Select Board - Regular Meeting

Um, welcome back. It's been a while since we've run a a Zoom meeting. Um, probably what a year or a year and a half from more. So, little rusty, but um, we we got that that part done. Um so now we're at a at the good news is um at the next agenda item which is to review and authorize T manager uh to sign the member of understanding and lease agreement with the Rodenbush Community Center incorporated for 65 Main Street, 73 Main Street and 170 Plane Road. And before I just call for a vote, just a lot of thanks to um to Kristen, to to to Mike Edwards and and to the Roden Bush uh staff because this was a long time in the um in the making, but I think it's you foundation for a really good partnership moving forward. Um so thanks to everybody who made this easy all these meetings and session for what four months now. Um so it's it's uh we're there if we if we pass the vote. So, is there a motion to um to to approve my my reading of the motion? So, moved. Second. Okay. Um all in favor? Uh well, I guess we're remote, so we'll do a roll call. Tom, I. John, I. Chris, I. Andrea, I. And I'm an I. So, um you see sign now and we'll be in business. um a few more things that are coming up and I um I think I probably will defer to um Mike or Kristen because these are both contractual things that have arisen in the past uh few days that we want to get tidied up before um uh you know the new board comes on board. Yeah, I can I can start and be turning it over to Mike. So within the past week, we've been working with the um owner's project manager and the contractor Hutter for the JB Fletcher Library project. And several items have

come to our attention that need resolution before May 12th uh in order for us to sign a notice of project, excuse me, a notice to proceed with the contractor. So, we wanted to take advantage of the board being in place today and not knowing that we wouldn't have a board meeting until May 13th and not to uh prolong the schedule for the JB Fletcher Library construction project. So, Mike, I will let you go through these uh three items that we have today. Uh two of them are contingent upon the permanent town building committee and the library board of trustees meeting which occurs on two uh Monday evening this coming week. Great. Thank you, Kristen. Thank you, Scott. Um, so the the first piece is really just a cleanup of our uh surplus policy. Um, we've been very aggressively offloading stuff over the last several months. I sent you the memo with with everything that we've been surplusing. It's been very successful since you allowed us to do the online auctions. Um, very easy for staff to put things up. Very easy for us just to free up space and get rid of things. The one problem we've had is there's certain items we simply can't sell. Nobody will buy, but they really still have some value and Mass General law prevents us from simply donating um without a vote. Um so we've worked with council, we've actually worked with Mass D because they've got some suggested language um to add basically an authorization for us to do uh donations and dispose of things through the trash uh or through recycling. Um, it's just a lot easier for us rather than bringing you every chair and desk for a vote under MGL to get a blanket authorization that once we've tried to sell it, once we've tried to reuse it ourselves, we can get rid of it just by calling Habitat for Humanity or somebody else to come and get it. So, um, what what we need is we need you to approve the policy change to allow us to do that. Um, we wouldn't do any of this

until we tried to sell it first for 14 days. Um, but it it this lets us then donate. So, we would need the policy to be approved and then I've got a second motion to allow us to do that for fiscal 25 and then we'll bring back every year just a blanket authorization saying we can donate things once we've tried everything else in our policy. Um, but that's that's pretty much where we where we're at. I sent you a redline version. My apologies. is the one I sent out last night. I the redline version was correct. I didn't accept the one sentence about the blanket authorization. So, I sent you um uh I I sent you an email this morning with that corrected version, but uh anybody have any questions on the changes or anything? It's I I'm not seeing any hands. So, um, that being the case, I would, uh, like a motion to adopt amendments to the town of Westford policy for disposition of surplus goods and equipment to the the allowed disposition through donation, recycling, andor solid waste. So moved. Second. And Scott, I just put up in the chat a second motion just to let us do that for this year. Wait, wait, we have to vote on this motion. Yeah. So, um, all all in favor, uh, Chris I, John, I, Andrea, I, Tom, I, and I'm an I. And our next motion is to authorize disposition of surplus supplies that remain unsold after auction in accordance with town surplus policy disposition. Sorry, town surplus disposition disposition policy as amended. Um, so moved. Second. All in favor? John? I. Andrea, I. Tom, I.

Chris, I. And I'm an I. I I appreciate that. And I'll I'll also say if you haven't had a chance to watch the auctions, they've become kind of addicting for the people that put things up. Um, and what we have learned is people will buy anything. So, hey, it it's it's been a it's been a great way to raise a little extra money and clean some stuff up. So, um Okay, so that's that item. Great. And then the next two items are related to the uh builder's risk policy which the town is securing on behalf of the project. And uh this is just a several options that we would like your recommendation on and then permit town building recommendation on then a vote for these contracts. So, Mike, go right ahead. I can speak to these. So, um the permanent town building committee, uh basically on on advice of our office and the um town council is holding the builder's risk policy. Um that's really a best practice. It lets us control who the underwriter is and the quality of the underwriter and the policy itself. Um because of that though, we can't get anything other than an estimate until we get the actual contract or the actual bidder established so they can review their record. Um once we get that, we get a formal proposal that's got the actual premium prices. They were right in line with what the estimates were. Um the only thing that was different uh and this is kind of new in the industry is normally they do have protective measures around security um lighting fencing things like that. All those things were in the contract. When we got the final contract they did have a protective measure for water intrusion uh detection and alert. Um, and basically, I'm sure you've been paying attention in Westford, that's been our biggest claim have been water related claims on buildings, freezing pipes, floods, things like that. Um, this is a

system that essentially puts in little monitors throughout the building. If moisture is detected, it it has a a standalone Wi-Fi that it sends a text message and emails to people so they can go check it out. Um, and you know, the more advanced systems will have shut off valves. They'll have flow monitors. They're they're hooked up in line with the water inlet to the building. Um we ask for three uh uh three different options from a vendor. Um kind of the minimum that meets the requirement which is just notification um you know monitoring and notification and then there was a second option that added flow metering or flow monitor and then a third option that actually added automatic shut offs on the water inlet. That's what we would recommend is actually going with this the more um robust option. Um I I will caution you until we actually get the vendor on site. I I've sent them pictures of everything. They have to check the valve itself. There may be a most of these systems sit on top of the existing valve. Um some of them require us to change the valve. So there may actually be a small change order with the contractor to have their plumbing contractor swap out um the valve back of meter. Um we don't expect that to be big. The contractors are used to dealing with this. But what we wind up with if we go with this larger, you know, the more robust system is we'll get a premium reduction. Um that's around $10,000 for the larger system around $8,000 for the smaller system. the net costs of everything after the premium reductions were in that memo. Um it winds up being about $11,000 for the for the bigger system. Um and I I don't have an estimate on the change order, but it would be minimum. Um and then the premium reduct or the deductible reduction winds up being $50,000. We had a $150,000 deductible. Um and the way we structured that in the

contract is the town would be responsible um for uh well the contractor would be responsible for half of the deductible up to $50,000 and we would be responsible for the remainder. So this is a benefit to us is it basically reduces our exposure on water claims down to $50,000 from a hundred. Um the policy itself and the water protection measures uh come in at about $225,000 total between the two after the net. Um we have a total budget for uh risk retention um within the project itself of around 250,000. So we're well within budget. Um we recommend that we send this to well it will go to permanent town building committee and library board of trustees with a recommendation for option three. Um we're asking you to approve it contingent on their approval just because of the sequence of I mean it makes no sense. I mean pipes don't break between 9:00 a.m. and and and 400 p.m. right? they they break at two in the morning and then you've got to get somebody out there with where the water gushing out. So it makes no sense to say, "Hey, there's a problem if the system can fix it on its own." So yeah, it's pretty I think pretty obvious decision here. John, yeah, I noticed the coverage is excuse my voice. I got some laryngitis or something. Um and honey, tea and honey, John. Tea and honey. Okay. Um I was wondering about that. Um, we have a limit of 32 million on there. Uh, would it have been better? Uh, would the price change if you just limited to the construction cost is because there are a lot of soft cost in that 32 million. There's design cost. Um, there's the contribution from uh the library trustees or the library commission and the actual construction cost. You got 23 million down here. That's including that's not the actual

bid price. That's higher than that. Would it would it improve the uh uh would it lessen the uh cost to us if we change that limit? No, it it doesn't. The way builder's risk policies work is essentially when we turn over ownership of that building during construction to the contractor, our property liability insurance goes away. So, we don't insure it during that time. So this actually picks up not only the construction, it picks up the property coverage as well. Okay. So this this this covers the property, the existing building, everything during construction essentially moves off of our policy. Everything within that site onto their policy or onto this new policy. It's a and it and it covers the construction as well. Um we we have for the construction budget that's the construction property limit of that 23.6 that was the original construction budget. It doesn't change if we reduce that down um at all. So we're we're at the basically we're insuring the entire project the parcel everything. Okay. Thanks. Any other questions? So that we go ahead. Your hands up still. Is that to the question or you Oh, no. Okay. In that case, uh we actually got two motions. The way this works. So first we need a motion to approve subject to the joint approval of the parent town building committee and library board of trustees at a meeting scheduled for May 5th 2025 a contract with cap with cabb risk strategies for a builder's risk insurance policy for the Javele Fletcher Library renovation and addition project. Is there a second? Is there a second? And just so people know, Chris Barrett just let me know he's having internet issues. I don't see him on the

Zoom anymore. So, he might not be part of this roll call vote. Okay. Um, that being the case, uh, all in favor, Tom, I, John, hi, Andrea. Hi. I'm an I and I guess we'll hopefully Chris comes back, but four at least. And the second and related motion is um to approve subject to the joint approval of the permittown building committee and the library board of trustees at a meeting scheduled for May 5th, 2025 a contract with Insight Risk Technologies for water intrusion protection services for the JV Fletcher Library renovation and addition project. Is there a motion? So moved. Second. All in favor? Andrea I. John I. Tom. Tom. Hi. And I'm an I. So four four zero. Is there anything else that um that's it for the agenda. Is there anything else we need to uh discuss that is uh within the bounds open meeting? My guess is not. So um so for the final time I'll move to adjourn. Is there a second? I will I will second with great gratitude to Anthony and Scott for their final meeting. Yes. Thanks everybody. Um and while we're here, just thanks for everything last Tuesday. Um I I've said that some individually, but um you not to all of you, so uh that was very special, you know. So So thank you for for that honor. We've we've enjoyed having you. who I know I've only been here a short time, but uh I' I've certainly enjoyed uh working with this board and I I think both of both of you have made me and certainly Kristen better at our job. So, we appreciate that. Yes. Thank you so much. We really appreciate working with

you and wish you all the best and please call us. We will call you. We have your number, Kristen. That's a mistake. It's a cell phone we have. So, just change your number real quick. Absolutely. I have mics, too. Me too, actually. Yeah. So, we have a motion in a second. Um, all in favor, uh, just you can raise your hand. Tom can't, but we got three votes. So, thank you. Thank you all for the special meetings. Have a good day. Have a good day. Be well. Be safe every Tuesday and sign the lease, please.