 Okay, welcome. Welcome everybody to today's meeting of the Jones library building committee. When I call your name, if you would just indicate verbally, so we'll know that you can hear and be heard Sharon. Here, Christine. Here. Alex. Here. On here. All present. George. Yeah. And Austin is here. Okay, the first item of business is the approval of minutes of the meeting of June 8. Is there a meat motion to approve the minutes. Austin one sec. Real quick, sorry to interrupt. Anika. Okay, she's been brought over and I started in the audience. I'll make that motion to approve the minutes. Thank you. Thank you, Sean. Hold on one second. Anika, are you, are you able to hear us. Yes, I can hear you. Okay, so Anika is present. Paul, do you want to second the motion? I do. Okay. So any corrections to the minutes. Okay. To approve the minutes. Sharon. Yes. Thank you, Christine. Epstein. Alex. Yes. George. Epstein. Yes. Sean. Yes. And Austin votes. Excuse me. Anika. Yes. And Austin votes. Yes. Thank you for that. Next item is the report from the town manager. Nothing new to report looking forward to today's meeting though. Thank you, Paul. Okay. Next is the. Finance update. Sean. So we'll start with invoices. Sharon, can you allow me to share my screen? Yeah. So the first one, this is for colliers and this is through April. No, we have a new lower monthly rate. This is related to extending out the, the length of this pre bidding phase. So our new monthly rate will be 7984. So this is for April services. This is through me or from a services same rate. Again, it's a flat monthly rate. And we have one more invoice, a smaller invoice from FAA. This is for work that the furniture consultant stuff for. Started. So it's a small initial payment, small payment for that. Okay. Motion to approve the minutes. I mean minutes, the invoices. I moved to approve the two invoices from colliers and one from. Fine old Alexander. Thank you, Sean a second. Second. Thank you. Are there any questions about the invoices? Okay. Voting. To approve Sharon. Yes. Christine. Yes. Alex. Yes. George. Yes. Paul. Yes. Sean. Yes. Austin vote. Yes. Thank you for that. Next is colliers. So we all are you. You're going to lead us through the colliers. Presentation. I believe so. Yeah. I know. Tim was trying to join, but I will take us. Through. Let me just share my screen. And everybody see that. Yes. Great. So we'll start with schedule here. You can see. This is where we are in June of 2023. We're done with the design development phase and the cost estimating that went along with that. And hopefully. We'll start at the end of this meeting. We'll come to an agreement to. Have final Alexander start the construction document phase, which is the final design phase. Of the project. Any questions on schedule. For now. Well, Austin, can I ask a question? Well, we're still on track to finish the construction document. Documents phase. By the date that we've worked on with them DLC. Correct. Any other questions about the schedule? Okay. Will. Great. I don't have a presentation, but I saw permitting was on the agenda. Next week. I will be meeting with Christine. Brestra and Jennifer Mullins with the town to keep pushing the. Various approval and permitting process. Through. Next week, we will also be submitting the plumbing variance for the gender neutral bathroom. And final Alexander will be starting to compile the. Documents to submit for our building permit prior to July 1st, which is when. A new. Code goes into effect. So we want to make sure. We've at least gotten. Our documents submitted prior to then so we can. Continue to design off. The old code. That's awesome. Can I ask another question? Well, how long does the, um, the variance process take? Or maybe this is for, um, Ellen, uh, is it something we'll know within a few weeks? Or is it a. They, they meet the first Wednesday of every month. Um, to review variances. So this. We'd know roughly first. Second week of July. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. Okay. All right. Uh, next item. Next item, I believe we had the. We'll go into the cost estimate. Great. Budget that was attached in the packet. Go through the. All the line items here, but. You can see in the very last page, this yellow. 342461. That is 34 million. $246,000, which. Is good news that is roughly. As you can see, roughly. Close to $2 million less than. Our previous budget. Which is good news. We'll go through the construction budget. You want to go down just, just to scrunch so we can see, actually see the numbers. There you go. So obviously this is a snapshot in time. And we'll be doing one more. Cost estimate. Estimation. At about 75%. Complete of the construction documents. Just to do a final. We'll go through the budget before. We go for town council vote and. Into the bid phase of the project. So. We're holding our overall budget for now. But. It's a bunch better news than our last cost estimate during schematic design. So that's a good thing. Just to be clear, well, these are the reconciled cost estimates. And this is the number that we agreed upon. Just so that everybody knows, please remind us who the cost estimators were. And the C. And our LB. And the C is for the. The two estimators met for a day. Made sure they were. Comparing apples to apples. And this is the number that. We agreed upon. Just so that everybody knows, please remind us who the cost. Estimators were. Was working for. An RLB for the town. Okay. I just want to ask one other question before others. Based on your experience and here. Tim or. Ellen Josephine. Well, based on your experience. Three. How good a predictor is this cost estimate of what we're likely to get at the next one. I would say. It's. A pretty good predictor. Obviously. Things change in the, you know, the design process, but this is. There's that much more detail since the last cost estimate. So. The risk, I should say, is going down. Yeah, I would, I would echo that just saying that as we go through the. As, as a 19 goes through the design process. Estimators carry what they call a design contingency. So they know what should be there in the document by the end, but they don't know exactly what it is. So they put a percentage against it. So the further, the more we have for them to actually estimate the better the numbers are going to be. At least the more confidence we can have in those numbers. So with these numbers coming in. Both relatively close and both under budget. With where that we are in the document phase. We should feel pretty comfortable that. As we go forward, those numbers are just going to solidify and, and hopefully the market helps us out. In the end, as far as inflation and what we're carrying as an inflation number. We have a good bid environment when the time comes because really ultimately. And that's what it's going to come down to who's available to bid this at that time. It would also be useful if in addition to showing the total construction costs, if you could go down further and show us. The projected total project costs. Well, I would go back to the. Do we have our budget summary. This, this. Yeah. Yeah, so our total project again is 46.1. That's our budget. And so that is, as we just said, as well just said, we haven't changed that based on the current snapshot showing that we're under budget. That's showing that we're doing good. We're on target. Unlike the last time where we had to make a correction to the budget. That which was back in September, I believe. So we can hold tight with this 46.1. And continue moving forward. I'm not sure I understand that. I think it needs a little more explanation. So we've, we've the. Construction cost estimate has been reduced by $2 million. That's just an estimate. Yeah. So we are, we are. We would be projecting a total project costs. Of $2 million less than what you are showing us. Is that correct? Yes. But you're showing that we're, we're holding on to a budget of. 46 million when the total project costs. Would be more like 43 million or 44 million. Correct. Yes. I think, you know, this is. We developed a budget that we're back in September that we're willing to work with. And we're designing to that budget. We're working towards that budget. But it's good news where we've, the estimate came in below that. But, you know, when two months time the market could be different, things could be changed. We wouldn't want to adjust the budget every, with every snapshot. And it's not really what the purpose of doing these estimates for is to verify that we're on budget, not to change our budget. So again, I'm going to. Certainly you could do that if you wanted to be decided to. Well, I may be asking may have asked the wrong question. The question I was trying to get at is what is the, the current estimate of the total project costs. So that would be will, if you can go to the other sheet that does show a revised. That shows it with the current number. There we go. So the total project cost right now you're, you have at about $43 million, $43 million, $900,000. Yes. Okay. So questions about the cost estimation. Yep, Sean. Tim, is it, you may not know the soft hand. I think it's about a 1% escalation that they're carrying for roughly a year. That's what it looked like, but I kind of, I'd do the, I probably could just grab my calculator and figure it out, but the 2.2 million. Yeah. So the, the two estimators. You know, they didn't necessarily agree on. On the escalation, but we had a. I don't know the total number of that 2.2, but I don't have the percentage. Okay. But I think you already mentioned, if escalation gets back into a normal. So 4 or 5% that might be. Help us offset any other increases that might come up over the next year. Yes, absolutely. Okay. Other questions about the cost estimation, Alex. I guess I just wanted to understand when you're comparing. The 46 million against the 43 million, I guess I want to understand. Is the 46 million. The number that we arrived at after we did the value engineering. So are we. Are we comparing sort of apples to apples, like the value engineered and number with what that costs today? Or are we looking at sort of what the project was before we did the value engineering. I think I was post value engineering. When it was recognized that there was a major shift in the market. And so the budget had to be adjusted. So we're comparing. The value engineering. The value engineering. The value engineering. The value engineering. The value engineering. The value engineering. The value engineering. From September that 46 million. To what it's currently estimated to be at, which is, is 43. Okay. And I think, thank you. And I think that we, I know one of the things we had talked about was synthetic slate. And I unfortunately wasn't able to attend the last meeting, but I think we looked at synthetic slate. And I know that was sort of. In the budget out of the budget. That's probably one thing that wasn't maybe in the 46 million. So that might be an additional savings that we're seeing as well. Possibly. I believe that was in there, Alex. Okay. Switched to synthetic slate. I believe we took that savings. To get us to the 46. Thanks Ellen. Other questions about the cost estimation. And Tim, I appreciate the word that you used. This is really good news from the point of view of the. Of the project. It's really good news when combined with the success that we are having in fundraising. So this is really. Really good news to share. Okay. There are no other questions questions on the cost estimate. The next item under collars is the design development. Package approval. Based on where we are with the cost estimates. And we're looking for approval from the committee to be able to. Move into the next phase. So we want to have the design team start construction documents. And as we'll add in the schedule earlier, it showed that that bar would go for the next several months. And I think we're looking for approval from the committee to be able to move into the next phase. That bar would go for the next several months. I apologize. I don't have the schedule in front of me. Will, do you want to go back to the schedule? Yep. Yep. So there you are. Tim. Yeah. Trying to put my glasses on so I can see it. So yeah. So the construction documents. Essentially would go into. The late fall. And then we would go into the bidding phase. In November. Right. Schedule shows construction documents completion. Looks like mid November and the cost estimation. Late October early November. Yeah, as well mentioned, we'll do a cost estimate again at the 75% set. So again, take a snapshot and time and just again. Verify we're on target. And at that time, you know, make adjustments as necessary. Right. Okay. Is there a motion. Relevant here, Sean. Yeah. So the motion would be. To recommend. That the town manager authorized moving to the construction documents phase. Our contract ultimately the town manager. Is the authority to move us. So if the committee. So that would be the motion for anyone wants to make it to, to recommend to the town manager that. He had authorized moving to the construction documents phase. Okay. Is there a second to that motion. George. George is seconded. Okay. Discussion of the motion. Alex. I apologize if I missed this at the last meeting. But I guess so in signing off on the design development, things like the landscaping and, you know, the rooms and I assume anything related to ever source and whatever we need to do from an energy perspective, I guess I just want to. Make sure all those ducks are in a row or, or can be put in a row. Like after we sign off on this, because those are the bits, I guess. I'm not sure where we stand on those. So I just want to make sure that either we'll have the opportunity or that they're. Handled. There are open. Sorry. Go ahead. I would say if there's open questions, we would want to know that now before going to the next phase. I mean, if there's questions that have. Need to be answered before moving to construction documents. You have an answer to that question. I'm not aware of anything that. Would prevent us from moving forward. Any questions that we have would really be further development of the design, which is really when we'll start getting into the details or Ellen and her team will start getting into the details. In the construction document phase. Alex, you want to make sure that your question is getting answered. So I guess I just want to make sure, I mean, one. That I know of, we haven't finalized the landscaping. If I miss that bit and I apologize. And then in terms of. Furnishing, obviously we haven't seen anything yet, but I'm thinking about the sense of the room. And then also I'm thinking about the energy efficiency. Like I. I assume we are where we're supposed to be with the EUI, but I don't know. And I, and I also don't know where we are relative to hitting any goals we need to for. The incentives and rebates and things we get back from ever source. So if those are. Three things that are still planning on happening during construction documents, that's great. But if that's something where we're supposed to have that resolved in there, aren't further opportunities, then that's, I guess, my question. Ellen. Wait a minute, Ellen. Yes. Thanks, Alex. I can. I'm going to give it to just me, but I just wanted to add to the group. We have 20 weeks to finish this as per our agreement in which we think is sufficient, but we're coming up against it to meet the NBLC deadline in November. So that to us, all of us as a group, we have to meet that date. So with that said, just, could you just comment on the. Where we are for the interiors and stuff, the rebates and things, Alex, I honestly don't know where they are. And I don't know if Craig was handling that. Go ahead, Justine. Yeah, just to jump quickly on rebates and credits. I think maybe that might be something Wilma or Tim, I want to chime in on just because it's hard to hear you, justine. Sorry. Can you hear me better now? Can you turn it up your mic? Yeah, give me one second. It's up all the way. Okay. Okay. Better. Okay. Great. So for the. Incentives for ever source. Craig was working with them and will you might have something to add to that of where you guys are. So we can't quite speak to where we are as far as that goes, but we can speak to all of the other things that. Alex mentioned. So I'll just run through those quickly. And then Tim, and if you want to chime in on the ever source portion, you can, as far as the furnishings and interior finishes, we are actually already communicating with Stafura and that will be happening on the early part of the CD startup. As Ellen mentioned, we do have 20 weeks to go through the construction documents. So we will be hitting all of these elements at the early stages of CDs. And we're actually already looking at dates of when we would be coming out next to review interior finishes. To review landscaping that will be another item on the hit list at the very early stages of CDs. We went through multiple reviews with all of you and MVLC and, and Rachel and our team at Berkshire, they have a list of things that they're, you know, that are on the top of the list to start CDs. So we would have another review with you folks on that. For sustainability. We already have it on our schedules to run an energy model and after approval, a tally calculation at the onset of CDs to make sure that we are where we plan to be. The last, you know, we looked at things we were on target, but of course we will run those numbers again. And then we will look at the, at the early stages of construction documents as well. Great. Tim or will do you have an answer on the. Ever sorts. Question. Well, I don't know if you have any specific information. I don't have an update, but typically. We need to give the utility company the specifications and show them what types of equipment we're planning on using. And then we'll send them the actual. Equipment list so that they can provide us with a. The cost savings based on the equipment we're proposing versus what would be their baseline. So we'll need some. Ever source would really be. We'd send them. The documents again. And it would really just be. A check in to make sure. From. Schematic through design. That we're still. On target. From the last time they saw the documents. So there isn't. It's not as though the times past for ever source. It's kind of an ongoing process until. Even through construction really. For them. Alex, are you satisfied. I think I sort of, I mean, again, I'm, I, I'm not looking to prolong the process. I'm trying to understand. What we've set out as goals and where we are today. And for example, you know, when we run the energy model and the tally calculation. If for some reason we're not where we expect to be. But we've already signed off on design development. I mean. I mean, is that just like too bad or is there like, will we then shift to make sure that we get like, I'm just trying to understand the process. Because this is my first building. Sure. Oh, and I think I might be talking. That's a legitimate question, Alex. I can't give you an answer because I don't. We haven't. Done a lot of, I mean, we run energy models all the time. Right on all of our projects for years. We've been doing it. We've been doing it. We've been doing it. We've been doing it. But actually they stay in a line. Right. Tally is relatively new wish. So we are assuming and just when you can chime in that we, we will be fine because we haven't changed our course of action. It's still the big picture. So. I don't know. I'm hoping. That we're good to go. But we won't know what we have that. And I guess the question again, I'm sorry. Alex trying to get this pin. It's supposed to run it and it doesn't look right. The question I hear Alex asking is, what do we do? I don't know. It depends why it depends what's off. On it. So I'll ask the question again, and it's slightly different. I'm sorry. Is it too late once we've signed off on these. Once you're into construction documents. To make any adjustments. That's what I hear Alex ask. And by adjustments, I only mean to make sure we're getting to what. We said we were going to do not that I'm going to suddenly change. A skylight or something, not that kind of change. I mean. I, I, Austin, I'm not quite sure how to answer you, because I don't know till we run it. So if we run it in some things, often we need to add insulation, or we need something else is often we need to do that. We won't know till we do it. And I Alex, I want to give you an answer. I want to say, yes, we'll be fine. And it's only if it's tweaking things, we're good to go. But if something comes back, it's like. Crazy. I think then we have a discussion, but the thing that is in my mind is the MBLC date of November, whatever, because if we don't hit that date, you don't get that money. And that's, so we're trying to juggle all these things. So Alex, I'm to be honest, I hope we hit it and. We will have, I mean, what we'll do is just, you know, I will, we'll have conversations with our mechanical folks. You know, it's just in house sustainability group to see if, you know, just on the surface, is there anything. That we should be really worried about. Sean. Just along the same lines, I guess. What does the meeting schedule look like for the next phase? Is it going to be more intense. Meetings as we get kind of the same schedule. It won't. So it won't be more. I mean, Josephine, you can chime in. I think we're going to continue to have design meetings about the interiors and stuff and some specific meetings about the overall. Building, but we had a really good meeting last week. Yeah, it was last week where we got close to the color of the brick and outside materials. We're going to come back to Amherst with larger samples and we'll pick those. So it's not a lot of design meetings. What we are doing is actually. We're drawing and figuring things out, but. There will be interior design meetings as we need another landscape meeting. So we have to, we'll have to get work with calliers and publish that. Okay. Good to know. But also in addition, we have a number of meetings we have to meet with folks in the town and the hot one on my head is the mayor's office. And we had a great reaction from a person in the, in the audience last week from the historic group who loved what we presented. So. Right. It's positive. Right. But we take down this slide that's in front of us. Okay. Other questions. Remember the motion on the table is to recommend to the town manager that we. Move from design development into the construction drawing phase. Any other questions about that? Okay. Are we ready to vote? Voting on the motion to recommend to the town manager. Sharon. Yes. Alex. Yeah. George. Yes. Thank you. Sean. Yes. Christine. Yes. Anika. Yes. And Austin votes yes. Paul, I assume you don't want to vote on whether we should recommend something to you. Whichever. Yeah. I vote yes. Okay. Good. All right. Thank you. That is, that is, that is great. And again, very exciting moment for this. Project as was the meeting on the eighth. Seeing the, the bricks. I think it's just really, really, really, really, really great. Really great to see the progress that you all are making. Subcommittee reports. Christine. Nothing to report. Thank you, Christine. Alex. We haven't met. Okay. Correspondence. None that I know of. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. The topic is not anticipated by the chair of 48 hours in advance. None that I'm aware of. So next is an opportunity for public comment. We have seven. People in the audience again, thanks to all of you for coming. If anyone would like to make a comment, please raise your virtual hand. Okay. I see no. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry for coming. So that completes our agenda for today. Again, I want to say. The. Cost estimate. Seeing the brickworks. Moving. Into this phase of construction document. Knowing the. Success that are. Capital fund raising is. Generated. I just think it's worth a moment of good news for the. Renovation and expansion of the Jones library. So, okay. Stay well, everybody. This meeting is adjourned. Thank you. Good night. Thank you.