a proprietary product, I think that's a concern. And along with that, and then the third thing is sort of installation and maintenance. I mean, not knowing if there are many people with our playground at Groff Park, we've had some light of fire on it and left a big hole and a stall are ready to come back and fix it right away. So that wasn't a big deal. What does it take when there's maintenance issues or repair issues for a new surface? I don't know the answer to the question. So it's liability, it's price, and then it's installation and maintenance. And I guess if we're, I have not seen what the conservation commission is our permitting group. If they said you cannot use port and place rubber, I want them to vote that. I think that's important. If they're gonna say that to us, they need to say it because that has broader implications to every institution in this town, public and private. I know it's all sort of circumstantial in terms of where the water flows. They're really concerned about something getting into the water. So if you're on top of a hill, it probably doesn't matter to them. But I just think that if they feel strongly about it and then they should take a vote on it and say you can't use this material here, and that would be very influential to me. So those are my concerns. So let me talk a little bit about my perspective on the repair issue because this circles back to the thing that Rupert brought up at the last meeting. So I think as I addressed in my memo from a couple of months ago, right now there is one licensed installer that we know of and they're in New Orleans. If you use, so I'm using licensed, their copyrighted term is brand master. If we use, if at the time this is bid, the only licensed installer is this company in New Orleans and there is a warranty. Whoever that installer is, they would be required to come from New Orleans to your repairs under the five year warranty. The warranties for port and place rubber are often but not always longer. It is definitely tied up with who the installer is. It's my belief that this product is probably going to expand fairly quickly in this market. But at the moment, so there are other people could get trained to be brand masters, they won't ever have done an installation of it. So there's a balancing act between, could other people bid? I certainly hope so. Do we wanna pre-qualify the bidder for this material to be someone who's done it before? Probably also. So I just say that to say, I think there will be other people who could do repair work in the future, in the area. But for the purposes of making sure that you had the warranty and it was by someone who installed it, at the moment, as best I know, there's one installer. So let's go back to your other comments. So I don't disagree with you that the conservation commission, we probably need to go back to them and get sort of firm direction. But everything I heard at that meeting leads me to believe that they would be, they stopped just short, I would say of actually taking a vote. And that was just because they had decided not to take a vote on anything at the meeting. And then we asked them to separate the two issues because we needed the order of conditions to move forward with the bidding. So let's return to the issue of schedule. Rick, I think what you laid out is an interesting variation of the bid process. But I would have thought that Denisco would have wanted a real commitment on this sooner, so as not to be having to do redesign at a later date. And maybe you're suggesting that as a sort of plan B, but I would like to hear what plan A is from Denisco. What is your preference here for being able to create a set of coordinated drawings for bidding? Our preference would be, well, as to mentioned, we're moving along with the playground design. We need to final, we're on track to finalizing that in March. And with that, any allowances made for what Bill Brown thinks, he's going to be comfortable with for resilience. We could make that decision assuming that it's going to be corkine. And I mean, like I said, it just affects perhaps some of the heights or some of the things that you think about. And I don't have at my fingertips everything. My suggestion for doing it as a file sub-bid wasn't as much as kicking the can down the road and redesigning it was so that the committee would know on bid day the price of corkine and hopefully the bids that they, the project can afford all the things that can very likely happen when you're the only game in town. And the design change could simply be making the area smaller because we have that latitude. We could make that area smaller now as a hedge against it, which is I think some of the latitude that we were given at the last meeting, but it wasn't necessarily to throw it open and then have to rethink about it. It was just trying to deal with the knowing what the product cost is early as possible. Now, having said that and thinking about the ramifications of that, if it's a file sub-bid, we have to pre-qualify them. And if we have to pre-qualify them, we have to somehow in the pre-qualification make it clear or name the section resilient cork playground surfacing. So we're not pre-qualifying PIP people that never installed it. And then we're pre-qualifying whoever is an approved installer in about two months time, which maybe the people in the grandmasters aren't gonna bother with some of the Massachusetts procedure if they don't have to. Right, so that's what I was thinking, Rick. So we're kind of going down this rabbit hole of pre-qualification, but they have to be decam certified. Who knows if they are, they could be like the elevators and the elevator people that choose not to. They're not. So we can make an attempt to do that, but as Rick's talking through this, I think let's just take that off the table. And I think there was a question, there was a question that I'm not sure we necessarily answered. Now I forget what it was, but when or why? We could go around and around and kick the can down the road a little bit further, but ultimately we want as much time to be able to document whatever it is that we need to document for our 90% bid documents, which are coming up, right, Margaret? We said that's going out. April 26th. So I don't know what the next steps are if we don't take a vote today. Is there an opportunity to go back to Conservation Commission to Paul's point and say, are you making us do this? I think what they said was we don't want you to use port and place. They're not saying to use corkeen. That's right. And they're not saying, and the building committee has already voted down the engineered wood fiber. So, you know, does the building committee reverse their decision on engineered wood fiber? I don't want to go there. I'm just trying to think this all through or do we stay firm on that because there are maintenance and accessibility issues and all other issues. Why we chose not to move forward with engineered wood fiber and just remain on port and place versus corkeen? Unfortunately. I see Ellison's hand is up and I also just want to do a time check with people. Am I, but it is by my watch, it's 1027. Can people stay a bit longer than 1030? Because we have invoices and people need to be paid. So we need to keep, okay, it looks like we can. Okay, Ellison. I don't think my comment will be helpful or my question. I just, when it comes to corkeen, it seems like we are talking about a lot of things that are very unsure and unknown. And if I was a producer of corkeen, I would probably give you a number that you would agree to upfront and then load in the costs on the back end when it comes to maintenance and repairs that you have to go through me on. So I just, I know there's a lot of things that were just mentioned when Donna did a nice summary there. So there were some things I didn't understand necessarily, but if we are going down that route, I would like to make sure that any agreements we have are trying to help us make sure that we're looking at costs that are similar to port and place when it comes to maintenance, when it comes to repairs. Since it sounds like our options in terms of providers is so limited. So they have us kind of over a barrel in terms of time and being able to work with them. Like financially, this seems like a really unwise decision, but I also understand the concerns that people who are in favor of it. And I am very concerned with the idea of going back to engineered wood fiber because I already have a playground that's inaccessible to my children who have wheelchairs. So I'd love to have something that is accessible because that's a daily need, as opposed to some of the other port and place, the concerns around port and place, which is very long-term. I'm in the middle of the daily need of having an accessible playground today. Okay, I see Jonathan's hand is up. So I would say that, I guess the thing I would, one's a question, one's a comment. Do the comment first, we have to be accessible. We cannot build a new school and not be accessible. So I don't think, to me, I don't think we can go back and consider the wood fiber, any form of wood fiber again. And the question is the vote that we took at a prior meeting and now I can't remember was the last one on the one before that. On this topic, what did we vote on, what did we commit ourselves to, and can that vote stand or do we need to actually have a new vote? And I don't know that we had voting. Do we have voting on our agenda? We don't have voting on the agenda, but the way I think of this is you voted initially to not use engineered wood fiber in favor of port and place rubber because of its superior accessibility qualities. At the last meeting, you voted to allow the design committee subject to their consideration to use corkeen. They've come back and said, we can't recommend this, but if the city provides us a liability of, a waiver of liability, we are willing to use it. So I'm not, I think, I'm not sure you can take a vote because honestly, I think Paul has got to go to the legal department and say, can we do this? But I think if you were going to take a vote, it would be to ask Paul to do that. And maybe that's really just kind of a show of hands not necessarily a vote, right? I mean, it's a process piece, right? So if the town were willing to do that, then I would go back to CONCOM and say, we really need you to formalize a decision about this that clarifies that it is for this site only. What's the legal question, Margaret? Whether the town is willing to provide the waiver of liability that Denisco is looking. I think that's a policy question, probably not a legal question. Okay, well, it's the town has to make a policy decision. And I guess I would say, I don't know that I'd be comfortable voting on anything today because it's just a little too nebulous as to what we'd be voting on. I agree. And I really think the other town committee needs to commit to what the issue is and vote on that and then we react to that. And we did, Jonathan, in the motion that I wrote on the fly, but it had to meet CONCOM's concerns. So it specifically anchored it in the other committee rather than just throwing it up in the air that the design team had to make a decision for us. So they've come back with us. So are people... I think we need to move on. I just wanna make a comment in passing that the Board of Health also took this up and made, took an advisory vote to avoid the use of materials that contained the kinds of materials that are in Port in Place rubber. It's not specific, doesn't say Port in Place rubber, but, and it was an advisory opinion because they are an advisory group, but just to make sure that everybody's in the loop about that. So I think we need to close this discussion for now. I think it'll be back on the agenda for the next meeting and I think we have some actions to take. So I wanna touch really quickly just to let you know it's somewhat related. There is a vote that is required for the design team to include proprietary materials in the project. And I'm gonna put the list up quickly. Tim or Rick, could you kind of quickly, this list is based on the needs of the district mostly in this case coming from Rupert. Could you just quickly review this because this will be on the agenda of the next school committee meeting. And we will probably add corkeen to this list as a possible proprietary item. And this is, and I just wanna clarify, this is not our vote, it's the school committee. Not your vote, it's just to let you know that this is in process. So Rick or Tim, could you talk about this quickly and then we'll do invoices. Sure, one of the things that we do early on is we talk with folks such as Rupert who are involved with maintaining multiple buildings and reviewing components and systems that have to work with other buildings or that they have to service district-wide and see if there are any items that should be proprietary. And we've talked about proprietary and its effect on cost. I have to say that none of the items on here are items that are budget busters by being proprietary in the security and having a universal key system for door locks is a typical item as is hardware, Von Dupren and Schlage entry and exit hardware for spare part stocking and service. The security system tends to be head-end type of equipment and universal among buildings. So nothing under the security or the door access and is at all untypical energy management system. It's just a request for controllers and not an entire system. So that's not a big ticket item. And then the public addresses them being a system manufactured by Bogan to be in line with other things that are in the district. So this is a very typical list without any real red flags on it. It's MSBA's requirement that an elected body vote the list, which is why it's going to the school committee and not this committee. Thank you, Rick. Does anybody have any questions about that? It's informational. Yeah, Doug has his hand up. Just send it to me so I can make sure to get it on the agenda for the school committee. Yes, in fact, I've spoken to Sarah Marshall about this to fill her in and I'm gonna send her materials for the packet. So thank you. Okay, Cassania, you're up. Can we write it out? Okay, here we go. I'll go as quickly as I can given the time constraints and thank you for staying for this. Everybody on the team appreciates getting paid. The this month's invoice package includes the OPM, the design team, the BitDocs online is a website that hosted the bit process for the early site package. And you'll see them again for the main GC and an electric who did some small electrical work during the gas line relocation to deal with some conflicts between the path of the trench and electrical wiring existing in the ground. The total of the package is $417,051.96 of which 77 and a half thousand is for answer advisory which is a 3% advancement on the previous 15% expenditure of that contract, the balance for both the OPM and the design team includes services that will last through the entire construction period. Denisco has three invoices, a 5% advancement, bringing them up to 51% complete, 338, 350 and 73 for a value of $750 for the BitDocs online hosting of the early site package and $441 for electric. If everybody isn't interested in me scrolling every page of this, please stop me in the interests of time but I will do so. So this is answer, advertisement, Denisco. Again, please pause me if you so feel that's the last page, the end. Yeah, well done, Cassana, thank you. Okay and we have to amend this for approval, thank you. I move to approve the Bids as presented. And I second it and I just wanna make a comment particularly for Deb since she's new. My understanding is the town is regularly vetting these. You know, in other words, this is, the reason we don't have to scrutinize every single line and at number one, there's an overall budget for this and people are looking at it to make sure there's nothing, there's no surprises on the list. So we are voting on something that's part of a larger system. Thank you. Yeah, they're reviewed and recommended by us then presented to Jennifer and Bob and they're coming to you after that review. So I will take, go around the room to take a vote and this is on the invoices. Simone. Yes. Jennifer. Yes. Jonathan. Yes. Paul. Deb. Yes. Doug. Yes. Rupert. Yes. Allison. Yes. Angelica. Yes. Alicia. Yeah. And Kathy is a yes. It's unanimous with I think just one person missing. We do, we have one vacancy and Paul will interviews have happened and Paul will be over the next few time periods, fill the one slot Phoebe as I think everyone knows resigned from the committee in January. So is there anything else before I open it up for public comments and I will try to alert people that we need to keep it short since we're running over. I don't see any hands. So we are open for public comments. So Rudy, I have brought you in and allowed you to talk. Hi, thank you. Can you hear me? All right. Yes. Just so people know there's one, two, three, four, five. There's six people in our audience right now. I'll make this quick. It's more of a comment. It's come to my attention that with respect to the peer review subcontract which was tied to a checklist that would be cross-checked against the so-called owner's project requirements in order to decide whether the project was on track to meet our net zero bylaw. And I had asked for some months back a copy of or link to the owner's project requirements so that we could see what those were because that was purportedly the energy criteria for the project essentially that the peer reviewer would check our design against to make sure we are on track. I subsequently learned fairly recently that that owner's project requirements document was never really prepared. So the peer review subcontract is a little bit floating in the void in my view. There's nothing to check back against. And I'm not sure this can be corrected now but as we do lessons learned from this project of how to conduct ourselves so that we meet the net zero bylaw requirements and we have a good way for the peer reviewer to cross-check against the energy estimates for the project done by the design team we should make sure that we have an owner's project requirements document prepared early in the design process. I think we should probably be tagging that to the energy budget defined under the bylaw and sort of either make them the same document or make them linked documents. And I just, I raise this now because I wanna make sure as we do sort of lessons learned we make sure and take care of that shortcoming here. And if there's some way to fix this as we go forward with our peer review in the next few months I will be good to have some kind of patch for this. And I hope we see the next iteration of the peer review contract. So we know we're on track for the net zero building performance under our bylaw. So thanks very much. Thank you, Rudy. Next we have, oops, Maria. Hi there, can you guys hear me? I'm on a different device than usual. Yeah. Okay, thanks. So, I'm commenting about the corkeen. You guys have received a lot of stuff from me else and something more comprehensive but I really do hope that we move forward corkeen. I think it is, I won't dwell on this because I know you guys are short on time but aside from having a warranty and installation manufacturers and installers having to test the product at different heights and confirm that it is safe to ASTM 1292 standards. You know, I think that we would be fine with this and this is used in Scandinavian countries and I hope that we can be leaders in this for our to be consistent with our net zero building and not have, you know, rubber port in place that is going to put the Fort River at risk of having contaminants and it provides a safety and accessibility we need so I dearly hope that we use corkeen. Thank you. Thank you, Maria. So I brought in one other person but it's Davidson but I'm not sure he was up at the minute. No, he's with our team. Sorry, Kathy. It was just, my cursor hovered. That's okay. Let Joel wants to say something. I'm not perfect on it. Thank you. So I think, unless I see anyone's hand go up, we are adjourned and I just want everyone to know that I will make sure that Rick sends me the pictures that he showed today so we can put it in the packet. So particularly for people like Deb, you know, just when I went to search for what does the whole thing look like? I didn't have the most recent one. So now that the, we've moved some of the canopies to provide this overdraw which I think is a terrific design thing. So they will get put in the packet and you can download them if you want to. So I thank everyone for participating. Please let me know in between times if you have any questions or comments, I will try to get them answered. Have a good. Enjoy school vacation week next week. Yes. We all have a great week off. Bye. Thank you.