 And now I will make you the host. Okay. Thank you. Sure. Good morning, everyone. While Angela makes me the host, I want to officially start the meeting since we have a quorum. This is Thursday. And we are the elementary school building committee on meeting on Thursday, November 18th, just as I check the calendar. I want to make sure that everyone can hear and be heard because we're conducting this by zoom as per the governor's order. So I will go across what I see on my screen and just ask you to indicate whether you can hear and be heard. Allison. Yes, this is Allison. Sean. Yes. Mike. Yes. Rupert. Yes, I'm here. Great. Hi, here. Steve. Here. Jonathan. Here. Tamara. Yes. Hi, Julio Fernandez. Internal assistant principal here at the fort. I'll be covering time around. For the beginning of the meeting. Okay, fine. So we'll welcome her when she joins us. Ben. Here. And Paul. Okay. So Paul is on the phone just so people know. And Allison has told me that she only has a half hour this morning. So she will be leaving early. I want to, as everyone can see Margaret Wood from answer. Our OPM has joined us. So I am officially starting the meeting. So I'm going to go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead. All of you know, and we sent out an email. Press release will go out shortly. Mike, Ben and I participated on the MSBA panel. On Tuesday. It seems like a long time ago right now, but. And it was. A very intense for me anyway. Meeting because the three firms that were the finalists were all in favor. So it wasn't a, you know, above all, and they all have a lot of experience that we were looking for. We ended up by a very narrow margin choosing Dinesco. And I'll let either Ben or Mike speak to it, but I think all of us were. We're impressed by the range of their experience that was relevant to us and the way they started out talking about the educational issues that we were looking for. One other thing I might say is. I went out on my own to try to get into a few of the schools, one school each free that, that each of the designers had built. And again, they were great, terrific schools. Very impressive, including the two that did not get chosen as finalists. So I think we will be well served by the firm we were looking for. So I think we will be well served by the firm we were looking for. So I think we will be well served by the firm we were looking for. Dinesco. So, Mike or Ben, do either of you want to add to that? Yeah, I'll add briefly. Second, everything that Kathy said was really hard choice. Kathy and I checked in yesterday and Ben and I did separately and a lot of law sleep. It was really hard. You know, and, and I think what didn't go in my notes stood out is they were really clear on communication. You know, I was doing that zero schools actually one net positive school, which I've heard that term before. So that was good learning for me. I thought their team, you know, was a team. That you felt like could work there. I think there was a right number of people on the call. And, you know, I think all of them felt excited about it. It was really hard, you know, I think what I've said this in public meetings, so it's no surprise, you know, I really struggled. I thought JCJ did a nice job. I think they made a couple of tactical eras. But I thought their green consultant was particularly good. And I also thought, you know, Lamarro Pagano had a really inventive way of communicating. So they were all really strong. Any of them, I think could be six, could have been successful with the project, but I do think we went with the best one. I think it is worth noting that Kathy, Ben and I happened to have the same ratings. We weren't able to communicate obviously during the meeting, but. But we ended up with the same ratings for the top three. So that made me sleep a little better last night. Once I calmed down and thought about it a little more that, that at least the three representatives that from this body, you know, didn't see everything the same. Certainly we didn't rank the short list the same, but in the end we came up with the same rankings, but I'll differ to Ben if he has other things he liked to add. Yeah, I definitely, definitely agree with Mike and Kathy there. I think the Nesco had probably like the strongest presentation. Like they kind of exuded confidence, but not only that confidence and competence was the other thing, but yeah, I just, the student-centric approach that they had and like their emphasis on communication like that, that kind of drove it home. But yeah, it was really all shades of gray. You know, and I was the school and Steve can speak to this, but the school Steve and I visited with the, we were guided by the facilities director for all of Springfield, but he'd been on the building committee for the school and Steve, Steve, you can speak for yourself, but his enthusiasm was also comforting about the building that they got. So, so I, you know, I obviously was on the selection committee and Kathy was nice enough to invite me to this visit to the Brightwood Lincoln school in the north end of Springfield. And I do have to make a comment that, you know, the guy who was the head of the division of capital asset management from Springfield showed us around and I thought that tour is going to go on all day. And you don't often see people in these positions, you know, these basically the town city architect, so enthusiastic about working with an architect. So the fact that the building is built and operating and this, this person was so remain so enthusiastic because they've seen all the sausage being made and they've seen, and they have to deal with the things. I mean, there were still people in there fixing the lady or alarm system, but just absolutely exuded enthusiasm for the disco team that had designed that project. So Margaret, I think you said that they were going to try to Donna and Tim, two of the people were going to try to drop in to say hello. Let me just see if they're out in the attendees. Tim is in the attendees, Kathy. Tim is in the attendees. I could bring Tim in and wait or I could wait until Donna joins us. What do you think, Margaret? Why don't we, why don't we bring Tim in briefly? Just because I think we should move on to the other things on the, well, I don't know, Kathy, we can actually continue the rest of the agenda and they can listen in and Tim, I will send you my cell phone and maybe you can let me know when. I think I brought Tim in. So why don't we just, Tim, I brought you in. And so if you unmute, you can talk. I just, Allison has to leave early. So I thought it would be good to at least introduce ourselves. You've met three of us and you could introduce yourself to the committee. So I'm going to start with you, Tim. I'm going to start with the rest of, this is the building committee that's meeting this morning. So why don't I just start with you, Tim, and your role. Your role on the project and who you are. Sure. Very happy to be here. Very happy to meet you all. I will be the project manager for Dinesco. I'm pretty sure Donna will be joining us shortly. And she'll want to say hi. But I just heard you talking about Pete Garvey. So I'm going to start with you. I'm going to start with you. I'm going to start with you. Here. You know, we have a pretty good relationship with Springfield. We've done multiple projects and we're in the process of a third with them. So. We like to think we give them what we want. What they want. And they. You know, they're good to us. So. Okay. And I did. And Donna has joined us. So Donna, why don't you introduce yourself. Great. Good morning, everyone. Donna Dinesco. It's super, super excited to be here this morning. We're ready and really look forward to making the Fort River school project. Just so amazing. So as everyone knows, we've got the one more step of negotiating the contract, but we'll be inviting. So I'm going to start with you. I'm going to start with you. Donna Dinesco back. And we may try to arrange it with a school committee, if that's possible, just to introduce you more generally and have you talk. So I think I'll turn around and just. Have, I'll call out names and each person can introduce themselves to you. Sean. Hi, I'm Sean. Mangano. I'm the finance director for the town of Amherst. I'm the finance director for the town of Amherst. I'm the finance director for the town of Amherst. Mike, you've met that he can say hello again, Rupert. Hi, I'm Rupert Roy Clark. I am the facilities director for the schools. It will be talking to you lots. Phoebe. Hi, I'm Phoebe Mariam. I'm a Amherst parent. And I actually went through the school system here. So it is interesting for me. Hopefully exciting too. Right. I'm Steve Shriver. I'm, I'm on the committee by virtue of being a town counselor. I'm actually vice chair of the committee. I will only be on the committee till January because I did not run for reelection, but I will stay involved as a member of the public. I'm also the chair of the department of architecture at UMass. Oh, wonderful. I'm Kathy, if I could interrupt for a sec. I think Rick Rice was also trying to join. He's maybe a. Yeah, just a public. Okay. There he is. Awesome. Thank you. Sorry about that. That's okay. Jonathan. There we go. Good morning. My name is Jonathan. I'm a parent of two Fort River students and I am a local architect as well. And Ben, you met so Ben, you could again introduce yourself just in case with a mask on, you're not the same. I was just going to say, I don't see him. Yep. I'm still Ben still the school committee representative. And also I'm. Rupert's lackey or slash assistant facilities director. Margaret, you know, Allison. Hi, I'm Alison. The assistant principal at Wildwood elementary, the sister school of Fort River. And the next person is not actually who the person will be, but he's, he's under the Tamara. You are. Uh, I'm sorry. I don't have the time. I don't know if you tell people who tomorrow is as well as who you are. Good morning. My name is Julio Fernandez, I'm serving a sister. Assistant principal here at Fort River. I'm also an amersparent and an amersfress. So. This is very important to me. Okay. And Paul Wow. I am the talent manager. Nice to meet you. Okay. And we have one more person from Dinesco. So why don't you quickly introduce yourself and then I think, well, thank you all for coming and I'll put you back in the audience. You're, you're welcome to stay. We're going to move on to talk about the webpage, the website for the project that's, that's been designed. So Richard Rice. If you need to just turn your mic off. So you can speak and introduce yourself. Hi, Rick Rice. Very happy to be working with you as PIC on the project. Great to get started. Well, I want, yes, Mike. Before our, our guests depart, at least this part of the meeting, you know, and the agenda said next steps. And I know it was referenced earlier, but I think Ben and I had some thoughts to bring from the school committee on this topic. So, Ben, if I get them wrong, as always, please correct me. But I think there were two requests from the school committee. One is related to the website, which we'll get into after, but the request was to see if perhaps Margaret and the Dinesco team, as well as perhaps the full school building committee might be interested in having a joint meeting at the normally scheduled meeting of the next day, our school committee, which is the evening of the 14th. I'm going to double check that I'm right on the 14th. If that's a Tuesday, then I'm right. Yeah, I am right. So, you know, I think they're interested in meeting this group, which we sort of had initially set up and then we waited for the kind of full team to be developed. And then they got delayed a little bit. And so I think there is some desire from the school committee's perspective to do some level of virtual meet and greet and maybe talk about what their responsibilities are and the school building committee's responsibilities now that things are sort of headed in a direction. So, Ben, did I capture that accurately in terms of the conversation? Yep, spot on. Okay. Yeah, we would be delighted. Yeah, we'll, we would be delighted, Mike. And those start at 6pm, correct, Mike? They start at 630. I imagine if it was better for the group, they'd be flexible about starting at six. Okay. No, I just, I got the time wrong. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know the availability of, of, of Margaret and her team and, and Danisco as well as the group. I mean, if this body doesn't have a quorum, we could still do the meeting, but I think they were wanting to just open it up so that we can start. So now that we have our team together, we could start some initial conversations about timeline and they really want to get some feedback on the ed plan and what their responsibilities are and making sure that they understand what is theirs, what's the school building committees so that we can work in unison, which I thought was lovely. And it's awesome. And we're available. We're so used to evening meetings. So you don't, don't, don't adjust it for us. If, if we don't get on till eight or nine, we're used to it. So, and if it's virtual, it makes it even that much easier, right? But, but even still, we would still be there in person. This is kind of what we do, right? So we'll work with Margaret and you all to develop maybe a short presentation or whatever you feel is appropriate. But I just like to say, Kathy, you have such a talented group of people here between facilities, architects, and, and of course educators that we, we just feel this is a dynamic team to really get involved with. So we, we're really excited. Thank you. Thank you very much. And thank you all for, for joining us this morning. So I, I think I will put you back in the public. Margaret. Sorry about that. Donna, Rick and Tim, can I ask a favor? Can you send me a PDF of your interview presentation? We are going to post it if you can see our interview presentation on the website. If you want to take a look. But we, it's very important to this community as, as was discussed in the. In the MSBA interview that there will, we provide maximum transparency in this community. There are a lot of very plugged in connected folks. So if you would send that along, then we'll get it up. And if you want to stick around, I'd be interested in your comments on the website, which our staff has put together and is just about ready to sort of get launched. So this is a web page for the project. Yeah, that would be great. And unfortunately there's no narrative to go along with our. That's right. But ours either. Yeah, but what I'll try to do is try to give you maybe a PDF with the videos. That we showed otherwise it's pretty static. So you might, I might need a day to convert. But yes, we'll, we'll get on that right away. No problem. However you think would, you know, best. You know, communicate what we all saw those of us who were able to participate to the general public would be great. You've got it. All right. Nice meeting everyone. We're going to stick around just to kind of listen in. Okay. And I will put you back out in the audience. I think I changed the role of attendee. Yes. Okay. What we have to do these days, Kathy. Yeah. Yeah. No, I know what I, when you're promoted to host, you get this extra set of tasks. Not necessarily. Not necessarily with the training manual. So there. Thank you. Nice. Bye everyone. Okay. And I see. Morgan, I see Caroline is in the audience. So I'm going to bring her in. Just wait one second. Okay. I think I brought Caroline in. Yes. Okay. The next item on the agenda is the website. And this is very much it's, it's. Ready to go as soon as we say it's ready to go, but where it's in the development phase. So this would be a good time as Margaret and Caroline go through. And I think Brianna is on with us also great. Great. So to talk about anything you see missing. Add change. And I think you told us a while ago, Margaret, that it's a pretty flexible platform. So this is not once we've done it, it will always be exactly this way. So I'm turning it over to you. You need to unmute. What's going on here. Well, Caroline's pulling that up. I want to just say, you know, I think what's really important to me right now is getting the kind of overall structure, right? I think it's going to work for us. So this version incorporates. The comments that we heard from you a couple of meetings ago. It is also, I think. Going to, to me, the kind of landing page right now is the most important that people kind of. So we'll look a little bit of this diagram, but Caroline, once you walk us through. The landing page. So obviously there's this rolling my key. We have the, just the one. Timeline image right now. Which we have updated since yesterday. Thank you. So this can we actually, can I just say a little bit about this? Because we haven't determined yet the, the overall timeline for getting to the local appropriation. This is intended to be very diverse. And just explain that there are two steps are done, which is the selection of the OPM and the designer. And there are three big steps related to the MSBA funding ahead of us. If you have this full size on your screen, you could sort of see a brief description between each. And then the diagram ends with the local vote. So we don't have dates. So we don't have dates. So we don't have dates. So we don't have dates. So we don't have dates. So we don't have dates. So we don't have dates. So we don't have dates. So we don't have dates. So we don't have dates. So the diagram ends with the local vote. So we don't have dates for anything passed through it though. You are here line. But we will. And I would say within a month, we'll have more more, a more defined timeline that will replace this document. So go ahead, Karen. Aside from that this, there's a few links to background information on this. First page. Retaining to the Wildwood school in the Fort River school. And as well as the MSBA process. And then we have an about the project page. Which has an overview of the project. Which Margaret have written up and just some images of the schools as they exist right now, but we can of course replace these with renderings, other diagrams as we would see fit in the future. So these are all links to the recordings of previous meetings. And at the bottom, there are links to the committee website, meeting minutes page and the agendas. These can all be incorporated in here as individual links. We can shrink these down. However, we would like to see fit. These can be modified, but for now. All of these are our links. They will open a new window when you select them. Key documents, we've uploaded links. These are just Adobe links. Into Acrobat. So every one of these opens a new window to. The documents, the key documents that are described on here. The FAQ page. We had discussed having individual. Full full pages available for key topics. So we'll, we will work on getting these available. I'm working on creating a template for any potential. Just to be used for any potential documents in the future, but so that there's a common look and feel. But in the meantime, this is, we'll be the kind of landing page for that. We can have an overview just with a short blurb for frequently asked questions and then a link to each of the full documents can go straight from here. Project team is just a list as at the moment we can include headshots or contact. However, you guys would like to set this up. And then we have a get involved page. And I think what we'd like to do is add a more of a description of how you can get involved here. Some bullet points out. So that's kind of the overview. Margaret, did you want to go over anything else? So the, on this page, again, involved page. I thought someone, maybe as Sean at the last meeting, we looked at this made the point that this would be a great place to list upcoming meetings. So if someone wanted to kind of easily see what's, what is sort of around the corner. This would be where we would enter those. So as we start to get the building committee meetings. And then we have the public meetings, public meetings, public meetings, public meetings, dates established. For instance, going forward, we'll plug them in here. Other public meetings, the joint meeting with the school committee that was just discussed, there were, you know, be things there with dates. And if available, you know, links on how to, how to join them, join those public meetings. But I think that was it in terms of what I wanted to add to that. So I'm going to send you all a link to this page last night. And there is a comment in the very uphand, upper right hand corner. There's a add comments button. It's a really easy thing to use. So you can, if you have any comments, you can send them back to me. You can add the comment on here and, you know, we'll keep picking them up as we roll towards. We'll keep picking them up as we roll towards. So this is still a private page. Any. Comments, questions. As this moves before our eyes. For people in the room. I'm not shown. Raise your hands or just speak up because I'm not sure I can see all of you. And then Mike has his hand up too. I think the structure looks really good. I think it's set up in a way that we can build, build it out in the future. So from my perspective, it looks good. I think it's a great way to add. Maybe useful links or something on the sidebars here where there's a lot of open. At least on my screen, because I have a wide monitor. There's a lot of space. We might want to think about that. But in terms of the structure, I think it looks good. Certainly. Sidebar. However, you guys would like to set it up. It's really very easy functionality. So we can do that. Yeah. So I agree with what Sean said. I think it looks great. Thank you for putting it together. I guess I had one piece of feedback from the school committee. Slash me. And then just a question, which is. You know, I think the school committee, much like this committee is really eager to get this published. So I think when it is published, if you could send, if I could ask you to send over the public link to it, then I can get it out in my newsletter. We can get it on social media. I know the town would do the same. Brianna's on. She's expert at all that kind of stuff. But I do think it's good to have it out, but we want to push it out so that people start looking at it. And I think that that's important. I think the only other question I had, which I know is addressed a little bit in the past, but just for everyone to be clear when there are updates to be made, like, for instance, with, you know, this week and a press release and things like that. What's the way, what's the flow for committee members that they should, if they notice something, like, should they be emailing Kathy, should they be willing Margaret should be willing me just so everyone knows if they notice something that perhaps is missing or needs to be added. How do they, how do they do that? Well, I would suggest Kathy, you can. Your opinion about this. I would suggest that. I think it's good to come to me with a CC to Kathy or any other member of the committee who might sort of weigh in on the issue. Right. So, you know, for instance, there might be something that Rupert had a comment on that he would want to loop you in or something you might have, or Sean might have a comment that he wanted to loop Paul and I don't think we need to necessarily copy the whole committee. But I would say I'm the receiver of the information and Kathy's comment on that. I think it's good to come to me. I think it's good to come to me on Twitter. Whether to go ahead and make the update as a proposal. That works. Jonathan. I'm already unmuted. I agree with all that's been said so far. I think it looks great. I'm just want to reiterate the eagerness to get it up. Now that we have a designer. You know, we have our full team in place. And we're going to be moving forward. And we're going to be moving forward. And I think that the key is communication is key. One question I had, and I thought about this morning, Margaret is on the opening page. And this may be difficult to do to always keep it up to date. Can we have a box that says next meeting on and then, you know, like. You know, you know, I think it would just be, we change that button each time we've set the next meeting. And then we could say for, for future meeting C and your, your link to your other tab. Yeah. Cause we, we've got that on our website and we have, we have something that alerts people who have linked on to any of our committees like this one. Anytime we post a meeting, but for people who aren't on the regular alert system, so, okay. How does everybody feel about the scrolling. First page. I mean, right now we don't have things for scrolling through, but it won't be long. Like I would say by January, there will be, you know, events that have taken place. You know, that we can link to presentations we can link to. Do people think that this is going to be helpful? Or is it better to have, you know, a single set image? And then people go to the pages. Brianna. Brianna. And I thought Allison's hand was up too. So either one of you reacting to that or Allison, I know you have to leave. So maybe if you want to respond to that or something else. So I, I think, I think scrolling images is fine. I mean, it gives some action to a website, which can sometimes be a little more engaging. But my comment was more about, it's a more of a personal kind of preference for how unwieldy projects can kind of hide very important decisions within several links. And so I think if we can try to highlight really important decisions and really important decisions that are impacting money so that it doesn't feel like it's trying to be buried, I think that would help give forth a sense of transparency so that people aren't feeling like they have to dig. So how do we highlight really big decisions around design and money so that people know we're being as transparent as possible, I think would be helpful. Yeah, Allison, I completely agree with you. I have done very, what's starting to be a very detailed look at the schedule that needs to kind of be embedded in the architect's contract and the overall timeline for the project. And so that will, and I think what needs to sort of point like import, like here, here, like these are the important points. So I, once we kind of get through this next piece of setting that schedule in place, I will bring back to you a draft of that that you can comment on, but I totally agree with you. And really this, this diagram is a placeholder just to tell people, to help people get educated until we set the dates. Yeah, that timeline could almost be interactive. Yes, it could, I agree. Looking at that top bar, not sure where would I go, but that timeline is very clear. These are really important moments in what we're trying to do. And if you click, I mean, it would, you wouldn't be able to make the scrolling then. Yeah, this could be interactive where if I click on this, I'll find everything related to that stage. If I click on this, I find everything related to that stage and that, that might be a way to connect better too. Yep, I agree. Thank you. Brianna, you had your hand up. Yeah, I was just going to make a general comment based off of Margaret's prompt. With the scrolling, if it's images, I just, I'm always looking towards accessibility. So if they're image based with lots of text, just being mindful, if they're image based with lots of text, we can click that to, to head to a PDF document that people can actually screen read or machine read would be appropriate in this, especially when there's that much information. Yeah. And then I'm just, it's just going to say that I'm here to answer any questions or show you about potential integrations of this site with the town of Amherst assets. So if you have a question about that, I'm here to speak to that as well. So Alison, did you have another question? Okay. So the one I have Brianna and Sean, we have something called engage Amherst, which is a way of getting comments back. Do you think we should. Build that capacity into this website rather than having people have to go to another place to do that. So they get involved. I don't know whether there's how interactive they can be, but as we get to a point where a meeting's coming up, you miss the meeting, but you want to send a comment. You, you looked at the materials. So how can we make sure that you don't feel like, oh, there was a nine a.m. meeting. I couldn't go to that one, but I do have something to say. Brianna. So that was one of the things I was going to speak to was potential crossover to our engage platform. So at the very basic level when this site is live, we can have this live as a initiative on our engage Amherst page where we will see that there's an opportunity to learn more about the school project. It'll live on our page when they click it'll. People will come to this page that you're seeing. That's at the very basic level. We can also integrate con consultation tools from engage and embed them on this site, which is a little bit more advanced, but we can certainly do that. If that's the preferred method of submitting comments or answering a survey, it can run through engage. If this group would like that. It's possibility. But at the very least we can have a very prominent tile on our homepage, which I have keyed up to show you as well as our engage Amherst page since people will be going there organically to look at other projects that we can link to this project as well. And I'll just echo really quick what Brianna said. I've used the, Brianna showed set up the engage page for a few different projects for me. And it works really well at that two way communication. So again, I think it's this committee has decided what it wants to do with it. But it is a really nice. Way to engage the public. So I think we should explore how we can utilize it. When we get to that stage. And the good thing about that tool, building off what Sean said, some of the consultation tools within engage, we can take and almost make it feel like it's coming from your site, but it's really coming from engage Amherst. So we get some good crossover. As well. So with, with, with the comments you got a, in terms of timing. And updating it to put Dinesco in the press release. You know, wherever, wherever we're doing press release, are you going to be ready to launch today's Thursday? Do you have a date when this will be up? Well, as I suggested at the last meeting, I would be reluctant to. Put this up until we've. Concluded at least conceptually. The. Fee negotiation with Dinesco. But I think once we have a handshake agreement about that, then, you know, it would be comfortable. And I'd like to think that will happen before Thanksgiving. So I think we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll move on to the, we talked about future dates. So does it Mike's proposal to. Meet jointly with a school committee. We wouldn't meet. Clearly we wouldn't meet that week. Also as a building committee. Meet meeting. Does that work for members of this committee to be attending a Tuesday, six 30 at night, rather than a Thursday, eight in the morning meeting. And have. Dinesco and that would be Dinesco coming to us. I think with a, what are the big milestones interacting with us? And we'd have something to put up on our site about that meeting. Exactly. So does that work? I'll just look around to faces. I'm happy to. Look at that. Will that work to shift to that? And I see, oh, tomorrow has joined us tomorrow. Tomorrow's Sullivan daily is on. So we're glad to have you. So does anyone. Does that work for everyone? Or and if it. You can tell me later, and we can then, if, if it works and we have a forum, then we'll declare it as a joint meeting. Okay. Okay, that's great. It works. It certainly works for me. And I'm glad Allison and everyone brought it up. Jonathan. I'm muted. Okay. Good. Yeah, I don't have a problem. Absolutely don't have a problem doing the joint meeting. We should probably talk about what the agenda of that meeting is. We may need or may not need to have our own meeting in close proximity to that to do kind of our, our, our work as a committee. So what I was necessarily doing our all of our work with the school committee. So Jonathan, what I was thinking is December 2nd, which would be a Thursday. We would have. It would be that, you know, and we could have assuming that the calendar is going to be. The nickel contract is assigned to join us. We could be talking about timelines. Miles. You know, that would be a gender, which just us. Yeah. Does that work? You know, and we try to not have them be exactly the same, but you know, do that initial. And. And I think that the agenda for that meeting. The very first thing we should be talking about as community that that to me is like the could be the entire agenda for the meeting so because I think once once you agree about it your approach to community agenda the other things kind of kind of lay out from there but you can't kind of back into that piece of it. And if I could add one last thing before I go of asking questions I think it would be good at that joint meeting to for the public's benefit kind of clarify the different roles our committee plays versus the school committee's role and maybe even touch a little bit on the town's role too because they are different roles there are certain things there's certain information we will receive as this committee that we will work with that will be handed to us by other groups and and clarifying what those roles are and how that works I think would be important. That would be great because the council's going to have that question also Jonathan you know as another body on when do we hear what are we part of what group Phoebe. I was just going to say also on top of that I'd like to really have I know Kathy you and I talked a little bit or tried to about not just sort of the delineation of roles but also how things that ultimately the school committee themselves gets to decide on or or Mike gets to put in place how it ultimately affects us and and the decisions that we have to make so things like the ed plan and you know how other buildings in this town will be affected by you know other school buildings ie Crocker that kind of stuff will be affected by this new school and and those are not decisions that we deal with but they are decisions that have an impact on design of the new school on all of those things that you know is sort of more our purview and that's that for me personally is sort of a missing piece here so I'm excited to meet with them and kind of get an idea about those things. That's great. Can I jump in here Kathy? Yes absolutely Paul. So I just I agree with what Phoebe said which Jonathan said about the purpose of the December 14th meeting I think we should use that as our sort of target public launch and engage with the community if the school committee will give us the time to really present the designers for use that as a major sort of launch point. Point two is yes I agree and trying to get to be the work with the answer and with I was wondering the question I have for the website is whether that is not sure if I did it right but I'm going to defer to Caroline because she has to do the work. Caroline I think we have a couple of tweaks here. Do you feel comfortable that we could separate it from the other issue about settling the contract with Denisco? Do you feel like you we could put it up on the 23rd for instance? Yeah I mean it's it's it's all we need to do is plug in the domain and and launch it so I mean it's really simple to officially release it to the wild if you will but great yeah I don't see why we couldn't do that. Brianna and on the town side once we have that live public link it's a little work to integrate it in the places that I'm thinking of but it I can meet that timeline definitely once we have that live link. Well this is exciting it's it also feels like the project is live then rather than we're we're waiting for paperwork. So any other comments on the website and and the link that Margaret provided us people should if you need it again just you've all got Margaret's email let her know so that if other things occur to you since there are a few more days before this goes live and it's flexible so it won't be forever as we've just seen it. Um one one other sorry there's this moment in the morning when the sun hits my face and I'm either in the dark or I can't see um the um I I think uh looking at it this morning with you all my reflection is that we need to have something that is fixed at the top of the page or the maybe at the bottom of the page that's the schedule and then have the scrolling thing as well um I I don't think it's going to work to have I know that we know that we can turn off the scroll but so we'll take the schedule and pull it out and maybe just have it at the top and the scrolly thing below it once the schedule gets settled so you know Phoebe and Allison I think to your points that you know we want you want to be able to sort of transparently see easily uh where you are and what these milestones mean so that I think should be fixed and not moving so. Okay so I think um I'm not seeing any other hands or comments I think that we have discussed the website so the one other item on today's agenda was people's ideas recommendations thoughts about we talked about um I don't even know what the right name for it but a working group that would help us with outreach that might be people that come in and out and Margaret's got this timeline that once we work with Dinesco would show what weeks are we doing big public meetings outreach so we're doing meetings at schools we're doing information sessions but do we want you know where are we engaging teachers and Paul has pointed out if we set it up officially it has to be official group um and then it has to have meet public meetings so any thoughts about sort of a liaison group PBU were one of the people who raised this initially um we've got people on the school committee in addition to Ben who want to be active on this um so this is just a time for brainstorming it's not decision of ideas on what might be useful to us you know what there when Steve goes off the committee as he he told Dinesco he he said he's going to be happy to come back in at the point where you know looking at architectural drawings or looking at some decisions between this or that um and there we've got clearly other people in our community who will architect civil engineers but there's teachers and parents and kids so any thoughts that anyone has um toward this end and you know if not we we can continue when we when Dinesco comes in we can seek out their ideas on what's worked well in other communities to you know the the goal is well before we make any decisions um that everyone knows this is coming up where to get information and they can comment um attend a meeting ask questions uh so that no nothing no one is taken by surprise that oh they're about to go in this direction or that direction um so I have a question Kathy about that um you uh said you know if it's a official then it's you know an official committee or whatever and hold public meetings and all of that um I guess my question um is how do we ensure that all of the outreach that that really needs to happen especially given our town happens um if it's uh you know if it's not official I guess like what are what are our options there um how do we ensure that we can reach the most amount of people um and uh you know get the information out and and not just get the information out but get the feedback in that we need to get from people to answer questions that people are inevitably going to have yeah I think it's a good question um you this we just started having some discussions and Mike you can talk a little bit about what you did with the listening sessions um early on but the um the council um president has said we could do should we could we you know have facilitated announce there's going to be a meeting at these places but a repeat meeting so if you can't go this day you can go during a week um and some of it could be by zoom and all of it is to bring people in uh do we take anything out to the community if there's a large group of parents and kids in a particular place we have district council meetings and we thought we could coordinate the the time period where we really want to get information and get information pulled in and out that we could all do a district meeting and that divides up Amherst into areas um and really announce it and have someone come in and do a presentation you know like what it so it wouldn't be that all the counselors have to so just trying to think of what are the different avenues that we have besides zoom facebook media you know social media to have people feel there's an opportunity this is the way I could come in um where I'm not going to follow every single piece of it but I want to be part of this piece so I see Steve's hand is up and this is really uh you know all hands on deck with ideas right now it's not to make a decision on how one way to do it I think we're going to try to think of multiple Steve yeah so I the answer is I I don't have I really don't know so the council meetings have have limited success depending on which district you're in and I think that you would find a lot of districts complaining that you know it's the same 50 people attending the council meetings I think one of the effective models actually in the as the change of government happened were the neighborhood associations so for example your neighborhood district one has very active neighborhood association as do others so the nice thing about that type of model is that that is outside of government right so they can they can operate however they feel fit and from what I followed with don't you know district one neighborhood association that said they were actually quite effective um you know advocates for very various issues that got very involved in the library and things you know the the North Amherst library you know things like that so that would be a model is through sort of a non-government um um you know outreach groups so that they're not that they can operate more freely so to the extent we have them I I guess that's a way of saying that the North Amherst group is is as Steve said it's it's a loosely knit group but for example when the listening sessions for the school were going on Mike Carey came to us from the school committee to say here's when they're going to happen here's what we're going to be talking about and the community group we filled a room with people who were asking questions so and some of those then came to the official meeting you know but it was a good way of in in your neighborhood Mike yeah yeah yeah it was the lovely pre-covid days which made things yeah we said the survival center where we were standing room and only exactly but but I do think the larger points a good one I appreciate Phoebe bringing it up you know my perspective is people appreciate sharing information when we have information when we've run public sessions that didn't have clear actionable things to talk about it feels like you brought me here and you're telling me oh yeah we don't know anything here's our you know we have architects great but you know why would I come to a meeting about that so I do think perhaps at our next meeting whether it's a subcommittee or you know as you said you know that conversation it'd be really important for me not just for Margaret but for Denisco to be on board because I do think when we say even their initial schemes on the site they may not want to do that because they were initial but like here's kind of like our initial read on this what do you all think right that's where there's two-way dialogue and when you call it a forum you don't actually have enough information to get feedback it actually sets up a really negative dynamic of why did you drag me away from whatever it is kids family tv netflix whatever and to a meeting to tell me that you're working on something so I think it's that balance of not waiting too long to engage but not going so far ahead of where we are that we engage people on things that we can't I mean it's it's very similar to like even the the sixth grade question which is sort of relevant which is you know I'm working with a group of staff members to come up with what are these kind of like decision points we have about the model and world language and stuff so that when we get feedback we're getting feedback on things that are real not just what do you think about things it's like here's an initial look you know what do you think where there's the feedback can be targeted to things you know as as we talked about before what that are actually happening so I think denisco will be huge partners out with us on this not that they need to go to every engagement but they may be able to help us with margaret think about okay well here's a rough timeline here's where we're going to be looking at sites here's where we're going to be looking at initial building design here's where we're going to be looking at ad reno versus building new and then at least we could plan out these forms and map them out when there's actual things to get feedback on the data to share information to share they could have their you know report from you know here's the wetness on both sites and here's the space on both sites and here's the parking on both sites and that's where I think the engagement can be at its highest because I think you plan engagement and you don't have something for people to gauge on it can feel really unsatisfying and that's the opposite of what we want so I'm just glad that Phoebe raised this and we're talking about it so thank you. Jonathan's hand is up then Phoebe then Ben. Yeah I would concur with Mike on the topic of when you bring lots of people together you want to make sure that there's actionable things and there's an actual focus it isn't just kind of a continuation of what we do many people who want to be very engaged will watch this group and but there's other people who don't have the opportunity to do that and we want to be able to focus those folks when there's really something we want reaction to or impact from. The other thing that I agree wholeheartedly with is we need to have Denisco as part of this they have been doing this during COVID I find the whole doing this during COVID very daunting because most of this when I have personally been involved with this sort of thing it's all been pre-COVID and I there's something really dynamic and I think very helpful when you actually can have people in a place I find these trying to get feedback in these kind of settings still very you know I don't want to say artificial but but limiting I'm not sure I worry that you're not hearing all voices on a zoom call and I just would really love to have a real public forum and I don't know how you do that I mean we can't even go inside our kids schools yet so I find that challenge very daunting I would love to have you know obviously Margaret's input on that as well but I'm sure Denisco's done it a dozen times in the last year and a half. Maybe we could have 70 degree weather in January and February right so we could be outside no it's outside the global warming on it. So Phoebe? I totally agree that having information to share is always better in terms of getting feedback and having those conversations. My only concern is I am not actually I'm not 100% sure that everybody even knows that that this is happening again and that's a concern for me because we we have to engage this town we have to get people's opinions we have to let people know that this is coming down the pipeline. I don't think it's appropriate to wait until we have you know everything in a complete timeline with everything in line to say okay guess what we have this decided and that decided and this decided and here we go and then have people go wait what you have all these decisions made and we didn't even know this was going on so I think that there I think we have to yes I agree with that piece of what what you're saying and there we really need to do some kind of outreach to say this is here again this is here we're doing this we're talking about it we want to share this with people because there's going to be important milestones that we're going to need to talk about and we need the most town engagement possible and that means not just talking to all of the people that are going to show up because they always show up but we need the we need the people who don't who don't show up who don't know they can show up those are the people that we need to know that this is coming down the pipeline so that's it thanks Ben yeah Phoebe actually kind of tackled a lot of what I was going to say because yeah I'm hearing us talk about neighborhood associations that's awesome district meetings nobody in my neighborhood we don't have an association nobody in my neighborhood goes to these district meetings so I think we need to have like aggressive active outreach when it comes to this right and she's dead on hitting it early to get it on people's radars is very important like I mentioned this when I was out you know canvassing for my other job there and uh like she said not a lot of people know that we're in the process of going about starting a new building project here so so yeah I just I just want to keep that in our in the forefront that there are people the outliers are the ones that we're going to have to most actively reach other people are looking for this information Margaret so I want to want to mention two things one of them I think I've mentioned before and and I'm putting it out there I haven't had a chance to discuss this with Deniscoe and you know they're they're very experienced with community engagement so they may have a different take on it but in in my experience I feel like one of the general problems with community engagement is it tends to feel very scattershot like there's a meeting here and there's a meeting there and and you can't people I think who aren't really plugged in can't capture the thread but they can't see the pattern to it and so I'm very interested and there's also this issue of like who gets which information first and how that feels um so I am interested in at least discussing something where we actually identify weeks where I identify like a set of actions that need to happen and I'll I'll come back to that I'm in a set of actions that need to happen like clear steps and then have a week that is devoted to each of them and in that week there is not a school building committee meeting but the town council gets an update the school could build the school committee gets an update their meetings in the schools their other event that it's sort of so that people kind of that so that it becomes hard if you're in the community to not have passed by something that marks that moment so you know and I think everything I agree with everything that's being said about you know it being multivalent in terms of what it looks like but I think that approach where it's clear like this is the week that this is being discussed and this is the week that's being discussed would help the other thing I would say is to me and you can spread this out into bigger steps there are really four steps here the first step is what I would call listening and reminding so you know Phoebe to your point like that's the point where you say hey everybody try to get everybody to say hey this is happening and then the second and as part of that listening step it's also we want to identify the priorities for the project not everybody's priorities are going to be the same but you do want to take in people's ideas about what priority you know for instance like provide a set of priorities and say here are some things which might be priorities what do you think about them what's missing how would you rank them we know that everybody won't rank them the same but can can we agree on a common set of priorities against which options should be evaluated so that's the that's the first step the second step is what are the options so then there's another week if you will where you the design team brings forward a set of options and we say this is this is what we think is the range what is it are there any missing how do these sort of match up with your priorities right so that's a week then there's a third week which is preventing presenting then an analysis where you say we've we've heard your thoughts about the priorities here's what the building committee thinks is the priorities having heard from you before here's how these options rate relative to the priorities that have been identified comment and then the fourth step is okay we showed you the options we we took in your comments we've looked at the priorities to now the school building committee is bringing forward a preferred option that builds on of those steps so I think that isn't to say that that process might at any one step might be like more than one week but if I had to reduce it down to one thing you know those are the four steps I would do and that's how I would go about it so again you know I haven't this is this is me this is not the committee this is not denisco it's just I think if somebody put me in charge of the process and said how would you do it that's Margaret's version shulin yeah I just wanted to um raise there's just a few non-meeting tools that we have around pushing out information um that are that sort of came out of COVID um and Brianna will appreciate this um we have a couple new signage opportunities where we can post information both the SUFA signs downtown and then we have other digital road signs now that we can place where we want again just to create that awareness that this is happening again and then the other thing that's very new that has you know I have to talk to Paul how this would look and and it's something we would want to explore further with this group we're using our ARPA our American Rescue Plan money is to fund an ambassador program or to continue funding an ambassador program and one of the things we hope to do with that going forward is to expand that ambassador program out into the community and particularly um underrepresented communities or communities that maybe don't participate in things like this meeting or council meetings um and that would be another tool to get you know they could go out and share information and get feedback and just again create that awareness that we're looking to create as broadly as possible that's great Tamara welcome you have to unmute me thank you sorry I was late I promised one of my buses that if they all remain seated I would ride it this morning not thinking that they would do it but they did so yay them sorry that's why I was late um so you know I'm new to this so you know please forgive me if I'm reiterating anything or something's already been addressed and so for me in listening to where since I've been able to get logged in I think a lot about equity and opportunity as it relates to a lot of the families and one of the things that Julio and I are actually starting today is a family community meetup where on consecutive Thursdays we're going to be going to mill valley or colonial village or rolling green or here so that all families have an opportunity to come meet with us um and we're going to be asking questions of them in terms of like how are things going what's um you know house education going whatever um but I see this also as an opportunity to begin to as I'm connecting with families and community to also use this as an opportunity to then share out information in a way that feels comfortable to those families um Sean that you were talking about that might not necessarily feel part of a group right or necessarily take part in or see themselves um in uh having a place at the table so to speak so I you know I'm I don't I'm thinking more like print materials in late different languages and you know I don't know what the timeline is for any of that but I'm just like throwing out this idea and hopefully we'll be able to work in conjunction to to see how this can happen so more people have opportunity and there's more equity for sharing information that's great thank you Steve yeah so um I'm not sure exactly what I'm going to be offering here but we're one of the only three cities and towns in Massachusetts that has an architecture school in our midst and so it's very possible that our department of architecture and or our department of landscape architecture planning could somehow be involved in this public process and and um we actually did this with a library with the Jones library that we took that on as you know four years ago took that on as a design problem sort of looking at what the issues were with adding on to and you know add all the things that Mike was saying you know renovation add renovation and our students took that on so we had 30 minds looking at that and we had various presentations that were open to the public in our you know our beautiful new design building but it's very possible that's something like that could be helpful in this process that if our students so students do the craziest things right so who doesn't love you know student young student architects trying to figure out how to you know address a complex problem but that might be some way of you know getting people involved in the conversation so when we did these student presentations for the library we had lots of people from the public we had the trustees but we had a lots of people that had been following that process you know and they were welcome to ask questions be involved the other thing is that we could hold charrettes so we have you know the ability to do that in our building also we have a great space for that and then finally we also have some of my colleagues also have degrees or earning degrees in the College of Education so they you know they basically have credibility of that area also so it could be a project that we worked on with College of Ed so I wouldn't want to do anything they would complicate them you know the discussion but it could definitely be something that could help free up the discussion and so it's sort of happening there rather than you know at UMass rather than you know in some town arena would for charrette Steve would the school of architecture space be available to denisco if they wanted to use it yeah I mean we could definitely make that happen so really when we got when we lobbied for our building and where it is so it's in the very public part of the UMass campus right at the south entrance to the campus really the argument we made is that this gives us the ability to engage in community issues either for the town of Amherst or for you know for the region pine or valley and it's a very accessible there's bus stops there's you know parking all around it's you know very close to town for actually but yeah absolutely so I'm seeing can I just chime in and say for those of you who aren't familiar with the word charrette it's a french word with a very interesting history but what it's what is being described as a kind of active workshop where a group of people come together and focus on resolving a design problem and it has sort of has a limited time frame and you set the problem at the beginning and then you know jointly look at at the outcomes at the end so if I may we've done so the particularly the planning department in the town of Amherst has done you know if you've been around they've done charrette's for say the north Amherst library area the various projects throughout the years this is this is great I have a long list of ideas that have been generated and I'm also wondering and Paul will likely Paul or Sean who has the money in town you know we don't often do mass mailings to every house but if we had some clear piece of paper tomorrow was saying we had to brochure to hand out we we could at least let everyone know what's happening you know once we're clear on what what the you know the the hope for timeline would be you know that the school discussion is now live so we we just think of a way that it would be hard not to know what's happening but you might not know where every meeting is but at least you would know where this is now we're we're live with the school project Margaret is your hand up again or is that just not down from before that is not down from before sorry so I if there are there any other comments on a pretty amazing morning in the range of things we've been talking about because if not I want to make sure we have time for public comments and we do have attendees and I see at least one of their hands is up is that all right with everyone for me to turn to public comments okay so Bruce Bruce I am allowing you to talk you just have to unmute I think I did can you hear me yep you're on well I I want to make a comment on the design team selection and I was I listened to all three of the interviews and stayed for the evaluation and it was a very robust process and essentially I'm pleased with the choice but except in one respect and I think it's a pretty important respect it's in the context of our net zero bylaw this building is going to be the essentially the first cab off the rank in compliance with the town's new net zero energy bylaw and and I really hope that this project can achieve compliance with that bylaw simply elegantly without complication and without controversy because that would dignify this bylaw and if it was done in a kind of a messy way or what it was arguably not fulfilled I think it could compromise that bylaw for future projects so I think it's really important and with that objective in mind I have to say that I felt a lot more confident with the mechanical engineering consultants the systems consultants with the other two finalists that is I said I think the design intelligence of the other two systems consultants engineering consultants was noticeably superior and take a very particular example it's it's one of a number but the presentation that that discos engineering consultants made vis-a-vis daylighting for example included in a short list of strategic options they included lightshelves now I think most people who are familiar with daylighting strategies in the northeast where slightly over 50 percent of our daylight hours are overcast we know that lightshelves are actually counterproductive they lower the light during the overcast conditions and they don't elevate it so the inclusion of that in a list of strategies was kind of not at all confidence building so that's that's just a particular example now by contrast the woman Julie from Bureau Hapold was just extraordinarily confidence building in all of her responses to the challenge of delivering net zero and as was the the people from Chris Schaffner's group the green engineer and particularly I thought it was instructive and Rupert you might want to bear this in mind I think their strategy to achieving things and reducing complexity was to um specify all of the systems to come the that's to say the the proprietary systems to come without the control systems embedded and then they had a separate single control contractor that did the control specifications and and sorry installations for all of them so that you got a single reliably integrated um functional buildings a set of systems and I thought yes that sounds like a really intelligent strategy and and so I I had a great deal of confidence in those other two and Thornton Thomas Eddy by contrast not so much I think that Thornton Thomas Eddy are capable of doing a good job it's just that the people that we're preparing on the screen hopefully are not representative of the of the best that that firm can offer so to conclude therefore I would encourage stress very strongly that when you are negotiating with Denisco make sure do your best to let them know that some people at least are not at all confident in their choice and make sure that their A team is delivered to this project and not their B or C team my sense is that we had the B team talking to us on Tuesday morning and I would like them to deliver the A team to this project and that's enough for me there's plenty more I could say about this but that was a huge reservation that I had in the selection and it links to the what I believe is a very important imperative for this town that we not only deliver this building handsomely as a project and we certainly have to do that having failed once before and Kathy was very clear about that during the interviews but we also have this other requirement that just to really make sure that our zero net energy bylaw is not compromised by a half-hearted and arguably incomplete compliance so please let's get Thomas said he's A team on this project so that we've got the best chance of achieving that thank you Bruce for me um any other public comments I don't see any other hands and I have to figure out how to mute okay so uh the the the other agenda item that we had was to discuss future meeting dates and for right now I think what we're looking at is a December 2nd and it will be our normal meeting time of 8 in the morning um I do I do hear from Allison that this time is a difficult one for her so just in terms of classes and other things going on but I think we need to keep that for now unless anyone disagrees and then we're talking about December 14th an evening meeting with the school committee so those will be I don't think we'll be meeting any more than that in this year the calendar year so um is everyone fine with those two as the targets and yes and Denisco will be part of the second when we're talking about some of these who's doing what timelines and getting ready for the larger public presentation launch of the project Mike I'm just looking at your face any thoughts on any of this I have nothing else to add to what you said I think that's okay I'm with you okay then I then I think um Jonathan sorry I just wanted to say if if if we have Denisco under contract by the time of our meeting it might be nice to have a conversation with them you know invite them to our you know our meeting but um I don't know if that'll happen oh yeah well that I think that's the plan Jonathan that the December 2nd that was the purpose of December 2nd in my mind was to have them their meeting have them at the meeting yeah definitely and and have it be very interactive I mean I don't want to have them redo the whole presentation they did to us but do a much more focus here's your team um you know yeah I want to look ahead yeah and and how are we how are we going to proceed you know um they did they did once we will send you all the um you heard that they will get us their presentation all all the teams because one of the interview questions was um if you have to build on our site and we have to you know whether it's ad reno or new how would you do phasing how would you approach it so they all did diagrams for us with which took in Wildwood and Fort River as the two sites and what we have to work with and then they also talked about education plans so to have them have a really focused discussion on how they see this proceeding um so that you know that is you know if we haven't had it negotiated by now then um a that would be too bad but b I don't think we have enough meat for December uh enough uh topics to discuss on December 2nd that's the purpose of that meeting okay I I think we are done then um thank you all um and for me as I said it was an extremely difficult decision um when we were doing this and uh you can hear from the public comments pluses and minuses in terms of what we heard um and we're but we are ready to move forward thank you very much and see you in and have a happy Thanksgiving right that is we're at the end of November so happy Thanksgiving and we will see you in a few weeks bye we are gobble we're adjourned