 My name is Jeff Thielman. I chair the Erlington High School Building Committee and I wanna welcome everyone to tonight's community forum. Our goals this evening are to give you an update on the project and an overview of the site work that will begin later this month. We'll answer questions at the conclusion of the presentation. Before we begin, I wanna take a moment to introduce the High School Building Committee. So if every member of the building committee can stand up and just be recognized, those who are here tonight, superintendent is here, great, thank you so much. So several members of our committee are here. Principal Janger, of course, is on the committee along with superintendent Bode. Our committee is beginning our fourth year working together on this project and I wanna assure the town that we have a very dedicated group of people committed to building a school that is educationally exceptional and within the budget approved by the voters of the town last June. Also here tonight are representatives from our project partners, Skanska, Consigli and HMFH. If you guys can just raise your hands. Skanska is our owner's project manager. Consigli is our construction manager and HMFH is our architectural design firm. For those of you who are new to this conversation, Arlington is building a new high school because the facility, if you walk around it tonight or any night, is outdated and cannot accommodate the district's rising enrollment. The town has partnered with the Massachusetts School Building Authority or MSBA which provides technical assistance, oversight and partial funding. You can get on our website, ahsbuilding.org and find all sorts of information about this project. Our first few slides tonight give you an idea of what the new school will look like. Here is the current look of the school from Massachusetts Avenue. The design team and our exterior subcommittee headed by Dr. Bodie are still refining the external design of the school. As you can see in the next slide, we are moving the building closer to Massachusetts Avenue with about an 80 foot setback from the road. And we are gaining green and athletic space around and behind the building. On slide five, you can see that initial site work will begin later this month. And tonight, the team from our construction management firm, Consigli, will go into detail about the first few months of that work. One of the handouts you were given shows you the current estimated construction timeline. This fall, building construction will begin on the front part of the facility. The science, technology, engineering, arts and math classroom wing and the performing arts center. The plan is for students to occupy these spaces in the winter of 2022. After finishing this phase, we will build the school lobby, cafeteria, library, humanities wing, preschool and district offices. The schedule is to complete this phase by July of 2023. Phase three is the construction of the athletics wing, which will be done in September of 2024. Then we begin phase four, an additional year of site work, including the construction of the new fields and the plan is to complete this final phase by the spring of 2025. Every high school building project in this state and other states is unique. Our site is about 10% smaller than the state's guidelines. There is a 24 foot grade change from the front of the property to the back of the property. A brook runs underneath us and there are contaminants on the site which we have managed over the years and need to navigate during the project. Additionally, the building will continue to house the district administration, the offices of the Arlington Community Education, the lab special education collaborative and monotony preschool. Last year we conducted a thorough process to evaluate alternative locations for each of these functions and the most cost effective place for each was to keep them right here at the high school. All town offices currently residing at the high school, however, will move to other locations. I know that many of you have been reading about some of the reductions the building committee had to make in the project this fall. I wanna take some time to talk about the work we did to ensure that the project remains within budget. Our charge as a committee is to build a high school that fulfills the educational plan, provides a quality education to our students and is within the approved budget. Last June, the voters approved a new school at a cost of $290.8 million. We estimate that the town will contribute $204.8 million to this project and the state will contribute approximately $86 million. The budget has two broad components, a construction budget that cannot exceed $235 million and a design and management budget of $56 million. At every phase of this project, the building committee is responsible for value engineering. This is the process of comparing different options for the building, looking at costs and making choices to keep the project within budget. The project entered the design development phase in June of 2019. During this phase, the design became more detailed and our design team did a new cost estimate. Late last year, we received a construction cost estimate that showed a $24.7 million gap between the estimate and the approved budget. In the current construction market, it is very typical for a building to seek cost estimates that are 10% higher than the original budget. A primary factor in the increase was the rising costs of HVAC systems or heating ventilation and air conditioning. When we came to terms as a group with the gap, we began to do our value engineering work. The building committee and our subcommittees met many times, took a hard look at all options and took a number of votes to close the gap. I wanna start with the positives. Despite having to make up a $24.7 million difference, we were able to maintain our goal of an educationally excellent building. We are pleased that we were able to retain the core educational and design spaces in the all electric design with low carbon production. We also kept the artificial turf on the new fields behind the school, allowing for sports and gym classes to take place for a longer period of time and in more challenging weather than is currently possible. However, in order to retain these items, we had to reduce some components of the project that many of us liked. After thorough discussions during the value engineering process, the committee made some very difficult decisions. You can find an in-depth blog on our website that discusses the process we went through and the rationale behind these decisions. They included removing lighting poles from the new athletic fields, removing the Minuteman bikeway ramp and the east side pedestrian ramp, and reducing the number of geothermal wells on the site. Note though that several of these changes have upsides. The light poles and Minuteman bikeway ramp may be added at a later date and the reduction of the geothermal wells only minimally impacted energy use and carbon production. There are many details about these decisions on our website. The committee took several weeks to sift through information, study options, and ultimately do what we believe is essential for the high school program. While we faced difficult choices, we focused on maintaining the educational program and building a quality 21st century learning facility. The project remains within the budget approved by the voters of Arlington and our construction schedule has not been impacted. Site work and construction will begin as scheduled. And as I just mentioned, should there be funding toward the end of the project, we will seek to reinstate some of the reductions the committee had to make. Now, I would like to turn to Todd McCabe and John Lamar from Consigli to talk about the work ahead. Good evening, everybody. As Jeff said, my name is Todd McCabe and this is John Lamar. John is our senior project manager working on site for the next several years here, managing the construction project and I am a project executive with Consigli managing several projects, this being one of them. We do wanna talk a little bit in detail about what's going to happen on campus, on the campus over the course of the next several months. We did wanna start by talking about a little bit of our agenda for tonight. Jeff introduced the owner's project manager. We're gonna have them stand up again in a quick second just to put names with faces. We did wanna talk about our overarching goals on a project like this in an academic setting and an environment with very curious eyes and ears and pedestrians and students all around. We obviously need to make sure that safety and separation is key and we'll talk a little bit about that. We're gonna get into our mitigation methods, not too much into detail, but talk about some high level mitigation methods as to how we achieve those goals and then go through some detailed phasing renderings that we have that will focus on pedestrian access to the school during construction for the first several months and then vehicular access to the school as well during those several months because there will be some changes along the way. And then finally, we're just gonna go through some project information. This is not something that students and staff see every day, so we want to make everybody aware of what's happening outside their window. And then we'll open it up to some questions. So to start off, the owner's project manager, as Jeff said, is Skanska. Jim Burroughs, Victoria Clifford and Hal Raymond are your representatives that will help manage us and the town and the designer during this process and they're sitting down here in the front row. Hal is gonna be on site right, Jim, full-time during the construction process. So if there are contact, if you're outside the fence, if you have issues that we'll show this a little bit later, but there's a telephone number and Hal will be the person that you're speaking with just to manage that process. So our goal is pretty straightforward. Safety for the students and the workers on the construction site. Minimize disruptions to the school and to the community and be a proactive communication partner here because I do think that that is a big part of being successful on this job. It's a long project, a lot of moving parts and we need to stay in front of all the issues and being able to communicate with our team here and with you all is going to be paramount. So with regards to some of our mitigation methods, really to support these goals, the separation of construction activities from daily activities is very important. Some very easy ways to do that that you'll see within the next couple of months, establishing a perimeter fence around the construction area, building protective barriers between access areas where students and staff need to travel adjacent to our construction sites. Things that we're gonna do to help the safety of the students and staff within the building and adjacent to the site perform noise testing on a daily basis and air quality testing. Again, this is something that's new. We're gonna have a construction site right outside the classrooms and we need to make sure that we're operating within the right limits. Signage is gonna be key. As I said, there's gonna be many moving parts and students in the nine to 12 grades, always very curious. We like to look into the construction fence, see what's going on, excited about what's happening. We need to make sure that they know where they can be and where they cannot be. And we'll show you some examples of that as we go through this presentation. And then whenever you have a major site construction project like this, pest management is always key. We'll hire a third party and they'll help manage that process throughout the duration of the construction job. As I said, communication is critical here. We're gonna be on your campus, part of your school for the next five years. So we really need to become part of your school. We're gonna participate in school safety drills. If there's a fire drill, we need to know about that. We need to be able to really participate in that because we will be part of that emergency if there was one. We need to provide construction offices to our team and you'll see a website that you all can access that will house all of that information that we'll be putting out on a weekly basis. And that's something different that we do in a lot of occupied environments like this. School is, consignly, dedicates a full-time mitigation manager to the job. And what that is is that it's really somebody within our team, one person that communicates with the many stakeholders on a project like this. Internal though, okay? So speaking with school superintendents, speaking with school principal, the many different entities that happen, athletic director if need be. So we get all the information to one person and then we can disseminate it that throughout our team and make sure that we're marching to the right direction there. So that is something that will be a key part of our project team as we move forward. And then finally, just managing the construction workers on site. We'll make it standard to perform background checks on all the workers, quarry forms, the quarry testing will be done before workers come on the site. ID badges just really so clearly identifying who workers are and so if a student or staff sees them in an area that they shouldn't be, they can identify that person and get that information to us. An act that enforces zero tolerance policy, one strike, you're out. And we need to stay diligent to that. And then this mitigation manager and our superintendents on site manage the day-to-day workflow will work with the school to coordinate all major deliveries around school activities. Obviously we don't wanna be bringing a steel truck or several concrete trucks at 7.30, 8 o'clock in the morning when most of the activity is happening outside the building and traffic is piling up on Massachusetts Avenue. So we need to work hard and communicate with that through our team, through our subcontractor team as well. So before we jump into some of the detailed graphics, I did wanna jump to just some absolutes here, some spring 2020 construction impacts and we know it's warm outside, we're not at spring just quite yet but within the next month we'll get there. And these are some changes that'll be happening on the high school campus here. The basketball courts located in the back of the site are going to be converted to parking. So we're gonna take those over and it's actually the first thing that we're going to do, the first element of construction. We're gonna convert those basketball courts into some additional parking and you'll see why when we walk through the graphics. Softball, baseball, pierce practice fields are no longer going to be available come springtime because we have work in those areas that we need to do. Key to note that there are no impacts to the pierce large turf field. That will remain open and that's where practices in whatever games that are scheduled there will happen. The Mass Ave, Massachusetts Ave front green will be offline and you'll see we'll be fencing that in March and that is really where our construction will start. We have a lot of utilities to relocate out in that area because as you saw from the renderings, that's phase one. That is where our first building is going to be constructed. And in the graphics that John's gonna talk a little bit about, you'll see the drop-off and the pickup for traffic patterns because those will change slightly over the course of the next few months and then the pedestrian walking routes as well. Okay, so we're gonna just jump into the graphics and walk you through those. They are the same graphics that you see here so if there are some questions we're available after to walk through some details if need be. Hello everybody, hello everybody. So we've got the blue, we have two different slides here reflecting vehicle and the next one, we're not gonna go to it yet, Amy, has how construction and pedestrians are gonna coexist but we felt it was important to define far out Grove Street and then you can't fit Mill Street in over there, Millbrook, how parents drop off their students and how they get to the site. So this is currently what happens now and this is what's currently gonna be happening in March but if you look in the far right-hand corner, the orange with the orange fencing around it, that's that basketball court that we're gonna create some additional parking spaces. So we have two different colors here, we've got the green and we've got supposed to be an orange but a yellowy, that's construction traffic and green would be students, how they come to the facility now and again that's March. So pretty much everything's staying the same right there except for the inconvenience in the back creating that parking lot. So in April, April's when we go to the front lawn off of Mass Ave and we also go to the Pierce practice field and a portion of the baseball field. What we're doing there, that's where the geothermal well fields are is the Pierce practice field in the baseball field and in the front zone we have a 48 inch line, Jeff talked about it earlier that there's an existing stream slash storm system that runs underneath the building, we're gonna re-root that along Mass Ave and then down towards CVS. But you can still see here that vehicle traffic drop off is still the same as well as we've got construction going on now, we've got construction, sharing school of court coming in and out to get to the geothermal well field as well as students coming and going the way they currently go today. Again, I think the big thing here in this April slide is that anybody that was coming from Grove Street to the DPW lot area there, that's now you can't access that way. So May, June, we're still doing that geothermal well field, vehicle traffic is still coming the way we've been describing it but if you look on Mass Ave here we show a road in the middle of the, what we call phase one construction or the current green. So we're gonna move the current loop road to the middle of that green and that's gonna be a shared pedestrian and vehicle pathway. We can go to the next one Amy. So that's what you're seeing there. This is May, June, you see also in the upper, near the column house, the corner by Shula Court and Loop Road, we've got utility works and gas piping that has to be rerouted there. So a lot of enabling what we describe as utility relocation work occurring from February, March, April, May, right into June. So this coming summer, July, is when we actually enter the building. So in July we'll be working and I know that's supposed to be a three month look ahead here, but we wanted to show everybody what was gonna be happening this summer because this is a very lively community campus and coming this summer, we've got several points that we're gonna be working inside the buildings to create what we call a swing space, moving staff from one side of the building to the other because the front entrance here, as you can see in the summertime, is shut off. So we're creating a temporary entrance in the back. As we get closer to that work, we'll post that to the websites, we'll let everybody know what's happening in advance, give plenty of notice what's gonna be occurring. Next slide. And then September is obviously when everybody comes back. So everything I just talked about, the geothermal well fields in particular that appears practice field, you'll notice now is a parking lot. So that's the actual permanent parking lot, but we're gonna be using that as a temporary parking lot for staff. It'll be oversized during construction. It's not, we'll squeeze more cars in simple terms than we're gonna normally park there. That'll be created in ready for September. The green is obviously under construction, but you do see coming from Mass Ave, the green arrows, the pedestrians are coming in. I'm gonna, walking along CVS, turning the corner and still using the existing main entrance. We're gonna throw a couple more slides coming up here about how we protect the students and the workers with overhead protection. But that's a quick, quick snapshot for September, but everything I just showed you prior to this is to get us to September. So we've got a couple slides here. This is a lot of signage. This is kind of a smorgasbord of pick your sign, but this is just examples of what we put around this fencing, not to this type of a cluster, but so everybody knows where workers go, where students go, where visitors go, what drop-off and delivery hours are, and a unique thing that we do, and it's not on there, but our superintendent, cell phone number will be on there. So for after hours, if there's something should go happen, fence falls over, something like that, a gate left open, somebody can make a phone call and we can make sure that HAL gets notified that we're going to go address that. Next one. So we just got some pictures here of dust and noise. This is more dust, obviously, but dust control, that front phase one, front lawn, there will be a lot of dust, but this is how we manage it with water trucks. The guy standing there with labor, excuse me, hoses, as well as wheel washes where we leave the gates, and there will be periodic street sweeping as well. We touched on February test wells. The geothermal has to have a test well, two test wells performed. It's going to be at the Pierce practice field and the baseball field, and that work is scheduled to tentatively start in the next couple of weeks, probably the latter towards the end of February. Once that design information gets at a design team that then allows us to go procure the geothermal wells, the 130 I think we mentioned earlier, the current design, and that's a lot of work. That's a lot of sloppy work, but it's contained to that Pierce practice field and the baseball field. And I mentioned the covered walkway, that's just an example, that's not what ours is going to look like, but that's a covered walkway that'll be put, it'll be lit, it'll be well lit to get from the street from Mass Ave into the main entrance. That's just an example of what we would provide. And I think that's it. Thank you. So as you heard from our firm here, the construction of the new high school is going to begin very shortly. For those of you with children who are rising through the ranks or in high school now, you might be wondering what parts of the new school will be online when your student is at Arlington High School. Are there any of you here concerned about that or wanna? Okay, we can take more specific questions, but one of your handouts provides a chart that compares the construction timeline with the grades your children are in. And you can also see this chart on the slide behind me. For example, if you have a sophomore, you can see during the student's junior year, the current school will be operational while the front wings are being built. And the new steam of performing arts wings will be open during the winter of your student's senior year. And the current fourth grade class will start their freshman year in a completely new school with just the remaining field and site work to be done. As Consigli mentioned, the entire project team is focused on the safety of students, staff, and workers throughout the entirety of this project. This is a complicated and long project, but our team will do their best to minimize disruption to students, staff, and community members. There are many ways to stay informed and remain updated on the progress of the project. We recently completed a weekly AHS construction updates, email lists that will provide frequent and detailed information about construction status, such as changes to site access, parking, deliveries, and weekly work schedules. You can sign up for these alerts on, there should be a clipboard, there should be a clipboard circulating, is that, is there a clipboard circulating throughout the room? Or maybe not, okay. There's clipboards here, so people just, yeah, run those around the room. So if you wanna sign up, you wanna get regular alerts, please sign up for that and you'll get alerts on that. We'll also continue to send the bimonthly eBulletins with general project information. So our goal as a committee is to keep the community informed at all times about the project and to share information with you about the project as quickly as we get it. So I'm gonna stop here and then open it up for questions. I'm gonna kinda moderate the questions and then there's different people from the building committee, the town managers here, the superintendent is here, the entire project team, our architect, Lori Coles is here, and so we can answer any questions you might have about the project. Yeah, go ahead. Now I just take the mic if you can. Thanks. Hi, I'm a parent of a senior. And I have a really pragmatic question. I'm glad to see it looks like some of the athletic fields are gonna be still usable during this spring. And I'm wondering if someone can just explain is the baseball team gonna move to a different field and is that field gonna be available for other sports? That's a good question for Dr. Janger. This works, right? So the answer is yes. I mean, so there's plans for both baseball and softball to relocate to different fields. There's some work in terms of which fields we'll use and where, but they've been working on that in terms of scheduling. That also has a ripple effect from anyone who's thinking ahead to other youth sports that use those spaces, but they are shifting around fields putting some different fields in service. And there will be a similar issue with track and field because they're gonna lose, they won't lose the track but they'll lose some of the spaces that that's used for. Some of those will be able to re-jabble in shot put. Discus can actually be done on the turf with different equipment that doesn't pierce into the space. So they're making adjustments for that as well. It's actually a follow up question to your question. What happens in the spring when, I'm sorry in the fall, when the fall sports start, you showed us some change in the traffic patterns in the back of the school access to the sports fields and things like that. So will fall sports be impacted, football, soccer? I mean, so it'll be the same issue for them. They'll lose for them some of the practice fields. The pierce field is never touched and there's always access throughout the project to the pierce field. I do have another follow up question. What are you going to do to prevent high school kids from getting adventurous on the construction site? Do you want to take that one? As I mentioned, we are gonna work on that separation a hard barrier, which will be a construction fence. It'll be lit around the high traffic areas. To provide just a warning, if you will, for some of the students. And that's, we'll be working closely with the school from a security standpoint to actually monitor. And we are talking about monitoring the space with cameras to provide just that much more information, I guess, or site when we aren't here. So that's really the plan right now is hard barriers and some technology to help us out. Hi, I'm Beata Becker. I live on Bartlett Avenue, so I'm on a butter here. I wanted to know if you could talk more about the pest control issue. I assume by that you mean rats. And I'm wondering just how much of a problem you think this will be based on experience and also what kind of control you're talking about. Cause I've had experience in the past with poison and knowing how it gets into other food systems and the ecosystem. So what we do is we have that third party, we list it up there. They'll come in and do a pre-inspection before we start the project. They will actually go around the neighborhood, they'll go through the school system and look for boroughs and look for any signs of rodent life. They document that and then they robustly will put rodent control, tier one, which are child and pet proof. So unfortunately, I have researched this and I've been doing this for quite a while, but poison is the most ethical but also the best way to deal with rodents in those traps. And they will always go back to their borough. So I mentioned that pre-walkthrough, they will locate those boroughs, the inspection company and they will document and then they will actually go, I'm gonna get a little too detailed here, they'll actually go into that borough and confirm that that's where they're all returning to. But they're called tier one, rodent control, I hate to use the word trap, but centers, I'm not sure if that answers your question, but and then if anybody in the Abutter neighborhood requests a station to be put on their property, in front of their property, we can that can also be done again and that would go through how, for example, that would be a how question. And then they'd come to us. Project of the tracking down and following the rodents or some of us have already contacted other parties, but we have to pay for it. So, and we'd like to know how far your mitigation project or control, et cetera. So it's a very good, good question. And I should have commented on that, that is at the very beginning of the job, they'll come in once a week, twice a week. And then as we get going, it'll be once a month for the life of the job. That's in the cost of the work. And if you are within a, I don't know what that distance is, but if you request it, most likely you're not gonna be turned down. We will put a trap at that location and that would be covered under our cost. When, when Carney did the construction over here on Mass Avenue next to the high school, we got inundated in the neighborhood. We're on Bailey Road and Lachlan and a bunch of us got inundated with rats. And it took more than one trap on everybody's property to try to keep them in check. So when you say you're only gonna go into the neighborhood a certain distance and you're gonna give everybody one trap if they requested, it took like on our property, it took three traps on my neighbors, it took three or four. So you're looking at just in two houses, a total of about seven or eight traps. I submit it's gonna take more than one trap when somebody requested it. And the rats went all the way up to Gloucester Street, which is like three or four blocks up the hill. So this company, that's what their expertise is are. And they will monitor that trap to your point. Sounds like the same thing happened is that they started with one, they were still getting signed. So they increased those traps and eventually they will eradicate the problem and then working the way down from three to two to one. I can't speak to the other project, but that's typically what we do. Hi, my name's Jackie Maurer, I'm a 30 plus year resident and I own upbeat cycling right on school or court right off the corner of Mass Ave. So I'm concerned about all these things. My question is a multi-part about parking. Number one, will there be designated construction worker in construction vehicle parking that does not take uptown in business parking? Number two, will there be steps taken to encourage strongly students to start taking public transportation to school? There's an awful lot of students one per car that park up all the side streets. So I'm thinking there's gonna be less parking for everybody and plus construction vehicles, that could be a real problem. My other part question is, can you describe the fencing around the front green that's going to go up shortly, what it looks like and how tall it is? Sure, so in respect to the construction parking, that on the slide that we showed the basketball court, this summer we'll be creating a lay down and what we call lay down or a trailer area and that's where the utility vehicles and the construction workers will be parking and that's for the life of the project. That's currently the softball field now I think, correct? So that's where we'll be parking the workers and again, their hours staggered differently from when the school hours get in and out. We talked about deliveries, making sure that what we don't have is at the height of construction, 150 construction workers trying to come in and the students also trying to come at the same time because I think next year, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the school starts at 830, Matt? Yes, so, all right. So I'll give the Matt in a second here about the perimeter and the students with their parking, but the fence is typically an eight foot high chain link fence driven into the ground with a tie wire at the top and bottom, our tension wire, excuse me, with what we call scrim. There'll be a maroon scrim put on so you're not seeing the unsightly dirt piles, but you just know that something's going on behind there and that it gets maintained. Once a week, somebody walks around and makes sure that the scrim is not flapping and the gates are closing properly. And I think those are the questions I... Students are currently encouraged to take public transportation. We don't have parking on site and we don't expect to have parking on site. The reality is we will work with the police as we do periodically in the fall if students are parking illegally or inappropriately, but otherwise they are like the rest of the members of the town allowed to park where they're parking legally. On site in terms of the building parking, the plan is for the sites that are currently allotted towards building parking, we're gonna have the same amount of parking for that on site. Another 30-year resident of Arlington. So currently, and I apologize, this isn't for you, but currently all of the Mass App parking is taken up by reserve parking for people associated with the high school. That's strict right there on Mass App. Yes, so that is not great for business in Arlington and I frequent small business, so that's not a good thing. The other thing is your... So that parking will be moved on site. So this also, you seem to be addressing mostly the impact on high school students and high school staff, but this is writ large for the Arlington community, so how can you speak to the impact of the eyesore that this construction is gonna be for the Arlington community and the impact on parking? I mean, I guess I can only say this, we have to build the building, right? And if we're going to build the building, there will be a period of construction. One of the conversations we had about parking in general is that once the building is built, and frankly throughout the building, we will be handling our onsite impact as well if not better than we currently are. The building has been here for over 100 years and parking in terms of people using it has been an issue for over 100 years, but it is a part of the community. So we try to be a good neighbor to our neighbors. Well, if you feel like having us as a neighbor is not a good neighbor, there's not much we can do about that, but the students come to the school because it's part of the community and they park in the school. We cannot stop students, if their parents give them a car, from driving around on the public streets and parking in the public parking spaces. We work with the police when there's an impact problem and if you particularly, if anybody we've had this happen, people call us and say some kids parking in front of my house and leaving their car there illegally for more than two hours. If we're notified about that, we notify the police and APD goes by and gives them tickets and we ask them to leave. So if people are having impacts about people parking illegally or being inappropriate on the site, we try to be a good neighbor, let us know. Whenever people let us know, we address it. Amy, there's a bunch of questions on that side of the room. So why don't we get over there. Hello, my name is Colin. I'm a local resident, empty nester, so not from the school perspective. Talking about impact on the local community we've talked about parking. Can you speak to what the rules are gonna be for construction traffic on the local side roads and also weekend work? When's work gonna start in the mornings? When's work gonna start in the evenings, please? Todd, and so the question is, yeah, go ahead. Just from a work construction standpoint, our typical day starts at 7 a.m. and runs till 3.30. There are times during the construction period where we'll look at maybe starting a little bit earlier and then potential for future phases using some overtime and working a little bit later in the day. So primarily though, it's 7 to 3.30 or our work hours, which means that people are coming and traveling to the site between 6.30 and 7 o'clock and leaving between 3 and 3.30, quarter of four. Monday through Friday is our plan. We will probably work some Saturdays. I hope I don't have to work on Sunday. And the other question was construction trucks on the local side roads. What's the rules about that? So the construction traffic, obviously we need to get to all sides of the project during the different phases throughout the four or five years of working here. The construction traffic will abide by the local construction rules, weight, traffic patterns. We don't look to change any of that during construction. So primary entrance into the site for phase one is gonna be from Mass Ave. And then to access the field, Pierce Practice Field here in this orange square, we're gonna be coming down Shula Court. And those are the primary access points for the next several months. And Todd, is it safe to say that the construction, the weekly construction updates will have any changes to start times, delivery times, extended hour work times, that kind of thing? Yes. There's questions all on the back too. I can't see everybody's hand, but we'll get to everyone. So if we don't just... I live on Field Road, a block and a half from the school. And I have personally called the police about students parking all day long on my street. And the police have told me that to getting students is not a priority. So that plan that's described is not working. Okay, thank you. Not that I'm telling you that someone didn't say that to you, but they shouldn't be saying that to you. And we're gonna take action if someone complains about it. So whether it means they're gonna get a ticket or if I'm gonna go find out who's driving the car, I'll come into the school and maybe have them move their car. But I would take action. I can't speak to everybody, but everybody should be taking action on complaints. I do, extension 3619 from the town. I know there are some memorials in the front of the school to students that died in the World Wars, I believe. And there may be others inside the building or on the premises that I don't know about. What are the plans to relocate those plaques, et cetera, to the new facility? Our assistant principal, Bill McCarthy, can answer that question right there. Bill, how are you? Sorry, I was in the back. So I'm the chair of the Memorial Committee and we are cataloging all the memorials in the building. We will be in touch with those people that still have connections to the memorials, if possible. There is a plan right now, so when construction starts in April and May on the front lawn, those memorials will be taken out and stored. And there is a plan with the architects to find an appropriate place for them when we reconvene if the people connected to that memorial still want it there. Some of the memorials, as you walk out here, you'll see there are two, I think, from one from 1920 that is connected to a tree. That tree is actually going to be there after the construction, so that will be part of the fenced off part. And most of the memorials on the front lawn that are out towards Mass Ave will be on that side of the construction. They will not be impacted. Hi, my name's Peggy Powell. I live on Lockland Ave, where I've lived for 20 years, and luckily my kids have graduated quite a while ago, so I don't have to worry too much about what happens within the school, but as in a butter, I have a lot of concerns. One again is about the parking. I think anybody who lives in the monotony rocks area is very lucky, but we do put up with a lot of people with the students' parking. And so I'm worried about construction vehicles, noise in addition to the parking, and but one big concern is about mitigating asbestos, which I've heard is within the building, and I'm really frightened about that. And I don't know if that's in a different phase than what you're talking about now, but I don't have a lot of trust about really our safety. And so I hope you can address that. And also you've mentioned that there'll be some street sweeping for butters periodically, and I wondered what that was about. I can't even get my street sweep at the moment because students are always parking there, so it's just impossible. So anyway, I don't know if I've asked too many questions, but there you go. Well, for the street sweeping, as part of our site work package, we will be hiring a street sweeper to clean the access roads. When John talked about phase one site work, he mentioned something about a wheel wash station. So we will set up two stations where the trucks are departing from the construction site, where they will wash their wheels to minimize any of the dirt or debris that's coming out on the tires. And in addition to that, we will be streets sweeping those areas to keep the street clean and to minimize, again, the site impact on the public ways. Another question, the second question is about asbestos. So phase one is new construction. We don't anticipate to encounter any asbestos. When we start to do demolition, phase two and three in the existing buildings, we will hire asbestos subcontractors. We have licensed site professionals that will be overlooking and providing testing and that clearance so we can work in those areas once we've been abated. So we'll probably, as we move forward into phase two and three in a forum like this, have a deeper discussion on that, but that's 18 months away right now. Hi, I'm Lynn Burke from Intercontinental Management Corp, Managers of Brigham Square Apartments, that also went a butter. Wondering if you could speak a little bit about that geothermal drilling and what that entails, noise, vibration, that sort of thing that we may be experiencing. Sure, I don't know if you recall the image, but geothermal well is like any auger driven well. It's a truck or a rig they call them. We will be drilling down approximately 500 feet in 130 different areas, right? Boar holes, the boring will be about a six to eight inch diameter. That process will create some spoils that we'll be managing on site. It will create some water that we'll be managing on site. And we'll be removing that soil, removing that water or managing it on site within the work area. The process is a long one. One rig can drill about a well and a half a day, right? So 130 divided by one and a half, it's a lot of days. So we, as your construction managers are working with, we haven't purchased that subcontractor yet, but we'll be working with those subcontractors to try to expedite, maybe we'll be using two rigs to reduce the amount of time on site. It's in a confined area, so we are limited by the amount of surface area that we can work in, but we'll be analyzing that as we bring those subcontractors on site. Before we start the work, we put out seismic monitors around the perimeter of where we're gonna be working to get a baseline of what the actual ground is doing today, and then as the work progresses, we keep track of that, and then if there's a, there's actually a like a Wi-Fi monitor that'll tell you that we've exceeded what's allowable for monitoring. So that's another control that we do to make sure that the equipment is staying where it's supposed to be within the threshold. So that phase of the project is rather long because there are so many wells to drill, and... And just touch, as part of our budget, we're also gonna be doing pre-construction surveys prior to the main mobilization of the drilling of the wells, as well as all the major mobilization of all the construction activities. That's similar to the pest control. It's radius around the school, around the construction area, and surveys are passed out. If anybody would request a survey, they come to your house, they photograph door frames, foundations, pretty much anything structural prior to construction starting, so that if there's any change from prior to construction starting to something during construction, that's documented. Those will be in the next month, month and a half, but it'll be prior to the main mobilization. Another question about the geothermal area, how close to the existing trees will that be, and what precautions are going to be taken to prevent heavy equipment from driving across the root masses of the existing trees? We're probably all familiar with the Uncle Sam construction work, which basically destroyed one of the mature trees there. Let's make sure that doesn't happen here. So, the geothermal field is back here by the DPW at the Pierce Practice Field, so it's not in the front green near any of those trees. Just wake and work right forward. There's a bunch of that one right there. Hi, I'm Kristen Bray. I'm gonna jump back to the athletic field question. I've got kids in grades 10, eight and six. You've done a pretty good job of telling me what fields are not available. How do I find out which fields are going to be available at any given time for field sports like soccer, field hockey, et cetera? So, in terms of the Pierce field, like we said, the Pierce field will not be touched and that will be used for the entirety of this project. The softball field and baseball field will be under construction starting in the spring. The athletic director has made arrangements for those sports to be played elsewhere. So, we will be using the Pierce field for larger events, practices, track and field, things of those nature. In terms of the other fields, the athletic director will be posting that on the scheduling website as they come up in time. But other youth sports and youths of other fields in town? And each team is gonna let, I mean, as soon as we go, they'll let you know, you know, if boys' baseball is playing at Bishop, you'll be knowing that right away. Hi, my name's Melina Salerno. I have a seventh and an eighth grader right now. And my question has to do about noise level within the school. I heard that there's gonna be daily noise level monitoring. I'd like to understand more about the details of that. And what are the mitigation plans around noise levels? So the details around the mitigation that we'll be using. The construction site is still a good distance away from the classroom window spaces, but we are talking about potentially adding some secondary, I'm gonna call them windows, but on the windows that face out to the green in the area that are classrooms, we may be installing some additional plexiglass to provide an additional barrier, if you will, to aid in some of that noise reduction. What we'll do first, though, is that monitoring. Obviously, there's an allowable decibel reading that will establish the baseline, and then we'll start some work, do some monitoring, and see if, in fact, the work that's happening outside is actually migrating into the building at levels that would exceed that decibel baseline. And if, in fact, they are, then we would come with, I guess, call it phase two, which would be some sort of additional protection at those windows to reduce the migration of the noise into the classrooms. And to add on to that, for our role too, is really looking at the logistics plan, working with the administrative staff at the high school, and really understanding their schedule, exam weeks, state exams, any weeks that are quiet weeks, we can build those into the subcontracts, we can plan for them, so that the construction activities can be tailored so that we don't set ourselves up for a bad week where there's exams and an activity that could have been shifted. So it's really proper planning, is a big piece of that too, before any monitoring happens day to day, it's really sitting with the logistics plan and tailoring it to the school schedule as much as possible. I'm thinking that maybe the 8.30 start time is gonna help students not drive as much to school, maybe that's wishful thinking, but I had a question about access to the site, because right now there's sort of no access from the northwest side of the site, except through that Pierce practice area, and a lot of students use that, and I'm wondering if there's any creative way to come up with a pathway for students coming from that side of town to get to the school without having to go all the way around any other route that could be designated during the project. So if I correct me if I'm wrong, but you're saying in terms of accessing from this side. So currently for those of you that know, this is all fenced off, and I'm gonna have a time as we repair it, someone goes by and cuts it. So we do have quite a few students that cut through Pierce fields. I just met with the, and I know I'm gonna get the title wrong, the community transportation group, and they are proposing getting crosswalks, crosswalks put in here. Part of our plan originally was to have a bike path entrance here that would come down into the parking lot on the new construction. That currently is on our alt list, I believe. Basically what that means is we've taken a lot of the plan right now for budgeting reasons, and our hope is that that can be put back in as we move through the project and see what the actual budget will come out to be. So in addition to our construction site, DPW is actually undergoing construction as well. So this area will be shifting around a little bit. Eventually, and I don't, here we go. This one here, this is Pierce practice field here. This will become their new parking lot, and we are working with them to build a walkway that will come in here, connect to this parking lot, and lead into the building. So there is, this will be an open route, and when we get to, I believe it is phase three, but don't hold me to that right now, our staff will actually need to use that to drive into as well. So that is going to be an access point. DPW recognizes that there's quite a few students that cut through this area despite us saying please don't. So they're working with us on that to redirect students safely down Grove Street and this way. So just to recap, so the Grove Street access in March will be offline because the project team has looked at this, the building committee has pushed them and there's no safe access while the geothermal wells are being drilled. So even though that will be, that work will be completed by September, I believe the DPW project is starting in November, Adam is that right? So briefly in the fall there might be access from Grove Street but then the DPW project starts for, and that lasts for two years, approximately two years. So Grove Street access will be limited for a few years. Amy, this is a family. Hi, Diane Crowley, I'm in a butter on the other side of Mill Street off the summer. And I just have a question about like in September, are all the students, if anyone's getting driven in or the only access off of Mill Street, am I saying that right? There's no more access to the front of the building to do like a turnaround drop off. It's all just on Mill Street. During phase one, there will be space to drop people off here on Mass Ave and there will be a walkway that will be lit and I believe covered coming up to the front entrance. So there will still be the ability to drop off some Mass Ave and then obviously we'll have Mill Street in the back as well. And just to clarify, currently we have that strip along Mass Ave as parking. So that lane will be open, there will not be parking there. So if you're pulling off to, you won't have to stop in the middle of Mass Ave and have your kid roll out. You'll be able to pull over to the side and let them get out. Okay, all right, thank you. Amy, there's a bunch, there's a question up here. I was trying to work my way forward. This gentleman's not. Okay. With the access from Mass Ave to the front of the school and the drop off and everything, I can see that what's happening already, Gray Street gets filled up very quickly with cars that use that as an alternative to Mass Ave. Is it going to have a serious impact on Gray Street with even more traffic coming down gray, down to Pleasant to take a corner instead of using Mass Ave? Is there any plans to mitigate any of that traffic? Let's take that one. That might be a question for like the traffic. I mean, I guess. Just saying it's something that they might look at if we see increased traffic on Gray Street. But I believe what Principal Jango was saying is those spaces in front of the school are eventually going to be all blocked off to be drop off only. So it shouldn't back up traffic on Mass Ave. There's a question up front. I think realistically, there are things that we struggle with now, right on the current site, right? We have the roads that we use. We have Grove Street, we have Mill Street, those I drive here, I live in town too, right? And so during those drop off and pickup periods, we struggle with those things. In general, our goal is not to make it worse. And I think when the building is done, we will make it much better. But we won't, I mean, we won't widen Grove Street, right? Like, we are dealing with the things on our side in terms of handling the people there. I'm Ariela, I'll have two kids at the high school. And I've asked this question to Jeff and a couple others before, mostly regarding the dust mitigation and environmental contaminants on the site. So I'm interested in hearing or going to a forum regarding the asbestos abatement when that's happening. I have a question for now. Is any of the area in the back of the school that's currently capped going to be disturbed during this first phase? Is any of the area where the geothermal wells are on the pierce practice field and the baseball field? So, I mean, that's area that's been capped, that was capped because of the chromium that was under the surface. So I think, John, maybe speak to how we're gonna navigate the contamination. So Todd touched on it earlier that the wells, we have to contain all the water. And we're gonna have settling of fracked tanks. And we have to actually treat the water and not put it back into the ground. So any water that comes out of the ground, put the wells in, does not go back into that ground. It actually gets treated. And then disposed up through the normal storm system once it's tested through all the regulations that were required for that water testing. So, yes, in other words. And then in the very back, that's why I was a little confused because I was actually jumping on the back of the building. We do, I'm pretty sure the design tries to stay away from doing any deep sanitary or water lines or anything like that. Everything, we're actually filling the site and we're trying to minimize not going through that engineered cap. Okay. So just an add on to that. I mean, it sounds like between chromium and wells and asbestos and lead and all kinds of things, potentially in the site, in the dust, is there going to be some kind of environmental firm managing this testing that, no offense to the building contractor, but it's not always monitored adequately on my project. Do you want me to answer that, Jim? I mean, there's an LSP, there's an IHS, there's all these third-party agencies, excuse me, I apologize, consultants, that that's their job, that they have to attest that the air is ready and clean before construction workers can go in there. So it's in a containment and there's a lot of procedures and policies that says you have to have a 24-hour or 48-hour air change. We cannot take that containment down until that's got a clean bill of health. And Skanska is the owner's project manager. They're involved with that with McPhail for the dirt and I forget the other engineering firm inside the building. I apologize. What was it? UEC. So there's other consultants involved that work through HMFH, correct me if I'm wrong. So there's a lot of checks and balances. So it's a very good question. We have what we call IAQ, indoor air quality program. So we're actually, I was on the phone, I won't name the name of the company, a consultant, to do a baseline test. So we're gonna, late March, probably April, before we put the first shovel on the ground, we're gonna do a baseline test of what's physically going on in the building right now, all parts of the building. So then we have the readings. And then when we first start that work once a week, they'll come in and they'll test the air again, they'll test the air again, and then it gets into a regular monthly program to make sure that the air quality is acceptable within the occupied building. It's actually a contractual specification requirement that we have to do. We submit in advance and it gets reviewed by all parties. And then we return those reports into weekly or monthly whenever we produce them. So I mean, we've got community, people from the building committee are taking notes of that and I think we'll try to get that. Yeah. There's a, this portfolio has been a asset for them. I wanted to add on to our yellows question. Given the level of pollution, air pollution can vary by day, do you think it's enough to test once a week and then once a month? Same for noise level. Ty, do you want to, I don't know. I think what we'll be doing is we'll be testing more frequently up front until we can become confident with what those air tests are showing and then make a decision if we think that we need to back off or decrease that cadence. But initially, when we're doing the excavation and there's a lot of work happening on site, we'll be testing more frequently. Well, I think that's what Jeff had said. The building committee is making a note of that and they'd probably make those tests available. So there's two likely outcomes. We have an indoor, yeah, we have an indoor air quality, as John said, specification. Excuse me? No, at the very beginning of the job, what's the first problem? They'll be there for the first week to verify what's happening. For that first couple, I talked about it just like the pest control. When we first start, we will bustily come in once a week and check on everything. And we have little, I apologize, I can't remember the name of them right now. We also have, I'm sorry? There's devices that are left in place that allow these third-party consultants to come back in and plug in and test that air. So they're always in the same spot, they're always in the same location. So we do that very robustly at the beginning and then as we get going on what the air quality is, then it's monthly report. And if need be, and Jim and I have done this on other projects, Jim, right? We've brought these IAQ third-party guys in on an as-need basis. If somebody says they smell something, it's better to be on the side on caution and bring that inspector in. First of all, thanks to the building committee for, okay, thanks to the building committee for everything you've done and for giving us this opportunity to have this conversation. I think it's important to keep this communication going and the few meetings I've been to have been really informative. Schedule question. So obviously, the faster we get this done, the better for all involved, the impact on the students, the neighborhood and so forth. And I think we all recognize that as soon as a shovel hits the ground, the best laid plans, you know, get tested. So can you talk a little bit about, sort of, one, your confidence in being able to finish this project on time, where you think some of the key risks are, and how you're planning on mitigating those risks to make sure that we end the project on time. So we're very confident. We've looked hard at this schedule. It is four phases right now. And it's an aggressive schedule, but we've looked at it in a number of different ways. We've actually even tried to accelerate the overall schedule to reduce the time here. But I think that we've actually settled on this four phase five year plan that makes the most sense that gives us the most confidence in turning over the building when we say we can. I think from a risk standpoint, you know, there's some deep excavations on this project. There's an incredible amount of SOE, which is a support of engineering, an engineered support system from the front mass av to the back of the site drops about 25, 30 feet. Phase one happens on a nice flat green. Phase two and three happen in the footprint of the existing building. So there's demolition work that needs to happen before we can create phase two. Half of the building comes down and we build in that footprint and then step over to phase three and do the same thing. So I think that the risk is centered around the existing conditions with the existing building and how we can mitigate those. We haven't done a lot of investigative work in the building yet. Some of the engineering and design groups have. I think that once we start to get into the project a bit more in those phases, we'll take opportunities during summer, take opportunities during some winter and spring breaks and actually do more investigation so we can gain more confidence in understanding the existing conditions. But whenever you do a renovation, that's the one thing that you need to be prepared for is the existing construction may not always be like the drawing says or like you think it is going to be. And that's the part that we need to work on. Just so you know, the building committee did look into we at work with the design team and the Consigli and nature in Skanska to see if we could consolidate some of the phases and accelerate the project and it just was not practical. I know there's a, is there some questions? Okay. So the question is what kind of monitoring and oversight do you have from state and federal agencies on the testing? So the MAST DEP, when we're doing the asbestos that we talked about, there's a whole program and whole submittal that goes into them and they have to approve it before the work and commence. Okay, I have a question here. I got a question on a construction site is a good educational forum for students. I'm wondering how you're getting students involved and would you allow students to take tours of the construction site while it's under construction? Matt or Bill? So the answer to that is yes. That we're, the students are gonna live through this for the next four or five years and there's an incredible opportunity happening outside their window and we need to involve them in that. So we've come up with plans because we do a lot of this renovation work at K through 12 institutions and we basically have a curriculum that we'll be working with Principal Gengoran to see if in fact we can have classes, teach some classes with regards to what's happening outside the window from a design standpoint, VDC design, our surveying, construction monitoring are different classes that we, our staff would put on for any interested kids that wanna find out a little bit about construction. So we look to maximize that opportunity as much as we can. I mean the whole construction industry right now is looking for talent so it's a win-win for both parties. So, I mean it's a great thing and noble thing to do with that. Hi, thank you all for your great work. This is really exciting. My daughter is in the 10th grade and she frequently bikes and takes the bus to get to high school. And she has said to me that she's noticed sort of maybe not enough bike parking around now. And I was wondering are there plans to increase that and would that help mitigate some of the traffic issues? Biking, bike parking. Sorry, I think. We just added three new bike racks. So we will continue to add bike racks as we need them. I was asking which side she comes in on because I was commenting as I left that the kids have all locked their bikes up along the railing and there's two empty bike racks sitting right there but that's the back of the building. Any more, there's a question in the back Amy. Hi, I was just wondering regarding the noise level and the pollution level, what are the contingency plans if they actually, if indeed there are days when you get high measurements of noise level or high measurements of certain pollutants, what is the contingency plan? How does that affect the students? And based on your experience, how many days of disruption happen on average on a project like this? Yeah, I think if we're, Jim said it earlier, proper planning is gonna avoid a lot of those issues. The contingency plans are as I described, immediately if we do have noise levels that are above the baseline, we'll shut down that activity, that's step one. And then step two would be to test that activity with some additional precautionary measures put in place like a storm window if you will within the classroom to again to minimize the migration of that noise into the classroom. We've gone as far as to sometimes shift certain classrooms away from some of the construction activity, basically creating a buffer zone if you will. And we will have to work with the school when we do know that there's some high noise level activities that are in close proximity to the classrooms, we will urge that we wanna create a buffer zone, which could be the width of a classroom, the width of a corridor, something like that that we would basically have to work with Matt and his group with about shifting students in activities around during the construction duration. I really don't anticipate in phase one where we're out on the green, we shouldn't have a lot of impact with the noise levels impacting the students in the building. Again, as we prepare for that construction though, we will look at mitigation measures at the windows that would allow some precautionary measures to take place. Matt, why don't you take it? I wanted him to take the hotspot because it's really his problem and I wanna make sure he deals with it. But I do also wanna talk about what we as educators are doing. I mean, we are used to being, unfortunately in this building, we're often there are spaces that are not. Sometimes it's too hot on one end of the building or too cold on the other end of the building and we work really hard with the teachers and everyone else to anticipate that and to move people as necessary. Our plan, me and Mr. McCarthy, my office is gonna be right next to that construction site. So I will be looking out that window and because I didn't wanna get a phone call and they were like, why don't you move to the back? And I was like, cause I don't wanna get a phone call. I wanna run out there and say, shut up, right? Whenever it is, they're doing whatever it is. So we will be attentive to that and really working with them on that as well. Ariel. Windows are gonna have to be closed in certain parts of the building. How are we gonna keep the kids and teachers from melting? So the honest truth is that's part of the same conversation. There's been conversations about ventilation in those spaces and covering in those spaces and then if those spaces become unworkable, we'll do what we do now, which is what we'll move people to other spaces. We will have some additional swing space as a result of this sort of the first phase of construction because the preschool is moving out so that gives us some other spaces to give us a little more flexibility, but most of that has to do with the work that they're gonna do around mitigation at the beginning. You wanna answer that about cooling things down? I mean, the rooms that are terrible are still gonna be terrible. The Fusco building right now, some of those windows have window air conditioning units. So Todd was talking about the double plexiglass approach or plexiglass and glass. So we've been looking at the possibility that we may have to put in some type of window unit air conditioning unit just to temper that room on the, would be the Mass Ave site for the Fusco building. So we're entertaining that, right? That building is one of the older buildings. It doesn't have all the bells and whistles in ventilation where some of the other buildings do. So if those windows are closed for noise, yes, it becomes problematic. And that's us planning as we've been talking about. We're planning now, we're thinking about it. When Kathy's been asking us, what are we gonna do to make sure that happens? And we're looking at a couple of options right now. All right, we're gonna stop here. We've gotta send the student film crew. It's a school night, so we gotta get them home. So we wanna thank you very much for coming out tonight. We're gonna be milling around here. So if you wanna come up, ask us questions, take a look at the drawings. We're happy to answer your questions. Thank you so much for coming. Appreciate it.