Good evening. I call to order this special meeting of the Veron Township Council for Monday, I'm sorry, Tuesday the 28th of July, 2026. Madame Clerk, could you please read the Open Public Meetings Act statement?
>> The notice requirements of the Open Public Meetings Act have been satisfied with respect to this meeting of the township council. Specifically, the time and date were included in the publication of the annual meeting notice. The public notice and agenda was posted in the municipal bulletin board at least 48 hours preceding the start
time of this meeting. The agenda and documents can be viewed online, although we don't have any, at veronenj.org/countsil meetings. Please take notice that pursuant to New Jersey Public Law 2025, chapter 72, the complete text of each legal notice of the Township of Verona,
including all public entities under the authority of the township, may be obtained or viewed by the public on our official state registered web page, veronj.org/countsil, I'm sorry, veronj.org/legal public notices. Public comment period
will be held and listed it on the meeting agenda and instructions on how to comment will be provided at the appropriate times. >> Thank you, Madam Clerk. Would you call the role, please? >> Councilman Shore, >> present. >> Councilman Roman
>> here. >> Deputy Mayor Mackoy, >> present. >> Mayor Tambbor, >> present. Mayor, also present tonight is Township Manager Kevin O Sullivan, Deputy Township Manager Michael Krauss, Township Attorney Brian Aoya, myself,
municipal clerk Jennifer Kieran. >> Thank you. Would everybody please stand for the pledge of allegiance? >> Oh, I don't have my flag >> here. I have a flag. >> Thank you. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the
United States of America >> and to the republic for which it stands. >> One nation under God, >> indivisible indivisible, >> with liberty and justice for all. All right. Okay.
Uh first up that our only item is new business which is the presentations for the emergency services building uh subject matter experts. And first up we have Mr. Paul Mitchell
from BKV group. Um just for the public edification the way this will go is that the um presenters will each have about 50 minutes. The council will then have the opportunity to ask some questions. Um,
Mr. Sullivan, are you >> I am here. I'm just I had to restart my computer, but I am here. >> Yeah. Kevin, if you if you just want to give the public a little background on how we got here and what our objective tonight is, uh, from your standpoint,
that would certainly be helpful. >> Sure. Thank you, Mayor. Uh the the township underwent an RFP process uh approximately a month and a half ago. Uh bids uh were received from subject matter experts uh
towards the end of June and uh they were reviewed uh which uh then led to a recommendation of interviews of of three subject matter experts. Uh that does bring us to the uh the meeting that we are having tonight. the subject matter experts will be presenting uh each of
their uh levels of of experience uh their approach on the projects and we'll be available for questions to the council. Uh the overall intent of the subject matter expert uh would be to partner with our local architect, our
local expert which is solutions architecture to uh provide additional support uh and to provide additional answers to some of the pending questions that were raised earlier in the process and earlier in the project review. Uh so
that's that's where the subject matter expert will step in and pro provide some additional uh support and guidance through this process to get us to the next step of uh the the project which would be ultimately some form of of consideration by the council and and the
funding mechanisms and uh and bidding documents. >> All right. >> Yes, Mr. I just want to make sure the record's clear that the subject matter matter experts are here today and really what they're going to do my understanding and Kevin can correct me if I'm wrong is they're kind of going to
go back probably very quickly in the process and based upon their expertise they're going to evaluate what our needs are where a proper location would be and kind of go through that entire process and then make recommendations as to you
know size location rooms that are necessary things of that nature I just want to point out that they're coming in almost starting from the beginning, although it'll be a very quick process because we're going to review all the documents and different properties that that might be available and things of that nature, but they're not here just
to look at kind of where we kind of ended. You know, we're almost at a place right now where everyone thinks we know what's going on or they have an idea of what's going on and that's not really the case. We haven't made any decisions yet. >> Right. And I and I would put out there that this process uh has been in
progress for for several years to get to this point um for this facility. And in the past little over 11 months ago, we had a pretty extensive meeting where the council asked a series of questions. Meeting was almost 5 hours and
administration and firms have been looking to get answers to those questions. Um and the the public had raised some questions as well about things like cost and size of facility. Um which is what precipitated the need
to have a uh a second firm help out take a look um in order to ensure that those questions were able to be answered um with as much expertise as possible. So I would just put that out there that this
has not stopped the process or held back the process but rather it's a vehicle to continue the process so that everybody is on the same page and we can provide the most effective and cost effective structure that we can that we can offer to our services. So, just want to put
that out there and um and this is a very positive step um toward getting this project in progress. Right. So, um >> so um >> sorry, >> mayor. Yeah, we have two representatives from BKV Group in as panelists. You want
to introduce them? Can you see them? >> I see Mr. Mitchell and Mr. Carter. So, >> all right, whoever is going to start, go ahead and we'll give you um some time. I I will try to cut you off if uh if it's going on a little too long. Um just so
we can keep the meeting in progress and be fair to all of the the presenting groups. Um so go ahead and >> Yes. Can we share with you Mr. Mitchell? >> Yeah. Well um just a quick sound check. Can you hear us? Okay,
>> I can hear you. >> And how about >> can hear you, Craig? There's one more member of our team who I don't think has been promoted to panelist yet. Mark Manetti should he's on the call. >> Okay, >> I see his hand up there. >> I saw his name before.
>> And just while we're waiting to get him in also for the public edification, the council's provided extensive documents from each of these firms as a response to the uh the bid. Um and so we've had the opportunity to review hundreds of
pages of documents before this evening's meeting. So if it looks like the the meeting is brief, it's because a lot of our questions and more specific information was provided in those documents. >> Okay, Mr. Mitchell. All >> right, I'm going to turn it over to
Mark. He's going to get started for us. You're We can't hear you, Mark. Um, Mr. Manetti is unmuted. >> While while Mark's adjusting his his audio settings, can you see the screen that I'm sharing? >> Yes. Fantastic.
Still nothing. >> Nothing yet. >> You can try to use the audio on his phone if he wants to call in. >> Yeah, there's a call in number, Mark, if you want to try to call. Mark, should we get started? Are you
almost there? >> How about now? Can you hear me? >> There he is. >> All right. Sorry about that. Um, yeah, I guess there was one step to go that I I wasn't doing. All right. Well, thank you for your patience. Um and uh uh on
behalf of BKV Group and our team just like to um thank you for inviting us to uh participate in this opportunity. Um this is a fantastic um project uh for your town. Um and I think it's some uh it's it's it's a place where BKV can you
know has in the past shined and I think we can do the same thing for you. So u let's go ahead and get right into the presentation and um each one of us will introduce ourselves. I'll start with myself and my role. Uh I am the civic practice leader from the DC uh practice site. Um so all of the and this work
would be u administered uh from our DC office site. Um so you know my background um having been with BKV now for uh 12 years has been primarily public safety. Um so this is uh this your project is something that we do
quite successfully out of our DC office as well as our other office sites. Uh so um you know this this is a a wonderful opportunity. Uh I have 30 years in the um in the profession working on these types of projects and um you know my my role uh for this team is is really to be
uh the practice site leader and then um support the overall um uh consultation from Paul and Craig who just have loads of experience on both the uh fire station design and the law enforcement design. So I'll let them introduce themselves. >> All right. Thank you Mark. Uh my name is
Paul Michelle. I'm the uh I'm a partner with BKV Group as well. Um but I have the uh unique privilege of serving as the national practice leader for law enforcement, which means I get a chance to work on all of our police projects across country. I've been something I've been uh uh really focusing on for over
25 years now. Um so I'll also be serving as sort of the day-to-day uh contact and project manager alongside Mark uh to help manage the project. >> Yeah. And good evening everybody. My name is Craig Carter. Uh, I'm Paul's counterpart on the fire and EMS side. So, I'm the the fire and EMS practice
leader for BKV Group. Um, and just like Paul, I I get to work on all of our fire station projects across the United States. I get to work on police projects also if they're connected to a fire station. [clears throat] Um, like this one is, um, which is a joy. Um, and, uh, you know, we we we speak a lot at
national conferences. We we write articles about these topics. um and really tried to to uh beyond our clients educate uh anybody who who's interested to learn um all about the topics that we're going to talk about today and that are important to your project. >> Thanks Rick.
>> So we thought it would be helpful to at least briefly explain why we think we're uniquely suited for this role. Um you know public safety has been a core focus of BKV Group for nearly uh nearly five decades and during that time we partnered with communities across the country uh to do near u you know over 400 public safety projects. many of
those are combined. Um, you know, it's becoming more and more prevalent that we see that. But the value is not in the number. The value is really what we've learned along the way. And it gives us something that, uh, you know, it's difficult to replicate, which is pattern recognition. You know, we've we've seen what works, what what creates challenges
years later. Um, how small decisions can really affect, you know, operations uh, year after year. So, uh, just as importantly, our recommendations are backed by a fully integrated team, which uh, we think might be unique. Um, not only are we architects and public safety planners, um, but we also have interiors
and engineering in house. And, you know, really the benefit for that for this project is as a team, you know, the our counterparts on the architect record, engineer record, um, they're going to have the benefit of not only the public safety planning architecturally, but also what works from an interior
standpoint and what are the special things from a from an engineering standpoint that need to be considered and incorporated into the project. So we bring a full full breath of of uh public safety expertise because all of our interior designers and engineers are subject matter experts also. Um you know
and so you know really we want to be your public your trusted adviser. You know our role really we see as extending past design. Uh we want to be involved all the way through implementation to make sure all of those decisions uh that were determined at the front end of the project uh make its way through uh to a built project as well.
You know, one of the advantages of working nationally is that we've got the opportunity to see how facilities um you know, continue to evolve. So, I'm going to talk a little bit about law enforcement, then I'm going to turn over to Craig to talk a little bit about police. You know, you know, police facilities are not simply administrative buildings. They're operational tools
that that really are going to support recruitment, retention, wellness, security, technology, you know, long-term resiliency. Um, you know, through our work on those projects, you know, we identified a lot of planning principles. Many of them are up here on the screen. Um, you know, but and those lessons become, you know, what we work
on every every uh project. You know, just a few of the ones that that we like to focus on is really making a project that is welcome to the community, welcoming to the community, provides transparency in government and policing, but also very secure. Um, you know, efficient operations is extremely
important. Um, you know, the payroll is probably one of the largest budget items, if not the largest budget item in a in a police department. Um, so whatever we can do to make an efficient project that saves steps and and makes it easier for first responders to do their jobs is going to pay dividends from day one. But even specialized areas
like evidence um and you know some of the the new technologies like you know cyber uh cyber crime investigations and drones as first responders and things along those lines need to be considered. Um and ultimately they need to be flexible and adaptable because um this project is going to be a foundational
and a generational project that's going to serve for decades. The same is really true on the fire station side of this this project. Um, you know, we we have seen rapid change in in how fire stations are designed over the past 10 to 15 years. Um, and it
goes beyond the NFPA standards, which are, you know, I wouldn't say they're reactionary, but they but they don't exactly lead the curve in terms of what the future holds for the fire service. Um, and so we we like to look ahead and and really see where the client where the fire service is going so we can set our clients up for long-term success. Um, and so we'll talk about things like
cancer prevention measures and uh and mental health support and and various uh hands-on training opportunities, physical conditioning opportunities. Um, we'll talk about staff diversity um and how you can promote a diverse, healthy staff of volunteers for the long run.
Um, and uh and we'll talk a lot about long-term resiliency. Uh, you know, that's a that's a hugely important component of the fire service. uh and there's a lot of specific strategies that uh we would advise implementing into your project that are going to address that. Um and uh you know we'll
so we'll talk to you about all these sorts of things as we're doing those very initial programming process um that you guys talked about at the beginning here. Um and make sure that that you are thinking about what the future of the the fire service holds uh so we can as I
said set you up for long-term success. Uh now this project type is a little bit unique. Um we we really do uh these though in in three different ways as as uh police and fire experts. Um sometimes we're the architect record where we're we're the the primary point architect.
Um we're doing the project from soup to nuts and we're we're in charge of the whole kitten kaboodleoodle. Other times um you know we partner with a local architecture firm and act as the designer. uh but we're involved from the very beginning and and uh both firms are are kind of in the in the trenches
drawing lines and figuring out how spaces are working together um how to plan the site effectively uh etc. Um this particular project is a little bit different. It's it's it's we're acting as a subject matter expert. Uh but we do this also and this allows us to to
really act as a design reviewer for your local architect. not superseding them by any uh by any uh means. Um we are providing an independent look at uh what they develop. Making sure that we're in uh talking about best practices um for
both of these uh project types and how best practices might see them being combined into one building. Uh and making sure that the township has that information and making sure that our local architecture partner solutions has that information. um we want to to set
them up for success and we want to set the township up for success. And and the way we're going to approach that is um is not through trying to badger you into what we think that the the national standard says or what what we believe is appropriate for Verona. Um what we're
talking about really is uh is what makes sense for this particular project. um and being an advocate and a resource um for the township and and for solutions architecture to make sure that uh through this project ends up being a long-term success. Really, we're we're an extension of your
team here. We're not taking anything over. So this is uh this um you know the value of the subject matter expert role as Craig's described it isn't measured by a single report or a deliverable or an instance in time is
it's really measured by how successful uh how successfully recommendations are carried throughout the life of the project. You know our involvement is going to be begin with uh validating the work that's already been completed. You know, we want to confirm operational priorities, um, identify opportunities, um, ensure the program and the building
organization are going to continue to support the township's long-term goals. You know, as the design evolves, we want to work collectively with the, uh, the township staff, public safety leadership, uh, and solutions architecture to refine planning decisions, verify alternatives, and really strengthen the project through
every major design milestone. You know, finally, we stay engaged through construction documents and and bidding and implementation ideally because we want to help ensure that the operational intent. Um, all the planning decisions that were made are going to, you know, throughout the project are going to be maintained all the way through con
completion of construction and and uh when you folks move in. So, that continuity really is what we see uh is going to provide long-lasting value. um not simply you know uh drawing comments on a you know comments on a drawing set or or you know individual recommendations
you know and I think another one of the most important things that the BKB group can offer uh township of Verona is really the ability to make decisions with confidence um every recommendation we are going to make is going to be intended to uh allow you to make informed decisions uh with confidence
and we're going to begin by listening um understanding the work that's already been and uh completed, you know, and confirming all of those things with the township. You know, from there, we want to analyze the project through the lens of national uh uh public safety best practices, but again, not just in a rigid way. We want to, you know, see how
those align with the way that that your public safety departments are actually, you know, actually need to operate. Uh we want to strengthen workflow, security, wellness, um and long-term adaptability. you know, as the design evolves, we're going to help organize and refine those planning decisions, evaluate the alternatives, participate in milestone reviews, uh, with
solutions, architecture, and the township. Um, finally, again, we want to stay involved through implementation to make sure all those decisions are are are followed through. And we really say that's how we uh provide value through continuous collaboration and informed
decision uh uh uh support. >> Great. So just in terms of a little bit of um discussion about some of our past projects. This is uh the sixth district police station for Montgomery, Maryland. Uh this project was delivered about a year and a half ago. Uh this was an interesting project the way it came to
us through a term contract that we had for Montgomery County uh for public safety facilities. Uh and this term contract was actually in its fifth year. And um this this project came down to us where we were asked to take a uh completely designed project that had been shelf for 10 years because of
budget overruns uh and then dust it off, upgrade it, um go through a whole program validation process with um Montgomery County Police Department, um and then uh put the project back in for permit, get it approved and built. And so we were able to accomplish this
project. Um oh by the way in the process of that we were tasked with doing a net zero study and uh the outcome of that was determined by the uh county board to move forward with those findings and so this project was delivered as a net zero facility. It also integrated a um a
structured parking because the site this is what they call a profered site condition. So it's a it's a very difficult site uh to handle um you know uh in many instances you get this site because nobody else can really develop in it and so hey let's put a police station uh here and that's what we did. Um this is uh indicative of uh some of
the constraints that you might see with the the uh the Verona Township public um civic build um building in terms of its kind of uh restricted uh site planning confines and you need to really consider how you're going to address the site from a from a um a sequencing of
operations um to build the facility on the site and achieve all of your requirements uh for storm water management and and thus and erosion sediment control and then access to the site. So, uh, even those types of things really take a level of understanding that I think our our, uh, project team
is well suited, um, to really provide guidance on and make sure that you're making the best decisions and, uh, using the the city's the township's resources as best uh, as you can. So, it was a wonderful project and Paul and I had an opportunity to take that in to do the same thing and develop the P for the
fourth district police station, which was a combined facility with uh, Montgomery County Police and the parks police project. Uh the next one we want to talk about is in Spennsylvania County, Virginia. Uh Mark and I worked on this one and it it's a it's a remodeling project. Uh but
mostly it's an expansion project because relatively little of the original building is is is there and and everything really changed. Um uh but this was uh they had a hugely constrained budget and and a and a tight site as well. There's a lot of zoning constraints on this. Uh but the but the
the biggest challenge for them was uh being able to accomplish this with a with a very tight budget. While their CIP allowed them to to spend a little bit more money on future stations, this this kind of first one out the gate was um you know at their busiest station in the in the entire county was was
severely budget constrained. And so we essentially put uh basically uh uh nearly double the size of the building um while only spending just under $3 million on the construction cost. And and we achieved that uh by being pretty straightforward with the mechanical
systems. Um using a woodframe building uh which matches the original construction. So it it it is not a catastrophic decision. Um it makes a lot of sense to continue the the construction methodology that had originally been used for this. Um but
you know being very conscientious about uh about roof shapes and building shapes and forms and and how you could uh carefully attach this without jumping through a lot of hoops. Um I mean a huge cost driver for for any renovation project is going to be um the number of separate phases you force the contractor
to jump through um as they're going through the process. And so we were able to kind of limit this uh number of phases uh pretty effectively which which kept the costs down significantly. Um, so we certainly have a lot of experience managing the budget and making uh helping our clients make decisions um
that are in the best value of the of of this in this case the county over the long run. Uh some of those are first cost driven certainly um uh but we can we can explain to you how to uh maybe shave some space here or there maybe how to do things a little bit uh less expensively in in other ways in order to come in at the budget point that you're
looking for. I'm going to talk very quickly about our Lancing, Michigan project, which is a definitely not of the scale as the Township of Roners project, but it's a great exercise, you know, in budget um issues as well, but you really want to talk about sort of the the scheduling
aspect of things and our ability to help you deliver a project on time. This is a fast-paced, high-profile project. It's about $175 million of total bond work. Um the the main public safety building is a combined facility from the standpoint of fire administration, court, police and and uh city uh county
lockup, but it also had operational fire station, fire training, uh you know, support structures um and then as well some some remote fire stations as well. You know, this project was, you know, really required discipline decision-m uh not just working faster. you know, sort
of our collaborative process and active engagement is what gave the the city and the user groups the ability to make those decisions with confidence, you know, and in order to support the construction manager, there were dozens of bid packages um allowed the CM to advance the project on time and on
budget. Um so really it's it's really the communication, the collaboration, and the ability to help you make decisions um is going to help make those decisions along the way. So just in closing just a um you know YB BKB I think is a good partner for you.
Uh 400 plus public safety projects um over the course of our um firm's history. Uh the national police and fire experience that both Paul and and um Craig will bring to this project are are pretty pretty amazing and I've worked with both of them and I think they'll be
wonderful uh partners for you and they will go through the process with you to inform the decision-making process with you. Uh we'll be developing alternatives and and really engaging your your architect design team uh and really providing that level of validation both from a cost perspective but a best
practice perspective nationally um to make sure that you can go back to your constituencies and assure them that the project they're getting is going to be uh you know a top-notch facility that's going to serve the community for the next um 50 years and and do it well. Uh we did talk a little bit about our holistic pra practice. Uh so that's one
benefit with the BKB group team is that you will have access to our interior designers, our engineers, structural, mechanical, electrical, plumbing that really understand these project typologies and can provide additional benefit and and um you know uh consultation to validate decisions
related to the different systems that are going to support your facility. And uh we're we're a trusted partner. Uh we've had great success serving our clients nationally um and then also out of our DC office. So we look forward to this type of partnership with you. We think we can really provide value through this process and uh make sure
that uh at the end at the end of the project that you have a wonderful project that you you that the town will be very proud of. So thank you again for having us and uh we're here for any further discussions. >> Thank you. Um
Deputy Mayor Makavoy, any questions? >> Uh yeah, Mayor, thank you very much. Uh I I'll start out by saying thank you very much for your presentation. Uh was very informative. I have a couple questions and thoughts. Obviously uh
with the dollar value of this project uh I truly believe that a second set of eyes is always beneficial. Uh not just in the design of the project but in the construction phase of the project. Uh I did notice I have a couple like quick
questions. Have you ever done any projects in New Jersey? >> Yes, we have. Uh not on the public safety side, but um we have a strong development practice that's done um a lot of um student housing. Um there's one for Ruckers that recently we
delivered. Um so we have been um in in your neck of the woods on that end and uh we look forward to uh being able to serve you on this end as well. >> Okay. So, uh, kind of off of that, uh, I I read in your, uh,
little RFP that was sent, you have plans obviously to interview our police, uh, officers, our chief, uh, other administrators and fire department. Do you are these going to be Zoom meetings?
And the reason for asking is one of the topics of this building is the location of it. And I'm wondering have you visited Verona? Do you plan on visiting or these meetings going to be done over Zoom? And even during the construction
phase of it, uh I didn't see anything in the RFP as to on-site visits. Is that a planned uh thing or they would be on top of uh the estimate that was provided? >> Do you want me to take that?
>> Uh in terms of being able to uh see the site, I think it's important for us to actually be there in person. So, I would anticipate uh being there in person to see the site. I always like interviews that are in person because there's a lot
of communication that um is not really uh verbal and that you really kind of need to need to be there in person to to pick up uh you know where people are kind of trending in terms of um the discussion. So I think it's important for us to be there. Um that would be part of our basic services to you. I
just think that that's really important to to the process for us to be able to engage you um you know directly uh during construction um in in terms of of site visits um and and field visits during construction. Uh
Paul, I did not um work with you on the um the development of the of any fee quote. So, I don't know if you included that or not, but we definitely have a team that is up in your neck of the woods quite a bit. Um you know, we have projects in Philadelphia again. and we
had projects in New Jersey that I think have finished up, but I think it's um something that um you know, we can provide value uh to you in that process. So, uh Paul, I don't want to speak out of turn. Um but was that something that was included in the in the uh in the
original um quote? >> Yeah, we included some of that. The the um you know, really it's it's the right times because you don't need to be out there continuously, but you do need to be there at the right times to see the project as it's developing. certainly as the um you know the the things that
really make a public safety facility operational is is really the right time. Um you know agree you know Craig and I agree completely with Mark you know these uh doing sort of the program verification and sort of gap analysis really is what this is. It's not a
full-blown restart for programming. We're going to take what the work's been done and work to make sure that you know there's nothing that might be needed that wasn't you know maybe considered initially. [cough and clears throat] Pardon me. Um you know so the the those
workshops as we call them are very important for us to be there in person. Um, but we're going to be involved. Uh, you know, there's some some may be able to be virtual, some some will definitely need to be in person. And I think the major design workshops and the engagement is going to be important to
be there in person. And we've included that the um, you know, one of the other important things is going to be working with solutions architecture behind the scenes before we get to those workshops and those client engagements. um because we need to help them develop the materials and the project type
understanding uh that's going to um ultimately develop the design and then the design that the city the township and the police and the fire department are going to see. So, we're going to work with them not just in engagement as we see it with the township and the public safety departments, but also with
the um you know, with solutions architecture and the uh the larger architecture and engineering team uh to all to to keep them moving forward, have the information they need to, you know, to prepare the design with confidence. And then you've got the benefit of of of design solutions that you'll see that
are already going to have that baked in. And you're not going to have to wait for us to then respond and give them, you know, sort of advice and recommendations along the way. Craig, did you have anything else? >> You covered it. >> Thank you, Mayor. >> You, Councilman Roman.
>> Thank you. Um would you uh please tell me a little bit some thoughts about the space programming process making decisions as to what types of space are requirement versus a nice to have um opportunities for optimization and
management of total program square footage uh and really putting the right spaces that you actually need into a facility. kind of walk me through that approach, client decision- making, how you work with the clients on that, and any historical experience you'd like to flag in that in that area.
>> Craig, do you want to do you want to take that? [clears throat] >> That is a uh that's a robust question. Um um so I'm gonna I'm gonna ask uh Mark and Paul to listen carefully and fill in what I miss. Um I I mean totally on board with you on on that uh that that
question and and kind of the impetus behind it. Um, one of the one of the benefits of having a subject matter expert like you're interviewing for is that we've seen a ton of projects. Um, and it's it's easy enough um for a firm who's done a couple of fire stations, a
couple of police stations to kind of regurgitate what the last group did and put that forward as as kind of a best practice. Um and and uh in reality it it may not be far off but one of the benefits we have is the ability to understand how you can shave square footage or or eliminate things without
really impacting long-term functionality. Um right so um if you talk uh about you know the size of the apparatus space or uh or something like that or well you know what's really practical for the size of the turn your storage room. I'm talking on the fire
side because that's my Bailey wick, right? You know, for a volunteer organization, you know, like the turn up your storage room is maybe not something that we want to shrink down to the the to the very smallest because it impedes functionality as they're trying to gear up on the way to a call in kind of in a
rush. Um, but, you know, there might be some some ways to to shrink up the apparatus space a little bit with that are not going to provide long-term uh challenges to the department. And so those, you know, those sorts of discussions are some things that that that your subject matter expert should
be able to provide to you and bring to the table. Um, you know, how you can squeeze some square footage out. Um, with regards to shared square footage, I think there's a lot of opportunities um between police and fire. They're they're aligned in in many respects. Um, and and we can share a lot of different things.
There are some things that we, you know, there's some things we can't, but but we can align uh align them and and organize the building in order to promote that shared space opportunity, which, you know, builds camaraderie back and forth between the two departments, which is fantastic. Uh but it also saves some square footage. Um you know, we wrote an
article just a little bit ago, maybe a couple months. Um about that specific topic and and we believe that that sharing space is is important and practical. Um but at the same time we don't understand exactly how Verona fire
and Verona police operate at this moment. we need to learn that before we can make strong recommendations about um about whether or not it makes sense to combine this particular space or that particular space and or whether you know we uh whether it makes sense to kind of push the departments with you know I
know you you you said you are not super interested in this but you know this might be a way to to invest money in this other's portion of the building that you think is very important that is currently not in the budget or something like that and and so you know in participation with solutions architecture we're definitely prepared to have those sorts of conversations
um throughout the course of the project to make sure that that we're right sizing this and and you know the other the other major topic I think that is important to discuss when we're when we're talking about reducing square footage um managing the budget you know making sure that we've got the the the
programming process aligned is is is thinking about the future is there expansion capability and I know this site is not you know it's not the parcel you would look at and say well this is going to be great for future expansion but but with a little bit of But you can you can maybe defer some of those things
to the to the future as well. If there's um consideration that that this department might grow or that department might grow, how would you expand in the future in order to accommodate that those those long-term needs if uh if it's not in the budget to do it immediately? And so typically what we'll do is we'll come in, we'll talk to the
department, um and as Paul said, we're not starting from scratch. There's a program established. We want to we'll flag that for conformance with national standards. Ask a lot of pointed questions to the department in person, right? Right? We'll tour our existing facilities. Um, and then we'll go through and say, "Well, did you think about this? Did you think about that?
Um, what do you think about sharing the physical conditioning room uh with your with your partners? What are the pros and cons of that?" We'll learn a bunch of information for each of the departments. And we'll come back into a more joint session uh with both police and fire there. Um, and kind of talk through um some of those broader issues
that are going to be uh affect both departments significantly um in terms of entranceways and and community spaces or or shared training spaces. And you know, some of the mechanical electrical side of things, you know, don't tend to be that controversial. But if we talk about sharing a physical conditioning room, when we talk about sharing break, fire
station, kitchen, like those are those are hugely substantive discussions that the departments will have strong opinions about and rightly so. And and so we just need to hash that stuff out, make sure that we understand um what all the pros and cons are. And we'll try to do that, you know, give each department a voice before we kind of bring them
together and and uh force them to to say that in front of the other person, right? >> Yeah. I would I would only add, Craig, that I think the you covered everything that I would cover as far as the the sharing of space. I think frequently I mean every project you know has a budget
and frequently we are you know with today's economy you know we're always finding ways to massage a project uh to to meet the budget and um it's just the realities of sort of the the economic state of the world right now. Um so
finding ways you know and space is the greatest determination of cost. So finding ways to share space is certainly important. Finding ways to be flexible and do more with less space is another way to look at this. You know, it's not doesn't work in all cases, but can a
community room also serve as an EOC? Can a community room also serve as a place where you might have to do defensive tactics training or something along those lines? Um, you know, some of those some of those spaces could be multi-purpose and uh again, doing more with less is something we'd look at.
I'll reinforce what Craig said. every single decision is going to have impacts. You know, it's it's really our job to help you understand what those impacts, the pros and the cons. Uh not only from operations, but from long-term flexibility and from uh from a cost standpoint. Um that's that's part of the
value I think that we bring is is again helping you make those decisions fully informed so you know you're making the best decision possible for the township. And I just might add the site planning aspect of this is really important for these types of facilities. Uh how you zone the facility. Uh just the ve the
vehicle maneuvering for the different um fire fire apparatus versus the police uh police and the motorcade and those types of things can be a real challenge and they can take up a lot of space on your site. And so really thinking through those appropriately and and making sure that you've cited the the different
functions in the best manner um can really go a long way into stretching your budget dollars. Another question, um, how do we avoid confirmation bias? Uh, from where we're at right now, if some of our fundamental assumptions are incorrect, um, how do we
know, you know, are we looking at site selection? Are we looking at whether or not a combined building makes sense or not? Um, you know, how do we avoid basically saying, okay, well, this is where we're at and this is therefore we have to go in a direction that we've already, you know, the trains left the station. How do we how do we avoid that
if we truly are on on the wrong track? >> Yeah, we we we understand that you know there's all the options are on the table is the way we understood the potential for this project. Um you know the first thing again programming validation gap analysis and then determining you know the best way to you know does does a
combined facility work on this particular site? Is there another piece of parcel we could look at that a combined facility works at or are we going to look at potentially two separate facilities on two separate sites? All of those options are on the table. We work very quickly because we've done this quite a lot. Once we
have a confirmed program and sites to consider and different ways to look at this, we're going to master plan some options very quickly to help look at what the what the feasibility of the various options would be. And that's a that's a a quick easy exercise that we built into our feed. Um and again with
pros and cons for operations, uh cost, site feasibility, um you know, compatibility with neighboring land uses. There's a variety of different criteria that can be evaluated. And frequently when we look at a a a quick site analysis, we're going to develop
that criteria with the with the township and with the public safety agencies as well because certain things are going to be important. arterial access, security, um, you know, public visibility and, you know, accessibility to to the, you know, to the public. There's those are just
some examples. We've got a, you know, that's a process we would go through to determine what the most important criteria are as we look at the various options. And we can do uh frequently we'll do a scoring uh you know a matrix or a scoring process to help you easily understand you know whether it be
numerically or visually to see which options are really going to meet your program and your long-term needs in the best way. So you know we want you to make you know be able to make again really good decisions. Um and those decisions are going to be best served early in the process um so we can get
get the project going in the in the final right direction that everybody agrees on. Thank you. >> Thank you, ma'am. >> Thank you. Um just a couple questions. I know in looking through your materials, it was uh it was impressive the number
of facilities you had built. Um one and you had done some combination facilities. I'm curious is if you have an example of a facility where uh you either built or served as an expert that had a career department and a volunteer department sharing the same facility. um
you know being that they have different operational structures and operational cultures if you could very briefly explain if you've done a project like that and uh and how you saw success in that project especially related to shared spaces. >> Great. Do you want to talk about
Winchester or Fairfax City or any number of those? >> You're talking about um career and career and volunteer fire departments kind of combined, right? No, I'm talking about police department sharing a common facilities with a volunteer fire department.
>> That changes the the project I'm going to talk about. So, I'm going to talk about Fidley instead. Um, and the Fidley Civic Campus was a it included Civity Hall also, and then there's a separate public works building. So, it was it was a large uh $45 million project um all
told. Um and the um they we have we kept that particular facility we kept the departments relatively distinct. There was um the administrative side of things um was a
little bit more conjoined um and that they they shared like uh administrative bathrooms and um and access to kind of the route to the parking lot um essentially. Um but the the police department being there full-time, you
know, 24/7, 365, uh you know, had a much larger footprint in the building. Um all told, they had a squad garage. They had uh significant investigations and patrol divisions. They had their their administration areas. In this particular case, they had public safety director who essentially was the um was the
administrator for both departments. Um and so you know it made it made a lot of sense to combine that uh the volunteer fire department into the same facility. Um although they do have two other remote fire stations they respond out of. Um but the the fire department um is
located a little bit on the the office areas on the first floor of that facility. But primarily the the places where the firefighters are hanging out um when they're either on duty uh if they're on if they have a duty a duty crew assignment or whether they're
responding um or at the station for a response or for for training night or whatever is on the second floor. And so there there's a grade separation between the two departments essentially. And so the the kitchen, uh training space, um there's some bunk rooms in that facility for overnights, uh locker room
facilities, all the showers and everything for the fire department is all up on that second level. The police department is really on the first floor with some some things in the basement, including the squad garage. Um so it allows both departments to have some space that they feel like is really their own. >> Um although, you know, there's there's
shared uh shared spaces certainly as well. The physical conditioning room is shared. Uh there's a an EOCtraining room that both departments have access to as well as the city hall staff. Um but you know, we did not find any sort of cultural
um conflicts between the two departments from a you know, you're here all the time and you're you I feel like you're just borrowing the building because you know, you you have a job at some other location and and you're only here when there's an emergency. Um what we what we found are this the typical differences
between police officers and firefighters and and how they want to go about their business and and whether they you know feel like sharing everything with everybody or whether they are are a little bit more closed off and and private and and feel like security is is more important, right? Um and and those
tend [clears throat] to be uh you know across uh communities um you know differences between fire and police departments. And so in in this particular project in Fidley, it was it was not a, you know, full-time versus part-time job discrepancy. It was a it
was kind of the standard um you know, I want to I want to be your friend versus um you know, we're good standing a little bit apart. >> Well, I appreciate that. Thank you. Um, one of the challenges that that Verona faces is that we're a smaller town with
not as much um, spending capacity and and things like that. Know a lot of your projects I was looking you know like Lancing, Michigan obviously is a bit of a different demographic. Um I just wondering if you if you just had any thoughts just a very maybe one very
brief example cuz we are running a little short on time of how you were able to get a project maximize a project for a small town like ours. >> You talk a little bit about maybe Detroit Lakes. It's a small uh it's a
small community in western Minnesota. Um it's only about an 11,000 foot operational police station. This is not a combined facility. It's a strictly police station. Um there was a full fleet garage in the basement with a little bit of operational and storage space. But again, this is it was a small
community. It was a small project. Um you know, we we really maximized the um the budget for for them by using simple building materials. Um, you know, there's a lot of good good hard durable materials, but it was simple simple
shapes, uh, simple materials that were still durable. Um, and we really focused the investment on the entry, the lobby, the public spaces, the areas where the police department can develop their camaraderie and spend time together. Um,
a lot of the rest of the building was uh, very simple and economical. Um, and I wouldn't say austere, but the the the investment was put where it did the most. >> Well, that that is certainly helpful. Um, thank you for that. I was wondering
if you could give a just a brief example. We've seen a lot of structures that you were the the project designers for. Could you give an example of a project where you were the subject matter expert um, you know, and just just briefly describe your success in in that project?
Um I well I can step in on this one. Um you know we just uh um [clears throat] finish up our engagement on a on a project for Fort Dodge, Iowa where where we are the subject matter expert. Um and
it it is a uh a an extremely budget driven project. Um city of Fort Dodge is is not a large community. We have a local architect who we're working for. Um we're not contracted directly with the city. were contracted with the architect. But um uh support during the
programming phase um kind of uh you know providing some some commentary or or making sure that the the local architect was was asking the correct questions at the correct times and uh and making sure that the fire department was thinking about the long-term uh needs rather than
that. In this particular case, they their focus was so much on the budget that um our concern was that they they weren't going to really think about what the long term held uh for them. Um and then just uh consistently throughout the design phase providing feedback on um
the progress of the design. And again, we didn't put pen to pencil or pen to paper to dictate what the design should be, how the space should be laid out, um the size of the rooms, how the rooms were outfitted, proportion of the rooms, where the doors were located, any any of that stuff. Um we provided commentary to
to let them know uh you know, this is uh this arrangement doesn't quite meet NFPA standards. You should tweak this here and there, like you'd have better response flows if you organize the space this way. Um, we've we've seen acoustic issues when we've done this particular issue. Here's a here's a a code concern
that has come up that you wouldn't expect. Um, if you if you don't if you're not involved in fire station [clears throat] design on a day-to-day basis, but but we want to flag this for you so so you don't uh kind of run into issues [clears throat] with the code official and and then have to backtrack a lot when you're going into permitting.
Um, you know, this [clears throat] is how you might set this up for for the future. Um, so you can add add a third apparatus over the long term. Um, hey, don't forget that you need this uh this piece of equipment here, that piece of equipment there. Um, just through that
process of dialoguing with the local architect. Um, you know, providing documentation then at at milestones that the city is able to review. Um, not just the local architect, but it's city has has access to that stuff. Um, we want to make sure that that they're getting all
of the information that we're providing to the local architecture. Um and uh you know over the course of that project the you know through some some fantastic efforts of the local architect and and taking in consideration a lot of the comments that we made I think they they've ended up with a pretty pretty
fantastic project. >> Yeah. Thank you. And one last question. um ultimately so you'll be you know in your in your response to the RFP and and uh and things like that and in the conversation we had this evening there's
a lot of discussion about um working with the the fire departments and the police department and the management and that's that's uh what we want to see. Ultimately, this project is going to come to the council and the council will have to make some tough decisions on
spaces and what the scope of the final project is going to be. Um, so you're taking this now to a five member governing body. We all have different experiences in different areas. Some of us do project management for a living.
Some of us have a background in emergency services. Some of us have a background in construction. Um so my question is can you give an example or what is your philosophy as far as now taking all of this data that you have
compiled and presenting it to a governing body to make these final decisions and how you support the governing body in that process. >> I'll jump in real quick. I think um part of it is not just engaging with you at
the end of the project. We really enjoy you know making sure that the the overall design team is is bringing the information to you as we go. Um that allows you to be part of the process and not just simply reactionary at the end.
Um to your point, you have an ability to, you know, various abilities, various um um areas that that you all have expertise in in your your day-to-day lives. Um you know, I think just providing you um a perspective of the
the why the decisions uh are important, the pros and cons as well. I mean, police and fire, city staff need to understand the pros and cons to help develop those decisions. You do as well. Um, you know, frequently there are different voices in the city council meetings that that we hear. Um, you
know, one of the things that, uh, um, you know, sometimes it's more financial concerns, sometimes it's more long-term adaptability or building for the future. Sometimes it is how is this going to make my, you know, how is this going to make my community safer? We've had um uh
we had that question directly asked by constituents to somebody who was making a decision to advance a project uh that was on the governing body and and that question was asked and it was something that was that um you know we had answered um throughout the the years sort of anecdotally but it was an important enough question that got our
attention. We actually wrote an article about it. You know how do public safety facilities make communities feel safer? Um, and strangely enough, I was at another city council meeting the following week and another governing body asked me the same question. It's like, well, let me send you the article
we just wrote um in response to that. So, we think about these issues and we when we see a problem, we we like to help help solve the problem and and bring the information to folks like you. >> Thank you. And I'll uh I'll turn over the
uh the floor to Councilman Shore. Thank you very much, Mayor. Uh, thank you very much for a a wonderful presentation. Um, I just have a um few questions. I'll put it in uh four parts so this way you can answer it and won't
have to go back and forth. Um, you talked about uh the different projects that you have in Virginia, Maryland, uh, Minnesota, and then you talked a little bit about the project at Ruckers. My can you just talk to me a little bit about in my first part of the question
about cost the reimburseable expenses the travel cost. Can you and we just talked about it with some really good questions from my colleagues about how you have to be on site that you're going to be working with multiple variables. You'll be working with the town council.
You'll be working with police. You'll be working with fire. Can you talk about those reimburseal reimburse expenses and travel costs that I don't see in the uh in your original uh project here? Maybe that's buried in which seems to be could
be a little bit low. Uh the second part of my question is can you talk about a little bit about the being familiar uh you're from DC based from DC being familiar here in northern New Jersey. Um, we pride ourselves here in New
Jersey and, uh, we want to work with firms from all over the place, but it's important when you're on the ground to be familiar and how you're going to adapt and work with, uh, with the community. So, uh, familiarity um is, uh, is a concern and maybe you can
address that. The third and fourth part of it is can you talk about advising on a building for decades, not just for 2026, but for something in 206. We are a town that is growing by a certain percentage every single year.
And with that growth, um our police force, our firefighters, um the facility will need to have u the width, the length to grow along with the community for it to be safe. And then can you talk about how the facade of a building that
blends with the community uh that how we're growing what we're about as as as a as as a town from Verona. So if you can um you know those are the four particular questions I have. Um if you can answer that would be fantastic. And um I once again I thank you very much uh
for providing a great um uh presentation in all the buildings that you've done um around the country. So thank you very much. Thank you. Um I would say from an expense standpoint, we did include include those expenses and we want to be efficient with with time and trips. Um
you know, so as much as we can accomplish in a trip rather than, you know, is good. Um you know, but those those expenses were uh were included in the in the fees. Um we feel comfortable that the you know that engagement is is uh going to be covered to to your
satisfaction. um the benefit of um you know being I mean we practice all over the country which means we we get familiar with every community that we work with. It's it's not um never a one-sizefits-all approach. Um you know
it really takes time for us to listen and to get to know you uh the city, the police department, the fire department. That's that's part of our process. Um, and because we work all over the country, um, you know, we do that because we want to bring, you know, we want to serve as many communities as we
can. And we think we we've we've got value that we bring to those communities. Um, I personally get up every day because I want to make communities all over the country a better place. And that's part of that is helping first responders, you know, do their best work. Um so getting to know
uh uh the township of Verona is very important but we also will have a terrific partner in solutions architecture that has the ability that that will be the design architecture record from how is this building going to fit into the the community. Um you know we don't see ourselves as the designer of the aesthetics of the
building. We see see ourselves as helping make sure that the building is going to operate effectively. So we're happy to take a more secondary role when it comes to the actual design of the facility because solutions architecture is embedded in your fac in your community already. They understand
Verona. Um they are going to design a building of Verona and for Verona. We we have we have no no question about that whatsoever. Um and then the last what was the last question was >> long-term advisor.
>> Oh, you want to take that one? Craig. >> Sure. Um, [clears throat] uh, we we would like nothing more than to have a long-term relationship with all of our clients. Um, you know, there's there's a a ton of clients that we work for where we've done several projects over the over the course of our our history with
them. We've done 10 projects with the Dino, we've done uh three projects with Spsylvania County, we've done uh four or five projects with Henriiko County, we've done a bunch of projects for Fairfax. Um and in for all of our clients, even if it's
the only, you know, for a smaller community, it might be the only building that they build, you know, within our careers. Um but uh but being able to to help them uh evolve that building over time, making small interventions to improve the lifestyle or or whatever for
the police and firefighters. um you know to update the finishes over time to uh to you know you know divide a conference room into a couple of offices whatever it is we'd love to be involved in that process um and provide that support over time. Um you know one of the great
things about our our job is um the ability to see kind of real evidence of what we do for a living. You know they they sit there for for 75 to 100 years and you can drive past and you can look at it. Um, but if you don't ever get to go inside and reconnect with the people
that you worked with as you were designing that building and the people who who worked there, um, you know, it's just it's just a pretty object. Um, if we can keep that as, uh, a community of people that we know and get to work with over the long run, um, then then that
makes the job absolutely fantastic. So, we'd love to be a long-term adviser with you. And I think the other part was the ability to be flexible and expand expand over you know you know design a facility for the long term >> and I think you made some of those
comments Craig about you know planning storage rooms that could be the size of an office you know you know being able to adapt in place I'm a big fan of reducing the amount of structural columns in a building when it's possible I know tonnage of steel and you know
shortened spans are for can be economic ical but if you can be more judicious and give yourself more flexibility to reorganize within the building um that is important sort of leads into the next part. If you have an ability to site the building such that you can have an
expansion that's really ideal because you you know we plan for a certain period of time but we know the building's going to going to be there for decades to come after that. So, how do you exist after you've officially ran out of programmed space that does account for growth? Hopefully, you can
have some room to do an expansion. Going back to my first part, if you have the ability to, you know, expand into space, that doesn't necessarily mean that, you know, you're going to add a couple officers and an investigator and another administrative captain or, you know, a battalion chief or something else into
that addition. The flexibility to be able to reorganize within the existing building is going to start uh give you the ability to massage into the uh addition. Uh so that all the adjacencies and the functional relationships between
the people that need to be next to each other and the people that need to be next to certain work areas or storage areas that those planning fundamentals can be maintained while you grow in place. So just flexibility and and being creative with the space that's that's generated and designed is a sort of
long-term steward stewardship and and and good value for for the long term. >> Well, thank you. >> Thank you gentlemen. >> Sorry, Cy. Thank you gentlemen. >> Thank you. >> And you all are uh you're excused for
the evening. So, we'll ask you to you're welcome to obviously to stay as a uh as a participant in the public meeting, but um if you can, Mrs. Kieran, if you can uh change their status and bring in the
>> revoke our privileges. >> Yeah. >> Yes. [clears throat] I I didn't want to say demotu because it just [laughter] sounded mean, but uh and if I can bring in our next Thank you again. >> Thank you. Heaven. Um, it's Dennis, right?
>> Yes, it's Dennis. >> Are you promoting him? I don't know. We'll ask him if there's if he has any other coworker. I'm asking him to mute. Mr. Ross, anybody else that you would like me to bring in? >> Yes. Mr. Pico.
Good evening. >> Hello. >> There you go. >> Thank you. >> Okay. Welcome gentlemen. If you want to take a minute and introduce yourselves and your firm and then we'll get your presentation up. Uh Mr. Patuko, we can't
see you, but we can hear you. >> How about now? >> I I can see you. >> Um, the floor is yours, gentlemen. >> Excellent. So uh we'll do uh we'll actually do our presentate our introductions as part of our
presentation. >> Perfect. >> Uh so who am I? Uh my name is David Pacho. Uh I'm director of operations, senior vice president and senior architect at
H2M Architects and Engineers. Uh for more than 28 years, I have specialized pretty much exclusively in public safety facilities. Uh I am myself a fire commissioner with Niskuna Fire District number one. Uh
that is a fivep person governing body. Each of us with a five-year term. It's a public elected position. Uh I oversee uh a force of 24 career firefighters
uh some 60 volunteers uh and the business of the district itself uh in and of itself a combination facility uh uh because we do have a mixture of of career volunteer and the administration aspect of it. I sit on
the ASM homeland security committee for emergency operations centers. Uh PAPs, 911 call centers, emergency operations centers. Uh that is one of my passions uh along with law enforcement and fire architecture.
And uh there's some other there's some other things I've I've got on here, but I think really my expertise uh has been in public safety facilities nearly my entire career. And the teaming
that we're uh that we're talking about here, we'll have some examples of what we've actually done there. And then I'll I'll let Dennis introduce himself. Thank you. Good evening. I'm Dennis Ross. I am what they call the public
safety market advisor. I used to be the director of the market. I've handed that over. Um I am also a subject matter expert and have spent probably the last 30 35 years working on emergency
services facilities of all types. fire, police, EMS, 911 call centers, EOCC's, any combination thereof. Um, I think personally I've probably touched on over
350 facilities during my career. Um, specific to your project, I want to say I am a member of the NFPA, National Fire uh, National Fire Prevention Association,
and I sat on the technical committee. I don't know if you can see it. To write uh I think it's kind of blurry, but to write a new standard for exposure and contamination control 1585
and being the only architect at the time on the technical committee, I was tasked to writing chapter five entirely on fire facilities and contamination control. And that is a specific expertise I would like to bring to Verona if we're
selected. Uh thank you. Go ahead David. Great. So uh I'm also going to show you the two other people that would be working on this project. Uh Katrina Pacho also with 30 years of architectural uh experience. uh more
than 28 years uh exclusively in in public safety facilities. Also is uh an MCPO uh project manager uh member of MNCARB
uh a lead professional. Uh Katrina would be serving in the capacity as project manager. I'll be serving in the capacity as principal in charge. But uh we also have Patrick Stone. He's he's our current director of the public safety
market and uh Patrick is going to be acting in the capacity of quality assurance and quality control. What I'm going to say about our team, these are all senior people. These are all people who are uh current or former owners of
H2M. Uh they are the senior people. They're the people you will be dealing with that the team will be dealing with. It's not We're not just here for the interview. We're the actual people who will be here. H2M is a firm with over 90
years of of history. We're started in 1933 and uh we are we are rather local to the project. Uh we're 13 miles uh our Parcipony office. Uh our New York City
office is is uh probably about 20 miles from uh Verona. Uh the office I'm sitting in, I'm out of the Troy, New York office. We're about 150 uh miles away. Uh Patrick is out of our Long
Island office. And we are doing lots of projects all the time uh in New Jersey. We're currently doing the Matuchen uh fire department project. Uh but we have done uh we have done several stations for Monroe
and uh Princeton First Aid and Rescue Squad. Uh people might have uh recognized that. That was the first image. I'll just go back. Uh this is in Princeton, New Jersey. Uh this is right in the center of town. you can't uh you
can't go through town without seeing this. This was a project that took about uh 12 years uh to get through all the processes uh as part of that. So we've been working in New Jersey for quite
some time and the organization would be uh I'm acting as principal charge and uh connection to uh the township and solutions uh architecture along with our project manager Katrina and Dennis and
Patrick are integral to that process. And I wanted to give an example. We have an exact example of what you have encountered. We were brought in for Webster Township in Michigan as subject
matter expert. They already had an architect on board. They already had a design completed for their new fire station for the Dexter Area Fire Department. And we were brought in as subject matter experts, fully understanding what our role is to stay
in our lane as subject matter experts. we've got the architect of record uh for the project. Uh they just had very little experience with the project type. So a lot of what we would do for you is
what we did here. I share from the the treasure of Webster Township uh just I like this quote that uh John Sharp the treasurer of of Dexter sent me just saying you were a critical success factor. I think that to me is uh the
mark of a successful project. They got the project in, they got it under budget. This is a community that does not have a lot of money. Uh we were looking for every possible way that we could economize and still have an
operationally correct facility. and we bring our expertise with the with the architect of record uh abilities to get the most out of that. And this facility came in came in under budget
and still meets all their operational needs. In fact, more operational needs than they originally thought they were going to get out of the building because how we economized the layout. One of the things, one of the main things we did when we went through the building and
reprogrammed and and helped on the redesign is just cut down on circulation that was unnecessary >> and prioritizing circulation that was about the emergency response. >> So Dennis,
>> thank you. So I'd like to uh spend just a few moments. This is the current site plan you have and along with the floor plans and elevations that Mr. O Sullivan sent me. Um, I did a report in April for
the township and you know, picking up on what David said, spent a lot of time looking at this and thinking about it and there are definitely some areas where, you know, there could there could be
some improvement, certainly some cost savings. Excuse me, trying to get over a cold here. um and have looked at, you know, various possibilities of of, you know, can you move the apparatus base closer
to Pompton Avenue and decrease a lot of the cross traffic, decrease a lot of the heavy paving. Um, as David mentioned, clearly there's internal circulation that could be better applied for, you know, prevention from contamination.
Uh, also you've got three or four very separate areas. Police is one, fire is one. Not quite sure how the EOC is operating, whether it's just for police or communitywide. And then you've got the public. And how do all these
interact both on the site and within the building. And if you get them to interact correctly and succinctly, you lower costs. Um, you save on square footage, you save on site costs. I know in the back of this site there's a
rather substantial retaining wall. If you can put spaces back there such as mechanical, maybe even the bays or some bay support spaces that make sense and don't need windows. You can combine the retaining wall and the walls of the
building and save considerable costs. So there there are a lot of ways to look at this. uh it can be done fairly quickly, very efficiently, coste effectively, and it gives both solutions and the township a lot of options to choose from right up
front. And that's where the most critical thinking needs to happen is right up front. So, I just I wanted to bring this up just as an example. We're very familiar with it. We've got a lot of ideas and if we're selected, we'd like to work with solutions and the
township and present those ideas and see what makes the most sense early on in this project. >> Thanks. And uh interesting that you mentioned the retaining [clears throat] wall as well, Dennis, because we had done this for uh a project in Fort
Lauderdale, Florida, where we came in and did an analysis of an existing facility, and they had the facility and then a separate retaining wall. That retaining wall was costing them over a quarter million dollars just for that retaining wall. And by moving the
retaining wall to the face of the building where you've already got foundations and you've already got a wall that you're building, you reduce the redundancy of having a wall and a retaining wall. And that simple that simple change not only changed the
quarter million dollars of all the retaining wall, but all the fill that would have had to be brought in to up to the property line. So, uh, these are real numbers that there's no operational impact to the building and
you're just saving dollars based on some of the experience that we've had in similar situations. Most of our buildings that we've worked on, we worked on buildings in Alaska and Texas and Western Canada and Maine, Florida, all points in between, but primarily a
lot of our buildings are in the Northeast. We know difficult sites, all the good sites are have already been taken. You don't get those big flat sites that you see out in the Midwest or or out in the Southwest where they have 10 acre sites flat as a pancake. That's
not what we have here in the Northeast. Uh they're they're tight sites, they're congested sites. Dennis had a program a number of years ago called Impossible Sights. Uh so for example, Norwok, Connecticut, we've got a 35,000 square
foot public safety facility and that site at its widest point is 55 ft. So how do you fit 35,000 square feet on a site that's only 55 foot wide? You you build up and how do you do that without
impacting emergency response? We are used to these difficult sites. We're used to these challenges. We like these challenges and we've probably seen the situation someplace before and you tap our experience with that to bring value
to your project. >> So one of the ways we would uh propose to interact with solutions in the township is with a operationsbased program for the police, the fire and the EOC. I would probably take on fire.
David would take on police and the EOC. Um, our programming is not just, hey, do we need a an apparatus bay? Of course we do. But our our programming is, I'll call it inside out. We're going to go
space by space that you need. And what do you do in that space? How will you use that space? What will that space need to be now and in the future? How may it change? Who's going to use it? Can't can that space be overlapped with
anything else? What infrastructure does it require? What systems, what furniture, etc., etc., etc., into gruesome detail. We take all those spaces and then based on how that space works, and I'm just again go with I I'll
say an apparatus bay. you know, what vehicles are in it, what may be in it now and in the future, are they going to train in it, um, etc., etc. We do a space analysis, again, space by space,
and we don't use percentages to upsize it. We actually figure in corridors. We figure in circulations, elevators, lobbies, uh walls, >> all sorts of vestibules, um vertical
transition spaces for um utilities if it's a two-story building. All that gets logged into the space analysis to come up with at least a conceptual number of size. And then based on that size, we immediately go
into a conceptual budget based on the space analysis and the programs because some of those spaces are more expensive than others such as a kitchen or a bathroom. Um, and we immediately know where we stand. Um, and you'll know, you
know, you'll have a size, a space, and an initial hardcost budget, and you'll know exactly where you stand before pencil ever hits the paper and there's any fancy designs or any of that. So, based on that, we can then say if it's
all, you know, within reason, we would do immediate test fits on the site. And we already know that the building can be put on the site, but there are other ways to do that and we've looked at several of them. From there, if the test
fits work, we would go into conceptual site plan, conceptual floor plan. And certainly, as David mentioned, one of the things in the conceptual floor plan is looking at overlapping uses, eliminating needless corridor, um, and
putting spaces where spaces belong so that the flow, the internal flow, the internal response works more efficiently. for all the folks in there and certainly works more efficiently for the public as they need
to come and go uh for whatever they need to do. >> And this this doesn't mean that >> I'm sorry >> that you need to throw out what you've done uh in in the Dexter example that that I showed. Uh we retained a lot of
the bones of the original design, but the program now informs how would we would change that. One of the things that we immediately discovered the bays were unders sized and uh bay size is so critical for future proofing. We know
what the size of typical apparatus is. We know what the trend is in terms of uh the the height and width and length of vehicles. Choosing the correct size can give you immense flexibility in that
base for the future. A 65- ft bay, which we see on on occasion, or even a 50-ft bay, will fit a fire engine just fine. It might even fit a fire engine, and it might fit a fly car or a chief's
vehicle, but it's never going to fit two engines. If you make if you make that 64 foot, you've not gained anything. If you make it 70 foot, you can now fit two vehicles backto back
in that. If you make it 80, you are futurep proofed against anything in the future that you're going to have. And you can fit two engines, a rescue, uh, a stick. And these are the things that can be informed at this programming stage
based on what are your needs now? And as Dennis points out, very important, what are your needs in the future? Dennis, I'm sorry. I just wanted to >> That's fine. Thank you. Um and you know, working off what David said, you know, for future proofing, um as you grow and
as you as a township change, you know, will you be going to all electric police vehicles? And if so, how do you accommodate that? So in the programming we would actually be looking at that as is that something you need to you know
for example bring in an additional conduit for future electric service. How does that affect your generator? These are all questions that need to be asked you know based on where the township is going for the future and where it's emergency services are going. Um, based
on these plans, we would then get into some budgeting, uh, which would include soft costs. Um, and then within the entire facility inside and out, we'd want to promote health and well-being, of course, for everybody who's in there,
uh, both responders, police, fire, um, uh, public, anyone who's using the facility whatsoever. We've already talked about futurep proofing and with all that said we want to maintain sustainability so that you know the township of Verona
is telling its residents hey this is an energyefficient welldesigned building to last now and into the future. um you know maintenance is going to be reasonable and then take
that interaction and advice you know for solutions into the future. So again as a for example uh we have hundreds and hundreds of designs where we've worked with um trench drains in the apparatus
space and how those trench drains get installed by contractors. So rather than ask solutions to come up with a detail, we could supply them with details and and specifications make their life
easier and a heck of a lot quicker, you know, with details that have been proven over 30, 40 years to work. Uh same thing with overhead doors and many many other types of things in in in buildings like this where we can work with solutions on
details specifications and what works what doesn't work um and would look to use that um connection with inter uh with solutions as project moves on.
So, some of our team projects, this is kind of interesting because uh many of these projects that you're looking at here, uh as a matter of fact, each one with an award ribbon on it was done with either BKV or Tecton,
>> not Left Brbridge. LeBridge was FWBA. >> I'm sorry. You're right. You're right. Different group. Um but in the upper uh upper right hand corner is Y12 in Oakidge, Tennessee that we were the
design architects. Um BKV was the uh federal connection and then um top and bottom on the left is NIC Massachusetts and Lethbridge Massachusetts where Tecton was the
architecture record. We were subject matter experts and we also worked with them in Greenfield and Tinksboro Mass where we reversed it where we are the architect record and Tecton is a subject
matter expert for us. So very very used to these relationships. And the middle on the um right hand side is Great Bington, Massachusetts. And again was one of those situations where
the town of Great Bington asked us to work with their local architect who was >> who was already on board >> already on board and be a subject matter expert and help them through the design all the way through construction and
through closeout which we were happy to do and it was a great relationship and you know all all I'm trying to say here is with Webster with Great Bington and with other architects. We're very used to these relationships.
Um they're not ego-driven in any way. They're driven to make the project more affordable. Best project it can be operationally. Make sure it works for the community and you know find ways to make those
relationships work. That's what's important. So, let's talk a little bit about shared facilities because that's what you're dealing with here. Uh, it's it's uh fortunate timing. Uh, just this month in
Firehouse Magazine, uh, uh, I had an article published called Shared Public Facilities, maximizing momentum while minimizing missteps and talks about some of the challenges and some of the ways to best optimize shared facilities. Uh
we I talk a lot about cultures and synergies, the potential pitfalls that you've got and how you really do make it work and where does it make sense? And uh simple things such as that often
get overlooked, wayfinding. How do you know on the site where to go? If you're coming to the police department, how do you know where to go to go to the police department? If you're going to the fire department, how do you know where to go to get to the fire department? And how are you not having those people cross
critical areas like a Sallyport area or response apron where it's just increasing this potential for hazard. These are the types of thoughts and discussions and uh expertise that will bring we generally like to see that
public entrance somehow in the center that lets you feed both functions such as we did in Pikipsy New York. the you come in the center to one side is is the fire to the other side is the police and
uh how you get on a very narrow site that they had there the the public without crossing those critical functions is super important. So if you haven't read the article it is in firehouse magazine uh uh specifically on
shared facilities and we have a lot of expertise with that. Uh so uh we're coming to the end here and uh basically say why our team uh national award-winning public safety
experience proven successful experience particularly in teameing uh situations where we are subject matter uh experts uh extensive uh law enforcement uh emergency response facility design
experience uh Dennis and I each have more than 300 projects of public safety that we have worked on personally. uh active working principles uh all of which are direct subject matter experts
and we've got active fire fighters, fire service leaders uh directing this design both in terms of Patrick who's an active uh class a firefighter and uh myself who's an active fire commissioner member
of the fire uh company uh where I'm at. And uh with that, thank you very much and we're happy to take any questions that you may have. >> Thank you. We'll start with Councilman Shore this time. Councilman Shore.
>> Thank you very much, Mayor. Uh thank you very much uh for the presentation. Just a quick clarification uh question before I get into my three quick questions. Um, are you aware or are you thinking about um outside the box of or that all sites
in Verona or the sites that we have are potential for a um emergency services? I I see I saw that or I was listening that you were commenting on the original proposal uh and the original site, but can you talk about um the other
properties or other options that potentially could come in play for for the team for the council for administration? >> Yeah, that's a that's that's a great point. This is the benefit of the operationsbased program and uh and and
space use analysis because right from there uh once we know that we've right-sized it generally the first thing that we do in our process is what we call a red blue. Right? So we've got the red is the fire, the blue is the police.
We know roughly the size and configuration that these these need to be and it makes it super easy for us to start test fitting those onto various sites to see which might be optimal solutions. Uh and that can happen fairly
early on and we can eliminate some that just seem this is going to be real problematic uh from particular uh perspectives. uh Dennis years ago developed a matrix where we do an analysis of sites where we look at uh
two different criteria. One is specific to the uh site aspects itself, the characteristics of the site. Is the site very slope? Does it have wetlands? Are there are there issues with uh you know frontage? And then there's the public
safety specific site criteria. And we look at all of those in those matrices and we can even rank the sites. And this is great for bringing back to a governing body to say these are the let's say six sites that we
looked at and here's why they are ranked the way they are. Here's all the criteria we look at for each of them and why this one comes out we think comes out on top. And then there's always that uh that unknown factor such as the very
best site may be not politically the best site. It it it may have a proximity to a use that doesn't want uh this use there. And you have to be sensitive to those aspects of it. Even in Princeton,
I can tell you that site was not the number one site. It was not the number two site, but the number one and number two sites were politically infeasible and we went with the number three site. Now, because we had gone through number
one and number two, then the public was extremely happy to shut the road that we needed to that we needed to vacate to make that that project happy because we weren't putting at the two other sites that they didn't want to see the project at. So, that's what happens right at the
operations base program. >> Yeah. And in doing that um the other thing that happens very quickly is we can look at whether these test fits are one story twotory combinations. Uh even when we did this in Perth Amboy it
turned out to be three stories but that was the available site. Um so you know we can look at number of stories in addition to the layout and whether the test how those test fits actually work >> and that can be based on the price of the site. So, a few miles from where I'm
sitting right here, a station that we did in 1999, we opted to go to a twostory station because it's in a busy commercial area. The land price was so expensive that it made sense to build up. Even though it's
generally more expensive to go twotory, stairs, elevators, duplicating corridors, and things that you have, it made more sense than trying to buy more commercial properties on one of the busiest roads in the area. >> Longwinded answer, but that just shows
the depth of how we look at it. >> Thank you, David. Yeah, I'm just going to give you three questions and you can answer it all at one time. So, um, can you take me through some of the positives and negatives of your work in the city of Patterson, which are you're currently doing right now as a police
facility that is pretty close to Verona. Can you also talk about Verona does a lot of work with H2M currently? I know this is a separate division, but what are the advantage of this potential collaboration or relationship that you can take based on relationship that we
currently have with H2M? And then also have you collaborated with solutions architecture previously? If so, what particular projects and how and how has that gone? >> Okay, I'll take I'll take that one first because uh that's probably the easiest.
No, we've not we've not uh uh dealt personally with solution architects. Uh uh that doesn't mean that uh there there could be we're a very large company. We're over 600 people. So there's a possibility that some portion of H2M
could have worked with solutions architect. I'm not aware of any uh time that we've worked together uh on this. Uh in terms of the relationship uh the existing relationship with Verona uh we
we have a proven track record of the things that we can do. We have familiarity with the community. Uh I know that uh uh SAN uh did a lot of work in terms of doing the analysis of a uh
you some of your existing facilities and plans for how you deal with that. That understanding goes a long way in in jumpstarting this process because there's already the familiarity
uh there. uh the positive and negatives of the work uh that you said uh in Patterson uh that one there I will ask Dennis uh if he was involved uh Pat Stone is the one leading that effort uh
so I cannot speak specifically on that project I'm involved with most projects that's one of them I'm personally not Dennis uh >> I am personally not involved in that project however uh because Pat Stone and I probably talk almost every day. Um,
and we do talk about it in our marketing meetings. Um, I can't give you specifics on positives and negatives, but I can tell you that in my discussions with Patrick, uh, the project is moving well. And if it's moving well, that tells me
it's on schedule and on budget. And I I don't want to give you any more than that because that's as much as I know. Okay. >> But if that's a critical bit of information, that is something I could have [clears throat] Patrick >> that would be that would be helpful
because it just gives us a project that's pretty close and I mean it's a much larger much larger space, but it would just give us the the council and administration and even the public such some knowledge about some of the work that you've done and on a very very local level.
>> A a a valid point and we'll just get the I I want we don't want to misspeak. Uh we just want to get Patrick in involved on that if that's the project he's he's doing. >> Understood. >> Uh Mr. Shore, can we get that
information and get that off to uh Kevin O Sullivan to share with the council? >> Of course. >> Thank you. >> Thank you very much. That's all my questions. >> Thank you, Councilman Roman. >> Thank you. Um I'll do mine sort of one
at a time. Uh tell me about managing challenges with site work. This is one of the largest costs that we see in terms of uh any building project that we do and also one of the biggest unknowns um that we tend to see cost overruns or
other challenges midspan in a project. Um, you talked a little bit about a creative solution around a retaining wall, but I'm curious about how you deal with drainage and storm water management, um, utilities, underground rock, um, other things in terms of just
making a site work for these fairly large institutional buildings with high infrastructure requirements. >> Very good question. I think one of the advantages that H2M has is we are a fully integrated firm. We have both
architecture and engineering. So we've got a full-blown civil department. So I've got plenty of experts on any project that I can go and and talk to regarding drainage and we do that we do that naturally inhouse. So we have that
we have that expertise uh right in within H2M. I don't have to go outside for that. In terms of the the site, where are the cost overruns on the site? The cost overruns on the site tend to come in uh unknown. What is underground?
What's there that you don't know about? The gas station that used to that used to be there. Uh we have found we found a 50-foot leather ball uh because there was a tannery on one of the sites that didn't come up in any of the the
uh uh environmental surveys because the tannery was so old basically almost colonial times that there was no documentation that that actually existed there. Uh in Pittsburgh we had a situation they've got this material
called red dog. Red Dog is a it was a waste product from the steel manufacturing process and they would use it as fill everywhere. It's a horrible filled material. Uh let me start with that one because here's one of the ways we control costs.
We make sure that we would be advising with your architect of record that we make sure we have unit prices and allowances in the project and and a statement that
any unit prices in the allowance must be credited back at whatever the unit price they say is the quote. So, if we have an allowance of uh a,000 cubic yards of material, uh it it prevents a contractor
from coming in and giving a ridiculous number that oh, that material is going to be $800 a cubic yard to place. Okay. Well, if we don't use that thousand cubic yard, you owe me a credit at $800 a cubic yard for a thousand cubic yards. uh and it keeps the biders honest and it
makes it very predictable for all the biders. But in the Pittsburgh situation, we ended up with the situation that they ended up finding a bunch of this red dog that the geotechnical report didn't hit. The contractor comes back with this very
large number and said, "Excuse me, Mr. contractor, but uh your unit price only allows you uh onetenth of what you're saying this needs to be. Now, you could stop right there and just really enforce it and stick it to the contractor. The
contractor came back and said, "You're right. That's what I agreed to. Is there any flexibility?" And bringing in our civils, we said, "You know what? Uh we'll allow number four punched choked stone here, a geoexile
and an RCA 6 solution that our engineers were happy with, that the contractor was happy with, which was much less expensive than taking out 8 foot across this t entire area of red dome. So, it's
not just what you do to design for the site and and anticipate for the site. It's the flexibility to make the right decisions when you find those unknowns that are out there. Uh, as much design as you can do ahead of time. We talked
about the retaining walls, but also don't put don't put your part of what we would look at on the site analysis when we're talking about the red blue. Where does the drainage happen? That's one of those site characteristics we're going to be looking at because if the drainage
has to be at one end of the site, but that's the high point of the site, drainage is probably not going to work unless we go with some sort of underground solution. We had that in the facility that we did in Virginia. All the drainage needed to be underground because we didn't have a downhill space
to put it. So, we had to put it underground in large storage uh tubes that were under the parking area. That was a way of saving of saving money and avoiding some of those cost
overruns. Getting your geotechnical report, doing your environmental uh analysis, making sure that the site wasn't something that's likely to be highly contaminated. These are great ways to save the money on on those cost
overruns with site work and also put the things where you need it. You don't need heavy duty paving where the apparatus isn't going to be. You can do light duty paving in those areas, but you need the heavy duty section at at the apparatus.
You need concrete where you've got a refueling station so that you're not constantly replacing because it's also the maintenance cost uh that's there as well. We're looking at all those things both from an operational point of view and just as architects, how would you
design this to be most efficient? And I know Dennis, you've got something to add here as well. >> Yeah. So, Mr. Roman, we think far outside the box. So on the Virginia project, there was a piece of land next door to ours and a developer wanted to
put a housing project in there and he needed some of our land for his second means of egress out of his subdivision. and we found that by granting him a piece of land that we didn't need for the operations portion of the station,
um he could get that second means of egress and the underground drainage that David had described. We were able to let it gravity flow down the hill to the road and then continue its gravity flow along his property to where he was
taking all of his drainage. and an actual agreement was worked out with the two owners and we supervised, you know, the actual um mechanics of the work, if you will, you know, how to make the road work, how to make the drainage work. Um,
but it benefited both property owners. So, that was some thinking way outside the box, but you know, from a technical point of view, it helped you know, two adjacent properties. So, you know, it doesn't happen very often. We did it in
the NATIC project in um Massachusetts where we were able to grant a piece of land to a shopping center next door and they were able to grant a different piece of land to us to make a really oddlooking site, a little more normal
looking. And both property owners um both property owners, you know, were better off for it. So again, you know, there's a lot of things we can look on the site, but then looking way outside the box, what else can you do? What else
is available? What other ideas are out there that we can facilitate to help? >> And second final question for me, um sort of one of the same ones that I asked our previous uh presenter, um avoiding confirmation bias, uh being
willing to challenge assumptions. And this is something that the role of subject matter expert kind of carries with it. Um have you had experience with that with looking at the ground assumptions of a project at you know
trying to find a path that may not have been immediately obvious from the start and you know some some experience in that area. >> Yes. Quite a bit in that in that specific area. and uh coming in as an outsideme, it's easier to see the the the bias that
already exists there because there are things that are going to stick out. If we if we had started the project right at the very beginning, you're probably a little bit more blind to that. Uh but coming in you you do have that uh ability. We are always even amongst
ourselves asmemes constantly challenging each other. Does this make sense? Do you see a better way, Dennis? This is what I think it it it should be. Do you see it another way?
And we're doing that both internally and with the team uh constantly and bringing the depth of our experience, which I think you can see we've got quite a bit of it. uh we tend to see things that have happened and we're just like let me
give you some solutions that we've seen this before. Here are ways you can deal with it. Here are the pros and the cons. And that's the way you can get around that kind of confirmation uh bias uh there. But always you have to work
everything within the reality of what do you have available for your budget and your operations. what what are your needs? That's ultimately what you're going to use as the measure against what you're going to say, does this make sense? If this is not helping our
operations, our response, if this is not getting us the project that we need to get and within budget, then that's something that probably needs to go. I think along with that when we make a professional recommendation
um we look at like David said we look at budget schedule operations um feasibility um definitely cost and any recommendation always comes with a professional recommendation.
What would we recommend to you and why? Um, so we don't leave you hanging to make those tough decisions. We'll give you a recommendation. Ultimately, as the township, you'll have the final say in anything, but we want you to have a professional recommendation to rely on.
>> Great. Thank you, Mayor. That completes my questions. >> Thank you, Councilman Roman. Deputy Mayor Mackoy. >> Thank you, Mayor. Uh, Mr. Pachenko, you uh discussed earlier uh my first question was going to be exactly what Mr. sure talked about uh you guys spoke
specifically about uh one project or what the design that's created already uh and how you're dealing with the environmental issues there. You mentioned retaining walls and the cost of retaining walls uh so on and so forth
when you have challenges with a piece of property like that. Uh my first part of the question is were other specific locations discussed with you and I don't want you to get into a specific I'm just asking that question and has there been
times where uh project like this is more cost effective to bifrocate because of the environmental and the topography and things like that. That's my first question. >> Well first first of all Mr. O Sullivan
had us only look at the one piece of property. He did mention there may be others and he did ask me in my report to at least talk about bifurcating you know whether it's generally cost effective or
not. Um, in very general terms, what my report stated was that to do two projects on two sites, generally at two different times with two different contractors, etc., etc., is going to be more costly
than trying to fit one project on one site. Now, whether it's that existing site or some other site uh remains to be seen. So the report did mention it at least, but we only looked actually at one site. At >> the same time, if you read my article in
Firehouse Magazine, that may not be the [clears throat] the only reason. You could be hemming yourself in for the future by creating a combined facility and you need to look carefully at that. If your growth trajectory is we need to grow, uh, one of the problems with
shared facilities is by definition there's a there's a direction you cannot expand. You've eliminated one to two directions of expansion because that is occupied by an adjacent use. And what we do see tends to happen in these
facilities is that when they need to grow, you need to you need to build a second facility. one of the occupants moves out and the other entity moves into the leftover space. Uh that is probably more common. We're doing one of
those uh right now where the fire department moved out, moved into the a new building uh because they just couldn't grow enough. And then the police department extended into what was formerly the fire department's area. Now everybody uh has the space that they
need. And as long as you've got that option in the future potentially, you can do that. But you do want to look early on and see are we impinging on an operational component of one of the groups by trying
to shoehorn them together. And if that's the case, the recommendation is even if it's perhaps more expensive for better response, for long-term flexibility, you may want to separate them. So we would be happy to have that discussion and
we've had those discussions. Uh you were talking about uh uh also the challenges with the property. Remind me the first part of your question. Uh >> uh the you you mentioned in your uh analysis of that particular property how
there's a retaining wall in the back. Uh I know there's wetlands on the one property that you had the drawing on. So I mean obviously to deal with them raises the cost of building if you can put a smaller building on the property
for one of our services and the other in another location then you won't have to deal with any of the environmental or or excavation issues. >> Yes, that is uh and that is something that we do all the time in terms of
these analyses. We're doing one right now, Town of East Windsor, where we're in Connecticut, where we're looking at combined police and fire, or do we separate it? And I think in this case, it made it's going to make more sense to
separate it. >> I'm happy because that the seeing that analysis, I I'll look forward to that. uh how percentage of what your experience is is uh as far as building fire stations or police stations are
would you say you're equal because a lot of your presentation you talked about the fire department and the size of bays and getting into the details like that are something we can deal with in the future but as far as I'm concerned now a large the the majority square footage of
this particular building was police uh and that's what I'm you know can you speak more specifically as to your experience with police departments. >> So, uh more than uh 25 years of experience with police departments as a
percentage. Uh I'll be honest, we do a lot more fire than police. There are a lot more fire stations to do than police stations, interestingly enough. Yeah. uh out there. Uh that has a that has a lot to do with the the ISO and NFPA
standards that says these facilities need to be kind of certain distance uh a maximum distance from each other. So there are naturally more of those. So we've got more of those. uh I would say probably in the range of 80%
uh 80% fire 20% uh police uh okay >> uh extensive experience in terms of the emergency operation center or PAP component of it uh that we have
extensive uh experience with and those are extremely rare components uh and we do quite a few of So, real quick, uh you don't have to get in too much detail, but your uh as far as the process here, obviously you're
going to be talking to solutions, you'll be talking to employees, our police chief, our fire chief, so on. Do you plan on Zoom meetings? I'm more of an in-person person with meetings. And then I noticed you you were actually put in your RFP that you were planning on three
site visits during construction. Uh is that enough with a project this big? And is that something that you basically if you're needed, you're out there, but uh there was no extra cost involved in that.
>> Yes, there's uh uh so uh I tend to like to do in-person meetings for critical meetings like a programming meeting. I'm never going to do remote. That needs to be in the room. You need to be with the people. You need to be talking to the officers. you need
to be talking to the firefighters and uh there are so many discussions that come out of that that just do not translate on a Zoom meeting. So that would absolutely be uh inperson and critical meetings would be in person. Some
meetings remote but uh my preference would always be and you're just over two hours from me and I'm honestly down in that area all the time. So, uh that's considered uh local to us. Uh we can get there in in two two and a half hours.
So, uh we can do that. In terms of the construction meetings, when you have an architect of record on the project, our experience is you don't need much more than about three meetings during CA. uh if there's if there's a particular
issue, we're we're not going to charge you uh an extra meeting. Just like, hey, we need you down here for a fourth meeting or we really have something that's going on. Again, I've got I've also got people just a few miles from the facility. If it's something really I need uh an architect or an engineer to
go take a look at, we're going to be there in just a few minutes to be able to do that. And that's one of the that's one of the benefits that we have of having a large group of people right in Paripony uh to be able to do that because even if I personally can't be
there for something if it's something critical I can send somebody out and there's not some huge cost in that and that's why you notice there's no there's no travel cost built into uh our stuff. this is considered local uh for us. Uh
>> thank you. >> If I can drive to Delaware and do a project without hitting them with travel costs, uh I can certainly go to New Jersey. >> Thank you very much. >> You're welcome. >> Thank you, Deputy Mayor. >> Right. I'll finish up. Um a lot of my
questions have already been addressed. Uh but one question I I do want to ask as we we look at combined building. Um, we're talking about shared spaces between departments and I was wondering if you could offer a a project example
where you've worked with a career police department, an entirely volunteer fire department um and and how you managed um space sharing of some common spaces uh and deciding what was what was vital and and what wasn't. No, currently what
we're uh project we're working on, town of East Windsor in in Connecticut, is that exact situation where you've got uh a volunteer fire component and uh obviously a career police department.
And uh there are some there are some challenges with that that often times revolve around the funding stream and and the funding mechanisms. And uh you can end
up with these situations where you have a strong partner and a weak partner. And this is something you have to look very closely at when you're doing a shared facility because that imbalance can cause immediate friction and issues in a
shared facility. Uh the functionality as well the volunteer facilities uh tend to have a lot more meetings with the fire company uh than if you had a career department. They don't have big meetings, right? the
shift comes in, uh, they leave, the next shift comes comes on. I see that in my own fire department because we've got combination, uh, career and volunteer. The volunteer spaces are much bigger. They have the big events. Why is that?
To get the volunteers to come, you want to give them amenities. You want to give them a reason to be at the fire station. Uh, so they tend to be there and they have events. uh what happens when that's in a shared space and someone leaves a mess uh in
that shared space. So these shared facilities, these are issues sometimes that become extremely big issues when you're dealing with something like a career uh department and a volunteer department is uh someone we won't say
which one. Someone left a uh a mess in the meeting room, they used it. Who cleans it? who pays for it? Who pays for it when the budget of one is much bigger than the budget of the other? And those I think those kind of cultural and
synergistic questions are probably more relevant than whether they're volunteer or career. Uh but that can have an impact particularly in how the building is used. If if there's a lot of volunteers because they're having a a
pancake breakfast and they're taking every parking spot and the police don't have a place to park, uh that can cause problems. That's usually not an issue in career departments in both. However, shift change uh and at the same time
you've got uh uh the fire department coming back from a major event. This this can cause specific friction or if shift change is not coordinated between the two entities and it happens at the same time which is is something that
common has has happened and then you've got a shift of firefighters. They're out on the call. The new shift is is on. They're taking up parking spaces. You've got the shift change happening with the officers. uh these are things that need to be looked at as part of that
programming uh aspect and some of the questions we'll we tend to ask is we need to know the composition of the various groups. Are they volunteer? Are they career? How many people on the shift? What does maximum shift size look
like? And we can start factoring that into the design. So that is all things that we've done relative to the the East Windsor project and I I think uh the the nature of the differences
between the two entities is probably why that is a separate facility and not a combined facility. >> Uh I would bring up one more thing. When we did Tyonderoga, New York, um it was volunteer fire through one funding
stream which was a fun district >> and the police were the town police, a completely separate funding stream and trying to figure out the two funding streams in terms of utilities, maintenance, upkeep, um and and how to
even split the cost of the facility itself. um was a major issue before we even got into the operations and all the other issues of day-to-day use. So again, you know, we would have to look at the
funding streams. Are they the same funding stream? Are they completely separate? And if they are, how how do we mesh the two together and and make it worth, you know, make it work for the township? And as David said, if it cannot work or it's just too
complicated, then maybe you do separate the facilities and that's a whole different reason to separate them. Thank you. And final question. Um this you'll have a process obviously meeting with all the different uh
stakeholder groups and town administration. Ultimately in Verona, the township council has to make the the final decisions on what is in the facility, um the budget, and and approve and put this out to bond. I'd like to get some
insight into what your plan is to work with the council and when um and maybe a brief example of a time where you've had to um provide more specific counsel to the
the governing body uh in a municipality or a group of of fire commissioners, whatever it might be. uh that involve making some tough programmatic decisions and design decisions. >> Uh sure. Uh first of all, we don't wait
until the end. Um the township is is an integral partner in the entire process. So all communications would be ongoing. Um you're you're never going to be reactionary to this. Uh you will be a
participant. You'll find out what's going on at all times. Um this was I think you know if you go up to Matuchen uh we kept the council the mayor and the BA as part of all discussions at all
times. Uh they were never left in a vacuum. So decision making you know got very easy on their side. You know the fire guys certainly wanted what they wanted. Um but then there were budget
and schedule realities that the um bureau had to deal with. But the bureau was completely well-versed on what was going on. You know we looked at many sites um and came up with one and you know they understood why that site made
sense, how to use it, what the costs were, what would fit, etc., etc., and didn't have to wait for a council meeting to know any of that because they were in the loop all the time. So, we don't treat that as reactionary. We want you to know what's going on. It's your
project. Ultimately, it's your township and you are the folks that were duly elected to watch over it. We want to make sure you're in the loop all the time on all these decisions. And as a commission member myself, I sit on the other side of the table. So I intimately
understand what the needs are and the motivations are when you're serving the public that has elected you. Having that insight is super important for bringing value to the council so that they can make the decisions with the information
that they need to make what at times can be difficult decisions and that they have everything that they need in front of them to do that. Sitting on the other side of the table gives me a unique perspective to what's necessary and having that conversation. We're used to
having those conversations uh in front of councils all the time, but as Dennis mentions, and that's the the most critical part, it's just not something that happens at the end. It's updates as you go to make sure that the council is informed and on board and not just
finding out at the very end uh where things stand, that they have an idea as we've gone through. >> Thank you very much. Well, that concludes uh your presentation and QA. We appreciate you being on with us this evening and you are of course welcome to
stay for the public meeting or you are also welcome to enjoy your evenings. So that is uh that's up to you. So if you can demote yourselves or Miss Kieran can turn you back to uh attendees that would be great. >> Great. Thank you very much. Have a good evening. >> Have a good evening.
>> Thank you gentlemen. Okay. So, um >> I I don't think it would be fair to attack time to keep us on. So, I think >> I'm trying to remove you, but it said I would have to remove you from the meeting. Hold on.
>> That's fine. You can remove us. We will not take offense. Uh thank you and good luck. We hope to work on this project. Bye now. And okay, so I see Mr. Salad going to
bring him on and then I'll ask him if uh there's anybody else from his firm. >> There is. They can raise their hand. >> Okay. Mr. Salad and anybody else from your firm?
>> Uh, yeah, there's me. I should be in there twice. One for my screen, one for my audio, and then Jeff Mravy should be joining as well. >> Okay. I don't see him yet, but Oh. Okay.
Um, hey, I'll promote um Jeff Mal as soon as I see him log in. We're running him now. There he is. Okay, man. If you want to introduce yourselves or share your screen and then introduce
yourselves, it's up to you. Welcome to the meeting and we look forward to your presentation. You ready, Matt? >> Let's do it. >> All right. Well, good evening everyone. Um, Matt, why don't you go to that intro screen and we'll start right there.
>> There we go. >> My name is Jeff Mory. I'm a principal with Teton Architects here at Hartford, Connecticut. and in Providence, Rhode Island. Um, I've been doing uh public safety design now for the last 40 years, 20 years with TETON, and then 20 years
before that with a different firm and uh, you know, we've had uh a long time long career of of doing both police and firework and uh, and a and a great amount of success with that with me this evening. Oh, just one more thing before I end. I I just want to make one mention
that uh I did spend 20 years on the International Association of Chiefs of Police Community Policing Committee, which did inform a lot of uh the police work that I've done. All right. Now, with that, Matt, your turn. >> All right. Thanks, Jeeoff. Uh my name is Matt Salad. I'm a project manager with
Tecton Architects. I'm also a senior team leader uh in our public safety studio uh which I've been working in for for the past 14 years alongside Jeff. um and and a few years prior to that at another firm uh doing public safety projects as well and very excited to be
here tonight with you all. So, just a little bit about uh you know our our experience. You know, we've we've done this for a long time and obviously there's an extensive list. The the map you see up in the upper left talking about of our experience is uh is a partial map because uh mine goes
further south and further west than that shows, but that's a lot of our more recent experience. Um so, we've been doing it for a very long time and hundreds of projects under our belt. Um, we like to be very responsive in our process and making sure that we're hearing what our clients are saying and
getting to the gist of what's important for any particular community. Um, we are also, uh, you know, thought leaders in the in the marketplace. Um, we participate along with, I believe, the other two folks that you interviewed this evening at the, uh, station design conference talking and speaking there.
Um but also I've spoken at IAP and uh we do a lot of uh innovative research in the way that we approach our public safety design and of course um you know we've gotten some national rec recognition for both our our police stations and our fire stations and our combined public safety facilities as
that as well. So, some of our experience, you can see a bunch of examples here. Um, up in the upper left, Lexington, Massachusetts, fire and police on opposite s ends of the historic district in beautiful Lexington, Massachusetts. That that was uh well, I guess it's it's been going on
for a long time now because we did the police well, we first we did the temporary facility, then we did the fire station, then we moved the police department into the temporary facility, then we did the police station. Um just wrapping up these solar canopies which will turn this into our most sustainable
uh public safety building in my career. And then we've got one more fire station we're going to do for that community later. Likewise just across the top there, South Portland Maine. This is a project we're currently working on with a firm out of uh Portland, Maine. Um working on the police and fire uh
facilities for that community. Um for the 40th precinct in the middle, that was an interesting experience. We were hired as a peer reviewer to a starch architect that the city was hiring uh to to do their 40th precinct facility. So, we got to spend a good amount of time
reviewing plans and making suggestions. Um Peodyy, Massachusetts, that one's coming up really quick here, wrapping up construction. That's a public safety building. It does not have an operational fire station it, but it does have all of the fire administration offices and EOC as well as the entire
police department. That's a very exciting project where we really focused on um recruitment and retention is a big issue that they were facing. And then of course the the the ones across the bottom show a lot of our experience uh doing consulting work and partnering with other architects just like uh you
know the the South Portland project I mentioned earlier. Um our projects down in Kings Fork uh in Suffach, Virginia. um the third patrol and homeland security facility in Norfolk and then finally our Virginia Beach fourth precinct facility.
>> But enough about our expertise because that's sort of why we're here, why we were shortlisted. Um we really want to start talking about the community of Verona, your township, and and really making sure that we're delivering the best level of service for your community. uh because at the end of the
day, all those projects that Jeff was showing previously in what was included in our in our proposal um show a vast uh depth of of different project types and that's because every one of them is community focused uh for the town or or city that that it's housed within.
Right? So, so we really want to start this this process with our understanding of you, of your community, of the township, um, of your public safety professionals uh, that will be occupying and operating out of these facilities. Um, we want to understand their history.
Um, it's not just about the fire and police service uh, within within the township of Verona today, but it's built on a legacy of history that's so important for its success in in how it operates within within your community. But then we want to really understand
what the vision is for the future, not just of the police and fire service uh in Verona, but but really of the entire community because they they they're part and parcel of of of of each other in in the aesthetic, the architecture, the language that this project and this
building speaks should be representative of that future vision, both of the departments as well as the community. In order to do that, we really need to start early engagement with with critical stakeholders within this process. Um, it's really important that their voices are heard throughout this
and that those voices are also reflected not only in the architecture but really in this building as a community asset. So, the first step in this process is really about program validation. And you've gone through a lot of work to get to where you are today, right? you've
gone through this exercise already uh with your current architect. Um they've done a lot of great work and we really want to help enhance that and build on it with our expertise so that this project can be as successful as it can be. So, first we want to align values.
And this may not just be the values of your public safety officials, of the police and the fire chief, of your dispatchers, of those that are operating out of that, but it's the shared values of all those stakeholders. Because at the end of the day, we need their support in order to get this project approved and funded and and making sure
that they're brought along throughout the process, that they feel heard, that they feel that their needs and concerns are understood is critically important. We then go through a datadriven approach to our space needs assessment and program validation. This is important
for two reasons. One, it helps us understand and unpack all the different critical operations within the facility so that we can build a better responsive facility for your uh public safety officers and for the public. But also, all that data that we're going to
collect and build is going to help us inform the public about what we're actually trying to do. It uses that information to justify the need. And when we have a solid data set that can be easily understood and presented to the public, it makes it that much easier
to to to have this project go forward through a referendum or or a budget approval process. Because if we just tell them this is what chief says it needs to be, they're not going to buy that anymore. That doesn't work. These facilities are so expensive. Uh they're
very challenging in order to get approved. there's very few grant opportunities and funding opportunities for these for these facilities. And so the public really needs to be well informed so that they understand at the end of the day when they go to the ballot and vote for this project to fund it that they know what they're getting
and that they're fully engaged and on board with that. So, a little bit about working um with the local architect and and I know that you know bringing on an expert into this process right now or you know a subject matter expert it it can be very
stressful in the relationship that gets built between you know us and the local architect in the community and we want to make sure that we're coming in this with a very collaborative approach. We want to lean on, you know, our experience, but we also want to value the partner, um, that's already spent a
lot of time with your community working. Um, what you see on the screen, uh, up in front of you there is actually it's what's called a Miro board. And this is a tool we used up with, uh, SMRT out of Portland, Maine. And basically, it was
an opportunity for us to communicate back and forth, posting ideas. As you can see, some sketches on the left that that I drew and then some uh some precedented images that the local architect threw in. There was a whole bunch more on this mural board. And
using this tool, we were able to to close in on the right solution, getting the floor plan, the program accommodated um and and operating effectively, but also finding the architecture that was right for the community. So, partnership is a a big deal in this. and you know I
I don't want to come in and and you know throw my weight the weight of experience around with the ar the local architect. I want to make sure that uh we work together and find the reasons that drive those the the functionalities that make this department this facility work. So
that's something we would we we hold very important. >> All right. All right, we want to dig a little bit into your project, your site, uh, and a little bit of some of the challenges and opportunities that that we've seen without having any any in-depth conversations um, you know, with the chiefs, with the community to
really understand this and and and certainly at first glance, and I'm sure it's no surprise to anybody, but this is a this is a fairly difficult site in order to fit all the different programmatic uses uh, that we're trying to fit on here. Um, and it presents itself with a number of challenges and
we're no stranger to difficult sites. We live in we live and work in New England in the Northeast and you know all the good land has been gone for quite a while. So just about every site we get is either too small, too contaminated or or too difficult. But we always find a way to make it work and it's through an
iterative process that we're able to do that. In this instance, there's a few challenges that we see right out of the gate that we want to work really hard to try to find solutions to. And one of those is all those colored lines down at the bottom are our different uh vehicular circulation paths through the
site where we're mixing police fire respon return return and response uh the public um and then staff parking uh as as well as civilian parking and they all share the same common drive into the site. That presents itself with a few
challenges. One in particular for the public it becomes really confusing on where to go, what to drive around. uh and where that discernable entrance is as they enter the site with with a vehicle. Some folks are coming to a police station or a fire station for their first and only time and it could
be an intimidating place and we want to make sure that sense of arrival is is safe and secure and and welcoming and well defined. But in addition to that, all these overlapping flow paths through the site create a real safety challenge, especially when when fire apparatus are
are coming out of here to respond to a call. Couple that with with a with a volunteer fire department where some of the some of the firefighters may be responding in from offsite to then get into their gear and get on a a piece of equipment and respond to a fire. So, so there's there's a lot of dynamics that
are going on here. And and I think the first thing we really want to do is try to find a way to start to separate some of these components out so that we can have more a more clear response path and separation of public and staff functions uh just for safety and security if nothing else.
um looking at the floor plan. So I there's been a lot of great conversations I'm sure and there's been a lot of great iterations to this plan and and and one of the things that we see as a real opportunity and one exercise we like to go through especially on the police side of the
building is is assessing the patrolman's uh path that they go through about their day. Um, as you can see, the the blue lines on the plans here are sort of highlighting what that flow path would be as as we see it. And it it's quite a
lot of circulation. So, you can you can you can imagine an officer coming in in the morning. They head up to the locker room, they get changed, grab a cup of coffee, um, you know, head down to the ready room to get the report and assignments, grab their gear for the day, and then they're out the door. Um
there's there's patrol areas that are that are sort of isolated in here. The the locker rooms are on the second floor. So there's there's a lot of moving vertically and horizontally through this this floor plan that I think can be compressed. When we isolate and start to break down those flow paths
into a more efficient circulation flow, we can actually that inherently makes the building smaller. So without reducing program, without taking away critical mission critical operations from the facility, when we look at it through the lens of the day-to-day operations, we can actually tighten up
the building and reduce the overall footprint by taking out unnecessary corridor and circulation space that may not be actually improving the way that the facility functions. >> And these are two 24-hour buildings, too. And the patrol officers are one of the uh the heaviest users, at least from
the the police size side of things. But um you know, one of the things is all of that moving back and forth through the building is putting that wear and tear on the entire building. If we can consolidate the zone where we get the tougher materials, the more resilient materials, um and and and consolidate
that use and abuse pattern, um then your building's going to last longer. We need less maintenance. And the same thing can happen on the fire side. We can talk about that a little bit later. Oh, there you go, Matt. >> Yeah. So on the fire side, um you know, it's pretty efficient as it is. There's not a lot of program here, right? It's
it's apparatus based, there's some support space, there's some living areas, um throughout the day, and then and then there's their their bunker gear. Um it's very consolidated. And I think one of the biggest challenges you have here is one um really trying to to comply as best as you can with NFPA
1580, making sure that we're addressing firefighter occupational health and safety and wellness within the facility is critically important. and making sure that all that gear is off of the fire floor getting cleaned, getting stored properly so that it's not being recontaminated before it's going back
onto onto the the vehicle and out to a response is important. In addition to that, the apparatus bay is one of the most contaminated portions of the facility because that's where all the equipment is coming and flowing back into the facility from a fire response.
And we need to make sure that we're isolating and segregating those apparatus bays out. um from the rest of the facility. And we do that through a series of transition zones that allow you to to create an air lock and air separation between this part of the building and the rest. But it also
allows you to do a light decontamination, right? Cleaning a little bit of the dirt and and and and dust off your boots that may be contaminated from from that fire response, washing your hands, just just those things to make sure that when you're entering the clean side of the building that you're not doing so in a
way that would be contaminating it as well. So we would like to look at more opportunities like that to improve firefighter health and safety in here. And then also the bay layout itself could be done more efficiently to also reduce the overall square footage of this building. So I think there's a lot
of opportunities to to really enhance the program that you have while also reducing the square footage of the building. >> So this is this is what we call site test fit. We do a lot of these on on a lot of our projects and basically it's taking a look at the program and trying
to imagine how it would arrange on the site and we focus on a lot of different things. We're looking for uh consolidating response routes for fire department. We're making sure that we've got uh police cruisers in the appropriate areas where they they're they're pro app proximate to the the
patrol areas. um where we have good access to for prisoner um sallyport and processing areas where we're making sure that we're segregating zones within the site and I will say when u when I started scribbling this idea out and started planning with it we we do a lot
of these before we arrive at the final solution it struck me right away this is a narrow narrow site for a public safety building um you can see what I did is I brought a drive on the lower side of of my yellow building there that is my police entry point. I got some a little
bit of public spacing off near the front of the building, but I get you back to where you have access to the sally port and and the cruiser and staff parking around that. If you loop around, you come up through the the the fire parking and then you get access back out to the
roadway. Uh, one thing I did create was an opportunity to create a drive-thru base for some of the larger equipment. the the turning area in front of the plan that we were looking at previously is incredibly modest for a ladder truck.
It's tight for for a pumper. We want to make sure that these vehicles are able to flow safely on the site. They're very expensive. You don't want to pay for repairs on them. It's safer for the firefighters. It's safer for everybody on the site. And then we get a nice 50- foot apron so that you can get that
ladder truck out the door before it starts negotiating turns um onto roadways or or into the pathway where other vehicles are flowing. Um in this case, the response route is completely separated from that public flow and from from the back of house activities with
hap that happen with all the police cruisers and their parking. These are important things to build safety and a really compatible environment for both the police and fire departments on the site. One other thing, we did take advantage of the narrowness of the site to stretch your building out. We noticed
that there was a light well in the existing pri your prior plan which is a lot of square footage that you're you know you're you're building just to get light down in the center of the building. If we narrow up that building, then we can get lots of windows on either side. we don't have to do light wells and things like that to make sure
that we've got a really healthy um and and and friendly environment inside our workspace. So, a lot of different things going on here, but you know, I think the real message is Trixie because it's it's a narrow site. You don't get a lot of street frontage. It doesn't give give
you a lot of public face. Um, but really the important thing is to separate the zones of activity so that the fire department flow doesn't conflict with the police department flow and vice versa and that you have a safe arrival for anybody that's stopping by the police station to get a records or to to
make a complaint or or even to visit the the fire marshall. So, uh, one test fit probably several that we'll do before we arrive at the final solution. >> Yeah. Yeah. And the real the real exciting thing is going to be sort of using that mirror mural board or some
other technology like that to work collaboratively with your local architect to to really iterate and create more opportunities to to really push and pull the site and really find out what what ultimately is going to be the right fit and the right solution for this that's both responsive to the
police and fire department uh open and welcoming to the public but also fits fisc you know into the fiscal responsibility of of your committee in your in your community so that that we're not overbuilding, overspending, and it's really checking all the boxes
across the board. >> So, we always finish up with this wire team slide. And, you know, there's a tremendous amount of experience on our team, not only with my years of experience, but Matt and Rebecca and the whole team that's been working together for well over uh, you know, several
decades here at Tecton. But the the the important thing is we use our experience as a tool to help you. We're not here to to force you into this direction or that direction, but to show opportunities, show the way that other communities have handled similar problems and to bring
that level of of, you know, experience with with other projects and and make them available. That's particularly important when we're talking about the details of spaces with either your police chief or your fire chief. Um it's very important us to us that we're listening. We want to make sure we hear
the information first. We ask questions. We dig in deep so that we can start drawing with a real informed place. We're not just guessing at how this building goes together and how your your operations work. We've got it because we've spent the time to talk about it.
Um and then, you know, in some of those conversations, we're going to challenge some assumptions. you know, um there there lots of little elements in the program that I'm looking at already and I have lots of questions uh for your department heads about, you know, how this got to be what's in the program. Um
and then of course, you know, whenever we're talking about a project where there's, you know, a fiscal responsibility, which is are near every project, um it's important to have those difficult conversations early. Square footage is the number one tool that you
or any community has to reduce cost. And if we're not using our square footage wisely, we are not using dollars wisely. And we got to have the hard conversations about that so that we get to the right solution that can be built by the community. And then, you know,
it's we get everybody on the same table and then we have a solid plan for moving forward. Um, and then ultimately, you know, our measure of success is is, you know, it's not our portfolio. It really is it's whether or not a successful building for you. And that's the way
that I've practiced for now for 40 years. And, uh, I'm sure Matt will do it for another 30 of his own. So, uh, that's a really important consideration for us. So, with that, we'd love to answer some really good questions.
>> Thank you. Thank you very much. Uh we'll start with Councilman Roman this time. >> Thank you. Um so there has been quite a bit of public engagement on this uh overall need in our community for the
entire length of the project. Uh we've been on this for quite a while now and there's been a lot of moving parts as to site availability and uh overall choices and public feedback. Um, I've kind of hinted at this with a lot of our other
uh our other presenters. What if there are, you know, what if the landscape has changed between when we've started and where we are now? Um, obviously we've done a lot of needs assessment and uh and gathering information, but how are we sure that we're actually
going down the right road? So, first off, when you say the landscape has changed, are you thinking from the program standpoint or from from what you're hearing from the community? >> Uh, from a site availability standpoint? Um, okay. You know, everybody everybody knows very well that that land is very
congested. We we have been fairly aggressive about land acquisition when suitably sized parcels come up. >> Um, I'm just curious about about that, you know, based on are we only looking at one site or are we looking at other opportunities >> if the landscape has changed? It would
be great. I I I'm a big fan of, you know, you're always going to get drilled with the question. Did you look here? Did you think about this? Did you consider that? I want to consider those options. And if you've got other options that that are out there, I've already told you my first test fit has taught me a little bit about the site that that we
started with. If we if you have another site that's available that that may be in consideration or maybe you're considering acquiring, doing test fits on that will help tell us is this a better solution? Does this offer a better solution to that one or or are there compromises we're making between
the two? You know, sometimes we have projects where we do 10, 15, 20 test fits to help find the right place and the right solution. And the beauty is these are, you know, they they they rely a little bit on that experience. It's up on the slide still, but um these are
things that we put together really quickly and they they start to inform us about whether a site can be successful or not. So if that's the landscape changed then uh yeah I think that's something absolutely I would encourage you to explore >> and we'll be on board to that.
>> Yeah and I think just just as an example that I could give um right now we're in the middle we we've uh we just started construction a few months ago on a new fire headquarters for the town of Auburn Massachusetts and we've been working with them to get this project approved in many different iterations uh since
2017. So, we've been we've been working diligently with them for for nearly the better part of a decade trying to get this project approved. And it started out as a large joint public safety facility. And it just wasn't it the appetite wasn't there in the community to spend that kind of dollars uh at at
that time. And so we looked at different ways of doing phase construction, different ways of doing um you know ultimately what the greatest need was while simultaneously trying to find what the right parcel for this project was. and and so we actually assessed over
over two dozen properties um that were that were known to be available and that were within the response radius that the fire department needed in order to make it work. Um we went out through the beginning of COVID and did two separate RFPs looking just openly for for any
parcels that might be you know not out on the market yet but may be coming due to see if we could spark some interest in it. Uh all of those efforts ended up failing over time and then eventually about three years ago um a local restaurant tour was was you know
retiring and the opportunity came up that uh he was able to offer a really great uh piece of property that fit the needs of the fire station not the whole public safety facility. Um, as it turns out, 50 years prior to this occurring,
that parcel of land was was looked at as the prime location to site a fire station in the town of Auburn, directly in the middle of the west end of town and would ultimately reduce their their overall response time. So, the project has pivoted multiple times, you know,
over the past decade to to being very large to being very small. And now what I think we landed on is is something that is the right fit for the community, the right fit for today, uh, and the right site. And, and it took not getting
discouraged by hiccups and and stumbling blocks that happen along the road, but continuing to push and drive the project forward because we know ultimately at the end of the day, something needs to happen. and let's make sure that we can continue to voice, you know, hear the voices in the community to get to the
right project that will be supportable and at the end of the day is going to enhance the delivery of service to the town. >> Great. Thank you much. Um and then second and final question um managing operating cost in terms of uh the maintenance and long-term ownership of
this building being you know anything that we build is is brand new square footage that we're adding to what we already have. One of the situations that we're in is our current facilities. Obviously, our end of useful life and if we were to continue operating them would need extraordinarily high levels of capital investment. If we were to try
and continue to use fire station number two, it would essentially we looked at, you know, we'd have to bulldoze it and just build another one. Um, one of my concerns with building a large facility with a lot of square footage is the potential to need to have additional building maintenance staff. And that's,
you know, a big operating cost. I'm kind of curious as to how we avoid having a very a very large commitment and how we manage the operating expense while still being able to take care of a new facility obviously but your thoughts on that and how we deal with adding this
much square footage to our portfolio. >> You want me to start with that one? >> Yeah, go ahead. >> No, you go ahead. >> So, yeah. So, I think you know we this this has been a question that's been coming up more and more lately. I actually just just I I've been working through uh with the town of Falmouth
right now. We're doing their police station currently and and the community is not just concerned with the upfront cost, but the overall life cycle of the cost, how to operate it, how to maintain it. This building is getting bigger, so now we're going to have to start hiring more people to fill the seats that we're
building the program too, right? Because we don't build these facilities for today because they're going to be outgrown in 15, 20 years. So we need to understand the total projection growth of the community and of the of of the agencies that work within these departments. Um and so I think we need
to layer in all that data and there they're important metrics to understand when we're when we're going to build this uh facility. And so I think there's the data component that I touched on earlier that's critically important so that the public can understand the building is is this big because of this
and these are all the trailing factors that that go into that life cycle cost of the overall facility and and those that that that are employed within it and and and the energy consumption within the building. But then we couple that with with not looking at value
engineering as cheapening the building, but building materials that also help reduce the overall life cycle cost. And we do that through understanding what are the maintenance cycles. What are you going to have available for maintenance staff, right? That same project in Falmouth, we put together, you know,
it's it's it's a coastal community. Landscape is important. And so we put together this beautiful landscaping package and and the the town facilities folks said, "We can't maintain that. we don't have staff in order to operate this. And so we're looking at zeroscaping to make sure that that it's
a set it and forget it sort of sort of design. And we look at that through every sort of every single building component that gets installed with the facility. We need to understand that you're not going to be replacing carpet and tile and and repainting walls every
10, 15, 20 years. So everything that goes into the building needs to also last the life of the building. And if it doesn't, in 10 or 15 years, it's going to look terrible. You're going to have low morale from everybody that's working within the facility, and it's not something that the community ultimately
can be proud of. So, I think it's really important to look at not just upfront cost, but the overall life cycle cost, the operating cost of that. Um, you know, we can study the energy efficiency of the building to make sure that we're we're putting a really good envelope together to res reduce your energy
costs. We're finding right now that HVAC heating and cooling costs are are a fraction of the overall budget to operate the building. It's coming down the plug-in lighting loads, especially in a police station that has so much data heavy equipment. >> Um, so maybe it's looking at scheduling
of certain things, putting um putting putting different monitoring systems in the electrical uh outlets and things like that to reduce those plug loads and reduce those operating costs, you know, on day one. any jump in with us? >> Yeah, I just I just gonna hit the mechanical systems because you know the
the biggest headache and you know the biggest maintenance issue often is your mechanical systems and you know uh there was the whole thing during when lead was a big issue and you were getting these very sophisticated systems that were energy efficient but nobody knew how to
maintain. Uh it's really important that we have conversations with your maintenance staff, your facility staff to understand that what we're putting in there, they understand the maintenance cycle and they understand how to work with it. It it does you no good if we put a sophisticated system in that your
folks can't fix or they can't change filters on. So that's a big part of the conversation we have so that we balance you know the sustainability needs with the maintainability um with with the the overall life cycle package that uh that Matt was talking about.
>> Great. Thank you very much. Mayor, that's completes my questions. >> Mayor, you're muted. Mayor, you're muted. >> Sorry, I'm having a little technical difficulty here. Um, Mr. Shore, you're up. >> Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I appreciate it.
And thank you very much for the presentation. Um, I just have one question to try to keep things pretty uh pretty quick here. Uh based off Councilman Roman's uh question about landscape potentially uh changing here in Verona and this building uh listening
to some of the multiple variables uh you just mentioned. My concern, if you can address it please, is about your cost ballooning because of that those potential travel costs and the amount of navigating the amount of uh potential
site visits and uh the overall uh structure of the project. I'm referencing you I'm referencing your travel cost within your presentation where will that cost that you have in that presentation. Will that balloon and
skyrocket based on a an everchanging landscape here in Verona if um if we decide to make some uh different decisions going forward. So, um, go ahead, Matt.
>> No, go ahead, Jeff. >> All right. So, you know, the proposal that we in we we put forward will include, you know, our travel costs and and we we you know, you're not really that far out of our our service zone. You know, I drive up to Maine all the time and uh we have not had any issues
with, you know, the the expense of that travel being a problem for the uh the client. We do take a lot of advantage of a lot of uh technology to help do a lot of our meetings. Matt um was one of the leaders when we went through the whole
co adventure of of using technology um during that but then carrying it forward after that. So like for instance uh we will do these team meetings where where Matt and myself or maybe one of our project architects goes and uh spends some time with the client but we have
the technology that we bring with us that allows the entire team to be virtually present and hear that information so that you know we don't spend a lot of time going back to the office and then trying to reach out to every single one. they get to hear the information fresh and that that's a big
costsaver in terms of what you're doing with you know the potential travel costs. You know obviously if the scope keeps expanding then yes you're you're there's going to be travel cost associated with that but taking a look at at you know different sites and doing
these test fits. This is an easy easy thing that we have all this great you know we can pull up GIS maps and we can get the information we need. Uh once we have that programming information we can sit down and generate it. And the important thing is we we we want to be
there when it's important to be there. Um and so there are a lot of phases inside this process where it's important to be there. Um and we're going to make sure that we manage our travel cost to to focus on what's really important. >> Yeah. Just to just to add to that, Jeff, you know, architects don't make money in
the study, so to speak, right? We we want to get the project approved. That's that's critically important to your community. Um, but it's more important, you know, to move through this phase and and and get to the point where we've got a full project and it's fully funded and
we're going into construction. I think that's that's everybody's end goal here ultimately. And, you know, I I think we take that true to heart. We we fully understand that municipal budgets get set, money gets money gets allocated and there's very little opportunity to go
back to the well and so we work really hard to make sure that we're not going to add service this project or you to death. It's it's something that that that we feel very strongly about if we're being asked to come to meetings that are positively impacting and and
progressing this project forward. um even if it's not necessarily you know straight up trajectory and we've got some stumbling blocks and hurdles that we have to overcome you know that's okay that example I gave of Auburn where we've been working with them for the better part of a decade you know eight
the first eight years of that was done under a single study fee without a single ad service and that included 24 different parcel analyses um multiple different building designs and we did that because we know it's important to get this project approved and we know that you don't have an unlimited will
that you can go back to to to continue to pay us to do our services. So, we're here to work with you to make sure that the project is a success. Uh, and if that means us, you know, coming down to a to a to a few more meetings and and doing that on our dime, you know, that's okay because this is it's important that
this project gets approved and moves forward. >> Thank you very much. Uh, thank you, Mr. Mayor. >> Thank you, Deputy Mayor Mackoy. >> Thank you, Mayor. Uh it's kind of the uh line of questions that I was asking
about site visits and uh because I always think a second set of eyes on any project is a good thing. Uh so I'm I'm happy to to to be here interviewing all of you tonight. Uh but can you be like
slightly more specific on uh meetings with staff, meetings with our police chief, our fire chief manager? Uh, I believe I'm an in-person face-to-face type of person. Uh, and I think that's more effective. Uh, I just
want to know that, you know, those meetings will happen. Uh, and because, you know, you did say in your presentation that you, uh, live and work in New England. So, uh, to that, Ken, I'm just going to throw another question
in there. Have you done any projects in Jersey uh in around our Essex County area? >> The firm has done projects in other markets in New Jersey. I have done uh I did a project many years ago with a
prior firm um in New Jersey. Uh Fort Lee, New Jersey, uh as well. Um you know, I I've done projects up and down the East Coast and and about halfway across the country doing public safety. Um, you know, I I I'm confident that I
have the experience and the knowledge um in public safety to to serve the needs of your community in Verona. Um, just on your I'm a big fan of FaceTime as well. um when whenever we do programming or program validation is I think is an
important part of your project because I see a lot of things in the program that raise my eyebrows and I want to understand those directly from from your your departments and so all of those meetings will be in person when we come back and give our results those will be
in person um whenever we do um present a new a new design solution those are always inerson meetings because um you know I I put a design out there and what I want to see is the guy in the back of the room that raises his eyebrow and
goes, "Huh?" Cuz I want to hear from him because he's got something to say and he may not come out and say it if I don't go, "So, what are you thinking back there?" Um, that's, you know, that's that's a great way to get to extract great feedback that'll help us refine
our solutions. You know, when we're talking about selecting mechanical systems, that's a meeting that can happen virtually. Um, but you know there when we're we're putting camera locations, when we're talking about what kind of gear
extractor, those those can happen virtually, but important decisions where we're really presenting big ideas, those should be in person. >> And I I agree because each each department is different whether you're up in New England, whether you're down here, even around here in every
different town. So when you're in person, face tof face with these individuals, you're going to get a different perspective from this group of people. So >> yeah, you know, I've been doing public safety 40 years and I still walk into a community and they have a different take
on, you know, some aspect of the the policing or firework and you've got to listen to it and you've got to say, okay, how does this align with what I've dealt with in the past? and you know you challenge a little bit and if if if the challenge doesn't take and they they
stand by their position then you you adapt to that and okay let's figure out how to make this solution work and you know a lot of times we'll come back and say well we've done this in the past and they go oh well that's better than what we were thinking and sometimes they say no this is we feel strongly about this
and this is the way it's got to be that you're right those conversations are best in person >> it's and at the end of today. You know, you're only it's like a three-hour drive from from where I live to where to where you guys are. So, I mean, that's that's shorter than the commute that we have
some for some other public safety projects where we're the prime on. You know, that that police station that we that I'm doing right now out in Falmouth out on Cape Cod, um last summer during the design phase, they held bi-weekly building committee meetings. So, every
second week there was a building committee at 3:00 in the afternoon on a Friday on Cape Cod that has two two-lane bridges for everybody to commute on and off of. It takes five to six hours each way, and we were able to manage that
without any any issues. So, um to to you know, you're not you're you're just south of New England, but really you're in our you're in our primary radius for where we would conduct this work as a prime architect. So one one last question for me. Uh the
you showed a different uh the one picture you showed the site that we had the design that we had already. You you had changed it a little bit and uh I know this site very well. There's some environmental issues. I don't know if you you were familiar with them uh but
towards the rear and it seems like you pushed it further back which there's topographical issues, there's environmental issues. So my question is uh part of your analysis will it be other sites in town? Uh we can give you specific sites but I'm not going to
mention them here. Uh and will you analyze those sites and is it possible uh to bifurcate this and do police and fire like maybe we put fire there leave it on that property with a smaller
building uh and have the police in a different location. >> Yes. Absolutely. We will we will gladly test other sites and evaluate them and determine it. You know, when we don't know all the details about your your site that you're looking at yet. Um we
know that your local architect has had a lot of experience. You know, there were there are a lot of challenges with the site as it is. Not that there aren't solutions, but there are challenges. Um we want to make sure that we look at that and and and see if there are other
sites that offer a better solution. Um, but it is not uncommon. Um, Matt told the story of Auburn where it started out as a public safety building and it was just too big a project for the community to digest and they also couldn't find a site that was
really suitable for a building of that size. And they ultimately decided to separate the projects. That Lexington project, you know, when we started that one out, we we explored is there a possibility of public safety? And at the end of the day, it just made more sense
to build these buildings separately. You know, it really comes down to, you know, what is the benefit of doing them together? You know, everybody says, "Oh, if we build police and fire side by, you know, as one building, then they'll share stuff." Well, the reality is finding
what police and fire are going to effectively share can vary all over the place. In Keen, New Hampshire, I did a study where they were willing to share the secretaries. So that they were, you know, it was one administrative suite. That is very uncommon. Usually what
you'll hear that departments are willing to share is the lobby, dispatch, maybe a training room, maybe a fitness room. And at the end of the day, that's not a big enough portion of the program to warrant the complications
that come from a much bigger public safety site because you've got all of these vehicular flows that need to be appropriately accommodated. Both, you know, responding apparatus and returning apparatus, police cruisers coming in and out, accessing the prisoner area to have
secure zones, secure parking zones and and vehicle storage zones and and public access. Sometimes these can get get to be very complicated sites and not all sites work for a combined public safety building in those cases and you know
thinking about it set differently is is is a good solution and you know and I think the ultimate test is to test it out and see what you really save you know it's not a huge effort to say if we did a public safety building here we imagine you know we can look back at our
our track record and say it's going to cost approximately this If we do a police station here and a fire station here, we can tell you the same thing. And you'll see, you know, how much am I really saving if I do them together versus separately? And will that become a more sellable project in
the short term? I I think that's worth studying. >> Thank you. Thank you, mayor. >> Thank you. That'll finish up. Um, so we have an interesting situation in Verona in that we obviously have a career police department and this is the
second station for a volunteer fire department. Just wondering if you could go into some examples of when you've done a building, if you have done a building where you've had a police department combined with a volunteer fire department, um and how you manage different organizational
um needs and structures and and really how that went into uh what you were just mentioning previously, which was was it was it worth did that fit having that one combined structure. So if you get into that, I would appreciate it.
>> Yeah. So you get you that's kind of the the culturally is the tough combination, the career police and the volunteer fire. You know, there's always this friction between police and fire. You know, I don't know why it's there, but
it is there. Um, you know, it it it's just a cultural thing. I was in Walam, Massachusetts, and we're doing a combined public safety building there. The fire department will be a standalone, but all the administration
and EOC will be in the police station on one site and you know the the the brass are all saying we can we can live together in the same building. H we're not so sure about you know the the rank and file and that is ultimately the real challenge that comes with a public
safety project that limits the capacity to effectively share you know operational space. Um, you know, not to mention, you know, the issues about, you know, the police officers carrying weapons and and, you know, the contaminants that fire uh, personnel are
bringing back to the site. Both of these have to be handled carefully as well. Um, we have done public safety buildings. We've done combined and we've done separate um, and we've done, you know, that sort of hybrid thing where part of the fire department is inside. Peody is one of them. Walam is one of
them. Um, we did a uh police and volunteer fire up in Pero, Mass, Massachusetts. Um, again, it can be a real complicated challenge because the the cultural differences that are there and it's
important to in those kinds of cases be a little bit sensitive to the way in which you're mixing personnel in there. um because there's a cultural difference >> and I would say you I I would guess that you probably have a a political difference between the two uh
organizations as well, right? Your volunteer organization is probably got a a board of fire commissioners that that's separate from, you know, the funding mechanism and oversight for for the police department. And so we need to find a way to sort of bring those two groups together so that they can have consensus. you know, if we are going to
stick around with a with a combined public safety facility or even separate them, you know, they're all going to want to feel like they have an equitable voice in at at the table. And we want to make sure that that we're listening to to all sides of that to make sure that they're they are being wellreceived and
their their concerns are being addressed. >> Thank you. Uh ultimately this project has to be approved by this governing body. Um and in our case there is not a separate board of fire commissioners. We're the
only elected officials that would be overseeing this project. Um, so could you walk me through where you would include the the township council um throughout your process um and maybe provide an example of how you've helped
a governing body uh to be able to bring a project back that is not only good for our services but also palatable to the the residents which is our role. um and how you've helped these bodies make some difficult decisions and ultimately
what's in the facility. >> Sure. Um there's a lot of pieces that question, but I want to start off with one of the topics that we we do go through at station design conference just this last year um was talking about our outreach to the community because you know we
know that you have a political responsibility in your community and you you answer to constituents in there and so we want to make sure that the constituents are on board and educated and informed about what's going on with the project. Um, but it's also important to keep you in the loop during the
process because, you know, there's going to be a lot of data that comes out early on in the process that talks about, you know, just how many lockers need to be in the police locker room to sustain this facility long term. How many do is there the potential for having bunking in there? Are you do storm coverage? You
know, what do what does the data tell us about that? what does the data tell us about the number of fire personnel um that you need to accommodate within each station? Um you know, I think those are all important things that you need to hear along the way. Otherwise, you know,
if you wait until the very end and you're not part of this information loop, then it will be like, you know, drinking from a fire hose because there will be so much data, so much information, so many decisions that you'll be backfed all at once at the end. That's not beneficial to you. it's
not beneficial to us or or your agencies either. Um, you know, I did talk about way earlier about, you know, being willing to have the hard conversations. I have I have had lots of tough conversations with with police chiefs or fire chiefs, you know, just saying,
"Look, you know, right now what we're hearing on the street is that uh that this project is too big." And as I said at the beginning, square footage is your number one tool. We've got to help them find the ways to get what they really need within, you know, within a
reasonable square footage. And those can be tough conversations. But the other thing is is it very much listening to you as stakeholders in the project. Um, you know, you you've been doing this for a while through the process you've already been through. I know that you
have you have lots of um information and opinions that you've developed during that period of time and we need to help you know hear them and understand them maybe challenge a few of them but also listen to a lot of them um for guidance along the way and and and again I think
you know if you if you tell us what your concerns are or what your issues with the project have been or you have concerns going forward then we can create scenar scenarios to help test and provide data to inform those um you know we Waltham right now we're going through
this very exercise um you know they had a project they had DPW fire department police department all on a congested urban site and the mayor was determined to get a new police department because they'd been in that building for a very
long time and it was tough and so we explored numerous ways of of working site and you know ultimately we came to a solution that gave them their new police station. Um we did relocate some DPW functions offsite. Um and then the
fire department became concerned about where their future was. And so then we expanded to show them what their future could be on the site. And you know as we went through this process we started brainstorming you know is should it be a police station and a fire department or
could we build the police station and house a portion of the fire department within that the administrative office EOC the dispatch and keep the operational fire station is a separate and you know so just I was just up there a few days ago and you know they voted
that the whole committee voted that we really want to bring this fire department piece in. So, we're going back and um you know updating our design concepts to to include that into the scheme so that they can get um expanded fire operational space right away when
the police department gets their new building as well as new fire administration offices. And you know, and for them that's a win-win. I'm not going to say that's the right solution for you because they're a different community than you are. Um
>> one other one other quick thing. um is uh you know another thing we've done with with communities is is is this sort of idea of of identifying shared values and how those impact the project and the cost. Um, you know, I just went through uh started construction recently on a
small um renovation addition in Carile, Massachusetts, small rural community, but um they had some very strong opinions uh on the their select board about what the project should be, how big it should be, and and what sort sort of values the project should um should
entail off, you know, firefighter safety and wellness, making sure they're compliant with NFPA, um keeping it at a high level of sustainability because they're they're they're sort of a decarbonization net zero type community while also maintaining this this very very tight
tiny budget. And so what we did is we put together a series of of packages of these are the different elements within the program the chief is asking for. He wants you know X Y and Z spaces through the facility. These are the ones that that are that apply to the goals and
shared visions of the select board. and here's the dollar value associated with those spaces. So that we can go through that list. Say if we meet five of the seven priorities, maybe that's enough for this project to be a success and we can look at a value engineering exercise
through the lens of th of that prioritization. Something that we we do something very similar along the way is we're going through budgeting of the project as well. We we we go through an estimate and we don't just say here's the estimate, this is what the cost is, let's let's move on to the next phase.
It's here's a series of value engineering or value ad solutions based on this estimate document that outlines every single budget item within the project and then and then value that as a prioritization exercise to see what
needs to happen. What could we maybe live without and what could we defer and really isn't that necessary? And so every step of the way, we're building all these value decision uh you know these these decision ready pieces of
information not just to the chiefs to understand but also for you folks so that you understand the dollar impact of every decision that goes into this project. >> Thank you. And the last question, um, could you provide an example of of maybe
the a time where you were specifically a subject matter expert rather than the architect of record and um, and you were able to really, you know, move a project toward um, completion with your expertise and and uh, you know,
basically we're looking for you to do here. If you had a comparable example. >> Yeah. I know a lot of the projects that I've teamed with um with partners um in other states down in Virginia. I had a great partner that I have worked with on many many public safety projects over the years um where they bring me on just
because I know public safety and and you know I bring that credibility to the team. We have great collaboration with that. I worked with a a company down in Florida on a number of projects. I did New Smyrna Beach Police Department with them. I did projects in uh Daytona uh
with them. Um and then also, you know, right now I'm working with SMRT up in uh South Portland, Maine. The project came out. It was a a new town hall, library, arts center, police station, fire
station, and SMRT could do three of those, not the other two, because they had virtually no experience in that. Um I had a a friend that uh I used to work with years ago. I reached out to him and said, you know, are you interested in, you know, bringing on subject matter
expert for this? And so we ended up making that connection. We've been working with them. Um we've been a big part of the decisions that went around the public safety. Ultimately the the entire project was put before the voters
or before the council first and then ultimately the voters and and they said this whole project that the city had decided to do all at once is too much. What we prioritize right now is police and fire and we'll think about the town
hall later. And so um we helped the town then go back um the the intent was to keep the fire station on the existing public safety site and the they wanted they had to get a new site for the police station. We helped them find a site. We test fitted it. We made sure it
was valid. Um we we developed conceptual designs and work with them uh through schematic design and you know that they're getting ready to go to the the voters for the funding for both the police and the fire department. and then they'll circle back later without me because it won't be public safety
anymore to explore that town hall, town offices and uh library at a later date. >> Thank you very much. And that concludes the questions that we have for you. Uh we appreciate your engagement in this process and the experience you provided.
Um this point you can we'll ask uh Miss Kieran to demotion or make you a an attendee. Uh and you're welcome to stay on for the rest of the public meeting. Um or you can, you know, sleep and wake up and design buildings tomorrow. Uh
that that is up to you. Um so so thank you for your participation. Uh at this point, I'm going to open the meeting for public comment. Uh any member of the public wishing to talk to the town council about anything, uh not just what is on the agenda for this evening is
welcome to do so. Madame Clerk, would you please read the public participation statement? >> Anyone from the public wishing to speak on any matter? If you're attending via Zoom, please raise your hand by pressing the raise hand button on your monitor. If you're attending by telephone, please
press star 9. Please um do not use your street address when giving your when identifying yourself because these will be posted on YouTube and meetings will not be redacted for any purpose. You have four minutes to address the council. Um and at the and when everyone
wishing to speak has been heard, the council may address your comments and or questions. Um mayor, I'll just keep track on myself. >> Yeah, that's great. Thank you, Madame Clerk. Uh, we have Kate up first. >> Good, Kate.
>> Good evening. This is Kate Partwe, uh, resident here in Verona. First, I wanted to thank the council for its continuing prioritization of transparency, um, and fiscal responsibility and public engagement when it comes to the
emergency services building. Um, this is one of the largest capital investments that Verona will make and as one of the presenters mentioned today, it will be a generational building. So, the building itself will outlast all of us. Um, with that in mind, I do have a couple of questions specifically for the council.
Um, the first is how will the council be evaluating the three firms that presented this evening? Um, is there specific criteria that you will be using to determine which firm is ultimately selected? Um, another question that um, came up for me was what are the specific
responsibilities of the subject matter expert and how are they expected to engage the solutions architecture versus township management. Um several of the firms referred to um looking at alternative locations uh during their
presentations and so I'm curious if when they go back to that they will also be considering the um rescue squad since none of the firms discuss any experience with those areas. Um and that concludes my comments and questions for tonight.
>> Thank you. I don't see any other public participation. So I'll close public participation at this time. Um on the the question of what are the specific uh responsibilities of the subject matter expert versus management?
Um Kevin, I'll let you jump in on that one. >> Sure. Thank you, Mayor. uh the the uh the final selected firm would be um engaged to uh perform specific tasks that were defined in the RFP process.
There's uh starting with uh a program review, a design review, standards compliance, and then also a budget review. There's uh particularly specific criteria that will will um and and tasks that were um obligated of the uh biders
as part of the RF process. So rely on them to engage uh as a professional of the township uh in a collaborative manner uh underneath the uh a contractual agreement with the township. They would be working for the township
uh in in collaboration with solutions architecture. Both would be um the professionals uh assigned to this project underneath the uh the management of the the township, not as a a firm for the AR uh
the solutions architecture. [clears throat] >> Thank you. And uh would you like to address the question about the rescue squad as well? >> Sure. the um as as part of that program review assessment um one of the things
that the firms will be asked to do is to uh take another analysis and review of um some of the tasks that were already performed by solutions architecture. So again it is part of their general review process of the program reviews. Uh those
are programs that were assessed previously. There were some designs that a number of schematic designs that were previously prepared. So it would be a matter of reviewing each of those programs, each of those designs and uh consolidating uh a total number of of
recommendations for the council at a later date. Uh that that would be uh expected of the selected firm. >> Thank you. Um and going on to the last question of how or the first question I suppose how the council would evaluate
the uh the three firms that's up to each council member member individually. We've been provided a lot of data between the RFP responses um which were in some cases very detailed um and we've
been able to review that which if those were all presented this meeting it would be going on until you know early tomorrow morning um as well in addition to the the questions and answers and the presentations that have been provided tonight to determine which
of these firms would best help in my opinion. I can only speak for myself on how I'm going to evaluate it, but which one of these firms is going to be able to help move this project forward in a cost-effective um and timely fashion? And which firm
has the the right expertise um and the the right vision in order to execute this uh this assignment um and support our team to get this done. So, that's what I'll be looking at. um you
know reviewing the the multiple pages of notes as well as the information that's uh been provided to determine which is the right fit for Rona. I think they uh this is ultimately there are objective components of this but also subjective
components of this. Um so I the council's not expected to you know agree to to one um system evaluation or a point scale or anything like that. Um, I found those to largely be counterproductive. Um, any other council
member wants to if I've shared what is in your mind or if you'd like to comment on that, you're more than welcome. Go ahead, Councilman R. >> Um, one of the big factors that weighs on me is coming to a project uh that
meets the interests of the public and is acceptable to the public. Uh this has been mentioned that this is a very very large capital project. Um anything that we do in this realm are lifetime buildings that will be here for you know
the generations to come. So this is uh this is a very important one. We have a lot of things that we have heard from our departments and a lot of uh evaluation has gone on. Um but ultimately it needs to be a project that I think the public looks at us and goes
okay that makes sense. um they may not agree with every last decision that we made, but that's really where I'm hoping that a uh that a subject matter expert expert is going to guide us and is going to help us um tune a project to to meet that qualification and present it in
such a manner that uh all the stakeholders involved um find the work uh acceptable and something that the town should reasonably go forward with. That's that's what's weighing on me in terms of um which theme we uh we choose. Um
I think that one of the things that's important to me is the site selection piece. Um challenging a lot of assumptions that have been made. Um looking at programming in general sort of all of these aspects are important to me and I've brought up with multiple uh
vendors about uh being willing to to take a fresh look at assumptions that have already been made. I don't I don't want to have confirmation bias where just because we've gone down a road that's the only road we can go down. Um and I really want to hear a lot of different ideas. So that's that's what
I'm what I'm looking at is I'm evaluating these vendors proposals. Um cost of the proposals uh matter. We um soft cost on a project like this do matter. Um but also the uh thememes ability to come up with smart solutions to manage cost throughout the life cycle
of any project that we execute are very important to me as well. um we don't have limitless funds um and that matters a lot is how can we accomplish what we need to do uh within our bonding capacity. Those are those are the thoughts that
are in my head right now there. >> Thank you and I agree with all of them. So thank you for adding that as well. All right. Uh Mr. Sure. Council, I don't know if you're raising the pencil if
u I felt like a kid there just trying to raise my uh at a classroom. Thank you. Uh Mr. Mayor, um I I agree with all the points from u mayor and councilman uh Roman. Uh my evaluation as I stated uh
when upon entering the council was to be very pragmatic. I was very impressed today with all three um firms and uh that's actually a good problem to have as a council because we're able to have
three excellent choices. Uh we have to look at cost. Uh we have to look at their expertise. We have to look at um whether we worked with some of them before. Some of them being local, some of them understanding some of projects that they've done before that we potentially have to look at as well. So
I think there are tremendous amount of variables that go into it and it's a decision decision that none of us will take lightly because of the extraordinary cost and how important it is and meaningful towards the police station towards the firefighters towards
the rescue squad. So it's all to everybody and also in a very difficult fiscal budget year that we're going to face probably over the next couple years. So, we have to be very, very, very smart and strategic about it. And I
was very happy with some of the results tonight, which I thought was three good firms, some good solutions, but a lot of work in front of us before any decisions are being made. Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor. >> Thank you, Councilman Shore. Deputy
Mayor, >> thank you, Mayor. Uh I I don't think I can say anything that uh the my three colleagues here have already said but I just want to highlight one thing and it was in the question that was asked this is a gener general generally
generational project. Uh when we people bring up that it's going to be here for 50 years it's going to be here for 75 to 100 years. Every building that the town has in this town is that old. Uh, so I think we have to make sure we do this
correctly and as costefficiently as possible and I think that's the bottom line when it comes to all this. Thank you, Mayor. >> Thank you. And uh and I'll conclude by saying that the the beauty of the way that the township council operates is
that you'll be able to see that vote and that discussion happen in uh real time at the next council meeting which is on Monday, August 3rd. So, uh, please join us for that meeting as we as we secure our expert. Um, and and add to the the
team that has already been working diligently to uh get this project moving forward. Um, I'd just like to always point out a thanks to our our representatives from all of our emergency services departments um and uh
the administration, those departments, our township manager uh and uh as well as solutions architecture for getting us here and to the members of the public who raised questions and to the council members uh over the course of this project who have raised questions and um
ultimately looking to have the best project possible. So, I appreciate the the public's engagement and I also appreciate the public's patience as we um do the right thing for Verona. And that's I think something that we all
share as a desire. Um there is no doubt and that these a building for the police department, a new facility, and a new facility for station 2 are needed. Um, and I can't comment on the rescue squad because I'm a member, but um, but for
those in those spec specific circumstances, uh, it's undeniable that those buildings have been needed and that they've been needed for a couple decades in in some cases. So, um, I look forward to to moving on. And with that,
I will entertain a motion to adjurnn. >> To adjourn. >> Council Shore has made a motion to adjourn. Is there a second? So, I think that was Deputy Mayor Makavoy. All those in favor? >> I. >> All those opposed, the motion is
carried. We'll see you on Monday, six days.