 This is the Fort River School Building Committee. This is Wednesday, March 13th. And we are meeting in the police station community room. And this is being taped by Amherst Media. I will call us to order. And the first order of business is to approve minutes, previous meetings. I have a stack next to me meeting the meeting minutes from our first community event, which I thought had corrected everything on. And then the regular meeting right after that, which would be the 19th of February. But I do not have a meeting minutes ready for the subject. So if folks want to take copies or if they have comments, I have a copy. Is that all that I need? Oh, I guess it is? Yeah. Yes. I'm sorry. Thank you both very much. I'm very happy to have this on a file for you. I have that. Yeah, a lot of people have already had it. Oh, that's this one. So I do know that for the community event, I've got to note that Diane did not make the community event the first community event. But I'm hoping we can approve it with that error that we'll be posting for the correct copy. But if there are other things to note. Just a quick, we should just note who is the minute taker. Yeah. Oh, for each of them. Yeah. I'm sorry. I'm trying to figure out if I was indeed at the February 19th meeting. It's all sounding very familiar to me. The 19th was the forum, right? The 19th was the one app of the forum. Did I leave you off? Because I thought I'd have gone back and looked at the video for that to confirm who was in which spot. But it's possible that I made it. It's too long now. I can't say whether I got it right or not. But if you think you were there, I will patch you in. I'm pretty sure the other was there. Okay. Yes. I am. Let's take them separately. Yes. Let's take the older one first, which is the community event. I moved to approve the meeting, the minutes of February 13th, 2019. Second. All in favor. I moved to approve the minutes of February 19th, 2019. Second. All in favor? As noted. As noted. The next item is who will take tonight's minutes. And I have two backlog ones I still need to do. So I'm greatly above it. If someone would step forward to take tonight's minutes. I have a good one. Next item is public comment. Viewing items. Yes. Great. Thank you very much. So I brought a PowerPoint presentation and a printout from that presentation for you. Benefit. I'm going to review the items that are on their agenda, but not in the same order. So I call your attention to our slide presentation. We're going to talk about the geotechnical recommendations more specifically and we have an impact on the project budget. We'll talk about their species identification as they're working in progress. But frankly, I have a chart that will show you about the MSP share and some thoughts about where future extension could go and how big should that extension be. And lastly, we'll touch upon indoor air quality of which humidity is only one fact. So let's talk about site. So the geotechnical recommendations are summarized in this chart. We have low bearing pressure according to the geotechnical report. And some concern about settlement. The ground improvement for two-story structures, I think I reported previously, does not need piles. We do need to do something with the soils. In the two-story scenario, we would need to bring in stone, place it within the soil to create a larger balloon, if you will, of area that could support foundations that would be placed on top of that stone. So the cost of that is roughly $12 per square foot for the building footprint. And if you recall, design option A is the entirely new building. There's more footprint there. So there is a cost impact on option A, as you can see in that chart, $624,000 approximately. And then an option B, which has a slightly smaller footprint, would be less. Now, I confess after we talked to our cost estimator that these costs were not included in the previous estimate. So consequently, you'll see an update in the options summary of costs, which we'll get to in a little bit later. The sequence of construction, which was cited in the geotechnical report, is a little bit of a concern to make sure that new construction does not compromise the existing building. That's normal process. There's no additional costs associated with that. It's a technique that the general contractor or the CM would undertake to make sure that the loading is done in the proper sequence. Ground water control. I did point out previously the existing building does not have water proofing underneath it. We would do water proofing as part of our slab on grade work. The premium on that would be about $2 to $5 per square foot, and that's now reflected in the costs. Surface water control. It's normal for us to do perimeter drainage. That would be part of the new construction, so that would not be a premium. And the comment about thickening the paving on the sidewalks or paved areas to reduce the frost heaving that could occur or the impact that frost heaving could have on pavement is insignificant less than a dollar square foot over the site where we have paved areas. So those would be the recommendations. There is some cost impact that's been reflected a little bit later in the presentation tonight. Do you want to talk again about the section of groundwater control and what the difference between what we can do in existing and what we can't do and what we would be recommended for new so under the renovation to provide water proofing at slab on grade? What is that and how does one implement water proofing on existing slab? Well, what we would do is core through the existing slab and then we would inject an epoxy based water proofing material or other kinds of material that would form into a gel and that would be the only method that we could do without removing the entire slab. So that's what we would recommend be done. And then we would plug those cores that we take out to do that. There are contractors who specialize in that kind of work. And so the two to five dollars per square foot that's for both for that coring process and for an upgrade in the vapor barrier add? Well for a new building we wouldn't need to do that coring. Only the existing one. So that really is... So the cost premium is only for the second slab? The existing slab. That's correct. So the $2 not new construction cost and the $5 is the renovation cost and that gives you a range? That's correct. That's the range. That's the range just for the renovation? That's right. So is that clear? Great. Would that give any insulation value to reduce condensation issues or would you still have that problem? The condensation. The renovation. The condensation what we would do is do other things with mechanical systems as well as perhaps the exterior walls to reduce the amount of infiltration. Make sure that the windows are tight. What we want to do is make sure that we're ventilating. We're dehumidifying. You have air conditioning in the existing building. I'm not sure how effective it is through unit ventilators. I suspect that some of them are not working properly. So in a new building scenario or in a renovation scenario we would do a different kind of system and that would through that kind of air conditioning dehumidify and reduce the humidity in the shower. But in a new building scenario you would recommend under slab insulation. I would. And a new mechanical system. So we would expect the new building to perform better than the renovated building in this regard. In a renovation scenario you would be spending more energy dehumidifying or air conditioning than you would in a new building because the under slab would be insulated. I guess I just want to make sure that I fully understand that line. So we've established that the $2 to $5 per square foot is for the renovation scenario, not the new building scenario. And we don't know. Has that been included in the pricing that was done? It is now. So that was an add-on. Everything in the right column has previously been reflected in the... It has not. And then in terms of what was the slab but when you did the initial cost pricing the new construction slab, you priced that because that's modern construction. That's conventional. That's normal practice today. A vapor returner's standard practice but a waterproofing membrane would not standard practice, correct? Waterproofing... Well, waterproofing in terms of... Waterproofing is not standard practice, you're right. Vapor barrier is pretty standard practice. And we think that with proper sub-base preparation stone and gravel insulation and vapor barrier it's pretty adequate these days for new construction. So, but there is... I'm sorry. But there is waterproofing membrane included in the current designs and the current pricing? I believe it is. Let me confirm that. Other questions? And I guess I just posed one last comment about this. So, if the waterproofing membrane is included and it's determined that we should go forward we would go forward if we were building in here I think it would be interesting to see what that cost premium is just because of the question that we're asking about like what are the cost premiums to build in this particular site? I think I'd be interested to hear that or see that. Let me confirm that. Okay. I'm going to be absolutely clear about that. I don't know if it's still coming up but I guess from our understanding and from the public's understanding what is it about this site that you would recommend upgrading from typical just vapor retarder construction to a full waterproofing membrane? Can you describe what was in the report that would cause you to make these levels of upgrade recommendations from this building on this site? Well, there is a high water table and in one location what was discovered was a water pump pressure which when they cored through it immediately came up above the surface of the earth. So because of that high water table we would do waterproofing underneath this lab to confirm whether that's included in the updated cost here. Normally we would do just vapor barrier and we would do insulation as well as the subgrade preparation. So that would be normal but in this case I think we would go the extra distance and actually make sure that there's waterproofing underneath this lab. And the critical difference there being that vapor barrier is not going to stop bulk water from moving. You've got actual water that's putting pressure against a building surface that you need to that step up. That's correct. You might as well do it that way in new construction to be absolutely certain so there's no question about it. So that's what I would recommend in a new construction today on this particular site. Just remind us, we don't know the exact parameters but there are some advantages to this site that you have basically a flat site and I don't think we found ledge there, right? So I can tell from other projects I've been involved in those slopes and ledge can have significant site costs that we don't have. So we have to remember that yeah, we're getting some issues here but we're not getting some other issues. It's hard to... I agree with that and actually I would add that although I think a really well done explanation that sort of walks... I mean hopefully I think I said this last meeting when I think you weren't here but Jesse was then. I'm hoping that in the narrative you end up walking people through the implications of the geotechnical and of the building itself when you know about it and then what you're recommending as different steps because from what I can tell there are a lot of people in town. I mean everybody, regardless of folk wisdom versus facts versus data which I'm not going to bother getting into if you look over the last 40 years there's plenty of anecdotal evidence that it's a suboptimal building in terms of voice control it's kind of a mild way of putting it and so since everybody essentially knows that then people including myself when I was 11 playing in the back fields at Fort River it was at times marshy and so these are common experiences everyone has of this site and so I think our ability to explain this and explain how with modern construction techniques and materials you can actually create a... even if there's a cost per annum that you can actually create a usable building that shouldn't have the same kind of problems that it previously has had it's actually going to be a real... it's going to be a nice thing for the town to know but the only way they're going to know it is if it's actually explained you walk people through those different elements so they can look and be like, oh I get it that's my view anyways I agree that's what I'm saying so let me give you an example of a building that we had to have a lot of controls over due to moisture or ensuring that there wouldn't be any moisture we did a project on Staten Island and it was in a mucky area in fact we had to do piles on that site and the building was to contain historic artifacts from buildings in that historic district and I'm talking large artifacts there are fireplaces doors lumber from old houses as well as horse drawn carriages furniture, all kinds of stuff and this was to be a collection that was to be contained using museum level humidity controls so we made sure that the building was as tight as possible we used a vapor barrier that was truly a vapor barrier not just a plastic sheet within the exterior walls it was a metallic vapor barrier with a very high rating that was really preventing any vapor from getting through because we couldn't have humidity fluctuate more than I think 5% in the building and we were able to achieve it but it was making sure that the walls were tight floor slab was tight so it is doable using modern techniques I think from what I'm sensing from the questions in the comments I think that this group understands that it's doable and that every site has its own things but I just think it's an important thing to come out of this like Eric was saying that we have a good solid story but what are the challenges with the site and how are we going to deal with them and what's the cost per unit Eric I would even argue that whether it's this particular example you're using of the museum-ish storage area or another example pulling out an example like that and giving it isn't a bad idea just because I would agree with I'm giving honest in my personal opinion I actually would agree with Broody I actually don't like the fact that there are people in town that have such strong opinions about the forever site they would like to discount it as a future site for a school sort of out of hand primarily because of the water moisture issues in the past and I believe you that you can actually create a usable workable building there but I know that most people in town won't not most people enough people in town won't unless they can be walked through the logic and feasibility of it and also understand what the cost is because there's a trade-off in everything always trade-offs the other part of the story that I'm interested in hearing is and for the public to understand is you have a lot of freedom to address these kind of things in new construction and with how much confidence can we say that we can address them as well as we would like to under a renovation scenario there's always more risk in renovation that's absolutely true but you do the best you can what you can do is do some testing to reassure everybody that you've done a good job let me think about that a little bit let me think about how to address that I mean, is anybody going to guarantee that it's absolutely vapor proof or water proof under an existing slab if you've done some mitigation of it using a coring technique I don't know I've never asked the contractor to absolutely guarantee that it's been done but maybe there is even if the more likely scenario that they won't I think kind of talking to Eric's point it's at least worth walking people through how far you can go and then what are the remaining risks and at least provide that level of information ready? and do small corings after this injection to see if the coverage has been all the way under the slab they'll do statistical sampling they'll do some sample cores and see if in fact what the average depth has been for that material has been injected the spread in the radius from the hall so you could theoretically check the coverage of your membrane you could also your injection memory you could also you know before you occupy the building do some create a negative pressure in the building and see if there's any moisture brought out because you're now allowing some moisture to penetrate and see if you can measure any difference over a period of time let me talk to a testing lab and see if there's a way to test to reassure people that it's been adequately done and then you know another thing you can do is you can do infrared scanning which can also detect moisture if there's any kind of if there's any kind of infrared difference between one area and other you know that that one area is wider than another area so I think there are test techniques that you can do to reassure people this is a 20 page document that we're still on page 4 my next question was are folks satisfied with the answers and questions on this one if so I would love us to do it on the next page okay the next page has to do with rare species habitat in the river area so we had our consultant Berkshire design group address this question to Massachusetts division of fisheries and wildlife which controls who has this information and will be able to report that to us on what sorts of flora and fauna might be affected in this region and so what they do is prepare this request to that department along with mapping information showing where this region is showing the extent of it showing the existing conditions and the proposed conditions and so we'll have to wait for a response from the state is there a typical timeline I mean what's the point of those things trying to think about whether it actually is able to come out with a reporter has to be something that gets it may have to be an appendix potentially yeah my experience is that there is a very specific timeline with this so they can put in and then there's like a 21 day turnaround time so I would imagine like six weeks might be the time for that but we can certainly submit this as part of the report and say that this is still a process as of the date of the report so my question is is there any vote that we have to do for funding or is this this is provided by the state I think it's something they have to provide at request but if you ever need to I just want to make sure that we get it done I think there was either a $25 or $50 fee that's all to submit it so I mean I mean it's not an outline reimbursable so we are you eating that cost then? I'm eating it so far I should say Berkshire has been eating it they would ask for us to reimburse them and if they ask us we'll reimburse them but it's not I'd like to suggest that when you're working with Berkshire on this that when they submit that they call and follow and make sure that the submittal was received because I had an issue what sort of submittal was that received what report was that? what submittal was that? oh yeah it was another project but it was this exact request ask Berkshire to follow up so presumably there will be more on that later than it was today ok these on the next page page 6 an update on cost as you can see really is option A it was actually a 63 something good and it's now a 64 and all of these have been adjusted it's just the nature of this as you find more information having to update page 8 you'll see a score sheet for various incentive points that MSPA offers so on the left hand side you see 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 items that they give you some additional incentive some additional points for reimbursement the first is maintenance and that score 1.3 is our estimate you won't get that until you actually go through MSPA process but I will tell you that previously you went through the MSPA process for Wildwood and that was the score that you got and it's very close to the score that we got on the West Springfield project that is going through MSPA process West Springfield is 1.31 so we think that's a reasonable estimate since this is based upon the district's maintenance policies and I don't think it's going to be different from what your experience was previously at Wildwood so that's why we carried that number you'll probably get that all the way across regardless of which option you're selecting yes I'm just going to suggest it's not critical to what we're doing I think putting this as a placeholder is fine but because the district is now looking better, closer deeper at maintaining its buildings the maximum that you can get for that is 2% so that is something to think about and perhaps to let Sean Mungano know the finance guy that investing in our buildings now can actually raise possibly raise our reimbursement here yeah is there a checklist that we could provide the district I don't know I have not seen a checklist from MSBA so they just like pull it out of the air I don't know it's a mystery is this something to score when they come around and do their I don't even want to know what to call them but for you I think we'll happily send you guys the regs on this I mean it's not going to make any promises but just so that we know what it is that we included in our report but I think it's important for the town and the district to be aware that there's opportunity here aside from doing the right thing I'd actually be really interested in knowing more about that I mean if you can send it along that would be great I'm happy to also follow up with Sean there is another maintenance opportunity here for another one percentage point for doing a facility maintenance trust where you essentially promise to do good maintenance in the future and the MSBA will give you an additional point of reimbursement it's literally putting money aside to enable match funds and do stuff like that right so there are opportunities here that I think the district I'd love to get there I don't know if we'll get there but we've been trying to organize ourselves in a more systematic way around maintenance and I think we are and so if there's a way we can think about either organizing and improving that or even just presenting it if we got 1.3 before if we don't get 2 we get 1.5 or 7 that would be good news you have the same challenge every school district has costs and money but I think it's important to note the story here is that the MSBA rewards can be paid here and rewards good maintenance so I just know we have a better story to tell now than we did even a year ago so you see zeros here because you are not a newly formed regional or this project would not be part of a newly formed regional school district it's not a model school program are you familiar with what that is so I am vaguely but I'm probably the only one MSBA has I'm not sure they still do it but they've had in the past a model school program so they had school plans in their files and you could pick from those files and say you want to use these that's their model school program there was an incentive associated with that I'm not sure how successful it's been I know some districts have tried it but that's not the case here you're doing a custom design it's not going to be an off-the-shelf design the next line is interesting major reconstruction renovation and reuse MSBA acknowledges that it's financially prudent to renovate and so they give you more money if you renovate so that's why option A has zero incentive for that and those that use more renovation as you can see get a greater incentive overlay zoning and overlay zoning don't apply here you don't have an overlay zoning for housing in town so that's not relevant the efficiencies we've reported previously that options ABC can go beyond the code requirements it's more difficult than options so we're estimating you would get a 2% incentive for that item for at least three of the options on these zoning bump ups is that something that we could first they don't have to be in the zone the project can be just in a town that has the zone and can we adopt the zone between now and say when it actually goes into construct or when it gets funded for construction or is there some time of it like you before you this has to be in place before you even start the MSBA process I don't know the answer to that question and I don't know what the tradeoff is for the town to have that overlay zone what the impact is I'd be surprised if the 40R 40S that it didn't need to be within that zone I mean you know what that is it's a smart grid over like transit right here they're good things the wording is that approved project in a community that has adopted an overlay zoning district pursuant to the provisions of MGL C40R C40S so an overlay zoning district provides for either 100 units or more of housing in one, two, or three family structures at 53% it doesn't at least this part of the regulation doesn't specify where it is in relation to the project it says in a community that has adopted 100 unit one or for the 40R 40S both for either of these so I mean I don't know who to send this information to in town town planer I'm just saying it may be something we want to do for other reasons we want to double up and get some so you all you can ask absolutely but for now we're counting it at zero sorry you're kind of triggering some other conversations that may happen elsewhere so as you can see the total estimate for incentive points is as shown below the highest is for C so using those incentive points we take the base rate for the district which is 64% we add those incentive points come up with the rate before liver in order to then calculate the cost so we have some ranges in there because some things are not eligible for reimbursement but as you can see here we have option C scenario cost to Amherst is the lowest anywhere from 19 to 20 actually the lowest is E and F but I'm not sure you want to pursue that but it's an excerpt from the MSBA worksheet that calculates the ineligible scope items and we can send to the committee this worksheet and then that way you can work with it and play with it so that you can see the effects that various things have what Jesse did is pulled out on the right hand side some important factors for you which is that MSBA has a site cost cap they say you can't spend more than I think it's 8% of your total project on site work so if you have an unusual site rock for example and you're spending a lot of money for a rock removal they have a cap and so Jesse's estimate is that 2.781 million would not be eligible because you have a fair amount of site work that you're exceeding that 8% when you say not eligible you mean anything above the 8% cap or none of that line item anything above the 8% cap they pay when they pay up to that point then that's on you I just wanted to make sure it wasn't like a disqualified hopefully we haven't done something like that so the next item construction cost cap MSBA also has a cost cap which if you go to the next page we're trying to explain you see there are two graph lines there one is the red line which is an indication of the cost of actual escalation of construction cost so if you look at what we were in 2019 we were estimating the construction dollars and you project forward to when you're going to be building the building sorry it's $534 per square that's the harvest again if you look at the year 2019 MSBA's cap for construction is $348 and if you look at the MSBA MSBA cap historically you can see that they've made adjustments a little bit roughly 4.5% per year so we're using that 4.5% to project forward to when our project will be built so that we're estimating to be $397 per square foot which means if your cost is above that you're not going to reimburse them so if you go through the map going back to the previous page the amount that they're not going to reimburse is $12,780.8 because that's above their cap as of that date okay and then we have another item in your local register of art the percent for art I think it's 1% I think it's 1.5% 1.5% for art so we're not entirely sure how this is going to be played out I'm not sure how the regulation I'm not sure if you've had experience with how that regulation is applied I believe it's fairly new and it probably hasn't been an application yet by understanding this is now several weeks old from having read it is that it would be our portion so that 1.5% is not calculated on the whole thing but on what the town's obligation would be but I don't think there's too many outs after that it would apply to that whole so if you identify that as art that's being added to the project MSBA is going to reimburse that part isn't necessarily a given it doesn't my reading of the text may or may not actually be associated with the building could be but some of that money could also be used to fund other art in other places in town but either way like poetry? or theater or music art is very broadly defined in that does that mean it goes into a fund or something? that's my understanding I'm not going to pretend to be an expert on this maybe Maria or someone else knows more I was just going to add that it's worth noting the AG last I checked the AG has still not approved this law yes there were some language questions I don't think it's 100% clear and the AG had issues about how we were with the town's plan so I don't know that it's clear I think we should assume though that we're not going to reimburse we're going to call our total project budget includes this so now what we're doing is pulling it out we're saying that's not going to help us for reimbursement that makes that really sensible so I'm sorry Mike so I guess this could be what you're walking us through but the previous page gave your estimate of what would be our reimbursement rate the project cost to the town does this reflect this information or is it I believe it does I believe it does so let me just again confirm that I think Jesse went through it you took that out other questions on the MSBA participation portion there's a couple more so the next line has to do with furniture cost the cap of the MSBA will not reimburse you for furniture or pre-k and they have a cap on how much they will reimburse you and again the worksheet will tell you when you get it they will pay $1,200 per student they will reimburse you $1,200 per student so you have to take out the pre-k you can only use this number for the approved enrollment figure so based upon your population projections and the enrollment that they approved we used $415 as the estimated approved enrollment by MSBA so once you do that math and then you realize you're actually spending more money this amount is worth it if we needed for the zero energy purposes to put in kitchen equipment which is super efficient we're already maxed out in our reimbursement it looks like from the MSBA for equipment so there's not going to be much chance that that will be partially reimbursed if we have to have special superficiality this furniture cost cap is strictly loose furniture what about the kitchen equipment that we would categorize that as part of the construction cost they're all pipe connected so it's just loose anything that's movable that's in this line but something like a range or oven that's actually fitted in the wall that's part of the construction that's the way we classify it but we should know that we are over the construction cap too so in a sense it's a different pile the answer is still yes for different reasons we get most of the walls but the same thing for soft caps they have a soft cost cap they have a 20% cap on all soft costs and our estimate is that it's going to be higher than that so all of these caps does beg the question of if they're capping it let's say for 2022 construction at 397 cost per square foot for construction and we're coming out at 534 we're going to question way back of what more are we getting for this and I do know that I think I don't know if there's ever been an MSBA project that hit their cap where there was no ineligible expenses well back before 2010 way back when which makes me say I should call my state reps and say you guys got it correct for the inflation if you are correct MSBA has lagged behind has not kept up with rate of inflation isn't that because there was an economic collapse there was well except that it looks like the state also took that opportunity to not increase sure the other problem MSBA we think of it as always having existed but it got rebooted it was offline in 2008 and there weren't any projects that were happening until 2009 or beyond that really is all of the data for the MSBA there is nothing before that but is there you always look at this and say okay so we've gone beyond the cap is there anything we could should think about in our project that would say well should we dial anything back are we pretty much I think everyone is in this particular direction so I would not try the MSBA you're going to really handicap the project this is just his way of explaining that just because there is a cap it's not that's not your goal it's sort of I guess it must be analogous to everything else we have in school funding where we just have massively insufficient state funding that doesn't recognize the true cost since burning global towns to much whereas the original intent of how school funding was supposed to go to Massachusetts is that the state would be equal in states moving on I have neglected to keep my slides currently to date so so now we're on page 13 future expansion question so what do you mean by future expansion I suppose one way to do it is to assume that you have a building that has been built for 84,000 square feet which is the program that we've been talking about and now future expansion so if you go to a population of 600 what does that mean you could leave the core as it is keep the cafeteria as it is the gym as it is and just add classrooms that might be one way to do it or what we chose to do is look at what a 600 pupil population how MSBA would treat a 600 pupil population in terms of square footage what would they need to be the correct square footage the same way we use it as a test for the appropriate size of a 465 pupil school if we use that method and use 600 MSBA's calculation comes out to 106,000 so that's the way we interpret and expand the population to 600 start with 600 let's see what's posted and if that were the scenario is there room to increase the size of the footprint in the options that we presented so the next several pages show site plans for each option and if you look at the upper right corner of the footprint of the building you'll see a faint orange footprint that faint orange that faint orange footprint represents a future true story 22,000 square foot increase in footprint to get to the 600 pupil 16,000 square feet so you can do it in that corner for option A option B you'll see another faint orange footprint adjacent to the paid play area option C is the bigger footprint but it does approach on that play field area also because it's a similar story option D we're doing it on the northern end of the building eastern side of the building so that's how you would expand I guess this is presumably one of the criteria that we set up in the beginning which talked about looking at if this needed to grow at some point in the future but it was more in terms of not turning to 420 or 465 into a 600 student school but what if your enrollment grew such that you had to add a few classrooms such as was done at Crocker Marks 2002 and that was more my interpretation of taking the project that we're starting with if you needed to grow how would you do that you know is there a way that would logically make sense with the floor plans that we've developed that you could put either a second story on some part or build out rather than saying you're going to need another 20,000 square feet to build a school of a different size do you know what I'm saying? the difference between 465 so 5 times or divided by the maximum what's your classroom guideline? 20 so divided by 20 so that's say 7 classrooms so 7 classrooms that probably will amount to about 10,000 square feet so rather than building so that's what you would do you would build a 10,000 square foot in addition just classrooms to accommodate that population so and you would do a similar thing you would extend one wing of the building build more classrooms with the two-story option you would build a two-story extension to the building and then maybe this was said already and then there's enough room in the other facilities gym library, cafeteria, kitchen and so forth to accommodate that this addition of 135 students if we're doing that or do we get other problems then or is that what the difference between this 10,000 square feet and the 22,000 square feet that you have indicated here that's the way I was interpreting because when you go through the MSB calculation they adjust everything so this is somehow adjusting those other spaces to cross-leaning without spending the time to actually figure that out so you're talking about building an addition of 10,000 to 22,000 square feet and there's room to do that is the point can I ask another question this is more for us am I being naive to think this is sort of thinking about if we go to a 600 student plan will this site conceptually fit not future growth but this becomes the site we're looking at for a 600 I've got a much more in-depth study that goes beyond the scope of our work I think what this can show is that there may be room for more building but I don't think we want to ask them to start figuring out the site components no I don't think behind this question wasn't my question so I have no idea I think in terms of I think I don't really care if this is in here or not I think the point of Rameray earlier is that under any circumstance you'd want to ask the question if we build this can we expand it and not forget any other conversations out there could you expand it if you needed to and if you could where would it fit on the site conceptually and just pass the smell test when you look at it that says this looks like something that could be viable so I think the fact that you're making that it conceptually could have implications as this being a viable site for a 600 person school that's good but I mean it's not the point of asking you just get the information and you can use it however you want right so in answer to the question one question is the rule for expansion the answer is yes the other question that Rudy was getting to which you're going to have to do anyway if the decision and I know that's by others bodies question if the decision is we've got to look at the 600 people building located somewhere I think you're going to have to look at Fort River as a potential site as well as another site as well as sites that haven't been identified yet to determine what the optimal site is I'm sure we'll probably just move on because we're not going to answer any of this here I'm sure it will be I'm sure it'll have to be and besides that I think it's a little bit like the water question that we asked earlier where we discussed at the beginning of the meeting where I'm happy if when people are looking at the report and discussing this they don't sort of a priori decide that we can't possibly conceivably look at Fort River and why would River bother either A because of water issues or B because we're already going to build and if you can at least start from the point that well based on this analysis you couldn't expand off of this concept and with various mitigations you could deal with water alright then you have a conversation and you do the analysis moving on so the last question depends in your air quality I think it started about humidity we wanted to address in this report air quality which includes humidity and I think these are the things that would be important you know the construction of the building a new building or a significant renovation building first is monitoring control I mean these days you monitor everything and again it's budget driven what we have is a budget is a reasonable budget but you can go crazy with monitoring you can monitor air pressure at every length of duct so you can tell whether the duct is dirty or whether the filters need to be replaced you can tell whether the pumps are working you can tell whether you're working or whether you're having a problem so these days unlike 1974 where the building was built there was very little controls today you can monitor controls monitor your environment you can watch trends and it will be a great asset in maintenance and in humidity control and air quality is provided ventilation to air conditioning and dehumidification so you don't have adequate ventilation in the existing building now you would need to bring fresh air in but at certain times of the year you're bringing in humid air so you need to dehumidify that and use that you do that with air conditioning basically so that's something that would be done in a modern building today you would eliminate pollutants that's the next item that goes toward air quality you can put in high efficiency filters make sure that you're filtering the air that's coming in and you know there's background stuff out there of this mold out there so you could be filtering all that stuff the air quality within the building would be better than the air quality outside so the materials to ensure low emissions of VOCs make sure people aren't having allergic reactions to the materials that you've included in the building that's what will be considered a modern building today we would create a very tight building I think this is what I mentioned in my example on Staten Island you can't have any humidity migrating through the walls also you would have a true vapor barrier on the exterior and then you could also pressure test a building make sure there's no leakage and then the last one you could also call don't do stupid engineering but if you create exhausts that are near intakes that's stupid or near chimneys or vents and so on so you just make sure that and I've seen it happen in our projects but you just make sure that you're not creating your own problem by re-entering into the building and seeing it just exhaust so that hopefully addresses the question about air quality Slightly off topic but I believe the At Falls School used a non-air conditioning system for part of all of the building and it reduced energy use and was a cheaper system I know that's not exactly the ventilation but did we this is probably going back before I was on the committee did we look at that for all part of the building or we assume the entire building with air conditioning I'm not sure I know what the system is that you're talking about but we were talking about the whole building being air conditioned what is the system that you're I'm sorry I'm forgetting the name but that's not right and I happened to be watching another school building committee meetings and they were debating this question and there's a lot of capital savings and apparently and operating savings by zoning the building in the parts that you aren't going to need brought down to a certain temperature and using this other system which apparently involves moving more outside the air through the building I believe the system you're referring to is called air displacement that's it and it does move a lot of air and the theory behind it is that you deliver the air low in the space and then through the occupants in the building it heats up and then through convection it rises in the space and then it exhausts it that way but the theory is that you could deliver lower temperature air because it's very close to you rather than delivering it in a remote location and having it mix it with the air so that's the theory behind it it has been done it's becoming more prevalent I don't think air displacement was one of the choices that we looked at it does require a lot of duct work and does that become part of your air ventilation system in effect too if you're using that system to produce some of these things or it's that you would not have another air system doing this that would all be incorporated in the air in the air displacement system so as we get down the pipe where we're looking at construction and if we wanted to rethink or save money or think about temperature different temperature regimes in the school building based on usage that might be something we could come back and look at and it's applicable those kinds of systems are applicable to smaller spaces classrooms you know pupil support spaces, even admin areas they're not applicable really to large spaces like Tunisians typically you'll end up with a hybrid you'll end up with more conventional systems in those large spaces air displacement in the smaller spaces and one of the things you pointed out early on was ducted systems while they have their advantages are much easier to deal with in new construction than in renovations one of our challenges renovations is the lack of space that's correct other questions so the next item I have on our agenda is the independent cost estimate obviously you have tweaked your estimates and so as soon as that sort of document is ready that talks about what a cost estimator or I should say ready is edited or updated we would love to get a copy of that so what what other exercise Jesse talked to me about that so what he did prepare is this addendum to our narrative so you could handle it this way as an addendum rather than waiting for us to reissue the whole thing if you're interested in issuing this soon just take what we've written before and this addendum I guess I need to confirm that we have the original one I can't recall if we do Jesse Ford that too but I don't think it's nice it's been sent to me personally at any point really I don't think we're talking about the pricing narrative so we have been issued that ages ago so we do have that and if everything I haven't seen this addendum but if that accounts for all the changes that have happened from that first issue until now then I don't want to see that but I think that would be all we definitely do have the original narrative that was like six weeks longer so my assumption was that it had significant revisions but if it can't be handled in one thing that's fine with me I actually prefer it that way because we're regular keeping discussions that have happened over time which is kind of a nice record of that I don't think it would kill us to get another to make sure if Jesse could send it again I'll make sure he sends it again the current version of it obviously it could be identical to the one we already have but it's just nice to know but it really is here at the package so then just to clarify are we here then we should check that over and just make sure are we then all set I had said some I responded to that and I don't know if we want to talk about that I think the only remaining task for the working group would be to identify the options that we want because we talked in the whole committee about we wanted to make sure each option had the same enrollment figures and we probably need to pick an HVAC option the most appropriate HVAC option for each I think that's it as far as tasks for the working group and we delegated that for you to do yes for you to us okay I think we can and I'll immediately issue it I'm not going to bring it back to the committee I think it was the understanding right right immediately and it's important for the estimator an independent estimator to have meaning for us this is not like a bid scenario we identify the planning specs on every detail for cost estimators bidders to bid on this is a cost estimating effort there needs to be a lot of dialogue between the design intention and the estimator to put in the appropriate numbers I think that was our intention okay so as long as it is aware of that we know it's kind of a weird animal and it's maybe if we were designing the whole feasibility process from the start we might have done this differently but we have a mandate and it is good information we understand that and we appreciate a cost estimator can give you a cost estimate without any information other than size of building where I come up with um but we have a lot of information a lot of information needs to be conveyed verbally so as long as he's aware of that so our agenda is I think we've come to the end of our agenda all invoices so far they're free I emailed them in advance and they were copies of our third one so there's a two side to the two side that's two sided thank you my best any questions on the approval of TSKPD Studio invoice number five all in favor figure you want to repeat that task I move the approval of Berkshire Design Group invoice number 7.212018- 110-1 I like yours second all in favor lastly I move the approval of O'Reilly Talbot and Okin Associates invoice number 47164 second all in favor I should probably put on the agenda next time we've just spent a little bit of money I will have another spreadsheet for you before we do anything we do have this room on the 27th on the 6th to 8th as for our usual time are we are we at getting the draft that was on Jesse's schedule it's on Jesse's schedule we will get that to you before that meeting is there anything else I mean aside from reviewing that is there anything else you need from us great one question that I was reminded about looking at the numbers about how the the assumption for a smaller enrollment is very similar to the E option for a larger enrollment in the expected costs for that and my assumption is that that's because there's no swing space available to move students around and so you have to pay for swing space but without looking at those numbers off the top of your head E like the the numbers coming very close for the lower enrollment to the higher enrollment let me look at that carefully I'm not sure I remember what you're saying is that the costs are similar there's no cost increased for an additional hundred and over 350 to 475 or 465 why is that if my you know my guess would be is trying to include costs for housing students when they're displaced because under a little renovation when we are not in that particular scenario we don't have an addition to move students into during renovation we're making use of almost the entire existing building so where we put the students so I'm assuming it's unique in that regard that the costs are very similar between those two enrollment figures is because that's the only option where we have like no addition correct I think that's the option that had temporary space yeah that's the one that had and is that why the costs are so similar it could be I know that temporary space was included in that analysis but we'll be just other comments questions I'll take a motion to adjourn to adjourn all in favor