 Okay, I wish. Okay, so this is November 15th meeting of the buildings and facilities committee for the Jones library. Seeing the meeting is being recorded, seeing presence of a quorum. I'm going to call the meeting to order at 415. I'm going to perform a sound check to make sure everybody can hear and be heard. So with that, George, Laura, here, and Alex Lafave, I am here as well. So pursuant to Chapter 20 of the Acts of 2021, this meeting will be conducted via remote means. Members of the public who wish to access the meeting can do so by clicking on the live link to this Zoom meeting that can be found on the public meetings calendar on the town of Amherst website or also on the library website or dialing in by phone. Public is able to comment during the public comment segment of the posted agenda by raising their hand. This meeting is recorded and will be posted to the Jones library website. So I see that we have two attendees in the audience right now and we don't have the library director today and I know we potentially we're going to have some members of town, Jeremiah LaPlante, Stephanie Ciccarello, and Rob Mora, but I doesn't look like they're in attendance today so I should make for a fairly short meeting that I'm guessing. So first thing we have is if someone would make a motion to approve the minutes of October 4th, 2022. I motion we approve the minutes. I second that. Any conversation, question, thoughts, comments on the meeting minutes? No. So George, how do you vote to approve? Do you vote to approve the meeting minutes of October 4th, 2022? I vote to approve. Okay, Farah. Yes. And Alex votes yes as well. So public comment is the next section as I said with two people. In the audience if either of you would like to make a public comment you can raise your virtual hand and we will let you into the meeting to make a comment. I see we now have three people and we are in public comment if someone would like to make a comment. The person who just joined, now is the time to raise your virtual hand. Okay, seeing no one. Oh, got somebody. George is going to bring you into the room. Can you state your name? Bear with me. Um, there we go. Um, and these, do I just allow to talk correct? I think so. There we go. Bob, you're in the room if you want to go ahead and say your name since we're recording the meeting and then go ahead and make your public comment. Hello, I'm Bob Pam. Speaking as myself, no one, nobody else. A couple of points that since we will be talking about things that need to be done now and things that may be done in the future. I have made some recommendations to the Jones Library Building Committee of things that I still think might be an improvement. I hope that those have been received by that committee. I have also thought about ways in which those might also be applicable here. I had asked the director to arrange a tour of the building so that I could have a clearer idea of the way in which the environmental system for the special collection works. I believe that the system that currently serves it is on the roof above of the special collections and that it has been a leaky and not terribly a functional system. It has seemed to me that since that is a limited amount of space which is similar to the amount of space in a large home that the kind of systems which have been recommended for homes which are heat pumps which have no water components and consequently can't leak and which are small and which are fairly effective both for heating and cooling that that might be a reasonable way to replace the system that we have been using. I can't judge that because I've not been up there to take a look at the way in which it is currently structured but in any case that is a thought that I've had with respect to the current situation which has meant that the special collections has been of limited availability for now a couple of years. In particular if it turns out either under plan A or plan B whether the building is reconstructed and expanded or whether it is not the special collections will remain a consolidated space of limited square footage and a heat pump system there since we've always been talking about that having its own specialized system still seems to me to be appropriate for a heat pump operation in particular given that it is unlikely that we are going to be putting up solar panels at any time in the near future and since it is likely that even if we do we will still need to be using electricity to supply energy for the building heat pumps seem to me to be appropriate for this specialized space. It also seems to me that given that the Woodbury room which is planned to be open during off hours for the rest of the library rather than continuing to heat and cool to an appropriate level all of the building during hours when the Woodbury room is open whether it is the new one or the old one a heat pump for that space might also be appropriate either as a supplemental system or as a primary system during off hours so that is questions and thoughts that I've had about this for some time and I am hoping that some consideration will be given to that. There is a second question that I have been thinking about and that I will be raising tomorrow I guess at the board meeting which is that just as we have had for the last couple of years a student project involving what kinds of things could be done in the backyard of the library which has been fun for the students and which has been of interest to town members it seems to me that it might be appropriate for us also to approach the engineering and architecture departments of UMass and see whether they would have suggestions about whether it says student projects or in other forms for replacing the glass roofing above the atrium. We have thought about this now for 30 years without having any success seems to me that a brand new set of both students and faculty who are involved with the advances in engineering that have occurred over the last 30 years might be a good thing for us to have a look at and of course we are thinking about this in the event that one year from now we have to have a plan in place to deal with it. So those are the two thoughts that I've been having. Thank you. Thanks Bob. Any of the other members of the public wish to make a public comment? Okay seeing none I'm going to move on to the next agenda item which is an update on the delivery van so George. I have no I don't have a bad update or a good update. The Ford Motor Company has been struggling with supply chain issues so the special orders for this year have been dragging along and I contacted the dealer representative last week. He had no update for me that there was no positive movement on the order like it's not being built right now or anything like that and it's mostly just the supply chain issues have been slowing down manufacturing production so we won't be seeing it anytime soon. Farah did you have any? No what are we doing in the meantime? We are still patching together the old van. It will need an inspection sticker I believe in February. Yeah we're just driving it and keeping it together. So we did a little bit of body work on it to get it to pass inspection last time so if the new van does not come in before it needs to be inspected we'll cross that bridge when we get there. Okay thanks. The next item on the agenda is the North Amherst Library building project update. I have not heard any recent updates from Guilford. I know that the foundation for the addition I believe is in so if you drive by the site you can actually kind of get a visual as to how big it's going to be. As far as I know everything is still on schedule. I don't think anything popped up that is going to slow the project down but that is all I have at the moment for North Amherst for the project but it's fun to watch the progress if you happen to drive by that area and see the progress. I don't think it'll be very long before we start seeing a structure there. Thanks Farah no you're good. Yeah great. Okay so the next item is the monthly building and grounds report. I think the only thing that I can report is that the tent is officially down. We left the frame up again because it's very possible that we may decide that the tent is going to go back up in the spring. If it's deemed that we want to do that we'll just have to get another extension on the building permit that we had to pull to in order to have that tent up there but we especially seeing as I was out with an injury we had DPW graciously helped us take the tent roof and sides down. So yeah nothing else to report at this point and I hired a snow plow contractor so this is great. Would you normally do that George or is that because of your injury? The snow plow contractor. I used to do it and then I sold my plow truck so we've hired an outside company for the past few years to do the snow plowing and we had to hire a new one this year because the one we had last year there were there were some issues so we're going with a new company they are Amherst based and we're in the process of getting the contract settled so just in time too. Any questions comments? No I was going to say just in time for tomorrow apparently. We're probably going to get it in. So George I assume there's no changes to the the leak that you're keeping an eye on over the staff lounge it's same nothing no changes there. Yeah yeah no changes. Okay so the last item is the backup building project planning so I believe you did a tour of the building per our last meeting so I guess maybe just give us an update on who I was sort of hoping that they would be here we could talk about next steps but maybe you can tell us sort of who came and anything shared that we should go about. We had so it was myself Sharon Rob Mora Stephanie Ciccarillo Sean Mangano and Jeremiah so we took them we focused on the mechanicals of the building and the atrium itself so we basically took them through space by space show them the equipment gave a brief overview of its age and what has been replaced and and things like that and it was a really productive tour I don't think any of them had been into the depths of the building to see like you know they've seen the the library itself but they had never been into the bowels of the building and seen the mechanicals before and seen exactly how how the building was designed to be heated and cooled and the things that were done in the 90s that created a lot of these issues that we're still dealing with to this day so it was a very productive tour it was a very eye-opening tour we did meet with them Sharon and I met with them last week just for a brief meeting just to go over what they saw and everything like that so there's no specific plan put in place yet there's right now we're just at the brainstorming phase as to if the construction project doesn't go forward what would be the first steps for us to do so that tour and that meeting were really the first steps for that but I will say it was very productive it was very worthwhile to do it because now now they have a much better idea of the things that we are facing and if the project doesn't go forward the things that will have to be dealt with there's certainly no way to put any kind of cost on that right now because we don't know what steps we're going to take first but they have a lot more information than they had a couple weeks ago now so is the expectation that thank you by the way for doing that tour and I certainly appreciate that all all four of them showed up so that was that's really nice for them to have a firsthand look at the building um do we have a sense of I mean I think my hope was that you know we would sort of have that group come back to us and we could start to have some conversations about what you know a plan B might look like so I guess do you have a sense of you know are there some things that need to happen before they meet with us or would the next step be for them like what what's your sense of what should be the next step so that we can yeah I mean I think they need to look into you know the first steps are are going to have to deal with you know construction engineers to come in and and look at the existing building and look at the best steps forward so right now it's figuring out where those costs are going to get paid and when on the calendar we should do those things so when they're better prepared I think that they will come before either us or or the board itself with something more meaningful they just haven't had enough time to absorb it yet but I definitely I'm definitely encouraged that we're going to get a lot of support and help from the town side should we have to go forward with the alternate plan I think we're going to get we're going to get a decent amount of help from the town on this aspect George have they done a tour like this before not the not these individuals no I mean some of them have been through the building just like on you know like on just a tour of the building itself like the the programming spaces and the public spaces but none of them had looked at the equipment before looked at the mechanicals or anything like that so this was all very new to all of them and sorry this is two part and did any of them have any like comments or suggestions about what looked like the most the highest priority um I think it's still it's still a matter of them working we all kind of feel that the HVAC is definitely the number one priority um it's determining if that will entail or it's determining what parts can be done separate without encompassing the atrium uh or kicking in the ADA requirements things like that but it's pretty generally known that the HVAC is the most important part of it and they also did add that they were all fairly uh impressed with how we've held the building together to this point given the obstacles that we've had now that they've had all of those visuals and they see how it's designed they they were actually um quite impressed and appreciative as to how we've been able to hold the building together thank you thank you that made me feel good the unsung hero um far did you have other no no thank you so much George so George one of the things um so we obviously invited Stephanie Ciccarello along because you know in any backup planning we're doing ideally you know we'd like to we'd like to be doing things right by the environment and looking at systems and I noticed that um Stephanie and Jeremiah just sent a sustainability statement for procurement um or not technically a municipal building so I'm assuming again this statement doesn't apply to us but I mean in in an ideal world we would be uh you know we we would anything we do would be following along you know with what the town's goals are around you know ECAC and the Energy Climate Action Committee so I don't know um if that'll be part of the conversation that we have with them I think it will be I I definitely think it will be um you know I think that they are they're I think they're being very realistic that if we have to if we have to go forward with an alternate plan that we do whatever we can to make it as efficient as possible um you know I don't think you know the cost will be a factor of course you know we won't have as much opportunity as we will with the expansion project but it's definitely on their radar looking into things that could possibly be done to make it more efficient this time around yeah and I know I had reached out to Stephanie Tikarello um because um there are some other libraries that had used um the clean I think it's clean towns green energy remember the top of my head there are certain funds that are set aside and my understanding was that you can only submit a project every two years under that and right now they're looking at the schools and so I guess kind of the the the initial information I got was that town has all of their green priorities lined up and we probably wouldn't be able to access any green town funds that are coming in but it'd be nice I just want to make sure that Stephanie continues to be part of the conversation so that if there is something available that we can try to get access to it oh yeah absolutely I mean if anything she's a wealth of information you know she's been doing this for the municipalities for quite some time and um you know I think if there's anything out there that we aren't aware of she would find it for us yeah well I mean one of the nice things about this is you know having having Jeremiah Robbins and and Stephanie is that you know we become part of the town planning in the sense of knowing knowing knowing where we're gonna fit right so if the project doesn't go through ideally at the end of this we'll have a sense for you know where are we in you know the priority in terms of receiving green funds in terms of when things might be done and so that'll be yeah yeah absolutely that'll be a great conversation to have when they do come forward when they do come to us to to present whatever they've got you know just to just make sure that they know that that's something that we have our eyes on um that that we definitely want to have that conversation so do we know timing wise when they expect because I feel like we're somewhat in a hold pattern until we hear back from them like ideally it seems like the next step is we sit down with them and they share with us you know here's what we saw here's what we think here's what we would you know offer up for suggestions yeah I mean I think um based on the conversation we had I would think that we should hear something from them within the next few weeks um they just didn't have they didn't have the information they needed to come forward with anything that would be meaningful okay so yeah I would I think optimistically probably within a few weeks we should hear from them so ideally at our next meeting I think so yeah okay good yeah I think so okay fabulous good um so speaking of that I guess do we I don't know what times I mean I would really I'd love for them to be at our next meeting so if changing dates or times to accommodate their schedules is the way to go I mean I'm happy to I don't know your thoughts Farah but I I feel like sure yeah yeah yeah I'm I totally on board with that too um you know if we hear from them that they that that they want to meet I mean maybe it'll be putting together google poll to try to find a date when everybody's available but yeah I would definitely I'd be fine with moving meeting times around uh in order to make that happen yeah so our next our next building facilities is tentatively for I believe December 20th and I can do a 9 a.m. Farah if that works better for you that would be amazing George does that work for you are you going to where are you going to be George you know um I'm I'm hoping uh because there is the little tricky thing that I I am having surgery and I will be on FMLA leave and I'm working with HR right now to ensure that I can at my soonest possibility continue to do my work from home but I don't know when that I don't know where that date is going to set um surgeries on the 30th but let me just check my why don't we just put December 20th 9 a.m. as as a placeholder which it already is my calendar um at night moving back to 9 a.m. and then as we hear from folks from the town and you know your schedule then yeah firm that up but that's the date we'll hold for now that's that sounds good to me okay and it's the 20th right is that what you said I have December 20th yeah yeah yeah okay all right well I'm not a lot I think I mean is there anything else George any or next topic's not anticipated by the chair no nothing that I can think of off the top of my head okay all right well again I really appreciate you we really appreciate you doing the tour for the folks in town and I'm very very interested to hear what they have to say both in terms of funding sources as well as suggestions for how to proceed and yeah and and putting some kind of schedule in place so that we can at least report back to the board that what the timeline is going to look like for and especially because we're supposed to I think report into the town as well I think was that agreement was to check in with the town but I mean it's in the town's lap at this point and Sean's part of that so right exactly I mean that the the people involved with that are also involved with this so yeah yeah okay they won't be going back on their own work okay good luck with your surgery George thank you yeah we're we're gonna get through this all right well thank you all thank you thank you for your comments and we will see you next time bye meeting adjourned thanks