not fix the storm water issue and build the school, we may see increase uh in flooding in the neighborhood that abuts the site. Uh thank you for your flexibility and accommodating meeting times as we work to maintain this ambitious schedule and achieve a fall 2029
opening. I want to thank the school building committee, all the subcommittees, do not hesitate to contact me. Sincerely, J. Christian Dumism mayor and we did we did through our email as well receive the letter from uh the uh the MSNBA
um determining uh that we were approved. Um at this time, I would like to bring up for you. Yeah, if you could do your uh introduction and start your slideshow as well. Thank you, Chris. So, um my name is Christopher Ely. I'm
the project executive from the Vert.ex companies. We've been working with the city of Marboro since October of 2024. With me tonight is John Lemieux, our senior managing director um for the Vert.Ex company. Also joining us um as
needed is um Peter Caruso, Chris Lee, and Christina Basman. For those on this side, she's behind the column. Um they are the principal in charge are the principal in charge, project manager, and project architect from
Lamar Pagano Architects. Thank you for uh having us here tonight. We've been working for quite a while on this um since October 24 and since February 25 with the designers to advance this exciting important project.
The project the project is at about 30% of its overall as you can see on the screen. Um we have progressively decreased the pro cost of this project both in terms of its soft cost and also its construction
cost as we've developed this since our initial numbers were available in June of 2025 and with the most recent cost we are looking at a total project cost inclusive of this these refinements have been the work of LPA the work of vertex
and the work of the school building committee as they've made disciplined decisions throughout the project to ensure that the project comes and at an affordable cost for the taxpayers at Marboro. Here you can see a chart that is put out by the MSBA that places all of the projects that are within there
was the lowest cost project in the MSBA pipeline. Now at that time you could build a project for almost close almost at the reimbursement rate in terms of funding caps. But one of the things that we noticed is that with the richer project that we're proposing tonight,
not only are we again the um lowest blow the cost of the next nearest project, another vertex project in Rena. Now, as we look at the budget, it's think it's important for you to understand that this budget is
all-incclusive. The MSBA has a fairly restrictive um schedule that's included in your packet that describes all the areas of a project and making sure that you budget comprehensively for the project both in terms of covering design
fees, covering soft costs, covering FFN and technology, covering the construction itself, and also carrying a healthy contingency. In putting together this budget, the OPM designer service and estimator working with LPA, they both estimated the same drawings and
they reconciled those to arrive at that construction cost. We also had um LPA working with their consultants develop a furniture cost based on actual pricing and a review of what furniture was necessary so that we could establish an accurate budget. and we reviewed the
techn value but also to include something that will maximize the reimbursement that is available on a per student basis. We've also um as I mentioned, you have already appropriated 2 million of this
amount and I think that's important to echo because it really it lowers the amount that you're looking to things that the MSBA uses when they determine what your reimbursement is and in making sure that you have a comprehensive budget. It'll take into account their
categorically ineligible costs which are based on the guidelines of the grant program that you're pursuing. It will take into account the cost and budget caps any ineligible building area take us hours to go through all the details of this. And so what I've
developed today is a way to try and simplify this for all of you so that I can uh informatively explain how the system works and what the reimbursement will be for the city of Marboro. Now this is the reader digest version.
The base rate is recalculated up until you come to the agreement with the MSBA and they actually raised your base rate based on socioeconomic factors that they study from when you originally agreed to the feasibility study. So moving forward, you'll have a higher reimbursement rate. They evaluate your
maintenance school score and they found that you were in the top 25 percentile in terms of maintenance at the schools that they look at. So you got an extra 1.54%. On top of that, we've also made the decision that you would be moving forward with the green schools program.
And so by meeting the requirements of the opt-in energy code and delivering a school that provides a higher quality of air quality for the students, you'll get an additional 4% of those eligible costs. Now, I keep saying the same thing, which is eligible costs, and that's an important component of the
MSBA grant program. They put certain caps in place and I've shown some of them on the screen here that establish up to those amounts they will reimburse those costs. Now in their analys.8% reimbursement on works out to be about
63% in total of the costs of the project will be coming back to Marbor from the state. So here I've just illustrated a little bit about how that reimbursement works. It's a paid as spent. So you as you incur costs review those they audit them
on the fly throughout the entire process and that based on what those eligible costs determined by that audit are you'll receive the payments periodically usually monthly throughout the course of the project. I've illustrated here sort of the two differences because what
you'll find is that much more of the all of the facts and figures that we have provided show to be eligible after that audit. And what you find is that about 74% of those costs in design end up being reimbursed. When you get to
construction, you're much more exposed to the cost caps. They work out to be just under $700 um per the project came in at. you're actually that first hundred or 90 or so dollars a square foot is not reimbursed.
The effect of that is that when you get to construction versus design where you're getting 74% of the costs in design, by the time you're in construction, you're closer to 63. But construction makes up so if the eligibility calculations after audit
prove true through the course of the job. Now, to make that clearer, I came up with a couple of different scenarios here to help explain how your decisions and the school building committee's decisions as they move through this
project can have a huge effect on your reimbursement. So, the first option in the green box is that you decide to spend every dollar within your budget. You follow all the rules. Everything ends up eligible. The city of Marorrow can look at a project that is 160,000
square ft that they would get for 59,4 and $9,098, which is a great value. It's much better than a lot of communities are getting from the MSBA. Now, construction, let's say, comes in 5% under budget. You hire
your CM, they get their bids, and we find out that the bids are 5% down. What you can see here is that while the $32, so you're only losing roughly $70,000 in grant, but you're spending $6
million less because the way that they do they calculate it is that they calculate where you are at bid. They'll adjust your grant down. They'll say, "Oh, this what we thought and up to 1% of your construction contingency." Now, let's
say the bid comes in, we spend everything up to up to bidding. The bid comes in exactly on target, but we're disciplined in the construction phase. We don't encounter a lot of unforeseen. When that extra scope comes up, the school building committee says we don't really need that. We want to be
fiscally, but the total project cost to the city is going to be $54,919,997. And the reason is that because they cap your costs, all that spending above that cost is spending that is paid for 100% by the city of Marboro. Whereas the
spending under that you don't need to put the money into. Now, it's important because construction is schedule and cost. It's important to just touch on the schedule and see what the commitments that we're working on here are. We're coming to you today
because our schedule requires a very aggressive approach. We're currently procuring the CM. Now, October, we're moving forward with design development, which is roughly 50% of the design phase hopefully by the end of the year. And then we'll be doing
early packages as early as March. And the goal would be that we have 100% of the drawings 1 year from now going to bid. But we'd have early packages that would allow us to start early mobilization and early um structure packages so that we can begin the wheels
moving of the construction machine and really have shovels in the ground as soon as school is out at the richer school at the end of this school or this next school year. So all told, that's what allows us to open the school in the fall of 2029.
>> And with your permission, Mr. Chair, I'll just continue on the storm water. >> Thank you. Thank you. >> Um, so the storm water came up through the course of the job. It was identified by the DPW that they had a recurrent issue at Ripley and McGee Avenue where
every through this area that is also wetlands on the back side of the site. And so we wanted to understand what the impact of that storm water would be on the project and how the project's impact would also
affect that storm water. And so uh we retained the civil engineer through the designer niche. While the school only committed 3% to the problem, the problem encroached on the school. It encroached on the southern entrance, which serves as both a bus and parent entrance to the
school. And so it had the potential of if you're going to spend $162 million to build this school, wouldn't you want to make sure that we're keeping the water from taking taking over? um Tom Deersio who is also here tonight and we identified that it's about $5 million in
construction to pursue two of the options that were in that study and a contingency was reasonable for design costs of about 1.3 million that would pay to bring the designer on board and to do the to run the project separately
of their vote. They want it to be entirely separate for various reasons, legal procurement requirements, as well as they want to make sure that when they report on the cost of schools, they're reporting on the cost of the school, not the cost of the school plus whatever the
city or town decides to tack on to it. So ultimately what we're before you today to discuss is that you have a budget before you that's $162,554
or 544,91. You have already appropriated 2 million of those dollars. So you are looking at a school that will give you that will cost you $160,544,91. The MSBA, if you spend every dollar,
will give you $103,34,993. If you spend everything but half your contingency, they will give you that same amount. The add the storm water to that to that, the two appropriations combined are $63,79,98. Similar to what we did when we visited
the urban affairs committee for PSR, we reached out to the treasurer and asked him to help us with the tax impact. He found that for the average um it would be $275.50, which both numbers are um about $20
lower than they were at PSR. And as the letter that we have provided to each of you tonight also states, the MSBA has confirmed at their board meeting that they will fund the project. That would be the next step. We like to describe the project scope and budget.
And the project funding agreement is like buying a house. You put in an offer and you sign that offer. That's your project scope and budget agreement. And then your project funding agreement is the thing that actually starts the grant flowing. So that's what those two documents are. So should this would
continue to design your building and by the time we get to October we'll have a third partner in on board with the CM so that we can deliver this school in 2029. With that, I will open it up to questions that myself or any of the
assembled partners that we've worked with very s the the water project is going to entail >> is thank thank you city engineer depio Uh thank you counselors. So, uh, Chris did a good job of explaining kind of how
we came to the decision that this drainage project, um, needs to be done in conjunction with the school project. And Niche Engineering, uh, did a good job at from a high level of breaking down all the different
components to this drainage issue. Um, the short version is that Milham Brook is piped through the neighborhood there. When that neighborhood was built, they took the brook and put it in the drainage trunk lines through the
neighborhood that are they're undersized now. And, uh, sort of the wetland system that really surrounds that whole southern part of the school site, it's all tied into that Milham Brook flow. Um so there's a couple phases we call
them of the drainage project that were uh in the design uh phases started >> right all the way through uh that's one piece of it and the other piece is going to involve um some of the mass DOT
infrastructure for the highway. Um there's a big uh stealing basin they call it that's behind the school and a and a drainage channel. Um and I also want to do some work at uh
the Lake Williams Dam because to the extent we can kind of get a spillway there that we can easily control, we can maybe close that in advance of a big storm and kind of delay that that part of the flow, too. So, there's several different components to it, but that's
kind of the overview in-house now. So, um we anticipate anticipate being ready to go out to bid with that part when we have the funding. >> And the other part, like I said, we're working with Mass DOT, so we're a little
bit beholden to their schedule. So hopefully we can get them uh >> two phases ideally. One that begins as soon as the um winter ends next year and then the second one would begin um the following year. So that by the time we
open the school the goal would be that both are um are complete. Obviously, that requires DOT to work with the city and the other components there. And um we've had lots of conversations with the
DPW to make sure that the contractor that we hire for the school understands their role in um working with that contractor and getting them access when they need to through the site to make sure that the both can occur concurrently. >> Right.
>> Thank you. >> Thank you, engineer Dersio. Council Orum, >> is it a question for >> a question? Uh Tom, you can stay up there, too. Um, so how much lineal feet
are are there in Let me see. So, it's going to go through several streets then. >> It is. >> It has to be replaced through. >> Yeah. All the way to the outfall at >> And that was my other question. The outfall. Where is the outfall and will it be able to handle I'm sure you've studied it. will be able to handle all
this additional flow. >> Yeah. So, the outfall is at Glen Street back into Milhambrook um >> before >> No, there's really there's really no place to do anything like that. >> Thank you. Yeah. >> That being said, the new school will
have detention on the facility. So, that that piece of it, that's going to be an improvement as well. >> Thank you. Thank you, Engineer Depersio. I'll open up to any further questions of the council. answer these questions. So, the the
tax impact, right? I mean, it's nice to say we want a new school and how much it's going to cost, but you know, people want to know what's it going to cost them, right? That that's So, you go through a scenario where you say it's up to $275, then drops down.
If Brian can answer that easily more easily than I can while I shuffle through my papers and find >> the tax impact. >> So tax stabiliz >> so your mortgage is the same over 30
years we'll say amount every month. The way the city does it, we divide, we take the principal, we divide it by the number of years and we take that level out the every year so that we pay a lot
more upfront and less later on in the schedule. Why we do it that way is because as you know we're always adding more bonds. So as that one declines then we bring on the next one. In decline we bring on the next one. If you do it
where it's always level, you're always adding to that payment. So, we try to do it this way. And also, it saves you interest by paying a lot of principal upfront. Level principal, you pay less interest over the life of the project. And in this case, it's millions of
dollars. So, so that's the point I wanted the public to understand and why the why the payment schedule is set up that way so that it actually does benefit the tax base because what's we have a capital plan that has not come down yet that usually runs in the order
of $10 to 12 million that's going to add my math $50 to the average tax bill. So, as you vote on this, it's not just a single bond. You need to take the whole concept. Now, I'm confident the city's
got, you know, increasing the average tax by about $275 if both project well both projects have to be approved in order to make the project work. You can't just do the school and not do the the storm water. Storm to me, the storm water, we need it regardless of whether
we do the school or not. The storm water piece has got to is going to have to get done and that would show up $9 million worth of bonds. So, I'm going to put it out to you to It came in under budget. it came in ahead of schedule. Um, I'm confident you guys can pull off the same feat because we do estimate
conservatively and that'll all work out in the end. But I just would like to challenge you to the fact that uh uh there's a benchmark before you that was able to resend uh your team make uh in various meetings uh over the last year. So uh
hopefully you accept the challenge. >> I I can certainly accept that challenge. Um while uh as any financial adviser will tell you past results are not a guarantee of the future. I can tell you that my MSBA under budget at with
another year and a half to go. >> So councilors I'm not guaranteeing this but I'm just saying past performance I mean they are estimates they they put the best they can because they're trying to predict what the price of wood steel pick the product is going to be 3 four years from now.
uh and what labor costs are going to be. But uh hopefully they've done their uh proper estimating and uh this should be the highest it is and not come in any higher than what they're projecting. If you want John wants to say >> I'll let John join in because he has
much more statistics about >> Oh, I'm not going to give statistics, but what I will say is um keep moving forward. You check that you're well within that schematic design budget at design development. You check it again at construction document. So, we're going to have numerous occasions and we
will challenge that CM as well. Just, hey, just because we have X amount of millions for construction, we want you to do better. We're hiring you to come to the table to help give us ideas. Listen, it's it's great because I've sat in communities where that number is at the other end. And it's a it's a much
harder discussion, but I think the team's done a phenomenal job with keeping the numbers down. And the challenge is finding the right CM that will sing that sheet of music with us so that we can, you know, we talk in extremes because it's embarrassment in a dollar if it never comes out of your
pocket, right? And that's that's super important these days where we know this is not the only community. We hear that very same list of capital coming, you know, potential issues with operating budgets, right? All sorts of things. So we we hear it and we you know we take it
to heart because ultimately you know >> Thank you, Mr. Chair. Gentlemen, it's my understanding that all furnishings, all equipment, all technology is going to be reimbursed. So we're going to get a new school with everything new inside. >> Is that correct? >> There is a limit to the reimbursement in
terms of they do it per student. So they have um I'm not going to know the number. about >> 1900 >> 19 at an older school for high middle school and high school where there's that much more technology where the furniture is bigger it's easier to
achieve in a small in small school for the smaller humans right >> so we so if we have a new school new new furnishings new equipment new technology we have an old school what has all that stuff is there any value to that facility and what's in it >> so it's a great question and that's part
of what will be discussed as the project keeps moving, what do you want to do with the the old old stuff? Do you want to recycle it through the the other schools? Is it, you know, is some of the stuff in Richer 10 years old and they're in other schools it's 20? Yeah,
absolutely. The value is is more in that value to you. Um ultimately when the CM is on board they aren't coming on board to manage that but they will be part of the process to say okay if we've got to empty the school out you know this is going to be part of our number if we're
going to recycle it here's what we can suggest. Uh >> um the budget carries about 4.15 million for technology and furniture combined. Of that all but 847,000
are reimbursed. Now, we base that off of an actual accounting of what we think the furniture will be at this time using unit costs of Marboro by the time we get to buying that stuff in 2029. But the reality is that we're going to
make decisions the closer we get to those about every aspect of this budget to try and deliver the project for the best value for the citizens of Marboro. And if we can deliver it for, you know, that $3,847,000
that comes straight out of Marorrow. MSBA is not paying that portion of it, but you want to make sure you get every dollar that MSBA is paying for. >> Thank you, gentlemen. Thank you, Mr. Chair. >> Council Vital, thank you, Chris. Thank you, John. Any further discussion from the committee? If no further discussion,
I will entertain a motion. And um with that would move to approve the proposed richer K- through5 elementary school project bond in the amount of 160,544,91. >> Thank you councelor Villa. Uh motion's been made and seconded uh to approve
order number 26-1009766 propose richer school. >> Mr. Chair, I would just ask that um that uh a suspension is asked at the next meeting. >> Thank you councelor Fil. Absolutely. Well noted. All in favor? One, two, three, four,
five. That carries with the suspension. Thank you, council. Uh, next up is order number 26-1009766. Uh, proposed storm water bond in the amount of $6,300,000 for the design, construction, and
improvement of the storm water drainage and related municipal infrastructure. Um we were uh nicely educated by uh engineer Dersio. So I will certainly entertain a motion on this if the committee is ready to do so. >> Mr. Chair, >> Council Vchill.
>> Thank you, Mr. Chair. Uh move to approve the proposed storm water bond in the amount of $6,300,000. >> Thank you, Council Vill. Motion's been b been made and I will second that to approve order number 10766 proposed storm water bond on the
appropriation amount of Mr. Sure. Just for a clarification, there is no state coverage of this expense. This is all on us, right? >> That is correct. >> Wanted to confirm that. >> And as uh President Ontioned earlier too, engineered approval, these are things that needed to be done.
>> Absolutely. Yeah. Completely understandable. Yes. >> Thank you, Council D. >> Motion was made in second. With that said, I will entertain a motion to adjurnn. >> Mr. Chair, >> motion to adjurnn. >> Motion has been made and seconded to
adjourn. All in favor? 1 2 3 4 5. We are adjourned at 7:15 p.m. Thank you.