Board of Education School Facilities Committee Public Forum

001what you're going to be seeing tonight and if it is voted upon by the Board of Education which goes to the selectmen which goes to the Board of Finance which they decide whether or not to send it to forum that's when you will be asked as taxpayers to vote so anything that we're presenting tonight is just our findings and please go out and vote on Tuesday it's very important without further ado I'd like to welcome first selectmen Steve ton Board of Finance chairman Shaun Hathorne chairman of the board of education Colette's term co-chairman Bob Beldon our favorite state Rep Steve Harding then committee members sue Slater I can't see joy goldstein Kristina Zimmerman Eileen cook Paul Loftus and superintendent barillaz hiding from us he's hiding from us don't listen to him okay following the presentation

002there will be time for a question and answers and as in the last meeting we will also be having a survey for those who wish to answer to give your opinion and to send us on our next direction thank you very much for coming [Music] good evening my name is Jeff was in ski I'm principal at Tecton architects were the architectural firm working on the facilities master plan for the town as even mentioned I have a brief agenda here to to go over you've already went over the introductions I'll hit are members of the team on the next slide but I wanted to recap and outline the goals of the project just to recollect our main mission talked about the work completed so far the basis of the proposed options so how we set up

003the options that we're presenting this evening then of course we'll go through those options and discuss scope cost timeframe pros and cons of each and then talk about the next steps and questions and answers so tech town architects have mentioned Stephen Mellon bonuses here from Tecton architects as well we have representation from Derrick bride from CES mechanical electrical plumbing engineer and then Maloney McBroom Ranchi Milewski landscape architects so our full team is here this evening just a few slides relative to the communication that has occurred since the last public forum which was the existing conditions where we reviewed the existing conditions back in March late March and the 27th we've had multiple community outreach meetings several different formats focus groups at the high school and meetings with all the PTO folks from all the schools

004in addition to that we've met with all a lot of the faculty staff administrators principals to talk about the programmatic needs as well Eve mentioned the community survey from our initial presentation I'd like to just go over quickly some of the results of that because those some of those results informed kind of where we were we proceeded in some of the planning options the check the website for upcoming committee meeting dates they're public they're open to the public typically they're once a month sometimes twice ma depending on what's on the agenda and then of course there's a Facebook page after the public forum basically the the next day we created a brochure that we use for these community outreach meetings that was really just a flyer that that spoke to the facts of the case

005you know the goals of the project scope of work gave a overall project timetable and then some questions and answers that are typically asked when we tried to head those off and then where you could find things as we progress through through this master plan so some of the initial survey results I'll go over statistics I have a slow a few slides on that but there is also a portion of the survey that that offered an opportunity to to answer some of your own comments and and some of these are identified here as far as huckleberry and Center need to be addressed as a whole or some of the comments safety modernization came out of a lot of the survey results and I pulled I think there was a total of about 15 questions I

006pulled about five of them and relative to to what we're discussing this evening and the first one was how satisfied are you with the physical condition of the schools overall and overwhelmingly or the majority said not satisfied overall and then one of the the related questions the next one in fact was do you feel there's a need to address the physical conditions and and I think what's interesting is there was an immediate concern a large majority said immediate concern but 42% said their concern but want a comprehensive approach and and that's the goal of this project of this master plan is a comprehensive approach looking at all four schools plan it out so that over the decade even into the future past that you have a game plan for your for your schools some other

007questions what schools may need the most work overwhelmingly so the first choice with center and Huckleberry's so we we took that to heart and some of our planning options where you know as far as grade structure we looked at a whole host of options up to ten that I'm not really going to go over all of them I'm gonna go over four but we're grade five should be so some of the options we looked at were great related the great configuration as well and I'm sorry overwhelmingly the answer was that it belonged in the elementary school level back and not in the middle school and lastly what improvements would you'd like to see and and I think there was really a combination of answers but the large majority I think it was interesting and telling

008is similar to the first few questions were it doesn't really matter as long as it's a comprehensive approach so they weren't concerned if it was additions renovations new construction they just want to have a comprehensive approach so that really set up our next phase of planning and as you had mentioned this is right there in the bottom is the the website for this evenings survey so please you I think it'll be live right after this immediately after this and then we'll have hard copies available as well the results from the first surveys over 600 plus really helped us informed us in that in the next planning step so we want to hear the feedback I mentioned the goal as a as a plan for the next ten years this is just recapping we did the

009existing conditions we're still kind of putting all that into a booklet and prioritizing it we're trying to engage the community along the way to understand where their needs are overall as I mentioned it's a sustainable approach and it's a combination of potentially large capital improvement projects and then yearly projects that like windows and roofs so tie it all together so you're not you don't have to undo things you know your after you completed them okay so we're completed so far we're wrapping up the existing conditions I told you about the numerous stakeholder input meetings in addition to these public forums we've reviewed and updated the demographics that the update to the demographics and I know this is sort of a hot topic in this community and the surrounding community is real relative to the amount

010of development central development you see the updates that we received are related to the population that you see today in the schools so it's based on the cords viable method and it's not necessarily taking all of that into place but I'll get into what we did to kind of counteract that or to accommodate that in our and our planning options we developed a series of options scope cost reimbursement pros and cons in timeframe and we we narrowed the ten down to four and we we started with numerical and then for this evening we went a through D just to keep it clean so even mentioned the purpose of tonight is to inform the public and to ask questions to listen to your questions and understand where we're headed with this so what's important is there

011is no preferred option at this point it hasn't been identified there's four options on the table we want to hear the feedback tonight on those four options both positive and negative of course it would be creative most if it was positive but that's okay are there other options to consider did we miss something is there is there a modification to an option that you see that you'd like us to explore we need we can look certainly entertain that and then what are your primary concerns out of the presentation this evening so the basis for the options how we set up each option and it's it's basically set up in a in a very strict method and it starts with the enrollment projections so there's a state checklist there's twelve items on a state checklist they

012have to fill out in order to say okay here state this is our project we want to we want your reimbursement so part of that checklist includes enrollment projections and what you do is you take typically you take the the highest enrollment over eight year period so and in that eight year period is when you submit the application and the updates that we received you'll see over basically the 2018 all the way up to 2028 period for the schools overall they've remained relatively now you take those projections you buy each grade and depending on your school configuration for example if you have a kata - with 300 students you take you take the 300 here and you take oops 124 square foot per pupil so what that is so you take the number of students

013in the school times the square footage and that gives you the maximum building that the state will allow you to build that they'll reimburse you can go you can build twice as much but you're paying out of your pocket for that that second half okay so that's kind of how we started developing the program and then for each existing school we put all the statistics into the spreadsheet because they are they're going to inform the options so we did we developed the total site area both in square foot and acreage the gross square foot and the middle there is the gross square foot per building and that's directly related to the amount of students in in the building so you're gonna again you'll take the number of students times the maximum allowable and that's what

014it's gonna yield and I'll show you example in a moment and then the grade level configurations as they exist today so pre-k through 1/4 Center now on the the current enrollment is here and for purposes of our planning options we increased all of the grade levels by a 5% margin in order to accommodate even though the projections that were submitted from melona mcbroom our consultant projected out a level enrollment we increased in 5% well and - to accommodate some of the growth that that we think may occur then we took each site and placed it on a diagram the well actually is the both Elementary's in the middle school high school was treated a little bit differently so the yellow outline is the property line you could see the outline of the building and the

015white and then there's these numbers there that indicate the level of topography above basically sea level so 485 on the right side 485 to 440 there's a basically in that span there there's a 45 foot drop from the building to about I'd say about maybe a hundred feet down so the reason why we we identified those those key kind of elevations is because it that to us indicates that it's really not a place that you can build same thing on the left side of the site it's relatively flat but then as soon as immediately thereafter the property line it drops so you'll see that diagrammed consistently through the three of the schools huckleberries set up the same way so huckleberry the total gross square footage is sixty seven thousand and currently you have two three

016and four so you have about five hundred and thirty students in in the building if you take those same grade levels and you project out with a five percent increase you have about five hundred and fifty five and then here's the site for Huckleberry the front part of the site is I would say relatively flat across the span of across Candlewood Lake Road between three ninety five on the bottom to the top of the corner there's four fifteen so it's it's relatively fly I know there's a long hill that comes down but and then you see the obviously the school parking and then there's this this piece that kind of it's this blue shade that kind of cuts through through the site that's the 500-year floodplain and that's important because that's where Ryan tells me

017that we can't put buildings we can't go in there to put buildings a week we can go in there for parking with some some approvals we'll have to get a lot of different approvals through their various different ways to mitigate but that's an important piece to know about this site where that's a 500-year floodplain and some of it's been channelized actually under one of the existing fields the middle-school larger site largest probably with exception of the high school 20 acres gross square-foot 125,000 grades five through eight so it's 884 students projected to be 928 there's the site similar to Parker topographies for our challenges related we're there towards the edges of the site it drops off quite a bit but there is because of the fields that you've leveled them out and a decent area

018so that may come into play in the future should you want to consider either additions and renovations or new on this site so the high school we summarized in the square footages and one of the challenges with the high school is that it went underwent a renovation in 2006 and the state doesn't really want you to go back into school that they they provide a reimbursement for for at least 20 25 years so if there's areas in the building that you didn't touch you can go back in with isolated alterations or renovations but it becomes a little bit more complicated and that's why we chose to to list out capital capital improvements specific improvements like locker rooms for example for improvements so some of the clarifications and assumptions these are all the the fine print

019but the important ones are item 3 which is all the numbers that you see tonight or not for today they're for 2021 so the idea is that you project and escalate as best you can your total project costs to the midpoint potential midpoint of construction ok so that so even though the dollars even though we're showing the dollars today it's really more or less three years from now okay the reimbursement rates that were showing which is your thirty two point five and twenty two point five are the current rate that the state has published as a 418 so those change based on the demographics and a variety of different elements but they will change probably not dramatically so we use those numbers and then I already spoke to the maximum allowable area and then we'll

020get into soft costs in a minute so the cost summary table so what's important in all the options is that we treat all the options equal as far as the costs all right and then add either premiums or deduct deduct items based upon what that option what the scope of that option includes so for site improvements you'll see I won't read all of them but elements like site improvement its by acre these are order of magnitude costs now and then as we move forward and developing you know refining design it starts getting down into square foots per each kind of building system but these are order of magnitude meaning cost per acre for development cost per parking space demolition costs per square foot new and renovation costs now these numbers are important which the 335

021and 415 our construction cost kind of bit cause those are escalated to 2021 and those are we picked the mid range right of of renovations can you do it for 200 bucks a square foot sure but you're not you're gonna do far less you're you're probably not going to be able to address many or if any of the programmatic needs in a renovation so we we didn't shoot for the stars we would kind of pick the median which is important for both new and renovations soft costs are eighteen and a quarter on average part of 18% of the total construction and then you have your reimbursement rate for new here's another important piece that you need to keep in mind as we move through the options new is 10% less than renovate as new or

022addition and alterations or renovations okay there's some exclusions in there if you can kind of prove that the new is less than the Rhino we can get into that but for purposes of this study that's how the state sets this up and then there's a list of probably a 12-page list of in like computers that the that typically are part of soft costs are part of a project when you're when you're renovating as new that aren't reimbursed by the state so we pulled that part out and we were conservative with that number because that interpretation is written into the law but some some there's a little bit of areas for room for interpretation and and they've chose recently to include more in eligibles than the not the soft costs so if you took the building

023that we're sitting in turned it upside down and shook it everything that came out all the furniture all the architects and engineers all of those costs are the soft costs okay and that's what totals you're 18 and a quarter percent so it's it's all the testing before and during construction to make sure you know the steel joints are correct in the concrete's right so it's all it's all cost that you will see it's contingencies it's legal costs its technology furniture it's an important piece so the the number that you'll see the final number are kind of on the bottom that I think everybody will be focusing in on is the total project cost which is inclusive of all of that it's not just the construction okay so those are the numbers that that we're gonna

024go through so I already mentioned costs are based on historical averages I just want to reiterate that there will be refinements to these costs based on once preferred options are kind of narrowed down and we get a little more specific and these don't include any kind of operational cost savings or or premiums for any kind of additional site logistics or multi-phase renovations in excess of I mean obviously some of the options we already knew we had the two-phase but if there's excessive phasing like you know limited areas where we can get into a certain point then that's gonna be a premium to the project okay so part of the challenge as as you see from some of the site plans we went over is there's really no room to move on these sites I mean

025it's it's tight so we took the opportunity to look at this was a study I think generated four fields a list of all the town owned property looked through probably I'd say six dozen properties and you know I would say nearly all of them were found to be inadequate because of topography wetlands access with exception to ones that I thought were great until I understood that they were dedicated open space so those are sites like happy landings right it's a it's a great site but we found you know actually Ryan found the legislation that it's dedicated open space so ok that one goes out hey this Nabi Road looks you know it's relatively flat let's that's maybe I know I was excited about this when I came back and saw the sign dedicated open space

026and then I said alright you know we're meeting you know with the in this building I see a field out there there's a that's behind the town building there on Pocono Road there's a soccer fields are located here the new Greenway Trail is there and that's Pocono so there's this this property that white footprint is about fifty thousand square foot so could it fit there yeah but it's probably gonna be a tall building so you know we took a shot at a lot of different sites and then it's other one where this was off of a part of the Greenway that that was just completed that was a site that looked reasonable and then you go out and you look and it's just just been completed for for the walkway so we took a swing

027at as many sites that we knew from a town own perspective yes there are private properties that are available the challenge with that and you'll see is some of the pros and cons of the new versus renovation you know that it's gonna add some time to the project and probably cost unless there's somebody that wants to step forward and donate so I mentioned I'm not gonna go over these in detail because I want to spend most of the time on the four we looked at a whole host of options and we looked at them from scope cost grade structure the pros and cons and all the way from new site stub to existing sites maybe just renovate what you have we looked at the population you know each option and you know what that grade

028structure would mean with the projections like how how many students in each building you know pre-k 2 for pre-k de to pre-k to 5 so we looked at a variety of options and then we put it into this is more or less for me to simplify you know what what what's good and bad about the things on the Left cost duration disruption the students and faculty and staff quality aesthetics parent and bus drop-off you know the the some of the comments that we received the first go-round of as far as the traffic source circulation and some of these sites is a challenge safety obviously a big one now fields and site amenities and then 21st century educational space so we we kind of I mean it's I don't mean to joke about this we the

029committee did spend a lot of time looking at and they made their own charts to figure out you know the pros and cons of each and we had this discussion and we ultimately narrowed it down to four which I then promptly Renate relabeled a B C and D and Eve kind of touched upon the the first one and we'll get into that in a little bit more detail so there's obviously a theme going right so there's new and renovators new for some of these larger capital projects and some of the benefits to new and and some of the challenges and I'm sure there's I'm sure people in in the room tonight can think of many more on each side but the benefits of a new are it obviously provides flexibility for the layout for both

030the building and the site so it you could with the new building resolve all the site bus parent drop-off challenges in an ideal world and provide the flexibility in the in the building itself for the 21st century learning environments you can incorporate septet the the crime prevention through Environmental Design safety features a placement visibility of the building onto the parking control parking all the things that you would do or should do in today's new school buildings it limits it doesn't in some instances that might eliminate disruptions to the to the students faculty staff community during construction depending on obviously if it's a new site or existing site provides a little bit more opportunity or actually a lot more opportunity for efficient layout you know getting rid of the long winding corridors because you added to

031the buildings over time and it also with compacting the footprint and the volume of the building obviously is going to lead to an energy efficient more energy efficient building so you know part of the challenges as we reviewed on the existing conditions were that the buildings in some instances have been added to an attitude that's fine we you get all that but what the net result of that is it becomes a little bit more inefficient layout therefore meaning more dollars to heat and maintain and those kinds of things benefits a new 30 plus years obviously and then could be a shorter time frame during construction if you have land available challenges could be more costly you know you got to deal with the infrastructure if you have to buy land that could be a cost

032you could impact the overall timeframe if obviously if you have to buy land because then you have to go through all another referendum process it's ten percent less reimbursement as I highlighted before versus compared to renovate as new you're dealing with some unknowns obviously you would do your due diligence to to kind of mitigate those but unknown conditions like wetlands and geotechnical those kinds of things may require lengthy land approvals if on a new site you know dealing with setbacks neighbors all kinds of different things during the land use approvals and you have to meet in a new building you have to meet unless you want to pay for the square footage you have to meet the maximum allowable areas renovate is new benefits and challenges you utilizes the existing assets in place and you

033have to win and renovate this new extend them for at least twenty years so his new project that means that you know if your have antiquated mechanical systems all of that's gonna be replaced and a renovate is new and has to last Derek has to sign off on that for 20 plus years so new lighting new mechanical mostly new fire protection almost always all new finishes so don't let me mislead you that renovate is as new as just a few pockets it's it's basically mostly new the challenges are that you have to deal with I'll get into those in a minute but might be a shorter time frame to start the building typically it's longer during construction you get a higher reimbursement may not require additional land so that takes one complication out and you

034can be creative with the modifications within the building but the more you're creative with modifying the existing structure of the building the more cost you're gonna it's more costly it's gonna be so the Delta between new and renovators new it gets closer challenges as I mentioned you have to sign off on 20 additional years so you know you gonna have to do things that if even though you said ah well we can get by with this system for another 10 years you have to upgrade it for 20 that's a challenge sometimes things like so here's dealing with the existing constraints so if you have a 10 foot ceilings in the structure to structure and you want high ceilings because it becomes an engineering space yeah you can raise the roof but it's gonna cost you

035so yeah you get I have to deal with some constraints like ceiling heights and the mass of the building and and circulation corridors you can improve them but you can't eliminate them physical changes to adjust the programmatic needs I just mentioned are less effective challenge of the site you know the site the building is where it is so you it you can improve the traffic but you know your your hands are tied because you can't just pick up the building and move it there may be some additional costs due to sequencing and phasing the the next bullet second-to-last should probably be bolded because this is the typically the biggest discussion you have is the disruption to students faculty staff and I would even extend that to the community because and renovators knew sometimes you lose

036fields sometimes you lose parking sometimes you lose a community space so it's really is disruptive to everybody in the community not just the typical occupants on a daily basis and most times it's a longer time table for construction so option a and I'll let's try to speed up a little bit more here option a is all for schools as currently exists current grade construct current grade configuration but you go in and your renovate everything is new and the net result of those if you didn't do anything other than renovate is new within the building for Center it's 19 million dollars huckleberry it's 21 and Wisc inherits 45 because it's a bigger school so let me go through and detail kind of how we set it up but I gave you the basis so we've already

037kind of seen this but this will change on each option right projected enrollment times the allowed maximum allowable square footage gives you this this tally that's your maximum allowable and so this is interesting the maximum allowable if you were to build Center Elementary today from the state which says you can only build it at 44,000 okay you're at 60 mm so why that occurred I don't know maybe because of general change in state regulations more efficient layouts addition renovations modifications the building I don't know but the variance is 18,000 this requires what we call space waiver from the state so that would be part of the grant application process the cost summary site improvements we've isolated a portion of the site that would be renovated we talked about the current spaces The Renovators new would

038be the total building that gives you your construction costs the soft costs everything like again I shake everything out of the building that's the four million you got to put the students somewhere that's part of the challenge is where do you put the students in any kind of renovation project so maybe you've either leased space or these portables or you got to find something so we carried a cost for that total project cost is 26 million so that would be you know the bills going out the door so to speak the reimbursement coming back would be eight point seven and then of that somewhere around nine hundred thousand would be ineligible we'd obviously try to work that down to as little as possible so the cost to the to the town to Brookfield for just

039renovating Central Elementary to meet all those requirements I outline is 19 million dollars they take that you do the same thing for huckleberry I'm not gonna go over the details set up the same way whisking air is set up the same way so all three of those are set up the same way and then for the high school I've identified what's already been pretty much on on some of the planning books and then we're adding to this is those isolated projects and we'll try to put them in a matrix and prioritize them like parking replacement field improvements there's some retaining wall issues that Ryan had to identified so there's a whole host and we'll prioritize that and try to fit those into maybe they're not capital projects maybe someone can come out of operating not

040sure but that's how the high schools treated in all these options okay so on the right side of this summary slide is option a is gives you the scope grade structure costs for each one of the schools and then approximate schedule the benefits and challenges you know benefits of doing this option are limited site development utilizes existing maintains your existing operating structure nothing much changes as far as the grade structure we heard a lot of comments relative to not so much huckleberry but Center as far as the scale quality of the space it is charming and provides a nice environment for the for the students albeit all the other challenges that exist there with the infrastructure higher reimbursement rate is definitely a benefit on this one challenges limited flexibility to renovate the to address the

041program NEADS so the flexibility future flexibility of 21st whatever you want to call it future educational planning is limited because we're not going in and moving walls around to address those where we may move a few but we're not going in and completely addressing every programmatic requirement impact to the occupants and again like I said the community compared to the cost compared to the end result you know there may not you know you may drive by and say we spent what on you know it's the building is gonna be all kind of new and fresh but it there's not going to be a significant change if somebody drove by and sometimes you're judged on that so and then multiple renovation projects require are required for the elementary school so option B is taking a look

042at hucklebuckle Berryhill elementary and making it a pre-k to five renovate is do with a pre-k to one addition for pre-k to one and in a grade 5 addition so bring in Center up and bring in 5th from whisking er down that's a big number the 47 there is the total cost to Brookfield but what it does isn't that one swing is it addresses those those two schools it addresses the center element center school that the challenge with center school is if there's a an emotional historical attachment to it you know what do you what do you do with it you vacate it do you repurpose it do you sell it that that becomes you know a question that we need to needs to be addressed eventually whiskey near and this is where I'm talking

043so one wouldn't where one could add up all these and say let's go and go for all of it at once or you could take a look at it and say a 47 that that project basically gives me the two elementary schools and gives me space and whiskey near it kind of buys time and whisking air right sizes whisking air and you'll see that in the numbers okay so here's the it's set up the same way projected enrollment now with this option shows a pre-k to five at eleven hundred students and it's the same same math you're basically existing building sixty seven thousand you're basically in this option doubling the size of huckleberries so if you know what huckleberry looks like close your eyes and picture choices big that's that's what this option really is

044bring in pre-k to five all the costs are unit cost per unit are the same the site improvements are modified to address the each each of the square footages in the parking counts and then the soft costs again so everything's you probably don't need any kind of swing space because you could you could put the additions on and then kind of use the additions as your swing space as you as you move around and you'll see that in a minute and then total project cost state reimbursement in eligibles 47 so that's 47 million around 47 million it's the cost of it to Brookfield Wis Kinnear again could be you know the next day or it could be several years down the road you see here what's interesting I'll point out is it's 715 students now

045because it's six through eight with the projection the maximum allowable area and the existing building are pretty close now right around you know nine thousand and change so I call it right sizing kind of puts it back into into the right size which could just instantly without doing anything to it give you some flexibility in that school but if you were to renovate as new these are the costs high school same list will be prioritized in detail so the the conceptual plans that we're gonna show are just that they're conceptual plans they're kind of making through I call them test fits just to make sure that we can do this too so it's not necessarily saying that this is a final solution at all it just means that what would you know doubling the size

046of huckleberry look like work could we put this thing so the gray is the existing the yellow is the new this would be two story back here and potentially connect at points in the building where it makes some sense for those corridors and then the yellow here could be maybe modifications or additions and alterations to the administrative staff to provide another kind of layer of security safety visibility for the site you'll see that there's not much I mean we can certainly work on this and may provide parking down here too but it's the entrance exit or a little bit of a challenge you see that we we've identified a block that could be expanded parking because you're gonna need it because you're doubling school now the other piece that's important when you put this you

047know this size building or you may you had a place basically 130 square feet on this site is it's our strong recommendation that you have secondary means of egress or ingress to the site and that's the Nabi Nabi Road site here and so we are recommending that for anything that we do on huckleberry you see it's consistent that may or may or may not be well received but when you're putting that many students on a site Art's are very strong recommendation that you have to from traffic safety all kinds of different reasons so be benefits and challenges again similar to a limit site development utilizes your existing assets the big one the third one down consolidates the elementary schools avoids the renovation so it basically takes care of almost three schools in one swing where

048you can takes care of the elementary schools and frees up the middle school to kind of move around a little bit so that's big potential to design some improvements to the site and building as a outlined may you know because this is a bigger the order bigger project to order magnitude you probably are gonna you're going to be able to address many more maduk functions in that so you can start blowing out rooms because you are you are adding and renovating so you can start to address many of those needs maintains some of the fields you lost the field and then obviously it's a higher reimbursement so those are all good things challenges are you're dealing with basically where the building is so traffic safety there's obviously there's things we can do not sure it's

049gonna be the ideal but it'll definitely be improved substantial impact to occupants community as I mentioned there may be a premium for sequencing length of construction probably about two and a half years thirty months of construction considering all the phasing the next step is to really start diving into if this becomes a preferred option to start looking at how we break up those chunks of phasing and a logical fashion multiple points of ingress egress I mentioned and reuse or sale of center elementary option C is same grade structure but building a new school on huckleberries site and then you demolish the existing create fields and add parking and it is sixty somewhere around sixty sixty two million dollars wisk a near similar process you could renovate it's new it but it does the same thing

050it frees up whiskey near two four six seven and eight center obviously set could be swing space or vacated or renovate repurpose high school same philosophy same projections on the right side I didn't mention it but the projections are there as far as each the amount of students in each school and then the top is more or less the same actually everything is the same except for all the number shifts new building and then the reimbursement changes so that's why those numbers you know there's a fair amount of swing there but you need your altom utley you're gonna need to start diving into those numbers to compare renovators new and new which kinnear is the same high schools more or less the same so we went just a little bit further to validate that a

051new school the concern or potential concern could be 1,100 students in that grade structure we face it a lot when we communities are not a lot some communities have pre-k to 8th and the challenge with that is making sure that you know there's proper separation in the building for the little ones versus middle school or you know grade 4 or 5 so so these sheets which you probably can't read are all the various different departments it's every space in the building identified so to make sure we have the right number of classrooms right size of the administration the benefit potential benefit of this option is that obviously you're you're sharing those spaces like the cafeteria you're sharing the spaces among more students so there's there's some savings there operational savings there there's some spacial savings

052there and then so when you add all these up on every sheet and I won't go through them all obviously all the toilets all the custodial everything in the building and then there's a factor of 25% for like quarters and wall thicknesses you're at 138 maximum allowable is 138 you know so obviously I was working on the program and trying to make sure that we married up with the maximum buildable but this just proves the theory that it will work so which is important at this phase you need to do that and then this similar to the first conceptual plan I mentioned is a possibility it's not you know a preferred option or it's not what's going to be built it's it's what could happen if you build a new school back on the back

053portion of the site the benefit is you push everything back here you can kind of as far as construction you can kind of stay away from the school area you do lose the feel of the use of the fields during the construction but it has and I'll go over my benefit list some some benefits and challenges maintains the existing and location just wraps it around and this is actually when you look at the topography relatively flat in here so it's a good approach allows plenty of opportunity for eyes on approaching the site provides good separation from bus and parent drop-off so it does some of the things that you couldn't do when you're working around an existing building and obviously there's you know with the number you can see there might be a premium for

054that you we could build this build the parking you'll see consistent with huckleberries site that secondary ingress egress build this move the kids in tear this down and build some fields out here so you don't necessarily have to lose much of anything as far as the fields you'll lose at some point during the construction but not in the endgame and then just as I mentioned you know the separation of you know the the little ones from the fourth and fifth graders which I often have to do at home is important yeah so you'll see that we've developed these smaller pre-k K one kind of neighborhoods that are on one side of the building four and four and five could be up here three four and five could be up here so the older students are

055kind of separated and what's shared is kind of in the center of the building all your admins your lab spaces your maker spaces your media centers your specialty learning spaces art music those kinds of things are kind of shared so you don't have to go through somebody else's neighborhood to get there which is important so I think again this is really just a test fit to prove out that we can do it on the site and it actually you know it'll work it could work the other thing that's important which we heard is obviously these buildings are great community resources for gym you know cafeteria library you know having the ability to block off a section have parking next to it is ideal obviously should be in every every new building for that used as

056far as layers of security so that could be achieved as well again just just test fit to show that it could work benefits and challenges obviously enhances the ability to improve the siting of the building and increases the potential to address all the safety related issues for both building insight gives you opportunity to basically build in flexibility 21st century learning environments a clean slate this option leverages the the asset of the existing site kind of rethinks it recreates this site and utilizes it which is I think I think a good one reduces the disruption to the occupants and I wouldn't say it eliminates it but it reduces it and then it does the same thing as the first two which is consolidates it into the Elementary and frees up questionnaire and Center can be repurposed

057or sold could be more energy efficient and more efficient on a layout as well which would net result may be reduced operating cost in there so that will probably have to study a little bit more detail challenges may be more costly overall the site logistics during construction or something that's gonna have to be addressed obviously any site that has students on it will would be additional lengths for utilities maintaining them and putting them in unknown subsurface conditions for use in Salem entry temporary loss of fields it's not not great but livable and then the multiple points for ingress and egress and it's less less reimbursement so and then the statistics the summary is on on the right here and D is basically this similar to C but on a new site so it's a little

058bit less because you don't have to demo and kind of repurpose the existing site so it's you know 58 you know 59 million the the challenges as I mentioned earlier in the presentation we need a site with scanners similar I just provided an option like I'm whisking air just to contemplate down the road in the future potentially is you know there is enough room to do what I proposed on huckleberries site for whisking air should-should you want to do that like build a new building in the back and recreate the field so I just provided that as an option to consider just seed so it was on a table these sheets are more or less the same that I already mentioned the differences and then the high school that's the Nabi Road I know it's

059maybe off limits I don't know but we just test fit it just to prove that it could could work where you'd have you know parking and fields and you know two-story building is I I already know and I I understand I already got in trouble but we that's our job is to explore all options so we did that but at least you understand what a footprint would look like you really need a site that has about 15 to 20 acres of usable land to to put a building of around 130 140 thousand square feet so the challenges are many of the same benefits and challenges are much of the same up see all it eliminates the disruption which is I think is it is an important one on this and then the challenges are really

060the finding finding a spot and we're all ears on that for sure so similar to how I open the presentation we'd love to hear your initial reactions we'd love to hear questions we may not have all the answers but we'll try to answer them as best we can and if we don't have them get back to you with answers because really what it's about is to talk about these you know all right they feel good are you shocked or anything at all to hear so that we can continue to refine this process so with that I think I'm gonna leave this slide up just for discussion so thank you very much okay so now we're at the portion where we're going to take public comment and answer any of your questions to the best of

061our ability when you come up to ask a question if you could please state your name and the street that you live on for the record that would be helpful normally we do limit the questions to two minutes we don't have a lot of people here so I want to make sure everybody has an opportunity to make sure all of their questions are answered so if you could just you know try to focus on on your question that would be helpful now there's a microphone over on the left hand side excellent thank you sir so I'm Bob Beldon 7 red barn Lane my question is actually a process question these are there's some big variances here on the options as a committee what's the timeline that you're looking at and what it like your next

062steps that you would do after you get the input do surveys and like how do you narrow it down how do you know what's your process and how long does that take so next steps and time frame I'll try to address that as best I can so we're right in the kind of the middle of this this planning process and the intent of this meeting and probably subsequent other meetings is is to get the collect the feedback and then get back to the committee and narrow the options down and narrowing those options down and finalizing a master plan at least our current schedule is to to do that over basically at the summer and into the fall and then item four is to really along the way start looking at which we didn't present this

063evening because other folks have to be involved you know things like tax impact and and and more detailed benefits and concerns so that'll happen over the summer and into the early fall at least according to our our current schedule and then begin you know more public awareness or continue the public awareness meetings during that process and then at some point in the fall weather I'm not sure if that date is it's changed or the same somewhere in the fall put this up for referendum now long term I'm sorry look okay as far as the schedule long term to actually so you need the twelve checklist items if you if you go for referendum and let's just say it's approved you would submit for June 2019 to the state okay with all these other pieces goes

064to the state they look at it they come out with their priority list and December 15th they send that to this to the state for approval and then it goes basically into typically its early spring of so that would be 2020 where it would actually be funded and you'd be you your official number so you can start some of the planning process before that and typically towns do but you can't put a shovel in the ground until that date and this year was on time that year before that because of the challenges with the budget I think that pushed all the way until the following almost fall so you know I guess the long wind answer if you're asking about shovel in the ground it's it's it's a ways out there's probably a couple of

065years at best with the state of submission process but the immediate tasks in front of us are are those right so sorry and then carmine will probably have some other inputs I'm sure so I'd like to now give you some of my feedback on that and so it's the same name and address the bills are big right the lot bigger than we put into our planning the big big piece on whiskey near right and I think we saw that coming when we saw the the condition survey we have to think my input is we have to think long and hard about trying to swallow both the middle school and the elementary school anywhere near one another right and how long could we because we can't as a community I mean you know whether it's 40

066million dollars or 60 million dollars that's a huge bill to absorb you know in our tax base and so I think having the middle school my view is that has to be put off I love the thought of getting it the right sized right that that makes a lot of sense to me I also like the options where we minimize disruption to the kids you know it's really hard when you have children who go through two or three years and there's construction around them all the time and so in my view either using the existing property but building new makes a lot of sense my problem is it costs the cost because of the reimbursement is crazy the difference there so I think it's a hard decision you'll have to face but I would urge

067us to minimize the disruption to the children as much as we possibly can I hadn't focused on the egress access and egress on that site that's that's sort of got to be a priority that we do that your recommendations right on so that's just a couple of inputs thank you Bob and also I do understand it's a huge sticker price and it it is a shock to many but our job as a committee was to report on all four schools not just one school or two schools so that is what we're doing here and again it's up to us and you as a community to give us your feedback whether do you want us to focus on say whiskey near school I'm just gonna pick pick one out renovate that as new first and then

068do huckleberry there's many different scenarios that we can take and that is why we're having the communication and I appreciate it but I wanted to let you know that again just to remind everybody the committee's objective was to report on all four schools as a master plan and not just be focused on one so you are seeing large sticker prices and that is why so thank you and also as an aside the energy cost savings we will see with a new building a fully sustainable building will be astronomical and Tecton plans to present those cost savings to us but we just wanted to narrow down the options a little further because it really involves in-depth engineering and things totally out of my realm of understanding so you do see that if you do renovate it

069I'm not promoting any option but when you do a new building as opposed to renovate as know the savings the cost savings long-term was substantial hi good evening come across a channel six big buckling in preparation for this meeting I tried to access the town's long term capital plan that was put together I'll say within the past 18 months to two years where it sort of detailed the spending in the cost for major town capital projects including the school police roads and the four centers the figures that that are included in this documents have been used for many presentations in the past including one that I intended where the town's financial consultant presented a forecast of spending long-term spending capital costs and interest to the town based on the figures that were included in this

070plan and you guys could correct me if I'm wrong but I think the cost for the school and the plant was in the mid forties with the net costs to a Brookfield in the mid thirties so my question is that you guys look at the strategic capital plan when developing the options and the cost if so why why didn't I see something up there with that if not why not when you when you looked at the potential increases in school in school alignment that 5% increases did you tie it into the plans the the town's development plans if so I think 5% may be right you may not be right I don't know how you got it why not 4 why not 8 one of my bosses told me to be wary of the term

071TBD is it to be deferred or to be determined in any of the case what sort of time frame are we looking at before we have an estimate whether it's the Fertile two years from now five years from now or whether it's going to be determined two years of five years from now and as a taxpayer should I be concerned about any potential cost associated with Brookfield high school or is this included from the assessment there are some options where you had a closure or alternative use of sent to school sent to school is is is an old building but in each one of your options you then have a cause for closure of that building or renewed juice I don't know if what's in it if there's any asbestos in it but I know

072removing that it's a very costly project and since the school was built so long ago my feeling is there could be some so when you talk about closing that and included that in is one of the options I think it's important we know what the cost is for closing it also as is as everyone knows these are some interesting cost figures that you've put out in most cases the cost of that was shown here doubles the town debt doubling the debt means increasing our interest cost which is an operating cost so this does have an impact on the annual town budgets as well as the debt repayment which does impact the town budgets so I'll ask that you consider these options as as you go forward in developing perhaps what these what these were cost

073as a future milray to the taxpayers so we have a full understanding of what we're getting into and can make an appropriate choice I stay in town 24 Lindenwood Drive it's obvious that you guys have done an incredible amount of work here and I appreciate it and I think the town does it's very clear this is well-thought-out I have one question you might be able to answer tonight but and then a couple comments one obviously when we move forward on any of these projects we're going to have to look at the overall net costs of the taxpayers and give them very very specific figures as to what it will cost when it will cost that amount and we will do this these are big numbers there's no doubt about it but it's clear from all

074the conversations that I've had with people in town that instead of mandating jury-rigging doing things looking at it as a whole as you have done is what people want even if we can't do all of this at once we have a plan it's well thought out we've done up to enrollment to future needs and I think you guys have done a really great job so we will look at it this summer as we get closer and closer we'll do the analysis with our financial advisors to advise people and keep in touch I would like to say to the public it was not the job of this committee to look at the cost in terms of mill rate and how we're going to finance it and things like that that wasn't your purview at all so

075I wouldn't expect you to know that and I forgot my question I hate that but if I remember it I'll come back up but I just wanted to thank you all I know this was a lot of work Thanks good evening Steven Harding 21 Brookfield meadows I just kind of wanna I just really just wanted to echo what Steve had said I understand all of all of you get paid a whopping zero dollars to volunteer and put it in the amazing amount of effort and hours and days and weeks into formulating probably what's gonna be most one of our probably the most critical resource project we have ever done in this town and I want to thank you because I don't think it's a it's a thankless position for doing a tremendous amount of work

076and something that's gonna be so vital to our community so thank you and I think is a round of applause in regards it this is exciting for me because I look at this and and and my son will be going to this new school and and and so that's that's the exciting aspect of this because I we are building on the future of this community in these whatever option we choose it's an we have to choose at least one of these options our infrastructure in this community particularly on our schools we have a fantastic school system but our infrastructure really is at a point of disrepair and we really have no choice but to to go into one of these endeavors I'm just gonna say just to make a comment as a state Rep whatever

077I can do in regards to dealing with das and state agencies as well as getting state funding which is a critical aspect to making this project go as smoothly as possible for the community just please keep me in touch and keep me in the loop and whatever I can do to help and get this project going forward I'm here okay thank you thank you mr. Dunham mr. Harding really this committee started almost two years ago I was appointed the end of last July and it's through these people that I'm sitting with here on the table at the table we have done tremendous tremendous work and each one has been of great value to the committee and I thank all of you for your hard work in in a 10 month period we took no plan

078we came up with a bid we put it out to bid we had nine responses from architectural firms we interviewed our top three or four and ultimately we came to the choice of our Tecton Associates who's with us tonight unfortunately this job was stalled for a few months when we went through the governor's budget crisis so it has really begun I would say the past four five months that we have been working diligently on this and the reason why we are working so hard is we did make you a promise and we promised you that we would come forward with this information and also to be transparent because that is also part of the committee so some of the things that you're seeing you're not going to like it but you know what it's it's

079a necessity and it's for making our schools better for our children and for our future generations and again thank you to the committee for your hard work and I'm gonna actually give the microphone over to superintend Burrell you were going to talk about the thirty million dollars no you took care of that okay all right anybody else have any questions excellent rated stuff at 11:00 old woods Road I wanted to throw out a programmatic possibility that I'm not sure was included in the plan since we're doing this anyway and we have to do it I wonder if it would be very forward-thinking by the town to create the space for a universal pre-k program in other words a pre-k program for any student that was of age and want that parents wanted to enter them

080into pre-k primarily because this is coming and anybody who's in education knows that there's a lot of talk about this it also would be a tremendous value and asset to this town to be one of the first towns to offer something like this you talk about people wanting to come here you put in a universal pre-k program they will want to come here and they will want to be part of our school system so there's a return on investment in a lot of ways to bring more people into this town who are interested in that kind of program so I wonder if you could consider including the space for a potential universal pre-k program and consider that as a major programmatic piece thank you carmine ostrich no.6 big buckling I'm sort of interested in in

081in the next steps and and what happens you've presented four options and I I've been reading and hearing that that you're going to or there's a potential for the town to vote on one of these four options in some time towards the end of this year in November that's it that's a pretty short timeframe to go through the pros and cons of these and pick out one option that you want the town residents to vote on are we going to be able to vote on all four or just one and how do you determine which one in and who picks which one is it a combination of the committee plus the selectmen and Board of Finance or you know just what's what sort of process is there to come down to one project understood where

082we go from tonight as a committee is we will wait until we received the results of this survey and take into account community feedback tomorrow Eric will start typing out the comments the questions and the responses and we he will give them to me to review again we wait for a few weeks for the survey to come out we give everyone an opportunity to watch this presentation on YouTube we wait for them to also fill out the survey for us to review it's about like a two to three week process then we meet together as a committee we go through the responses from the survey we talk about the presentation we talk about the strengths and the weaknesses of the presentation and at that point it is really up to the committee to decide whether

083or not they want to explore one option two options four options or no options at that point if we have if everyone is in agreement and we are ready we feel we're ready to go to the Board of Education we would go to the Board of Education with a presentation of the option or options that we feel would be best for the town based upon again your feedback and our opinions and of course with our architect and you know our school staff there they're a big part of this too if we do decide to go to the Board of Education we would give a presentation to them it would be up to them to come back to us with feedback comments questions they may ask us to do further work which we would go back

084and do if they decide to vote on it and go forward then there would be a presentation to the selectmen and then a presentation to the Board of Finance so there's many many layers to this yet though that we have we have to do yes we are planning on for now having a vote in November on this if it is our hope that we get there because we did promise that we would work diligently on it and we did promise to be transparent and I feel that the committee has already been in existence almost two years ten months of which we've been working really diligently on it so it's not like we haven't spent our time working on it and we just made this up in the past month to present it to you there's

085there's been months and months and months of work into this and and researched I lost my train of thought sorry so it all depends on what we find and what we think yes yes absolutely thank you so to to members of our committee art architects and they're both on the economic development committee and they have been of great asset to us it's Paul choco and Josh flowers they are just phenomenal as to what steps we need to take they give us their opinion they helped us along without them the committee has would not have gotten to where it is today so not only do we have Tecton Associates and we have each other we also have two other professionals that are guiding us on this room Howard lasts for 116 Town Road I apologize just

086just a ride but I have been watching you on TV and there's one issue that I think is very important that I wanted to be sure there is an answer in the public record I'm not so concerned about the cost at this point frankly I'm not really that concern about what the parents want I'm more concerned about the educational imperative and what is the best educational environment for our students in that vein in 37 years living in town I've been through this process many many times and during those iterations we've been told I believe that a school shouldn't be more than 800 to 900 students I don't know whether that was from an educational perspective or a management perspective but K through 5 configuration would be I think 1200 students potentially so I think be

087interesting to understand from the educational perspective how does that impact the environment and if you can't address it now I hope that the committee will take that you know under advisement and look into that aspect actually actually is an excellent question I'm going to answer the first part of the question one of the avenues that text Tecton associates had to look at an explorer was they met with our our TSL our our Board of Education members they met with school officials they talked about different grade configuration they talked about what they felt would be best for the Brookfield students so we did have that color they did have that conversation and that is taken into account into this presentation but as far as your question about the 1,200 students I'm going to actually hand the

088microphone over to dr. Burrell thanks Steve thanks Howard it's a great question we've talked about is looking at the facility whether it's the renovate is new or the site the new building and taking a look at that number of students Jeff really articulated well neighborhood in it and really dividing it up by age group appropriately but the other part is not only dividing it up by age groups so we have our kids separated as necessary the other part of it is really staffing the building appropriately and that's the thing we have to really take into consideration I think a lot of times when we talk about larger or smaller schools there is feel and that's why we need to neighborhood these schools or wing off the schools or have for our older children we talk

089about learning to read in the pre-k through 3 years and then reading to learn as we move out of 3 into 4 and 5 in kind of an academy model we have some different things we've been exploring internally and talking about if this was to come to fruition and how we would organize it but really staffing is the key I was involved with in Prior districts with possible to high school towns and bringing them to one high school which would be very large and there were some concerns about that and again it really came down to staffing social workers counselors administrative staff the number of teachers in terms of class size and so forth so really is being able to build those relationships as students are not falling through the cracks and they're taken care

090of properly so that's a big part of that the other part with new is the safety and security measures layout lines of sight and the other things we've talked about so that's that's a brief and short answer to that but it is it is something on our minds it's certainly taken into consideration and we'll talk to be tucked on great deal detail depending on what our feedback is our next meetings coming up and then as we really get into what our educational needs are which we've laid out through all of our internal work we've done and then moving forward it's the actual planning for our future space : rasa tahn oh again just two quick questions I I know you want a feedback and you'll be--you'll say you'll be making recommendations based on the feedback

091and the survey I've been involved in in in surveys before in one survey we got 15 responses in another survey we got 122 responses you know as I look at it over the audience tonight it's I would have expected a much larger audience tonight so I'll ask you what do you think is is reasonable to base feedback on if you only get 50 responses out of you know 18,000 people second comment is if you're asking for a referendum for the voters in November it's a very short time frame you're looking at were in June people go on vacation in July and August a lot of people still dealing with the impacts of the hurricane and in microburst I'm not quite sure that you're going to get the full attention and focus that this project deserves

092from the residents I'm not quite sure what process that the selectmen has to go through or the board of Finance Aston has to go through is as well but that's probably you know another month or sell so I'm I'm wondering if in fact this this short timeframe is in the best interest of Brookfield residents making a decision and what happens if in fact the referendum to make a better more informed decision gets put gets pushed back to say January or February of next year I believe I said and and I may be wrong it it is the goal of the committee to have this voted upon in November it isn't a dead stop it is a goal and it is if we work diligently in and actually the reason why we did come up with

093the goal was to save taxpayer dollars every time we go to a referendum it costs about ten thousand dollars to the taxpayers so when we took this over and we really started looking at the different options and we started meeting and speaking diligently with one another on the committee and really knowing full well what we had ahead of us that was something that we had all kind of agreed on we're not going to rush a process I said this last public forum it is our goal to make it in November to save the taxpayer dollars and we would like to do that being we have been working behind the scenes for months and months and months on this but it is not a hard stop concerning the people that are here tonight thank you for

094coming out I know from our results from our last meeting we literally had hundreds of people watching it on YouTube and on the direct link from the school and town website many times I don't go to meetings but I do watch them at home and I have a feeling a lot of people are concerning the survey and results we had over 600 responses just from our initial findings so I do believe we're going to have a bit more than 50 responses and just it's something people are interested in we're right now we're in what the different sports and it's it's a hectic time we're coming out of the macro bursts and actually it was suggested that we postpone the meeting tonight and I vehement ly protested against that and I'll tell you why our last

095public forum I promised you and I promised everyone in the committee that we would be meeting on June 7th with our findings I wanted to be transparent our committee had been working very hard for this and it's for you too it's just not for us it's it's for the community I made a promise we're going to stick to our promises and I did not want anyone to think that we cancelled at the last minute because we had something that we did not wish to share with you so I'm sorry a lot of people aren't here I do understand and I hope that they will watch on TV Laura or about 95 Stony Hill Road so I actually wasn't this wasn't primarily what I was going to say but I have to agree with with mr.

096Rosas channels comments I'm very concerned about the lack of attendance in this for this meeting you know the lack of participation in this process it's not a reflection on the work of this committee that there's a lot of information in this presentation I I'm gonna have to watch it again to take it all in I think the public is going to have to hear this multiple times in order to make an informed decision and I I mean I hate to bring it up because it's a sore subject for some it's it's it's a sore subject period but the library they did surveys meetings coffees I mean way more than this for a longer time and the feet and it's one building and the feet for not sorry but laughs and a lot less money than

097we're talking about and the feedback was they didn't ask the community people didn't get input there wasn't no but how come nobody asked me here's ten ideas of how it should have been done none of which were nearly as thorough as this so to try and get your next step slide you had during the summer like at the same time collecting feedback we're finding feedback I mean you had three steps happening all in the summer I just don't see how it's possible and it's not a reflection also on you personally keeping your word or transparency this is about what's best for the community and what's going to help parents will everybody actually who has to all the voters feel comfortable so that something passes being able to put a you know checkmark that we did

098this meeting on this date or whatever that's not going to help get something that meets the needs of the community and that passes a vote so I would really encourage you to think about slowing down and making sure that everyone has a chance to thoroughly understand all of this really good and useful information um the other thing is I think when people look at this and try to evaluate what makes sense a lot of people are going to do it from the standpoint of you know the the cost and we tend to do that you know 20 million 40 million wow that's a huge difference it would be helpful if it's possible to have like a calculator that says if this is the assessed value of your house and this is the project you're choosing

099this is what the I don't know how all of that works in a lot of detail but this is fine it you know this is the way it's going to be financed this is what you you're looking at you know what it will impact you because the dollar amount over the course of 20 years or 30 years or however long these projects are financed might not be what people think it is when they say well this one is double that one and I think people need we need to think about what it really means to us over the long term and and choose the right project thank you undertaking this project we knew that there would be not everyone would be pleased a lot of people would be pleased sometimes you're never going to be

100right and that's just part of being on a committee and doing something like we're doing right now we did go out into the community and meet different groups we have plans to continue to do that unfortunately two of the meetings we had to cancel because in the macro burst people didn't have electricity we couldn't even get anywhere by car so that is something that we're going to continue doing again this is a goal to get there in November if we get there great if we don't that's ok too but as a committee we cannot make people come to these forums this has been well advertised it has there's been an article in the news times there it has been mentioned in brookfield matters I have mentioned it in every single public forum that I've been

101in it has been on this website we have our own website it's been on the school Facebook page it we have our own Facebook page notices went out to the parents we're trying our best to get as many people as we can here like I said earlier I do understand people not coming out you come home from work you're tired you make dinner you have your children to help with homework you have different things to do so most people are watching these presentations online we are trying our best thank you hi Eric cylinder 13 Apache Drive I had a question about option D I believe I heard I just wanted to confirm that there's no town owned property that's adequate for for option to use that is that accurate and then I'll ask my second

102question let you guys answer the second question is if there's no town owned property has there been or will there be a part of the process where private parcels are looked at and and both budgeted for and evaluated for use for option D because I think as we learn from the library going to a vote with a with an option on a new property without identifying that property isn't a good plan I I can address the analysis that we did of the town owned property of the sites that we looked at the nearly you know six dozen we didn't feel that any of them were appropriate or had the capacity to to hold a school of of what we're talking about in any of the options so is there other town owned property that is

103available that wasn't on the list I don't think so but we can certainly circle back and look at that as far as private property it just becomes a cost issue so we committee some of the committee members that threw out some potential private property locations it was just the initial costs of that that became a bit of a challenge so we'll continue as I mentioned at the end during the presentation to look at options for this but the of the sites we looked at we didn't find any that were appropriate that were not dedicated to open space all right thank you and then and then just I had an observation with the options up there in the numbers when you look at the the ranges and the you know the top range of the cheapest

104option and the the bottom range of the most expensive option I mean they're really only probably about five million dollars apart you know and a hundred million dollar project so I really think the focus the committee should be to choose the option that's best for the learning environment for the students the safest environment for the students and also they can get done with minimum disruption and on a pretty aggressive timeline because we know for some of the schools it's pretty urgent Thank You Howard lastly and one further question dealing with the timeline to address what Laura and Carmen had to say before as I understand we've gone through this before and that there is two ways to present a project to the town one is you know you give them some estimate we get an

105approval for that estimate and then we go out and we do the detail drawings and get the final you know proposals and that could be within or maybe not most times it's not within the estimate and we end up either value engineering or going out and asking for more money and the other way to do this is to go and ask for some money to get the detailed drawings on a proposal and get a detailed proposal on the on the table and getting a more accurate number and then going out and asking for that so I'm wondering you know how that equates to your timeline for going to a November referendum also as my understanding is that the State Department of Education has a role to play in the review and approval of our plans

106so what is that process what's their timeline and how does play into your November timeline it seems to me to be very short because I dealt with the state on various projects they're not that quick to respond so it'd be interesting to understand you know the timeline of a November vote versus like I said what the real estimate an estimate versus what we can expect to really spend versus you know the timeline of the state so sure yeah that's a very good question at this phase of the project as far as timeline the approval process for review of the drawings that you mentioned the the state has what the prep meetings the DD our PCR completion all those phases all those steps are once you are have already submitted your grant application and are approved

107so that's that's kind of down the road now the process to submit a grant application is really I think the the primary focus and early on when we started the project we we agreed that June 30th is the deadline for grant submission applications and you can submit them and still you can submit everything on the checklist the 11 items except for the 12th which is the the referendum or the the acknowledgement that funds are in place to support the project and go like so if you submitted this June you could you could have a referendum in the fall the committee early on chose that we're gonna submit for next June which is 2019 so in an ideal world you you want all of those 12 items in hand when you submit your grant application so

108you wouldn't you could start doing and then to address the other question you had relative to developing detailed design drawings for you know an accurate bid so you don't have to ve I haven't seen a lot of communities do that because they typically would be at risk for that service and I'm not sure we would recommend that I mean we could certainly look at the options but we wouldn't recommend that you go at risk to design all that work and then not even have a grant application submitted so there's there's other ways other methods to help mitigate the issues that you that you raise though which certainly will be on the table as we get further along in the process so hopefully that answered your question and Jeff I just want to go one step

109further from Howard's question if we do work over the summer as a committee and into early fall and it becomes apparent that November or December for referendum is not realistic as is being discussed tonight could we go to referendum in spring of 2019 so maybe ten months from now eleven month from now and also meet the June deadline in 2019 you just walk us through that part of it as well sure so so the answer the short answer is yes so if you needed to push it to some other date you could push it all the way to not to June 30th but up to close to some communities do so you have if the community feels if the committee feels to that that something needs to change in the timeframe to in order to

110still submit your grant application for 2019 yes that referendum could move there's a lot of other logistics when you're preparing for that grant application like the Board of Ed has to vote on its specs and there's all host of items that and logistics that also have to happen for that so hopefully that answers and then one more follow up on that because a lot of people are not familiar with the process and can you talk a little bit about why the referendum in the securing financing relative to submitting to the state and how reimbursement is related to that and just the timing and that kind of a thing yes so you absolutely have to identify the referendum and have costs and have funding in place in order for them to even entertain the fact that

111they're gonna lock you in for put you on the priority list so that's that's a I mean I've seen a lot of different you know modifications to some of these applications but that's a must just to clarify then once we have the funding in place but we still need a state authorization to go ahead and what do you think the timeframe in that respect is before we can go out to bid at that point sure so I'll give you do you submit in June June 30th and maybe I think you said you were driving on the way here somebody you submit June 30th to the state state comes out with they'll take all the applications they'll rank them create a priority list typically December 15th they published that list so you're on either a B

112or C priority depending on how they view your needs compared to other communities that list then goes to a subcommittee the educational subcommittee two for approval basically in January February and then in early spring typically and when it's when everything's on track at the state though the legislation will will approve the funds for those that list once they approve those funds you get an official number grant list number that you can begin your project you can talk to the state in more detail you can schedule your prep meeting so that kind of starts the clock so just big picture you submit in June the following May or June you'll you'll actually have you know an approval in hand so yeah yeah and in some communities and I guess I would say in many communities once

113they know they're on the priority list then they start the pre-planning because they know it's coming it's just a matter of time and that there's advantages and disadvantages of that but and I think that's that's what Eve has been getting at this evening and the committee's been getting at is is you don't get anywhere if you don't have a target and the target was late fall of this year if that is but you how also have to be realistic if the work isn't done and isn't ready then you move that back and that's okay but if you don't act with a sense of urgency and light a fire we will talk about a building project in building objects in this community forever and so you need to move on them having said that we want

114to do it right and I want to emphasize that the committee wants to do this right and get all of the input it needs to receive from the community work with the community and make sure everything is communicated and transparent and available so we're still looking at two years from now to leading them from Howard's question a clarifying question we're looking at 2020 at 2020 yeah that's always one dozen 2020 he's so confused there a lot of long nights a lot of numbers but we're looking at 2020 so this process if we don't even if we move swiftly and smoothly it's still two years out we've got a long way to go so we just want to emphasize that for everybody and Jeff did talk about that at the beginning of the meeting but the

115Laura's comments there's a lot to digest there just in this one evening and I just want to let everybody know that electronically over the next 24 hours we'll be getting out the survey we'll be getting out the PowerPoint the video replay etc etcetera so just so you know it will all be there electronically for anybody to access good evening Dave sweet 18 Cherokee Drive Eve Jeff thank you very much for taking us through this process and applaud all the hard work just a real short comment on Eve you made a comment about getting all the feedback and looking at the four options and then deciding which one you also open the door to saying there could be no option but my my comment is that is not an option all right to do nothing is

116not an option we have to do something and we have to start reinvesting back in our infrastructure because my wife and I moved here 18 years ago for the schools we just want to make sure they get back so thank you and in this process nothing is open-ended so and I will never speak for my committee members so I wanted to make sure that I had all options open I went to Brookfield public school system from the time I was 5 years old and the clocks in whiskey near are the same clocks that were on the wall when I entered in my first year so personally I'm in agreement with you but I will never answer for everyone so point taken thank you name is Bryan frame from for Kendall Drive just a question from

117going from the ten options to the floor options I saw a lot of smiley faces on six to ten if they're going to pick them so as I see it just should get before I want to rehash all the options but essentially we have four options but essentially this is kind of two conceptual to take until conceptual is to renovate each school and the other three involve closing Center renovating risk and error and they can hug very big right so it's just something we're gonna put on loans but just you're for those other six options that you didn't pick well they know that these four will rise to the top so we don't look back on those ones or or or shouldn't be looking at those those are the six ones but I don't want

118a hash the details you guys look what I thank you for that so just your pending if we should just if you feel confident that judge those floor those top floor ones thank you so we we met a few weeks ago after we saw the ten options and we had each had time to process what those were and looking at the survey results looking at the overwhelming response of keeping kindergarten in the fifth grade in an elementary school level that kind of knocked out a bunch of options right there and so that was using the feedback that we got from the town we also with everybody's independent review we pretty much all picked those four as the options independently that we thought were the best fit for the for the town I think one option

119included building a new middle school but that doesn't quite resolve the issue of the two elementary schools that are a problem yeah some of them are very disruptive to the students and having to transfer and get everybody in buildings while we're trying to renovate another school just really kind of took those out also so I think the short answer to your question is as we reviewed all ten those four were the unanimous of the committee and so we shouldn't go back and rehash all the others primarily safety disruption and the costs I think it was mentioned earlier the costs are all about the same anyway and so we focused more on the the key elements associated with it yeah I just like to go back to a question I asked about why wasn't there any

120options considered that tied into the town's long-term capital plan budget for the school I think the budget there for the first spending capital spending was probably around 40 million dollars that was included in the town's long-term capital budget and plan every figure up here's at least double double that so a triple was there any option considered to tie back a plan into the into the strategic capital plan that the town develop less than two years ago the town did develop a 10 year capital plan two years ago in that capital plan we spoke to the school's the jamba real and got our best estimate as what we thought it might cost to upgrade our schools and get them to where we needed at that point in time it was 45 million dollars this organization this

121group this team had nothing to do with that capital plan because that wasn't their charge to look at our capital plan and try to fit their choices into our capital plan now we'll update our capital plan we do it every summer we go through it obviously we're going to add this right now we're going to take the library off because that guy voted down and we're going to move forward and everybody should remember our capital plan is a plan it's not written in stone and it adapts every year and it changes every year so this committee was not charged with trying to make this happen for forty five million dollars I don't even think they looked at that then that wasn't their charge okay thank you has everyone had an opportunity to speak that hasn't

122spoken because we're gonna start wrapping it up and I just want to make sure everybody has a chance mark and Jing ro Rachel a farm road um I think this is great great job getting this far along I didn't really expect it to see this detailed even even narrowing it down from ten to four this fast was great I'm just quick question from what I remember from last meeting one of the big concerns everybody talked about was the access at huckleberry hill and two out of the four options involve increasing more than doubling the students at huckleberry hill do you think we're gonna actually be able to address that with that big of a school on that site and I understand it's limited but I'm just wondering do you think you can actually address that

123sure I'm a landscape architect with my loan McBroom I work day in day out on several school projects that's one of my specialties and having right now the way wisk and I are set up it just has single access off of Candlewood Lake Road oh sorry yeah I'm in the same place just said the wrong huckleberry am I in the right school now okay sure so so you can see to the east at your main access off the road there is a right-of-way coming off of Nabi Road that currently exists connecting to that huckleberry site by having two accesses or axes you are able to split up bus and parent drop-off which is a huge concern and it's one of the modern-day design elements is separating those two forms of traffic the entrance Drive coming

124off of Nagbe would be our Nabi Road would be quite substantial it is a long drive so it could handle a lot of queuing and take the traffic off of Huckle yeah that's an ABI there Candlewood Lake Road so yes having you have plenty of room for parking it could handle the sight plenty of queuing distance off both means of egress forgive me if I didn't properly address it during the presentation but if there's a lot of things having a second there you need a secondary I call it ingress and egress so entrance and exit both Candlewood Lake and Nabi a couple different things that it does the sight lines obviously to the building so if admin is somewhere in this general location they have eyes as far as safety and security the separation whether

125it be parent on this side or bus you have one kind of cue here and then another cue here so it does quite a few things and the positive the the obviously the downside or concern or challenge that we have is is you know getting through there and designing it properly those kinds of things but and then the other piece with anything that you do on a huckleberry this kind of overlay blue area here is that flood plain and if you put a building on this side of the floodplain that's why the recommendation is really a strong recommendation if not a requirement to have to two points okay thank you [Music] David Lathrop interim fire marshal for the town of Brookfield I have to recommend both the committee in the architects in the group in

126my 40 some-odd years as a fire marshal for many municipalities I've done probably eight or nine major complexes of schools they have really stepped up to the plate and I think their designs and what they've submitted to this meeting and they should submit more to you know other people in town so they understand the concept this plan right here with this emergency or this secondary access road will alleviate a lot of problems if you come out that now beyond an Abbey Road note Road we have a traffic light that makes it much easier and safer for the buses to make either a left or right-hand turn Lysa if Arents or whatever when you're trying to get out of that huckleberry Hill School driveway right now the speed that some of the cars come down the

127hill is quite fast so I think they've really done a good job on this in this study so I give them kudos Debra Vogel 186 Longmeadow Hill Road the renovate as new versus a new construction The Renovators new is a 20 year like lifespan exper expectancy and new construction is how long they're supposed to be equal so the state defines renovate to new as having the life expectancy at minimum of 20 years or equal to a brand new product so the both from a MEP infrastructure standpoint should be equal because you're going to be getting a brand new product for everything that you currently have now this is to Carmen's point I I know he's concerned about the thirty five forty five million dollars that we had kind of anticipated if I could call that

128almost a placeholder but it was our best guesstimate and that's why we hired the architects and that's why we brought in the experts because we aren't but they were the ones who went through the buildings they went through the properties they found the things that we were surprised by some of them so that's why we're seeing the numbers that we are and that's why we're getting true numbers this time [Music] all right I'd like to thank everyone for coming out tonight please go online watch the presentation as many times as you wish please fill out the survey we as of yet we do not have a next public forum scheduled that is because the committee has not yet met once we meet once we go through the survey and the questions we will discuss when

129is convenient for the next public forum and we will be scheduling that and we will have it in Brookville matters it will be on both of the websites in the Facebook pages again thank you so much for coming out tonight have a great evening and I call the meeting to a close [Music]