 All right, we're recording. Welcome, everyone. This is the Thursday, September 23rd meeting of the Elementary School Building Committee. And my first task as chair is to call the meeting to order. We have a quorum and per the governor's orders, we're doing this by Zoom, so I need to do a roll call vote to make sure that everyone can hear and we can hear you. And I'm just gonna read out the names and the order I see them on my screen. So Phoebe Miriam. I'm here. Mike Morris. Here. Rupert Roy Clark. I am also here. Sean. Here. Ben. Here. Steve. I'm here. Jonathan. Here. Michelle. I'm here. Allison. Here. And Paul Bachman. So we're missing Margaret Wood right now. And I'd like to start the meeting, the discussion of the designers when she comes on. But Mike had said that's the major agenda item today. We also need to review an invoice and agree on a next meeting time. So Paul, Mike, you said you wanted to communicate with us a bit on a conversation you had with Margaret. Yeah, but I can, Paul wants to jump in now. I'll remember Mike. I just want to welcome Michelle to the meeting. Congratulations for being here. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you for the invite. Well, thank you for joining us. This is quite an introduction to get these eight easy to read documents as a first induction. So while I'm waiting a little bit for Margaret, what I said is that a couple of people have said they can't stay for the full two hours that we'd scheduled the meeting today. So if we will see how far we get with the discussion and comparisons of the eight proposals and eight submissions that we have. And I was going to suggest that we meet on October 7th to continue this discussion, which would be two weeks at eight o'clock in the morning. And we can also one of the agenda items then can be Margaret is going to present her proposed website design and some of these materials would go up on it. And along with that, when we go to the panel, which will be November 2nd. So we have some time before the MSPA panel. We might want to discuss the kind of interview questions we would want to ask of the finalists. So again, that's a big agenda for the seventh, but we can save some of our discussion as needed. Is everyone in agreement for that meeting? Okay. And then the next meeting after that, you could tentatively hold the 21st. I'm not sure we're going to need to meet, but on November 4th would be reporting back on the MSPA panel. And Michelle, just for your information, we had agreed to meet on Thursday mornings at eight. So to the extent possible, it will always be a Thursday morning unless we have a time where we're meeting jointly with the school committee. And there may be some of those going forward. We just haven't scheduled them yet. Yes, Mike. It appears to me that Margaret's in the meeting as an attendee. Ah, okay. I don't know. I'm not a Zoom person. I don't know how to transfer someone from an attendee to a panelist, but it appears that she's there. More, I'm promoting. Yeah, I can promote her if you want. Okay, Margaret is here. Hi, Margaret. Margaret, I just promoted you to the panelist. So you should be able to unmute and join us. I won't bore you with the details of my technical failures this morning, but I'm here. So I saw that Shelly is also in the audience. Would you want her to be part of the panel? So do you just want to leave her as public comments? No, I would be great if you could add her as a panelist. We'll do that. And then you can introduce Shelly to everyone. Okay. I'm bringing her in. Okay, Shelly, you should be with us as a panelist now. So you can unmute and Margaret can introduce you. Good morning. Good morning. All right. So Shelly Potthorff was on our team for the project, is on our team for the project, and we brought her to our team because she is, I would call her a knit zero guru. How's that, Shelly? You want to be a guru? Sure, sure. So I, she's going to be in this conversation to comment on and answer any questions on the proposals, the applications as we go through them from that perspective. Okay, so everyone should have received, Margaret gave us a Dropbox link initially, and they are now posted the eight designer proposals, responses, and she gave us what I thought was a beginning grid of so we could easily look at some specific facts about them, how big they are, whether they've done schools before. And then you can also look at, there was a second page, well, two second pages, one page listed the consultants they have. So you can see to the extent places are using the same firms and or the firms are women led or minority led. So it's a lot of information on the eight. And Margaret, I think Margaret, you're planning on taking notes throughout this meetings. So I think what we want to do is go through my suggestion, but I'd take anybody's suggestion on this, as we can go one at a time and talk about what we thought as particularly interesting about them, either in a positive or a negative way, and that would help fill out this grid. We are not going to be rating these today, we are mainly collecting comments and observations that everyone had about them. Does that make sense to go through them one at a time? Does that work for people? Yes, okay. And they've been organized in the grid in alphabetical order. So I will just put their names up. And I think what I would like to do is just everybody, anyone who wants to comment should raise their hand. And you can either do it this way or there is now on Zoom a little raise hand button and the hand shoots up. So either way. So the first one up will be Danisco. And I'm not necessarily going to be pronouncing these correctly. So I do not want to lead off with comments. I did take notes and I have comments on each of these, but I think I will reserve the chair's right to go last rather than first. So anyone who would like to comment, again, either strengths, weaknesses, particularly interesting, it's not an evaluation as much as a sense of this design team with all their sub consultants. Sean. So I think one of the things I liked about Danisco is I think they're led by an educational programmer. I think that was, as opposed to maybe being led by somebody who's more on the architecture side, this person seemed to be more on the educational programming side, which I thought was interesting. Mike. Sorry, I've got a lot of comments on these, but all of them not, it's not specifically to this. Yeah, no, no. I just roll through it and then hopefully the conversation will go. No, I absolutely. Yeah, so things I liked, it was female-owned business. So I think I shared with Kathy and some others that are districts looking at adopting a policy of consultants and contractors and diversity is very important in this field. Gender certainly, and many others. And there's one I thought in their introduction statement as well as the backup information that Margaret provided, lots of MSBA experience having been halfway through a project. That's a really important thing for me. Amherst is a wonderful place, not always the easiest place. And I'm not sure, I'll just say I value the level of experience they have with that process. I thought that some really important comments about special education as well, understanding sub-separate spaces and sub-separate programs, which I think is really important here. Some experience with environmental projects, again, Shelley will be able to weigh in more than me, but at least what I read, I thought sounded good. They also had some experience in Western Massachusetts with consolidated schools, frankly larger schools than we're talking about and attempts to make them feel small. So I think some comparables that are relatively local. That matters to me as well as in Lexington where they did a lot of work on, again, sustainable practices. They also had examples of, you know, at least one example of an ad reno. So my belief is that we need to explore ad reno and build new and they were able to kind of clearly make connections to what we're all talking about here. I think they also talked about high groundwater and places with complicated sites. And the last positive I'll mention is that, so, you know, you can't read too much into the sketch designs at the end, except of course, if you're like me, I get really excited when I see what potentially could happen in the future. So I'm gonna comment on them anyway, but just they had a lot of thinking about how to maintain open space on the site. And just, you know, when I go to Michelle school and Allison school, not just COVID related, but I think we were all learning that people, we want kids and adults to be outside more often than we maybe thought about before. And I thought just really interesting inventive ways to promote open space on the site. And, you know, some of the other ones, you know, I didn't think had that as much of a priority, but it's certainly a priority with how we're approaching teaching and learning. And I don't think we wanna go back to being inside all the time. At least that's not what I hear from principals and teachers. So I really, those are just a lot of the strengths that I saw in this proposal. Sorry to take so much airtime. No, other, I think everyone should feel comfortable taking airtime. This is an important discussion. So, and if, if anything- Like those were great comments. I totally agree with all of them. Yup. Others- I can speak up. So I don't know, Dinesco. I thought some of the work was good. I mean, I think that one of the things that I'm looking for is the actual design of schools, whether or not there's a coherence, you know, after all of these inputs and, you know, community engagement and, you know, all these pressures is the final design, you know, rigorous. And I think there are other ones that seem to have a more, you know, kind of a rigorous approach to the, you know, in the end. The Donna Dinesco is actually an alum of our program. I did not know this back when it was an interior design. I don't, I don't believe I've ever met her. So I'm going to look, look more into that. So I think maybe one of my, the plus is also the minus. So the plus is that she's the president of the firm and she's an educational programmer. The minus is she's not an architect and this is an architecture firm. So I have seen, you know, I don't know where I'm going with that but it's something that I'm definitely thinking about. So for me, Dinesco is definitely, I think all eight were qualified. They were definitely qualified, not at the top of my, my, in my head, but I love all the other comments. Thank you. Other, other people. Kathy, just one thing I noticed with Dinesco too is I didn't, and maybe I missed it. I didn't see much in their presentation on cost control as much as some of the other presentations. And that was one of the, you know, one of the objectives that we had noted. And I don't remember seeing much on that. I agree. I'm just looking at hands before, because I have some additional comments without trying to repeat what others have said. Okay, I'll weigh in. You know, I basically agree with everything Mike said and I'd made notes on it. I thought particularly the use of outdoor space, they didn't, unfortunately, they didn't say anything about Wildwood but they did give us a really good discussion of Fort River and trying to talk about the groundwater levels and what you might not be able to do. They, unlike many of the others, talked about solar canopies over the parking lot. You know, so where, where you be able to do what? And I love that they've done a trail and, you know, real examples of outdoor space. I also, I mean, it may be because I have to read a lot. I like it when people are clear when they write. And I found the cover letter very clear and succinct with some good examples right at the beginning. They didn't, a few of the others were more flowery and more saying, Emerson's a wonderful place. They just got right, much more right into the kinds of schools they've designed and how they were relevant. And I thought the featured schools were really good write-ups to cross-reference what we were looking for. And then the last thing, I think Margaret already flagged this in her comparison. It looks to me like the team they're proposing have often worked together, you know, including the consultants on sustainability. So it, some were new, but it wasn't just many of these proposals because we've made an emphasis on minority run and women run, pulled together teams. This team, including the sustainability team, they actually have a school. They built the Maria Hastings School. So I think those to me were very strong positives. And on Maria Hastings, they mentioned specifically when they talked about the school that it's a larger school, but they designed it inside. So it had a small scale feel. And they talked about linguistics and cultural diversity. So Mike, they also went a lot into special, but they paid attention to Amherst in terms of what we're gonna need in the school. And I didn't always find that, including that ILP special needs programs, they had a district wide program. So I thought they spent time thinking about us, which to me was a very strong positive. And I'll stop there. So I'd love to hear from Shelley on, I was gonna speak because I'm gonna follow up on something that you were catching on to. And I'll just say that they're sustainability team. And mostly as I'm looking through these to see, can they do it? Are they qualified? I'm looking at their sustainability consultants as well as what they're bringing to the table. This team is strong and it's not just that they have the sustainability consultant who hasn't had zero experience, but they're bringing the renewable and geothermal with them and have worked with them. And so that's a strong, robust team. A couple of other things that I liked about this one was that they were speaking about net zero holistically, not just in terms of energy, but also in terms of water and waste and mentioned project-based learning. And even though they don't connect the two, I think something that you're gonna wanna do is use these as opportunity project-based learning in a holistic way is you're trying to develop leaders. Going into the world that they're inheriting. So they're thinking along those lines and maybe they were thinking along those lines. You know, as I said to me, I think they had to write a lot about Fort River because they wanted to talk about these issues. They didn't talk about Wildwood. And I wish they had also talked about what they could or couldn't do the same way. Any other comments on Denisco? And I think what Margaret, you're gonna be doing is putting these notes into that grid that you have, right? Correct, that is correct. We will be capturing these, not just on film, but for posterity, so. So are we ready to go to the next firm? Yes? Okay, next one up is DRA, Drummy Roseanne Anderson. And again, I'll just wait to see hands go up and call on anybody whose hand goes up, however you wanna raise your hand. Mike. Not to go first, but I'll just, you know, I'll fill the space. Let's just say on this particular application, I mean, they do have a lot of MSD experience and that's a positive, similar to what I expressed earlier. I found their comparables in terms of other projects less comparable. So I didn't see a lot of projects that were connected closely to, I think the values that this committee's expressed. And I also thought their description, I found it really historic. It wasn't that it was bad, but it really is kind of the opposite of what you were just saying, Kathy, about the prior one. I'm trying not to compare them, but I think it's so kind of the contrast is so significant for me that, you know, it felt very, my line, what am I sticking notes to the stock. And I get really concerned in this particular community when people aren't recognizing some of the uniqueness of our students, of our community. So, you know, I think they have a lot of experience. I think they could certainly be successful building a building, but, you know, those were kind of the quick piece of feedback I took down on this one. Jonathan. Yeah, I kind of remember Mike's comments. They're very, very competent. They've been building schools for 50 or 60 years, almost as a specialty, but my reaction to their proposal was that it was very canned, compared to others at least. Good night. I will just add my thoughts on it, because I had more negatives. I didn't think they used graphics very well, and they didn't bring in Amherst very much. So it has the same sense of more canned. There's no mention in section 10 of Amherst, Fort River or Wildwood until much later, and they only in passing reference mentioned bilingual, but they don't mention why they're even talking about bilingual, so they don't mention the program. So I thought they didn't take time to think through a good cover letter, good examples or a section 10 that should have gotten much more into what we're looking for. The second to last page in section 10 was the first time Fort River and Wildwood were even mentioned, and the paragraphs weren't bad, but it was kind of messy visuals. So if I was gonna judge a design firm on the design of the proposal, I would not rate it highly. And I didn't feel like those visuals were actually, except for the two arrow photographs of the two sites, they weren't really our project. They're standing, something they pulled from another project. Okay, so we did number two. And Kathy, I'll just add for the purpose of the comments, I don't think they put anything in there about cost control either that I could tell. Okay, next up is, I don't know whether it was newly created just for this project, but it's the team of JCJ and Moody Nolan, where Moody Nolan is, I think, new to Massachusetts, but not new nationally. They've had a lot of experience. And the team, as everyone who's read this looks at, they've combined them in different ways in terms of what roles. And JCJ, for those, everyone who read this knows that they were the team that was on the original Wildwood project that didn't get through the final vote. So they clearly know our community. I mean, they've worked here. So I will, with that opening statement, I'm turning it over wide open for comments. Yeah, so maybe I'll start. So the, and this is something that obviously is a procurement issue, but to me it looks like we're hiring JCJ and that Moody Nolan is really a consultant to them because otherwise they would have, they could form a joint venture, which is a new entity. And to me, it looks like it's JCJ with Moody Nolan as an associate architect. And I feel like at the percentages of time, like particularly of the founder, the firm founder, it's like 5%, which is not that much time. So just FYI, the Boston office of Moody Nolan has been around for six or seven years. So they're not that new to Massachusetts. And it was formed organically. So it wasn't, they didn't buy a firm. And, you know, change the name, they really started organically and they do have significant projects, you know, in Massachusetts. Another comment is that JCJ, like the Yankees of today are not the Yankees of five years ago. So they have the same name, but so just because JCJ worked for better or worse on our last project, it is the same entity. I mean, I don't, I actually don't know if it's the same players or not. So to me, it's like, we should be looking at the JCJ right now and what their prior experience is. That was then, this is now. I do think that this team together, JCJ and Moody Nolan have completed projects together. So that's always a big test for these sorts of joint ventures. And most recently they did the Yukon Recreation Center. And I believe that there are some of the same players that are involved in both projects. So that's a plus, right? So it's not a shotgun marriage formed for the sole purpose of getting this project, but there is some track record. So there's at least one track record of those two firms working together that we should look at more. I think it's super interesting to have Moody Nolan involved in this project because they are the most prominent African-American founded firm in the United States. And they have a lot of credibility. I think that the people that they do from the Moody Nolan side of the aisle that they do have on the team look to be super interesting. You have to look at the percentages of time that they're being assigned to this. But I think that they, you know, I know we're not doing shortlist, but this would definitely be a team that I think should be, I hope gets to the interview. And actually somebody else can answer all those questions about who actually are we, would be behind whether or not it's a joint venture or we're hiring JCJ with Moody Nolan part of the team. And I also think Steve, some of these are good. If they get to the shortlist, they have the good interview questions. Yeah, yeah. You know, I'm taking, you know, on exactly, you know, which roles I had some questions about who would be doing what, even though I can see the names next to them. Other comments specifically on this. I can speak to the, again, to the net zero. So just to kind of give a background, what I look for when I'm looking at the consultant, the green consultant is what, not just beyond lead and beyond chips experience, do they have building science experience? Do they have energy modeling experience often? So, you know, if you see something like Passive House, that tells me that they have building science experience. And so they are used to managing heat flows in a very rigorous way. So this consultant is one of those with LBC and, you know, the lead is the certified Passive House consultant. So I think those signal strongly to me that they're well qualified to come up with a good solution on that front. The other thing I just wanted to mention in general, when I look at their little conceptual designs, the one giveaway to me is, have they oriented the building properly for daylighting? And I will say that, and you really, daylighting is super important for a net zero school. You want your classrooms facing north and south. And if they've done something and where that's not the case, then it's a little bit of a big giveaway to me that it's not higher on their radar. I would say most of them did that. They certainly did on this project and certainly discussed daylighting. So. Jonathan, I think you had your hand up also. Yeah, I mirror a lot of Steve's comments. I'm just curious, actually, Margaret, have you worked with a joint venture team in the past? And I'd be curious to, not necessarily today, but when we're thinking about questions to kind of get the owner's project manager's perspective on joint vendors, if you've been involved. So I have not, but I also agree with Steve's that I don't actually think this is joint venture. Well, I think that the process doesn't let you do a true joint venture, at least. Exactly. Experience trying to do these sorts of things. This is as close as you practically get. Yeah. So I haven't, I don't think exactly, it's exactly what they're doing. They're naming it what they're allowed to name it. And, but I think it's bringing in a sort of reiterate, you know, Steve's comments, I think it's sort of bringing an interesting, you know, new people, new element. I want to diverge from your question and make a separate comment. So the, one of the differentiators for this team, for me, is that they are using the engineering firm of Burrow-Happold. And you might have noticed on here that Burrow-Happold is actually very, very innovative. Engineers very focused on sustainability. I've met some of the people on this proposal. I think they're very bright. I am concerned that they have not done mass public construction. And just from our consultants. Sorry? Is that the sub-consultants? So this is the engineer, the lead engineer, the MEP engineer, mechanical electrical plumbing. That's a bit of a concern to me. It's not a deal breaker. And I feel as though we worked with JCJ on their very, very first project in Massachusetts and they had a learning curve, but I feel like they get it. I don't know that Moody Nolan has done public construction in Massachusetts. So it puts a higher burden on JCJ in the leadership role on the design team to be basically teaching their consultants a new system. But it doesn't take away from the fact that I think that the Burrow-Happold team is sort of a group of very creative engineers in the Boston office as well as sort of more nationally and internationally. John, just say, I am not particularly concerned about the giant venture thing because I'm not here. But I was just curious if when we got to the questions part, if there was more you could add. No. Mike? I agree with a lot of the comments already made. The only thing I'd add is I liked that they scaled and some of their drawings and rental model that stood out a bit compared to most places. And I understand why you'd want to show a shiny new building because there's all applying and that's a shiny new building is fun to look at, right? But I did appreciate that one piece of that application. Mike, can you speak to, we can see who is leading this project on the JCJ side, which is Doug Roberts and Alicia Caritano. But I think they're not the same team that we're leading before, is that correct? Yes, Doug was involved, but Alicia I've never met before. Okay. And you know, if you look, I did look just because I've experienced with this in one other group about the teams and there's some of the sub points, like the FF&E, I think I'm saying that right, person was the same, but actually other than Doug, there's N. Jim La Pasta who do more of the engagement. I don't know many of the players from the last go around. Okay, thank you. Thanks for asking that, Margaret. I was going to also, Paul. So just by happenstance, I still get newspaper, they still send me newspapers from a previous community. So this is the, I don't know if you, is it backwards or is it forward? No, we can see it from anywhere. So they just had this on the front page of the Manchester Mass. So they're very happy. I can try to get that to people if they're interested. So one other little factoid here is at Scott Mandeville, who is the head of the Boston office, the architect ahead of the Moody Nolan Boston office. There's also an elected town counselor in a town that's alphabetically just in front of Amherst. So Amesbury. So he and I are unique that were elected town counselors. But I mentioned that in part because that also shows some commitment to community and some knowledge of working, Amesbury and Amherst, although we're alphabetically close or very different places, but still sort of knowledge on how the political realms work. Huge. So the fact that he's an architect and a counselor, is that those are two pluses or two minus, Steve? Oh yeah, those are, those are fatal flaws. It split, split, split. That is out. So I'll add just a few additional comments. I thought the schools they profiled. I looked a lot at the pro-pod schools and I thought there were several really interesting schools, including the schools that Moody Nolan was bringing in, but La Pasta has been a lead on one in Arizona that brought in cultural issues and architects. So we talked about, you know, fitting a design and thinking about artwork and the way the school fits. And it was a really nice example of, and in that one they featured the natural light and the way they done it with a sort of a U configuration. So, and then I thought several of the Moody Nolan schools were interesting too. And I know this is, I actually said, okay, I have a little bit of time. I think I wanna drive around and visit some of these schools, the ones that are in Massachusetts to take a look at them. I'm not going to Arizona to do that. I did have questions. It's not clear to me exactly who's doing what on a few things when it comes to Moody Nolan. So David Stevens I think is our educational person on almost every project. And then we have a Moody Nolan person also on his education. And I didn't know what their team roles would be. So that to me is an interview question. And I'm, I would be worried about having more than we need just to get the two teams both involved. You know, so is it duplication or is one bringing one particular strength and another bringing another strength? So, and I did see that in Chicago, Moody Nolan did charrettes as they were moving to design to try to bring people in to think of the way what this might look like. So I found a lot that was interesting here. I did think the cover letter, this is a critique of just spacing. It was more wordy than it needed to be. More praiseworthy of Amherst has evolved. Well, we definitely are. Thanks for telling me we're wordy new, right? And the world has evolved, we're now in COVID. But you know, it had, I was looking for like just get right down to who's the team, but I'm not going to hold it as a big negative on it. I did want to know more about Alicia Caratano on, you know, specific school she's led. I didn't know how much she was brought on to the team. She came to the site visit. So when she did the walk around with the schools, I didn't know how much she was brought on because we wanted some women led teams and how much she's a really terrific fit with what we're trying to do in Amherst. So it again is, I just wanted more explanation of who she is and which projects she's been involved with. And those were my specifics. And Shelly, you can tell me more on lighting. I'm never sure when we're talking about daylighting and then someone talks about top lighting. I think if top lighting is different than daylighting and it may be that for some spaces you need top lighting, for other spaces you can have big, wide open spaces. There's different ways to do daylighting depending on if you're on the perimeter of the building or in the middle of the building. So to get daylighting on the perimeter where classrooms normally are, you're using clear story light shelves, bouncing it deeper into the room. Whereas when you get to the center of the building, then you need to be bringing in daylighting from above. So most likely that's what you're reading. So those are two different strategies depending on how in the middle of the building you are. And again, they know the Wildwood site. So they did focus a bit more on the Fort Rivers site which is makes sense. But Sean, you brought in cost containment. Did they specifically talk about cost control at all? Yeah, that was one of the things I... They had change orders in here. Yeah, I mean, that was one of the things that I liked about their proposals that they did a, they had a whole section on cost control and gave some actual numbers for us to consider. So they were one of the few that really addressed it directly. Yeah, that's a really good diagram. I'm gonna steal that diagram. Anything else? I'm looking across my screen. I really, I agreed with you, Margaret, that I thought that diagram was fantastic. And I loved how they, it just showed there was an attention to that issue that we also, from the administration side, care a whole lot about. Yeah, well, it's just great when someone, back to Kathy's comment about an earlier project, when someone provides a graphic that you don't have to read, you just look at it and like, I got it. Super helpful. I wanna just add one thing. I mean, I think generally there are too many people in this proposal to everybody's comments and clarification of rules. I will say that I worked with Alicia Caritano on another project when she was at another firm and would definitely give her a big thumbs up. So I hope she does have a big role on this. I do not think however, I think her real forte is sort of managing the project. So I think what I would probably expect is to see if they were selected that, again, Jim LaPazza and Doug Roberts might be major leaders in partnership with Nmudi Nolan and Alicia might be more of the person who's like making the wheels turn. But I think it would be a question to ask at the interview if they make it to the interview. Other comments or questions? And I think I'm really appreciating people suggesting questions we should ask if the firms become the shortlisted firms because it will help sharpen that. Okay, so next, I think is- Can I ask a quick question? Sure, Jonathan. I'm sorry if I don't remember this, but when, as this process unfolds, the MSBA produces a shortlist at some point, do we have to have what I'm gonna call generic questions ready at that point? Or do we get to have other questions once they've narrowed the selection down to that shortlist? So let me, so it's actually, the good news about this, Jonathan, if you're familiar with designer selection board. Right. This is a mirror. So what we're kind of moving towards is a meeting that will happen on November 2nd, I believe, of the panel, the designer selection panel. And they will do what we are doing here, but we will have three representatives in that room and they will be making comments. So what we want out of this process, which we don't have to rush through, fortunately, is kind of really clear differentiating comments that our representatives can make. Based on that, the people around the table will vote in shortlists just like they do in the DSB and then there will be interviews. When the shortlist is complete, the MSBA will turn to us and say, what questions would you like to have addressed in the interview? They don't always take all of our questions. They take, you know, they have the sort of final say, but if we give them a good question, they'll include it. So... There's one other point on that. My experience, Margaret, in the past is they, separate from the particular questions on this particular partnership or firm, who does what seems like a normal question that I felt like gets asked at a lot of these. Maybe it's just my experience, but I think that's a question that the MSBA is really interested in from a cost perspective, from a management perspective. So I think that's unlikely to be a question that gets filtered out. Yep. That's one of their base questions, is explain everybody's roles. So we won't even have to throw that one in the ring. The questions we should be putting forward are ones that are more particular to this community and this project. And, you know, I think we've agreed we're going to meet again on October 7th, so we can come back to address some of this if we don't get through today. Jonathan Levy is the next. I almost called you on you, Jonathan, to lead off on Jonathan Levy, but that's our next in alphabetical order. So comments on this proposal? Mike and then Steve's hand go up. I was trying not to go first and Steve put me out, so. So I think of the eight. This particular firm has the most rigorous designs. So in other words, if you look at just the actual buildings that are built and not pay attention to all of the inputs that happened before that, this one I think is really stands out for that reason, that high design. So I'll leave it at that, which, well, I'll add one more thing, which for me is important. Mike. Yeah, so they have the nicest drawing. So whoever their visual artist is, kudos to them. I can't help but notice that I know they referenced one project that was an expensive, just superintendents talk about this stuff. And I wonder if that's an outlier project. I'll just leave it that way to, you know, a superintendent meeting, you know, and we talk about a bunch of stuff happened to have one yesterday and asked around. And so. Mike, you just went on mute. Sorry, sorry about that. I think the other thing that I'd know is, you know, to Kathy's point about maybe the wordiness of JCJ's introductory letter, I think this was the opposite. So maybe you loved the Kathy, but for me there was a lot lacking in the introductory letter. That was just ingest, Kathy. And, you know, they gave a lot of examples that were not public school examples of how they were doing things. Oh, Amherst cares about this. Go see this, you know, IRS building that we built. And, you know, maybe from an architectural point of view, Steve and Jonathan can tell me to like go shove it and that's fine. And it's just the way it happens, but from the educational point of view, I'm not saying they didn't reference some schools, but it felt like they were referencing a lot of things that weren't schools to talk about goals and building the school. And it did feel not quite as much as one of the ones earlier, but a little bit generic. You know, I liked their view on swing space, but, you know, I just, you know, I think when I'm thinking of the number of challenges the town is going to have with capital projects, Sean and Paul can weigh in if they want on those challenges. I get anxious looking at these designs. Beautiful. But, you know, I think, you know, it's kind of like what I referenced earlier about the ad rental. I'm not convinced that we can't figure out, you know, financially viable ways to have a great building and I got anxious looking at those. My first reaction was, whoa, that looks great. And then my immediate next reaction is, ooh, Paul and Sean are gonna love this, right? And, you know, I want to be good stewards and I just had a concern about that based on other experience, other superintendents have shared with me as well. Kathy, can I add to that? Yeah. I mean, when I looked through it, the pictures were very beautiful, but none of them like struck me as an elementary school when we were thinking about warm child centered environments. I don't think they did a great job with the pictures of creating that image in my head as well as some of the other proposals did. And then the other thing, and I'm not an architect, so I just, you know, this may be completely off, but the drawings they did do for Fort River, they seem very spread out, long buildings. And I'm just not sure is that what we're looking for, some of that's spread out, is that the best for energy efficiency? And then going back to the daylight, and I can't tell if the way they oriented the building is good for daylighting or not good for daylighting in this particular case, but they always seem like very long, again, very beautiful, but very long and maybe not the most cost effective. I just want to jump in on that. My prior experience before running for town council was working a lot in the healthcare sector and one hospital person told me that in a brand new hospital that opened up, she went in and she said, walk me through the patients experience. And as they did that, they said, oh, we haven't designed it right because you were walking a lot to get from one place to another. And I looked at this semi-circle where the children would have the gym at one end and the cafeteria at another. And especially on the Fort River design, I'm thinking 575 kids potentially walking every day to get to a place that they're all using is a lot of time in the hallways. And it didn't feel thoughtful in terms of it was pretty, but I really worried about it. And then they couldn't make that on the Wildwood site, so they did two of them. But I thought, how do you get flexible space? How do you get used? A couple of the other proposers talked about using the hallways in new ways, using the library in new ways. So the drawings did not resonate with me. As a children's, young children's elementary school. And so if there are any schools that are designed that way, I'd love to walk it. But I think minimizing the amount of time the kids have to go from one place to another and making it more that they're in clusters. Then I didn't, Shelly can join. I didn't see much in the, the Daerys is their sustainability. I didn't see much in their experience of green buildings. And in the discussion of the design, I didn't hear water tables, wetlands. I didn't see, in one of our proposals, they were using solar canopies. So I didn't, I didn't see a lot to address the topography of the two places we're talking about. Would you, Michelle had her hand, so. Yeah, thank you. I'm so glad that Kathy and Sean brought up the design element of, because, you know, being, you know, the principal here, I immediately went to the designs on all convenience, right? Cause I wanted to see what, you know, designs that they came up with. This was out of all of them. This was my least favorite. It seemed very siloed. It felt separate. It didn't feel like a cohesive, kind of collaborative space for students or for staff. Everyone seemed so far apart and in their little box. It seemed boxed and I like Kathy that you brought up also that the gym was on one side and the cafeteria on the other. Cause I was like, oh my God, like how much time are we going to lose an instruction? Traveling back and forth, if you're on one end and you have to go all the way to the other. It didn't seem like a space where students can really be able to learn and have that collaborative feel with their classmates. It just seemed like, for the lack of a better phrase, it just seemed very separate to me and very boxy. Not like the other designs that have a lot of open spaces where students like a lot of different spaces for learning or for special programs. This just seemed like very boxy and separate. I don't think it gave me a feel of like, oh wow, everyone's working together. It felt, the word that came to my mind when I saw that it was like, wow, everything looks so separate. And I don't think that's where we want to take the school. Can I make a comment? Yeah. So the inclusion of basically free work, the beginning, what seems to be conceptual designs of any of these proposals is in itself, that's not a requirement, right? So we did not require them to give us initial sketches. In fact, the inclusion of such sketches is somewhat controversial because some architects consider that to be free work. And so the reason that architects do that is because they want to show you that they've thought about it, that they're interested, but of course, there's been absolutely zero conversation with these guys about what any of these things that everyone's been talking about, zero conversation. So the fact that they've included it, and I hope they're watching or will watch the tape of this, is exactly one reason not to include sketches because it makes it assume that that's the path that they're going to take. I think so much more important is what their approach is when they actually do get a contract and how they work with their community. So by no means at all in any of these proposals are there actual, this is not a design competition where we're choosing a design, we're choosing a firm who will take us through a process. So absolutely we can comment on whatever there's been in that proposal, but these are not the products or hopefully these will not be anywhere close to what the town eventually moves towards. Rupert's hand is up and then Shelley, I did want you to weigh in after we hear from on what you know about the sustainability firms they're proposing. I just like to point out something that I did like about their sketches for the Wildwood and Fort River location, they put some thought into how people get into and out of the building from the community. They looked at ways to separate cars and buses and that's I think something that is important for wherever we end up building the school. So this is always hard because if I have my architects hat on and I just judge this firm based on their previous work and say, yes, I agree with Steven, like, you know, this is a high design firm. Unfortunately what bothers me is I now have to take off my architect hat and put on my net zero hat and they don't have a super strong showing on this front. I'd have to agree with the comments that have been made on the conceptual diagrams. This is one where their classrooms just aren't oriented properly to answer your question, Sean. I also agree with Steven's comments that we shouldn't be, this is an issue, trying to get redesign up front in these proposals. And yet it's there. It's there, now I can't erase the fact of what they were thinking about when they did that, right? And so it's different from that but all that aside, when I look at the green consultant on this particular project, they've written a lot of guides for schools, green guides, sustainability guides and without looking at those to see what they're actually doing, it's difficult for me to know what their actual bringing things into reality. How much have they been writing guides versus how much have they been working with project teams on projects? I'm not seeing that same depth with some of the other teams in terms of building science, energy modeling, that sort of experience nature. So it doesn't mean it's not there. I'm simply not seeing it in what's been provided thus far. Does that answer all your questions, Kathy? Is there anything else you want to say? Yeah, no, because when I read the Dardis featured, they were guides, they didn't say this school, that school or this building, that building. So I was just looking for where they've been involved in a project as opposed to, because I think green design could also be waste disposal, recycling. So Margaret, your hand was up. So just for those of you who may not have seen this piece of it, so Jonathan Levy's team has on it an engineering firm. So this is the main engineer that's called GGD, Garcia Galuska de Souza, who have done a lot of schools, but not a lot of net zero as far as the application it describes. And they have worked with extensively and then they brought on a consultant called Vaderis who I haven't worked with, but actually, I think that's who you're referring to as the Vaderis has written these written guides, but not done so much. The thing that I find out about this application with regard to this is there is a school that this firm has done or is doing in Brookline, which is supposed to be a net zero school. And it's not included, it's not mentioned anywhere, which I find odd, so. That would have been a strong positive, right? Yeah, okay. Unless there's a reason they're excluding it. Possibly. Jonathan. So I just want to make a lot's been said about what they presented here in the section 10. I want to just add a little twist to that and more just as we're thinking about them all, the thing you have to remember is I agree with Steve that they're giving away free design here in a sense. And as a practitioner, it's always this question, how much of this do we give? Do we do? The reason we do some, I would not personally take something this far because it's flawed, it doesn't have any client interaction, but the use of this sort of exercise diagrams or designs is to talk to how they're going to present the design once they have our input. And so that is something we should think about when we look at these. Flawed as different ones may be depending upon A, how much time they had to do it. I mean, the time they had to prepare the rest of their proposal and they had to work on this at the same time. And it's amazing that you can get some of these things done in the amount of time they had. But we should be a little bit, try to step back a little bit, think of it a little less as actual design proposals and more of how are they going to think about it? How are they going to graphically present it? How will this graphic presentation work in the community? Is it informative? So it's trying to think about these diagram exercises in a different way. Any other comments on Jonathan Levy? So then we have LPA slash A, Lamarue Pagano Associates, who would like to lead off. Okay, Mike, go. All right, the role I didn't want to have, I keep continue to have, so that's okay. So I thought, you know, lots of MSBA experience, so I thought was good. I happen to know a little bit about the Nelson Play School in Worcester, which was my understanding from folks closer to that, is it complicated site, really, really tight in Worcester and, you know, very sustainable. So that's also a similar side school in some ways. So I always looked for comps and that was good comp. A female president of the organization, which I also thought was a good thing. I liked my next sticky, they had other examples of much larger schools than we're talking about, K to four school. And, you know, so I think. My name, you miss all of it or just that last part? No, no, just the end, just the end. Zoom doesn't like me and I don't like it. So I think it's mutual dislike. My apologies about that. You know, so, but they have experience, you know, with scaling larger elementary schools. So I thought that was good. I thought they had a really interesting part, the site selection part. They clearly did a homework and that's always something I'm looking at is doing the homework on our community. I think it was language around coming on dates that I thought was really affirming. And I thought, you know, so I saw that as a strength, the artwork piece, you know, I'd be curious what Shelley will say on energy efficiency and sustainability because it's not my area of expertise. But I thought, you know, just from the lay person, I could understand a lot of what I think they were trying to say. And I think that's something that's gonna be important. If there really is, if this really is a strong team, I thought they were able to communicate different ways to get at the sustainability question to like I use myself as the broad audience in non-technical ways. And they certainly talked a lot about budget control. So, you know, I thought, I thought there was a lot of strengths in this. Again, it's not a firm I know at all, but I think in terms of our priorities and making it Amherst specific, I thought the application did well. Others? If no one jumps in, I'll jump in and build off what Mike said, starting with readability, I found it was a brief but good cover letter bringing in specific schools that addressed our goals. They mentioned public art net zero and they gave us examples of schools. I really liked the way they organized the school presentations with little bullets in it telling us why the school was relevant to us and what we might wanna know about the schools and the pictures of these cafeteriums that were multi-use and they talked about sort of community use of them. And then last on my criteria of readability, section 10, they organized it into five very clear sections. And in each of them, I started with site selection where they emphasized that that's a key decision here because it's gonna drive a lot of design choice things. And rather than take a flying leap, Steve, at a tentative design or even a choice, they said they would start out talking to the community to try to figure out what we think about these sites. I thought the education program, each of these bullets made sense to me as saying, how would they approach it? And I liked the community examples and I wanna go see the Worcester example cause they were showing how they use the library in the elementary school as part of the library system for all of Worcester so that it's open after hours and it's an all purpose. And then they use Shrewsbury to give an example of children's art. And then sustainability, I'm gonna turn to Shelley on it but they're using a firm that others are using and the way they wrote this up, it looked to me like they had read our by-law, they referred to it and they talked about insulation. And then finally on cost, they actually talked about the maintenance cost as well as the design costs. So I thought this was a big that we have to design it in a way we can maintain it. The only negative in it that I saw on it was they didn't mention daylighting but it may be part of what they think of as the green, the sustainability design. And they didn't even try to get to any specifics of what the buildings might look like. And speaking to what Steve and Jonathan just said, I think that probably was wise. If they'd drawn us a few pictures we might not have liked them. So they just held off and they talked about all the things we have to think about rather than take a plunge. So that was, it wasn't, to me it was just a notable absence because it's many of the others tried to say what it might look like if we tried to- Relatives to the others, yeah. Relatives to the others, right. And I'll stop there. And others also talked to trying to build on a site while keeping a building open. So I'm not sure they would have built the same way if they weren't trying to keep the building open. So just, so I thought this was smartly laid out because they didn't hang themselves around any, this is what the direction we're going to go but these are the things we're gonna have to be thinking about. So to pick up on the sustainability piece, the green engineer who's on three proposals, well qualified to take this project and that zero has energy modeling experience has been on task force focused on that zero energy. So that's a strong component on any of the proposals that have that consultant on it. This architect and has worked with that consultant before on that zero schools. So I think that that background is strong. And I also appreciated that they had achieved that in a previous project without geothermal. So they were using I think VRF and geothermal is great if you can afford it. So the fact that they are able to, we're able to get there with VRF is still expensive but it's less expensive. So they've been able to get there. I think that's notable. They also mentioned air displacement ventilation. I think there was another project that mentioned that as well. That I highly recommend particularly in a COVID era and without getting into technical of explaining it, it's gonna give you much cleaner air inside. And so that they have experience with that I think is strong. And then their diagrams that where they were explaining these are the components of net zero energy is right on in terms of everything that you would be thinking about. So I think you can be comfortable with this team on the net zero front. So I'll speak up a little bit. So I know I've known Katie Crockett for years but I don't know the work of the firm. And I was actually pleased to kind of see the body of work that they've done over the years. So the things I like about this particular team is that it is led by a woman architect, right? So it's, and I think we in Massachusetts don't give any favorability to proximity to the site but this is the Massachusetts based firm that's closest to the site. So they're based in Worcester. They're a very prominent firm in Worcester. All of the other firms are, you know, Waltham and then Boston or Hartford. So I think that that means something, you know that they're in central mass rather than eastern mass or but I think that generally the body of work, the thoughtfulness, the whole thing, I would definitely hope that this is a firm that gets interviewed. I just, I don't have a ton brand new to say but I wanna sort of highlight something that both Kathy and Steve brought up in terms of it felt to me when in looking through this and reading this I'm not somebody that, you know reads through this kind of thing on a daily basis obviously but it felt like they took a lot of our criteria and we're very thoughtful about it. They really sort of the way that they laid this out and Kathy you focused really on their, you know section 10 and that really captured me because it literally was sort of the things that we put out there as these are the things that are most important. These are the things that, you know we want to sort of categorize all of this on are very thoughtfully laid out and they really highlighted each of those specific points in sort of a much more comprehensive and easily understandable way. And I think that sort of says a lot to how thoughtfully they really listened to us read our materials, thought about this project and you know you can have, you know many, many, many years of experience and you know we've talked about it before Amherst is a little bit different and we have very clear criteria and some of those things may not be exactly in line with other communities and they really took those things and made them spotlight in this proposal and that was sort of nice to read and nice to be able to digest and understand all the different pieces of. Any other thoughts? Thanks Phoebe, I thought that was very helpful. You know they also the, that the readability to me speaks to if they're speaking to the residents of Amherst that they're going to be speaking clearly as well and presentation materials, it's a strong positive. Any other comments? Just zooming right along I'm just going to do a time check. People ready to keep plowing through? Yes, okay, tecton next on the list. Sorry, Steve, is your hand up? Yeah, sorry, I'm just turning my machine was winging at me, Mike. I need to play the role I didn't want you to play but that's okay. So I had real questions about the staffing model which I'd be curious about Margaret's perspective. It looked like we talked about maybe having too many people involved. I had perhaps the opposite concern with one other firm opposite concern. They did have some experience with consolidation which was good, but I found just bluntly I found this proposal very difficult to mix. It's the opposite of what Phoebe just experienced which I endorse wholeheartedly about the prior proposal. So I don't have as many comments because I had trouble really sorting through and making sense of how this could fit for our community of variety of ways. I don't wanna sound negative so I'm gonna leave it there but that was my impression reading for it. Others? I'm not seeing any hand so I will jump in. I thought, unless I think Margaret's table also told us they haven't had any experiences with Massachusetts schools, is that correct? So I- They've never done a project with the MSBA. They've never done a project. So they gave us some Connecticut examples. They at least mentioned COVID which was a good one but they didn't do a lot in section 10 other than saying they'd listen to us and review later. I thought it was very wordy would be a way I did but it was, it could have fit other places the way they wrote up their section 10. It wasn't written to fit Amherst and didn't talk about our bylaws. So I had this one in my mind. I have very short comments on it because they're more on the negative side and nothing jumped out of me as a positive. And I just briefly will say that the sustainability consultants work is mostly in housing. I don't think I saw any experience on schools and I'm not even on the housing front. I'm not, if I'm remembering correctly it might have been more along lead lines in terms of general sustainability rather than really high performance energy efficiency. I could be mistaken about that but either way not specific to schools. So I think we just did Tecton in record time unless anyone else- I wanna add something for the record in case Tecton is listening. So they haven't done, they haven't worked with the MSBA. They haven't done much in the way of Massachusetts public construction but the biggest flag to me is that they're using my older frame, they're using an engineer that also hasn't done mass public construction. And this is the second time in a week I had to look at these resumes that talked about keen sense of humor, interest in a utopian future, love of hockey. It just demonstrates that they don't actually understand what the purpose of this form is. So if you're listening Tecton, I don't wanna see that again. I thought the resumes were interesting, Margaret because some went right to what they've done where they've gone and others, yeah. Yeah, not good. That's not the purpose of this form to find out what your hobbies are. Yeah. So TSKP is next up. And this is for those, well, everyone has seen it. This is the firm that worked on the Fort River visioning feasibility study to look at that site. And also, I think Mike did some work on, they did the work on Crocker, right? So they have physically been in airmers and know us from that. So open up for comments. Sorry, Mike, Steve. Oh, to use my Yankees analogy, I think that these are at least a couple of the same players that were involved in the Fort River feasibility study. This is another very high design firm that's been around for a very long time, practicing mostly in Connecticut, but they do have a Massachusetts office. And they've done some, really some very credible, elementary schools are really, have been there bread and butter for decades. And so one of the things that I'd love to hear more from some others are these net zero schools that are being built in central Connecticut, I think in Manchester. And well, that part of Connecticut, near UConn basically. So that was one thing that really caught my eye. There are a lot of other things that caught my eye, but basically there are very long credibility in building beautiful elementary schools. I'd love to hear more about how the Fort River process was about net zero, et cetera, et cetera. I can talk a little bit about our past experience, at least my perception of it. I'm sure Mike has his own opinions, but I found them to be very good listeners and they were able to do a really nice balance between the ability to aim towards a high design and being practical with budgets. We didn't have to get to the level of detail, obviously do a completed school in the Fort River process, but they got the full Amherst experience in that process and I thought they did quite well. How tactful of you. I'll let Mike go now. Mike. Yeah, I'm going to intentionally, look, I like this firm. I like JCJ, I work well with both of them. I'm not going to use any of my assessment of past experience. You know, I think it'd be unfair of me to do that. You know, being that there's six other firms I haven't worked with and so, but what I would say is, you know, they certainly have heard the call for a diverse, our diversity, you know, while it's not at the top of the organizational chart, like some of the other ones, particularly with the female leads, you know, I think that was admirable. I think the sustainability part was really strong and the net zero part people spoke about. I think, you know, not having a completed MSGA project is, you know, Margaret can maybe speak to that because it'll be on her end, but it is, you know, something to note. And now I'm going to be my picky any moment of the day. I promise I won't do this more than once, but just, you know, when they're talking about Amherst, this is in section 10, Amherst is a town of beautiful pastoral landscapes, gracious suburban homes and historic village center. I struggle when we have the population of students we live in a significant number of students who live in high density apartment or condo complexes. It struck me funny and it struck me funny because they've worked here before and they know the demographics. So, you know, and I see Rupert nodding his head because he knows where the buses go, right? And so I don't think a big deal of it, but it did paint a picture of the town and the schools that I think is a very popularly imagined one. And people are shocked when they see the demographics of our schools that the majority of our, you know, our schools and food just launched percentage are generally above at the elementary level above 40% that are the majority of our students identify as students of color at the elementary level. And this like feels like New England postcard circa, you know, maybe 1938. And, you know, again, I'm not picking any, like this is my annoying moment of the day. I apologize if you're watching KSP. I like you very much, but just that line stood out to me and it bothered me. It doesn't mean that it's more important than all the other pieces in here about sustainability but I have a particular sensitivity and I bristle when people talk about Amherst in a way that is not how many of our students and families experience it. So I apologize in advance. Just a pet peeve. Ben Chansell. Yeah, so like, so I'll go in reverse order from where I was gonna go. But yeah, that kind of stood out to me for a number of reasons. Like having, so I worked on both studies with them and I personally don't live in a bucolic countryside, you know, picture ask. I live in a very condensed complex. So that kind of irked me that, you know, they've been here for two studies, you know, been here physically multiple times and kind of missed that. The positive that I'll say is that they definitely know our, I'd say our political landscape. Like they were here part of the, during the Fort River feasibility study, there was the point where the net bylaw didn't exist. Well, it was in progress when it started. And so they had to like, they were there and to kind of experience how that went. So I think they're very well versed in terms of what our net zero, I guess priorities are and that sort of thing. But yeah, and I would say they were relatively easy to work with. The one thing that like, I guess my second negative I guess would be the, so understanding who the principle is. I understand that there is diversity within their firm. I don't feel like I dealt with a whole lot of diversity when we dealt with them. It was consistently three white males every time, which is no problem with white males, but consistently the same three folks. So that's my two cents. On the sustainability front, again, they have the green engineer, they've done that zero schools, have daylight modeling built in with their MEP. The sketches that they showed had proper orientation and all of those things. So the one thing that I would say also stood out a little bit to me is that they were starting to tie educational opportunities with these various sustainability measures. And again, I think that's something that you'll want to do. So again, I'm just looking at it purely from a net zero standpoint, you can be comfortable with this, Steve. I'll just build off Shelly's comment. They clearly, as you said, Ben, they were there when the net zero bylaw was being written, but they did some creative, as Jonathan knows, creative with ad reno saying, how do we avoid some of the net zero because net zero only applies to the new, not to the old. So they were looking at total costs when they were doing that. So that was some of the modeling they were doing on that, not to try to avoid it, but saying you could narrow down on the costs. So I thought they didn't talk as much as they might have, but again, it may be wise because between Wildwood and Fort River, no one thinking about what you can do with their, the relative sites, they did do some discussion. Their target of an EUI of 20, Shelly, I don't know whether that is doable or not, but they, so some of these firms actually put numbers out on what we could get to. And that to me, primarily single, they knew how tight we were talking about the design and that the insulation, the basic structure of the building matters. I'll stop there, because I haven't visited any of the schools they built. Again, I'd like to look at some of them to get a sense of what did they feel like for the kids? And that's it. Just in response to that, I mean, yes, you can meet a very aggressive EUI. It has to do with good design from the very beginning, integrated design and money. And you have to look at those cost options from a long-term view, is what I always recommend, not just the upfront costs, but it's doable. Those are decisions that you all will have to make on the cost front. I'm sorry, go ahead, Sean. Well, I was gonna see, Mike had mentioned earlier, I was gonna see if Margaret had thoughts on the MSBA piece of it, because I know that's pretty important that people who build these buildings make sure all the, as many costs as possible are eligible costs for reimbursement, because I know that comes up throughout the process. So, it was interesting to me, they've actually done a fair number of what are called accelerated repair projects with the MSBA. They haven't done a core project, but they have done, unlike my comments about TSHK, about Tecton. They're familiar with, and this all started being newly about it, but Massachusetts has a particularly challenging bid process that directly ties to how you make your construction documents. It's called the filed sub-bid process. They do not have it in other states. And if you don't know what you're doing with this, you can really screw up the bid documents. So it's like down the line, but it's huge. Okay. I think what struck me about this, you know, the lack of MSBA experience is a little bit of a concern. To be honest, my bigger concern about them is they don't actually have, they did not present a completed elementary school, except for one. And I wanna share a screen because I wanna sort of explain my issue with this because I think, so can everybody see this? Not yet. Not yet. Oh, because I always forget to double click. Okay. Can everybody see this? Yes. So on the right is their proposal, which I'll sort of take over the screen here for a minute. So if you look at their projects, so this is a project in Springfield, which is underway, but not complete. I would feel more comfortable about this conversation if it was complete, but they've mostly survived and, you know, been through the crucible of learning the MSBA process on that. But when you look at these other projects they're presenting, they're excellent renderings, but they're renderings. I mean, these projects are not in process. If you look at this one, you can sort of see, well, here's this net zero project in Mansfield, you know, and it's part of a plan to do several, but this is the only one that's in motion. The other ones aren't, right? These are renderings. These are not completed projects. Ditto with this one, which is another, here's another Manchester school, nowhere close to in process planned. Here, this one's the kicker for me. So here's the new Lebanon Elementary School, right? Completed project, lovely interior images, but it feels to me like they very deliberately did not show you what the exterior of the building looks like, which is this. This is from their website. And, you know, that feels a little bit to me disingenuous, because I think, you know, one of the things you're looking at here is like, you know, does this seem like a good fit for us? So, you know, it's not like, I agree with Steve and Jonathan. I mean, these guys are really good designers, but they're being a little disingenuous, in my opinion, to not actually share the images of these buildings, because I think they think they know, back to the comment about who Amherst is, they think they know who you are and what you want. And I have a little bit of problem with all of that, so. So one of my favorite jokes has to do with somebody, somebody who's done everything right in his life, and, you know, and he's at a bar, and basically the punchline is, you know, you do a million things right in your life, you do one thing wrong, and forever your nickname is based on that one thing you did wrong. So, you know, I keep reading that one line in the proposal, and it's like, I hope a marketing person, you know, I hope the marketing people are listening to that, because I think there's a lot right in there. And I totally agree that that is, I missed it. I totally agree that that's from somewhere else, or, because they do a lot of work in these rough and tumble, you know, Amherst isn't rough and tumble either, it's something else, but they do a lot of work in very, very diverse communities, like the schools that are being built in. Springfield. Manchester and Mansfield and Springfield are all, yeah, no, are all, they're, they're not, so who knows where that came from, but it came from somewhere, and it's real, but the, anyway, there is a seminar right now as we speak that I think Paul pointed us to, that I think is sponsored by the MSBA, and I had signed up for it, but I can't go. It's on net zero buildings or net zero schools, and they're one of the featured speakers for that, so. But. Mike. Steve, I agree with, with your comment, the reason I brought it up wasn't just that it bothered me, I wouldn't have done that, it's that if you, if you put that language in front of any educator in the Amherst public schools, they would have had the exact same reaction to me. I feel very confident about that, and I don't want them to not get the job because of this one line or not get shortlisted, but to me, it was not reading the room of who they're talking to, and I think that the RFQ was pretty clear on the importance of diversity, and it wasn't just about the staffing, it's about who we are and what we care about, and so I don't want this to be a bigger deal, but I do want to respond to your comment because I agree with it all heartedly, but that stuff, I find there are some communities that are very forgiving about people making mistakes. I do believe this was a mistake, and my experience is that it's a community that takes the language being used, I think for good reason to be very seriously, and so that's the concern isn't so much to say, because we're gonna have a public discussion about a document where they're describing our community, if they're describing our community in a way that one might feel like whitewash is over, where our community really is, it's not a small mistake to make, right? So, but your point is well taken, it's not to disagree with you, it's actually just to more explain why I found, there's other comments, I could have done the same, I'm a really annoying editor, which probably makes me okay at doing it, but I'm really annoying, like my wife doesn't want to give me stuff for her, as she writes, because she's like, you're gonna be that guy, but I think this one is something that's so core to who our district is, that's the part that I think the reason I chose to bring it up was it's a frequently made mistake about who Amherst and Amherst public schools are, sorry, if we'd be at our hand up, I don't want to go on more, I'm gonna have to leave it for five minutes. No, I was just gonna, very briefly, I was gonna say, Mike, you said, put it in front of any educator, and I think actually put it in front of the large part of our community, and you've just alienated a huge population of community, parents, teacher, I mean, I think it's not just, I think it's the large community, and you've just alienated yourself if those words happen to tumble out, so having it in writing is sort of the same, unfortunate, I think, unfortunate experience. You know, I think just the use of the word suburban, Amherst is not a suburb, and whether it's not B-collect, it's not a suburb, it's not, yeah, there's a lot of things that it's not there, so I don't disagree with you guys at all. Okay, we have one more, Tarrowsky two, double Tarrowskies. I should probably, I can start off a little briefly here, I'm not gonna, I don't wanna get too deeply into it, but I could say I know both principles, having worked in the past with one of them, and knowing her husband quite well when he was working at Margo Jones's office, so I'll just stop at that, but I like him as people. Mike. I'm gonna go just because I'm not muted. You muted yourself. I'm gonna host this meeting on Google Meets the next time, just to let you know what happened, but I'm gonna say this, I have to go, and Michelle probably does as well, so we're gonna, I just wanna make sure to inform, because we have a Puerto Rico Day celebration, which I'm really excited about, and it's not raining, so that's a good thing. So I thought, they talked a lot about consolidation, a strength, and I think they had some good examples, their cost control, I thought was a useful description, but much like one other firm, I felt like it was a really stock description, I didn't feel like they really got amourst, or really did the homework that many of the other firms did about our community. I mean, I think they did some sample, how it could be located, but I think they missed a lot of what was listed as priorities by this body, and so I was lacking a lot of detail, and it made me hard to make sense, I had a hard time making sense of the proposal and evaluating consistent with the goals of this group. Yeah, I also was wondering, Jonathan, you said you know them, it seemed like the schools they were featuring were several done a while ago, although there were some in process. So I didn't know whether there was a lull in the time they've been working on projects and coming in, and they have brought, they're using the sustainability team is the same team that did Maria Hastings, so I'm assuming they brought in a good team for that. They don't mention, when you say they don't mention much about Amherst, they don't mention much on, when they talk about Fort River, about the topography and the water levels. So that's just like a, you can look at a picture, but you need to think of what there is, and they don't discuss specifics or net zero bylaw. So I found this thinner than some of the others, in terms of bringing in Amherst, and I'll just stop there. I have the benefit of not knowing any of these people. So yeah. I think what's important to know is they're compared to most of the firms that we've looked at today. They're relatively young firm. A lot of the school companies that specialize in school design have been practicing for many, many, many decades. And while they individually have that, that, you know, they have a depth of experience, the firm is relatively young. Okay. Michelle is waving goodbye, or what Michelle wants to say. I'm waving goodbye. I have to go because we have that. Okay, so we're losing both Mike and Michelle. So what I think I want to do is continue the conversation on October 7th of the comparisons. And do we still have one, two, three, four, five, six? We have enough for a quorum. Sean, we have to approve an invoice. Is that correct? It's one on the agenda and then open it up for public comments. But what I'm hoping we can do is come back with notes on October 7th for the three people who will be representing our group. And that's Ben, me and Mike, so that we have a write-up of all of this, not just Margaret's massive one, but picks up some of this nuances so we can speak to that. And so people can come back to this again and say, does this capture? My notes have us, we have three or four strong ones. And Steve kept mentioning which ones he wanted to be on the short list if we get a short list, which I think is a healthy way to think about it. You know, if we're gonna get down, we could get down to eight, but if we can get down to four on a short list, it would be better than eight. And I think we are there with these comments. So while we have everyone here then, Sean, can you quickly do the invoice and then I'll open it up for public comments as well so we can finish on time. All right, does everybody see the invoice on the screen? So this is an invoice from answer for the month of August. And Margaret, I think you explained last time to us the way we're getting built. So are we generally gonna be seeing a similar invoice, except when it's an intense period of work, when you're bringing in multiple people or will this be more standard? It's not standard, actually. As Sean was just trying to scroll, starting to scroll down, it goes up and down, but on the pages behind is the hourly reporting on the tasks that were done in the hour. So Sean, you might just sort of show them that as an example. So it will probably be kind of in this neighborhood, except for blips up. Okay, I wouldn't expect it to be much less than this, but you're gonna start to see there's this sort of very detailed accounting of the day, the task, the hours. And I'll just say I've been entering these into the MSBA pro-pay system. In the past there was an urgency to kind of enter these and seek reimbursement. But again, I don't know if we're getting reimbursed for any of this yet. So I have been entering them into pro-pay, which sort of logs all the costs for our project. But I haven't submitted anything for reimbursement because I don't think there is any. That's my understanding as well. Yeah, I think this is all out of Amherst pocket. Yeah, and this is so our contract is a not to exceed number. So it's sort of billing towards that. And then I track it on a monthly basis. And Sean actually, I should probably share that with you as we go so that you can see it tracked against the full contract amount. And one question Margaret, at this point, it's very simple, but when it gets more complicated in terms of the work being done with designers and if we have a construction manager, will you code these for me when I need to break them into certain MSBA codes? Yeah, so we'll start doing a requisition package for you that will have a cover sheet that will code them. Okay, great. I wasn't planning to start that until we got to the point you were getting reimbursed. Yeah, these are simple. These are simple right now. Yeah, we'll share that with you and kind of make some edits to it. Great, okay. So does anyone have any questions on the invoice? And then if there are no questions, then is there a motion to approve? I'll move to approve. I'll second it. And I need to do a roll call vote. So if we can take the screen down so I can see who we have. I think we still, yeah, we do. So I'm just gonna call out the names and it's a yes to approve or no. Rupert? Yes. Sean? Yes. Jonathan? Yes. Shelly doesn't get to vote. Ben? Yes. Phoebe? Yes. Steve? Yes. Kathy is a yes. We have one, two, three, four, five, six. Yes, we do have a quorum, seven. Good. Okay, I think at this point we're open unless anyone has anything to add or questions, I'm gonna open it up for public comments. And you will get a notice that we're meeting on October 7th to continue this discussion and answer will be ready. Margaret tells me if we have time, we'll do another two hour block to present the ideas for our webpage and this information, minutes and everything are gonna migrate over to that webpage and Sean is busily catching us up backwards on minutes. And so I think by the time we meet next time we may have all minutes posted for 2021 which will be thanks to Sean Mignano. Is any other questions or comments before we move to public comment? Okay, so we have two people in the public and I see one hand is raised, Bruce called them. And Bruce, I'll bring you in and allow you to talk. So Bruce, you're here. I just wanted to say having watched all this, my congratulations to the committee and to you, Margaret and Shelley, I think anybody who looks at this would have great confidence that the three people from the town that go on the MSBA committee are going to be very effectively briefed. And so my congratulations. I feel very comfortable with this group and you all. So keep up the good work admirable. And I also admire the direct comments that Margaret and others made to the assumed audience. I couldn't agree more. I think this is kind of remarkable opportunities we have. As an architect having practiced many years basically going in and out of interview either person coming out who's there and then you're coming out, someone's coming in. It never occurred to me to stay in the meeting and listen. I mean, it just never did. And I think that's true of all of my colleagues going back starting from a year ago onwards but now it seems to be changing. And I think recognizing that and briefing that people like what I used to be this is a whole new experience. Congratulations for recognizing that and availing yourselves of the opportunity of informing the profession. Thank you all very much. Thank you. And so everyone knows these recordings are being posted as well. So to the extent people weren't out there listening and in the terms of the attendees there's a chance to go back. There's one other person, but their hand is not up. So I think that is the extent of public comments. Yesterday again, thanks to Sean and the data people we managed to upload the very long documents. So they are part of the meeting materials. So to the extent anyone comes back on and is watching the video, reading the minutes wants to see the eight proposals there there. And Margaret next time I think we can talk about your grid a little bit. Yeah. Well, and Sean, I think while we were talking Sean and I were exchanging emails about uploading the grid which is I do, I am gonna send you an update that says draft because it's a draft. I don't want anyone to think that that's the final scoring. It was a way of capturing the information in a kind of summary form for the members of the committee. So people weren't having to flip back and forth to see stuff. Margaret, I can add that before I. That would be great. Okay. And just everyone saw that she for the most part Margaret left out the positives and negatives and tried to just focus on this many of that and this many. I also found it very useful to have that cross-reference of how many were using the same consultants. Yeah. It's super helpful. Yeah. It's extremely helpful. So any other comments or suggestions? So please hold, you'll get a meeting notice for October 7th, but hold the two weeks after that. So if we have other business, one of the things Margaret wanted to make sure we know is how the reimbursement formula works for schools and also the limits to what we can and can't do as public members of a committee when it comes up for a vote, those are things we can schedule at any point. We had a tentative meeting schedule going all the way through to next February that got thrown off when we didn't have the posting happen for this but I think we'll go back and work on that. So we'll try to figure out when to work that in because we included some times that we might be meeting jointly with the school committee so that the design firm doesn't have to do presentations twice and some thoughts about what the public outreach would be on key decision points like the site selection where we're building. So that would be potentially assuming that MSBA panel works, we could have those. So hold that October 21st date and the November 4th date as 8 p.m. I won't be posting both of those. Any other comments? I wanna thank you, Shelley. It was terrific that you could join us. And seeing these names, I thought does this firm do what they say they do? It's very useful to have someone to overlook that. And I wanna thank everyone on the committee. I personally found these hard to read but useful in going through those resumes and all the, and looking at the consultant lists, they were, one was more than 90 pages or 100 pages but I was glad they provided pictures of the schools they built. So thank you everyone and have a good rest of your day. I think we are adjourned. Bye everyone. Bye. So I need to stop video.