Planning Meeting 12-10-20

001tonight's meeting we're having a full meeting of the for the planning community meeting for uh december 10th 2020. um we have a pretty brief agenda but i'd like to ask vinnie could you do the roll call for quorum please sure that's not supposed to do that mr martelly here mr paragini all right here miss ham here mr grippo here miss harrigan here miss helen here and mr white okay mr chairman you do have a quorum okay i'd like to ask vinnie will you put the flag up for us so we can do a pleasure of allegiance i got it god okay okay i pledge allegiance all right great job guys i just had a flashback to the meeting over the summer where i spontaneously asked marlene to lead us in the pledge and the dog

002just went with it never heard from that dog again either jeff i noticed you never miss an opportunity to bring that up all right um jeff orvin do we have anything from the audience any emails um for the committee i don't i don't have any okay all right then with that um i just wanted to before we get into it coliers is here this evening coliers is going to be presenting the various various school modernization options to the full board um i think it's important that we start this discussion now i know a lot of you have been following along with our both the school admirers asia committee meeting and then our options subcommittee meeting which has been meeting um basis we had a meeting actually last evening and we have another one coming up

003this coming monday um i do suggest you listen to those meetings they're very informative so tonight chuck from followers will run us through the various options as they stand today um do know that last night we started developing a scoring matrix um which the school modernization committee is going to be using to refine the various options that you're going to see tonight to kind of start to whittle them down to a few options which then we could actually put full numbers too and then start talking to the town about the actual cost implications for mill rates and etc so with that i'm going to turn it over to chuck and chuck i believe you'll share your screen and walk through the various options yes they're okay can you make it a little bit larger chuck

004and i did email them to everybody on the board a while ago how does that look andrew a little perfect it's good for me all right great um yeah so thank you chuck warranted with colliers i've met some of you um pleasure to meet the rest of you virtually with me tonight is john copeland's as well um our senior project manager john um we'll probably bring up the matrix andrew and i'm gonna i know there's a lot of work yesterday done i'm gonna have john go through that because he was very really involved with that towards the end right when we get to that so i'll pass it off to john so um in the criteria as i'm sure many of you if you've been watching on uh watching along um we've been developing about

005five major different types of criteria with slight variations in each of them and and really um as we look through these we can mix and match kind of the i'll say the individual projects it depends on the order um where you'll see options scenarios one and two um they have the high school renovation towards the end um option i think it's four or three as the renovation in the beginning so it's kind of just a flip-flop in essence but little nuances to each of them yeah gross score yeah gsf yep there you go grow square foot um here um so in the options um these options were really driven at least the first couple really driven by our data on the enrollment projections that malone mcbroom did um if those i assume most of you

006have seen that information but uh your your enrollments and your space requirements in your elementary schools is going to be tightening very quickly and you're you have a strong need for additional space and what we've shared in prior meetings is how do we how do we create that space how do we provide more space to relieve that and essentially there's two is you know major components one is is building this new middle school potentially six to eight there's an option of seven to eight um which needs discussion uh or build a new elementary school or expanding those schools the high school really doesn't meet that need right away the way we see it it's not going to give you more space in that type of an option so that said um the in our in

007our data here and i think you've had this already i think most of this is pretty straightforward uh we have the options to the left um we show the eight year projected high enrollment where there is either a new project or a renovation for a project because that factor goes into the reimbursement rate uh and how much the state would be willing to participate for that type of a project the cip we don't list them because that would be fully on the town we show the building size uh in in those projects where we would have reimbursement the low gross square footage what that relates to is the excuse me the space standard which is you take your enrollment you there there's a spreadsheet that may some of you may have seen they have factors

008square foot per student and you multiply it by your eight year high and it tells you what the what they call the building area should be in the building area it's really important to understand it's the inside face of exterior walls so if you're in a room if we're measuring in that inside face is what that is accounting for the thickness of the exterior walls accounts for anywhere from four to six percent in most buildings so in order to develop a budget we apply a five percent factor to that building area if you don't um it could be multi-millions of dollars escalated over many years and you can have a shortfall on a budget if you don't and we've we've had that challenge in the past that we want to avoid the high growth square

009footage we're adding approximately we're adding 10 percent um to the to the space standard and expectation that there would be programming requirements uh and that would require us to over build if you were build in addition to that that'd be a discussion with oscgr uh but um we we assumed that for a high and low for gross square footage and essentially in our budgets and i'll be happy to show you how we build those if anybody is uh familiar os cgr office of school construction grants in review it's uh the department of construction services they on behalf of the department of education manage the grant process for the state of connecticut uh there are a bunch of project managers uh financial analysts architects engineers and some attorneys as well up with the state so there's

010any acronyms that we we we don't cover definitely just type it up and i'll we'll clarify um so as we go through this the way we typically build budgets just to give you a quick overview we start with the square footage of the building as a base that's really the core of the budget we'll apply cost per square foot dollars that we've seen historically in projects that'll give us a cost for the building we typically use a percentage base uh for of the building for the site work that's for your drives your utilities storm sewer electric playgrounds parking lots etc um for those and then what is also included in these budgets and it's a total project budget is uh there's ffne at your furniture anything if you take the building you turn it upside

011down it falls out that's your furniture we account for that the the next component are fees and expenses those are the architects fees materials testing fees hour fees any specialists there might be environmental hazard consultants that need to be involved um there would be printing costs uh financing and bond origination costs which are not included in this because we would need that from jim jascott to um to advise us on that and then lastly what is included also is owner's contingency um that's anywhere from five to ten percent in uh to cover any unforeseen conditions errors emissions requests might become from the district or the town or third party reviews like a fire marshal or a building official may request something during construction so those components in a very quick overview is what comprises a

012total project budget um so then we go to the right we have our total project budget the low and high to correspond with those and then in the far right we have the low and high for what we estimate to be the district's share using reimbursement amounts for the district for the new reimbursement it's john you have that number at hand 45 i'm sorry for new is 35.72 there we go so news 35.72 and for renovations it's 10 higher of that 45.72 so we have to factor that in we also factor in these district shares we assume a certain amount of ineligible costs and it's really important to understand that many times when a project is sold we've seen that ineligible costs are not taken into account so what it does is it overestimates how

013much the state is going to reimburse and then sometimes there's expectations that are not met um on a project so our first scenario here um is um would be a construction of a new elementary school in this in this uh option we're showing uh in different colors uh we calculated a school that would accommodate 550 students 600 students and then 700. um maloney mcbroom and in their recommendations would be around a 700 student school and this is subject to change subject to fine-tuning of the plan um but for our purposes in the totals we're using this the the 700 student in the green we're using these numbers here in the total at the bottom um that would what that would do is would provide an uh enough room to re-configure your district um what those

014lines exactly are we would we would find two nodes with meluna mcbroom um but allow room to essentially take off chapman uh we're assuming taking off chapman and darcy and um and uh and uh and consolidate making more room in the and these should be k to six we haven't changed andrew notice the other night but these should be all k to six by the way so um we have to modify that uh the reimbursement rate jeff i saw your question um if we did an addition to a renovation that addition is a has been at the renovation rate not at a new rate so it would be at the temp the higher rate for those unless they change it but they haven't changed that recently um you see any other questions here before we

015go okay no i'll leave that up um and then so in this scenario uh we'd estimate that project for a new elementary school uh we assume it also on a town property we wouldn't be purchasing the property if we had to purchase property that would be an addition so that's not included anywhere about 55 to 66 million and that can modify a little bit but based upon numbers we have from other projects we're pretty you know comfortable be in that range in the district's share would be about 37 million to 44 million as you can see in here and i'm kind of rounding these up for a new in this scenario we're assuming a cip plan and i'm sure if many of you have been watching uh we're assuming some values over a 10-year period

016of anywhere from 15 to 25 million uh that would that would be accounted for the cip of course that can change over time depending on the needs the physical conditions of the buildings we haven't gone you know we haven't gone through uh in depth uh on a case-by-case basis we've walked through the schools but we do have some information from from then um and we're kind of using those as a placeholder uh for doolittle highland and norton um in this scenario we're assuming also uh the cip you know again maybe replacing projects window replacement not renovation this is not renovation projects um and we may look at that uh 30 to 45 million for dodd none of that we assume would be reimbursable however there are projects um uh that are reimbursable roof replacement projects

017window replacement ada code upgrades do get reimbursed at the higher reimbursement rate um cip projects for dodd bennett has been identified for this um we haven't identified them ourselves but i think then we may have a list of of some projects that may be identified in in maybe in your plan but we haven't identified them yet to specify those yeah and and chuck if you could just clarify for the board when you say renovate its renovate is new and and it's a 20-year life yes absolutely and i do apologize um yeah the the renovation status is is a statutory definition and what it states is that a building no less than 75 percent of the building which is over 30 years of age is brought to a like new condition with a an expected life

018life span of 20 years so you're essentially bringing it down to the structure um to the to the bones you're replacing your electrical you're upgrading your all your hvac new boilers new rooftop units dedicated outside air units it finishes millwork you know basically it looks like a brand new school when you're done except your reason the foundations and the structure um and as noted you may place additions on there if your space standards in your program dictates that and the state is in support of it that can be added on to in certain cases again that's that 45 reimbursement rate and then um in this one we've uh we've placed the we assumed the renovation of the high school with a midpoint of construction um we state that because we escalate the dollars our dollars

019and our estimates are 20 20 so we have to escalate those with compounding interest we use three and a half percent per year um that might be three some use four um we split the difference and we carry it out to the midpoint of construction um to show those dollars in you know 20 30. and you'll see a big difference when we flip these when the high schools uh up front and then hummus and that's going to be to be determined i know um that's been a a topic of discussion in the town and there are some options to possibly relocate that to the to the middle school but that's the one we haven't fully vetted out yet that we'd have to uh moving forward you can see in this scenario the the low total

020budgets are 283 million to 376 million total project costs again this could vary in time with estimated district share for the elementary school and the high school and that's the current current rate the high school the rate would be you know different but they stayed pretty consistent um through the years 200 million to 274 million that would that this program would cost um the district over we're saying 10 years it might be 12 but in that range it's not a 20-year plan that we're assuming in this case again we're assuming they're all k-6 uh the pre-the pre-k program at darcy would move the highland as we understand it we're assuming that it wouldn't require any additions to the remaining elementary schools we'd have to refine that a little bit more to see if there is

021but that that's our assumption that the new elementary school would be able to accommodate that expansion that's required god remains as a seven eight and again renovating the high school any questions on that scenario all right adam then faith thank you um so many questions and even after i've watched all the other meetings um uh chuck firstly it's uh nice to be able to speak to you uh in person or well not in person but personally anyway i know your uh your firm has done a great job so far putting all these projects together um i guess uh my first question is i guess on the new elementary school um the you have it as k through six uh and i think i heard this in a previous meeting does that mean pre-k since darcy's

022going to be shutting down pre-k is going to go to perhaps some excess capacity at perhaps highland school or something like that that's our assumption in this um scenario we understand that that program would want to stay with the kindergarten and we were advised that it would probably most likely go to highland okay and then the um the assumption is is that all kindergarten then goes to their all kindergarten populations go to their home neighborhood schools at that point that's correct yep that'd be redistributed do uh uh do little would you know bring theirs back into their school with with the relief of some of those uh enrollments and um lastly uh why is there such a um i don't know it's large but a uh a difference between the low and high uh gross

023square footage as the population increases at their for the elementary designs uh in in these here is they go from 74 to 81 yeah let me let me if you don't mind i'm gonna we'll spring that spreadsheet up for you that way you can you can see it um it's pretty somewhat complex spreadsheet so we'll we'll walk through it probably help to kind of see how the the cake is made if you will or sausage is made so this is the spreadsheet we're showing you here obviously you're going to see a lot of tabs along the bottom as we go along so we colored these to kind of make make them um make them easier to for us to read so um this here um it's space standard calculation sheet that the state uses chuck

024i don't know if you i don't know if i don't see it but i haven't seen the change we're still looking at it you see oh you know what let me let me make sure i'm sharing the screen it might be the way i'm sharing it uh andrew yeah we're still in the 1a yeah let's see if i can um switch to these using zoom so forgive me here i'm just going to stop right i want to bring it up again and should it should be a tab instead of a window to switch between um applications you know right now i just see tiled view of everybody's faces now when you share chuck you have your entire screen and then as you click through your tongue that's the one i'm looking for yeah that's the

025one i'm looking for it's a terminology though there we go now we got it there we go thank you sorry about that um so this is the space standard calculation um that the state of connecticut uses we've turned it into our own uh has anybody seen this where before is this new to most people on the panel so what it is it's pretty straightforward at the top we have the grades to the left here they list the enrollment projection that's that eight year high enrollment for the school and so we have to find the range and then for the grades that the school is going to house and this one we highlight it so we make sure we get them right you can see that for uh pre-k through six uh we have to we

026have 120 square feet per student from uh pre-k through grade four and for five and six it's 152 square feet what we have to do is take those values and we enter them in these cells here down below can you enlarge that a little bit absolutely yeah yeah thanks a little better all right thank you i'm on a 27-inch screen so i do apologize if it's small um then we take the total of those numbers and we add them up and we divide it by the number of grades here seven and we get an average square foot per student in this case 129.14 and then we enter our eight year high enrollment which uh we're assuming is is five fifty and this is a test fit this didn't come from aluminum we were kind of

027doing a test fit uh in these cases and so um the math here is that 71 029 and that's that building area i was mentioning before when we do the budgets and this is this is our this is our budget i'm going to um so this is a square footage here um if i don't know if you can see my calculation but we basically link to that square footage multiply it by a five an extra five percent factor that i was mentioning before to give us a gross square foot because you can see here if you have roughly 70 74 580 and you subtract from 71 there's almost 3 500 square feet when you multiply that by 350 square but you're almost at a million dollars plus escalation so you can kind of see that

028math if you don't account for it you can have a million dollar bust here um so so that's how we get the the low end of the square footage on the high end we're taking that same number of the 71 029 we're just multiplying it by an extra 15 percent instead of five so that's that difference there on the 550 alone you can see the unit prices were we're covering and i'll just kind of scroll down here um you can see the math on a new construction we we assume uh some site work costs on a percentage based once we get more detail we'll fill in some of these other numbers but we we know by by history that's usually a percentage base works for us we account for construction this will be actually a

0292023 in this case uh because we are we're carrying extra occurrences out about four years um because depending on when the application is done and when we get it completed the ffe um it's it's data it's furniture um mdf equipment switches and stuff like that to run your it also um playground equipment etc would be included architects fees you know architect and the design team to do it we assume a 7 value there in that case hazmat consultants just in case we have to do some environmental studies [Music] in multiple other cmts other professional fees and expenses and reimbursables materials testing and then down below like highlight in yellow that's that financing cost every district will finance a project differently um some just do the straight bonding costs some capitalize interest um that's where we

030need the town's input and then ultimately the owner's contingency so that kind of shows you how we kind of bake the cake here on a budget but going back to how do we get the variances in the going from say 70 4580 to 81 360. um it's simply the same uh the same spreadsheet as we noted before um except we're multiplying the 129.4 times 600 that gives you 77.46 and again similar math at the top for um for the square footage so and then all the math again kind of works its way down and so on and so forth for for those did that um apologies did that answer that question of how they kind of range there yes and that'll that'll help uh guiding us through the or at least for me the rest

031of the projects we'll see tonight so thank you because it'll be very similar through all the scenarios so it's kind of good to walk through that and understand you know how do you come to these numbers you know and there is a formula and there's some you know there's some logic the renovation for the high school just for that one that's the existing size of the school based upon what they call the ed050 that's the what's filed with the state of connecticut for the size of the school based upon your enrollment um your space standard is below that so we wouldn't see a need or a way to justify additions there at least at first glance so we we would assume i think it's around 88 it's just below that so you assume the existing

032building would be renovated as it is and again the budgets are grown they're they're they're they're developed similarly for the high school with you know some assumptions on that let's see whether any other okay make it bigger um spreadsheet you don't have the excel spreadsheet we can certainly we can certainly send somebody to our our budgetary um files are a bit proprietary um we'd ask that they we do send them to you for that any other questions on that one as we move forward yeah we have faith and then uh ann okay yeah i'm myself okay mine are just kind of going forward questions and they're you know i'm assuming i mean i know there's a big variation but that's that's a very good question and and and then you know certainly um chai man

033we we put these in as placeholders now um assuming a million and a half to two and a half million per year um in these and we're still refining these spreadsheets um they are definitely in draft form um in this model um and and part of that just to some background some of the members when we were developing these and we're still very early we're like hey listen we want to see the whole the full picture we were only talking about the first project for a while so in order to develop a model to show the full picture we kind of put these in this placeholders these may vary in order to really um we take a lot from our facilities counterparts vin and his staff on their program but we have also in other

034scenarios done a full what they call facilities condition assessment it's a really detailed assessment walking through looking at all the mechanicals and truly identifying uh outdated equipment those that are coming to the end of their useful life and putting estimates on what those might be based upon priorities um that's not something that we've been engaged to do here um we could but with the timing um we're not at this moment okay what i would add to that is you know i think you have to look at these numbers as just rough order of magnitude if we were to go in and and do some real capital improvements to in this case doolittle highland norton and then dodd um you know that would take care of roofs it would take care of the window projects but

035it wouldn't be a renovate as new and getting a 20-year you know life out of you know out of the components of the building so they as chuck is saying you know to get those numbers a lot more precise would take work but i think it's a good range it's between 15 and 25 million on on the smaller schools and you know 30 to 45 million at dodd it's we could dictate how much of that we're going to spend but that's that's you know that's about what we're talking about just to do some of the basics and the buildings that we've been putting off over the years over the next 10 years so you know you said i know that most of this is non-reimbursable but you said that the roofs windows would be so

036can you give us an estimate of what the percentage of that 15 to 25 might we might get funding from the state for i know it's peanuts but yeah so i i don't have any hard numbers that we did spreadsheets so roof on um on that that building would probably and i'm guesstimating here um this always gets us in trouble but if we were to do a project on that build i'm guessing two to two and a half million maybe three million for that project given the size of it uh multiply that by say 0.4 because there's some ineligibles so you know um you know so just to say three million times point for what 1.2 million if i got my numbers right uh and reimbursement for that windows would be harder to have to

037really do a take off i'd be really thrown out a wag on that one there might be some code upgrades if you elected to do that i think they might be reimbursing on some security upgrades so say if you did some hardening of your entries i think they might be participating in those too okay so it's it's a it's it's uh it's definitely on the lower end um yeah of those values okay and um when we look at the range for the cost of new of the cost of the project so 74 to 81 and i'm looking actually at the enrollment but the cost themselves um should we aim high and come in under budget is there is is there because you know 10 million dollars is a lot of money sure it sure is

038yeah um really um this is our when we're doing our first pass and we start talking about budgets we start with a range and then as some of these options come to fruition we'll do what we call the probable the actual budget whatever you think it's going to be but in order to do that in in and hone that in um what we recommend and that's part of the phase three of our work would be okay if the new elementary school is selected and the town picks a site for example we would recommend doing a couple things is some preliminary siteboards geotechnical borings so that we can determine is a rock is there ledge is there unsuitable materials we would do a phase one environmental site assessment that's a historical review of the site um

039was there a use as a farm where there's polluted soils herbicides pesticides that we would have to account for uh in there we'd want to look at some wetlands as well if there's any wetlands we have to account for just to make sure we want to look for budget busters um you know it's all even and it's a decent site we you know without any concerns you might have an endangered species too in that phase one it'll look for that as well um archaeological sites uh in the phase one or if in a case of a renovation project we would want to do a preliminary hazardous materials assessment for um asbestos pcbs um lead paint stuff like that because we've known projects where they didn't do that assessment and account for it in the budget

040and it's it's it's caused heartache and projects as i'm sure you can imagine okay thank you you're welcome and a lot of it is also um the dependent upon the final educational specification that would have a program and that would tell us where that square footage is as well okay ann yeah quick question hopefully um so do both scenarios one and one b have um darcy pre-k programs going to highland and how big does that make thailand how large is highland how large is it with the added um pre-k oh so um we're assuming in these scenarios that with the building of a larger elementary school that we would we provide some relief in the space in there so coming from darcy obviously they have to do a little kindergarten so that those that component

041would go um back to doolittle and with some redistricting um and i'd have to look i think the we're assuming it's primarily the vk um and so i'm looking here's our projections um here's darcy so pre-k you're work there's an assumption of 105 students in the pre-k and i think is those are those half-day programs um or full day for the pre-k that was a full day well that um so i think typically you know just looking at the size and how many classrooms i think maybe is it 12 all the 15 a reasonable arrangement for your programs for for jeff um for your classrooms you don't go much more above that do you for pre-k yeah i think we would you know i'm not i can't i don't want to answer the question on

042pre-k i know the average elementary right now is about 18. yeah we don't that's 15 would be about the cap for the pre-k okay that's what we typically see [Music] so that's about seven you know seven classrooms um you know so my question really is because 700 in elementary school is a big elementary school it is i think ann went on sorry what what did you hear uh it's a big elementary school so so how how big then is our second biggest elementary school with highland um i'll bring that right up i think we have that here highland 738 students 106. so highland is 700 students as well it's more than 700 isn't it 740 according to this 2020 enrollment yeah i was showing that 2738 i believe as of october 1st john that was

043from malone um and they're projected obviously higher highland it was 900 back in 2005 or so about 90 almost 900 wow yeah projecting 9.74 sorry it's really small the projected 974 right out 20 this is your 29.30 for highland right here um as is this is the as is projections okay so thank you you're welcome thank you all right i think tim has a question and then adam thanks andrew um so with regard to uh one thing i always want to look at with a construction project is the lifecycle costs sure so we're talking about capital upfront cost right now is part of what you're going to do is it going to be um incorporating lifecycle costs whatever that is 20 30 40 years operations maintenance stuff yeah and in our study and our engagement

044we're i i'd have to double check our our contract i don't believe we're in including life cycle costs um on those oh i have to check that tim i don't believe we are okay all right all right now you shouldn't be looked at obviously you know over over the cost of it we're looking these are capital capital project costs yeah so i'll just make my point which i think that's an important perspective for people to understand the life cycle costs in terms of you know supporting or rejecting the idea i think i think for something particularly of this nature this is a huge project for the town of cheshire i think it is extremely important anyway thank you for that um i think i have two basic questions and i'd like to be brief if

045possible but i'm not sure if it will be um six hundred dollars i'm looking at this at six hundred dollars a square foot total project cost is what you're talking about yep okay so i i had in my mind that this was probably like a construction project new construction ignoring land you know more like 300 a square foot i know you mentioned some adders um is is i'm just curious you don't so i know you don't know the basis of where i'm getting the 300 or actually it was even less than 300. and when i talk about that i'm talking about a meeting that i recently went to with what i believe are knowledgeable people talking about net zero new construction school projects sure in the range of 250 to 300. is that almost like

046a hundred percent difference there could that constitute the all the adders like site work playground uh furniture would would that be could that come up between it um yeah we hear this quite often tim and essentially sometimes when people talk about cost per square foot a lot of times it's just the building alone a lot of times they don't include site costs furniture fees and expenses and that's one thing we train internally with our with our people is is when someone says hey we can build for 300 a square foot you can't build any we're actually doing mansfield elementary school and if you want actually um some actual budget numbers tim i can provide you those we're working on that right now it's a brand new net it's gonna be the first net zero if

047you just want to see a budget on that i'd be happy to share that with you just so you can see a real budget on that yeah just for reference yeah and you're talking for that you're talking 600 bucks a square foot and you said that's the first school in connecticut or first elementary school net zero in connecticut i believe so yeah like our colleague scott pellman's uh working on that project and um uh that i believe is the first net zero um elementary school i'm just bringing up the budget i'm just kind of curious myself um the latest one um that they have that is going to bring it up for you just so you can see it so 76 000 square feet our budget is 373 a square foot [Music] so if you

048take 76 000 square feet tim and the total project costs on this looks like it's 50.5 million okay and that's a net zero project i believe i pulled this up quickly um you know here just to try to give you some quick uh and i'm just gonna check and make sure that's still the current budget we're getting ready to go out to actually getting ready to go up a bit on that so okay so what i just saw if you're looking at probably like a 10 adder because it looked like it was is it 660 a square foot no maybe not so the high on the on the 700 is uh total project gross per square foot is 642 in this example that doesn't include your financing and bonding costs and then the low is

049580. yeah oh so that's actually kind of in the same range 600 580 to 640. okay so the the projects you're talking about here are they net zero in close to it i forget about your panels they have to confirm that high performance which is equivalent to uh lead silver standards we just don't go all through all the certification on it but it's it's connected high performance building okay so it's extremely low energy use basically yeah yeah it's got to be efficient um we have there's a whole process we have to have a commissioning agent on board with these projects and they're efficient but they do use more electricity i'd say some people sometimes mistake oh they're more efficient so we should have lower bills well they're bigger buildings you have bigger systems your air

050conditioning they're efficient but they still use more energy okay okay more electricity yeah the bill's not going to go down the bill is going to be higher it's just efficient efficient systems your percentage of efficiency yeah not necessarily the bill because you have more systems and say you know you don't have air conditioning in chapman so your bills aren't going to be as high as you know per square foot okay okay that's i think that's a whole other conversation i could have yeah so i'll just i'll jump off of that um so my other question i so i just want to i just want to give you my background on this which is so i've been kind of involved in the local in this local stuff for about 20 years now and generally speaking and

051i'm just going off of memory right here it seems to me like every year i always see the projected enrollment going up in the out years and it generally has not uh so probably like go back to 2000 it was going up to about 2005 and for the last 15 years it's kind of been decreasing even though i've seen projections saying it will increase so i come into this with a little bit being a little bit skeptical about increasing enrollment you know starting a couple years out and then going up i will caveat that and say i think it's pretty easy for me to see um you know there's new construction for probably the first time in like 15 or 20 years going on around town going on around town um which would drive enrollment

052but i'm just curious is there um and i know i've asked this question before but there's probably other people who are watching right now or will be watching this video um what do you have a couple of the main drivers for enrollment i would i would actually i'd have to defer that to melania mcbroom we didn't do okay so i i wouldn't even want to speak on their behalf okay um what those are for for what it's worth is tony uh there was a snc committee meeting maybe a month or two ago where my loan did present those projections is a it's a great video to watch goes on that detail we'll try to dig it up and link out to everybody okay all right thanks tom thank you chuck you're welcome all right adam

053thank you um uh two quick questions uh this time uh i guess i'll well um all right first question um for if for the new if there's a new elementary school and or and i guess i'm skipping ahead to uh 1b um with the light if the potential like new renovations of all the other elementary schools is there additional capacity built into these construction projects whereby if we were to exceed let's say um exceed these projections and there was some sort of uh gigantic population bump in uh 2040 let's say would this system be able to handle anything larger because like we see um um highland being pushed to the limit at what was it nine was it nine hundred students is that yeah for the existing as is is around 974 right and so

054you have uh this new school projected at 700 is that maximum capacity or is there additional uh room built in is is that assuming a like a a 20 to one ratio or like what are the pop what are the the ratio assumptions when you when you build for 700 students is i'm i'm guessing there's capacity there okay so the the the way um so when we look at the square footage we obviously use the eight-year enrollment right like so the state of connecticut says you can look out eight years for a maximum in this case here we're assuming because we haven't finalized the malone hasn't finalized the scenario to go exactly what it will be we're we're we're kind of in that still in between mode a little bit but we know it's in

055this ballpark so we're assuming 700 the state of connecticut if we said hey state of connecticut at 700 for the next eight years that's all they're going to reimburse a district for um on the size of the building so when we're talking about you know 2040 they're not looking out that far however what we what we what we try to do when land exists on a project is identify a location for future expansion um for a project like if you take a wing of the academic wing and okay can we add on six more classrooms to a certain portion of your building um the other side too is when you look at enrollment and when you actually develop the ed specs and i'll use our pleasant valley project in south windsor because they've had a

056population boom in the last um three or four years it's grown immensely we've been updating your their enrollments malone did theirs they update them every single year so we've been tracking them every year because it's been so hot we've added additions on to the last two projects we just completed we added a total of seven classrooms between two schools midstream um but what we what we would do in this type of a program is because it's projected to you know increase we would recommend each october you update your enrollment projections to see where it's trending against your prior years and see if there's a trend going on to see if if it's holding true so that when you get to say if you were to renovate and potentially add on to these uh your existing

057elementary schools we want to know do we need to accommodate and change that budget and change that ed spec to accommodate for more kids so you're cut we'd have to constantly monitor your enrollment in a master program like this um but at pleasant valley they're enrollments 803 but if you look at the homeroom seats and the actual capacity it's about another 150 students actually when you look at the classrooms you say we can do 24 kids per class from here and 26 for here and you multiply them by the respective number of classrooms it's actually a little bit higher than what the enrollment number is based upon the ed stack and if if we were to uh you know this would uh from the other plans uh when we'd redistrict um do we plan for

05885 of 700 or like when we decide what population is moving into this new school where i'm guessing it's going to be 100 of whatever chapman was going to be and then what and then i'm guessing we're i guess picking off some of doolittle i guess so that they can have the kindergarten back so at that point when you figure that out what at what occupancy would we be at after we've moved those the uh the maximum occupancy in uh 20 what is it uh where are we in 2030 or whatever whatever the projections go out for uh what uh occupancy rate are we at at that point so um in malone's study you if you go back to that one they'll they'll talk about the 100 full capacity of a school but as a

059rule of thumb they i call functional capacity they look at uh trying to keep it closer to 90 because you're going to get fluctuations in your sectors in your different grade ranges so you may have three grade three and four grade four next year but then it may only it may fluctuate as populations come through so you want to have a little bit of a little bit of room to grow with as the bubbles come along um in those so the goal i believe when malone looks at it is a 90 functional capacity um when they redistribute okay um and i just had one other quick question it's sort of a one that tim inspired me to ask i guess um if we did like new renovations on all of the other schools or all

060of the schools would our roofs be strong enough for solar panels that would have to be evaluated on a school-by-school basis um when we do the new ones we typically accommodate for an additional five pounds per square foot for the solar panels and so we would have to have this structural engineering value do an evaluation of the system to see if it can accommodate that i know they're not now that and then we are talking about our operational costs going forward for the next you know 20 years and we're able to you know decrease our our electrical costs which is a a big uh sore point here in the state of connecticut that something like that would be beneficial yes we look at those at every school and at the very least we try to

061accommodate put in conduit and so forth so in the future if you use a ppe or something like that all the conduits there they install them and it's it's it's relatively simple wiring less disruptive not tearing apart the roof etc with the with the penetrations great thank you all right anybody else before we move on to the next uh scenario okay chuck okay so um the next the same scenario one with the twist is as we're talking is the renovation so uh instead of doing the cip um for your remaining elementary schools we're assuming that they would be again their case six uh um renovations uh without additions again we have to fine-tune you know what the numbers would be uh with malone to go hey do the what would the what's the projection for

062these and and these are some numbers we did get from malone for this scenario and uh they're pretty much right sized for that and i can show you the numbers if you want um but as you can see those numbers for a renovation you know go up quite a bit again similar exercise um as the new construction except our reimbursement rates 45 percent versus the 35 uh in change so these numbers are similar to the ones up here um and so uh obviously total project total scenario budget would go up uh in this case uh your estimated district share would change um but if we were just to flip back um just say the low district shares 224 million here you look 200 million here so you know if you you know assuming you know

063these numbers are in the ballpark for 20 another 25 million we're saying we can run you know renovate those schools the challenge what we have in studies is okay there's phasing obviously associated with these these are just numbers based on square foot they'd have to be looked at for how do we phase them they're elementary schools so there's more challenges associated with that and creating space to move children around in that case maybe you know chapman might be used for swing space that's something we have to develop further in these scenarios so that's the only difference there in these first two here um and it's going to be similar moving forward scenario 2a is a new 6-8 middle school assuming a new chapman and that that came about i think that came about it was

064i'm trying to remember how we came about with that one because it was going to remain online i think we said it would be remaining online and uh and we said well what's the difference between renovating and doing a new chapman and it wasn't uh we showed both of these here in this scenario um there's a lot of comment public comment on chapman and sensitivity to it so in this case i'll zoom in here new six to eight middle school 1172 eight year high enrollment uh varying from two hundred thousand two hundred twenty thousand gross square feet using those same numbers that we kind of shared with you before and the factors um for that uh a low uh total project budget range from 112 million up to potentially 136 million again assume that's on

065town property we have not included any financing and bond origination costs here i think your prior studies back in 2017 were around 115 million if i remember so you know that that kind of that's fallen in line there with that and your district share would be roughly 75.3 million to 91 million for that school uh for a six to eight pretty very large school uh you have a higher population there uh chapman we looked at both building a new one on your existing parcel uh for the projected enrollment and and also renovating between those and this one's pretty interesting because uh the existing building is 51 200 square feet a new one would be anywhere from the the 42 575 to just under 47 000 square feet so slightly smaller but uh your your total

066project budgets are they're very they're very similar um in in these cases um you know you look at the bang for the buck you look at the site you look at programming that school code you know ada accessibility south windsor was in a similar scenario for philip r smith and pleasant valley and they decided to go new because of the challenges associated with bringing it up to code in ada requirements but in our in our scenario we're assuming new in the bold there and then we again carried um in this plan um you know doolittle um highland norton would remain online darcy be taken offline and pre-k brought into highland here um the the unknown in this one and and um is is dodd and i think some preliminary discussions were uh potentially bring central

067office into dodd in the alternative high school over here and maybe reuse the rest of dodd in a in a different capacity with the town i think that's still being discussed and considered um that's why we kind of highlighted it we're not really sure what that is at this moment um what to do with that and then again renovating the high school making sure we we um address uh that that one as well in here so uh obviously you see the total project budgets and the re the reimbursement on these as well uh check hold on faith i think wants to jump in with the question sure sure i thank you um as i recall it was chapman that was maxing out the most um in terms of capacity right in the enrollment in the

068enrollment presentation and i guess would you bleed off enough sixth graders from chapman to justify a reduction in the size of the school if you were to build new versus renovate you know let me bring up that scenario firm we will so how we looked at it and john feel free to jump in here too is um the enrollments again these were updated uh these are enrollments from maloney mcbroom and so what we what we did here is you know i'll bump this up here forgive me so what we have these grade combinations that summarize these and so uh in in these here we can see grades six to eight um and over here we show grades four to five but what we've done in in chapman for the enrollments in in this scenario that

069they provided to us um and i'm trying to remember here um if we just simply move six day we took we took those uh grades out we just said okay what is it from k to four uh in that scenario that sound right john this is the refresh my memory right so when chapman um okay to five depending on what you know what middle school we end up proposing yeah so for the six to eight we would be you know if four and we essentially did a highlight here and said okay for those projections and just simply not really redistricting much in that regard leaving in the schools for the most part we're saying what what's the projections for the board and this is out to 2930 by the time we get to it to

070be in the eight year um grades k to four would be 327 students based upon the projection so that's how we came up with that number for for chapman okay i guess okay uh chuck when we look at that cada or six through eight model yes basically what we're saying is the elementary enrollment projection is so high that you couldn't do six through eight and take both chapman and darcy offline correct yeah i i don't uh chapman and darcy i don't think we were able to do it in that model i'd have to double just want to double check with malone because they they assist us with this model right um let's make a note just to double check them alone but i don't believe so yeah actually i did discuss that and that is

071true the the chapman cannot come offline that is correct okay in the in the seven eight model um if if dodd say went five six they they're saying their preliminary numbers is that you could take chapman offline in that model subject again right they haven't really dove real deep into that that study we're going to talk with chuck and jen tomorrow on that to say do we really want to study that but yeah if it went five through eight then yeah you could take and you pull a lot of kids down you could probably take somebody off but i don't know that there's really much appetite for that from either a parent or a from an instructional perspective that's a huge that's a large large school um the only model i seen there i think

072jeff i think is francis walsh which we're doing is a 5 8 model yeah pretty rare bird yeah yeah it is for the reasons that you just said it's huge and then instructionally it's not really advisable i mean in our district would be huge yeah it's culture it's a it's a cultural thing too and yeah but we rarely we never we already ever see a five to eight five to eight school it's very very rare yeah um but yeah i think we had to keep chapman online here okay and um we're like okay well you know and part of this stem too is we we had done a preliminary assessment we looked at the existing parcels for all the elementary schools and at a very high level i took a google map i took the

073gis map um from the town site which has topography in it and we're able to kind of scale them against each other and draw over the property lines bring the setbacks in and look at and i can show you some of those but at a high level just looking which which schools have the best opportunities for either additions um and room to grow and and chapman surprisingly probably has the take aside location on route 10 everything else just the property itself has some uh potential i'll say on that northern part where the field is at um for a building of this size of being you know 45 000 square feet that's not a big that's not a big school um and uh that that's when you look at the dollars you take the opportunity to

074build new program how you like you know have it fully accessible uh re reorganize that site so i think there's some advantage to that if you were to to go in that direction all right and then um the other again just the the flip side is is is going okay what would the cost be to renovate and bring all the schools up again assuming um you know not assuming you know there's no uh additions per se uh to it um again these numbers that are similar we have the enrollments uh given to us we would go um you know again k to five here and you know add the numbers up and um that gives us our square footages here for them adam you want to jump in with a question sure thank you um

075so that was a little bit of um i guess some enlightenment there jeff about not being able to close chapman and uh darcy with a with a new um uh middle school six or eight middle school um so i i guess so that was just a comment um there was uh during the presentations i guess a few weeks ago there was an examination an examination of the norton school property uh where there seemed to be a um a decent amount of land behind norton school but you couldn't get to it um was there a possibility of like new norton instead of new chapman or something where you know chapman is renovated ada compliant compliant and you can build capacity uh at the at the norton school property and shift everything south i don't know if

076i mean i don't know i'm just thinking out loud here just because of where the land was because i know doolittle was like built up against a ledge and highland is already kind of at capacity and i just wasn't sure if that was something that was uh yeah so um yeah yeah adam you're you're right like too little where this the parcel is good size it just in this wooded area behind it it does climb in elevation quite a bit not to say you can't do it but then you're you're building large you could be building large retaining walls in here it could be like a large site cost and again that that's you know up to the town um but that was just a first pass um and then you just have this field

077up in front and maybe some opportunity you know on on this northern side here um and i think there's a right of way through here if i remember the parcel is correct um [Music] so with the topography it made that one a little bit tougher doolittle norton there's it and this is pretty flat there's it's it's a pretty it's a pretty decent sized part so you can see it relative to the existing school however constructability i think would be tough you're surrounded all by residential obviously so the only access that that we're aware of is is really you know coming through the main part of the school which is difficult um when you have a school in operation um you know in a case like this and i'm throwing this out is ideas where if

078you said hey we want to let's build a new norton in this case after you say you built the the middle school and relocated you could and we did this in south winds you relocate norton over to dodd for for two calendar years while you take this whole entire site over and you give it to the contractor and now you got some really good options there um and we've done that um and that was very very successful um in that case they they relocated for two years in the old orchard hill that was replaced we kept it online we moved them completely over for two years moved them back and the they they never saw none of the kids in that program have ever actually seen occupy construction fortunately it's been very fortunate for that

079elementary type of school to if they don't have to be in the school when we're working that's ideal yes that parcel there okay um and then i guess the the last question because i breathe through all the other scenarios there is no scenario for renovate like new all of the elementary schools and building capacity because there's no swing space oh i think that is that scenario five john is that what sarah i'm talking about here just renovating without doing any other um new schools adam is that what you're referring to yes yes that's right we are looking at that john i think uh we just we haven't put that uh spreadsheet together yet adam oh okay we're going to be working with not in the packet that we got tonight correct okay right so we're

080working actually on uh scenario we're still finalizing scenario four which would be a new high school um and looking at okay if we built one on say assume the existing parcel then you go do we demolish the existing high school or what do you do with that you know you demolish it or um if it came first do you renovate it but i don't know if you know looking at the site if you know that's a lot of building on one site a lot of congestion probably on route 10 but you probably demolish it we're still looking at those scenarios but problem is it doesn't address your uh what the data is telling us is a space need at your elementary level at least immediately right so if if you if you renovate like new

081all of the elementary schools and build in the the additional capacity that we needed the swing space ends up really being the problem and if you have an addition right if you had an addition a significant addition like we've done where we had even a six classroom edition you basically you build that addition you take a section of the build and move in addition you're kind of playing puzzle pieces around the building until you get it fully renovated problem is is you're you're you're working in and you can't you can do it we do it river in fairfield all the time where we do an addition and then we move you know a certain number of classrooms we take a certain section over for three or four months renovate that portion do another shift over

082the summer and you kind of you're kind of playing a a jigsaw puzzle with the with the occupancy so that's what go ahead so so that's what a revenant a renovate like new of all the or of all the schools would look like is basically a big shift around for 10 years because there's no actual swing space to to basically vacate an entire school gut it redo it that that's not possible kind of is what you're saying it would be based upon what we know now i think that would be a challenge unless we've found some type of a place to put them to displace them to make that room to do so right and and that brings me back to the um the old project that we're looking at a few years ago uh

083jeff is is leasing like commercial real estate an option for a swing space is that i mean i'm guessing that's a massive amount of money in itself but um i mean i'm just you know just thinking out loud that's all i'll just move on but i just wanted to put that up thank you and the state doesn't like portables it's it's flushing money down the tubes that's one thing they'll tell you all right [Music] anything else there andrew that we're i'm not saying i think we we're all set for now i would think the portables i hate portables but everybody does but we get to adam's point you know if we're renovating if their plan if our plan is to renovate several uh buildings in sequence portables may be a decent investment there you know

084because you could move them literally from one building to the next when they need to be used to ease and facilitate construction but that's a long way off i mean in in this scenario and again high level if you were to do a new 6a in in dodds available yeah in that scenario yeah that's a lot that's just a beautiful scenario for yeah swings move in move out move in move out um and what it does it it it actually yeah you may have some a little bit more transportation costs depending you know what school it is i think kylan's pretty close to there and do a little but norton might be a little bit more but what happens is your your your construction time is less with with with construction so your your general

085conditions go down it's safer for kids the parent the stress level on parents goes way down because if you're renovating you're typically dealing with materials that nobody likes to talk about and have their kids near and you know with asbestos and everything um so that's a that's a beautiful situation if you have that swing space to do that the asbestos is a great point because given the age of our buildings and it again they're safe asbestos is safe until you break it apart in a renovation process they we have to abate all the time over the summer people can't be no children can be on premises so like when do you do that it would take forever it's very timely yeah somewhere yeah it and that escalates cost obviously when you protract it out over

086time yeah and there's a lot of hitting conditions where if you say okay contractor you have if you're going to renovate the building first thing they're going to do is go in and they're going to gut that thing renovate it bring it down to the bare bones and then they can see what they have to work with and we can make adjustments that we didn't know about and and it's one it's it's safer's number one that there there's no doubt about that um you know we've done it but it is difficult like you said jeff it's only over the summer that we can do it so we have a lot of plan it's usually about a two-year project in a lot of these all right so um so that's the two-way that's the the the

0876a and again the renovation and i think you know that movement does you know support those in in that scenario 2b the difference is is a 7 8 middle school certainly with the enrollment coming down your square foot's coming down your cost is coming down um you can you can see these costs here um again we we we you know kept in line here this um you know uh chapman either maybe a new renovation in that situation um and again a lot of these parts and pieces can be interchanged we talked about that at the last meeting that we can interchange a lot of these parts in a lot of scenarios i think we have at this point all the ingredients for a scenario it's finding what's the best combination at this moment um the

088way we see it then the other in this situation is now you're seven eight now your your your dad is um is pretty much vacated and again do we bring central office and don't you know um that the alternative high school over the problem there is you still have um if you're only moving seven and eight you still have a demand for your space on your elementary schools in this scenario if you didn't move five and six over or even say just six you'd still have a requirement for those so um not sure if this one's even as attractive uh check that it's funny i was gonna chime in quickly in the five to six uh and again it's too really little too early for us to say you know there's anything that's off the

089table we have some more work to do but i got the consensus you know time various board members that a dedicated fight assist school is probably not going to work out and that was my that was my gut feeling and i think i think in large part from her superintendent sullen um early on it's not the only issue but i think separating siblings etc could be a problem but this is the one this is the one where i i hear you know i see folks on the board get a little harder i'm like oh i know there's something we really want to do but you know i just put it out there because um as as a team as i've seen moves forward if there's any you know additional supporting detail that's driving that you

090know we'll certainly look at it because we don't want to make a you know poor choice early on so just doing something that we're not really you know lukewarm to yet gotcha gotcha no totally when i heard this one i'd go well this is to me this is my experience a heavily aborted ed influenced one you know yeah it has to be um well of course so it was just to look at it you know before sun's decided yeah tim you want to add something i think tim has a comment yeah thank you thank you andrew yeah i just wanted to comment on the five and six so just so you know chuck i'm i'm here with a preschooler and a first grader what goes through my mind is what i've never studied but i

091know i've picked it up along the way which is my understanding of the basis of the elementary school is a neighborhood school where oftentimes the kids could walk there and my understanding is this goes back decades you know maybe a century or more it's nice to have the kids near school and to be dropping that grade range down i don't particularly care for it i like having i i look forward to having my kids being able to go to school like until later years beyond fourth grade um let them be kids for a while right exactly exactly yeah that's just like very prevalent in connecticut um very much so um in a lot of towns that we've we've seen is you know um and especially you know ever taken a school offline is very um

092emotional um and sentimental and it's a difficult difficult process to to do just redistricting alone and not taking them off is hard but when you start shifting that dynamic it's it's difficult thank you um so this one the alternate to the 2b again this is just you know renovating all the schools um in these in these scenarios so i won't spend too much more time on that unless anybody you know has a question um the 3a um this one here is renovating who would say okay we're going to renovate the high school first um that was put out by some of the members on the committee so we're investigating it again this one does not address your space needs it's your elementary level not at least for probably five to eight years out i'm guessing

093depending on what we do with the schedule um and this one if you were to you you look at the the total the budget the low and the high for the high school compared to the first scenario where 122 and 150 that's dramatically different from 153 to 189 and that's that escalation factor that's purely that's pure escalation there in in that scenario so i just kind of want to highlight that um and same math for you know the district share there are some assumptions here and then the difference between 3a and 3b is whether we do a new middle school or a new elementary school that's the only difference between this and again we're shifting parts and pieces from one and two into this scenario and it's just changing the order of how you do

094things um so we carry that you know we looked at the costs for the six to eight we're just carrying them over we're changing some of the escalation uh with it and then again assuming um some capital improvement plan for the elementary schools assuming the space is uh addressed um again this this this doesn't address space needs same scenario with renovating all your elementary schools again similar um and that came from the the subcommittee saying you know let's look at both and let's look at modernizing all your schools that's why that's why we're doing this and then um 3d again like i said is is just taking the basically scenario one and and putting the high school first in that in that case um let's say you can't do them both at the same time

095it's just a big lift financially obviously um if anybody was you know at the last meeting the town council is concerned with mill rate impact um net impact to the town um so um you know this would be 180 to 222 million um if you were to do those at the same time and then again cip we're not sure about hummus in here and then the final one is again just you know renovating your elementary schools um in under that scenario so so as you can see it's just a lot of really shifting around of these projects and and modifying the escalation to the proper year in the order and there could be other scenarios where we mix and match these we at this point we can do them relatively efficiently um unless there's some

096other you know scenario out there chuck do you have it broken down anywhere where you have the cheapest option versus the most expensive option for a district we're gonna we're gonna be working on a summary sheet andrew we don't have that yet this one came hot off the press but yeah once we get this dialed in i wanna have a summary sheet with all these at a super high level that's you know that shows them all just the the you know um you know just say scenario 3b you know with just the bottom line on it and not all and have all the detail behind it if you will but we are working on that once we get all the scenarios kind of figured out um we're also going to be working on schedules i

097think we mentioned that in the last meeting is working on timelines for these so now we can see you know okay when are these occurring at least get an idea um if there was a case of a redistrict what year would that be in ideally just one and evaluate that is as well um so that's kind of our next steps in this process um as well um and then doing some cash flows chuck i had a general question on the run of the high school option although really any option for any school renovation but considering cheshire high school honestly are our largest and very busy area there if we're going to renovate a place that building that location um would that take a little longer than a let's say an elementary or middle school innovation

098just because of the sheer size and well i guess i'm one what i'm saying is like they did running in high school it's gonna be addressed at some point in the plan i'm not sure if it's sooner or later but um by when that pro if we don't do uh you elementary school in parallel to address that uh space issue we run a risk of um doing high school taking two three years maybe longer and we're not addressing the elementary enrollment um unless we do something parallel right i don't want to assume that the high school's going to take longer to do in place but that's my gut's telling me if it's accurate i i think your gut's right tony um we did just for sake of comparison east hampton high school a couple years

099ago that project that building wasn't nearly as big as 120 25 000. that took us about 30 months so you're looking at a solid 36 months here um plus or minus anything on the plus um in place we're altering benny dover middle school now we're getting we're working through bids uh that one's one around 130 as well and we're at a three-year um schedule on that because there's no really no it's a small site there's no swing face so that's part of the trouble with that but you're looking probably 36 to 42 months i think just in construction and probably at least a probably close to a two-year pre-construction between design and bidding you know solid 16 i'd say 16 months for design another three months for bidding you know then you got to put

100you know other factors in for you know any potential delays or whatever have you but you're probably looking at four to five year project there you know from from start to finish realistically got it thank you chuck yes sir all right tim has a question thanks andrew uh yes uh um two questions uh first thing you just mentioned you would design bid and build and andrew i don't know you could might speak to it too or chuck but have has there been any discussion on design bid build rather than just design build there not yet now tim okay okay that's okay i just because i heard you mentioned design bid build and it's two different different directions you're you know i've done some design build not i can't say a whole lot when i was

101in the higher education for the state and um there are certain projects that i think are at more advantageous form and keeping with those is you have to have a really really good program up front for that design build entity to to know what you want to do and your your your you may give up some control on the design of that because of the fast process associated with the design build job um but we i haven't seen that employed in connecticut in my experience yet does the state allow it chuck does the school building programs allow like do they allow that or do they also allow cm at risk well in these cases um so i haven't seen design build i don't think they would prohibit it but they'd want to analyze it and

102know what the advantages are because as a district from my experience the reason for these is because they're going to move faster um you're getting that architect and that contractor on board with each other you know they're getting fast track and you have to make sure you have a really good budget a really good program and that means almost putting the program like here's the finishes here's what we want for program space you almost have to design part of it out front anyways and have a really good program architect for that um i haven't seen it happen i i i really haven't talked with the state about it so that i really don't know that answer with respect to construction manager risk that's almost what we do every project with now these days uh we're

103doing that that mansfield project that's going on general content they're going gc on that one the state is pushing that you go back to some gt because i think they they the perception is the cms markup they're higher than what they'd like to see but in renovation projects we highly encourage construction manager um typically at risk the other one's as advisor which means you hold all the contracts that wouldn't go there but having a construction manager as a partner in a renovation project is huge um they're not self-performing the work uh they're acting as a professional partner it's part of the team got it thank you um adam or timmy another question yeah just one more thing um so i apologize i bounced out of here i lost internet i haven't been in here the

104whole meeting so you can skip it if you've already addressed it but i was just wondering about the renovate high school does that include new square footage being built no that would be as is um only because the ice was oversized the space standard for the projected enrollment uh is slightly below um below that um at uh that two the existing size of the high school that's why okay that's why it's the same in both for 278 and 278 because it's bigger than what the space standard says you needed it might depend on the edge back you might say hey we need another ten thousand square feet but typically they say after you program fit that in okay and then i guess it's one more thing for jeff programmatically um all right do you have

105something in your mind about uh where there'd be a benefit you know maybe the square footage doesn't change but the internal design i've mentioned to you having more opportunity for vocations rather than the more academic you know reading writing and math um is that something that you've got in the back of your head about what what you would want to do with the buildings for high school renovation specifically yeah no i think you know the the space that we have in for the uh career technology education area is pretty pretty solid and what you know it does need to be dramatically updated to you know if you walk into one of the rooms now you'll see a lot of old dated machinery try and then we try and jam in the new machinery like the

106cnc machines and things like that um it does need to be tidied up but wise it's pretty good and and we could clean it up to make it look you know to update it and just be re-updated is really it hope you have nice spaces down there we do yeah thank you hi adam thank you i apologize for all these questions i guess i'm all pent up from the uh all of the smc meetings i've watched all right i finally i found you right now you gotta check yeah um okay so firstly now and and just direct me to the video if i missed it uh firstly why does the high school population flatten out um where the elementary school population climbs and then there doesn't appear to be a correlation to the high school

107population because it would be it would make sen because if if there was a direct correlation it would seem like you'd want to build a high school first to capture that population increase at some point i don't know maybe i'm just getting my head down years out adam to be honest because where these population increases we only went out 10 years also since it's not far enough out so were you seeing that climb if they carried out another 20 years which the state doesn't even allow us they don't even look at that um you know theoretically um you know if they stay in cheshire um yeah you would you expect to see that to carry that population probably to carry into the high school maybe in years you know 13 14 15 i'm guessing you

108know um but then there's also the other choices that are available when you get to that middle school and high school range too that i think they factor in i don't think they went far enough out to see that okay so eventually we would get back up to that uh i think what was our peak was uh 2015 i think at the high school level if i recall jeff does that sound right like we were at our peak population it was somewhere around there yeah it may have been a little bit earlier than that um but i know we you know we were at 1600 when i was there yeah um okay so uh those are two okay so um jeff or chuck or anyone it has any town our size not including the cities

109because they have really good reimburse their reimbursement rates a lot higher than ours are there any towns our size who have incurred the amount of debt that we're talking about like at least 200 million if not more has any yeah i mean even over the span of let's say 10 years south okay and that's your elementary school plan which um jeff's very familiar with and we're actually going to be meeting with dr carter tomorrow the superintendent um we're on um hundreds it's gonna be 160 million total total program for four schools there and that's four elements four brand new elementary schools and then what are they doing to solve their what are they doing to solve the rest because i'm assuming they probably have similar problems to us or did they invest in uh new

110structures a while ago and they don't have that uh you know uh six through 12 problem that we have as well they they might be they i think so what happened with with theirs adam is um they started with uh their their their program that got passed in 2013 was a one two one a build a new one um renovate and build a new and then renovate the last one um subsequent to building the first one um orchard hill that was supposed to be the largest we opened with 630 students when it was designed enrollment of 576. so we immediately saw a spike in in that district and it kept going and we think malone was the demographer there and they attributed to an affinity group coming from overseas and working in the insurance and

111the i.t sectors and you know groups you know they they want to they want to live where you know i think there's a lot of folks maybe from middle east and they they tend to they want to live where each other at and they were going to south windsor and it and that's one part of it but it's in a you know attractive community like yours it spiked up it kept going um and uh the sizes of the schools have grown since the original plan pleasant valley's double the size of what it was supposed to be originally seven years ago um so um they just it's like build it and they came scenario wow okay because yeah because i'm looking at all the figures and the the question is well what do we do about

112the high school and yeah middle school i think um if you were to ask dr i think she's concerned about that um and then ultimately the high school so we might be looking at that next but that's been i've been privy to that one well i think that's why you said earlier you continue to do the demographics you know periodic at least periodically if not annually to to be able to project that out yeah because if you're tracking a master plan like this you're right jeff it's you want to track those and go okay because these are projections and and they have models and and malone's you know they're they're probably one of the best this you know in the area um but there are projections right there there are certain assumptions that are made

113in these models and to project them year after year now you're going okay how are our assumptions in in are they accurate and there's something going on that we didn't account for as you model is so you can tweak those out as you go and and that's definitely a master plan like this i would you know if not every year every other year at the very least unless you know you guys see your numbers you go hey we gotta spike what's going on then you may call them in or if it's hitting where you expected okay we'll wait a year or something like that so all right adam you all sat great question all right faith yeah um you've mentioned this once in one of the scenarios um i'm curious about the administration in the

114housing of the administration um i mean you know we're going to be taking pro homicide offline where do you envision putting them and i assume the administration is going to grow as the district grows that's not an insignificant amount of space that's required and so uh have how's that going to affect all of this yeah so in a couple of the scenarios i think you know for dad where the middle school that scenario there was discussion of you know maybe relocating there um that's one of our honestly faith that's one of our questions that are still out there that we haven't uh provided a solution to um on on hummus then yet um you know whether it can go into one of the other schools if there was space made available or do we find

115it do you find another space that's something we're honestly still working on in all honesty well that but obviously that's going to affect the cost of the project sure he could it all depends on okay where can we go i know you know obviously hummus and everybody's thinking hey we we have to get out of hummuston um and find it i think for the central office to find a new home i think it's a question of you know where would that be within the facilities that are here if it's not say died um i'm not sure if there's other space in another existing facility available um the other the other the other option and i guess it will i guess one question i would have just speaking a lot is does the alternative high school

116accompany it in the same facility and we understand there's an importance to keep that um program um i'll say uh isolated for lack of a better term we don't want to have it in high school or others so i think there that's a unique challenge in itself of having a facility amongst itself because there's some districts that'll build a central office within a school like brantford uh they're going in francis walsh the central office is going to their intermediate school torrington high school there there's going to be a high school middle school and a central office in that in that program um so that could be looked at but if the alternative high school is coming with it that might present some challenges with it so for the town and i think the town there

117there's a not insignificant um portion of the town that's thinking we're going to reduce the physical plant of our school system and it may not be the case because we may perhaps even use darcy absolutely that's another yeah that's a great point you know if you take darcy offline you may want to reuse that we were talking we were talking about some of these savings that i think some folks may be assuming or shoot a goal for in our opinion the only time we're going to see significant savings with taking the facility offline is if you either sell it or demolish it because you still have to maintain it you still have to heat it you still have to insure it it doesn't go away it's an asset to the town and it's still an

118expense maybe not as much as if people are populating i know ben we did some numbers and we vinnie's ben's done some numbers assuming over a 20-year period with you know reduce electrical reduced heat but it's still an expense it's not it's not going to be zero and i think some of the assumptions we've heard and then i think we've talked about it is okay because you take this facility offline you still need certain amount of staff and administration and support per student you know there's so there's a certain factor there of so many kids you've got to have teachers teaching them and custodians cleaning the spaces and administrators administrating that program it doesn't go away because you changed the building um that at least from a human resource perspective i think i don't know

119anything been there that i didn't cover there and what we've talked about or no the only thing i would add is that you know once we know the scenarios we can analyze the cost because there's a big difference between if you take darcy offline altogether versus um you know one of the snares we had in the previous master plan where you're taking dot and using it as swing space um and then you're replacing it with a newer building so you still have a middle school you know it's more efficient so you'll save money in the efficiency but you still have a middle school that you're maintaining so we could my point is we can model it out once we know what the scenarios are whether whether we're closing a building and shuttering it all together

120or replacing it with a newer one or even renovating it but you know i think the the thing that i want to say is we will not cover the cost of a new building you know from savings in the old building i mean you know there's be a cost offset but it's not dramatic by any stretch of the imagination and if you sell a property which might happen you know that would probably give you more of an offset than just cost savings from an old building that you're replacing with a new one chuck i i'm wondering i mean given the scale of four elementary schools if we were to renovate all of those i'm wondering you know if we were to do those without a swing space as we know there's significant additional cost to

121that and time i'm wondering if like what if you build a six through eight middle school and then you're therefore able to use dotted swing space how much money would that save versus not having a swing space because i think that would have to be a factor calculated into the overall plan you know what i'm saying yeah i think it yeah i agree john i think at a high level and again these are ranges um i think one of the primary factors in that calculation is the construction duration because the cost of the work is still going to be the cost of the work it's just a matter of um you know when when you incorporate phasing there's a cost to doing that uh cost to inefficiencies temporary work you know kind of what we're

122talking about and you know for these schools you're probably talking anywhere from you know an additional six months to a year on each project so when you look at general conditions you know i'm just saying high numbers for a cm on these projects you're looking at probably 60 to 70 000 on an elementary school probably 60 to 70 000 per month you know for uh just for the for the for the construction managers costs you know so say you know six months uh you know say the average nine months times 60 you know it's half a million dollars in in construction manager costs you know again that's high level i'm using some rounds yeah so you're talking about a couple of million dollars in total plus years yeah you know over the course of four

123buildings you're talking about several years and just just the impact of having the i think the the part that you can't really put a dollar on is you have kids in a school where you're you know um getting and you have traffic moving around and some tight sights just from a safety perspective you know uh to me it makes sense um yeah decade of headaches and a couple it's so much cleaner and it's so much more attractive for um you know we're going to be doing um newington anna reynolds it's 66 000 square feet we're gonna create about six to eight classrooms of swing space but we we're not taking them out of the building we're gonna be just working our way around the buildings probably 18 to 22 months uh we're identifying um we're

124gonna have to be very strategic with that with that plan um but if they had swing space to go to let's move them on over let's spend the moving costs you know to get a movers and costs it's probably to move over and move back it's probably 80 000 round trip um with a moving company to do the heavy lifting a little bit of organization and scheduling with the principal but i tell you what once they're planted there for two years now they're not being disrupted again yeah now if you're using a middle school space check for elementary school the other factor i think about is you know like our elementary schools most of them have bathrooms you know you got to scale them down right for the for the population yeah i think we'd

125have to look at a case by case for like maybe you know grades what k to two maybe jeff um you know and you know where we would program you know because if you're gonna do this really think about it if you're doing it for three or four schools right um you're gonna repeat this multiple times right so let's program the space for okay here's the kindergarten in first grade and second grade wing in here's you know three to five um you're gonna get you're gonna be able to use it multiple times in in the program like this if you renovated all of them right so i think we could you know we can come up with creative solutions to facilitate you know i think uh you know it's it's some time you know work

126it's not going to be like brand new but um you know you have enough room and you have a large that's a large facility the only one that would be you know filling it up quite a bit is probably your highland school because it's kind of comparable a little bit smaller but you'd fill it up pretty quick but the other ones are smaller so you'd have room to move yeah i like the idea of it a lot though because it just takes a lot of stress off you know the the non-dollar factor the stress factor it relieves a lot i think timmy a question thanks andrew yeah i was just mentioned a few minutes ago about uh cost savings uh just in in theory if we knocked down a building and sold the land vin

127or jeff do you happen to know who owns the land is it boe or council i'm just curious i'm assuming that's a council decision not a board of ed decision really yeah that is a that is ultimately a council decision and technically all the land is owned by the town okay by the the council being the controlling authority correct okay okay yeah i was just thank you adam thank you i'm just i guess i'm uh processing in place i suppose um and so and i i had this conversation with catherine i think uh a few days ago uh about so we're we're back to deja vu which is our re we're back to three years ago uh six to eight new sixth grade middle school using dot as a swing space um and i don't

128know if in that old facilities master plan which seems very much like whatever the new facility master plan is going to be that the if we do not build new elementary schools um and if we renovate so if we have the swing swing space we renovate we renovate like new the elementary schools uh to the new k through five configuration that i think vin said that gives us 20 years if we renovate like new once all of the schools are done and perhaps maybe highland would not need a renovate like news since it's technically the newest of the buildings i don't know um so after that 20 years that the then our capital improvement projects become what they are now again they're just changing the windows fixing the roofs and and that kind of stuff

129it just buy it just buys us 20 years basically and after we've incurred all that debt is that i could buy you more than that to be honest if you maintain it well i we say 20 years because they say that's the bond issuance is 20 years so the state of connecticut if you renovate a school they go you know they'll say you know you can't come back to us for any grant applications for another 20 years they're not going to give you any more money but realistically you know you guys maintain your schools well you're you're you should be looking at you know 30 35 solid 35 to 40 years on windows and stuff and stuff you know the roofs got to maintain those your mechanical systems if you know it's all about maintenance

130and this stuff doesn't unfortunately some people think okay hey i got a new school and i got to maintain it like a new new car i don't got to maintain it you know it you got to maintain it's going to cost money in these systems now they're complex so having the personnel on staff or you have to you know hire a service to maintain these complex mechanical systems um if you do that they'll last a lot longer for you highland schools 45 years old then 40 so high on school is almost 50 and that's our news looks great so well i guess for me if we weren't whatever we do for renovate like new i just from the energy perspective if we could get rooms that could that could i never thought i would say

131this but if we could get roots that could hold solar panels it's it could completely wild out everything like that but because just because of energy costs and the efficiencies of solar panels that if we could get some technically free energy out of our school that would be a a decent win to help knock back the cost if we can't achieve any additional savings from from physical plant that maybe we could get it on the energy side which i'm assuming would only become more expensive as as we go through the years um so i don't know thanks i think we just need massive solar farms if i could just ask one more question um for for jeff uh because and i was asking about high school before and building giant complexes of middle schools and

132high schools uh is five through eight just unorthodox or is is it not educationally sound is it can you just speak to what five through eight looks like because i know that was a discussion on smc as is that a realistic thing or just something we're not willing to do or is it just too radical or i don't think it's quote radical uh i i do i don't think it is necessarily favorable from an academic perspective whereas i think i you know i can make a really good argument for six through eight uh i think you lose that argument from a curricular perspective in five through eight uh not to mention there are pretty significant developmental differences when you get down to fifth grade i know it's only a year but it's another year younger

133i just it wouldn't be my preference if there were no other options and it was something you had to do then we would certainly make it work you know you do that structurally by segregating the building differently and stuff like that um but you know it just wouldn't be my preference um first developmentally i guess it's probably a tie with academically i just don't think it makes great sense unless you have to do it then you make it work big question since i'm out of turn i apologize has smc toured a sixth grade middle school i don't recall if there was any say again town there's smc the week tour i think it wasn't some of the tours but what did we ever pour a sixth grade middle school not that i wasn't yeah i

134would not not through smc i would recommend it because there's been some comments and smc from folks you know uh foreign against that um more from a personal side of things i know there's one in middletown i've actually been there a couple times earlier this year it's it's phenomenal but if and i would say if and i'm sure obviously chuck probably has a list to that you know if we decided to do this but you know if the sixth grade middle school materializes in some form in an option when we get down to it it might be good for some of the board maybe even some of the smc to tour one just to get an idea that's like maybe here or there but you know i want to waste people's times i am again

135i have no idea where we're going to go there's more options being refined but we haven't haven't seen that yet might be good to see yeah i think um didn't that didn't the subcommittee go to north haven middle school i know ann you just referenced it but that is a six through eight middle school and it's relatively new yeah yeah i can't i can't keep track of stuff anymore maybe maybe he did so if i'm speaking uh speaking i apologize smc did tour north haven and we did it years ago as well because i've seen that school now in two different iterations now that it's all finished but we toured it three years ago when it was still under construction and it was one of those where chuck was talking where they were piecing it

136they were moving it around as they were doing it and it it yeah it's it's not it's very disconcerting um i can see why parents would be very disconcerted uh with a project like that where where the kids are in the school it's yeah how's it talking about getting construction while they're in there north north david it came out it came out nice it just uh the the new part was was the easy part and then you know redoing the auditorium and in the cafeteria we pulled the roof off the cafeteria and this steel deck was like it's cheese and we had to pull off all the steel you know and it just it came out good it came out here we did it under the budget but it was uh challenging yeah i know

137i know i've shared the dirt b uh stuff in half of the durgby schools are six through eight and the other half are seven through eight yeah and then there's one where madison's five six seven eight actually i think they're actually six eight now jeff they re they re they i thought they re redistricted i think a year and a half or two years ago tom was down and uh brown is now four or five yeah they took island ave offline for the elementary went k3 and because polson's so huge it's 150 000 square feet so um right i think that's six to eight now i'm looking at the other ones here on your list um brookfield five eight yeah i'm sorry to extract around with this i was just thinking um for the new

138board and smc but let's see where this ends up i don't want to waste people's time storing stuff if you don't have to a lot of these um comment uh thank you um so with the with the six through eight the i guess the the only thing that that bugs me and i guess i i guess the old plan this is the part that bugged me in the old plan too was um i know and i've spoken this many times that dad was you know meant to to be at least having a lifespan of at least another 11 years that was three years ago so now it's eight years ish um and i think what needs to be answered and i'm sure you're gonna uh cover the subject is what happens to dodd after this

139is all over because that's a really large space um that i mean sure you could add administrative offices you could even add hummuston in there but what there's still a lot left over after that um and so that's that's the question is what happens because that's an awful large space to to leave unoccupied because it's not even where we've even talked about town view space more gym space more uh whatever recreation space it's it's just not there um so i i don't know what can be done without spending even more money on dodd afterward anyway so i don't know but i'm not a creative type so i'll leave that to you guys but i just think that's an important issue for smc to broach at least to brainstorm a little bit as to what to

140do with that space afterward if six through eight renovate all those uh elementary schools what happens to dodd after that would be 15 years out right but roughly yeah yeah probably yeah adam if i could speak to that a little bit um because you're exactly right but i i attended a week ago um a cave some webinar on the board's role in the budget process but at the end of that webinar near the end there was a lot of discussion on shared services so and i think we do some of that between uh between the border bed and the town and shared services means why couldn't we have hummuston and the board of ed offices and parks and rec and arts plays yeah other other town um entities all in the same space i mean

141i just i just think that there's some creative thinking that that goes along with this as well and um that's part of what we're charged smc is charged to do i think and so let's create let's let's solve that problem right and then that leads to millions of more dollars as well because you're going to want to add if you're going to have office space you're going to want to have climate control you're going to you know you want to have amenities for for those office workers as well that they may have been used to in other office spaces so i mean again those are all just challenges and plus we still again have not broke the subject of the high school after all of that um so yeah i would imagine though you know

142if the middle school if if again big if we'll see what comes out of this but if that is repurposed um i would imagine there's a lot less capital approved by projects due because it's no longer an educational facility maybe it's not half of it whatever that percentage is so you know dodd didn't have a lot of va compliance issues if i recall the buildings are really good bones the roof i'm not sure so it's going to be something because dodd worn down it's still evolving something has been done with it but the last time i looked at this one and katherine you know three four years ago or you know we're at the point where if that were going to happen we have to work with the town to figure out you know what

143can we do with it we just never had a discussion and i think in any assist in these options what ann just talked about we're gonna get creative um but that's a good point adam just because if a new movie was done there still has to be something invested in the old building and whether it's board board investment or town it still comes from the town so it'd be good to know what that cost could be right tim thanks andrew uh jeff or anybody else i'm not then you might know how how many classrooms standard classrooms do we have at dodd so take out the cafeteria take out um uh the gymnasium uh the what the i won't call it an auditorium of you know a lecture room how many classrooms there were standard ones

144do we have four offices type of thing uh it's just a ballpark 30 40. yeah i want to say it's in the 40-something range but i'm going to look it up while we're talking here it's in the 40s because we have um four teams four classrooms per team in each grade level world languages and special ed classrooms you it's probably just a shade over 40. okay thank you yep according to melania mcbroom thank you 98 at the high school i knew that it's somewhere all right does anybody else have anything else tonight i mean i think we covered a lot of information i think there's going to be a lot of uh further discussion and contemplating and reviewing the different options um but this was really beneficial i hope everyone thought so on the board

145got to see it all and have chuck here tonight to go through everything yeah i if i could add i want to just thank uh chuck and collier's team for this is probably the third night in the role maybe that uh or or you know that's you guys so i appreciate you hanging in there uh you know chuck and and john again it's and it's only work you're doing it's been very helpful and you know for the board members uh i know they've been paying attention to the smc meetings over the next 60 days i think the intensity is going to pivot quite a bit quite a bit because smc has to finalize options we have to review them town counts has to be doing the probably some back and forth so you know i

146asked and jeff to kind of set this up to get going um i would say if you have any questions um if there's data points you're looking for concerns of feedback you know let myself andrew and ann know and you know it was uh our goal is to kind of get feedback quality as they move along right versus waiting until january are getting the culvert so if there's something that doesn't make sense you know raise your hand you know let us know but um but thank you everyone for staying tonight and collier and jeff i think jeff was driving at the end of this meeting so be safe pleasure yeah thanks go pick up my son thank you everybody all right with that motion to adjourn oh motion to adjourn tim second faith all right

147thank you everybody all right