001uh planning committee meeting january 28 2021 this is a continuation of a earlier planning committee meeting where we are taking up the 2122 capital budget for improvements at the schools as well as the five-year plan i'm the roll call please yes good evening everyone mr martelly present ms hallon here mr white here mr martella you do have a quorum of your plan all right stand for the pledge of allegiance okay bringing up the flag and to the republic for which it stands one okay item two on our agenda is there any communication from uh the public audience emails received then i received none mr martelly okay all right with that vin i believe you're going to take us through uh presentation you share your screen and show us some projects we have rich clavette here
002thanks for coming rich you're welcome good to be here okay thank you and i see we have mr peregini with us as well i'm sorry and we have chairman perry jean with this as well i miss everyone so much i just had to be here it's good to see everyone seriously okay so the agenda for tonight uh there's just the one item the capital expenditure plan and budget for 21 22 through 25 26. in in terms of a uh just a quick recap after the last meeting the where the planning committee requested that um we take a look we being mr clavette who's our facilities manager and myself at the allocation of the capital budget by year to determine you know where we can make some adjustments to uh bring down the the cost of
003vo1 and essentially what we did is scrub through the document that we have provided previously and this is a summary that you should be seeing on the screen we isolated for the 21 22 capital budget year which is the first year of the plan which you know whatever is ultimately approved by the clan planning committee on the board this is what the council would be requested to actually fund in the plan so we were able to take that from about 5.4 million down to 26 2.65 million by pushing out some of the projects in year one out to years two three and then making some further adjustments in years uh four and five so what i just wanted to walk through quickly is what are the items that are remaining in year one before i
004show the you know the rest of the uh spreadsheet that's already been shared with the committee members so if you see here the right side of the screen represents the 2.65 million um and just i will note the left side of the screen this 37.728 million is the full five years of the plan including the 2.65 million so what's remaining is in the category of window replacements we're requesting 500 000 to continue to make the window replacements and keep the project at cheshire high school moving and these windows are going to be on the south side of the high school which is the side where the west gym is located for example and the auditorium um we're we've left in the second category of paving roofing sidewalk and masonry improvements a million seventy five thousand
005seven hundred fifty thousand of that though oops sorry about that let me just recenter the screen here 750 000 which is where my cursor is this is for the dot roof replacement needed above the gym cafeteria main office areas we described that as areas where we've been chasing leaks and and you know we can't continue to make repairs the roof does need to be replaced in that area uh beyond the 750 that's included in this million seventy five thousand is 125 000 to you know do repairs on the sidewalks across the district on a worse first basis same thing 100 000 for masonry repairs worse first basis and then we need an additional hundred thousand dollars to replace the leaking roof over at cheshire high school so that's the million seventy five thousand the district
006cafeteria improvement line of 175 thousand this is the norton cafeteria which we did discuss at the last planning committee meeting the allocation that we have now 400 000 after hiring a an architect and doing the review it's 400 000 is not going to be enough so we need an additional 175 000 in order to be able to do that project and i know there was a public building commission meeting last night um if mr clavette would you mind just giving a brief update on what the decision was on this project related to that yeah we're gonna um i mean ultimately uh because of uh the estimated budget to be over or the estimated project budget was over what was allocated for budget the public building commission despite our attempts at trying to infuse this 175
007000 felt that it was better to postpone this project until the summer of 2022. so their recommendation last night um knowing full well that this 175 is included in this capital uh has uh is going to push that decision to the town council for further direction ultimately it was thought it would it's better to deliver the full kitchen as requested and as intended then try to deliver a partial kitchen renovation uh that would we would be limited by uh the constraint of our current budget yeah and even if if this 175 000 is to be approved in in april it wouldn't give us enough time to bid for this summer anyway so the other the other flying ointment is uh 175 would push uh the entire capital appropriation over 500 000 which would require it
008to go to referendum for approval good point thank you so i'm going to go uh just back to the worksheet here 350 000 half of that 175 000 is the replacement of the underground oil storage tank at cheshire high school which was is at its deadline so we do have to fund that project and then another 170 000 is needed essentially to make some of the ventilation improvements at cheshire high school as well so we thought it was important to leave that in uh this 250 000 a portion of that 100 000 is to make some improvements in the utility tunnels at cheshire high school and also to fund annual inspections and again that's it's important that we you know keep those utility tunnels dry and um inspected properly so that they're in good repair
009and we don't have you know any of the indoor quality issues that we've we've experienced in the past there at the high school we are looking for 50 000 within this to do the design work to reconfigure the south parking lot that we talked about and then um you know rich and i really talk through there's another hundred thousand included in this 250 that is to start replacing some of the interior uh doors whether they're classroom doors some of them are fire doors across the district and priorities are the high school chapman dot and do little so you know we just don't have enough in the operating budget that we expect that we can make some of these door replacements and they are in tough shape in some places so it's important that we continue
010that and just getting towards the end here district laboratories 250 000 to continue to move that project forward and the last 50 000 is to add some additional and ada compliance stadium seating at the main game field at cheshire high school so those are the priorities that you know have been you know whittled down you know again we knocked about half this is about half the size that we originally had proposed and then very quickly i'm just going to show you that this is the full summary spreadsheet that um i did include in in the packet i'm sorry the packet that i sent to the planning committee members but these yellow highlights indicate the projects that we've moved out of the first year 21 22 and into either years two through five so you could
011just see very quickly that it's somewhere about um eight or ten projects that we've moved off to the right down at the bottom here this represents your one two three four five and the total um has not changed it's still 37 million 500. these are the allocations by year this 2 650 000 is the request for funding for next year that's being recommended and so you know the other documents that i had provided is the breakdown instead of by category by building so that's a quick screenshot of what that looked like most of the capital requests you know not surprisingly you know going to our bigger schools cheshire high school [Music] doolittle is getting a significant portion over five years district-wide projects and then died and then the funding request the 2.65 million for next
012year would go uh cheshire high school district-wide projects 750 000 for dodd that would be the roof replacement and 175 000 to norton and then the last sheet is the instead of sort of by category this is the more detailed sheet sorted by building so that's where we are in terms of the proposed changes to the capital budget so with that we'll you know address any questions and thoughts comments first i want to say thank you for going back and you enrich taking a deep dive and looking really at what is necessary immediately necessary i know all the projects aren't necessarily necessary um now um quick question a couple questions first question is of the projects i see so the windows at cheshire high school would have to go to referendum the roof at dodd
013would have to go to referendum and then would the norton cafeteria have to go to referendum yes because as rich explain we have 400 000 if you add 175 that takes us over the 500 000 threshold and even though it's in separate years it's looked at as one project over multiple years that exceeds the 500 000 okay um the tank removal at cheshire high school that's that's a requirement yeah it is the tank typically a steel underground storage tank um per connecticut the eep has a 30-year life span before it has to be removed uh from the gut from the ground or and or replaced um 2021 is the 30th year for that tank is that tank used rich uh well we spoke about it it's it's uh it's occasionally used and it's used in
014in uh in the sense of trying to make sure that the uh the product turnover is regular so we don't wanna we don't wanna store oil in there for a decade per se but uh i think we still need to have the conversation of whether we want to install a an oil tank there because of the status of the high school as the town emergency center um my opinion which doesn't you know that's my opinion it would be a good idea to maintain at least a dual fuel capability for an emergency center natural gas is pretty is pretty uh reliable but unfortunately in the early winter i think the town of shelton or derby uh 200 customers with without gas service for two and a half days so so much for the reliability of natural
015gas so i think this is a sign that we need to take a deep dive on and uh i know that's that's what i'll say about that yeah so the recommendation is to request the full you know replacement value if a decision is made that we ultimately don't replace it we just remove it then the cost would be you know less than half of that rich would you get yeah but it would be about a third just to do a removal would we be putting the tank back in the same grave as the other that came out right now it's a 10 000 gallon uh storage tank i would probably recommend like a 4 000 gallon you know just uh just to have something in the event of an emergency okay no i think that
016it's it's smart um to have the dual fuel capabilities as it's the emergency center for the town i mean i don't see you know for before pulling it out i think it makes a lot of sense to replace that um does anybody else in the committee have any questions comments tim hey thank you andrew uh yeah rich or vin you might know i don't know you mentioned the benefit of having the dual fuel you is do you still i assume it's true that you would still get a lower rate for the gas if you have the dual fuel don't you i don't think we're paying away yeah i don't think right now tim we're not paying a rate differential because we can use dual fuel um i i was thinking that that would come on
017the the eversource side the gas supply side yeah i think it i thought the rate was like almost like a demand response rate where they could just cut the gas off if they want to and you switch over to oil because particularly because of winter constraints anyway they call that an interruptable supply plan exactly interruptable so if you have the capability of dual fuel um you do have that option to apply for that rate so technically you get a little bit you know you get a little bit of a break on um on natural i mean gas not a big difference yeah we don't i i don't think we're i don't think we're enough although we'll have that dual fuel capability that'll be the only building that will we will have that capability on so
018i don't know what you'd have to do an analysis on what the cost savings would be in today's day and age i don't know if that would be all that much but okay take a look now i understand the question you know and i'm it's a little fuzzy but i think we do have an interruptible rate that we do pay and you know what to tell you the truth i didn't think it was our choice but i'll check and see what our gas rate is well yeah i would hate to i would hate that to be the case especially for the schools that have gas only yeah anyway something to look at um a couple just a couple more things the 400 versus the 575 project was that norton yes i'm just curious how did
019we is there like a 30 or 60 second elevator story on why we came in with the 400 versus the why'd we originally come in with 400 um yeah i guess the the simple answer is that's around the range that we brought the doolittle project in so when we you know prepare the capital budget we use a budget estimate uh best guess um which is a little backwards you know we've talked in the past that's why some of the requests we have this year are to hire a design professional to get an estimate you know design it get an estimate that we can request in the capital budget but um i guess the other thing about norton that's unique is the because it's a small footprint and if we're going to redesign we really can't
020do much inside so we wanted to move the refrigeration equipment to the outside of the building to give us more room for serving area inside sure okay that makes sense i mean you were doing you were you were coming up with a number before you did the design basically and yeah i mean ultimately we know it's a requirement so we we basically do a rough order of magnitude estimate you know based on what we think it's going to be and then the 550 ends up being the actual design cost so you know now that we have you know everything in design we've gone through you know what uh the food service uh you know uh department wants and needs and then we have to review code requirements and then what we can build in that
021specific space uh we have you know that that would be a hard at least designed number that we have now so that explains the difference okay thank you it's awesome i can add it's also a big difference of why we're trying to ask for design dollars in the previous year because that gives us a better uh handle on what actual cost is downstream well the will the capital project manager will be able to help out with that at all uh yeah we're work i work together with dan uh with dan all already on that so we're already we're already in full in full gear here okay um uh just a couple more things that i think are probably quick just an observation if you can speak to it uh so i recall that i've heard
022comments recently about trying to work with the town and uh reduce costs sharing services and stuff like that i know in years i believe in years past we have done that particularly in relation to um i'm thinking fire inspections like there might be a public works maintainer that's qualified to do stuff like that and then he comes over to do the stuff of the schools do we do anything like that in terms of sharing services with the town and building maintenance really um yeah i guess there's a few things you know rich i'll let you guys share some so i have on my staff i have two e2s uh both of them specialize in fire alarm systems and access control so when the town has a requirement um we do you know we'll go out
023and we'll help them out we'll spec out what what equipment uh you know we'll troubleshoot we'll spec uh new equipment and we'll assist in the install so uh yeah i mean we don't do it we don't do it you know across every trade but we do uh we do have some some uh sharing initiatives like that okay thank you yeah and it doesn't need to be that you know really widespread but we are trying to do what we can to reduce costs for the taxpayer type of thing yeah yeah i'll just mention a couple of others because i think it's a great question and you know some sometimes you know the things we do i know i take them for granted it's just the way it's been but like the chief technology officer that we
024have for the town is outsourced and we split that cost so we have you know one company that provides services across the town and it's more for the infrastructure and the networking the uh you met dan bombaro at the last planning committee meeting that's a new shared support that we have specifically for capital projects um you know some of the simpler things that come to mind are the whenever we have snow you know we have a contractor that does the snow removal but the town staff mark cunningham who's on the public works side you know his group comes in and sends and salts all the parking lots so there's a lot of coordination that's going on it you know unfortunately for me 4 30 in the morning where you know we're communicating with each other
025you know to make sure that the schools you know get open and this week was um a great example of the the teamwork was just incredible because you know the snowfall that we had wasn't expected to last as late as it did so we wound up with a little bit more snow you know coming into the morning hours and i guess it was was it tuesday rich um yeah yeah oh no i'm sorry it was wednesday was an early dismissal we did not want to have a delayed opening on an early dismissal day because the students would only be in for two hours so you know rich brought his group in two hours early mark cunningham and his group had to come back to several schools you know to plow and sand so um there's
026actually quite a bit that that we do obviously in medical benefits we're using one insurance broker we go out to bid jointly with the town you know that's how we hired cigna it's how we do our stop-loss insurance so um yeah there's quite a bit of you know if not necessarily direct savings it's not overstaffing to provide these types of services you know between the town i'll add that through the pandemic we've also provided quite a bit of assistance to transfer cut and you know especially distribution of ppe and things of that nature so that that was uh that was a significant effort through this past summer to date and and that goes back to the cheshire taxpayers because we fund chespercott in part right right we're doing what we can to share services and
027reduce costs reduce taxes so thank you for that um i just saw one of the numbers in there i didn't ask about it before i might have missed it fifty thousand dollars for ada field 88 seats at the field yeah it's actually for the replacement of the portable bleachers which are currently not ada compliant so there's a series of four or six uh portable stadium seats if if if you will that are currently don't meet ada compliancy and really need to be disposed of in the right um the right benches to put in so that's what that is that applicated for okay um and uh the last point you pushed it out to i see you pushed out to year two for uh highland 220 000 for a generator yeah so i i think i
028believe i emailed you about it then i just want to highlight it because i didn't mention it last time i just hope we can take into consideration the possibility of switching from you know the fossil fuel-based generator over to energy storage or battery technology it's coming of age i don't know if it's there yet i don't know that it makes sense but i have seen these things making sense slowly but surely so i just want to make sure that stays in mind when we get out to year two okay especially if we're doing especially if we end up doing some solar projects um yeah i think it could work together well if we do solar in highland and you want a generator to highland you could do this plus the battery and make it so
029it would be uh address concerns address any uh reliability okay thanks tim i don't remember seeing that email so i'll i'll go back and take a look for it but that's a good point but yeah we'll we'll be talking energy solar energy next week same if i may really quit rich do you know what what kw how many kilowatts do you want for that generator do you know so that's a 480 volt uh service and it's the only one that's 480 in the district uh between freezer plus uh full you know rooftop unit full ac for the building uh no less than 250 kw okay okay the thing is i saw it come through i saw i saw a project come through at about a thousand dollars per kw per kilowatt hour which is different
030than a kilowatt but right it's just the money the the tour the the economics are really beginning to look good yeah we have to get uh electrical engineer uh assigned to do a load calc you know based on our peak usage and then determine the size of the generator but off the top of my head i would assume you know the the electric output the electric uh use based on kilowatt hours the highland and the high school are one and two so they're relatively they're relatively close to each other okay thank you thanks thanks andrew yep hey cathy you've been patiently waiting i i this is so unimportant compared to all those questions but i just wanted to make sure part of in the athletic complex improvements originally there was some portion of it that
031was going to be used to remove the secondary viewing tower which is not used as in in disrepair so leaving it for another year is not a safety issue is it i mean there's is there a reason why we would want to get that out sooner rather than pushing it off and i don't even know how much of the original 200 was would be needed for that but i just wanted to ask that question two years ago i uh i undertook i hired the professional services uh of a structural engineer to do uh an assessment on the uh steel frame and the structure of that particular building including how the press box was attached to the um to the bleacher uh setup that's there right now i was hoping to use this leverage uh to
032get some emergency funding because it was would have been an unsafe structure and uh it was one of them so there's no danger of that collapsing anytime in the near future okay darn okay thanks let's that try though good question good question um the sidewalk is required sidewalks is is that for like just aprons and curbing and actually most of that yeah most of that money is going to be allocated for doolittle school uh the uh west the west elevation especially leading to the uh um actually it's the north facing west entrance to the gymnasium that and the accompanying stairs and handicapped ramps uh just that alone is probably gonna take all of that capital to uh get that replaced but it's in uh it's not in very good condition right now and needs to
033be replaced very soon i know well my daughter plays volleyball there i got it god it's not a it's not a very good setup and then the masonry repairs that's just very general repointing yeah et cetera yeah we've uh we've expanded uh between at least we had i think we had one capital appropriation from 2018 or 19 but uh between the uh hummingston building the chester high school dodd middle school i mean we've spent well in excess of 300 000 already and i could honestly spend another 300 with what's remaining so that neat that just needs to be that's part of maintaining the masonry facade of all of these buildings got it okay i mean as one of the planning committee members i feel that um you did take a deep dive you went back
034and you looked and you've outlined projects that are necessary to be completed um i don't see anything in here that's really a want i think most of these are needs for the district um specifically the windows and the roof i mean cheshire high school no matter which way modernization goes we do have a long time until cheshire high school is touched we have a leaking roof you have leaking windows as well as the roof at dodd we know that'll be used for swing space if not renovated in its um entirety um so i feel comfortable moving forward with this list um i don't have a motion so to speak in front of us but um if we are ready as a group to forward it off to the full board for review um i'd be
035i i think that i think vin and his team has done it have done a good job at identifying what's really necessary to keep things in good repair right i agree i think that there's um you know it's unfortunate we can't spend more money but i agree that in light of the school modernization you know committee planning and that kind of thing it doesn't make sense to spend money we don't need to sooner so i think that this represents um a pretty prudent approach and i don't have any problems moving it to the full board at all okay tim yeah i'm happy to move it to the board i'll i could make a motion in a second my only my only one point is for the smc to just sort of have this it's proven
036to keep this in the mind of the smc so if it goes in whatever direction some of these pieces i'd be happy to support some of these pieces changing um depending on what happens right right and well before before you guys jumped on um vin and i had an offline discussion about that so there is time we could forward this to full board and there is time i think until april then so the process the way it goes once the board approves the capital budget we take the numbers we put them into the proper format that goes to the town manager the town council begins reviewing the capital budget in mid-march and assuming that they they keep it on the current schedule will approve by april 30th so by the time we get to mid-march
037the school modernization committee you know it's probably going to be further along with their recommendations so there'll be some more clarity as to what the direction of school modernization will be and we do meet with the town council to present what was ultimately approved you know by the planet committee on the board and so there's time to negotiate you know make changes at that point in time so it's it's really the beginning of the process after it's approved by planning committee on the board and there is time to change it you know as far as as a motion i'll bring it up on the screen as soon as i'm finished explaining so the motion should uh be made that the planning committee you know recommends that the total amount of the five-year capital plan 37
038million seven hundred twenty eight thousand five hundred be moved for consideration by the board of education and then if you could just whoever's making the motion just say how much it is in each of the fiscal years oh okay that's what's up on the screen now that helps well tim volunteered to make the motion so yeah yeah i need the motion in front of me i missed it are we so i move that the planning committee recommend to the full board of education the five-year capital budget for the period 2021 through 2026 in a total amount of 37 million 720 8500 um broken down it as follows year one two million six hundred and fifty thousand dollars year two do i have to say twenty twenty one twenty year two is good you're two year
039two seven million two hundred and eighty five thousand dollars year three ten million six hundred seventy five thousand dollars year four six million six hundred and fifty six thousand dollars and your five ten million four hundred and sixty two thousand five hundred dollars chump change no any discussion well tim's gotta second it oh oh second yeah okay any discussion no all in favor motion passes unanimous thank you so much rich and catherine great job off the cuff like that you're welcome thank you okay all right any uh any other move to adjourn is that what you were asking that's okay i'll second that okay all right thank you everybody and we will see you guys at seven o'clock yeah all right thank you very much thank you thank you see you good night