 I welcome slow. Okay, we're recording. Okay, good morning everyone. We are at the March 11th meeting and it may be the 11th meeting as well, but March 11th of this elementary school building committee. And I am as chair, I wanna call the meeting to order and I need to do this with a roll call vote. We have a quorum, but we also are waiting for some members to join us. And as they join, I will also make sure they can hear and be heard. And I'm just gonna do it in the order of the faces I see on the screen. So indicate that you're here, Sean. Here, sorry about that. That's okay, Paul. Present. Mike. Here. Jonathan. Tammy. Present. Phoebe. I'm here. Great. So we do have a quorum, although several- Alicia's coming in too. Okay, great. Alicia, I'm just making sure everyone can hear and be heard. So if you could say hello to all of us. Hello, president. Thank you. Thank you, Kathy. Simone. Here. I think we will start the meeting and I will recognize others as they come on just to make sure everyone is here. Margaret's gonna lead off by showing us the agenda, but I think as everyone knows, the key issue today is where we are with the preliminary design program and Donna will lead off with a piece on that as well, Margaret, and we are due to vote today on the PDP. So Margaret, I'm gonna turn it over to you at this point. Margaret. Margaret, you're muted. Sorry, my mute due to disappear to when I shared the screen. So here we go again. So, Margaret, I'm gonna just turn it over to you to introduce today, but also just start us off on what is an important milestone for us in the project. Yeah. So, yes, as Kathy said, the vote, we're gonna take a vote. Actually two votes as we sort of come to, after Donna's presentation, one of the votes is going to be, sorry, one of the votes is going to be to confirm what we have been discussing, which is that the steps going forward are going to be focused on the combined building population. So we will leave behind at the step if you agree in your vote, the single building population. And then the second vote is a vote to authorize the submission of this gigantic document, which hopefully you had a chance to at least take a glance at yesterday. The other thing I wanna note just looking forward is we're not gonna meet next week, but we will meet on March 25th. We'll be our next meeting to take up the next steps in the PSR. And then the last thing I wanna say is, because it will be going into the PDP, but it wasn't in the package you received, it's in the appendix. This is the overall schedule for the project that we're sharing with the MSBA. And we haven't looked at this in a while, which is why I'm bringing this up again. And I made an effort to put it in a fairly graphic format, but the red line is where we are today. So we are at the conclusion of the preliminary design program phase, which is the basis of this vote. The next step, which will end in June, and I know it looks really tiny, but we have about three months in the overall schedule, is this preferred schematic report. And this is the piece that will end with the selection of a preferred option, preferred site and the choice between addition and renovation and new construction. The rest of what you see here is additional design work, then detailed design work that the team, the design team begins to do, that will end approximately in December. And then a series of votes, including by the MSBA board and a local vote that will conclude in March or April of next year. After that point, the designers have a pretty extended period of creating the construction documents that are basis of the bidding. We are expecting to bid in the summer of 2024. And then these two orange-ish lines are showing an option for new construction timeline and an option for addition renovation. We're at a very preliminary stage, so it's really hard to say how long an addition and renovation would take, but it would take somewhat longer because it would be phased construction. So what that does, if it's a new construction project, is it has, there's a new building online for the school year, the fall of 2026. So with that, I'm gonna turn it back to Donna. I know that there are probably a lot of questions about the materials you received. And hopefully some of you had a chance to look at the email that I sent responding to a set of Phoebe's questions. I'm gonna capture Phoebe's questions in these meeting minutes. And if there are other questions that come up today that will get answered in the next phase, we will capture them there in a sort of parking lot format. So we do not lose track of them. Any questions about that before I turn it over to Donna? I don't see any hands, but Margaret, I just want to recognize we have several more members of the committee join us. So I'm just gonna call out their names to confirm that they can hear and be heard. Angelica? Present, I can hear, thanks. Rupert? Oh, sorry, I'm late. That's okay, you're on time for the meet of the meeting. Ben? I'm here. Okay, I think that is the additional group. Okay, Donna. Great, thank you. We're ready. Great, so just making sure everyone can see the presentation. Good morning, everyone. And what we're just gonna highlight in the key aspects of the PDP and what we've actually accomplished over the past few months. So thanks to everyone for their thoughtful insights, comments, and helping us get to this point. Many of you have been at several of the meetings this past week at a community forum. On Wednesday, we have the school committee meeting Tuesday, and what we are presenting today really is just to confirm everything that we shared with you last week. So I won't get into this, but as Margaret said, we are here. It's kind of like, you know where you are at the mall. This is where we are today. So we wanna finish this up so that we can come to a preferred solution in June. And again, really the preliminary design program is to establish the educational program which we received a vote on Tuesday night, understand the existing conditions, both building and site, establish basic design parameters, and then to develop and evaluate the alternative. So the purpose isn't to pick something. It's really almost of pick an option and alternative. It's really to eliminate any that just are not viable. So we wanna continue reviewing and evaluating some options. Tim, I don't see you, but do you wanna- I'm here, sure. I can just go through this recap of the initial phase of the traffic study which is included in the PDP that will be submitted. It's, this phase is just existing conditions of the two schools currently. And as we move forward in the process, we will be evaluating the design of whatever we replace the schools with. But the summary is that starting with the Fort River School. The school site is large enough for all queuing for bus traffic and parent drop off to be entirely accommodated on site, which is great, which means that traffic coming into the site doesn't necessarily back up onto the street or prevent cars from entering the site. On the site, the different loading zones are separated, which is good for flow, but to get to those zones, the car and the bus traffic has to cross which requires control by staff and a little bit of conflict on site. And then just to the north of the Fort River site, there is the intersection with Main Street that causes a backup on Southeast Street and cars exiting the site sometime conflict with that traffic queue. So there may be ways on and off site that we can deal with that. And then in general, the signs on the site are there at most of the locations that you would expect them to do be, but a few of them don't meet the standard, the manual for uniform traffic control devices which dictates what all of the common street signs that you are familiar with crosswalks look like and just having them be instantly recognizable is another layer of safety that we like to have. Moving to the Wildwood site, the queues for the buses and the cars is dropping off are accommodated on site, but since there is only one entrance to the site, there is often a backup exiting and leaving with crossing traffic patterns at that one entrance on Strong Street. So that is something that we will be looking at moving forward. Second curb cut might be a way to mitigate that, you know, drawback of the site, but we'll have to see how that works. And then the same situation exists on the Wildwood site with the signage. So here's a diagram with the bus traffic in yellow, car traffic in blue, buses drop off in front of the building near the main entrance. So you can see the loop through the Southern parking lot where the cars drop off and kids walk around to the front of the building. The areas of conflict where you have either merging or crossing traffic on site are highlighted with the red arrows. And then you can see at the north of the site the proximity of the exit to the intersection of Southeast Street and Main Street. So the backup from that light can sometimes prevent people from exiting the site and then a backup on the site. And then if we move to Wildwood, here you can see the single entrance from Strong Street where all of the traffic comes in with people going right and left, both in and out sometimes there can be delays which leads to a queue on Strong Street. Once you are on the Wildwood site, bus traffic drops off in front of the school and circles through the Northern parking lot and car traffic goes through the Southern lot. There is also a little bit of conflict on site where vehicle traffic crosses, but luckily it's kind of far away from where kids are exiting the vehicle so that's a little bit better. But we also have active drop-off in areas where there is active parking which is something we might like to avoid as we develop the site just to make everything as safe and efficient as possible. And then as we move into the next phase we'll study, that's it for the existing conditions. But sorry, Tim, I didn't mean to cut you off here. So the next step as we develop these alternatives is to understand the implications of bringing 575 students. So what Tim was referring to was the current enrollment. So now what we're gonna do is look at the impact of bringing 575 students to the sites. Okay, so we've had a lot of meetings, visioning meetings with the staff, educators and community. And again, what drives this whole conversation is the education program and providing adequate spaces for students and it starts with the educational program. So really what we're hearing throughout is student-centered and experiential learning, universal design for learning. You'll see that throughout collaborative STEM and STEAM project-based learning, outdoor learning which again is more than sitting in a classroom, innovation and engagement. And in sharing we have the appropriate spaces to support our special needs students and make sure that they're integrated into the general classroom areas or with their peers. And then we also ask folks what are your architectural goals which really tie into and you're gonna see it's very similar to what your educational program goals are. So innovative, inspiring and inclusive, right? Ensuring that we have the appropriate special education spaces, flexible and multi-use which ties into forward thinking. This building will be with you for 50 plus years making sure that they're collaborative which again turns into the flexible aspects of it. We wanna focus on outdoor learning and the connections we can have both for play and learning. We wanna ensure that this will be a net zero school. And then again, just we wanna be forward thinking and making sure that the building is flexible enough but not too flexible like the open concept plans that you have that they can actually function more appropriately for today's needs. So again, the educational program is identifies all of your programs, the programs within the new school and what the spatial relationships and adjacencies should be and then the program will define the space needs for the total square footage of the project. So as everyone knows, we have to study two options and if anyone's had a chance and we know that we just submitted it probably while everyone was working yesterday, the PDP which basically states that option one for Fort River only 165 student really is not a viable solution. So we wanna continue to look at a combined Fort River and Wildwood School grades K through five with 575 students. We've all seen this chart before so I'll just simply say general classrooms, we need 12 general for the Fort River only and 30 general classrooms for the combined Fort River Wildwood School based on the class size policy. We are really excited that we've got the school committee vote Tuesday which identifies a total program area of 70,500 square feet. We believe that it absolutely needs all of your educational needs for core academic. I know we've spent some time so I'm gonna just highlight these special education programs, neither of those were compromised. In any way, they've been refined and we'll continue to look at them now as we move forward, what the design of those spaces will really look like and how they'll be able to meet the program and the activities that occur in the spaces. Art and music, we have dedicated art and music. It was agreed upon to have a 4,000 square foot gym and we're very comfortable with that recognizing you have other larger gyms within the community to support recreational community use and everything else remained the same. So we have a total program of 70,500 with a gross square foot of 105,750 square feet. And then how that's now gonna be shaped is what the next phase is gonna look like. So should I pause, does anyone have any questions or comments as to where we got to today? I know everyone has seen a lot of this so see any hands. Yeah, any committee member just raise your hand as Donna's going on and then she can pause, so. Thank you. So now that we have the program we start talking about and this is kind of the fun part of this phase is start to identify the spatial relationships and adjacencies. And we've not updated this since the vote on Tuesday this still shows two music and a full-size gym. But basically fundamentally we wanna start looking at how the spatial relationships to ensure that the adjacencies and time on learning are maximized and where we perhaps have the community use spaces versus the educational spaces and keep those separate for the safety of the community and the staff and students. So you can see taking those components it starts to sort of shape the building. And we will be working with the school department on how these programs really need to be aligned so that we make sure that the building is designed to accommodate the program. And this will inform the shape and two-story, three-story building. And we'll be discussing this with the building committee as well because there will be some important considerations surrounding community use, et cetera. So I'll quickly go through this is what we saw last week. We appreciate people's feedback and comments. Again, this is a test fit only. We're pretty sure that the final solution won't look like any of these options or alternatives that we're putting out here, but we just wanted to make sure that the alternatives and sites remain viable. For both the Wildwood and Fort River sites, we are accommodating the programmatic requirements for the site as well as for the building. We have a sufficient parking, same number parking on both sites. For the Fort River, we have play areas which will be for the younger grades and then the older grades which will also occur at Wildwood. We ensure we have access around the building and we'll have those conversations with public safety folks to ensure that we meet their needs and requirements for access around the building. For the renovation and addition option, we've maintained a good part of the existing building but we wanted to remove or demolish the interior of the building to provide natural light to all of the spaces for educational use. And in here, we've established a two-story addition which includes classrooms so that we can phase this appropriately with a cafeteria, library and gymnasium. With the Fort River site, the other component that we wanted to look at from a building perspective is if geothermal field would be accommodated and it can. What you can see is that we've identified it to the south of the building. Please note that all of the dots represent the number of wells but it will be well below grade so that we will be able to utilize the space above it going forward. What we've also done and I know one of the conversations has been why is the site so much more at Fort River than Wildwood? So if you can look at this, we will be disturbing pretty much the entire buildable area of the site and therefore we have to do something with it when we're done. So we at first pass have replaced in kind the current fields that exist there obviously relocated to accommodate the site and the expansion of the building and we wanted to improve them. We understand that they are not usable for a good part of the year. So we have created a base layer for drainage. We've raised them about a foot just so that we can use them more frequently or most of the time given the high water table on the site. So I know there's been conversation about it. We can look at how creatively maybe we can use CPA funds or other means to recreate these fields but this is our basis of design. We have the two access points as well into the site. For a new story building and the existing building will remain an operation. So everything else pretty much remains the same and we'll continue to explore how close the parking should be to make sure that we have easy access for staff into the building. We are just showing a three story building. We believe that that will provide the most opportunities for outdoor learning and recreation space. And again, full circulation around the building, play areas, outdoor learning and then replication of the fields. And the geothermal well we've located in the corner at the entrance, which is fine. Again, it will be buried and that too will be evaluated going forward. The Wildwood School site as we all know is much smaller. The footprint of the building is the same. So we took the same approach as far as a renovation and addition option or alternative. We've identified the same number of parking spaces and play spaces and access around the building. We've included a geothermal field located to the southeast of the building. And we're gonna continue to explore the Hawthorne site which is across the driveway here and see how that might be beneficial to the site as well as the cemetery portion of the site to the south of Strong Street. But you can see there are no fields that have to be replicated here but we can assure you that this whole site will also, excuse me, be impacted with the construction. Again, while the new story building utilizing the same building footprint three-story building you can see how important that is on this small site. We wanted to bring the parking in but we've heard people say, maybe we can do something different with the parking. Absolutely, we will continue to study that. We also wanna look at how we might be able to take advantage of this tree line along the east and see if we can maybe build the building into the hill here so that we can take advantage of the site in a more meaningful way for play and for outdoor learning. We've identified the geothermal wells in this location and what's important to note is you need to have the well field completed before we tear down the existing building because that provides the energy that we need to operate the new school. So we can't put it under the parking lot because the building exists there. So we'll get into all of that. We've also looked at possibly putting the well field to the south, which would be on the middle school site recognizing that Amherst doesn't have full control of that but we'll continue to study and explore all of our options. So does anyone have any questions with those before I get into the cost? I know everyone's seen these. So hopefully I've acknowledged at least all of your thoughtful comments. Kathy. It's not as much a question, it's just a comment because you've said it a couple of times. Right now what's been priced out is on the high cost side for energy because we have geothermal and that we will be looking at VRF which air source heat pumps in the next phase. So it's not that this is the only way. So when you said we have a choice of two sites and two ways of building, we will be having to make a decision about the heat. So I just want to say, so everything we've seen has geothermal in it but that is also up for a discussion at the building committee level. Correct? Yes, thank you. So as it relates to costs, again, these are cost-preparative comparisons only. We had to make obviously certain assumptions at this point just so that everyone understands kind of the order of magnitude. And there are many ways to, or we'll be spending a lot of time as I'm sure you all agree, how we can make this the most cost-effective solution. But as far as cost comparisons are concerned, we use the same building square footage for both renovation and addition and new constructions. The conservative costs are based upon current market for public schools. And I think we've touched on it that we're working with an independent cost estimator, A.M. Fogarty, who for the most part has probably been involved in every MSBA school project either on the designer side or the OPM side for, well, we've always used them. So per 20 plus years. So he understands the basis of design and what's required for buildings as far as durability, materials, et cetera. We sent him a basis of the design, which you all saw, but all of this is gonna be fully vetted going forward. The other aspect of this, we understand this needs to be net zero energy and the goal is 25 EUI. So we wanted to assume the probably higher first cost option, as Kathy suggested, was the geothermal. We will continue to vet that over the next several months so that we at the end of PSR will know what our systems are gonna be and how the building will be heated and cooled. It also understands that we need to include PV, both roof and canopies to achieve the net zero energy bylaw. And then as I pointed out, the Fort River specific site impacts is that it is a larger site. We do have to address the high water table. And then our initial thoughts were if we're gonna rip something up, we need to replace it in kind and we can have that conversation again in the next few months. Rupert. Thank you Donna. Would it be fair to say in terms of the geothermal or ground source heat pumps versus the air source VRF system that although the ground source heat pumps have a higher first cost, they have a lower lifetime operating cost? Yes, we will be going through that. The air source is used, is what's called a VRF system. And it is a lower first cost but you will need to replace parts or aspects of that system sooner than you would need for a geothermal. And the other aspect of that is they aren't as energy efficient. And so that means that we would need probably more canopies and PVs to support that system. But we'll be going through all of that with the net zero group as well as with you all over the next few months to determine what's the best solution. And we'll do a life cycle cost analysis, right? So the other component of this is if this is, it will be, not if. One of this is a net zero of school. We wanna take what the cost of the system is but also recognize the costs or the savings and operational costs to the town as well. So we're gonna be going through all of that to determine what the best solution is for you all. And it's not us determining, it's for you all to determine. But we'll give you all that. Thank you. So everyone has seen this chart and we just tried to simplify it a little bit more. Let me see, maybe I can be a little smaller. Well, and Donna, I think it's important for people to note that it, and it simplified further in what is in the PDP, right? This document I think sort of appears in a somewhat simplified format in the PDP. In the PDP, yes, it does. MSBA doesn't wanna see all this, right? Yeah, they can. They, this is really, like I said, it's a test fit and MSBA trusts the teams to make sure that, as I said, the basis of design, working with the appropriate cost estimators to ensure that what we're putting in the other aspects of the PDP are represented here. So between us, Ansar and our cost estimators, MSBA doesn't wanna see all this detail, but we know it's important to you all. And so that's why we're getting into it here. So what we've done, again, CMR construction manager at risk and we'll be getting into the pros and cons of that versus a design bid build or chapter 149 versus 149A over the coming months. But for apples to apples for renovation versus new construction, we just wanna highlight everything and we've simplified it a little bit. Direct costs to subcontractor costs are listed across here. And then when you bring on the CM, there are markups, there's escalation, there's design contingencies included in this markup column with a subtotal construction cost listed in the first bold line. And then we've added in the photovoltaics, someone said, what does turnkey construction mean? Well, we believe it's in everyone's best interest in the least expensive way is to actually procure the PVs as part of the project, but independent of the construction manager general contractor. If we go through the general contractor, they're gonna hire the same folks that we can hire and then they put their markups on it. So we're saying we can do this independent of but it would be part of the project. And then we also just wanted to identify the geothermal cost because that's a conversation to be had going forward. And then we've added a percent for art and we're really excited about that being part of the project. So our total, grand total construction costs are listed down below. We're just showing what a 165 student school is, MSB is asking us to do that. And then what you'll see is the cost comparisons between the four options ranges from 74.9 or 75 million to 80.2 million. And that's construction cost. Hey, Sean. There's just a little difference between the construction costs here and one number in the packet. And I didn't know if it was a typo or if it was not. It probably was. Alt number five has construction costs at 82.53. Oh. And here we have it at 2.73. I just wanted to know if it was a typo. Thank you. Look at you. Everyone's doing their homework. Thank you all. I gotta do that part, right? That's my role as Smash them up. Sean gets a blue ribbon for today. So there's a typo in option five. Okay. Thank you. So what we do then was we take the grand total construction costs, we mark it up for project costs. And I've identified the project costs down below. Its fees, its agency reviews, such as if we have to go for conservation commission or zoning or other regulatory requirements within the town. It includes a hazardous material abatement oversight. It's not the actual demolition, but it's the oversight of it. It would include what's really important is construction testing and oversight for structure, soils, geotech demolition. It's significant, believe it or not. It includes utility fees. If we have to relocate pools or transformers, sometimes the utilities ask us to change things and it's their fees associated with that. And then furniture and equipment is, you know, to furnish the entire, I'll say new quote unquote new school as well as the technology equipment. And it even includes moving, right? So even if we do a renovation addition or new construction, you're still going to have moving expenses. And then of course the contingencies for the project. So we're looking at across the board anywhere ranging from, and you're gonna tell me again, I probably have to, oh, this one says 253. So I must have made a mistake on the other one, Sean. Thank you. When you take the construction cost plus the multiplier of 1.25, really looking at these four options, the project cost range from about 93.7 to over 100 million. Yeah, and Don, I think just the same thing happened with alternative number two. I think it said it pulling down, it pulled over. So the project cost in the packet or the document is 60, 122, 322, and I think it's supposed to be 72, 343. Thank you. So I'll check all of them. Thank you. Making myself a note. So we also looked at other ways to start looking at reducing costs. And our first comments were that for a new construction we believe we can utilize the design bid build method for construction. And we could use the CM, absolutely. The CM has a larger role during renovation and addition, but for new construction, we are absolutely comfortable with going with a design bid build option for all delivery method. And there's some reduced costs in that. And so what we're showing here is that for the new construction, there are means of reducing the costs for the two options remaining. And Sean, I'll have to make sure that these numbers are accurate as well, but order of magnitude, 88.8 or 89 million versus 92.9 or 93 million. And I just wanna point out again, this is all based upon the assumptions that we've made, the preliminary, and that we will work with you in the next few months to have a better understanding of the costs. And then we'll refine those even further during schematic design before we ask the voters to support this project. Does anyone have any comments? Sean, I'll double check all my numbers. Sorry about that. Okay. So the next steps, we got the school committee vote on Tuesday night, which is awesome. We're right on track to move forward. We are looking for your, I don't know when it says that. We're looking for your vote today to submit the PDP to MSBA on the 15th. And then we can really get into some more exciting parts of the evaluation of the alternatives. Is it going to be Wildwood or Fort River sites? Is it gonna be renovation and addition versus new construction? And how are we really gonna achieve that zero? What is the best solution for you? All of those are gonna occur in the next few months and that we will be looking to select a preferred solution in June to submit to MSBA by June 27th. That's a hard date with them. And then they will be meeting, their board will meet on August 31st to approve us to move forward. So for those that might wanna attend that meeting, you might wanna put that date in your calendar now. We'd like to hear from the district and the town. And actually Donna, I am realizing I don't have that date in my schedule and I should add it. So I'll send you a revision. Okay. They will be looking for that when they review it. Yeah. So I know a lot of this is repeat conversation but we wanted to just highlight what we're asking to vote on today, which really is to continue to explore the Fort River and Wildwood sites with a renovation addition or new construction over the next few months. And I know people probably really have gone through, we've gotten wonderful comments and back already but that's the basis of the PDP. MSBA wants to know what the ed program is with the size of the building, more or less will be a renovation addition isn't always as efficient because as you could see, there were some differences and nuances with that but they wanna see what the educational program is, the square footage associated with the educational program and then what alternatives meet the test fit and what you'd like to continue to explore. So I'm done. Kathy, I'll turn it back over to you. Thank you, Donna. I guess we can take the screen down. So everyone was sent a link to a Google Drive and I at this point actually Sean worked very quickly yesterday it is also posted in the public packet, all the different sections of the PDP that were being asked to vote on today. And last at the last meeting, Donna and Margaret focused on that what we are really voting on today is to move forward with the study of four alternatives which is two different sites and two different methods. We have not made any other decisions yet other than eliminating the 165 person school as not fitting the education program. So what I wanted to do before the big goal today is to take a vote, but I wanted to see if anyone had any either minor edits or other edits and Margaret will be capturing all of those. So the document you've seen other than the kind of edits that Sean just did making sure things reconcile will be the document that moves forward. And we can note those today but still be voting on the main document knowing that we're just gonna make some either typos or other kinds of fixes. I'm just gonna look for hands. And while I'm waiting for any hands to go up I'll tell you some that I saw yesterday and then I saw one more this morning. In the introductory section there was one meeting that we had that was missing. So when I'm saying minor, we've met a lot. If, so there was one joint meeting we had with the school committee in December and I thought it would be a good idea to show the fact that we had two subcommittee meetings of the net zero group because net zero was a featured part of this project and that we sponsored two community forums. So that's just an edit on what we included in that introduction piece. I also the other comment I made and I don't I'll leave it to the team. We clearly state that net zero is a goal but we never have two sentences to describe that. So just putting it somewhere that the town does have this bylaw in would be helpful because it appears throughout the document. And then the last thing I saw this morning so Sean went to the numbers mine went to some of the other tables. There's a typo on page in the section five on page one. The zoning in the table is should be R dash VC. It's correct in the sentence, but it's wrong in the table. And when I'm saying minor, it's really minor. It's a residential village center and it's stated correctly in the sentence. So that is the sum total of what I saw when I went through the document and I consider those as minor edits but I'm gonna turn it over for everyone on either questions on the document, anything else people saw because there are two votes today as one to confirm that we're eliminating the 165 building option. We're not bringing that forward. And the second is to approve moving forward. And I have motion language that we'll put up on the screen for each of those. And we will be taking a roll call vote. And then our vote has to be certified. So MSBA wants to know we voted and they wanna get either the town clerk or we'll figure out the certification but this is an important step in moving this forward. So with that said, I'm going to stop talking and look for any questions, edits, comments or anything else on the document. And Margaret's hand is up. So Margaret, why don't I start with you? Okay, so I thought it might be helpful also as the committee kind of reflects on this just to show you as Kathy said there's sort of two forms of sort of, well, there's the, yeah, there are two forms of certification. So one form of certification of the vote is the sort of follow up vote or certification. The other is a document that goes into the PDP which I'm just gonna share on my screen hopefully I can get the right document. This was not in your draft but what this is, it's a standard letter that there's a template that we use for each document and it lists all of the meetings that have been held public meetings that have been held on the project. So, as Kathy noted there have been a lot of meetings there have actually been, what did we say? 21 meetings of the building committee and you can see at the bottom here is this meeting which will after this meeting I will sort of complete this by sort of noting what the outcome of the vote was. And then in addition to that there were another 13 meetings that occurred and at the end of this document when it goes into the PDP next week it will have the signature of Paul, Dr. Morris and Allison. So that's just to sort of explain how this all gets documented for the MSBA. So I'll take my hand down and see if anybody has any questions. Just one other comment I want to make on what has happened is Margaret's been pulling this together. She also is linking them to all the minutes of the meetings. So going back to making sure we have minutes and today I've actually put minutes on the agenda because MSBA wants to see that we're keeping a record of our meetings. So I'm looking for any hands, comments, questions I don't see any. Angelica has her hand up. Okay, Angelica, okay. Angelica, sorry. Your hand is up in the ceiling and I couldn't see it. The color's the same as that foot. Thank you. I see that. Thanks, Kathy. Just a question on the site development packet on the section on Fort River where it says about the environmental assessments. It says phase two but I wasn't sure what phase one where it fits in or what that is versus phase two. It just listed phase two. And so I'm just wondering if there is just a question of clarification about what is phase one versus phase two as it relates to the Fort River site. And actually Donna in answering it might be helpful to just explain the role of the phase one and the process for everyone. Sure. I can talk, but we have so many people sitting here. Tim, do you wanna? Sure. Phase one is essentially a record search and the overall purposes is to determine that the site is free and safe of contaminants and not polluted in any way. Phase one involves a record shirt, public records, history of the site and then phase two as indicated in section five. If we are, well, either way we will be demolishing some part of the building and changing the site. So it would also involve on site investigations. It's just a more detailed analysis of the site to make sure that everything there is clean, safe and as we would expect it to be. And I just wanna note that this is typical and common that some sites, you're good you don't need to go past it sort of, I hate to say it's sniff test but then there are other times where it says, oh wait, maybe you should just look into this a little more. Sometimes it could be as minor as there was underground storage tank or something that we have to just chase to make sure it was removed properly or whatever. Yeah, and I would just add and the nugget of this is that if you do that the consultant does the phase one and says you're good, they do not if they say you're not good they recommend what's called a phase two. So that's why it's called a phase one. You have to do the phase two if something in the environmental site assessment is pointing to the need for further determination which usually involves soil or water testing. So on both sites, these reports are now complete and nothing is pointing to the need for a phase two. So, Phoebe. So I'm struggling with my voice a little bit. So I apologize. It was my understanding that we had to include the 165 option whether it was something that we were ultimately going to be looking at per MSBA, is that not the case? So we can vote at this point that we don't want to continue looking at that at all. Correct. We will continue to carry the cost for it. It's going forward for comparative purposes. So MSBA and their board can see what the cost would be for 165 students rather than the 575. So we'll provide the costs and we provided the alternative narrative in this phase. And then we state it doesn't merit further discussion or evaluation, but we'll continue to carry the cost moving forward. Okay. And then I don't think that section seven or eight of the PDP were sent out or put out at all. Was that something that was going to go out to everybody? Yeah. Margaret, section seven was the local actions and approvals which is what we're asking you to do today. And then the section eight is the appendix which refers it has a lot of the information as we've referenced in the body of the PDP such as they actually want to see the presentations in minutes of every single meeting. So you can imagine how thick this is going to be. It includes the invitation to the feasibility study and it's just background information for MSBA. So I think it was outlined in the table of contents what would be included in that, but you will get a complete package. It's just nothing that you needed to review. It was just to provide the backup documentation. Does that answer your question, Phoebe? Are you comfortable with that? You know what, let me, I think I can just pull up your table of contents quickly and we can look at it. I'll scroll down here. So here we go. So here's seven and eight. Everybody see that? I can make it a little bigger. So as Donna is noting these are, it's all the stuff that you have seen that is creating a complete record. So there's that certification that I just showed you which is documenting all the meetings. Here's the meeting minutes, agendas, presentations, and then all of this stuff is kind of statement of interest. That's where you started the feasibility study invitation. The MSBA asked for this, but it enables us them to have it all in one place, design enrollment certification, capital budget statement. We can say a little bit about maybe before we leave this project directory as a list of who's involved with the project. Project schedule is what I showed you at the beginning of the meeting. And then here again are these meetings and presentations. Donna, I can pull up the capital budget statement that went into the document if that's helpful or do you want to, it's a statement that I drafted. So it's a piece that I put together in partnership with Sean, Kathy and Paul that goes into the document that states the town's fiscal condition and their intentions to undertake a debt exclusion. Donna, do you want to pull that up? I have that document here if you give me one. So Margaret, that was in the document. It's in the introduction. It is in the introduction. And then there's a link to your capital improvement plan, I believe, is what it is, that's what's attached in the appendix. Right, and so this brief statement, if you can see this, is embedded in the introduction and that piece at the end is referencing the capital improvement plan for the town. So town of Amherst is in good financial health, et cetera. So Phoebe, does that answer your questions? Yeah, thank you. And I'm sorry, I hope you feel better than you sound. Yeah, you do not sound good. I agree with that statement. Thanks. Are there any other questions or comments? Rupert. I'm going through these documents as best I can. I just would like to comment that I'm very impressed with the layout, the organization and the thoroughness of the ones that I've looked at so far. I really like the inclusion of pictures and their captions. It's very helpful to recover the whole sort of sense of what we have and where we're going. So I just want to say thank you very much. Yeah, thank you, Rupert. We tried, it's a lot and pictures say a thousand words, right? Well, and Donna, I'm gonna jump in and say I was, I've looked at a lot of these, but I thought that one of the documents that was super useful, and I just want to draw a little bit of attention to it is Dinesco's included these extremely, for me, useful diagrams of site utilities. And I'll pull up one of them if I can. Here we go. Which are definitely worth, I mean, we'll be digging into this more in the next phase. But let me see, can I make this bigger? So this is in the existing conditions report. Let me pull it. Okay, so this is the Wildwood site. And if you look at this, there's a little legend on the side that explains where all the utility, what the different colored lines mean, but it's terrifically helpful. And when we start into the PSR development, this will help explain some of the sort of concept issues that they will be working through in designing the site. So these are great. Alicia. Thank you. I just wanted to bring up, cause I would have liked to have more questions or comments about this document, but just because we received it yesterday and I had a very full busy day with the kiddos, I didn't have a chance to review the full document. And so for me, it's been a little bit difficult to participate in this conversation as I would have liked to because I did not have enough time to review the documentation. And it's quite a significant document with a lot of information in it. So to respond to that, and we recognize that Alicia, everything hinges upon one vote to the next to the next. And we just received school committee approval on Tuesday. So we really couldn't have expedited this any quicker. We will, our goal is to submit this to MSBA on Tuesday. So if it's okay with you, Kathy, to continue to receive comments over the weekend and Monday, I think Tuesday is the 15th. We're happy to take them and appreciate everyone really looking at them. And if it's okay with you, if anyone has comments, either go through you and copy us or how you'd like to handle that. I think that's fine if, and I see Mike's hand is up. If there's anything major, we would need to come back and take another vote if we're significantly changing it in some way. But if it is, add a sentence or clarify a sentence, then we're basically approving the contents. And I just wanna say that we were told last time that the key thing we're approving right now is saying there are four viable options for us that the tests fit show that on either of these two sites, it's possible to build. We could have actually eliminated one if you had said can't do it you could have eliminated a renovation addition or new construction, like anything, we've had districts go in at PDPS and we have one option we wanna continue further. So we applied you for wanting to be more thorough during the next few months. So that's the big to me, that's the big decision we're making right now that we have four viable going forward. And as Phoebe pointed out, we don't think because of the education program the 165 person school works. So those are the substantive things as a building committee we're saying okay to right now. But Mike, let me turn it over to you. Yeah, I just wanted to share that I think I'm glad Alicia raised that point. I think it's a real challenge in the process and thank you for doing that. The other thing I wanna share is that my experience and maybe this will be different but my past experiences, every submission comes with lots and lots of feedback from MSBA that comes back to the group and gets discussed. So I think sometimes we think about documents as being final documents because they're submitted. My experience is that everything's iterative with MSBA and that's a good thing, but it's not like this is the end of the document and never gets discussed again. There's lots of red font responses that my experience was they gave some of them a clarifying question. So I just thought it was important for the committee to know that maybe Donna and Margaret you do it where you never get feedback from MSBA but just talking about their superintendents, right? It's pretty common that we're gonna get feedback. We'll come back to discuss it and it really integrates really well into the next phase. So the feedback we get from MSBA isn't just on the PDP, it really helps the work that's happening towards the next submission and that iterative part. I think what I experienced last time was that the committee members often take that feedback to heart and continue to look and especially as we're looking at site stuff, I think Donna described a couple of things. We're like, we're looking at this, we're looking at that and that kind of dialogue only grows sort of between this phase and the next phase. So that's just my experience. Margaret and Donna and team, you could tell me that no, everything never, you never get any feedback from MSBA, it's mood sailing but I think it's a good thing. We're not that good. But that's a good thing. It's a good thing there's an independent group that's looking at this and sharing feedback. That's one of the benefits of the process from my perspective. Yeah. And I mean, I will say I am always amazed at the degree to which they delve into the finest level of detail. So, and then we have to turn around and return and provide a written document within a fairly short, I think they give us 14 days, right? Dineshka team to respond back to their questions. So we will be sharing all of that with you. And I think, Mike, that's a good way to put it for those who feel like Alicia that this is just a gigantic undertaking over just 24 hours. So. And I think just to reiterate to Kathy's point and to MSBA's point, this is really just to understand your educational program, understand what sites you have, what the site constraints are. And again, like I've been saying, this is a test fit to eliminate options so that we don't waste our time or MSBA's time going forward for options that don't meet your educational program or the sites don't work. But really what we're saying is we're not really making any decisions today other than we don't wanna continue to explore 165 students. So we're happy again to receive comments over the weekend or through Monday. But again, fundamentally, the vote today is really just to continue. Margaret, maybe you wanna pull up what the vote is, right? It's to continue to explore. Yep. Let me do that. Which I think we have more than I wanna say adequately. We have outlined all of this and we've summarized it and all of our presentations and so I'm hoping everyone is comfortable with the solution or with the motion to continue to explore the four options. So, Kathy, do you wanna walk through these? Sure. And I think I sent it out to you in an email. I asked and then Margaret thought it was a good idea rather than just the second motion which is to approve moving forward with the design program as reviewed by the committee and that as reviewed is with any changes we are making now but we saw today, we drafted the first motion which is to confirm what's already in this document that we're moving forward with the combined school option of 575 grades K-5 and that the options for the 165 will not be considered further because they're not viable to meet the Amherst education program. So that motion was added just so that we are taking, confirming what is already in the PDP. So I don't know whether there are any questions on these motions but if there aren't, I think it would be good to move forward and I'm willing to make the motion and then do a roll call vote if we are ready to vote but I'll take any questions on these two motions. So again, the first is confirming if you read the document says that it's already several times that 165 doesn't fit, it's not viable. And so the first motion is to agree with that statement and the second is to approve moving forward to the MSBA. There any questions on either of these motions? Okay, so then I will make the motion and I will read it out loud for the first motion regarding the MSBA enrollment certification of two possible school populations. I move that the alternatives to be pursued in the preferred schematic report will only include options for a combined school population of 575 students, grades kindergarten through fifth grade and that no options for a school of 165 will be considered further because these are not viable to meet Amherst education program. Do I have a second? I second that. Alicia second. So I'm going to do a roll call vote and instead of doing it by faces on the screen, I'm just gonna go down the list of members in alphabetical order. And I think everyone is here today except for Allison. So Margaret, you're gonna need to record that there's one member not here. So starting out with Angelica. Hi, proof. Paul. Yes. Owen. Yes. I think Allison is absent unless she joined us. Ben. Yes. Sean. Yes. Phoebe. Yes. Mike. Yes. Rupert. I vote to approve. Jonathan. Yes. Kathy is a yes. Tammy. Yes. And Alicia. Yes. So the motion passes unanimous of everyone who's here today, 12 yeses and one absent. And then the second motion, as you can see on the screen is to move this document forward to MSBA. So I will move to approve the preliminary design program as reviewed by the committee on March 11th, 2022 and that the elementary school building committee will authorize the submission of the preliminary design program to the Massachusetts School Building Authority in accordance with the MSBA requirements for feasibility. Do I have a second? Yes. Jonathan seconds. Jonathan seconds. So again, I'm going to do a roll call vote. Alphabetical. Angelica. Yes, I approve. Yes. Simone. Yes. Alison is absent. Ben. Yes. Sean. Yes. Phoebe. Yes. Mike. Yes. Rupert. Yes. Jonathan. Yes. Kathy is a yes. Tammy. Yes. And Alicia. I'm going to abstain. Okay, so we have 11 yeses, one absent and one abstain. We can take this down. I thank everyone. It's been an intense set of meetings and I want to echo what Rupert said when I got this document at 10 yesterday morning. I found it, I won't say it was a page turner the way some novels are but I found it very easy to read and I really appreciate all the presentations and the fact that there's this enormous appendix that shows the amount of work that's gone in to both public presentations and committee. So I want to thank everyone for staying with us for this and I see that Phoebe's hand is up. I am just wondering is in terms of the building piece of the 575 school, obviously we're going to move forward talking about that. Is that something that the school committee has to approve prior to us actually being able to combine schools? Like is this something that we should be having a conversation about or they should be having a conversation about? Mike. Yeah, I think I want to defer to Margaret and folks but they approved an educational plan where that was explicitly delineated and that's what the MSBA and my experience will look for is did they, the sixth grade piece has already been shared with MSBA but in terms of the education plan, it did speak to that. It's actually all built around that and the language there and they voted unanimously to approve it. So MSBA will let us know if there's a problem but my experience is they need an affirmative vote and one of the reasons they're the approvers of the education plan is exactly because of that. So it's spot on in terms of a question but that's what I understand. Mike, I was just going to say the original statement of interest that we submitted came from the school committee and it always had this as an option of a combined school with up to 600 in this grade. So right from the very beginning, it came out of the school and then it came to the council and then the two submitted it. Am I correct, Mike? That went through a vote at the school committee level. Yeah, and just to add to that, we have the enrollment certification from MSBA that school committee signed as well acknowledging that it would be for 575 students K through five. So MSBA is anticipating it. I mean, we've had conversations with them. They too don't believe the 165 student school makes any sense. However, I will say it is possible. It's an interesting question, Phoebe. It is possible that they may come back and ask the school committee to take that vote, but it won't be because they don't agree with it. It will be to sort of cross all the T's and dot all the I's. So we'll see what they ask for in their comments. And just to add to that, I think Margaret correct me if I'm wrong, the chair of the school committee will need to be signing some documents as we move forward as well. So their oversight doesn't stop here. We will continue to inform them, but they, I believe that school committee chair will need to sign off on documents going forward as well. Sorry, yes. So that certification that I showed you, they sign the chair of the school committee signs each sort of is part of the certification process for each submittal. So yeah, you know, they continue to, they will continue to need updates and sort of be looped into the process, but they won't have as big a role in future. You will be the sort of leaders here and they will be providing input. Jonathan. Am I correct in believing that the grade reconfiguration will be happening kind of independent of this process that it'll be a kind of fact on the ground before the project is even completed, I believe. Yes, the school committee, two school committees voted Amherst and the region for that to happen in the fall of 2023. So well before this change could be possible. Any other questions or comments or should we move to the other part of today's agenda? I'm not seeing any. So I think maybe rather the next thing on was to report on the community forum that was held on Wednesday night. But I think we can skip that because we basically, Donov did a preview of it because I want to get to the, it's all right with everyone. I mean, it was a good forum. We had a lot of terrific constructive questions as well as suggestions moving forward, but I wanted to get to the next item Phoebe had asked and I agreed that we start putting the minutes on the agenda so that we're voting to approve minutes and all the minutes were sent out. So we hadn't been doing this practice. So I wanted to make sure it was all right with people that you are getting draft minutes. You get them in advance. If you have any comments that you send them in but then taking a formal vote to approve the minutes. So right now the minutes for last meeting are marked as draft. So I just want to, we had well over a year ago whenever we started just delegated to the chair a review of minutes and we didn't put them on the agenda but I think it would be good since we're moving into such a formative stage to take a vote each time. So seeing no distention, I just wanted to make a motion to approve the minutes as drafted or if anyone had any comments on them and then to do a roll call vote to approve the minutes. Kathy, did you just make the motion? Yes, I made a motion. Second. Thank you. A long-winded motion, I apologize. Yeah, Paul. So are we changing our policy on how we handle this? Does approving these minutes means that we're changing our policy? Previously we had delegated to the chair to do the minutes and approve the minutes so they could be posted quickly. Or are we saying at this point we're changing our policy so the committee is going to review minutes every week, every time, every meeting? Or is it just for this one time because we took these significant votes that were, or that's, we didn't take, nevermind. Okay, so Paul, I think the suggestion was that we do it every time so it would be change our policy. So I guess I should ask it as a two-part question. Do people want to change the policy? Any arguments for not changing the policy? I could hear first before we say this will be a new policy going forward. I don't even remember whether we voted on it last time. Everyone just said yes, just do it in the streamlined way. So is there anyone who would like to keep the old policy and not change it? Rupert. I think because these meetings are also recorded, I don't have a problem with just letting it reside with the chair to approve the minutes. I do like the idea of approving, voting to approve minutes for significant votes, but I don't think we need to do it as a normal way of business. That's just my perspective. Paul. Yeah, I just want to support that. And I also think we have a lot of high-priced talent here and our meetings are long enough. And if someone has a concern about minutes, they can bring it, there can be an exception clause. If anybody says, wait a minute, that didn't reflect what I said. I think the committee can always overrule what the chair approved. It doesn't mean it's forever. So that would be my argument for not changing our policy going forward. But I totally defer if someone feels like the committee should do it, I'm fine with that as well. So let me ask on the other side. I mean, Phoebe, you raised this initially. Does anyone feel that we should put, I mean, we can do it as suggested, we can say for key minutes. So for example, for today's meeting, make sure the minutes for today's meeting are on the next meeting agenda so that we confirm those rather than taking time during the minute. Each, here we are taking time on minutes, but rather than taking up time, is that practice? Phoebe, does that meet your concerns? So I think when I sent the email, my thoughts on it was that going into this next phase where we really are getting into a lot of sort of detail, it gives us the opportunity to sort of offline, not review the minutes in the meeting obviously, but to go back and ensure that what has been put together is actually what we intended and what was said and what the outcomes that are showing, both to the public as well as going further if we have to submit these to MSBA or anyone else in the process, that all of that information is accurate and to, in all honesty, to rely on one person to ensure that they have everything in a two-hour meeting every other week or as often as we have them, feels like a lot of ownership on one person to really sort of go through all of this. So that was my thought on it. I'm happy to do what the committee wants and I think that we need to ensure, especially for sending this out to the public, that what we put in though, that what gets said is accurately reflected and that we as a committee can 100% stand behind that and say it is accurate and we know it's accurate each and every one of us and that was my thought on it. So I think what's been suggested is something that does, that for any meeting where we have a significant discussion taking votes or reviewing that we would make sure we take the minutes come out and people acknowledge those during the meeting and otherwise when we send the draft minutes out we are absolutely totally willing to do any changes. We had one person that they didn't feel their public comment was accurately reflected and we changed it right away. So there is an effort to be accurate. And as people have seen the all minutes link to the video. So the video is always there for the record. So I'm going to just propose that be the policy going forward. So the March 4th minutes, if anyone has any comments just please send them and then we'll finalize them if I haven't heard from anyone but for the next meeting with these minutes that we are taking for today we will put make sure everyone confirms does a vote on them. Does that work for everyone? Okay. I'm seeing nodded heads. That's a, I guess, rather. So I think the other, the expected timeline Margaret already put that up for the building committee. The next meeting will be March 25th and Dinesco will be once we get over this home we will be sending out something that will indicate what we're going to be talking about at each of those future meetings because we have a pretty tight schedule to be getting to going from four possibilities to one and discussion of the net zero approaches. And we will be scheduling an additional net zero subcommittee meeting. And as many committee members who would like to come to that because one of the things we would want to discuss with the next is the choice between geothermal and air source and getting some beginning life cycle cost analysis. So we have to wait till Dinesco is ready to do that but where, since that affects the cost of the building the design of the building, the design of the site having that discussion will be something we're going to be doing in addition to the building committee schedule. So we've, everyone has received early on the schedule and this agenda shows you how often we're meeting in each of the months. And I will send the schedule out again with as soon as I get from the design team what they think we're most likely to be doing at each meeting and this will change over time but it's like, where can we have decision points? So I think the only other item on the agenda before I open it up for public comments is invoices. Is that correct, Margaret? Or you're raising it. So yes, invoices, I just, I want to close and this is somewhat related to the minutes on the question I raised in my response to Phoebe's comments earlier this week. And if you had it, I'll pull up the email but if you had a chance to review, Phoebe had a really great list of questions and a bunch of the questions are things that we want to keep track of. So what I proposed in my response to her was that we, I capture the questions that we'll get responded to in the sort of further development of the design and I am proposing that those sort of become part of the meeting minutes going forward. So I'm just going to hang on one second. I'm going to briefly bring up that email if I can get the right document. And while Margaret's bringing up Phoebe's questions for questions that others might have had and the designers responded to them and Margaret responded to them. This would be a way of everyone getting the answer to the question that was posed by any committee member and they could say, oh, I thought of that, now it's been answered. Paul had also suggested that as we're going through this and they're frequently asked questions and we have answers to them that we update the project website so that the larger public can see that we're starting to get some answers to questions and we will be doing that. So I liked your suggestion, Margaret. So this was a long email exchange. Long email and I don't know if everybody can see this but here at the bottom there's a set of questions. What does general conditions include how much of this is the component of the construction cost? How will the design anticipate keeping the building operational? How are site costs different between the options? What are the differences between design bid build and construction management at risk? When will the building committee be able to see the next level of detail in the estimating? How will the solar and geothermal be contracted? How does that relate to the estimating? Who will own the photovoltaic arrays? What are the options for heating cooling systems and their relative costs? What other options are there for funding site work? How does this relate to the MSBA process? And what are the relative costs of two-story versus three-story construction? Phoebe, I hope that this was a workman-like job of pulling out of your questions a set of bullets that could be in the minutes but I'm proposing for the building committee's consideration that we pull those into the meeting minutes as a kind of parking lot that we can check back on as we move forward. And I'm seeing several people nodding their head, Margaret. So I think that's a... And Paul. Yeah, so I think each of those are all great questions that we should discuss at a meeting. I just always want to caution us about when we copy the entire committee that we're not violating the open meeting law, that none of us on the committee, Margaret's not on the committee. So she can send to everybody, that's fine. But just make sure that just as a check-in for us that we should not be saying, well, I like this or I don't like this, just make sure just to self-check us. So when it comes from Margaret as our support, that's fine. But if I were to respond saying, these are great questions or these are, I don't like this question, that would be a mistake because I'm a member of the committee. Good reminder. So, and thank you, Phoebe, for taking the thought that went into the questions and for asking them. All right, so now why don't we talk about the invoice? So I'm gonna pull up the invoice and if would be helpful, I can pull up my summary of how this fits into the overall contract amount. So here we go. So, Dinesco's, they're faster at getting their invoices out. We just sent our invoice out yesterday, so it's not on the agenda for today. But this is the latest invoice from Dinesco and you will see, as I said in my email last yesterday, that I have, it's my job to kind of review and recommend these to the building committee for your consideration. So here is on this line here. Here is the first step, the feasibility step. Their total contract amount is $500,000 for their base services and they are billing this month $33,333 of that. So they are also billing work for their environmental, geotechnical and hazardous material testing. And those line items are part of additional costs that were approved in their contract summary. So you can see here the second page of this I sign and then the town signs. This is the MSBA's format. Here is the Dinesco's cover for their share. And then this is Dinesco's cover for the other tasks that were done by their consultant OTO. So here are the three tasks summarized. So they have completed the phase one environmental site assessment. Which we talked about a little bit today. They have, let's see, this is geotech. They were participants in the test pit exercise that was done back in December. And then they have completed the initial environmental testing for Fort River. And so that's, and then they also, this is a new requirement from MSBA. They have to provide workforce participation documentation. So any questions about this document? Seeing no questions. I move that we approve the invoice as presented. Second. Seconded by Sean. And again, I need to take, if there are no questions, I will move to a vote. I'm not seeing any questions. So Angelica. Yes. Paul. Yes. Simone. Yes. Alison is absent then. Yes. Sean. Yes. Baby. Yes. Alison is absent then. Yes. Sean. Yes. Baby. Yes. Mike. Yes. Rupert. Yes. Jonathan. Yes. Kathy is a yes. Tammy. Yeah. Elisha. Yes. The motion passes unanimously with one absent. Kathy. Yes. I, so I have the OPM invoice. I know Margaret, it just came out today, but we do have it. Since we're not mean again for a few weeks, should we, we have, we'd have just general approval of invoices on the agenda. So we could approve the OPM invoice as well. If you want to walk through it. Okay. Do you want me to share it, Margaret? And you can walk the committee through it. Sorry. Yes. As I mentioned in previous meetings, our invoices are. We do not bill on a lump sum basis. Our invoices are based on. Hourly billing, which is tracked kind of like a lawyer's invoice. If you've ever seen them. So you can see here the three folks. I'm going to go through them. This is the first one. So I'm going to go through this. I'm going to go through this. So this is most Moana who was here at the beginning. Of a meeting Bob Stevens. Who helps me with the administrative monthly reporting. And myself. And so Sean, if you want to scroll down. There is this is the kind of detail. That we provide that where we're describing. What it is we're doing. everything school building project related in terms of the contract and how much has been built so far so we can kind of keep tabs and keep track of how we're doing. So I will again make a motion to approve the invoice as presented. I'll second it's Jonathan. And I will call out the names of the committee members for a vote. Angelica. Yes. Paul. Yes. Simone. Yes. Ben. Yes. John. Yes. Phoebe. Yes. Mike. Yes. Rupert. Yes. Jonathan. Yes. Kathy as a yes. Tammy. Yeah. And Alicia. Yes. So that concludes the agenda of our meeting for the committee and I just want to see if there are any other comments before I open it up for public comments. Jonathan. Just curious now that the protocols around COVID are changing or is there a point where we would transition back to to live in person meetings? It's not something I track you know what what the governor or the state legislature says about the open meeting format. Paul can you let us know? Yes. So the under the state law where the remote meetings can continue through July 15th the town council has started their discussion about what they wanted to do. They're meeting in a hybrid format. They're going to have that they're going to continue that conversation on March 21st and on the staff level we are meeting I've been meeting with the health director about how this will apply to other committees such as this and we have not come to a conclusion on that if we it's either in person or Zoom and but a lot of people don't want to lose the advantages of the Zoom where easy participation and broad participation versus being together in the values of being together in a room. So and doing hybrid formats are pretty technology it's people intensive for us to be able to manage that so we haven't come to a conclusion and a path so but we're working on that over the next week. And and Paul at one point we were getting committees to make a decision which way they wanted to go so right now we have the permission to stay virtual until July correct? Right we were not allowing we only had virtual as an option up up until April 1. The committees did not have the choice right but that's one of the options we're looking at for come after April 1. Alicia I want to thank Denisco for all of their work and all of the sort of forums and all the things that they're hosting I think you all are doing a great job I have just one request and that is also related to what I was talking about earlier and that is that we can receive documentation a little bit earlier prior to meetings especially when we will be having a vote on things and especially when the documents are quite lengthy and so I know that you all didn't necessarily have much control over the fact that the school committee just voted on this on Tuesday however we do have a schedule of like anticipated votes and so if we could like look out and project how much time we will need in between so that we set us up like we're setting ourselves up for success and the ability to be able to go through all of the information thoroughly and make conscious decisions I think that would I would really appreciate that. Thank you Alicia and that's in Angelica I'll call on you I think that's a great suggestion and one of the things on looking with Denisco on the schedule of when we'll be meeting there may be ways of having pieces of it that we're looking at at a time before we come together for one large document so that's something that they'll have to say what's possible so Angelica. I also just wanted to second what Alicia said for those of us that are juggling also small children just reading going through that much documentation is really a challenge and I also appreciated what Margaret sent pointing us in the right direction of some especially when we're looking at a couple hundred pages to go through in less than 48 hours so I just wanted to say we I would love more of that as well but also more time Donna. Yeah I um thank you to both of you and and we too try and juggle the schedule getting the information out but then also having enough time to develop the information so that we can provide it and present it and communicate it in a timely manner. I think what you're going to find going forward is there's going to be more information that's technical that we cannot and don't expect you all to read and understand that's that's not intended to be anything negative but it's more you know for Margaret to read or whatever that we will continue to highlight the areas that are important that you really need to read no one I I can't even understand some of the Ahara reports right so so I think some of that is more so we want to focus on what's important what's meaningful as we move forward with all of these decisions. Thank you um Margaret. Donna thank you for reminding me of something I meant to mention earlier um along the category of things that um will appear in this final document which is the Ahara reports that Donna just referenced so um the so as part of this document um and I don't think that it was in the draft Dinesco team um there are the um schools that have um existing um asbestos containing materials um are required I think it's Rupert it's bi annually right every six months to provide what's called an Ahara report to the state which is an inspection that documents that any contaminants which are typical of buildings of this era are fully contained and protected from the kids and the kids protected from them so um we did not um sort of dig into these they are something that gets submitted as part of the report but I think it's actually you know a great example I I think what's really important is that we um the consultant team like make sure you understand what these things are but no one's expecting you to digest or understand an Ahara report you know most importantly the MSPA it's just is part of this sort of complete documentation that wraps all the existing condition uh information together in one place which is one of the core purposes of the PDP Rupert Rupert did you have your I thought you had your hand up yes but yeah yeah I did I just didn't I pushed the wrong button on you sorry um yes thank you Margaret um we do do a six month surveillance it's called of um any potential risks to staff and students it is state law we're fully compliant thank you so um I'm looking uh is your hand up again Rupert or was that just the a double hit okay got it so I I think um not seeing any other hands up I'm gonna open it up for public comment um and I just as I'm doing that I just want to say my appreciation for the enormous amount of work that has gotten to going to getting us to this point and the extensive effort to make it uh public every step of the way um with the visioning sessions and the forums it's really been a lot of my own time but I've learned a tremendous amount so I just want to say thank you for that and um we are open for public comments and we still we have public and uh I see one person I see five people have raised their hands um so Sean are you set up to bring them in or should or should I I'm bringing in the first person okay I think at least I think the first person is let's see is Rudy yep on his way okay so we're going to be bringing you in in the order we see the hands so Rudy Perkins you are um you've joined the meeting thank you um it looks like I don't have my camera um hi uh and looking at section five the site development requirements and the surveys it looked to me like if the town wanted to spend cpa or other funds to extend cottage street into the Hawthorne parcel for ball fields say the addition of ball fields and conservation areas and took that driveway up to north of the um head start building there might be the possibility of then connecting the school driveway from the wildwood site into a driveway that went back to cottage street and gave I you know I'm just looking at the plot plans generally and then gave a second way in and out of the site the wildwood site without having to deal with that big slope on the strong I don't know if it's worth looking at but maybe you all could and that might give us some more playing field area that would tend to equalize if that's not the right word the fort river and the wildwood sites if we if we had ball fields added over there maybe done with town funds um secondly on the preliminary design program spatial relationships chart I couldn't quite understand the relationship between the two charts and if some point you could explain those because they didn't seem to be like first and second floor they didn't I couldn't tell if they were ad rena on one and new on the other but anyway at some point if you could tag those so we know what the difference between those charts are on the chart I couldn't find mechanical rooms and maybe they're a subset of one of the other labelings or maybe I just missed it but I think it'd be good to label those just to make sure we're getting them in the right place and Ben Harrington made a good point about the recycling area that maybe you don't need 400 feet because you tend to as a practice the school folks get the trash and recycling pulled out of the building pretty fast so that was still left I think you're full 400 feet um so that was that and then um well let me leave it at that because you got a lot of commenters thanks thank you Rudy and as we put them in it's we're not going to be responding to comments we are we taking them so thank you very much right uh Chris Riddle you can unmute you have joined us hello thank you thank you everybody for the vast amount of work that's evident here I need to uh go back to the term geothermal I'm sorry to keep uh prodding on this but it's the wrong term it should be ground source heat pump um not that that matters their geothermal does have a sort of popular um uh it's in popular circulation but it's not that's not what I really want to comment on it's um it's not just semantics um in one place the text says has says the following words I load it down geothermal provides the energy for the new building that's incorrect the energy for the new building is provided by electricity the geothermal provides a heat sink for dispersing heat in the uh in the summertime and uh collecting heat in the wintertime and it's a it's an efficiency tool not a generator and it doesn't generate electricity and I'm concerned about that because um it is grouped along with the uh PV uh below the line and I've said this said this once before but I'll repeat myself um it shouldn't be there it's it's part of the general contract I presume I presume we're not having the general contractor or in this case the CM at risk or CM in general um uh not purchasing the the geothermal portion of the HVAC system that would be a mistake and I don't believe that anybody's proposing that it may be that what um the NISCO means I might ask not none of this is that the cost of the well field is what is being called called geothermal and there is a possibility that you could that the town of Amherst contracts separately to do to have the well field the wells drilled I don't recommend that doesn't seem like a good idea it ought to be a GC responsibility I'm sorry a CM responsibility um let's see so um and I also want to clarify I think that there's a misunderstanding on what BRF stands for that stands for variable refrigerant flow and that's a distribution mechanism that distributes heat and cooling heating and cooling throughout the building and it's the same system that would be used for geothermal quote geothermal as for air source heat pumps um it's a it's it is not something that uh that defines uh any um refrigerant based heating and cooling system uh uh what am I trying to say it does not it's not independent of the ground source your ground source systems can will use a refrigerant as the distribution mechanisms as will air source they're the same um and I really think that presenting um the ground the geothermal quote geothermal unquote as a um as an energy source is confusing to the public probably in a bad way in the sense that the public will think that that two numbers together geothermal and pv are the energy generating uh systems and that's inaccurate really the only energy generating system is the pv let's see also have we considered using the school as an emergency site um if so should we consider adding battery storage to the uh the hv to the portable tach system that's just a question um also I just I said this before also when I'll repeat myself I the I don't buy the estimate the estimating of the savings for renovation you take um um the say the wildwood school and you carve the middle of it out throw it away and then restructure everything else and then you do a new exterior wall and you do new windows and you do new hv ac and you do new electrical and you put in new hymicaptic accessibility mechanisms and and and there is no remaining value of the box that's there at that point by the time you do that much major work to an existing building you have lost the advantages of rebuilding renovation over new construction and um lastly um I think that um I think I'd ask you to consider relocating the public comment period to a point in the agenda when the committee can consider the public comments um putting them at the end like this is it's basically saying that well maybe we'll consider it next time and I would have loved to have what I said just now and what Rudy said be reflected in the vote you just made so thank you very much thanks to all of you for all your work and and and uh thanks to Denise go and Donna for a very um except for my comments a very thorough and professional job thank you thank you Chris um I think I'm on is that correct yes you are hi Bruce um uh again thank you to niscoe that uh clarity of that uh um documents that they presented and I downloaded them and been reading them on another screen uh through the out the last hour and a half or so uh very good I want to commend Phoebe's questioning as well um I think those questions are the basis of a very useful FAQ document that could and should be uploaded and maintained and expanded and refined so I think that's a really good start and Mike comment further comment would be Kathy that the one of the agenda items of the next zero net energy committee meeting could be to expand a similar expand similarly the uh some key FAQs so far as it relates to zero net energy and and subjects related because we can see the beginnings of concern in town for the value of zero net energy versus the possible cost and so forth and there's a bit of nervousness going on so I think it's important to to at least have that decision and discussion based in reality and in fact and it's heading in in in the wrong direction in the heads of some people I know so I think this FAQ initiative that Phoebe's taken either inadvertently or inadvertently is very valuable and should be extended it could be extended into the net zero energy discussion where I think it could have some really important positive consequence and lastly I do agree with what Chris said about geothermal which it isn't its ground source heat pump geothermal is what happens in Iceland that's where it would be appropriately below the line but if it's not Iceland it's not appropriately below the line and we should adjust it accordingly so that people again don't get the wrong impression about what we're talking about here thank you I think you're doing a wonderful job thank you Bruce uh Jennifer hi there I'm Jennifer Page I'm a member of the Amherst school committee and I have three comments the first is in the educational program there's a data table in the grade and school configuration policies and I'm apologize for not noticing this when the school committee was was voting on it but the data table compares student data for the district compared to the state and it's one year outdated like the data table when I look at desi data is for 2020 2021 but the most available data is for 21 22 so could it either be labeled as 2020 21 21 or could it be updated to 21 22 and labeled because I like to make sure we're super clear in labeling data um secondly um will this group be seeing an invoice from am vogue ready um it just would be in order they get paid I'm not sure if it just would be interesting to see no it looks like that that's not going to happen so I would be interested to see um what their what their delivered work product is and and how much they're getting paid and lastly I'm the school committee liaison to m pack the multilingual parent advisory council and this is a group that welcomes families who speak more than one language and I gave them an update on the school building project at an impact meeting this week and I got some great feedback from the group some of the ideas that came out are translating some of the important documents from the school building project into other languages as well as holding a Spanish language community forum and heavily publicizing that to our Spanish language our Spanish speaking families and now that the educational program and the PDP have been approved congratulations everyone in the weeks and months to come as you all are working on selecting a preferred solution and submitting the PSR and even after that when the detailed design work happens I would urge the school building committee to implement ways for speakers of other languages to engage with the process and communicate their input thank you thank you Jennifer we have Tony I think has Tony I think yes you've been brought in Tony Tony you are with us if you can speak I'm not hearing anything hi am I on yes hi thank you uh hello I'm Tony Cunningham I have two children at Wildwood it's been a grueling couple of months with all of you working at a frantic pace to meet the March 15th deadline I want to thank Donna in particular for acknowledging the many questions and concerns that have been expressed related to assumptions that have been made to date including about the way ground source heat pumps and solar are listed in the cost comparisons the substantial differences in site costs and the assumptions about the Fort River fields like Alicia and Angelica and perhaps most of you I have not had a chance to read through the almost 1000 pages of the PDP that were posted yesterday either although I would like to and regarding the preliminary nature of the cost estimates may I suggest that you add a sentence or two to the PDP that clearly states that the costs including the site costs need a lot of further development and then lastly just to touch on what Jennifer asked about Fogarty I served on the Crocker Farm Feasibility Study with TSKP and I followed the previous Fort River Feasibility Study very closely and we did spend time going through early Fogarty cost estimates and I would have expected there would be something similar here that shows the detail on the estimates so I'm just surprised that we haven't seen anything like that thank you so much thank you Tony and we have one more person Maria you're you are with us thank you when you just so you know when you join as a as an attendee it kind of boots you out for a moment so that's why there's a delay when people come on to speak a couple things one is that I as a member of the public was not aware that the school building committee had on its agenda a vote to eliminate the 175 student option now nobody disagrees that the 175 school student option is not viable and needs to go but as as a matter of protocol and and procedure that I think probably took some of the school building committee members by surprise and I think that needs to be when votes are going to take place I think they need to be listed on the agenda in addition it is true that the school committee is I do think has a requirement a state requirement to take votes on not only grade configuration which they did and that's all set but also about school closure which consolidation would naturally lead to so I think you might have to be taking some votes there but that would be something to think about going forward in the future if that's going to happen um it's really people have said this this was more than a thousand pages that I checked for repeatedly over the day yesterday and did not see posted in the packet until the afternoon there's a lot of information in there that hasn't been made previously available certainly not to the public maybe it has to the committee and I don't know but it's really not fair to committee members to have to go through that volume of material and section seven and eights are still not posted less than 24 hours prior to taking a vote like this um you know some people might be comfortable just giving it okay but um but people when when you take a vote that's that's your name and and you're saying that I it's it's it's at least implying that I have read this document and I concur with this and I and I agree with it it doesn't leave any time for substantive discussion um and input and I I do take issue with saying that there's a lot in there that you don't have to worry about with with all due respect there's um it's your responsibility to read that uh and there are members of the public who are quite comfortable reading a number of these different types of documents and who would like to have the opportunity to read them and digest them and be able to have feedback to you and meaningful input as members of the public before taking a vote so um I'm would like to make a plea for all substantive materials to be available at least a week before a meeting and we do have a timeline here so we know when things are going to be happening um and two weeks prior to a vote so that people can you can have input you can say you can ask questions you can correct things um uh and I I don't agree with taking away people's agency by by not allowing that to happen thank you thank you Maria so I I think that um um we have received all the public comments um and I we are slightly over the 1030 stopping point so I think everyone for being able to stay with us see this Paul had to leave early he had a conflict we will be meeting on March 25th and we will get an agenda out as soon as the team is ready to focus on getting this document out and I believe the entire document all the contents will be posted with all the appendices and to the extent people want to read through all the minutes and look at all the presentations again they will have an either longer but it it's quite a comprehensive piece of work that everyone in this committee has been part of and I really thank you and I thank the team the two consultant teams we've got working with us to make this possible and I think with that I am going to adjourn the meeting um and wish everyone a great rest of their Friday and the weekend and uh we will um meet again and we will on the next meeting the minutes for this meeting will be there for us to certify because we did take an important vote thank you very much good night goodbye good morning