ORDER-2017-76 : Library Renovation and Construction Grant Application

Transcript (~30 min @ 25:22)

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▶ 25:18 Speaker 1: Alderman Zwirko. Yes. Yes. President Pond. Yes. Yes. Seven yes. The order passes. Order 2017-76, Library Renovation and Construction Grant Application. This order comes recommended from the Committee on Appropriations. Motion for passage, Mr. President. Second. Alderman Mortimer moves for passage of the order. motion is seconded by Alderman Inferna is there discussion relative to the order Alderman Zwirko then Alderman Forbes I make a motion to suspend the rules

▶ 25:51 Speaker 1: second Alderman Zwirko moves to suspend the rules to hear from city officials relative to this order the motion is seconded by Alderman Mortimer on the motion to suspend the rules all those in favor aye anyone opposed motion passes could the appropriate city officials please come forward to the table in the center of the room good evening

▶ 26:18 Michael P. Zwirko: you have the floor Thank You mr. president and thank you both for being here this evening so I would also like before I ask a few questions I also just wanted to acknowledge you know in my first year here it's very rare that we have a forum that's this filled with with folks and residents that are concerned about this this item so it's nice to actually see some some dialogue on this in the chamber so for all those residents that are here that spoke tonight I greatly appreciate you taking the time out of your personal lives to come here and express that so it means a lot to me so so we've seen a lot of correspondence on this since the meeting that we last held on this matter and it was unanimously approved in the Appropriations Committee there's a couple of things that come up and I do want to point not only those folks that are able to see these records at home but there was a correspondence that came out today from the city planner miss Gaffey and it is in response to some questions that were levied not only by alderman Rita but also an individual who spoke here tonight mr. Lillo I would like to make a motion that mr. Lillo's correspondence be attached to this order it kind of will help correlate the response that Ms. Gaffey wrote second that motion I believe that's correspondence dated January 14th if it could just be added to it as a motion to add that

▶ 27:45 Speaker 1: correspondence to the record relative to this order it's been duly seconded all those in favor all right thank you so that being said I just how exactly

▶ 27:58 Michael P. Zwirko: locked in are we should we move forward with the application so the application is due Thursday at the end of the day you need authority from the Board of Alderman in order to apply so that's two questions I guess if you can answer the first how exactly locked in with this application are we we have a figure we

▶ 28:21 Denise Gaffey: have a schematic so the so the submission of the grant application does not lock the city into anything if if the city ultimately when it comes back when you know if we're lucky enough to get on the list for a grant and then we get selected to move forward because we expect we'll be on a waiting list when we get selected to move forward we'll have a certain amount of time to come back and get the matching funds and if there is no support at that time to fund the city's match then the we forfeit the grant I mean there are examples of that other communities from other rounds of with this program from other previous rounds where communities ultimately even have to going through this process of doing the preliminary submission they did they could not get the support that they needed from the community and they had to forfeit the grant so you never we are not I only tell you this we certainly don't want that to happen or expect that to happen but I only tell you this because just to assure the members that we are not walking into a project by agreeing to submit a grant

▶ 29:26 Michael P. Zwirko: application certainly and I remember during committee you know this is not expending any appropriation of city's funds either I guess I was more asking

▶ 29:32 Denise Gaffey: the question of design so in terms of the design I mean we you know they do they the language does ask the Alderman to support the the project's design I mean we have written it and they supported the language that we wrote that this is preliminary design and so we very much view this as preliminary I mean we don't we wouldn't want to spend the amount of money that it would take to really you know really further the design on this project because it would costly and and you know we want to get more feedback before we did that but you know to get to this point I do want to I do want to you know we kind of reiterate that you know we have done a lot of work I mean it was probably about a year ago that we came to the alderman to accept the donation account to in order to fund the feasibility study to get us to this point so since that time we you know we hired architects who are experts in this field they're not lay people these are these are experts and they worked very closely with with Linda and myself and with the library staff over several months of planning meetings and based on that based on the needs of the building and the needs of the staff and the needs of that library at large we went through many different different you know different iterations iterations of a plan we also have we don't have a lot of options either I mean we have we have a building a Carnegie building that is adored that we would never consider you know moving out of or taking down and we have a division that has some real serious structural limitations and overshadows the historic building so for many reasons we and we and we're land locked and we don't have a lot we don't have any land to expand on so you know We do have certain constraints. There weren't an awful lot of different iterations we could look at. But we did look at several to get to this preliminary design submission. That said, the design itself, we know, will evolve in the future if we're fortunate enough to get a grant award and then be able to take it further along. And so from that perspective, we're not locked in. just to be quite honest there aren't a lot of a lot of different options and if

▶ 31:54 Speaker 1: I may add just a piece from the grant requirement in terms of the possibility of doing something small you know just focusing on one problem area we're not actually allowed to do that through the grant process and they're very deliberate about that they want you to look at your building as a whole your functions as a whole you can't focus on just children's or just local history they want a comprehensive plan that will actually carry the library through into the future and not have a community coming back and saying oh you know we did this a little bit but we didn't quite get it all so they're very focused for a successful application on making sure that we've really thought about all of our needs as we're going into an application and thank you for that I

▶ 32:49 Michael P. Zwirko: mean I just know that you know a speaker had said earlier that you know this is really just opening the door and I understand it's just we're just applying for the grant I get that and I don't mean to just you know harp on this but you know there are several hurdles that are going to have to go through after this process I mean we've got a variance issue under the current plan there's you know I believe there may be some parking issues with the plan so I mean I know we can scale things back accordingly so it just seems to me that you know there's a figure there's a plan there's a schematic but it's somewhat malleable and I'm just wondering how malleable it is because maybe after you know having a community conversation because this plans ultimately going to have to be sold you know again I hate to go back to the term but you know how locked in exactly are we and I'm not discounting any of the work I've looked at the plans that you know you would attach to the order it's just you know as we move forward on this there are several things that are going to have to align in order for us to receive the grant money so I want not only the community to be aware of that but understand that this is still a conversation that the community will I hope have and we the Board of Aldermen as well as you know others involved will have this conversation because it's certainly not a small sum

▶ 34:06 Denise Gaffey: of money um can i just clarify a couple of things yeah please we we do not anticipate requiring any

▶ 34:12 Michael P. Zwirko: variances for this project okay i mean i saw something on two and a half stories and i wasn't

▶ 34:16 Denise Gaffey: sure if that meant because of the we have a basement level and then we have two stories about so you're planning on matching the current right okay okay we don't need any high relief and that's my that's my misclarification sorry in the parking we've we've we've talked with the grant funding agency we've talked with the building commissioner we we we do think we i mean if we if we were trying to comply with parking today we can't by the by the letter of the law but we factoring in all of the ancillary parking street parking municipal parking in close proximity we you know we know it's always a challenge but there's there is a lot of parking in the area and it's also ideally situated located for people to walk to and so we're not we don't to spend any concerns or you know the parking becoming a problem for us and

▶ 35:04 Michael P. Zwirko: then I had a one other question are you are when municipalities cities and towns apply for these types of grants I mean do any of them already have the matching

▶ 35:17 Michael P. Zwirko: funds ready to go so I guess what I'm saying is most municipalities are aware that upon receipt of said you know grant award that there's still a laboring war

▶ 35:26 Denise Gaffey: that needs to occur on their end right because again we you know to remind everyone we don't know when we will get the award we will get they are gonna do a ranking and we'll get on a list and we don't think we would be one of the highest projects on the list so we think our project is a couple of years out and I mean so we know there's going to be so it's a little it's a little bit tough to even anticipate what the project costs are going to be given that but so project so communities generally wait to find out if they're going to get a grant award before they get their matching funds okay well I appreciate your time

▶ 36:03 Michael P. Zwirko: on this and I know that there's been a lot of discussion on it and you know I hope that the discussions continue after after tonight so I look forward to it as well thank you for your time that's all the questions I have mr. president thank

▶ 36:16 Scott M. Forbes: you Alderman Forbes Thank You mr. president now I am the numbers person so I I just want to go over one thing with you and hopefully you can provide me with a little bit of clarification based upon a 16 and a half million dollar project 40 to 45 percent means that we would be getting anywhere from six point six to seven and a half million dollars in grant money which would mean that the leftover remaining portion that would have to be raised by the city is nine to ten million dollars that's where we get that number here's my scenario and here's the question I hope you can answer for me hypothetically we we go forward with the vote tonight you you you apply for the grant you get your funding and you get a seven and a half million dollar award now this is a preliminary design so let's say after a dialogue with with everybody here we all come to an agreement that we're going to approve a ten million dollar construction plan altering the original plan and everybody's in agreement with it we go back to the grant writers and say that we have an approved plan for ten million dollars are they going to scale their grant back their grant award back from the 7 million that they promised us before to reflect the approved plant plan price of 10 million dollars and say we will scale back your grant to reflect the 40 to 45 percent and you will give us a grant award for four and a half million dollars which means that Melrose now be obligated to come up with the difference which is five and a half is that how this works or once you get the grant you get the seven million dollars and we have to build in that scale that's my question do you understand what

▶ 37:56 Denise Gaffey: I'm saying I think I understand the question and I I would say we would ultimately get the grant funding that's based on what the project costs are so it'll be the percentage the approved project based on what the final what the

▶ 38:16 Scott M. Forbes: final cost of the project okay so that's a fluid number right that's workable

▶ 38:18 Denise Gaffey: also say as as Linda alluded to that the funding agency is going to make sure or want to ensure that we are addressing the serious concerns in the building especially around infrastructure about hazardous materials around around you know and around space and how it's utilized sure and so there may not there may not be a building to go from a 16 million dollar project to a 10 million dollar project for that reason I mean because we have given a lot of thought

▶ 38:47 Scott M. Forbes: yeah my concern was they approved seven you're stuck at seven and we have to build in that larger scale project where if they didn't like you know if it's not a fluid dialogue if the award money wasn't be able to be scaled back a little bit then you're really only locked into the one design and not the other not the other three that were on the table so they know this is schematic

▶ 39:08 Denise Gaffey: level and they know and and we will be if we're lucky enough again to get an award we would be working with them very closely on the future levels of design right and they would have to you know it would be a cooperative process and it's actually as it has been till this point I will point out that the funding agency has been out to has been to two of our programming meetings so we you know they're they're on board with what we're doing and they they're very kind of picky about what what what and you know a modern library should look

▶ 39:40 Scott M. Forbes: like so they have and I know there'll be a lot more information moving forward I do know that I think a lot of us on this board would like to see you know numbers costs and I understand it's all preliminary I totally understand moving forward I know that that's a discussion that will all be as long as we're all on the same page then you know I I think I think you answered my question so thank

▶ 39:59 Speaker 1: you mr. president thank you Alderman Inferno thank you very much mr. president

▶ 40:01 Gail Infurna: thank you for coming back this evening to answer some questions I hope I can articulate this and I hope I'm not going to confuse everybody because I think all Alderman Zorco kind of was alluding to it and Alderman Forbes was. But we heard tonight from the public that they were looking for more options and looking to see just what could be done and if this was the right thing to do or not. If we approve this, and I hope we do, and it gets submitted,

▶ 40:34 Gail Infurna: do we have the time during this little downtime, if you want to call it that, to look at more options, and let's say if one of the options was to maybe not add on to it or just to do something a little bit more creative or outside the box or whatever, we could still apply for this grant, and if they awarded us this grant and we all of a sudden decided that option D was now better, we really have kind of looked at option D, and option D is now better. we've kind of come up with that we still have the opportunity not to finance that grant so so we would decline the financing of that correct so we're not tied into anything i think that's what i you know so if in the meantime we submit this and you want to look at option d a little bit better you know and and all of a sudden it hits you like wow we really could do this for um instead of you know 16 million dollars look at what we can do for for 8 million dollars and go out and finance that and we get the grant the grant is awarded to us we still could deny that grant because we as a Board of Aldermen would not be approving the finance for that grant correct right the project and my making that clear so we still could look at more options you could in this meantime if you wanted to be you know you could look at option B C and D we could yes right and you could still work off of option A and define that a little bit more also so there's a whole whole thing that's still open here so by us

▶ 42:18 Gail Infurna: supporting this and and giving you the you know the the opportunity to submit this grant I don't think there's anything lost there's nothing lost here you know except your time but I think you know we should still be looking at whatever the best plan is but I hope that we can as a board we will support this and allow you to submit this grant this is an opportunity and and we'd be crazy not to go with this opportunity I mean this came down before us it's gone before also to experts the library has looked at it trustees the city solicitor so I'm very comfortable with it all knowing that it's not the final plan the grant requires you to you know submit a plan not the plan but a plan now so you know we want to talk about the future I don't know how I'm all I'm going to vote for this when it comes to the financing piece but i can separate that i can separate that tonight you know and you know let's see how it moves forward and see what you come back with if we get the reward you know we we get rewarded with the grant um then let's see what you have to present to us and you'll see what the the finance piece to it and and how we're going to fund that i may not support it at that point i don't know but whatever that is i can separate that vote tonight and i think this is a totally separate thing um the um i just had something on my head

▶ 44:01 Gail Infurna: i i can't think i just had one more thought there too and i can't think of it now so i'll i'll just end it there and and certainly hope that we can support this knowing that this is an opportunity we can still look at options and i hope you do look at options a b c d e f however many you know you want to look at and come back to us you know as time goes on oh i know what the other thing was time sensitive how time sensitive is this that we vote on this tonight so um so the

▶ 44:31 Denise Gaffey: grant regulations require that this vote occur by they think the deadline is june 17th of this year but they go on in their in their guidance to strongly recommend those are their words strongly recommend that we have this approval prior to the grant submission and um so our feeling is and our understanding is that they consider that um advantageous and more favorable with you know in terms of their view of the grant so and our grant would be viewed more favorably

▶ 45:05 Gail Infurna: with that with this support all right and i do ask my fellow alderman who may be thinking that they want to delay this vote for looking at things or getting more information i'm not quite sure how much more information we can get we we've had it before us it's been you know with us now for at least a week and so i don't know what purpose um a delay in this will be since

▶ 45:32 Gail Infurna: we're just you know because the vote is just for you to go ahead and apply and it still does not lock us into anything so i i do hope once again that we can support this this evening and not

▶ 45:45 Monica C. Medeiros: delay it thank you mr president alderman medeiros thank you uh first of all i wanted to thank miss gaffey you spent some time on the phone with me about this and and answered some of my questions today so i do greatly appreciate that and i just you know just want to sum up some of some of the concerns that that you know i've that have been brought to my attention and you know and truthfully to some degree i i have too is that you know i mean we've been pretty frank that the funding mechanism that's expected for the city portion the nine to ten million is most probably going to be a debt exclusion at some point in the future so you know it's it's um it's a little bit tough to sit here and go down a path knowing that you know this is the the path that we're putting you know fourth is a question for you know increased taxes above the two and a half percent you know proposition two and a half percent limit to do this um but you know but that being said you know it is also very true that we have already put a lot of resources although we haven't put in city money towards doing this we to some degree we have because we've had the friends come forward and we've accepted those funds that otherwise might have been used for other things in the library obviously there's been some staff time to put this together and you know we've gotten to this point where we have um something in front of us that's a plan and a proposal um i i'm hoping because i i know we've again talked a little bit about this on the phone that i'm i'm not exactly sold on this being you know a need rather than a want and you know the time for that discussion will be later in the future but could you you know just from your perspective being involved very much especially Ms. Gardner in this just reiterate for me and for the public why you and the trustees decided to you know embark on this now and why you feel like this is important and the right time to move forward with this there's a couple pieces to that we

▶ 47:52 Speaker 1: started looking at it in response to as we've said this community loves the library and loves the historic building of the library but there are individuals who struggle with access we do have as Joan alluded to we have programs that we can't a we can't we've had authors that won't come because we can't provide the space for them at this point we also one thing that wasn't mentioned about that really great program that we had last week is that whenever we have those programs we have to close the children's room to accommodate that so that's compromising our own services to provide service to another population we also so I'm a service side of things we have needs that we could meet better on the building side of things we are looking at an HVAC system that is reaching end of life DPW has done some heroic efforts with with our air conditioning unit and we kind of cross our fingers every year but it's you know the systems are getting older there is you know asbestos through the building there are aspects of the building that if we were going to do any type of renovation we would really have to deal with those also regardless of if they were our first first thought so all of those combined with the fact that this is not a yearly grant this grant doesn't happen every year so since we are coming to a point of real need and conversation and the grant was coming up available in how often is this kind of

▶ 49:58 Speaker 1: grants available to your knowledge it varies they do not currently have an extra grant round set so it could be in another five years it could not happen

▶ 50:10 Monica C. Medeiros: again so you know my my thoughts on this overall is that you know we you know obviously I have some concerns but I do know that you know we have gotten to this point and one thing is for sure that if we do want to move forward with any kind of renovations or doing anything like that and even if this does go to a debt exclusion question if the public decides that they want to do this if we don't apply for this grant now we won't get those state funds for sure so you know I I think weighing all of this I think that it's the right thing to do from our perspective and from my opinion is to apply for the grant and have that option be open but we still have the option as you say to to not move forward with it this Board of Aldermen if I'm correct you know usually we have to vote to accept any grant that's right funds yes so that will come before us for that it would come before us to appropriate any funds whether they would be through the general operating budget or and if this question is to go to the ballot it would come before the board of aldermen whether or not to place it on the ballot so you know there will be more opportunities for this board and for public input at each one of those steps in those meetings to um to look further into this so i do think there will be you know more opportunities for discussion um i do hope that we can see you know i know we have an event coming up at the library on the the 28th and the 29th as fundraiser and I hope to see I'm excited about that and I hope to see you know more of that kind of events I know you know the Wakefield library and the Malden library do have very successful fundraisers annually and so it's a lot of work for the many volunteers that are involved with that but I think that you know I do think we have a community that appreciates the library and is willing to invest so i'd like to see that stepped up so when the time comes that this city portion you know would be less more so with people who are voluntarily giving to this thank you thank you

▶ 52:33 Robert A. Boisselle: thank you for coming this evening um just to get this straight again this the request that you have is basically this is a simple request to consider under a grant for funding a proposed plan that you're submitting for the library.

▶ 52:51 Denise Gaffey: That's correct. That's correct. The order is to allow us to submit.

▶ 52:55 Robert A. Boisselle: Rita. Now, the program that you're applying for, its regulations are specifying that the applicants receive, who are successful in receiving a provisional grant award, will have six months to complete the local financing and fulfill other certification requirement now this six months to complete the finance has that gone have you talked to the auditor about that and if that can be made

▶ 53:24 Denise Gaffey: if it's approved and so forth yes we have and he's not concerned about that time frame but the thing to remember and to understand is what we expect is that we'll get um we'll get on the lit the waiting list when they make their announcements in july well we're hoping we get on the waiting list and that we won't actually get tapped for a provisional award this fiscal year we would we would be so very surprised by that knowing some of the other libraries that are vying for this funding so when

▶ 53:48 Robert A. Boisselle: you come down the list and you get selected that's when it that's when the six months but then but so

▶ 53:51 Denise Gaffey: the beauty of our position is that we will have much more time to plan and you know i can sort of i sort of consider that date in july when we get the award as our day one in terms of the the public outreach and community support that we're going to need to make this project happen ultimately so i think you know that will give us the opportunity more so more than the six

▶ 54:14 Robert A. Boisselle: month period really okay i see in the order this evening that there's a great deal of information that's been added to this is this the request that we made uh last last meeting to submit and have this online yes yeah that's it all right well thank you very much thank you thank you anyone

▶ 54:33 Speaker 1: else i said twice the last time but i just want to make it clear because it seems like it's not clear the funding source for the city portion is going to be a debt exclusion or an override

▶ 54:50 Speaker 1: is that not true that seems very likely yes there's not eight or nine million dollars in any other source in the city budget that is going to be able to be set aside so as this goes forward people should understand that that's how this will proceed and only one other thing i said it twice the last time but i'll say it again we're not going to get money unless we have an approved funding source we're not going to be given grant we're not be given five or six million dollars unless we have an approved funding source is that correct that is correct okay anyone else

▶ 55:22 Speaker 1: Ms. O'Shea, could you call the roll on this order, please? Alderman Boisselle. Yes. Yes. Alderman Forbes. Yes. Yes. Alderman Inferno. Yes. Yes. Alderman Medeiros. Yes. Yes. Alderman Mortimer. Yes. Yes. Alderman Zwirko. Yes. Yes. President Pond. Yes. Yes. Seven yes. That order passes. Motion to adjourn, Mr. President. Second. Alderman Mortimer moves to adjourn. Alderman Boisselle seconds the motion. On the motion, all those in favor?