are there any public comments from the board just want to welcome our new town manager it's uh nice to see you not on side but on this side of the table so welcome aboard on your first day thank you very much I Echo those comments but also to the booth the TV in here is not on I don't know if we need that presentation I didn't even notice that um but thank you Jen I'm really excited to have you here and looking forward to getting to know you better in working with you thank you and same here Jen uh it was wonderful having the opportunity to
speak with you one one between the interview and now and I certainly look forward to you being on board and the chance to work with you for what will only be a couple of months or a few but I certainly look forward to working with you over the next few months thank you all right welcome Jen I'm excited to have you as you already know thank you any public comments from the public all right seeing none announcements Jen I believe you have one I do have an announcement thank you Mr chairman so I want to take a moment
to uh read a Commendation for interim Chief Tibido and Animal control officer Kathleen KO into the record um so I would like to take a moment to recognize the dedication and compassion shown by the interim Chief Tibido Animal control officer Kathleen KO and the lunenberg police department in handling a challenging Animal Welfare case last month on December 18th 2024 Miss KO responded to a call about a stray dog in distress on Route 2A the dog was found
in a serious condition and in need of immediate medical attention acting quickly she and officer Gage Russell transported the dog to Westford Veterinary emergency clinic where he received an initial procedure to stabilize his condition the cost of this emergency treatment was $1,600 and thanks to miss komo's effort she was able to secure $1,000 in funding from the Massachusetts Veterinary Medical association with the remaining costs covered by the town's Animal Control Veterinary budget she then personally cared for the dog
during his recovery un fortunately complications arose and on December 27th the dog required additional Emergency Care Miss coo alerted interim police chief of the additional complications and recognizing the urgency of the situation interim Chief Tibido immediately met Miss KOMO and escorted them both to Angel Memorial Medical Center in Boston he remained by her side throughout the process providing both logistical and emotional support as difficult decisions needed to be made Miss KO explored every
possible solution facing both financial and ethical challenges at that point a more extensive surgery costing approximately $7,000 was the only option to save this dog's life interim Chief Tibido stayed three hours at the medical center with Miss KO his commitment to assisting with this case went above and beyond ensuring the best possible outcome for the animal this situation highlights not only the compassion of ACO KO but also the exceptional leadership and dedication of interim Chief Tibido his willingness to step in and assist firsthand exemplifies
the kind of leadership that strengthens our community and I hope the board will join me in recognizing and appreciating their efforts absolutely yeah I love when stories like this are shared with us in the community so I do want to thank the interim police chief and the annual control officer I hope everything is going well for the anual getting out on 2A like that is definitely really scary uh so thank you as well Jen for sharing thank you Mr chair I I I want to take I just want to take the time and say thank you to both of them and
both of them in their own in their own uh spheres of authority and influence and their service to the town highlight the kind of people that we really go to hire and that we do hire and keep peers so both the acting Chief and I know that uh Kathy KO in her role as the AO has done an exemplary job for many many years and that just shows the kind of empathy she has for the the animals in her charge so I want to thank them both and thank the town manager for bringing that
to the public I just wanted to make a comment too I agree you know having worked for many years with both of them very closely um I did just want to say in case anyone noted I believe the $7,000 cost was not incurred by the town um I don't want to speak to the details just because I don't have them all but I do understand that the town ended up the dog was GI given over to you know an organization to help maintain it just in case anyone is like why did we spend $7,000 on this dog I do not believe the town did just clarify that but thank them for their their amazing dedication and I I want to also thank um Miss
Cuomo and uh Chief Tibido you know we've we've all worked with him at this point for many years and and as Mr Lonzo said they certainly exemplify in the best of our community um and and you know I've been thoroughly impressed um by Chief Tibido and his um acting in the in the role of uh interim police chief uh as I have uh always have the utmost respect for Kathy uh and her family thank you all right I don't have any announcements does anyone
have any announcements that they'd like to share all right Communications from other boards I don't have any all right so let's jump into scheduled meetings and hearings we have a 7:05 p.m. tool boo tool Booth application for the boys and girls club for May 10th from 10:00 a.m. to 2 p.m. and I believe you guys are no longer actually called the Boys and Girls Club is that correct correct you guys are now just the club club lber team Center okay cool um and just an FYI this was reviewed and approved by Public Safety just for the board uh is there
anything guys want to add um my name is Andrew Woods I live at 947 flat hill road the main reason why we do toll booths is to support our summer program we give out scholarships last year we awarded $115,000 we would like to do the same this year our program gives the kids the opportunity to go out there and have experiences in the summer that they may not get just staying at home like this summer we're going to cannaby uh and a few other places that are just really fun and we we want to make sure all these kids can go so we just
yeah awesome we like that 15 any questions from the board yes first good good to have you tonight I think you guys know exactly what you need to do um if you can just explain for the benefit of the community um just you know are there any substantive differences between the boys and girls club and the club lunberg teens Center is this a name change a affiliation change is there any change for the community that's for you Robin I to know that one um it's mostly just a
name change uh our program is staying largely the same um all the staff members that you know and love are staying uh it's really just we are now our own entity got it thank you cool any other questions no no other sorry before you Mo the motion I don't know if we need to include the rain date in the motion because they did request a rain date oh when we have our approval yeah we can include it in the motion as well I would move that we approve the toe Booth request from the lunenberg teens Center for
sat Saturday May 10th 2025 from 10: to 2 in the center of town with as Miss Moore just noted a rain date of Saturday May 17 2025 same time same location second any additional discussion those in favor say I I those oppose no the motion passes unanimously all right I hope it goes well for you guys thanks for coming in have a good night thank you you too all right up next we have an interview with Peter Stella for Conservation Commission term
to expire June 20th 25 so I'll just have you yep just have you introduce yourself talk about your experience your interest serving on the Conservation Commission all right uh well my name is Peter Stella I've lived in the town um I was born here traveled a little bit uh I expressed uh an interest in you know doing something with the Conservation Commission mostly with regards to the publicly accessible uh properties which the town has
that are there for you know use and for conservation of a natural state right um that was my interest so then she said well why don't you like look into being a member of our Conservation Commission board my experience besides being I'm not like a super environmentalist type of person I but I understand the legal requirements of the wetlands protector uh I work I've worked as an engineer for multiple
different companies uh General electric American power conversion couple engineering firms out of New York City traveled all around the country I work as an electrician and I understand the electrical code in detail you mean you have to be master electrician I've worked on all sorts of projects uh I have customers all day long come to me when I have to do a project for them and they want to somehow not put something in that's required and I State them well too bad if you want me to do the work I have to install what's appropriately need required for the job I have to get
a permit and it has to be inspected and um you know it has to meet the requirements of inspection I'm not as familiar with the wetlands protection act they have a good idea of the kind of things that are involved um I have had a couple customers that live on lakes or have done projects where they run you know like they Buck Right up against people on Conservation Commission they want to fight with the electrical inspector or the building inspector um and I know that it's an not of paid position so I'm not
going to get all upset when someone they're probably not as Mary Wilson said to me they're probably going to go after her cuz she's the head of the board mhm nevertheless you know I I I kind of expressed it to her you know I understand the way the process of these things are so I understand that part what has to happen and uh what my general and she kind of we discussed it I pretty much have the same kind of ideas as other members of the board I'm sure because she kind of said yeah
that's the way it works you know people come they have engineered designed drawings Etc and they have to meet the requirements of what they presented and what's approved and if they don't then you tell them well you got to do what we asked so I think it'll be a good fit for the position because I understand the principles of a construction process and on that CU I think that's what mostly what the Conservation Commission does they most of the time right and then but my real uh desire is to
more get involved with those publicly accessible pieces of land uh make them usable in any way they can however Mary's mentioned she some of the things I was thinking about is you know parking area she say she's worked on that already um and kind of seeing that these things happen and uh make it you know make the town aware of how much property we actually have I mean there is quite a bit um some people complain and want want us to I've also kind of looked into that I talked with uh Tom about it at at a meeting for something and I was
looking at how much open Land There is people want more open land sometimes the Conservation Commission gives a recommendation when there's a piece of property available so I but I'm also aware of how much is already there so and and that kind of thing so I don't know if you guys got questions you think you want to inquire as to why you think I would be horrible at it any questions from the board I don't know how to follow are there any reason since you know
you'd be horrible at it you talk us out of it I will refrain from being like my usual self with people who are involved in the professional or the um which I Do by the way you know when I'm I work actually I work for a Solar Company so uh is another gig you know and I deal with very big customers and sometimes they want to do things so when you're dealing with that kind of thing it's a little bit different for me having a casual conversation I think I've had a few conversations with people around the town about things I don't like like
you know but when you're working for the town not even getting paid but when you're in a position like that you have to kind of like say well I got to keep my mouth shut while I'm here and just do do it the right way basically so so I have a couple questions first of all does your property do you AB but do I personally no well I'm pretty darn close Okay um I don't know if I I live over by the Gulf Station so behind me is a guy by I think it's I don't know what his name is I know his last name is
Kelly okay and then there's a new piece of property that we got by Northfield Road one's called Table Rock and the other one's called something else I think Northfield con yeah so those two big areas I'm pretty close to them yeah but you're not but you don't a but them I don't a but so no so I wouldn't have an interest in like in you know having a fence put up on my property boundary or anything right so you you said that you uh don't know some of the the wetlands regulations and everything and that's fine the question is I mean I'm assuming
and maybe I shouldn't so I'll ask you are you willing to learn them oh yes yes and uh I think I'll as Mary stated you basically there's a numbers of people on the board that have been on the board for a very long time and they're very aware so there's there's a review process and you have an opportunity to get more in depth into them and um you know you have to I always say some people say things are subject to interpretation but they're really not subject to interpretation a lot of times a lot of times people try to bend things
to their own liking and you have to sit down and then read exactly what's in a law that's electrical code I've been in business so there are other legal aspects and things that you know contractual things you have to know I know I know how to read things and look at it and understand what's on a piece of paper and uh you know and I'll I will spend quite a bit of time you know in the specific areas that I need to get into as directed by other members of the board because they already know they've been doing it for a while I guess have you met with the Conservation Commission I
know youve we got just a message back and forth I think she's been traveling she went somewhere so the chair yeah got an email from her yeah uh who apologize for not being able to join because she's not well with the flu or something but so but you not met you've not gone to any of their meetings or anything no not yet I mean I kind of got I've been talking back and forth with a few different people about different things uh uh there's some other things over the summer somebody needed a the habitat what is it the uh it's the bee habitat
what do you call the poate mowed and I offered to hey if you need somebody to mow that those fields I can run right over there and I've got a machine I can cut anything um so but yeah I I will uh you know I'll go to as many meetings I guess there probably a little bit of leeway for personal things but you got so many meetings you have to go to per month and then there's a certain I think it's a couple weeks or a couple times a month they run around and look at projects and say yes or no right yeah okay thank you yep I don't have any additional questions to just a comment
that you know thank you for coming forward um we always appreciate new volunteers any volunteers um and I think that you know knowing your history hope I think it will lean well to you being able to learn the role so y I want to thank you for um stepping forward to fill this role um it sounds like you have quite a few transferable skills and the ability to read regulations even though you're not familiar specifically um with the details I have some you know about this much of what those regulations entail
but something like a silt barrier that you'd have to put up I had a customer talked to me about um his problem on one of the lakes with blueberry bushes and other issues so I got an idea what's what's in in there you know yeah um but I think you present as having transferable skills uh that are relatable um so I I certainly uh support your request to be appointed to the Conservation Commission yep as do I and I'm grateful that you're willing to step up and volunteer for the town so thank
you for that you're welcome is there a motion I will move that the board approve Peter Stellar for the Conservation Commission turned to expire uh last day of June this year I'm assuming you're going to want to hopefully serve again unless unless a terrible few months right okay right so to to serve then unless he's horrible as he said might be possible but anyway I would move that we appoint Peter to the Conservation Commission second all right any additional discussion those in favor say
I I no the motion passes unanimously so you've been in contact with Mary so she's telling you yes I believe there's a meeting tomorrow night there is yeah okay so all right wherever that is I'll there I didn't hear that I said I'll get there tomorrow tomorrow night wherever that is all right well it sounds I'll give everything you need then thank you you just you make sure to get sworn in by the town clerk before your next meeting oh where do I oh do I go downstairs during business hours while around yep not all the time but tomorrow I can yeah you will have to do that before you nice to meet you thanks
Peter all right so up next we have a joint meeting and discussion with the municipal building design committee and Taylor and burns so this a joint meeting with the uh design committee and Taylor and burns are here to give a presentation on the work that they've been doing so would you like to uh call your committee to order do you guys have a quorum sure um we we do not have a quorum present uh and so I I will not call the meeting order just yet but if I may reserve the ability to uh if if or at
such a time in which we do uh hit a core that's fine we have representation from the committee though with us tonight we have Mr Greg Roy um myself and then we also have Mrs scullen bini um who we treat as our unofficial member of the committee as this is all in the architecture preservation district and as Mrs colen brini is our represent representative from the committee all right so I recognize some faces from their uh meetings with the committee so we do have microphones up there so we
would like you guys to sit up at the table here the presentation is going to be on that TV over there so the public will be able to see it we will not uh we do have the slide deck on our iPads though so we can open it up and follow along on there so if you guys would like to come up you will have to turn those microphones on there's a button you'll see the red turn to Green that's how you know they're working and then I can't see that screen up there so you'll have to let me know when that PowerPoints up there and whenever you're
ready to begin you can and if if I may Mr chair um I going to turn it over I know that we're having them provide this presentation but I do want to introduce um Mr Robert Taylor Who's one of the principles at Taylor and burns uh he has been a joy to work with I expect Mr Taylor will introduce uh the remainder of the team that is that is with him today um but again I want to turn it over to U Mr Taylor I know that we have a a really
nice presentation in front of us this evening um and to confirm um I'm expecting that board members are going to have probably questions throughout do you want the board to be able to ask questions throughout the presentation or would you that's it fine that's fine if you guys are okay with it I'm fine with it being kind of a ongoing discussion if members have questions all right thank you yeah of course well thank you Mr chair Mr Vice chair um my name is Robert Taylor of Taylor and burns Architects and I'm
joined today by our design team and um I'm going to because I have the mic I'm going to introduce yourselves um one by one starting over on my right uh Dominic Kelly of simps Simpson gumberts and Hagar Structural Engineers and uh Steven Lauder uh architect working under my firm uh with my firm Marley Lynch to my right and uh she also tailor and burns Architects to
my left is Paul Rosen Str I think that's right structural engineer working with Dominic Kelly at Simpson GTS and Hagar and Bill scanland from blw Engineers who's a covering mechanical electrical Plumbing fire protection and fire alarm y so that's our team um we'll all be speaking so it's going to be a little bit of past the mic um if that's okay with you um
and I should we just get going or do we need to wait for Quorum we do not need to wait for Quorum great okay so um we have a slideshow this a visual presentation and um we have maybe nine agenda items next please there we go we'll show you a site plan then
we'll show you some building plans we'll show you some perspectives of what it's going to look like uh then we um we'll talk about this building um both in plans and in renderings then we're going to talk about uh HVAC and plumbing and electrical engineering and we'll talk about structural engineering and we'll talk about cost in that order so um to get started we'll talk first about the
site plan which is the next slide and the site plan on your left is a general plan of lunenberg Village uh near the top of the plan is the uh this building where we are right now a white square and uh across the intersection of massav and Lancaster you can see the Ritter memorial building which is the old library and next to it
on its uh east side is the addition from 1965 the Ritter is from 1909 and the proposed town hall edition is on the west side of the Ritter building and it's a um building uh outlined in black with a gray roof uh along the side of School Street and uh on south of that along School Street is um parking with uh covering a photovoltaic panels that is
a parking lot where the old school used to stand that parking lot will accommodate up to 80 cars uh so in total we're adding about 92 parking spaces into the center of lunenberg in addition to a new town hall and a renovation of the Ritter Memorial and a renovation of this building so that's all depicted on the site plan and it's more detailed on the right side of that plan there the
same components next slide please here you can see the photov volic panel um array that is U proposed for the new parking lot at the end of school Street that's an an alternate to the project you'll see in the cost estimate next slide please we did study another location for the proposed New Town Hall and that would
be on the east side of the Ritter memorial building it's outlined it's that white rectangle in red outline and um the reason it doesn't work there and um the champion of this site plan I have to say uh Mr Tony scalini um really wanted us to look at this and and we did but we believe it doesn't really work and the reasons are is that there's simply insufficient sight area on that side side of
the r Memorial Building to support uh the footprint for a two-story New Town Hall that the program uh dictates and so it would be very crowded against uh Lancaster AV and pushing up towards the corner of Lancaster and massav and pushing I think too close to the r Memorial Building um it would be also twice the distance from the new parking lot on School Street so the amount of walking distance would be doubled
if it were on that side of the street uh another reason is that the the Ritter Memorial um had an addition in 1965 and in order to do a new town hall on that side of the building would require tearing down that rder Memorial from 1965 and that's 1500 square ft of perfectly usable uh space um to rebuild that today at today's construction cost would be north of 750,000
so I think it's a prudent um use of town assets to leave that as it is and improve upon it um they say the the greenest building is the building that already exists and uh so I think the smart thing there is to uh improve that 1965 Edition not tear it down and fourth reason is the the rer memorial building a lovely building from 1909 was built at a time when people uh with disabilities were not really admitted into building um it's uh
half a level above grade and half a level below grade and to tie the new building to it very closely would uh require taking on all of those problems um if we build on the west side of the Ritter Memorial Building then uh we can get enough distance to navigate those changes in level uh gracefully I think with ramps rather than needing um elevators anyway so that's the discussion
of the site plan we now like to take you through building plans and um Steven Lauder is going to take you through those first starting with the floor plan of the proposed new town hall and the rder memorial hi thank you Robert so as we see here in this plan this is an overall plan of the Ritter building on the right side and the new town proposed town hall on the left side the colors of these are representing
some key adjacencies that are being programmed uh and that were thought about in our design of this building so that light green that we're seeing here as a lot of that first floor of the new town hall is regular Town Hall function such as the Town Clerk and d uh Treasurer and the assessor's office um and the blue which is largely in the Ritter building is all School functions uh if we go to the next slide we'll look at the square footages associated with some of these rooms and we'll also zoom
in and look at these more directly uh so the next slide after this one zooms you into the front of this building on Main Street and you're uh greeted as you walk in by a large stair that would bring you up to the second floor and as you continue down the hall towards an elevator and another staircase centrally located that would also bring you up and down to the basement floor for pack and the Upper Floor with different down functions uh as you get to the next slide uh we zoom into the
treasure office and the bullpen area for accountants and treasurers and the town hall this has the Vault that is currently located in the existing town hall and there's a new Vault proposed here that is directly accessed by the Town Clerk and can also be used by the accounting uh treasuring ballpen the next slide will bring us over into the Ritter building on the right side this is the lower floor plan of the Ritter building which is mostly special services and special service director it also houses the ace programs
kitchen and laundry Center um and on the right side after you step up those stairs using either the stairs or The Limited uh use lift would bring you up to the 1965 Edition where the Ace Program is largely taking over this space there's also reception area at the entry of this building for the school program if we go to the next slide we will see a similar diagram that we saw on the first floor for the second floor uh the Deep green here is planning
and business functions of town hall so most of what is behind us here in this room currently would then be relocated into the new town hall with a planning department um and the town manager's office would be on this floor the building commissioner's office is also on this floor if we go to the next floor plan we'll zoom in on some of those spaces as well um and I'm sorry the next one after this as well this will Zoom you in on the north end of this plan where you come up that front stair case into a waiting
area that could be future program space and allows for expansion of offices as they may be needed um walking down the hall there's the building Commissioner's Office was is actually sketched by The Building Commissioner and it was adapted to fit into this plan uh if you go to the next slide we'll look at the southern part of this plan uh talking about the zoning board and also the town manager's office the town manager has had input into this as well and they requested space for uh the executive assistant and the Comm specialist outside
of the office but within their Bullpen and if we go to the next slide here we will look at the right side of this plan which is the Upper Floor level of the Ritter building this has offices dedicated for the school program and centrally located on this plan is the superintendent office which will take place at the front area of that Ritter building overlooking the courtyard space that is Created from the addition of the N the new town hall and the 1965 Edition
on the right I think if we move forward we will now be going into perspective views where I believe oh I'm sorry the basement view um so this is the area where if you go all the way downstairs in the new town hall there's a basement level that is pretty Bare Bones but it is all fully dedicated for Pac and also rooms for electrical and MEP uh Pac has had their uh input on this recently and this plan has actually been reworked to suit exactly what they wanted in this
space um given the restraints of the building footprint I believe that would be it for these floor plans we'll actually take a look inside or to the exterior of this building now we go to the next slide so from this perspective um you can put yourself in the place of someone at the intersection of massav and School Street um and we're looking at sort of the um North view of the new town hall and on our left is the existing Ritter
building and 1965 Edition um as you can see there is a porch that wraps around the um School Street side and massav side of the building sorry about that um and um I think on the next slide um AR Robert's going to speak to some of the architecture of the building as well well that slide there just shows um
how the building might be ornamented on for the 4th of July um with its colonades and um we just thought we would dress it up for an occasion um we understand your 300th anniversary is coming up and uh so it's easy to um bck it with some bunting this is the view from that you would see coming from the parking lot uh coming along School Street and so the building has
a a one-story colonade coming along School Street that is um collecting people from the parking lot bringing you to an entrance along that side of the street and um then the building materials are white claer white trim uh Granite base um a shingled roof a colonade has white round columns and we're proposing
a kind of glassy roof to it to um introduce a lot of daylight into the first floor Windows uh yeah first floor office Windows while also providing some overhead cover uh for foul weather next slide and the materials are um familiar to you we you know call this New England vernacular construction of um simple
frame buildings with familiar materials as I said clabbered um white trim white columns and the next slide I think oh can you go back a couple slides I'm sorry one more or two more yeah so the the design of the building is I'm to EXC I'm going to
interrupt you for a second you can't see the screen and now you've gone back so can you read the title of the slide so we know where you're yes I'm sorry about that town hall from Mass okay thank you just want to know that I'm looking at the same thing you're going to be talking about yeah yeah of course Fourth of July one okay July one or the one or the one before that does matter to simplify things to talk about architecture the building is designed to create a courtyard
that is is um formed by the Ritter building it's 1965 Edition and this new edition and this Courtyard will be a nice green space in the middle of lunenberg village that I think will be a a very welcoming space and the town hall entrance facing massav has um small columns like those coming along School Street for human scale as well as large twostory plasters that give it a Civic quality um um akin to other important
buildings in town and it's a weaving together of those two scales that gives the building its architectural character um otherwise it's um a building that I think will be although new will will feel familiar and feel like it's right at home in lunenberg Village while we're on the slide Mr Taylor can you just speak to the treatment um in front of the uh remov stairwells remove staircase
at the Ritter building thank you yes uh otherwise I would have forgotten to mention that so the as you know the Ritter building lost its staircase at some point which was an important architectural focal point this is uh the area um underneath the Gable that has that round window and uh columned kind of opening we're proposing that the missing staircase be replaced by a landscape feature in this case it's a
kind of um sort of a a a stepped Terrace of um seating that would not be confused to be stairs to get into the building but would be stepped to allow for people to sit at different levels uh in nice weather and enjoy their time in the center of lunenberg thank um so if we advance
to I think it's it's five slides forward that one stop there please it's the interior perspective Marley's going to talk about this one again um so standing here we are um just one step inside of the entry vestibule from that main entry on massav inside the town hall directly on your right you can see the staircase that brings you upstairs to some of those um building department related and planning and
conservation um functions and then straight ahead on your right would be the assessor's office with a transaction counter there you can see someone at and then directly across from that would be the elevator that will again bring you upstairs to those other Town Hall functions or downstairs to the pack and then um as you progress further down the hallway that would be the um town clerk's office and then on our right would be the entry from the school Street next slide please
this view is as if you've just stepped off the elevator and you're looking back towards massav um down at the end of that Hall is a waiting area directly outside of the Board of Health office um but that can also be used by anyone else that may be waiting uh to meet with anyone on this floor on the left um is the Building Commissioner and building department and on our right are um accessible bathrooms the material material pallet that
we're proposing here is um it's practical but I think also uh attractive it'll be um tiled floors with uh a waines coat lower wall that means um wood baseboard and wood tongue and groove siding up to a chair rail that is roughly at window sills for transaction counters as well as Windows into the offices and then above that line above the line of the head of the
door uh we're proposing what we call borrowed light um frames they're interior windows that allow the daylight that's coming in through the outside windows coming filtering through the interior offices and Illuminating the interior Corridor so you get daylight coming in you can see what time of day it is and um I think it also um speaks to the transparency of
local government and um the ability to see into what's going on in the various Town Offices next slide merley you want to take this one so now we're looking at a redeveloped side or it would become a main entry of the 1965 Ritter Edition and this would be accessed primarily by those um School building functions and
this new design includes a sloped walkway that would allow um entry to this side of the building from any one of any abilities there would also be a new um concrete staircase leading up to that as well and the ramp wraps around a new landscape um garden bed that reuses field Stone from the existing Field Stone Wall that's there um and the doors to enter the Ritter Memorial would also become newly accessible because they're currently too close
together um for it to be Ada next slide please before we um if I may before we go to the next slide um I know that we have of course we've seen this several times in the committee um but a couple features that I just want to um focus in on if you wouldn't mind is speaking a little bit about the uh sloped walkway um and just uh and why that
was chosen over a um a ramp style walkway can we go back at slide to look at that talking about the ex yes a r Memorial accessible entry yes there we go yeah so um this entrance is um 4 or 5 ft above parking level maybe
it's three and a half ft but in any case rather than a ramp for handicapp people what we try to achieve here is a true sense of Universal Design meaning that two people Park their cars and one of them is able-bodied and the other person is perhaps pushing a stroller or in a wheelchair they can start at the same location in the parking lot take their different paths and arrive at the same
location at the doors of the Ritter so they have equality in that sense of their access to this building and the person in the pushing the stroller or in a wheelchair can take a sloped walkway that is defined as a walkway of less than 5% grade meaning you don't need handrails and guard rails a ramp is more than 5% and goes up to about 8% in
slope uh and that has a full complement of guardrails and handrails and all that stuff so we're trying to avoid all that stuff and keep it as a sort of landscape feature that provides universal access to the Ritter building thank you that answer your question it did thank you you're wonderful so if we can go forward one slide I think Stephen will talk about the plans for this building thanks Robert so on the left hand side we're looking at the lower
floor of the building we're currently in and it's Redevelopment into a meeting house so on that lower floor we are looking at regrading the sidewalk into the building so that it is completely accessible um for any uh person who may need to get into this building and on this lower level there is multiple conference rooms you can see labeled conference room a b and c where there they will be able to accommodate
uh different sizes of groups and have different sizes of meeting all these will be equipped with anything that they would need for meetings such as these um and there's a staircase on the right side as you walk in and a limited use lift in the back of the building that would bring you upstairs in the same place where there currently is a lift and so on the right side we're looking at the Upper Floor level which is the room we're currently in um this room is being gutted with all the space in
the back all those offices are being removed and the hearing room is being expanded to take this whole area and it's also complemented by a gallery space at the top of the stair where if you're leaving this meeting you can have a quiet conversation in the hallway or people who need to discuss something during me meetings such as this could do this quietly out in the hallway the restroom on my right uh is currently we're looking at changing the direction of the door and also expanding it out to uh match the existing walls this would allow
for a little bit more privacy on this uh in this area and completely separate these two uh zones from meeting to back of house uh if we go to the next slide this is a look at uh the current meeting house so this is the existing condition of what is outside currently where the uh grade slopes grade or the grade slopes towards the building and then there's a step up
at the front entry the next slide will show this regraded uh trying to keep it at that 5% that Robert said which would be a slope walkway to avoid handrails that would be needed um and then also replacing that step in the front so that it's completely pass through without having to step up or bump over a threshold as you walk into the building I believe we can go to the next slide and so now I'm going
to hand it off to our Engineers from SGH Paul and Dominic thank you Stephen hi everyone I'm Paul Rosen Strauss as Stephen said I'm a structural engineer with Simpson GPR and Hagar um I'm joined by Dominic Kelly senior principal at SGH uh next slide please this is when our titles pop up I apologize oliz for not taking the uh
animations out there's no more of those don't worry um so you're all familiar with the buildings that you have uh in order I'll speak about the meeting house the Ritter memorial building and then the town hall addition next slide please call yeah all right sorry to interrupt he's just going to call the municipal building design committee meeting to order now that there's a quorum all right the time is uh 7:47 I
want to call the municipal building design committee to order and I'm seeing in attendance Mr Tom Gray Mr Brian Leighton Mr Greg Roy myself M Ray Jeff and uh Tony scullin bini thank you you can you can keep going thank yeah you're welcome the presentation hadn't come up yet so sure now it's there yes thanks bit of a delay but thank you um so there's a few
major scope items that we will undertake in the meeting house um I'll talk about each of these in a little bit more detail they are the first floor leveling challenge the column end bearing the front entry accessibility Renovations repairs to the access ramp and then some first floor programmatic improvements I'm in the meeting are you yeah I went in on Zoom mute him thank you going and uh and repairs to repairs to
the attic above us next slide please so we understand from speaking with Taylor and burns and from speaking with you that um the first floor is not exactly level and it Creeks when you walk across it and when we were out here as part of our exploratory um observations we of course witnessed that because it's very noticeable and we can address that if you go to the next
slide we have a diagram a little schematic of how we would address that um it's a little hard to see um for everyone in the back but what we would do is we would have a survey conducted to in the basement to understand where exactly the tops of the existing columns are and there are a lot of them if you've been down there you've probably seen um so we would understand where the tops of the columns are we'd use hydraulic jacks to relieve the wood girds uh from on top of
the columns uh one at a time and we would actually take the columns out uh put a an end cap on them to protect them against the moisture that could Wick up the timber we can put we would then put the column back shim the top to make sure that they're in contact you can remove the Jacks and then move along to the other columns and methodically address the um differences in the existing Timber columns height if you go to the next slide please and Paul if I make for a moment um many people
probably have never seen the basement of town hall oh okay and so um as we're looking at this next slide uh that says uh floor leveling and column in bearing protection um so just for those at home um this photo is essentially taken where we're sitting on the stage this is in the basement essentially where we're where I'm currently sitting right now looking um toward the front door correct uh and so those stairs are the stairs that are right outside of the accessory
office and these large tree trunks um essentially are the supports that hold the town hall up M thank you thank you Michael R so I in the previous slide spoke about addressing the differences in the column Heights the uh over time wood can creep and we will also assess the the displacements that have occurred in the middle of the spans and we would use a similar Technique we can we would put a beam under the floor Jo s Jack those
up and install new uh Timber columns to support the middle of the spans also later in the presentation um we'll talk about the changes to the program and in to support the new uh plans for the meeting house we may need to strengthen some of the existing floor joists and that's the horizontal red line on the in on the top of the photo we would call that a sister and at the end of at the end of the project will employ we we
will likely employ a mix of those two strategies to address the improvements that we're that we're doing to the town hall to the meeting house excuse me and then in the photo on the left you see uh something we noticed when we were on site that looks like you're shimming the furniture with uh little shims to address the existing problem next slide please Robert and Steven and Marley talked about regrading the entry to add more concrete so that there is a
smooth transition from the sidewalk into the building that will add more concrete and therefore more weight to the existing structure albeit locally um to support that we will add more sisters uh to support next slide we noticed during our walkr that there was a damaged post on the accessibility ramp just on the side of the building we can address that similar to how we will address
columns in the basement next slide on the first floor uh we are removing some walls um at this point in the design we are unsure if they're partition walls or if they're bearing walls part of the design will include verifying whether the condition of those walls so that when they are removed we will still have structural support for the room we're in now up on level two and where we are removing bearing walls we'll put in new Timber girds and new
Timber posts down to the basement as we are doing the interior demolition we can address the squeaking of the floors by screwing the existing wood floor down to the joists below next slide please in the Attic we'll repair the truss that's on the left side of the screen there are also some uh structural elements that have deteriorated over the years
and those will need to be replaced next slide so those were the main points of Renovations in the meeting house in the Ritter building uh we're doing much less invasive work next slide please to support the program we're taking out two walls on in the middle and on the top of the Ritter uh basement
one of them is not a bearing wall so there's minimal work that needs to be done there one of them uh may have bearing elements inside if you go to the next slide it's a little tough to see but the photo on the bottom right shows there's like diagonal drywall um and some brick behind there was actually an old stair there and so you can see there's two beams we just need to verify that those beams are supported prior to taking out that
wall in the Attic of the Ritter uh things are generally in decent shape we just noticed some uh evidence of moisture staining so we'll apply a protective coating where we observed that to protect it next slide that brings us to the new construction to the new town hall uh I have put the outline of the Town Hall in yellow it's just to the I believe that's the south of the ex
existing Ritter building next slide please there's two major foundational challenges with the new addition the proximity to the street and the depth of the basement to support the pack program means that you'll need temporary uh supportive excavation to install that Foundation next slide similarly at the interface between the New Town Hall and the existing Ritter building the depth of the foundation means we are actually going to
go below the building so we'll need to install pit underpinning that's what we call it to support the building as you dig under it next slide and if we can just comment on that last slide sure um and I know that we've all looked at this um before but the footprint of the basement uh if you can just speak a little bit to the footprint of the basement and what's not being excavated as per this slide uh just for any Clarity mhm my understanding is that
the bottom right portion of the new addition will not be excavated as part of that am that correct yeah yeah that's right that part of the uh new addition would have foundations deep enough for frost walls 4 feet down below grade and they would step to the depth of uh approximately 12 ft below grade for the pack area so that part of the building closest to Ritter would have shallower
foundations so I think that the support of excavation um is minimally necessary but to be careful we might be able to refine it but we want to make sure that we're covered at this stage for sure uh next slide please the structural system itself for the for the new town hall very standard for this area it'll be will have concrete foundations the building frame uh
will be steel we will use steel braced frames for stability you can see an example on the bottom right photograph um the floors will be concrete slab on composite deck um the elevator pit typical concrete wall with a masonry shaft wall and then to save some cost at the roof level we'll you we'll use steel joist roofs steel joists with some steel girders and an untopped steel deck so no concrete on the roof
to save some cost and save some weight next slide yeah so thank you for having us and uh yeah we appreciate it looking forward yeah of course so bill scanland is going to is uh the mechanical systems and in both buildings are similar so uh we would recommend new fire protection new distribution new new sprinkler heads per code uh our plumbing with the same thing with new fixtures new piping um per per code Heating and Cooling would be through uh heat pumps with
u ventilation through uh energy recovery and lastly is electrical new service new panels new wiring uh devices uh lighting and and fire alarm so really new systems throughout both buildings and if I may um one of the um understandings that we have is that the guidance that has come from the governor's office is that public construction needs to eliminate or minimize fossil fuels uh and so you know just so that way we get it out there that the plan is that all three
buildings would be off of fossil fuels as per the guidance in Massachusetts correct so Heating and Cooling we we would look at heat pump systems which are all electric brf so high efficiency heat pump systems okay thank you yep all right thank you and if that's the end of the presentation I'll open it up to one more slide yeah we do have one more SL hav talk about money yeah I saw that there this is the money shot yeah um our cost estimate was completed just uh two
days ago really and it incorporated or it it's an independent estimate uh that means we did not uh cook up these numbers they were done by uh Peter Bradley at pmnc they've estimated other projects here in lunenberg and we've been using them for over 10 years um we have found that their estimates are accurate in the sense that they their estimated cost usually lands in the middle of the
bid pack they're not estimating to be the lowest bid they're not estimating to be the highest bid they usually are pretty much in the middle of the bid pack and so excuse me let me talk about these the trade cost that means the actual cost for construction plumbers Carpenters building materials and labor for the meeting house renovations is um I was
going to test my eyesight $2.6 million for the Ritter Memorial Renovations it's uh about $3 million 2 million sorry thanks better eyesight to my right and the town hall is uh up near $7 million site work is about $1.7 million in trade costs these total up to 13 a little more than 13.4 $4 million
the um that's trade costs now on top of that we need to think about um contingencies for what we don't know because we're at the early a uh stages of design and we're talking about older buildings and also escalation our cost estimator put those contingencies at 12% for what we don't know and 3% for escalation assuming that this project would go into construction Within in about a year um talking among
the team we believe the first of those contingencies is maybe a little bit low so that's a number here that is somewhat soft but it bring just using the estimators numbers that brings us up to uh $15.3 million then there is uh the cost for the general contractors General condition
bonding um Insurance overhead and profit uh brings up a total uh to 17.4 million that's total project oh I'm sorry 15 17.8 17.8 thanks um my glasses don't help at this distance it's um $17.8 million that's for the general contractors that's what we think the middle of the bid pack would be and on
top of that you will need to um hire a design team I imagine you'll um do a whole new stage of interviews for that as well as uh owner project manager according to Massachusetts law um those costs we estimate to be uh somewhere around an additional 15 to 20% that brings it total cost of the project
up to somewhere between 21 and $22.3 million that's an estimate it's not a promise it's not a hard bid just it's an estimate I want now there are other parts to this that we have talked about and we're uh we asked the estimator to consider them as alternates that means you uh choose to take them or not the first would be the PV the photo
volic canopy over the parking lot estimated cost about $1.8 million you could build a parking lot and not put those in um save them for a rainy day um the basement slab in the meeting house in this building right now this building has a dirt floor down in the basement covered by sheet of plastic we recommend that it be um covered with a concrete slab sometimes known as a rat slab but it's like 3 in thick
of concrete that will um keep Vermin out that's why it's known as a rat slab but it will also uh can be constructed with waterproofing layers so that it uh keeps moisture down that would help prolong the life of the wood frame structure that is down there and then finally the third alternate is for electroic uh Chargers you for electric vehicle Chargers the building code requires that if you build a parking lot
for I think it's 84 parking spaces 21 of them need to have electric vehicle Chargers um the code requires that you put in the conduit and pull boxes to support that in other words the electrical infrastructure but you don't necessarily have to put in the Chargers themselves under the building code um to put in 21 vehicle Chargers would
cost $280,000 estimated cost um and that would be a choice whether or not you want to do that you could say we'll do five and we'll do you know 16 down the road once we see how many electric vehicles are driving around lunenberg but um so those are alternates in the cost estimate and um that's all we have for you um thank you very much for bringing us in it's nice to be able to show our work to the public appreciate it yeah of
course thank you all so much I'll open it up to questions and comments from the board now have a couple questions first thing is in this room I in this building there was talk about the first floor squeaking but anybody who unless you levitated to your seat you walked on this floor too but I didn't see any mention of removing the squeaking from the second floor now that we're walking through uh we
AG I agree that there's some squeaking here and we can certainly include that in the design but that's not included in what we're seeing I don't believe so at this point I think we should update that okay um the approach the approach would be the same except you can remove the finishes and then screw down the sheathing or the or the boards to the framing below yeah simar one person I would think that if we're going to renovate and do the whole
building it would be silly to come up to a building that has second floor that had squeaking problems after $2 million were put into it so agreed um I did notice the kind of odd shape that the town hall addition has can somebody speak to how it got that shape of two kind of offset rectangles and it has kind of a do dog leg to it and doesn't seem to be enough to
make it architecturally interesting it just looks odd to me yeah happy to address that um the building is shape to create a courtyard um between well I'll call it a qu but it's actually a you know a c-shaped open space framed by um the Ritter the 1965 addition to the Ritter and the new proposed town hall and um so it'd be a nice open Civic space and
that um we didn't start with the building um having that doglike shape but once we began to look at the shaping of the outdoor space we thought that the connection between the New Town Hall and the Ritter should be a 90° angle for Symmetry and configuration of that space um however School Street does not meet Mass AB at a 90° angle and so to take fullest advantage of the site along
School Street the building skews over to begin to uh follow the geometry of School Street and it also by getting wider on the southern end gives us more square footage inside the building walls um the bend is followed by the colonade along School Street um and um to my eye I thought that the Bend along School Street actually made that colonade more interesting than
just a straight you know bowling alley shot um I noticed oh so two things I noticed in in two of the buildings the the Ritter building and this building after renovation we're still going to have a limited use lift I don't know how different than the one we have I'm assuming updated in technology
but still similar is that correct yes okay so again that would raise eyebrows to me that we spend all this money renovating it and we have a lift that people have complained about for years in the fact that you know it's not a normal elevator it's difficult to operate and I think if I remember people's wording correctly who had to use it made them feel less than a full
citizen so and I I I don't think I'm mischaracterizing what they said so I just again I don't know what the addition would be to make a real elevator in those areas but it does strike me as something that we would be replacing something that we wouldn't be replacing something we just be updating something that people have objected to in both places for many years well um let me address that if I may the um limited use limited access elevator is allowed by the building code for
existing buildings that are less than three stories tall and it's to promote access to buildings without doing a massive renovation um so it allows you to put in a elevator that has a smaller footprint that's the most distinguishing characteristic of a Lula elevator and they don't require a full pit all the way down to grade um you can um build them basically off of a floor with a small um indentation in the floor so they
would be uh it would allow us to upgrade that equipment but roughly follow the same footprint maybe a little bit larger but not bring an elevator hoist way all the way down to the basement with its own Foundation if we were to do that in both buildings we would add something like half a million dollars to the cost of the project each building or combined about 250 in each building above what our estimate shows and it would also require more
reconfiguration of the floor plan so for example over at the Ritter building when you go in there's a stair that um brings you up or down According to which level you want to go and then the elevator is next to that stair so if we were to put in a full elevator not a Lula lift the stair would have to get squeezed and completely rebuilt in order to accommodate the larger footprint of a fully a full elevator okay
uh uh I will say and I don't you know again building codes are building codes about getting away from fossil fuels and that's fine except most of our electric comes from fossil fuel still but that aside I will say that heat pumps you do realize that this is uh probably don't because I don't think any of you probably uh live in the unit the the wondrous the wondrous and the wonderful Land of Oz that is the Unitil service
area which has like one of among the highest utility rates in the country I think if you illiminate Hawaii which is forced to have its own you know people just look at our Facebook pages what people are paying uh I can attest last year you know that when we we tried an all electric at my own house it was incredible it I couldn't believe the pricing so these buildings with the
weather we get up here all electric I I just has I I'd love to see what the operating cost assumptions are going to be for this uh with only electric heat pumps uh in the summer they're great but in the winter uh and so that that's something that we can look at as we get further into the design and again these these uh heat pumps are variable speed now high efficiency modulating compressors modulating fans and also energy recovery so
we're ventilating um we have um again just better air quality throughout and to your point though we we'll model it with different systems um that you're familiar with and and you know we'll have to make a decision at that point but our baselines are for a lot of our buildings throughout Massachusetts you know they are heat pump based okay I don't think I have any questions other any other architectural or engineering questions um at this time Mr chair thank you I want to thank you for the presentation I also want
to thank you I mean I've been able to follow some of the municipal building design meetings but not the two most recent ones which were likely some of the most important ones um can you talk a little bit more about the pack space um because I know that that was a direction from the bo from this board to the municipal building design to provide that plan and just talk a little bit more about um what you proposed for those of us that didn't get to see your initial presentation I saw you know you mentioned it briefly here but just
that' be great sure yeah and when we started we thought that the pack um would be its own freestanding building um south of the proposed town hall edition um in a sort of one story Barn likee structure um and once we began to understand their program we realized everything they were looking for Vi vibration free um no windows we could accommodate that in the basement much more economically and
so uh we talked to pack about how much ceiling height they needed they that 12 ft is adequate for their Studio needs and then um we went through several plan iterations in fact the plan that you saw tonight was generated this morning based on feedback from p uh pack of plans that they saw last week so it's accommodating what they need in the most economical way
um that we can see and it follows their program exactly according to what they say they want in terms of room configuration okay so this is meeting all of their needs based on what they've presented to you um yes I mean Mr Walker is uh is here with us this evening but um yes the pack area was uh we provided there um there have been a couple iterations of this design but the most recent
um was uh sent off to uh the chair of the pat committee as well as the um staff member and they did get back and confirm uh the floor layout that we're looking at today great um I'm not sure whether this is for you or for you Mr chair of the of the committee but um has there been any public safety input into the design in terms of Safety and Security and emergency response to the building there has um so the chief the interim chief of police made a a couple of comments um some of them were not uh integrated into the plan um so
one of them was whether or not we intend to use this building as an emergency shelter I I think that um the answer largely is no here and so Emergency Shelters need generators uh we you know discussed the idea of a generator with the team and I think that based on the site plan um you know there was um the generators generators need to be large and they need to be exercised weekly and so putting a large generator in this
area with residences nearby I think that they thought was that there would be a negative implication on the abutters um and um I think using the pandemic as an as a guide in which most staff members in this building and Ritter worked remotely um and we made sure that the um public safety building you know uh was open and those Public Safety functions so uh I think that the Vision here is that uh in some kind of if we
were in another covid type situation that with these service Windows it enables the staff to be able to continue to operate in the building uh with some precautions put in place by the town manager um but it allows staff to remain in the building um and again have that barrier there uh for the public if needed but um the other request from Public Safety was uh was if we were going to use it as a um emergency building that it needed to have showers and Stu stuff like that so those things I think were not added
into this Vision um because the intent is that it would not um replace any of the other emergency buildings in town I think I thank you but I was thinking more along the lines of Safety and Security you know in the the way our unfortunately our country is sometimes with you know shooter active shooter situations things like that I mean we're looking at adding safety film to some of our school building windows has any of those considerations been addressed in terms of making sure that the facility is safe and secure um I would say that on a deep level no that at this stage
in the design process I think the goal is to get to uh a a product that we are generally agreeable to um in terms of design adjacencies layout I think that we did have an understanding that we would be employing a card access system to limit access throughout the building and that was understood but some of those some of that level of detail uh I think is expected in the next iteration uh in which you really dig into all right you know we have Windows here does it make sense to put in some window film
uh as you know I I do have a a background uh in physical security and I think that going through this process something that the Architects were mindful of was multiple modes of ESS um that when you are in any space that there's multiple ways to get out of that space and then also controlling access into that space that that was I think integrated into the design okay awesome I think I've got one more um um again it's for you Michael
right um in our last meeting here last update you gave you were going to have some meetings with staff um have you had all those meetings and like has a school been I know that they've been dealing with some issues with their the superintendent stepping down but have have you met with all of the other departments and gotten their input and feedback into this yes uh so we received a lot of feedback from staff a lot um and um and so I think when we met with staff in the department head meeting I think there were 29 request or so uh that I emailed over it could have been
30 but it was somewhere between 28 and 30 requests for modifications and revisions um the planning department um excuse me the Building Commissioner kind of overlaid the section of the floor that they have and Drew out how they wanted it to look and that was fully Incorporated um meeting with the school committee uh they had um they excuse me meeting with the superintendent's office they similarly Drew out uh you know the floor plan and marked up all the iterations and changes that
they wanted that was then for I met with them I made additional comments in my meeting with them and then that was also forwarded uh to the team um we did get um you know I think that there's still going to be a need for some minor tweaks um but generally the superintendent did ask for additional revisions after the last round and those were also incorporated into uh what you see today so there was a lot of Engagement uh I think with I know that in this round of design the there was minimal direct engagement between the
architect uh architectural team and the staff because when we did this the first time there was a lot of Engagement between the architectural team and the staff and they met with all the teams individually uh several times to identify what the space needs are so what's in the background of this and it and and it will be in the presentation that we supplement Municipal buing design supplements is that analysis of um current space u requested space and
presented space and so you know again it's not in the presentation here today but what generally it is is is it represents about a 20% growth in most of these areas that a critical aspect of this was future proofing um and planning for future proofing but also not wanting to have any empty offices and so you know in the design I know that Mr Taylor spoke to a couple of things um but for example um to to to feed into I'm saying the some of the specific feedback that
we received from the uh land use Department again they kind of re redrew what they what they wanted some of the specific feedback from the planning department was about that Bullpen area um wanting to have the conservation agent in a separate office um wanting to have that conference you know table you know kind of there so that way staff could be separate um wanting to for those offices to be shared conservation and what is now the land use um some of the specific feedback from the uh Financial um accounting and the uh tax
collector office was that they wanted to be collocated they also wanted to have visibility from their offices into the windows and so the design incorporates glass basically a glass wall for both the tax collector and for the um um Town accountant so that way wherever they're sitting they have visibility over those windows they also asked for an a second window so right now we have one window for a tax CER and a accounting functions the accounting functions typically are like Town departments um that need
to interact with the accountant it's not generally that's not a public thing and so there is now a secondary window for that accounting function so that way the staff member doesn't have to wait in line for 15 minutes to be seen which then provides a benefit to the community the secondary benefit as well is that if there's a queue in that line for the accounting that there's a second window for the team to be able to assist other clients with so some of those things you know I I I think as we went through this those were some of the things that
were considered uh the school committee as we know had many modifications uh to um to the building that that they're in uh we spoke a lot about the doors and the access and again we know I think we've presented this as you know two separate buildings here it's a town hall it's a Ritter School building but they happen to connect and they happen to connect for a couple of reasons egress security reasons also shared amenities you get to share copy areas you get get to share break rooms uh and then also bathroom calculations we assume that in the
morning most people are coming in the office around the same time given where the parking lot is it enables people to come into the building from that School Street entrance and pass through to get into the school side for the staff and that again gets them out of the rain it speaks to what we were talking about early on whereas if you have the staff coming in off their Lancaster a entrance only you know you're just putting people on and then I think some of the other things that we thought about was the walkway that you know staff wanted a and I think we wanted it as well but a covered walkway um so that way they
can get from the building get from the parking lot into the building but you know not just that there in the rain um and so some of those things I think were incorporated into into the plan I think that's all I have for now other than I really appreciate all of the work then I know that this was a short turnaround time and you guys have done a great job listening to feedback um and providing these updates um and I'm I'm really excited and hopeful that hopefully the town will move this project forward and thank you also to the committee same thing all the time and effort and work that you you've all put in and something
really cool I know that Mr I don't I don't have any questions for the team but something that's really cool uh is if we you know in the plan for the uh superintendent's office and we don't need to necessarily scroll back to it but I'll anyone looking at this so we can see in that in the superintendent's office which is which is right above where the stairs were removed at the Ritter building um that we learned that that what is on the right side of the office is a closet that the left side is is a a time capsule um and so uh which we I didn't know that but that there's
a time capsule uh in that wall area when do we get to open it well I mean that's something that gets discussed in this project year um and with the historical commission uh and or or more so this historical society on this one um but you know it certainly creates an opportunity during renovation to uh crack that open and and see what's in it he been there for 100 years anything else you want to say no no all right well um I have a bunch of notes that I can go through it's mostly on like design stuff but I want to say I think I've watched most of your
presentations and it was really awesome watching you guys iterate on this plan and I just want to say that I thought you guys Incorporated all of the feedback that you got very well and it was great to watch you guys present Solutions at like the next meeting for every single thing that people brought up so I just really wanted to call that out because it didn't go unnoticed um so I'll just read through some of my notes here um the first one is 90 two parking spots added to Town Center I think that's incredible um one question I
did have so additional people that are moving into this building it's just going to be the schools right they're the only new people that are moving into it cuz town hall is just going to be shifted over to the new town hall schools are moving in it would it would to clarify it would be all the current offices that happen currently in town hall and you know what is essentially Town Hall B which is a Ritter building sure so all of those functions and then uh what currently is at TC pasal for the school district but in terms of like
new people who are coming over who don't already have parking in town center it's really just schools right uh I think there I think that maybe it's fair to say yes to that however it's a shift um that right now I think we all see how busy massav looks during the day uh it shifts a lot of that parking that's currently here that's the staff in the building and moves it to a parking lot across the the way which then creates better parking for the eagle house uh creates better parking for the teen
center and and then again meetings that happen uh that could happen here during the day it provides better parking if staff were to say hey let's have a a meeting at 11:00 we're to have different vendors from outside come in um right now it's a little tight and so it really does kind of open that up a bit more how many School Employees are moving over I have to go to the spreadsheet that has that which I don't have I don't need specific numbers like an estimate we do have on our on our space needs analysis we have a staff count uh I just don't happen to have that in okay that's fine
um I also just wanted to say like I agreed with your reasons for the spot that you put the new town hall in uh I think it's the best location for it and I agree that it doesn't make sense to tear down the existing addition and then rebuild there um I really appreciate how you guys were able to shrink that walkway connector um to minimize wasted space um and that's sort of how you ended up with the office space in the back and the shape of that uh rear part of the building um I liked the new space for the Ace Program how you moved that
I thought that made a lot more sense um and that reception area that you added I thought that was really good design um one thing that I noticed um is like that L shape for the it office and then uh the facilities office as well has like like a initial walkway entrance and then there's like a maybe sort of like a second office inside of that um I didn't know if you wanted to speak especially to like the It Suite of like how that space would be used sure I can speak to that a little bit so on both of those
cases and this is the first floor um so the facility U manager requested storage and so what this creates is an office area and then also a storage room for that and similarly in the it Suite that it's storage space MH okay um and then just a note too with like the renderings of the furniture that was added at some point made it like a lot easier to understand the sizes of the offices because at first I was looking at it and I couldn't tell if they seemed like kind of small and claustrophobic um like especially
I made a note of like the parks and wreck office at one point cuz it's sort of in the rear and it's at that angle and I couldn't tell like how small it would have felt um but it seems like they're actually like pretty sizable looking at those um the renderings in there um I like those waiting areas that you added in the hallway and then there was that one sort of internal somewhere to like one of the offices Flor yeah on the second floor that was all staff request okay good to know um I like that you added
that second entrance as well along the side of the building and I think that potentially could mitigate some public safety concerns because there was like another entrance and exit to that building on the other side um thank you for coming of the plan to accommodate the pack studio um you guys didn't originally plan on having that basement space at all did you or did I miss that that was mainly to accommodate the pack request it it was but it also provided some opportunity here um in which it allows us you know the first floor of a building is Prime real estate um you know
and it allows us to move when we see the designation me mechanical electrical Plumbing it allows us to take those mechanical rooms and get them off of the first floor um not that uh with the an electrical system you expect a lot of noise to come out of these things um but you know again it just takes that Prime real estates and puts it in a lower level where it's not S Prime uh which then creates more opportunity for office space um to be on the first floor okay yeah makes sense uh so for the exterior I love that courtyard Green Space
I think that would add a lot of value to the town center I likeed your approach to addressing the remove steps and how it's functional and I remember watching at some point you guys were discussing how you can't add stairs back because then you would have to include a ramp at some point and that just isn't really feasable didn't really make sense um I really like that colonade that walkway I just like the design of it um I made a note that the ramp in into the Ritter building the addition uh excuse me is great I liked how it really was incorporated in that design doesn't really
just look like a ramp it's you know into the actual design that you have there um the meeting house uh I did note as well but the second floor creaking cuz I did pick up on that as well um it's really hard for me to imagine walking into this building one day and not hearing creaking um and I think it's actually really impressive and I really enjoyed listening to you guys talk about how you would address some of the structural uh challenges in this building how you would do those Renovations which is really interesting on
a historical building like that um I made a note of this as well thank you for addressing the poorly designed restroom that's on this floor in this meeting room nobody likes that bathroom there like that with the door right there um Michael Ray can you talk to just future proofing how did you do your um space needs for the Departments and how did you account for growth sure um so I think that um at a future meeting um I will need to um go over a presentation from the municipal building design committee that goes into a lot of
those numbers that way we can see it from a numerical perspective but if we can go in the slide um deck and if we're able to go back to the slide that identifies as uh the easier ones for me are the colored ones uh plan rder Memorial and Town Hall I believe this is like slide number probably five or six or so and I can um maybe the next one that has a square footage is probably going to be a little better and then we can talk to this one a little bit so
what the committee did um a while back was again meeting with the different U Town departments and understanding what the current needs are looking at current storage uh there was a lot of interplay a lot of back and forth um one of the things that the committee was pretty committed to um was that the town needs to digitize their records um you know the initial requests that came in were quite substantial for record storage um from both the school department and from the uh Town manager um there was a
lot of push back from the committee on that um because you know you're building Prime real estate for records um and you know I know I've been criticized for the way that I say things sometimes so I want to be a little careful with how I word this um but one of the things that I recognize is that we have a lot of storage at TC pasal building sitting in about 9 to 11,000 square ft um and that there's no real inventory of what's there there um there's no real record retention policy for what we have and
so some departments are really on top of what records they have and other departments are not um but replicating what I consider to be largely bad habits uh is not a good plan um operational decisions um you know if they can be you have to minimize the impact of operational decisions on Capital expenses or Capital costs and it's an operational decision to not have a record retention policy that keeps records minimal and digitized that is
operational and so on the capital side it doesn't make a lot of sense um if we don't agree with that operational decision um to try to mimic it and replicate it so one of the one of the features that you see throughout the building is that we did look at existing storage current records what needs to be maintained now for day-to-day type use and we weren't very open to replicating long-term record storage within the building um when you look at certain offices like for example the um um on
the and I'm on the first floor here so when you look at like the assistant Town Clerk and Rister office they're currently sitting in about 4 um50 Square ft and this shows a growth to almost 800 square ft uh if you go into the town clerk's office they have records floor to ceiling I mean it is just jam-packed um they don't have enough room to do their job and so part of this was meeting with the town clerk previously understanding the needs of the registar under understanding what those needs were so that way it could be
accommodated uh for um when we look at the Bullpen area for the treasuring we have square footages here Town accountant 172 payroll clerk the entire town accounting uh functions down there are currently sitting in about 600 square ft and so what you see here is again about a 20 to 30% growth in that space um so that way you have more room for current employees you also have the ability in the future to add an additional employees uh into that space um and
then you know um if we go over and just look at the school side um you know the school's in a unique position because they're using old classrooms that are all about 1,000 square feet um and so the utilization of space over there is not optimal um generally the the as you as you look at how much square footage a typical person is going to need in an office uh the answer is about 100 sare ft uh when you start putting in you know transactions Windows it bumps to 135 um you know and when you start adding in conference rooms it gets
even bigger um so what the school Department's probably the exception uh in which their current um square footage when we assess their needs we assess them at about 26 27 100 square ft um this building is close to 6,000 square ft um and so you have certain things here you have um uh special service director office you know twers office that's a little shy of 200 sare ft um you have a um a a laundry room that's again I'm on the first floor here looking
at this stuff um you have a a bullpen this was requested by the um school department where you have kind of these entrances and areas for the staff and and if we go to the second floor other Ritter building um if I can maybe my hands are a little wet here all right let me get to it um when you get into the second floor of the Ritter building let me just get to that that slide here it's a couple more slides down where you also see additional
future proofing is like Board of Health that office gets twice as big as it currently is we have what's listed as a waiting area uh this could be potentially two more offices in the future um one of the the record storage uh that's identified now as being in the Building Commissioner assistant building inspector area you know speaking with the building um commissioner one of the comments he's made is that in you know roughly four years they haven't filed one piece of paper everything's digital that and so they're already in a
digital mindset and so there are some records that they currently have we're calling out about 200 square ft for it um but that provides potential for that to again be two more offices down the line if that department grows as communities grow normally where you start seeing Town departments grow are in the things that support the growth such as inspectional Services um inspectional Services is the common name for like building Commissioners building inspect that kind of stuff usually that's a department that you see growth in the other department you see growth in
is in the planning department um because people are planning projects so so some of the thought was if we grow where will we grow and we need to make sure that we're showing the growth in those areas um and so that I think is part of the plan I mean I don't I mentioned at a at a meeting with the um with the Council of Aging uh yesterday about population Trends generally and and it's worth mentioning I'll give the the brief summary here population Trends generally in terms of where is population going
because you know we talk about our community and how we've experience this high level of growth which we are one of the fastest growing towns in Massachusetts but you know when we look at the fact that we've had a 20 roughly percent growth in our population little more than that over the last 20 years but then you look at the school population which has decreased over that same period of time you know what does that speak to it speaks to what is true which is that we're about to hit our peak of 18year olds so we often talk about U population as a large number but in
terms of who is turning 18 we're in a window right now where we're in about a four or five year some people will say six-year window in which we're going to hit our Peak 18y olds in which they're the most 18y olds we're going to get for the foreseeable future and then it will start to drop what that means is that you know while the globe generally is having a population decline that the country like America which has high immigration we're not having that decline yet we're going to see it about
2080 um but most communities or most not communities most countries will see it about 2040 and so we are kind of getting into this bell curve if you will in which our population is probably going to maximize in terms of student body population in the in the next decade and then population at large will become uh older um as we live longer um but again you know so I think that the growth that we are in that personally digging into
this given what I do professionally um I think the growth that we're expecting is likely over the next couple of decades and then we will basically max out and that's the projection broadly now if anyone wants to disagree with me you're certainly welcome to um but that's my analysis as I understand it from my profession all right thank you and it looks like a lot of work went into that so thanks for that answer and that was it for me those are the notes that I had so thank you all so much CH I do have two additional questions if I can I I'm looking over the floor plan but I
was trying to locate the finance director's office but I don't see a finance director's office sure if you go into the um first floor it's identified as the town accountant uh the finance director is finance director toown accountant uh right but if you look at Future growth if we're going to talk about future growth that that was put together the town accountant previous Town accountant was made Finance director and then of of course with the foreseeable idea that the finance director would not be forever the town accountant I mean they have very
different skill sets eventually and that we would need another office so I just point that out to the committee um that that is eventually the the the direction that will go one would presume the other thing I noticed is I don't see in the school side of things I don't see a conference room at all I I'm I mean I'm assuming that the superintendent and and
special services or business director HR Director have meetings with people where were they where will they meet sure so to to answer that there aren't there are no conference rooms in terms of an enclosed conference room at all in the entire building um it is um the design is that most of those meetings will occur in the meeting house um and that is why we have you know um different size conference rooms in this building so what you have is you have the
um superintendent has a uh in her larger office uh has a space to be able to meet with different members of her team um you have a you know some of these these offices on the second floor which are the offices that typically will meet with like a family um that they are a little bit bigger to be able to accommodate that and then you also have what the school requested was like Reception Area uh which when when parents come in to register their kids to fill out different types of paperwork um that that they wanted that kind of
private room for that but I think the design anticipates that just as staff kind of walk across the street now that that will continue um but that it will be a lot less um because it's only going to be for those kind of scheduled meetings okay I will note that people comment that they hate having to walk across the street especially when it gets to weather like this or when it gets raining and snowing and everything so but I I understand and the answer thank you any other questions at this point all right well
I want to thank you all so much for all the work that you guys put into this and for coming in tonight I know some of you drove from Boston right so thank you for spending your Tuesday evening with us here in Lunenburg and thank you for all the work that you guys have done well thank you for uh this opportunity to present our work um we enjoyed all of our meetings with people in lunenberg and we're happy to be here tonight and look forward to more
in the future I if before we say our final goodbyes if I may Mr chair U the new town manager has has had the opportunity to look at this presentation and if I can just solicit any feedback or questions or comments um yeah so thank you um and to the members of the committee thank you for your work I've watched some of your meetings from afar um I'm just kind of getting first blush at this I haven't even been next door to see the r bit olding yet um in all fairness but I think that you've obviously listened to the feedback that um
has been elicited from staff and the public um and I'd like to see how this progresses as we go forward thank you and I also want to I think the committee last night in detail uh think the team that we work with in detail last night but I also just want to publicly thank them again um you know this was a momentous task to undertake uh in a relatively short period of time but I was confident that we we had all the information we needed uh to get through this stage of the design and and with the understanding that you know with
how the state requires us to build buildings that there's uh a lot more money that's going to be on the table uh for More Design work uh to really take this concept and and uh find tunity even more but I want to thank the team um it's it's a little rare and and I want to say this publicly in a schematic design phase of any project to have Structural Engineers um to have mechanical engineers that is and Beyond what is certainly expected or required but in this case of working with uh historic buildings we thought it was necessary
to be able to have a a accurate cost estimate for what was needed to really get these buildings to function and to work and so I want to uh publicly thank Mr Taylor um Robert for his work uh I've gotten to know Marley and Steph a little bit more uh in this process they've certainly been a joy to work with and uh I said it yesterday Steven's probably going to appreciate the the phone calls that he was not going to be getting from me every every other day uh or so uh but it's been a real joy to work with you guys
and and our you know if we can move this forward and I certainly hope that we do uh it will certainly be attributable to the design that we have the renderings you know people who are in this field every day we can look at a floor pan it makes total sense to us and we could we could we can visualize spaces um but I think there's a real skill in being able to in our heads and put it onto paper so that way other people um can look at something and it makes sense to them and I think that the quality of these of the floor plans the quality of the renderings the quality of the work that
went into how um you know on the structural side the mechanical side the how and then you know people haven't seen this cost estimate but it's like 30 something pages long I mean it's it's a very detailed cost estimate and this enables us to be informed consumers on our end so I want to thank the team fully um you know I want to thank Dominic for his work think Paul as well I want to think Bill and I want to get the names right of course I know Marley and stepen and uh and thank you so much Robert for your help you're welcome thank
you yeah of course all right well thank you all so much I hope you all have a good night thanks for coming in thanks so much for being here and if I may Mr chair adjourn our meeting um The Time Is Now 8:45 and I move to end the meeting of the municipal Bild and design committee all right we have a motion in a second uh this will be a roll call vote we need to take Mr Gray who's on teams or Zoom um Mr Leighton yes um Mr Roy Mr scullen
brini Mr Gray hi and an i for myself Municipal boning design is adjourned at 9 8:45 thank you all right great I want to sure go ahead just going to wait for everyone to exit first hold on hold on all right up next we have appointments ratifications and resignations we have the ratification of the Town manager's appointment for
a videographer for Public Access cable Lily marble yes Mr chairman I'd like to tell the board a little bit about Miss Marble uh Lily marble is a senior at brandise University where she's studying English film television interactive media and creative writing she has experience in media specifically writing directing and camera work in short film she is the currently the production maner manager and event coordinator in the brandise television club and she is enthusiastic and professional and enjoys the details
involved with video projects she was chosen for the position based on her experience eagerness to learn and her creative approach to videography her references state that she is patient professional extremely reliable and has great customer service skills and we are looking forward to bringing her on to the pack team um and she'll be working approximately 2 to 10 hours per week awesome any questions for the town manager nope I would move that we ratify the town manager's appointment of the videographer
for Public Access cable and Lily marble second any additional discussion those in favor say I I those oppose no motion passes unanimously Mr chair I have a quick question about uh so what is the next step with with the what we just got presented I didn't know we were going to quickly go into something else so sure are we going to be bringing this up because now that I'm assuming this is at least at this point for the
next few weeks immutable like this is the plan we're going to be dealing with that's my understanding as well so that's I wanted to get some guidance on that from Michael Ray since he's the chair of the municipal building design committee but it seems like this is the plan that's going to be moving forward so so I mean I just want to know what our next steps are I I ask questions only that had to do with the Architects right and and the design work I didn't speak to anything else about it mhm but I wanted you know I guess most importantly and I guess I'll say this
because the town manager who was here all of uh what you know 11 hours was asked asked their opinion on this I would ask that that that she take a really good look at this I'd like to know and and get feedback directly to this board from the employees and the staff both School side and town side about you know what they feel about it too yeah I think that's fair it's important for us to hear that staff feedback too and I'm sure Jen is going to jump right into all of it um I
did make a note by the way um you did mention that you want to have a presentation at some point from the municipal building design committee to this board again so in terms of next steps we'll probably schedule that um do you want to just speak to what our next steps are and what you think that we need to really review at this point moving forward yeah um so I think that there's a lot of questions uh that we have to answer as a committee going into the why right why did we why did the select board make the decision to create
this um committee um what is the problem that we're trying to solve um how are how does this solve the problem and I think those are just some Basics that I think the committee has a responsibility to give to the public um and then what do we expect out of the next iteration of design um you know and I think we have to be clear that you know I think that anyone watching this process and for me it's I'm probably more comfortable with it than others but watching the process and if you look at like that first design to where we are
it's it's a process um and so you know what comes next in the process is if this is approved by town meeting it's construction documents and construction documents you know it it takes a concept and it turns it into reality like one thing that you don't see in the design today is like where are the wet Stacks going to be like there's going to be columns you got to get water through this building there's going to be areas you know so right now looking at mostly squares for offices but there's going to be bump outs for when the power has to move to the building where the water has
to move to the building um and so you know those are things that come out in the construction document phase as well as some of those minor things that you do uh as uh as Amanda U mentioned tonight um selectman um Moore mentioned tonight that there's like that Public Safety input as well into that construction document phase where you say all right what are some of these minor tweaks we can make to make sure that this is the safest building that we can that's you know I'm not familiar if there already are existing policies that the police department has about certain
aspects of building design but making sure that if if you know that that we're employing some of those so um I think that the expectation is that um we have a estimate uh working with the town manager over U funding and then being able to go before the voters in the spring um and then you know this is going to trigger a ballot as well vote um and then being Rel ISC with the public about what comes next you know this design as we've seen it tonight this isn't the final design this isn't
the 100% design there will be additional changes to this um and so having you know understanding can I interrupt you real quick just before you keep going changes before we get to the construction phase or changes to the design because you kind of you had stepped out so we had talked about you know is this the final design at this point or is there going to be additional changes before this gets to town meeting this is the final design at this point um you know the in in the way that the state kind of outlines how we do this you know this is a schematic
design the standard for schematic design is incredibly low and all you really need to do is kind of show a floor plan with like color codes of what you expect space to be you don't need to show walls really you don't have to go into detail about the about desks it's a pretty basic this is what we think will work that's the standard um we are well above that standard because I think that for our voters to be able to vote on something they need more than just a very basic schematic design um and so this is a schematic design kind of
plus plus but in that construction document phase you make additional U modifications to to the design you know this is when you really go and you sit down with the endusers and say look this is final final like we got to walk through this really walk through this try to visualize this and this is when you make those kind of final changes um in this stage of it what I my opinion and it did taint probably some the process I thought we wasted a lot of time on the TC passs design
meeting with departments and having the Architects specifically meet with them it was very expensive time that that cost us almost $300,000 and that product didn't we were in and we were able to use the data that came out of it but it was a lot of time that I thought was wasted and and what will need to happen in the construction document phase is that is that that staff engagement resumes in its more direct more one to one um so that that's in the again construction document phase so
what about for from now until then from now until then what I expect is we need to we have to sell it to the voters um we have to show the voters why this is necessary why this needs to get funded but no more dollars should be expended on design um that we are at a point in my view where we have enough to go to the voters with and what changes from that point is I wouldn't say minim but it's it there are changes um but they're not as significant like you know if we're showing the if you're showing
voters one thing today and then you end up with a a completely Square building um or a building that's on 30 School Street like that's not the same thing the voters approve right that's substantially different um but small modifications um are are pretty normal in that design element and again we have to hire an architect um to bring this design um in in the state process we have to hire an AR anyway and it's going to and not just hire an architect but hire one for over a million dollars just about uh so it's it's a lot more design
work that has to go into it and what we saw today again what we haven't picked and what's going to come out is what are the exact windows that we're going to be using like we saw some renderings here what are the windows what are the flooring materials exact we have some in the cost testment we have some ideas but now you need to actually get specific and pick you know what what you're really talking about here what you're designing for so it's that higher level of Det detail um that is what will happen after a funding phase but between now and then it's it's explaining to
the public that our committee explain to the public in our own presentation incorporating some of this data and then voting all right cool i' like I don't recall for the schools how we of course the schools worked with the state so it worked a little bit differently just trying to remember if we had Construction documents before we asked for the final vote like we that means we funded construction documents before we did the final
vote or not and I'm just again I'm just musing out loud what we've done in the past um because I mean to go from a design like this to okay ask the town if you're going to spend 22 plus million doar you know it's I mean it's a big ask obviously MH and I mean if you put a cost onto
what what comes next I mean to get engineered plans when we looked at that cost estimate and you looked at that last page and uh and and and I just want to pull it up for a second but roughly it's about $1.5 million um is is what's kind of the estimate is to for that final design construction document I can hone in on that I don't want to give bad information and give an actual number of it is but to get to a construction document um it is not another 200,000 it
is it's it's right closer to 1 million than it is to half a million and and that is exceptionally High to ask the voters in my opinion um to fund that for a project construction documents only good for the time that they get approved building code changes annually the energy code changes annually uh and so they are not something you can put on the Shelf so I opened it back up um so there's the subtotal here right 15.2 and then plus this right here right the GC
h&p that brings it to 17.8 yep so it's it's the remainder so it's the gap between the seven so what the cost is again was 13.2 million for the actual construction right and then with contingencies escalating that's that's the 15.2 um the architectural team uh estimated that with the uh general contractor some of their um um operational cost that we we would be safer to go with a $17.8 million kind
of number um but they are also are encouraging another 4 million to 5 million to carry for what is the OPM U which is what we're required to hire by the state um and then additional design so typically in your design based on the state formula you're going to spend about 10% of the total project cost on an architect um and so there's a lot of cost that's associated with that yeah which is different than how you would do it at your house right you you
wouldn't hire you would you'd get that 13.2 million right you don't need a project manager that costs you know that much so you were really spot on with the estimate of the actual building right it came in at $600 a square foot yeah and then with the OPM and that other general contractor it really does push it up quite a bit but yeah all right anything anything else we want to talk about on that all right so we ratified an appointment for
a videographer while you were away so we're going to jump down to town manager report thank you how was your first day tell us about those last 10 hours well I've been um I've had a full download as much as possible from the interim Town manager today so that is how I spent much of today um but the information I am portraying to you or transmitting to you in my manager's report is not mine and it is
his so um project updates the library team room and expansion uh construction will begin in the next couple weeks the team room will be temporar closed temporarily closed but teens are invited to hang out in the cafe area uh young adult book collection will be available upon request the town hall roof replacement and chimney restoration began last week but has been delayed due to the subfreezing temperatures uh completion date is estimated to be February 28th uh the Ritter building roof and gutter repair contract has
been awarded to FG contractors the facilities director is working out a start date with anticipated completion as of March 17th and both the DPW roof and garage floor projects have been completed Uh current vacancies we have the assistant to the Sewer business manager which is a 19h hour per week position um a pending uh police officer position as you're aware the police chief position has been
posted and an assistant U meal site manager for 19 and 1 half hours per week I know uh you've been pushing the current vacancies on the boards and committees um and I've been told that the office has received about 20 volunteer applications and those um have started to be disseminated through uh to the various boards and committees for them to schedule um interviews uh but if anybody has any questions about the status of their application they're asked to reach out to
Annie in my office awesome thank you so much Jen any questions next week you'll hear more from me we'll hear your voice exactly yes any questions for Jen no other than 20 applications that's great I know yeah all right awesome thank you so much all right moving on to Old business seller hold 55 car AV is there any disc on this tonight
we were this there's no new information I did add um Carter's memo that he presented when we did our Workshop so that's the document that's in there if you're wondering um it doesn't sound like there's any discussion on that tonight right no no okay Mr chair through you is there any information that the board would be looking for to make that determination at perhaps perhaps the next meeting or so I did have one because it keep we keep you know cuz I'm just not sure let's put it
that way so have we do we have or have we already filed for foreclosure on this property that's what I'd like to okay I don't know if we have or I don't think we have I don't think so either but I just want to be like that is a key factor because if we didn't then we don't ever have to make this decision right now yeah right exactly I think my recollection Mr Lonzo oh excuse me Mr
chair if I may my recollection Mr Lonzo is that the reason why we keep getting asked this is because they're back do on taxes and we can file for for cred oh yeah but if we make that decision as I think all the literature says we have a short period of time to do an appraisal and then to provide the you know um any any funds here to give back to the current owner I'm in favor of holding 55 car I don't need any additional information related to that so it's really up to whatever the my colleagues need to make an informed decision holding
as in not taking any action no holding as for closing and foring okay and what yeah and holding it foreclosing and holding I mean our options are sell or hold and I I'm in favor okay thereon well we hold it we have to come up with money I thought we could do no action a lot of money we can do no action because because that's a big piece of property and we're going to have to come up with money yeah so right unless somebody can identify a funding source I mean that's why I want
to know what status is right now yeah I understand do you want to talk to why you want to hold it sure um this is uh you know if we pull up the map and where this property is located at uh it's in Prime real estate um right in the uh whum area if I remember correctly that we have um a lot of abutters to this property and it it currently is functioning as a green space um you know I think any kind of development into that region uh As I understood it uh there is potential for high density development to replace what is currently Green
Space and uh you know I think we've put a lot of energy into preserving Green Space in areas that are already spread out and whum is our densest part of town um and I think it it's to me keeping with the character of our community to ensure that we maintain Green Space uh in that part of town understood all right we can look into that and then we can pick it up next week well then I would ask one thing
too of the Town manager that would add to this so if we hold it is there a length of a limit of time that we are required to hold it if we decide we want to hold it y your question um is whether or not we ever have to foreclose on it is that your no if we foreclose on it from the moment we actually get the title we have to well we have to decide before then whether we're going to sell it or hold it if we decide to hold
it is there a a minimum amount of time we have to hold it or can we never sell it you know which sounds kind of probably wouldn't be true but this may be a minimum because otherwise people would just skirt around it saying oh yeah we're going to hold it and then a month later sell it okay okay just reading through the memo here I don't see anything about that in mostly about the appraisal yeah okay all right so we can find that out and then we can
um discuss at our next meeting then all right anything else on that tonight all right review draft of cannabis Control Commission host Community agreement for Bliss cannabis we do have a draft of that now in our drive it is Town Council approved and reviewed and it was reviewed by the attorney for Bliss cannabis and I was informed FYI that um the attorney for Bliss cannabis was going to be here I found out just before the meeting uh Valerio yep hi we can see you on Zoom
um and the reason for that is to um answer any questions since uh Carter isn't here and Carter was involved in the process um the attorney is here in behalf just to answer any questions that might come up um so have members had an opportunity to read through this yet where I'm looking at the six documents in our Drive which one is the draft one it is bliss cannabis lunenberg HCA model okay the all those numbers okay so we can read through it
I'm going what are the and what are the any any substantive changes here through you Mr chair um this is after the U substantial regulatory changes that the Cannabis Control Commission which um changed substantially the way that uh Community impact fees are assessed by communities and so um before communities were assessing up to 3% for impact fees
which must have been reasonably related to The Entity but that has now changed so that now impacts need to be actual and realized and uh invoiced to The Entity before we can charge them um so this this new agreement this new host Community agreement is based on the cannabis commission's uh model um and it is it does speak largely to that
that impact fees must be actual and realized and then um assessed so basically the only difference between this one and the last one is that now we're following all the changes that the yes cannabis commission made correct which will change the next time we do this again it and to add to that that the um cannabis Control Commission has been um anecdota I understand rejecting a lot of the uh agreements that don't follow closely with
their model at this point have you had a chance to review this yourself I know with with your couple of hours that you've had um only briefly only briefly but our Town Council hasn't they have approve spent a lot of time on this I mean I don't know that it's again you know the only thing obviously the fees were gutted out of the thing uh so if that's what it follows yeah I mean I'm fine with Adam reviewing it and if you're interested in that part that's on
page four so under Section Five annual payments and responsibilities section A is the CIF so all that information is there um it's included shall not exceed 3% of the gross sales of the company nor be calculated on a certain percentage of the company's sales y yeah so all that's there I don't know if there was any question questions on that section in particular well the Heyday of the Cannabis you know retail is kind of gone
anyway so I didn't think we were going to see much money anyway so now it's just another business in town which I'm glad is a business to town that's fine yeah understood any other questions or concerns at this point my concerns remain the same um which I vocalized last time um you know part of this requirement is that they have to to have this uh diversity plan MH and um you know I just I I mean I think it's worth noting
what it says um so I mean the goals in order for Umar flowers to promote Equity uh for the above listed groups in its operation um flowers has established the following goals recruit a staff compris where are you reading from this is in a separate document yep I'm in the diversity plan oh ufl's diversity plan and I'm in the uh first section is statement and purpose the second section is goals um so in order for um flowers to promote equity for the above listed
groups in this operation um flowers has established the following goals one recruit a staff comprised of 40% women and 20% minorities 10% veterans 10 people 10% people with disabilities and 10% of IND individuals who are lgbtq uh for its hiring initiatives um so uh I take issue with this I don't support quotas I don't I this is very much so a quota uh and I don't at
all support quotas so I think that you know people can make uh efforts the other thing that I wanted to note was if we go into the other document here that says um ufl's Umar flowers plan to positively impact areas of dep disproportionate impact and then we go into um their programs and this is also on the first page in programs um flow has developed a specific um has developed specific programs to effectuate it stated goals to positively impact past or
president residence of geographic areas of disproportion impact such programs will include the following one to give hiring preference to individuals from Fitchburg Umar flowers will post the job listing on indeed in yada yada yada um I take issue with that as well understood I just want to say the language that's actually in the template for the host Community agreement doesn't include those quotas if that is how as
you know a private company they want to interpret the guidelines which were very vague and you know not specific in that sense then that's their prerogative um that's you know just kind of my take on that does there Mr chair to your point first of all I echo my sentiments are exactly that and I did not get a chance to review this but does the the the HCA model that Our Town Council reviewed does do they reference those documents in that okay then I then I'm with
you 100% if that's what their if that's what their corporate goal is then that's what their corporate goal is it says it's a goal doesn't say it's a requirement and I'm fine with that they should run their business to where they want to run their business yeah I agree all right any other discussion on it tonight are we ready to vote on it tonight or do we want more time to review it I'd like to review it okay well actually I'm not here next week so unless are we having a meeting next week we're going to have to have a meeting next week yeah well if you're going to
review it next week so I don't want to hold it up then yeah so I do also just want to point out so their um their license expired and they're working on a renewal they got a six-month renewal and I know it's up at some point this month I don't know if it's at the end of this month um so I will ask yeah Valerio you want to um add some information here just so we don't uh mess up this timeline here yeah of
course um sorry and sorry I'm logged in with my phone and my uh laptop I got home from another hearing and phone okay um the board you know the the board can take their time to review we can apply for another extension this is one of the ways that the Canabis Control Commission you know they realize that you know municipalities are grappling with the change um and so uh if the Board needs more time and and we get you know pushed
up against our renewal date again we can just tell the Cannabis Control Commission that lunenberg is reviewing the amended HCA and uh you know we need more time and then will give it to us so I'm not trying to push the board it is it is largely the the template language you know just very very briefly the the diversity plan and the plan for positive impact that's that's fairly close to the recommended Plans by the Cannabis Control Commission it's not something I mean we're you know largely minority
women own business anyway um with lgbtq people who are on staff we a lot of these questions we can't even ask constitutionally but it's just something that the CCC you know requires of all operators to put forth this kind of those two plans like literally they have to call them that and they're largely the same language for most plans so we do it and but this this company is about the most about as diverse as the company's get in Mass so so I I understand that you know me some members of the board you know take some issue
with some of that language it's really a cannabis Control Commission requirement that we have it we didn't you know create most of that out of whole cloth we're just trying to do what they want us to do um so I hope that doesn't you know uh Scuttle what we're doing here that's just an effort of us to comply with what the state's doing um but as far as time to review the HCA itself which really is a SE seate document the HCA the plan for positive impact and the and the uh diversity plan they go directly to the Cannabis control
commission and they're not necessar I mean we're welcome to share everything we have with the town we're an open book for the town and that's why they were asked and I sent them but like the HCA is definitely a whole separate entity a separate thing on its own its own monster and so if the board wants more time um look we'd love to get it done just so we can check it off but we can also go back to the commission and ask them for another extension all right understood thank you so much for that y of course that Mr chair I'd say if we could put it on the 18th that'd be great yeah perfect the 18th so that you can review when you're back yeah so I can
vote on it when we get back okay understood yep we can do that I mean again if if you have enough people and and it would be four to nothing anyway it really doesn't matter yeah if it's next week but since like I said we're not we're not oh sorry yeah I appreciate that thank you all right yeah all right thank you very much for uh staying on with us by the way thanks for joining Valerio have a good night thank you guys very much have a nice night take care all right thanks all right so we'll look back to this on the 18th I'll add it
then so we can have some more time to review it all right review and discuss draft it's no longer the annual climate survey policy I forgot about that and I didn't update it it's now the workplace climate survey policy so we had our workshop and really worked through the draft of this and I want to thank Amanda again for all the work that she put into this excellent draft um and yeah we're just going have a second reading of it go through it real quick all right town of lunenberg workplace climate survey policy draft purpose
the purpose of this policy is to establish a structured and consistent approach to conducting the workplace climate survey gather employee feedback on job satisfaction workplace environment staff development and communication oops I just zoomed in with management the feedback collected will inform strategic improvements for to recruitment retention and the overall work environment any issues on that we'll just go Section by section all right before we start I do know I was asked by Carter to provide this then I I just referenced him
back to the drive because he wanted to specifically review it with you Jen have you had a chance to look this over again I I'm going to keep putting you in the spot I just don't want to ask questions that you haven't had a chance to look at it we did talk about it we talked about it but we did not review it in depth um primarily we talked about the timeline of needing to uh get it going sooner than later with the need to expend some of the funds in this fiscal year to carry over into next school year this is where somebody would mockingly say what have you been doing the last 10 hours I don't know I'm not anything and I don't
want you to think that that's what I'm what I'm implying I just I don't want to like assume you you have reviewed something that you haven't had because this was your first day like so Carter's subtle suggestion to us was to you know really review this tonight and make it to so FYI sorry he suggest was was to make a decision tonight is that what you said he wants us to act as soon as possible because it needs to you know start being implemented all right so if I may ask yeah sure so are that does that mean that the intent here is to
see if we're going to agree to implement this tonight if it's there doesn't have to be but of course this is the second reading of the policy so if it's there then it's there if not then we will go to a third reading I haven't again I just got presented to it tonight so and I I don't know if we do readings I think the first time we went through this we made a lot of changes so I think this is the first time actually going through it and seeing it but some of the chainers we requested weren't Incorporated like all the questions that are at the very end yep I was going to get to that
all right they're still in this document but they're not actually part of the policy they're going to be maintained in a separate document that are our core questions all right so we have issues with doing a reading or do we want to continue no issues with other members is managed no I just um I hadn't reviewed I hadn't reviewed this version again so but I think reading through it is fine yeah okay survey team it's the town manager the assistant Town manager HR Director
Personnel committee and the select board responsibilities select board I'm not going to read all of it I was gonna I was I was just about to ask you you're not going to read all six pages all right so responsibilities anything on that that anyone wants to bring up at this point do you know I think what would be helpful is if we knew what I wish I had I wish I had my old policy so I could review the changes that we made yeah because I feel like it might be hard to make sure we
captured everything from that last meeting I think that'll be hard to produce who made these changes Renee did live so we would have to get that draft version from you Amanda and then someone would have to manually go through and Redline the changes okay which no that I mean I'm not we sure looking for more work I just wanted to make sure that we did incorporate all of our changes sorry I don't mean to keep interrupting no it's all right do we want to do that I think it would be helpful to have that
I'm not opposed I think it's always help if Renee has it it would be helpful to have red line because it makes it a whole lot easier to review she also did it in Google Docs and they do have versioning in history with built into that doc so it should be fairly easy to pull that Mr chairman through you if if we have these in word we can do a compare to document the Rines if that would be helpful to the I think so yep okay all right so we'll create that and then we'll revisit
this at a future meeting how does that sound all right yep and up next discussion on select board and town manager goal setting process we already determined that we're going to do one policy at a time so once we're done with the climate survey then we'll pick that one [Applause] up all right current Business review arpa press release I have a draft of this I don't have it to present tonight because I want to quadruple and triple
check that all the numbers in it are accurate so I don't want us to actually take any action on that tonight um what I did discuss with Jen is that perhaps I could send that to her so that she can really verify with the finance team that it is accurate and then it can come back to us how does that sound sounds good thank I think the idea of a press release would be excellent in and of itself to review and present the final report to the town's people even though it wasn't money they raised it was money
we were given but still to know where it went would be a very good thing yes right and thank you Mr chair taking the initiative I understand how important it is to express this to the community so right yeah so all the language is there I just have to um make sure that that table of all the numbers is yep 100% accurate all right review and discussion on budget task force recommendations I was hoping we could just go through and sort of Identify some next steps some things
that we want to pursue some things that we want the town manager to pursue uh so if we can just open that up let me get it up is this the BTF draft 3 yes all right so we can skip all the introduction and all of the language here and just go Direct ly to the table of recommendations so recommendation number one was consolidate Town accounts we don't have to do anything on
that that's already sort of been addressed recommendation number two targeted diagnostic audit this is something that we're interested in pursuing I don't know what the cost associated with and I don't know what we would get out of it yeah I'm not super in favor of it I think it's a nice to have without too much benefit it's just having that historical information which may or may not
be useful uh and it's probably going to come with a hefty price tag to get that information so I'm okay with skipping over this one other members what do you think um I think broadly that since um selectman mki was on this committee it would probably um be helpful to me uh if she could speak to some of this while we evaluate it because like you know one of the
notes Here I agree with you right like I I'm on the same wavelength with you on this one however there's a note here that says this is discussed in almost every BTF session and so there must have been something that they saw in this that I now today don't see and so I think it it I I do think you know it sounds like the 18th maybe the first avail opportunity um I had the same thought and I don't want to keep putting things off but I think Rene input on this might be crucial because I well I did watch
one or two of their meetings I have not watched all of their meetings so same the same thought I agree with what you're saying but that point that I saw that too that they discuss it at almost every session so I wouldn't want to discount it if this committee this task force that we put together for this Monumental task we put gave them I wouldn't want to just write it off without hearing why yeah we'll definitely have to go through through all this again with Renee here anyway so maybe we should just hold off but I do remember from watching their meetings there was a line item that they couldn't fully understand the history of that just
sort of disappeared in 2015 uh I don't remember the amount of it but it was some sort of like miscellaneous like 300,000 yeah it was substantial yeah so I think that was really the motivating factor for them discussing this and bringing it Forward is because they just couldn't come up with an answer for that on line item so all right do we want to keep going through this or do we want to just wait until there's there's probably some low hanging fruit in here like you know that but I mean we can revisit it again and do a second passing what
do you think oh I I mean I so I thought you were just asking for opinions anyway I I I I would agree with those who already said that since Miss Emy was on the on the task force that she should be here when we make final decisions but I don't think it influences but I would say exactly what I said if she was sitting next to me anyway so but I think no vot so no final decision should be taken until we hear from her shirt yeah I completely agree all right that sounds good to me then recommendation number three Implement prudent
investor rule we already did that I was going to say it yeah yep recommendation Number Four review viability of the community preservation act we discussed this U seemed like there was some interest um but I don't think we would have the time to really pursue this this year for town meeting um and it also seems like historically the way that these are brought on is if there's a lot of public support which I have
sort of tried to see if it was out there and it doesn't seem like there are a lot of people who are willing to Champion this so it seems like it would have to be driven by us which probably in my opinion isn't the best way forward uh so that's sort of where I'm at on this right now yeah so i' I've been a big supporter of the CPA forever and again was involved two efforts to try to pass it and with the changing demographics maybe it would pass I believe and this I'm not sure but I believe it
has to be done on a annual i' have to look this up but I think it has to be done in an annual time me it can't be done in a special look that up so if we don't and it's very short notice so from us to get it ready for then M but if somebody wants to do it and build a campaign to do it yeah it would have to be for next year right yeah and it's still I mean again I don't know what the returns on they're nothing like they were in the beginning
but they're not nothing either so I know yeah I agree did you have it Inon we did have it in West Boyston and uh what was the return percentage wise oh I don't remember off the top of my head you remember if you had a 3% sear charge or did you do something lower no 3% three okay that's that's where you and reap the most rewards in my home Community we just passed it uh last year at at our town meeting and and it
was a citizen Le initiative with a lot of Grassroots efforts in Boon in Boyston yeah Michael Ray and Amanda what do you guys think I don't have too many thoughts on this right now to be honest with you other than you know what I what I've looked into it since it's been brought to us I agree the turnar around time seems like you know we as a board likely don't have the time to put effort into it I wouldn't want to see it be presented and failed again yeah cuz I you know and I also hate to see money
left on the table um but in terms of you know who's the champions for this you know is there Community Support I haven't done you know the research that you have so I'm sort of in the same boat as you I I'm would be supportive of seeing it you know fully fleshed out but whether we have the time this year or not I'm not sure yeah I agree I think realistically it's just not really going to be able to move forward this year so all right anything else on that all right recommendation number five green grants for hvacs uh this one I don't recall too much pursue
green grant funding for installation of air conditioning units for phase phases two and three of the lunberg primary school HVAC system and for phase one of the Turkey Hill HVAC system so I remember this one Mr chair so this had to do with the fact that um this um School District was requesting Capital funds and hadn't yet met with the green communities task force or committee for some of these Capital funds and and they were saying hey there's grants available so I think
that what this is encouraging is that um for the school system to pursue grants funding before they pursue uh Capital funding and that's I think largely a school request right okay so that would my recollection was the same and and again this is the same pitch the chair of the green communities committee says every year that people should come to them with projects and they look
for projects like this all right understood all right recommendation number six solar on Oldtown dump site support it so if I may though Mr chair so one of the things and we talked about this Municipal Building design but it's something that is is relevant here so in the inflation reduction act this is a federal law that was passed in I think 2022 uh it outs for significant funds for municipalities to install uh photovoltaic uh cells and the reimbursement rate and it's a pretty direct payment I don't even think it's
a reimbursement I think it's a pretty direct payment but the reimbursement or the payment rate was roughly 75% wow um and so you know there's a lot of potential here when it comes to these fundings now I will say uh that uh with the change over in federal Administration that all these funds were initially put on hold and I don't know if the distribution of the remaining $61 billion is still on hold that's in this fund um but that's um kind of what
I think uh six and even getting into seven speaks to the other thing is is I know that we have an a similar to the comment that Mr Lonzo made earlier today you know I heard from one of my friends recently that that their parents installed um a heat pump system on their house their electric bill came in for uh almost $900 and they turned it off CU they said o cheaper um and uh and I think that you know I support a cleaner environment but also it's about cost
Effectiveness um and you know right now we do have this this mindset at least coming from the state that we need to get into get off of fossil fuels and to me it's pairing it with solar you know it's why in that project we put solar panels over 80 parking spaces it's because we don't have those projections until you know all the you know users or or productss in the building that pull um but you you can reasonably assume that you know certain square footage is going to provide you with so
much electricity similarly you know I think analysis needs to be done for Roi um and return on investment when it comes to how much money are we currently spending on electricity um and then how much will solar panels offset that cost and what is our return on investment at which point do we start making money and the same thing with the school loss which is number seven I mean the main thing is is is shading and we know that these Lots get excellent Sun throughout the day and so there's just some level of analysis that needs to be done to identify
what that Roi is uh for these potential projects I will say that U many years ago there was a a breach in the cover of the landfill U like 15 years ago or so and it cost the town a lot of money by the EPA or meepa to have to repair that so in and of itself I'm not against putting solar there but it has to be carefully done because we cannot you know we can we we don't
want the cost of any kind of landfill breach that the C the cap is is is compromised so that's an important uh important thing as far as the solar panels on school Lots again I think uh a cost study about what our return on investment would be is key to the whole thing and that any cost on investment has to include what a maintenance plan is because the things that hold these things up you can't you don't put
them in and leave them eventually they're going to need work either painting or or some kind of Maintenance so that has to be we're very good or not we as a town but most towns are very bad at putting together packages that go over total cost of Maintenance yeah definitely some of the best ways that um these can be handled and I know this is areas is you create kind of different funds uh for these uh for the revenues to kind of fall into uh
if you're selling it um I know a lot of these things are done now by credits um but essentially if we go with a fund route what that allows the town to do is when we establish that fund um you know we reserve a certain percentage for the maintenance and a lot of the contracts you can sign with external vendors now is a maintenance contract that tells you um that that's a long range agreement so it's not just a one year by one year but it's a you know you can do a 5-year agreement so you can kind of project out your
cost uh over a period of time um so there's just a lot of opportunity here but certainly more time to explore yeah all right recommendation number seven already talked about that recommendation number eight Brooks house lease that's already happening somewhat Yeah well yeah Municipal design been assigned it's been assigned yeah haven't picked this up yet um so we're going to you know we're meeting next on the 19th and we will but who as someone
who leases a lot of property um leasing an old building realistically it's a dollar a year is what you charge people for a building that needs significant structural and interior work I don't see Revenue stream coming and off the Brooks house no all right well we've already sort of decided on a path to that recommendation number nine review Town trash and recycling programs uh so this
is something that Carter had recommended that we do a lot are you nodding your head because we talked about it we did discuss trash and recycling programs today yes and um having a a look at really the recycling component of the program in the future and what makes best sense going forward I'm personally fully in in favor of this one I think that especially knowing how hard it was to for us to secure a contract as is and that almost every vendor is going away and going to the totor programs or the
the totor um I can't think of the word I'm looking for to you're right um that I think we definitely need to review this before our contract um expires I think we're having a great from what I've heard or maybe with the lack of what I've heard we're having a great transition to our new vendor amazing vend has been great y um that just reminded me that I think we're expecting to hear maybe a route change from them at some point that Carter had brought that up not that I'm aware of but no he brought that up in one of our meetings what he brought change the the route changes that the Sha had requested
a rout change I'm not crazy that yeah there were there were just shifts because of the they were overloaded on some so the trucks the trucks weren't able to collect cuz they were full and other parts they were empty so he wants to they wanted a realignment to okay to be able to collect they're going same number of routes they're just going to change shift some shift some related to this but it just think of it um but no I'm fully in support of pursuing this I think that it's imperative that we do before our next contract is up otherwise I think we're going to be in a really tough
spot because it's going to change our funding likely with how this program is funded so number nine and number 10 are I I file these under these are things we should be reviewing periodically anyway like I don't need the task force I mean and this is no knock on the committee I don't want to sound like that but these are things we should be using doing every year or every other year anyway right but they're I mean they're helpful to remind us that we're not uh and that they that they should yeah so it's good that they're here but you know I think
what number nine speaks to as well is that China was taking on recycling for a long time and they're not anymore once we started putting tariffs on when they stopped uh and that has led to a significant increase in cost it's never really come back to normal so and there's been a significant consolidation in the region of trash companies and so what used to be a lot of small Mom and Pops all over the place it's now Waste Management it's Shaw it's El Hardy um and I'm yeah it's like School transportation eventually it'll be eventually
you'll have one one group that'll do the one town and that's it they all figure out their turfs and yeah that's exactly what happened the town was extremely fortunate to find a vendor that didn't require the transition to the tote system at this time yes yes for sure very much so all right so we're tracking that one uh recommendation number 10 we talked about it the chapter 90 town roads um we've talked about that as well um Bill Bernard I know was looking into that as well um it didn't happen exactly when this was originally brought
up um because they had a lot of other stuff going on um so I don't know the status is but I know that they've been really um evaluating all of those I would if I can comment before you move on to the next one yeah on that one um you know for my time working at the DPW I'd just be interested when we this does move forward of you know are we incorporating roads that should are already town roads that you know just either weren't a proper you know properly labeled or are we talking about taking private ways and making them town roads because that changes the scope of
what our services are so I'm just curious to know what we're looking at when we're talking about classifying designated roads as town roads are these roads that that were overlooked we are not looking and certainly I would not be in favor of the Town any private roads and taking responsibility for yeah and I remember that was a question that got brought up there is a list of the roads that it's an overlooked thing yeah okay I just wanted to make sure that that is and it was it was for our funding that we don't have them on our list yes but we take care of them already that's true
right okay just wanted to make sure that was clear because I am very familiar with how the TU 90 process works I just want to make sure we weren't talking about adding additional no no yeah that list is somewhere I can try to dig it up and send it over uh definitely probably needs to be uh looked at some more uh at some point but it is somewhere in our inboxes and I can try to find it recommendation number 11 hdhp this is a high deductible health insurance plan uh I know there was some talk about this on the school committee at some point
I don't know whatever happened with this so maybe this is something that we can get a status update on uh not sure uh what was going on and I know Carter was looking at it as well uh but I don't know what the status was well the PEC I mean we we use Health we use our health insurance agent we should ask them to add a plan I mean there's nothing that this board would really do for this right right and but this one was just adding a plan not talking about getting rid of our other plans it was talking about adding an
additional right High deductible plan okay which I don't see the harm in adding an additional option correct and then recommendation number 12 also related to health insurance health insurance buyouts I think we have to really discuss that one falls into the same category Mr chairman if I can just add um when we're talking about health insurance buyouts we want to really look at who is most likely to come off of the health insurance uh conceptually just
removing somebody from health insurance might might sound good that we're saving those costs but those might be the same exact individuals that are offsetting our folks that have the higher claims so correct typically the younger healthier folks that opt out and those are the folks that you want to keep on to offset your loss ratio so just I want the board to be a little cautious When approaching this particular item I appreciate makes a lot of sense yeah I appreciate that as well all right thank you
Jen recommendation number 13 payroll and purchase order streamlining uh an estimated value of this is Time Savings uh so I think this is something gen uh that you can look into and see what people you know are interested in or maybe not interested in I don't think there's much for us to talk about on that at this point I just want to add you know again as a staff member that I think this is an imperative thing that I know that that um A's done a lot of work you know on our Erp but fully in
support of anything we can do to improve our processes for our staff as well as you know our transparency and and Sops and everything else for our town yep I agree all right recommendation number 14 standardize and improve workflow for Town finances sort of in the same uh vein as the other one and this is the consolid ated Town chart of accounts which Carter has talked a lot about uh so that's same thing as the last one I I think that this is a department by
Department thing though I think when we say it broadly it sounds good um but you know it's it's good for facilities to track energy use you know and and really drill down into all those subcategories so because not every cost I'm using them as an example not every cost is cyclical or some costs are cyclical some costs are or annual and then similarly in other departments like there may be a lot of benefit in having a drill down into some of these GL so I
generally understand where he's coming from but I really think that this is a department by Department consistency over time and what you need to track and measure if I may Mr chair again um a lot of the things that I think he's addressing here are there are line items in munus that are from like 1999 single purchases that were just never removed so you know when you're looking at the hundreds of accounts that are still Legacy accounts I think a lot of what he's doing because I am fully supportive of what you're saying that we need to track these things and especially facilities which again I
have did um it would be much harder to do if we only had one you know major rollup account but there are many many accounts that are just have never been removed from our chart of accounts hundreds that could be removed that are just never haven't been used in years and years thank you recommendation number 15 School solar contracts so this is review current contracts with solar panel providers to determine if the school district's panels are providing maximum Revenue to the town if necessary
switch leases or consolidate leases that's not us recommendation number 16 create regular review process for school fees also not us but recommendation number 17 this is something that Carter uh spoke about and really recommended create regular review process for town fees uh so we sort of been doing this in a department by Department um process but Carter recommended that we come up with
some sort of schedule where um you know every certain amount of years we look at these set of fees and it just sort of rotates slowing down because I hear writing everything recommendation number 18 warrant delivery um so this was an interesting one so it would pass rule changes it would be for the charter that allow for electronic delivery of the town meeting warrant with paper copies available for pickup at
Town Hall and I remember this specifically the estimated value would be $7,500 I think we're going to spend more staff time talking about how to save 7500 bucks for this you also not for it I'm not in favor of it yeah and it's a lot of work too you have to change the charter and it's just uh well first of all it'll take a charter review but I don't again you know there's reasons hard copies are important right and I I don't not that somebody has to go and
pick them up so we'll we'll deliver them to everybody but if you want the hard copy that now you're the one who's inconvenience even though mail comes to your house every day yeah I understand and I think it's also about having um you know electronic database with everyone's email addresses in it and you know everything it's attacked so it's just one more thing one more thing fair enough all right recommendation number
19 consolidate town and school snow removal and ground maintenance agree agree agree okay I you know I've I've I've seen the town go back and forth over this so every time whichever one you choose there's people who don't like that and they want it to be the other way and then all we do is you know just keep flip-flopping so yeah there's a lot of benefit in having a dedicated crew which is I think what what essentially they need um but in terms
of equipment goes like there's benefit I mean I think what we're going to seeing here is replication right where the school side has has HR the town side has HR the school side has a certain way of processing the town side has a certain and I think it's just you know if we keep having these divisions we keep having to explain them as the school side and the town side and it all should just be one thing and I think you know a dedicated crew that does ground maintenance and snow removal for the schools has the ability to supplement the general um you know DPW crew at
large and I think the answer here is dedicated Crews and not necessarily separate equipment and everything else um I if the concern as I've heard it from the school side uh the school um members of the school committee the concern is that if they go to DPW it's going to be a decrease in quality service um but shouldn't the standard be the same for everyone shouldn't the sidewalks going to the library be just as clear uh as the sidewalks going to the schools and I I mean I get it it's people's kids but I mean it's
it's also our taxpayers like shouldn't we implement the same standard everywhere so I think consolidation is the way to standardize the problem is autonomy the problem is control that you have a school committee and a superintendent and a totally separate school department that's out of the reach of they don't have control over the DPW so if we say the DPW is going to do it and they and something happen they don't have autonomy to do and make
scheduling changes the way they want I'm not arguing for or against I'm just saying that is the issue who has control over the Personnel is what the issue is that I want them to do what I want them to do when I want them to do it and this is the same thing held true with it I mean it it'd be great if it was Consolidated but they have needs and the town has needs and they'd be like and then they're saying well we're paying half their salary and we're not and this is historical data now we're paying them half the salary but we're not getting them half the time or the town says the same thing we're paying half your salary
and you're always at the schools and I've been through this so it there's no easy way to do it you of course you could come down to the why why can't we all just get along but it's not that easy to do that well it's a cultural thing I mean we we we're in an area of collaboration I mean that's today's that's the skill set you know someone turning 18 today the number one skills that they need to get is how to collaborate and communicate with other people um and then on the you know fast forward 30 years and it's like well we can't collaborate we can't communicate so why
and you know it just seems kind of silly that what we teach is effective what we observe is effective than we ourselves accept that we we are unable to achieve so I I think that we need to maintain the goal of and I think stuff like what you mentioned with it it's it's accurate that if one if if we're I don't think I've heard anyone satisfied with the status of the it situation on the non-school side of the house so it sounds like the school's got a right and you know and I think some of those
things they need to be vocalized and and we need to understand them because the schools aren't suffering through what I think we're suffering through on the it side because they said we have a there's a better path ahead here um and I also understand like all these are not the same thing right I know administering an IT Network in a school presents itself with a lot of challenges which is one of their concerns too which is why they want dedicated IT staff over there because it's different right you have to take into consideration how you're handling
data for example this you know maybe it's a little easier on this one so you know I don't think they're all just sort of like the same in the sense that it would just be easier to consolidate these services so that's also a note as well I mean I think it is probably the most challenging one and I think the one that we' probably get the most push back on at least in from conversations I've had um so this one though I don't I don't know I I get the merits of it uh but you know I think I would want to hear more from their side but yeah I'm notos pursuing it
myself you know if having the conversations especially with a new superintendent coming on board but whether I am a support of it or not I don't know because I do see both sides but I wouldn't say no don't pursue this I mean I don't think it hurts to have the conversations personally yeah and I was just going to bring that up too we have a new Superintendent at some point coming on and you know then I think it definitely is more realistic to evaluate some of these things after that hiring so the charter also gives the school committee full control over
facility and grounds of school property um and so something like this is not as it's not as easy as maybe it's expressed here but again uh what I notice in my field managing a lot of property and buildings is that we have end users all the time with different requirements and you can very well manage both end users and have you know a dedicated crew on on one hand and a different crew on another and two different expectations and standards and a manager can should a
good manager should manage both um you know every similar to any snow removal company right they have multiple clients they know the client that has to be out of their house at 6:00 a.m. they know the client that's going to be home all day and who they can hit after the snowstorm is over and it's just managing that um but maybe as we if we pursue this you know with the schools having the that Charter hook that you know if the trial of how to make this work together doesn't work then they can always say it didn't work we tried it didn't work let's go back um well but
all I'm saying is that and I'm fine to swap back and forth I'm saying that we've done that we've like what you just said has already been done right understood with it if somebody wants to do it again that's I'm fine with that but I mean I'm just saying that there there is no easy way because you have two jurisdictions and and you you it's hard for one group of people no matter where you put them to answer to two masters that's the problem yeah all right
recommendation number 20 split rate we already voted on that we'll just skip over that and that was the last one all right this is their prioritized list right cuz I thought we had like 30 something initially no it was 20 oh it was more no but those were in the order of their prioritization though all right all right any other discussion on any of those thank you for going through that yeah of course all right moving on discussion on FY 2025 budget FY 2026 budget Capital plan
and annual town meeting Warren articles this is the standing agenda item that we will have for any discussion on any of those topics between now and town meeting um so is there well I do have a question first but I will pose the question before I ask that is there any discussion on any of these topics tonight I will just say and this will be my committee report but only because it's coming up so we had a committee a capital planning committee last Wednesday
where uh the inim town manager proposed some changes to what the capital planning committee had decided in that prioritization and the two major items were that some Ritter building uh repairs and I think Town Hall repairs were he had zeroed out and he's saying well if the municipal building committee is going to be coming forward with a town warrant article for redoing this then we shouldn't be spending Capital money on it uh and
then the discussion came up basically I was the one who said well that's fine I'm I'm fine with that but what happens if there is no article or the town denies the article then we can't go another year without doing this so I I floated the idea of having two Capital planning warrant articles submitted by the town manager one with them and one without them because you can't modify the town the capital planning articles so I don't
know where Carter stood on that at that time but now that we have a new town manager I will say that that is one of the things that I proposed CU it does make no sense to use Capital money and then have a capital plan the municipal building committee if if the town approves whatever their final plan is then they will be overlap but we can't not have these things addressed because the envelope deteriorates further and further yeah I agree with that and um as
this additional information part of our cost estimate was taking all of that work that we expected to be done outside of this project and adding it into the project right and that's what I said so we're already accounting for it and I said thought yep so the only way out of this because you can modify a capital planning article is have two of them and then we pass over the one that we don't want to address and we take on the one but it has to be after if there is a municipal building article it has to be after that article obviously we did ask
for a placeholder already okay MH yeah I think that sounds like a good plan if uh Jen wants to pursue that yeah makes sense to me all right in terms of Warrant articles I am aware that the historical commission and the apdc merger were an article with sub subed uh it's the only one I'm tracking so far uh so Jen I know we're asking a lot of you on your first day are you aware of any other warrant articles that have been submitted yet it's okay you're not so I know that
um Annie is compiling what's come in and that there are a fair amount of Warrant articles that have come in from a variety of departments um planning submitted I think three articles um and so we'll be looking at those over the next couple of days um and making sure that all boards committees Commission that wanted to meet the deadline that we have not something hasn't fallen through the cracks and that we're making sure that we're getting their articles in
um I'm looking to be presenting the preliminary warrant next Tuesday um obviously all the language won't be finalized at that point but you'll get a sense of what the different articles are that we'll be looking for for this the spring meeting all right well that sounds perfect then great all right any other discussion on any of this tonight no other than thank you cuz we we keep putting you on the hot spot all right minutes warrants and action items minutes we do have minutes
for November 13th 2024 January 21st 2025 January 27th 2025 and January 28th 2025 have we had a chance to review all these minutes yet I didn't see the ones on the 28th but I they're there yep they're all there that was one that she had email to us I thought because I had a correction what she did make sorry I didn't I did have one I did have one correction um and
that was I'm trying to find it now oh so in the 28th on the public session it should say 39 courland Circle 39 and I know 39 courland Circle because I read it in The Ledger every single week multiple times I think we all are aware with that address yes yes thank you for bringing that up and I don't want the person at 11 who inadvertently has that address to be have their name here
understood all right any other changes all right is there a motion to approve these four sets of minutes I would move that we approve the minutes of January 21st January 27th and January 28th of 2025 and November 13th of 2024 second any additional discussion those in favor say I I I those opposed no motion passes unanimously warrants do you mind passing me those that big stack of warrants right
there absolutely start my car we have an accounts payable warrant in the amount of 1, 47,7 6860 I'm going to recuse myself from AP signing okay and let me just check oops um so I know with this stack it's a little challenging one thing that we used to do if I can just make a
request here is um it's really helpful to just have like a rubber band around them so I don't have to always do this and double check that it's all the same warrant um but it looks like it is I'll save us all the headache unless they almost go through it all right action items please make it warmer in this
building that was already an action item um but we can uh continue to address that cuz as we said it did get colder uh throughout the evening so it might be turning off or something like that automatically um I do have a couple or at least an update uh so the first one is from an action item that Amanda brought up on in our last meeting is about better tracking and following up on action items and I did talk to Jen about this and I think it really is
as easy as just creating a spreadsheet that we maintain in the Google Drive that we just list all the action items and have statuses in there what do you guys think yep um I have no conflict with it however however I don't use Google for anything so I only go into this to read stuff I've never actually sent anything from a Google Drive so I don't want to sound like I'm in like you know 1990 over here but uh I would certainly need to be trained on how to utilize Google for
those purposes I think we're moving away from Drive we're going to one drive anyway we are isn't it would just be an same but if it's to jeffre light we can send it to Myspace and he can Michael Ray I'm sure we can arrange some IT training free thank you I appreciate it if it's if it's in one drive I I can do excel okay but it's Google stuff I don't get Google and and with that migration I just want to point out I think it's um a good
opportunity for some spring cleaning I think our drive is outdated uh could be better organized kept up to date um so that's more of like a long-term ongoing action item that I think we can work towards one thing I I will note only because we're on the subject so in the past I don't know why maybe there's different reasons why it happened but if a if we had documents about a topic and then a week or two we had it again those documents weren't put forward now sometimes it's just for space
I would I wish there was some link to them because a lot of times I'll remember we discuss this on this date I go to the drive and it's like and then the documents aren't there and then I'm like oh they must have been early ones and then I have to just search manually and like okay how far back were these and that makes it very difficult yeah Jen and I just discuss this already um more broadly about um better planning for documents and sticking to the timeline um I agree with you it is kind of frustrating or challenging it presents
an extra layer of getting the information that you need so I do make a habit of myself sometimes going back and finding the documents and figureing out which meeting it was and pulling it over um sometimes I'm not able to do it so I think that's one thing um you know the three of us me Jen and Annie actually before this meeting we were talking about stuff like this and you know like how do we want to format all this stuff how do we want to present it and I think one thing is just making sure that there's something for every action item or
or agenda item in the drive if it's something that previously we had discussed and there are documents from a previous meeting we should just have a folder and have all those documents pulled over even if there's no update just to have them there for reference or if one drive or if one drive allows you to just create a link to some other place you know that in Alias that would be helpful as well just so you don't have to you know use up more space one of my thoughts and I don't know if I brought this up in my meeting or not but you know if you look at our drive as it is you know like we have an arpa folder
but it was only ever used once so you know if we kept the documents that I understand they should be in our weekly meetings but if we also had a copy that stayed in that arpa folder when we talk about arpa we could look at it I'm just using arpa as an example and understand that document would live in two different places but if we're talking about one PDF it's not going to be a huge space issue I don't personally think I think it would make sense if we had those main items and we kept those documents there because then it eliminates the searching yeah and that's actually the perfect example of why
I really want to reorganize all this because I noticed some of those other folders they're not used at all right we just look at our meeting folders arpa was perfect because it was so challenging sometimes to go okay here's the first iteration of the spreadsheet for arpa and where we were at in that meeting and then a month later here's the same spreadsheet but the numbers are completely different and I had to go spreadsheet to spreadsheet to spreadsheet where it would be helpful if we had that for each meeting but at the same time had one living documents of the most upto-date information I think what
also will help was when we move to the one drive since we'll all have our own logins any changes that any of us make or add is tracked versus having the One login you know you can see I think that just right same thing if we make changes or whatever it's trapped so we know which versions we're using we can keep one liable document I think it makes a lot of sense so I'm I'm excited for the migration I will add one other thing that this is a new topic of well it's a new perspective or a new angle on the same topic and that
is after a meeting if we've discussed items and we've had documents that we've discuss publicly those are by definition public documents and those should be made available because we have recordings now and if the public wants to download the documents that we're talking about they should be available so it's like a self- serve so they don't have to request people give them the documents I've I think I've brought that up too um again I I say this on a regular basis because I use conquer because I work there as an example but conquered um provides their meeting
packets their entire packet on their website that is available to the public um I think that would alleviate a lot of the public records requests as well as members at intendant or people that watch our meetings could look at it and review exactly what we're looking at um I am fully in well yeah I well I I don't I don't know with open mean law well I guess you have to be careful yeah it's time to right it's they got introduced to us and that's when they become public they they don't become public before necessarily uh because there
may be some things that some documents you don't talk about that are in our drive that AR we have to be careful to be the public facing documents but anyway there should be a way to do it I know enough people like a lot of a lot all of us have mentioned that you get a spreadsheet and they present it on TV and everybody gets their you know Sherlock Homes magnifying glass to read the spreadsheet well it would be nice if you could download the spreadsheet while you're being discussed so you can see it the numbers yeah great point that was another thing that Jen and I started to talk about already
as well with um just meeting packets in general so awesome and then I have one more um so I don't think we haven't talked about this yet um so Heather did a first pass of creating a volunteer handbook and it was a really good resource for volunteers on any border commission that's kind of like High Lev stuff right like open meeting law that sort of stuff um I have been thinking for a while now that it would be really helpful to create
board and committee specific handguards typically do because after a while it you start getting the same types of requests for example like by our hold right like none of us are experts in tax title process maybe we should document some of that and then just document you know what are relevant uh state laws bylaws Etc what does the process look like for that board to go through um I think that would be really helpful especially in light of the public
comment that we got last week uh from that Resident who is trying to get the um certificate of uh compliance with the Conservation Commission and it's also something that I talked about with the chair of the Conservation Commission as well and she agrees that that would be a great resource so I think we need to revisit that that and the second iteration of it would be creating more detailed handbooks for really just onboarding and reference for members of boards I think that would be immensely
helpful personally you know a lot of people that are coming on to boards myself included when I came onto this board I mean I didn't really know what to expect yeah and a lot of people that aren't connected in town as I was so I had contacts but you might not know who to reach out to or where to go or really what you're getting into as also recruitment for volunteers that would be a great tool to have like hey are you interested in this committee this is what it does and exactly yeah um so I wanted to bring that up I think that's something uh that we should try doing that's it for me those are
all my action items tonight any others all right committee reports I gave Capital planning and we've gotten some submissions for the finance committee and I think we tentatively have a schedule for February 18th before this before this board we'll have a finance committee appointment committee meeting y Economic Development Committee does not has not met since our last meeting um master plan steering
committee unfortunately we were supposed to meet on the 6th and we again do not have a quorum so this is an ongoing issue that I you know I've been bringing to the board um I did send an email um to both the chair of the planning board uh the inter acting chair of the um master plan steering Comm and to Chris Riley our land use director just for an update on this um you know and how we're going to move forward because we have not been able to meet in in many many months I mean I think it's been at
least six months yes I think longer than that um you know is this going to impact the delay on the timeline you know we've got a lot of money invested here um you know what can we do so I have not had a chance to look at my email since I sent that to see you know if there's been any responses but I do think that we need to keep our eye on that understanding that that is a a planning board committee but mhm it's becoming a prettyy serious issue that this committee cannot meet okay yeah I agree um we do really need to um see how we can help out with that process um that's all I
um I think the first uh hour and a half of this meeting was likely my committee report um the library is meeting soon I don't have an update for for them I know that they um well I guess I do have a slide update um they do um as they go through the budgeting process this year uh I think that uh they're a little concerned about I think the rumor mill right now uh when it comes to the budget given that every Department basically was um last year
in the budgeting cycle every available dollar was was made available to the school department uh and no other department experienced any growth and so I think that there's just general apprehension um from the other departments about as they're hearing grumblings of um uh the school department com school districts and school um committee having discussions about where they're at in the budget and I think the rumor mill is that they're starting above 10% um and
so I think there's just a little apprehension is what I'm hearing thank you the superintendent screen committee met last night I am a member of the committee uh we mostly discuss timeline and process and the one decision that we made last night was to start off with a consolidated ated application period for both internal and external applicants uh so the school committee wanted us to just start with internal candidates and then make a
decision based on the candidates that we got internally and then we would decide whether or not we would open it up to external candidates or not and it's also interesting too because it seems like the school committee has a lot of oversight over the superintendent screen committee um they're the ones that like our motion for for that by the way was to basically request that the school committee allow us to do that uh which was just interesting um but we just thought it would be the most Fair process for everyone involved instead of
saying um either we really liked internal candidates and we reviewed it and you know we um uh what's the word I'm looking for not I screened I guess or um anyway screened those internal candidates but we want to open it up and now consider external candidates or you know we didn't really like them we just thought it would be better to avoid all of that and just start before we even review internal candidates to just have external candidates apply so it's in the same
process um so that was the only thing that we decided but other than that uh it's a 12 member board which is really interesting um a lot of yeah there's y yep 12 people on the screening committee um a lot of perspectives but uh it's a great group I think uh we all really enjoy enjoyed the meeting I was very productive and we have another meeting on Thursday uh and then several meetings next week uh but now that we're modifying the process you know obviously we're
going to have to have a period of time that we're accepting external applicant so I think the timeline that we first set is probably going to have to be extended a little bit uh so the timeline's probably going to go out a little later now um but yeah it was a really good meeting is anybody interest who's interested is there a place on the website to go to or is that not up yet not that I'm aware of no okay um I don't think they've gotten to that part yet because the school committee still has to discuss it too so
and that's it for mine upcoming meetings we are meeting on February 11th next week and February 18th public comment is there any public comment and I missed this I was going to say Town manager I was going to mention that to you the new permanent Town manager no I my only comment is uh really to the public um I'm going to be looking forward to meeting you over the next couple of weeks and months as we go along here through this uh town meeting
and budget process and I really look forward to immersing in your community and really getting to know all of those that make Lunenburg great thank you any public comment from the public sure Anthony skull Bernie five Valley Road um it was an interesting discussion this evening to hear about the uh project for the lunberg municipal building design committee and uh since my name was
mentioned by the architect um I thought I would stay and and address some of the issues that he brought up and of course each of you have received a fairly detailed email from me regarding this project um I still stand by the note that I sent to you uh you know he said we couldn't do the the project the way Tony skull brini suggested uh it would be uh too big and it would be twice as far from the parking
uh parking lot and uh quite honestly that's not an accurate assessment of what I wanted to do nor is it an accurate assessment of what the consequences would be um I want to just highlight uh some of the things that I brought up with regards to this project problem that it represents and as I said in my note to you I'm not criticizing this project with the purpose of bringing it to um
an unsuccessful support from the town at annual time meeting um I I am pleased that the first time I had the the opportunity to talk as a a citizen of the town of lunenberg was at a special town meeting I think it was in November 2020 and one of the things that I addressed was that tan Hall was a great old building and it wasn't as bad as it was being portrayed by members some of which are on
this platform today uh to the town as a reason why we needed to abandon town hall and go someplace else that was 3 four years ago and what we now know based on the engineering uh report that we received from the consultant is that this building will actually be the least expensive to keep running for the town of lunenberg when you look at the cost per square foot just as I had said it would be if the time would take the time to look at this this facility as
a component of the Town administrative uh function so from that standpoint I'm really pleased that we're moving that part saving this building and using it as part of as part of a plan but I am concerned that we're going to spend another year or two talking about uh the lunenberg municipal building design needs because of what we have in terms of wasted space GSA has a standard
for usable building space of 190 square feet per person that's a pretty big number and in fact today gsa's current uh employee space requirements are at 150 GSA goes up GSA GSA General Services Administration that's the federal standard for buildings thank you Tom for for me falling back into my old Federal acronym world uh so the general Services
Authority says for 10 people you need 1,900 square fet but actually what they buy today is 1,600 square ft for 10 people all right so if you do the math let me uh bring up my my next chart if you do the math I I haven't quite got a handle on how many employees lunenberg has um but let's say it's 60 employees that's what we want to put in town administrative space I think that's actually pretty high but let's say it is
60 so at 190 Square ft we would need 11,400 Square ft at Ritter uh for Town administrative functions 11,400 Square ft what we are currently proposing to present to tan for their support is 20,400 square feet plus 9700 F feet for a meeting space almost actually more than
30,000 square ft of space and I think that the town is going to bite you know that's they're not going to bite on that number and I think that we really need to take a look at what we're proposing to do here now if the GSA was actually going to buy the space for the town of lunenberg it wouldn't do it at 190 Square ft it would do it at 160 Square ft so now we're talking about uh procuring 9600 Square ft
of space in between Ritter and the new edition once again we have more than twice that square footage that we're proposing to present to the town to buy I don't think they're going to do it okay so let's go back I'm going to go quickly here because I know it's late um Amanda you brought up a great point about security and with a building that with the floor plan that's been laid out in fact this was my second Point poor Flo uh FL uh flow from a
standpoint of having little little segregation between areas that should be very accessible to the public versus those that should be more private that's the first step in terms of securing a facility and the way the floor plan is today I don't know how you would have a a key card system to maintain access you got two principal entryways into the building one from school Street one from Mass Avenue actually you have three cuz you also have one from Lancaster Avenue you know so there was really no consideration
given to that security issue and you will have people roaming through just like we have in this building here now you know we're not going to we're not going to go into a new building complex I think with the same kind of security approach that we've had here at Town Hall I don't think anyone wants to do that um Tom you you touched on this one um we're going to have one of those in this building and we're going to have one
of those in the newly modified uh rder complex and we're going to buy a new elevator for the the uh new addition I think that's insane and I think it's a gross waste of taxpayer money and I think that people when they see that plan are going to go oh my God you know I'm still going to have to get in my wheelchair and ride this thing up to the second floor or up to the second floor of a brand new building in order to get to that spot you'd have to use the chairlift you may have to use the chairlift if you come into the schools
side entryway and of course you know the school has already said that they don't want to be able to they don't want to have traffic from their side of the building to the town administrative side of the building because of the students that they have in that complex and then U lastly um we're going to pay for what this is kind of linked back to the wasted space um we're going to pay for quarters because we decided to have um the new addition link to the uh into the Ritter complex with these corridors that's
wasted space um I hate to say this but the select board I think made the wrong decision with regards to adding packs to this project because while we have added uh packs you know to the floor plan that was clearly out of scope for the architect um that was something that was not specifically addressed a statement will work uh if I was him I would probably eat the time that I had to spend the lay out that that that space because it leads a good warm happy feeling in the in the client's heart that maybe I'll get the
big project the design but the end result of what he did was we we now have 1,300 ft in a basement that's undesignated for someone to use now go back to my first point wasted space what's the standard that GSA would would buy for us if we were asking them to to acquire administrative space these are all things that that I think Town voters will listen to and I think the town voters will respond to and the end
result will be we'll have another year where our town has to operate in a very inefficient manner we'll have a brand new town manager who will have to deal with the staff that's spread out and split up in a way that doesn't lead to good efficient operations for her all right so the last thing I'm going to say is I don't think that the building will work well for the town of lunenberg um you can present it uh you can you know you can put it as put it
as a warrant for the town to consider and they can uh they'll make the final decision for you um if it's if it turns out that uh the town doesn't support this then we're going to have to live with those consequences for another year or year and a half or maybe even two years so that's my two cents and uh hopefully um you'll take my comments once again not from a standpoint of you know being argumentative or disagreeable with what the process has been but
I think that that my comments are valid and I would hope that you all would take you know the opportunity to look at this project it looks pretty on on paper you know there's some nice things and I don't debate that I don't disagree with that but I think that there's some serious project flaws that have to be addressed for you to get the support from the citizens of the town of lunenberg so that's my two cents thank you Mr scol bra any other public comments yep oh hold on
one second Mr passio have some more in the room oh okay no problem good evening Glenn McLoud 436 Reservoir Road uh overall I would Echo the sentiment of Mr scalini in fact watching I have watched all the all the meetings and I I commented that I thought he he had his his uh thumb on the pulse of this project many many different reasons I understand the points
he's making but overall I have other other issues but tonight I think I'll just focus on one and I hear a lot of a lot of conversation about pack and I was reassured and comforted by the fact that everybody had um agreement that they are in fact essentially or they are in fact a town department and deserve to be treated as such and I totally agree I I would I would categorize them as critical particularly when
it comes to their content coverage I I have benefited personally from all the coverage I believe it or not watch most if not all uh government meetings and it's through their you know hard work and diligence that I'm able to do that and stay engaged with government as frustrated as that is I suspect you guys know but what the question what I would like and not tonight but through the uh future meetings what I'd like to hear
is more discussion about the minutia of pack again recognizing the importance the critical aspect of their content uh coverage and what I what I'd like to hear more about is their content creation and what impact that aspect of their service has on the overall cost of this project meaning you know specifically the basement the you know the 11 foot ceiling and and again that's as as it in a basement you know
as I talked about the excavation and support of the excavation it just sounds to me as expensive so I I would like just to hear more discussions on that issue and could the could the studio be moved elsewhere could the studio itself be used could they for at least time being could they use just a studio of you know lemonster or any other surrounding town and particularly in a stay in age where a lot of people you know allegedly
make you know pretty significant um incomes off you know their phone standing in the street or anywhere else sitting at the desk in their office doing a podcast there's there's a lot of content creation uh out there with from from the user end of things pretty simple so so that's just something I'd like to hear more more discussion of discussion of and you know obviously pack takes their their um their mission very serious and I do appreciate that thank you
very much thank you Mr McLoud Mrs Lockwood good evening I'm the Lockwood 91 Main Street always shorter than everybody else there we go um you know I so we heard the presentation today from um from The Architects and I followed all the meetings I've watched it I participated in a few and the the presentation that you had today was a result of a
group working together from the past two plus years I know they had kind of paused a little bit during you know there were different things but they've been working since October in that group we have an engineer Greg and who was part of the school committee School building committee design and development so the result of what we saw was the the result of the work of that group so I urge everyone you know to hear that group as
a group as to their concerns what they like where they don't like it um the you know when things are brought up about the school the chair of the school committee is part of that group and this plan was taken back to the school committee and was you know given feedback and they they're living with that this project in terms of cost in 2011 or 12 when we approved this the new
high school that was a I believe a $65 million project that we funded this project 12 or 14 years later is less than a third of that and meanwhile we are taking care of two historical buildings that the town deeply cares about it and maintaining and setting up for the future the last thing that I'll mention um Mr Peter beore at the last meeting of the school committee that they had where they discussed this plan he phrased it really well and I think
this is something we need to keep in mind he said this is not going to be a perfect solution but the alternative solution is to keep doing it the way we are doing it in a building that is imploding so there is no perfect solution here where we are going to land is going to be imperfect hopefully it'll be better than a ho but today it it won't be perfect and then he added because we had the perfect solution a few years back with a presentation I think
it was for it was in the 2019 Tom meeting that came to re revamp TC pasos with every Community need every way we wanted for $32 million and that was in based on the schematic design and the town bulked from that so we bulked from the 32 million and now we are coming you know five years later with a $23 million project that actually addresses two existing building and builds a new one so
I I think before we see the the you know get to focus on what's not perfect you know I I I understand Mrs cini Mr cini suggested this his all the comments that he made here today are comments he has made in every other meeting of his of the group that has invited him in and as a group they didn't address or they took some of the his information but we got to Value the work of the group so I ask for you all to keep your minds
open and remember that you know remember Mr Peter be Moore's uh comment that we just got to we got to find a way to move forward it's been too long TCP building um I'm not sure if if this is a number that has been circulated well but for the past 14 years close to 14 years I think it closed as a SC 2011 we've been the town has been spending close to $100,000 to keep that building running like that's a million dollars that we have just wasted that you know the
schools have been using but they've been using a very small part of it and you know so we really need to find a solution and stop wasting money and waiting another year is not another is not a good solution I hope you all can will get behind this project that very distinct group of citizens have been working on for a long time thank you all right any other public comments in the room all right Mr pasos thank you Mr chair Dave Paso's formerly of Whiting Street lunberg we can't really hear you
FYI you're yeah not sure why the volume's down all of a sudden can you hear me now yeah yeah it might be an internet issue please let me know if it if you can't hear me uh Dave Paso's formally a 56 whing Street uh the previous speaker actually was a great segue into what I'd like to say right now um as a member of the TC pasio redesign committee a number of years ago as she mentioned we came up
with a uh a project that was well vetted uh it was not renovation of the building it was a tear down and a complete rebuild um and it came in at a number that was escalated by a percentage rather than cold hard numbers so we I'll just leave that alone for now I I think that project should have flown and we'd be in that building right now uh the wild card through this whole
process uh has been the school department now we have to have this or we can't do this there and we can't move our programs back into the schools well Mr Jeff did mention this evening that the school committee voted in this past week to uh relocate all of their operations within TC pasos to the Turkey Hill Elementary School all of a sudden they can do it but for all these years theyve said oh no no no no we got to
have this space and that space and you know this project would be a totally different project if the school district had not been demanding space and saying they can't do what they're doing now and through the next year or so um I honestly feel that if the town goes back to its original plan way back when with the first building reuse committee to just Co collocate town offices in a
single building which they came up with back then a $4,000 excuse me a $4 million number to accomplish that in One Wing of TC pasos and we weren't tangled up with all this other stuff we'd be much far way far ahead from where we are now anyway um the tax impact on this uh is not going to affect me but I want
the taxpayers to start uh calculating what their individual impacts are going to be depending on what this number ends up at whether it's 18 20 22 or 25 million uh the numbers presented tonight are not the bottom of the bottom of the numbers that they only go up from here um so on the department of uh local services or Department of revenues website if you Google tax impact calculator there's a
full page calculator sheet that comes up you select the town of lunenberg and you plug in the number that you want it to calculate that is going to be borrowed to accomplish this project all I did for this per these purposes is put in $1 million and then you can multiply it by the number of millions that it comes out to at the end of the day so the average home in lunenberg according to
do presently is valued at $505,000 a $1 million increase in our taxes is $212 per million that's very similar to the override last year because it was just under a million so take that 200 $12 and multiply it by whatever number you want to use uh you know they said the project was going to be 15 million well it isn't it's a $23 million project
so uh just giving you those numbers and I'm sure it will be made available uh in visual form in the future uh I I think the project is as good as the one we had for TCP uh but I think the the dollar amount is just too high thank you all right thank you Mr pasos all right seeing no more public comment is there a motion to adjourn I have a public comment from the board
oh my apologies yep public comment from the board we had so many I forgot all about that yeah so you know in in this process and I I want to respond to a couple of public comments but I want to clarify some information you know it is challenging running um trying to manage any process or be a part of any process U that has so many thank you for turning the volume in the room down it's I'll have to speak louder now all right it is always challenging to manage a process
with so many stakeholders in this case stakeholders are every single Town Department uh that currently operates in town hall and in the Ritter building um you know but I want to offer my um unfiltered opinions on a on a couple of things so number one is um the location of the building and and I just want to react to a couple of things that were said um this board previous iteration of it um authorized what was the tap a study
to look into how do we get to the position that we're in today the select board um in 2014 roughly looked into what to do about a future town hall and they authorized a study that was then funded by the town um and there were two studies the vertex and the tape what we needed to do to sh up the buildings and what are the potential options to leave and and one of the options presented was an expansion onto Ritter building to the
west side of the building um that was one option another option was the TC passels building that was another option and at that time and I think the third one U maybe was 30 School Street uh and reutilizing what was the old primary school that is what started this these iterations of things um was was the board um getting funding approved by the voters um and charge approved by the voters to look into where to move to and and I
think that that history is important um the comments that were made this evening by Mrs scullen bre were all made in meetings the municipal building design committee is comprised of members of the finance committee a member from the planning board a member from the school committee a member from the select board and three citizens at large uh we all heard the request from Mrs skull and biny to move the location in the building and we unanimously voted that request down um you know I think that when boards are exposed information and
make decisions um that that we build upon decisions that other people made this board made a decision at some point in time um to to formulate these kinds of committees other people serve on these committees decisions get made along the way and they keep getting made along the way and what happens and I've lived in lunenberg long enough to see it is that what happens is that when processes like this take time I mean we remember members at Town Hall and and at Town meetings saying I need a full plan of what we're going to do with all
our buildings before I vote on anything I don't want to peace Mill it and then you have the other side that says I need to see the most cost- effective solution for building this building and I don't need to see everything for everything you know it's hard to keep everyone happy but what we have to do is just March forward um I want to clarify some information um so the current footprint of the town hall and Ritter building totals about 12,000 Square ft the total footprint of the uh New Town Hall
as envisioned totals 10,000 square ft I don't know where this number of 16,000 number uh came from um but it's just not accurate uh it is less square footage than we currently occupy in town hall and the rid building um the change of course is that this we do have this room here um and we have two meeting rooms in the Ritter building and those will be replicated uh in a meeting house but I just want to clarify that the footprint for the new town hall has presented uh
is a little bit smaller than maybe what was stated tonight I don't disagree with Mr pel's comments um I have found engaging with the school department throughout this process to be challenging to say the least um the committee was not in favor of the ace program being collocated generally speaking um with the with a school function 18 through 22 year olds being located in an office building there was a lot of push back from the committee on why that was the request from the
school department on why there wasn't another location in a school to house that student body population the resistance was strong that there simply wasn't the room and that the person who managed that program was part of the District staff again an operational decision that has a significant Capital impact and yet here we are 5 years later into this process and now this lack of space that we've heard about now everything's getting Consolidated into Turkey Hill and
and for the Last 5 Years every conversation we've had related to this topic it was off the table not possible including the school district um the school department had the most significant requests in this process even though we assess that their needs were only 2700 Square ft we still provided them a building of 6,500 Square ft and they're still saying it's maybe isn't enough um it's really hard to Fathom when you look at some of these Square footages I disagree with the use of
the GSA table as Mr skull and Bry proposed tonight I think we use a different National Standard table because we don't have those uh those federal dollars that that seem to uh be disconnected from reality um but you know all these products are challenging I think that we all hear the the concerns we're never going to have a perfect answer to any of these Solutions because we have to address multiple multiple needs but I'm confident that you know having an engineer on the committee Mr Roy who's been a big part of a lot of things has been helpful
having Mr blat um who has an engineering Focus having Christina who's a mom who understands things from a really practical perspective I think she offered some of the the best insight into into our committee as well as other members of the finance committee from the planning board you know our our meetings as well were open to the general public in which the public could participate at any time during the course of the meeting and so I welcome uh the comments from members of the public including Mrs scullin biny um we
certainly opened the doors and said that it was necessary for the apdc to be a part of the conversation and as most people know I have no problem with people having opinions that differ from mine freedom of speech is our first right and through the ability of people being able to speak their mind and speak pieced respectfully that we can get to a better result I am sure that the solution that we have on the table today while not perfect is the most coste effective answer to our problem that we're simply going to get um and we
can fast forward years we can try to find Opportunities to shave off square footage this product will never cost less than it cost this year this is the most bang we're going to get for a buck and every year that goes by the square footage will have to decrease uh for the price to say the same and we expose ourselves to an energy code that changes dramatically from year to year and a building code that lately has been changing pretty significantly from year to year as well uh I expect a lot of Conversation Over The Coming months um
to discuss this in depth but certainly there's going to be difference of opinions there's going to be opposition and that's part of the process thank you any other public comments from the board I just want to say that I look forward to the conversation and now that it's now that this is of the plan and it's been you know uh presented to the the municipal billing committee yesterday and to the select board tonight and to the public I look forward to the public and the staff here in in town both
town and School staff the general public I really want to hear everybody's opinion as we go it's a it's a sizable investment and I'd like to hear other people's perspective on it and speaking about other people's perspective I also a totally different subject we we got emailed we got presented to us several weeks ago and we got emailed to us a bunch of questions from from a citizen who I think represents lots of citizens uh I'd like to see us discuss
what we what if anything we're going to do with those questions I think a lot of the questions maybe not all of them but a lot of them were pertinent and even I would like to know the answer to some of those questions so at a future time I'd like to know what we're going to do with that yeah they will be responded to what what are we talking about we're talking about the list of questions that was handed to you actually I believe uh during that meeting that I wasn't here when you were chairing That Was Then emailed to us during a public comment and then they were emailed to us two weeks last week
I thinks okay we'll respond as Bo yeah I'm tracking that all right is there a motion to adjourn so moved second any additional discussion those in favor say I I those oppose no it is 10:43 and the select board is adjourned we will see you all next week thank you for joining us tonight