 Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Sharon. Welcome everybody to today's meeting of the Jones library building committee. We are meeting by authority of the legislature and the governor extended our ability to meet via electronic zoom virtual meetings through March of next year. It's nice to see you all I'm going to ask you to signify your presence vocally. Sharon here. Christine. Yeah. Paul. Present. George. Here. Alex. And Austin is here. And we may I hope be joined by other members of the committee, but we have a, we have a quorum at present. I see Sean Sean, can you hear us. Sean. Yes, I can hear you. Sorry. Great. Okay. Fabulous. Thank you very much. Okay. The first item of business is the approval of minutes from July 5. Is there a motion to approve the minutes. So moved. Thank you, Paul. Is there a second. Second. Thank you, George. Okay. Are there any comments, corrections to the minutes from July 5. When did we get an email with them? I don't know that you got an email with them. The minutes were in the packet that was posted on the town website. Oh, they're in the packet there. I'm under the minutes part. So I'll look there. I wouldn't look at them. They're in the packet. That was posted for this meeting. Okay. Any, anything else on the minutes, anything on the minutes. Okay. Sharon. Vote to approve. Yes. Yes. Christine. Yeah, I approve. Thank you, George. Yes. Thank you, Paul. Yes. Sean. Yes. Alex. Yes. And Austin votes. Austin vote. Yes. The agenda as posted listed minutes from July 26. Those minutes are not available. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. I wonder if it would make sense, Sean, before going to the financial update to actually ask Craig to make his presentation. So if there's no objection, what I'd like to do is I like to ask Craig. And thank you to Craig and Will for joining us. Thank you for Josephine and Ellen from FAA for joining us. I think what we ought to do next is to hear from Craig about the. Cost estimation activity, the exercise and what it. And what it produced. So Craig, would you please lead us through your presentation. Absolutely. Let me share my screen. Thank you. Okay. Should be able to see that now. Thank you. Thank you. In short, the news that I have to deliver is frankly, not very good. We did complete the cost estimate reconciliation. And in short, found things are more expensive now than before. And even that, even more than we anticipated. So this presentation, the idea is to sort of take a step back. And to understand sort of like where we've been so that you guys can hopefully make an informed decision on where to go next. At any point, if something I say doesn't make sense, feel free to stop me. And then I can share this presentation with Angela. So she can post it after. All right. So what we're going to go through is just sort of high level sort of budgets and costs. And then I'll give you a quick explanation of the process we went through and then the outcomes. There is a budget gap. So we'll talk about that. There are a couple of paths forward. And there may be others that are not identified in this, but I'll share with you what we've got so far. The challenge is limitations to each of those. And then how it all affects. So big picture projects, construction projects have broken down into two big buckets, hard costs. And soft costs. So the hard costs are everything you need for the building and the site. So that's like your construction. Soft costs are your furnishings, professional fees, any expenses, your contingencies. And together, hard costs plus soft costs is our total project costs. And you can say the same thing about our budget, you know, hard, you know, the budget for the hard costs plus the budget for the soft costs equals our total project budget. So this is where we were with the budget, which is how much money is available. And that is the budget for the hard costs was at this, let's say $20,000. Budget for the soft costs. Just over $9 million. And then total project budget. So that's how much money it's set aside, 36.3 million. Just to give maybe the folks at home. And understanding of where that money is coming from. MBLC is their grant is for $13.9 million. Library capital campaign is targeting $6.6 million. And fundraising town of Amherst is contributing 15.8 million. And so the total amount of money that is available. Mashed the budget. So those two aligned. Previous cost estimates. And now a cost estimate is just the hard costs, just the construction costs. So that back up. So that'd be just this, this number here. This 26.9 million. So back in a summer of 2020. Those projections were for 25.2 million. Seemed good. Flash forward two years, April 20 of 22. That number jumped up as we know, jumped up to 30.8 million. This number does include the. Anticipated costs for cross-liminated timber. So this would be just this, this number here, this 26.9 million. So back in a summer of 2020. There will be an over-liminated timber. So this would be kind of an all in. One important note is that something that affects the. Construction costs of their anticipated cross construction cost very much is when construction begins, as we know, we've gone through a period of great escalation over the last year. Unfortunately, all the experts in the field think that that or they'll never really turn around, but level off. So these two costs were for the 25 million was assuming construction start of March, 2021, which we know did not happen. And this 30.8 million was assuming a construction start date of June of 2023, which in fact, we are a little bit past that now with our current understanding. So our schematic design cost estimate, which is the exercise that we just went through. This month, we had just a reminder, we had two cost estimators, one that the design team hires, one that the town hires. The idea is you put those two together because cost estimates are just a prediction of the future and it's just essentially opinions about what will happen in the future. Having two separate entities look at the scope of the project independently, come together, compare notes. And what we do is we actually average those together and that gives us what we call a reconciled cost estimate. And in the industry, that's essentially what everyone considers to be the most reliable method. And so our reconciled cost estimate is 38.5 million. Again, that's just an average of these two numbers. Cost estimate number one was Fennessey. They're hired by Fangle Alexander. Cost estimate number two was Ryder, Levitt, Bucknell. They were hired directly by the town. Again, you can see there's a large discrepancy. We average those together and that's where we are assuming that the cost of the project will be in, when it goes. Craig, you're breaking up, Craig. You're breaking up the question in the future. Craig, you can use my signal now. Ooh, I see my, Craig? Yes, I'm still here. Can you hear me? Yes, I want you to just, for a minute, you broke up. You're going to need to repeat, but there's, is there an error on your slide? It said schematic design cost estimates, August of 2023. You are correct, Austin. I should read August of 2020. Okay, just so everyone's confused about it. We're talking about the cost estimation that was just completed in August of 2022. Correct. All right. And I'll correct that before I share the slide, before I share this presentation with Angela for the record. I see, Sean has a question, Sean. Craig, do you want questions at the end or as they pop up on each slide? I think in general, if there's a question about sort of the material on the slide, then now is a good time to talk about it. If it's sort of like, what are we going to do next? Question, maybe we'd say that for the end. All right, I'll ask and you decide if maybe you're going to address this, but so the April 2022 cost estimate, that was from Fennesee as well, right? Correct. So is it just cost escalation that changed between the 30.8 million and the 36 million, which are both Fennesee cost estimates? I'm just wondering what is in that six million or I guess $5 million difference? They weren't done too far apart. Is it some of the design choices that we've made or what is the big, I guess, within that's the same cost estimator that drove that price up? Yep, no, that's a great question. I think now is the right time to respond to it. So there's in a way three things that have contributed to it. Part of it was in Fennesee's, our assumption back in April that the start of construction would be June of 2023. We essentially extended that out four months between April and now. So that has sort of four months of this kind of high escalation. Another aspect is that back here in April, certain assumptions were being made about the market. Now, things haven't gotten any better. In fact, they've continued on. So that's another kind of four months of market understanding, which has also continued to increase. And then the third thing is this April estimate was off of a kind of conceptual level or very early schematic design. And so there are a lot of assumptions that Fennesee made that now that we have a full set of schematic design drawings, things are clearer. And so in that clarity, just between his assumptions and what we now understand the design to be, there may also be some increases in sort of what he's seeing on the paper. Does that answer your question, Sean? Yeah, I know that's helpful. I have one other question, but Christine can go first. Well, actually Austin's gonna go first. Go ahead, Austin. Is the $5 million gap in cost estimations, is that kind of what one expects or is the gap a surprise? I think it's not uncommon for that gap to, or that difference to exist. And I think the fact that it's 5 million, such a large number is uncommon. And I think that is largely having to do with the market sort of this, I wouldn't say unprecedented time, but very unfavorable market. I'm just trying to get a sense and maybe we'll talk about this more later and Christine and Sean will get in. I'm just trying to get a sense of the reliability. So the $5 million gap doesn't give me a lot of confidence in either estimation. And I think it'll be good to try to look and say, why is fantasy lower and why is the other one higher? Because I think we wanna have a sense of how reliable these cost estimations really are. So Christine and then back to Sean. Thank you. So it's that reconciled word that I'm... Look at the 36 and the 31 and it's an average of the two cost estimates, 2.5 right in the dead middle. Is there a process of actually going deeper on the reconciling and then rationalizing? Just meaning should that 38.5 actually be 40 million? So sort of like, is there a deeper dive than just an average of the two? Short answer is we perform that deeper dive there was we had a meeting, I think it was we spent five hours in the meeting kind of going line by line. And then after the meeting, there was some additional coordination between the two cost estimators and additional questions and answers. A lot of it comes down to philosophy. So it's in the cost estimators best interest. Each professional cost estimator is they don't want the eventual price of a project to exceed their estimates. That's even though it's not necessarily always their fault that makes people feel less confident. And so they always want to be kind of conservative. I will say fantasy is more that's cost estimator number one is more familiar with this project. They've been working with Fingal Alexander for a long period of time. However, sometimes having another set of eyes coming fresh into the project will reveal some things that maybe the first cost estimator wasn't say focused on. So that's sort of one aspect. Another aspect is escalation. So, and we can dive down into the cost estimate but there's millions of dollars that are tied up in what the cost estimators think the market is going to do between now and this October 2023 date. There are two primary methods or philosophies. One is that you escalate to the start of construction. The day the general contractor gives you a bit. That's what fantasy is done. The other is you escalate to the midpoint of construction. And that is because, and that's what RLB has done. And there's different arguments and thoughts about it. But my understanding, my probably crude understanding is that the day the general contractor puts in his bid, that person is also escalating to some point in the project during construction. It's not necessarily the same. All right, they know they're not going to build it all in one day or in one month. They know it's going to take a year and a half or more. And so they build an escalation. So those are the two theories. And I think that is also contributing to that large delta between the two because fantasy has one philosophy and RLB has another. And not that one isn't more right than the other. It's just that estimating to the, or escalating to the midpoint of construction is a more conservative approach. Okay, Sean. Oh, Christine, are you all set? Yeah, I just thank you. That was good. Sean, but Craig answered my question. So I'm all set. Alex, you had your hand up. No, I'd say I'm good. Okay. All right, Craig, thank you. All right, so as I had sort of alluded to before, we had a budget gap. So here is what we have budgeted for construction. Again, that's assuming construction starts October 2023. The anticipated cost is that 38.5 million. So now we're looking at a budget gap of say 11 or $12 million. So there are a couple of paths forward as we sort of see it. Strategy number one is to reduce the cost of the building. The number one tool that designers and OPMs use when they have to get the cost of the building down is usually to reduce the size of the building. NBLC has already allowed a reduction of the size of the program. And they have taken a hard line, been very clear that they do not think of further reduction in the program or say the size of the building is supportable. And their goal is obviously to have a library that not only suits the needs of the town on opening day but also for 20 or 30 years afterward. And so that's the perspective they're coming from is they don't think that a smaller library will necessarily work 20 or 30 years from now. And so that tool is not available to us. The other mechanism for reducing the cost of a building is value engineering, which usually is just reducing a small amount. I'm calling it to get a significant cost, as much of a cost down as we need or as we can achieve, it's more of a aggressive cost cutting. You're no longer saying that carpet's really nice but maybe we can find one that's a little more affordable. You're making bigger moves, like we're not going to, and we'll talk about some of those ideas in a minute. We're gonna take down this sort of portion of a structure or like I said, big move. So with working with the cost estimators, we came up with a list that appears we might be able to achieve about a $4 million cost reduction. That still leaves a gap near as the math. That leaves a gap of 7.6 million. So budget gap is at 11.6, if we can reduce the hard cost by 4 million, we still have a budget gap. And I'll talk more about that in a minute, but some of the challenges to this strategy is that aggressive cost cutting might not give you the building that the community is envisioning, right? So everyone has seen the drawings, the conceptual drawings and perspectives. They, in large part of the community likes that. Some of these big moves would be things like eliminating sawtooth skylights, eliminating access to the third floor and this sort of caveat on this one is the design team is working with their co-consultant to determine the parameters if that's possible and still being on the right side of the code. Significantly reduce the landscaping costs. This one's actually a kind of a go-to in the industry, landscaping, adding plants later on after the project is done, if more money comes available or if they're bid day savings, that's something easy to do. It doesn't affect the design too much, but we would be significantly reducing those landscaping costs. And then another one, which I know the town is in general not in favor of is instead of doing the CLT, which has now been baked into this, these cost estimates would be replacing that with structural steel again. Another challenge, so again, you can kind of see these are not easy decisions, these are somewhat painful, things that erode what the town and the library are trying to do. Another issue is that MDLC might not accept some of these cost-cutting ideas if they think it compromises the function of the library. So each one of these would sort of have to be reviewed with the MDLC. Some of them I don't think they would be worried about, such as CLT versus structural steel. I think that is something that they leave up to the designer and the town, but something like eliminating access to the third floor is a discussion we'd have to have with them. And then lastly, to make all these big changes, we'll take time for the design team to physically draw them up and design it. Great. Oh, I see you've got a hand raise. Paul. Just a quick question. These four bullet points, does that constitute the $4 million or is this on top of already the $4 million that you might have already factored in? Those are the biggest ones that contribute to that $4 million cost-cutting. Understood. But then on the next slide, we have some smaller ones that we can look at. But Craig, again, just to be clear, those four things, do they add up to $4 million or are they still short of $4 million? Those four things don't equal $4 million, but they're pretty close. So here's the... Yep. All right, so here's the list. And so all of these items, items one through 12, one through 12, these are the ideas, the cost-cutting or value engineering, value management, whatever you want to call it. Here's what we estimate or the estimators think we can save. And then this is, I can actually click in, this is a dynamic spreadsheet. So down here, if you accept all of them, we think it'll be about $4 million saving. So that's where we put our $4 million number. So Alex LaFayette has a question. Alex? Yeah, this may be a process question in terms of how we do this, but some of these value engineering ideas are going to require either MBLC or some kind of accessibility waiver. So are those things, like are we going to make decisions and then find out whether we can do them? Are we going to find out an advanced, like I just kind of procedurally want to understand how it works. So that's a great question, Alex. I think you're sort of, you're getting to my last slide. My last slide is, we're throwing a lot of information at you guys. So our recommendation would be to think it over, ask questions offline, but then meet again maybe next week if possible to start making some decisions. And in that week, if there are things today that you say, that's just, we just can't, we can't do it, we're not willing to do it, then we can table that or take it off the list. And we've got sort of these categories, accepted, possible, which is where I listed everything right now, rejected something that's a hard no or alternates. Cause that's the other concept is that some of these could be an alternate. I'll give you an, what that means is we approach a contractor with the documents. And in the documents, they say, please give us two prices. One where the building is both Eriscraft and Brick and then an alternate price, which would be a deduct for just all brick. And so it's somewhat small potatoes here at $30,000, but then when you get your bids from the contractors, it'll say, you know, X million dollars for Eriscraft and Brick and then X million dollars minus whatever savings we can get out of that, maybe 30,000 for all brick. So we don't necessarily, but some things can essentially be pushed off till later, the decision to get the project out later, other things, the decision needs to be made now. An example of something to where the decision really needs to be made now would be eliminating the elevator and thus eliminating handicap access to the third floor, and thus really not being able to occupy the third floor for its attendant uses. That would be a decision that we would need, building committee would need to give to find gold Alexander, let's say in the next week or next week so that they can start modifying the drawings. So I wanna talk and Paul Bachmann, I wanna draw you into this question that Alex raised. So as I understand it, the Jones library building committee is empowered to make recommendations to the town manager and to the board of trustees of the Jones library. So I assume that the process would be, but again here, I'm just making it up, you tell me whether I'm wrong that the Jones library building committee would deliberate about any changes that it wants to make in the design of the library. These changes are not de minimis. So they're significant enough that I'm wondering whether or not what we should be thinking about is the building committee deliberating and coming up with whatever change it wants to make in the design of the building, these are significant. And if you will making a recommendation to the town manager and the board of trustees, there's a whole nother thing that we're gonna be talking about which is of course the gap which remains even if we would do this kind of thing. And then if the town manager and the trustees were to accept these changes and say, this is fine, this is great, we would have to go about getting whatever other permissions that we need to get from other committees. But I'm just curious, Paul, whether that's your understanding of the process looking at this level of cuts and redesign if we were to go that route. Yeah, I think it's an iterative process. I think this is where the discussion happens with this committee. I think we might need to talk to the MBLC and say, what does this look like to you? And obviously with the designers, but yeah, I think you're precisely right. This is where the discussion occurs. We look at it goes to the trustees and to the manager officially. And then I think we have that broader discussion. Great, thank you, Paul. Christine, I thought I saw you hand up earlier, sorry. Christine, you're muted. Sorry, that my question was to Craig about he was saying some of these need to be decided like this week or next week, but in a way, don't all of these have to be decided on now cause we're trying to figure out how to pay for this building? So the way we can postpone some of the decisions are that method of including alternate in the construction documents. So I'll give you an example of one that, which would be easy to achieve. And that would be, so we have a couple here for lower costs, lowering the costs of the ceilings. So it's an interior finish. So right now the design includes some compound wood ceilings. Another ceiling could be drywall or acoustical ceiling tile, sort of a drop ceiling. That's something that could net a significant amount of money, $475,000 if the estimators are accurate. But that is one that we don't necessarily need to decide within the next week. That's something that design team can change out in a couple of months maybe. Ellen, does that sound accurate to you? So I'm just wondering. Yes, it does. Sounds accurate. But the big moves at Craig, like the elevator and stair up to that third floor, that's something we would need to know now. Not this moment, but shortly. Christine. So I understand how there's flexibility in these items on when they have to be designed. What I'm asking is the building committee and as looking at this budget, don't we have to sort of decide like in this process over the next couple of weeks, what is it that's gonna get cut and what isn't and what's gonna be changed so that we can have a better number that we can pay for? And I think the answer is yes, you'd have to be on board with kind of all these. There may be other cost saving ideas that we don't have up here. And so I think we would benefit from kind of a deep dive into this maybe tonight, but maybe it doesn't have to be tonight, but sometimes soon. But yes, in theory, you would have to at least be willing to accept these if the market turns out to confirm the cost estimators opinions and assumptions. And so you would get to, so let's say there's three of them on here that needed to be decided within the next week, those decisions get made, yes, yes, yes, final Alexander modifies their drawings and brings that forward. But then some of these other ones maybe the about the interior finishes, those are decisions that the design documents can show the wood, but then with just a note, it can say alternate number one, remove wood and instead provide drywall and then those essentially that decision doesn't get made until the end of the design phase or once we're going out to bid. Does that make sense? So there's some things that you might say, all right, we can live with drywall as a ceiling instead of a wood, but we won't necessarily know that that is going to be the case until we get to bid day. So I just want to just come back, Sean, before you get into this notion of we need to decide now, because I think I understand what that means in terms of an October 23 construction date, but there is another part of this, which is even when we do this, we have a significant gap in the financing. That is not going to be resolved now. So I think we want to do the work that we can do as a building committee to express what our views are about these potential changes, but there's a larger discussion that is going to have to go on beyond this committee about the next part of your presentation. So I think that we all, unless I'm really mistaken, that the idea is we want to do whatever work we can do in the building committee and communicate what we want to communicate about these changes, but there's another discussion that's going to take place that is not likely to happen and be resolved now. Sean? Yeah, no, I was going to say something on those lines. I think you're right about that. I guess the other question I had was, when's the design subcommittee meeting again? Is it this week or is it next week? Christine? We don't have one scheduled right now. We're waiting for this meeting to get direction. I mean, it seems like based on Craig's input, we sort of have to accept all these or know which ones are, maybe with the design subcommittees feedback, which ones are sort of the ones we absolutely cannot accept or their recommendation on that. But again, just to Austin's point, there's another big piece of this. So I'll stop so we can move to that next slide. But may I just say, Sean? Again, there's, again, I don't need to be Panglossian. There's a yes and a no to this. So if the other side of this wasn't, we need to raise 8 million, but we think we can raise 10, then that would impact on what we do about these things. So I'm not saying that that's in the offing or I'm gonna write a check tomorrow for it, but I think we're engaged in a kind of contingency planning exercise, at least right now. Craig? Yes, that's a very good point, Austin. The two are interrelated. All right. So strategy number two, increased funding. So capital campaign, originally their goal was 6.6 million. In talking with Sharon, there's thoughts of increasing that by 8 million to a total of 14.6 million. Similarly, the math fair is, this is the only strategy we take, 11.6 million, $8 million additional fundraising. We still have a gap, but a much smaller one, 3.6 million. Some of the challenges here, increasing funding, we've already asked the question of MBLC, can the grant be increased? And the answer is no, that's not how they're set up, that the grant is 13.9 million is the grant. And that's it. There's no flexibility there. And then the other challenge that I sort of mentioned already is that the capital campaign, if another 8 million is very ambitious, but even that won't kind of close that gap fully, which leads me to my next strategy, which is kind of combination, attacking from both sides. You reduce the cost of the building as much as you can. You raise as much money as you can, if these things are achieved, and that's a big if, the budget gap could potentially be resolved. So here it is, 11.6, you reduce the cost, you get increased funding, now you're back on budget, essentially. Challenges here is that, I mentioned this earlier, the $4 million cost reduction, it is somewhat of a different building than the original concept. And like I said, MBLC negatively impact the fundraising. So if somebody's like, really like those saw-toothed skylights, not interested in a building that doesn't have them, that's a potential. Cost reduction is an estimate. Fundraising is a goal, as everyone knows, there's a lot that can happen between now and sort of the end of the project. So this 11.6 million, that's not a magic number, that okay, we just have to get to that. And we've made it, it's an evolving situation, things will continue to change. Also, these calculations don't factor in soft costs. So this is all just hard costs, but estimated cost for construction of the building and the site. If there are additional professional fees needed, that's not included contingency. We're now, when you have an increase, usually you have a three to 5% for a construction contingency, three to 5% for your owner's contingency. That's your emergency money. When the project cost goes up, typically your contingency increases proportionally. This 11.6 million dollars does not include an increase in contingency. So now we'd be down a construction contingency of 2.7%, which is not sort of in the range, the recommended range of three to five and the owner's contingency we will be way down at 2%. Same thing, not in that range, the comfortable range of three to 5%. So what that means is we would continue forward with this kind of restriction and kind of the opposite of comfort. So the discomfort with how much money is sort of in the wallet. That brings me to the fourth strategy, which is not one that is fun to talk about, but it is an option and that is the back out of the current grant. This is one we've discussed with MVLC and said, all right, what does that look like? So first step is the 2.7 million dollars that has already been received and the first disbursement would have to be returned. The library would then now be without that 13.9 million dollar grant to get another grant would require reapplying. The good news is the next round of grants is in winter of 2022. So it's not too far into the future. However, MVLC did caution that it is going to be very competitive round. There are already 40 cities and towns that are interested in sort of competing for that money. We don't know if the Jones library would be a recipient of that next round of grants. There sort of a note to that is MVLC did indicate that the process is changing a little bit, which the biggest difference that they mentioned was I guess originally a process, you had to come with a program as well as a design. Now it is just a program need and the design and in this next round, it'll just be a program in need. And so you don't necessarily have to show up, they make your application with a design which I think is a good move in general for the MVLC. And then the other big challenge is the project goes on hold, right? So between now and when the grants are announced, nothing really moves forward with the design and that hold could potentially be for years. If the Jones library isn't selected for this next round, then you've got to wait around until another round is announced, apply again and kind of repeat process until another grant is secured. So this is sort of, again, it is an option but it's not one that is relished. And that so those are sort of the extents of the ideas that we have certainly open to more ideas and hopefully in our upcoming discussion, we can think creatively and maybe come up with something else, but time is a factor. So here's our current schedule. You can see this is where we are on this red line. Schematic design is complete and if these cost estimates had come back more favorably, we'd be looking for the MVLC in the town to direct find go out gender to immediately proceed on to design development. We're already say a week behind that any time that it takes to sort of get our legs under us to figure out which direction we're going is as the project pushes off, here's what that might look like. Unfortunately, I'm getting a mess. All right, my internet's unstable. Can you still hear me? Yeah, off and on in and out so far, keep talking. Okay, sorry. So just the first kind of thing in front of us would be, all right, if we make those big design moves, design team estimates it'll take about six weeks to kind of get that into the drawings, review it again with MVLC, review it again with the town that pushes the, it's essentially kind of taking a big step back in schematic design. So we would not leave schematic design until we have a balanced budget and scope. So it pushes off design all the way through construction. All these red stars, this is our MVLC grants. Those are tied to certain milestones in the project. Those start getting pushed over. One of them gets, the final one gets pushed from mid 2025 all the way out to July of 2026 at the earliest, which I know poses a cash flow problem, a potential cash flow problem. So that leads me to my last slide here, which is that message that times of the essence, we're throwing a lot of information at you, take some time, absorb it, let's talk about it as Paul was indicating, continue these discussions, develop a plan, and then perhaps in a week or as soon as possible, meet again to make some of those hard decisions. Thank you, Craig, Ellen. Yeah, I had a quick question and Craig, we had talked about it. One option is, and it is a risk, but I just wanted to throw this out here, because we've done it before, is that we continue with the design process and get through DD, do another estimate, and then what we don't, and then we could go to CDs and do another estimate, and then if the fundraising doesn't come up to speed, you shelve the project. But if you can, if the fundraising fires on all systems, cylinders, and they can make those goals, you won't miss a step. If we delay this, you're gonna, it's gonna, Craig's schedule there was very helpful. Everything start, you start missing those payments and that's a financial burden, but it would be a risk to the town. I just wanna be absolutely clear, because you would still have to pay the design fees. Yeah, and at some point, Sean, right, you gotta decide about when you're gonna float bonds. Yeah, there's that, and I mean, tell us points. So if we have to return the grants, I assume we also would have to return the fundraising proceeds because those were for a new building. So, we'd be the town has to decide how much it's willing to sort of put into this project with the possibility of not, if we go with that final option that was presented, like how far we're willing to go into it without knowing it's balanced. So that's something we'll have to discuss. And if I may, so Collier's, our standard recommendation is that at the end of schematic design, whatever it takes, you don't proceed until you have a balanced budget and scope. Just as a general recommendation. Yep. So, Ellen, your hand is still up, are you? Okay, so Craig, for the moment, could you take down the screen chair and then I want you to bring back the screen chair. So I wanna just ask a couple of questions off the top about the impact of these things on the sustainability goals of the library. So the sawtooth roof, you know, the sawtooth roof and the skylights. The movement from cross laminated timber to steel. What are the likely impacts of those things on the sustainability goals of the library? We had a sustainability committee that worked very hard to produce a design, including cross laminated timber. And I assumed that the passive solar on the roof was part of it to produce a very sustainable building. And I wonder whether you or you and Ellen have at all thought about that. And if so, what do you have to say about that? Yes, so we did look at that a little bit. And if I may, I'll share my screen again because I have a graphic that'll help us. Thank you, great. All right, so these four items that are in gray, these are those energy conservation methods or measures, lighting controls, HVAC, occupancy controls, HVAC, demand ventilation controls and plug load controls. These are all sustainable moves are still in the project. Great. So those are baked into those current cost estimates. Yeah, okay. But as you were saying, and I'll let Ellen speak to the, or Ellen and Josephine speak to the discussion about the skylights because there is sort of an idea that we floated, or they floated earlier this week. One thing is we could just do standalone skylights, right? So they're pre-manufactured and they're essentially dropped on the roof. We did have that discussion with MBLC. They like to, they would rather us not do skylights because down the road, if the maintenance is an issue, there's leaks, like I think you will have today. I don't know if you wanted to add anything to that, Josephine. No, I think you hit the nail on the head. The skylight is definitely a hot topic for MBLC. So it's something that we have to think about. We had floated the idea of maybe not doing several monitors but maybe having a reduction in monitors but depending on the sun and the lighting that's coming in, maybe we can have one or two smart ones as opposed to the number that we have now. But we are just floating a lot of ideas around right now. I raised those because of those seem to me to go to kind of one of the values of the project. Closing off the third floor, that's a loss in space. It may be compromise some program elements but I don't think it goes to what I would call the heart of the project, the sustainability goals, I think close to the heart of the project. And I think we would need to know more than you have said about what the impact would be. Again, we can revisit Alex and the sustainability folks can revisit if you move away from cross laminated timber what is that gonna do to the sustainability goals? The other thing I just wanna say before Paul and Alex get in is I am very optimistic that the Capital Campaign Committee can significantly increase what it has been imagined. They've had great success already. There are several million dollars in grants that are in the offering that were not originally part of the plan and that at the trustees meeting on Thursday I think the trustees are gonna have to have a conversation also about what if anything the trustees can do the library can do about this $8 million gap. So I just wanna just put that an asterisk about that. As we go forward with the conversation, Paul and then Alex Paul. Yeah, thank you. So first, I really appreciate the way you laid this out. Craig, it's really nicely organized and presented. I think everybody in the community can now understand this. And I do agree with you that this is a good stopping point to say, okay, where are we? As you outlined as Austin's outlined, to me, I would not spend a lot of time on the design elements because I think the fundraising piece, if that's a, you know, if Austin you're right and says that's where we can get the money. I think that the two places pressure points for me would be the, you know, are we able to raise more funds? Which I really would really, I mean, grant opportunities are great, we'd like to see that. But the timing of that is pretty critical because those are probably long lead times. And so I think that's a, and then also if the MBLC, I know they're sort of very firm on their design, their program guidelines, but every community is going through the same thing. We're having the same issue with the schools and I doubt they will change, but I don't know if they're getting enough, if there's any pressure to be put on them to say, we need to adjust our program given these skyrocketing, you know, construction costs estimates. And maybe that will modify over time, we don't know, but time isn't on our side in this moment. You know, we need time to make a decision, but we don't have time to make a decision on these things. Thank you. Alex? Thanks. I actually just wanted to follow up on two questions, one of yours, Austin and one of yours, Paul. On the sawtooth roof and skylights, my understanding of one of the uses of that was daylighting which I assume contributes to lowering energy costs. Like it wouldn't just be removing, I assume, and this is where you need to come in, is would we have to add additional lighting where our ultimate energy costs be higher? Like are there long-term impacts to taking away that daylighting aside from it just being more pleasurable to have more light in the building? So I would add that to Austin's question. And then this is sort of related to what Paul's saying, but no one here may have the answer, but so when I talked with our person who works with us from the MVLC, the way their process has always worked is that they don't open the next phase of projects until all of the projects that are currently approved have gone through. And so opening in winter of 2022 seems to be a clear change from what their past practices are. And we are one of, Sharon probably knows better than me, number of projects that are in this exact same position. And so I don't know what that means. I don't know what that means for the MVLC in terms of if they're already looking forward to other projects. But I just put that out there as the next phase wasn't supposed to open for like, it was five to seven years, two years ago, but like they're clearly changing direction on how they've said they're doing things and how they're doing things in the past. And I don't know what that means. I'm just putting it out there as information for when we're dealing with the MVLC. Great. Sharon, Craig, Ellen, do you want to say anything about the conversation with the MVLC? I would love to. So we, Josephine and I had a conversation with MVLC before we had this formal one with Craig and we've been working with them for six years or something on this particular project and other projects. So we know them well and they were very stern about the reduction of program because they feel as though, well, not feel as though, we've cut, we've reduced the program, I think twice already and they will not do it. So that we wanted to bring Craig into the process since he is the OPM representing the town and he posed the question to him. And Craig, what were your thoughts on that? It seemed like it was a hard line that they were not willing to cross. And just to add to what Alex was saying about how they're changing their process, they are absolutely changing their process, which is actually better for the towns because you can submit for the grant without a design in hand. You just need your program. So that's a benefit. And I believe they are speeding things up because the state has money. And when the state is, when things are bad with the state, they slow the gap between grant runs down. So I wanna come back, may I just ask you again about the MVLC. So the point that was made that Alex and others have made is that this is not an Amherst problem. This is a statewide problem. And is their view like they're gonna be accommodating to other libraries because, no, their view is, we don't care whether these projects get built. Oh, we're gonna hold the line on what a program is. Alan, you were speaking mutably. Austin, they don't have any more money to give anybody. And as Andrea, who's our direct contact, one of our direct contacts there, she was the director of the Wuburn library when it was bid and when it was estimated in 2008, it was, when I'll forbid when the economy came back and it was $14 million over. And they had to make cost reductions and raise more money to get that project built, and they did. So it can happen, but on the other hand, there are projects that stop and never get going again because they can't get funding. Yeah, okay. Other questions about Craig's presentation. So I would like you to do me a favor if you could. And if others don't need this, forgive me. Could you bring up the slide about where you looked at the detail of the cost reductions? Yes. Because I think it would be useful for the committee process to go through each one of those lines to actually understand what is on each one of those lines. But Alex has a question. So Alex, do you wanna ask a question before we do this? Alex? Sorry, yeah. My question was gonna be specific to some of those lines. So I think we'll leave it to us. But also, we do have a member of the sustainability committee in the audience who has a hand raised. So I just wanna put that out to you, Austin. I hadn't seen it. So, okay. So let's go, Sarah, just hold for a minute if it's okay. Let's go through these lines. Craig, walk us through what these lines are. Certainly. So item number one, we've talked about eliminating the sawtooth skylights. Cost estimates believe there's the potential half million dollars to be saved. If we, and this is to eliminate them and have a flat opaque roof. One idea is maybe to not go for the full half million but have say a smaller skylight simply located as Joseph was describing. So there is flexibility there. The next one, item two is changing the aris craft on the exterior to brick. So right now it's a combination of aris craft base, brick up above. And so this would be, brick is less expensive. So it'd be brick and brick. Again, that's not a huge value, $30,000 potentially. Next one, this is a complex one but eliminating that elevator and handicap access to the third floor. So that would mean you're not, you're not gonna be able to have a meeting room up there and not even necessarily be able to have staff space up there. So they don't have to be relocated. So where is that gonna be potentially the ground floor? One idea we talked about offline was, and I know this would be a painful one but to have the art gallery function instead of having its own dedicated room, move that to the conference room. And again, this itself could be a whole hour long discussion or more. Perhaps in the cafe area, perhaps in a corridor display the art that we've seen successful examples of that in other venues. But that one's a big one, $300,000 savings potentially. Item number four, change curtain walls to windows. Not a big dollar item. It would change the look of the building significantly but it is something that instead of having curtain wall which is somewhat of a premium, you'd have large windows but again, a different look. This one, I don't even know if would be allowed according to in accordance with the historical societies. Item five, standing seam metal roof in lieu of slate tiles. So right now there is a $400,000 or so in the cost estimate to replace the existing slate tile roof with new slate tiles. This would be a change to standing metal roof, standing seam metal roof. Item number six, decorative mailing and decorative metal railing in lieu of glass. Right now the interior, some of the railings are glass. It's a very cool, modern look. Metal railings are less expensive to the tune of $120,000. Lower the cost of the ceilings by replacing the compound wood ceilings with drywall or ceiling tiles. Pretty good chunk of money there, $475,000. But again, that does have a significant impact on interior space. In addition to that, you could replace the plank ceilings which are these long sections with two-by-two lay-in ceiling, not as nice, $50,000 potential savings. Item number nine is reduce the landscaping and this would be kind of across the board you'd be doing concrete in lieu of stone or granite pavers or even asphalt instead of stone or granite pavers. So you'd still have hard walking surfaces but a different character. Eliminate the rain gardens, significantly cut back on the number of plantings, both trees, shrubs, flower beds, $495,000. And again, that's one that if money were available later those items could be added back in or swapped back in. This is one that is probably gonna be news to George and probably not welcome news, but item number 10, we have an enclosed sort of trash recycling area doing a three-sided CMU structure with maybe a gate on it could save $65,000. Again, not a big number. Here's a big number replacing the CLT with structural steel but understanding that that is not one that the town is with relish. And then item 12, this has to do more back of house things, reducing the HVAC and electrical systems, changing them to be less expensive, still code compliant, still very comfortable but this one potentially a million dollar in savings. And that's one that at this time because those systems are just exist in narrative would be an easy change and a potentially lucrative one. But again, that's just an estimate. So we would have to see if that bears out. And then we listed off and the rest of them are just these, the energy conservation measures. And so we listed off the ones that are not currently in and the ones that are in. So adding the attic insulation would not be in. Adding insulation to the existing walls would not be in. Having triple pane windows would not be in. High performance glazing, which I think is an option to this number four would not be in. Window overhangs would not be in. Lighting controls, yes, or baked into the cost estimate. Geothermal heating is not in. That was a big ticket item over a million dollars. HVAC occupancy controls is in. HVAC demand ventilation controls is in and plug load controls are in. Photovoltaic panels or solar panels are not in. And the total of the savings is a four million dollars. And then to execute these other energy conservation methods or measures would be somewhere around 3.4 million dollars, which is not factored in at present. So we have many measures, including nothing else. Right, but I just want to understand this, Craig. So if we did the cuts to four million and left those other things out, would the savings be seven million? Is that what you're saying? Nope. No, I'm sorry. The way I presented, I was trying to capture everything in the anticipation that we would, you would want to know about where these things landed. But yeah, it does make this a little more complicated than it needs to be. Essentially, to have these four energy saving measures does not increase the cost any more than we already have. You would have to cut all of these items up here to see that four million dollar savings. Yup. And these other ECMs would kind of undermine that or reverse that. Okay. And then I would you'd be adding in the cost. So we'd be adding three million dollars of course. Okay. So I've got Sean and then Alex, Sean. Craig, the HVAC reduction. Do you know if that has any impact on the CPA project for the special collections? So we've got the million dollar CPA funding. I don't know if you know if that's detailed enough to know if that would have any impact on that project or that part of the building project. Ellen and Josephine, correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that this would be for the library at large and not necessarily a special collection. Special collections system remains as originally designed. Yes. I believe that's the, yes. But my question to you Craig, my understanding was that million dollar savings was the delta between what Fennessey was carrying in the town's estimator was carrying. I thought that's what that number was. That's also what I thought it was for a system that it's priced at about 70, 25 a square foot. And I think it was the delta, if I remember correctly, but the special collections back to Sean's question, it does not impact any of the special collection and CPA grant. Craig, do you have any answer for about this million dollars now? I do not only that it was reducing the square footage cost for HGAC, I think right now, and maybe it was the RLB estimate was up higher on 80 or 90 dollars a square foot, getting it down to 65 to 70 dollars a square foot. I thought, and maybe I was wrong, I thought that was a change of system. I thought that was going to a VRF system, which is not what was currently designed. No, but I think Josephine and I are correct. It was that gap between the two and it was a middle ground. Okay, looking at the reconciliation, they're from what I got back from them, the most recent there was not, there's only a couple hundred thousand dollar gap after the reconciliation. Okay. So this would be separate from that. Okay. All right, I got Alex and then I got Christine and then we'll see whether or not a couple of members of the public can contribute to our understanding here, Alex. Thanks. So I just wanted to clarify, in terms of the chart that we have here, just so we're looking at accurate things, the only ECMs that the Sustainability Committee asked to be considered during design development are ECM four and six, triple pain window glazing and window overhang. There's some, like the geothermal weaq stuff. So there's only two that should be in that alternate category that aren't in gray, just when you update that chart should only be four and six, ECM four and six. And then also, I noticed that the cost of the ECMs are the same cost from the estimate that was done whenever the first estimate was done. So these don't look like they are updated estimates. So for any of the ECMs, so I don't know whether just there hasn't been movement in these particular things, they're small enough, but I just again, wanna make sure we're all dealing with realistic numbers. That's actually a great point, Alex. And these are, this is information from October of 2020. Just going through this process, we realized that we never got a proposal or revised numbers in 2022. So that was an effort that I know you guys had asked for and then just yesterday realized, we never got them. So I apologize for that. All right, Christine. So not two quick questions. One building on what was just said. So in the estimates, the two estimates, were they working off these numbers or were they knowledgeable enough to be looking at these items and know what their true cost is our current cost or escalated cost is gonna be. And the other part is, seeing all these sustainability issues, elements removed, will that knock us out of the ever source money that we were hoping for? Cause I know that seemed to be where it builds, you get more by doing more. To answer your first question, Christine, just to clarify, were you talking about this top area? The bottom, well, the bottom, a lot of these sustain the ones that you were just highlighting and talking about that Alex brought up that they had. So it sounds like the two that are really under consideration are these in yellow. And these are, this is old information. So it's not escalated to current day dollars, unfortunately. And then the second part of your question was about ever source and their rebates. And I guess I don't know, and I don't maybe Josephine or Ellen know, but also possibly not cause we haven't gone very far with developing those designs, but I do not know if we would be in jeopardy of not being eligible for the ever source and national grid, I can't recall. We can ask the engineers, I don't know that offhand, but that's a good question. Christine will definitely check up on that. Sharon? Yeah, so it is ever source. And those, it's based on the EUI. So I think the question that Christine is asking is if we get rid of ECM four and six, does that affect our EUI? I would have deferred Ellen and Josephine, I imagine it would, but I don't know to what extent. Josephine? For ECM four and six, there is a, we have a last chart that we shared with everyone had the EUI number that was categorized with the ECM. So we would just have to go back to look at that. Okay, Alex? Alex might remember. Yeah, so four, thanks. Four and six were things we wanted to look at that would have further reduced our EUI by another 1.06. So the EUI that we presented to ever source is with the ECMs that are listed in gray. So if we keep, I don't know how the day lighting and the CLT input, you know, like, so four and six don't play in here. I just, those were the ones, those were the only ones that should be in the alternate category, the rest of them should be removed. That was what my comment was. Thank you. So I think if it's, no one has an objection, we have a couple of members of the public who've been involved in the sustainability effort. And I think it would be useful if it's okay to hear from, first from Sarah and then from Chris Riddle. But I just want to make sure are there any objections to that at this point? Okay, so Sarah Draper, Sarah. Yeah, can you hear me okay? Yes, loud and clear. Amazing. So I have a bunch of things. I'm going to kind of say them all at once so I can get them on the record and into the ears of people who will make decisions. I guess the big takeaway for me here is if we have this decision to make about what to do with the project, the information that I would need and that I would be interested in from a sustainability perspective is what is the impact of any of these proposed changes on the energy model? And that would mean updating the energy model to show based on removing some of this daylighting, what does that do to the energy model? Without that information, we're kind of flying blind. And then the other piece is updating the embodied carbon calculations or carbon footprint calculations. Because again, the CLT we know is a huge piece of that. But for me, from a sustainability perspective, like what the specific materials are, aesthetically will make a difference and there are people that care about that. I am most interested in what is the carbon impact? And if there are other design changes that can be made that can keep us at the carbon footprint that we were talking about, whether it's an insulation change or something, those are options too. I don't want to get too caught up in what are the specific materials. I think we really need to know is what is the carbon impact? And those are numbers that the design team can hopefully, I don't know how easy it is to get those or how easy it is to update now that you have it as a schematic design. But that's the information I would need to know. Great, great. I guess one other thing to ask is just a question of those HVAC, the modified HVAC design for that lower cost per square foot is again, what's the energy impact of that? Is it just less efficient model or does it mean it's gonna be a little bit less easy to control? Just like, what does that mean? Great. Okay, thank you, Sarah. Good questions, we'll get your answers. Chris Riddle. Hello, thanks. I am on the eastern part of the country at this vacation here. So you might, and it's there's thunder and lightning happening. So you might not be able to hear me in term of, I might get interrupted. I'd like to thank what's, I really agree with the other word that Sarah said there and we really are trying to, we're walking and make trying to make decisions and without the data. So come on, five down please, sorry. Sorry about that. Granted. I wanna concentrate on the geothermal which I prefer to call ground source heat pump system. I'm not, if we're gonna take that million dollars for that and apply it towards HVAC then we're talking about a VRS system. I wanna confirm that that is so, it's not something, well, it happened to be involved in being a fly on the wall with the high school project and the elementary school project. And it is clear to the people on that committee that there is almost zero Delta and the cost of actually the ever source contribution and you consider the life cycle cost. So basically the life cycle cost for the additional life cycle costs from geothermal over air source is zero. As far as the analysis can contributed but now by the architects and the OPM at the elementary school project. And also there's also environmental, big time environmental hazard, relatively a negative environmental hazard of VRS system, air source heat pump system which has to do with the amount of refrigerant used and the leakage of refrigerant in the atmosphere both of which would be a great, grossly less than with ground source heat pumps. That's my message. Thank you very much. Thank you, Kristin. Thanks for joining, thanks for joining us. So Craig, you heard those questions. Ellen, you heard those questions. I assume you'll be able to get us some answers to those questions. And Justine, can you chime in just for the ECMs and the energy model? I mean, that takes time to get, correct? Right, well, so the whole process would be that we would have to make all the updates to the model before the energy modeler can look into this and do an updated energy model and the tally is part of that base model has to be updated with these design changes for us to move forward with any of that. Right. So hold off on that for one sec. Oh, Alex. This is something separate. So if you wanna finish this conversation, I can hold my comment. Well, this is what I was gonna say. Let's, we've collected those comments. Are there other comments on this slide in front of us? Are there other things that people wanna say or they want information about it? So let's get that. Then I would like to spend some time, at least for a minute, talking with Paul and Sean in this committee about the rest of it, the other $8 million, because I do think that we need to, in a preliminary way, just have a sense of what everybody's thinking is about that other piece. So Alex, and then again, comments, things we wanna find out about this chart. Alex and then Sean. Yeah, I just wanted to pop up when we're making the list of things that we're considering. So the landscaping, which seems like low-hanging fruit, I just wanna point out that we have a historic preservation restriction, which applies to our landscaping and has to be approved by the local historic commission. So just again, procedurally in terms of, whether it's MBLC, historic commission, accessibility advisory board, whatever, all of these may or may not, I guess we just need to identify what they are so we part of the conversation. Thanks. Sean? Yeah, I was gonna ask Craig and Alan, do you think there's a lot more than this, or I mean, this seems like it, based on what Craig said earlier, this is sort of aggressive cost cutting, but he also said it was sort of a preliminary sort of brainstorming session. Do you think there's much more that could be uncovered based on your experience with other projects in terms of cost-saving ideas? Or do you think anything else we identify is gonna be really small? Are these all the, pretty much all the big ones that are available? Craig, I'll go first and then you can go. I think there's not much else, Sean, on the interior of this building that we can do, or on the exterior, because we were pushing the idea of, and I know most people hated metal panel, but we're told by both cost estimators that brick is the cheapest exterior material. So we've got that in the budget, and that seems to be the way we should go. One thing that I've been thinking about just sitting here, and Justine's gonna check, is what program elements are not funded by the MVLC grant. And I don't know, Sharon, you may rattle them off, but I can't remember. So if they don't care about parts of the building, they're not funding. So that might be an opportunity to shrink the building a tiny bit. I mean, as Craig started this conversation, that's usually our go-to. We take square footage off, but we're so limited here, we could maybe think about the things that they're not covering, that it could be something we could consider to shrink the footprint. Sharon, could you just speak to that particular issue before Christine gets in? I could, but I don't wanna. Thanks, Alan. Yeah, so as Craig had said before, so the Burnett Art Gallery, the Civil War tablet space, Special Collections exhibit space. They don't, none of those are eligible costs. They don't consider art galleries, exhibit spaces, museum spaces as pure library spaces. And I'm not sure if ESL would fall into that. Those are the things that are coming to my head for now. Do they care about things like replacing the furnishings? I don't think so. They've always said that their focus is on functionality, not whether or not something is pretty. Do they care about replacing shelving? Not as long as it's safe and sturdy. So is there another place where one could say we would look at the furnishings, the shelving and would there be cost savings associated with that? I would say so, definitely, yeah. One thing, Austin, we've been down this road a few times on different libraries. Reusing your existing furniture as is, it saves money. When you start refinishing it or refinishing the shelving, that's where it ends up to be a wash. If the idea is just to keep what you have for now and phase in new stuff as you can afford it for furniture, yes, that's a cost savings. Well, that's what I was thinking about. I don't know if you can do that with shelving exactly, but yeah, I was just trying to add some other possibilities along the lines of not something that the AMBLC would particularly care about. Kristine. Another piece of the puzzle, I'm sorry to interrupt, Kristine. Another soft cost are the IT costs. So we've got 2.5 million set aside for FF&E and the IT is a piece of that puzzle. So the more we save on FF&E, the more that can go towards the construction costs. We do have a separate JCPC technology, IT budget. So there are savings there. There might be some additional savings if we wanted to go further than the 4 million, we would accept that, Kristine. Yeah, so we're looking at significant millions here and it's great to talk about furniture and shelving, but in the big scheme of things, that's really small. And the only way you make big cuts is square footage. And even though we're hearing the AMBLC won't let us, I'm interested in Ellen's comments there about looking at some of these areas from a different lens. And I'm looking at the, from the 2016, the space needs table that broke down all the space. I know it's probably a bit of work, but I would think we need that information of what is not required by the AMBLC in programming just to at least use as something to consider. I know the whole thought of museum space or galleries is painful, but I think we really do have to at least get the information on everything. Great, okay. So other questions about this, Sarah Draper, I don't know if you have a new question, you just didn't lower your hand. I have a new question, comment. All right, can you just hold off for one second? Yep. So any other questions about this slide that's in front of us? Again, Christine, is your hand new or old? It's new. I just wanted to confirm, is there someone who can get that information on what areas of our library are not AMBLC required? I think the library director is... Yeah, I can do that. Thank you. Okay, Sarah, do you have a question about this chart? Yeah, sure. Yeah, it was just one more question or a thing to know or thing to ask about the landscaping piece and the rain gardens. I don't know if those rain gardens were purely decorative or anticipated to do some kind of water management on site. And if they were anticipated to do some kind of water management, what is the cost of doing that in a different way? Great, great. Actually, I think Ellen and Josephine would be best, most knowledgeable answering that. We can check, if it is water, if it's water retention, that's usually the cheapest way to go because those chambers that you have to install, they're quite expensive, but we'll check. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Sarah. So we've spent, as we should, a lot of time on the four million. I just want to get a sense and Paul and Sean, I know there's nothing definitive that one can say, but I think it would be useful for us to talk a little bit about what would the town's attitude be towards a pledge of additional fundraising? So I'll go first and then Sean can weigh in. Thanks. So unfortunately, this is not unfamiliar territory because we're looking at this for all of our capital projects. These kinds of really challenging difficult decisions are very real. I think the concept of, I mean, I think we have to look at the big picture like you're sort of driving to Austin and say, are we going to get, before we start talking about the smaller sort of tweaks that we could possibly make, can we get within spit and distance of each other in terms of the revenue side of things? It sounds like the MBLC is not going to change, which is an important piece of it. I think it's the footprint, the square footage is an important thing and we have to look at what's required based on different funding sources and what's optional. In terms of pledging, we'd have to see some evidence that that's a real, I mean, what has happened with the pledge so far is that the trustees have backed it up with your endowment. So I think that's the question for the trustees. Are you willing to backstop any kind of fundraising? And I think that would be the max of the fundraising, whatever the trustees are willing to backstop it with. Sean. Yeah, I mean, I think I would just add to it, how likely is it that, you know, where the new pledges can be met? And then what is, how are we protecting that as our risk or contingency planning? If it's not met and what is that? And we'd want to be careful that anything that we used as sort of contingency doesn't affect future operations, operating budgets or of, you know, the library or the town. So, so, you know, I agree that that's not really this committee's decision. I think our decision is on the appearance of the building. The funding piece I think is a town manager finance director, library director and trustees discussion with the council about how we can close that gap. Yeah. Well, that's very helpful because I think apropos of. We need to decide with all deliberate speed that we need to, to kind of know what it is that's going to work for the town. And we need to know obviously what it's going to work for the trustees, because until we know that, then the conversation about do we replace clt with steel beams. Is it's an interesting conversation, but if we're not going to be able to resolve the. The eight million dollars that Craig shows in his chart, then we're not going to be able to resolve it. And that conversation about clt and steel beams is going to be, I think. It's not, it's not, it's not going to, it's not going to get us across the finish line. And I do want to say for anybody that's out there that I think that the board of trustees of the library will begin to have this conversation on Thursday about from the point of view of the trustees. But I do think, and I'll leave this to Paul and Sean and Sharon, I do think that as much clarity from the town. In advance of that meeting as you can provide, then you may not be able to provide any more than you have. I think that will be helpful so that we can have a discussion that's, that isn't really abstract and, and hypothetical. What date did you say that trustees meeting was awesome. It's Thursday isn't it Sharon. Yeah, it's Thursday. So again, if, if, if Sharon, if you guys can get your heads together sometime between now and Thursday and sorry to ask you to do that. I think that would be that, that'd be helpful because it does seem to me that there's a threshold question. And that threshold question is, can the town and the trustees come to a position of comfort, that's the right word on this, on this fundraising gap. And if we can, then I think, then we're going to face these hard questions about, you know, that in the, in the design. And I'm optimistic that we'll be able to, but. So just kind of quick response to that. Sure, my optimism, you want to rain on the parade. No, no, no, it's more of just. Just think about processing again, maybe this is an offline conversation, but just, again, we would need to see information from the group that's raising the funds again how, what the plan is, how the timing of it, the, again, we would need a plan that we could evaluate and determine if the town is comfortable with that plan. So Paul and I can talk about it, but, you know, we don't have much to go on until we see sort of more specifics and details about how that would happen. Well, yeah, I mean, but there, there are different conversations, right, there's conversations about the fundraising and then there's conversations about the backstopping. And I take it. I say this with love that the town doesn't care whether it's money comes, whether the money comes from the library in some way or from fundraising, so long as the library's contribution doesn't doesn't compromise the operation of the library. So, correct. In any case, I hope that whatever conversation can be had can be can be had and again just to keep the complexities in mind, as I think Craig's presentation suggests, we've got to be aware of whatever, even if we could get to a comfort level with that, we've got to be aware that whatever changes we make in the building may have implications for fundraising and other, and other things. But that's a contingency on a contingency. Christine. I agree with Sean that, but as a building committee member, I would like to see that is we're trying to make these hard decisions. I would want to hear what the plan or assurances from the fundraising people, how they would think that they could increase 6.6 million. Another 8 million. I would want to know that. Just back to the meeting. You said it's on Thursday. What time and is the public able to watch it? Can I watch it? Is it online? Or is it a private meeting? I don't think we're allowed to have private meetings. Is it in person? I don't know what's going on. Yeah. So the trustees meeting Sharon will, will answer the trustees meeting will be online on zoom. Correct. You can go to the town's website to get the zoom link for 30. And members, members of the public are invited to attend in the usual, in the usual course of things. Great. Okay. Any other questions for Craig and Josephine and. Ellen at this point. Okay. Before you, before you do this, if it's okay again, there are other members of the public. I want to invite them to ask their questions just or make their comments so that Ellen and Josephine can also. Hear them if that's okay. So if there's any member of the public that wants to make a comment or. Alex, are you raising your hand? I am the meetings at four and at 430 on Thursday. Is there any member of the public that wishes to speak? I see one member of the public. Jenny Hamilton. Jenny, are you there? So we're not, we're not hearing you, Jenny. I have asked her to unmute. Okay. So let's see whether or not we can fix Jenny's. Jenny's issue and then we'll get Jenny back in. So before going back to Sean about the financial update. Do you have anything else that you need us to hear? Specific to. The cost estimates. No. That's everything I've got. However, I do have sort of the typical reports. If you would like me to go through those. What reports do you have? Let's see here. So we've got. So we've already seen the schedule. Yeah. I have the, there's not a whole lot of information on it, but I have the financial status report. If you'd like me to show that just shows. The invoices that we've received, or we can table that to either the next meeting or next month. Sean, are you okay with laying it over? Or you want to see it now? I would table it. I think, you know, I think the first piece was sort of the big financial status. Yep. Yep. Okay. The last thing was, you know, on the agenda is interim locations. And I don't know that we necessarily same thing. Maybe we table that till we have a good discussion. Great. Okay. So Jenny, are you. Able to speak. Okay. So again, we'll try to. Work with Jenny, right, Sharon. Sean. Yeah. Yeah, the only thing I have, which sort of salt in the wound, but I do have an invoice first to approve. So I'll just quickly share my screen. Thank you. This is Collier's invoice for work through July. Same as before the monthly fee is consistent. So there's not too much more to say about this unless Craig wants to comment. I don't have anything else to add. These will just keep coming out. Yep. Ellen. Yeah, I, and Sean, maybe we have to get together. We still don't have a contract because we were asked to get some other. Consultant on board. So we can't get paid. So I think we need to table us getting those other consultants on. Because we've been working on this for months. Okay. So just hold on one second. Ellen on that. So let's, let's resolve the invoice. I'll move to approve the invoice as presented. Oh, I'm sorry. That's okay. Is there a second? Second. Thanks. So again, I'm just going to ask you vocally. You approve the payment of the invoice. Christine. Yes. George. Yes. Thank you, Paul. Yes. Sharon. Yes. Sean. Yes. Alex. Yes. Austin. Okay. So we've approved. The payment of the invoice. I was just a loss a little around the bend, Ellen. So there's some problem with the contract. It's not the con. Well, we, John and his team asked us to. Go out and get other consultants like it was avians in FF and E, which we came back with an FF and E cost reduction, which I think is a good thing. And then so it's, it's a good thing. But we still don't have an AV because we don't know the scope of it yet. So I would like to. I don't know how we, I don't know what we do, Sean, for us to continue down this road of not being able to invoice because we don't have the scope for the AV. And we don't have a signed contract. I think we need to work that out sooner than later. Yeah. No, I agree. I think Craig last time we spoke about this, we might be at the point where we just do the. And then, you know, anything else potentially would be an amendment to that contract or add it on to that contract. But we, I think this committee and, and the town manager have already seen sort of the base service contract and we're agreeable to that. So. We were just working on getting some of the other specialties within the, the, the budget for the project. And we're fine doing amendments, Sean, that'd be great. Thank you. Okay. Well, I'll leave that to Ellen and Sean. I think we're going to be able to, to work out. Jenny, are you able to speak? So we're not able to hear. So I think we're going to keep going and then the hope that time will resolve this problem. So I don't know that we have subcommittee reports from design. We have not met since the last meeting. Right. And my, I'm hearing that we're probably going to meet next Tuesday. And I don't, I'm not seeing a reason why the design meeting. It's happening on Friday. Please tell me Sharon. Yeah, I think probably we're going to try to get together next, next week. We don't need a design committee meeting between now on then. And then Alex from outreach. Yeah, we haven't had a meeting as well. So we did do the two exterior tours. But we haven't had a meeting. Great. Okay. Well, thank you. Can we just. Craig made a proposal, but I think we need to. Craig suggests that we meet next week. And I just want to raise the question of. Will we, will we have anything new to say next week? Well, that, that got a lot of response. The reason why I'm saying that is I wonder whether we want to proceed along two tracks. I think we should proceed along two tracks. One is to actually keep talking about these design changes. And the other is to carry on the conversation with the town and the trustees about the. About the, the, the financing. And if you are amenable to that, then I think we should. We should meet again next week and hear some of the answers to the questions that were raised about. The sustainability questions and other questions. Are you good with that? Okay. So are you, are we able to meet a week from today that would be on the. 16th at 430. We can't meet next week. But it doesn't mean you all can't be without me. No, I think we, I think we need your present chair. Yeah, I'm on vacation next week. Okay. So. Sharon, let's get our heads together about scheduling the next, the next meeting, figure out when everybody's, when everybody's, when everybody's back. Okay. Jenny. Are you able to speak? She's telling, she's texting me. She says she's on vacation and she apologizes for the lack of a working connection. Okay. Well, tell her we appreciate. Well, I guess she can hear we appreciate her attendance and we'll look forward to. You know, if she had something that she'd like to address, she can write a letter or write a communication. Okay. I know of no correspondence that we need to address. Other than other than what we've talked about this meeting, I know about nothing that wasn't anticipated 48 hours in advance. So I think we don't have anything there. Okay. I'm going to ask for public comment. Anyone other members of the public. Okay. Well, I want to second what was said on behalf of everybody about Craig's presentation. I want to thank you for. Being thorough. Calm. And really very clear in what you've laid out for us. I think it's, it's a tremendous contribution to the work of the committee and to the town and the. And the trustees. So thank you very much for that. Thanks to you and, and, and will. Okay. So what we're going to do is we're going to adjourn and you will hear about a proposed meeting date in, in, in due course. Thank you everybody. Stay well. Thank you. Thank you.