ORDER-2018-124 : An Appropriation in the amount of $750,000 from various accounts at set forth herein to funds #3383 High School Roof and #3384 School Improvements.

Transcript (~25 min @ 32:20)

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▶ 32:22 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: board meeting which is next week thank you very much the second order on agenda tonight is order 2018-124 and appropriation in the amount of 750 000 from barry's accounts as set forth herein to funds number 3383 high school roof and number 3384 school improvements yes alderman mortimer

▶ 32:41 Peter D. Mortimer: a motion to recommend for passage we have a motion to recommend for passage by alderman mortimer

▶ 32:54 Peter D. Mortimer: is there a second oh there's a second i'm going to have discussion but if this second

▶ 32:57 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: we have a second by alderman wright on discussion alderman mortimer

▶ 33:05 Peter D. Mortimer: the uh i think the point's been made in the first order money talks and uh this will show

▶ 33:13 Peter D. Mortimer: that we're serious we still don't have to spend it even though we might set it aside

▶ 33:20 Peter D. Mortimer: so i think this is a question of putting our money where our mouth is so i think we already had the conversation that's why i went right to the motion to recommend for passage and this just shows uh that we're putting our money where our mouth is but as was carefully explained by city planner gaffey if we don't like this later we can always pull it back so as alderman wright succinctly illustrated on the previous question um this is kind of uh where we are and we should just go go right ahead with it thank you thank you since we're still under suspension of the

▶ 33:55 Robert A. Boisselle: rules could we have the dpw director come forward please mr shen i could you join us at the table

▶ 34:13 Robert A. Boisselle: good evening good evening good evening john um we see a lot of these funds from the schools hoover school windows hvac from the high school learning common project these are all money that's been left over from the bonding operation to be paying for part of this project and one part is this is the school repairs uh what are we repairing in this in this line item here that we have of three hundred and thirty three thousand dollars it's a very good question

▶ 34:43 Speaker 4: it's um there are two main parts to that funding um roughly a hundred thousand of it is going to go towards the elevators in the high school the elevators at the high school we were notified during our july inspection from the division of professional licensee the public safety inspection office that we had to replace the main cylinders of both the freight elevator and the passage elevator at the high school we made some temporary temporary repairs to get through the school year so that we can get our certificate and get our occupancy certificate and and um and get through the 17-18 school year however this was something that we had to seek funding for and we made a commitment that it would be addressed prior to school reopening in 18-19 so that we have quotes that's about 85 000 um we're going to put it out to bid and um you know with contingency and design fees and soft costs that that piece of it is um is is out is funded with the appropriation and this isn't any this isn't new borrowing that's before you we're reallocating funds i think the auditor sent a a memo on the 25th of january to the board explaining that um it's not new borrowing it's leftover money from prior projects and authorizations of prior projects and it's also banned bond premium and in order to avoid arbitrage arbitrage and to satisfy the arbitrage spending test this had to be reallocated the second part of what this funds is improvements to the auditorium the middle school auditorium

▶ 36:33 Speaker 4: focused on lighting and sound and the stage that's an auditorium that sees over 1,800 hours of rented rental use six to eight weekends of dance recitals every spring some along recital some along drama program and productions from the Wakefield Repertory Theatre aside from day-to-day educational use that it this is that the lights really never shut off in that auditorium if you buy a camera today or any piece of technology ten years from now you can only imagine how outdated it is a lot of a lot of the equipment in there we've been advised needs to be upgraded just like regular software and technology has to be upgraded so the balance of the funding will go towards that we'll be working with the office of planning and community development denise on that and superintendent has assembled her own team of educators from drama and music that will help us prioritize where they want

▶ 37:48 Robert A. Boisselle: to see the investment go to so the 233 000 remaining would be pushed into the middle school auditorium correct for improvements all right thank you very much thank you madam chair thank

▶ 38:01 Michael P. Zwirko: you uh next up we have alderman Zwirko thank you madam chair i appreciate you coming here tonight too uh mr senator for being here as well as uh earlier speaker denise gappy um and thank you for outlining that that 333 i just saw school repairs but i didn't see any itemization there so i appreciate the question by alderman Boisselle um i know i know you didn't write write this order but in the in the future you know that would be very helpful for us um we we can i could we could

▶ 38:27 Michael P. Zwirko: definitely supplement the order yeah i mean you spoke about it so that's that's good to know i'm just wondering if in um you know 233 000 or so about we're going to essentially uh free for appropriation for those school repairs but what what is the process after that and i guess where i'm going with this is as you stated there will be some music and performance professionals that are employed currently at the high school in the middle school that will assist in you know what the needs are um but i mean is it is it carte blanche that they now have this 233 000 to kind of see as uh spend as they see fit is or will that you know further appropriation you know be delineated before us or is or is this okay this evening or this you know failure just giving that

▶ 39:10 Speaker 4: discretion i'll ask denise to join me but that process will be led by her office okay um and you know similar to other school projects we always start with the end user but she has a very very specific process that we'll go through so that we can outline the needs the needs of the end users and also make sure we check all the boxes off in terms of procurement and and then we'll work very closely together in terms of scheduling and you know for the various windows of the year that it's actually available to to work on if there's anything else you want to add

▶ 39:45 Denise Gaffey: in that regard just that um so this this initiative is a really important one for mayor dolan and for superintendent taymor and it's been something they've been looking to do for a couple of years um you know the auditorium when it was built um over 10 years ago now was state of the art at the time but after 10 years both just through a lot of use and also just changes and technology in order to keep it current and you know keep it as a state-of-the-art

▶ 40:14 Denise Gaffey: facility and keep the rentals coming in and and just you know keep maintain excellent

▶ 40:22 Denise Gaffey: usability for the space these it's viewed that these investments are needed we actually um we had the architect come back and just informally give us some ideas about if we had you know a

▶ 40:36 Denise Gaffey: wish list what would what would be what we need to do and this was done in consultation with the um the the drama and music professionals in the school the faculty there and you know we looked at lighting um this was just very back of the envelope at the time but it was lighting

▶ 40:59 Denise Gaffey: pa system video projection um and rigging in stage floor so things like that and this we've had and we have recently had another meeting to kind of to bring the architect back and ask us if he could drill into it a little bit further and give us some costs on these items so we will have more specific um numbers through this process and through working with this i'll call it like a working group and um but our sense just from from his original um feedback was that we would be able to afford to do the floor replacement and the upgrades to the pa system into the video

▶ 41:36 Denise Gaffey: projection with this funding and if we're lucky and after we're bidding it and we get good numbers you know maybe we can do something with stage lighting

▶ 41:46 Denise Gaffey: as well the rigging is a very big project it's also not required it's just

▶ 41:51 Speaker 5: we just have a mechanical rigging system now which from from when it was built 10

▶ 41:57 Denise Gaffey: years ago where there are more sophisticated and automated systems now

▶ 42:02 Michael P. Zwirko: know but they are very expensive no thank you that that's helpful and i'm wondering you know you had mentioned uh mr shenna mentioned that you know the lights rarely go off in that auditorium so with these repairs i would imagine that there would be some impact to its use obviously i mean i would i would imagine you know redoing a floor it's probably not just simple refinishing of a floor so i'm just curious as to when and again i know that this is back of the napkin type of of stuff that you've kind of spitballed about but any schedule as to when this might exactly take place and therefore that it's a contrary to my question on any any impact that could occur because of it yeah it's a great question and we

▶ 42:40 Denise Gaffey: haven't really drilled down on that yet because it's very tricky to schedule this work I mean there's a really small window with which to do that we know that we just when we stood on the stage a couple of weeks ago and talked with the drama teacher and the music teacher and the superintendent and others you know there's really it's used all the time right so we have to be very

▶ 43:06 Speaker 5: cognizant of that when we're moving forward with this project and I don't

▶ 43:10 Michael P. Zwirko: have an answer okay I would just ask as a courtesy if you could keep you know you don't have to certainly come before this board but if you even via email if you could keep us posted as this project moves for should this project move forward just it's used so much by the community for those that don't even have children in the school system it would be interesting to see not only what those repairs are going to go towards or enhancements rather but also the scheduling as well if you could do so I'd greatly appreciate that yeah thank you those are all the questions I had madam chair thank you madam chair so

▶ 43:40 Speaker 6: thank you both so much for being here and for also talking to me a little bit about this earlier in the week on the school repairs line I'm wondering one we talked about was we were trying to identify projects school repair projects that would be able to fall within the term limit of the bond that we that we're now reallocating the money toward can you remind us um what the the timeline is there yeah what it was what the auditor and the

▶ 44:09 Speaker 4: treasurer requested was that the borrowing life and the lifespan of the project um was equal or greater than what it was originally borrowed for so these funds that you were reallocating

▶ 44:29 Speaker 4: were borrowed from the hoover school the hoover school window project the roof project at the high school the learning commons all high school school campus type of projects with 20 to 25 year lifespans i believe i could confirm with the auditor what the actual lifespan is and and follow up with some information to all of you on what the actual life strand of and term and what borrowing terms okay and maybe this is just for my own

▶ 44:55 Speaker 6: edification maybe for others already because or understand this but what I had understood maybe was the projects that we've completed where there's been a surplus those projects had to be completed within a certain amount of time therefore we also needed to look for projects that we could complete now in some short order rather than have them lingering out there for a long period of time so is that what you're sort of suggesting that you'll be able to follow up a little bit more information about precisely when these

▶ 45:28 Speaker 4: funds have to be spent yeah we will give you that information I believe it's two years from from the reallocation okay two years okay that's how tonight and I

▶ 45:37 Speaker 6: would like to agree with the public comment we had last week about this line item when it was um proposed and we referred it to committee and as alderman's work oh and alderman Boisselle have been able to discuss i do think the more information that can be in the public packet in terms of something that's a third of a million dollars would be helpful for all of us here and also for people looking at home i think also it would be helpful to think about if there's a way to talk about these priorities within the larger context of for example here the schools and the buildings around the city so i just finished visiting all five elementary schools last week for kindergarten tours and i'm certainly aware of some of the limitations at those schools with their performance spaces where schools are using the room for a cafeteria and an auditorium and a gym and so just kind of having a sense of where this project which seems very worthy fits in with other projects so it's easier to sort of have a sense of the larger direction and the other priorities that may be out there would be helpful to me i think the only other question i had was about the line item for the high school roof and that's with respect to the last order when we you're going to pro you may submit a statement of interest for the msb grant and then we may submit an application perhaps get an award if we did get sort of a 50 match would this 416 000 perhaps not be entirely necessary at that point and if so will we still have time if there is some left over in this line to repurpose it for something else

▶ 47:18 Denise Gaffey: i have asked the auditors that question and because it's true if we get the grant i don't think we would need all of that money so um and i was told that we could reallocate it i mean obviously we'd have to come back to this board but it could be reallocated okay thank you so much

▶ 47:36 Monica C. Medeiros: to you alderman medeiros thank you uh i was wondering if you could speak a little bit more about the funds left over from the fire station roof and about that project

▶ 47:49 Speaker 4: yeah so that we we allocated funding the roof next door at the central station was was failing and was leaking in several locations pretty badly so we borrowed funding together with an additional borrowing to redo their bathrooms and we addressed most of the issues and that's funding that's been left over now I mean that what we did was temporary in nature given that the feasibility study was in the horizon and a more long-term repair would hopefully come from that but the roof isn't leaking the way it was these funds were available and we decided to reallocate them as part of um because they either had they had to be reallocated um and that window was closing in terms of of letting him stay in that account okay well and just some commentary

▶ 48:42 Monica C. Medeiros: you know i uh back in high school went through the drama program was very involved with that in the musical and you know it was always kind of disappointing when we'd go out for drama competitions that you'd go to other communities and their stages were you know phenomenal and Melrose at the time we didn't have any kind of facility that we could we could never host a drama competition we were never in the position that we had a good enough facility to be able to do that so it is you know it is it has been exciting to see that that you know facility in the middle school and to know that that's opened up you know lots of opportunities for our students to you know both in the middle school and in the high school to really pursue and you know so i do think like everything time goes by quickly too quickly and technology changes very quickly so i'm i'm glad to see this project underway and hope that this will last i you know it is sort of surprising seeing that the last you know the technology that we had was only 10 years old and that this might last 10 you know it seems sort of unlikely that it might go to uh alderman livergar obedience point you know 20 to 25 years out but technology isn't always on a different

▶ 50:09 Monica C. Medeiros: not on a 20-year but it is important to maintain that and you know and to be able and it is a money maker for us that we have lots of groups come in and rent the space and so that does you know allow us to offset and and allow us to have more programming that we wouldn't also i know it's it's been a little bit belabored here but just you know we do have the opportunity where we have our next mayor in the chamber with us and so i think you know the point has been made that it would be nice perhaps to have more detail in in really kind of expected to have more detail on some of these expenditures in particular the school repairs of you know 333 thousand dollars and and hopefully you know moving forward you know i think it's something where we should be able to any member of the public should be able to see and the board of all of them should be able to see the the order and understand what it is and and look at it five years from now and be able to understand what it is and and have it be clear so that you know if if some member of the public did want to comment on it they would or if one alderman wanted to you know we have better questions and things like that if we have more information up front so thank you thank you

▶ 51:28 Scott M. Forbes: uh next in queue we have alderman forbes well thank you madam chair um i agree with all my colleagues here i know there's a lot of discussion about the breakdowns and uh maybe some itemization and give us a little bit more clarification but my question really just lies in the in the uh the section regarding a priority in this project um 233 000 for the middle school uh auditorium is are these critical needs or are they just upgrades because the way i look at it is you have the hoover school windows at around eighty five thousand dollars that was a surplus from that project right would that money be better served reinvesting in the hoover school would there be more critical needs there rather than two hundred and thirty three thousand dollars worth of upgrades in the middle school i just want to know how what was the dialogue in coming to the determination that the 233 000 was best served at the middle school project rather than maybe reallocating some of that money back to the hoover school which is an older building that we could probably find plenty of repairs that could be taken care of in there i just wanted to get the thought process of how this came about i believe part of it

▶ 52:32 Denise Gaffey: is just the nature of this space the performance center which is built i mean it's in our middle school but of course as you know it's really it's a high school grade auditorium so it's used by the entire campus the high school and the middle school so i think it touches all the students you know are touched by this facility and get access to this facility district-wide eventually so i think it's an important space to invest in and um so i think that you know i think that coupled with um just how much use that the performance center sees on daily and annual basis just spoke to the need to to make this investment and as I was kind of alluding to earlier there this is a lot of money there's no question about it I think the needs are probably three to four times this so you know if we really were to look at you know making this you know upgrading it to today's standards ten years later right and just making it a space that

▶ 53:35 Denise Gaffey: could you know really be exceptional I mean it's a great space right but if it was going to be state-of-the-art today to today's standards it'd be a significant investment and so I think the view was that this was a good use of the funding that's available and it could make a great impact right it's going to have a big impact improving the sound system replacing the floor maybe doing some lighting replacements will have a significant impact on the space and on so during that discussion though it was weighed you take a look and try

▶ 54:07 Scott M. Forbes: to find the right balance of where these funds are best to be reallocated based upon all the other projects that came in say under budget right right right I

▶ 54:19 Denise Gaffey: mean I think again I think the superintendent and the mayor are very much aware of what all the the needs are citywide and they felt really strongly

▶ 54:30 Speaker 4: about this investment and i could speak for the superintendent she views it it's not the middle school auditorium it's the melrose school systems auditorium i mean there are several people that walk in and out and she really feels it's one piece of her school facilities that every student will touch at some point in time and and walk through and you know she also sees school districts in this area are improving their facilities and we want to keep up um in that regard as well

▶ 54:58 Scott M. Forbes: um and then my final question do you think that their frequency of its use has a lot to do with the fact that it's outgrown its or beyond its shelf life um the fact that there are so many

▶ 55:10 Denise Gaffey: events that take place there that's definitely true for the floor i mean the floor itself needs you know it's just seen a lot of wear and tear i think the pa system is really just a matter of like catching up with today's you know advances in technology and equipment and

▶ 55:24 Denise Gaffey: the lighting to the lighting would just be you know replacing it with more

▶ 55:31 Scott M. Forbes: efficient and current lighting sure I appreciate your I appreciate your comments here tonight obviously you know just taking a look at you know some of the things that are here I know the Hoover School has gone through a lot of upgrades in the past couple years which I'm very thankful for because in years passed there's been nothing for a long period of time so the fact that we do have the the new windows a storefront in the front for security and then the modular classroom so I just looking at the opportunity if there's ever a way to upgrade that I would you know I had to ask so thank you thank you madam chair

▶ 56:06 Robert A. Boisselle: thank you for the performing arts we have another stage in the school system in the new common area I believe sort of a minute that's where the mayor I think last year gave a present his budget presentation and it accommodated a good hundred maybe a hundred and fifty people and he could probably double that is that being used at all by the outside groups for activities in the system I

▶ 56:31 Denise Gaffey: know I just attended a session there a couple of months ago when they had a

▶ 56:40 Denise Gaffey: saturday what did they call it parents university thank you it was awesome and yeah you can fit a

▶ 56:44 Robert A. Boisselle: couple hundred people in that space now is that being publicized out there that it's available

▶ 56:50 Denise Gaffey: for the community organizations to use it appears to be i think it is i know i see others i i've seen and i've been there for other um other events as well yeah very good thank you very much thank

▶ 57:02 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: you manager thank you any other alderman wishing to address this order we have an order we have a

▶ 57:06 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: motion to recommend for passage that's been made and seconded all in favor all right be opposed this this order will be recommended for passage at the full board meeting