hey Tim hey Bill how are you there how are you doing good how about yourself very well thank you you uh back home yes yeah I got back home a couple weeks ago or three Yeah two weeks ago oh you should have stayed a little while longer the weather has
not cooperated i miss Hawkington too much that's good have you put all the school snow shovels away yet we had him away until Saturday you know that one That one caught us off
guard a little bit yeah I think it's fair to say it caught everybody off guard not necessarily in our functional responsibilities but it definitely affected my mood yep okay good evening everyone we are
uh right on six o'clock so I'm going to give it another minute or two because um looks like Chris Eberly is still logging in okay okay um I
believe one two three four five yep we are at quorum um Chris Everly are we good to start i don't see anybody from Perkins bear with me because I have one more set of things
to get open okay you tell me when we are ready to begin and we are recording just so everyone knows okay thank you and John while we wait Peter Romains from Perkins is on so oh I'm on yes he
is sorry I did not see him thank you for pointing that out through the chair john we're having a little trouble getting the sound up we're still recording but uh we're not putting sound out on HC cam yet if you can wait a few seconds I'll
let you know if we get it out okay you go ahead just I'll I'll wait on your signal Bob thank you must look fascinating if anyone is watching on TV right now we can do a group dance
go for it you lead us off Chris we'll all follow i promise everybody just go like this it's funnier now because I don't actually have the screen up um in front with everybody's face so I don't know if you're doing it we were all We were all doing it all of us
okay i think I finally have the wealth of things to present to you tonight yeah you got a busy night i just got to get through some invoices and uh minutes and then your show for those who might have hopped on after
this um Ham is just trying to fix the sound going out so we are giving them a few more minutes before we get started reorder my assumes gives me a chance to take attendance without looking quite so erratic
uh Bob just checking in how are we looking okay so if we get I'm going to give it a couple more minutes if we get to 610 and the um sound issue isn't resolved I think we go ahead and get started if there are no objections because the
meeting is being recorded and the stuff at the beginning is uh minutes and invoices so I think we can go ahead and uh get through that and hopefully it'll solve by then i think you're downplaying
the 16 months that I spent trying to get to this Eversource bill yeah no you can yeah we we'll we're recording it so you can properly celebrate the achievement of the Eversource bill don't worry you got to get you got to get ready though i mean it's Roll call vote we got We're
gonna have seven votes in this one we got a a almost a full house here maybe a full house yeah I think so the next meeting's the exciting one uh I'm ready to go when when you're
ready all right why don't we go ahead and get started since it is being recorded um and as I said the the first few things are fairly administrative in their nature so um I will welcome
everyone to the uh Tuesday April 15th 2025 meeting of the elementary school building committee um for the Charleswood School um I will quickly review the agenda for tonight and then we will go ahead and get started
um after our usual opportunity for public comment we will um consider uh approving minutes for from our last meeting of March 20th um we will we have a couple of bills to pay so our usual
package of invoices as well as the specific Eversource utility charge um we will then receive several project updates um the first on the conservation committee amended notice of intent um update and approval of revised
playground designs consistent with our conversation at the last meeting um regarding adaptability um update on a butter mitigations including existing conditions survey um update on additional services bidding and then any
miscellaneous project updates so uh we are hoping to wrap up you know as close to 7 o'clock as we possibly can so starting out um we have our opportunity for public comment um I do
not see any members of the public on the Zoom so um we will as always uh be open to considering uh revisiting public comment should anyone join as a member of the public and want to make a comment
but moving on we will consider the minutes of March 20th 2025 does anyone have any comments or questions regarding those minutes okay hearing none I would seek a motion to approve the minutes as written
for March 20th 2025 so moved Mr chairman motion by Mike is there a second second second by Bill um we are conducting this meeting remotely so this will be a roll call vote starting with
Bill yes jagroot yes mike yes sir chris Masters yes tiffany I need to abstain because I wasn't at the meeting okay and I thought oh yes Shahadul yeah I'll absin
as well i wasn't at the meeting but thank you and I am a yes so uh those minutes are approved i think it's five with two abstensions chris yes that's what I had okay um so next uh Chris do
you want to talk about the Eversource utility charge which is in our Sure um it it's it's in our invoice package so from a process perspective I think we're still going to I made the I don't think we need to I
don't think we need to approve it separately i think we do need to approve it separately because we haven't committed it we we made Oh right we have to we have to allocate it and then we have to pay the bill okay fair enough yep okay so we will have so for the committee's benefit um after Chris
explains uh this we will have a motion to approve the uh payment for Eversource and then it will also be included in our invoice package so we can write them a check quickly and what's I'm just going to point out what I really enjoy is that
this looks exactly like the Eversource bill we all get at our house except obviously hopefully this is a larger number than most people get at their house it it literally looks exactly like an Eversource bill it always shocks me um
so the um the process for starting a utility service with Eversource is that you establish a work order number um you meet certain requirements um based on their standards you send it to their engineering department and they come back and give you a utility charge the
reality is that that is a um many month often more than a year process to get to this point so what this represents is it represents the initial utility charge that the uh town of Hopington will pay in order to establish service at the um
new Charleswood Elementary School so this covers things like the delivery of the transformer um taking the primary lines from the street to the um transformers and all the associated work it also includes transformer for the um
power that's related to or the power components that are related to the vehicle charging stations which we've we're doing through an Eversource project so this $73,976 represents the town share of that utility charge which is um
calculated through a formula that Eversource keeps to themselves to determine how much does it cost to establish this service versus what their payback is going to be with you being a um uh service per or receiving their service over many years and the um
revenue generated by that so we would um we made the assumption as John John pointed out that this would be approved it's important to approve this promptly because it gets us in the queue to order all the components that will eventually provide that permanent service and um for clarity um this permanent service is
a separate service from what the contractor will get to get the project started which is temp electrical service which is usually more of a 120 volt service like you'd feed to a house um usually pretty high amperage so that they can run all of their um temporary construction needs and then once the
transformer is provided and the infrastructure is provided Eversource connects the um transformer and provides the per what's called permanent power to the building ultimately so we would be looking for a motion
um to accept the um utility charge from Eversource um in the amount of $73,976 so move second Mr chairman okay any um so motion by Shahadul second by Mike um just want to allow if there are any
questions or comments on this before we go ahead and take a vote okay then it seems like we're ready for a vote bill yes jagroot yes mike yes sir chris Masters
yes tiffany yes shahadul yes and I am a yes so that is approved 720 unanimously um okay next up is the
actual payment of bills so we have um a larger invoice package this week uh we or this month we've got five invoices um we've got an invoice OPM11636 from Vertex in the amount of 72,218.33
we've got a invoice 0095421 00000015 from Perkins Eastman in the amount of $325,775 um we have a invoice from the Hopkin Police Department 25-0000171 in the amount of
$2324 we have an invoice from Harrington Heap LLP um in the invoice number 1650 in the amount of $225 um we have an invoice 11969076 from Eversource as recently
discussed in the amount of $73,976 even the total invoice package uh is $472,42657 this month any questions about the invoices um one point of clarity uh the Hopington
Police Department invoices for a police detail that we got when we did the um hydrant flow test um in March that allowed us to um conclude the sprinkler design and it was one of those watch items that we were trying to get in before we went to bid so we were able to
complete that get the test results and as part of that because the hydrant flows into the street in the middle of the day they do ask that you pick up a police detail and all of that things like those police details are in the are considered in the project budget correct anyway so while a
nominal amount not one that isn't reconsidered okay um hearing no questions I would seek a motion to approve the total invoice package of $472,42657 so move there a second second okay motion by
Shadul second by Jagroot roll call vote bill yes jagroot yes mike yes sir chris Masters uh Chris you might still be on mute or we potentially lost him uh sorry I'm
I'm back yep yes okay tiffany yes and Shahadul yes and I am a yes so invoices are approved unanimously 7 to zero um Susan the uh signed vendor invoice package is already in your inbox so um
we should be good to go there uh next we are moving on to a series of project updates i think starting with the conservation commission update so Chris Ely I will turn it over to you this one's a fun one um so we notified
uh the committee that we would be reappearing before the uh conservation commission last week as we neared um the end of the Abutter discussion uh Mike and I noted as we were out there that we saw a flag in the middle of the um the
location right about here um that was placed when the soil testing uh dig Safe was called in um we looked at that and then met with the abutters and discovered that what exists currently on our neighbor's property is what is currently a flowing stream that comes
out of a pipe about here does this little S and comes to a catch basin that was previously probably pretty well shielded with some brush um about the same time period it was alerted to Concom and also to LEC um
Perkins uh environmental um permitting consultant that there was potentially um an intermittent stream as described by the bylaw that was coming onto our project that's significant because an intermittent stream has buffer zones
that were not part of our original order of conditions we aren't really sure how this got missed it's quite possible that it was dry at the time that we were um doing our initial wetland survey it was not caught as part of the um ANRAD
process when we um designated the um wetland boundaries that we would be using for the project and as a result what it does and you can loosely see this I know there's a lot of lines here there is a buffer zone that you can see sort of delineated
here and a a closer buffer zone here that are the setbacks that determine what um what setbacks are in are related to the stream we went before concom last week so that we could understand this
and um take action on it we asked them if they would consider to deal with it administratively and um their response was that in order to keep it fair and consistent with how they deal with these issues across town with all applicants
they asked us to submit an amended um uh order of conditions request and so within the meeting packet there's a folder on there that contains the updated landscape drawings as well as the updated um uh the updated civil drawings and the
amended um order of conditions so you'll see that in terms of these sheets that I'm showing you now um the updated landscape plans include if I can find the right sheet um some of the updated plantings that reflect what we talked about with the
buffer it includes the turnaround that we discussed um for the abuter um at this location and so we'll now take this information both um the revised plantings on this side and the fence location and the revised plantings on
this side and the new fence location um back to both of those abutters to just notify them where we ended up and we will be appearing at the conservation commission for them to consider this at their April 29th meeting um because of
that and the impact that that has an order of conditions typically is issued 3 weeks after the um meeting where it is approved so we are hopefully going to be approved at the meeting on the 29th but because that is so close to the original
bid date for the overall project we are pushing the bid date back from what was originally going to be May 5th to May 14th the schedule for the project is based on having notice to proceed by June 6th which allows us to finish on
the scheduled date of October 27th so we don't anticipate provided that this committee and the town can enter into a contract with the uh low bidder uh between the 14th and the 6th of June we don't anticipate this to have any issue
on the overall schedule and it'll allow us for allow for us to get the ultimate um uh order of conditions that is amended to be actually given to the contractor which mitigates some potential change order risk there if there's an item that applies broadly to
the project that wasn't in the original order of conditions overall um I'm glad we caught this now and not say two months from now i don't have a good answer for why we didn't see this sooner other than the um suggestion that's been
made that it was a drought at the time that we were doing the ANRAD and maybe it wasn't a flowing stream and it was just a ditch the um graphics of the topography did appear on the survey here but there was no mention of water or anything else at the time so it's it's
very strange as part of this um when we met with the town DPW they did make the reasonable sele uh suggestion that the portions of this drainage system which appear to be shared between the neighbors continues underground from
here north uh through the backyards of the properties and also appears to continue on um it's not entirely clear exactly where but continue on through the backyards to the south um that the portions of this that are on 147 so this
drainage structure and the pipe itself that goes under the road that we replace those at this time i think that makes sense overall and I would agree with that assumption because you wouldn't want to pave a brand new road and then have to
um dig it up in the first few years to replace that drainage structure if there was a problem with it so restore what is on the town's property to um a new condition and then um whatever happens in the future um we'll deal with that so that's largely the sort of outline of
the concom process um we do know that um the plans have been submitted earlier this week hard copies I believe were delivered Monday or Tuesday and we anticipate being on the agenda for that meeting so unless there are any questions that
was all that I had for that particular Yes sorry I forgot I was on mute um yeah does anyone have any questions regarding any part of this uh just one quick question through the chair uh I heard you mentioned there's no schedule
impact is there any cost impact um there is probably going to be some minor cost impact associated with having to dig up that piping and um that structure it's um based on pricing I would think it'd be less than $40,000 overall um which in
the confines of a $116 million project is not significant in my book and it's certainly a lot less cost impact to deal with that um pipe now prior to bidding than to do it as change order work if we were to need to do it over the course of
construction such as if that pipe collapsed from the weight of construction vehicles driving over it over two and a half years makes sense yep thank you any other questions okay I think we can move on chris
so next on the agenda if I have it in front of me was the um revised playground so we had talked at the last meeting about um the goal of creating an adaptable playground at the time we discussed the various options that had
been discussed and the various goals for the project this stems from work that Susan Rother Mitch is doing um at Marathon to create an adaptable um playground where um able-bodied and um disabled students are able to play
together on the same play structure um the goal of that separate project is to create that I believe at Marathon and um the discussion we had last time was to create a similar opportunity at the Charleswood school so that when those
students graduate from Marathon should that playground be built the same idea of inclusive play um would continue at the next school uh the traverse the landscape architect went through a vendor and took the suggestions made
during uh multiple working group meetings and came back to us with um this proposal that they'd like to incorporate into the documents so this creates um varying degrees of ramp structure it creates a tunnel that is accessible that someone could utilize
either able-bodied or in a wheelchair it also creates um opportunities for um disabled students to interact with some of the ground level items that are part of the playground as well as um
upgrading the sort of overall quality of the play structure that was proposed to begin with so that it provides more opportunities for play some of these um swings here are you can transfer from a chair if necessary some of these ground level elements and um you can see the
the use of the um the tunnel and also there's a um a seating area that can be used by um able-bodied students or also you could bring a wheelchair up to it uh we reviewed it with the working group and they were in
favor of proceeding with this um play structure so we would just be looking to endorse that with the committee as a whole so that um this would replace what is currently proposed in the north playground um it also adds additional
shade structures that were not part of that original um playground that was proposed so all in all it just provides a um what I think in the working group's uh view and I'll let the working group speak to this um just a better solution
overall for meeting the goals that we talked about at the last meeting i don't have an exact dollar figure um I believe Ashley came back to me with that this structure overall is 300,000 um for all the elements shown um it
would be we've got the overall so all the elements shown which if I remember correctly I thought the original play structure was somewhere in the $200,000 range so it is a slight increase but in
the confines of a um $116 million um project it's not a significant increase and you the town would very likely get much better pricing should we be able incorporate this in bid as opposed to waiting until after bid to incorporate
it given the complexities of installing this the multiple foundations and other elements that go into building a playground and I hopefully can answer your questions as I stated last time I'm not your landscape architect but I believe your landscape architect is currently out of the country
um so uh before we get to questions Susan if I could put you on the spot a little bit because you've been closer to this type of work than I think anyone on the committee um I know the working group gave its endorsement of which you're a part but if if you wouldn't mind just
confirming that that this would accomplish what we're trying to yeah the nice thing about this structure is it um provides multiple elements for all children to play uh and that's really
you know just having you know more touch points where the kids can can can gather um is very helpful with the structure originally it just seemed to have a long runway ramp but now with those uh elements that Chris pointed out it it
does give the kids multiple areas to play together on this structure so yes it's well done now thank you um questions or comments from the committee i I I've got a question Chris thanks for uh sharing this information
is this the entire amount of structures we would have for the playground no and that's what I'm bringing up in the background um bear with me for one second i want to bring up the presentation that I shared last time thank you
so comparatively last time we talked about um the playgrounds are made up of two playgrounds so the initial playground um there's the north and the south play areas so the south play area is made up of multiple structures and at
the last meeting we walked through the various elements that make up that playground and then um originally we had this sort of climbing structure which um was various uh logs and ropes that allowed for climbing we had a smaller
play structure and we had swings and I believe that's a spinner um I have So these are a lot of the elements that are on that south playground and then as we Oh
sorry and so as you walk through it there's various chimes there was um a large shade structure there was a balance climber um then there was also a a slide of sorts um a swing and a spinner
um and then swings as well here and that makes up that south playground and then um this which I shared in the last meeting packet so you could refer back to that um highlighted the various skills that the playgrounds
are designed to support and develop and then within the um thought I had a separate one for the within the north playground originally there was this sort of agility trail so it was various rope ladders and um other structures that you
could move through um there was a a teeter totter swing element and then there was the tree deck climbing structure as well as a set of swings so the structure that I've outlined in today's presentation would replace the
elements that were shown here with that um comprehensive solution that is pictured okay i guess a different way of asking my question or getting to what I'm looking for is what you're what they're proposing for this adaptive um
enhancement would it be for 20% of all the structures for the school or 35 or 50 um well what it does is it deletes uh let me see if I can bring them up on side by side um So the structures that you see depicted
here would be in place of the structures depicted here okay thank you and so that's 50% of the playground but it's not a 50% add to the playground it's swapping out the playground that's proposed for a different playground
right but it's 50% of one of three playgrounds it looks like we're two oh two okay okay thank you so overall it's not a drastic upsize of the playground it's finding better solutions within the planned playground
to deal with it and I did have an email at some point that was somewhat difficult to read that should have showed the final layout and I apologize for not having that queued up but it would probably take longer than it's worth to to find it for something that didn't convey it all that well
other questions um Chris can you can you I think you had a earlier like a high shot that showed the north and south the placement of the north and south playgrounds put together can you flip that yeah there was one other item that I wanted to touch on as
we're talking about this so um a further discussion that occurred in the working group um that is still developing that we'll get into as part of the ad service is that um we have this north playground up here and the south playground down
here we're working on uh integrating this type of structure into this playground we've also discussed this field in the middle before can we Sorry before you do the field before you do the field I just want to finish up the
the playground and get if because you want an endorsement for that um so the the one reason I asked you to bring this up is just because I I think for people who may be following along the idea of the calling them the north and south
playgrounds makes them sound at least to me if you didn't know this design well a far away from each other so what you can see here is is obviously in this view that when we talk about the north and south playgrounds it is sort of one
reasonably connected recess complex that the students would have access to so it's you know I think that helps people get a view of it's not like we have one adaptive playground and one non-adaptive playground that you know they're going to get directed to uh students are going to get directed to one or the other that
we have this that that the playgrounds are reasonably near each other um I I I do want to talk about the the field thing but I think we need to do the the end the overall endorsement separate from that um does anyone have any I guess
concerns or objections with the committee endorsing moving forward with this adaptive playground structure in the um in the bid okay um not hearing anything um I think we
can consider that Chris Everly the endorsement of the committee um you know I think the one thing I would just add is as you outlined it is um there's a ballpark cost increase of $100,000 while this is a $116 million
project and that might seem like a small percentage you know the committee continues to take very seriously any dollars we subtract or add out of this project um speaking for myself as a member of the committee and I think we have others have echoed this before this
feels like the right place for us to be spending that extra money this is something we should be striving for um in this facility if this is if this is an educational facility that's going to carry us forward for the next 30 years so um I'm I'm pleased that we're we're
able to do that so the chair I would echo that and I think it's very thoughtful and it aligns with the larger vision and this gives a good opportunity to also as I heard the continuity um should we build it in uh
marathon then uh the kids gets to enjoy that and continue that experience here so I fully appreciate that thank you okay you want to talk about the field now sure um so we'll we'll cover this
more at the end when we talk about um some of the additional um uh designer service requests um as part of the working group discussion one of the concerns that was raised during our playground discussion was the fact that we have this field in the middle but under this field we're using uh we have
uh various well fields we're also using some of the drainage structures are being located under that field and um the landscape architect pointed out as part of a discussion about whether it was worth bringing irrigation to that location that it was um going to be a
challenging field to keep green um some of those who attended the school tours know that at some of the other schools that we visited when you put what would be the 400 children that will be out here for recess in one of three recesses so three waves of 400 children that
grass is going to take quite the beating and without irrigation it's challenging to keep it green and and beautiful um one of the suggestions was to consider uh potentially adding a turf field in that location we discussed that option
amongst the working group and the working group was in favor of moving that forward um in discussion with the group um I'll take the blame for it i forgot to bring it up at the last meeting um but we uh the working group did believe that it should move forward
and in speaking with John he also endorsed um the additional service for that that we'll talk about in a minute the idea of replacing it with a turf field would um add longevity and a little more durability to it similar to the turf that you have at Marathon currently um that surrounds the
playground um because turf is quite expensive it could potentially be a six-figure ad we thought that the most um economical and um sensible option to move forward considering an option such as that would be to do it as a bid
alternate by doing it as a bid alternate when the contractual price comes back and we see where our bid actually is the decision to upgrade to that field could be made by the full committee at the time that you're accepting the bid and that way you have cost certainty about
what that app upgrade actually costs at the time that you're accepting the bid um in discussion with the committee or with the working group that seemed like the most reasonable path forward to consider that type of an upgrade um in quality and durability
um without committing the town to proceeding with that if the cost came in too high any questions about that again just a consideration in the bid so we can get both pricing on it and have it in the context of what the overall bid costs
before we decided whether we actually wanted to make that change as a full committee i I think it's a great alternative and a great way to price it going forward i'm just curious do we have this option on other things as well or is this kind of a one-off to have
that uh extra upgrade option for this project that was the only one that we chose to include as an alternate it was it was sort of discreet in the sense that it you could capture all the edges of it and um it was a straightforward sort of
swap out so it was easy to issue alternate drawings just for that purpose without it becoming so broad uh the way alternates work in Massachusetts public bidding is that if you pursue the alternates you have to pursue them in order so as you add on additional
alternates you can end up in a situation where even though you get a great price for alternate 2 you can't pick up alternate two unless you also pick up alternate one and so it can become quite complex in terms of how you strategically um order those alternates to make sure
that you you have the the one you have to get first and the one you want to get second we didn't really identify any other major scopes because I think overall we have a fairly um comprehensive um project here before us
with a lot of those decisions made over the several years at this point that we've all been working together to get to this solution and so um purely as it related to that alternate or to that change an alternate made the most sense
other ones you could consider would be like swapping out various surfaces for other things but um in the confines and reminding the public that we're I think in the neighborhood of $8 million under budget um a lot of those smaller swaps
don't really seem like that big of a deal in the context of the estimate coming in as low as it did okay thanks for the explanation other questions i have a question and um what would the the cost of the turf be compared against is it
the grass field with the irrigation line extended to it or without currently it's the grass field without the irrigation line extended there was a design for irrigation that was developed by the landscape architect um but that we decided to not move forward with the
piping we only moved forward with the well so currently what we're planning is um water to establish the plantings is going to come from that well that we're incorporating into the project that well will also serve for a water source for dust control around the the site during
construction but we weren't actually taking remote water lines to various locations on site okay thank you well just to follow up on that so is that suggesting that even if we had irrigation it would be hard to keep
those fields green because of the use is that's why the irrigation is not even being considered it's a tough it's honestly it's a tough question to answer Bill um give you the Hopkins example hopkins
is in the confines of a wetland on multiple sides um that field stays pretty green in the amount of time that I've been out at that Hopkins site even with our um fairly uh active um fourth and fifth graders on it every day in a
very confined area with the construction ongoing um I can't say with any certainty that you'll struggle to keep your field green here um with irrigation you will struggle less but that's not to say that
irrigation is a necessity it's a very wet site now and a lot of the material changes that we're talking about are going to um alter that slightly the concern is always that you know kids wear a path in that dirt i think you see that at playing fields probably throughout town i know I see it in the
playing fields throughout my town with the heavily used fields and so um I think that's why we talked about the turf in the context of being an upgrade because you know you're going to have longevity and the um school administration supported moving forward
with that turf as an option to consider so um to say that the grass field is a failure or won't work or any I wouldn't say anything like that but um the turf would be an upgrade that would um you know in the same way that Marathon's turf has turf playground is you know
stayed pretty good over what is almost 10 years now bill I would just add you know the maintenance of these fields can somewhat be difficult um we can't necessarily bring in like a true green and use chemicals on these fields or any of the
school fields really without um without like a 5day notice prior to putting anything down so what h what happens to these fields a lot is when we first install them they're great and then they start to get overrun with clovers and then weeds and then they die out and
then rocks start coming up the ground becomes uneven um so it just becomes uh it becomes difficult to maintain or somewhat costly to keep those fields smooth as like a playing field what I liked about uh making that turf over
grass is even the maintenance of the entire playground becomes a little more simple we're not blowing grass clippings and stuff all over the playgrounds driving equipment you know um trying to get in there with the amounts of recess that we have trying to get in there and
and get that cleaned up in between recess classes can be difficult and and um so I think there's many reasons um where turf makes sense i think it's a it's a playable surface all year round
um and I think even for accessibility from playground to playground it'll keep a smooth transition if we did have a smoother transition if we did have uh children that were somewhat you know impaired to be able to to go through without having to come out to the
pavement and go down and around um so I think it's just a it makes it an overall nicer space I think on top of it and more usable for longer periods of time thank you Tim other questions
any objections to putting this in as an ad alternate okay then Chris Eberly I think we're good to go with this one all right I'm going to stop sharing for a second and open up the one document that I forgot to
open um so I I mentioned earlier I sort of covered our our next topic which is a butter mitigations we're going to be reaching out to the two who um are most affected by our discovery of this intermittent stream and the effects of that as it relates to the conservation committee's um wetlands
bylaws um we'll that way we'll be able to reach out to them and get an understanding we're also still working on the um uh the street improvement package we don't have a bid date for that yet but one of the additional services will move
that along tonight um assuming it's approved um we did want to make a suggestion as it related to the abutters that we've done in some towns and I'm going to preface this suggestion with
um our experience in proposing this what what we have done in some communities uh when you get to about this time is we have proposed to the neighbors to do an existing sort of
preconstruction survey of their property so that we can understand what um the level of quality that it's at so that they can have a record of what their house was like at the start of construction in the event that the
vibration you know I'm I'm not sure if blasting will be necessary or not depending on how much rock we find um certainly the breaking up of rock can have a vibration effect that was noticed by the um the staff at Hopkins as we
were breaking up rock there um and so to mitigate that given that we're so close to so many homes what we have often recommended is that the um school committee or the town go out and do a survey uh or offer to do a survey of the
adjacent uh property owners homes what this is usually involves is um a third party goes in with a video camera and um just reviews the houses and think of it like a um a simplified home inspection
like you were purchasing a home and they'll just with this video camera they'll do an audio notation of any noticeable cracks water damage separations um cracks in the walls floors ceiling so that we can eliminate any uh
misconception about what was or was not caused by construction should an issue arise on any of our neighbors properties we find that this falls in the sort of $500 to $750 per house
um uh per house cost based on who takes you up on it and what we've done in the past is um we'll send out a letter um that we'll work with the municipality to draft and we'll send it to each of these um homeowners and we'll offer this
survey as a service based on a proposal that we'll um reach out to a vendor and get for the the city or town we have found that this is um some towns are interested in it and some towns are not we've seen reception
to this include um I don't want to let anyone into my my house i you know I don't want you to see you know I don't want to let this stranger into my house type of reaction we've also seen um some committees don't want to take on the liability of having
someone in someone else's private home upfront they'd rather deal with it as an insurance issue as it arrives it's um you know there is value to having that information collected but it's really on a voluntary basis we can't force the
neighbors to accept something like that um in the same way that you know it it doesn't prevent any issues from arriving it really just serves as something that is a record uh the record can be left with the neighbor themselves or a copy
can be held by the town based on a discussion with those neighbors about how it wants to be dealt with and we find that some communities like that and some communities are like I don't want any part of that um I won't name names but we've we've seen both the other question that comes up
when you consider something like this is how far to go out from the site so um obviously the most impacted are likely to be the neighbors who are going to be closest to where we're paving for roads where we might be doing vibratory compaction or digging up large rocks out of the earth um we're also doing the
street improvements over the course with the widening of the lane so potentially you could be dealing with not only direct to butters to the property but you could also be dealing with the butters off of um the right ofway improvements on Hayden Row that stretch basically from EMC Park to uh just south
of um uh 149 Hayden Row it's entirely up to the committee to share what you whether you would like to pursue this we can certainly um provide vendors that we've used in the past to um to collect this information if we if
you'd like us to seek that proposal alternatively we could also just do nothing continue on with construction and as neighbors bring up issues investigate them on a one-off basis as you would for any related construction
i know that's not a great sales pitch for doing it either way but I I personally actually don't have strong feelings on this um I I was in the why would anyone want to let anyone to their house camp when this was first suggested to me um but I know that we've used it successfully and not successfully in the
past did we do this did we do anything like this for marathon i don't believe that we did mike's shaking his head so uh you're muted Mike you're still muted no we didn't do that at Marathon and the
other thing is the the Toll Brothers project uh which comes close to the school um I don't suspect they did that for the rest of their neighborhood because they're doing a lot of the same things extensive excavation
compaction significant hunk of roadway um you know where do you decide who did what i I uh I really don't see the need for it i think it may be caused more problems than than otherwise but um I I
I go by whatever the majority of the the board feel you know thanks Mike other views yeah it'd be nice to go in and take pictures and see if people have had water in their solar so when they claim they never had it before we can deal
with it but again it's it all becomes insurance even at that point um so I'm not sure it's money well spent at this point this just my two cents i'm sorry okay thank you yeah I would I would agree with Mike on
that i think the most uh the complaints that we had from Marathon School opening was they didn't think that we were captur uh there were some neighbors that didn't believe we were capturing the offshed of water uh appropriately so I know we kind of went through some things
with that so um but never any complaints about damage um to any homes from any of the digging or the vibrating or whatever it whatever it hadn't had been uh it was more water issues okay any other views without without
these surveys is there anything else that could be relied on to settle some of these claims or or you know deal with some of these claims for example vibration monitors or any kind of instrumentation if you're close working in close proximity to some
of these properties i it if it become if we end up doing blasting there's certain regulations that require that they monitor um within a certain radius i I don't know Dan if you remember those rules i think it's 250 ft um
I don't remember them off the top of my head but it's it's closer it's it's pretty close and so you could do that vibration monitoring what I can tell you is that you know different soil stratas transfer it differently um not my OPM group but
we have other divisions within um Vert.Ex texts that are more insurance-based and they actually do these analyses of you know if a vibration from this piece of equipment is happening here and the strata of the earth from here to there is this much it's reasonable to expect this much
vibration that's far away and but that that calculation or assumption can also be done after the fact which is usually when it comes up someone claims that oh your shaking cracked my wall but then you do the math to prove out that well actually no it's probably not possible for my shaking to have cracked your wall
your wall was probably cracked and you just didn't notice it so it's this again this is why some communities are really on top of it and other communities are like why would I want to bother these people or why would I want to invite
claims is the other thing we sometimes hear yeah there's So Chris what are you looking for here guidance or um if you would like us to get a proposal you know it's really about how many homes should the proposal
initially be for and we'd move forward on sending letters if the committee doesn't feel that this is necessary at this time and that we shouldn't include anything special any specific outreach to survey the neighbors property then I think that we're sort of this issues
closed if you'd like us to investigate a middle ground we can certainly add into the bid that the contractor needs to set up some monitoring stations at the perimeter of the site to make sure that they're not creating excessive vibration but then that becomes you know what's
excessive yeah i mean Well well Chris I had a question do you have off the top of your head how many homes you think would be involved is it just on that side of the street or would it be across the road as well potentially no we we talked
um Loren had pulled up an image for me let me see if I can track down it i want to say it was somewhere in the neighborhood of like 25 homes there's also the issue that we discussed internally that I don't know that I have a great solution for which is um
bring this on on screen didn't do a count ahead of time but you'd essentially have uh you know 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 over in this area one two existing homes you would have the new
Toll Brothers homes and that was the piece where we weren't really sure what the right solution is there because the existing Toll Brothers homes are new construction but you won't know whether it there it's not really you can't really survey an
inconstruction home and you similarly can't say whether the quality of their construction led to an issue or if it was an effect of us that led to an issue so I don't know that we have a great solution there and then it would be all of these homes along Hayden Row which um you know depending on how far you choose
to go out um I don't know I don't know off the top of my head whether DPW has sought this type of information in the past when they've done road work um I doubt that they have and so you know we might be opening up a precedent there as
well well I guess my simple question is what's the best way to protect ourselves is it just through proper insurance to cover potential claims or is it and or uh offering this as an option for people
to have their home surveyed beforehand i don't know that I have a great answer for you Bill in all honesty it it's really it's an option that provides additional protection if you choose to to move it forward and purely moving it
forward doesn't necessarily mean that all these folks are going to take you up on that and when you say pro protection I mean potentially offers additional it potentially offers additional insight like I'm it's not clear that it offers additional protection um that would be sort of
situational well no it would if they're claiming a crack in the foundation and yet there that was already there right yeah so I guess if if all you're looking for is consensus to have a bid I personally don't see any downside in
getting a bid for what it might cost and then whether the committee agrees to offer it that's another another consideration yeah I think I would agree in that more information is beneficial so again getting the bid would be would be good i
I just and I don't know if this would affect the bid at all but I would feel pretty strongly that we exclude the new construction Toll Brothers development because that just feels like impossible to actually as you said
you can't really survey in in construction home and it's a brand new development now the so we can certainly get a proposal and I can bring it back to you at the next meeting the other question would be whether this is the
right radius to consider for lack of a better term or the right boundary to consider um in terms of the homes that we would include the building itself um is roughly right about there dan don't judge my architecture
that looked pretty good actually so the building itself is is likely there you've got the roads that circle it i think the most impacted are likely the folks in this neighborhood downstream yep um that's where I would focus this is down there potentially you
could also include the neighbors who are you know going to have the traffic rumbling through on 147 and potentially the the next step up would be to include all of Hayden Row that's going to be within a certain distance of the scope of the roadway improvements
and when we've gotten this in the past pre- pandemic it was about $400 a house i would think at 500 to 750 a house is probably about um where we'll see it today you know start line you might consider
because um they're a little bit closer but I I don't know that we're going to have a heavy amount of construction right up against these houses with where we cighted the building how will that quote come in will it come in per house as you
suggested or will it come in as a lump sum um usually it comes in as a lump sum and then there's a per house number along with it so if if we you know we buy it out for 20 homes here and then 10 people say no we'd adjust it as as
such okay and we we might want to reach out to um to the town and just because we're reaching out directly to um residents and offering them something we might want to get a letter through
town council to do that i know we did it um with some of our notice letters early on when we were talking to a Butters yeah we can connect with Elaine the next couple days well actually probably not even the next couple days because right now we're going to do the bid sell
uh Chris can I can I ask a question um I is there no liability borne by the contractor for damage done to houses around there don't they have insurance for that they they do and they
don't so their means and methods are can be dictated in terms of what they are and are not allowed to do in the bid but we don't tell them what their means and methods are and so when you talk
about something like blasting if they don't follow the rules and the blasting results in an unfortunate circumstances yes they'd have liability for that because they should have followed those rules yeah if you're taking a virgin site and making a parking lot and you're going to run a
vibratory compactor over it or the a better example the lower side of this because we're into a hillside it's going to be raised 6 ft mhm so for every 6-in lift they're going to take a vibratory compactor and drive it over it starting
at about 4t below where it is now to clear out all that lommen stuff and then 6 in drive a vibrate compactor up and down it is and that has some tendency to um those vibrations carry through the air if those vibrations are ultimately
what damages the house next door that's not really the contractor's liability cuz he didn't do anything wrong he was just following the ordinary means and methods that one would pursue to um build a parking lot or raise a foundation and so in that case you end
up in a you know is this the town's fault was my was my basement already cracked was it cracked because of what you did or was there something else yeah all right thank you and Chris to extend that scenario should
anything or any claims come uh I understand you know this um photographing or um video recording the houses would create a baseline so there's no false or fraud claims uh but
should there be a legitimate claim then which insurance would eventually cover that do we need to purchase a separate one or it's already embedded in the things that we are doing say that what type of claim say um in a scenario like
that eventually there is a claim yes so which insurance will cover that claim um I don't know off the top of my head it it really is going to depend on the circumstances of the the damage and the
claim it would I I would have to reach out to MIA or MIA um who's currently pricing up the builder's risk i would think it would be more likely to fall under builder's risk if it's the ordinary process of
construction and it creates an issue there um but I would want to ask that question specifically of the town's insurer and have them make sure that we're covered if that's the concern and I can also you
know make this suggestion to um I think I'm working with Sean at um Cabat Risk to get the builder's insurance or the um builder's risk claim now so I can reach out to him again and say um you know that this question came up we're
considering um pre-erveying some of the neighbors how would that relate to any claims or pricing that we're going to get for builder's risk when I bring that pricing back to this committee we can have that answer
that sounds good yeah I think this is a good risk mitigation strategy but uh the first risk is you know if something happens how are we covered and second is if something happens even if we are covered how do we cover any false claims
or legitimate or address the legitimate claims which is this one both are I think um helpful but the first one is probably going to be more universal and needed and for this one I think it the more information with you know the bead
and others certainly is going to help as I understand it and process it a little bit okay Chris do you have clarity on the next steps yep I think so i'll I'll reach out to we'll reach out to get a pre um the one thing I don't have clarity do we want to extend it to the
full like road work scope or do we want to just limit it to the immediate neighbors for the purposes of the initial proposal i my my personal thought is immediate neighbors um but maybe worth checking maybe worth
checking with the town if they've done anything similar um on road work that has been done recently yeah I think if anyone if the if the town's never done this for road work anywhere else I would be hesitant to do
it here i agree okay um my my vote would be for immediate neighbors uh my experience it's usually based on a distance you know if it if you are within certain distance of the active construction say 500 ft then it's more of a concern um but if clearly some of
these residences are are not within that that threshold distance you know I I would say prioritize the ones that are closest to active heavy construction yeah I would really when I first started talking about it we looked at sort of like the
center of the site to like thousand feet really started to become those four you know maybe you extend it down to include you know I think it's nine houses in total that are down here and and Chris pardon pardon me if you've
already answered this but were there any claims from the Marathon project the only issue we had was water and the circumstances of that are a long story that I don't want to get into now not structural with any homes in the area i
don't believe Tim i don't believe so no nothing that was ever brought to our attention what it uh the vibratory compactor is always the one I point to because people find it unsettling when everything starts shaking a little but I don't know that I've ever actually seen a direct
claim that I can tie to that cuz they're not driving it next to your house it just feels like they're driving it next to your house because it can carry through the soil all right so um should I start with these nine okay
okay okay what's next uh next um so next is to walk walk through a number of additional services that I had shared these you with you John but we're so close to the meeting that I thought it made sense to um to just run through
them with the committee at this point so I have five in total um I am expecting one more and off I forgot to write down who it was from so when I get to the end of this Dan can tell me um who I
forgot so uh starting with VHB vhb is traffic engineers working on the roadwork improvements um as you may recall we had an extended um back and forth with Concom as a result of trying to get through the right-of-way improvements and Concom kept asking for
additional as it related to catch basins and trapping the um suspended solids before they were discharged into the adjacent stream we thought country drainage was the right way to go we proposed multiple versions of that we proposed um a few alternatives and ultimately they asked us to do a study
of the additional catch basins that would be required to um deal with that extended stream um study to get through um permitting they're requesting a $6,600 um additional service for additional
engineering work that's related to that um original concom uh approval my view is that I think that that's reasonable they um they were very diligent in doing this work they um
tackled it without um delay which I think helped us get through that approval and so I think the 6600 they're requesting um is reasonable i should preface all of this i didn't do the math ahead of time so all of this is subject to Perkins uh 10%
um uh markup that's allowed by contract so it would be 6600 plus the 10% um due perkins for um for that particular one i can do these individually John or I can just sort of run through all five of them just roll through just why don't just roll through all five and then
we'll do questions um the next one is amendment three so this is related to clarifying some scope gap that I don't think we identified in the initial disc um proposal discussion with Perkins um we had originally thought of this as an extension of the building project scope
when we put together the DD through construction administration amendment at after the funding vote um they're requesting uh what amounts to $5,000 for the base scope of putting through um the front end and then they gave us a um uh
I think it's 17,000 for additional CA this would be to develop the front-end uh documents that relate to the street improvement work specifically right now there isn't really anyone to come up with the chapter 30B section 39 um uh front end documents so this is the
contract all of the terms and conditions all that kind of stuff that we're that we worked with Perkins to create on the building project this would be to create the same for the street improvement project which is going to be run with a separate contractor it would also cover them doing site visits and inspection of that work and basically running it as
they would any street improvement project that they were hired to do in any other town or in this town because they've done them in the past so in total that comes to 22,000 and we would recommend that that proceed because it was not owned in the original proposal we think it's
necessary to move forward uh Traverse came in with I believe it's 22,000 for the um the turf design so that's 16,000 to develop um the design $1,000 for the bidding support then an additional
$5,000 for additional CA that would occur over the course of um the installation they originally came in with a higher amount and we discussed it with Perkins and they eventually came down to that amount um so that was 22,000 that one i know John you did uh
verbally approve um Sammy OD's uh the next two relate to the develop or the identification of the stream um uh the first was for Sami Odes the civil engineer they immediately jumped into action to identify the stream um
developed the documents that we needed to go before um Concom for the notice of intent to ask for the administrative review and then jumped into the documents that we needed to stay on schedule with the um the concom work that we're doing they did flag two
additional items in addition to the $8750 that they're requesting um which could be from a 6,000 to 12,000 and that's if the concom process requires them to revisit um I think it was the the sewer line i don't know if you
remember the other other piece of that Dan if Concom expands their scope I think they had six to 12,000 extra that they um were indicated that they may pursue but I don't believe they're pursuing that at this time and then in addition there was um for the Concom
process to go through the additional approvals with um uh Concom LEC the environmental consultant is asking for uh $9,700 i did not push Claire to get me that proposal because I thought getting that to Concom and staying on
schedule was the more important approach um but she did uh provide a an email to back that up which I included in your packet and she'll follow up with a proposal so in summary
um items one and two essentially are $31,460 with markup in order to um deal with additional services specifically around the street improvements items four and five is $20,295 with markup and that's
specifically related to our intermittent stream discovery and the concom processes and um rebuilding that drainage pipe that are related to that and then separate from that is the um did I write down the number here separate from that is
$24,200 for the additional service related to the turf field with uh 6600 to 13,200 in the background that um could result as the result of Concom asking us to do more um should we move forward so
we'd re recommend combining all of the items together that would be uh Perkins amendment number eight totaling $75,955 um and so uh we would commit this to um we had
within Perkins budget so the art um designer budget we have an other basic services line item that was for things that come up over the course of construction we have $83,500 remaining in that and so we would use that budget category should
the committee um approve of uh what would be Perkins amendment number eight um per $75,955 the only other piece that I could see potentially coming that I remembered as I walked through all of that is um BSC the surveyor had to go
out and do additional work to to locate the flags and put them on a plan um which they did and so there could be a cost coming for that i don't think I don't think you sent that to me yet Dan bsc no but there definitely will be an ad
for that that's for sure he was out there for a day so that could be you know up in the drawings 3 to 5,000 I would think i was going to say probably 3500 to 5,500 or 6,000 bucks
um so Chris just want to confirm what we're looking for here so um are you looking for a vote on the amendment i I'd look I' be cleanest to just do a vote on an an amendment eight as it relates to the five additional
service um proposals or if you want to do a vote to authorize the chair um for final sign off on the um proposals is outlined pending receipt of the final proposals or um I can I can give you better well
let's do let's do let's do qu let's do questions First any questions about any of the those that Chris just listed okay hearing none how about a motion i mean it's tough to approve
contract amendment number eight because we don't have contract amendment number eight yeah I know i thought of that as I was saying to to approve the expenditure for additional services as listed in the agenda materials and
authorize the chair to sign the necessary contract amendment or approve the proposals as outlined approve the proposals outlined in the meeting packet and authorize the chair to sign the necessary contract amendment
so moved second Mr chairman okay we have a motion by Shahadul second by Mike roll call vote bill yes jagroot yes mike yes sir chris Masters yes shahadul yes okay
and I am a yes so it is unanimous we are 6 now chris Everly all right and that was start calling you guys just just by your last names that was Shadul and who was the second mark mic okay i was writing the uh um the
motion as you were doing that okay um bidding update that takes care of that so bidding update i sort of covered this the at the onset but um currently we are looking I want to make sure I get my dates right um with the concom effect we're finalizing a lot of those um RFIs
and questions that come in we've gotten a a healthy number of questions I would say um to date um we discussed it earlier today with Perkins and right now we're looking at setting a deadline of the 22nd for um any questions from the
filed sub biders and then we're going to push back their bids until May 2nd uh I think it doesn't just give them but it gives everyone time to work a little longer on getting the bids together gc questions would follow um usually that
date follows the filed sub biders because we put out an amended uh or we put out the list of um the filed sub bid results and then there's often questions that come in as a result of those so um that date would be May 6th and
um the uh final GC bids would follow on May 14th so as it currently stands I would look for the committee to meet again on um probably the 20th and that would um set us up pretty
well to uh review the bids and potentially approve the contract at that point okay any questions about the bidding process okay so we'll look to schedule that meeting as close to the 20th as we
possibly can and the last item on the agenda is just any miscellaneous project updates that we haven't covered and I have one um so previously the committee approved um uh ads to be the um licensed site
professional for soil sampling on characterizing on the site they were able to get out and do their um their review and um they issued a draft letter uh the draft letter does cover um a laboratory issue that they ran into that
they were able to resolve but the results of that letter are that they did not find any significant um contaminants that are outside of expected environmental levels and they expect that the soil can be disposed of by any legal means um with no hazardous
materials that they identified in their testing that would need to um be accounted for in any other way we are going to continue to carry a small quantity of um unit price in the bid that's that's there to deal with you know a pocket of something that we might
identify you know maybe there's something we find adjacent to the house when we demo it um as we're pulling a foundation or some other costs associated with that or something that got left in the community that nobody remembers um but generally that's great news for the town because it means that
that we don't anticipate any special handling or special material um disposal requirements associated with the the site that is good news uh the other I touched on was that we did complete the
um the hydrant flow test um we were able to do that with the water department and we're grateful for them helping us out on that and um those results came in and I don't believe that they changed anything about how the design had conservatively figured the water levels
so also good news yep okay and with that I believe Dan unless I'm forgetting something or Peter I think that's everything okay well so John I mean we have a
tentatively a meeting on the 13th of May that probably wouldn't happen now yeah that sounds like that'll be backed out to align better with the bidding schedule so we'll get that finalized as soon as possible and I think I had floated at one point that we might meet on the 29th
but with Concom being that night I don't think it makes sense the only thing that we would share at that time would be the filed subreddit results but even that I don't think we'll have at this point so um on barring some issue that needs to be determined by the committee um I
don't anticipate needing to meet again until we get to the 20th okay all right well with that I would seek a motion to adjourn the meeting so moved second is there a second second second okay motion by Bill second by
Shahadul our final roll call vote of the night bill yes jagut yes mike yes sir chris yes shahul yes i am a yes and we are adjourned it just flipped to
exactly 7:30 p.m um thank you to HCAM and uh thank you to everyone for joining have a good night and we will see you in May thank you thank you