 I'd like to call the Lord to order the meeting of the Minutons. You were there. I'm going to finance committee. The first thing I just want to mention is that I want to make sure all the finance committee members that are not town meeting members get a copy of the finance committee report. Since it was mailed out this time instead of in the back some of you might not have. Gloria has a few extra copies in the back. We decided to do something different. It's nice and white on that. But check with Gloria and make sure you get one. There's a resolution that proceed from the school committee put forth for us to review and see if we can endorse it. If we have time at the end of this meeting we can do it or people can read it and we can do it tomorrow. Article 31. This was the article we put in every year to say we adopted any regulations or statutes that the state has recently passed that allows us to raise additional revenues. This year the select committee voted on it. The finance committee might not. The select committee voted on it. So, of course, nobody voted on it. It's a routine thing to get to it. If nothing has come out of either the governor's budget or the house budget, then we usually just vote no action. That's the case. There's nothing in the governor's budget or the house budget or pending that allows us to raise more revenues. So, I would request a motion of no action so that when we get to that I can make that motion before town meeting. So long. So we're good. Okay. Moving seconded. Any questions? Okay. All those in favor of no action on article 31, can we say aye? Aye. Opposed? Okay. The minutes have been presented. Do I have any motions, corrections, questions? Okay. Do I have a motion? So long. Okay. Moved and seconded. Any further discussion? All those in favor, can we say aye? Aye. Opposed? Okay. The minutes are approved. The minutes are approved. Okay. Now we get to the main issue for tonight. As I e-mailed you earlier, the meeting this morning of the special task force out by the committee to make a recommendation, met this morning on the task force with myself, Charlie Foskin, Steve Corsi along with Dan Dunn as chair, Joe Curl was there, Alan Reedy from the Permanent Town Building Committee. And so, I'm sorry, I cannot remember. From the, who's the representative on the building committee? Two representatives. There was one representative from the school committee, Paul Schwickman, who was replaced because Paul had to leave early by Jeff Thielman. Anybody? It wasn't there, Kathy. And Adam Chaplin was there. I'm sorry, oh yes. And a few gentlemen from Minuteman who were just here for overtime. Were there as they have been in many meetings in the town of Arlington. And the task force voted to approve a vote of favorable action on the building project specifically contingent upon a proposition two and a half ballot to vote. So before you should be legal opinions from Bond Council and from our own attorney, please tell us some information that I can go through later. And I asked Dan Dunn to come and tell us more specifically what happened and why. Oh, and welcome to Shackler, the Minuteman School Board. Good evening everyone. As you know from Dan Dunn, the task force that the selection was created, I appeared to talk about, I believe that I've mentioned this the last time I was here for this group. And it's partly simply because we don't have a good mechanism in town for thinking about projects that are outside of our regular school or municipal building projects. We have a lot of built in systems like our permanent town building committee and the capital planning committee and the finance committee, the school committee and the town manager for evaluating building projects that occur entirely within Arlington. But when we talk about a group project across multiple towns, we haven't done it to my knowledge since 1973 and we don't have a lot of practice at it. So we created the task force of people who are fairly knowledgeable about Minuteman and or building and or education to look at whether or not to recommend the Minuteman building project. And it wasn't an easy path for us and I think that many of the members, myself included, had a hard time deciding about whether or not the building was right for Arlington and then in the end, by about 8 to 1 this morning, we did recommend that we would, to recommend to both the finance committee and to the board of selectmen to go ahead and build the Minuteman, recommend the Minuteman building project. And I think I'm going to rely a little bit on more probably, and I would say different people came to that conclusion for different reasons. But we were all working from the same body of emails and paper that you have all been seeing as it goes by. And I'm going to tour you briefly through my particular reasons. I think that they were shared by other members of the committee, but I think different people, like I said, had different reasons. I think about, look, I stopped looking at Minuteman, the Minuteman rebuild about the how and how we're going to get things done. And I started thinking about it, what is it that we actually want to happen in the end? And I started to think about what are the outcomes that are likely, what are the outcomes that are desired in terms of a Minuteman rebuild decision? And there are kind of two big ones. One is that we participate, that a building happens. And the other one is that the new building doesn't happen. And we, through the various, through our town meeting authority and through the authority within the new regional agreement, we effectively could stop the building from happening if we chose to do so. And so it really becomes down to us to say whether or not we want the building to happen or whether we want to stop this new building from happening. So if you think about the outcomes within the building actually happening, there's, you know, the outcomes range from poor to great with good in between. And good is that all the predictions turn out more reasonably as well as we hope that they will. Great is that they turn out better than we think that they will. And some of the math that Al has passed out that came in through work from Kevin at the Minuteman, which has also been largely confirmed by Sandy, a pooler, is that the range is 1.2 to 1.7 million per year is what the, 1.2 would be good, 1.7 would be bad, and there's a few outside, you know, that the school truly fails, that would be even worse than that. So those are like the build, and when you do that, you get a good building, you get 628 students that is appropriate for a good educational education program. On the other side, you've got the don't build the building plan. And I outlined that out as kind of an A through E. A is what would be really great if it was available, which is the cheap renovation. If it turns out that it's possible to do for small money, keep Minuteman going as a successful school. Then there's the expensive renovation. In the expensive renovation, the paper that the building committee provided says $100 million. $100 million doesn't get a lot of traction, I think, in terms of people believing that that really is the cost of what the renovation would be. But I think that the thing that really got me to yes was discounting, was comparing how much money we'd pay for the new building, and then thinking how much we would have to pay in renovation. The new building is $145 million, the state kicks in $44 million, that leaves approximately $100 million to be borne by the people sending kids. With the new state regulation, we can drop that $100 million by taking out of discharging, out of district students, a capital fee. That's something that wasn't possible before. And that potentially could drop that $100 million that the district has to pay down to $80 million depending upon how the predictions actually work. In Arlington's on the hook for, depending upon how many students we send, say a third of that $80 million. So call it $25 million, call it $30 million. We're on the hook for it that we have to pay. Now, how much renovation dollars do they have to be before we've already exceeded that $25 million? Because remember, if we go the renovation route, there is no state assistance, and we cannot charge the out-of-district fee. The out-of-district fee can only be charged for math, school, building, authority buildings. And so one of the opinions that I relied on was Alan Reedy. And Alan Reedy had reviewed the Minuteman documents and he kind of said, you know, I don't see a great path to a cheap renovation either. Sure you can do the renovation for small money, but then when you have to replace this system, and then you have to replace that system, and then you have to replace this system, then you're going to break all the thresholds where you have to put in more ADA money and there isn't a cheap renovation. So those, that's where I came to believe that the cheap renovation didn't really exist. I came to believe the expensive renovation would cost us the same as a new building, but in the end we wouldn't have a new building. We'd have an inferior product. And so that's where, that's what, in terms of outcomes and desired outcomes, that's where I came to. Just for the sake of completeness, I'll just briefly talk about some of the other options which would be dissolving Minuteman, trying to rebuild a new district. You know, form a new school with Belmont and Lexington and Watertown, invite someone like Everett and rebuild it on the Mugar property. You know, there's a million ideas of things that one could hypothetically do, but we don't have the leadership. We don't have the dedication. We don't have, there's no one who's up, to say this is the path that we have to go forward. And instead, what we've done is we've created this new district that we think can really succeed with better governments with the 10 towns that we have. So that's, that's my, my combination report of the committee and my personal thoughts of how I got to the place that I am. Thank you. Any more questions? As long as you want. Okay. Sue, as you know, there's a better man's school for me. Do you have any thoughts you'd like to add? A difficult road. I took a couple of years, but they helped achieve it. That gives me some confidence to use it. The national demographics are moved toward the more sophisticated growth of that head, especially in the Boston areas, like the Boston area. There's no question that is a national movement, a national need for it, which I believe will have, will be a factor in increasing in-district enrollment. I certainly think that a new building will give you a lot to attract students that perhaps now don't even consider a man. I think that of the alternatives, the new building is the one that speaks to me the most. I think having the new equipment, the new academy model there, which is what the new building would allow us to go to, reducing the physical size of the building and the energy costs and whatnot that would go down with that. There's a lot of positive things that would come with the new building out of price. I believe it's the alternative that we should take very seriously. Okay. The superintendent and the director of finance, assistant superintendent are here to answer any questions that you have. The materials that you have in front of you, I think, I handed these out before, but the two spreadsheets, basically I asked Kevin to run them so we could see what happens with the original scenario, which is where it was about two-thirds member students, one-third out of district students. And that had a, about a million-two impact from the project. Now, what happens if the school district is overwhelmingly successful and all the students come from the district? And let's say the same percentage of those 628 is from Arlington. What is the topside from that? And that's the other run that actually we just got tonight. And that is about a million-seven-thirty-one. So we're talking a million-two to a million-seven, you know, give or take. Obviously, if our percentage is higher, the number is higher. If the percentage is lower, it's lower. But at least then you have sort of a parameter that's somewhere between that two is the impact. The other sheet you have, I think it's just the other cities, all the other towns that are members or even leaving the status that they are as far as the projection. The opinion from town council and from bond council supporting that contingent vote, even when the referendum is after the 60-day period, if that referendum passes or if that referendum is defeated, then the bond council considers that a no-vote from the town of Arlington and will not allow the bonds to be issued. So I think several people requested that because it was sort of not directly intuitive when you just look at the statute. It's when you get the couple together. From my point of view, I think I'd recommend this for probably the reasons that Dan went through and I throw it open to the committee now for either questions for any of the people attending or for Rod to state your point of view and how you want to proceed. So John? Yeah, just so I understand. And could people speak up? Remember, this room is really lousy. Just so I can understand. It's the opinion of our town council and bond council that a contingent yes does not irrevocably lock us into bonding if the debt exclusion fails. That's correct. Thank you. That's correct. And it's bond council that has to approve to provide the legal opinion for the bonds. So if he says or she says no, then that's it. Bond council is also the town of Arlington's bond council. Okay, Dean. I think there's probably a better question for that. Minuteman folks, but I just, I can't understand. Can they walk through how this bonding actually works on a mechanical level? And because I always hear, well, we're going to bond it. I just don't understand it because they have to be bonding it and then are we paying it back and then we have to be bonding it at a percentage of enrollment, but if our enrollment changes over time, there's a reconciliation. If our borrowing rate and their borrowing rate are differently, how does that work? I just like a general understanding of how it works. The Minuteman Regional School District is the bonding accord. They will issue the bonds on their own credit and their credit is based upon really the sort of combined credit of the 10 communities. They will be responsible for paying the debt service. They then turn around and according to the formula in the new regional school agreement, which is they will assess the member of Townsend operating and a capital charge. The capital charges are a share of the debt service. Half of the, in the assessment formula in the new agreement, half of the charge is based on a four year rolling average of enrollment. One percent is based upon, or 10% really, one percent for each community, everybody pays the same. That's sort of your share for being there. The balance is a wealth based formula. So they issue the bonds and then charge back to us according to the regional agreement, a capital assessment, which we pay they take and they pay the bonds. So now I'm just going to jump and sort of fill in the gap. So under that model, if we approve this, if we have a debt exclusion, if it passes, we never actually borrow the money. The debt exclusion in this scenario that you're explaining is actually just used as a mechanism when we set the tax rate to raise the money to pay it. Right. In other words, just like we do with the middle school or the high school, the debt exclusion, except for the elements of Prop 2 and a half, the debt service. But that's a little different because the debt actually goes on and we actually borrow the money ourselves. Under this scenario, we're not borrowing the money. They're borrowing the money. It's for our share of the debt service if you read the vote in the town council's opinion, this approval shall be contingent on a successful vote of the town to exempt. It's our approval share of debt service on this project from the limitations of Prop 2 and a half. So our annual share. You're going to get it. So they give us a bill for picking a number, a million dollars, then that basically passes directly through to the next bear. All right. So I guess my next question, maybe I guess I'm starting to understand since we're not borrowing it, is I guess then, as a member community, we'd be secondarily liable for the debt in the event, something right to the school or what not, but we're not primarily liable. What I was getting at with that is on its face, it went some postures when I say this, but between all the projects coming through and the timing of the high school rebuild, we're going to get pretty high up on that debt limit, the state debt limit for the town. We're going to probably at one point go well over 50% of our borrowing. So if we were primarily liable, the only reason I'm asking this is to make sure it doesn't matter at some point, right? If we were liable for a whole number, it would be a problem. But this debt service will go on whatever... But it's mayors, because we're secondarily liable. Okay. And if a man fails to pay the debt service, the first thing they do probably is seize the superintendent's house. Now, it's based on the credit of the district. Okay. Makes sense. Okay. Other questions? Opinions? However. Paul, Bill, Frank. I have a few questions here. First off, when Dan spoke, you said... You talked about the money that other district students would pay towards the capital this month. Are these numbers of 1.2 million or 1.6 million per year, are they based assuming that we would get some amount, or is that assuming we would get no amount from other district students? The model that was originally passed out that shows that Arlington's obligation would be about 1.2 million is based on 170 out-of-district students paying the 8,400 dollars per student. That revenue is then applied to offset debt service. Thank you. The model that we passed out tonight assumes all of district students. My second question was, who voted now this morning? Mr. Foskin. And my third question, and it may not be anyone here to answer it, in looking at the costs per student for sending someone to Minuteman with this new cost on top of it, and comparing that to Arlington, what an Arlington High School cost per student is, do we have any kind of estimate as to a fully loaded Arlington High School student cost given pensions and insurance and capital? Nobody's behind me now. Charlie, do you want to take out a published number by the DESC of like 12,000 or 13,000? No, we have a published number by the DESC of 12 or 13,000 per student, including capital and other ancillary costs. And I think we're talking about 30,000 here. Thank you. Okay, Bill. So thank you. You know, I'm in the finance committee and I can imagine how difficult this whole project scenario has been for Swachman and the task force to, my mind keeps going back and forth. But one thing I just keep coming back to are some of the numbers that just don't sit right with me, and I just want to put that out there and see maybe I'm looking at things the wrong way. In the email that I got today, the enrollment argument stated that enrollment at Minuteman are on the order of 700 students. The proposed school has a target of 628 that we talked about. Those are really two different categories of students. In other words, the 700 students are, these are total member towns. This is total projection for students that are in the building, which can include out of town, right? Right, I think that, yes, I think that 628 and the 700 are both composed of both sources. The 628 will be both in and out of district and the 700 is both in and out of district. Okay, because one of the financial forms that got circulated shows the 628 was all total member towns and non-member towns were zero. And so that the figure used to calculate how many students we might need from in town in order to make this viable was 628. So just bear with me for a second. So what I did is I just simply took an average of the last six years of total member towns. And I came up with, I came up with 420. I did the same thing with Arlington over the last six years. And I came up with 138. To get to the two figures respectively of 200 Arlington and 628 total in town is between a 45 and 50% increase. So I guess my question is, the way we built this 45 to 50% increase really wasn't from the bottom up. It was from kind of the top down. This is a figure that we really need to have in order for this to be viable and to be financially viable. But how do we know we're going to get a 45% to 50% increase in Arlington students and as well as in town students to sort of hit this number that you're looking for? And so that was one of the questions I had. Do you want to take these one at a time? Yeah. So I would do completely, I personally and I think other members of the task force would absolutely agree to you over with you that it doesn't make sense to count on filling the school within district students. So that run that I think you're referring to where it has zero out of district was a change of possibilities. And so I'm sure that the superintendent is more optimistic than I am that the in district students enrollment will go up but I'm advocating this building on the basis that I believe that we can fill the 628 with a combination of in and out of district students. So my personal belief is in, you know, if you can see farther than 5, 10, 15, 30 years of the future and what the enrollment is then let's grab that crystal ball and use it. So my personal belief is that we're going to be able to find 628 students to come. That's in and out. In and out. Okay. There's different financials for each group, obviously, correct? Yeah. Yep. Very different financials. Would you like perhaps the superintendent to answer that enrollment or respond to that enrollment question? Yeah, sure. Ed. Thank you. Sure. Yeah, I think in the short term given where we're at right now and that we're, if everything passes, we're three years away from entering into a new building, we will not fill that new building the first day with 628 or more students just from the 10 remaining member towns. That's absolutely the reality of that. The other reality is that we're seeing an increase in just the population of students in our largest sending communities as you're dealing with in Arlington. I've read the Arlington enrollment trends and they're predicting a 14% increase by fiscal year 20, which is when this building would open. If you look at some of the, when we look back at, I've also looked at the highs and lows of in-district and out-of-district Arlington, for instance, just four years ago, sent 165 students. This year, eighth graders are applying for entry into the ninth grade from our member towns. Those applications are up about 15% as of today and we're still accepting applications for three more months or so. The other approach that we've taken with marketing and recruiting and retaining students seems to be bearing fruit even though we haven't completed a full year of all these activities. One bellwether of that, which was encouraging this fall, we go around to all of our member town middle schools and talk to students. We have students talk to other students and they raise their hand if they're interested in visiting Minuteman. A year ago, we had about 350 kids total from all the eighth graders raised their hands. This year, we had over a thousand kids raise their hands and actually 400 of them came to Minuteman and visited. We had a dinner with the teacher a couple of weeks ago where our incoming eighth graders come with their parents and families and have dinner with the teacher. We had almost 300 family members there, over 110 kids. We're seeing a lot more interest in vocational technical education in general but your premise is correct. We're not going to fill the school with member town only for several years. The other thing is Minuteman, if this school goes through and it's built new, it's only the fourth new vocational school built in the last 10 years. Worcester, Springfield, and then the merger of Essex Aggie, Peabody Vogue, and North Shore Regional. Within a year or two of those schools opening, they all had waiting lists of 100, 200 students where prior to that they were struggling to fill their school. I think that's not a reflection of the jazziness of a new building. It's a reflection of the buildings being built now are reflective of the educational programming requirements of innovative and high tech vocational technical education and that's compelling and attractive, just like when a student visits a college campus and is compelled by some of the things they see and thank you for it. Thank you. I really don't have a second question, maybe more of an observation is that it is... I was thinking this is sort of like build it and they will come but it's only part of that. That's what you're saying and the other part is demographics and enrollment trends and programs within the new school is going to up the enrollment as well as the pizzazz as well of the school. And as Sue mentioned, there's a tremendous interest in career and technical education from families that I've never seen in my whole career. Parents coming and asking questions I've always wanted to hear but I've never heard where they're thinking about the return on investment for college and career tech ed is becoming a way for kids to try out college majors and some of the minds of the families that are coming and it's true. Is that okay? Ryan? I have a question for the new board of incentives. Basically, I'm curious to how you got to the $8,600 figure for the out-of-district capital cost is if you simply just take 628 divided by the total cost it costs about $92,390. We came to that calculation based upon the regulation that was put into effect in March of 2015 and the intent of the regulation is to allow a regional district such as Minuteman to charge what the average capital costs are for its members to the non-members. So we used the and I should say the regulation has sort of two dimensions. If a student comes from a community like Watertown for instance that has no vocational programs of their own they pay 100% of that average. If a student comes to us from Medford or Waltham where they have five or more vocational technical programs, state approved they would pay 75% of that average. So we used a conservative number for these calculations. I have actually a question for Mr. Dunn. What is the opinion of the select committee on this project taking into consideration everything this town is facing financially and specifically a refer to the five-year plan approximately 2021 there's going to be a huge deficit not discounting any of the projects that are coming up. So two parts of the answer. First is that the Board of Select has not taken a position on this project and it created the task force because I don't think we recognized we didn't have the expertise among the five of us. The Board has on more than one occasion respected my recommendations and opinions on this because I've been so immersed in it and Joe Curo has been also very immersed in it and he shares my opinion. So I think the answer is I can count to two and I need to get to five. We'll see. What does it look like in the big picture? I think we are acutely aware of that and I don't know if you had a chance to read. We took a vote to put the debt exclusion on the ballot for June 14 and that motion very explicitly covers both the past talking about the two overrides that we've done. It talks about the present with the current enrollment and it talks about the future and articulates that this debt exclusion on June 14 is one of three significant votes that we're going to ask for time to take over the coming years. There's this one that we're talking about right now, Thompson Middle School, Arlington High School Feasibility Minuteman. The second step, excuse me, is the full Arlington High School bill and the third step is the operating override. So acutely aware of that package. Because I've tried to speculate as to what these numbers are going to be and it's clearly going to be an excess of 20 over the next five years. It's clearly going to be an excess of 20 to $25 million additional over where we are today. For the third step. For everything. I assume the school will be about, I suppose it will be somewhere around $9 million a year. I don't know. I haven't seen the numbers. I'm just ballparking it. This is going to be one and a half million, say. And if you're going to actually do another override, just similar to what we did last time, that number, I calculated it to be somewhere between 16 and 18 million dollars a year. I don't have enough of a command of the numbers to tell you what else. Just as a help is that Sandy Pooler has been working a lot of an estimator for these things and he's sent around a draft of it at the Long Range Planning Committee and I should forward, we should get that into your hand so you can compare and make sure your number is compared to his, correct? Thank you. Okay, bye. Charles. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So, you heard after Paul's question at the lone opposing vote at the meeting today was yours truly. And you received an email from me while I was away expressing many of my concerns with this project and I'd like to go through those with you in a little bit more detail tonight. And I'd like to start out by saying that that Bill Keller was close to do or actually quite accurate in saying that this project is a, you know, build it and they will come concept. We're really facing two things here. First of all, I want to deny the assumption or the supposition that Dan Dunn presented this with that this is a vote to build this new building or stop the building. That's a pejorative way to position it. We really have a question before us whether we build new with an expensive building and even after the MSBA reimbursement, sign up for $100 million worth of debt. I'm talking about the entire community here. Or we follow a renovate and build project which can and probably will cost us substantially less. And I'll come back to that issue in a second. Experience tells us, and I'm looking at the 15-year historical enrollment data published in this year's financial package from Minuteman, which I got off the web today. In 2004, the total member town attendance of our member town student enrollment was 522 students. In 2015 it was 390 students. And if you look at the data from year to year, it bounces around a little bit but it's been on a steady decline. Now we just had I think it's 5 towns exit from the agreement. And if you look at the numbers that those 5 towns contributed to the enrollment, it comes to about 48 students in 2015. So that means without those 5 towns and maybe some of them will come in as out-of-district students. But they will also have the choice to go to other districts. And many of those districts surrounding the town, surrounding the Minuteman district have vacancies in their vocational educational program. So we could lose as many as 48 students from the 390 students that we had this year. So the build it and they will come leap gets ever higher. Now there is another concern that I have with respect to the out-of-district students. First of all there's an assumption here which defies logic to me that if the out-of-district students have to suddenly pay a capital fee that they're going to leap at going to Minuteman. And every other experience I've had in life says that when you come to a big price increase in something you look for a less expensive alternative. And I believe that the out-of-district students will look for a less expensive alternative. So based on the increase already we're talking about a school that has one of the highest if not the highest per-pupil cost among all the vocational educational educational schools districts in the state. We're now going to be adding another $9,000 or $10,000 a year to that cost. So I don't I think based on the cost alone we're going to lose out-of-district students. And then finally as we discussed today and as we as I mentioned to you in my email recent changes at the DSE department of elementary and secondary education department in Boston restrict makes it makes it more difficult for out-of-district students to leave their own district if they have certain programs in their district so that freshman students may be pushed back into sophomore year before they could switch to minima. And I think many of us here have had experiences with children with children both you know at the elementary level and at the high school level and we know at the high school level kids bond with their friends and neighbors and their schoolmates. So anticipating that after a year of bonding these kids are going to suddenly make a jump to leave their surroundings that they've grown comfortable with and also be encouraged to go to a more expensive school system because of the increased capital cost defies logic to me. So I think I think the trend of member towns attending the district is going down and I think the possibility or the expectation that out-of-district students are going to increase is a triumph of hope over experience. And one of the main arguments that the Minuteman District has made with respect to why we have to spend this 100 million dollars on a new school is because the alternative is so expensive and it's going to cost us the same. The first comment I want to make is that the work that was done on this is based on what I would call back-of-the-envelope, square foot analysis and the school enrollment task force already rejected with respect to Arlington's projects. That sort of approach to estimating the cost of school renovation or rebuilding. The second comment I would make is that at this morning's meeting I asked Lieutenant Bo Quillen why we were using a 6% inflation rate in escalating the cost, the future cost of this renovation program as opposed to a 2-3% inflation rate which is what the MSBA uses when they calculate future building costs. And I was explicitly told that we didn't use a 6% inflation rate we used a 3% inflation rate. So I went back and I looked at the at this document which is the I think it's the right one. It says non-NIT, report of the non-MSBA Building Plan and Subcommittee of the Minimian School Building Committee and on page 9 it says construction costs adjusted 6% for 2014 one year escalation. And then later it says and I went through this and I made some detailed calculations and then later it says the escalation start of construction 10% so that first of all the first year is escalated by 6% and then it's escalated again by 10% for the first year start of construction. What I'm getting at these numbers are padded these are not reflective of the real cost of renovating the school system. And then it says 6% per annum to midpoint of construction so we're again applying a 6% inflation rate to the construction costs on each of these years. So it's no surprise that and then there's another mystifying thing to me which I haven't had a chance to investigate. But there's something in here called general conditions 8.4 million added to the 45 million trade cost contract. And then in the this is for the minimum build program. And then if it's built concluding the the changes to meet the new educational plan requirements there's another essentially it's double another 8.4 million added so that's 60 million $800,000 added to the basic $77 million. So it's no wonder that we come to 100 million or 100 in this case the bottom line is $141 million renovation cost. I mean I think that I don't think the school district has done the appropriate amount of due diligence in evaluating how to get a good rebuild and renovation program accomplished at a reasonable price. Now I did a comparison just a quick run comparing the numbers using the 3% versus the 6% escalations that they have in here on this sheet and the differences accumulates to about 16% in the total cost. So in the first column where you're dealing at the bottom line here $71 million cost it actually should be $61 million. So on the basis I mean I think that the argument that this is going to cost all this additional money. We've renovated schools here in Arlington very successfully on time and on budget. We have built new schools but we've also renovated schools. So renovation is not such a completely ridiculous alternative. And I've been through the building on many occasions and I think the building is not in that bad shape. It's in a lot better shape than Arlington High School and there's enough space there that this can be renovated over time and provide alternative conditions for new educational programs. So I oppose this motion among other reasons because it's going to if town meeting votes for this it's going to imply the town meeting supports the spending of this $100 million project or $34 million in and essentially going to shift the burden of the decision to the voters who are not going to have the sort of detailed information that we've had. And then finally I'd like to raise one question. If you look at these enrollment numbers they are steadily dropping. If Arlington's numbers stay the same and the member enrollment numbers drop we're not dealing with a 33% burden of the capital cost. We're not going to be dealing with 40% or 45% or 50%. So the numbers are going to actually come out higher than the two scenarios that we saw today. Now it's been said a couple of times that you can't see into the future. I agree that you can't see into the future but the Minuteman School District and Mr. Dunn or any of us here don't have a special insight on how to see into the future. What we have to evaluate is what are the risks in light of the other expenditures that we have to undertake in this town and if we undertake these costs and they turn out to be higher than our Pollyanna's view of what it's going to be like to build this new building. Then we run the risk of losing on some of our other requests from the taxpayers. And I think that's a big risk and I think we have to consider it very seriously. I'd like to make a motion which is that the finance committee recommend the town meeting that this bond issue be vetoed unequivocally. That's my motion. Second. Okay. My question was if the hours of students increase and other towns decrease when it comes to capital our percentage of the capital goes up, right? Yeah. Like I said, it's 50 percent for your average of enrollment. Right. One percent for each community no matter what. And then the others a wealth-based action. Yeah. Okay. So it does go up if the other towns drop down our average increase. Okay. Alan. Two questions. One real simple and one maybe not so simple not nearly as profound as Mr. Foskets. The simple one is in this first model of the 458 in district how many of those are in world? Is that 200 or reduced proportionally? Yeah. I'm trying to get a handle on the point that Charles said. Could you restate the question please? In the two models. The one that's 100 percent in district has 200 students from world. The one that's 458 in district I can't find the number for how many are in world. What's the number? What's the number? The other question is something that I've been going back and forth with Mr. Sharer about if I private sector language I would call market research. You mentioned this morning that minimally unaccepts a certain number of students and not all of them end up enrolling. And certainly there are students considering that a man who never applied. What answers you get to why they don't apply or why they will enroll and accept it? And specifically what I'm looking for is what are the resistances to enrollment which are fixed by this? In other words if a student doesn't enroll because the school's too far away they don't want to arrive on the bus and this doesn't fix it. There are probably other things that are not fixed by new programs in the building. So I want to understand basically just to enroll in the group that you found and how the new building counters those. Yeah that's a good question. Well we asked that question to I think about 85 students I think it was in the fall of 14 and this fall of 15 who did not come. We contacted them again gave them a little survey and the top two reasons that the students gave we asked the students not the parents was that my parents thought if I went to Minervan I wouldn't go to college and the second reason, most popular reason was my friends are going somewhere else and then the facility was depending on what town you looked at was in the top five after numbers three, four and five were the facility, the distance and I went to a private school. So those were the five reasons So the second part of your question what is the facility fix about that I don't know if the facility alone fixes anything as I said before I don't really subscribe to the building and they will come I believe that our marketing improvement and retention program is really directed towards helping parents understand the competitive advantage that kids get at a vocational school and I think that message is probably more to reduce the barriers right now than anything else in the near term for us. Can you do that marketing and promotion without a new building? Yeah we are doing it right now. So it sort of sounds like a new building might be fixing one of those five reasons with maybe one and a half to go somewhere else. Your question was about incoming students if I was asking departing students and their families what is it about Minuteman you would want to improve we are actually working on a survey of that form anecdotally kids understand if you listen to some of what the kids have said about the building and they have been very involved in the design of the building even though they will never set foot in it never that the educational program that we are offering doesn't fit the building and this is very frustrating to the kids as I've mentioned many many times before environmental technology is on the third floor you know robotics engineering was never imagined in this new building How many students do you lose over here? How many students go somewhere else over here? There's probably ten out of the whole school. That's pretty small. Yeah it's very small we retain about 86% from the time they are freshmen until they graduate I guess part of it is I'm looking for what we give us a higher confidence in the enrollment growth and again I reflect that too if I was selling a product I would call it market research and try to drill down to what market research has been done that's not anecdotal but very specific I think the educational program plan being served by a facility is absolutely foundation So the question we should be asking ourselves is how well could the new program plan be implemented in the current one? We did look at that as an option MSBA asked us to do that and some of the stuff that Mr. Foskett was talking about there's another column where if you just repair the building it's say 70 to 85 million if you wanted to repair it and address the educational program plan within that building it was almost double that Thank you Okay other questions or comments? Carolyn and Peter I'm going to say the same story that I told earlier today which doesn't have a lot of numbers in it when and Steve Don't speak up When Steve and I were in second grade we Who do we keep missing? I had the same age so we went through the public schools at the same time Here at Arlington Here at Arlington he was at a different elementary school than me we didn't meet till junior high but when we were in second grade the town voted against renovating the high school and I remember it very clearly because it was made very clear at the time that the high school wouldn't meet certification by the time I was in high school if it wasn't passed the town chose not to rebuild the high school when I was in the second grade when we were in sixth or seventh grade the town lost its accreditation no surprise to anyone who was following it and then when we would have when I would have started high school there and when Steve did start high school there the construction began and the construction went on for the three of the four years you were there Two and a half I chose to go to nowhere so I went to a private school the amount of money that was spent on the work that was done when we were in high school was significantly more than the money that would have been spent back when we were in elementary school and the quality of the school was at least 30% less than what the quality of the school would have been had it been built back when we were in elementary school and so when we're talking about whether or not to renovate whether or not to spend the money I think we need to be considering what happens in the long run if we choose not to build a new building I think history not just this case but in many other cases would tell you you get less for your money and in the meantime it would serve as less kids more kids poorly so I recommend that we consider doing this project Peter? Being retired and recovering from our lid operation I've had a lot of time to think about this and pester the people at Minuteman who have been very helpful answering questions and so forth and I'd like to suggest that not only we have to consider financial issues but we ought to consider what's good for the town Minuteman is a valuable resource for our students 25% go directly into the workforce it offers an alternative to an expensive college education where so many kids were here are not able to get a good job when they graduate 60% leave the school and go to a college but they go with it said and I think it's probably likely being better motivated because they have some stuff in their back pocket that they can use if they need to Minuteman is a well regarded school one measure that is the report that the accreditation organization gave two years ago they have many different criteria that they judge the school got satisfactory in their terms was but I interpreted it as satisfactory on all but two the staff was rated as exceptional and the building was rated as unsatisfactory another consideration is that this kind of teaching and learning is valuable for our society as an engineer I know how important it is to have well trained and intelligent technicians to work with and as a homeowner as many of you are I know how valuable a good plumber, electrician carpenter can be and there many of the people that are available are not that good going on to the cost the cost seems reasonable it would be an increase for even in the not so good cases of not much more than $100 per year for most homeowners the operating cost is expected to decrease because the students that are taking if for example the students taking obsolete courses were not were to graduate this June the superintendent has estimated that the cost portion of the operating cost for next year would be $300,000 or 8% less than it would be than it is it's also obvious that as the district contracts the transportation costs decrease but the final thing which we've already discussed at some length is the viability will the student attract enough students to fill the new school is a key risk no question about it recently in the material that we got yesterday or today the superintendent provided a list of reasons that he is optimistic there are 38 separate reasons and each one is supported with references he's already he's already read we covered some of them tonight I won't talk for you by reading the list but I find them persuasive so the school is important to our society it's a good quality school the cost is modest and the viability is promising I will vote yes for a contingent debt exclusion okay anybody who hasn't spoken before would like to add something or ask a question okay Dean so I think I want to I'm not going to actually advocate it one way or another but I do want to call up what I think on a lot of our minds the elephant in the room which is it's not about minimum it's about having to own the gauntlet that we're about to have to run for school projects right and it's I think for a lot of us it's an interesting time because this is it's the beginning of the moment of truth most of us were in this room two and a half years ago arguing against a tax increase that the select were conveniently ignored when they talked about their past stewardship of the town and we said look we're on the verge of running a gauntlet we knew about Minuteman we knew about Arlington High the enrolling growth was on the cover the first page of the chairman's report we've got to add to our spending we knew the Gibbs was going to potentially have a problem Kathy Vody when we were having the end of the school committee we all recall in March of 2014 said in that meeting I don't know if the Gibbs is going to be able to hold the kid we might have a problem she was cautiously optimistic on the Elmer she thought that might be a problem but she was very she questioned the onset and so I think the frustration that a lot of us are having right now I would just internalize it myself is the spot that it's like look we go heck of a way on this but ultimately how I want to go is not to get one and lose the others that's the worst case scenario of them all like we talked about back in 2014 and you get whatever the middle school solution is and then you lose Arlington High in a vote and you lose you lose the override in a vote and I think that's sort of the scary reality that we're confronted with right now and so I guess what I want to say is no matter how we go as a committee we have to own these votes we have to own the decision making we have to own our opinion because this is a reality that we have been saying is coming for a long time now we have been saying to people this is coming, this is coming even when people were saying no it's not coming right? I had this great going back to 2014 in the fall there was this great debate actually between Mr. Gruderman who makes this comment about saying that these cries that there are all these problems coming the high school enrollment the odyssey and all these scenarios 7 or 8 those claims just don't hold water well they do hold water we're seeing the reality of that now and so I pointed out because as a committee we don't want to make our responsibility for the whole view of the town to these task force committees and stuff like that we've helped strong so far win or lose and however we vote we need to own not just this one but we need to own it all and we have to realize it's all coming and make what we think are the best decisions any other members of the committee John John could you speak up John could you speak up a little bit please John for a very long time now you've heard me talk about that has been just playing way too expensive it's well above the tuition for our own students in the fall of my school and what I hope is that with a new regional agreement where why Arlington now maybe has much more to say about what's going to go on in Arlington High School we'll be able to drive the costs of a purportable basis down to something equivalent to how Arlington itself is a very good school system but far less expensive than most ordinary school systems in the state we do very very well we manage very very well our school system in terms of versus cost that's not true for Minutemen Minutemen is the very highest end of the cost for vocational schools now we have a proposal for ability as Charlie pointed out that looks like it's very very expensive as comparison to other possibilities and I think that if we vote this positively we're stuck with a cost that is way too high in comparison to the way Arlington manages its own school system and other things in this town Minutemen is just plain too expensive both in terms of tuition and the costs being proposed for this building we're stuck with something which is kind of what Dean was just saying we own it then so I'm going to vote negative with a vote for Charlie Tom Just feel that four or five really critical things are going to come towards us at a very fast time it's going to cost the tax base a lot of money fortunately this is the first one out of the gate and I'm not going to dispute the numbers and renovation to a new if we commit to this like Dean says if we're committing to either the whole package or it's somewhere along the line someone's going to lose the tax base in my opinion she's not going to keep going yes yes yes yes somewhere along the line we're going to lose whether it be a high school there's something unfortunately a million comes right out of the gate and I can't accept it only because I know there's other important things in this time that we're going to be looking for so I just can't vote against on this for that reason okay other people Alan the concept of ownership has come up a couple of times and I guess I want to express the other side of that that I feel personally and maybe we shall feel as a committee if the town of Arlington prevents the new building from being built and our justification that a Minuteman can succeed without a new building then we in some sense have taken ownership of the future success of Minuteman or conversely if Minuteman spirals downhill so I just want to again I think we have if we prevent the new building from being built then we need to take ownership of making Minuteman the best success we can when a renovation happens when a $10 million bill comes to build a different type of laboratory or we have to fix a roof or whatever let's say we really have ownership of that now to make it successful so it's just something I think we need to consider yeah at the end of the meeting this morning Ellen said well I'm sure it's not going to be a unanimous vote tonight if the finance committee you can see the range of opinion because it is such a difficult issue and I walked out with Charlie this morning I said I can't begrudge anybody voting one way or the other because of the difficulties now I voted in favor of it I'm going to speak a little to that and also try to raise a couple of new points but the difficulty here is the unknowns we know just roughly going to be about 400 in district students maybe we're lucky it gets up closer to 450 or 500 and we've got to fill seats to get up to 628 because to the extent that they're at 628 seats at this new school we're going to be on the hook for roughly a third of every seat and while the projections are hopeful and you would think a new building will bring new students it's an unknown there's no way around it it's also an unknown what the new building will cost or what a renovation will cost but I look at it the renovation is 100 million even if it's 50 or 60 million the unknowns and the difference between a renovation and a new building to me are worth going forward with the new building and years ago Caroline brought up the high school I'll bring up the hearty school the hearty school of Virginia was going to be a $3 million renovation it turned out to be an $11 million renovation or $10 million renovation and just after that the MSBA and the University's predecessor said once you get up to 50% of the cost of a new building because of the renovation you should do a new building because of the unknowns and because of some other just differences in quality between what you'll get from the renovation versus a new building so even if the estimates are way off on the $100 million cost I think it's to a point that if it's a 50 or 60 million renovation without changing around programs it's still worth having the new building the other thing we all have to remember is we're still in this district whether we go forward with the new building or not and I haven't seen anybody make a motion to pull out of the district and we would need a majority of the other communities now to get out and state approval I don't think that's going to happen so you have to look at it through the lens of okay we're in there we're not the water towns looking at it should we get into this and wave pros and cons we're in and there'll be costs coming through our operating budget for renovation whether it's just upkeep or whether it's minor capital type improvements that we'll be paying for that will go through the budget process as Dan said earlier there's no capital fee reimbursement from the other district students if that's the case there's no state reimbursement so for all those reasons and it's a close call I'm in favor of this now as far as the others are concerned I don't think I need to use my top priority in terms of getting something done I said in the very first meeting to Kevin Mahoney that if you walked around you walked through Minuteman I don't think that's in much worse shape that doesn't mean that Minuteman is not worthy of a new building at this time the motive providing education at Minuteman has changed so much from when it was first built to what's required today and the modules that are required the building has changed significantly and just seems while it's close it feels to me that we should be supporting this okay I'll throw my two cents in I've been involved in the Minuteman process for a long time all of Charlie's concerns on cost and enrollment I can't argue with them too much especially the enrollment I think it's a challenge people around the group this morning were concerned being able to even if we don't get to 628 at least getting to 550 or something like that whether we're going to have those students those are valid concerns and if those are paramount in your mind to vote no I was that way a few weeks ago I've been listening and talking to as many people as I could Alan Reid this morning talking about is there a cheap fix 40, 50, 60 million and his opinion I think I remember this correctly he didn't think so that he thought it would be an expensive fix I talked to Sue Scheffler a few weeks ago her concern over staff morale over working so hard over seven years to put this project together something insignificant that could be worked out I talked to Paul Schlickman I really wanted him there this morning because Paul has an interesting history because for several years he was our representative to the Minuteman School Committee and nobody has kicked the stuffing out of Minuteman more than Paul has and he was concerned with the enrollment but he felt that the school built back in the 70s for 50s, 60s type of occasional education it simply could not be adapted or at least not cheaply adapted to the new programs which is the reason he wasn't finally there when we took the vote but I think he would have voted in favor of it and Carolyn's piece that she said just to fill in a few details back in the mid 70s the project was proposed to rebuild Arlington High School including if I remember correctly tearing down the A building and all others putting up new structures on putting a I think a new gym and a swimming pool field house or something like that and the individual it was taken to the ballot and voters turned it down and then they revised it a little bit put it back out and it was turned down again and so about three years later we went back and built that monstrosity and a building with pillars in the middle of classrooms so we ended up with as Carolyn said a lesser building for a substantially greater cost and that's a risk too as the risk is with the enrollment so I think after all of that I guess as Jan Dunn said drinking the Kool-Aid I think that the proposal for a yes vote contingent upon a debt exclusion that at least takes the debt surface off the finances of the town and sort of spreads them among 17,000 households at about $100 per household per year it seems to modify the risk so that's why if it comes to a title I don't vote yes at that point we now have a motion on the table so I'll be calling for a show of hands and Dean is right it's not any other task forces this committee we have to own the vote that we take so the motion has been made and seconded for no action of turning down the project so if you want to turn down the project so yes to this no action so a yes vote on the no action turns the project down okay all those in favor of no action please raise your hands one two three four five six seven eight all those against no action please raise your hands one two three four five six seven eight nine ten