001a meeting full committee meeting planning committee meeting of the whole september 23rd 2020 uh good evening i'm gonna have vin mastiana run through the roll call for quorum okay plenty committee members andrew martelly here tim white here kathryn halland and then board members mr paragini i see he's here here sorry uh miss arrogan pierre miss ham here and mr griffo here okay mr chairman you do have a forum great all right vin uh could you put the flag up for the pledge of allegiance please i can oh that's not really the one i want but okay can we see that yep all right i pledge allegiance okay okay first item on the agenda is audience um [Music] mr solon or vin are there any emails received um i do not have any but then again
002i don't have access to that email request and mr solon looks like he's he's on so if he can speak we can hear him and he may be just getting on yeah may have trouble he may have be having trouble getting in i see he's left the meeting okay so we could um we could go back to that i'm sorry i pressed the wrong button yeah no there are no no correspondence no correspondence okay right information sorry just uh jeff if you could just sort that out for future committee meetings just for ones you don't you don't attend sure just something to keep in mind that's all yeah moving forward i'd be happy if you want to afford any email correspondence to me um we can go through them that way yeah we just didn't
003have any relevant correspondence to this meeting i haven't worked it out but i i'm at the meeting so i didn't send it to ben gotcha understood thank you thank you jeff okay we're gonna move into item number three which is the hummuston building discussion i'm gonna turn it over to vin vin sent out some um items to the committee i'm gonna have him share the screen and walk us through the hummington discussion about the facility okay thank you mr martelly and good evening everyone so hopefully you could see the template that i have on the screen and if andrew can you just confirm you see that so i can move through yes i have it yep so this is a this is a template and it is a draft template so the committee members can
004you know add to it as we go through the discussion but i did put this together as a way to look at and gain an understanding of hummuston the hummuston building in general when i speak about it in tonight's presentation covers the entire building and the building includes hummuston school which is our alternative high school as well as the central office space that is occupied by all the departments of central office including the superintendent's office so this template just starting at the top left what i listed are the parameters and these are really items to consider these are the major ones that i've identified there may be more so when we look at hummuston building and compare it to any other alternative whether it's it's lease space whether it would be you know a new
005building the the things that we would want to consider are one the annual operating costs and i'm going to go through these in some more detail but i'll just run them run down the list what are the capital investment costs for hummerstone versus for example if we were to rent new space would there be leasehold improvements that we would have to make to new space to make it adapted for either the hummuston school or central office or both ada compliance is certainly an important factor and especially as it relates to the hummuston building which is not ada compliant for the most part currently the other thing we need to consider is this hummuston building if we vacate it the cost don't go down to zero because you still have to you know maintain the building
006even though it's to some minimum extent for example in the winter you'd want to keep the heat running at a low temperature just to make sure you don't freeze out the pipes the next item is the cost and time required to remove the use restriction on this building if the plan were to repurpose the building or demolish the building or sell the building the when the building was donated in 1911 the the way it was donated is that julia hummiston put up 30 000 and then as part of the agreement the building was then turned over to the town once it was built and thereafter it had to be used for public school purposes so there's um you know certainly something that would need to be addressed and then hummuston building is in and of
007itself um part of the greater uh i guess the center of town of cheshire is on the national register of historic places so the hummerstone building is listed you know as part of this center of town that's on that register certainly we want to look at the quality and functionality of this space versus any new space two important things that we'd want to consider one hummuston building is in close proximity to the high school and there are students that you know do move between the two school buildings as well as staff that move between the two school buildings so being 0.9 miles from the high school is certainly a key factor and an advantage to the hummiston building right now and then a kind of a subset of that is this next item the student
008costs related to hummuston school or the transportation costs related when we move students back and forth the other factor is central office uh being in the center of town you know is is in a really good and convenient spot so that quick access to other schools becomes um easier from from the hummuston building and there are situations you know that aren't necessarily large emergencies but you know times that you know this the superintendent or marlene solano our assistant superintendent or myself do need to move into other buildings quickly so that is another factor and then the last item that i put in this template are [Music] you know and i guess the best way to describe it is hummuston school is roughly occupies about 7 500 square feet central office is about 7 500 square
009feet relatively small spaces that is part of an overall school modernization plan you know if we decided that we within another building project can fit the alternative high school 7 500 square feet is a lot easier to find space within a larger building project and so hummingston school and central office are really our two smaller spaces so really you know making any moves before the entire school modernization committee's plan recommendation is made you know may not be you know the most efficient use of um you know any money that's invested so that's the basic template that i i wanted to take you through and before i pause for questions i'm going to hit this first line item because i know this has been kind of a big question within school modernization committee and that is
010you know what are the annual operating costs of of the hummuston building and so i just changed to a spreadsheet that um was developed by rich and i and you could see the columns that we have listed here are 1819 these are the actual costs of of running hummuston and central office 1819 and 1920 in the next column so you could see here we heat with natural gas um and that's been about 22 000 let's let's call it an average of 20 000 per year the last two years electricity is probably an average of about 15 000 if you look at the two years sewer costs 500 you could see water trash plowing you know each several thousand dollars per year and then fire sprinkler testing emergency lighting testing fire extinguisher inspection and um you
011know integrated pest management is what ipm stands for insect control five hundred dollars so if you look at the recurring expenses of this hummuston building you'll see that we average somewhere around forty seven thousand five hundred forty eight thousand dollars let's call it and then if we take this one step further and look at you know maintenance and and repairs that are non-recurring um you'll see that i'll just cut to the bottom line first 1819 non-recurring expenses were about 000 and 1920 it was about 35 000. the big difference between these two years because you could see there's some minor expenses for painting and and you know we did some boiler repairs but in the last fiscal year 1920 we had um we had to do some work on the second and third floor bathrooms
012because we had a plumbing leak so you could see those items total a little over ten thousand dollars and then here in 1819 we replaced some of the not the main entrance door but the other entrance doors around the building that were aged out so the bottom line is that over the last two years the cost of you know heating providing electricity and maintaining the hummuston building has been about eighty five thousand dollars so it's this is in line with the information that was provided to the school modernization committee um you know earlier this year which was more on an estimated you know per square foot basis but now these are your true costs on a non-allocated basis so i'm gonna pause there before we we start really discussion on the um the template and
013i stopped sharing the screen so um are there any questions so far you know as far as what we presented for the template or the call if i could just ask quick um is it i know you you provided a snapshot from 1819 and 1920 for the non-reoccurring expenses um since you've been around for some time is that about 30 to 40 000 a year is that normal to be spending in non-reoccurring expenses on the building just to keep it open so to speak without the large capital expenditures that are in the capital budget it is you know we i guess it's fair to say that we've we've looked at this building as as being on hold you know for potential future um you know relocation um so but we are maintaining the building to
014the extent we can so i think these this 40 000 a year roughly is about what um is normal for us we've identified in the in the next section the large capital investments we need to make um and really the only other thing that i can think of that i would consider a maintenance expense that we know we have to undertake is the the men's bathroom in the lower level of this building you know which is probably rich i know you had done you know some initial estimates we're talking yeah including new fixtures and reconfiguring it's probably around in the 30 000 neighborhood yeah okay um you know and so you know that's a good example of a project that we know is out there um you know we we should do it but you
015know we won't do it unless we have other priorities met and that's the juggle that we always do not only within this building but across the building okay well that bathroom doesn't get a lot of use um greg gibbons and i probably use it more than anybody else and so we we haven't made it a priority for us got it and then one other thing before i get to everybody else's questions here if i could was there ever a has ever been like a market study done for this building by the town that you're aware of i.e selling it by the town or the school district no not that i'm aware of andrew and i mean i've been here for you know ten and a half years so there's nothing been done during that period
016of time certainly okay all right thank you adam thank you um vin during your presentation you spoke about the uh central location of the building in reference to both administration and students um could you perhaps elaborate on the student portion as to what type of students travel between the high school and and hummuston and is that something that could be um uh is that a problem that could be solved by i don't know having a different spot inside the high school if hummerstone were to were to move um well i'm going to give dr sullin an opportunity to answer that uh before i do because he's more well-versed than that sure sorry guys i was driving i left work too late but anyway um basically you know the students that we have at homiston are
017students who for whom the high school just wasn't working out that it wasn't appropriate um in many cases sheer size and volume of students that there are anxiety levels at the high school that are for their attendance that being said the goal is that they transition back to the high school or fully to the high school um is as much as we can we want them to be participants at cheshire high school so the goal is you know that we address the needs that they have to a point that they could return full time and in that process we try and split time between the two buildings so you know a number of students are you know traveling to the high school for classes the schedule doesn't always make that easy but we're trying to
018get them back to the building as much as we can so that's i don't know if that answers your question fully adam but that's you know kind of where we're at so if if the location were to move was just a matter of an increased transportation costs or i don't know do those do many students at hummus didn't have their own vehicles are they allowed to have vehicles or on on-premises or anything like that they may but most do not um and you know we don't in terms of uh cost it's not wildly more expensive if they were say if we had an alternative school at one point we talked about having you know central office in the alexion building um you know if we had let's say moved homestead up there it would be
019it would be more of a time issue than it would be a money issue per se but yeah money would be impacted um the closer that we can be to cheshire high it's advantageous but i wouldn't call it a deal breaker okay thank you yeah yes that adam yes okay tim uh yeah um with regard to the 7 500 square feet for each section let's say you did uh get a new facility would you want it to would you want it to be that size bigger smaller any idea you know i i think that for central office anyway um if we had more efficient space we could probably go a little bit smaller you know and that's assuming that we keep the same potential upgrades um some of these departments can can be split out
020um it's you know i i think the space having all of us together even though the space isn't that great because it's it's very choppy but it works for us so if we could keep central office staffed together we might be able if we have more efficient space to slightly shrink the footprint but i don't think it'll be dramatically different the school side you know part of what's included in the 7 500 square feet is the gym space that you know in theory we really don't need if it were if we had the alternative high school in a location that already had and could share some of that type of common space but i don't think it would be dramatically different as i said here tim okay that said you know what happens in a
021larger building project if we were able to try and condense central office into a larger building project or the alternative high school or both it just becomes a lot more reasonable you know to look at it from that perspective then just try and take 15 000 square feet and find a new home for that it's probably not the best use of our resources overall thank you thank you um yeah the one thing that goes through my mind is it's not just the square footage it's the cubic footage you have there you probably have normal height ceilings from a heating perspective um the uh ada compliance i know you haven't gotten to that so i could wait on this um if you were only using the first floor of the building would you have 88 compliance
022issues very generally would you in this building yeah yeah we still would okay because you know i mean just getting into the hummuston school building you're either going down steps or up steps okay so yeah that it wouldn't solve that problem okay anybody else have any questions for ben not for right now i do have some more questions but i could i could hold off on them so welcome catherine sorry i was late thanks thanks i'm here now so you know what i would say on on annual operating costs just as a general statement at 85 000 per year including you know maintenance and our recurring costs um because we own the building and we pay no rent you know we're not going to find if we were to rent out a space it's going
023to be dramatically more expensive because you know at a minimum even if we could replace 15 000 square feet of space at eight dollars a square foot and i'm just you know kind of making that number up as a generalization you know you're still you're talking about 120 000 per year just for your rent before you're paying utilities another cost so from an operating cost basis we we wouldn't be doing any better there are other factors i mean quality of space you could argue you know we would do much better and that's part of what you're paying for but you're not going to you know move out of this building rent somewhere else at a lower cost it's just not practical i happened to read an article yesterday that wallingford's central office which isn't a
024freestanding building they're talking about renewing their space um and they've got a little under 13 000 square feet of space and the the cost for rent is somewhere around 140 000 i believe is what the article said that they're negotiating so they're at twelve dollars a square foot you know it's pretty basic space it's nice um but it's just office space so from an operating cost basis because we own the building i think we from a cost point of view we're not going to do better than what we have here okay so any questions on that before i move to capital okay so then i'm sorry i had just one clarification is that that's 120 000 is that annually or per month no that's annually annually okay yeah so we're at 85 000 and what
025i'm saying is even if we could get a base rent you know for 15 000 square feet at 120 000 a year it's it's you know 120 000 plus whatever additional operating costs you know and i'm i'm assuming the eight dollars is is a triple net lease so you know as a tenant we'd be responsible for everything you know above the uh the base rent so that would include heating and electricity and those types of of things then real quick who does the plowing rich um yeah we have uh we have a contractor that does the main plowing and then uh my staff takes care of sidewalks and uh general cleanup so there's an outside contractor hired for the parking lots in general uh they're hired uh based on districts so it's really not based
026on uh square footage per se okay we have a couple of our pickups outfitted with uh plows and salting equipment so you know if it's a small event you know we could do it internally we do yeah our current contract is based on time and material for uh for better clarification i think there was a question from faith yeah um so i know there are a lot of unknowns um but andrea raised an interesting question about whether or not there's been a market study and um i guess that is a question that i have as well and in order to get a complete picture um of what the situation is going forward and i'm not saying in the next couple of weeks but it would be interesting to hear if there is if you know
027that's a prime piece of property in town um would could we benefit by considering a sale and um and i don't mean immediately but as the modernization committee comes up with its plan that becomes a piece of of the puzzle as well absolutely okay so um i did include in the in the packet um which i don't think i need to bring up on the screen i'll just explain the five-year capital plan what's included in our five-year plan right now is 3.45 million dollars and that's really to do three things one make the building ada compliant which essentially means we'd have to add two elevators one on each side of the building the second item that's included in that 3.5 million is replacement of the roof this is a slate roof and again it's a
028historic building so we have a 900 000 estimate to do that it's not in need of immediate replacement but you know in a five-year plan we've included it and also to replace the window some of the windows or i should say most of the windows have been replaced in this building but they've failed um you know seals are broken some windows you know won't open some windows when you open them you got to be careful that you don't get hurt because they just don't stay up so you know when this work was done and it was you know it's probably over 20 years ago you know the windows that would replace need to be replaced again so we know we've got three and a half million dollars worth of capital investment required for this building
029just to do those three things and then the second piece of information that i will share is when perkins eastman completed their study their review of this building they had an estimated total cost of about five million dollars to you know not only bring this building up to code but also to make the necessary improvements to really make the building you know look better including the facade you know make it more functional overall so you know the you know the one disadvantage to you know this building is that we know that there is a capital cost investment it is a you know building that's over 100 years old it's a historic building you know the investment could be made but that's obviously a big decision you know within the scope of you know an overall
030plan in in my view um and the ada compliance you know is certainly you know going to be an important component of bringing this building you know from a modernization point of view where it needs to be so that's the capital investment question and then again if we're looking at new space if it's a lease space versus you know moving you know either one of these facilities into an into part of a larger building renovation then any new space that we get might have some leasehold improvement costs that you know depending on on what it is if it's not a new building you know to to try and accommodate for example uh hummuston alternative school into any space it could be anywhere from you know million dollars or up if we're trying to do that
031and and um again that's obviously something that's that would have to be negotiated it's pie in the sky information it's just it's not just capital costs of hummus then if we're looking to rent space you have to remember there's probably going to be some leasehold cars if we were to get new space got it i think adam has a question than ann thank you uh this is sort of a multi-part sort of thinking out loud slash questions sort of thing um so you you uh did a lot line items 3.5 million in capital improvement costs to hamilton and then you also said 120 000 a month uh potentially for uh just to rent a space so that so i you know just ran a little quick math that's basically a 30-year loan for three and
032a half million dollars um you know adjusting for interest or whatever we could get isn't there property out there that we could purchase that could would probably be less than 3.5 million that would have more square footage and be ada compliant um potentially i mean maybe there is maybe there isn't um and then the piggyback on that um i um i toured uh darcy school today um to see what they were what they were doing as far as you know their coronavirus uh protections of the kids and everything like that and that you know i've been there three times and and this is uh the first time where it really uh made an impact on me about the uniqueness of the property where there's the trails and back that the kids are using as the
033outdoor uh activity especially now during covid it's and i think the modernization committee should really think about if if darcy is going to be closed down if if that's going to be part of the plan how would how is the uniqueness of what darcy does going to be combined uh into the other spaces and could uh some of what darcy does also be compil combined into a new administrative space because i i think that there needs to be some creative thinking there because because of the uniqueness of what they do and the uniqueness of the programs there that uh i i think that a modernization really really take a look at all that and and i think strongly that uh we should look at purchasing property for hummus in uh and administration and perhaps even
034combining of those things unless um the combining the darcy components unless there's going to be additions to other schools somewhere so that i think there really needs to be a lot of creative thinking so there was a lot i guess a little more commentary in question but i do think that purchasing uh might be bet might be better off in the long run vin i don't know if it's probably it's easier to to to commandeer rent expense than it is to go out to get bonding for purchasing property of that kind but i don't know i think maybe in the long run it might be better for if we're if we own property instead of lease it if that way we're not at the whims of of a a landlord for what we want to
035do uh well as you said that i'll i'll take all of that as commentary and it's there's no i'm not answering any part of that question and i i think you you hit the nail on the head that it's kind of exactly what a school modernization committee you know has been formed to really take a an overall plan view for what we need to do in all our buildings because there are you know a lot of different components and probably a lot of different options that we could come up with and i think adam just your your commentary there i think it makes a lot of sense as to why we're doing this and why it might make sense to kind of hold off on any quick reaction to space planning until we have a
036full picture from the consultant and really have a chance to look at all options on the table absolutely so and yeah a quick question then um when perkins eastman did the the um looked at uh revamping the whole building um did the is there any possibility of using the front door to that building this is just curiosity on my part is the front door well that's a great question you know i have i've never gone into the front door of that building and i'm wondering if one can we don't use the front door just because um it is more convenient to reach the rest of the space through those two side doors and those two side doors you know were configured with the electronic door strike you know it was probably an easier configuration but
037i have used that front door it does open it does close but it's not a commonly used door but in a reconfiguration that's a that's an interesting point you know why not use that as as visitor access it's just a little further than from the parking lot i suppose you may have seen that front door in the famous convocation back to the future video of 2019. however uh it has been said it's not very convenient to parking so we tend not to use that one thank you van i was just thinking in terms of if we were to use that build it is a beautiful historic building and if the town if the if somebody decide who has the power decides that we should renovate it it should have a working front door i i
038guess but so i was just wondering if there actually was one that worked thank you you're welcome all right adam are you set yeah i'm good okay tim thank you thank you andrew i'll try to keep down my counterpart here the noise those comic books he's showing you uh it's a it's a halloween i think it's a well it's a toy store maybe lakeshore or halloween book so there's lots of good pictures to look at and stuff to buy um i think this question is probably for rich so i heard two i heard two numbers get um mentioned before three and a half million and five million dollars sort of as a range for capital improvements i it's good that's good for halloween dev please stop um so i just divided that by 15 000
039square feet just in terms of a building commercial construction that comes out to about uh 230 to 300 per square foot what would commercial construction be in cheshire as a ballpark figure yeah i mean the commercial construction based on square footage a lot of it is depend depending on you so obviously like uh for instance like a doctor's office you know would be in the 350 to you know as much as 425 a foot if it's just a general office space you know 200 250 uh it all depends i mean i remember the days when renovation was uh 65 a foot those days have long gone uh so i mean a lot of it is dependent uh also take into consideration is the age of the building you know the shell of the building uh
040abatement requirements that would be have to be um you know uh looked into and dealt with you know a bit a lot of times abatement falls off the radar and uh that ends up being you know 20 of the renovation costs so it's an older building my guess is that the dollar per square foot cost for renovation would be elevated because of that i'm actually not even talking about renovation i'm talking about new construction is what i should have said out of the ground yeah yeah i mean if you're doing comparative talking yeah it's probably probably would be more cost efficient uh to build out of the ground okay okay so is it all right so it would be in the range of like 200 250 dollars yeah i'm just speaking very generally per square
041foot that would be like very baseline okay so it would go up from there and what about do you could you off the top of your head say anything about school construction so the the hummington school that's good the hummus in school component per square foot what might that be yeah it's driven by what the curriculum requirements are so i mean i don't i i don't know if maybe jeff can speak to it but like you know would you consider you know lab space would you consider you know gymnasium oh yeah all of those different spaces have different costs per square foot so i mean it's kind of hard to make a general estimate on uh you know what that cost would be so let me just ask you vin really quick do we have
042any lab space in hummuston right now because that's the expensive one that's like a thousand bucks a square foot or more 2000 bucks a square foot i forget okay we don't have lab space i mean basically you know hummerstone is configured as classroom space you know office space space for a social worker for example okay that doesn't mean if you if you you know looked at a new configuration or new space for hummuston you would necessarily exclude that as part of your educational specs oh yeah no no no yeah yeah there's nothing there's nothing like that now but in apples to apples it sounds to me like we have we probably have certain mandatory costs over the next few years and new construction taking the land part out of it the new construction may actually
043cost competitive down devin uh compared to what we're talking about right now okay um and the second thing no uh the second second question i have um relates to darcy so adam you mentioned a second ago about uh you know new construction that would incorporate darcy darcy is correct me if i'm wrong here darcy is uh a certain amount of it i'll just say half of it i don't know what is pre-k and the operating costs are as i understand it fully funded by the state only for the birth to three program oh the birth to three okay so so would the birth just say with the birth to three be um with capital costs related to that be fully funded by the state 100 percent um are you not sure yeah i don't think
044so and you know the one thing birth to three you know doesn't occupy a lot of space because birth to three is primarily a program that's conducted in oh in the homes in people's homes yeah yeah yeah um so the the space that we have you know for birth to three you know would be some evaluation space and space for the staff that you know run the birth to three program you know so really the hard cost with when i say the hard cost i mean the the cost you'd need to invest if you were replacing darcy would be for your pre-k classrooms we do have two smart start classrooms that are part of the pre-k and then you know the other part of darcy are the four kindergarten classrooms that are for do little
045students currently because there's not enough space and doolittle so presumably if you were doing an overall modernization plan you try to accommodate all your kindergarten students you know in do little building assuming we're keeping that too little building as is so you would actually reduce the footprint required potentially for your pre-k and birth to three program if you were able to do that okay well you know there's again so many different sure scenarios that you know you have to look at and that's again part of the the charge of the school modernization committee certainly okay okay all right um yeah i have one more point but i don't know if vin wants to continue yeah you if you continue i'll continue but it's up to the chair yeah adam has a question but tim are
046you still going you have another question uh yeah yeah i'm not sure if there's a question or a comment so the the one thing that has crossed my mind in the past would be would it be possible to um turn it into you know apartments and specifically in relation to public schools generally speaking i mean i i think being a teacher or a cop is a pretty good job but they also start out with relatively low wages and housing could be difficult for them and just to uh if there'd be any way to um if it would be possible to even uh get that as a benefit if it got converted over to apartments because i'll say this i i really would like to continue having hummuston i don't want to see it get knocked
047down um so need a use for it and then i wonder if there'd be a value to the to the schools by providing housing for somebody i'm sure we're getting the contract negotiations and things like that and not be easy but it was a thought that crossed through my mind because housing is i think there i think there'd be a i think housing stock for say a 23 year old not making a lot of money a 25 year old i think there's uh there'd be an appetite for that in town so no question just a comment thanks andrew okay thanks adam thank you um no comment for me right now except uh for rich um the uh the three to five million dollar figure uh that tim mentioned before did that include an estimate for
048abatement or not or is there is is abatement unknown right now yeah that would be that would be an unknown those uh okay and vin can uh correct me i think the three primary were to uh uh you know to upgrade ada compliancy which i would assume it would include the construction of an elevator to reach all floors i'm assuming there would be a percentage of abatement required for that but it's basically just a baseline capital calculation uh the other would be the roof and that would be that would more than likely include abatement and i i can't recollect the third item finn windows yeah and there would be marginal abatement but there would be some abatement involved yeah and again those are all budget costs we've not gone out and hired you know a
049contractor or or you know an architect to give us you know more detailed costs those are costs that we use for budget purposes you know in the capital budget obviously if we if we're going to proceed down any of those paths we'd have to you know get to the next level with cost estimates you'd see a you see a more of a significant abatement cost uh for a full interior renovation that's where that's where you would really where that would really uh you know manifest itself so really uh renovation could potentially be double three and a half million yeah i think in industry standards is usually uh 20 is usually what what you use it's a safe bet you know it's a it's a safe percentage okay thank you catherine thanks andrew um i this
050is a comment not a question and i it feels to me like we're going down several roads that are really as other people have said being considered by the school modernization committee and you know we all know that darcy has special programs and we want to make sure that whatever the plan is in the end takes that into account and and that we are not um you know sort of separating out those aspects of what is is you know so special about darcy school um and you know splitting it up among buildings but those are you know what happens to the hummuston building if if it turns out that the school modernization committee has a plan that does not include hummuston as one of the uh school buildings um that you know that's all going
051to be then up to the town council i would assume whether they want to turn it into apartments or anything else and i'm just not clear why we right now at this meeting are spending any time on those kind of issues because of the fact that the school modernization committee is working really hard to come up with a global plan that will address i think a lot of these issues so um i'm not even sure i understand other than to to get some specifics about the costs associated with keeping hummus in which again should be going over to the school modernization committee um i'm not sure what we're what we're trying to accomplish here tonight and i don't mean to be difficult at all but it just feels like we're i don't want to start
052going down a path or a parallel track that's uh inconsistent with what the school modernization committee is doing or repetitive or whatever whatever the right word is so thanks and i totally understand catherine as you and adam and tim and i think myself have all said um there might have been an opportunity to look at other properties in town and i think that we wanted to get a sense from the board how everyone felt about hummus and if there was a short-term solution to humson if it's really an issue that needs to be dealt with now or if it should be rolled into the overall school modernization um so i think that this is all good we're all talking about it now and then as we move forward with school modernization if it does come
053to the board and there is a request to potentially move central office to an alternate location um we all have the facts in order to address that as a board the modernization not the board of education purview not school modernization right and i appreciate that um and i don't mean to as i said be difficult um but if you want my opinion about hummuston i mean i don't see that as being part of what our school system really needs so um but you're right we're we're going into uh we don't need to address that apparently right this second so i'll be quiet now oh you're great thanks all right anything else on the discussion for hamilton or should we move on to solar um yeah i i have nothing else i i think you know
054andrew i guess my only question is it is the template and the cost analysis for hummus and something that we want to put in front of school modernization committee just so that they're aware that there was a discussion you know with the planning committee and the board about it and i'm not sure that you know there's an outcome that you want to state like you know we can or don't need to do anything at this time i think that this is definitely something that should go to school modernization committee um i think it should be shared with colliers um as they look at all options that are on the table so they know uh what direction the board is is looking okay i mean i'm only one of you know seven i don't know if
055anybody else feels any different here but um um i agree with all of that andrew and just said i think i think i'm agreeing with what katherine's saying that hummingston needs to be a long-term solution and not a knee-jerk solution so i don't know if from my point of view i don't know if short-term is the answer i think a long-term solution is the answer right i mean just in that in the one common that vin put on here i mean it's we're looking at about 15 000 square feet in overall school modernization of all of our school facilities so it's really a very small portion of the overall plan so i think we need to look at everything all right so you know with that what i'll do is i'll um just go over
056this one more time i don't know that it needs to be cleaned up necessarily and i will send it on to colliers and i'll send it to our net so that we can add it to the next agenda as a discussion item sound good perfect thank you okay and then the next item on the agenda is uh solar and so i'm the update is actually it's it's pretty quick the um and i did spell this out in the email so i'm going a little bit by memory but we had met with um dave newman who's the chief engineer over at ecg you know back in february the goal at that time was to get a proposal you know to review our options for various solar configurations across our school buildings including ground-based solar installations such
057as solar car ports we got a proposal from ecg engineering and by the way ecg engineering was the firm that served as the owner's rep for our large ameresco energy performance contract and they're a good firm and and dave newman was part of that original um you know work scope that was done so long story short we did get a proposal from ecg to do this work um they appointed michael sam who's actually a local engineer he's i think i believe he operates right out of southington so we had the proposal in hand we provided information and then of course the pandemic hit and you know we got an initial review completed by ecg engineering which was in in powerpoint i did share with the planning committee and board members earlier today but we basically
058put that project on hold we haven't expended any money um against the you know the the agreement with ecg was per hour of time spent with the next not to exceed limit of 9 800 so what we've got from ecg at this point is just a baseline of if we were to do solar on our roofs which i don't think necessarily that is the road that we want to go down we have a baseline proposal the next step which we had put on hold but we could take off hold if everybody's ready to do that is to have a um we could do it by video a call with michael som from ecg to talk about the work he's done and really start to explain what we're looking to accomplish um so i would think
059that might be the next step with the planning committee then michael can do site surveys you know with with rich and i you know and others from our staff um and so the planning committee members could be involved in that review and then you know we would count on ecg to give us recommendations so you know that's that's really where we are um i think that over the next couple of weeks things are starting and i hope i'm not changing us but things seem to be starting to subside in in terms of you know where we are with with the school district and you know keeping things running we're we're on an even keel right now i think we're going to have certainly ups and downs you know as we have some positive cases but
060you know we're learning to manage through it and i think after a couple of weeks we you know we certainly couldn't invest some time to take this to the next step so that's really the long and short of the update there so it's really a question for planning yeah i mean i'm i'm open to have a call you know as soon as as soon as ecg is ready to discuss have we received any invoicing from them to the davin of the 98 not to exceed no nothing um and you know what what they put together was based on you know we gave them our our roof schedule um we gave them the plans and aerials of our buildings so what was put together was baseline uh you know i my bet is they're not going
061to charge us for it otherwise they would have the real work will begin when after we do you know a site review you know with the engineer so and these ecg's you know i'm not going to say they're a generous firm but i think they'll you know conduct this you know review at a reasonable rate for us so they're not going to gouge us in any way okay okay tim thank you andrew yeah i definitely would like to move forward i think that i definitely i have no doubt that there's uh opportunities for us where this could work well for the school system we obviously have to uh decide on locations specific sites not just a school but a parking lot a roof a yard um but the one thing that i want to remind
062everybody including viewers is that the the price will likely increase over the next um 15 months from now the price is going to increase for solar it's because there's various incentives there's both eversource incentives and federal income tax benefits that we could take in the next 15 months that will be basically disappearing and so i'd like to take advantage of those things and when i say we have a 15 month window that means you want to be energized or literally be using be plugged in have it fully constructed have it plugged in by december 2021 so we would have to make decisions before then um you know because it'll take a probably a couple months to actually make construction happen so i would like to move forward on this if we're going to thank you
063okay all right anybody else on solar say let me check the queue adam yeah i just had a comment i definitely think that a presentation would certainly be uh interesting especially with the the current state of uh eversource's billing practices uh it might actually uh really serve us well if these rates uh are going to continue i don't know if we're in a different structure than residential rates i'm guessing we are but whatever those extra fees that they've been charging i'm sure they'll find their way to us eventually and if we have a way to be able to feed back into the grid um at minimal costs and minimal let's say minimal obstruction to operations uh then it might be at least worth a look okay thank you any other comments questions or anything for
064vin before we adjourn to executive session hearing and seeing none um okay please have a motion to adjourn the meeting executive session motion to adjourn you have a second second by adam so that'll conclude our regular meeting we're going to adjourn to executive session with no action to follow all right nice to see nice to see everyone take care thank