001[Music] you're good okay we're recording I'm Steve thumper selectmen what I'm gonna open this meeting would everybody join me in the Pledge of Allegiance please I [Music] pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay our first order of business is to elect a moderator do I have any nominations yes okay when the youngblood do I have a second for Wendy Youngblood yes I do are there any other nominations for moderator not seeing any all those in favor of hiring hiring he's not getting paid of having Wendy Youngblood be our moderator please say yay yay that carries Wendy it's your meeting [Music] good evening I'm Wendy Youngblood thanks everybody for coming out on
002this cold night and Happy New Year um is there a motion to waive the reading of the call to meeting all right all in favor all opposed so the motion has passed thank you we move first to resolution number 1 special appropriation of 78 million one hundred forty one four hundred and forty six thousand four hundred forty six dollar sorry for a new elementary school is there a motion to waive the reading of the resolution by the town attorney is there a second [Music] all in favor please raise your hand and all opposed so the motion passes there will now be a presentation by town officials Steve would you please come up thanks very much we're gonna have a short presentation but first before we do that I would like to introduce a gentleman who's
003the chairman of our municipal building committee and they will be supervising the construction of this building we all know that we had some issues with the high school and how that was done and we're going to avoid that Paul check Oh would you like to come up and say a few words thank you you didn't leave after the high school project the the town put together a committee called the high school renovation review committee and this was sort of a post-mortem look at the high school project what the pitfalls were what was successful what worked and what didn't work that committee was it was made of members of the public people who were involved in the process members of the Board of Education and what came out of that was that we had a very
004fragmented process at that point and what we did is we put together a document with recommendations of major construction capital construction projects moving forward how to avoid those pitfalls so people often ask what does the Municipal Building Committee do and I liken it to a division of responsibilities so we're here pre bond for a major construction project we have an architect we have the Board of Education we have the superintendent and they are really programmatic driven they decide program spaces what the school need the NBC doesn't get involved in that what the NBC is is really process driven we're nuts and bolts of the process moving forward the one thing that we do at this point and that we've been doing is project delivery methods there is many different models for capital struction over the
0054050 million dollar range of had the liver project to the public its construction manager as advisor cm as constructor design-bid-build multi-prime these are all terms that everybody's going I don't know what they mean that's okay what we're here to do is to develop an RFP for each one of these for an owners project manager for a construction manager and for construction administration services from our architect that all of these solicit proposals on them all make a presentation to the Board of Selectmen and jointly with the Board of Education and the Board of Selectmen the Board of Finance select the project delivery method going forward which best suits the needs of this project which best suits the needs of our town some larger towns the bridge ports and Stanford's they have full-time committees full-time employees who
006run projects the immiscible building committee in Brookfield that is a group of volunteers and while we all have construction experience and backgrounds during this full-time is a full-time job and we can't dedicate enough of our own time since be the owners project management team so with that we go and we hire other professionals a project manager or construction manager to oversee this process the MBC then has the oversight over at the construction manager along with the Board of Education the Board of Finance and the Board of Selectmen the question is always brought up to us well after the project is approve at referendum who can make changes can the MVC just decide to make changes to scope and the short answer is no we can again we're managing process we're not managing the day-to-day operations
007if there's a scope change or if it looks that the project is going to be over-budget the MVC the architect the engineers the Board of Education and the superintendent will get together and discuss what are the needs of the project what is our budget how can we best modify the scope to suit the programmatic NEADS and bring this project within budget nobody has sole control but is more of a collaborative effort for all team members here in speaking with cholesterin the chairperson of the Board of Education we're gonna make this document available on the district's website for the new school project and this is the high school renovation review committee report it really does a great job of explaining what happened what were the pitfalls and how do we best avoid them and the short
008of it is the way to best avoid them is actually to work together like I said earlier it was a very fragmented process during the high school project at that time not to rehash old memories but we had a First Selectman who didn't like the sitting Municipal Building committee they made an ad-hoc building committee we had a Board of Ed who didn't like a superintendent and there's all these divisions throughout this process what we've seen here throughout the ensuing 12 months that we've been doing this is a great unity amongst all the boards and commissions working together for the common good of the people of Brookfield and for the common good for other children who will be occupying the school but with that I'm going to introduce Jeff from Tecton architects he's going to give
009you a short presentation and I think we're gonna have a question the answer period after that thank you [Music] good evening my name is Jeff was in ski I'm a principal at Tecton architects thank you for all coming out this evening I have a brief presentation about 15-20 minutes to go over kind of the whole process that we went through in the presentation of the preferred option the slide that's up there is a slide that you may be familiar with we presented at all the previous public forums it summarizes the four existing schools their vintages the year they were built and then the student current student enrollment and really the point is that the average age of the buildings is 60 plus years in the average age of the additions is 17 so seven and
010huckleberry being the I guess the babies of the group if you will so as we worked over the last sites a year here in a couple months now we started back in December of seventeen we've been what we work through a strategic facilities group to identify a series of options a capital improvement plan and we came up with defining the problem after all of these studies who came up with defining the problem and and first and foremost it's aging of the existing buildings and they require more maintenance the inefficient of layout of the in kk tional environment the existing layout is difficult to adapt so it's difficult to adapt the existing structures to meet today's current square-foot standards by the state fifth grade is at the middle school so we did a couple surveys in
011that whole process and we found out that there's a preference to move that back to the elementary grade level and they're still in portables at risk' near many of the building systems are at or past their useful life building systems are the HVAC electrical plumbing systems of the building the major infrastructure of your buildings and there's high energy consumption of the schools as well especially the two elementary schools huckleberry being all electric so to summarize kind of the effort in this slide on the left side as a part of those surveys most of the community 98% agree that there is a need here and the schools so everybody understands there is a need and on the right side you'll see as we move through the description of the preferred option the preferred option really touches
012nearly 80 percent of the students in Brookfield and I'll explain in a few minutes so the preferred option why was it selected least disruption to students so wanted to maximize the educational time throughout this process and the option that was selected was to minimize that piece of minimize the disruption it's inherently safer it's further away from the buildings it's not ad rental immediately adjacent to a school it improves the learning environment it's a basically a blank slate it provides maximum flexibility for today to meet today's educational needs today in the future educational needs it solves grades pre-k to 8 in one swing so what it does is that addresses the pre-k through five and this new building but it also right sizes whiskey near middle school putting it back to six seven and eight halves
013the construction time when compared to some new construction compared to existing Adreno it halves it in halves the construction time which limits the disruption to not only the students but the community as well more predictable typically than a renovation and then you'll see as we move through the conceptual site plans it preserves and improves the athletic fields overall so the preferred option you know as a part of the the goal of our effort was to provide an overall master plan so to look at not just the immediate but out far out into the future for all the schools and this preferred option summarized in three schools in total so this phase one is the new pre-k defy it would have house an early childhood Learning Center and then it would create this fifth grade academy
014that is a transitional grade level two to the middle school at demo the existing huckleberry Hill Elementary School and repurpose Elementary and further into the future phase two which would be ten plus years if not more look at whisk inner middle school it's in relatively decent shape and can accommodate the 68 as I mentioned and then Phase three would be targeted improvements over past that ten plus years so the next series of slides are a proof of concept this is not what the building will look like this is what it could look like and the idea is to really identify the program or a conceptual program plan and site plan to show you where the building could sit what it could look like how it could be arranged and all of that is tied to
015the overall square footages in total project costs so what's important and those came out of multiple public forums in the feedback in the surveys and all the meetings that we had with the working groups Early Childhood Center so separating that portion of the school from the remainder portion having potentially having separate parent and bus drop-off the opportunity of combining pre-k through five creates some interesting opportunities such as a shared core space so really leveraging that in the school placing in a location and you'll see in a few minutes how you could arrange it so that the circulation is safe secure and an efficient create grades 2 through 5 potentially in the rear of the building with a 5th grade Academy as I mentioned provide some protected outdoor space kind of in interior courtyards if you
016will not only providing natural daylight into a building but also providing that protected outdoor play area or educational area and then community use so big piece is schools often our community heavily used by the community and there they are community assets and placing things like cafeteria gym kitchen and other multi-purpose areas and in a fashion that could be easily separated from the rest of the building to limit disruption is key so you could place them there in this particular example so this next slide is a conceptual site design just for our interpretation purposes on the right side of the site plan is candle with Lake Road north is directly up on the screen and you'll see a a light area here that's kind of out outlined in red I think I guess it's a darker
017Brown on your screen but that's the existing huckleberry school and you can kind of see how it sits right up on the entrance and for for parents and others that have visited you you understand this location here is the existing curb cut location and the yellow portion back here is the proposed new school so the proposed new school could there's there's grade there topography that steps up about 15 feet from I guess I'd call it the front of the building to the back so it presents an opportunity for the building to step up the hillside at no one point with the building be taller than two stories which we believe is important to these grade levels keeping that scale residential scale quality down and then you can see they are in the relationship of the
018long entrance Drive which alleviates or mitigates potential traffic concerns as you enter for anybody that's entered and trying to pick up the child or drop-off it allows for additional queuing gets them off of Candlewood and then the other opportunities that this creates is the opportunity to create separate drop-off for the early childhood center and the remainder of portion of the school it also presents the opportunity to separate both bus and parent drop-off to really clean up the circulation and then just to reinforce that have separate completely separate entrances for the Early Childhood Center and the basically grades either 2 through 5 or 1 for 5 the conceptual floor plans working from left to right on the screen third floor we'll call it the third floor middle is the second floor and the right is the
019first floor and just to reiterate what you saw on the axonometric view or the bird's eye view was the location of the Early Childhood Center and kind of separated if you will off from the rain main your portion of the building the shared core spaces things like innovation labs media centers multi-purpose rooms all located in areas that are easy easily accessible by all the students and then the potential for creating a 5th grade academy so now to kind of zoom into each each floor level we can highlight some other features that could be incorporated into the project which are those protected outdoor spaces that often times you know the courtyards originally in the 50s and the older buildings are really just a way to bring natural light in but today they really can empower outdoor
020educational classrooms and that would be the intent in this plan and it provides obviously a protected and secure setting for all grade levels now a key piece as we move through some of the concepts in the discussion and dialogue during the public forums was establishing neighborhoods and I we circled them in orange there with the blue connecting dots and what's critical to understand is that no one grade level ever has one no student from any grade level has to pass through another person's neighborhood to get to a shared or common core area and that's key in a building like this and then there was also discussion about the ability to expand and for example it to either universal pre-k K but add to the buildings in a fashion where you wouldn't have to either remove
021portions of it or add modulars design the building or the ends of the building to accommodate this and that can be done in a series of different ways and then really the layout just to reiterate promotes flexibility because you can kind of move grade levels around where you see fit and promotes the transitions between often you'll find pre-k to 1 you'll find between 2 3 & 4 and then again from 5th grade on up until the middle school we also since the last public forum we've also heard other comments and questions relative flexible in specialty spaces and I really just wanted to insert some new slides kind of liven up the presentation but also address some of the comments and this diagram is really orange boxes are represent those shared and core spaces just to
022read and they're about 50% of the total area of the building and what's important to understand and these conceptual plans is the total square footage can be divided pretty much within state standards anyway you really want so we heard conversations about is one Jim enough it's two gems enough we need more art winning more fan all of those details of detailing what's in the space the exact square footages all of those pieces I'm still need to be developed in the detailed programmatic design but just for example I'll drill I'll pick on recreation and assembly for for a minute on this slide on the left side is the center Elementary on the right side is huckleberry Hill and there's some totals there so these are Gemma cafetorium Zoar auditoriums and cafeterias it's all what I wanted
023to do is compare apples to apples so if you take that kind of space in both schools and you total it up it's about fourteen thousand four hundred square feet top left of this slide the proposed if you add up all the proposed areas in the new school it's about twenty-one thousand so it's an increase of about forty five cent percent or sixty five hundred square feet so there is an increase in the in the area alone and there's there's a whole wide range of other considerations that could be contemplated whether it's you know folding partitions curtains mobile mobile walls but also during schematic design and I'll talk about potential next steps if there is a next step what happens that next phase but picking on the cafeteria and gymnasium again you know this was
024the original conceptual pant plan could it be laid out differently within pretty much the same area for two gyms keep the cafeteria move the band around so the alternatives the study will happen we will hear from the community we will address the detailed concerns of each of these spaces I just wanted to illustrate that it this really is proof of concept and we're getting there and and we hear your concerns and they would be they will be addressed so just to summarize again clockwise around the development of the early childhood center the protected outdoor spaces the fifth grade academy that greats two through five kind of sitting up on the hill in the back the front piece being that community use and I think I failed to mention but that offers the opportunity create a
025shelter on this side of town with the kitchen cafeteria gym all located up front next to the parking the shared core spaces and obviously the separate entry and drop-offs so very briefly next steps if it were to happen we would obviously continue detailed discussions with the stakeholders continue our conversations with various community groups and surveys and get their input study alternative design options of course and then really develop detailed program programming and what that means is it's a list of each space the areas that discuss the flexibility of what needs to be in each room set up equipment everything soup-to-nuts in each of the program programmatic elements and then continue with board review and meetings and of course we've had many meetings already but we would continue with the NBC Board of Ed Board of
026Selectmen finance communication keeping people informed is key but including comprehensive groups like Public Safety Building Park and Recreation so this is just a short list but having that dialogue early and often is important the next series of slides are really just opportunities that that may exist in a new school design and think of the outdoors more of educational classrooms than really just the space that you walk to get to the building think about flexible spaces and natural day lighting and how that could impact the quality of the educational space and the flexibility and the ability for for students to want to learn in different spaces take every advantage every opportunity and every advantage you can in making spaces for learning environments so classrooms yes but quarters aren't just quarters anymore they become classrooms and these
027are some just some examples of what could exist the flexibility in today's environment even in in previous in in history and in those environments in those schools flexibility is very important to the educational learning and then really drill down into okay how do you teach as it's student-centered learning is that project-based learning is a combination allow for personalization as much as we want flexibility you still need to allow comfort and personalization so all of these elements will will need to be incorporated in the future phases of the project so okay so everybody's probably looking at the right side and orange the big number so we'll start there the bond referendum 78 million the cost a book filled after the anticipated state reimbursement is 63 million and change how do we get there so again forgive
028me if for those that have attended the previous forms because I think I went through these quite a bit but I'll try to go fairly quickly you take the grade levels and you take the projected enrollment so that enrollment there is the is the for each grade is the highest projected enrollment in an eight year period and that's what the state wants to see you multiply that by the allowable maximum allowable square footage by the state and you get a bunch of areas the total students is 1138 that's a projected enrollment you come back you take the area it's 138 thousand 852 so that's the size of the new building overall that's what the state says that that's what you can build that's what will reimburse then you come down to the project cost summary
029and you look we're developing because we're going a little further back about sixteen and a half acres and we use kind of a all these costs or kind of middle range costs as far as the overall type of construction based on historical averages and they're escalated to the midpoint of construction or proposed construction so that would be either late 2020 or early 2021 so you take the site cost and they cost per acre you take the proposed vehicular parking lots which is around 255 260 spaces you take the new building 138 thousand times the what we see is the average cost for new new new building of this type escalated we're gonna demo the existing school after we're done with the new construction and it comes up with the sub total cost and then there's
030all the soft costs and I won't get into the detail of soft cost but I like to use the analogy if you flip the building upside down you shake it out everything that comes out your your furniture your tables your desks your chairs the engineers the surveys that you need to do everything that's kind of loose and soft around the building is about on average 18 and a quarter percent of your sub total so that's what that twelve million dollars is so so that's kind of a soup to nuts list the the Opium that you were referring to earlier those costs are in there so that is turnkey costs if you add those two together so if you add them together it's 78 million dollars which you see up here in the on the far
031right you take the state reimbursement which is currently at 4 for new new building construction 22.5 and so they'll give the state will give them around 17.5 assuming you hit all their checklists and review and and qualify and and make sure they you're on that priority list and there's a list of ineligible zand eligibles that you have to go through on average we've seen that around three and a half so we were trying to be as conservative as it could and the total estimated cost of Brookfield is is the number in the bottom here the 63 million so that's kind of how we got there there's a lot more detail behind it but I think you've heard enough tax impact analysis unfortunately Marsha I think is a way but I basically took there was a
032she did a fantastic presentation to the Board of Selectmen and the Board of Finance this one this information was taken from November 5th presentation and there's a lot more in that presentation so I would encourage you to look at it comprehensive analysis of the entire town and all their costs this slide is relative to this to this project to this school and what you see and this is just the 10-year projection you see there's really no impact for the first three years and then we try to give the numbers in a couple different ways yearly and then monthly and you can kind of see it's starts in the 363 350 range and then works works its way down and is modified so that's kind of a snapshot and it's all based on the average assess
033of a house at three hundred and forty thousand but I would if you're interested in all the detail back up all of it's shown in that presentation which I believe is posted this information was also some of it was collected from that presentation and this is kind of if if you don't proceed and these are just kind of generalities but things to consider the market value of the homes the impact of a commercial and residential development the educational of education of the students of course hiring and recruiting and retaining is becomes a challenge and then as part of our work we did the capital improvement plan and was a ten-year capital improvement plan for all the schools all four and what we did is we just took a snapshot of the first immediate in first
034three years one two three and it kind of gives you a sense of just just to keep up with the deficiencies that we've identified and again I just summarized them in general numbers and there's a lot more to them there's gonna be some costs so thank you very much for for allowing me present and I'd like to turn it back over to the first elect men oh I'm sorry Wendy [Music] all right um mmm thank you very much for that Jeff I hadn't seen that information before I'm sure it informed a lot of us we're gonna move to discussion questions and comments so there are some ground rules I'm sure many of you are familiar but just in case this is your first time the way we're gonna do this is that folks who wish
035to speak come down to the podium here on the roll our left the discussion is to clear up people's questions to give voice to your concerns to give us all the information that we as citizens as residents need to consider as we think about how we're going to vote on the referendum so please keep that in mind we ask that you limit your comments to three minutes so think ahead about the points you want to make and try to frame them as lucidly as possible I'm gonna have my phone up here to keep track of time and that's not to be like your mom or a jerk or whatever but it's to make sure that everybody who's got something to say is able to ask questions of the of the panel and to get their
036opinions heard also when you do come up please initially state your name and your address for the public record it's important that we capture that and address your comments to me or to the folks on the panel Thanks so let's start discussion [Music] that's amazing shukran is my chance Hannah shaker 87 Longmeadow Hill Road I really don't have a question but I can't have no one speak but I think could you maybe explain that when the design the actual design is formulated who will be doing that and does the community have input into that but you know who decides what it's gonna be the final concept sure so I'll speak to kind of the next steps and then one of the next steps would be the schematic design process and I tried to kind of
037summarize it in the presentation but who is involved of course the user groups which would be the superintendent principal and the students and the faculty and staff would be kind of the day-to-day discussion relative to the program and the programmatic needs and what happens as far as the process during schematic design is there will be a development of a series of options additional options to what what you see here and it's really the idea is it's cheaper on paper you need to study you need to fully vet all options for this particular site we developed them with the committee's various different committees we would do a similar type of public forum interactive public forum to get solicit feedback and make adjustments to that and as you go through schematic design the the intent is to
038kind of narrow down to the preferred option with more detail to that preferred option and move on to what would be called the next phase which is design development which is basically taking each room now and looking at each room on okay where do you want the outlets where do you want the sinks where do you want the windows so that's sure so the process to hire of the various different consultants I believe goes through the Municipal Building Committee and mr. Cecco can speak to kind of that process in a little bit more detail and he spoke to typically what you have or at least what we've seen these days on projects of this kind of order magnitude is you have the professional design team which is the architect of the series of site engineers
039building engineers all those kinds of peat design professionals you would have owners project manager which is really the eyes and ears I guess it's the I guess what some may refer to as the clerk of the works in the old old days were that was really a clerk or the works on the site well that's expanded to an older uns project manager which handles like a lot more handles all of the kind of day-to-day for from the owner so so that you would have that group and then oftentimes you would have some kind of relationship with a cm whether it's CMR cm at risk in as a adviser so you have a team of three working most likely with the Municipal Building Committee so that process needs to go underway but let's just say after
040this and if there's a successful referendum there's a series of and I have a checklist but there's a checklist from the state that needs to be submitted by June 30th financial support and funding is a key one there's educational specifications that needs to be submitted there's a pool of those educational specifications from the Board of Education there's a series of site plan and analyses that need to be completed a cost estimate so there's probably about eight or nine items along with this checklist that that in fact the superintendent needs to submit to the state by June 30th so that goes in they look at it December 15th the state comes out with what's called a priority list and they're gonna tell you where you fall on a B or C you hope that you're in
041the am vs a in particular and then they send that list to an educational subcommittee that in order to so that's the list that comes out they'll send that through the kind of the legislative process whenever that happens in bet in the best of times it's early spring a couple years ago was longer then they'll approve you that means you have the ability to proceed with construction so I hopefully I know it's a little bit long-winded but there's there's a series of multiple steps that need to happen I guess in my mind if I was the community that the first step is to what happened what do we need to do for June thirtieth and that's those kind of seven or eight pieces I wanted to emphasize as well that the design phase for a
042project of this magnitude runs into the millions of dollars and that is in these soft costs of the project but it's nothing that we can spend without getting the project approved a referendum first so that's why we start with a conceptual plan and then go into the detailed design phase after approval referendum Howard last one 116 tower wrote just a quick question on process the the purpose of meeting is to set the date for the referendum is there any statutory rationale for the specific march date is there any reason it couldn't be the tie the same two months later the time we vote on the budget combined with that budget bug I'll let you go in just a second Oh if we don't think if you get two ones later we won't make the June
04330th cutoff for the design stage to submit it to the state and with the way the state's finances are going we're very worried that we might get cut in the state grant June is after May so this design takes a while it takes more than two months yeah so I don't see that is an impediment by charter the maximum amount of time from tonight would be 90 days in order to have the referendum showing us in South Mountain Road with these designs affect the or improve the daily schedule the students or I'm thinking in terms of like you know there's staggered lunch times during the day and it just seems like 10 o'clock in the morning is kind of a odd time to eat and that's because the design of the cafeteria here at the
044squat in accommodating the amount of students so yes absolutely when you have the conceptual design in the cafeteria that'll be dedicated as a cafeteria and then when so we can accommodate more students and we can get the kids earlier and it won't have to be used as other spaces if we do our design correctly in terms of gymnasium space auditorium space music space and it won't have to double up and that's not another part of the problem so it's all its size its capacity of the kitchen and it's properly designing that as well as the consideration of it's not necessarily a cafetorium an AZ 'm combination room it's dedicated to cafeteria so that is something we definitely could address in addition to that strategically as a board and administration were embarking over the next really
045frankly 18 months really starting to look at time study not only people heard about school start times and that kind of a thing healthy school start times but in addition to that really analyzing our time in general and analyzing our schedules so we're looking at all of that thank you you're very welcome Betsie McIlvain one to seven Longmeadow Hill Road I like the proposal so far I like particularly that it suggests a new building allowing you to design it for much more educational activity than is currently available in old buildings I recommend and I'm sure you're doing it the best thing you can put into it is flexibility flexibility to say yes now we've got a 3d printer room it's not going to be there ten years from now it's unlikely that maker spaces are
046going to be the thing that we need we'll need something else and so we need a flexible space to put those in so I on that point I think a new building really is a better solution I also as chairman of the library board there was an article in patch about this project and at the end it quoted a couple of things about the library project that we put forward mr. Benjamin the author confused the size of what we proposed 35,000 square feet and said it was 35 million dollars I thought wouldn't that have been wonderful no it was not um I also think there was some miscommunication and misinterpretation with mr. Dunnan about what the Library Board considers for center school people have been suggesting center school to the library ever since I've been
047in this town the library board has not made a decision the library board will look at any available space when it becomes available clearly center school is not currently available for anything but an element school so we're happy to to have that and if it's possible we will look at it but again I wouldn't really like to say this is a good design with the new building thank you thanks rich grill I live on Christianly got a few ideas I enjoyed the proposal it's very good and the first thing I'd like to comment on him was the legal notice in the paper and particularly C and D no D and E on an legal knows this gives authority for people to make agreements with the state this is where I believe with the state and
048it's caught caught boss if you read this notice I I would disagree on any project giving a representative car wash without approval of the community the next thing this was a great proposal for a new school but I would like to see proposal for modification of existing school my educational background I was very interested in science and believe me I didn't go to school that was really that well constructed you know in the old days they didn't have all these modern for sois but had very good teachers and I was very interested in the school made me interested because at that time they didn't have a piece courses but they I had to go a special school to get them at that time and believe me it worked the AAP was great I loved science
049and there's other factors in education and there's motivation of children at early ages my son was very motivated early ages so it had to do with the schooling and what we did with him but I have one other comment about how communications are done in the town and a proposal that when you do any kind of budget proposal that on the ballot itself you give the alternatives and the impact on the taxes with the vote so it's right there you know exactly what you're voting for and the u-turn there might be a third alternative in this proposal and that is to reconsider and go back to square one this is a big project and it's got to be done right and facilities should be really top-notch if you're gonna spend this kind of money Richard
050you're over here three yeah okay but what I want to say was that I think there should be other considerations in the school that haven't been addressed and that is how you motivate students and by motivation I mean what is invoke in a student in in the student body football or science it's a toss-up I was motivated by science I loved sports I was great sports I loved it much more the vote on the on the date okay thank you but think about that as an important objective in all the schools motivation students thank you are there further comments or questions okay because this resolution must be voted on at referendum there is no vote on it tonight I'm sorry did you have a question as well okay sure Laura Laura Oregon 95 Stony Hill
051Road so I just want to thank you for this presentation for the whole process from start to finish I think this was really thorough and I wish that this was a full auditorium but for those of us that are here and maybe those of us that will watch us later and as we consider this as a community I think it's incumbent on all of us to know what's been done and to consider the fact that this is not a school for me right or a school for you or you this is a school for the whole community [Music] and so we have to consider whether or not it meets the needs of the community I may not agree with this piece or that piece but that doesn't mean that it's not the right project for
052the town there the fact that there have been multiple versions multiple proposals considered that we're all presented to the town I think you gave us lots of information you explained the process really well and whether or not each person is aware of all the work that was done that went into this up until this point rather than objecting and saying why didn't you ask me this or you know how come you didn't do that you know I think it's it's incumbent on each of us as we make the decision to find out well what was done well why didn't you know you think of this or include that because from everything I've heard so far there's not been an objection raised or a question asked that hasn't had an answer so I I think I
053think I support this proposal 100% I think it's great and I would just ask that each of us consider whether or not this works through the town as a whole so I think it does thank you very much are there any further comments if not all close discussion and because this resolution must be voted on at a referendum there is no vote on it tonight but the town meeting tonight does need to set a referendum date which is the next resolution so resolution number to vote on referendum date can I get a motion from the floor and please state your name when you make a motion can I get a motion from the floor to set Tuesday March 5th from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. as the date and time for the new school project
054referendum thank you and is there a second thanks Kim is there any discussion on this okay can we get um yes Richard um Steve would you would you like to address that I feel like Howard's question and and Tom's come in about the the statutory and that by charter sort of hems us into this yeah we do have some time constraints as Tom Peter had mentioned we have to have this vote within 45 to 90 days of the Town Meeting the second consideration which is more important I think a lot of you have seen the overall plan with the timeline that we have going out three years for the development and building of this building the critical point there in my mind is June 30th if we don't get our design into the state by
055June 30th we have to wait a whole nother year in another year we'll have no idea where the state's finances will be right now the state is saying we'll get 22 and a half percent as their grant to the town my guess is in the future those numbers will go down we'll still have to build a school and we'll get less from the state so this process people a couple people have said to me why this is really getting rushed and nothing could be further from the truth the Board of Ed started on this project almost three years ago with design with hiring tacked on with having I don't know 20 or 30 public meetings so this process has been going on for three years I know a lot of people in town haven't been
056seeing that but it has been happening if you go back to the Board of Ed meetings back to the presentations back to the meetings that we've had with the input from the town we started with ten proposals we the Board of Ed has worked their way down to four and now to one they've done a phenomenal job on this so I would strongly recommend we set the state for March 5th so that we don't lose state funding and we can move forward with this project Tom this is a question for you yes Oh what is what is your question all depends on the the magnitude of the weather event if the town facilities can be opened from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. then the vote will take place some people may not be able to
057make it but that does happen but otherwise it would go on it does it does just like if everybody shows up on a sunny day more people showed up and that vote holds - so with that we're gonna do a voice vote to set the date for the referendum for Tuesday March 5th from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. all in favor say aye all in favour I mean all opposed say nay ok so it has passed with that our business is concluded so can I get a motion to adjourn mr. Harding thank you and can I get a second great thanks so much have a good evening folks [Music]