 Welcome to the Rochester high school repurposing committee public involvement kickoff meeting extraordinaire. I'm Dan McKinley I'm the town moderator but I'm not necessarily acting that role tonight I just agreed to facilitate this committee meeting and this community process. So I'll be acting as facilitator our objective or our goals for this evening are to kickoff the public involvement process for this high school repurposing project. We're going to talk about how we got to where we are right now and a process lined up for moving forward with repurposing the high school. Goals of the repurposing committee and their consultants this evening are number one is just transparency so the community knows what's going on and questions can be asked, questions can be answered. We'll be sharing information about what they do know and taking your questions outlining where they're planning to take this process and to listen to you all and collect feedback. So those are the goals tonight and I'll be trying to move us through that agenda and those goals this evening. We'll have a presentation, a number of presentations and then a Q&A for you all. Just a couple of maybe ground rules that we can use just to keep it orderly. We don't have a big crowd but still let's use our tried and true skills from Robert's rules. Raise your hand if you want to speak and I'll call on you in the order that I see you raise your hand. As always be respectful, take your turn, keep your comments free if you may so everyone if you can, so everyone can have a chance to talk. Of course no personal attacks, it's fine to talk about the ideas but not about the person that's sharing them. There was a nice little saying that says respect is the oil that keeps ideas and communication flowing and if no one knows who said that, I think I'm going to claim it as my own, I think it's pretty good. Respect is the oil that keeps ideas and communication going so let's have a respectful dialogue. I want to note that this is a charged issue for a lot of folks, there's a lot of history, a lot of emotion around this building, this place for myself. My kids went through this school and lots of you went to this school or your children or grandchildren went through this school so there's a lot of memories right here on this stage, this auditorium so I want to be aware of that and let you all be aware of that as you speak. So tonight as we go through we'll have five speakers starting off is going to be Vic Robato who's the co-chair of the high school repurposing committee and Vic's going to share how we got here to where we are today with the high school and then Dick Robinson, Dick Robson, excuse me, from Hancock, the retired architect, co-founder of the White River Valley players, Dick's going to talk about the building itself and the condition of the building. Catherine Shakeman, co-chair of the Rochester High School Repurposing Committee, we'll talk about the potential programs that are being looked at to repurpose and where those came from and what will be looked at and then our two consultants, Peter Fairweather is the owner of Fairweather Consulting out of New Pulse, New York and Greg Gossin is the principal of GBA Architects at a Montpelier and they'll be talking about the feasibility study that's going to look at the potential uses, future uses of the project and they'll talk about the scope and the timeline of that feasibility study. After each of them have had a turn to speak I think we're going to hold questions at the end. You're all going to present and then we're going to open it up for questions and answers and dialogue and just be yeah just getting feedback. With that I think we can move forward unless you're any questions about the process how we're going to do this tonight. Okay so we'll start with Vic. You want to come up here, Vic? Hello, I'm Vic Robato and please excuse me for reading my comments tonight. I just there's a lot of important details to convey and I don't trust my memory about the details or the order in which they occur so I'm going to be reading and this will take less than 10 minutes so hopefully it won't be too big. Can you hear me? I don't put the mask on it's a little harder but, pardon me, I'm fine. If you can hear me that's what counts. Okay so Rochester High School which where we are now was built in 1974 was the site of a junior and senior high school education for the Valley. It also served as a major focal point for the community as both an educational resource and the foundation of the school community that often span generations of the same families. It was a site of many community activities and events like the musicals and plays put them by the players, the annual town meetings, school band concerts, soccer games outside and much more. The events brought the community together and added sustainability and substantially to the quality of life. Following years of changing demographics and falling enrollment the last class graduated in June of 2018 and the school closed. Following implementation of Format Act 46 the Rochester and Stockford school districts merged effective July 1, 2018. The newly created Rochester Stockford Unified School District Board undertook many challenging tasks to make the merger a successful reality. One of which was to decide whether the Rochester Elementary School should remain in the elementary school building or move to the vacant high school building. The school board contracted with Black River Design of Montpelier to assess the conditions of both buildings. Among its findings Black River advised that due to the condition of the high school building and depending on how it was reused the capital cost could be anywhere from $300,000 to $3,000,000. Dick Robson will have much more to say about the condition of the building in his comments. In the end the board decided to keep the elementary school building and that continued possession and operation of the high school building was unnecessary. That decision led to a formal subdivision of the high school land and building from the rest of the school property so that another entity, whether the town or private party, could purchase the high school property and that subdivision was completed this past spring. The merger agreement that formed the unified school district allows for the town of Rochester to buy the building from the unified district for a dollar so long as it maintains ownership for at least five years and uses it for community and public purposes. From the school board's perspective it's a costly and unproductive asset that they quite logically are eager to dispose of. Even vacant the building costs thousands of dollars annually to minimally heat and to ensure and maintain. But if left unheated in Vermont's harsh winters even with water lines drained key parts of the building heating and plumbing systems would be destroyed and the foundation would likely buckle according to facilities consultant to the school board. So at the school board's request a select board agreed to pay up to fifteen thousand dollars to help heat the high school building during the current fiscal year. A fund drive will take place this winter to help cover the cost with private donations. So what will become of the high school property? One can imagine several alternate future scenarios. And here are four and maybe there are more. It could just be boarded up and left unheated and vacant. This would be the cheapest option but result in an unusable and unmarketable empty hulk in the middle of town. Two, it could be torn down at a cost of seven hundred and seventy thousand dollars according to Black River design. Three, it could be sold to a private party for some new business purpose. The school board had contacted four commercial real estate brokers this year but none of them saw potential value as being high enough to be worth their investment of time and effort to make to market it. Also if a third party did buy it a town would have no control over what kind of business would go here so long as it met the zoning requirements. Or fourth, it could be acquired by the town and repurposed for some kind of new public benefit function. And that is what we are here tonight to talk about. What I have observed of the select board is that they are committed to supporting whatever future the high school property is in the community's best interests and to give the Rochester voters the opportunity to weigh in on that decision. With that in mind, the select board applied for and one a grant from the Vermont Department of Community Development to assess the financial feasibility of a multifaceted plan to repurpose the high school property. This is the answer to the question. Is there a way to develop the property that would not settle the town taxpayers with millions of dollars in capital improvement costs and $50,000 or so of a year of high energy costs? With that grant, the town contracted with Fairweather Consulting of New Pulse, New York in conjunction with GBA Architects of Opelier to conduct the feasibility study. You will hear shortly from Peter Fairweather and Greg Gossens, principal with the GBA Architects, about the feasibility study scope and work plan. As you will see, the work plan will take us to the summer of 2022, at which time the select board could put a proposal before the votes. Catherine Shankman will talk about the specifics of the repurposing plan developed so far, but let me share just a little bit about how that came about. Many of you will recall a local community development initiative called Envision Rochester that ran in 2019 and 2020. Following a series of community meetings and a voting process, repurposing the high school was selected in February 2020 as a top priority for exploration and development. With the blessing of both the select board and the school board, a volunteer committee organized, which Catherine and I now co-chair, to create a concept for what the new purpose might be and how best to serve the community. What evolved over 18 months was the program that Catherine will talk about shortly. And now I'll turn it over to Dick Robinson. Good evening. I'd like to first show you this is the report done by Black River Design that studied all the school buildings in some detail and assessed their condition and they're looking at future use and they were always looking at school uses for all the buildings, what kinds of maintenance, what kinds of improvements would need to be made in order to decide which of these buildings to keep the school and which to get rid of. So first of all, the overall assessment is this is a working building. It has a viable envelope that though it's poorly insulated and so forth, it's there, it's intact. The systems though, fairly antiquated work. So it is a functioning or a functionable building. There are, however, a lot of issues that need to be addressed among the ones that that would need to be addressed for almost any use in this building are code issues like ADA issues, access issues. The bathrooms are not up to code in terms of handicap access. The there's no handicap access, for instance, from the house to the stage or stage to the music room. And so those kinds of issues would definitely need to be addressed. Another code issue that would need to be addressed is under fire code that I think I believe if we were to renovate more than 12,000 square feet, that sounds right, that we would have to spring fire sprinklers for the entire building. That's quite a project. And there's apparently emergency lighting upgrade that needs to happen. So beyond those immediate issues for almost any use, we have a lot of issues that should be addressed. And one of the major ones is energy use. This building was built in 1973-74. Oil prices were very low as before the oil embargo, you may recall. And it's very poorly insulated and it requires a large heating system as a result. So it makes so much sense in a facility like this that we would hope it lasts for a long time to try to reduce its energy use because rather than looking to find the right kind of fuel, for instance, whether it's electricity, sun or whatever system, is to reduce the use because that will last as long as the building does. So the building needs insulation, roof, walls. The windows are single pane. Air sealing is very poor. The wind blows right through here. Under electrical, there's suggestions. I don't know the requirements to upgrade the electrical panels. And the building systems, heating, ventilating, air conditioning systems should be replaced. There are two oil boilers that heat the building right now. There's a ventilation system, which you have the delight of hearing right now, which works but which really needs to be replaced rather than repaired. The control systems for the building are antiquated and need to be upgraded. And then another issue that they point out is that part of this building is in the flood plain. And we know that from the time of Irene when Irene came through that door and the water was up to row I, I believe. It was destroyed most of the seating in here, the stage, and required complete rebuilding of that and complete re-outfitting of the stage equipment. So I won't, I'm not going to go into detail in terms of the cost there. They do have their guesstimates and costs of these various things. And you're welcome to look at this plan if you are interested in that kind of detail. But as I say, their estimates are based on this becoming an improved educational facility. So we'll have to see what proposals come out in terms of the use here and what the effect is on state codes and therefore costs. So I'll be glad to answer questions later on. Katherine. My name is Katherine Shankman. Both my daughters went to school here. And even some of my grandchildren have participated in programs here, Suzuki Institute, White River Valley player summer camp. It's been always a place of, since I moved to town, not only a high school, but a place of social engagement, a place where the community comes together. And it's always been lively here. And it wasn't long before I moved to town, because my husband wanted us to move to this town, that I realized that we all made the best decision. It was something I never looked back on once I moved here. You really have a chance to find a place in the community and to have a voice in the community. It's a place where your ideas are welcome. And if you have the energy and the stamina, you can develop your ideas. And the engagement workshop sponsored by Envision, that big reference, was a very important part of what launched our committee work. Because for those of you who didn't go, there was a prioritization process where five different areas of interest were selected. And included in that was arts and learning, was family, children and elders. There was business development. And the high school was another one. And I think farming was another one. And our agricultural aspect of this community. And at the end of that workshop, sponsored by Envision, folks got up and said that they've realized that if the repurposing of the high school was done in such a way, it could include all the other priorities that had been established that night. And that pretty much set the direction for the committee who was sitting on the high school. And included me and Dick was there. And Dick was soon to join us. And some of the people who are in this room were there. I think Carolyn, weren't you there that night too? Yeah. So we've come up with a multi-use plan that has five different components. Childcare, adult daycare, arts and learning, maker space, which is tied very much into arts and learning. And co-working spaces. Small incubators, co-working spaces. And people were already asking to reserve office spaces for them. In fact, somebody in the post office who was in the post office with me today earlier couldn't make the meeting tonight. And he said, do I write a formal letter to the committee to reserve an office space for me? So there really is community interest. I'd like to know the method by which we should get the word out because the paper is no longer the only way to do it in front page forum and Facebook. But it seems that these days everybody has a specialized means of communication. And we will continue to get the word out. We spent the day today with the consultants, each one of the committees, giving them the progress of what these committees have developed. The arts and learning committee has, they conducted two community surveys. And based on the surveys have our developing program, they identified teachers to provide classes based on the community interest. They have established fees and class, the class structure size. And so we're hoping that that will get launched before even the school is acquired because they've realized that there are enough venues in the town to be able to start an arts and learning program. And within that committee are leadership from all the long-established arts organizations like the White River Valley Players and Rochester Chamber Music Society, Green Mountain Suzuki Institute, which holds a week long summer camp here. And Big Town Gallery is also involved. And so is the Ridgeline Outdoor Collective. We have interest from one planet. And so there's been, and I'm sorry if I'm missing anybody as I say this, but unlike Vic, I didn't bring notes. And so I think that what is starting will grow where we are bringing people already involved in these things under one umbrella. You might have seen the Hall of Calendar this summer where the libraries were also included from Pittsfield, Rochester, up in Hancock as well. And that's the kind of all inclusive way we see this. And we don't see this as a Rochester venue in the future. We see it as an asset for the entire Queen Town area, a regional resource for whatever the building can offer. And if you can just allow your imagination to wander a bit, you know, people being right next to an elementary school, having a childcare center, and also small incubator spaces, that's a chance for my firsthand experience. And also to the audience that this is an elder community, folks. And there are a lot of people that are in need of more care than you can get just based on what's available in the home. And so the adult daycare centers, they delay institutional placement. And they're a place for social engagement and intellectual stimulation for the participants. Let me see. The incubator space is successful over in Randolph. We don't even have available office space in this town. So we have 33,000 square feet in this building. And I know we can make good use of it. I understand from recent polling of the community, there's a great interest in a food hub. And there's also interest in developing the agricultural lands. So there's a possibility that that can also be included in our component. So this is about a dream. And I understand, you know, there's facts, there's figures, there's money that involves upgrading this building. But there's also grants and there's very generous federal money coming down the pipeline that we really believe we can access to. So I would encourage people not to be discouraged by fear of cost. Yes, there's a practical aspect to it. But there are solutions that we don't even know about. I think if there's a will behind a dream, then there is the possibility of manifesting it. And I hope that you can get your dreams come alive in seeing your imagination for this very important town asset. Thank you. Hello, everybody. I'm Peter Fairweather with Fairweather Consulting and with me is Greg Gossens of GBA Architecture and Planning. And we're going to talk a little bit about the the feasibility study that's going to actually was basically started today. And being a good consultant, I have brought a visual aid with me, which will be projected shortly, which is basically it'll show you the tasks that are involved in the feasibility study, as well as the timing of it. And it should be up on the screen shortly. If not, there's hard copy available. But basically, as we just heard, part of this process of thinking about re reusing a facility is using your dreams and imagination. There's a famous saying about don't despair if you built your castles in the air, that's where they belong. But just make sure they have a good foundation eventually. And that's really what our role in this process is, is to look at what are the different options that could be supported in this building, and then bring together a couple of things to test that and move it forward. One is, what will the market bear? And we what we're going to be doing is it all right, good. So my role in this process is to really look at the market in terms of demographics, consumer preferences, kind of local stakeholders interest to see what demand is there, what kind of support is there for certain kinds of services to make sure that if they're offered, there'd be sufficient resources, either through fees, or other kinds of financial support so that it can be self-sustaining. So that as these dreams are realized, the costs can be accounted for and can be carried by the community in a sustainable way. And this is the kind of work I've been doing for a number of years. I do economic development, strategic planning and feasibility studies, and have been involved in the adaptive reuse of facilities for a long time and feasibility studies on everything ranging from an equestrian center to a food technology park to the adaptive reuse of schools. So this is kind of familiar territory. And Greg and I just finished the project in West Burke, looking at ways to help revitalize that village based upon looking at market possibilities and what the opportunities are there, and then what the physical configuration of the process would be like. And that's where Greg's expertise came in. So just to go through this briefly, the first task you'll see which goes through the first three months is kind of a preliminary break-even analysis. And that's where we're going to look at generally what are the kinds of revenues that are associated with the activities we're thinking about in terms of incubator space, arts programming, adult daycare, child care, maker space. And also what are the, what are estimates of the operating costs? And again, sort of high level preliminary estimates to see is this an idea worth exploring? Is it feasible and likely that you're going to get enough revenue from these kinds of activities to cover the operating costs of the facility? And if we get the go ahead on that after that first task that it looks like this is something that's possible, then we start to dig in more deeply into what are the specific activities and what are the components of that spatially that would be needed to be here either through renovation or restoration to support those activities. So the first step again, conceptually, I'll be doing the market analysis. And again, it's looking at demographic trends, consumer preferences, talking to folks in the marketplace about what they see as potential demand for everything from adult daycare, child care, arts programming, maker spaces, and co-working. And then putting together what that mix of uses might look like. And then the next step in that part, as we were accounting lovers, what does that mean in terms of physical facilities? And Greg, you want to talk about your part of this? Sure. So once we start getting some ideas on what could happen and with economically viable that can happen and do some community building with that, our studio will start taking a look at how they could fit into this facility. What is the most efficient way to do it? What's the most efficient way to use this facility? It's obviously, Dick pointed out there are a number of issues with it, but also the bones are really good. It was also, it was interesting, I found out that it was designed as an open plan school, pretty much a failed educational concept. But actually it's going to serve this purpose well because it's going to basically design for flexibility and openness. So that's going to help us a bit, which is really, really good. But we will dig auger and deep with various options on how to rearrange spaces, how to fit the program in, but we'll also take a look at things like the thermal shell, so working with energy modeling, some other people to figure out what to do with the building to bring it up to code, bring it up to the current energy efficiency standards, and look at long-term operating costs and making sure that that all balances out to our firm specializes in community redevelopment projects. We are very fossil and that kind of thinking in those lines and also adaptive reuse projects, which is also nice because when it's a school, you only have really two arrows in your quiver for funding. One is the taxpayers and the other one is state aid to education, which is kind of dried up right now. With the uses we're talking here, all of a sudden your quiver, your financial quiver is going to have 10 times that amount, if not even more, potential funding sources. And that's going to be really important. So we'll be taking a look at how all that fits in. Yeah, so again just to go over this real quickly, you can see on the chart up there, we're going to do the preliminary break-even analysis, then we're going to do the market analysis and look to get that done probably about March. Then we start to prepare the master space plan. We have an understanding now, what are the sorts of things that are going to happen here than Greg works his magic and say, all right, where does it go, how does it fit into the space? And then the master facility plan is, all right, what do we have to do to get ready here? And Greg said the good news is this is a pretty flexible space because of the poor educational choice that was made in 1974, I guess. And then we put together the overall operating budget, you see in task five and then task six, which was putting together that quiver, we look at what are the possible funding sources that could be used to make the investment, help defray some of the costs involved with it, and then put this all together in a business plan of going forward, what are the uses, how is the building going to be configured, how does this get paid for both in terms of revenues from programs and potential funding sources. So that I think gives you an overview of the process we're going to be involved in and we'll be happy to take any questions at the appropriate time. Can you help me leave this up for the folks that have a paper copy? Well, I think you can turn the lights up and go into the Q&A. So I think our committee members and consultants are going to just sit up here on the front of the stage and we'll open it up for questions, comments, ideas, dreams. We have Molly's going to be running the microphone around. Please wait for it, especially because we're wearing masks, it can be difficult to hear folks. So who would like to go first? In the back is Martha. And I may not recognize you with a mask or I may not recognize you or I may forget your name, even though I've known you for 30 years. So please say your name. I'm a member of the player. I'm very, very happy to see all the work that's been done to be presented in school. And I wish I could not help in any way I can. I just wanted to say that it's very hopeful, very hopeful, to be able to see this happening. I think it's an important thing because it's not only like it's coming out, it's not only in this building. Part of the school is a hub in their lives. Debbie? Hi, I'm Deb Matthews. And this question is on why it was a agreement. I had looked it up on the AOL website this morning and another sentence after the sentence about the town has to see this for five years. And instead, if the town does not use it for community purposes and they decide to sell it, and they have to reimburse the Unified District for in top-of-the-loom children to remain when the Unified District has. So that's good to me that there are a lot of options. I'm glad that I was looking at it, but also it's how it's going to be like the town of the town and sell it here if you didn't come through. Do you like understanding that kind of thing? Oh, yes, I believe that. Is this on? Yeah, I believe that it's right. Yes, I believe that's right. So, yeah, if the plan didn't pan out and the town decided to sell the building, it would have been the town to continue that. We would not have to reimburse if we sold earlier than five years. Folks not hear that? Robert said that there would be nothing at this point to repay. There's no improvements that they made. Is that right, Robert? That's correct. Okay. What's the part about the five years? Can you talk about the five years? It says to advance for any of the U.S. property so the conditions on the town should only be utilizing the real property that the community and public property is for a minimum of five years. Next question. I can't tell who it's freezing your hand behind your mask. Yola. Sorry, Yola. Hi, Yola Abishev. So, it's not a question. I just have a comment. Would like to applaud you guys for doing this. My son was the last graduate of this high school and just even thinking about now, like I'm being very sad, because I had been on this school more than also a chair for about seven years, tried to that. So, it was a whole very sad process. And now I am the type coordinator of the one plan of the school program. And I see how everything is in thousand cycles. And we all know what rights are in cycles. And we have 20 kids in kindergarten. We have a lot of kids in all, in elementary school. And this year, we have 20 more kids than the previous last year. So, the numbers growing of the young kids. So, I see a big progress on this, you know, doing something with the data. I know families with young children, some of them come to my program, but I understand why it's, you know, come to the door and they could easily, you know, use data. And I remember, we won't be able to use it, but we won't be able to use it. And it was so nice to see the kids from the elementary school just walk over to the eight-year center. And that could happen again, hopefully. And so, there's a lot of it. And I, my last two years, after that school program, closed, my elementary school program operated at the FTS room next to the other column. And so, also, I tried things about just keeping that part of the building. And I don't know if that's feasible or, like, you know, if they might achieve it. But I think I would be self in favor of keeping the whole building. And it just, like everybody said, a lot of people here said, it's so many memories there now. And now, seeing even this, all they said, the gymnasium in the elementary school, just, it's what it's, it's, it's, it's, it's just one more step towards not having community being involved in this school life, in this, in sports, and things like that. Now, it just, that's what I like about being in a small community, you know, kind of like, kind of kind of like, it was like, it was just, like, people were saying that, like, capital was saying, this is, this is that heart of the community. And it was like, especially after the, close. And I remember the people were saying, oh, you know, we won't have choice, but people, people go, but there will still be a town that is still visible. But we still think it's going on, not true. And we all knew it. Because they, they have sports. They come home on a bus from, you know, doing activities in the other schools, we just hope we have separate schools all over. And we are not visible. We are just no young people in taking this problem on. Like that, you know, that you can do something with it, you know. So I think, you know, this, this will be maybe bringing forward what you guys were talking about. And I just hope it will all come to fruition. And thank you so much. This is just what you're talking about. I just want to respond. Thank you. One of the visions that we have in the Arts and Learning Center is to create intergenerational opportunities for learning, including the makerspace. We're talking about adult education. We're talking about older children education. And we're talking about family education so that a parent and a child can actually take classes together. And, you know, and the program is not just about arts. We are also developing industrial learning so that we can take part-groupry or electricity or plumbing. We even have a local mechanic who's interested in teaching car mechanics for beginners. So I mean, we talked about actually leading up with other school systems to see if we can get satellite. And actually Robert's been working with Jamie on developing that. So, I mean, there's a lot of possibility here. We have a lot of student footage. And we are the only auditorium. Only, you know, right now we're just sitting. It's the only kind of gathering we want to place. What is the entire cleaning area? So, actually none of the other schools, you know, as you and the district, you know, none of the other school, you know, this is the other school that I'll be talking about. And they just kind of, this is just a side of my mind. But, you know, it's sad that you made that Starbridge wants to redefine. The Starbridge kids don't come here. They, since when the school was still open and the building was still open when, at least this part was still operating. And so there was a plan to do things together. And then again, there was like a beautiful new room that we couldn't utilize. That never happened either. It was just the talk of the arts, art on the card, the music on the card, which is like, you know, the music. But, um, so that was, you know, hopefully this will be, this will happen in some other way. Thank you. Major, then Carolyn, and then Larry. I just want to say, it has to be mentioned that, you know, there's a lot of cost involved, which people call cost in the day. So, look at it, and there's a tremendous cost by not doing as well. If we were to dismantle the school, and there's that notion that that's a possibility, and businesses could come in and take the space, and the town would be all, say, over what it's done and how it's done to this. That itself is a tremendous cost to this town. Something we will never get back. And, you know, we talk about how there's, when the school puts this piano, and everybody went out to do, you know, how it really vibrates to the school. It's kind of like dropping a stone and go a pond. It's just a little bit of community, and away from the community. And I think we mentioned this, the folks working on these buildings today, is what's so important in this town, you have to have every single one of them here, and you can broaden them in here, plus a sense of community. And the school, lots of post office, lots of grocery stores, like the play, but anything that has, we have all benefited. And it was easy to take this for granted when it was hearing the function. Well, now, without the high school students here, we've really lost a team factor of our community. And it's, we kind of have this notion now that everybody is out there to display this. But we can, we have the possibility to reword that notion and bring people back to this area. It doesn't have to continue on for everybody at this point. If we weren't on community to stay as a whole, we have an opportunity to work with the community to create programs and activities that people want. We all have the same. We have a survey here tonight to get more feedback, but please talk to your neighbors, your friends. This is a reality. We could lose this building. We could lose any potential for parenting on the things in this community that we so love. And this is our chance to show and to act on that commitment. And it doesn't have to come from everybody who's over 55 years of age. It can go into a lower age as well. So, as Kathy said, it's a huge financial commitment to explore that or to move beyond exploration to actually bring in nutrition, but it is a huge expense to lose it as well. And so I just leave, speak to the, get people excited, get people help, engage people at least in the conversation of what could happen here and what can happen here and what's the future of our town, what we wanted to look like. And that's what I have to say about it. So, thank you. Thanks, Mitch. Carolyn, right down here. A lot of emotional kind of feelings about the government. I'm also thinking, we're facing a kind of, I mean, it's a serious, serious situation. At the same time, what would be actually the plan if you ever considered, is there a possibility of there being, that this has been an alternative to the regular way of appearing in this, to get a plan that this would be done in an alternative way, so that it's an example of how public buildings can be built and cared for and carried on to clients. I'm getting very concerned about what's going possible and how this building could feel to have. The other thing that I've often thought about is that with climate changes, driving people from other parts of the world this way and New England is looking like a very wonderful place to go to. And we may need this back as a school building, because the fact that we're learning into where these people are going to live, how they're going to affect our plans, these are things that have to be considered, too, very seriously. And I think that this building comes to be an example of how it can be an advantage to climate change and cutting that in on everything you talk to me about that. Is that anything that's considered? And there must be plans that would be... We'll definitely be looking at resilience, not just flood resilience, but ecological resilience and community resilience when we do, when we do this. So it's definitely going to be part of the matrix as we develop the schemes. And we will be up here presenting different options and different means by which to do it and just see where the process takes us. But definitely, I think resilience is really important aspect of everything right now. And I do think resilience is a very broad subject and a lot of what I'm hearing is a lot of this community resilience aspect of it. And I think that's going to be just everything that's important is flood resilience and environmental resilience. But we're going to want it all. Thanks, Carol. Larry was next. Larry is next. So I have a question, I guess, primarily with the consultant. So I'm just curious about the task one in the grade reading analysis. So you have these five or six primary potential uses that you're examining. So what happens when you get to the end if you pull below the grade reading analysis? So is there a mechanism to be able to look at, you know, where you might make up for missing piece? For instance, you know, there's X numbers where we need to be used to maybe rent to to be leased for some other use. You know, say a quarter of a building with some outside use, you know, to make up for the missing piece. Yeah, I think that was a good description, Larry, of what the process was about. That first step is to really make sure that this feasibility study is worth doing. And, you know, like just to give you an example, if we say, all right, maker spaces, if in order to make this building work, the maker space needs to have 2,500 members, you know, that suggests it's, you know, this is not going to work and you need to rethink it. That could involve two things. It could involve retooling uses to include others, or it could be a situation where, and I don't foresee this happen, but you'd say, you know what, our sort of back to the end of the sketch is saying, you know, we're not going to go any far. You know, again, I don't foresee that as not, but that's, you know, if you look at all these potential revenue sources, and they're nowhere near what the operating costs are going to be, then, you know, our responsibility is to say, this is the situation where maybe it's, we need to rethink this thing altogether. I don't foresee that, but that's really the purpose of that first step is just to make sure that this is worth looking at in depth. But, you know, one of the implications is just as you said, are there gaps in revenue that can be filled by other kinds of uses, you know, maybe even renting a portion of the building out to a regular tenant in a separate organization. But so that's, that's really what we asked for these all about. I've got a question for Dick was waving around the Black River report. Dick, could that be made accessible on the town website or someplace? I know hard copies in the town office. I don't know if the report itself is posted on the website, but certainly can be. We'll make sure that there is a suggestion that people wanted to get to it. Did everyone hear that? It is posted. The Black River report on the facility is posted on the Supervisor Union website. And we'll try to get it posted on the town website as well. Thanks. And with a link. Next question. Yeah, I hear. I don't know who it is. Hi, I'm Dianne. I just came on to the door here for the talent stop bridge. And also there's only administrator there as well. So I wear a couple of hats. I think my comment that I want to make about this plan and this program is that our, well, we know you didn't really have a town. We had to grow up community. And we relied on kids, we relied on professors, we relied on faculty from a lot of our services and the things we needed. However, this particular program could really benefit the kids in our area. And I'm looking to see that we don't become an aging community where we age out and become the town's guys and result. Because we already got kind of scooped out by the state, you know, Act 46 to the ways of the hard decision making in our choices. We're now working together to correct that and make sure it's a positive result for both communities. And I just, I don't want to applaud the vision, applaud the steps that this report is taking to get the grand block program that you can do this feasibility study. I would love to see that hope be a lack of a report on our town side as well. Because I'd like hard, anyone interested in our town has small children to be able to access that and know what's going on. Because it's an impact though. I mean, I love to see after school activities that our kids could take a grander job, that type of thing. So we, our, our biggest concern right now is the redistricting proposal where they're looking to throw us in with going to an amendment. And at least no sense whatsoever. So we've got a little crowd and there we've got a fight. Because we're already well in sconce with the white river that sorts them and with you guys. And you don't want to see that community connection go away. It could be very isolating for us. It could not be a good thing. So just wanting to acknowledge that, I will say as the zoning administrator, I'm seeing a couple of inquiries a week for people buying property in our area, because they love the area and they want to see here. And the more we have to offer them, you know, yeah, we've got to drive when you're living from a better drive places to get what you want. This is a close, because this is a neighborhood, close neighborhood program that everybody can take at the end of the day. We're an opportunity for it that way. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for coming tonight. Next. Hi Bill. Hi, I'll just make a quick comment. For any program, any initiative like this to succeed, it's going to require partnerships. So reaching out to the doctors is just a logical thing to do. And then we look forward to building as many partnerships in this process as we can. Well, first off, Bill Matthews. But first, I want to thank all of you for the hard work you put into this program. These are very exciting times I think for Rochester, not only for this high school repurposing program, but also the Rochester area climate initiative, which is being coordinated by Vermont Council on World Development. And I guess my question or comment is, my question is that will you be working with the Rochester Climate Initiative to try to dovetail programs that make sense for the high school? The food talk you mentioned earlier, which I think would be unnatural. But there could be other things too, like when we talk about having a place to charge electric vehicles. So I think there's a lot of great ideas that are going around it. I think it's important. I personally think it would be important to try to dovetail and work with the other group. Yeah, maybe I could respond to that. Tim Kippard is also a core member of our committee and has provides that direct link to the Rochester Climate Initiative program, as well as the Valley Climate Initiative committee. So we always have just perspective on what we're trying to do. And from a physical standpoint, if we were talking today about the possibility of solar power around this building, let's get a look at what we are actually called. Back to your room. I think anybody out there who can be a partner on this project, or who you're talking to, just point this in the right direction. Yeah, I mean, because you know the capital letters better than what you do. And you know, as far as energy efficiency and all that other stuff, again, every aspect that we're going to look at, hopefully there's going to be computer modeling at some point in time, energy usage and the like. So, you know, where it takes us, we don't know quite yet, but I mean, I just don't want to open in every opportunity we can follow. I just want to respond that that was one of the first things that John Copeland's mentioned that our first meeting at the town meeting of that particular group was we need working in collaboration. And he said we want to be working in collaboration. There's energy, the multiple buildings in the town, it's all part from a town's perspective. You know, whatever the plan is going forward. Jeff, do you want to speak to any of this? Since we're here at the island? We can have a lot more and we do a lot of things here. Indeed, collaborative, you know, we, in addition to Black River analysis, the town, God's energy investments incorporated to do a light audit of all buildings, including high school here. So, we have more up-to-date estimates of the cost for upgrades to this facility, as well as other town facilities. Green Mountain Palace has reached out to us as well. They would like to create the call of the Zillion Seed Zone in Rochester to century aid and move them on the river and see cattle in the field. The town does not have a lot of solar-equipped real estate. And so, right around high school here was an area that they were interested in using for solar generation. So, now we have a connection. There is a, you can get a copy of the audit report. We have the panel office. Julie's going to start me to hand those available to folks. There was new activity as of Friday, last week. The request for proposal offers is supposed to begin. Seven will then come in. One has been given an extension. It is, I won't see much detail on TMP's analysis along those lines until this Friday. And what's interesting though is that some contractors who would like to build this Green Mountain Palace are looking at properties outside of the county properties as the generation source. So, that's the problem we bring home. Their mind separates some of the wishes and desires from the computational respect to the better equipment. I should say that a little further about the Zillion Seed Zone. The Zillion Seed Zone is a reliable record. Solar panels, battery storage, and controls. And in the instance where power too much as we was cut, the electricity panels for the batteries will provide service for the community. How long that service lasts depends upon how much generation the storage brings home. The other thing that it does is that it allows the Green Mountain Palace, since they've got lots of it, to do what's called heat-shaving. We have a high summer and a high winter heat. They could develop power off of those batteries. And that's an approach that keeps the utility from having to purchase very high-cost electricity. So, it's a benefit to all of us. But again, working with Council on the development, with the Town Select Board and the Repurposing Committee, we're all in this together. Hey, Mitch, I'll come back to you. If there's someone else that wants to go, if no one else wants to jump in, we'll go back to Mitch. Take it away, Mitch. It's an opportunity that you know of, or anybody else, where, again, we can meet and ask questions on this proposal, what it entails, what the benefits are, what is GMC really seeking to do, what are these companies that we're setting out to propose, what are their plans. So, we can educate ourselves as a company, what if it's just a company we even want to explore even further, and how much they do even now. And so, there's just so many questions all around this. I'm just wondering, can we have a meeting that's specifically around information of that? As was done previously, GMC attended virtually the Select Board meeting to answer questions, and I'm going to anticipate that now with fathers in the details, and in front of them, that they will want to meet and we will encourage them to meet with the Select Board. So, the Select Board has been very clear that they want the community to understand, and to vote on this, that they are not. At this point in time, and every time I get spoken to this subject, that they don't want to make decisions on what they're doing. That's true. It's good right now from the paper, though. It's been discussed at all of the meetings that we've been having through the Watchlist Barrier London Initiative, where we're focusing on the Select Board agenda. It's done, you know, arts and things done before it's going on. We struggle for what is being made for now, and it wasn't the next year, it was the next year. I'm just wondering, if you know, if you said something about the Select Board, was there anything that you had to say about what happened to it, and how is the point that you didn't want to get to them, because they're where you can be, for example? Jeff, could you repeat the question as you have a microphone? I think Martha's asking if the decision about the resiliency island is going to be something that will come to a town vote on where it would happen, and if and where it would happen. Is that the question, Martha? Yes, I'm just wondering if I could... Yeah, could you know that, Jeff, or Pat? I don't want to get too far down this rabbit hole. It may have some pertinence to if it happens around the school, but if it's not, let's not get too far down this topic. Pat, can you give a quick answer? Yeah, it would probably be an decision that we actually see that would be even more blessing to go ahead and squirrel possibilities. When they come back with something that we think that might have any opposition or any different opinions or anything, then we could at that time be like, we could possibly at this point delay it and make it kind of downvading. So it doesn't matter, what do they actually come back to this with? Okay, so folks, stay tuned to select board topics and agenda, and you can hear more about it there. Now, let's get back focused on the school. What we perceive will be our, while they're working on this staff, we're going to talk about how we're going to work on information we're going to gather and any other opportunities for a more public meeting. Well, you know, I think we're going to be working closely with the communities. I was going to mention that because it's something I think this community should be really proud of. The amount of work that the communities have done, these options already, is pretty impressive. This is a very committed group that's really been working hard and trying to get the best available information. And that'll help make our job a little bit easier. And so I think we'll coordinate with the communities to see what's the highest and best use of both of our times in terms of this. Thank you for the work that's already done. And I think the plan is to have ongoing outreach to keep people aware of what's, where we're in the process and what we're learning. Yeah, our intention is to have public meetings, meetings like this, maybe every six weeks. They're just dividing the time up and being reasonable about every interval. I should expect to have another meeting like this only. Hopefully we'll have a home viewing version as well to Zoom or live stream something. We just couldn't work out technically for today, but I expect we'll get to do it. It means going to a different venue together. But our intention is to be transparent and kind of demonstrate that by this kind of process. We'll be completely open about what we're doing. I was going to take questions and comments. Oh, yes. Who's not on the subcommittee yet? Who is that? Maybe we could have folks here great to see who is on a subcommittee. Just raise your hand if you're involved in the committee of this process. And anybody who has interest in any of these topics that you talked about, maybe you're not interested in making streams with VDRs, you're interested in the arts, see me. I'll get you to the right person. I think we're not allowed to go home unless you sign up for... Yola, let me check and see if anyone else hasn't spoken yet. We have plenty of time, but okay, go ahead Yola. I just wanted to say real quickly, I'm very happy that you're here, and if there is a desire for members of our committee to come and make a presentation to your select board, we've been talking about that. I would love to be able to make the arrangements with you. Okay. Nice, nice idea. Okay, Yola. So I don't know how, we can't be accomplished, but somehow, could you please look into making this clear to the public in general, that the town and the taxpayers will not be responsible for the upkeep of this building once the activity starts going on. We all know, we're more scared than you are. And I've heard that rumor that, oh no, you know, we'll be paying for the building we used to come, which is not true, but how can we make it clear to people in general that no, this is like, you are talking about it will be sustainable, and if we get enough involvement, the building would take itself, be it by, you know, lease or, you know, any, you know, because this is, this is like the father of me, that people don't know, I think it's human rumors that are going, and that can be dangerous. Yeah, I can speak to that. I kind of spoke to this briefly in the opening comment, but just to reiterate, we want this to be a financially feasible process that does not settle the town and taxpayers with billions of dollars of renovation costs and tens of thousands of dollars of annual energy costs. We hope there's a way to make that happen, and that's what we're going to find out through this feasibility process. We don't know the answer to the question yet, but it's clearly in line with what you're talking about here, and maybe even different organizational ways to structure this so that it's not the town that the town owns it, but it's not responsible for the building. Good, so. I have a question for Mr. Lovato. Can I wait till home? I think the question was, how do you get the word out about what you just said, and putting it in the narrow? And how do you find the words for it? We have to do more, obviously, by the attendance tonight. We haven't expired up, and technically, we didn't have the at-home viewing version of the building by tonight, so you're right, we have to do that. I don't know, I'm not sure what goes better right now, but this is a good one. So I have a suggestion, a very simple website that we can share with you is something that we can point to. You know, if you don't know much about the project you were at, it would be the website, and it's something that every time you have an article in the paper, or if you do something longer from the front porch forum, someone's stepping in completely, I know, it's another spot that we do kind of catch up. You know, but we have this meeting, and this is where we have to find out what the idea is on. Great. Molly's going to create a website. All right, thank you, Molly. I've got a question. I have a call on myself. Go ahead to him. In looking at the feasibility for each of these items, I'm thinking about, you know, the administration executive director type thing, facility manager, and if those get rolled into the feasibility, or you assume that each of those, the spaces, makerspace, elder child learning, come with their own administration and facility management. Now, that's one of the things we're going to look at is, what's the management structure that needs to be replaced? And maybe they can all be separate, but the initial information is given the complexity of the different operations that are going to take place here. And the funding sources they're going to have to manage having a single entity managing the whole process is probably going to be required. And that has to be factored into the operating costs. So follow up question from everything. Would you think of that as a like a nonprofit or a town employee? Well, it's early in the process, but I think the preliminary thing is it would be a not-for-profit, it would be a separate organization that might lease the facility from the town and as big as it be responsible for the costs and the revenues with the operation, but the town, you know, just gets a nominal amount and leaves it up for that organization to make the facility work. Thank you. Any other thoughts, questions? I can call on people. You know, while I've got you here, has anybody come here with a broader idea about this building that you haven't heard discussed? That you'd like to just throw it in the mix? I definitely think we should try to, as I mentioned before, dovetail with the climate initiative. And part of that is the agricultural community, not just in the five towns, but I think it would reach out beyond that. If we were to have a food hub, maybe a place to sell, market agricultural products, take advantage of making the home micro and install a commercial kitchen that the farmers could use to prepare foods. If they even have cold storage available, that's just one idea. But, you know, there could be other things, too. You know, I found some ideas off of that, but we'll talk more about that, but then they can immediately tie in with the climate initiative and the food program and agriculture. That could be a good program. The other thing, of course, is electrical. Having a charging, you know, we talked about that in the town, having a place to charge vehicles. I think it's, you know, that would be so good for the town of Rochester to brought people up to 100, stop in Rochester, charge, walk around town, do business in town, and this might be the location. Absolutely. Absolutely. Just a couple ideas. I'm sure there's many more. Ray? Ray, and then Pat. Oh, go ahead, Pat, while you're there. Let's do Pat. This is a quick note, too, Bill's comment. That town meeting, the last town meeting that took place right here, at the very end of the meeting, we had an article camp voted on, so the select one would have to take into account quantity for every decision we made. That's why we had to. So, if we do take that into account with every decision we made, whether it's perfect or not, we do always bring that up in our decisions. So, capital fear went around by town voters asking us to do that. And so, and we are adhering to that as much as possible, and Jeff makes sure we do it. Over to Ray over there on the far side. Keep you running, Polly. The many of us work out and operate out, and we're ready now. I think we really need to look at small office trades and stores, and that keeps the record of the city. And they need to be advertised up there, and they don't have enough time to have a great job. Thanks, Ray. Rich. You're truly that, the fondness of your work out there. Yeah. Can you hang on a second? Martha, wait for the microwave. Sorry to hear you. No, that covers 15 pound, 5 or 15 per gram, so we're all Republican. So, I've got one. I'll go ahead, Yola. Jeff, I'm sorry, I jumped in before. All right. We're going to school right here. I know a lot of stuff. I know a lot of mothers who are young kids, and they take their little kids all over for dance, ballet, gym, gymnastics, and I know it's hard to get the teachers, because I know the pierce hall did offer a life lesson for a while, but I think they were well attended to think about it, like when I think about it. So, something along the outlines, dance, slash, gym. Also, that's just a kid. I would love to, like, do so far, nothing. I've always done that. I love to dance. I love to exercise and stuff like that, so. Like, in all of your directions. I just want to respond a little bit to that. One of the things, it's a pierce hall. It has to do with exercise classes and things like ballet and what not. And one of the things that we do want to make it clear is we don't want the redundancy. We don't want to compete against any aspect of the town activity that's already taken place in the city. We want to work in conjunction with different folks. We want to build a final authority there, but we don't want to compete with anybody. So, you know, we need that something that's not the gene that has great facilities there, and encourage her, encourage Pierce Hall to really elaborate on the program here, probably, and bring great things to that, and make it up. Any other ideas? I mentioned the Hall of Organization, the HUB Arts and Learning Alliance, which is an umbrella of multiple organizations, but it includes Pierce Hall and Gene Zinnick. And members of that committee have worked in response to town surveys to develop programing and dance. It's definitely on there. I'll jump in with an idea. Over the past year or so, I've developed a knee jerk reaction to any question that's asked of me. I say, housing. People say, how do you like the Patriots this year? And I say, housing. So I don't know how it could work or if it could work, but I know that we have a housing crisis throughout the state and in this valley. It's not available. And we want people to come here. We want them to live here. We want families, maybe starter level apartments or something like that. I don't know, but I'll do it. Yeah, I can speak for you. That was one of the first things we looked at, just given the dire need for affordable housing in the community. And so, we brought here for a site visit the Executive Director of Quintine's Housing, which is the major nonprofit housing developer and operator in Vermont. We did a walkthrough with him. He looked at the building and his summation was, there's nothing about this building that says housing to me. And you need to demolish it and start it over again. He said he wouldn't have enough capacity to make it economically viable. So that was the end of that. Thanks, Rick. The truth is, I'll see that as being part of the development. That's enough to scroll. It's just easier and much better than touched by our homes. We have to, if we're not going to see what else is available. So, there is a community for people that's trying to explore that aspect as well. And I think that includes the importance of looking at zoning so that some of the plots that we have now might be able to afford to have a development on them. Now, this is only something that has been damaged, nothing but another idea, but this is part of the process that people express their ideas and that is, should this building be realized and be purposed that it's potentially a place where the town offices could be, and then the town offices could be turned into housing. Anyone else? Closing remarks or what's next? Yeah, I'll just, first of all, thank everybody for coming out today. It's dark and cold out. It always is, and I'm a member here, so I appreciate that. And stay tuned for another public briefing and conversation after the first of the year. I'm not sure what exactly, but there will be more after tonight. And this has been very, very helpful for just getting information, helping get the word out. And thank you and good night.