 Well done. Okay. Good morning, everyone. Seeing that we have a quorum, I'm going to call this meeting to order. This is the Thursday, October 21st meeting of the elementary school building committee. And we're conducting the meeting virtually. So I need to go to the people I see on the screen to make sure all the committee members can see and be heard. And I'm just going to call out people's names and just indicate. That you're here and you can be heard. Sean. Yeah. Paul. Here. Mike. Here. Phoebe. Here. Jonathan. Here. Ben. Here. And Rupert. I am present. Great. Thank you, everyone for joining us. And we also are. As per the agenda that you saw, we're starting out with the discussion of the. Beginning framework for a webpage for the project. We're joined by Margaret Wood, who's our, everyone knows Margaret from answer, our project manager. And now with that, we're going to start with the agenda. So. I think I had a question for you. I think we have a question from Caroline Kendall from answer. And I think Caroline, you're out in Colorado. So Caroline got up early this morning to join us. And that's the first item on the agenda. So, unless other people have any questions or comments, I think we'll roll right into that. Item is, is everyone good to go. Yes. And everyone the next meeting and I'll say this at the end will be on November 4th after the MSBA and I will post that but that will be mainly to report on what happened at the MSBA and then there will probably be a couple other non-urgent that fitted in but that's the next meeting. So Margaret sorry to cut you off. So just to recap from last week so Caroline who is our design guru has put together this draft of the website. It's based on the anticipated look of the new district website which is going to be rolled out shortly. Mike I think it was the 20th we said last week. It's tomorrow. Yeah it's tomorrow the 21st so it will look a little bit different from the website that you're familiar with the district but it's using the branding of the new the branding sort of components of the new website and it's a standalone page so it's and Caroline can explain technically a little bit more about this so it's not on the district site it's not on the town site we'll need to link it to those but we will manage it we will be uploading the material we'll be sort of consulting with the building committee about what to put on it so Caroline why don't you say hello and show us what it might look like. Good morning let me pull it up there for you can everybody see my screen. We can. Wonderful okay great so we have set up the drafted template through the Wix platform it's a much user much more user friendly platform for the masses to get in and edit as needed so the idea was to to make make it accessible so here's just a drafted landing page and the idea was to kind of illustrate where we're at in the MSBA process have some links to the previous background page and some of the MSBA process background information and then as you can see the top bar is navigation pane I'll just flip through each of the pages so that you can see these can obviously be modified and customized as the project progresses but just kind of templated out for the meantime feeding minutes these will all be linked but these will each be set up as a button similarly presentations we haven't loaded anything in here yet but the same thing these will all be set up as buttons and if you want additional information you can provide that we'll have a frequently asked questions page and then the project team as well and these can of course have links to email addresses or however we would like to set that up and then a contact page which will send an email out to Margaret directly make it easy to contact so pretty simple at the moment but just drafted to provide an idea of the direction that we were going with it and amherstbuildingproject.com is available as a domain so we can set it up that way sorry Caroline I think last week we Paul made the point that it needs to say school in it so was it amherstbuildingproject or was it amherst? Amherst school project sorry school project yeah yeah I think we don't want to use building project because the town's got other building projects in the work this way okay I want to just pick up from what Caroline was saying and show you some examples these are actually examples Kathy found when she was researching opm's that gives some examples of materials that are on can I think have been successfully used on other websites so let me just grab this page show you okay can everybody see that so um so this is a webpage for from a project in Tisbury this project actually had a sort of in its second cycle like you are so they had a public vote and they're rebooting but one of the things that they did that I thought was very successful I mean we'll have similar ability once we start design to post meetings and events but they also I won't play these right now but if you wanted to go and look at them they have some kind of online interviews I guess for lack of a better word with members of the community the school there's a teacher a parent and I think a longtime elder member of the community who spoke in some of these links about why they thought the project was important so I think that's a sort of interesting possibility this is a project that's in construction now so you can see that most of this one is really showing periodic updates on the construction process this is one also in construction let me say this is one I think that's kind of interesting where they have a timeline on the it's a timeline mostly takes up the whole first page and I might do this in a horizontal in a landscape rather than a vertical format but you know this is this is very like in Boston the Boston public development development development authority but what's called BAPTA now has something very like this for projects where you can see a timeline and then here's another one where you know there's sort of more of a newsy use of this page to put the public presentation links right on the first page so this the page that Carolyn's drafted is really a scaffold for the content that we will put in there going forward and it will get it will get richer over time but we wanted you to see the the scaffold version version can we go back to that scaffold version again because it was very quick it'd be nice to be able to spend a few more seconds kind of looking at it and absorbing it and we can share the feedback link where you can provide comments struggling into the page too it's kind of a nice feature in the Wix platform so others should do what Jonathan just did on any or raise hands either way we do this pretty informally I mean one question I have Caroline is can you wherever this is can we look at it later after we leave this yes okay absolutely I'll share that with you at the end of the meeting Kathy can I ask a quick question sure where would where would something like the educational plan or or some of the other like major reports that we have to put together for the MSBA would they go under project design yeah so I think it's a great question Sean I think one of the things that this doesn't exactly make space for but I would put in project design is the submittals to the MSBA and we're going to talk about that a little bit more when we get to the schedule discussion this morning but the very first submittal to the MSBA is actually the ed program and it is it is it drives the ed program drives the design so I would put that in project design and I would note it as a submittal okay okay Jonathan I was almost wondering if if big milestones like that shouldn't really have their own tab I'm just wondering if the people that you know in the general public will know to look for example under under project design for something like that I'm not opposed to putting it in project design just trying to think that as we put stuff in categories that we think as as much as a lay person might think about how to find stuff well we could add a tab between presentations and FAQ that would be submittals so some of these pieces some of these pieces might appear in more than one place but I think it would be a good idea for people to be able to go and see what's been submitted to the MSBA as part of the funding application would that answer your response respond to your concern Jonathan yeah I'm sure that I'm sure that would be fine I'm just trying to I'm trying to think like someone who doesn't know much about the project maybe he's heard about it from the media or from from folk in town and comes to the site and doesn't necessarily know the construction process or the MSBA process so quickly building up of what Jonathan said you you may want to have like a like a key documents maybe on the home page or on one of these pages the key documents that would have the ed plan and then I also know there's there's lots of different versions of design that come out at some point so being able to have like the most current one that people should be focusing on might be a good way to go so maybe have the sort of the latest thing that has that is also in a folder the latest presentation linked right on the on the landing page so I'm hearing Paul so Caroline I think you worked with Brianna and folks at the school in terms of this I hope one of the things I was wondering about so our next big milestone is going to be a debt exclusion override that's a vote of the people and I'm wondering if we should have a section here about the need why it's necessary and right now we're focused totally on the project and like it's moving forward like we're almost in the construction process but we are going to be needing a vote of the public and I think a lot of public I think Jonathan's right people are going to walk into this and say I've heard about this I have really I know idea why you're bringing this up because there's a long history to this and I know we don't want to clutter this up and maybe there's a link to someplace else but might be something we want to think about in terms of how this plays into you know when someone learns about it they're being asked to vote on this maybe a year from now they're going to say well I want to learn more so I wonder what folks reaction to that is Paul just thinking about the FAQ could could have a dedicated you know how you know something how are we going to pay for this so yeah I was thinking more about the need why do we need to why can't we just you know why do we need to do that yeah and I think you're right on the financing that would come whether it's on this site or not I'm not sure but that's definitely will be something that we'll have to build out at some point or add in can I just build both on that comment but on milestones I thought when Jonathan was saying layperson to the extent there is a buzz right now people are saying where is it going to be built is it going to be is it on the Wildwood side is on the Port River side is and I and that's a milestone so trying the designer product it may be on the home page Margaret just on a where are we now and one of the things that would be specific to Amherst is we have that's a key choice and if there then is something I don't know how you cross link there we will have information on this site versus that site so it could be if you said where are we now and you clicked on it you would get over to the presentation on any information we have on it just on making it really easy so forming the project team visibility study schematic you know we've got a specific for our project not just the MSBA so so people can just find things easily that's that's my main that they don't have to figure out is that under project design probably but um how else do I do it sounds like we almost need a timeline page independent add an extra page on here okay so Mike Mike's hand is up also yeah just briefly my recollection of the last time um and this is both to check with Margaret but also for the committee if I'm accurate to know is that this is um it can't be a page of advocacy it can just be a page of information if there are advocacy groups that form elsewhere they form elsewhere so I just think it's important to note as we move forward we all may feel really strongly about this project but this website is not a place to put anything that could be perceived as promotional information it's you know we could list the date of a vote a future vote we could list yeah as other people are saying you know the benefits of this site versus that site or why we're doing it as Paul was saying but there we just got to be really clean on that so I just thought it's important to know because it's easy to bleed into um why we think this should or shouldn't happen you know usually should if the building committee you know since the building committee site so I just thought at the beginning it's good for everyone have a sense of what the the rules are around what can go on it and what what other people should do that's a really good point Mike thanks for bringing that up so I had another Phoebe's got her hand up yeah Phoebe um I think that there's a lot of content here that has to go into however we tab this out um is there going to be a basic search so that somebody can type in a word to find what they're looking for um because that may be one of the simplest ways to accomplish that goal we can certainly add that that's that's an easy thing to add on here to really tag out content too so it's easily searchable can pop up and there can also be a site directory too if we want that okay and I think if we're going to tag that out I think we could potentially send a list of like here are the the top things that we want to be tagged out so when they they put that in then these are the things that come up um you know as opposed to somebody trying to go through all of these things and understand what each of these categories mean because I think there's going to be a lot of people who want some information and don't understand what you know click on project design and just think they're going to see you know designs of buildings so thank you um on project design or the interaction so sending comments back we have a website that we've launched this I guess this year I don't know whether it's been up for a full year Sean engage Amherst where projects have gone up and you can do comments on them would we put the school building project on that as well or would we enable on this I saw one of these you know contact leave a comment would we try to make this the site where we're collecting those and responding to them can I answer that Kathy yeah or way in on that um can this site do things like surveys um okay so I think that I mean the major benefit like about engage Amherst is it has a lot of tools for public participation if this site can do that too then maybe we don't need to use engage Amherst we don't we don't want people to get confused where different information is but um I think that's the major benefit of engage Amherst if we do want to do a public survey or some of the other tools around different around designs um we'd want to be able to have that available you can embed survey outlets into this okay and then in the background we'll have Google analytics running so we can see on a heat map which pages are effective and things like that too but from a survey standpoint yes we can include that and then Kathy can I say one other thing um one of the things that the library has done with its building project that we would have to do it maybe a little bit differently but I thought was really nice is um they did like these one page uh flyers on different questions and on different topics and kind of put all the contents related to like a certain thing on one page so that people could find it really easily and they could just pull up that one thing to find out the answer to something we may want to think about that for different topics related to this project as we go through um putting sort of those one page you know it'd be kind of like an FAQ but um it says somebody having to browse an FAQ to find the right question just a one page sort of topical um flyer at some point whether it be on the project timeline or on design as we get farther into it. Rupert. Thank you yes I like what Shana P. V. are saying I'm imagining there's going to be a portion of our population that are going to want to know about energy and carbon footprint and that kind of stuff and trying to get all that information together in one place that's that they could then you know read or print out or hold or discuss might be really valuable. And and some of that just thinking about that one um Rupert we could we could marver could whoever the drafter of these one pages I could start to frame it that the school will be and then in layman's term talk about what our net zero bylaw is and then when we then we could we could start that drafter already and then we could add to it when we we have a designer on board and where they're going with those kinds of choices. And I don't know on the I'm looking at the tabs I too like the one simple one pages it may be the FAQ can be the button but then you get to it you can get see one pagers here you know and or just the simple you know some kind of easy easy to find one pagers as we add them rather than another piece. So will the when you have presentations project designs the background documents um so one example for this would be answer gave a presentation to us when we selected them as OPM would that go under presentation and would it be with would that go under project design it's uh you know where where will we put things so they you know when we first select the designer so I what is a presentation versus what's appropriate so um I so I think it can be really interesting to use the designer presentation for the interview but you have to play it a little bit by ear in terms of what's discussed in the meeting I mean sometimes you end up discussing things in the interview that will feel like red hearings to someone who doesn't have the context but um you know generally I would definitely want the building committee to be able to see the interview link one way or the other you know interestingly MSBA doesn't typically record them or share them publicly so I'll have to ask them whether they're willing to do that um if they're certainly public meetings but unlike you all they're not in the habit of recording them um other than that I would say um design presentations are things that are made outside of the building committee so obviously the building committee meetings are one set and I think of the presentations as the late as the tab is here on being the things that are um bringing what's going on to the building committee to the general public and so we would just have to make it clear I mean as this starts to get populated it will become clearer but I'm thinking that if someone's Phoebe's like where would I go to see that and that that might be something that was just within the building committee you'd go to one place versus the very public presentation that if we when we do our public meetings yeah yeah well for us there's one thing we could do is when there is a public presentation we could add you know for more information on the C building committee meeting on blankety blankety date rather than duplicating stuff all over the place press releases if we have press releases we had one um and when you selected press release would go on the landing page um if it was breaking news and then move to someplace else or thank you that's a good question um I would probably move them to an FAQ page after I would put them on the landing page initially Caroline what do you think about that I'd put them on the landing page and then once they had sort of timed out I'd probably move them to the FAQs it's however you guys want to slice it but that can certainly we can certainly do it that way I'm almost thinking it might be a presentation and documents or I'm not sure how that would get categorized exactly okay I I see three hands uh and I didn't see the order I saw Sean Phoebe and Paul you know so Sean um two things I like that idea of maybe either changing presentations to documents and then having the presentations um like header under documents and then it would kind of be you could put those other things we talked about whether it be press releases or um or just other things that come up post them there the other thing I was going to say is we may want to consider instead of like the contact tab we might want to change that to like a get involved tab and in addition to like the you know submit questions to the OPM we may want to start thinking about laying out the framework for where the involvement points are for the public laying that out ahead of time so people start thinking about that I know we're still early in the process so it may not be super robust at this point but maybe setting up one of the tabs just on participation with the public and where they'll have opportunities to submit feedback on the project um that's a great idea yeah Phoebe um just briefly will the meeting agenda and minutes have links to our recorded videos well I'm so I I'd like to not get in a situation we're totally duplicating everything that's already on the town's website but I'm assuming that what will be posted here is the meeting minutes and the meeting minutes will have the link to the video but if you think we should separately post the video link we can certainly do that um I just want to I think my my question sort of revolved around making it as easy as possible so whatever we can do so that somebody can go oh meeting agenda and minutes and click into that and then you know hit a button and also get the uh associated recording um I think that transparency is is very big in Amherst right now in general um and so whatever we can do to make everything that's on here sort of simple to use and easy to find and you know this thing automatically links up with that I think that's sort of the the mindset that I'm looking at things and at this point um so that people aren't searching for things that they can't find and then they feel like you know it's it's okay easy for me yeah I know yeah you're you're right one of the go ahead no Margaret I think the last minutes you did but what we've done we've started to try to do is in the minutes had the hot link to the video you know so that that you'd read the minutes and up atop this was recorded and you could click on that and you could go over to the the video would be an easy way to keep doing it um and then on our website we sort of make it easy um I Phoebe I can't see whether you're talking but sorry yeah I'm more good I didn't mean to cut you off sorry oh no um yeah I mean I think it's it's sort of a preference thing I mean some people would rather scroll through some minutes and some people would rather watch a video link so maybe we should look at actually posting them separately from the minutes let me think about it and we can always link it directly to the town's page so it's not separate it's not duplicating it but it would we can have the link to the minutes and we can have the link to the video on the same little box yeah so that's pretty easy to set up Paul yeah so I think these are a lot of good ideas I would suggest that Caroline really work with um um Brianna Sunred our communications manager who manages our website and you know she's already addressed these types of questions on our own website and sort of being consistent and then whether it should be linked or posted all those things they could I think at that technical level they can figure that out and then come back and say how does this look and I think you know Phoebe's point about saying we want ultimate transparency um is a really good sort of operating principle um as they start to develop but I you know I think you know you know I know so I think that a lot of these comments will come through as they start working at the staff level I'm looking any other comments um the launch of this Margaret so you you're getting all these comments um what is your what is your thinking on when content timing of adding content and then opening up the page well I think we definitely want it to be fully up and functional by the time the designer is on board which isn't it right now you know I think we're anticipating it to be the 16th well the designer selection to be complete I should say probably not say on board um I I think there is I certainly wouldn't probably put it up before the second but I think once we're sort of um you know people aren't sort of focused on the election which is probably taking up a fair amount of um spate airwaves these days that you know shortly after that would be a good time to sort of put something up and have people be aware that that process is moving along does anyone have any thoughts I mean the the MSBA meeting that goes from the shortlist to the finalist is the 16th um so getting this open before that or getting it open to coincide with that I mean I don't you know I guess my only personal preference would be making sure we have enough content on it that it's not frustrating when you open it up that you think you're going to find things um Paul yeah I think coinciding with that decision by the MSBA as to that the architect would be a good time to launch and because it's a reason to say something out loud to the community and we say and we have a new website available and we would do the town would be doing a press release on it so we could also point the people to the fact that go here for all the you know where we are and by then we'll have we'll have the beginning of a timeline moving forward you know yep okay and the only caveat I'll make is that um I I think the there's selecting the designer and then there's an agreeing on a fee I mean it's it's very rare but occasionally the top but the municipality can't come to agreement with the top ranked firm and then they're allowed to go the second um it usually takes a few days so um I think in the timeline we're going to look at this morning I would basically say we should once the there's a fee agreement in principle and they've been given a notice to proceed that would be the moment for the um press release and the rollout of the webpage. Phoebe? Sorry a little off topic at this point I just also wanted to say um the other thing that I think is going to be really important is that people understand everything they're reading so if somebody doesn't know what an RFS is you know what does that mean we have to ensure that people understand all of these things so anyway that we can get to that point. Not not be an acronym Hal. I'm with you Phoebe I'm always the first person to say I have no idea what that acronym means. Any any other comments um you know I think if we get the link back to what we're seeing here and and some of the suggestions on the tabs people everyone has Margaret's email contact so you can just send any additional comments to her and we meet again our next meeting is on November 4th so we could see after the interaction with Brianna the answers to some of the ideas to some of these tabs as I heard we we changed so we're still seeing the prototype so Margaret we could just come back one more time because that's still going to be by my calendar at least a good two weeks before this gets launched as a website. Yeah I agree. So any other discussion on the website? If not we can if there aren't any I'm looking around no um we can thank Carol Hine for joining us early in the morning and for giving us this preliminary and move to the next topic um and I I had asked people to send in if they had any draft interview questions and I got a few um and Margaret had one and I had one of my own so these would be um Margaret maybe you can describe we're not in total control of these interview questions correct but you know in other words we're we're not we're not like you with with OPM where we drafted them but we yeah but but we need to have drafts because they'll move the process will move pretty quickly from from where we are now so I did do a draft of some of these but I wanted to hear first whether people have some ideas on this or I can just show my screen okay I'll just share my screen and let me see whether I can draft interview questions and while Kathy's putting it up I'll I'll just tell you all what I said to Kathy about this is that so what happens is on the second where they'll do the designer will do the designer shortlist like the your representatives in partnership with the MSBA designer selection panel and then usually within a day um the MSBA assembles the questions that they want the interviewees to address in the meeting so it's you know they're they're given 10 or 15 minutes to make a presentation they're asked to address a few things specifically um it actually might be a little bit longer for the presentation out I think it might be more like 20 minutes and the MSBA has a set of questions that are they ask everyone to address and it has to do with making roles clear talking about project management they're they're good but questions but they're a little bit they're not project specific they do ask like on the afternoon that the shortlist has been completed they will say to us do you have questions that you would like to have considered for the interview and we will give it to them and they will take some of them but not all of them and some of them they might add it and then the questions go out to the interviewees and that's to give them enough time to really prepare well so um I just want to make sure that everybody understands because we give them a question it may not end up in the interview but we should I thought several of the questions that Kathy had offered up were really good ones so and I just um just this background two of these came from Allison's estes you know she didn't join us today but she sent them in um the one about uh small group instruction spaces and storage needs both came from her so Paul yeah it seems like two and four both talk about daylighting um it's almost like duplications almost um and I guess what I would want to see is a question about um the greenest building possible like we want to be net zero and I don't know if that um I mean I think that's where we're going to be possibly different than other projects is is that we're going to be we want to be net zero and having them address that explicitly I think that's really a good point um so I wrote down greenest building possible so John Jonathan do you want to build on that as a yeah I might you know one way I might suggest framing the the green question is you know how how do we get how do we meet our bylaw and get the uh greenest building possible and uh stay within a budget or something like that you know because it's it's going to be a balancing act we have to meet a certain criteria we want to do a green building um but we we are going to have budget constraints um and we'll be tackling those for for a long time to come um and then if I could just quickly add I don't have an issue necessarily with any of these particular questions I just think this is an opportunity for us to go back to to when we were thinking about our two kind of solicitations both for the OPM and for the architect about the things that are important to us as a community I think we want to make sure we get those those questions or those issues into a question um and if necessary you know uh you know kind of put the ones we feel are most important up the top or something like that so that that the MSBA gets a notion of what we consider important now whether they present that question is done up to us but at least we'll get the we can try okay so Jonathan were there specifics on the OPM ones um I have the list of what we asked yeah um well I think we want to know obviously the the green building that zero one is important um I don't know quite how to frame it but we you know and but we've had some discussion about how certain candidates did or did not you know well understand our community um you know I don't know that I can frame that question really well but I think it would be good to have a question that said you know how are you going to approach our diverse community in some more eloquent way than that okay Rupert yeah along Jonathan's lines um I think um there's a there's a trade-off and a balancing act that happens between um uh maintainability and our long-term costs versus initial costs and operating costs and especially in super green buildings a lot of designers like to throw a boatload of technology um that's difficult to manage long term so it'd be interesting to me to have them address that kind of a question and should Rupert would you put it in this question six and and um keep and keep maintenance costs low or something like here or would you make it a separate question uh I would start it with a second separate question and see if we want to merge them okay but um just so that because sometimes if you put too much in a question you only get an answer to the part they want to answer right I I think the way to frame that question Kathy would be to say um how do you strike the balance between the technology that makes green or net zero buildings functional and the maintenance budget of public school districts like it's what I'm yeah what Rupert is saying I mean it's it's a great question and I think I think if I had to pick one of the questions the MSBA will pick that's one of the questions they will be very interested in that question yeah I mean if you want you can throw in language like lifetime costs versus other costs uh to try to get their a sense of the designers or a concept of of not only you know how the building operates at zero but what was the the energy cost of the footprint of creating that and maintaining it and disposing of it as a whole another layer possibly and Kathy might change where I said functional I would probably rephrase that to say net make notes here a reality and the maintenance budget there we go and Jonathan I do have yours this number seven on a demographic so I just have to figure out how to word that um you know and Paul you um you suggested on two two and um the one on daylining it does do daylining the different the one difference on two and I'll just speak to Allison I think she was also um wanting to make sure we have small group instructional spaces so it's got two concepts in there you know so we want classrooms but we this notion of and Jonathan I know we we did this in our goals to where everyone we did that we want some flexible spaces we want don't just want classrooms but we want breakout rooms um so maybe we can reframe two to be about the small group flexible spaces and have just one on day lighting Mike sorry I didn't see your hand up oh no thank you so I think these are great and the other thing I'm thinking about is what what interview question you know describes some of the uniqueness of this particular project and um for me it's a project following up on a failed project right a project that didn't didn't come to to conclusion I'd be curious about how designers talk about their experiences if they've had any of coming in after there's been a project that wasn't completed and how to re-engage the community how that feels different than you know more typical project which doesn't have that history so I do think that's you know people have different views on it I'm sure but rightfully or wrongfully that is our history and Amherst that we had a project that did not come to fruition and I'd be really I don't think that's the normal question MSBA would ask because it's not the typical situation I think it really is going to matter to see how an architects how a firm's response to that somewhat unique context that we have I don't know how to word it at all Kathy so I apologize but um yeah no no I'm just you new failed project and I'll come up with some wording and we can wordsmith it till it makes sense I think at least one of the the firms noted that they had had a project that was that they had to come back to so so if they haven't had that they're going to have to speculate anyone anyone else you know I can send we can try to with this we have to do everything in public but we can try to wordsmith these and get them back to you um so that we and then you can just send me any comments on them so I'll be just the cedar then that's within our especially for this thing about the unique demographics how would they design failed project two and nine is probably more than enough for us to to have and Jonathan your suggestion I think was right that we should order them with the ones we should make number one the one we would like most to have you know so if they only take some so to have them in if we think they're all important but still do some doing so I will feed this back to you if that makes sense to everyone and just send it out as a word document and then just get comments back to me once we've got two placeholders here um that aren't worded the one other one that I thought of but I saw that we we did do a good job on the request for the proposals on talking about space that is designed for elementary school but can also be used by the community and it's space that can be used be too first so we we had groups talking about cafeterias with a stage which could also be the music room you know or a library that could be a community library I don't know whether we need to separately ask that because it looked to me like we got most of the designers who were responding to talk about it but if anybody thinks that you know you know it's a goal so we can lock the rest of the school and people from the community can still be using it okay so you know this is a lot to do um just looking at a screen so is is that does that work for everyone that I send this document back to you um and you know with Margaret's help I can get those maybe get those two questions and the consolidate the daylighting questions so there's only one get the two questions that are just placeholders right now written and then everyone who thought about them can look at them and just send back comments and um we only need them by Margaret we the MSBA meeting is on the second and you said they might roll right away into the question so we we just need them by that date correct yeah I mean typically we do that you do the interview you do these the short list and then within a couple of hours of the meeting closing we'll get an email asking for interview questions and I don't believe they'd give you more than a 24-hour turnaround because they're trying to get the questions back to the designers quickly so that they can prepare for the interview okay so I will today is the 21st so I'll get this back at the latest Monday you know potentially by tomorrow if Margaret has time and then if people can commit to getting any kind of responses back um by the 29th or the 1st of November okay so you have a week to just look at it and if other ideas come on they go on the list so we'll just have group group think rather than group wordsmithing um all right I'm seeing nodding heads so I think we can I can unshare my screen and how do I get unpause share stop okay I have to figure out how to unshare my screen stop sharing I don't want to stop share all right I don't know how to do that let me just make this small stop share stop share there it is tada yeah no the the your faces were covering up the stop share the stop share button I hate it when that happens so so the the next item on the agenda is Margaret has um put together a potential timeline for us on meeting um and and as she pulls up it's a messy messy you know complicated because one of the things we thought of is there need to be some public meetings so none of them have dates right now yeah and when the designer comes on this will be firmed up but trying to at least identify um p things and after this meeting we will share the timeline with you you know it's it because it's excel to take a look at it and it just as you go to pull it up one of the things she said to me is that once the designer is on board you know we're looking at a november and december that'll be hard to have very many focused meetings between thanksgiving and the holidays but that by january we're going to be our time meeting time will become much more intense um you know again driven by designer but that's so planning on does this time slot still work for everybody and we're talking to the school committee on at least potentially one joint where everyone meets the designer and and paul we could involve the the council in it but you know trying to find dates that work for a bigger meeting so i'm going to let margaret pull this up um yeah so um i actually was emailing back and forth with caroline this morning god bless her for wanting to be up at the crack of dawn um and to sort of share this and say you know this is this document this is this is a timeline that we need to make into a really legible graphic so i apologize you will be like my head is spinning looking at this um can everybody see this can you all see it yes i'm seeing nodding heads okie dokie so um i am going to just make a little bit bigger so the the nugget here is um what i was trying to do and this is based on an earlier iteration i did with kathy is to have a chronological timeline that's sort of color coded to different activities and the the key which you quickly start to forget after you get it past the top is here at the top so yellow stuff is msva deadlines urgent urgent um blue is building committee meetings um orange is community forums or or broader community engagement i you know i would like to think i think the right thing to do here is not to think of the community engagement as being like a single event i have suggested to kathy that we think of the community engagement as being a week of multi uh valent communication so that someone who doesn't go to a meeting might see something on a website might see a flyer might see something so think of the community forum piece is really community engagement um this color which isn't showing up very well is also school committee um and then green is a joint building committee and school committee and what's not in here is um as a color is also updates to city council which i think will also need to meet so you could you could also sort of think of these as separate timelines next to each other but for the purposes of getting started on this they're just it's just one long ton set of milestones in the sequence in which they need to happen okay so the other kind of key to reviewing this is that we have to make three submittals to the msva in order to be lined up for um an approval the the first one is what's called the preliminary design program and it does not have to be tied the ms it does not need to go to the msba board it's a staff review basically so that one um you know we're that i would say that piece of this project is fairly well advanced because mic has been taking the previous building program educational program and making some edits to it and i think it will be in pretty good shape when the designer gets on board that's the first submittal the second submittal which you know i think for this community is the most important one is what's called the preferred um preferred schematic or sorry it's the this it always got them confused the design program preferred schematic yeah the preferred schematic is where you say we've looked at all these options this is what we think about them this is the one that's preferred right and then the third one is the sort of schematic design presentation which really determines um preferred oh sorry preliminary design program is the one where you've picked i'm missing something here and there's a schematic design submittal which is really the basis of cost okay so um that's interwoven here and and it also drives because each submittal requires the sign off of the school committee and the building committee and in this case i believe paul bachelman right as the town administrator each submittal has to have all three signatures you have to know when those are and then you have to um uh be able to get all of those sign off sick because there's a piece of paper that goes in with all the signatures so in the in the bigger picture what's guiding this layout is those submittals but um i haven't tried to assign dates to a lot of these once we get beyond the sort of short term you know getting to the first of the year because really the it's the designers work right i mean i there are timelines here they need to be working with us and saying this is how long it's going to take me to do this this is how long it's going to take me to do this so um let's just walk through so for eligibility you know this piece of it up to here basically is in the rear view mirror right so there were these things we did for the MSBA there were there was a building committee meeting um the school amor school committee has met the regional school committee has met uh the district website roll out is actually tomorrow the new website and then um the next big milestone is there's a november second is the designer selection panel reviewing the applications then on the fourth because it's blue building committee gets back together um on the 16th we have interviews then i plugged in you know a few days a week basically to negotiate the designer contract somewhere around in here we're launching the project web page that we talked about this morning and then it's Thanksgiving right so everything screeches to a fault a halt um and then we reconvene on December 2nd we Kathy and I just said there's no point in trying to do anything the week of Thanksgiving yeah Jonathan is agreeing with me like Jonathan you're saying no but i think you mean yes um so really we come back together with the designer for a first meeting in December in early December and then um we're proposing by the 16th which is about two weeks later that we meet have a joint school and building committee meeting to look at the designer presentation of the milestone so that that's where I will really have dates for all of this because you will see that after this it says need date need date need date right but at this point December 16th we can hopefully fill in these dates right so there you are now it's Christmas time and then we're going to get back together in January with an initial here's the project here's the designer here's our process get feedback and again I think there should be some kind of a public meeting but it should be broader than that right um then I anticipate there will be at least two meetings uh committee meetings in January there could be three depending on this um and then at the end of January um because one of the big things that we'll be talking about in January is the beginning of the discussion of the which site I don't think it will be concluded I anticipate that this meeting in late January is really saying here's what we know here's what we you know here's what we hear these are observations right um so then by the end of January there would be a building committee meeting sort of reflecting on what we heard from the community in February again go back and sort of make a make sure the school committee is on board right and then um also in February review the education plan and and vote to authorize the submission right so the school committee has to do that the building committee has to do that and the town manager has to do that um and so here's the building committee meeting to authorize here's the submittal that's our first submittal okay so that will have a summary of all the conditions that have been observed so that's one of the designer's big requirements is summarize everything they've seen the time so the timeline for this the program I think is going to be relatively easy typically it would be several months to do this work so one of the big questions here is since we're giving the designers the work that has done be been done before how much are they comfortable taking in and how much are they comfortable do they feel like they need to kind of revisit any of it right so could be later than late February wouldn't be earlier on that basis okay so now we're really starting to talk about what is in the preferred schematic which is now we're looking at the different options renovation well we're looking at the two sites and we're looking at the different options renovate add Renault and new right and then there's a whole basically a slew I'm not even going to go into any of the detail but I'm going to basically say there's a whole slew of meetings potentially ending in April late April where we kind of settle so we have all of March most of April to process all of that stuff and this is where it starts to get a little tricky because I honestly think it would be great if we had a little more time but when you look at the MSBA schedule for when we need to be making these submittals we actually in order to hit the next MSBA board meeting and get their approval we have to the next coming update for that is May 4th if we miss May 4th we can't get to that step for two more months so I get Margaret would you just say that again so there's the May 4th date and then yeah more months would be June 4th July 4th so that it would be July yeah hang on just second it might do you have it way down at the bottom the other MSBA yeah so it's it sort of becomes cumulative essentially let me just see if I can pull up here something else I shouldn't be the only one I'm just other people should ask questions too I'm just trying to think through how much has to be done by May 4th and if we get it all done with these community meetings what's the next date so that that was just my question on that yellow one right um yeah you know what oh here we go I got it give me one second so this is um can everybody see what I just pulled up in front of the other thing this is um this is what we kind of live or die by in terms of submittal so also color coded just to be really confusing not the same colors but the way this works is the dark this is the MSBA board agenda that I just opened from the website so the dark blue is board meetings and the green is submission deadlines so what you can see here is there is a board meeting in June and the submission deadline is six months earlier the next board meeting because they're not meeting in July and August this year is September 1st and the submission date is August 31st this is a long gap between um between submissions so um so actually there's a June 27th submission for an August 31st date and then there's a September 1st submission for an October 26th date and then the last one is there's an October 27th for December 21st date so that's what I'm sort of toggling around here um in order to get this so again this this is is a scramble if we shoot for making the May 4th submittal for June 22nd but just to sort of carry on with the thoughts so then at that point you've basically said now we have picked an option um we believe it is the right option we're going to direct the designer to proceed with the detailed schematic design for the project and this is the part that I'm honestly most uncomfortable with now in terms of timeline because then again there's a sequence of building committee community engagement meetings and votes culminating with June 27th submittal for an August 31st board meeting that's too fast for what needs to happen here because the schematic design process you you're really depending on the team to get the cost of the project right and you do not want to cut this too short so I I did this just to look at the fast as possible but if I were the designers I would say no that's a bad idea and I would agree with them so the alternatives are if we can get to May 4th for the start of the of the schematic design submittal then the next we have the options of submitting September 1st which I think would be fine um which would get us to the October 26th board meeting or submitting the 27th for December 21st the problem with the second one is I think we probably need to have the value in hand for the purposes of the debt exclusion vote um a little sooner than mid-October Paul when would you say that date might be yeah that's been my this my question is um you know if they're going to go for a November vote um which would be on a current an election already election happening they could call a special election for this obviously but the drive would be to have it in November um for a lot of different reasons um so I think you know just for publicity and everything you'd want a couple months in advance of that right so I think what we probably want to shoot for if you think so in this version um with the September 1st submittal um we would have the costs in hand that we were giving to the MSBA by August so if I see both Sean and Jonathan and Paul all three so why don't we take a pause Margaret and Sean I think yours seems to have gone up first Jonathan was first Jonathan Jonathan go for it okay to uh someone unrelated once but I'll I'll touch on first exactly what Margaret was saying yeah I the May 4th June and then June that that seems like animal to me um the the pure cost estimate it'll take three to four weeks in there but even even the rest of it's it's pretty aggressive you know there's a lot of work for the designer the community the committee to get in between you know between what is it uh you know January and May um I'm not saying we can't do it but I just from my perspective I can see that it's fairly aggressive I would like us to hit that but those community engagement weeks as you've called them are going to be very important and uh and they you know a lot has to get done in what seems to me to be a relatively short time um the the other thing not to be answered today but at some point we need to sit down kind of have a dedicated time to think about what those community engagement things are going to be what they're going to be like well I've loved having these online meetings for for convenience um I think at some point we need we're gonna need to have some live engaged people in a room yeah I think to build engagement and I'll stop my comment there because there's there's we can spend an hour on just those kind of topics right well and John and I agree with you and that's why I think the very first task in of the very first meeting is to talk about that in tandem with what's the time when the designer's on board with in tandem with the designer and though so that's why December 2nd would be that conversation and then we would take it to the school committee yeah I mean this might be fine with it but I just I'm just as much nervous about what we have to do as a community there too I totally totally agree yeah totally agree so so I hope that isn't completely illegible Carolyn and I are going to try and make something that's a little more graphically engaging but this is really I did this to get my own back center row about what had to happen between what and make sure you know that that you understood that every time you know we make one of these submittals we have votes associated with it right and estimate I mean there's like you have to sort of put together a submittal including estimates for each stage that become kind of increasingly detailed and then share them have people you know share them then come back and say can you do you want to vote on them now I mean there's nothing worse than putting very complicated documents in front of a committee and saying so by the way I need to vote from you today we do not want to do that Sean so my comments were very similar to Jonathan's which I think we should probably start ramping up the community to be prepared for this to you know that this six month kind of sprint is going to happen and there's going to be a lot of engagement and we should start thinking about now I know we don't have dates but we should you know start making people aware that this is coming up and think about the strategies we're going to use to to work with people I know the designer will dictate some of that but I think we want to definitely give people as many people and as a group of people a heads up that there's going to be a lot of engagement coming up in the next six months or so and so I have a just a question on this Jonathan you were suggesting a dedicated meeting we've talked about meeting on November 4th we could meet November 18th and have it just be not well we'll know the negotiation but we could just have our group say how do we think we might want to do this or be pre designer you know we know our community are we talking about we have districts districts councils doing meeting what are we going to do with the school committee what do we do at the school level with the parent the parent so we could have that before the before we're meeting with the designer so we just think of what are the people oriented kinds of things we could be doing so yeah so Paul so that's just an idea on one more meeting in November where it's just us without an outsider so three three thoughts on that one it could be that we we may want to create a subcommittee of you know two or three people to work on the outreach piece because you don't need it's hard enough to frustrate a quorum not everybody's interested in that part of it maybe there's two or three people who would like to be delegated it would still have to be a publicly posted meeting of course but that's one tool one technique to lessen the load on everybody the second thing is I think it would be really good to have a time frame I think what John is saying and John is saying about letting the public know how this where we are sort of a generalized time frame like we expect to have a designer on board by November we expect the community to be engaged during February and March and please you know we expect to have a you know whatever it is by certain dates sort of just big broad things so people can say well when is this coming up and then the third thing was when do we make the decision about the site and who ultimately makes that decision because we're those are those and along those lines do we only have to look at two different options well you can look as many as as many options as you want but but as does MSBA require at least three or are they fine with two no I mean for sites there I mean most communities are only looking at one site so you have a situation where you have you know two two logical sites and I think not not other options that are sort of real contenders at the moment so to answer the question about where it is going to so when you make this submittal which is in mid to late February you outline what you're going to look at in the next step right then in the next submittal you say okay now we looked at all of them and this is what we learned and including estimated costs of both you know the site options if you're looking if you decide here you're only going to look at one of the two sites you say that if you want to keep two sites on the table you say that here you are now looking at two sites of two on the table plus Renault add Renault new and there and there may be variations sometimes there you know variations the I think the thing that's probably most common is different variations of addition renovation so you know like what you did with TSKP at Fort River where there were like I don't know six different iterations of that so so I'm not recommending that many options here because it's a lot right so ultimately if the town council I'm assuming the town council is the ultimate decider on where this new school is going to go and correct me if I'm wrong on that a and then b we need to plug that in for the council so they have opportunity to review the options and make a decision in a timely manner so that's where I would like to see that overlaid on this thing yeah and I'm not sure I mean school committee is going to want to weigh in as well I know so yeah Mike so uh two things one is that I will have to depart I have a 930 meeting that I have to get to that's not a virtual meeting but um on on the point Paul just talked about my understanding and maybe I'm wrong is that the school building committee this body is the one that determines and votes on site as part of the submissions MSBA I'm not saying they wouldn't be informed by both the town council the school committee in the community um but Margaret if I'm wrong please please jump in I'm happy to be uh corrected but you know my understanding from the last one is that town councils kind of other than um feedback and um thoughts would be around the use of the building that's vacated in that scenario not on which site gets used I'm not suggesting that they shouldn't be have feedback it has large implications but the actual the decision I just it's good for the people in this group to know that which decisions are making so that's a good point Mike so we should plug that in here when does the MS when does this build this body make that decision so that you know Mike and I can go back to our respective boards and say here's what we're doing because you know they're the elected leaders so I think that they're gonna want to have an opinion and could we also Margaret could we get clarity maybe you can just ask MSBA so Paul you were assuming that it had to have a council vote I mean this is this is publicly on land you know so normally we talk about how we use it so just is it the school building committee with of course informing the council or do we need a council vote I just I think it's important that we know that well so I can tell you what the MSBA is looking for they are looking for again the three signatures so school committee has to sign the building committee has to sign and I agree with Mike's comment the general they consider the building committee to be the arbiter however by virtue of asking the person who is signing the contract which is Paul the construction contract to sign by implication Paul is being directed by the council actually that's not true no no oh okay the executive is independent of the council oh okay so I would say the MSBA expects that the town council is in the loop and then concurrence but they're not looking for a vote from okay that's good to know okay and I'll just maybe mention this that matters a lot Margaret because the way we do votes we have to do a first reading a second reading oh yeah yeah just briefly and then I really will have to run I think it may make sense and I don't mean bad these people say politically and I'm not referring to the bad politics that people often refer to but just for critical stakeholders like the school committee and the town council to receive a report probably from the architect along with the building committee about the site selection be able to ask questions even if they don't have a vote I just think and it's not just optics they're elected to represent their constituents they should have their voice heard at a different level because they want an election to be able to do that and I think that feedback can form the building committee and that way at least everybody there's clarity on process to go back to Phoebe's point you know in the transparency piece absolutely you know I hope you all have a lovely day enjoy the unusual seven degree warmth and I will see everyone soon and I agree with Mike on that too I mean obviously and and that's trying to build this in you know so I wasn't saying that the council wouldn't have a full discussion on it and then we just do do we do them as three separate meetings do we do them as combined meeting what's what and people's tolerance for meetings so some of us have to be in all of those Kathy we're still good with quorum right with seven yeah we are good for a swarm because we we have Sean you said we do have one invoice so I just want to see we're good with quorum as long as we don't lose anybody um right and I've got some time limitations so we should do what's essential right now so let's do what's essential and we have a let me just see whether we have two we have two attendees so I also want to make sure we ask for public comments so Sean are we good to move off the timeline and Margaret will send this out I think with whatever additional annotations so we understand the those MSBA dates on them Margaret and again I think Caroline and I are going to try and make it into a schedule where there's MSBA and so everybody understands the governing line and then there's the community line and there's design line so we'll make something that's a little not quite so dense okay Sean okay I'm just going to share my screen quickly so we have the September invoice from answer that has Margaret's time and Michelle I believe was the consultant who helped evaluate the RFP proposals at the last meeting so the yeah this invoice is 6369 yeah it's funny when we got this I was like who is Michelle Potter because I don't like nowhere as Shelly but that's Shelly okay I move to approve I second it um I need to put it to a vote unless there are any comments okay so um I will call on Sean yes yes Kathy is yes Paul yes Margaret no Margaret doesn't get the vote on anything Margaret doesn't get to vote on your own I don't get to vote on my invoice John happy to do it but no yes then yes Rupert yes and Phoebe yes okay the vote is unanimous unanimous of one two three of the people who remain um one two three four five six seven of us so I will have the tape so we can have the minutes reflect this I do want to take time for public comments and just if unless there's anything else we are meeting on November 4th is the next meeting and if people want to have I like Paul's idea of a subcommittee for outreach and Paul the one question I had is could we also put other people on that at least informally so it's not just a subcommittee of our group and we can talk about that um maybe quickly later not now I'd also like to suggest we might want to call it a working group a working group yeah so it doesn't have to be just a sub that that's probably a good way of doing it okay so I am turning it opening it to public comments and I do see one person uh Bruce so I'm going to Bruce I'm going to allow you to talk you are now part of us hi Bruce welcome and you have to unmute I just did lots again very impressed with the whole proceedings and so forth and so I have one question or comment very particular it relates to the questions that propose questions that you're submitting and thinking and deliberating on um that's not surprisingly my suggestion relates to the daylighting question um I wonder whether you wouldn't consider or whether it's appropriate to consider sharpening that question um in something like the following way uh could you say if we were to consider requiring the highest level of daylighting um per the uh the chips or lead standards which is a very specific uh by the way um a measurable objective then the question what would be your approach in other words sharpening the question by uh prefacing it with context of the highest level that is currently discussed as a as a measurable objective in daylighting it seemed to me that it would be interesting to sharpen at least one of those questions so it was quite pointed and then see what the people say I can imagine all sorts of answers they might give to that and I can imagine that they would be quite revealing and I don't know whether this uh interview would be open and I suppose it is because it's a public meeting I would be very interested personally to listen to the answers to such a sharpened question related to daylighting I mean it could be done as well with the uh zero net energy but in fact that question is already sharpened by the fact that there is the bylaw and so it doesn't have to be stipulated because it's essentially already is but with daylighting I rather like the idea of prefacing it with a requirement or a suggested requirement of the highest standard and see what they say how about how they would go about it I don't think I need an answer and I'm not sure you can even give me a no thank you I wrote it down so thank you very much um as as always it's a very useful comment thank you congratulations I think you're doing a wonderful job all the way by the way any other uh of our attendees no so I think unless there are other comments or questions the to-do list will be I will send out these draft interview questions you get back any or all comments just to me so I will send them out to everyone Margaret will simplify and take into account the timeline comments that she received we will meet again on the fourth and at least tentatively have a dedicated meeting on the 18th if that will work for people to talk about a working group and approaches and not try to solve that but just put ideas and then figure out how we set that up does that sound good to everybody yeah great thank you all thank you for giving us your Thursday mornings and have a good rest of the day the meeting is adjourned