 This is the October 10th meeting of the Fort River School Building Committee. We are meeting in the Amherst police station community room, and we're being taped for broadcast by Amherst media. I have cold, so I'm going to do my best to enunciate and not cough too terribly much. First item on our well minutes of the call to order is proving previous minutes, and I don't know if any of you have corrections to the minutes that went around. Yes? A couple of questions, so under item five it's architects, it said that site engineers have visited the building and the reports have been forwarded to the committee. Did we actually? I think they went around, they went around several weeks ago now, so let me know if you don't have it and I can read it. You know what, it's probably fine. I just wanted to make sure. I just thought that that hadn't happened yet, and then I don't think we have the architecture quite yet. We still owe you the architectural portion, but what we have done is the structural mechanical, and site, so those reports should be, and the file should be available, and they're pretty sure. What's on the website? Yeah, they're on the website. The other thing that we still don't have is the survey. We don't have the survey. That wasn't from you guys, that was from our side. I think that's for my confusion, so I knew we were waiting for some things. We have the geotech. It's a little out of order, but the geotech is, it's my understanding, is ready to go out. The RFP has been finished, no reference has been identified. So, I had wanted to have it out before this meeting, but I didn't get it out. I think we'll go out tomorrow morning. I have a list of six parentheses from various people. It's just a simple code process, so we won't have a formal opening or anything like that. You don't know any more on the status of the survey? I don't. That communication has not been going through me at all. What I realized after the last thing, and I asked Jim about it, because he didn't have any information on it either, is I don't know who it would go to. Yeah, I don't know if Berkshire's kind of, maybe they're just waiting for someone to talk to them. I'll reach out again, because I have reached out before and not heard much from them. Other comments, questions on the previous minutes? All there? We are now at our public comment period. Anyone in the public want to make comment? Okay, so we're going to move on to discussions with our consultants, and we have two broad categories. One is report on the existing conditions, and also to talk about zero design elements, and then I suspect we'll also talk a little bit about progress on design. I know Mike, at some point you would like to chime in if you want to do that now, or should we do that after we hear the reports? Do you have a preference? I don't. Okay, why don't we dig into the reports? Absolutely. Because I think that's the important piece to start the conversation. Sure. First, let me introduce two gentlemen here who have joined us this evening, Frank Duarez, who's a professional engineer, with specialties in mechanical engineering. Don't ask them why it's warm in here, because he doesn't know. I have theories. You have theories, right? Frank is with Colorado, the mechanical consultant that we brought in, and they have done an investigation of the existing conditions at the Port River School. And they're going to be participating in our discussion a little bit later about sustainability and net zero. The other gentleman is Chris Schaffner. He's the green engineer. Literally, that's the name of the green engineer. And he's been brought in. He was part of the team initially that came to for interview. And so he's an expert in net zero and has done such projects in the past, and he'll participate in that discussion as well. Peter, I found out when he showed up this evening, is from this area. Your parents live in town? Used to. Yeah. I went to cracker fire. My wife went to the Port River. Local connection. Yeah, local connection. So anyway, so you have no comments about the project. You're just coming to visit your relatives, I'm sure. So that's who we are on the side of the table. New people anyway. We do owe you the report on architectural. We want to schedule another walkthrough. We'd like to come in through it with several people and focus on certain aspects of the existing building, like the walls, windows, all of the skin. And that that should be done. So we need to schedule that. There are a few things that we are hoping to obtain that are still open. The uncertainty of the floodplain. And so we'll be discussing a number of we'll be discussing a matrix of options that we're trying to flesh out. We'll later talk about how many of those options we really need to focus on. We owe you a range of options. But when you look at the matrix, there's lots of possibilities. So we don't want to do the third option. We want to select the ones that are most appropriate. So we'll have that discussion when we can later. The floodplain does affect the options because depending upon whether the floodplain is located where it currently is shown, automatically eliminates some possibilities like any building in certain locations in the site, just because of the extent of the floodplain. If the floodplain line is corrected and filed and accepted, then that presents other possibilities. So we may end up in one of the options looking at the existing floodplain scenario and other new floodplains. Because I don't know what the timetable is for accepting the new floodplain. But it could be months for that. So we may need to look at both. Just on that, we've only just hired someone to actually do the floodplain revisions. But that was this week. But then to actually have them approved and filed by the town? But still some time off and it may happen after most of the rest of the work. That's why I'm saying that probably we'll need to look at the two scenarios. This is the revising the ones that the survey they did last year? The ones that they have done over, that they finished last year. That's a new standard that was issued. I only have a tertiary understanding of this. It was a new standard that was released in the survey movements previously were enough to it. So this is the small revision to bring it up to the modern standard. I'm suspecting there was probably some change at the federal level that this is reflected. What happened is that there was a paper that came out that they wanted to use a different algorithm. There's no additional measurements that I understand that are required. And from speaking with folks at the town, there's not an anticipation that there's going to be much difference from the revision that has already occurred. But it needs to be voted on. This secondary work is being completed and then that has to be adopted. Do we have that draft? Yes, it's available online. So we can continue with that draft and then showing those two options. And then if that draft is adjusted in the future, if it's minor, it's not going to affect the problem in this study. We're still puzzled by the library size. We will need help trying to sort through that with this survey. We're kind of daffled by the fact that the Crocker farm was three-footage is smaller. And yet the collection is, do you recall what it is? It's about 30,000. It's like 31,000 volumes. There's the Port River, if you recall, is around 34,000. It just doesn't make sense to us if we don't understand it. It could be the 50,000 volume. But if it's the same age range, I think it would be similar. Well, I do say that the library does tend to be a very communal place. That's used for multi-purpose. We hold our staff meetings there. We make use of the space. I understand. And yet the library at Crocker Farm is smaller. I understand. I don't think they use it for the same purposes that we do. We hold our PGF coffees there. It's a gathering place. We encourage families to utilize it. It's somewhat of a community center in the school. Yeah, so having worked in both buildings, I'll just say that today at the point, at Crocker Farm, although they have a community room that serves the function that some of the extra space at Fort River in the library. So everything that Diane said is true. And since there's not a community room at Fort River, that function gets doubled up for the library, which I do think accounts for some of the variation in the size that you're referencing. So I think that if you combine the community room at Crocker Farm and the library at Fort River, I wonder what the metrics would be. I don't know if I can talk to my hand. That's the community room at Crocker Farm. They use it for other purposes, because in the blueprint that we have today, there was not only a community room as far as I remember. I could shed some light on this. There was no community room at Crocker anymore. It got taken over, so it is now no longer a community. There was one room that was, I don't know, a mid-size room, but it's not, it's been repurposed. Somebody pick it up. Yeah, okay. Well, as we develop the options, we're going to make a recommendation. Before we move on too far, we're going to find a way to serve those additional functions to the possibility that a smaller library space will work where you really believe that it really does, it does need to do that double duty in that space. Well, I haven't experienced any difference, honestly. So it's hard to speak to if it will work or if it won't work. I think there is a nice feel to it as it exists. I'm not saying it couldn't be somewhat smaller, but I think the significant reduction is a bit concerning. It's nice to have people come into our building and utilize the resource as a community space. Sure. One of the items that you had asked last time is could we look at expanding northward at Fort River? We're going to be discussing that tonight as well. And another question had to do with the possibility of using the gym at Fort River and expanding it in its location because the roof is higher in that area. It's more complicated than that. We had our structural engineers looked at that and there are columns that support the mezzanine in that area, so we can't really just blow that space out without doing some significant structural modifications and getting into the seismic reinforcement requirements. So it's not as simple as one would think. Okay. We had discussed when you showed and we have on our calendar a meeting with the school committee, really just the informational session on the 27th. Yes, I got confirmation through Eric, even though he's not here tonight, that's now on their calendar. I think it's kind of a joint meeting. And so at some point, heads will have to be put together about what the range of things we're going to talk about because I'm sure they have their regular business that they're also going to somewhat attend to that if they bubble or something else. Good comment. I know what typically happens is it's not the only body that there's joint meetings recently, but now they're elected of the body and our appointed body. And typically it's the first agenda item out of respect for two groups coming together. So that and Amherst, that would be a six o'clock meeting or six o'clock five after, you know, and many other, you know, approving minutes, things like that. And it, you know, I think you can give the agenda what topics would cover is important, but we've done that before and we tried out respect for everyone. So I'm not having a third agenda item where you may or may not get on at 7-12 or whatever it says on the schedule. So I think you can, you know, in my conversations with Mr. Donut as the chair, you can thank on that being the first agenda item. Is that meeting at your building? Is that there to the high school library? At the high school library. At the high school library. I would imagine this would be the case. That would be the case as well. What date is that? I have November 27th. November 27th, 2008. And would you be presenting work? How will it work? I don't know yet. We do some follow up. And we have to go out of town. I don't think all the details have been worked out. Typically what we have happened is the chair of this committee makes an introduction to the project, what the project has, the things that have been talked about at this meeting, the issues that have been identified. And it's really an opportunity for members of the school and the committee to ask questions. So we're not expecting decisions to occur that night. It's just an opportunity for everybody to get caught up. I think later maybe I can describe with the feasibility of this building committee was on the agenda last night and I can share some of their feedback, both on I think some initial thoughts about November 27th and some other thoughts they had. And the other thing, the last thing I want to bring up before Jesse gets into going through this PowerPoint presentation is communication that we received from Maria. I saw the email presumably from you and I had some joy about it. I got some feedback from certain people that told me a couple things and then the second part where it was in painful detail about each of the sections that was made. I had a long email that had a lot of good thinking in it and Jesse did respond. He responded to it. In order for us to maintain communication protocol, I don't know if you sent it back to all the members of it that you did which was the right thing to do but I think in the future if I could ask if people on the committee have questions or if people in the public have questions they should be followed I think through the chair. I sent it to Jesse and to Jonathan. I don't know, it might be helpful. If we're getting quick, because we're going to garner comments from the public I think it would be good to share them to our group first not that I don't want to filter anything out but so that everybody in our group hears the same thing and that we can move them on. It's more kind of housekeeping. The only thing is that we cannot comment. It's just sharing it but you cannot comment and it's receiving by the way I understand these. But it gives the opportunity if someone sees something that they think we need to discuss with the committee before passing it on to say I think we should hold this until we've had a chance to talk about it as a group. Correct. That's the point. So that's all I had to discuss. At this point I'd like to ask Jesse to bring us on the speed of the options that we've been looking at. So if we're going to dive into options I think we should hear from Mike first because he has feedback from the school committee about what we're exploring. One thing of legality. It's not an agenda. Can we discuss it? I think it falls under the... I think it falls well, Mike. So I think it's a really good point and I think I prefer to do to offer that feedback because I think it'd be relevant in the context of the presentation that'll come because I think some of the feedback I received and we're laying on behalf of the school right there is directly relevant to the options. So I think that's much cleaner in terms of what's on the agenda, so I agree with that. That's a good one to share. That works for me. Cleaner. Am I done both? Yep. Okay. After presenting to you last time in our discussion and meeting and then also receiving your feedback and your email, we developed two additional options and we haven't made any revisions to the first three that we presented yet and ones are forthcoming. Let me present the two new ones. This presentation begins with the existing site plan. We've diverted the flood line that Richard is referring to. But I think you're aware of it and I think we've talked enough about this. I'm going to continue. Professor, that's the old flood line. That's not the one. In the revised plan, the flood line is pushed way back to the river. It's not anywhere close. So if it ends up, as Maria was saying, something similar to that, we wouldn't have an issue. So this is a site plan for option D. Option D kind of stems from our discussion last week where we were talking about, well there could be a code minimum upgrade option. And option D is not that. But it's a less option than our option A, which was our minimal option last time. Because we realized that what we'll look at a code minimum option with code unfortunately won't address some of the things that are most important to us in this project. It's definitely a non-starter, such as the acoustic limitations. If we go in the MSP pipeline, we'd have to address those because they would have acoustic criteria. But strict code wouldn't make us do that. So the site plan here looks very familiar. The idea to this option was to live within the existing walls because the walls are providing structural performance. And so we were trying not to touch the masonry walls, which are contributing to the lateral support of the structure. So this is a very limited option. When you work with your program, this footprint lacks 6,000 square feet compared to what your program would require. And so a lot of that square footage is made up with the gym. We're proposing to keep the existing gym, which I realized from the feedback. Some people are saying we don't think that would work, and that's not been our target. But that's one of the first deficiencies of this option, let's say. Another difficult point is that there are four classrooms that do the large footprint in the building. Four classrooms are getting light from interior courtyards, which is not ideal. Go ahead. Well, six, seven. I mean, the aims, the building blocks programs are also classrooms. Yes, it should have said general use questions. You're right. You're right. Seven. Six. The aims are getting from a larger courtyard. Oh, right. The one building. Yes, so six. So I'd be more concerned about these two. Upside down. Yeah, I can't do it. Okay, yes. I agree with you, and I missed a good point. But there are some improvements in the building with this layout. We have addressed the acoustical separation. All the classrooms are now acoustically separated. Each classroom has a toilet, actually. We thought, well, we'll keep the existing toilets and we'll provide toilets at some of the new classroom spaces that would otherwise be lacking it. So that provides some flexibility, actually. If your kindergarten expands, it would still have a toilet. Or it also reduces the load on the toilets and the rest of the space. We moved the cafeteria into the center of the building. We would imagine there'd be skylight bringing natural light into that space. And it does create a public access zone in the center of the building. The classroom blocks could be closed off with locking doors. And so that's always one of our goals that's not present in the existing building. I think I'm going to move on. We have a lot to do tonight. And if you want to ask questions about this, it's a compromised option. I guess the question would be, do we need to proceed with it? Yes. Initial thoughts about most kitchens tend to be on the perimeter, so they can get stuff in and out of them over their thoughts. You'll notice that in our other options we have the kitchen very close to the receiving area or it has its own receiving space. Here you would be bringing goods in this corridor. We've kept it nearby, but it's not directly on the exterior. Which we have done before, but I agree it's not all right. It's not ideal because you would have a receiving area where things get unloaded, stored, staged, and then brought in at the appropriate time to be doing it during the school day. And the toilet rooms, they're existing because they be renovated to reduce the number of toilets and then make them accessible? Yes. So in this option, all the clothes will be brought up today, including the accessibility. There's a lot of circulation in this and I had the perception of it because we were retaining the old corridors. You're correct, but it's such a deep footprint. And we already have a lot of circulation. And we have to get to the inner space and then we end up with the space between the inner space and the perimeter and we need circulation to that as well. And it's necessary for acoustic separation. To add to that, there are columns on either side of this corridor which is the existing corridor. And so that sort of forces us to work with it. So it becomes difficult to find another use for that scheme of space. Whereas we need to add some kind of corridor to the classrooms to partition them up. So you can see it's sort of duplicated. You had your hand up first. Well I'm curious, in any of these designs, I haven't seen any or current therapeutic space. We have a space that has reflection space and also breakout space. It's kind of in the center of the building as it exists now. A sensory room? Not a sensory room. It's actually a therapeutic space that's staffed by a therapeutic parent educator. I don't know if that's me. You're right. That's separate from that as well. That's separate as well. Well we need to add that then to the room list if that's what everyone wants to do. So we've gone through and we're creating this list of what the rooms need to be in the program. So there's agreement by the group. We should adjust that. And what's the name of this room? It's therapeutic space. It's like an intervention space for students that's used for specific services of K-V-I-Ds. And is it staffed separately? It is. Well not separately. We have a therapeutic parent educator who works at that space. So two quick ones. One... I don't know if that's what I'm saying. So just having an internal kitchen space, just what comes to mind I just want to follow up on Heather's point. Just from a safety perspective, our deliveries do happen during the school day quite often. And so the advantage of having a separate loading zone is that we don't have deliveries happening while children are walking by with people who don't have quarry checks. And I hate to go to the safety place where part of my job is doing that. And so just thinking through our safety planning, I could tell you that when we talk about, you know, eventually we'd be at the police department and things like that in the police station, we'll have some questions about traffic flow of people who are at quarry check walking to the building during the school day. I'll save my second one for Ashley. Yeah. There are ways to manage that. I mean, for instance, the receiving and storage area could be large enough to actually receive all the deliveries. Right. And that would be kept secure. And someone who's making a delivery who schedules it or gets buzzed in, it doesn't go beyond that point. Right. But that's, yeah. It's... Kitchen's in the corridor facility. Do occur. Yeah. It's not ideal, as I say, but sometimes you're dealing with an existing food. Absolutely, yeah. I mean, it is... I don't mean to go back and forth, but we've talked to our vendors previously about deliveries because for all sorts of reasons, we prefer them not to be in the school day even if they had a separate entrance for our vendors have not necessarily felt that that was feasible. Okay. Second option, this is addressing the idea of what would happen if you put an addition on the north end of the building. And there are some advantages to this. Services, gas and electric are coming in to the south end of the building as well as some of your core spaces are in the south end of the cafeteria. So by building a new cafeteria in the north end in terms of phasing, there's an advantage, actually, that you build it and then move the services over to the new space and tear it down a little bit. But in the site plan, you also see some of the challenges. By moving the main entry, the cafeteria to the north end and also the service, as we mentioned, the service needs to be near the cafeteria in the kitchen and also the gymnasium at that end and the cafeteria is going to need to empty the recess. We're bringing the pay play and the playground. We're really getting some congestion in the north end of the site. So I'm going to go ahead with the floor plan. So here is the floor plan we developed. As I mentioned, we brought all of those functions to the north, which works well in terms of zoning the building for public access, the cafeteria and the gym and the administration are all right in the same zone. Whereas academic support wraps around this new courtyard that's created. So I think there's a lot of linear footage of wall space so that while this version of this option, let's say, shows some classrooms still on our courtyard, I think it would be possible to adjust this so that all the classrooms are getting good daylight and are on the exterior wall. One limitation of this option that the sketch hadn't realized is this sketch shows the enlarged gym, which Richard already referred to as we found that our structural engineer and we reviewed it in more detail and it's just not feasible to enlarge the gym. So anytime we add on to the gym to the north, we're going to be accepting the smaller gym, which we currently have. And so that's something also that's considered in whether this option is feasible and whether it's worth continuing with this option. I think I'll stop there. I'll just do the slides quick. So that's a photo of the structure of the gym running all the way up to support the roof, which is the problem there. And then this shows the zoning by program academic support wrapping around. Public, kind of in the middle. At the district special ed. Probably too far off in a way we try to incorporate them more, but it's a study. And then we have the administration right here at the entry with a good sight line of the entire property from the north end of the property. And then this is our new versus renovation and demolition diagram. I think that's pretty straightforward. All this gray area is renovation area. We're demolishing 1,000 square feet and we're building 24,000 square feet. So, let's open this up for comment. Here in the gym, we're saying this is a problem by coming in that the apartment has been expanded with bleachers and spill-off space. Right. These columns look to be pretty problematic. You could fill some alcoves in here but it's not terribly wide. So, yes, you could use it for spill-off or bleachers. But in terms of, you run into a height problem at some point there will be pretty low tiers of bleachers because you have measuring tools. I don't think we expect to have thousands of people, hundreds of people, usually even more because it's going to have a cafeteria with a stage. It's not that we're going to have it. If we have the cafeteria as an auditorium with a stage, I think it's mainly a spill-off where we're having basketball practice or something that you can be there if you don't need it. You could create alcoves with seeds. Sometimes we've got just three high or something or 30 people in there. It helps. Yeah. So, you could expand it slightly. I agree with that. But you're not going to get to the 6,000... I don't think we need it. Well, it's something I think we don't want to talk about. So, can you show me on that diagram where the current south wall of the gym is? Is that the dots? It is the dots. Those are the columns still showing in the model. Okay. Right. So, where that slightly darker green is, is that... Or maybe it's just... No, it's just... No, it's just some of these dots here. Right. So, yeah, I think that, you know, and everything that is north of that is the current, basically, the basketball court. Right. So, yeah, I think that maybe it was miscommunication. I was thinking about not necessarily expanding the entire gym, but as you said, taking that space that is currently storage and having low bleachers. And as Ed Anna said, we're not talking about meeting, you know, high school height of bleacher expansion. You know, you've got tens of people. Yes. That's definitely true. Definitely. Yeah, no problem. So, I guess I'll just... This is a good segue or a good moment for me to share, you know, feedback that I heard from the school committee because I think it's relevant to this topic. So, we talked last night about preschool in particular. I raised the topic of the school committee and they brought back that the mission statement that they've set for this committee, which is on the website, talks about... I'll just read it. This school building committee will limit their consideration of options to a K-6 elementary school on the Fort River site, elementary school site. So, I think there was some feeling or some concerns about including a preschool wing when that was not consistent with the mission of what they've passed. So, since Eric and Peter I'm tasked to bring that to this committee because there was some concern that it was inconsistent with the mission. It seemed like a worthwhile conversation. Understood. So, we've been... Let's talk about that because we have been developing these with the understanding that pre-K, that three classrooms would be pre-K in the plan in every option and we were trying to fit that in. And that was based upon our understanding of the program and I believe that's what was consistent with the RFQ that was issued for a selection of our So, we actually talked about this at our very first school building committee meeting and the mission statement was read and I went back and watched this and I brought up, I said, you know, I think that this is an oversight because the school committee to my recollection had just discussed having it include pre-K and they did discuss it at their October 24th meeting. And Eric agreed with me he thought that there hadn't been a vote taken and the idea was okay, well, double check on that and we did and I looked at the minutes and I can read you the minutes from the October 4th school committee meeting where it was brought up and in fact the chair at that time said, you know, do we want to have pre-K and the response of the committee was consensus that yes, we want to have pre-K in these considerations. So, we have been proceeding as is. So, I would be very concerned if we were going to, if the school committee was now going to tell us that we should not have pre-K in our building options. I mean, that wasn't what we had decided for what we were instructed and clarified. I'll respond to this at the end. I think this is also a feasibility study. I don't think we are not tied to that. I don't know if you go with MSPA with the concern is funding MSPA that might not fund it. This is just a feasibility study. Let's see how it looks with pre-K. There was always discussion about pre-K down. I think this is the perfect place to keep pre-K and I don't know pre-K in total. I don't know that I'll not speak in a moment. I don't think that at least the way I understood it, the school committee's concern was it wouldn't necessarily be funded but it was really another step beyond ours. Our process ends at this feasibility study where we have options that we hand off to others to consider. But that on paper we have a mandate that doesn't say pre-K and I didn't know about that piece of another vote. If it sounds like we have some ambiguity I think it would be important to clarity. Maybe there's I don't know if there's enough I don't know how much change there has been on the school committee since that time and so part of me wants to acknowledge that yes they have said this to us that we are supposed to be limited on this I know this group wants to talk about it in depth. I'm trying to balance the need of that versus making sure we get them clear direction where to proceed and get through as bay things as we can tonight and so I'm trying to balance it. I won't speak for the school committee because I'm not a school committee member. I just wanted to say there was four or five people there last night but I didn't talk to him today. So Ohio and that was the feedback that I was I'm not here to argue any points I don't have an operational funding source to fund the people to go into that so this is not the school committee talking this is me talking so I just I have concerns about adding a wing it's not because of lack of the need that I agree with that was referenced but you know that's a career and $400,000 and I get it's a feasibility study but on my feasibility study can I pay for people to fund it level service or we even didn't have to make budget cuts in the last few that's a huge investment of resource to build something when there's not necessarily a known funding source to fill the staffing of that it's a complicated question because it does go to operational operational costs it goes to demographics what do demographics say about this so I don't expect to appreciate what the school committee has expressed to you but we were hired by the town and we received directions from this building committee which is authorized by the town to execute this feasibility study so we take our marching orders from here so if you need to regroup and get back to us that's fine but we can't bring in the council I really don't think there was any ambiguity I think we got clarity it was certain from the beginning and we had been proceedings and this was November of 2017 that we had our first meeting and we talked about it and this is included pre-K the entire way through all of the space summaries this is not news that pre-K is part of what we are doing so just do you need to have pre-K in order to get MSBA's funding? No, it's just for the opposite they don't fund it actually I do want to clarify that a little bit one of the reasons it's a long day for me is that very early this morning we were at an MSBA meeting to review another project and pre-K is part of that program and they were very optimistic about funding that so I wouldn't necessarily say it's not something that MSBA won't fund I mean I think they've been coming around so I think you need but that's funding of the building it's not funding of operations so that's a bigger question that the school committee needs to tell you I think I think we don't want to get stuck because today you're going to go home and you need to keep working on ideas when we are on a clock I think I would suggest since it's a feasibility let's include it if later when it is when it goes to the second phase and we're going to have schematics and we decided what's the funding and the town design for the school committee says we cannot include pre-K then the new drawings will be devoted to pre-K but at this point I think it's a feasibility we don't we are not producing the final new prints that are going to be built but just two quick comments and I agree with you we should get to the rest of the slides so I think one thing is since this is on the website and it says something different than what is being produced some communication maybe from this committee to the school committee around that topic right because I'm not arguing about whether pre-school should be included or not on behalf of the school committee that's not my role I was asked to communicate their concern and that's what I'm doing and just ambiguity or the lack thereof in this statement versus what's being produced as a conflict perhaps in the perception here on paper when they voted they believe they voted and what's being worked on does need to be resolved and hopefully in an emuable way and it doesn't be inside and inside that's not going to be the whole story anybody so I think perhaps even before November 27 around this issue would be my proposal the second thing that is perhaps not for today but just that I'd be curious from the architectural point of view is whether let's say in the end we get to a place where pre-school's not part of it it's in the designs now does that actually throw off the whole building like is that just like oh okay we just don't do this no big deal schematics we make those changes or is if we don't have this wing then it influences all these other things because if it's the former no issues if it's the latter then I do think more clarity for your perspective is needed on the sooner side and I don't know the I'm not an architect I don't need it it depends on the option so in the new building option it's really integrated with the footprint of the two-story building for example so that's more difficult to unravel whereas other similar options give it in the renovations where we're often trying to fit inside an animal good point the removing that square footage gives us some options whereas trying to fit everything's crammed in there so it would help in terms of fitting into a new existing building for person I think at the same time as we're seeing for reverse space that we call finger that uses different ways that was originally outside so I think even if it's not used for the original purpose it's gonna get used however maybe not on the square footage square footage so I would encourage you to hone in on as close as you can to the square footage that you need so that you can get a budget that's that's impactful when is the next school committee meeting is it the on the 7th October I mean I feel like was that yeah I'm certainly not comfortable proceeding in defiance of the latest direction for the school committee I mean I think I don't know if like the school committee had at their disposal last night as part of the discussion their previous discussion and I think it would help to make it full circle just like you were saying so but I don't know so the 20 were like the it's like two weeks away that's gonna set us like a month back because they meet on the 22nd and then it's all scheduled with our meeting that sets up almost a month you would be meeting the next day right now or one day in part I think we do need to have some communication at the same time we need to to be able to make sure that Richard can proceed I mean I guess I'm sorry so can I ask why this ever school committee is saying that they would now like is to change direction and take pre-K out of these plans so again I feel a little awkward space to talk about why other people said certain things I'll do my best but I want to there's a limitation because I'm not a school committee member so I want to I know I say that a lot but I think it's really important to be for me to say it so I do think some of it's around communication that particular aspect has not necessarily been communicated to the committee members so I think some of this perhaps is around I'm gonna speak to a positive because I think there's two positive one that deeply appreciative of the volunteer work that's gone on here and they said that multiple times last night and the second is they want to get kind of more connected to the work as the work has not progressed instead of quick updates at school committee meetings you know they're very enthusiastic about November 27 and so I do think it's sort of some of it's about communication you know where we are where we've been and other things they've been working on so that's the product that's what I can do because I don't know if you have a turn in speaking more directly about it I mean I just have to read from October 17, 2017 our school committee for building committee members selection and mission statement Ms. Hazard explained that the mission statement for the Fort River building committee does not mention pre-K and asked if the committee is comfortable changing the language to reflect pre-K instead of kindergarten Mr. Demelin noted that he would not want to restrict the committee's work adding pre-K Mr. Nakajima noted that it would make sense to have this information it was agreed by consensus to make the change I mean that's before we even met awesome is there a possibility that the school committee forgot about that? I'm not I mean it's like we might be talking about some things it's not it's an issue it's entirely possible that I mean miscommunications can happen in multiple directions we posted what we thought was the right document and it doesn't include the words pre-K we may simply oppose the wrong document it may not have been formally updated even though they took a vote on it and so after hearing that my inclination I think we need to have some conversation and at least maybe that means me reaching out as the chair to the other chair and saying we were basing our thinking on this meeting and this information we understand that at the moment you have a different understanding can you can you clarify this with me and that might be a lot that might allow me well before the 22nd to give you some sense of direction if the committee is okay with me kind of taking that on and having a conversation one thing else is I think communication all the press releases we have included the pre-K to C has been out in March since March I think the first press release was in March so all the press releases for the last six months have said pre-K to C so I would feel very uncomfortable now changing it all I do have a change into K to C after one year I've been working on the base of pre-K to C I wouldn't like necessarily making the change if it's a clear direction from them we have to kind of accept it but I think we need to find out whether they've seen what we've seen and so I think it's worth reaching out having some communication that's between formal meetings I think almost 10 months in right, no I understand that and my hope is that we that it gets communicated and resolves in a direction that supports the position we think we have I'm going to make a suggestion we have consultants here we have we need to keep our committee moving forward so I'd like to continue with that I think it would be fine to be to talk to the school committee but I am not comfortable making any decision for this committee with regards to changing what I believe is our direction without that coming back to have a public discussion and that's fine you know again I did not intend to create tension in the committee as a communicator I think that public discussion also has to be about funding you know so separate from the school committee and what folks they took so I'm speaking again my role not as elected official I do have significant concerns about the operational implications of preschool in terms of funding so that's not here they're there it's not about who said what at a certain time I think it just has to be a discussion because just because we built the space doesn't that's not the end of the funding challenge that we have for the school we need to ask Jesse we talked about starting a matrix we did that's where we begin the idea here was we have developed options A through E at this point and they all reflect the 420 student enrollment which includes pre-K and we've also talked about a smaller enrollment which is based more on the existing student population which would be 360 which is without pre-K and that's with pre-K as well but it's smaller pre-6 population as currently in school and then we went and just extrapolated what those numbers would be without pre-K and then even potentially without 6th grade because that's also been a discussion topic in the town while I realized the school committee hasn't directed us to do that and I realized there's no way that's going on as to whether that makes any sense at all and I think if this is valuable it does show you a range of student populations which relates to school size it also shows you a potential of 30 studies that we could go down which is daunting and we're going to scream but that's not what we're saying to offer but it does occur to us that this study perhaps could pick up from these other columns as well we owe you a range so if you want to rethink that range and pick from column A column B however you want to do it maybe this might help and just one helpful thing it's a different topic but just the school committee does plan to vote in less than a month about future programming at Fort River which gives some sense between the larger and smaller sizes so I think we have a lot of unknown variables but at least one of one or the other within a month which hopefully will be helpful for you to narrow the range of it and ultimately if down the line pre-K were to happen that also would be a school committee vote I mean because the funding issue that you've talked about it's something to have to commit to just like they have to commit to moving or not moving sixth graders or doing dual language it's something that they need to formally decide at some point and that's why I hope we can get to have a good place on this whatever the question is So I have a question because I was going to say can we move on and do we have to take a vote about having you talk to the school committee or can we just do that? I think I can just do that you know I'll reach out and you know if other folks want to participate in that conversation I don't have to do it alone I think it just sounds like a seriously it sounds like just something to do and if that's the case it might be easy to resolve too and so and if they have yeah we'll find out more if we can yes do people can is everybody ready to move on? okay let's go you will have more by that point yeah now it's got nice and warm in here for various reasons I know alright so shall we turn it over? yeah just very quickly sustainability is obviously important to us it's important to your community as well I'm going to introduce Chris in just a second I just want to put this in the context of in our study we're developing these options eventually they're going to go for a cost estimator and so one of our goals tonight is to talk about goals for sustainability that'd be first and also that we could get some strategies that we are incorporating into narratives that are given to the cost estimator she says a basis for these cost analysis so at first we're going to open it up and just have a discussion but that is the that is the overarching goal that we have systems we can proceed with ultimately we'll have three or four options on each of those thirty yep yeah that makes twenty different options and get prices so what's at the cost and then we'll be done in about twenty twenty three yeah so talking about sustainability just like there are tensions around which is that you're going to ultimately end up with there are tensions within the schemes about different sustainability strategies and one of the big ones is aligning some of the sustainability goals around especially the energy that the town has established along with the desire to be as practical as possible we use what's there so in some cases reuse and renovation options have less opportunities to do this sort of energy interventions whereas the brand new building we can do virtually anything with that so that's a tension that's there that we feel and we are seeking the town's guidance on direction as we give you more details of what that means but I wanted to start with just thinking about the big picture about sustainability because its energy is an important part of it but fundamentally it comes down to four things that you've identified which are really the hands I guess a lot of things and so just to walk through each of these the first thing is we want a building that's going to be safe and healthy and so that starts with a good learning environment good air good life and spaces and then the materials that are in the building are healthy materials and ultimately it's just not safe and healthy for the students and the staff it's healthy for the community and it's healthy for the world and really the health and well-being of the students there but ultimately where those materials are manufactured where they're disposed of and that's all part of that so that's a key first piece the second thing that's very important to us is to be resource efficient so obviously energy efficiency and all the issues around carbon are there and but efficient in all our resources including money so I always said that wasting money is not a sustainable strategy and we want to pick the things around investment that's part of the analysis that we'll go through you know the team will go through is to look at what things cost and what kind of return you get on those whether it's purely dollars or other benefits coming out of it and then the last two are kind of related buildings are potentially something that's in your community for a long period of time and so we want to to the extent we can be able to be flexible and adaptable to future needs and current needs so there's a concept of loose fit long life and we design everything down to exactly what you've got in the building right now those things are going to change and you know we don't want to be back here in a few years saying we've got to change it because it doesn't work anymore and that goes along with the selection of materials and especially thinking about how things are maintained in the building and that really goes into the energy systems and the reality is that the mechanical systems are going to wear out before other things do and they're going to need to be replaced and the structure of the building might be 100 years the mechanical systems might be more like 25 or 30 the IT system could be obsolete by the time you put it in and so you need to be able to accommodate all of those changes so maintainable and those kinds of things are really important to them so that's the big picture of the sustainability now the big focus is the energy piece and so we're trying to figure out how to get to zero current and should so should we remind the committee of what the town regulation pertaining to zero current yeah well you have a regulation that says you have to build new public buildings and achieve the zero net energy right paraphrase so if you renovate any building that doesn't apply right but if you're building a big addition to an existing building the portion that's the addition has to achieve and I think I'm sure some will chime in if they disagree with it I think as a committee we feel like there has to be a certain parity even in the renovation office we can't just even though the bylaw may say oh no you don't have to do that I think we feel I don't know what the level of commitment is but we need to we just can't put the windows in and say you really want to address some of the energy usage well remember in this range of options the base building option which is to bring the building up to code right has does not need to meet the net zero energy regulation that's true if you go above the base building bringing the building up to code that's your choice but I think we owe you the base building option so we have baseline right I think this goes to something that was mentioned in an earlier meeting I think maybe Eric that said he wants as well who said that we want to be able to compare to see the magnitude of existing problems in the building and what will it take to bring it up to speed just a base level and so that we have some there's one more piece on that the town regulation as well is not just to be net zero but to be net zero and be fossil fuel free so we're not offsetting natural gas consumption with renewable energy that's an important part of that so as we think about getting to zero carbon you know so I think net zero buildings are a great goal our real interest is thinking about net zero earth and so frankly a little less interested in making sure we match the amount of renewable generation with the energy consumption of every single building and instead figuring out how we make buildings as energy efficient and low carbon as possible and then think about how we do renewable generation and so we can come down to the four things the first is the low EUI energy utilization index second thing to think about is decarbonizing our heat and sort of the heat pump technology for heating and then we think about where we can do renewables such as solar on site rooftop on new buildings that's pretty easy to do that it may be that and we've seen a lot of communities think about solar as a separate but related project so maybe all the solar for a school isn't actually on the school it's owned by the town somewhere else and we think we've already got the town's consumption and then that goes to the idea of the community renewables and ultimately I hope that we will see the grid which has gotten quite a bit greener here in Massachusetts already a few years continue to do so so that ultimately all electric building will be getting carbon free electricity from wherever and that will do everything that's like the long term vision there but I think there's some time together in the bylaw between the renewables project right it might be a little different you will say that I'm I know you're talking about we think about this like I said there's a lot of tension here so if we were looking at renovating the building one of the big issues there is you've got and I'm going to get into this a little bit more you've got gas boilers that are there now that do hot water heating from what we understand those are relatively new installations and so does this really mean we want to throw those away and pursue another option and maybe it does but there's some tension there if we're in those options let me just real quick get to this and then Frank can show his stuff that will get us into more details that's cold building there is it significant is that briefly building that's the Nelson Place elementary in the Worcester that we finished about a year ago and what's significant about there meant zero electricity so they actually we looked at it studied it in the town go ahead and install gas boilers so they're it will offset their electricity consumption with the solar on site but they still burn gas and they burn so they have a little UI the other thing that's interesting is basically the the building shell is built to pass a house standard so it's the R30 walls are 60 roofs triple glazed windows and was able to do that for you know an MSBA budget because that also downsides the systems that wouldn't so one thing is that our codes have gotten more stringent over time and so currently we are on the IECC 2015 for new construction and compared to where we were five or six years ago that's about a 30% more stringent code than what we we had and likely within the time frame that this building project may happen there may be additional codes that's scheduled for another code cycle update next year so codes continue to go over time to get more more energy and so the typical strategy that people have taken over the years to try to get to net zero is to drive the energy consumption down to a low level and then to make up the difference with renewables we're never going to get to zero consumption the building is you'd like to be able to turn the lights and plug things in and maybe you can smear around and you know the plug loads and the lights or something like that so one of the things we started to look at was what possible energy targets might there be and what's the context for this this is really rough estimates based on the energy star database something called the CBEX data CBEX is commercial living energy consumption survey the federal government has done last update was in 2012 so in that database you can adjust for things like location and use an average school in that database would have $65 and based on an $82,000 school and average Massachusetts energy costs that would be an annual energy cost of about $170,000 a year compare that to a building that was designed to meet energy codes would be that high performance green building would be a lead building and then a huge jump from the green building that would be it still would probably be looking at less than a bucket square foot for energy versus that net zero building that hopefully would be zero energy cost as well as zero EY one of the things we want to do is put this in context of what your current consumption is as well and understand how that fits into this we have utility rates and something we can work with for the next step here is this a way to define where a renovation should be well yeah I think one of the things we want to think about in our renovation is what is what's the current consumption and how much can we reduce that so if we were able to look at the current consumption and see that it's a pretty low performing building we would expect that we would have much more room for improvement than if it was already a pretty high performing building there's lots of room for improvement I can hear G it's a pretty performing building so to get all through the first is to try to reduce the needs energy consumption reducing demand the advantage of that is that it also means the systems get smaller so a simple example is we put in better insulation in the roof and we have a smaller heating system so we save upfront and we save energy over time second is look at what's there on the side already that we can use natural light breezes maybe energy recovery things first the efficient equipment is right size and then the last two are really about how you're going to run the building gotta have a building commission make sure that the design intent has been realized and communicated and then the building's gotta be operated in a way that makes sure it's energy efficient that goes back to making sure the building is maintainable over time but if you do those first three terrifically and you screw up to squeeze on those wonder if I got here so this goes through this heating idea this is a study we did for an independent school here in Massachusetts who had an existing steam power plant and they were doing a climate action plan in multiple buildings on their campus and what we see from just because of our electric grid here is by simply switching from some sort of fossil fuel power to heat pumps we are cutting the electricity with heating by 50% or more so ground source heat pumps are great they get to a really low number but air source heat pumps split systems VRF some of the systems we're gonna be talking about in a second get pretty close at a budget price and so those are things that we definitely wanna be thinking about depending on the options that we're looking towards and then my final two here is some context if we are gonna ultimately get MSBA funding for the project you're probably aware that we need to be their LEED version 4 certified or human ships verified and we also need to show 10% better than code so it's equivalent to being stretch code compliant and there's an additional 2% reimbursement if we can exceed the energy code by 20% so that's you know gives us sort of a baseline for what our energy targets should be I think we should be making sure we're meeting at least those and hopefully going far beyond those should we think about the LEED project well I have to admit I don't personally know much about the requirements of the NE chips and so since we're we have to choose a path we have to do one of those I'm a little curious to hear about the differences you are there's another 30 slides on the board we hit it back I was like we can't have a slide on this person because we don't need to hear about my question probably should have been do we need to be either LEED or doing the chips because I think that could figure into our cost estimating at this very early phase I think we should I think we should assume something like the not knowing the other I mean I think that would be guaranteeing in this community that would be an expectation not just the the state's requirements I don't know others can feel free to speak the other reason that would be very valuable as a community talking if we can use LEED as a rating system it will help distinguish between our options so we're presenting information to the community LEED because it does take into consideration and I don't know I don't know whether the chips either but it gives you points for reusing existing things and so when we talk about renovation versus new construction LEED already builds into a way to weight the value of energy consumption versus some of the compromises you make to hold on to the embodied energy of an existing building so I think not only do we want to meet these for those reasons but it also becomes a very valuable way for us to start to distinguish between the quality of what we're getting when we choose one of these schemes it's a way to score the options I'm going to be the 30 second versus chips if that's the case so LEED and chips are rather similar the rating system is designed for schools LEED for schools and England chips is focused a little more on the specifics of the new England region and it has a section about operations that doesn't exist in LEED so some districts have a good thing others say we need to engage more people and it's going to be a pan that we just want to get that chips you can't get the final certification until after the full commissioning process so you're typically not getting your final sign off from MSBA until more than a year after occupancy LEED you're probably looking at six months to nine months last time before that happens that's a big deal but they both are very thorough rebuilding rating systems that address the things that you're looking at and how do they have similar impacts on cost in other words do we have to choose between them or can we simply say yes at this stage I would say the purpose of the feasibility studies saying that it's going to be certified in some ways enough to make sure that the pricing is built in there you certainly would have been able to do that but I think that's the question I can ask what do you recommend that we do one over the other do you have a recommendation about which we should score on which we score on both I would turn to Chris we've done both I think our personal preference because we think the pathway is chips is better suited for that so I don't see that as we've done both we've done more lead than chips but because we do lead for all kinds of buildings chips are really only solid schools pretty much and really only in many times it's a method that we're very familiar with so if you were to ask us we've done 169 lead projects we've got about 10 chips but we don't have to make an absolute choice certainly hope you decide anything there you go set me up I'll set you up okay one more slide, Chris oh yeah so the final thing was that there is significant funding if we go down the heat pump path so you hear me saying again this is a good thing if we can figure out a way to heat carbon as the heat using heat pumps so we've got utility incentives just like any other electric customer that mask the energy center has specific incentives for heat pumps depending on the capacity and then there is something now that's just how recently called alternative energy credits which people usually unfortunate aches these are basically like solar rex if you're familiar with how those work everybody's got solar they sell their s-rex and you get a check back the idea here alternative energy you're putting in you might be getting two or three units of heating out of it and so three minus one the two units you've got from the environment are considered alternative energy and you can credit for that you get those for up to ten years besides the building we're talking about here you get quarterly payments just like the s-rex if you're doing it at your house just that information like not so much for the last move for the other incentives how does that work when you're in an MSBA project there's some does that how do they it's part of the application process forms that need to be filled out and then you have to go through a certain process but the incentive question is do they go back to MSBA or do you get to keep them it used to be that MSBA always just took reduced your reimbursement amount my understanding is that the utilities have been working on that and so there is potentially some share on that and certainly the alternative energy credits they would come in over time and do a different thing oh I understand the question you were talking about does a grant offset MSBA is that the question yeah I'm sorry I didn't ask you clearly and now at the end okay and now we're going to switch gears a little bit maybe just do some of the systems that we've been used to so your energy goes you want to come back yeah okay so you've been saying probably something high right yes okay so anyone who can catch my hand I'm Frank Grace from the COLA Ramen I specialize in HVEC design I do a lot of mechanical systems and for projects we take a consideration I actually have more business but we took some considerations based off of the the concepts that were proposed and potential to not only be net zero not use fossil fuels but also some of the limitations with the existing building itself so we were initially proposing five systems all of them have in common the use of a dedicated outside air system or DOAS unit which is primarily designed to provide ventilation to the building I'll get into more details but in that little bit but the the first three systems kind of picking back on the use of electricity as your your means for generating cooling and heating you utilize a VRS system a variable refrigerant flow system option one two and three are very similar option one would be air-cooled units option two would be water-cooled units possibly a geothermal system option three is very similar to option two and that is also water-cooled except it's sort of using geothermal using a cooling tower but performance-wise they're fairly similar options four and five we've had success in schools and office buildings and many other projects utilizing chill beams that would use the water source heat pumps and as well the water-cooled using either a geothermal system or a cooling tower to go into a little more details one of the reasons for proposing the use of a DOAS systems and realizing if you do continue on the proposed option of keeping your existing building one of the limitations we would be working with is the existing structure existing roof heights and the roof is pitched and does have some low points so benefit the DOAS system it does minimize some of your your ductwork distribution through your building and switches more of the heat transfer to piping in general piping is better means to transfer energy than a duct a pipe you can pipe you'll get a ton of cooling out of a three-four inch pipe could be an eight to ten inch duct so there's a huge difference there so there's a major benefit to going down this road not only from an energy efficiency standpoint but also from the view of trying to potentially use the existing building ceiling cab making things fit making things fit yes certainly there are alternatives that could be pursued but they do pose unique challenges whether or not things can fit and how they get attached to the architecture whether it's topics and it does present a lot of unique challenges if you go down that road so with a DOS as I mentioned you would potentially have a rooftop unit on the top right top left it could be indoor equipment and you would have ductwork distribution similar the bottom left dispersory building and presenting outside air either to the zone directly the classroom office might have you or possibly to your indoor VRF which will be a piece of equipment so pursuing one of the alternatively to supplement that would be your geothermal system that has wells that get distributed through your site they could range anywhere from 400 to 450 feet in depth the quantity would be coordinated with whatever our cooling and heating loads used to the building one of the unique challenges with that is while it is a very efficient system does have a high initial first cost that needs to be weighed in and considered the other downside is you also have to realize where we can put the wells with the potential that you have to keep your current school in operation and whether or not you're having an addition or renovating it's a matter of finding out where those wells can go and where they can be installed to keep the building running with this system we would have water source heat pumps that was piece of equipment would be located indoors some place and they'd generate hot water and chill water and that hot water and chill water would be distributed to your whether it be chill beams or it could be used as a means for heat rejection for your BRF system no questions so far well in order to install the geothermal wells to be old you would need to probably tear off the play fields yes you could you could locate them below theoretically below your but they could be you could build new play fields you could you could locate it below soccer field baseball fields all the piping would be several feet below grade so if you do have there's a lot of field on the site right now which could be used but again it does take a large large area to sort of accommodate one of the other options I mentioned was the BRF system so this one is an air cooled system mentioned you have condensing units located outside similar on the top left from those outside condensing units you'd have refrigerator piping that would be distributed to your indoor BRF units similarly you'd be using a do-as unit for ventilation your BRF units would be providing air cooling you don't need a jowler hot water system which is one of the benefits capable of both heating and cooling some of the downsides they don't always look very pretty so the top right is the BRF cassette it basically comes in two colors white and off white and it's really based on who you're purchasing equipment for because they come in what color from the manufacturer so there are some alternatives wall-mounted units you could do ducted units ducted units are a little more costly than said a ceiling cassette because you're adding ductwork distribution insulation hangers et cetera you do have to consider these heat pumps would be located under roof there's a lot of flexibility of how far they can be located from your indoor units which if desired you could possibly put them a little bit further from the building or if it does take away the potential for your PV array of pump it is less efficient as far as as it freezing temperatures are achieved so the colder it gets the less efficient they become a lot of equipment does get derated there are a couple manufacturers which offer 100% heat capacity at 32 degrees or even zero but a lot of times as you approach those lower single digit numbers you start to take the efficiency hits a lot of equipment besides for heating for the building and not necessarily just cooling similarly along the BRF lines you have your air cooled you have your water cooled this would be paired with either geothermal system or a cooling tower potentially in a boiler as far as indoor equipment similar top left sort of gives you an example of some BRF cassette units all of which architecturally we have the coordinate picture visually they are acceptable and they function properly distribution from your water cooled condensing units would be very similar to the heat pumps refrigerant piping that runs out to your indoor units it would also be paired with a DOAS system certainly it does require chowar-hobbler piping it's a little bit more costly than your air cooled heat pumps in that you you're looking at adding geothermal system or some other means of heat rejection isn't one of the issues that you end up with lots of mechanical units distributed indoor potentially yes so you could couple ways with the BRF system you could have a ducted unit for example per classroom you could have one to two COA cassettes per classroom if you have offices you could either do a single ball-mounted unit or do a ducted unit certainly multiple spaces but you do tend to have a lot of indoor units sort of spread out each one of those does have like a filter which needs to be considered so there's a lot of maintenance there but just a quick one right now how is fresh air handled? or is it handled? I believe there's there's a unit family on the wall on the wall so they're old so for all I know the outside gate adapters can be closed they can be open and adapters being exhausted totally exhausted just pulling in through infiltration you know I'm not sure I do know that there's a potential mold issue so one of the benefits of DOA you are controlling the amount of outside air to bring to your space when you're pre-treating it so with the current system because it's not functioning as it's intended to you have building infiltration and it'll treat outside air making this way for the building which is wrong and on that DOA so you're bringing in a verifiable amount of outside air to each place regardless of the need for heating or cooling and it's going for energy recovery so that any heat you're exhausting the atmosphere you're going to be using this then so could you send humidity control yes so in all our systems the we're proposing the DOA's unit is intended to provide not only treatment of outside air but also to provide your latent cooling load with the intent that you don't have consate at your VRF units or your chill beams all that's handled at your DOA's unit it won't be confidence yeah it won't be like this yes so you have up there that this the water cooled VRF's require supplemental heating but when you talk about the air cooled you're talking about having trouble when you get down to freezing temperatures so would you recommend having a supplemental we would have some sort of means to inject heat into the loop so whether that's because we don't want to use fossil fuels that would most likely be an electric boiler I'm sorry that would most likely be an electric boiler to supplement either the water or air cooled the air cooled you can size the outdoor equipment for heat with the intent that as you're pro-zero you're only able to get say 75% of heating capacity so you can up size your outdoor equipment to handle the load at your design cooling temperature if you think the geothermal this would be an issue right yeah like it's a quick question about this before we're talking about the if they go I mean all of these may have some these two are similar right just to the question of you know in some of the models renovation models that don't have a tremendous number of amount of day lighting you know there's been some dialogue about lighting from above how would that interface I mean you know it's possible to do both in other words that systems like the ones that's on the screen as well as adding some day lighting absolutely small you know piping if you were to add a skylight or some other means for daylight you can certainly route piping or even locate settings you know according to wherever those you don't get a good scale that could set you know is it 2x2 it's basically a ceiling top okay yeah I think the ceiling that image still yeah your split units at home might be 2 to 3 feet wide and you mean 10 inches 12 inches wide yeah a couple foot or 2 feet tall these will typically run you 2 foot by 2 foot and maybe 4 foot in height and you'll typically yeah they're a little bigger and then depending on what your capacity requirements are you can actually pair multiple together so it's just taking that same box put it next to it so similarly on the top left that's a 2 so that's probably somewhere between 144 tons to maybe excuse me 144 MBH to maybe 230 to 40 so you can get a lot at a very small footprint but it does take roof area so that's such a question no absolutely I'm sorry I'm sorry I just read the scale no yeah they're not the scale actually well I'm not an expert but existing equipment up on the floor of the roof like I'm a little concerned about like the structural the well anything we add to the roof it would happen to be reviewed structurally you know a VRM unit might weigh a few hundred pounds but I would imagine probably need to have some sort of supplemental support the DOAS unit will be a couple thousand pounds that will definitely need some sort of support in some you don't really have major units on the roof right now right now yeah so just just an aside perhaps future conversations because on the on the capital plane from the town of Amherst looking at the four river roof you know sooner than this the of this would come to reality so I think as our team you know particularly our facilities team has discussions about that which stay in contact with what that might look like and so that we're not spending money to undo money on the roof that you just put in right right and I know nothing about roofs this may be a moot point based on what our issues are but I just when we talk about roofs and capacity I'm sure perhaps the town being asked to spend money on roofs I just think we should be locked up about what the realities might be in the future that's all moving forward another option we've had success with the chill themes similarly that outside air be ducted to your chill themes and they are basically a heating and cooling coil that sits in the ceiling put it very simplistically one of the benefits of chill themes is we do have a lot more options visually as far as what we can do there are chill themes that could be worked into light fixtures pendant light fixtures you can have two by two chill themes two by four two by six and their size will vary depending on what you need for a heating and cooling load a couple of benefits it is less noise in a VRF system there are no fans in the chill theme whereas a VRF system to do a two by two cassette the fan is in the actual cassette so it does generate a little bit more noise than used to be considered one of the drawbacks of the chill theme is it does require chill water and hot water and it does introduce an increased complexity for controls so one of the considerations for chill themes is making sure the space two point temperature stays both so professional one of the issues you want to avoid is if your temperatures change very drastically you can potentially have condensation occurring at the chill theme which we want to avoid so a situation if you've had a lot of operable windows you want to monitor whether or not those windows are open because that could introduce a lot of blunt treated outside air into the space and then you could have a condition where your chill themes are condensing there's control methods to accommodate that and to account for that but it does add a little bit of cost compared to a VRF system sort of summarizing as far as our 5 systems VRF does project heats and building exterior basically through your roof systems 2 and 4 which are water cooled VRF geothermal system and chill building geothermal system respectively those have heat rejection to achieve level well out on the sites in place internally if you use cooling tower located cooling tower at system 3 and 5 those heat gets rejected to your cooling tower compressors with option 1 your air cooled VRF compressors are located on the roof and the remainder of the systems excluding system 5 systems 2, 3 and 4 and you have heat pumps water source heat pumps someplace in your building so consideration there is their proximity to adjacent spaces compressors do tend to be your no easiest piece of equipment so you need some sort of acoustical treatment as far as ventilation they're all being used as a DOAS system that's all from our rooftop unit or potentially indoor to make it be easier to do it through a rooftop unit humidity control our tent will be to use the DOAS unit to pre-treat the outside air and remove moisture from the air so as it's introduced into space you're not doing any late cooling with your VRF unit for your chill beams as far as units serving in classrooms with your VRF options option system options 1, 2 and 3 you do have VRF cassettes productive units in your spaces for options for 5 chill beams you obviously have chill beams ties and shape can be used as needed as far as the gym the gym typically does not lend itself to the use of the VRF system or a chill beam tends to be a very large open space so in a space like that we'd be looking to use a single zone heat pump just a little bit bigger with large capacity and better handle a space like the chill beams so we would not have the DOAS unit so we just want to mention that so it's somewhat bigger as far as supplemental heat for the VRF system aerical VRF you would only consider supplemental heat if there's some sort of comfort cooling application if you have a large curtain wall or a large window and you intend to have people sit by there you might want to consider some sort of electric system heat just to carry it with skin loss as hot air rises and cold air falls you can do that which we want to address the remainder of the systems if it was required we would more than likely consider an electric boiler with the intent not to use fossil fuels the geothermal system you can generally get away from using electric boiler but we don't want to say we wouldn't consider it but our intent would be to try and avoid it if possible okay that's a lot of information I don't think that you're asking to build I like it no I'm just sort of I think it's important to get Jim the facilities director get his opinion we may have a history with certain systems that he prefers or doesn't prefer so I think it's important to go around in the country as we can we can sort of summarize I wasn't intending to have you guys pick a system today it was more to sort of blaze over some of the options we're looking at and why we're looking at them since they're electric as we pursue a net zero building and not using fossil fuels yes whatever I don't know we're in the same direction I have a question about cost how much do they scale linearly with the how between one and five they cost there's huge differences or small differences the the air quality will probably be your cheapest option I wouldn't say your option using geothermal is the most expensive I would I would think one more zero or it varies based on the layout I wouldn't say it's an extra zero but it could be an extra five to ten dollars square foot it does add up I think geothermal wells recent experience for me has been wells between ten to twelve thousand dollars each well you're talking about probably one and a half to one and a half to one and a half yeah for the well it could be easily half a nut three quarters to one the difference between the VRF or the Chilpea options is probably five boxes so I think that information would be useful to help I mean I could give some feedback to your facilities our experience with cost but we are cost investment I could give you a follow up the process we're going through right now is to lay this out so we can get some feedback from our cost estimator and give you better information but we want to see the word going down the right path and we're aligned with your thinking right I don't want to what I'm hoping is if you have had bad experience with the system you know if you say oh my god I hate system five then I okay I'll move that off the table I've had a bad experience but so in layman's terms in layman's terms yeah people are going home and telling their family you know what we learned today that it looks like we're going to be doing a system that doesn't have fossil fuel is that correct correct that it probably has electric boilers is that correct potentially depending on what system maybe maybe geothermal maybe geothermal definitely photovoltax yes we need photovoltax offset or electric if you're trying next year next year the more efficient system we can have the reduced number of photovoltax photovoltax correct so as you're also putting together the different costs I would really like to see differences between these maintenance so not only the cost of maintenance but how difficult this to maintain where the pit falls where the first cost well I did yeah yes and over time that would be that would be helpful absolutely sure I can let you know as far as maintenance your chill beams will probably have a lower maintenance than your VRF systems your VRF systems you have a lot more equipment it's based out through your buildings there's a lot more points of failure potentially a lot of your VRF units you have a filter associated with data maybe wash it but one feedback we've gotten from the digital beams their maintenance personnel and staff could do that directly but they were in VRF that was more of a specialized it is right there is a higher level of complexity with chill beams so what might be fair to interject at this point is all of these systems are very different than what's in anything in any of this I would venture to say anything that in any town owned property of the mold as a community your facilities most need to be practical we want to have experiences elsewhere I don't want to put anything forth about gypsum right now yes I want to follow up I agree with our various comments and you know it's probably too early but it would be helpful to see a couple things in this matrix so one is the cost piece that was mentioned but one is also the energy savings and post-energy savings and I know it's hard to do energy modeling for a long but I think having a sense of what the install cost is the maintenance piece but also how quickly you'd make the money back based on the energy savings that would be realized and the other comment I had is are we thinking about these and I may have missed this I apologize but these systems regardless of whether it's new construction renovate like is it these systems what we consider regardless of one of the issues or reason we're proposing certain systems is because of limitation with the existing structure so if you were to say pursue a conventional VAV system that has a larger rooftop unit that could be fed off your existing boiler but one of the issues you run into is running duct work through your existing space so that becomes an issue it's not to say that it's impossible but it does challenges that have to be so it's a one-story building it's conceivable that you could run duct work on the roof you could theoretically there would be a lot of penetrations and a lot of potential for a leak at one of those penetrations so just to make sure I'm understanding your answer so regardless of whether we're talking about renovation or new construction these five systems were chosen because they could work in either model correct you could potentially use a boiler but any situation where you use a portion of existing building and then have an addition that addition would have to follow the net zero approach that's really helpful thank you I at this point need to call a quick time we're about to lose quorum I think we can continue to discuss things once we lose quorum but I would like us to vote quickly on an invoice we have for our another round of meeting I'm just going to quickly pass some of these in each direction and ask our consultants to be patient with us as we do a little bit of positive business these are the minutes for and I apologize for not being able to get these out but ahead of the meeting this is for recording a last meeting which is the first one with Laura and this is in the same range as some of the ones before and Laura was hoping that she may get a bit more efficient but I did go back and look at the context and this is in the general ballpark sure well people have questions on the invoice and I get a motion to approve it I'm going to stop for a minute for the invoice second all in favor Alison can go question I think well we probably should technically adjourn I'm going to wonder whether we keep the camera on is there any harm in that I don't think so but let people continue to ask we just can't make a decision yeah I don't think we're going to be asking for anything no okay oh yes we have to we actually have to I need a motion to adjourn second second all in favor I think I think she's going with her feet she's going with her feet she's going with her feet well that was a little sloppy part of my procedure on my part I apologize just a question about could you speak to what assets if any there are in the existing mechanical system the existing boilers 8 to 10 years old which is pretty relatively new it is within its useful life and it's a gas fired I believe it's a gas fired boiler yeah you could conceivably use that for the chill beam most buildings chill beams most buildings do in fact use the gas boiler and is there any parts of the distribution system that are I think for the most part you'd probably cut it back pretty significantly yeah you have unit ventilators I would get want to get rid of those yes please yes what I would add to that is I put this knowing that Jim would not be able to come tonight and in his role I asked him what whether he thought there any from his perspective any systems that beyond the boilers could be salvaged and he certainly didn't see anything in the distribution systems from his perspective things that all passed their useful life that goes for not just the mechanical system but also the plumbing and all that sort of stuff so we should assume a lot of that you know even in a renovation model right that's been hard to keep other questions I can public can comment what we're adjourned why not why not I'm already in trouble so I'm Chris Riddle I'm an ex-associated that man across the hall here he's the one we blame for why it's so hot there is AC in the building it's private turned off where did they switch to heating already maybe some awesome my feeling is with Jonathan I have talked about this in the past that looking at the Fort River building a building with essentially an uninsulated exterior wall single glazing uninsulated slab a lot of floor plan changes some structural changes complete scrapping of the HVAC system is it your opinion as the architect that it's going to save money to will it cost more per square foot or less per square foot to renovate that building cost more than what than new than new construction don't forget also you have to consider phasing construction phasing construction phasing in the renovation project will be will be complicated and it will add to the duration of construction so my gut tells me it will be less expensive to build new we'll find that out we'll find that out you're going to give us that I have to I have to support that gut feeling without more facts and figures and the other thing well I guess that's that is my basic question and I I really feel that we need to get rid of these buildings both this one and Wildwood I think that they'll be a compromise forever and I don't think it's going to save any money to try to keep them my opinion what am I what I know I'm not involved in the project I would want this body body to be very careful about this it's very easy for new construction to be cheaper than renovation if you're doing very substantial renovations and you have to go a long ways good well I should probably reiterate that in the end it's not going to be this buy that picks the preferred option I'm sorry I should probably reiterate that we as a body as a committee don't actually get to pick a preferred option we have to explore multiple options we've charted them and we have to come up with pros and cons but ultimately hopefully folks will look at that and some this should become self-evident one night over there we go can I question about the energy efficiency I've seen some buildings that they put as seconds in an exterior skin if there's solar panels, glass is there something that can be do you have experience doing that is there something that can be done building to put a second skin? yes, you have to be very careful doing that because if you're insulating from the outside where that insulation occurs you could actually create a condensation problem in the exterior skin but some of the some of the ones I've seen even is just glass passive passive solar passive solar I've seen either shading neon so many people they'll have to either shading or even solar just bright and solar panels we've seen that we're done with taller buildings and office buildings is a good example in Peter Budsby did that with the Dallas Building in Vancouver where they took an existing kind of ugly office building and they just put a second glass box around the whole thing that's probably not the low-cost option it's very elegant and then they use that space for moving air and opening and closing things to control the environment inside if you do anything I've seen factories that they put solar like these solar panels that are glass so deficient solar panels but you can have even light going through yeah I mean there certainly are different sorts of glazing systems that can also generate solar and the whole thing is how much of a light are you going to pass through yeah yeah I think all these things start to get I was wondering because I've seen an evidence of houses we have a lot of problems in the Port River building one of which is the footprint of the building the geometry of the building is problematic so by spending a lot of money on the exterior skin or the roof doesn't really address that we're trying to create a 21st 22nd century school making sure that there's adequate daylight everywhere and so on I think that's the goal we're going to do the best that we can with the lobes end of the spectrum but at some point it's just not cost effective other questions for folks today just following up on that though whether it's double wall or I mean you envision the cost estimating I mean this gets into your architectural report like we try to address that our values out and there's ways to do that that are yes there's multiple ways to do that but yes that will be part of the charge is to bring the building up to code and that means energy as well so that means insulation value that needs windows thermal paint all that sort of stuff another perspective your single story building is a huge roof and we can the area of wall to roof is really almost distorted windows and fixing the roof then what's left is in the back so I just be curious I think I've just said by email but I don't know if you are on it Wednesday nights almost never make it so I apologize that my attendance hasn't been as good as I'd like but I do think the phasing that you mentioned is something that and I am going to be concerned about but on a practical operational level for future meetings but there's a cost to it but there's also the what do we put kids you know and so I don't know when that process gets rolling and where that gets integrated I don't have an opinion on it but I just think it's something that certainly as we go down roads we're going to get a lot of questions about that we will analyze the phasing and the duration of construction will be part of that cost and you'll see the difference thank you so thinking forward to our next meeting if we're done kind of asking questions about tonight's presentation might I don't want to put words in your mouth but my guess is you would like us to begin to think about how to narrow that matrix yes down into something that you're refining more deeply but fewer of them correct and so six would be nice six would be nice yes if you can okay we will be thinking about thinking about that okay so we tried to meet the next week so that we can because if if we want to be narrowing down and like you need to be here you know well I think they need I think there was there was some potential updating that we may want to happen ahead of that and I think it might be worth having them formally present the full matrix even not in the same depth but so that we're all reminded of what they were what some of the basic relationships were and then have it have that discussion and hopefully we can make a narrowing in one one meeting next meeting but I'd have to look at the overall calendar and I haven't thought about it in that context yet does that does that work for you? I'm concerned as we've we have new information coming in potentially looking at other options than the five that we've presented so far I consider we may need to have more time in our schedule to be able to have those options narrowed and then go back and refine them I only see that as the process because there are comments that are open right now that we still need to get into as we didn't get to a fair amount tonight well I guess what I would say is if you could think about how you want to present and list for us things we might need to decide next week or next week the next meeting and get that to us a couple of days ahead that would be a couple of Okay we could do that and then I think we would like to look at the schedule Yes and remember we had identified certain milestones or certain decisions in the forthcoming meeting and we may need to adjust that and we had been we had this potential or do not potential we had this schedule a joint meeting with the school committee coming up in November and about the same time we were also thinking about the community outreach and certainly may want to look at that calendar again make sure that's still realistic what we do present I want it to be a presentation So let us take a cut at the calendar and then we can forward that to you as soon as we have something I think something that would be it would be helpful for me and I think other people as we do try to do more community outreach and some different ideas about how to go about doing that but it's at what level do we want to get input I mean I gave you guys some input on a very specific level I don't know if that's too deep a level are we talking at a higher level do we it seems to me we don't really have um definite answers on our space summary which of course everything falls I do think we want to close out our space summary um that's an important goal here because we're now building these options on space summary now there's a big piece that was brought into play but even with the smaller pieces in the special education area particularly it would help to have clarification from the district as to what our goals are there so that we're more hitting them in these detailed plans that we're showing that we're not running into questions you know two months from now but why is that we're not there we don't want we don't want the details that we're throwing us off is there is there someone who can review the special education space for the district um yeah we have two special people that are in charge of specialized I mean particularly specialized program spaces um I do have concerns about where they are not about the size or anything but they're located in a way where I think when we get bothered by the state they would say these are not integrated in the school um and so you know and that's that's probably not that large a fix and as you know other things that may come out are listed in that first two page document I found it in there the list is reflection rooms well we have reflection rooms in the plan right but it's a reduction from what's in that original list there's three in each plan right and the original sheet indicates five oh and then there's two typically in like um okay there may be two missing some of the plans I'll leave it there we'll get them in there they're the small they are small but they're highly utilized yeah so with your permission what we'd like to do is contact Michael about getting together with the um special ed groups absolutely okay that's good I had sort of initiated cause direct I had initiated a meeting with Joe Anstman favoring Nancy Stewart and so I don't know if it would make sense to try to just roll that in with you guys I mean I was I would be a matter of me just trying to translate yeah cause I had these very concerns like it just didn't seem like we were all met up yet on that so the scheduling emails just went on today so maybe we can integrate those too can I ask a very fine question this time but were you looking to like get written feedback from them we were looking to like Skype in so that you could talk about the mechanism that you were looking for for communication we would like to meet okay you would come up and we would come up yes and we would like to have a discussion about what the district's roles are for special work so I think if the committee wants I can facilitate I would like to attend that meeting and trust those folks but the time and I think including Nancy Stewart for the special appearance advisory council president would be okay and I want to come back to Maria's question about public input I think you're almost there what I would like to have is the options picked from that matrix so that this committee feels comfortable with those six options let's say and then we can start discussing this with members of the public and say we're looking at six options and here are the six options and this is we narrowed it down and here's why I don't think you need to present 30 options and start getting some questions so that hopefully while we're going to present a group of options the school committee might be slightly narrowed than six it might be some of them might be filtered out by what we learned why not it was nice so I have a couple of comments in my rooms I think we were talking the day about flexibility and I think you brought it up staffing and programs change and requirements change throughout the years and I don't know if we need to go a one by one comparison of what is now to what it has to be built and maybe have rooms that have some flexibility then it can be a big purpose because we are building for many years to come and probably you didn't have the same rooms 10 years ago I think we have to be careful of having one to one exactly the same and we have to have some flexibility and this basis has to be some flexibility because if not in five years from now I'm going to say I don't fit because I'm exactly too tight the other thing is that there was talks at some point that one of the programs might be moving so I think that the district is going to have to clarify whether that is going to impact the home the square footage I think that will become more clear also and so we're timeline is the school size probably sometime November okay so then that is going to be a little better in advocating for the therapeutic space so I can say based on the experiences that I've had those spaces are going to become necessary than necessary so I wanted to go back to last review and are there ways that we can have that flexibility but also the multi-purpose rooms and see if we can bring that down and I know I don't know I know that we have to decide that as part of the space and not just the number of rooms but how big everything well let's talk about the ends of the spectrum of options at one end we have a new building that let's say MSBA guidelines exactly because you're going to hold for MSBA funding and you want to make sure you can play about their rules that's one end of the spectrum the other end of the spectrum is you don't really care about MSBA and you want to do this thing as cost-effectively as possible and we're going to work within the footprint of the existing building because there's enough square footage in the existing and you can extend the useful life of that building X number of years and we'll try to plug in that X number of years so that's the other end of the spectrum it's a different I was thinking but even with an addition, demolition, renovation just to the current footprint of the building is extremely problematic and I think that defining ourselves to the current footprint is probably a mistake but as we do demolition and addition even so I don't think do we need to end up still at 80 plus thousand square feet? Yeah, the question is about target the program so it almost from my perspective doesn't matter the construction strategy whether it's near renovation because we're trying to get to this target and so I mean if you see efficiencies in the the room list I mean we're going with the smaller media center which we're trying to verify out to prove that the gym we've got the big gym and there's some talk about maybe we should have a smaller gym and that let's say that's open but right now we're working with the big one and then in special education we've talked about Parker Farms is the RTI rooms it's in a way to fit into that building but it also allows some multi uses in special education space so that they have their own room but they're able to provide their services efficiently with perhaps less space and so we didn't model around that yet and maybe that's something that comes out of this fall off or not I don't know but if you see other opportunities for so what you're saying is regardless of the option try to follow the MSPM guidelines no, no I'm saying she's asking is there a way to reduce the proposed square footage our room list which exceeds MSPA guidelines by part of that I think for example I think it's the orchestra and the band those can use one and a half days a week so how how much how constant effective is to have two separate rooms over one thousand square feet for those that can use only one and a half day a week at the B level one developer is thinking of the other three days of the week three and a half days of the week they can use the same time but no I don't know but they come at the same time but they can be used the other three days of the week three and a half days they can be purpose for some other purpose because it's fixed so it can be conference space but it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's