001Mr ecky here miss Rosenberg here Mr White here Mr chairman you do have a quorum I will um bring up the flag if you give me a moment and then we could do the pledge should have the flag now yep I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for [Music] all all right our next item on the agenda is the audience and I do not have any correspondence and there are no members of the public that would be on this call but if I get any emails during the um you know the session I will certainly let you know are we recorded uh we're live broadcasting okay yeah and it's it's available on our
002YouTube channel thank you and then once it's over it just plays on the YouTube it's available to play on the YouTube channel Mike salamini you could he's in the is he's joined that's that's how he's broadcasting but he's covering a meeting at Town Hall tonight okay would you like to move on to the elementary yes is that is am I supposed to be uh moving that along yes item number three Elementary classroom expansion than I'll jump even everyone the um this particular item I wanted to um review a proposal from anazi Associates the the planning committee members from the prior planning committee had hired anazi Mr eki and just given you an update here to do a a a review of ditt and Highland um because we anticipate that or at the time this is
003going back two years anticipated that we may run out of space at Highland and do little before our new schools are built and when the new schools are built the plan is to um reallocate students so that the buildings are evenly distributed so because of that anazi was hired to do a review of dittle and Highland to see where and could we add portable classrooms since then what we've seen is that Highland's enrollment has gone up faster than dittles so the bigger of the two concerns right now still continues with Highland so what I wanted to do first is just do a a review of where we are with enrollment and if you um just bear with me if you look at the screen this first section um and I'm going to highlight if you
004look at Highland in the middle hopefully you could and I realize it's kind of small but there's a little blue Highlight Highland's enrollment in the 2223 school year was 838 um so that's that top section it showed all the elementary schools but I'm just focusing on Highland for now um the projection when we built the budget that we received from nzq for this current year which I just highlighted again in in blue if you it might be easier if you just look at the cursor the projection for this year was 878 as I move my screen down I'm now going to show you where we are currently or excuse me where we were with Highland as of October 31 so the top section that's highlighted in blue that shows Highland's um overall enrollment um projection
005at 8 78 and this bottom section shows that as of October 30th of 23 instead of 878 we had students uh 46 classrooms and an average of 19.3 instead of 19.1 students projected so as of October we were eight students over the projection and that projection was again about 40 students higher than the previous year and now I'm going to move the screen one more time and at the bottom here um what I want to show you is that as of January 8th yesterday Highland's enrollment is now at 892 so we've gone up six additional students at Highland since October 30th so the average is at 19.4 students per class that is relatively High not only you know for Highland but it's it's relatively high for the district you know we had been maintaining an
006average of around 18 students per class even though Highland's been a little bit bigger than than that you know the driving force at the increase enrollment in Highland has everything to do with the new housing that's being built in town as well as housing turnover Highland is our biggest school district so just from a turnover point of view as empty nesters are selling their houses and families with with younger children are moving in the bulk of those students would just wind up at Highland so the the problem that we thought was going to occur is occurring um so I think it's important that we continue to go down this path of preparing um additional classroom space at Highland and again just in by the way of of background you know there were other options considered
007for Highland you know such as adding on to the building but that would be a lot more expensive than adding a portable classroom I don't um I don't think anybody you know planning committee or Board of AD or or administrators want to see portable classrooms at any building including Highland but it doesn't seem like we have much of a choice and it is the lesser of the evils so at last year's U um capital budget approval time the board approved after the planning committee recommended that we budget um funds for addition of portable classrooms at Highland and at dittle the council then approved $450,000 for the addition of these portable classrooms so we do have $450,000 appropriated so we can move forward with this plan so what I want to do is move off of
008enrollment but I'll I'll stop and see if there are any questions before I I move to the proposal M Rosenberg Ben just for clarification those watching um I guess who provides the enrollment projections for us so the enrollment projections that we report annually come from the New England School Development Council um and we've been obtaining projections from them for many years also as part of the school modernization plan we did hire another firm slam they did their own enrollment projections which were more detailed in methodology than the nesdec projections but for the 23 24 school years the projections from both nzda and slam were pretty close and we are exceed actual enrollment at Highland is exceeding what was projected by both those groups not by a wide margin but we don't expect it to subside
009a lot of the new housing that's under the construction um has not been opened yet um but as it opens we do expect Islands enrollment to continue to grow and then the my other question is what was the and I don't recall um what's the max capacity at both locations if you look at it we're there really at Highland you know the the 900 students is ideally you don't want to go higher than that now can we put more kids into those classrooms and continue to grow the class sizes we could not ideal it's what we've been doing so we're pretty far down the road I I will add again for Mr eki because he is new to this committee and the board that over this past summer we did a few things over at
010Highland we um took one of the library we had a second um an Annex I'll call it to the library that was used as a resource room we we took that we divided it in half and made special education spaces in the hallways in several areas at Highland we built cubicle walls and have learning support tutors that are working in the halls and we had a storage literally a storage closet that we were able to reconfigure and fit three small cubicles for learning support tutors to work there so we're doing everything we can to continue to to live within the footprint of the building but we we we can't really do all that much more um and if we had no capability to add portable classrooms you know I guess the next couple of things
011that we could talk about you know would it be possible to slightly redistrict on a temporary basis some students to Chapman not ideal but you know we'll we'll have to take these types of decisions one step at a time one of the new developments I'll add this as information as well one of the new developments on um the far side of town where the new North End development is going the name of the road escapes me but there is a new development of tow houses um that technically belonged those tow houses when they were built those students would be zoned into Highland but Dr Solen made the decision that students moving into those new tow houses would go to Chapman so we've already done um some of those well that was one decision that was
012made to try and ease the number of students that were targeted you know for Highland and in the new construction area thanks V okay Mr White thank you VIN so on an ongoing basis just generally speaking from year to year sorry my microphone was down up uh on a on an annual basis are you looking at the borders when kids move into towns when when kids move into town and seeing if you know if it might make sense to have a move into a different school not just this year and next year but I mean historically have you done that traditionally we have not we over the last decade we have not needed to do that we have never been in a situation where you know we're starting to see overcrowding at a particular building
013so the answer is no are you doing it now we are doing it now okay we have to with regard to um we had a we had a redistricting idea a map laid out by somebody a couple years ago right that was part of school modernization that was the redistricting um tentative plan based on what the expected enrollment growth would be um with the new schools so yes I think ultimately that will change when the new schools are open as we see where the exact population is um for the newly zoned districts after we have the two new schools opened do you think it might make sense to look at that even sooner I mean I assume there'd be a cost associated with it but specifically what I'm thinking about is uh I think that
014map correct me if I'm wrong but I'm thinking north of cook Hill is Highland and south of cook Hill is Norton generally well yes yes and I think the redistricting map pushed that over to the new Norton yeah some of it Norton again the the what happens when the new schools open because the closing Chapman um and Norton will be bigger it's it it's going to change you know the the zone for all four Elementary School Districts yeah no I'm just thinking specifically like if there was a certain if there was a neighborhood or anything where it might make sense to just shift it sooner rather than later if we had I think the development is going on mostly in the north end of town yeah so the South End is probably fairly consistent so
015we probably have a better idea of where those populations might be shifting in the south end of town without new construction happening just a thought yeah yeah we're gonna we're going to continue to look at this we're going to have to as as we move through I mean we we just need to get through two years um but you know we we'd like to do that obviously with minimal disruption where you can but also taking into consideration that you don't want to have one school with you know grade sizes that are just so high compared to others I will add that um you I wish I could say that we had one of our foure elementary schools that had plenty of capacity you know the truth is we we don't have excess classroom capacity in
016any of the buildings you know maybe Darcy but that's about it and and Darcy we do have four pre classrooms in addition to what you see on the screen with the two um yeah I I should mention this Darcy has two kindergarten grades but those kindergarten students are um dittle children there's just not enough room in dittle to house all of its kindergarten grades so if you look at this year D little has a total of five classes of kindergarteners three of which are at dittle two of which are at Darcy when we're looking at the uh the temporary classrooms how many are we looking at at each school we look looking right now to add two temporary classrooms at Highland so that'll give us if you do just 20 students per that's room for
01740 students so that would we think that would get us through and do we have the staff for that or are these new teachers as well yeah if I think we're going to continue to add staff as this enrollment continues to grow so um if you look back at Highland 2223 there were 44 classroom teachers and now we're at 46 now if we just kind of to continue on that um although the the board hasn't seen the budget for next year yet if you look at the projections for next year um Norton's number of teachers is staying the same um Chapman is going down one D little and Highland are going up one based on enrollment so it's a net increase of one you know two two of the elementaries go up one one goes
018down Norton stays the same so again projections based on what we know when we actually hit the fall you know those those do change not dramatically but they they can change when we get into the new school year yep thank you welcome all right for good with that I'll I'll move to take a look at the proposal that we received and I will walk the um committee members through so this this proposal is dated January 5th it came from anazi Mike losasso is the principal that uh worked on the first phase of reviewing dittle and Highland we asked after our last planning committee for Michael lasso to give us now a um project and pricing to just take Highland Elementary School we have the ability to purchase a triple wide um building that's currently housed
019at the bus depot that's owned by dco okay so that the backdrop to this next phase is assuming that we purchased that triple wide from dco which we haven't negotiated yet and I I'll explain as we get you know through what this proposal will give us um but if we purchase that triple wide move it from the bus depot in Cheshire down to Highland Elementary can we make that triple wide work and is that a more reasonable approach than going out and buying a new portable classroom so that's what we asked anazi to take a look at um and so the project understanding just it just explains that I'm I'm going to go quickly here the scope of Design Services that has been considered as being presented you'll see the numbers in a minute um
020first has to the requirement whether or not we purchase you know a building from dco or anybody else we would have to do a site survey and determine where the utilities are we know at the back of Highland where we anticipate adding new Portables there are two existing Portables that do have utilities meaning they they do have obviously electricity but they also have you know bathroom and hand sinks in each of those two portables so you would think that would make this a little bit easier and it does but doesn't make it easy and it doesn't make it inexpensive so a site survey is going to be required again no matter what building um or where we purchase the building um we will need to determine where the utilities are one option we have which
021we don't recommend but is an option that we can drop in two portables and not not have bathrooms and in doing so that would require students and staff to exit the Portables and go inside the building to use the facilities not great especially if these are used as full-fledged classrooms the second scope um which you see on the screen is uh geotechnical Services geotechnical services so even though these are portable classrooms they would sit on a slab they still require um borings to determine you know how deep a frost wall needs to be installed I mean so that's just you know not a choice we have and then sight and civil engineering design services this will need to go to Planning and Zoning you'll see on the proposal that anazi has consulted with SLR the
022former milona MC broom you know they generally do know you know this property but anazi would engage SLR as a subcontractor in this proposal to help with the regulatory approvals including Planning and Zoning Mike and Mike lasso did mention to me that you know there is a roadway that goes around the back of Highland where these Portables would be installed if that's what we wind up doing so there is some storm water control um not issues but some considerations that that need to be made for storm water I'm just going to keep moving here the this next osca submission this was recommended by SLR to anazi because of the size of the property at 100,000 square feet they SL SLR has indicated that the State Office of traffic Authority has to do a review the
023concern being that would adding Portables create more traffic and the reality is whether or not we add the Portables we know that it's you know if we took more students and just added them without the Portables the amount of traffic wouldn't change but SLR is insisting that this is something that will need to be done um and it this is a limited um review hopefully it doesn't need to be there's there's discussion here about a full certificate revision which um SLR doesn't think is needed but you know this this particular item is priced as as um on an hourly basis you'll see in a minute um and it's it there's a not to exceed cost of $99,000 for this the architectural design and coordination fee this is the big one this is for anazi to
024take the footprint of the existing triple wide reconfigure it to meet the needs of the classroom and deal with everything having to do with the with moving it installing it we would have to add accessible ramp and stairs for these units these units will not be attached to the building they will be separate like the current Portables but you know there is a a a fair amount of cost associated with that um structural Foundation design and mechanical electrical Plumbing technology that's all going to be incorporated in the design so with that I'm just going to show you the numbers um so the the way this design fee proposal is laid out is I asked anazi to to break this out you know as as deeply as they can so you could see that the schematic
025design service portion of this is 10,000 site survey and the utility delineation fee is 6500 and the geotechnical engineering fee is 11150 those three fees that total about 28,000 no matter what building we we drop on there we're going to incur that um construction documentation this is the anazi fee this is 46,700 so if you take the 467 plus the numbers up above that's the 74350 and then the numbers below construction Administration Services if we choose to do that with anazi regulatory applications and meetings and that Osa administrative decision submission 9000 those are proposed as hourly Serv and those are the not to exceed amounts so all told this is in the neighborhood of $1,000 in terms of a of a proposal um the I supposed advantage that we have if we purchased the the
026trailers from dco is it would cost us less than if we sourced new trailers and but that doesn't mean that we would have none of these fees so that 46,700 really is the cost of you know taking the existing Portables from dco um and making the engineering and Architectural changes that are needed to make them work as a classroom so I will pause there um actually just one more thing if we decide to go forward with this um and we only get to schematic design The Proposal does indicate that the architect will only be compensated for services provided up to the date of termination so if we don't actually get to the point of doing any of the changes because we decide not to B buy the Portables from dco or because we can't negotiate
027a a reasonable deal with them then we don't pay anything more than than the work that's been done by by anazi now I'll pause Mr White thank you so just as a uh so Vin thank you for doing all this I it makes sense to me uh knowing the history but do you have a 30 or 60 second recap on Al alternatives to this at this moment in time because I'm thinking there's not much in the way of alternatives for us due to time constraints yeah the only alternative we have Tim and there's there's still a couple of um components to this that need to be completed before we could fully engage with anazi you know one has to do with you know just talking um to dco about when they could make that portable
028trailer available for us to Pur purchase okay that's tied into the conveyance of the bus depot property from the Department of Corrections to the town of chesher which we are working on but I don't have a firm date or answer on when that's going to occur so I I still need to take a couple of steps um so one other option we have if we can't purchase that that um triple wide from dco is to purchase it through another vendor so that we would have to you know issue a u you know a request for proposals or an invitation to bid um but as I said earlier whether we do regardless of where we're purchasing the building you know one thing we we do need to get started on is looking at the site and
029determining can we fit where would it go so where are the utilities so we can get started on the first three components of the proposal and no we really don't have any alternatives you know that are reasonable outside of adding you know portable classrooms that's the quickest way to make some classroom space available so I guess my my point is with regard to the Portables an alternative to this would be either other used Portables or new Portables I recall our conversation from La I believe it was last summer we were talking about it new Portables would probably be in the millions of dollars which would require a referendum and they would take like a year in advance so my simple point on that is just to to highlight for uh for everybody that I I
030don't feel like I'm pinned down in anyway this this was that was a decision we made you know six months ago so we're here now and there's not a not a great deal of flexibility but it's because the process is just in the we're in the middle of the process unfortunately yeah yeah I mean I I don't think there's any doubt if if we can make all this work this is the quickest way to come up with a good solution to get us through the next couple of years at Highland as that enrollment continues to grow yeah thank you and they think we if we were to get this work this thing out with Deco we can get this thing in place with with no issues for the fall it's a push but I think
031we could still get it done now is are would that include building a new I know the uh the existing exterior classrooms over at Highland they have a a covered walkway and all that would would that be is that part of the costs that we're anticipating as well um we would like if we can do a covered walkway we would certainly prefer to do it that way um and obviously see so this is the design cost the actual cost that's right of doing that is going to be incremental to this but again we have 450,000 so I I believe that this plus um what the cost of purchasing the actual you know actual building and getting the work done I I think we'll be able to work within that budget and just the uh just
032for my thinking and my experience I know all our schools are locked are these these portable classrooms are they locked all the time and and the the class goes in and out as a as a class with supervision back into the building to the main part of the building yes the they they're locked I mean we use the same Locking System that we do on our exterior doors you know to access the main building as we do on the Portables we have biometric access you know and the staff you know does have the authority to get in and out of the building yes it is it is supervised okay Miss Rosenberg yeah V I kind of had similar first off it's the for now for me it's the uneasiness of kind of getting a clear
033timeline because we have such a constraint um I like to move this along as quickly as possible to give us that buffer space um but I I was thinking similar to what Mark just asked about security features uh more or less if we go with the ones that do not have uh bathrooms and I'm and I think I expressed this last time I'm kind of uncomfortable with kids if we depending on what class we put in there even your sixth graders just going in and out to utilize the bathroom room is a concern for me um and then the risk of us waiting for the possibility of the dco unit here so I'm going to continue to move that along yeah you know it's just I'm going to continue the discussions I just wanted to
034you know just get some consensus from the planning committee that you know here's the proposal let's continue to move this forward that's all I need I don't you don't need a formal vote money's allocated we've got a proposal in hand um but yeah listen I I I share the concern about the speediness of this there's you know the conveyance of the land you know it turned out to be a little bit more of an obstacle than I was expecting but you know this is what we deal with we we have a problem and we work to solve it if even if the conveyance doesn't occur quickly um we still have a a lease that we can extend with the state we are speaking to an attorney over at the Department of Corrections who's been very
035Cooperative so you know we'll continue to to push ahead and try not to miss the date and it you know I I suppose that you know if we miss September one you know with with getting getting those Portables in place but we make October one one you know we still have a solution that that will benefit us for a couple of years yeah i' prefer before the kids come [Laughter] in I I'm teach okay I'm coming from a teacher hat now in that I like to get my classrooms up and running put those structures in place and not have another disruption when you know yeah agreed Mr White You're muted yeah thanks Vin just one other point I mean in terms of like negotiation and timing and stuff um I I'm comfortable with you sort
036of negotiating in unusual ways if d needs space if they just need to move out of that portable and they need space elsewhere and you want to figure something out to work with them on that I'm comfortable supporting you doing something like that I mean I know you've talked about nearby properties um whatever we could do to make something like that work or even you know existing School building property if they just need a space for a desk for somebody in chesher to get it to work just I'd be open to it okay I I appreciate that and I I will say I think that goes maybe at least as equally anxious as we are to um to move their Dispatch Center from that portable building into the new building that they purchased you know
037that's adjacent to the to the bus depot so did you exp I may have missed it did you explain that point did did you get that actually I did not yeah Mark did you this is I think this is an important point to this picture here yeah Mark did you know that Deo bought the building that's at the corner of sandbank yeah okay so deo's plan is to um use that building move their Dispatch Center and other offices into that building and they would like to dispatch from that building they have visibility to the yard if trees are cleared which that's that's part of the plan and you know they certainly are willing to to incur that cost we do have another $125,000 that had been appropriated by the council to do additional work at
038the bus depot property that's beyond the 450 for the trailers so working with dco and and they've been very very good to work with over the years and I think they'll be really Cooperative with this project as well so deo's got the space to move the their people it's just a question of do they have the visibility they need you know one alternative that can be employed is using cameras to do the dispatch so they get visibility into the yard it doesn't have to necessarily be line of site only does that make sense any other questions all right at this point is the committee comfortable with me um asking anazi to start moving forward continuing discussions you know with dco you know to move this um towards a conclusion where you know we could site
039and add the Portables at Highland I'm comfortable I mean we've got to be moving on something and get something to happen and if you do have a backup plan too not that I'm saying you need to have one but that would be great too okay you Good Sam okay and I will talk to anazi also a little bit about um a little bit more about the price too to see if if they could sharpen that pencil little bit okay all right I think that concludes that particular item Mr eki okay all right the uh item number four the 2425 to 2829 capital budget okay this one um um I'm going to jump right back in So what I would like to do with the planning committee members tonight is um give you a quick understanding
040of what was approved last year by the Town Council um that are projects that are currently being worked on um and then give you a preview of the items for the new five-year Capital plan that ultimately rich and I need to do a little bit more work on after tonight but you know we do have these items laid out um we will not need a vote tonight just need some direction as we talk through the items that are on the capital list that we're bringing over from last year as well as about a half a dozen new ones so if you can see the screen I'm going to just give you a quick um preview here what I'm showing you is on the far right column the uh dollar amounts that the town Council approved
041last year for capital projects um and just starting right at the top the Cheshire High School window replacements 750,000 that's a continuation of of a project that is a that is the largest appropriation we've gotten in several years we're doing a roof replacement on cheser high school as I talked through these rich if you want to add any information just feel free to do so um and I I know I'm going to pause on a couple of these to ask you rich um also at the high school we have design work funds approved for um replacing the steam boiler or boilers a roof replacement project so those projects for ches high school total 1.1 million I've just highlighted that with my cursor excuse me me districtwide projects the U first one here the 450,000 is
042what we just spoke about with the Elementary classroom expansion 250 for live improvements across the district 100,000 flooring 125,000 for masonry restoration um Rich can you talk for a second about the roof ladder replacement 125 th000 and what that is so all all of our current buildings have uh old style um you know ladders that that some of them Traverse uh different roof elevations in some cases such as DOD um they don't have uh roof laders so typically um I think uh OSHA just came out I think it takes effect I'm not sure if it's this year or next year that is going to require ocean compliant um ships ladders if you will or ocean compliant ladders uh to be able to Traverse uh roof spaces in order to you know perform you know roofing
043repair work um HVAC work things of that nature so this is a first effort uh we're going to focus on key areas at DOD Middle School Highland and the high school and then uh slowly work our way um you know to getting all the ladders uh updated the high school just for instance probably has about 12 uh different kinds of ladders and different configurations none of them obviously uh OSHA compliant so uh that needs to be updated and that's part of uh uh the beginning of that 125,000 how that's going to be utilized okay thanks Rich um continuing with District projects we are um we have 265,000 and that project we just started working on making school security communication improvements with a product called Mutual link you we're working with the chesher PD and emergency
044responders on on that project and that will link our video cameras our radios uh and our phones uh to be much more functional and useful in the event of any kind of emergency at our at our schools and and we do have a Grant from the uh Department of Emergency Management and Homeland Sy and Homeland Security that um offsets about 50% of the cost of that project uh we're doing concrete sidewalk repairs Replacements tile Replacements and some upgrades to HVAC controls that's all part of districtwide improvements that that's 1.6 million that was approved last year this next one um rich I want to give an update on that we have $600,000 appropriated to replace the two boilers in Dodd Middle School on the Parkplace side which is the new quote unquote newer Edition uh about
04520 years ago was added um that just went out to bid Rich you want to give an update on actually uh yeah it did go out to bid uh we had uh we had six participants six proposers that gave us some uh very competitive uh bidding and we're currently in the in the process of down selecting uh the successful bidder so um we're currently working on that we're anticipating on uh getting a contract out beginning of February and ordering the equipment for uh summer 24 installation yeah and that was an important one that was a um that was a request that had not been planned but the You Know Rich had had pointed out that the boilers are really starting to show their age and um obviously we wouldn't want to jeopardize losing you know
046one or two boilers in a school because can't can't hit the school then uh Mr White uh thank you did uh the proposals that you got in did they come within budget uh the uh looks like right now the successful B will put us in position to be within budget awesome thank you Mr Rosenberg yeah a similar question rich but is do you have some sense of a rubric to weed out and kind of hone in on the one outside of just staying within the budget are there other criteria you yeah yeah so typically on any Capital project um you know just so where my background before coming to treest Public Schools was in general contracting I was a senior project manager um worked for companies like AT&T and Neil no Haven hospital so we
047know how to vet uh you know selective biders first there's a qualification that has to be completed in order to become a qualified bidder uh once a proposal submitted we go through pretty rigorous uh scope review uh checking references uh checking their uh their actual their safety records um so we we do we we collect quite a bit of information uh it's not just the lowest bid it's the lowest qualified bid so we're pretty diligent and trying to make sure that we meet the that uh that standard great so similar to pretty much how we look at rfps basically then yeah it's exactly the same way okay yep thank you I I will comment that that's definitely one of Rich's strengths when we U issue an RFP or an invitation to bid he is you
048know really on on on top of all aspects to find you know the the best bidder you know at the best price I'm not a big fan of change orders yeah that's an understatement and you don't want to mess with Rich when you're doing work for him in the schools trust me I don't like to mess with Rich um okay uh last couple of items and then we'll move on to the new proposal there is um you know some additional rtu 150,000 that's a rooftop unit that needs replacement at at dot is that one that's a couple of units Rich yeah that's probably two rooftop units yeah between five and 10 ton so it all depends um the prices have been cyclical I mean obviously lately they've been pretty high but um the additional cost
049includes upgrading uh the direct digital control which is the building automation system so that's usually 20% of the actual cost of the rooftop unit or air handler um but it's a worthwhile investment in order to gain deficiencies okay and then the last two items for do little 150 000 was approved to do design work to upgrade the HVAC um do little when the new schools are built will be the only Elementary School that isn't fully air conditioned so that was one of the reasons this was recommended and it was the 150,000 was appropriated to begin the design work and when we look at the capital budget in a minute you'll see that you know the the dollars for that project are are substantial um and I'll explain some of the other options we have under
050way looking at you know is there a better way to get the DU little air conditioning installed and then the last one is Highland we um have to do some additional work to continue to improve that building envelope that's 150,000 so all told last year's capital budget approval was 3 $79 million uh it's a good number and obviously you could see these these are all just pretty much items that we need to continue to maintain you know our building and and keep things like the heating systems and the cooling systems up and running so with that I'm going to move to the to the kind of last piece of the agenda on on Capital and I realized this is a little bit small to read um and rich is going to definitely help me as
051we we talk through these so I'm going to just zoom in a little bit closer so what we're looking at and we've got a few pages of this but these items that have this greenish color like the first one the green color this light green color indicates that this was on last year's Capital plan and it's just last year's year two is now this year's year one so if it's just shaded green we haven't done anything with it we just rolled it into the year which it was originally approved for this orange highlighting um when you see that that means that the the monies that we had requested last year have been modified and generally have been increased because of inflation or change to what we believe is necessary um and so I'm going to
052start talking through these eventually we'll get to some yellow ones which are new requests that were not in last year's Capital plan um what I'm looking for at this stage is if there's any particular concern desire do we want to um as a committee does the committee want to make this happen faster or is the okay with pushing this out okay so the first one is the greenhouse demolition with possible future replacement at ches high school Greenhouse has not been used um it's not ADA Compliant Rich cette did make sure that it was short up last year was it rich so because it is y it is starting to uh disintegrate um we don't I mean I'll speak for myself I don't see any particular um expediency about building a new greenhouse and certainly at
053at that particular site at this moment um and Rich do do we need that first 50,000 do we need to do that in year one Greenhouse won't fall down for a couple of years right right no it won't um it's that was earmarked for design for new Greenhouse but um alternatively it could also be utilized as a demolition uh funding for the existing and the only other thing I'll add is that you know the well I Mr eki may not know but we added a greenhouse pilot at humiston this past summer so we have a very small Greenhouse that is being used by culinary students at the high school being managed by a food service director the humiston transition students those are over the age of 18 are also using the greenhouse so um there
054are some grants available for green houses that were made available last year that's how we got the current one that we think will be available going forward but um this is not necessarily a high priority item at all Mr Rosenberg do you have a question yeah I just wanted Vin to clarify because from what I recall we I thought you were talking about the new one but we just got that through was it Connecticut grown Grant or something like that yes um it was going to say if there's a possibility of maybe going through that same process to assist with this financially somehow I think the answer is yes probably not going to be 750,00 worth of greenhouse um and I realized this is an educational component it's it's really not a building maintenance issue
055um and I could I could certainly speak to you know Jeff Solen marleene uh about you know is is there an educational desire for this or can we can we just park this out a couple of years and give ourselves some time well it clearly impacts the uh environment to science courses but yeah I would like to know how what's the frequency of usage you know prior to us um being put in this position yep I mean we we put it on the capital plan originally because we we needed to do something with the existing one and and by Rich Shoring up the the building it it does buy us time that was where this originally started so I'll talk to Jeff and and marleene about the educational component and then at the next meeting
056again we'll make a recommendation you know what whether to keep this and what year to place it in or if we do need time would the alternate solution be that we bust the students over to the new Greenhouse if it serves the same purpose too that's all yeah Mr White thank you um yeah as far as slow walking this that's probably where I am just thinking about school modernization I mean spending close to a million dollars I'm thinking is this is the million dollars just to clear it out or is it to build something new it would be to replace it with something new I'm probably not even at that site even so just the general you know what's going to happen with the high school and maybe 10 years is a big enough window
057for new construction but if we are looking at something in 10 years I'd just like to have a bit more of a discussion about the high school itself rather than just one small piece of it yeah if I mean from an educational perspective if if Jeff and marleene say there's a real need right now it's I'm not opposed to moving forward but I'm I'd like to get a better idea IDE of treasure High first got it um the next one is the school office reconfiguration I know that this was discussed last year this is at chesher high school the objective here was to reconfigure the the main office and the old main office to improve the functionality and actually move all the administrators into one area was the desire this was something that you know
058was recommended by Dr Gad the principal um and Dr Solen as well so all we did was we moved this it wasn't year two last year it's now part of year one unless it's moved um reason that the 50,000 is highlighted is because the the last year Rich was at 30,000 or do you remember what the number was yeah it was uh just just south of 40,000 yeah well I mean ultimately two two things I mean uh Professional Service uh costs have risen as with as with everything else uh the second is uh the scope is not clearly defined so there's a little bit of uh contingency in that number uh obviously uh those uh those the the professional Design Services are driven by scope the the cost is driven by the the the scope
059so we'll that as to be more clearly defined and that would be part of uh the design function okay Mrs Rosenberg yeah I think I expressed this last time Vinnie I'm not very convinced as to what the um justification of having administrators in one location back to security purposes I prefer to have oversight um of students in various locations so uh if you can convince me why we need to move all administrators without the expense of you know monitoring students I'd be happy to you know go along with it but I I I do remember that is what you said last year and um I I'll ask Dr Solen and and Dr Gad to weigh in on it for the next meeting thank you the next item is the maintenance garage um this again was
060in last year's Capital plan of a smaller number Rich you want to talk about that yeah this is uh we had 200,000 included last year but added um um we do need Renovations uh as staff is growing for uh internal offices uh just plain all interior Renovations uh I think that um that garage was built in uh 1990 so it's uh overdue for renovation uh including a bathroom renovation for the ground staff um in addition to that we want to do some site modifications that'll include um the installation of a weatherproof storage area to keep uh some of our equipment under under cover as well as winter salt and sand which we're currently doing by via a tarp so um we want to get a little bit more modern uh so we can increase our
061efficiencies in uh in dealing with that yeah and and this is certainly one that is that is due we have not put any money into that maintenance garage and it it's functional and very useful um and use extensively again it supports not only the high school you know it supports you know everything that we do across the district through that maintenance garage the the next one is the U Walkin freezer replacement at cheser high school this just moved this has been in planning for several years uh we do need to to make this investment the um only thing that I'll add here is we may get some funding um through the Food Service Budget on this but we still need to to request this 175,000 as part of our Capital plan so what I could
062do is I could keep moving if there's no questions is that all right the next one is this kitchen upgrade for cheser high school um this has been in our Capital plan probably for close to a decade the what we have right now is functional um but the kitchen is old we do have the um common area the the what they call the commons being used in addition to the the cafeteria to serve students you know the goal would be to improve the kitchen to expand the cafeteria not use the commons because of the traffic that um takes place as we're serving and moving food across the floor um you know I think this goes to to Mr White's point that you know do you do this in the scheme of of just doing this
063as a standalone or do you look at the high school as a whole so that is a significant number of 5.4 million um we've escalated that number a bit I'm not sure we've escalated it enough though well yeah we're figuring 3% a year so obviously the last three or four years it's been substantially more than that so we'd have to take a look at that again Mr White what budget does this come out of so I mean I know this is the capital budget but I'm just wondering you often mention that the the cafeteria budget the kitchen budget is separate from the $85 million school budget but do they they basically get so there's there's almost like you have a cafeteria budget a school operating budget two separate budgets when it comes to the capital
064budget they're aggregated into the same thing no the food service department if it's it's related to improvements that improv Food Service they can make a capital contribution basically from their operating budget they don't have a capital budget per se but food service is allowed to maintain a three-month reserve of based on um monthly sales so if we were to do a project and it's happened in the past where we've made improvements for example at dittles cafeteria the food service operating budget was able to make a supplemental contribution to get the project done okay but generally speaking I mean this is coming out of the the standard capital budget yes yes okay yeah I'm sorry I didn't mean to create any confusion there this is no it's fine I appr and because it's the emergency shelter
065do we get any money from the town for that or is that just all falling AB board it it I don't think we would get any specific spefic money because it serves as our emergency shelter um that doesn't mean there if that does not mean that we wouldn't get a school construction grant for this particular project we we would okay good on that as I said earlier I think you know not a tonight meeting but ultimately we'll move some dollars around we'll make some recommendations you know based on our discussion tonight so that as you look at the the plan next time around you'll see what falls into year one which is the important year because that's the only year that the council funds and then years two years two through five will spread that
066out accordingly the next item is the improvements for the athletic complex um which we had funding requested um last year um and Rich maybe give an update on where this stands right now because the council you know did approve 50,000 for planning money to do design work yeah the design contract was awarded to L SLR uh out of treasure I believe it was back in I'm going to say October of 23 so um they're in process of doing their due diligence we've met um we've met with them a few times we've also included uh the athletic director John Perino Mary Dr Gad and U and then John per Perino's key staff and trying to determine priority um and then you know obviously we're going to approach this as a multiphase project phase one being uh
067addressing the what I will call the Stadium complex uh multip follow-up phases would include improvements to baseball fields and subsequent practice fields um so we're currently in uh in in the early design of uh of that effort uh and hopefully we'll have uh some kind of presentation to make uh within the next few months and the only the only thing I'll add is um some of these improvements you know need to be made they'll they'll make the facility better they'll be aesthetically better the you know the stadium seating itself is inspected every year um you know it's been up a long time so it's it's not a safety concern but you know the investment that we make you know would be beneficial to that complex and it it is time well keep moving fire alarm
068control system at chesher high school this is just moving through the through the uh development through the capital budget phase you'll see that the 50,000 being requested is to um that's for design work correct Rich that is correct and then the actual replacement of the fire alarm control system is $1.1 million that's that is the estimate we're currently in the in the midst of replacing dods system um but the high school that that system is is certainly getting dated and it does need to be replaced any update on on that rich that I missed no that's uh pretty much sums it up the next one is the south parking lot reconfiguration storm water improvements um this was in the capital budget last year that the dollar amounts increased rich uh yeah that was based on
069uh we did uh we did us uh that was awarded to lauo um engineering uh they are in the process of finalizing uh the actual construction drawings uh and that'll be minus uh the underground survey in Geotech uh that we're not going to invest money in until we have a capital appropriation in place uh but that is uh that increase is based on a cost construction cost estimate that they provided us uh based on the design scope of work okay and I know there's some questions I just wanted to throw one more point out there I think when we uh spoke last year at the capital budget um that the loading dock that's at the back of cheser high school is is failing it's been shorted up right Rich was that last summer that you
070did that yeah there is uh we purchased Shoring uh for the loading dock to keep from uh you know collapsing I don't know I guess that's for lack of a better term yeah so that was the Shoring was installed it is it is uh not permanent Shoring uh it gets inspected every six months and then we also sealed the uh the the uh loading dock deck in order to prevent uh water migration so so far so good but ultimately that will need to be uh replaced okay thank you I'm not sure Mark did we lose Mark yeah looks like he's looks like he's coming back on there okay I see he looks Frozen on the screen yeah to me too Sam did you have a question or I could yeah I think you went first
071go ahead oh okay thank you um with regard to the fire alarm system the million dollars for the high school as I recall it last year or two years ago when we were talking about DOD it was urgent and you really wanted to move to get it done is that the same situation today and the question I'm I've got going on in my mind is that $50,000 I understand the planning needs to get done how long is it good for if it ended up getting kicked out a year or two is that $50,000 plan still good well yeah I mean ultimately the only thing that would change would be if there were uh you know fire code changes things of that nature that would that would uh Force you know change in the scope of
072work but I mean fire code has has been pretty static I'd say over the last 10 years so if uh if that money was expended uh to develop a design the design would be you know I would I would say it would be uh still a good construction design for you know five to 10 years say okay got it thank you I had the same question as Tim so we're pretty much in sync I was kind of concerned if it's Rich if this was a an immediate requirement to update and upgrade based on the you know fire codes and so forth well all the fire all the fire alarm systems districtwide are aging I believe the fire alarm system at the high school is is over 30 years old so um the problem the problem
073I mean we and we maintain fire alarms internally my staff is licensed to to do so the issue that we run into um is uh being able to get replacement components so it's all electronic you know printed circuit boards things of that nature that just you know disappear from inventory and are no longer available so that was the urgency to get DOD completed uh but the high school and doitt will soon follow yeah I think it might be you know beneficial for us to get ahead of this um again back to Safety and Security yeah and the thing I'll the thing I'll add to that too is the 1.1 million I mean that's you know that's uh that's what we call a a rough order of magnitude estimate and now the key word is rough
074so part of the design monies is to hire an engineering an engineering firm uh not only to to design the project but to also develop a construction cost estimate that is uh you know more in line uh with you know today's cost so that gets refined once the design is completed thanks Rich okay going back kind of the the next two items down uh the Synthetic Turf field replacement at 600,000 that was basically all that happened is we moved it for a year um and it's 600,000 you know we had initially budgeted 500,000 so we did want to adjust that upward again the turfield um Mark is in it's still in good shape we have a maintenance contract on it it gets uh gmax tested every year still performing well we've only had to you
075know add a couple of patches in a couple of areas that have worn out so we believe that we don't there there's no urgency to replace it it's still functioning well still drains great still gets lots of play so uh we just need to to earmark money to get that replaced I think we're in our 10th year um longer than that we put it's first first game on it was in 2011 so it's it's yeah it's performed very well we uh you know I was I was a small part of that the committee that put that thing together and we we selected a very good product and it's it's held up very well yeah now when we when we initially uh put that thing together we were supposed to be saving money in the athletic
076dep Department uh off of ticket sales do we have any information on if there is that if that fund went forward or yeah if there's money there there's about 50,000 that's in that turf field replacement fund uh we do report on that at the end of the year um the the other thing and this I don't have a handle on but um some of the organizations like booster and and grid iron are um you know supposedly setting some funding aside for eventual replacement and providing assistance when that occurs and if that occurs then that would reduce you know the cost that you see here in the capital budget y next item is the steam board Oiler replacement and this is a multi-art explanation Rich wow okay buckle your seat bels all right I'm GNA move
077the page because we we know that this a dark green highlight indicates that 50,000 was allocated for design work to begin to modernize the Schools main boilers but you see there's a whole bunch of yellow these are new items that I'm going to have Rich explain so I mean there's a lot of there's a lot of overlap here so uh what we're trying to do um is trying to allocate uh or at least request an additional 50,000 for a total of 100,000 for uh professional Design Services so that 100,000 would cover a whole slew of um of um design requests that we would be looking at in order to gain uh energy efficiencies in the High School uh right now the front actually probably 75% of the high school is heated from uh three 11
078section steam boilers um which virtually constantly have to run 247 in order to maintain uh the head of steam we also have uh uh steam domestic water boiler set so that's a total of four boiler sets um that need to run almost consistently because it's uh this is the nature of a steam uh steam boiler um in order to maintain the head of steam it constantly has to fire hot water is much more efficient because now you're controlling water temperature versus creating a head of steam so our our overall plan is to you know to solicit a design a professional design service that will come in perform the due diligence and analyze our system in place the steam footprint I'll call it uh extends from the front of the high school to the rear of
079the high school it covers a variety of different types of equipment uh from rooftop units to heat exchangers that are inside the mechanical tunnel to heat exchangers inside a uh mechanical rooms so what we're looking to do in a phase one component is to reduce that Steam circuit footprint um from a design perspective have them come up with the scope Define the impact and then uh try to convert at least the domestic hot water side and a portion of the heat to uh gas fired condensing boiler so we eliminate a good portion of the steam circuit install a condensing boiler to pick up the hot water side that in itself is a pretty significant energy saver the second phase of that um would be to renovate the remaining two steam boilers and keep a much
080smaller footprint um in place uh you know to to maintain uh heat in the in the balance of the of the footprint the alternative to doing that is to eliminate the steam system Al together which would be a substantially higher cost so um my department our trades folks and our HVAC uh trades people came up with an idea that we could potentially do this in a couple phases reduce the steam uh circuit footprint substantially and uh and get some savings out of that um so that that's kind of a a quick background on that the utility tunnel Renovations uh would be to you know to re you know reconfigure and replace all the mechanical circuits which are are well beyond the intended lifestyle most of the utility tunnels uh at the high school are Circa
0811956 so you can imagine the condition of the steam piping domestic water piping and even sanitary circuits uh we constantly uh if not weekly we're we're in those mechanical terminals performing repairs and Replacements um which create you know indoor air quality issues or have the potential to create indoor air quality issues so we're very diligent on staying focused on that but ultimately uh steel piping only last so long and I think SE almost 70 years is uh long enough so all of that needs to be replaced in the long run so a lot of that would overlap into these different phases but we just put in the utility tunnel renovation uh or at least that block of funding in there uh to help you know install new steam distribution new domestic water distribution new sanitary
082lines improve the ventilation of the tunnel add tunnel monitoring service and then uh partition it in a more robust fashion so we can have better control um the only thing that I'll add to that is some of the some of the larger dollars of 900,000 and 800,000 we'll probably be able to shift that out you know one year each um so really the request for this year is going to come down to you know adding some uh $50,000 of additional design money this makes a ton of sense that to find a solution you know you don't install Steam anymore these days um and sooner or later those boilers need to be replaced anyway so we we should look at a much more um modern alternatives to the steam all right so we we'll make some
083adjustments there go ahead Rich yeah and I mean ultimately again these are just placeholders as far as the dollars amount these are just you know rough order magnitude estimates that we're making uh based on you know just what we know ultimately when we do get a formal uh design or a for formal solution in place you know we would we would do uh a construction cost estimate and then get a get a a real number or a more accurate number the next line item is uh replace rtu 1G 2G 3G does serve the auditorium and two of those uh two of those uh rooftop units actually utilize uh steam uh for heating so uh again those units are are uh you know have are long past their intended life cycle and then ultimately trying to
084deal with a steam uh coil if anybody has ever had that experience is a little difficult and very difficult to control so we always have trouble with uh maintaining environmental temperatures um our intent would be to replace those with conventional rooftop units capable of full DX cooling for air conditioning and natural gas heating which eliminate would eliminate the uh the again eliminate the steam circuit alt together Mr White thank you um yeah Ju Just backing up probably going through all this stuff just reiterating the point about sorry uh you know School modernization in general and also we're going to be spending a bunch of money on new Energy Systems can we can we get uh like somebody as a sounding board about the life cycle costs of gas fired versus more renewable stuff I mean
085just curious about G getting some idea on that yeah well toine renewable we're talking about heat Gio well yeah well sure okay that's the potential I mean we'd have to we'd have to solicit an engineering firm to do uh our heat load calc our AC calculation and then uh design a system uh that would meet that load and then uh do a cost estimate yeah I mean the truth is is you're I think you were asking for 50,000 you said it went up to 100,000 I don't know what these I don't know what these uh designs or calculations would cost I'm not sure if it's realistic to even just have a you know a a 20-minute conversation with somebody about it what's the general Ballpark and again it also is backstopped by school modernization but
086I think that should be part of the conversation rather than just simply going to new gas fired systems as an improvement to steam systems I think we should at least have that as part of the conversation that's all stop it M Rosenberg yeah sorry um so we we had a nice tour last time I believe was it a d little rich in their boiler room that yeah I'm assuming is going to be the same process here if we move forward with this but I kind of just want to back up a little bit didn't we have an issue last year or maybe a year ago we died spoiler and we were able to replace it or while the other one got fixed I mean is this again back to the sense of urgency of this
087um yeah I mean you are you referring to the request reement to replace the Park Street boilers at DOD yeah yeah yeah I mean ultimately those DOD Dodge boilers were suffering from a Cascade failure issue uh that was caused environmentally because the Boiler Room location was uh you know close to the water table and then uh you know water mitigation 2005 um 2005 or 2006 but the balance of it are uh you know 25 plus years um and then again it's in an environment that's not conducive to uh you know it's steam it's very aggressive so it's not like a hot water syiem like do is um the other is the other issue at the high school is not so much that the boilers are in Fair shape it's the condition of the actual distribution
088Circuit of the of the Steam and then the condensate return you know circuits as well um they're just they're you know 60 70 year old piping so you know if we have to spend uh an appreciable amount of money to get that replaced or that upgraded um it's probably makes more sense to invest in changing you know the systems that are currently steamed to hot water so that's kind of what drove us to look at this a little differently as far as uh eliminating the steam system I don't know if that makes any sense but no it did I just kind of based on what Tim's saying we I'd like to see a bit more of looking at Alternatives can you hear me Mark your mic is breaking up on us a little bit I'm
089gonna try to shut my camera off see if that's better um no nope okay all right to be continued yeah I mean certainly oh no one you're muted Mark can you hear me yeah okay yeah you're good Rich it's just been yeah I mean well I don't have a problem we could certainly take a look at you know what uh all the the other options are um I could certainly tell you I mean short of you know something like what you're talking about Tim would make sense especially in new construction of a new high school um short of that it would be a pretty substantial cost to convert uh that front end of the school to geothermal but what yeah it doesn't hurt to ask or to look at it yeah no the the other
090thing that just crossed my mind is I mean one piece of Geo is the the internal piping but then also the wells yeah yeah if regardless if we did new if we did anything change to the footprint of the high school the wells could stay intact so anyway just a thought depending where you located them yeah absolutely yeah yeah yeah yeah I'm gonna just throw one one thought out here which actually is an agenda item anyway and that is you know the when we engaged with energia to take a look at all our current capital projects um and see are there some Energy savings that will help offset the cost of these projects um you know my the intent is to take last year's Capital plan and any additions to this year's plan and have
091them put that through the same kind of highle review that you know doesn't make sense to uh make some energy Investments that will help offset the cost of these Capital items so you know geothermal window replacements you know those high dollar cost items don't necessarily have good paybacks but we already have energy engaged so that is one place that we can go to with this particular question thank you it's a great idea thank you all right the next few items these are all just items that are relatively small they've moved up in the new capital budget year I don't think we need to spend much time on these tonight I'm I'm kind of sensitive to everybody's time this evening um so we could spend more time on them at the next meeting but I did
092want to highlight a couple of more items that are are new um these the three yellow highlights that you see on this upper portion of the screen those actually rich just talk through those for a second because it's really not new the 150,000 for roof ladder replacement well these another year right these are just ads so what's in yellow are ads so you know Code Compliance for roof laders so by the time you know we get through all of them you know that 150,000 for year three uh is is just you know padding to to take care of what we weren't able to get in previous years similar with DDC um you know 40% of the high school Al actually now that numbers might be 35% um we continuously pick away at removing the pneumatic
093side of of uh HVAC controls at the high school and then obviously as we're upgrading rooftop units and Air Handlers we're also upgrading the direct digital controls to them so there's a cost associated with that and then laboratory improvements I just put an additional half a million in year five uh because that will the 400 400 500 there the I think it's uh you know 1.3 million uh will not be enough to cover um Renovations of uh the the the major bathrooms at the high school and uh and DOD so that was just uh added uh in year five okay and Mark um the laboratory improvements you know we've been hitting each school you know over the years with a you know anywhere from 250 to 500,000 a year doitt is now doitt is fully
094completed Rich uh all the multi fixture bathrooms are 100% uh what's remaining are like the kindergarten and first grade um you know single stalls I'll call them uh so we're slowly picking away at at those uh but that does come out of this funding and so the next after D's done high school and yeah high school and DOD both of those are in h dire need of uh replacement and we need to get designs uh underway for both of those yeah okay then um the next yellow one is the stor more to management improvements Rich can you just yeah I mean this uh I just added this line item uh you know we've noticed in the you know obviously uh with the very wet season that 20 thou 2023 we've had and now looks like
095we'll continue to 2024 uh we have uh we do have storm water management issues uh specifically at dittle and the high school so um this funding would cover basically catch Bas and replacement catch Bas and cover replacement and then try to make some improvements to storm water impoundment uh primarily dry Wells and the like so um these are things that uh we need to uh to stay on top of and and address yeah judging on just the last you know few weeks here we've had an Monumental amount of rain so we want to make sure that these systems can keep up all right and then I'm going to keep moving because these were just additions the um last one I wanted to talk about tonight which is the Highland Courtyard restoration which is that's a
096new project as well right yeah we we're putting that in uh the court the Courtyard at Highland um is the same age as the building um there is a storm water management system uh in the uh in uh you know as far as uh yard drains and things of that nature but after uh you know 50 years of uh being in place the concrete slabs uh themselves have been uh slowly uh you know sinking if you will so now we have a condition like tomorrow morning the Courtyard at uh Courtyard at Highland despite the yard drains will be a little miniature lake so I mean it just needs to be updated and upgraded um that number is just again a rough order magnitude estimate we would need to take a look to see if uh
097we were we'd be looking at actually doing a full Demolition and repouring or minimizing the amount of slap concrete slab we have in the courtyard uh to to increase permeable surface or if we have an option of hydraulically jacking um those slabs back into a a more suitable position so that's not that would require further investigation but at least uh we place it here so that it's on the radar thanks Rich so just looking quickly along the bottom here so including these new items um the 5year total is 53 m255 th000 what's in year one right now is 15, excuse me 15, 320,000 and you could see that there's nothing that's in year five yet so based on tonight's discussion and some other time rich and I will spend we'll move some dollars around I
098don't think that $15.3 million is realistic for for a year one year one request and I know we have some opportunities to you know to get that number to something that's probably more reasonable um which we will do and and make recommendations um for the next meeting so Mr Rosenberg was asking uh Howland School 1972 I I have it at 7 71 I believe it was dedicated okay yeah so it's 52 years old um actually you know held up pretty well but it's not a new building even though we we typically do to it is at our newest school yeah I mean it's it is it is in it is in good shape the building I mean obviously we need a we need a roof you know an updated roof you know windows window walls
099need to be replaced but you know the bones of the school are in in good shape the slab is in good shape um you know that's something that I look at you know to to see if they're settling or heaving and everything is certainly when they did the uh structural uh design and construction of that school they did it right so Mr White oh thank you uh with regard to Highland 1971 is that the original footprint or did it get expanded at all since the original that is the original footprint okay thank and I think that was the only thing that was added was the um uh the mobile classrooms in the rear of the facility sure sure sure okay thank you and one other thing just in general with regard to school modernization I
100I don't know if I've ever said this but I think it's important just to point out I'm not looking for any sort of absolute certainty on anything it to me it's all about likelihoods and if we have a conversation and we're thinking it's likely the high school stays in place okay let's do stuff if it's likely it's something new well then let's then I'm gonna vote against it I'm not looking for any absolutes or any guarantees or anything 10 years out but directionally where are we headed and does it make sense to do something that's all legitimate point and just kind of along those lines you know Mark you'll notice that we don't have any requests in for Chapman you know or Darcy or anything substantive or for Norton because we know those buildings are
101coming offline not that we're neglecting those buildings of something that needs to get needs to get done we're going to do it but we're not requesting any substantive Capital Money the one big one though that is always a question mark is humiston um because a decision does need to make do we stay or do we go you know at that building as well so we'll we'll continue the dialogue and um we'll we'll come up with some recommendations for the next planning meeting to finalize the capital budget okay okay and then if we're done with that we just have one more quick update um real quick uh M Rosenberg would like to know from last conversation with school modernization I thought DOD was second in line for potential consideration but I believe we need to start
102reviewing the data from the last committee yeah that is uh that is a that that is a planning committee discussion that needs to be had you know when we completed the school building committee when they completed their recommendations the um conclusion was that phase one ultimately two new schools will be built but there was to be a phase two and phase three so that does need to be um a planning committee topic meeting topic in the future to make some recommendations on on how to go forward I know the planning committee in the past talked about is the structure that was followed for the first school modernization committee that was joint effort from the board and the Town Council and the Town Council appointed a school modernization committee is is that the mechanism to do
103phase two okay so we can add that to a future agenda okay um moving on update on energia and energy performance contract okay so this is very quick and Mark I'll give you a little bit of background um in about nine years ago we did work with a company called amesco um and ECG engineering where the town invested about $10.2 million to make infrastructure upgrades to its buildings things like Highland which was all heated by electricity that was replaced with rooftop natural gas for units the back of chesher high school which was also electric heat that was um changed over into natural gas you know fired units as well we made LED lighting improvements across the district classrooms um on the town side about two million of the 10.2 million was used to make improvements
104that whole project uh made these $10.2 million in infrastructure improvements but it was partially repaid by Energy savings from for example at Highland no longer paying to heat it electrically so that contract is a 15-year contract we are looking the planning committee about I guess eight months ago now looked at whether or not we can do a new energy performance contract making some improvements to our schools that include energy enhancements to help offset the cost of the capital investment we were looking specifically at doitt can we take the major projects that we need to get done at dittle which are to add air conditioning to replace its windows and to replace the roof and when we replace the roof as an example if we add solar to those roof to that roof does the Energy
105savings help offset the investment that's required to make the the infrastructure improvements so we engage with energia on a no cost basis to do a review look at our Capital plan look at what we're expending for electricity natural gas oil and is there a new contract that can that we can enter into that um makes it financially more reasonable than making straight out Investments and bonding for these long-term projects so at this point energia has received the information they needed from the schools to do that review um and most recently they received the information they needed from the town they're working through in the background on the details and we expect to hear from them within the next few weeks on initial recommendations and whether or not there is a viable contract that we can
106enter into so that's the update on that okay Mr White yeah just um Vin You' mentioned it's done on a no cost basis so the initial review is no cost um if we go forward with an energy performance contract and it wouldn't be with energy energia would do an RFP to find a energy performance company to make the infrastructure improvements by going through that process if we meaning the board and the town decide that we do want to go forward with a contract the cost that eneria would be paid would be included in the price of that contract we would not pay it Direct ly and that contract would work similar to um how we structured it um in the current contract we're we're in $10.2 Million worth of energy Improvement and infrastructure improvements gets
107paid over a 15-year period at the rate of $600,000 per year and most excuse me and that $600,000 cost per year is offset by Energy savings and that's just that's just how their business model Works they don't every project they look into they're doing an investment grade audit which costs them real money real time they're not guaranteed anything but they know that these things tend to be tend to work well so often it's just part of their business model and those are just some throwaway projects but they end up making money on the second half of the project which is going forward with it happen correct yeah so this maybe this I know this sounds a little bit nebulous but when the energy performance when energia comes back and says here's the work that can
108be done this is what the Energy savings is going to be this is what a contract would look like and what the repayment terms would be so it'll make a lot more sense when we have all the details and I know with the uh prior planning committee members I had shared what the financials were for the first contract you know I I will send that circulate that to everybody again so Mark can see it and um understand what the first one looked like I don't think this this is my personal opinion I don't think the second one would be as attractive financially but certainly some Energy savings could offset the cost of these infrastructure improvements which would put us ahead of where we were we went through traditional Bond financing to make and the uh
109infrastructure improvements any other questions not for me I'm good I'm good um do I make a motion to adjourn did we do that I make a motion to adjourn second all in favor we are adjourned great