 Good evening. It's the Fort River School Building Committee. Today is Tuesday, February 19th, and we're meeting in the police station community room, and this meeting will be broadcast by Amherst Media. I'm gonna call us for order. Through the door, and so maybe we're giving another person another. Okay. And the first item on our agenda, other than that call to order, is proving minutes from last time. Did anyone have any edits to Anthony's? Everyone okay with the chronological reordering I did? That was a long, complicated meeting to record. I was okay with it. All right. Okay, second. All in favor? Great. I'm gonna attempt to take the muted minutes for today. So as I mentioned in an email, I need, we still need the updated minutes from last week to post. I need the analysis. Oh yes, that's true. Okay, I mean, and also we still don't have any minutes from 12-12. Yes, that's my fault. Those are also my list to do. Okay. And they're mostly done, and every time I try to go to finish, I might get distracted. Last time, two minutes today. Public comment. Obviously don't have TSKP today, but I think there's some stuff we can get through. The next item is a public outreach. And I think we should try to thin down at least a couple of dates that I can then give to TSKP for the final of the two big public events. And at one point, we had talked about doing it on a weekend, and I just wanted us to talk that through again. And I'm like, I think we did, or maybe we didn't, maybe we talked about it in my head. It sounded like it was a weekend, but I'm throwing it open to suggestions. I think we thought it was in the working group, but Mike wasn't. That's what it was. That's right. Mike didn't want to. He was concerned about conflicting with people's religious observance. Yes. And so that would mean doing another weekday events, potentially. And when we had talked about it previously, how it was recorded in our outline for community outreach events, and it's been posted to the public for a long time, we said we were targeting weekday evenings. We have suggested to do one during the day, since last time was, I think when we talked on the working group was, since we did the other one, do a night, have one during the day in town. Do folks have thoughts on day versus night? It's not easy for me to be there during a school day. I think it makes sense to offer it at a different time, just because people, and I can even might be able to make it during the day. I think we had talked about doing a kind of a lunch time-ish thing. Yes. The main three issues that we had talked on, we started advertising next week, and announcements haven't been sent out. I'm concerned about doing it next week. I am too, because the logical day would be to do it, maybe like the Wednesday of next week, which is 227, although I think Richard is coming up to do Mike's Amherst Media event on the 26th, the day before. But I am, I agree here, I'm concerned about the ability to kind of advertise for that. But the following Wednesday would be, actually, it's March 6th. What's wrong with the 4th or 5th? If you want to have the SKP dishes, if it wasn't to have them present, I think it has to be maybe probably on the same day that I haven't come twice. Oh, you mean as a meeting we have. Yeah, if we can do it, but if it has to be a different day, I'm gonna have to obviously give them some options and get them to chime in, but if I'm more than anything, I'm trying to aim for a week that I can notify them about. Part of my thing also is that since the 6th is one of the dates or listening session for the SOI process, it'd be ideal to not pick the same day. Is one of those sessions? That makes sense. It's also an early release date which is gonna complicate parents' lives. Right, yes. The 6th is out. I know there's a number of those SOI dates and I'm trying to find them. Oh, I know where they are. They're on the 27th and 28th of February and then March 6th with a snow day of March 7th. When we had talked about the segment listening session, we had talked about it as a way to address any questions that arose out of the first one. And I just wanted to make sure that we have that in mind as we're framing, that's the way we framed it. So by moving the time, I mean I kind of like the idea of drawing a different audience, but at the same time that's not really how we build it previously. So I just want to make sure that we're thinking about that. I don't think we'll ever get quite the exact same audience. Right. But I think you raise a valid point that I think we want to make sure that we've had a chance to talk with TSKP and if there are things that we want to adjust, have kind of incorporated arena. I think the TSKP, all the meetings are recorded. So if they address things, people that cannot make it, they can still need to watch it. So I prefer changing the time so we can catch up a bigger audience. And if there are things that they want to change in the presentation or do a cookie cutter presentation of the previous one, if they want to change something based on the meeting, they can do it, but everything is recorded so there's no problem to. So the next time we're going to see TSKP, I believe the 27th, we don't have our next meeting. There's no next meeting. Okay. So we probably need to establish that. I will target a couple of weeks. I'm going to target the week of the sixth and the week of the third, or week of the fourth and the week of the 11th with TSKP. So the week of the 11th is when the university's out. Spring break already. That's all we can send next week. Since when are you talking to them next? The next time I write them an email, I might probably do that tomorrow. I don't have a schedule time. Whenever you do. I mean, I think to me, the practicality of when we push this on the calendar is partially a matter of their availability on the fourth, fifth, or sixth or whatever. And then it's also a matter of, the entire point of this is to get feedback that could be incorporated in some way and how they prepare or draft or answer questions in the report. So at some point, we don't want to be doing that if we're hoping we've moved on from that process. You know what I mean? That's something they can answer for us. Okay. Well, it sounds like we're not going to necessarily pin something down tonight, but I think I've had enough input to have the conversation with them. Can we agree that tentatively we think so that we don't have to come up to another meeting and vote to another meeting that less, unless we hear otherwise we're gonna target the first of the fifth unknown as a career education if they're able to do it and try to figure out this if possible before the end of the week, so that we can send announcements to channels to try to get it as well as much as possible before the date. Yeah, that is something. Yeah, I just, in terms of advertising, we had snafus in terms of, think is that they receive, press releases two weeks in a row and somehow nothing ended up there, so I also want to make sure that when we do this, we have some assurance from them that... I'm not sure how we get assurance from them. I think we might have to just go up the blue chain. So, I mean, just to say to the editor, she, like, guys, you know, no announcements were made the last two times. We really expect there to be an announcement prior to this next week. I can... Yeah, I'll try to, please. I just wanted to sort of ask a question. I just wanted to... I'm acting like I'm chairing. I wanted to actually ask you to ask the group whether everyone actually grew. But I'm not saying I disagree with it. I'm just saying I want to make sure people affirmatively assent as opposed to silently just sit here and then next thing I want to make it a sin. Do people agree with the approach of me reaching out to TSKP in hopes of finding a new time either the 3rd or 4th or 5th of March for our final large group? And if that doesn't work, go into the next group. Yeah, you'll have to work and then we'll have to go back. Work with Andy. It won't be ideal, but... Is that all right? Okay. I'm not going to make any data, thanks. Well, I don't mean you're going to do it. It's just more of a... Do I have to make it a noon? Yes, but I'll also talk to Bridget about the exactness of that, but I don't see any reason why they couldn't make noon. So that is our next community events. And then I have another bullet point here for discuss other outreach, mostly just to see if there's a discussion about other outreach. We don't necessarily have to have. I think you were contacted by at least one TGO. Yes, and Maria and Heather and I were there last spring. That was... That was Crocker Farm. Crocker Farm. I mean, I feel like this is a good time to... This is the community outreach outline that I updated on February 6th in an email to the committee. Yep. And so this is... I mean, at this point, you know, this is turning from something as an aspirational thing that we would be updating along the way and now becoming morphing into the record of what we have done. And this is something that I think would be very helpful to include in our final report because the school committee charged us explicitly with not only engaging in this process but engaging in a community outreach process. And this is the record of what we did in that regard. So I think it deserves a little attention from the committee to make sure that what we have done is actually recorded accurately in here. I know for a fact there's something missing, but then also when we're talking about PGO events, like they're not listed on here, the interview with byline. Yeah, byline. And since I wasn't involved in the byline stuff, if somebody would be willing to provide me a summary of how that came to be and what happened, that would be nice. And PGO stuff, I could probably take a crack at that. And then, so is there a PGO event schedule that we file for? Not yet. And do we need to reach out to them? So they, I've been reached out to, I said this week doesn't really work for a couple reasons, not least of which was school vacation week. And I believe I'd propose dates for next week or the following week, but I haven't heard back. That's at least my memory for instance. So you've been ready to put a reviewer on the program, so what would be the last week? And we do have PGO for the high school and middle school. I mean, this is already beyond what we had suggested as part of our outreach at the beginning of this and that we had available public comment. From my perspective, I think we've sort of done pretty good diligence on public outreach. That will be two recorded videos, three PGOs, two public forums, and then open meetings every time we've had one. So does anyone else feel like we need to do more? I just think it's worth noting the press releases that didn't get released. That we picked up on paper, yeah. Yeah, yeah, we should make a note that as far as I know, only one press release generated a story. Right. Is that right? That's even true. None of them. Sorry. Is that the very first one? No. Or that was three press release? It moved into a letter to the editor and that up. They did do that, okay. That was like ages ago, like, you know, that was our... Like October 17th, kind of thing. Did anyone remember that first thing? I think it was the first one that we did and that's, I think that's the only one that's fine. I'll try and figure that out and make a note of it in this, but some of them got picked up in, like, I mean it was also picked up in the superintendent's newsletter, right? Yes, they did. And the PDOs carried it. It was, there was a couple of updates in the Fort River Newsletters. So, we've been pushing it to ask the PDOs to release them, but for outside the school system, we asked them several times and for the last one, we asked them several times. This is the paper. The paper was sent several times, even to put it on the events, on the listing of events, not an article just listed with other events happening in town, and there was zero response. So, if anybody can ask them why? I've got the name of the person who reached out to me and said she was gonna call me on Monday, which was like two Mondays ago and a half, and I'll tell her again, say, let's figure this out, but otherwise, I'm going to have to reassess my ethical framework for change. So, Eric, to answer Heather's question, from my perspective, once we do the other PGO, then we do another community session, I think we have done the right amount of outreach. I think the next thing we need to do is help the design team get this thing done. And then we obviously then have to get done it out after the end and release the thing for the present. Eric, can you give us some sort of idea about what we need to do and when we could do it to get back to the school committee to do our final presentation to them? I mean, I haven't discussed this within a stage yet. My assumption, here's the chair, obviously, of the Ames Committee, my assumption had been at the point the report was, I mean, there's two ways to go. One way would be to have the report almost entirely fashioned and presented for feedback, if we thought that feedback would be helpful in some way. I think otherwise, I assumed we would get a review of final draft of our own and the point we felt that the designer was, I think, that the draft was complete, we could work to schedule the usual community and time at the school committee that is 19 to be able to go. Yeah, I just know that your agendas are very full and I'm just wondering, dude, should we try to anticipate and book it now and have a deadline? In other words, give ourselves an idea. Oh, I think it'd be a better option than we could do that. I think that's another question for the design team. I think we could start working that way. Also, I think it's just healthy, too. But if you never know when you're gonna be done, then you might, I mean, as facetiously, but if you never know when you're gonna be done, then you might never finish, right? If you know when you're done, then you can actually put affirmative pressure on it. Could I ask you to do one thing, which would be? You're gonna have to do two things. Well, I can actually do all kinds of things. You can not do them or do them. But could you talk to your compatriots on the school committee about whether they want us to present this kind of as done or at that almost done stage? That would be helpful in that way. I can forward that information. Very happy to do that. Then I'll also ask, I'll also actually ask if there are, it's between Anastasia and Mike, they will know if there are Amherst School Committee meetings coming up at some point that are likely to be lighter or heavier, I can start having that. It's only one of those things. Go right ahead. No, I wasn't gonna suggest that they don't submit or base or anything. Yeah, yeah, which is what I'm glad to know. Yeah, exactly right. Making notes and putting my head kind of to absorb things at the same time. So I think I, at least for a couple of voices and certainly I wouldn't have my own to that. I think we've done as good a job as we can in outreach. It's, well, I'm disappointed by the lack of coverage in the paper. I don't think we need to add any more things to a calendar over the right level of stuff to pass on to school committee. And this is well beyond our control to tell the paper what to write. Yeah, I mean, I don't mind being a squeaky wheel. I can do that. I don't see enough to write an email and it's necessary to make a phone call. You either get people to do something or you don't, you know, it's just the way it is. Other items under outreach or should we move on? Perfect. Rudy. Do we need to plan to talk to the town council around the time of the school committee? I don't know the answer to that. We're not obligated to as part of our charge. And I just don't know if they would want us to come and speak to them. Do you want me to reach out on that? Can't hurt. Sorry. I think we should, actually. I mean, there were, at the last, maybe not the couple of last meetings that we did go, they had questions about what we've been up to. And I think that it would be valuable. So I would like to do it. Accepted that. Yeah, reach out and find out. I think one is for formally coming and talk to them. One other thing, and maybe we'll come back to this, but should we schedule a meeting for us to meet with T.S. K. P. Marsh in the sixth week? That would be good. I mean, I would like if we can manage to meet it. We have. Avoiding the 26th and 27th message. I don't know who we're feeling, but that whole backwards design idea that came up a minute ago is something that sounded really great. It's our end point. Yeah. And what are we doing back? Right. Yeah. Can you ask if they're coming up on the 26th? Whether they come to? We can do another Tuesday meeting. If they're coming in the morning, then that's a good sense, but if they're coming in the afternoon, I don't know how people are available on the 26th. Let's send around a poll or show them, do a show of hands, but. I just love sort of like, what are our objectives in that meeting? Well, I would say, what we would like to do with the next meeting, I've been thinking a little bit about this and really the next series of meetings is one we do need to formally recap with them, the takeaways from the big event last week, but we also have to work our way through formally the geotechnical report, the survey, and the existing building reports. We've received all of those. I have never formally gone through them. It may be overly ambitious for a single meeting, but I think we need to get through those things before they can go off with you there, Eric. I agree with that, but I actually think, I actually think before we did that, we actually should get some sort of presentation from TSKB about what they see as a schedule, what do they see as the, where they are with the feedback they've gotten. I mean, and I'm not trying to be facetious, but my guess is, for example, without having talked to them, is they've probably gotten all the feedback they need on the financial modeling. We know that I haven't got any impact on the engineering or the geotech, because we've never even discussed it, but then beyond that, from a production per purpose, they might, I assume they already have a set of questions or things that they need to work from the roof from us in order to be able to know they're in the right place with what they're doing with their draft. And so, I would love to see an outline from them of what they think they're realistic ending, and what do they need from us in each meeting. And then, I mean, that's not funny about this, but also because, I mean, and I'm not saying it is invaluable time, since we spent a really long time going through the financial stuff, the cost modeling. I think it's important for us as a committee to know if their view is, we need to go over the engineering and geotech, but we need to do it in no more than a meeting and a half, let's say, then that means it creates a normative bias on how we're conducting our meeting to make sure we can meet that goal. Whatever. No, right, I'm gonna take it right now. Yeah, I think that I don't know that we're done with the financial and we still haven't done that last bit, the operational costs, the carbon emissions, you know, so I think there are still outstanding issues there to talk about. It would be nice if we could also address, some folks have written to us by email and it'll be good if we could address those and maybe, I don't know if TSKP gets our emails. I try to pass on everything so they have what we have. But I mean, we might kind of start to develop a punch list of like, let's make sure we hit all of that. I'm wondering, Anthony, do you know, some of the stuff that we've gotten, you would only know about the survey one. It said draft and it was basically maps. I mean, is there a written report that's forthcoming as well or? Go for the survey. For the survey. The survey is probably marked draft because they sent it to us. I hurried them up. Yeah. The PIs and they probably wanted to make sure they crossed all their eyes and thought it all their T's because it were, but I don't expect we're going to get like a book. That document is sort of what I expected. So just maps. I think one of the things we need to go over is the narrative for the cost estimator. I think it needs to be adjusted. It wasn't clear on the, I don't know how many, how many was it, 200 pages? The cost estimator, there were some gaps and it wasn't even clear for them at some point, but the borders were in each one in which options, what I was saying, in which ones they were not staying, the site scope. I think we need to go over with them to make sure that the narrative, if we're gonna send for a, this is the next item. In the benefit cost estimator, we need to, all the changes that were done to the narrative, they have to be changes and I think we should discuss them to make sure that we're in sync with those things. So I just, I mean, I don't disagree with what you just said, but I think we're never, we're never gonna get to the end unless they're driving the bus somewhat in terms of telling us, we have a lot of input to give them, feedback to give them, but we need to know what they need to get done to get done, right? And we need to know what's most useful out of our meetings to give them what they need to get done and I'm not disagreeing with any of the feedback. I'm just simply saying that I'm worried for weeks now or months now, they haven't really been telling us in our meetings how what we're doing fits with or slots in with the overall work program they have and what else they need to get from us to get it done and what their production schedule looks like given all the projects they're working on and I'm not trying to heavy program everything else they're working on, but what I'm saying is so I don't always know whether what we're doing in this meeting is always the most effective use of our time to get them to a point where we're getting to a good product and so what I'm urging, there's also a committee of violence degrees and I'm urging you to get from them a stronger frame of what they need to get done right they need from us. Partially so, but we do give them feedback on other items. We can feel confident that it's just slotted in effectively into a moving program of work. Well I think I like the idea of them coming to the next meeting with a clear agenda for us about time line framework of meetings. I think I can give them feedback based on this evening's discussions and get them to do that. So this is also from a way back, did we get a meeting report from the public outreach event? How are we recording, how did we record that? I have a list of handwritten notes. Folks wanna send them to me in some form, any form I will compile. And I feel like that goes back to the question what the second meeting looks like, what our discussion, leading into that second meeting looks like. And then to follow on what you said, I think we definitely need to have TSKP helping us wrap this thing up because they're writing the report. But I think it would also be helpful if the committee basically just listed the question very individually about like as individual members of the committee have we had our kind of questions answered and then let them slot that into or we have answered that question. Right. So I have a list of those. Yeah, I mean that's not a problem. I also give email those to the chair. To me, and I will consolidate them. And consolidate them as I did with other comments and send all onto them and say, okay, these are the things that the committee is still thinking about. We know you need a certain amount of direction and we need to do certain things like go over the survey just how to do diligence. Here you go, it tells us to write order to do this stuff in to be the most efficient. So we should go ahead and email those questions to you, right? Feel free. I'll be in and out over the next couple of days. So if I don't respond to you quickly, just, well, remember it's communication. What do you want us to do in those parts? By Monday, it would be really great. Okay. At the end of the week. Yeah. Right. So that people have time to write them and I have time to think about them. I think that actually gives them a sense. So that way, you know, whether it's the operating costs or I've already lost the thread, but the different pieces that people will pull down already tonight, let's get them into their hands. Every big list. What's the new day? Are these up to you? It would be really great if folks could get into me by, by turn on my thing, whatever Monday's statement. I'm not looking at that for right now. It's the 20, I should know. What's this? Okay. So by the beginning of the day, on the 25th? End of the day. What do you say? End of the day. Okay. I want a kid in school, so I... Oh, so he's not till then. End of the day is fine. Oh. It's a self-imposed deadline. Yes. So are these questions for that they're gonna be, we want them to answer on the 20th if they... Not necessarily, but figure out how for them to make sure they address it in some way over the next few meetings. Some they might choose to address the next meeting. Some they may choose to address the end, but they're, they're friends we don't want to lose. We're gonna work it into their schedule. So when they give us a schedule, it'll incorporate the idea that they already have at least something. Maybe not 100%, but maybe 75 or 80% of the questions we have follow up. The, my only concern is that they receive like 20 questions. We need to prioritize also with our timeline, for example. The narrative, if, I think... Well, no, I, well, we could do that, but I would throw up like Eric's idea and make them prioritize. I know, but at the same time, but then my considered narrative, something on the line, but we want to concentrate as much the time that we need also. I can, I can, I think I can safely say, we have a separate process we have to go through with them and the narratives. Anything that might be passed here, they need to, they need to be up super fast. That's really a different process. They can do that to me. They can do that offline and send us an email that says, okay, here's the updated piece for cost estimating. Okay, I don't think, I don't think they, so we do that in the meeting as long as we get our answers, our questions answered. What was that? That was the 25th, right? I'll make the 25th, will you confirm it? Yes. We're now reaching our show, should we move on? Did we decide on February 26th as the next data thing? I'm gonna, I'll prompt and ask them a question and see if they're available. And then we have to send out our own kind of poll to check if we'll be able to bill if people aren't here tonight. Or kind of like, I don't know. You can think it's gonna work better for me about it. Okay. And then, while we're at it, I'm wondering if I should just send out another one for future meetings as well. Yeah, I'd love to send it out. To the Wednesday format, which would be, well, I mean, theoretically, I guess, I know it's going to be a little bit, it's college, spring break, but the 13th, or do we wanna go on either side of that? I personally, I'd say send out a poll for the 13th to see what you get for responses. All right. And it doesn't look promising, the most, five to the 20th, but just, again, in the interest of. So that would be the 13th. Peace. Okay. So I'm sorry, we're talking about the 26th. Oh, you're gonna send out something for whatever time. Also, one day of February 26th, and then check on our usual time on the 13th. Okay, thanks. I don't know if it matters, but there's a split majority in the 26th that will have some hesitation going on, so I don't know if that matters at first. Oh, amazing, like, it'll be good. Yeah. Well, let's see what we can get for a quorum. We don't get quorum, we'll have to, but. Before we move on for, I mean, we sort of mentioned the work staff through about advertising for the last public quorum. I'm not clear, like, if I have any role in advertising, we know how we're approaching it, who's doing a lot for advertising for the next public quorum, because it sounds like we're gonna set the date and we're not really gonna have time to assign roles before we need to be using, you know, the action of role. Unless folks have an objective, I think what I would do is kind of repeat the process and hope for a better outcome, which would be to update the version of the press release we have now with new dates and have Deb Westmore on some of the, I don't think. So, are we able to set it up, or do we do anything? I would just say on that note, when we have the date established, I think we cannot, we should authorize now the people to update the press release, update the flyer, and distribute as we did, as we did immediately, basically. Take the same actions. I don't know if there's any new actions available to us, but authorize everyone to take the same old ones and do it again. I think, post it again on town meeting, on the town website, ask the RPS to post it. Everybody that has access to a PGO, reinforced to the PGOs, because it gets sent through central, but somebody else can send it asking, he has a direct content to the PGO, he's doing. So, last time, that's what everybody would have asked. Everyone comfortable with that approach? If you could put public form in the first sentence, rather than the big, that would be nice. The next item I have is, or discuss, review, procuring independent cost estimates. That was one of our charges, I believe. And I suspect we're getting close to a point where we could do that. And that would be another solicitation that we'd have to send out. We need to get the names of the cost estimator to do that with. Did, it might be jumping ahead a little bit. Did we allocate once upon a time a cost to that? We did. In Christine's original budget, she had $7,500 for independent cost estimate. I don't have the experience to tell you whether that's a good figure or not, but we have other money, so we have a tax that we're going to go there. And that's right about right. Yeah. So, does everyone have a scope? I think that's a two-dager, two-sided scope. This is something that I drew up from, that is you need one? I think so. I have time for right here. No, I got it. You got it, okay. This is just something I drew up. Obviously, still some missing parts, especially around qualifications. I mean, I guess the first question is, do we actually need to do this? It is part of our charge from the tab meeting warrant to do an independent cost estimate. TSKB's cost estimators are an independent company, but they do work for them, not for us, so I guess we just want to make sure that everyone is on board with us doing this, so we will have two cost estimates to compare against each other. I guess everyone is on board with that. Okay. I guess I just want to voice that view. Yeah. We spent an inordinate amount of time on the first cost estimate, and I just want the committee to be aware that we do owe the community some information sooner rather than later, and I'm afraid in that regard. Because they will not be perfectly aligned. I mean, that's sort of the reason you might do a second round. I guess I would be open to trying to find out whether what we've done to date meets the intent, but I don't know how to do that. It says independent, and they are independent, but you're right, they work for TSKB. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, but I guess one way to think about it would be to go back to our touchstone of using the MSPN process as a model, and do, does that process have a separate estimate that's different from the architect's estimate? I don't know the answer to that one. It's an independent cost estimate of the MSPN, I don't remember if you ended up with two, I'd have to look up, I don't remember if you ended up with two cost estimates of the MSPN process, you're not. Yeah. You didn't? Okay. But if that's under that process, if they're the architect and they're the architect for the final project, then it makes sense you'd want to hold them to account because they're sort of driving the bus on a major multi-million dollar construction project. In this case, there isn't really the same challenge. You want to get the number right, my point is it's not like, oh, they're the architect, they're managing the project, they're, I'm happy to do whatever. There is a reconciliation process you have to go through. Exactly. And that's the challenge. I was going to say, if we would feel comfortable, I don't know how important the reconciliation process is in this particular scenario, I feel like, okay. Well, the other difference that using that MSBA model is that there would be an owner's project manager who would help that, that. We don't have that advice at the table, but Diane. Well, I understand that we're following the MSBA process, but this is not an MSBA project. And if we do end up getting an MSBA pipeline, which we're not close to, the MSBA process would actually cover the cost of that, as well. That is true, yes. So more spending money, we don't necessarily need to spend. Yeah, I feel the same way. I'll go with the group, but I would like to find out what this is something we absolutely need to do because I feel like if we're going to spend money on getting independent cost assessment, we're also going to have to commit to spending the time to go through and do our own reconciliation, figure out why are these numbers different, or there's no real value in doing it, just to get it done. And so if we could find out whether what we've done would satisfy the charge or commission, I'd say let's not do it. I agree. So I think the problem is that if we do get, if it did happen and the numbers were significantly different, then you'd have to say you actually would want to know why and that would be important information to have. Can I ask, Anthony, do you have any sense of the timeframe in terms of sending, if we sent this out, getting somebody on board, getting a contract and getting it done, where are we talking? I do not have that sense actually finding an actual procurement just for a independent cost estimator was actually very challenging. I had to go outside the state to do it because I don't think it's done off and just on its own. So I'd ask any of the architects on the committee if they had an idea. I don't know how long the procurement part would take, but once you had someone in hand, given the scope, I would expect it to take three weeks for them to actually turn around and estimate maybe four before we would even have a product that we could look at. So we would give it to them and then a month later we'd have a result. And the other thing that we'd have to anticipate is that TSKP would have to interact with this cost and misdemeanor at a certain level. It's not as though it's just gonna be this kind of thing which you put in a black box and get a number back out because even if they make the corrections that we've kind of noted that they need to make, there's still gonna be some question about the scope the only way they're gonna get answers is to call the architect and then have them communicate. Irina. I wouldn't be worried about the part because TSKP has known from the beginning that we were having independent consultations. Right, yeah, I'm not worried about that. That part I've taken so far. And I think considered things, some of things have changed along the way from the time they did the cost estimator. They did, there were, the geotech came in and they said, oh, we haven't been talking the other day in the presentation, we have told the cost estimator to the pile, but then we don't need the pile space of the geotech. And there are several other things over, including the boilers, but actually we don't think that we need the boilers. Some of those things, I think, we might want another one cost estimator because we hammered them quite a bit on sales and more on the details. So I think this had a number we most likely most do not agree with. Well, I guarantee you they will not be perfect. But I think to geotech said we will be comfortable with a 10% difference, they said, okay, 10% or 5% or at which point we trigger that we have to compare number by number. Forgive my ignorance. Is an independent cost estimator that we hire going to take the basic set of facts from TSKP and derive the run and analysis of the costs? That's correct. Or they're not going to critique, not going to look at what the other estimator did. No, they're typically they're doing it with that, you know, with the page turned over, you know, you get the documents, the same set of documents. And when they have a question they'll have, I mean, they'll have to contact TSKP because this is a complicated thing with many moving parts. And so it's kind of hard for me to imagine if there would not be some interaction. How much do you think this is going to cost? We had it allocated a little over 7,000. 7,500 originally, I have no notion of. I mean, that's that's intuitively in my experience feels about right for something this complicated. I wouldn't surprise me if we got some solicitations that were close to the 10, but that's just me being a little pessimistic. So who would you talk to Paul Valkovic? About whether we do this or not. I would probably start with the town attorney and. So what do we have to do it and then be, because to me, what's weird about this group, I don't mean this group, but I just mean it's like a genuinely weird feature of this group is it's kind of a headless horseman. It doesn't really have, we'll all forgiveness and it doesn't really have any, it doesn't really, it's not accountable to anyone, right? Like so we spend the money or we don't spend the money and it's not really clear to me whether there's anyone who should be giving us advice on whether that's a good idea to do or not. Right. And I think that's sometimes wise, even if we're making our own decision, it's not a bad idea to get it. To take counsel, yes. Take counsel. Okay, I'm not sure we'll hand it again over to Rudy and then Rita. I've been on the fence about the utility of this a little bit, but on the other hand, here's the reason to do it is one of the two things that's probably gonna get thrown about as a conclusion for the study is the cost. What we said was the cost of doing this, including the PD and all that stuff and the sites used for the school. And so even though I worry this is throwing money out the window of this site and this configuration project that's now used, on the other hand, I suspect that the numbers that come out of this are gonna get referred to by people. And I've had my doubts about a few of the numbers. So maybe it's worth 7,500 to get a second opinion. And even if we presented a range in the final report, I'm not sure we have to go through it. Maybe we do once we get it, we have to reconcile them. But at least people would know there's a doubt and here's the range that two different firms. That's the answer about it. I think we're gonna add, or yeah, sorry. I think one of the, sorry, the said we don't respond to any of them. I think we make the decisions and I think originally we said we were gonna do it. So if we won't do it, we have to give a very strong reason because it has been from the beginning we said we're gonna do an independent cost as an Instagram. So if we don't do it, we have to give some reason because I think it's from that, some people might come and say, why didn't you go to a second opinion? That's my only, yes, it's my name, we might not need it. But since we said it at the beginning, if we don't do it, we have to say why. I mean, Eric's question is in, when I go to Paul Backelman is an interesting one because we were created by town meeting, but we were appointed by school committee who then kind of let us free. That's exactly. So, I mean, it'll be interesting to get Paul's opinion, but I don't think I would go to him for a decision because he's not. I don't think it's a decision. I think it's an interpretation. What I would say is we're gonna ask for an opinion and then this group's gonna have to have another, we're gonna have to decide tonight and we're not going to decide tonight. I mean, I'd go to the attorney, I'd go to KP and maybe, but I don't know. I kind of feel like we're reluctantly going towards doing it right now. And I personally, and in favor of doing it, it's in the town meeting charge. As Rudy said, the cost is gonna be one of the big takeaways here, so defending it. And I have no idea what the reconciliation process is like. If they come in pretty close, then maybe we just let it stand and we don't really have to worry about it big. And if they're wildly different than, and there's a different conversation. Yeah, yeah. Maria then, Eric. So I'm leaning towards doing it as well for a lot of the same reasons. I think that we could make this less complicated and less costly to do if we maybe don't have them do all 100 plus numbers. So if we could pick an enrollment, maybe, from, maybe some B&F. That's probably a logical thing to do. And then if they're wildly off, well then you assume the others would be wildly off. Right. I think that's a very fair assumption, yes. I was gonna say something when we got to the actual steps, I was gonna say. Yeah. So it sounds like a group is, well, Eric. I just wanted to wrap the conversation up. Yeah, well I think I figure since I was obviously much leading, I wouldn't say the reaction, just questioning it. I mean, one, if it's in the charge and these guys are a sub, the current cost estimators are a sub to the designer, then the idea that we should actually have an independent cost estimator and it's in the charge, then we should just do it. Yeah, that's a good point. Ideally, the other thing I'd say though is this is why there's an urgency on the previous thing we talked about, like data protection schedule and the meeting schedule, because I'm not personally gonna quit the committee. If we spend seven meetings, six or seven meetings, or whatever it is, analyzing every single line item of the cost estimation, I'm gonna walk out, because it's, I think, because I don't think it, well, live it this way. If the estimation's that different than it suggests the first estimator was in charge. Yeah, I wonder if I could go really, we have another problem in an entire life. But I think it would just be, what I'm worried about, and what you said this earlier, what I'm worried about is if we, and this is why I want to hear from the designers on their schedule, what I'm worried about is if we have a report that's a little similar to the presentation the other day, in which the discussion's about how don't worry the site's feasible, let's talk about what options you could build. That's a really bad, and then here are the numbers, but we've really kicked the tires on our numbers. That's a really bad report, because there's so many people in town who want to know what a net-zero building looks like and how you ever get there, and there's so many people who think the site's wet and want not just an answer of, hey, look, it's buildable, they want you to walk them through what we learned from the geotech, walk them through, but the stuff actually they talked about the other day. By the way, one of the things that wasn't on the, the other day when we listened to the guys, TSKB, they said another thing that's not in the cost estimation is they said, after looking at the geotech, that they might choose to remediate the existing building by plugging into the ground and shooting stuff into the ground to solidify it. That wasn't in the cost estimation either, right? So some of the costs go up, some of the costs go down, but my point is, even beyond the costs, if we want to have a public that's more educated about the site, they need a report in the end that actually walks them through those different things. How much it costs for those things? Then how much it costs for those things? But also literally what the process is. What did we learn about the site? What did we learn about the building? Yes, it's buildable, but here's how it's buildable. And then we get into the cost. I want to make sure they're doing that because if in the end the report doesn't include those things, it's not going to be a successful report. Even if the final numbers are really well vetted. Right, because we won't actually get there because we'll send them back to do more work. That's me, but anyway, I'm sorry to belabor that, but it's actually a really big deal for that. Right. So do we need a motion to decide that we are going to go to do a cost estimator, or do we just do it? I don't think the product is ready to send out to the cost estimator. I think we've had a good introductory discussion tonight. I suspect we're bound to do it by the rules. I don't think, from what you just said, I'm not sure the town council's necessarily going to dissuade us. They're going to go with a conservative approach. Yeah. So we can't just stop. I haven't stopped. I hear so many discussions. So it sounds like we're doing it. So these are draft, there's stuff that I still want to add. I guess the big questions to answer, maybe not tonight are at what point do we target to go out? At what point is the immaterial that we're giving to them? Ready. Ready to get a second set of eyes on it. It's not right now, because as we discussed there's stuff that's not in the current cost estimator. Secondly, is the procurement method? It was in my assumption that we would solicit quotes. If it's under 10, we do not have to. If there was a firm that someone felt comfortable with, there's nobody that the town currently works with for this sort of thing. So I would be soliciting, but we don't have to if time is a concern. Had someone who were comfortable hiring, that's an option. Under 10,000. Can I ask about the process? Do we need, when we do the solicitation, if we go for solicitation, do you have to give them the whole narrative at that point, or just do the solicitation just to gain time? So we can work in parallel. When we do the solicitation, and by the way I'm gonna give you the documents in two weeks, or you have to say, these are the documents that you don't have to look at. I don't have to give them the documents. I think it would not be prudent not to. Yeah, if I just said we'll give you, especially, this is kind of an unknown, this isn't something that's done frequently, and they're not gonna know what they're up against as far as what we're providing them. So I, also anyone that was willing to do their homework would find it posted on our website anyway. That's what I'm saying, people can find it, but can we? I don't know, where this is kind of, maybe not where good people are gonna be scrambling for, I maybe don't want to, I want to make it easier for people to quote on this rather than harder, right? Fran? Can you, what documents exactly do you need? That was also gonna be a question, although I kind of figured for later, I figured they're gonna need, they're gonna need whatever TSK's piece, cost estimate they want, and we'll ask them, right? The pricing narrative, which is an important thing for us to make sure that, I mean, I think we need to have a solid grasp of that and agreement that yes, this committee approves that pricing narrative. Ready to move on? No, got that, yes, that too. But no, the whatever TSKP gave, their cost estimate, is what we need to get this cost estimate right. And if there are things that need to be reviewed by the committee, that's fine. My point is, that's the set. Find out from them what the set is, that's the set. And any results that you make? Yeah, and if there are things that need to be reviewed by us, that's fine, my point is, that's how you get your answer. I'll email Jesse and say, I don't need anything coming now because it's coming, you're going to ask you to have it happen. Yeah, and help us organize so that we can effectively execute that. We're still planning to have final report around the end of April. Is that the sort of ballpark? Well, that's where I'm going to put it in TSKP's court to give us some guidance. And I'm just backing back to get it. I'm a little, I would love it if we were done by then. I'm going to express a little skepticism that we'll actually hit it, but it would be great to drive that direction. Just think of it, four weeks for them to do, two weeks to get the quote, a week to do the sentence. We're getting near the red line for getting a second estimation if we're trying to get a report out. That's our brand to do. Okay, we'll start, Eric. Well, sir, what's the rest of RTG unless we're done specifically? We've actually touched on a lot of it because the next item was next steps and we've kind of talked about an approach for next steps. Unless people want to add more to that, I don't mind moving on, which would be to look at the budget. I don't think there's any invoices, but I could be wrong about that. No new invoices. The only change on this budget from last week saw was invoice number four from TSKP. I guess one thing to talk about, maybe not tonight, is the items that are completely untouched. The second matter of the air quality testing, we never did. It was not part of our original time meeting charge. And where we do not currently work, Jim's departure timing meant that it didn't happen in the fall. We have a new facilities director who doesn't appear to be joining us. So I'm guessing that line item is probably just gonna go back to the general fund when all of a sudden done. But now that we are doing it, kind of cost us a minute, that does mean that we've pretty much done everything we had originally planned on doing at the outset. Any questions on the budget? Kind of on the next steps and what you were just saying about the air quality testing and what you were saying about one of the big questions that the community brought up at the meeting was just this whole website. And I'm wondering if we have kind of left a resource unturned as far as information about, we have a facilities director here who was great but hadn't had a long-term experience with the building. And we have had teachers living in the Fort River Valley for 20 years or more. You had 30. 30, you know, and I'm wondering if it's incumbent upon this committee to use them as a better resource in finding out what, you know, we've got one report, you know, in a letter to the editor in the newspaper about an experience of having water seep up from the floor. And, you know, it's hard to tell if that's a one-off or if that's a bigger thing. And, I mean, I wish this is something I would have asked a year ago but sadly it's not something that came up. But should we be asking the teachers in a real kind of much more methodological, you know, a rigorous way about, can you tell us like what your experiences have been in the building as far as, and we, you know, we have the other piece of information, you know, the tell survey that come out and says that, you know, only less than 10% of the teachers in Fort River feel like it's a helpful environment for them to work in. You know, do we need to ask them questions about what is it? You know, and then, you know, is our approaches to renovating, we've got four schemes or however many that are renovating this building and are we addressing those concerns in a renovation? To me, that's like, at the core of, is it feasible? Like if we can't address the concerns of the teachers who have worked in this building or maybe these concerns don't exist, I don't know. Well, this is something that, it did come up in the public meeting last week. We only, as you know, we only touched on it obliquely at our meeting, last meeting with T.S.K. We just got back to your technical report and I thought that at the public meeting, it's why I brought this up a little bit a month ago, because I wanted to get it off my chest for research, is that I didn't love the way that the designer, the design team, initially talked about it, because they were talking about it in a very conclusory fashion. And then, once they were pushed by the audience, they said, oh no, no, no, no, I mean, I'm paraphrasing, most of us were there. No, no, no, no, no, no, I get it, it's a website, but I'm telling you I've worked on websites before and there are ways of remediating them. And then once they did that, they started walking through specifically, and actually they even talked through, no, somebody in the audience talked through the fact that there was a reasonable basis to think that you could have a wet building even if you didn't have see picture of the building, because the floor, there's no insulated barrier. And so you get a cold, probably you know this stuff a million times better than I do, but you have a cold slap in the summertime and you have condensation. And so back when there were carpets, you could have easily gotten mold from the carpets, not because of any other reason that you got natural condensation on a wet floor, a hot summer, and that's why the great they tore the carpets. My point on that though, is that the designers then answered that question, I thought, in a pretty good way about how they would respond to it. So what I heard from them was not actually a denial that people had negative experiences with the building, but also an answer of saying, given the site conditions, A, it does need to be remediated, B, it can be remediated, and C, here's how we do it. They didn't- And we get, D, we have a cost for it. And D, we need to get- I don't think we do yet. We don't have a cost yet for it, but we need to get a cost for it. That's why I was bringing it up, is that what it didn't, to me, what we ended up with in that meeting was a conversation that illuminated, could illuminate public understanding. Yes, there's a problem. Yes, it can be remediated. Here's how. And that's a better, to me, that's a better place to be than doing what we've always done, which is, I mean, forgive me for saying this, but run on anecdotes, where one set of anecdotes is fighting against an understanding of anecdotes. But my point on it was that, we haven't had the, I mean, you said this at the beginning, Jonathan, we hadn't had that conversation in this meeting, but also we don't, this is to me the big thing, we don't yet know how they plan on incorporating this in the report as a narrative, in our descriptive section. And as you say, accurately, it's one of the crucial things that they've described well in a satisfactory way to the public. And I guess the suggestion for the surveys is one of the questions, I guess either the committee needs to come up with a list of questions or we need, as far as this what stuff goes, like specifically what are the concerns that we have about it, the condensation, I feel like we've been kind of touching on it, but haven't really like got into a thick of it. We haven't, we haven't. So I think the questions about how the proposed designs address the concerns of the people that live in the building is a good one, but a quarter of this committee is supposed to be made up or supposed to be made up of people that work in the building every day. I would really hope that those members of the committee would address those concerns in the process that we have here in the committee itself. For sure. So there's one, there's one. Right, yeah, I mean. And whose value of cost-benefit analysis weighs the most, right? So how, whatever those things in our column that we say are must, what, who ranks the value of the benefits that you get of remediating certain aspects of the building, right? That's where it gets really money for me. I wasn't. I guess what I'm trying to say is like, as far as going back to the people in the building, like we have not been able to get a teacher on this committee in over a year now, the staff member position was vacant for a long time. That was only partly because of lack of it, like that was the government change and everything, but of the three seats allotted to four-diver workers, only one of them has really been consistently attended. Heather, and then, Irina, did you have a hint on it? I just want to make sure I'm not missing anyone as I'm trying to write. All right, so. So you did, Eric. What? Okay, I don't know. Yeah, I did. Like, we've done this in regard to a lot of other aspects, you know, like the, I mean, I think there was a lot of consensus on the committee that open classrooms were a problem. Yes, we addressed it. Daylight was a problem. Yes, we were addressing it, you know, but this whole water thing has been so much more, you know, not rigorously discussed or, or I guess I feel like there has been disagreement on this committee about the extent of that particular issue. And I guess that's why I feel like maybe we needed to go beyond the committee to, to get more input. All right, I would, I would urge the committee to go, to set an agenda item with PSKP on going over the geotechnical survey and its implications for the building concepts and the feasibility as well as my plugness. And my point is, whatever you come up with, how do you plan on writing it up and explaining to people? Because that's, I think, I just think that in the, I honestly think we're never gonna get out of the box of if people disagree about the site in town, we're not gonna solve that disagreement by having more of those people talking to one another. We need to get professional advice. And that's what the entire point of this feasibility study was that we were supposed to be getting good professional advice to give us feedback on the site. And I'm agreeing with you, we haven't talked about it, but this is the point. We have, we literally haven't talked about it. So we need to get them in here. We need to have this agenda item. And I think before, we need to let them lay out what they've learned and go over the stuff and then, and then push with them. And I think there would be great to get. I mean, I know it's not a committee, but make sure Ben shows up. And if we can do it on a day where Ben and Mike both can, because if we have Ben here and we have Mike, then we actually will have three people who've worked in a four river present in the rhythm room. So we would actually be getting some of that feedback. Brian? So it was my understanding that this was already in our plan, right? We're having them, they're gonna be talking to us about this. We got the geotech a couple of days before the previous meeting. We're gonna be talking about it. We're gonna be talking about survey. And they're going to be doing exactly what we need them to do. They're gonna be rendering their professional opinion about what to do. So. So. Yeah, I think also, I think I'd like to say professional advice. We had the environmental study. So we have some information that it did study, that it did study, we didn't do the spring, but we had the default, we compared to other buildings at the same time. So one at the same one at the same time. So we have a professional advice. I think my concern with the geotech is that building conditions change along the time that there were rocks. Now there are no rocks. The things change. They cleaned the vents, they don't clean the vents. Things change and there are some many anecdotal. And I think I go for the scientific method. I think I want something systematic. If you want the environmental study, they came, they did props, they did microbiology, they did a lot of studies. We have that point. It's unfortunate we didn't do it in the spring. Maybe it can be, we give back the money to the town if they want to repeat it in the spring after we sunset. I think we didn't do it in the spring. We didn't do it in the fall. We were supposed to do it two seasons. Even, yes. They can do after we sunset, if there are still more dust, can be repeated because we're giving back the money. We won't be there to do it. But I think environmental, there wasn't big points on the environmental that we raised the flag. They said, okay, let's stop here because we have to address these issues. I think it's perfectly reasonable for us to put this to TSKP and get them to give their professional opinion and to raise the issues that have been raised from the community and what we know from the reports. And see if we as a committee feel satisfied by their answers. Are we done? We can be done. I just want to let the folks be done. No, we've had a really productive meeting. We've had a lot done. That's cool. So no invoices. So yes, we can entertain a motion to adjourn. Motion to adjourn. Okay, second. In favor.