 I am so happy to be having this evening's meeting with this sense that we are really finally starting to make some real serious progress in getting this project going. For a little bit of background, and for those of you who have been with us on this for the last 40 years or so, forgive me, but when I was brought aboard here at Union in the fall or summer of 2013, Dr. Rick will remember this as well, one of the first things I brought up was, I guess in a general sense, what's up with the place, what's going on with that? I had my own daughters coming through here as elementary students, and I remember that was the talk of our groups of friends, the condition of the playground, and I thought it would have been the case for many years before that. And we started an undertaking along with a community, a group of parent moms here, as many of you are here tonight, to begin the process of unifying, upgrading, restoring our playground here at Union. This was about four years ago, and we are now coming to the point where, despite a number of ups and downs and a little bit of obstacles that we've hit, we're finally at the point where we're getting some answers and we think we've got the green light to go forward. So the point of tonight is to present the design ideas that we have in place. We've got Talia Stunaroff and Stephanie Hurley. We're going to lead off with a design update for both the lower and upper playground. They have a presentation for you, and then we're going to hand the baton to Michael Namias. Michael, am I pronouncing that correct? Namias. Namias. Michael Namias and Kurt Miller, Kurt of the Johnson Company and Michael of the Department of Environmental Conservation are going to be talking about the site soils and the process for remediation that we've been talking about these last few months. And then Sarah McKernan is going to be talking about how folks can get involved in the process moving forward. Sarah, Talia and Stephanie are UES moms that have been with us from the beginning of this project. I'd also like to give a shout out to Kristin Darcy, Jenny Sheehan. They're up moms or dads here. But just to be really clear with everybody here, this is a totally volunteer endeavor. And I've just been honored to work alongside these folks for these last four years through the ups and downs. I've not only been honored but I've been inspired by it. Nobody's ever given up. We're here tonight and we're excited to move forward. So with that, oh, and one thing about just kind of how the night is going to go, we see at the end we have a question and answer period. Just kind of move things along and we ask that you hold your questions until the end of the presentation because many of them may be answered as the presentation moves forward. So if you just hold off on your questions, feel free to drop them down so you can remember. But we'll have plenty of time for questions and answers. Okay. Thank you. With that, I'm going to hand it over to Talia and Stephanie. I'm going to pull that up. You're going to turn the lights down to have a better visual. All yours. Do you want to turn off the lights? Yeah. What's that color? Is that color? Should we go dark all the way? People need light in the back to see. I don't know. It's fine. Does everybody have that work? You guys look a lot better. Okay. So, I'm Stephanie Hurley and I am faculty at UVM in Lamb Street architecture. And Talia Stonarov is at Norwich University in architecture. So we've both been involved with aiding, reviewing, critiquing different iterations of the playground design. And what we're essentially considering the final design we're hoping, and we're not going to go back to the drawing board on this anymore, is based on a lot of the features that we're going to show here. It's not every single detail, but I want to give an overview. And Talia is going to zoom in on some key areas. SE Group, a landscape architecture and planning firm that's in Burlington did this design. So we're not claiming this design as our own. But an engineering venture, which is a civil engineering firm also contributed to this design. So we're really happy with the work and to be able to be so people for it. So one of the things we talked about initially, I don't know if you can see, it's not a ton of text, just the first few slides, the idea of play principles. And my students actually, UVM landscape design class, some of you may have seen their work two years ago, came in to do some creative, inspiring ideas around what could happen with the upper and lower playgrounds. And we really gravitated, as did the whole up committee, towards nature play and natural playground themes. And then some of the principles based on this book, Ask Salt to Ecosystems include having diverse play options, including hills and water and different things throughout the seasons, play that's unstructured so that it's not the same thing every day. Moveable parts and loose parts where the children have the option to modify their environment around them. Exploration, adventure, challenge, and strength building. So like the active, more physical stuff as well as hideouts and open spaces to balance the kind of feelings of like, ooh, this is a special little corner versus this is wide open, we want to have some of each. And then this idea of performance and places where kids can be extroverts if they want to. And a notion that every surface is a play space potentially. Like as probably all of you know kids will use things that were not designated as play areas to play on so we wanted to sort of recognize that at the beginning. So here are some examples of loose parts play. And some of this is stuff that we probably have in our own backyards and things like pine cones, extra lumber, stand boxes, things that you can move around using natural features to really stimulate creativity in play spaces. There's a couple more images around the idea of nature play. So things like logs and boulders and rocks mixed in with plants and then some more traditional play structures. You'll see two shelters and gathering spaces of different sizes because there are kids who want to use this space from the school and from the community at large for more sort of contemplative time and not always just racing around. And I really like this quote, children learn as they play and most importantly in play, children learn how to learn. And there's a lot of data and literature to back up this idea about playing can really be something that is educational. So with that kind of philosophical background, this is the very sort of flat computer drawn version of what we have but this is what contractors need to build things. And so I will kind of break this down into upper and lower playgrounds. So this is kind of the pseudo-final construction drawing version and zooming in on the upper playground first. One thing to point out is just to orient people, this is the front of the school here. This is the cafeteria like where we are basically in that direction. This area is a new deliberate switch back coming from the corner up here. So instead of people kind of hurling themselves down this hill slope really nearly it's deliberately a switch back system of a way to get down the hill from this corner up by State Street into the playground area. So that is something that's really key of mediating that slope without having to officially walk all the way around. And then some other features that aren't necessarily what you think of a play. This is a concept for an amphitheater that actually kind of mixed these aesthetics of more of a wood structure but maybe intermixed with some like mobile lawn. It's still sort of the final version is under development but the idea is this built into the hill slope gathering space where in theory you could probably fit the entire school to do an outdoor assembly or you could have events potentially on the weekend and just sort of have a space that is recognizing you have this big old hill that wraps the whole site but what can you do with it that builds in function. And then there's lots of sort of nature play themed areas and then also some equipment that isn't necessarily like rocks and logs but some more fun and different play equipment than what we have now. This is a slide that's built into the hill slope up here where it's actually at grade. Research is showing it's a lot safer than having the slide fall into the air to just have it be onto the slope but still get the rush. And this is a large play structure idea, this sort of web like thing that you can see in the plan view of a climbing structure that can probably fit 20 kids at a time. Just to add to that, this was a structure that one of the parents on the committee had interacted with. Is it Sarah? I think it was her. And it was really wowed by it. So I saw kids using this structure, thought it was so fantastic that she brought it to our committee, we researched it and were able to bring it in as one of the big items on the plan. Yeah, and I don't have a picture to this because this is this line which looks like basically nothing in plan view is a swing set. So all of these perimeters around structures like this one and the other are based on sort of regulatory spacing and how much space you need for people to run around safely around these structures. And this is kind of like the big bang of this playground in terms of new equipment that would have a lot of different alternative options. This just really quickly is an example of one of the two types of green infrastructure. This would be out in front of the school and these are wire mesh filled gabion walls that are planted. And one of the other aside from natural play goals that we have talked about from the very beginning is dealing with the runoff in a more ecologically friendly way. And so green stormwater infrastructure does that. I'm happy to talk to people about it more. It's my research expertise. And these are structures, I've actually been to this one at the University of Connecticut but people can kind of get on and sit on and they're multifunctional. And so mixing in the fact that the water that's coming off is not coming off of paved surfaces for the most part but holding the water in the landscape and being more eco-friendly and doing that. And the other kind is this dry riverbed concept that is very popular from what I can see with kids of all ages and there's something similar to this along here and is also in the center of the lower playground in the courtyard. So there's just a couple more pieces. To get into the lower playground a little bit, again an altered entrance. I don't know how many of you have watched your kids run around this corner and just been like, I can't believe I'm just sending them out into that corner. Like what is back there? You can't see. It's not welcoming. It's got dumpsters. So for fire lanes and other reasons these dumpsters are being kind of staying here being reconfigured and pushed back into the hill slope so that this becomes more of a retaining wall and there should be a little bit more opening, welcoming to the community with the new configuration of that entrance. You'd still be able to come from the other direction as well. This is the idea of a large sandbox where we're still maybe reviving that a little bit to make sure it can be covered overnight with some kind of tarp system or a framed cover of some kind but this idea of like lots of the younger kids getting into sand and with boulders lining the perimeter. Some fun like kid appropriate, age appropriate bouncy kinds of structures are shown in these bubbles over here. This is the more traditional play equipment but with more natural materials as opposed to all metal and plastic a lot more wood to be used in that piece of the design. There's other things in these designs I'm not highlighting just to give you a flavor here. This is another slide built into an earthwork berm here. These kind of amoeba shaped things are raised earth so there's like hills to go up and down but this one has a slide in it as well and up in the upper right corner is a design for a boat. That's obviously not in water but you can get the feeling of a pirate ship or setting sail. I didn't talk about this or the other playhouse that was outlined because it's coming up as a detailed piece of the presentation from Talia. And then just really quickly, this is that dry river bed concept in the middle of the lower clay ground that I wanted to make sure we touched on as well. Hi, so I'm Talia Stonrop and I started this project with Theresa Giffin I think it was four years ago as a parent and my child has since moved to the middle school. I'm an architect in town but I'm also a professor at Norwich in architecture and I was really excited when this became something that I could approach as a professor and have my students work on as well. So the playhouse, some of the precedents for doing research. We are going to, as a studio, I have ten incredible students that I'm going to be leading them. They will design and build a playhouse for this playground that will be completed by May this spring and ready to be installed whenever we are ready for it. So we're going to start the studio by looking at these precedents. There are incredible pieces of architecture out there that deal with play, that deal with tree houses. There will be trees all around. The playhouse is really, of course, about your children, our children. And the students are going to be tapping back into that. These wonderful photos from Chris. It's about joy. So how do we bring joy into a piece of architecture? It's also about learning. So the playhouse is going to be a space that teachers could come and bring classes and actually teach classes outside in the rain, in the snow, a space for learning. I have to explain this slide. This is a big inspiration and some small moves that we did to the playground early on before we could approach this larger project. But this is Brendan McLean's class that I happened upon. And here they are using these natural materials. And he's created this amazing game completely with the students, of course. And it was really an inspiration. So it's about engaging the outdoors. The treehouse, it's going to be a classroom, a space for play, and also a space for all children. So Stephanie noted the really wonderful path that's coming down from Hubbard and State Street. That is going to connect to... So here's that path coming down. Coming up from the playground, this is going to be ADA to about here. So this is a treehouse that is going to be accessible for all children, which is, I think, a really exciting and important part of this. So here is just a little snapshot of where this part of the project is going to land. This little green box only represents about where it's going to be. So these incredible students I have are going to be designing this. We're hoping to have some really fun structure actually at the bottom of it. It's all going to be engineered and permitted and inspected, don't worry. Here's a zoomed-in version, so you can see this path coming up that will be ADA accessible. And so you'll be able to take a wheelchair from here and enter in. And here's a version just in sections. So we're going to be doing a lot of hard work, of course. And some hard play as a playhouse. And I just wanted to finish with a larger version of these precedent images that I think are incredibly inspiring, pairing a lot of beautiful, natural materials that, of course, Vermont were very rich in wood. We hope to use a lot of natural and local materials. And then also just re-imagining surfaces and how the ground surface can become a really exciting space for play. I would just add the second one that's shown on the hillside. Her class is going to design. But would not be able to, in the time frame, also construct. Right. So over in this area, in the lower playground, we're also going to be doing a separate course-related same language, but a separate design for that as well. Italian Stephanie, thank you so much. And Michael, I'm going to pull up your presentation here. I'll let you guys introduce yourself while I pull this up. So I'm going to be giving the presentation this evening, and if there are any questions that are specific to the Department of Environmental Conservation or the Department of Agriculture. Would you like me to do the... I don't need to do it. No, I'm going to sit here or whatever you want. Great. Good evening. My name is Kurt Muller. I'm a senior environmental engineer with the Johnson Company. We're located right here in Montpelier. I'm going to speak to you a little bit tonight about the soil assessment that's been done and the evaluation of the soils at the playground area. So just to get a little bit of an overview of tonight, I'm going to first start off with a history of the area, what's going on there historically. And then I'm going to get into an overview of the actual soil sampling that we've done, provide a summary of the results, discuss a little bit of the contaminant concern that we identified, and then get into the next steps in corrective action planning. So a little bit of history here. In the early 1800s, there was a school by the name of the Montpelier Academy that is not shown here, but that school reports it that that school birthed down. And in the mid-1800s, this next school was built. And I've got several other photos. You're standing on Elm Street here, looking down School Street, and that's the old school building. And then in 1938, that school was torn down, and it was replaced by this school in 1940. So the reason I bring this up is the fact that we're not dealing with a piece of property that is void of human activity. There was a fire, there was demolition of a building, and as a result, there was likely fill that was brought in to regrade the surface soils, etc. So the next slide here, you can see here this is where the current school is, and this is where the footprint of the former school is. This is blue because this is just the blue print that was overlaid on this, and I couldn't get it off the slide, but the reason I bring this up is we did sampling in this general vicinity here, and it's interesting to see where some of the results came in. And again, there was likely a lot of soil movement upon the property over the years. So as we go through this presentation, there's some site features that I bring up. This is the courtyard area, obviously. There's the upper ball field area, there's a steep grassy bank, and then there's wooden steep slope in the back. So from a soil sampling perspective, the design engineers, particularly engineering ventures who I've worked with in the past, they identified to me that there was a project going on, and there was a lot of excess soil that was to be generated. And when you're dealing with excess soil that needs to go offsite, particularly in a developed area, it's not uncommon that that soil may contain some typical urban contaminants. And as a result, it was important to understand for the purposes of a budget what may be in that soil to then determine what the disposal costs may be. So I was brought on board to give a very broad brush, to provide a broad brush predisposal characterization. So basically sampling the soil to say, what's in it here, and if we didn't get rid of it, what might it cost? So this was a series of samples that were collected in a composite manner. So we collected several from a lot of different locations and put them together. And that's what the landfills required. Bottom line is we sampled for everything under the sun. We sampled for PCBs. We sampled for volatile organic compounds. We sampled for herbicides and pesticides and metals. And basically the only contaminant of concern that we identify were these PAHs. In the next slide, I'm getting into what they are. So the good news is there was only one contaminant that we've identified. So as a result, this follow-up, in August and September of 2017, there was some supplemental sampling done. And this was done much more in a finite way to better understand where they are and how broad what the concentrations are in these various locations and also determine how deep they are. So that happened in August and September of 2017. And we got the results back. And again, so PAHs were the primary contaminant of concern. But we did also sample for arsenic and lead. Again, given the fact that, you know, you have lead-based paint and lead gas leans used historically, possibly lead could be an issue. And also arsenic. Arsenic can be found in herbicides and pesticides. And it's also a naturally occurring element that's found in soil. So we did evaluate arsenic and lead. Fortunately, they did not exceed the applicable concentrations. So back to this PAH. These are polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. It's a big word. All it basically is the exhaust product of the combustion or burning of hydrocarbons. And hydrocarbons could be in the form of fluid. They could be in the form of coal. They could be in the form of fuel. But think of, you know, the locomotive in the middle of the century spewing soot. So it will then fall out and be deposited on the ground surface. But we also found PAH's campfires, wood-burning stoves, vehicle exhausts. So these are relatively ubiquitous contaminants that are often found in urban areas. You also can be exposed to PAH's uncharred meat. So I'm not trying to, in any way, shape or form suggest that they're not important. They shouldn't be evaluated. There certainly is a standard for a reason. But I'm just trying to give you a sense of that this contaminant we're exposed to in many different facets of our lives. So back to the sampling effort. This was the follow-up sampling that we did in the fall. In the upper playground, there were 16 borons, and a sample was collected in three different depth intervals. Zero to two, two feet, two to four feet, and four to six feet. We did something similar over here in the courtyard area. Again, zero to two, two to four, four to six. And then we did some shallower sampling just in zero to two zones over in the bank. And the reason we selected those intervals was based on the preliminary designs. What soil would be disturbed and how would we manage that soil? We also sampled deeper in a few locations, and I'll get into that in a minute, but that was the primary. So now we're looking at the soils from the zero to two zone. Again, no arsenic or lead exceedances. But we did have PAH exceedances. And the Vermont Department of Health developed a site-specific standard for the use of this property and what would be applicable for the school. And as a result, we compared to that standard, and of the 31 grids that we sampled, five exceeded that threshold. The school proactively put an fence up with this general vicinity here, and there were some wood chips that were spread. As we get a little bit deeper into the two to four foot zone, again, no arsenic or lead exceedances, but now we have six zones that exceeded that Vermont Department of Health threshold for PAHs. If you recall, the building, the former building was approximately here, and I can't say definitively that it was a result of that building being there and whatnot, but it just is kind of a coincidence. As we get a little bit deeper, now we only have two, I'm sorry, three grids that exceeded that threshold. And as I mentioned prior, there were some deeper samples that were collected, and the only reason we collected those was that was the soil that would be in communication with groundwater, and we just wanted to be certain that these soils, if they were impacted, wouldn't adversely impact the groundwater quality. Unfortunately, through the analysis, it proved that no, groundwater was not impacted by the presence of these contaminants. It's important to note that these PAHs, they're not very mobile. They tend to bind the soils relatively tightly, so with that being said, they don't beach out, maybe they do to some extent, but not readily, and so groundwater is not one of the impacts as a result of this contamination. So, next steps. We're in the process of developing strategies for managing the soil. So through collaboration with DEC with the school, the design engineers, essentially what's determined is if the material exceeds is purple, and exceeds this for bond department health standard, that it would be removed and disposed of offsite. If the soil is below that standard, it could remain on site. And the upper 18 inches of soil, the surface soil, would be confirmed, and the material that does not exceed that bond department health threshold. So then as we transition from the soil management discussion, then we actually get into the formal corrective action plan. And so, what we would do is evaluate various alternatives and compare the effectiveness of how that process would work for that strategy would work, the aesthetics, the feasibility, and the cost as well. And then once the school determines, selects a cleanup strategy, the corrective action plan would be written. So this is a formal document. And there's a 30-day public comment period. So there's an opportunity for the public to review that and address that. And then if need be, a public meeting could certainly be arranged to discuss that. And the reasoning for why said approach was selected. So finally, once that document's approved and signed off on, it gets implemented. And it would be implemented currently with construction. So it's not a situation where there's purple soil, so to speak, get dug out and then you walk away. There's, to some extent, oversight to ensure that at the end of the project we can, with confidence, say that we had a clean surface of 18 inches or greater everywhere on the playground. And I say 18 inches. That's where the soil will be located. If you've got a impervious feature like a concrete or an asphalt, that would then also satisfy that barrier. But that wouldn't be 18 inches. That would be more than 6 inches thick. So ultimately what would happen is there'd be an oversight professional that would confirm that, again, this corrective action plan was implemented as approved and there'd be an as-built draw and confirmation and sign-off that indeed this is what we have and this is a safe playground. So that's essentially it. I look forward to receiving any questions. Great. Thank you very much. The next segment here, I want to introduce Tom Wood, the facilities director for my political schools, and Sarah McKernan, one of our up leaders, fearless leaders. And they're going to be talking about the next steps, timeline that's coming up with this and also ways in which those of you who are interested can jump in and help out with the union playground project. So Tom and Sarah. We are going to be very brief and want to really open up with lots of time for everybody to get their questions answered. I did, yeah. So everybody just look away because you're about to see my email for the entire presentation. What could possibly be on there? All right. Hang on, Sarah. Quickly, Sarah slides. Everybody look away? All right. Well, so maybe I'll just dive in. Perfect. That's it. The first thing I just wanted to start out by saying is that many of you have been hearing about this project for a little while. We have some newer parents in our midst from pre-K parents and kindergarten parents and it's so exciting to be able to invite you all into learning about this project. There are also a number of parents that are sitting here that started hearing about our grand ideas for really developing a great new playground for our kids. You know, really starting three years ago. And I just wanted to put up Rosie the Riveter here to say, you know, we really believe we can do this project and it has, and we can do it this summer. Tom's going to walk you through a schedule in a minute and show you exactly kind of what we're thinking about the timing and what we need to do from a funding perspective. But we really do believe that we can do it. We're at a moment in time where we could really use a little extra help and that's the piece I'm going to talk to after Tom gives you some context about timing and money because there is a lot to do with a project like this and we're just at a moment in time where we think it would be great to get some more parents involved and there are lots of ways to plug in and there are lots of ways in which we could use help. So, I'm going to give you a sense of that in just a minute. But I wanted to just reflect on a metaphor that I'll probably botch that Kurt has given the little parent team that's been meeting with him and now with the regulatory agencies Department of Environmental Conservation and the Department of Public Health about when you encounter it can quickly feel like it's kind of taking over the project because it does add some process that we have to go through with the ultimate outcome of just making sure that our kids are playing on a really safe and clean playground. So, all that work is totally worth it but at times it can feel like well, where's the playground project in all of this? And Kurt has this great metaphor about you know, it's kind of like when you are going to renovate your house and you have this beautiful vision and you discover you've got some dry rot in a joy store you've got some knob into wiring that you've got to deal with and that's really what we're trying to to think about with respect to this soils issue. We've got a lot of help from our agencies now from the Department of Environmental Conservation and the Department of Health and they're here tonight to answer your questions they are really going to be involved in a technical process with Kurt who's been an enormous help to the project to worry about and think about what we do with those soils and get a great plan in place for us and that's all going to go forward but we still have that great vision and we're going to do it and that's why it was really important to show you the design tonight and to remember all those great ideas that we're trying to bring this summer. So Tom will give you a little some of the specifics. I thought I'd give everybody a little bit of recap in terms of some of the financial commitments that have already been made to the project just because everybody has mentioned we've been doing this for a couple of years now and one of the initial endeavors by a parents group here is to apply for a land and water conservation fund which we rewarded almost two years ago for approximately $150,000 and so we've been awarded some grant money because of the improvements we're doing here with the storm water infrastructure and the demonstration site and the green infrastructure that we're doing so that's something we wanted to leverage to be able to make the playground even better than it currently is and in addition to that we've had tremendous support already from the school board in terms of giving us the seed money to be able to get through the regulatory process originally it started with to be able to generate concept design documents for the playground but through that process it was the discovery of the soils issue and it's led us to further the soils investigation work in that regard but the school district today has given us originally $45,000 in the fusion of money to get that process started and then they ended up backing it up with a $10,000 contribution to be able to help us do the initial soil sampling that Kirk mentioned that started the investigation that started to identify the need for even more soils work and then originally there was an allocation of existing fund balance for the school board of $250,000 to be able to take a shot of getting the first phase of this constructed that was back before we fully understood the magnitude of the soils issue we were getting ourselves into both in terms of the money involved to solve it and the time involved to be able to identify and address the concerns that we're doing right now there has been numerous activities here in the school through various parent group organizations to solicit donations from families as well as local businesses to try to self to help build the playground so there were fundraising campaigns that went on last year there's still some plant that are planned for in the coming year to be able to give some private money to the project so today there's almost a half million dollars that's been allocated to this project we're still trying to get a handle on what the total cost is going to be and there is a shortfall in terms of where the total cost for this project is going to be we're in the process of over the next two weeks to two months of trying to identify what that total value is and we'll be working with the leadership team to identify that and bring it to the school board to come up with a strategy for how to fund the balance of the playground work with that said so where we are in terms of process the final design and bid package preparation we've been working on this for a certain amount of time but right now we do with some reasonable degree of certainty look at about a 90 day window here to be able to finish the SOAS investigation finish the CAF design to be able to get the regulatory criteria to be able to finish the designs to be able to get to what point where we can have a bid package to go out and solicit competitive proposals from contractors to build this project concurrent to that we still have to go through a regulatory process to be able to get a local city not clear site plan approval permit zoning permit because we're not building any construction here and we still need to be able to go to the state to get a state general permit and storm water permit so those processes can happen concurrent to us going through the solicitation big process but we want to wait a couple of months still before we so we understand exactly if there are yet to be determined criteria that the CAF be put on us we want to make sure that we incorporate that into the right permit applications we don't have to go back and amend permits once they've been acquired so our goal right now is to finish the the bid packages design process by about mid February so that between January 15th and February 15th we can finalize the preparation of all the permit applications that need to be wins so we can start those down their regulatory process for final review concurrent to that we're going to be you know goal right now is to get big packages together by April 15th is the target to be able to solicit proposals from potential contractors by May 15th with the desire to start construction of this you know honor about the under school and right now that seems possible but what we've learned in the last couple of years there are a lot of variables here juggling a lot of balls and this is our schedule that we're going to try to implement but six months ago I couldn't tell you with any certainty that this was a realistic schedule and now I can stand before you to say that I feel reasonably certain that we can actually you know work towards the schedule that we've identified a lot of those variables that we have no control over and now we're you know quickly you know finalizing the details so we know exactly what we need to do to satisfy the regulatory concerns so so I just mentioned that we're we're looking for parents that are inspired to get involved and help out in some way and helping out could look like doing a little something on your computer while a shadow naps and it could look like joining a subcommittee that's meeting once a month to do a task I want to give you tonight just an idea of where we are looking for some extra help and you should have on each table a sheet that just says if you're interested if you think you might want to get involved you don't even have to be sure put down your name tonight and your email and give us an idea of what you like to do where your skill set is that you think might be helpful to us and then we'll get in touch with you so here are some areas where we think we are needing some help I just mentioned we have a funding gap the funding gap is both about how are we going to address the soils but it's also just about building a project that is a large project with two full playgrounds, lots of new play equipment, you saw the amazing ideas in our design so there's a funding gap related to both the playground aspects of the project and the brown field aspects of the project, the soils issues. There are specialized sources of funding that help with brown fields both loans and grants and we are really looking into those we already have one from the central Vermont RPC to help us with the sampling and with the development of this corrective action plan so that piece will be funded with grants and loans and also the district may supply funding to help with that piece as well but we are still pursuing funding sources from other places that will help us build and get all the great structures and play equipment that we want so there are a few grant opportunities out there we know about that we still want to pursue and we think some of them are really good live options and so we are looking for people who like to do grant work and help us research grants but especially we've got a few in mind and we are looking for people who can help us put together do some writing maybe go and talk to a grant review committee so if you like that kind of stuff where you have some expertise in it think about helping out and it's scalable to what you have available in terms of time we want to mobilize a business sponsorship effort in this community we really haven't tapped that potential source of funding at all and we are not talking about the small businesses downtown we know they get asked by just dozens and dozens of worthy causes every year I am thinking about we are thinking about more of the big employers in the area the kind of national life of our region and we want to put together a sponsorship package we think we can offer them great visibility right in a physical way in the new playground and so we are looking for parents who might help us develop a sponsorship package and go and visit with a business or two you could just sign up to visit with one business if that's all you have time for each one of these are probably going to become little subcommittees and we are going to have a lead for each and we already have some ideas about who is going to do that leadership work and then lastly um make it too fast for you no no that's perfect just keeping the community informed especially as this project has grown in complexity we are really we know that we need to do a better job of keeping everybody up to date about what is happening how is the schedule looking are we on track what is going to happen this summer so we are standing up a website which is pretty new in our community has jumped right in and is helping us put up a website where we can post updates about the project we are also going to look to do a donate now or donate here button if people want to give a contribution to the playground they can do it right on our website and then we are we need to be keeping the board up to date and keeping city council up to date so if people who are interested in that community engagement piece the communications and community engagement let us know and lastly there is some real energy for trying to do some short term stuff in the lower playground Jenny Sheehan in particular who is here and has been part of this effort from the beginning is really interested in organizing and mobilizing some parents to try to make some short term improvements to that lower playground because there is so little there for our kiddos right now and in fact we just had to fence off a piece of it because of the soil so it's even smaller than it was and it really lacks interest for pre-K and kindergarten kids so if you feel like you want to figure out what do we do with the space in the short term can we get some stuff donated can we spiff it up can we make it more interesting let us know that's all I want to say I know we have a lot to turn to questions but there are sign up sheets and I might need to bring a few back there we're pleased to see so many folks here so we may not have quite enough to answer there is one one parent came in a little bit later so we give a shot of Terry Holloway who is over there Terry it's hard to single you out but you deserve to be singled out and again the volunteer efforts that have been known over the last four years here around it has been so impressive and inspiring but we do need your help with all of these things in fact spiffing up the little playground I've already talked to a number of people in this room about some of your ideas and we welcome them as we go into the winter in the spring ahead so with all of that we're a little ahead of the schedule which is always nice and I also want to thank Stephanie and Tally and Kurt and Tom and Sarah for your presentation you guys put a lot of time into that really bringing people up to speed and I thought it would be cool so thank you to all of you guys and with that questions I think we'll have to do a kind of popcorn style there are a lot of experts in the room here we're going to be able to help and if you have questions I'll just try to answer them or pick on people in order so raise your hand if you have any and you'll be great to introduce yourself if once I call on you so, yeah? I'm Claire Buckley and I'm a first graders I go to the school and I had a question about the Department of Health setting the level in a specific city yeah well I mean why is the department I have a little bit of background as luck would have it Claire we have representatives from the Department of Health here with us so I am happy to defer folks to you well some trash would have been a lot easy in the State's management election and we work with to look into what that Sarah can tell you about that and if we ask for a state specific Department of Health we'll take all of the information that's specific to us I used to come up with it but I guess that's kind of I'll just follow up on that and why I was asking that which obviously I do call it a lot of parents and this really works out to the point during if you haven't been involved in this is the criteria do you feel like right now especially when you dig anything up where the kids are out there playing right now I mean what if you should have to be safe here so right now safety all the areas that have so right now the thing I'm going to see doesn't meet the current requirements that we have so that's what it's doing where you have the kids touching the soil cleaning the soil all of that soil right now except for we're good chefs I can so I'm the toxicologist at the Health Department so I work in the Environmental Health Division would you work a lot with the EEC when they ask us for health protective criteria to clean up chemicals in air sometimes in air but in water and soil we work together so we don't have the authority to require cleanups we don't work individually with sites but we do help DEC make health protective values so that we as a state are cleaning up chemicals do you want to talk about the specifics about the site specific standard is more stringent because it's a school versus sort of like oh it would be nice to get rid of some soil is it more? yeah so typically when we work with DEC we create standards that are based on residential exposure because it's one scenario that we know if your soils are below the residential criteria where you're exposed 24-7, 350 days a year for your whole lifetime if you're below that then we're pretty confident there's no issue there so the site specific request comes from DEC there's an exceedance of one of those values that's based on a residential scenario but DEC looks at it or a consultant looks at it and they say this is not residential so our kids sometimes it feels like they live at school but they're not here it's not the same scenario when we develop these cleanup standards it's based on two different pieces of information one is the toxicity so there are lots of animal studies to understand how toxic is a chemical and there are specific doses that come from those studies so that's kind of one piece the toxicity but the other piece is the exposure so there is a big difference in being exposed at your home every day versus being exposed at school the exposure scenario for school is less stringent than the exposure scenario at home because you spend more time at home than you do at school so for this particular request we did work with all the great people here we have a lot of information about what ages the children are that go here how often they're here and how many days or how many hours per day they're here so we took all that information and we created what's called a reasonable maximum exposure so reasonable meaning it's realistic we're not assuming that every kid is here 365 days a year but it is maximum so we assume that the kindergarteners through 4th grade we're here 9 hours a day so we built our scenario to cover the kids who were here from preschool on to kindergarten through 4th grade and in the after school program so we built the most exposure we could into the scenario does that, yeah so along those lines there's no standard for say schools so let Trish answer it our standards are specific for residential scenarios and industrial commercials so I'll ask you a question about that because the D.E.C. published a report in April in which they did statewide background levels for arsenic lead and PAHs and the number that they came up for PAHs for industrial areas was 580 parts per million which is lower than 720 that you adopted for this site so I'm just wondering how you came up with 720 it's actually not industrial areas it's urban centers so places where you have a lot of homes or activities so if you go to the agency in our allies there's something that the agency put out that shows you where you're developed here because I saw you throughout the speak and those areas are under what's the a bit more buildings later and so here's where there's a lot of houses or other development and to end downtown the number of samples that we took from these locations versus the areas outside of that and to seek parts this is the difference there's no health statistics involved in that at all and the background the background value for commercial industrial was 580 parts per billion and the residential was 26 parts per billion so how did you get to 720 from 580 it's actually rural and urban it's the way it should be I don't know we could look at the table but there were two numbers residential and then inside the urban areas and the number was 580 now it doesn't affect the results here because if you look at the plot the green square the green polygons or the purple polygons it's essentially the same you still have the same number of borings that exceeded the value of whether it was 580 or 720 but it could affect your question before how do you choose that number so that's a completely different process so what Trish just explained is that the state was required to figure out what is quote background so they went around and took a bunch of samples and what's the average level so what we do is we look at how are you exposed to the chemical how much dust do you eat every day because believe it or not when your kids play outside they eat dirt when they come inside they eat dirt we look at how much dirt sticks to a child's skin and gets absorbed into their bodies that way so we looked at the surface area of a child with different parameters that are you know well they make up quite large equations and we looked at how much of the chemical volatilizes into the air so how much do you breathe in so we look at so we do a lot of equations looking at how this chemical gets into your body to determine the level so it's really two different processes that are not at all related I see that you had a question want to introduce yourself yet yeah I was just following up on that if there was what was the range or what you showed is the green areas if there was more protected or a lower standard how about the green and purple would it be a more purple or would it be like value and space if we were going with the 0.65 how about the urban background value or the different level area a little bit intermediate if we were to go with that urban background value of 0.58 for all three of those layers there were two squares that changed so there was one value that I believe was 0.61 so it was above urban background now that was below the VEH value so there was another one like that and I'm specifically sure exactly where it was but I just want to be clear the urban background was nothing to do with the Department of Health calculating actually taking into account how these chemicals react with a person or a child and what that number is that can cause something when you're above that value so the urban background value really has nothing to do with the health department the number actually calculates what is safe for your kids to be involved in and that's the number that we've decided is protective to your children and can be used here so I don't want to I don't want to get the urban background value confused with anything other than this is what industrialization has done to our state and this is what you'll find everywhere I'm sorry there was a the only sample that was collected for that study in Montpelier was on the state house lawn and the value was 1,145 or something like that so way way above the state house also burned down am I seeing some questions behind here yes in fact oh sorry I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I 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