School Committee - Special Meeting

Good evening, everybody. This is the September 15 meeting of the school buildings facilities and maintenance special committee joint committee with the with the school committee. Regular meeting. I am Jesse Kling, and I am the current chair, the new chair as we've had some staff changes around the council with council Panetta Neufeld leaving and that making council Davis the president. So we had to make some changes there.

Before I get started, I just have to read this blurb that allows us to do this meeting remotely. So pursuant to chapter two of the acts of 2025, this meeting of a city council committee will be conducted via remote participation. We will post an audio recording, audio video recording, transcript, or other comprehensive record of these proceedings as soon as possible after the meeting on the city of central website and local cable access government channels. With that out of the way, I'm gonna open the city council side of the meeting, and I'll turn it over to the school committee so they can open their meeting. So this evening, we have clerk Delaney. Delaney, what's your last name again? I'm sorry. We've never even met in person.

Yeah. My last name is Fisher Cascio, so madam clerk is probably easier.

Okay. Madam clerk, if you could call the role to establish a quorum, please.

Yep. This is roll call. Counselor

site. Present.

Perfect. Counselor Klingen or chair Klingen.

Present. And I see counselor Davis is here.

And counselor Davis is here? Perfect. Alright. With all three here, we do have a quorum.

Excellent. Alright. So just jumping right in. We have a number of memos that have been provided by city staff. I know we also have some items that will be discussed this evening. I see Rich Raish is in in the list of attendees here.

Chair Klingen, would it be alright if we established our quorum as well?

Yes. So, yeah, so my intention is to, yeah, turn it over to school committee and allow them to establish quorum.

Appreciate it. Thank you, chair Klingen. This is school committee. We're just gonna do our roll call and then pass it over. And, my apologies, chair Klingen, for interrupting. I am Leron Biton, chair. I am present. Sarah Phillips, are you here?

I am here.

And has Laura Biton joined us at this point? I know she was running late. Not present, but we have enough to, do business. So, with two out of three here, we have quorum, and I will turn it

back to you, chair Clinton. Thank you.

Thank you. Sorry about that. I I said that what I was gonna do and immediately, jumped into the agenda. So my apologies. Okay. So item number one is the, approval of the minutes of the school buildings maintenance special committee joint meeting of 06/10/2025. Why don't we just do a roll call to get that out the way? Oh, my apologies. Sorry about that. So, yes, the item number one is the approval of the minutes of the school building facilities and maintenance special committee joint meeting of June 10. Why don't we just do a roll call vote and get that off, get that housekeeping out of the way, madam clerk?

Perfect. Councilor Seed? Yes. Councilor Davis?

Yes.

Chair Klingen?

Yes.

Perfect. That is all votes in favor.

Okay. So, yeah, so we do have a number of memos, that have been sent along regarding the pool and some other things. I am just gonna take up item number two. Some of these, you know, some of these are really sort of big items with, may not be ready may not be fully ready, yet, but, these are requests that have come in with concerns around, you know, contingency plan, in the event that a school went offline. So these are really important, questions that we may not have all the answers to tonight, but, these will stay in the box until, you know, does time we're satisfied with them.

So I do believe there is a memo for item number two, and that is an item from councilor Davis and school committee that the administration submit to the city council and school committee the city's contingency plan in the event of an emergency school closure during the twenty twenty five, twenty twenty six school year. So that one would be time sensitive. So on that, we have okay. I'm sorry. We have, liaison rep.

Go ahead.

You're muted. You're you're still muted.

Anything now?

Yes. We can hear you.

Oh my god. I tried all the microphones. Thank you, mister chair. My apologies. I was actually hoping that we could take some of the items on the agenda out of order just because we have staff that would only be here to speak on certain items. I was hoping maybe we could do the pool items first just so that Parks and Rec doesn't spend the entire night here, followed by the the school readiness memo so that DPW can participate and then hop off. And then happy to do the MSBA update or or whatever from from there on out.

But Alright. We'll skip item number we'll skip item number three, which there are multiple. Three, five, and six are all on the pool. And I'll read those. I'll let the director and we can take them up. The director of Parks and Recreation report to this council on the cause of the chemical spill at the Ginny Smithers Pool and the process to address the cause of the spill and prevent future occurrence. We'll take that one up actually by itself for for that. No. I'm sorry. Item number six at the same time.

Sorry. But the administration reported this council on the cause of the reported chemical imbalance at the Ginny Smithers Pool and process being used to address the imbalance. And we could take up the ongoing maintenance one separately. So items three and item six, who do we have here to speak on those items? And we do have a a memo. I don't know if anybody had enough time to read that one before the meeting, but we do have

let me see. Do I

can't see everybody. So I know that

Through the chair. Sorry to interrupt. I just wanted to flag that the memo refers to items three, five, and six in, like, a holistic picture. And then wanted to let you know that we have chief of staff, Nikki Spencer, here. We have director of operations, Yani. Here, I'm gonna try to pronounce last name. I'm so sorry, Yani. And then I think we also have, commissioner Jill Lathan as well, and director Bill Fisher as needed.

Okay. So we'll take out three, five, and six. Let's talk pool. Who wants to go first?

Through you, mister chair, I'm happy to go first. Good evening. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to all three items concerning the Jenny Smithers pool tonight. Earlier today, as we said, we submitted a memo with details in response to these items, and I'm happy to discuss them briefly. We look forward to your questions. Once again, I'm Mickey Spencer, chief of staff here at Ballantyne, and joining me is

Yani Tsaragatis, director of operations for Parks and Recreation.

So as you're aware, we currently do not have a director of Parks and Recreation, so I've been working very closely with Yani and the management team throughout the summer. Yani has been personally leading the aquatics team and enacting many of the improvements we've listed in tonight's memo, so I wanted to thank him. And I'd also like to thank both DBW commissioner Latham and her team, as well as director of emergency management, Bill Fisher. As we stated in the memo submitted earlier, we've seen improved procedures, cleanliness, and overall teamwork around the Ginny Smithers pool. For example, this summer, DBW and director Siragodas have worked hand in hand to successfully address a temporary closing of the small pool in the facility.

They have also evaluated the options for long term management solutions. Each one of these present a high cost and come with their own pros and cons. And so as a result, both DPW and Parks and Rec are currently recommending that we alter the schedule of the pool by closing for one day during the week and expanding hours during the weekend. This will allow one full day dedicated toward making adjustments and necessary maintenance. We're working to finalize which day will be off during the week, and we'll share that detail very soon.

We've been looking at which day has lower attendance, and which day will avoid an impact to any school swimming lessons when they start up again. Then Aany has been working to bring back and expand weekend availability, and we are currently working to finalize these hours. So again, we look forward to sharing more details very soon. We also sent you an updated guide for lifeguards and members of the aquatics team. You may recall that following the closure of the Ginnie Smithers Pool, then ISD Director Nick Antanavica worked very closely with Parks and Rec Director Sue Yerkus and the team to update the lifeguard guide to ensure proper procedures around testing and reporting of chemicals in the pool.

Director Syrogotis has since worked to make the lifeguard manual a little more user friendly and has been vetted again by ISD and DPW. So what you see before you tonight with the lifeguard manual is a living document. It will continue to be improved over time. Finally, we want to thank you for the opportunity to address the chemical spill that occurred back in June. We take this incident and all safety issues very seriously.

After investigations into this incident, the cause was found to be human error via overfilling of a tank of muriatic acid in the storage closet. While the fire department did not find any toxic fumes or readings throughout the school or pool facilities, there was water on the floor of the storage area and also an improperly stored bottle of chlorine. Since that day, DPW and Parks and Rec have worked to clarify the limits of that tank with the muriatic acid, review protocols on proper chemical storage, and DPW has installed a shutoff valve on the water hose in the closet to reduce the likelihood of leaking. Parks and Rec also wet vacs up any remaining water. Finally, director of emergency management Bill Fisher, who is here tonight, will be convening an after action exercise as an opportunity to train and improve our protocols with all relevant departments and the schools.

Thank you all for your attention to this important safety and quality issue, and please know that our departments remain committed to maintaining this important community asset and providing a safe and enjoyable pool experience for all.

Alright. You said Bill Fisher? I'm sorry. What?

Phil's our director of emergency management.

Okay. So I just have a couple of quick questions, and I'll turn it over to school committee to see if they have questions. I'll first go to I have colleagues. I have colleagues' questions as well. Okay. I saw councilor Syed. Go ahead.

Through the chair. First, I wanna thank everyone, for all the work that was put into this, to ensuring that the pool is safe for users, and more importantly, that this does not happen again. Yeah. Thank you for the memo. I have got a few questions. You mentioned closure one day a week. So the questions there are when do we expect this to start, and would that be for until a director is hired or just indefinitely? This is just, like, the plan going forward?

Through the chair, we will be implementing this very soon. We're bringing together the final details in the coming weeks. So we hope to have more information on which day the closure will take place during the week and then more details on what expanded hours of the weekend looks like. So thank you for your patience. We are implementing this before we bring on a new director, but we do anticipate that a new director will bring their own improvements and their own thoughts around ongoing maintenance and course, partnership with DPW.

Thank you. Through the chair, I just, like, wanna understand, is this just we're doing the one day a week closure just because we don't have a director right now? Or is it just this is is it just, a best practice so that we have time to do all those protocols you've mentioned.

Through the chair, thanks for letting me clarify. It is not because we don't have a director. It is a practice that we've seen other pools implement, some of our neighbors, as an opportunity to pause during the week, make the myriad little adjustments, and making sure that all of our maintenance is being coordinated appropriately between Parks and Rec and DPW. It gives them an opportunity to make changes and avoid any interruptions to programming throughout the rest of the week and the weekend, so both for school swimming lessons and also the other activities in the pool.

Through the chair, thank you for the clarification. I mean, my first thought is we need if anything, and what I'm hearing from constituencies, we want to use the pool by also and we for example, seniors, I hear that from seniors a lot. We want dedicated they want dedicated hours, but I also understand safety first. And if you're saying that other cities are doing this and it's the best practice, then, yeah, let's let's do its best so that so that we don't have to close the pool again. My other question is, in the memo, there's a list of responsibilities or tasks for DPW and parks and recs.

And my question there is, how are these responsibilities or tasks different from before the all these incidents? Like, what are the improvements, changes that were made in order to ensure that, you know, there will be no closure in the future for these reasons?

Through the chair, that's an excellent question. This was an opportunity to, like, redelineate these roles. I think, ideally, that these have been the roles and responsibilities that Parks and Rec and DVW should be maintaining. There was certainly an opportunity with the closure and with bringing things back on to retrain everyone who was responsible for chemical balance testing, and that is done four times a day by Parks and Rec staff. However, DPW staff also occasionally test and confer on those results.

Routine cleaning, both making sure that that is within our protocols, but also buying other vacuums for the multiple tools that we operate to make it easier to do so. And then we've strengthened sort of our communication protocols, making sure that while some issues should always be a three one one, if it is urgent, if it's after hours, that there is a strong chain communication to DPW staff in particular if there's a maintenance issue. And so that we can also bring in our pool maintenance vendor if there was emergency.

Great. Thank you.

Officer Davis?

Thank you, mister chair. And I'll echo the the thanks to to everyone who's obviously put a lot of time and effort into figuring out what, you know, what what got us to this point and and, you know, different options for, for moving forward. The good counselor from Ward 5 hit most of my questions. So I'll just just make sure I understand the the memo, which I'm you know, it came in late morning, so I haven't had a chance to fully read all of it because it's just came in today. But just skimming through it, it looks like the you know, there's several options that that have a cost associated with them, and and the memo says that if if I essentially, the the the decision was to go with the go with the option of closing the pool one day rather than going with those more expensive options.

I assume it it implicitly because cost and then each of those other options do note that there's maybe some uncertainty as to the efficacy. So not sure if it worked. Let so let's see if this works. I guess, you know, I'll just kinda share the frustration that that, you know, just that I hear from constituents sort of ongoing about the pool. You know?

Hopefully, with it sounds like it seems, you know, clearly for what you're saying, a better, you know, better attention and better focus on on this asset that we have. Hopefully, going forward, we won't run into these problems. You know, you noted through through the chair to to you, Spencer, you noted that the most recent issue was a a human error happens, but I think, you know, obviously, we all know that that training and and procedures and etcetera can can really help avoid those. So, hopefully, we'll have a better system in place going forward as well, and I I assume that will be, you know, very much part of having a new director that will will be able to to address some of those things. I hope we can get this back to open every day because it is a really important asset.

We spend a lot of money on it just, you know, as it is. It's disappointing that you mentioned that the in the memo that there's a few other communities that that have taken this approach. I don't I don't see it say that it's best practice. More I read it more as sort of a a, you know, a necessity given sort of where we've gotten ourselves. You know, my my my hope would be that, you know, going forward, if we have a better system and and and better standard operating procedures that, you know, that we don't have to do that.

I know we we did spend a significant amount of money over the past five, ten years on a bunch of the different systems. So, you know, I don't know whether whether the I I assume the memo wasn't intended to sort of, you know, shrug off the fact that, well, it's an old pool and these things happen, but it does kind of read that way. And, you know, I wanna call out taxpayers who spent a lot of money in these systems. A lot of the money a lot of the systems in the pool aren't that old and really should work if they're if they're maintained properly and and and implemented properly. So, hopefully, that'll be the case.

I there's not much else I can say at this point other than, you know, thank you for for recognizing that this is important. And I think many of the folks in the community, myself included, will not like that it has to be closed one day. People will like more hours on the weekend. I tell you for certain that that, you know, having expanded hours is it was already a thing that that I've heard about. So, we'll, we'll take what we can get and and move forward and and hope for, you know, better oversight in the future. Thank you.

You have another question.

Through Jacqueline, if I may, I have one more question. Since the pool was closed for a long time in this winter and then fall, winter, spring. I know a lot of classes were canceled, rescheduled. There was an email that was sent regarding rescheduling, but then no follow-up. I know this because I signed up my son, for one of the classes.

I understand that there's right now no director, so we're focusing on the important stuff. But because they received this from black constituents, have we reached out to all the, folks who signed up for classes for rescheduling, or are we still working on that?

Through the chair, I believe the city councilor's question was around outreach to folks who may have missed classes or activities this past winter. I should say that one of the improvements that we have been working on is our the way that we communicate with users at the pool. We have a fabulous coordinator on the parks and rec team, and she has been working hand in hand with the the core comms team at sort of in the larger city comms team to work on how we update pool users, those with activities using our city channels, and moving forward. So we will take the feedback always, and it's a continual improvement process, but we are proud of the improvements that we have made. I know that back when the pool was closed, not everybody got the right notification, and so we've been trying to ameliorate that process for the future.

If folks missed a class, they should have received a follow-up. If there's anyone out there who does need support, please do not hesitate to send them our way, and we'll with with them or with whatever group that they are working with to make sure that they they get what they need. Our goal is to make sure that there are no long term disruptions going forward, but this is a a pool. The natural state of our water is highly chlorinated. And so, over the many years of this pool, we know that we've struggled with ongoing, chemical balance issues. And so we do wanna have a both, protocols around safety and for notifying folks if there is an interruption of services.

Through the chair. Yeah. Thank you. I think just to make it simple, I'm going to rephrase. My question is, have the users been contacted in order to reschedule those classes? Because some my constituents have been reaching out about that. If not, please do that. I know. Not to make it about me. I know for sure.

I signed up my son. I even emailed used the email to ask when the class will be rescheduled. They never heard back. I imagine others are are have reached out as well. So, this is just me asking to please, reach out to users, for scheduling classes or offering a refund or whatever the options are.

I was gonna add something. Yeah. I think those are all my questions, Jacqueline, and thank you.

Okay. Thank you. Just before I turn over to school committee, just a few quick questions to whoever wants to take them. So and I also appreciate all the work that's been put in and trying to move us forward, and I'm not I I know we can't really, like, look backwards to the point where we're only pointing fingers, but I'm just curious. Well, first of I know we don't have a director right now, but is the pool the the maintainer of the pool, has there been any staff changes there?

Through to you, mister chair, there have been some departures. I'm not sure I can say more beyond that, but the parks and rec team continues to program and test and administer the pool on a daily basis, and then we work closely with DPW.

Okay. Because I just wanna be for the folks. I just wanna be completely transparent. I mean, we've had this pool for a long time, and all of a sudden, there was a string of of problems all at once. And, you know, all the things I was hearing, it sounded like it was, you know, the way things are being handled.

So, you know, it again, I mean, with, you know, with pools, I mean, I understand it can get complicated balancing balancing things, but I just wanna make sure that we that the folks have you know, that we made changes to where we can instill confidence. I mean, beyond this, I mean, this is great. You you have all done done a lot of work here in terms of moving us forward. With the direction we're going, I I guess so my only other question is, like, a so who is who so right now, like, we've have we always used an outside contractor for pool maintenance, or is that a new thing since this has all happened?

To you, mister chair, my understanding is we do have a long term maintenance vendor, and I'm gonna ask commissioner Latham to maybe fill us in.

Yeah. Yes.

So the chair commissioner Joe Latham, we've always had outside contractors work with the the maintenance of the filter systems, whether that be Lawson Samson or Full Pack. We've always kinda engaged with a contractor to come in. These are very complex full systems, that we need to stay on top of. And so an outside vendor specializes in that. It's always been deployed.

Okay. So that just makes me want like, so but are they involved in sort of, like, the balancing of the like, did they let us down in this? Like, how in terms of the imbalance that in the in the the closures?

Through the chair, you know, miss Spencer's kind of addressed what Parks and Recreation has been doing to kind of change some of those practices. We're here to we continue to support them. That the the testing and the balances really comes with with Parks and Recreation, which they've done a phenomenal job over these last few months, working with Nikki and Puniani, the current full staff. So I can't wait to speak to what's happened in the past, but we firmly in collaboration with DPW and Parks and Recreation has really, has done a great job trying to address technical issues.

Okay. And then thank you for that. And I just I'm just trying to figure out who all the players are in the actual hands on with the pool. So now I know there's a contractor, and you know? So we closed the pool in the spring to do the deep cleaning, which then I think for made it, like, we weren't gonna do it again in August. So are we now on a springtime schedule for that, or is that gonna go back to being put in August?

The chair, from DPW standpoint, we were gonna get that back to an August schedule based on, timing and programming and and really, a good window of time to do that kind of closure that we need to with deep for DPW, which is really to, you know, look at all the systems, do some preventive maintenance, drain, really look at things like tiles and grout. That's really the best time to do that, in that August closure time that we usually do. So we will be heading back to that.

Okay. And, you know, that I just I'll just make a comment before I hand it over. Just, you know, I'm not trying to like, you know, I've expressed this in past meetings and with Sadaf that this pool is such a treasured, you know, asset to the community that you know? And it's being handled, you know, great now. But there was a while there where it was sort of an afterthought when you're like, if it would go down and people weren't being alerted who who who had already been signed up or they just find out.

So I'm glad to hear that we're getting management under control and and especially with regards to communications. But just in case if anybody watching thinks that, like, you know, making a it is a big deal. I mean, it is it is a big deal, and and I can see that you're all handling it like it like it should be handled like it is a big deal. So I appreciate that. And, yeah, onward and moving forward, I I think, hopefully you know? I know things are gonna happen. To me, pools are almost like elevators. They're just like you know, once they get old, these things happen. But but I think, as have been noted, we we do invest a lot in that pool, and so, hopefully, we can keep it open. Alright. Chair Baton, if you wanna go ahead and take the reins, I see. Thank you for your patience, school committee.

Oh, always. Thank you, chair Klingen. We'll go right to doctor Phillips.

Thanks. Through you, chair. I really appreciate this conversation. I really appreciate the complex trade offs that we're having to make here. I am wondering how the decision to close the pool for one day during the week will affect the third grade swim lessons for this academic year. And, also, what is being put in place to make up any missed lessons from the closure last year?

Through the chair. Currently, we're looking at two days out of the week where there are no swim lessons. It's, we're kinda trying to narrow it down. We still are open to the option of moving swim lessons to different days. We haven't really locked that in yet. It's something that the department's hoping to do in the next couple weeks through the new head of the physical education department. We're working closely with him to try to settle that. In terms of last year's classes, it would be really tough to kinda make up at this point. A lot of them the lessons are for the third grade classes. It is already a pretty tight schedule, the majority of them have obviously gone to fourth grade now.

So it would be it would be hard to go back and really make up any of the classes that happened last year, but we're hoping going forward, we don't have any any other cancellations or any issues going forward.

Doctor Phillips, if you wanna follow-up.

Thanks for that. I appreciate it. Just a quick follow-up. I wanna make sure that for this current year, even though we're moving the days around, we're still gonna be able to accommodate all of our current third graders. And then to the chair, I'd like to request you to put an order in through the city, related to making up those missed lessons at a different time, not during the school year, but finding an opportunity to get those kids their swim lessons.

Noted. And I have the same thought, so I am glad you brought that up, Doctor. Phillips. Thank you very much. And you also asked my main question, but I do wonder if we have a representative from the school department here, who can speak about coordinating with these new restricted hours and, the challenge or, feasibility of of that with respect to the constraints of the pool.

Mister chair, this is Amaya Nessikane, chief of staff for the district. I just wanted to say that Yong has been great and that you did well in terms of keeping us, informed what what their situation has in terms of staffing and lifeguarding. They've been mostly working with our we recently hired a new director of essentially, she oversees the he oversees the gyms, and he also working with assistant superintendent of academics to figure out scheduling. That's something that's been ongoing, and I don't know if Yani, you have addition anything additional to add, but we have been in communication.

Thank you. I see here dutifully standing there, Yani. Go right ahead.

Yeah. I think we just wanted to add, and and thank you to chief of staff, Mara and c Mara and CK. Pardon me. We have been working very closely to ensure that the day that we select will not conflict with the days that we're considering for swimming lessons. That was our first priority. We do not wanna have another interruption or any scheduling issues with those. And we also just wanna clarify that last year, we did offer as many makeups as we could at the time. If we've misspoke, though, we will certainly show, follow-up and, discuss further. So thank you.

Appreciate that, future conversation that we'll have. I have no further questions seeing, Doctor. Phillips neither. We'll turn it back to city council.

Okay. Great. And I don't know if I misheard, mister Deacy if she said I know that the director of emergency manager is here to speak about contingency plan for school. But did you say that he had something to or maybe it was Nikki said something about weighing in on this, like, as far as, like, the chemical spill or something? Is that is that I know his hands are in everything these days with regards to emergency, so I didn't know if that's what you were referring to. I I topic.

The chair yeah. He's here in case there are any, committee questions about the emergency response. So if if there are specific questions, he's happy sorry. I'm speaking for a director

Yeah.

Or director for sure. But yeah.

Well, I am curious. Like, the chemical spill, you know, and that's that was scary to to to, to parents who, you know, got a notification that there was this, chemical spill. I'm curious. Did it rise to the level of, you know, something that mister Fisher were director Fisher would be would be alerted to or brought in on? I mean, it might be I know he's usually supposed to be from a big picture, but I feel like, you know, there's a lot that can fall into that bucket of emergency.

Oh, through you, the chair. Happy to answer that question. Because, honestly, there's no more bigger responsibility than the children. So I was notified immediately, and I responded to the school and was there for the duration of the event. The big thing with this is that when it comes to the emergency response, we've been talking a lot about the you know, how it happened, why it happened, which is hugely important, but I wanna put a lot of people's minds at ease.

The one thing that worked fairly very well is the response. In the response, the alerting, the evacuation was done through an abundance of caution and concern to make sure that those kids and staff are safe. Because in the end, there was never any toxic vapors, chemicals detected anywhere in the school. It was a very safe environment. Thank god. But the people that responded knew enough to see that there was possibly a risk, and they immediately took action to evacuate the students and send these alerts out. So however scary they are, and they are scary, they were done proactively to make sure everyone was safe.

No. I do appreciate that. I do appreciate that transparency and the fact that they didn't, you know, treat it as no big deal and, you know, whatever, you could end up the road. So I do appreciate that. I'm and and and I and I'm glad that you alerted right away. And so these systems are are working and that you, you know, you have the skills in the background to help handle a situation like that, which is why we we hired you. So alright. So I think if everybody's satisfied with, the Ginny Spethers pool for now, I think, hopefully, we've moved to a new era of, pool maintenance and and tension. That's the way it sounds to me, and, I wanna thank the staff that have been working on it, director Spencer. I I don't I can't see Yani's name.

I don't I want I was gonna I don't wanna say his last name wrong, but but thank you both. Yeah, guys. Working on it. Of course, always commissioner Latham. Okay. So we will close those. Madam clerk, we will or complete those items, please.

Perfect. And, also, just very quickly for the record, director Yani, could you spell out your last name for us, please?

D as in Tom, s as in Sam, I r I g o t I s.

Alright. The first letter was s. Correct? Or did I miss one?

The first letter is t, t as in Tom. Perfect.

Alright. That brings us back to what's next in the agenda. So, liaison, Rolicy, do you have a preference as to what we take up next? Director Reyesha, I know is here. I know we have some staff here.

You're the chair. Yes. If we could take up the 2025 summer school readiness item Okay. That would be great. I think I I don't know if you wanna take it as DPW's kind of presentation and questions just for DPW, and then I am separately, but up to you at that point. I just wanna make sure that, commissioner Latham doesn't have to stay all night

if if she's not needed.

Okay. So that's item number nine. Right? Is that

Correct.

Yes. Item number nine.

They have they have slides as well, did you say?

Yes. Through the chair. There's a document a memo document from DPW, and IIM has a slideshow. IAM has the updated presentation that I sent out as a handout, and I and DPW should just be the original attachment to the item that we submitted.

No. I looked at it. I just didn't know who I'm turning it over to. We need to make them able to share their screen or whatnot. Is director Henry here to do a presentation, or am I

No. We're here. Through the chair, we're here. I wasn't sure if this was already loaded up into the agenda.

Yeah. The clerk

has put

up on the screen. Ralph, you can step through if you like.

Alright.

So let me

just read it directly. So this is item number nine on the agenda for anybody following. This is a separate discussion conveying an update regarding work completed during summer twenty twenty five on summer public school buildings. So this is everything that the that was the the punch list that the city had for the summer while the kids were on break. And so they have some exciting things to report, in the form of a short presentation. So with that, I will turn it over to director Ralph Henry to, let everybody know what what you all did.

Good. Thank you through the chair, director Ralph Henry in capital projects. And we appreciate having a few moments just to highlight some of the things that capital project staff embarked on over the summer. We were able to get a lot of very meaningful work done for the school department, and we can not sure who's gonna control the slides, but the first one we were working on was the Jenziano kitchen expansion, which involved installing a new walk in freezer for the kitchen area there that's adjacent to the loading dock area as you come in off the back. We were able to utilize a storage area that had a storage cage, so we kinda moved over a few things and we're able to nicely fit in this this freezer, which has about 88 square feet of space in it, and it was a great addition to that kitchen area.

We can go on to the next slide. And we also added, I had two different pictures of it just from a couple of different angles, but we added an additional electric oven. This is a ventless oven, so it's a it's a doubles, you know, double sided oven as well. And this pretty much, added, not to be used double too many times, double the capacity for for cooking in that area, in that kitchen. We can go to the next slide.

And then part of it was to relocate some items from the original Winter Hill School on Sycamore Street. So we made some use of these flash freezers that the school utilizes when food service is over. They'll put some items in there. And then also the tilting kettle that was placed, right in the center of that picture on the left hand side that they, want to have moved over. So it it looks like it was all easy, but there was a lot of, gas natural gas, work that had to be done, some additional electrical work, lining up some drainage for the tilting kettle, and, just some little logistics for additional electrical plug loads for that area.

We can move on. Continuing on at the Agenciano. Now these pictures don't quite show where we're at currently, but this is that 3rd Floor kind of an atrium area that was wide open. That now houses about an 850 foot square, square foot classroom. It is just about done.

We'll be able to provide some additional pictures at some point that we can share, but the, we're doing a punch list walk through tomorrow morning with the vendor, and, it is just about ready. We have the cabinetry in. The lockers have been installed out in the hallway. The only one item we had a longer lead time was for the actual door to the classroom, but the vendor who was fantastic to work with was able to procure, a wooden door with the appropriate hardware on it for now until we get that new door in. But it'll have the same functioning lock capabilities that you would normally have for the classrooms.

And this room has all the new technologies, smart boards, Wi Fi. We increased the fire sprinkler suppression system in that room as well. And, fortunately, we had, HVAC components that were already in that area, so we didn't have to do anything of that nature there. But we also added a sink and additional cabinetry. So, basically, it looks just like all the other classrooms in the building.

Okay.

This particular item, Wintihill and Edgeley ADA Improvements, was a project really through engineering through Brian Pulsalwaite and Rebecca Wright's help with this. This is a modification of the sidewalk area and accessibility ramp that leads to the common doorway that goes into Edgeley that one of the staff members uses, on a very consistent basis. And I had the opportunity to talk to Brian and and Becca the other day. This has made a huge impact in a very, very positive way for this staff person and, you know, for anyone else that may, need this type of assistance. Now on to the Kennedy School.

We've been over at the Kennedy School for for quite a while now. We installed a brand new air conditioning system, which used a modular chiller technology, and part of the the next steps on this was to enhance the building management system. So I just put a little definition in there. What is a building management system? I won't read.

Don't get into all that. I think it's pretty self explanatory. But just for the for the committee, the city of Somerville has been progressively trying to upgrade all the building management systems. We have an old antiquated Honeywell system, and what we're trying to do now is anywhere in in you know, any opportunity we have doing mechanical work, we enhance and go to a new Johnson Controls building management system. And that is really a super helpful thing for both capital projects and DPW.

It gives the DPW folks a great system to have, firsthand knowledge, live screen of of comfort, temperatures, alarms, how the systems are doing, how the temperatures are in the classrooms, and the you know, how the heating and cooling systems are doing. So it's really, really a very beneficial system. It also gives you some trending reports where you can see how you're doing and, if you're if you're, you know, meeting the the goals of the set points for the building overall, things of that nature. So it's a very, very handy tool. And the further thing that we did up at the high school was for for mister Rivas was to install an additional plaque.

There should be a picture on one of the slides there. That plaque is located over by the Oval Berm area that's down by where automotive in that turnaround area from the entry driveway as you come into the back area by the next wave, full circle, campus entrance. And then we have our solar. So we were finally able to get the solar panel systems started up in late May, early June, and the system is doing great. It took a little bit of time to kind of work out some kinks and some bugs with the vendor, but the system is fully up and operational.

And we did get a question from someone on the committee one night about the power. So I tried to answer that question as without getting too technical. As you can imagine, Summerville High School uses a tremendous amount of electricity, roughly almost two two billion six hundred million watts. So, it's it's enormous. The solar panel system helps defer about 12% of what the school uses annually.

And during the summertime, which is what they're really the highest peak for electrical usage in the building, of course, when we're running the air conditioning system. During that period of time, the solar panels help defer about 16% of the kilowatt energy that's being used by the by the air cooled chillers that are up on the roof. And that's it in a nutshell. Be happy to take any any questions.

That's great. Great work. I'm glad the classroom is done. Any questions from folks on the console side? No? Okay. I'm gonna turn it over. I have no questions. Just like I said, just common to say that great work. And I'd like those I like the pictures of the the the Johnson Control System. Like, just to understand what you all are seeing and and that you have a a command of these systems is really cool. So that's it for for this side. Commissioner Leithen, you wanna oh, okay. Councilor Saeed, I do see your hand up. You wanna let commissioner Leithen speak real quick?

She seem to have something on the presentation or whatnot.

Mister chair, I just wanna make sure that I brought up opportunity to look at the DPW submitted memo. There was a significant amount of work that the buildings submit the buildings department did for the schools. I wanna make sure that they get the the credit due for this enormous amount of work they did, which is laid out in this, you know, system will be minimal. So I wanna make sure everyone gets a chance to really go through that. You

okay. Did you wanna highlight anything?

Well, sure. If you can put that up, that'd be great. And then my superintendent, Matt Bennett, put that on.

Yeah. I mean, you waited. I don't have any problem with that. I mean, this is part of the same update, conveying an update regarding work completed.

Commissioner, is there a a different attachment you want me to pull up? I'm not seeing another attachment.

I was I wasn't I wasn't sure which attachment they what was being referred to either.

I'm sorry.

2,000

Hold on, commissioner, Lathan. So through the chair to Delaney, it's it's an attachment to the original item that's submitted in registrar. So if you click into the item itself, it will be the DPW school readiness memo attachment in there.

Got it. Why don't we do this? Why don't why don't

So I

think You know what? Why don't we do this? Because I think there's some questions on the the presentation we just saw. So while she's getting that pulled up, why don't we just take one from my colleague, council Saeed, and then we'll turn it over to school credit.

Through you, chair, Clinton, I wanna say thank you everyone for, the work that you have done over the summer on the schools. It's always great to get these updates and just to check off things from the list. Yeah. Very excited to see the that we started the work on the Arduziano School classroom, you know, the solar panels from the high school and the Kennedy School chiller. And my questions, one about the school classroom.

Just asking when will this be completed? It says soon, I think, in the slides. Is it a matter of weeks, months? Mhmm. Yeah.

Sure. Thanks for the question.

I assumed

it was

Good question. I assumed it was done. I I didn't actually see that part. Right?

It is yeah. Through the chair, it's it's not done yet. We have, what we call the punch list. We walk through the architect and the contractor. We just identify some small minor details that we want them to fix, and then we bring in, fire prevention has to do their final inspection, and then ISD, which is the most important one, does their final sign off on the permit card.

And then at that point, we can very happily turn the classroom over to the school department. Actually, it'll get turned over, plus Jill's team will need a a day or two to go in and get set up, get the the classroom furniture put in there, that kind of stuff. So, I would say, hopefully, knock on wood by the end of next week.

Oh, okay. Anything else, Consciouse?

Yeah. That's that's great to hear. And the other question is also about a timeline. When will the Kennedy School chiller be completed? It also says

The chiller itself is done. It's it's been up and operational. We just had some minor piping work to do downstream just to make it run-in a little bit better, more healthier way. It basically needed a bypass valve so that it could continuously loop the water around the building if different classrooms weren't calling for cooling at that time. It just helps balance the pressure.

And the BMS system is, again, fundamentally finished. We're just doing a punch list on that as well and sharing over some information with DPW for those folks just to look at some other long you know, short term, long term, repairs that they may need to make to the system. But the chillers, are up and running. They're

Alright. Great. Sorry. Just had a follow-up question to the my first question about the school classroom. You mentioned that furniture was moved to the from the winter hill to the actually, this is about the kitchen. Mhmm. So are we done using the Winter Hill School for storage a few months ago? We we learned that we were using the Winter Hill School still. So does this mean that we're done using the Winter Hill School for

Through the chair, I did confirm with director of nutrition, Lauren Manci, that they have moved everything over to the Argentiano, and they no longer have anything at the Winter Hill at Sycamore.

Awesome. Great. Thank you.

Thanks, Rich.

Great question, Alright. Let's turn over to school committee. Chair of the tone.

Thank you, chair Klingon. Sarah Phillips.

Thanks to you, chair. As a leader, I sometimes feel like I'm saying the same thing over and over again, and you all just did exactly that for us. So I just wanna appreciate all of you who had to stay late to come give us the same presentation you gave the school committee a few weeks ago. I really appreciate it, and I'm grateful for your effort.

Thank you. Much appreciated.

They they wanted to come brag anyway. We get that website up and running. We can put it all on the website, and then we'll have to stay late. Mhmm. Mhmm.

Yep. It was a lot of hard work by our staff, and, you know, it's like anything else, with schoolwork, we don't have a whole lot of time. You know, you literally have about eight weeks by the time you get your vendor hired, and you, get the students out of the building, and then we have a chance to get to going. But

Nice day.

Great work. And and DPW, of course, did did a whole lot of of work as well too. So I know Jill's like to share that too, but thank you very much.

Yep. Appreciate it. And I also just wanna highlight, the accessibility improvements at the Winter Hill at Edge early. You know, accessibility improvements help everyone, not just those who have particular accessibility needs. And, you know, they sort of I don't mean this as a pun, but, you know, levels the playing field a little bit.

You know, there's, for those people who have accessibility needs, you know, having being able to enter in a location, that everyone else is able to enter in as well, is incredibly meaningful and, I I think really goes to the heart of inclusivity. So deeply appreciative of of IIM's, capital projects work on this, as we continue to this is gonna be our home for a few more years. So, you know, these investments will have an incredible impact on, teachers, on students, and families getting their kids to school every day. So really appreciate that.

Thank you.

I know my colleague, miss Patone, had her hand up, and I just wanna give her a moment if she is still on the line. It looks like she may have dropped off, but, maybe there will be an opportunity after the DPW presentation. So I'll close it for our side.

Hey, guys. I'm here.

She's back.

Oh, there she is. Miss Patton, go ahead.

Thank you. And apologies. I've been in an unexpected series of transit situations. So anyway, I'm home. I had a question. First of all, I do wanna acknowledge the amount of work that has been done this summer was tremendous. So much work. Not to say that we don't do a great deal of work in our city for our schools over the summer, but this summer, clearly, decisions were made to prioritize work on our schools. And I really wanna take a moment just to acknowledge that. I'm I I think some some people on this call have already done that.

I missed a bit of the call, but so I got kicked out. But, I just really appreciate how the city, over the past few years, and particularly this summer, has really made work on our schools a priority. So thank you for that, and I and it's just such a large scope. I had a question about the building management system. I was excited to hear about an update to that.

I had two questions. One is, is this building management system currently just being used on our new chiller at the Kennedy or is this full scope in all of our school systems? And the second question, it sounds like a lot of the information in the system is real time which is incredibly exciting. I'm also curious, are we using this system to keep track of our maintenance work in terms of when we're replacing parts so that we have that that type of work scheduled? So there's one part of it where I I totally see that it's real time data in terms of performance, but I'll also questioning whether or not we're also using this as a tool to keep track and manage maintenance work on our systems.

And I

apologize if this question's already been asked because I missed part of the call.

No. Through the chair. Thank you for the question. It's the first question is is this system used just for the chiller at JFK? And the answer is no.

The Summerville High School has a very similar Johnson Control System. Obviously, the high school had had that. It's it's a much more robust system that looks at, as you can imagine, a building with 400,000 square feet and a and a a very large number of rooms and spaces, so it keeps track of a lot of a lot of different points for the high school. We also have it at the West Branch Library. It also uses a very similar Johnson Controls Facility Explorer BMS system with, you know, similar graphics that you see here.

And then believe it or not, over at the Cummings School, we replaced the boiler back in 2020 That has a very small mini building management system that helps keep track of of that. And then now over at JFK, we have now installed this Johnson confisc Johnson facilities explorer system throughout the JFK school. And so what you have now are two systems in the city. You have the old Honeywell system that we're basically trying to move on from and slowly but surely go through each building to upgrade it to the Facility Explorer. It takes time.

It takes money. And but it's well worth it. You know, these these systems allow, for for the case of, like, Jill's staff, they could go to a a small little, map that we have of the city, and you have the the different locations on the map. You can click right on that, whether it's the library or the high school or the JFK, and you can pull up the information, and you'd be able to link right into the building management website for it. So it's all web based.

We can have many many users that can go in and utilize it. So we're very excited about it. And it does help. In terms of maintenance, it doesn't spit out predictive, information, but what it does do, it helps track any trends, any alarms, things of that nature so that you can look and see if any piece of equipment is having some issues, and then you can track it down depending on what it might need. Go ahead, Rich. And Jill has her hand in. Jill cut first.

Yes. To the chair. Also, so DPW for the last few years has been really doing a sense of cataloging of all our building systems, and that's really been hand really going in, adding, creating our system, our building systems manager. Andy has been working on this along with our preventative maintenance manager. So all of our buildings and school buildings are, like I said, extensive cataloging as far as, you know, all from serial numbers to pictures to when they've been installed and that kind of thing to really get a a better handle on all of our systems, what the city even commanded mates of what's needed.

We work with, you know, capital projects and making sure as we identify a need, working with them to make sure that, you know, in x amount of years, this is this is gonna be coming on the pipe based on what we've been doing over cataloging over the last few years. So this really is a joint effort. This these are great new systems The capital has kinda installed. But hand in hand with that, we have the manual labor work of going to every single facility and building and cataloging, painstaking and cataloging everything in every single builder, which is what the PW's been doing.

It's almost like we planned it. And then for the next step on that, we have selected a provider for the citywide, asset management program, which is a work order management and tracking program. The selected vendor is OpenGov. They're built on Cartograph, which is another long term player in that space that has now been brought under the larger umbrella of OpenGov that has a lot more of other capabilities. DPW, particularly Andy from DPW was key among the selection committee for that.

And so we're now in the contracting phase, and we'll be implementing that for the coming year.

Can I do a quick follow-up? Okay. Thank you. First of all, thank you for that feedback. So what I'm what I'm interpreting is and I I did know some of this and it's really nice to share this publicly that through commissioner Latham's communication that, you know, the the detail work that has to be done to catalog everything has been a work in progress and that is continuing to happen.

And right now, we're cataloging it with the intention of feeding this data into the the full asset management programming where we can kinda keep track and schedule everything. Now these building management systems are right now only come online with these new systems that are being implemented. So those and I know that the asset slash, you know, asset management systems are kind of a global thing that we're gonna have to do across the board. And like I said, the idea is, like you said, ticketing, understanding what the work orders are, understanding that, you know, just in layman's terms, you know, every six months, we're plant changing a filter. Every two years, we're changing a sensor.

All those things that are sort of, you know, that need to happen to make sure that we don't get into the crisis mode are happening, and then we're we're using information technology as best we can to manage all of this. But it sounds like these building management systems, which are much more live data on what the systems are doing, are right now only implemented in these new systems. So high school, Kennedy, and West Library, which totally makes sense. So it's really great to get this update, and I'm looking forward to learning more about the overall asset management system. But I am correct in understanding that the asset management system will be utilized by both ISD and DPW to put all this data in that DPW has been collecting and to schedule the work so that this work is being done in such a we have such cloud complex buildings.

We have such such so many systems and that this work is being done on a scheduled way. Not to say it hasn't been being done, but that we're gonna have these systems to help us do this in a much more organized and systematic. So I hope that's what I'm understanding.

Yeah. Through the chairs,

you're correct in that understanding. And they also have the capability to report out. So, like, these reports that you just got from or that you got from Ralph and will get from Jill are all manual at this point. The software will help us produce reportable data. And and it's it's buildings is a big portion of the lift on it, but it's also, you know, the same concept for water and sewer and highway and lights and lines.

It's it's across all the asset classes. And the the the other, aspirational thing that we're doing, you know, we just, replaced the system at the Kennedy because we did the chiller at the Kennedy. The plan is to continue this on when we do work in the other buildings. So as I've said before, next up is the West Chiller. And to the extent that we can also leverage that project to to update the systems to get off the old Honeywell system and onto the new Johnson controls, that'll be within scope. So it's not just entirely new constructions when we hit a building.

Excellent. Well, thank you so much, and I look forward to getting the updates on this work.

Alright. With that, I will turn it back over to chair Klingen. Thank you.

Hey. Thank you. And with that, we have DPW commissioner Jill Athan here to report out, update us on what the DPW, all the hard work that they did, over the summer as well. So, with that, turn it over to you, commissioner Lathan.

Thank you for the chair. At this time, I'd to for Matt Bennett, our building superintendent. Tim and Mike Bowler has led the charge this summer in getting a significant amount of work done. So, Matt, I'm gonna go gonna give them the highlights of the incredible work that our buildings division did this summer.

Yes. Good evening through the chair. Thank you. So just just to start off real quickly, part of part of what we do is our general summer cleaning, our general maintenance in each one of the buildings. And so that's from a ceiling to a floor as far as custodians work.

We work around our summer programs, getting rooms ready prior to, and then cleaning after the fact in each one of the buildings that has that. In the meantime, we start to go through end of year three one ones. So you're dealing with plumbing concerns with so or electrical concerns, holes in walls, painting, general maintenance in general, and it's a daily basis. And we probably deal with two to three hundred three one ones a week in reference to just general upkeep in all of our schools and city buildings. That that said, on top of that, we're also running at this time, we have three boiler projects going simultaneously.

The replacement of two boilers at the Brown School with a brand new chimney flue that is safe. The the DPW boiler number two for the water department. Same thing, changing the boiler and new chimney. We are putting out to bid the highway and fleet boiler that is in signature process. That one also was an antiquated system.

And hold on. Multi I think yeah. On top of that, then it's so then we're dealing with hot water pumps at the Kapilano School. Argenziano, which we took care of the circulating pump on boiler number three that had failed. Multiple oh, it should go in order.

I apologize. Multiple plumbing and and kitchen issues at the Argentinian moving on to the Brown. It dealing with multiple bathroom backups due to blockages and pipes from either root work or ongoing corrosion. So changing that out. Skipping past coming the coming school, new we had to put a new damper switch on the boiler room in anticipation that we know that that building is still utilized in different aspects during the course of the day.

Repairs to the the pneumatic system and compressor. Ed Druley working working with and around with Capital and I am dealing with Brian Paulsawade on on numerous projects, but also making adjustments to the ramp door at the elevator issues that we've we've had timing problems with making adjustments there. Exterior lighting in multiple areas, painting and patching in classrooms that over the just over the course of the year, you know, through general work that's the students have been hanging with, you know, rips and tears. Going all of the schools while I'm there, but Edgeley specifically changing out a lot of the older lights to LED lights. It's not necessarily consistent with not only consistent with Edgeley, but in all of the buildings.

East our East our middle school, that that building, we did a multitude of patching and painting in areas. Some rooms that were done a year prior, some that were not we have not gotten to in a year or so. Repairs to plumbing, electrical, a lot of light switches, patching of the exterior, foundations throughout the building due to rodents, and really looking in different areas to solve that problem. It seems to be knock on wood, with the help of the school staff and re the reduction of food left out seem to be progressing in the right direction. Changing our classroom hallway LEDs, working on the enunciators with the fire alarm company that we're having issues with.

Oh, boy. Sorry. Got a lot of schools here. I always forget. I apologize. The the Healey School, we replaced multiple sink tree sink traps. We we had slow leaking, we discovered. So when we noticed there was one or two, we started looking for other problems, and we were finding them in in a multitude of areas. So we went through and and probably made half a dozen to maybe 10 or so complete change outs of traps in classroom sinks, reducing a lot of ongoing leakage that was minor but was going to be problematic in the long run. Again, changing LED lights and on.

Ken the Kennedy School, notwithstanding with, you know, the the change of the pool equipment and working with the pool pack, in in that building, there had been a multitude of older breakers, switches, plumbing issues with antiquated flushometers, full room painting before and after the summer school. The heist that, you know, ironically, the high school, it's one of the biggest buildings. And and it does have daily issues, but we we seem that seems to be with the with the help of Kevin Hatcher, who's a Greens manager there working really good communication. We seem to keep up with most of the problems there. Typically, everything that was left for summer work were small minor things, cabinetry work, some door frames that were bent, you know, window screens, a few broken windows here and there.

Our electricians went through. We replaced a myriad of GFI an old outlets to GFI outlets that had failed over the course of time. It's pretty much building shop. It's what we do on a daily basis. It's it it's I I take no credit for that. I have an amazing staff. They work incredibly hard. They don't really complain when I'm giving them constant three one ones or taking them from one job and moving them to another at the last second. Today, we had a problem at 42 Cross Street. We had to go over there, and my locksmith was busy.

We're doing voting setup. So he was able to find time to get over there and make us a minor adjustment with the plan being there tomorrow morning to take the entire lock apart and either change it entirely if need be or make the correct adjustments so we don't have an issue with the doors and opening. That's a constant in in the department. We start at one project, and sometimes we get pulled off. And part of our goal in developing that long term asset management system is to go from what we consider whiteboard maintenance to data driven maintenance.

So it's we always have it there. We know when things need to be done, but adding that in with the asset management and all of this data that we have helps us actually predict when we're having a lot of these estimated life expectancy issues. You know, you you can't you can't deal with plumbing and electrical issues that just happen for whatever reason, but you can anticipate boiler problems, chiller problems, compressor problems. So that's probably it. I'm gonna stop talking because my throat's getting hoarse. I'm being sick all week, and I apologize if I rambled.

So, I just wanted to say that and thank you, Matt and the team. You know, even though that we're in different departments, it be DPW or I'm Capital, we really work as one unified team, to get this work done. A significant amount of of work that has to be done from the time these kids get let out of school until they get back back into school. And keep in mind, all the schools are occupied through the summer, so we're working around a very busy summer schedule. So, just wanna give my official hats off to the DPW team and the I'm team for really working collaboratively together this summer to make sure that we prioritize what's really important here in summer, which is our use.

Yeah. No. Thank you to both teams. I mean, is an immense amount of work, like you said, in a very short amount of time. I do have a couple questions I don't wanna take away from the positivity, but it's just something that somebody brought up to me again the other day because it's the it still doesn't seem to be addressed is so the outer tiles on the East Somerville School, like, there's still a number of them that are off the building. I mean, have we made any progress in sort of figuring out what these new ones that are falling off, or are they am I are they just seeing the same ones that were off? Is like, what happens with those tiles when they fall off the the cement tiles fall off the side of the building?

So through the chair, we're working with the school department on the the tile issue. When they do fall off, you know, DPW is trying to work it on a mechanism to how to repair those and repair those quickly. We're working with the school department to kind of assess kind of why and when these are kind of happening and the behavior that may be leading up to some of the tiles breaking, whether it be just normal kids play and and, you know, kicking balls against the the tiles that's wasn't really intended for that use. So this is gonna continue conversation we're gonna have with the schools and DPW and and and Capital, try and find solutions to that tile the tile that she's at Bethsaid.

Okay. So you think it could be Vindals and it could be, but it's not they're not just falling off?

Not just falling they're not just

Yeah. They're these are these are new tiles. It's not that the same tile is, down for an extended period of time. It does appear as though the frequency of these things coming down is increasing, which is, you know, sort of a a new development on that. So, Capital's bringing in, one of our, on call consultants, to take in a to take a look at it, see, what if anything's new or different, and what if anything we can, do to prevent this from happening. So we're we're we're attacking it from, at least three different angles right now.

Great. And then my other question is before I turn over to colleagues is so and I'm not trying to put anybody on the spot, but, you know, we are always pressed for space. And I know that there was some question about I'll just get to the cut to the chair. I'm I'm looking for an update on the the space that was the boxing club. Like, I know there's some environmental possible concerns or, you know, remediation situated. Is there any updates on the that space, director Reish?

No updates on the space. We've been been as as has been noted a few times, in the meeting, what we did over the summer collectively between DPW and IIM, was a tremendous amount of work, and that was the priority of the, it's really the school, department that helped us prioritize that work. So just we had to, turn our attention away from the boxing club for now. And as we, get into next summer and, you know, plan out our work for that, maybe the boxing club comes back in. But, as of right now, we don't have any active plans for the boxing club.

Yep. No. That's fine. That that that's the update then. Just like I said, if anybody's watching this meeting back or anything, like, right now that you know, like you said, I mean, that is an enormous amount of work that you all pulled off over the summer. So I'm nobody's fault. Yeah. I just I just wanted to ask the question. That's all I have for the school buildings, like, maintenance summer update stuff. Colleagues, counselor Saeed or counselor, Davis before we turn it over to

Through you, Jacqueline, and no questions, just lots of gratitude for, everyone, working was worked, in a short period of time to make all of this happen before the students are back. Thank you.

Okay. I see director Anaseke has her hand up. I don't know if I should call on her or if if what difference make any difference. You miss Anaseke, you can go ahead and

speak if you chair. I I also wanna say thank you to DPW and

IIM

for all of the work you did throughout the summer even while we still ran many summer programs. Really appreciated working with you all and collaborating with you on on all of those projects. I I will note that the Brooks 50 East, like, from the school district's perspective, we're still curious about what is happening. We have there's no evidence of vandalism causing any of the drugs to fall, but we are working with the city to determine what that is and how to solve that safely.

Yeah. Just so you were a little garbled, but I think I got most of what you said that you're working on school departments trying to figure out from their side what might be causing that as well. Okay. I'll turn it over to the school committee for questions, comments.

Thanks, chair Klingon. And, you know, my I don't have a question. I just wanted to, share gratitude from my end. That's an eight page small bullet point memo. Not full sentences, just item after item after item of just work.

The amount of work y'all plugged through in each of our schools is worthy of celebration. And I just, honestly, thank you for your commitment to our kids, making sure they are, you know, this is their home away from home. Right? They are spending a and our teachers spending a tremendous amount of time in our school buildings, and you are, putting in your blood, sweat, and tears to make sure that they have a high quality learning environment, and that is not lost on us. So just true gratitude and appreciation.

I just wanted to when I I read this a couple weeks ago, I think it was, I was just floored by the amount of work here. So, anyway, thank you. Any questions from my colleagues? Not seeing them. I will turn it back to you, chair Klingen.

Alright. Thank you. And just one more comment. I am glad to see that, we're no longer using the Winter Hill School, for anything because I know there was an issue with the door being locked and so on. So, hopefully, that, we won't have any more of those issues. Okay. So thank you for those updates. I'll, again, pile on with the appreciations because you guys did an awesome job, and I I really probably could have had its own meeting, these these updates. But so with that, we will work complete item number nine unless anybody has anything. Alright.

And so then we will a couple of items, there's they're not ready for prime time there. The school committee, I believe, is still working on an MOU. So I'll I'll get to those items in a minute.

Sure. Colleen, if I may, looks like, liaison Raddasi has a Yeah. Comment.

Sure.

Thank you, chairs. I was hoping we might be able to take up item eight, that MSBA update next, if that's amenable to you both.

That is a great idea. Exciting updates. Alright. So we'll take up item number eight, madam clerk. That's, that the administration provide the special committee on school building facilities and maintenance with regular updates about the Massachusetts school building authority process for the Winter Hill and Brown schools. Here, I believe, to give the update is director Resh. Go ahead and take it away.

Thank you, chair. We prepared a memo for the school committee's records, so we submitted it here as well. So you have it for the record, but the the highlights since the, last, meeting of this, or joint meetings of these committees, we're fully under contract with PMA, our owner's project manager, the OPM. They hit the ground running because it's frankly the same team that we had for the high school, and they'd also been helping us with some other projects like city hall. So we rolled right into this.

We said we released a request for services for designers, basically, the architects and all the various different disciplines to design the new building. We got six responses, which was very exciting. One of the the larger turnouts for current MSBA projects, which sort of reflects how much interest there is in the, technical community for this building because they know this is one of the the bigger and more exciting ones, that there, is in the state right now. We met with the the designer selection process, is sort of driven by the MSBA. They have a a selection panel.

We get a say on that. Doctor Carmona, superintendent Carmona, and I represent the the district and the city. We had third, member, who is also, a Winter Hill parent and a member of our school building committee, Courtney Kozlov. It served as the school committee's representative, and she did a job in reviewing those proposals and and presenting Somerville's perspective to the MSBA. So we've now shortlisted the six down to three and have prepared questions for them, interview questions.

And they will be interviewed on September 25, which is, I guess, a week from Thursday, something like that. At at that meeting, we will select the the top firm top team and start contract negotiations with them. So we're we're well into the forming the project team phase, and we'll be ready to hit the ground running with the feasibility study given all the background information and data that we've amassed as part of the the k capacity study. In parallel with that, as the committee knows, we have the construction advisory group, the CAG. They've continued to meet throughout the summer, have been making some very good progress in really examining all the different ways we need to look at this question on the size of the building, the location of the building.

And and they're a good portion of them are starting to coalesce around some some conclusions and some, know, the the way that we need to approach this. In parallel with that, we have, as I think probably everyone knows or, has maybe even taken, a survey out in the field to ask questions around that. We've been getting fantastic response to that survey. I don't know the numbers off the top of my head, Charter Communications. Taylor would, but, apparently, this is one of the the highest return rates we've had on these surveys, which I think shows a lot of the interest that we have in the the community around that.

That survey will close actually the day after the the interviews, and then we'll hand over that data to the CAG for, you know, their their final consideration. So all in all, things are going pretty well. It's been a busy summer on this front too, but there's a lot of excitement from the team and in the community and from all the stakeholders. Happy to take questions.

Yeah. I have a couple of comments, questions, I see councilor Davis has his hand up, so we'll go to, colleagues first. Councilor Davis, the floor is yours.

Thank you, mister chair. Through you to director Resh, thank you for the update. A couple questions. First, the the the survey that's in the field you mentioned, this is the the second survey that was put in the field. Is that correct?

Correct. Yeah. The the the first survey, was, without much fanfare, just quietly put to rest, and nothing was really done with that as as far as the the the CAG or anybody else. This one, we brought on an outside consultant who worked with the CAG, and in particular, a few members of the CAG that were particularly interested in it. So the the survey that's in the field right now, was a the product of the strong collaboration with the CAG members.

And is the the data from that first survey, being used in any way in the process?

So our our official position on it is or or at least from from my perspective is is what we're saying is if if anyone wants to look at that data, they are welcome to it, but we acknowledge that there was a lot of flaws in the way it was put in the field and and maybe some the the the the the way the data was gathered isn't quite up to what our standards were or are. So no one is putting very much weight into that first survey. And and so I to my knowledge, no one's really considering the data from that first survey. Moreover, the the second survey, whilst more streamlined, sort of gets to to to the heart of what we need to to find out anyway. So the the second survey is really the the one that's gonna give us the the most information.

Okay.

So that yeah. I mean, I think the the first survey, as I expressed in previous meetings, was was about the way the data collected, more about the way it was the way the questions were framed. But it sounds like so it's it's still there. It's still live. It's still available, and for whatever reason, hasn't been simply removed.

In terms of the process for the selection process, you talked about you down to a few candidates. Are they is is that conversation it it strikes me as as interesting in how that how that conversation sort of goes or how those contracts will be signed if based on how you've at least explained where we are in the process. Are there are people sort of submitting, you know, answers, responses in in in two completely separate contexts for the two, you know, possible types of buildings that would be built?

To the chair, the the RF is worded, such that all options are taken through the feasibility study, which is an MSBA requirement. And and granted, we're a little bit ahead of the curve. We'll be able to get to the feasibility study faster than some communities that don't have any of the information or haven't even had the conversations. But we we have to do a a, you know, a good faith examination of the options and document them in the in the feasibility study. And then whichever one of those options, big school, small school, Winter Hill, Tram, that then gets carried through in into design.

And this is fairly common for the MSBA process. You know, I'll I'll you know, the MSBA requires the feasibility study with or without consolidation, looking at different sites. So the teams that respond to these things are sort of used to having a large range of options and feasibility and then proceeding on with the, you know, the the scope per design once defined.

Okay. Thank you for that. Through the share. So let me just kinda write some commentary just to because this is the this is sort of the venue I have or the the channel I have to to express it. And the first part of what I'm saying is is from what I've heard.

So, you know, I I haven't had the bandwidth to to go back and listen to or sit in on any of the the the meetings. So, you know, I acknowledge this is not not firsthand. What I've been told and concern what the concerns have been raised to me is that the conversations, at least, has been interpreted by some folks as as being sort of steering folks towards one option. And, you know, the information that's provided might be entirely accurate, but it's been sort of provided in a way that that folks have felt is is sort of intentionally trying to lead towards a result. Again, you can you can refute whether that's the intent, but that's what I'm hearing people are are hearing themselves.

So take that for what it's worth. You know, that that concerns me because, you know and this is now just coming from me. I have I will have significant concerns if we you know, understanding what types of environments we have for kids in this district and happen you know, I happen to have some visibility to, the different ways that kids learn and the way that different environments can impact their ability to learn. And, you know, we're talking about the two, I believe, the two smallest schools in the district, essentially being, combined into what I believe would be the largest school in the district. That on its own is a huge red flag to me.

And, you know, so whatever the financial considerations might be, whatever other things a large building building might provide, you know, I worry that those types of considerations might seem really good in the moment, but in practice, you know, x number of years down the road, we, you know, we will really regret having having made that decision. And I gotta say as the councilor from Ward 6, any decision that takes the only school in this ward and and closes it and and forces my constituents to, you know, not have a single choice in in the ward is a is a very significant concern to me. So, you know, I wanna you know, I I don't think it's appropriate for a a a counselor to sit here in a committee meeting and and tell the CAG how they should, you know, how how they should go about doing their job. But I worry about the process. I've heard repeatedly people raise concerns to me about the way that those conversations have been colored, way the filter that has been sort of through which that information has come out.

Again, I'm not there, but that's that's what people are telling me they're experiencing. So I as I can say, I just fundamentally for a decision that will ultimately need, you know, voter approval, I have a really hard time imagining myself getting behind any plan that will close the two smallest schools and turn them into a big one and have no school in Ward 6. I would anticipate campaigning, you know, actively against that, and I don't believe I will be alone in that effort. So I I was thinking about this a lot in the last, you know, week or so, and I thought, you know, I ought to just say this now publicly so that it's not just kinda my thoughts festering. You know, we have this form.

This is an item that's before us, and I I I think I I you know, if I haven't made it clear before, I should really make make my my views and concerns clear so that, you know, nothing comes as a surprise to folks. But I'll leave it at that. Thank you, mister chair. Yeah.

No. I appreciate it. Okay. Just a couple of quick questions before I turn over to school committee. So two things.

One, I was gonna ask well, actually, I just want a clarification on the process because I think a lot of people actually, I have to correct the record in the next MSBA group meeting because the chair of that group had said that the CAG would be making a recommendation to the MSBA school buildings committee? And I thought I was correcting and said, no. The the mayor ultimately, it's the mayor's choice, but I've since learned with this MSBA process, haven't never have gone through one with the high school, that the CAG is a a body that was constituted to give the mayor a recommendation. The mayor is one member of the MSBA board, one voting member of that board who will, you know, vote along with the rest of us on that body. We want that to obviously go to the MSBA, as unanimous as possible or, you know, hopefully, it'd be like a jury, like, after we've all been in a room together discussing this.

Hopefully, we'll become to some consensus based on all of the data, all the information that were being given. Can you correct me if any of that was wrong, director Rasch?

Yeah. To the chair to the chair, who is also a member of the, school building committee, if that wasn't readily apparent. That's correct. The CAG does not have a formal part in the MSBA process. The the recommendation to you know, that that comes out of the feasibility study in the MSBA, you know, that the the the city and the school building committee submits that to the MSBA for approval and for funding.

The the mayor, under our form of government, has is on the building committee. And, like, under under, you know, like, the the MSBA requirements, the mayor actually fills, like, three or four different slots within the school building committee. They have they have script that that sort of, like, Commonwealth wide, acknowledging that there are different towns and different school districts are are function differently. So the the mayor is a member of that committee, but also has a lot of, frankly, power within the city. And if if the mayor isn't behind that recommendation of of the school building committee, you kinda know that that it's not going anywhere.

And and so, you know, this mayor, mayor Valentine, wanted to form the CAG to help inform her decision and her position, which will be expressed through the school building committee and then brought to the MSBA. So so I I I I hope that sort of adds on to what you're saying. Your understanding is right. I'm I'm just sort of acknowledging that with our charter, the mayor holds a lot of the cards.

Yeah. No. And I just just I think it's important to get this process clarified just because I think what really turned the conversation a little bit was the communication that went out by the administration about the CAG and where it said in that communication, ultimately, it's the mayor's decision, which it ultimately is, but with the CAG giving a recommendation. But but now and now and what I'm hearing also is that and, yes, then that she will then take that informed decision and bring it to the MSPA or but then also impose her will on that body as well. So that's interesting.

But I I I the reason I wanna clear that up is because at least, you know, people understand that there are other people making the decision. Ultimately, the mayor has to be on board. Absolutely. But the MSBA body of, folks is is alright. Sorry.

So second thing is a little bit on the weeds too is I just wanna get on record of saying two things. One, I did listen to the selection meeting that you three from our community are on, And I after talking to some sort of industry professionals, which we have an abundance of here in Somerville, two things were brought up. One is that, you know, none of the three who are obviously the three top firms, the great firm you all advocated and did a great job. But I think the sense and, again, take it from the source was that these three, they they're sort of darlings. Like, they're they're they're the go tos.

Right? But, like, they didn't this person and some people didn't feel like they have a lot of experience with, passive passive, buildings. Like, I think Ron has one building at Brandeis that they did that was passive. So I know that a lot of this is a this is a priority for a lot of people in the community. I'm not saying that we that that's we can make that a reality. If the numbers don't work, they don't work. We're under tight budgetary constraints. But I do wanna put a plug in and and anybody listening to understand that, you know, that is something that I hope you all it's in your questions to the three that got through, you know, out of the six. If that that is a question. And the second question to those three applicants from the summer wolf's folks.

The second question is I also heard them say you know, they they kinda lay out the lady reads through the through the the the the applications and says sort of who the teams are within that project management team. And another thing that was brought to my attention is sometimes they'll read these, like, all star cast of people that are really good in these areas. Like, oh, and then and the person who will be in charge of the, you know, education component of that project management team or design firm rather will be this one. But then once they get awarded the contract, all of a sudden, the a team wasn't available. We get, like, the b or c team.

So, again, I just want I don't know if that we can get that into, like, as a stipulation as to sort of, like, how to nail them down or if that would be, you know, way out of bounds as far as the MSBA folks were concerned. But, again, I just wanna make a plug for that. Those two things that were brought to me from residents that also watched, you know, listened to the meeting. And then the last thing I'll say is that the I did hear one when the when the woman was running the running off the sort of design plan. Like, yeah, it's my first time ever going to one of those. It's really weird. They're just kinda reading things off. I'm pretty sure I heard her say that. One of the firms has in their plan included school building that would include the St. Ann School.

Did I did I hear that correctly that there was a mention of the St. Ann's School building?

To the chair well, you've made three points. They're all, valid. These are things that we are thinking about and and how to, mitigate them in, you know, in terms of even even if they don't have a lot of Passive House experience, this will be the job on which they do it under the watchful eye of our staff and our constituency. Summerville does include a lot more in our contracts than a lot of other cities and towns do. And and so we do actually have mechanisms to hold consultants' feet to the fire on on the listed folk, and and we've had some good success there.

And then the the final yes, One of the you're they get very limited space, and they try to show their creativity in some limited space. And and one of the teams picked up on the possibility of reaching out to the archdiocese and and showed a concept that would include that, you know, with the big caveat that they know that that would be dependent upon the archdiocese playing ball. I just think they were trying to be very creative in what they were presenting. And as as much as a lot of peep that's you know, for for a lot of people, that's their favorite part of the proposal is looking at their concepts. It's such early days that what's in their proposal is never what winds up getting built anyway.

So I I just, you know, I take that with a very large grain of salt.

I just, yeah, I just zeroed in on the fact because, you know, I've been saying that if we're gonna because if we can't build up too high for whatever, we don't have to rely on elevators by going five whatever whatever those constrictions are about going too high on the 115 Sycamore. If it Sycamore side, if it went that way, the only other solution would be to to build right off the side to that school building. It's almost perfect. So, you know, my concern is that, yes, while they're just dreaming up concepts and and they they were getting creative is if we missed the opportunity to secure that building. And so I don't know what steps we can take to can we emit a domain from the I'm just curious. I'm just throwing that out there. Can we from the archdiocese, are they, like, immune to that or something?

I wouldn't want to incur the rest god. I

That's that's what I was gonna say. Yeah.

Alright. So so so suffice to say that I I'm in contact with archdiocese real estate people on a semi regular basis, and it's a subject of ongoing conversation.

Alright. Those are my three sort of high level in the in the weeds, I should say. One of the other, things that have been on my mind with the MSBA process. The update is great. I'm glad that we're moving forward with the, selection of a firm design soon, and that's it from this. Oh, I see councilor Syed has a question. You have your hand raised, councilor Syed?

Thank you, Jacqueline.

Them.

Counsel, you're cutting in and out. Could you just You

can't hear me. Can you

me? We can hear I think we can hear you now, so just start over.

Hello? Can everyone hear me?

Yeah. We can hear you now. You can just start over from the top from what you were saying.

Yeah. You all are frozen, so imagine you can't hear me.

We can come back. Can you reconnect or something? Can you hear me?

Yeah. I'm having Internet issues.

Alright. Just log out and log back in, and we'll go to the school committee.

Alright. I'll take that as my queue, chair Klingen. Thank you. And seeing that miss Baton has her hand up, we'll turn it over to you, miss Baton.

Thank you to you, chair Baton. I have a question, and I also have a comment. The question is how the data is being collected and collated with surveys that we've done in the school. We've kind of advanced our practice in equity to make sure that we're balancing perspectives and that we're sometimes in some ways waiting different perspectives to make sure that either a, we're not because we got 80 were parents, we're not only waiting in the parents of 80% because, obviously, our population in Somerville is much larger than that, and it's a very small for smaller percentage of the population that is, that are parents in the city and that we're considering the views of the community at large, because they're all taxpayers and will be impacted by less than the long run. So, so the question is, is the data gonna be collated or or managed in such a way that it reflects the distribution of our residents and the demographics of residents versus the weighting of who actually responded to the survey?

And then I have a comment, but I will wait for that. I'll leave my hand up.

Yeah. To the chair. We are tracking demographic information along with the survey responses. And one of the reasons why we had it there I still have it open for such a long period of time is because we've been doing targeted outreach to demographics that haven't responded in as high numbers. So comms, SPS, SOIA, supported by IAM staff have been doing tabling.

They've they've done pickup, you know, tabling at pickup, time. We're we're tracking those demographics closely. Before that big push, the last snapshot that I saw was, I guess, not terribly surprising that most of the respondents were higher income homeowners who have been in the city for ten plus years. And so the the the the point of the targeted outreach was to to get, you know, more return in the in the demographics that weren't hitting. I haven't seen how successful they've been since then.

I just haven't checked the numbers, but that is being tracked, and that will also be part of the report. So not only, you know, what the results are, but what the the demographics are so that you can, you know, sort of interpret the data, in in that way.

Thank you. May I do a follow-up? So I know the district has when they did their strategic plan work, they actually did some waiting to make sure that the data we had had that distribution of, demographics. And so if we you know, 80% was, you know, of one population and 20 other, sometimes the 20 was waived a little bit more in the results. And so I don't necessarily want I mean, it's one thing to show the full data, which I think totally makes sense, but I also think there should be a view on the data that is demographically relevant and make sure, that we see the big picture of who is responding.

Obviously, if we have two responses from somebody who's a senior, that's not helpful. And I will compliment I was at the senior picnic, and you don't wanna wait the two responses huge or anything. But, obviously, we have people that are do this kind of research, and and I hope the consultant is is balancing this in. But it's almost like in some ways, yes, you can see all the raw data, but I want one view of the interpretation of the data that absolutely reflects our distribution. I saw at the senior picnic they were tabling, so that was great to see.

So we are trying to get some of our seniors because, obviously, whatever decision that gets made is gonna have a huge tax implication on families and and not families, but residents. So it sounds like we're doing outreach with families. I'm curious what's the balance of nonfamilies, and are we doing outreach to people that are not families? Especially families maybe that aren't in the schools yet. That's really what families are not in the schools yet or anyone in the city. And then I'll go off and wait for my comment after.

I I know there's an effort to do that. I have not been privy to the nuts and bolts of that side of it, but I we can I'll get a report for you, for the for the next committee meeting, from from the team that's focused on that. Nikki might have a

better insight. Add. I don't have the specifics, through the chair. However, we are having great success in many of the categories that we were thinking of, including, you know, our schools, families, but beyond. So we can get you more information. I also know that the consultant that we've hired to help work on this is working hand in hand with Somerset to think about what is the correct analysis. I think you you referred to weighting the analysis or not. There are pros and cons. But we are thinking about the best way to portray the data to show, you know, Somerville and how representative we are with the data that we have. So that is an active conversation, but we are absolutely considering it.

Alright. Thank you, Ms. Patton. I see Doctor. Phillips has a question. Go ahead, Doctor. Phillips.

Thanks, chair. I appreciate all the work that is going into this entire process and has from the very beginning. Thank you very much for all that you're doing. I wanted to make one point and ask one question. The point is through through your chair to member Patton, I I'm sure you all have have thought about this, but I would imagine that you could be doing this survey for a variety of purposes.

Right? One to understand where families wanna put the school, and one, maybe to understand, are we likely to pass over it or not? And you would probably want to do your analysis differently depending on that purpose. So just putting that out there to match our analysis to our purpose. And then my actual question, slight tangent from this discussion, but I was wondering, how is the design process that the folks who are ultimately selecting going to build off of the design that was already done to figure out the preliminary locations and the preliminary different combinations of schools?

I just hate to waste our resources by redoing something we've already done.

Through the chair. It was made clear in the RFS and at the interview that the the selected firm is to take the work that we've already done as the starting point and that there's no intention or interest to relitigate anything that has already been examined. You know, everything from, you know, the the the hazardous materials survey in in the buildings, which were frankly very expensive to do. We're not gonna do them again. You're accepting those reports, you know, to to the to the sites, you know, that that and and everyone that's responding knows that they're not gonna reinvent that wheel, that they're gonna use those wheels and build the car from that.

Alright. Thank you. I'm gonna take a turn myself, and then I'll turn it over to, my colleague, miss Patone, who looks like has another question. So through the chair, I guess, me, to mister Resh, we were told last year, that, you know, we were gonna go through this process with the that this recommendation that the CAG would develop with, lots of expertise and input from different corners of our community would not hold up our process. Understanding, of course and I think I've seen the deliberate pace with which you've been working, as evidence of that that, you know, we are we are not interested in wasting time.

Constituents have brought to my attention, however, that other communities that were accepted at around the same time or at the same time we were, which was in December 2023 to the MSBA process, When we were put at the top of the list, right, we were one of the first three communities to start our eligibility period. However, other communities that started their eligibility period after us, and they were staggered by basically once a month. Other communities were added in. Other communities have shaved off some time from their timeline by completing their eligibility period earlier than we did. I may not have the terminology quite there, but they were invited to start their feasibility study.

For example, South Hadley and Needham both completed, or were invited to, launch the feasibility study at two hundred forty days or one hundred eighty two days after their eligibility periods began, Whereas Summerville, it took us two hundred to eighty four days. Now I don't know what goes into, you know, sort of getting us over the the line, but I just see those numbers, and I worry that, there's something about our process, and I'm not sure if it's the CAG or if it's something else, but that is causing us to move less expeditiously than we might otherwise. Now I don't know, if if you have looked at those other projects and there may be something unique about them. But I'm wondering if you can shed any light on what it is that is allowing those other communities to sort of leapfrog, if you will, and sort of move faster than, than we are moving. And if there's anything we can do to make sure we don't we don't move any more slowly than we, than we really absolutely need to.

I'm trying to phrase this very carefully because I I do not want to suggest that we're wasting time. I don't think we're wasting time. I think community input is is important. It's really critical. But I also just you know, we're in a situation where we have a whole community of kids who are displaced to a different building. Yes. We've done a lot of work on that building, but the faster we can get those kids into a brand new building, the better, and months matter. So I hope that somewhere in there you found a question, director Reish, and, you can respond to it.

Thank you for the chair.

I think it's important to remember that every school is different. Every project is different. Every community is different. So I have not, diverted my attention away from moving Summerville's project as quickly as possible to examine the particular details of other communities' progress as a measure against ours. Because, frankly, I don't think we could move any faster than we are.

But it is important to remember that, you know, that the this is gonna be a complex school, so it's gonna have a lot of requirements. There may be other schools that are less complex. I will tell you from lived experience, as most people here know, prior to my almost ten year tenure working for the city, I spent about twenty five years as a consultant, and the city was one of my clients. Somerville has a lot of requirements of their consultants and contractors, and our contracts are a lot more complex than some of our other municipalities in Massachusetts. A lot of this comes from a lot of the great ordinances that we have that protect a lot of our values that we have as a city and have bothered to ordain that then trickle down into our our contracts.

So our our requirements are are probably higher than a lot of others, and and we've had to spend the time. The director of procurement and contract services, and I each step of the the process for those had to reconcile the MSBA format with the with the city's requirements. So there's there we have a lot a lot to get through that a lot of other communities don't. And and, also, I wouldn't say that any of the work of the CAG has detracted from the overall timeline. Because the community was able to get through eligibility and even through forming the project team and into feasibility, it may very well be that they have a lot more work to do during the feasibility study phase, and and that's stuff that we've already completed in parallel or are continuing to complete in parallel.

Like, the the CAG is essentially part of the prob public process to decide the location and size of the school. So all this work that we're doing in parallel, which is in violation of the the MSBA, it's just our community work around it, you know, we'll be able to make up time there compared to to other communities. So I would absolutely love it if someone from South Hadley or Needham would then say, hey. We got into feasibility three months before Summerville, and they're already done. You know, it's it's all all all of these things go into it.

So that that's that's just sort of some important data to understand around the the process.

Thank you for that context. Miss Patone?

Thank you through you. I just wanted to take a moment, sort of in light of hearing from some members about their sort of concerns about choices and decisions and and acknowledge how complex the recommendations that the CAG is considering and the data that they're looking at. You know, the survey is not a vote. They're not, you know or if we get, you know, 51% of the survey answers to vote x, then we're gonna do x. The survey is is complicated and and many people put in a lot of work into this.

And, you know, this decision is all about, as, director Ray said, the the values of our our district. And, you know, a decision such as retaining or combining current school communities, That's complicated, and and there's, you know, losses to be considered or gains to be considered there. Retaining or removing an option of a smaller school, addressing risk of a 100 plus year old building that is something that, you know, keeps me up at night personally as a school committee member. And I put a plug in for the city for moving forward on some of the risk planning work that I was very excited to see in our last school committee build, meeting. That that's a thrill for me because that's something that's been on my head and and I felt accountable to as a school committee member.

But also thinking about possible gains of whatever decision we make around equity and access. You know, right now, we deliver special education in one of our buildings in the hallway, and there's no dignity in that. And we also have some segregation of populations in our district based on the schools and based on what they can or cannot receive in schools. There's also an opportunity to enhance inclusion. Right now, the Winter Hill, because of its current size, only has two strands, which basically means we have two first grade, two second grade, two third grade, and then we have our AIM program, which is dedicated towards our students with autism.

Right now, the amount of inclusion we can do is limited by the fact that we only have two strands in that school. Now there could be a plan that involves still having two schools and enhancing the size of the Winter Hill and being able to have three stands possibly. Again, I'm not designing the programming that would allow us to do a a better job of inclusion and increase our access for our students. And then the other piece, which I know people can write off, but all of these decisions have huge financial implications. One of the things again, I applaud the CAG.

The survey was really complicated, but I do think it's missing a little bit around the finances. You know, when I talk to people about this, obviously, it would cost more money to build a bigger school, and then it would cost more even more money to build two schools or to renovate two schools. And I think that's the kind of data people need to make decisions. But, again, all of these choices, there's losses and there's gains. And all I wanted really to reflect on is the fact that the CAG is the group that has the largest amount of information.

They have more data than I have. They have more data than anybody in this. At least I think. Maybe some of these people in this group are are more involved than I am. And just acknowledging that whatever decision gets made, there could be potential both losses and gains to that decision.

And the decision is something not about today, but about ten years, twenty years, thirty years, fifty years, and what, you know, is gonna be in the best interest for the city. So I just wanted to flag that it's more complicated than we're gonna shut a building down, we're gonna combine schools, or we're gonna keep two schools. There's just a lot of other, elements that have to be considered, and I just appreciate that there's a body of volunteers that are taking their time to take all this complex information, including the results of the survey. So I just wanted to acknowledge that.

Sorry. Okay. Chair Klingen, we'll turn it back to you.

Hey. Nice to Have you have your hand up. Go ahead.

Thank you. Through you, chair Klingen. First, thank you for explaining all the process tonight and for the update. My questions, the first one, I don't know if this was mentioned when I had Internet issue for, like, few minutes. But my question is, at what point in the process that you laid out tonight, the administration will be sharing the financial implications.

The World five school committee member just mentioned how important to have that piece of information that we've been asking for for months. So if we you have an answer to that.

It's in the chair. A matter of fact, we presented that to the CAG just last week. I think a week ago, Monday, the eighth, something like that, at the last meeting. And we like, I I wish I could just tell you what the URL was off the top of my head, but we've posted that with the materials that are available, you know, all the all the CAG and MSBA materials. So we ran a few different scenarios that that look at different timetables and different configurations of the the one and two building options.

So I think I think we had, like, six six different scenarios, something like that. And and what we're able to calculate so we we got updated, estimates of cost, because the the if if if you recall the when we got the MSBA enrollment numbers, they were much better than we we had thought they might give us when we did the k capacity study. So we needed to update the the size of the buildings and also bring, like, bring them up to today's dollars because construction costs have continued to escalate. So we did that. We plotted out, like, a couple different time scenarios, gave the cash flow.

The finance department then calculated what the debt service would be based on that and based on our current bond rating, and and that calculated out to the the the total debt service for the different scenarios. And and so all all that's in a in in a table and available now. There's a lot of nuance and detail on that. And and so if we wanna put it on a future agenda for for this group, I wouldn't be opposed to explaining it to you, but it is information that the that the CAG now has.

Great. Through the chair, thank you. That's great to hear, and happy to put in an order so we can discuss that. So you can present that our next meeting. I think that's very helpful information to have right now.

And then the other question is related to the outreach regarding the survey. I know we don't have information on that. We don't have the staff members to speak to that tonight. But if you can just add some my my colleagues on the council and on the school committee, made some requests. I'll make some comments on that.

The request I'm gonna make is to, one, share the data with us at our next meeting. And, also, I'm just gonna ask you if you know the answer now. If not, to provide an answer to the question, what type of outreach are we doing in the proposed for, like, the abutters in the proposed locations? You've mentioned this is the survey has been taken by by a lot of folks and seniors, families, just no. Yeah.

Like, everyone. But I would love to know, yeah, if there's any particular outreach that was done to residents that but in the proposed locations.

If you

don't have the information, if we can have that next time.

Yeah. Through through the chair, we'll work with

the, with the team that's working directly on that, and get a report. Depending upon, the timing of this next committee meeting and when they're gonna be crunching the numbers, I I don't know if it can be the very next meeting, or or the one after, but we'll we'll definitely commit to, getting you all that information.

Okay. Alright. So we will keep that one in committee as is the custom. And then let's just we're gonna power through one more because we did get a memo with a pretty good answer here. And then I think the that would be item number two.

Items number four and seven, which are relating to the well well, sort of the coming school or the MOU with the school committee. So let's just jump to item number two, which says that it's that the administration submit to the city council and school committee the city's contingency plan in the event of an emergency school closure during the twenty twenty five, twenty twenty six school year. So, actually, this is, you know, very time sensitive, and there was a memo sent that we can sort of just we'll we'll turn it over to mister Diesi in a moment. But I'll just say, you know, it is a plan, and and it and it it certainly would probably work. So I I'd like to hear how everybody on this body is thinking in terms of the memo if you were able to get to read the memo.

But with that, if you wanna, kick things off, liaison or dicey. Go ahead.

Thank you, mister chair. As you mentioned, the administration did submit a memo in response to this item. I just wanted to provide a little context for counselors that haven't been part of the separate but related, conversations that have been happening with the school committee in the past few weeks. So earlier tonight, you heard from DPW and the IIM team about some of the preventative maintenance that was undertaken over the summer. And as we've discussed in this committee before, these interventions are a really important way for the city to make sure that we are proactively doing preventative maintenance repairs and upgrades to prevent any future school building failures.

I know that I've also shared at these meetings that the city is committed is fully committed to mobilizing in the case of a future building failure just as we have done before. And last week, the administration shared with the school committee our concrete five step plan of what this administration would do if a bill school building were to fail tomorrow. So the memo that was sent to you on this item outlines those steps, that would that we would take if this were to happen in the school year. I won't read through the whole memo. Hoping folks had a chance to look at it since I sent it on Friday.

But just a few highlights. If a school did fail tomorrow, we would react instantly. Ever since the Winter Hill, the mayor's office and city departments have continued to evaluate and reach out to partners about potential locations. As outlined in the memo, within hours, the city would convene an incident command system and activate an emergency operation center. Next, we would call Tufts and address immediate instruction needs through the Tufts Administrative Building, the TAB.

And the TAB already has some classrooms, and Tufts has cleared it for this use. This is a high quality building, and we have experience mobilizing quickly to move in and move out from past experience. Step four would be to move SPS admin and city staff from the TAB, and we have a couple options for this move outlined in the memo. And finally, the city would work to rapidly evaluate a more long term solution. Ever since the Winter Hill, we have been in conversation with several community partners with large properties.

At their request, these must remain confidential, and discussing them may actually jeopardize our ability to use their properties in the future. So just wanted to share that information. We do have staff here in case there's more specific questions about, emergency responsiveness or or emergency preparedness, but that's that's all I have in terms of an overview on this. Counselor, you're muted.

So, yeah, so as I was saying, thank you for that. And, like, you know, the the tab, you know, it may not be perfect, but it is a plan. You know, prior to that, this idea, you know, I just I the the sheer, you know, dread of imagining if a building goes down and and what we're gonna do with these children. I mean, this gives us something of an answer. I I'm looking for the part where it says what would happen with the current employees. I mean, they're probably already working high well, no. School department, actually, a lot of them well, certain depart certain areas work five days a week. Anyway, so just can you just hit me with that point? Because I don't see it here. I am scrolling out. I'm not finding it.

Through the chair, just to clarify, are you asking what would happen?

With the current employees at the tab from

the school board?

So that's the section that actually Delaney has up on the screen.

Oh, okay. Okay. So yeah. I mean, so, really, you don't know. It's like it's basically remote work and then maybe throw some in the, you know, possibly in the the annex or something.

I'm not even sure who's left in the annex, but I know we don't have a lot of room to play around with. So as far as those employees, that would be a challenge, but, naturally, you know, the first priority would be the children. So to have this as a potential emergency plan, you know, I I think it's good. I think it puts I hope it puts some people a little bit at ease, but I'd like to hear from other people. So anybody on the council have any questions or comments regarding this emergency potential, use of the tab?

Okay. I don't see anybody with any hands up. So let's just go over to the school committee, chair Baton.

Chair board Klingon. I don't have a question. We've already seen this on the school committee side. So I'll just say, you know, I agree with, counselor Klingon that, this is a plan. This is you know, this answers the question about where the students, would go.

The the classrooms would go to the tab, at least in the immediate, term while you continue to search for for longer term solutions. And, you know, is it perfect? Probably not. But it's it's an answer, and I I think it does provide with with enough certainty for me to share with, constituents and families who worry about this sort of thing. We had we do have a history of events happening, and we need to be prepared.

And, again, I appreciate all of the efforts of the administration that have mobilized quickly to find solutions. I have no doubt that you will do so in the future, but this kind of information is really critical for us just knowing sort of where the net is so we know, you know, how our educators and our students will be supported in such, an event. So and and, you know, doing everything in the meantime that we can through maintenance, and we've heard from all of the, excellent work that Capital Improvements and DPW have done to make sure that our existing buildings stay clear of major issues that are preventable. So this is all just part of this kaleidoscope of issues that we are doing to make sure our buildings are safe and that we have plan b's in place. So really appreciate that.

I'm getting off my soapbox and turn it over to Ms. Patone. You have a question?

I don't have a question. As you said, we already saw this. I do wanna acknowledge, a, that, yes, I'm thrilled that we have this. It's a an adequate not an adequate. It's a it's a reflection of the partnership between the city, the schools, and the administration that this was clearly and and I think the mayor, her own words, and staff also were, you know, reflecting, like, everybody wanted this.

This is not something for years, it was something that the just the school committee wanted and somehow couldn't get prioritized, but that I just really wanna acknowledge that it's been great that this has been prioritized and, that there's been a lot of thought put into it both. And I I I applaud both the process and, you know, where the locations possibly could be. But I also wanna we had several colleagues who are very frustrated in how long it took and that it really took this warming center desire, which everybody was behind and really wanted felt felt if the city felt like the Cummings was the best location that we wanted to support that. But that until unless and until we got this information which we have requested last year, we're really we're put in a difficult space. So I just wanna acknowledge the frustration, that many of my colleagues had.

But, again, I'm all about honored and upward and moving forward, and I just wanna, thank everyone.

K.

Okay.

Back to you, chair Klingen. Thanks.

Great. Yeah. Thanks to the administration for this. It does definitely put people somewhat at ease, because the Cummings is just not a possibility, it sounds like. Although that leads us to the last two items that I'm just gonna, like, touch upon them, but we're gonna keep them in committee because I don't I think there's can you just explain?

I'm gonna read these, and I'll have, liaison Radassi speak to, you know, why these don't have an answer for these yet. So item number four is from council plan Nufeld that the mayor create and make public specific make public specific plans that outline the full scope of work necessary at the coming school, including capacity, time, and cost to host some of public school students in the event of an emergency and provide regular updates to this council on until such plans are completed. And then the other one is that the director of asset management develop swing space plan to accommodate several public school students to mitigate disruption to students, families, and staff while a school building is unavailable or during construction. So these sort of both feed into that emergency plan, plan, which get kinda gives us the half the answers, but I think the Cummings would be possibly part of the longer term strategy even if, you know, we could guess at some of those other institutions should that shall not be named right now. You know, you know, with one thing we do know is that we have this building.

So the question, as to what what it would take and, you know, what would be needed to get the Cummings online as a school building. For that, we have liaison Radasi here to explain, you know, why what the process will look like in terms of why there's not a solid answer as of yet.

Excuse me. Sorry to cut in. Chair Klingen, did you want to mark item two as work complete, do you wanna take that up with these other items?

No. Item two will be work complete, and then these two will, four four and seven will be kept in committee.

Perfect. Thank you.

Thank you. Liaison?

Through the chair. As you've alluded to, the school committee is currently considering, a memorandum of understanding, regarding the development of a full, plan in the case of an emergency displacement. The plan that we just outlined for this school year is our short term. We have something on the books. I think the idea and what some of the language that is be included in the final version of MOU, which has not been accepted by either party yet and will be, discussed again by the school committee Wednesday night, includes a full continuity of operations plan, which is something that, emergency management works on has been working on based on their expertise in emergency response.

And I don't know if we wanna get into tonight. I know director Fisher is still here from OEM. Thank you, director Fisher, for still being here. If he wants to talk a little bit about what continuity of operations plan looks like and what we're thinking of in terms of that. But that's that's more, I think, responsive to item number seven in terms of a full swing space plan is is we're looking at a continuity of operations plan, that would be more more comprehensive.

I know, director Fisher has talked to the school committee about how there's a lot of thought that goes in detail that goes into a full continuity of operation plan, and that a lot of it is contingent on different situations. What the cause of an emergency is. I will not try to, do as good of a job as OEM in explaining that. And then also related to part of the, the MOU touches on evaluation of alternative locations in case of a in in case of a school displacement. I think, the idea is that the coming school would be evaluated as part of a whole scale evaluation of possible locations, and it's it's it is part of our capital improvement plan.

I hope I got the acronym correctly. The CIP plan. So it's evaluated at the same level as all other buildings once we're looking at what improvements are made there. But

at the

highest level, basically, these are things that are still being discussed as part of the memorandum of understanding that hasn't been signed off on by school committee or or city yet, so just didn't wanna jump ahead of that.

Yeah. No. I got it. Yeah. No. I mean, it's past the two hour mark. It's late. We we don't need any I appreciate director Fisher is sticking around, but we we don't need to have much. If anything, I would ask the school committee since these most likely the school committee side that these most likely can't I believe they came from them through, at the present of the time, If you wanna keep these in committee, or do you want to, work complete them and then, you know, reintroduce new ones or, like, again, this was sort of your desire, I I would imagine, and we always wanna how do you wanna discharge these, or do you wanna just keep them in committee? I'm moving to it.

I would I would like to keep these in committee if we if we can and and address them, you know, at the next meeting or, you know, in the near future.

Okay. Alright. So on this, anybody have any questions or comments, from this council side? Okay. I'll turn it over to you, chair Baton, on these items that we're not discussing, really.

Yeah. No. I'm gonna close discussion on this at this point. I think, we can save it for when we end up a more fulsome discussion. So thank you.

Perfect. Alright. So, yeah, four and seven. Madam clerk will keep in committee, and that brings us to the end of the agenda. Clerk, do you, madam clerk, do you have any questions about any of the discharging of any of these items? I I think we're on the same page. Right?

Yep. I think I got everything.

Okay. Procedurally, how do we do we just motion to adjourn, as a council and the school committee is adjourned with us? I forget.

Okay. School committee will adjourn immediately after you do.

Okay. So, with that, councilor Syed moves to adjourn. Do you do a roll call and adjournment, madam clerk?

This is roll call and adjournment. Councilor Saeed? Yes. Councilor Davis?

Yes.

Chair Klingen?

Yes.

Alright. With all votes in favor, we are adjourned at 08:32PM.

The AM and E.

Are adjourned. Thank you.

We'll see you tomorrow.

Perfect.

Thanks, everyone.