two one. Good evening. Welcome to the Wednesday, May 14th, 2025, 6 PM meeting of the middle school building committee. This meeting will be a hybrid meeting both in person and on the phone uh and
online. Um we have public comments. Anybody public comments? Seeing none, I'll call for a motion on approval of the minutes. Motion to approve the minutes from the
April 16th, 2025 meeting of the meeting middle school building committee. There is a motion. Is there a second? Second. Motion and a second. Any discussion? Seeing none, call for a vote. Lynn, yes. Carissa, yes. Chris,
yes. Josh, yes. Nicole, yes. Marty, yes. David, yes. Is it Armen? Yes. Um, is that it? Is Julie there or no? Okay. All right. Just want those uh the
minutes I'll just have to have certified. Okay. They need to be part of the schematic design submission. I sent them the draft. So, this meeting certifies these minutes and now we can submit them to the MSBA. Okay. So, we'll take care of that. I mean, Diane will take care of that. Perfect. Thank you.
All right. Moving on to new business. Collier's update first schedule update. Yep. All right. Thank you very much. Um, so the schematic design package was submitted uh back on May 1st and since then we've been going back and forth with the MSBA. There's been a few
comments here and there just trying to get some preliminary uh information um to the MSBA. So when we have our meeting uh everything's uh good to go. We do have a um project scope and budget kind of um prep meeting. They sent an email through today. They're looking for May
22nd or May 23rd. Um that's to go through the total project budget with the district and um introduce you to kind of the uh additional team that's going to come on from the MSBA that we'll be working with from design development all the way through construction. Uh so that's what that'll
be that meeting on the 22nd or 23rd. And then there's a uh June board meeting um which is June 18th. And so they'll send through a link for that once it gets closer. There's we don't have a time as of yet, but that'll be virtual. Um just like previous meetings that we've had
with them. Um for people that need to be there, I guess Lynn, which works better for you? Do you know yet? That it looked like the 23rd worked better for everybody, so I can make that. Yeah, there's been emails going through this afternoon. So, all right. So, I would say the 23rd based upon what we've heard so far. Yeah. Do we know what time on
the 18th yet? No, not yet. I can ask. I don't know if they'll give us a time just yet, but usually it's as it gets closer to that they'll give us a time. But um let me find let me ask tomorrow and I'll find out. And what should we expect on the 20th? Uh yeah, the 23rd. Is this more kind of like the other prep
meetings where we there? Yeah. And they want to go through that the that if you guys remember, we had that large 311 sheet that had all the budget numbers that are in there. Mhm. They want to go through that entire thing with the district to make sure that you all understand what's eligible, what's not going to be eligible from the MSBA's
perspective. Um, so that's really what we want to go through during those meetings. Um, it's going to be, um, probably a longer meeting than we've had in the past. I think they scheduled an hour and a half for that meeting. So, uh, going through that and kind of the space summary and those types of things just to make sure everybody's fully
aware of, um, what that total project budget is going to look like when we actually go to town vote. Okay. Um, and then I mean nothing should be a surprise, right? Like we know. No. Okay. No, but it's just it's it's just one of
those, you know, similar to previous meetings we've had with them. They just want to make sure from the MSBA's perspective that, you know, the district fully understands um the process and the next steps. All right. And then from there, we have the special town meeting dates that were set. So, thank you, Lynn, for working
with the select board on that. That's with uh September 9th um for the town meeting and then we have the day exclusion on September 30th and then from there after the uh the votes then we move into design development and then into construction.
Perfect. Any questions on upcoming schedule? Sounds good. I mean a lot of work but sounds good. Yeah. Yeah. I was looking today the the um MSBA feasibility was back on June 21st and 23. So next month
it'll be two years since since we started. So two years goes fast. Yeah, it really does. I guess Adam, the only question that I have is I've spoken to Uni Bank who is our financial adviser who handles a lot of our bonds and just made them aware of you know they've
they've been made aware of this process. Sure. How early should they be I guess more involved in going out for the bond sale? Is that am I too early on that to start discussing that with them or now that we have some estimates? Can we start putting together some numbers?
Yeah, we can start putting together numbers. Let's wait till we get the final total project budget uh approved from the MSBA on the 18th. So from there then yes we could submit and say this is going to be the total project budget and then what we can produce at our end is probably a cash flow and how that's going to work and that'll probably help
your y your bonding. That's something that they were looking for is once we have the cash flow they can kind of figure out the schedule exactly. So once we have that final number kind of set in stone then we'll be able to produce that for you. Perfect. It's great schedule. I mean we've hit going back two years we we've hit every
milestone you know. Yeah, it's a lot of work, but yeah, we've been everybody everybody holding each other accountable, you know, and so it's it's worked out really well. Exactly. All right. All right. I guess we have next steps in selecting the CMR. Yep. So, uh,
the CMA risk. So, just as a reminder, we've had eight submissions that we've been reviewing. It's uh Walsh Brothers, Shalom, Whiting, Turner, Bomb Brothers, Fontaine, uh Conigley, DOC, who is Daniel Okconor Sons, and Bar and Bar. So, uh we've been working with the subcommittee as far as doing the
evaluations on that. Uh we're going to try and meet on Friday afternoon just to um check in, see where everybody is, and um kind of discuss the evaluations, our findings, and all those types of things. Um I do have a lot of references that came back on these different companies, so uh we can go through those as well.
And then from there we will um hopefully next week be able to short list. And then from there it's usually about three weeks by the time you shortlist to when you start doing interviews uh to give them time to put their packages together and we put out our RFP. Uh so we're looking to mid to
end of June probably do the interviews and make a selection from there. So would you anticipate at our July meeting that we'd be voting on? I would say so. Yeah. Okay. Yep. Yeah. And the timing for that actually works out great with the September town
meeting and everything. So, yeah. [Applause] All right. Uh then I guess that leads us into what you were just talking about. Wait, I'll stop first. Does anybody have any questions about that? Okay. Then so I guess the thing we have
next is preparation for fall vote. Um you want to say something? Sure. Yeah. Uh we we have um with uh Kier's help and the the design from JWA, we put together 250 trifold flyers on the project and we had those. We were distributing those
last night at town meeting and anybody who walked by, we put one in their hands. So we we felt like we reached a lot of residents last night. Very helpful. Some great conversations. Um those same flyers, we'll get those out in the schools. Uh maybe there's some um points of contact
on the town side that we could work through. Um the schools were also interested in having some of the display boards um from now through the end of the year if that's possible. We have some already, but um um maybe I could talk to Dory or Christian about sort of
duplicating the the board that has the the visual of the of the uh of the building from the outside. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They're on right now. So yeah, I'm sure they can um and appears to be a group of parents that are coalesing around spreading information and and
preparing residents for the votes in September. Um the we'll be meeting uh Monday night. And so hopefully, you know, that has to be sort of self- sustaining. That's got to be, you know, work that's independent of our work as a building committee and our work as
administrators. But we think that there's a decent amount of wind in our sales and that we'll have some folks that are willing to come together to spread the news about the project and the vote. So, did the um middle school step up nights for parents? Did that happen already? Yeah. Did Yes. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. We didn't have the we didn't have the flyer available at that time, but we'll um there's some other end of year events that we can sort of put the put a table out probably unmanned, but we'd put the table out with the flyers and everything. So, what about for the
um select board election coming up? Y is that something we can put a table out? That's what I was going to say is we should if we can borrow those um big posters. Yeah. And line the community house hall just for that day. We could bring them back to the school after
that. Yeah. And then hand out flyers, do the same thing we just did last night. Yeah. I don't know. There's some limits on where you can stand, but I that might just be if you're campaigning. Yeah, it's campaigning. Yeah. So, we might be a thinking this is justformational. Yeah.
Yeah. And and you're not it's not voted that election anyway, right? That would be a good one to do that for June 3rd. Yeah, definitely. And if we need more flyers, I think we will. Yeah, we can print out another 250. I mean, they weren't very expensive, so we can
They came out beautiful, I think. Yeah. and and charge back to the project. So that's good. Yep. I'll show you the typo on lawyer. Well, show us first. So before we put down the next one, we can uh All right,
we can make that. It looks really nice though. It does. Be sure to send the the typo to us so we can correct it. All right, Marty. I was just gonna Can you guys hear me? Yes. Y Oh, hi. Um, I was just going to mention that, uh, in addition to the flyers and stuff, if
there's I know we have on our weekly wrapup, it always goes out that says like frequently asked, sends them on their way to go look at the new middle school, but like sometimes that get lost that gets lost in our weekly wrap up. So, I don't know if putting like even the visual like a screenshot of stuff on
there or the flyer electronically on its own. Like, we can do things like that. We just need to and we could just talk about how we do that. Excellent. Love it. Yeah, we can add that flyer to the FAQ page as well if that's I mean yeah doesn't hurt to have multiple Yeah, there's there's probably detail in
general on that FAQ. Um that could be up there was some placeholders that we had back in the fall that we could probably you know the updated traffic study once that's ready to be posted we can post that as well and and those types of things. The dates for the for the Y maybe have a an idea on this. Is there a
limit of like what kind of advocacy we can do as the committee? I mean I don't think there is a ban from us like using our website and stuff to advocate um you know the
position of we know vote yes. I mean I don't think there's anything unethical about that. Yeah. I mean, that's our why we were formed, right? Is to to get it passed. And I while we can't get involved with the outside
pack, um we there's nothing preventing us from giving them information like we would give anybody citizen who's asking us for information one way or the other. Okay. No, I mean, you know, I I think there's
a fine line. Uh but like you said like working a table at the vote like you know I'll sit there for a couple hours hand to us and explain especially during the busy hours morning and afternoon right for us administratively it's not committing public resources to
advocating for a vote one way or another. So we you know um and so that's the one that's where we need to be careful. Yeah. Um man I think we're good on on that.
Um, question for Adam Collers. When we brought you guys on, one of the things was that whole marketing role. Yep. Like what are you anticipating that marketing role is going to do between now and the vote? Yeah. So now once we get through this MSBA step, we'll be able to work
with our marketing as far as, you know, if we have to put together any graphics or if there's anything additionally that we want to do for um a website or um what we've been doing on some other projects, too, is sending out surveys. We can do a survey as well. Um, so we we can definitely work together to to
determine what the best kind of step is for between now and then. So that's saying after the June vote by the MSBA. Yeah. Okay. Yep. So big meeting probably in July just for everybody on their calendar. Yeah. If we think anybody
thinks it's a bad date for them, let me know and we can try and move it to a better date for for most people. What's the July date? That would be the night. The ninth. I'm here. You don't get vacation.
Um, in regards to the vote and the preparation for the vote, I did uh a question did come to me and it is on the MSBA website. So um the question is if a SBC's if a school building committee's member's term as an elected official
ends for example this is right from the MSB website uh for example a school committee member can they still serve on the committee in another capacity and the answer they say is yes they can remain on the SBC and be placed in the other category so long as the district
continues to maintain the suggested membership. So, for instance, if a school committee member declines to run for reelection, they may they may remain a member of the SBC, but a current school committee member should also become a member of the SBC. So, it
sounds like we could keep the person that's been serving and then school committee would have to add a new member to the comm or do you just keep or do you keep our existing? I don't know if you have to have two. Yeah, we have paperwork that we
submitted at the beginning. So, we'd have to double check that and Yeah, I think it's just one. I think that as far as a requirement, I think one plus the other would I mean we would just have to resubmit that roster to the MSBA. Yeah. Anytime there's a change in the committee, you have to resubmit from school committee member to other. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And if you bring another
member on, you have to, you know, notify them. This means you Julie. Yay. And does that other designation retain voting rights as well? I don't see why they wouldn't. Okay. Yeah, that's I
think that's we get to determine who the voting members are. The voting members are. Yeah. All right. Anything else in regards to the preparation of a vote? Again, thanks to the select board, everybody, and Lane for driving that. I appreciate it. The
only thing I would add is um uh Ian has been working on the information um to build out the website to allow people to see exactly what the uh impact would be to their property tax bill. So that is uh in process and we should have a lot
more on that by our next meeting. Okay, that was my next question. And I and I know Marty you brought up a good point I think too is you know what's the cost of doing nothing like so yeah that cost might be 900 bucks 1000 bucks you know 1,100
bucks but if we don't we still going to have to do repairs to bring it up to standard which is up to code yeah which is going to be more more equal to the reimbursement probably so I don't I think we can't lose sight of that right
could we include I mean you could I it really depends on how you want it to present on a page. You know effectively you can have you can you can create a database like an Excel spreadsheet and then put it onto
the website. That's something that other communities have done and I'm speaking to a community in Sharon who has done something very similar. Um so really it's just a matter of how it wants to be presented. I can have two separate pages where one page is if we were to do
nothing and do it code specific and then another page where this is where it would be if we did the new the new build or I can do something in the middle. At at a certain point though it becomes very messy in terms of what you're looking at. So I don't want it to become
too much information on one page so that it's confusing. Yeah. And remind me the code just the code upgrades for both schools were estimated about 80 million each. So even if we just put like a disclaimer at the top that said
that could be enough, right? Whatever you're calculating below is actually less than what the code upgrade. I think there could be some kind Yeah, exactly. Doesn't have to be. I don't know that it has to be a full calculator for that part. It could just be the information of what each option costs overall and
then the calculator allows you to determine what it what your tax bill will be increased by. Yeah, that's awesome. Anything else? Motion to adjurnn. Wow, I didn't even ask.
So, so there's a second. Uh, let's go through Marty. Yes. Nicole, Josh, Chris. Yes. Lynn. Yes. Julie, David, don't forget Chris. Yes. I said Chris. Oh, Cararissa. Sorry, Chris. She's wearing
Pittsburgh. Armen. Yes, we are a jerk. Thanks everybody. Thank you. Good night.