Appropriations & Oversight Committee — 2015-03-19
Attendance
Jaclyn L. Bird ; Robert A. Boisselle ; Donald L. Conn Jr. ; Scott M. Forbes ; Gail Infurna ; Jennifer L. Lemmerman ; Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis ; Monica C. Medeiros ; Peter D. Mortimer ; John N. Tramontozzi ; Francis X. Wright Jr.
Agenda
Minutes
CITY OF MELROSE APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE CALENDAR● MARCH 19, 2015 Aldermanic Chamber Committee Meeting 7:00 PM The public should take notice that the Melrose Board of Aldermen may, on certain occasions, have a quorum in attendance due to standing committees of the Board of Aldermen consisting of both voting and non-voting members. Members attending this duly posted meeting are participating and deliberating only in conjunction with the business of the standing committee. Attendee Name Title Status Arrived Peter D. Mortimer Chairman Present Jaclyn L. Bird Vice Chairman Present Gail M. Infurna Ward 5 Alderman Present John N. Tramontozzi Ward 1 Alderman Absent Monica C. Medeiros Alderman at Large Present Robert A. Boisselle Ward 4 Alderman Present Francis X. Wright Jr. Ward 3 Alderman Present Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis Alderman at Large Present Jennifer L. Lemmerman Ward 2 Alderman Present Scott M. Forbes Ward 7 Alderman Present Donald L. Conn Jr. President/Ex-officio Member Present In Attendance: Mayor Robert J. Dolan, Superintendent Cyndy Taymore, City Planner Denise Gaffey, IT Director Jorge Pazos, MHS Principal Marianne Farrell, City Auditor/CFO Patrick Dello Russo, City Treasurer Art Flavin
ORDER-2015-111 Bond Authorization of a Bond in the amount of $5,300,000.00 to pay for costs of constructing Interior Renovations at Melrose High School Hold Appropriations Committee City of Melrose Page 1 Updated 4/14/2015 12:42 PM
Transcript
▶ 0:00 Do you want the lower chair? Do you want the higher one? No. I'll take one of these other chairs. This is fine. I just can't reach the floor. That might have been good for me. I don't know what this is. Is Frank coming here tonight? I don't know. Is your wife Frank? Is your wife coming tonight? I think rather than sit in this chair, I'm going to stand for the whole time. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'm going to sit in this chair, I'm going to stand for the whole meeting. Okay, that'll be good. All right, good evening ladies and gentlemen. This is the Appropriations Committee of the Melrose Board of Aldermen. I am the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, Peter Mortimer.
▶ 0:52 Peter D. Mortimer: The vice chairman is Jacqueline Bird. It's a committee of the whole consisting of every Board of Alderman member, including Gail Inferna, John Tramantozzi, Monica Medeiros, Robert Boycelle, Frances Wright, Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis, Jennifer Lemmerman, Scott Forbes, and Donald Kahn. I would like to point out that this meeting is being recorded and is available on the MMTV and our local website, if someone would like to see this meeting at a future date. I would now welcome a motion to open the floor for public participation has been made. Alderman Inferna, was that you, Alderman Lemmerman, or you, that was Alderman Lemmerman, has seconded the motion. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed?
▶ 1:46 Peter D. Mortimer: Hearing none, the floor is now open for public participation. Are there any members of the public present who would like to come forward and share some opinions or enlighten us on their thoughts regarding this one order before us this evening? Seeing none, motion to close public participation. Seeing no takers, Alderman Inferno has made a motion to close public participation. Said motion was duly seconded by Alderman Lemmerman once again. All in favor of closing public participation, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, public participation is now closed. And I will read our one order before the committee this evening. This is order 2015-111. It is an authorization of a bond in the amount of $5,300,000
▶ 2:45 Peter D. Mortimer: to pay for costs of constructing interior renovations at Melrose High School. At this time, I would welcome a motion to suspend the rules that we may hear from the mayor and other city officials elucidate on this order. Was that you, Alderman Medeiros? Aye. Yes. Okay, Alderman Medeiros has made a motion to suspend the rules, duly seconded by Alderman Forbes. All in favor of suspending the rules, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, Mayor Dolan, City Planner Denise Gaffey. superintendent a more sick school committee Kristen thought thought are you gonna come up well if I if I may yeah if I may mr. chairman as we bring the presentation I just have an opening statement and then we can bring people
▶ 3:38 up as they need to make the presentation after I make my opening statement if that's okay with you very good sir I thank you please proceed thank you I'm here with our superintendent of school Cindy team where Jay Picon our school business minute manager i'm patrick delarusso our cfo members of the school committee pat sayada project manager who you all know for many years working with the city of melrose and charlie hay from tapay and associates also a long time partner in our school building projects in the city of melrose two years ago we transformed the science classrooms at melrose high school from an oversized open area divided by makeshift petitions like most of melrose high school in the past into a
▶ 4:20 state-of-the-art science wing with nine new fully equipped proper classrooms and lab spaces we took an awkward space that was designed according to an outdated educational philosophy and made it into a modern area that serves students and teachers well in 2015 now we are tackling a similar challenge reconfiguring the library also known as the old Resource Center and transforming it into a Learning Commons where students can work independently in small groups in large classrooms and a variety of different learning situations using both print and digital resources the existing library which occupies 20,000 square feet or about 10% of the total area of Norris high school is not maximizing the opportunities available to the students or to the staff of the city of Melrose
▶ 5:08 our design that we propose tonight in my opinion will bring this important part of our high school line with 21st century teaching and learning and the expectations and practices of today's public schools that means important changes in infrastructure and wiring strengthening the bones of our school so it can handle the demands that we are now putting on it it also means reconfiguring the space to reflect new ways that students learn with separate areas for full classrooms small group projects and individual study there will be a special separate space for blended learning collaborative classes that combine online instruction and live supervision. That was something that was unimaginable in 1975,
▶ 5:51 1985, 1995, as well as 2005. But in 2015, it's happening every day. To accommodate our students' need for different types of literacy, not just reading and writing, we will have a special graphics classroom, as well as an upgraded television studio. A new business classroom in the very popular CAD lab will help train Melrose High School students for today's jobs as well as tomorrow's. Students who have to quickly print a paper or look something up before class will be able to use the computers in our quick stop tech space. We are adding project rooms as we did in the Melrose Veterans Memorial Middle School, where several classes can be brought together to work collaboratively, and departments and teachers
▶ 6:37 can hold professional development. And we will have a presentation space with a practice room where students can hone their public speaking and presentation skills. This space will be a flexible layout to accommodate up to 200 people. Anyone who has been in the current resource center will appreciate the need for a comfortable space with good acoustics for large and small meetings. And this space can also be used by other organizations and groups throughout the city of Melrose. In addition to the library renovations, we'll be creating a new administrative suite to bring guidance and other student service departments into a single space and an easily accessible area on the first floor. This will benefit both staff, administration and parents with easy accessibility to all
▶ 7:23 staff and administration. Like all of the capital projects previously done over the last 10 years at Melrose High School, this will be done within our debt service budget and is part of our long infrastructure plan for keeping up with the capital improvements of our city. is in line with our policy of committing no more than five percent a very conservative figure of the operating budget to debt service and it also takes advantage of the best bond rating in the city's history this is smart fiscal planning for the most pressing infrastructure need in our city right now from the first day of kindergarten to the last day of senior year we expect our students to learn independently and collaboratively as will be required of
▶ 8:09 them in every workplace in America and around the world. No longer do they sit passively all day listening to a teacher give a lecture. We expect students to be active participants to work together in small groups and in big groups and to solve problems and to do research and work on projects independently as well. This was an important component in the design of our award-winning middle school. The Melrose High School library in its current configuration simply does this support this type of learning it is vast totally underutilized cavernous cold and absolutely depressing on the other hand this open space configuration of the library like the science wing lends itself well to quality redesign we
▶ 8:57 will not only change the way the space is used we will bring in more natural light to make it a more attractive and pleasant space for students and staff alike for generations to come the fact is this building a new high school will cost well over 100 million dollars and that simply is not an option what we can do is manage what we have with the best possible or in the best possible way renovating Melrose High School is the best choice for students and for taxpayers doing nothing is not a choice we have already enclosed the open space areas and made separate classrooms and we turned the dysfunctional science wing into a new thoughtfully designed science center and we have built fine arts facilities and athletic facilities that are second to none in Massachusetts and
▶ 9:48 these benefit the entire community across all age groups our school building committee has been analyzing and discussing this space for several years. In fact, it needs to be stated that the poor initial design and construction of Melrose High School in the early 1970s has been an absolute albatross around this community's neck for four decades. And that problem, in my opinion, can be solved. The committee has come up with a thoughtful solution that we believe is the best possible use of this space. We are not just putting new equipment in old rooms, we are creating a new space that accommodates the many ways students learn in the 21st century and allows them to develop and hone the skills that they will absolutely need in college and in their future careers in my opinion this is how
▶ 10:38 you build a better community and a better future for melrose and i ask for your support on this proposal this evening thank you mr mayor our superintendent tamil would you like to make make some opening remarks please thank you mr. chairman when I was hired three years ago this month the renovation of the library was on the table we were very fortunate that at the same time the accelerated renovation for the science labs became available and we chose to postpone the library renovation timing is everything and this was fortunate timing not only did we gain our beautiful science labs that are state-of-the-art but it allowed us to step back and rethink what the library should look like in the intervening
▶ 11:28 years the we worked with the permanent school building committee we've talked to consultants and we've really thought about what we need a center that will take us 20 years into the future 25 years into the future we don't we know that the city cannot revisit this in the near future that if we do it we need to do it right if any of you are involved in the college search process or you have children at colleges you know what college campuses are building I think what you will see tonight will rival anything that is found on any modern college campus in terms of technology resources flexibility and that was the key to this this is a flexible state room excuse me to be used for multiple purposes not only during the six and a half hours we have children but before
▶ 12:20 school after school and into evenings the secondary school campus has become a real center of community life as I left the school tonight we had the college fair happening at the high school we had the Roosevelt concert happening at the middle school on any given day any given weekend that that campus is filled with activity this is going to expand and enhance the campus as a major focus of family life in Melrose and it's going to be a real asset one of the things that we're doing is with the TV production with the CAD labs with flexible technology is again to look at this space as not only how does it benefit our students but how can it enhance many of the things that happen in Melrose not
▶ 13:15 Peter D. Mortimer: that I want to take away from Memorial Hall and not that I want to move school committee meetings out of this room but this is a possibility also so I think you'll be very impressed by the plans and we're willing to ask answer any questions you may ask if I may mr. chairman if it's allowed maybe we can turn the presentation over to Denise Charlie and Pat to talk about what we're gonna propose and then and then go from there just one second I think that's a great idea but on what you've said so far I'd like to see if any of the aldermen just have any quick questions before we move on to the next phase are there any aldermen who wish to make any comments or ask any questions at this point seeing none we will then hear from the city planner and her team and move
▶ 13:59 Peter D. Mortimer: on to the next phase of the presentation also while we're making that transition I'd like to note to the record that we have some correspondence here from Christine Gagliano from 30 Upland Street in support we also received emails from Annie and Jeff Bray and we received an email from Janet Dave McAndrew and from mr roberts now and those are going to be included in the uh the record by our collective committees thank you very much please proceed good evening it's a pleasure to be here tonight and allow me to introduce um the design and project management team and i think you're very familiar with with this team as the mayor mentioned the um they worked with us very closely on the design and construction of the mellows middle school and on several other projects so on my
▶ 14:56 Denise Gaffey: On my right is Charlie Hay, who's the principal architect with TAPE Associates, and on my left is Pat Seata, who's the project manager. And Charlie's going to walk us through the process that we went through over the past year to get to this design proposal. And before we do that, I just want to mention that we did start in earnest about the time that we completed the science lab project. started back in earnest thinking about the master plan the facility master plan for the high school and this this phase of work involving the Learning Commons and it was a very comprehensive initiative we we spent a lot of time investigating all the different spaces in the building we brought in educational consultants to do just sort of charrettes to talk about you know the
▶ 15:46 Denise Gaffey: district's vision for the future and just to better analyze how the spaces are working and how they should they could better work for the for the school population in the future so it was a really comprehensive effort and we as a result of that we came up with a phased plan of different projects and the building committee selected this learning Commons project in students or excuse me student services wing project as the the priority so I'm gonna turn it over to Charlie to allow him to kind of walk through the different plans Thank Thank you, Ms. Gaffey. Please proceed, sir. MR. Can we rotate the screen? Are we allowed to do that? MS. I don't think you can. I think the screen has to be in that position.
▶ 16:25 MR. I can see it well enough. I think Alderman — MS. We have it on our — MR. We have it on our — MS. Oh, we have it. MR. We have it. Wonderful. I feel better. MR. We have it on our computers as well. MR. So I'm talking to something you can see. Thank you for the introduction. I'm Charlie Hay from Tape Architects. And we are delighted to be participating in this project, and thank you very much for opportunity to present to you this evening the first slide that you will see shows the existing plans of the high school on top and then a schedule below from a procedural point of view the intention of the building committee is to prepare documents this year if the project is approved and then begin
▶ 17:12 construction around Christmas of this coming year and then have the project built out prior to the beginning of the school year next prior to the beginning of the school year in the fall of 2016 that the superintendent and her team have been working on that what will have to happen to make that happen there will be some shifting around of spaces to allow them there to be open these spaces to be available for work. But that's a very comfortable and reasonable construction schedule. It gives the design team time to prepare the documents. It should give a contractor time to do the project. As we entered a sort of, as Denise said, a kind of planning phase over the last year, we really looked at the high school in its entirety.
▶ 18:05 And the point of that was to really look at what spaces do you have, what's available to you, what are the priorities. And as Denise said, there was a list of various projects that could be considered. And if I could have the next slide, please. Here you see the sort of master plan document that shows you the first floor. And you can see that the orangey spaces are the academic classrooms. The blue on the right is really arts. the left the green is athletics and down in the middle is in the gray is support space administration space and if you flip through the next couple of slides you'll see on the second floor you can see the big yellow box is the space we're generally talking about which is your current media center and then if
▶ 18:56 you go one more space you'll see on the again above the media center that U-shaped space those are part of this proposed project which is technology spaces but the point of this is we did go through every space and try to analyze what what is the best way to move the high school forward in this this media center space is a remarkable opportunity there are very few high schools in the state perhaps in the country that have such a large space available to rethink and really if you'd looked at that you know the slide before that yellow box it's a large portion of your high school and so this is really a remarkable opportunity it the kind of space we're talking about is really the way schools are thinking this is a very progressive sort of idea which is to
▶ 19:50 create a sort of space in the middle of your school that students can use both with teachers in a in a more formal atmosphere but also for independent learning and for group learning it will make your high school very much a cutting-edge high school in terms of what this space can do so you're getting a lot for the investment educationally next slide please the the part of this phase is as the mayor mentioned an administrative space on the first floor and what you're seeing there is a series of offices and what that really is is department head offices and a guidance suite and one of the things this does which is really positive is it takes the guidance which is now up in a high floor and brings it right down to administration so as all of us parents
▶ 20:40 know when we come to the school mostly the reason we're coming is to go to guidance right I mean that's not always but often so there's a lot of you know there's a lot of parents and public coming through the building who are going to guidance for college planning, to talk about courses for their students, their kids, and this allows us to have a good face to the community and gets guidance where it should be, working with the administration and working with parents and also working with students. Next slide, please. And this is the second floor and the third floor, and these are really the major spaces we're talking about for renovation. And I'll talk about them in greater detail in a couple of slides to come,
▶ 21:19 if you look at the plan on the left and you look in the the upper portion of it I have a laser pointer that may or may not shine a red light on this if it does I can kind of point this out although some of you are gonna have to break your necks to see it I apologize the as the mayor mentioned the idea of a graphics lab a space that can have more robust computers that can be used for graphics it could potentially be used for CAD it could be used for all sorts of things students could be in there for a formal class however it also could just become part of the media center if a student had a project to work on this presentation zone we've talked about students give thesis presentations they they you also have the opportunity have guests come and of course is the
▶ 22:05 opportunity for the city to have meetings there a series of small kind of group areas throughout this space which allow one two three four five students to sit together and work on a project obviously a library support spaces are critical here and we have those work rooms and office for the librarian as circulation desk and then down in the lower area is a large reading room that has book stacks it has seating and then as the mayor mentioned a Syria project space where two classrooms could come together a smaller space where one classroom could work or a group of students a classroom that could be used that is going to be used by a particular program and allows for distance learning and again it allows for students to to interact in all kinds of ways and then
▶ 23:02 that horseshoe shaped space above that has a business lab a CAD lab a large TV studio and another technology space this together creates an incredibly dynamic and interesting space that all the students in the school will use and we have been talking about as many as 150 students in there simultaneously before school or after school two or three classrooms using it at the same time so it will it should get heavy rotation and have a lot of different opportunities for students to be in there next slide please this shows you that that in three dimensions you can see that seating area with a state of a platform there's a little practice room as the mayor mentioned where students can go to practice so there's a lot of different opportunities in
▶ 23:54 various spaces next slide please this shows you an image this is just imagined you can see back towards some of the seating you can see there's already glass walls as all of you know from the second floor and third floor corridor we're going to keep all that so you'll be able to see into this space so it really becomes the heart of the school students can be passing it all the time and it should be a very very attractive feature next slide please and then this is looking the other direction out towards the outside where as you many of you know there's the big high windows in that space and we're hoping to put some lower windows in as well so there's some actual view windows and as superintendent said bring a little more daylight into it and there
▶ 24:36 Denise Gaffey: are some windows where you can see up into those other spaces those technology spaces and we intend to keep those so it should be a very dynamic environment for learning and I think that's the last slide well that's the last slide I was going to present a final slide to just outline in general terms what the project budget is and of course we're here tonight to ask for authorization for five point three million dollars which is the the amount that we project for this project based on the preliminary cost estimates and that would be broken down into soft cost and construction soft costs representing about 22 or 23 percent of that amount which is one million two thousand dollars and that includes all of our architects fees design engineering fees project
▶ 25:30 Peter D. Mortimer: management fees it also includes furniture and technology built into that soft cost figure and then the the remaining cost of four million two hundred ninety eight thousand dollars is the actual construction and includes construction contingency and that's how we got through the total of five point three million dollars and that is the last slide thank you very much sir thank you very much Denise are there any other presenters who would like to speak before us are actually at this point are there anybody who has any quick loan just ask you to see are there other presenters or is that the totality of the presentation the totality of the presentation first in queue I see Alderman Boycelle. Good evening. Thank you for coming. Now, you showed three floors
▶ 26:24 Robert A. Boisselle: in this building. We're only concentrating on the second and third, is that correct? Well, that guidance area was on the first floor, the ground floor, so it really stacks up. There's actually work happening. We're also doing floor one, so we're doing three floors in this project. Right. Okay, good. And the guidance just says on the first correct right across from administration okay on the second and third floor it's a lot of open area we've been talking about and so forth and you got to have a construction cost of four million dollars for an open area and from slides 9 10 11 it shows a lot of area what are you constructing in an open area that I'm seeing in these pictures well I mean we're not building
▶ 27:16 any walls from what I've seen here well we are actually building walls that we're building in quite a few walls we're creating classrooms where there are not classrooms now and we are modifying the layout of the third floor pretty significantly we're also talking about all new systems in there so we're talking about wiring we're talking about HVAC we're talking about new lighting it's all new finishes so I think that the I think that the cost it's a preliminary cost but there's no reason to believe it won't be something in the range of what's what's estimated the other issue is that it's actually the the soft cost hard cost is a is an estimate and it may be that this the furniture and the technology actually increases in cost if the construction
▶ 28:04 Robert A. Boisselle: cost comes down because it's a very furniture and computer heavy project as well there's a lot of cost there we'll get to that in a minute since you mentioned the electrical and we wiring of the two floors and so forth I see here you have an electrical closet in the middle of this complex I mean that's really unusual to have all that electrical power flowing into this closet in the middle of a highly trafficked area why did you put it there it's existing the cost to relocate it would be significant so the intent was to not move it in order to not spend the money to move it why do you have looks like computing I'm not sure you have the computers right next to it if you're going to have anything coming out of these it's switchgear is it's a
▶ 28:55 Robert A. Boisselle: significant it's a significant electrical closet with a lot of gear and and a lot of power there's also at that location a technology hub which would also be very expensive to relocate so we're trying to consider costs in terms of what infrastructure understand the cost but why why do you have seats in computer stations around this particular unit according to this diagram here I mean why wouldn't we I mean that's that's a lot of power you're pushing through that is there any oh I don't think there's any concerns relative to there's no code insurance I'm quite confident yes I just want to make sure now I notice you're looking for eight thousand six hundred and forty volumes of books and on units that are for 42 inches high it seems to be a lot of
▶ 29:51 Robert A. Boisselle: books and we've talked in the past concerning electronic books or ebooks into the system is that being considered at all and a lot of these kids have their own iPads that they can just come in plug in take a book out similar to what goes on in the library now these books will be out of date by the time this project's finished well we've had discussions with in turn relative to the existing collection what may or may not be weeded out of it what will remain and the stacks that are shown now are based on the data we have about what the anticipated collection will be libraries are not going but completely book lists they're keeping some of their collection there's dramatic reductions but they're
▶ 30:38 Robert A. Boisselle: only some of their collection I don't see any number for books excuse me alderman in our material so it sounds slide number four if you enhance it you'll see it next to the electric closet at 11 o'clock it gives 80 42 inch height and stacks 108 volumes per stack 8640 volumes I hope I'm not the anyone that has this I mean we've discussed this many times and previous budgets for going to ebooks and and everything a lot of colleges and schools are just doing away I mean University of Mass Amherst got rid of its bookstore and it's doing amazon.com and it's ebooks and in this so why are we buying another eight thousand six hundred this is your existing collection this is not well if you have a thousand six hundred forty now are we thinking of condensing
▶ 31:52 that and giving more room you have twelve thousand so we are currently we have a new high school librarian who if I can brag is quite talented and he has been taking an active part as well as most staff at the high school in the design and the outfitting of this space he is currently culling our collection eliminating outdated books and identifying areas of need two issues around books first of all digital books as you know if you have a college student are not necessarily cheaper than a hard copy. Digital books are a profit center for publishers just as paper versions are a profit center for publishers and they'll always be a need for both versions for many kids. The other thing is when you talk about a high school library and you're teaching
▶ 32:53 children to research you want them to know both digital and print literacy for the purposes of research the last point is we cannot ask public school students to buy books that are part of their curriculum that is Massachusetts regulation and you often need to have print copies I cannot ask a student to buy a book of a Toni Morrison book which is copyrighted and protected and is not an open source book so therefore I must have hard copies of those books for children who are going to read them as part of their coursework so there will always be a need for print there'll be a need for digital yes we are moving towards more digital but I cannot force a child to go buy a digital copy of a book especially if it's part of the curriculum I must be able to offer them
▶ 33:45 Robert A. Boisselle: a copy either digitally because we own the license or through print because we own the book I'm not asking the child to buy the book I'm asking the city to either rent it or use a new the new technology to do this for the student to get this type of book online or in a library type atmosphere and again mr. boys out my answer to you is I need to have print copies available for those children who need print copies I cannot presume what that a child will be facile with using a digital copy all right moving on to the third floor we have a cad lab and a tech support next to the tech lab which looks like a computer center what is the tech support there for that has actually been relocated to another and that's the
▶ 34:37 Robert A. Boisselle: that this is a this is an older plan uh so that's not there anymore the new plan simply has a so there's other specs then that we're not looking at there's other designs that we're not looking at that's the only change that's the only one would you mention a new plan there's no space for the technology that was the only change okay and to the far right of that you have a TV studio are you moving the middle school TV to this area or you're going to have to two TV studios on one site there's already a TV studio already have a TV studio at the high school the program exists it's just it's it's just upgraded you are you enhancing it yes yes okay that's we're all new equipment? There's a wish list of equipment. The last contract we signed, the first contract
▶ 35:23 Robert A. Boisselle: I believe with Comcast was focused on upgrading MMTV. The new contract with Verizon is focused on money for high school television. Okay. Now, in the final slide, which was sort of slipped in at the last moment, you have a total, you have a cost of $5,300,000. What is the this is a bond issue i believe what is the final cost for this uh project that is the final box well you're borrowing five million dollars so what is the final cost what is the interest pushed into this well i can't i know we have the the cfo and the treasurer with us okay a different different time yeah all right thank you mr charon thank you very much alderman boycelle next in line we have president khan please yeah um thank you all for coming down
▶ 36:25 as everybody's aware this is our first opportunity to get a uh to get a look at this and um i i want some time to digest it and uh hopefully the board will we'll see the wisdom of taking our time with this and where i said 5.3 million dollars is a pretty good expenditure of money a couple of quick questions can we get access to the is there there's a physical master plan generated by school building committee there are there are plan sheets that show different phases that we can provide okay and in terms of costing this out how did you come up with the the 5.3 million and the second question is if you have cost analysis information could you provide it to the committee yes there is a there is a cost estimate that was done by a third party
▶ 37:19 cost estimator okay would it be possible to get that to us and my understanding mayor is that the upgrading the upgrades to the television area are really not part of the bond they're they're being funded through the the cable TV contract if there's any construction in the area but the equipment is the TV car it should also be noted if the board would like to schedule a tour of the area it's been for some of you more recent than others having been in the school yeah I just want to take some time to conceptualize what it's going to look like at the end like I said this is the first time I've had a chance to see the to see the president Conn is the the fire portion of the construction was the old middle school library and then when we built a new middle school put a
▶ 38:21 library there so that has been that's been vacant since the construction you know seven and is is this project going to be upgrading any of the athletic areas are we creating any new gym space or anything that nature we have a lot of athletic capacity actually between the camp the two buildings okay those those those are the only questions I have relative to this aspect of the of the presentation mr. chairman thank you very good thank you very much president Kahn next in line we have alderman bird please thank you mr. chairman I have several questions I think I'm in the same boat trying to digest this information and so I've tried to sort of group the questions so that we can go with who's sitting here and then who's coming up next
▶ 39:14 Jaclyn L. Bird: miss Gaffey if you could tell us a little bit more about the process and maybe the superintendent as well about the process that was used to determine this as a need rather than a want for the school if you could talk about what that space is going to do that we can't currently do now within the existing space I understand like open concepts and some of those things but I'm sure there are classrooms within the building that could do some of those things but what's happening in this space that sets it apart as as a need and not a want I mean I think a big part of it is as the mayor alluded to just moments ago is a big portion of that space was designed and used by the middle school before the
▶ 39:50 Denise Gaffey: middle school was rebuilt as a library so that space when the middle school was built and the new library in the middle school was constructed all of those you know the books and materials and everything related to it were moved out of that space and it's been empty and underutilized essentially unprogrammed space so that's it kind of adds to that cavernous feel it is it was built in the open space design just like the the entire building was and that as the mayor also mentioned we've been sort of chipping away at through various projects over the last ten years I think very successfully and I think the way it's designed in these open spaces is just not very conducive to to learning and so I think I think it's been acknowledged for many many years that
▶ 40:37 Denise Gaffey: this is a really high priority for the district to to you know tackle the the library in particular and in terms of our process we actually went through a pretty you know a pretty comprehensive evaluation we asked Charlie to look at the standards that middle standards for high school that the MSBA the school building authority uses if we were to build a new middle school today so he actually looked at you know all the different spaces and compared that to what a typical high school would look like so we had a good sense of where we might have some deficiencies and where we had an excessive space and that has all sort of been folded into our thinking about about our approach to this to this project
▶ 41:22 committee, which of course, members of this board, Alderman Medeiros has sat on for many years, is now Alderman Nolman. The process in terms of getting where we are today is pending as well. We've ranked what we wanted to do throughout that period of time. First and foremost was the open space, and that also has included roofs, it included energy from solar to do HVAC. The air quality was a major sense of distress in that building for how many years. this was next on the list we've actually been discussing this as you know even I have before you since probably about 2010 and this is this is the next issue on item on the list there are things after this that we have decided not to get to at this time but the thing that I value the most in this process was the
▶ 42:11 master plan instead of just what is what is the want of the day what is the flavor of the month in terms of education they brought in department teachers students an educational special design specialist almost people in the community to talk about what they want and made it more organic what I way I look at this part of building is it's like buying a seven-room house and not using two of the rooms just not using them leaving them with studs and really that's not a value for what what we're what we what we need we also have to deal with the fact that the superintendent can attest to the population of Morris High School is increasing the 1975 version that we currently have know that it's basically a bunker and to Alderman Boisselle
▶ 43:05 point about digital age excuse me it's basically a what I missed that word bunker a bunker yes thank you those of us who are old enough to remember the drills and you went into your desk it was perfect before I graduated from that yeah and one of the greatest issues we have in the high school is connectivity with Wi-Fi and the Internet so when we built the science wing we made we purposefully began to expand the building's capacity for Wi-Fi and the Internet by laying some infrastructure into that built into that end of the building knowing that when we eventually got to the resource center we would expand that even further there are parts of that building that are quite dead and we have begun to work with more digital resources with Chromebooks a lot of the
▶ 44:00 kids now bring their own equipment and God knows we have many phones going every day it's very important that that library be brought up beyond par again trying to think about the future that library has in the morning a hundred and fifty students in it the kids gravitate there in the morning they get there early they gravitate there they're finishing up their papers they're doing research they're just socializing almost we've gone to Google we've gone to Google Docs and Google ed to the point that many of the high school teachers everything is sent via Google so it's not unusual to have kids come in the morning and want to basically fire up and finish work send it to teachers and things like that during the day we would like to encourage it so that students
▶ 44:49 can come down there do their work there do their research finish the finish whatever assignments they have there again but right now there's parts of that whole building that have dead zones when you go into that and again I echo the mayor's invitation please come see the site and please come see the whole school school and see some of the things we're doing what we've done is we've got the red lab there we've got the blue lab there we took that space that was the middle school and we moved two of our labs there all it is is open space with desks and computers it's not again very conducive to working or anything but we took advantage of the space when we did the high school render when we did the
▶ 45:31 lab renovation we use that open space for swing space we put up a partition we had classrooms there you know again it's underutilized space and we know that if you write create the right environment this is where the children will go they'll go for help they'll go to work they'll gather with the classrooms sometimes you need to combine classrooms so one of the spaces that we worked with Charlie on is a double space that you could get two classrooms in with a presentation space those of you who have gone to events at the Heritage Room you know what it's like very uncomfortable chairs not good acoustics we've got the what do we call it the birdcage above it which is not handicap accessible which
▶ 46:20 would come down in this design we would create a presentation space that would enhance a lot of a lot of functions in the city so there's a lot of opportunity here the last piece as you know is we have begun to do a lot of work across the two buildings and to the point where the heist the middle school library is more functional than the high school library when you begin to talk about digital resources and digital capacity and when you think about the demands on our kids they're not getting the support space that they really need for their education at the high school you did the right thing you built a beautiful beautiful middle school but as you also know a lot of districts that were in your spot ten years ago chose to flip you didn't you chose to go with the
▶ 47:14 middle school and our kids have benefited we need to bring the high school up to par with the middle school just two points because we all remember the reason why we couldn't flip was because this wasn't enough square footage area of land to build an accredited high school okay that has to be pointed out secondly one thing that is is i think one of the better qualities of the middle school that i hope can be replicated in this is the following the superintendent talked about the number of students that congregate in that area from the high school if you go to the middle school library in the morning it's full but what's even better if you go to the library in the middle school in in the afternoon kids are working not fooling around and playing working
▶ 47:56 responsibly to about 430 in the afternoon it is a new Melrose Public Library for the young teenagers if we can replicate that at the high school and create a place after school and perhaps even on certain weekends and during busy times during projects and open it for high school students over the weekend it will provide a space for children who don't have that at home provide access to technology when they don't have it at home and provide the number of group projects that are now commonplace at Norris high school as well as in college in graduate school if you go to the middle school in the afternoon not just the rec programs that were running but that that library I think is the greatest thing that we have built that benefits children in quite a
▶ 48:44 Jaclyn L. Bird: long time thank you going back to the needs for a second and I think superintendent you were getting closer to what I'm looking for here when you talked about some someone mentioned before that that students and teachers and other staff members administrators were involved in giving input on the design what did that process look like and how do we see more about how that process unfolded were there you know school building committee meetings held that we have minutes for where their surveys done you know what kind of information do we have that's kind of data based that we stand pull the needs out of for this particular space principal the schools here thank you hi principal Farrell how are you good good so when we decided to revisit the high
▶ 49:36 school master plan and think about priorities and think about how education is changing we began to bring in a lot of the primary users and not just from the high school but from the middle school so the middle school librarian the high school librarian the high school academic facilitator we began to bring in the department heads and we used a similar process like we used when we did the science labs so that was sort of the early phase as we got closer to a design we began to bring in teachers and other users so that they could give us feedback we have not yet done student focus groups we did not sort of want to get the kids hopes too high until we had run it by the alderman and then brought
▶ 50:30 Jaclyn L. Bird: it back to them to get their input on some of the things they're thinking about but principal Farrell may be able to speak a little bit more to the to the type of work she's been doing on the ground with staff great and if I could just add one more thing what I'm looking for is basically when we talk about the overall goals of the high school in general you know whatever that might be maybe it's you know when we think about classes that we want to offer or scores that we want to get up or any of those things how does how does this particular project help drive any of those overall goals that's what I'm looking for well I think exactly what you're saying is that you know we we have so many new things
▶ 51:12 that we're doing and again we're trying to prepare our students for what the future will hold for them and we can only go on certain things but again preparing them for college right now and the many conversations we've had with some of our college partners that we're creating now is finding out how they need to learn how they need to be able to be able to do research how to collaborate many of the things we're doing in the classrooms right now we're getting by with the spaces we have available with the technology we have available but we are being held back in many areas with people that really are ready to fly with a lot of these things because space or technology is not available so this really gives us an environment that's going to enhance all
▶ 52:00 the things that we've been trying to do you know since superintendent came on board who's really allowed us to kind of look outside the box look outside of the classroom walls look out of the just the regular classroom and the textbooks and see what else is out there making everything relevant to the world and again having a space that allows you to move around and have student engagement that's very difficult to do in those triangle classrooms that don't have windows that don't even encourage you to want to get involved with what you're doing so again creating a space and excitement and the staff is excited about this we've been talking about it for a while but again before we go too much further with those conversations we don't want to get everybody's hopes up
▶ 52:46 Jaclyn L. Bird: too high so so ultimate bird I think what you're talking about is sort of the long range for vision yeah one of the things I'm thinking of specifically it someone brought it to my attention this week and I know this is probably a sort of a source subject but it's something that that I think we should just be able to talk about is that modeling Catholic high school is Melrose is the number one feeder to modeling Catholic high school for area schools from their admissions office so what I want to think about is and that's some of that is some people are going to choose private school that's going to happen we know that there's you know there's a percentage of people that we're not going to reach for
▶ 53:24 Jaclyn L. Bird: various reasons but when we look at some of the reasons that say eighth grade parents that we know of you know having to make those choices how does this particular project let's say you know further those goals besides just being aesthetically pleasing how does it you know and then how does it fit into some of the overall goals for the high school so where we're going with the high school is and again I have to be respectful of my staff because there's some things I'm going to release in a couple of weeks about some things we're doing and I really need to be respectful and my staff is as principal Farrell said we we don't want to be confined by the physical building we want to be able to think about personalized learning the way it is evolving in this country where
▶ 54:09 children set out their course of study their course their interests and we're able to provide them with resources and courses whether or not they're inside the four walls of Melrose High super miss Farrell referenced our partnerships we've created a partnership with UMass Boston to do dual enrollment on-site we're finalizing a partnership with Salem State University again to do dual enrollment on-site or at off-site satellite sites that they have and we almost finished with our conversation with Bunker Hill Community College again to do dual enrollment off-site so the students don't have to do this six subjects or seven subjects in the building when you talk about this library though that when you talk talk about children doing dual enrollment or
▶ 55:03 courses off-site they have to have a place to come to to do this study to do their work and this is part of the function of a Learning Commons you know just like when you think about a college I may take my college course in the liberal arts building but when it comes time to do my homework and do my research I go to the college library well this would be the equivalent of their college library they would go to the other thing that you know that we're continuing to do is we continue to expand our blended learning and our online learning there's enhanced sites in this again if we don't offer a course on-site and a student wants to take it either through virtual high school or through some of the new consortiums that have been set up by the colleges that
▶ 55:49 you may be aware of edX is one of them that Northeastern colleges Harvard MIT and some of the other colleges from this corridor are involved in they need a place to go to do that all of this is contributing to that the other thing that we what we're thinking about doing is we're thinking about actually do I just say it I'm going to say it we have we have kids who are ready to leave us earlier than they then end of June the end of June of senior year and we're going to try to find a way to facilitate early graduation and again this is all part of how we're changing that high school so that it is a more flexible adaptable building that meets children's individual personalized needs for learning there'll always be certain courses you must take to get a high
▶ 56:44 school diploma in Massachusetts but we also want to encourage children to reach beyond the mass core requirements and we have to facilitate that you have to have strong technology you have to have flexible spaces and you have to quite frankly open that building more hours and we're opening it okay thank you very much I'm gonna take a break to let someone else have the floor for a minute but I still have more questions for a little bit later thank you very good Thank You alderman bird next on cue we have alderman McAteer my goal is please Thank You mr. chairman thank you all for being here thank you for the hard work of the school building committee I was on it many years ago and worked with
▶ 57:32 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: Charlie and Pat when we did the middle school when we took that library away how many years ago eight maybe seven seven yeah that was like that was gonna be like one of the next projects was get that space done for the high school so I'm personally very glad to see that we have finally reached that point where we are able to consider it thank you to the school committee for your foresight all of you and your dedication to working on a project and getting behind this I think you have a lot of really good ideas programmatically that we have needed for a long time putting guidance on the first floor I think is ideal I think you you're the experts you know what how the building should function and how it does function I guess is the a DS office going to go down on the
▶ 58:30 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: first floor as well so that will make it also more accessible I think the the second floor with its eight hundred and ten thousand books was that what you said was a hundred forty three thousand I'm sorry I think it's probably about two hundred thousand short in my book being that I work at a library and as much as the digital age is upon us there are always there is always going to be a need for for paper books and it is always going to be a resource for some students who don't have the digital access and and I see this in the library where I work which is a you know I would say a more affluent community than Melrose there are people that sit in that parking lot at night after we're closed so that they can access the Wi-Fi because they don't have it at home
▶ 59:21 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: so I mean you are going to find that in every community and sometimes the answer to that is that you have a piece of paper and a book light and that's how you get your work done at night at home so and in addition to which I just think we can't we can't really give up on the published word in in print I do notice that you have a little kitchenette and cafe cafe in that area as well is that something that you're thinking of as being accessible to students or staff or both we're thinking of it both ways often are you know that room is used by our PTO's that use functions I think the Hall of Fame induction was up there as well and it would be nice not to have coffee and cookies on top of the library's librarians working area so we thought a little kitchenette that we
▶ 1:00:19 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: could sort of close almost like a galley kitchen yeah would be useful yeah okay I i i think that's uh intriguing and probably um acceptable um i'm excited to hear that the middle school library is getting so much use particularly after school and i hope that part of the plan of this uh programmatically includes staffing uh for before and after school for for this facility for this particular learning center we hope we hope that we'll see you in june about that Build it and we will get it, right? Is that it? So, no, I mean, I think, again, I think the more use we can get out of it, the less costly it becomes to us ultimately in the end. And if it can be accessible to the public and to community groups and organizations,
▶ 1:01:13 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: it not only benefits those particular groups, it benefits the whole community. And it benefits the parents who may have kids in kindergarten or people who may not have children in the school system at all, who look at this as a good investment in our community and ultimately encourage friends, neighbors, family to keep their kids in the Melrose Public Schools because we have great resources and great staff. I'm excited about the third floor with the CAD and the TV studio, of course. My daughter, who is now an engineer, had to find her way down little dark hallways to the CAD room, which I think was built on two different levels am I right is it still like that now you know like one room was about as big as this row of desks and then you
▶ 1:02:09 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: kind of like went around another room and up the stairs and boy it you had to be pretty challenged I mean you had to really be motivated to be you know sitting in that classroom for two or three hours or going back and doing work so I'm really excited to see those types of facilities and I think those are facilities that meet a need and are not a wish I think those are things that that kind of technology a business classroom for heaven's sakes even the cafeteria and even a little cafe if you get kids running it after school or something like that you know those are skills that our students need going forward so programmatically I think you're you're on the money you're certainly right on target we have people who we have worked with before who we
▶ 1:02:59 Denise Gaffey: know we have had great outcomes with I do have a question in terms of the financing and I know we will be getting to that but I wondered miss Gaffey if you can tell us is any of this are we able to apply for any SBA money with any of this for reimbursement no no we are not I mean we did obviously have some conversations about that the the challenge would be if we were to apply to the MSDA it would be it would end up being a much bigger project they would force us to bring the entire building up to their current standard okay and they don't have any projects like they had the science but for learning comments like they had for the science lab for the roof it just is nothing like that so and speaking of the roof what are we doing to take advantage of all the green
▶ 1:03:50 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: technology that's out there are we are we doing anything special in terms of wiring or wireless or low voltage I mean what is there any green things that we can do terms of lowering the well we've done a load we've done a lot are right in the building I mean as you know yeah with the recent ESCO project that and the lighting rehab work that was done and even our HVAC project was probably the biggest one when we just completed we have already seen an incredible reduction in energy usage in that building so all that in the solar installation these all these these will all be high-efficiency fixtures everything that's going to go in will be all state-of-the-art and it'll be obviously focused on making sure that the green aspects and the economic
▶ 1:04:41 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: economies that you're going to derive from that are all implemented okay yeah great so I think as I say I would love to come back and take another look at it personally and and do another another walkthrough just to remind myself of the state of affairs up there but as I say my recollection from when we opened the middle school was that that high school Resource Center was was going to be coming up pretty you know pretty quickly and I I know we had a great advantage to avail ourselves of with the science lab but I think this is something that we will we will be remiss if we don't consider it as as a need and something that we have to do to bring us our students in our city in our community up
▶ 1:05:36 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: into the 21st century thank you Thank You Alderman McAteer-Margolis next in line we have Alderman Lemmerman please Thank You mr. chairman thank you very much for coming down and presenting this several of my questions have been asked and answered so I just have a couple more first I would echo Alderman McAteer-Margolis is sentiment about the tour and that mayor Dolan mentioned I did not graduate from this school and don't have kids there so have not spent a lot of time in the space and would love the opportunity to walk through it just on this presentation I noticed that there are a few areas on here in the in the bright yellow that are designated to be determined and I'm just is that part of this project that there's more to be planned out or is this just a designation
▶ 1:06:28 Francis X. Wright Jr.: for a future program that's a programmatic designation not a project designation okay great let's see actually all the rest of my questions have been answered so I'm all set thank you very much Thank You alderman limelight next in line we have alderman right please Thank You mr. chairman thank you for being here this evening for your presentation so have a few questions like alderman limelight a lot of my questions have been answered I've had a lot of discussion about everyone who's had input into this and why it's such a great space and it certainly looks like such a great space but if I look at it from the standpoint of accreditation and we've had a time in the past where accreditation was something we had to
▶ 1:07:25 wait on how is all how do all these improvements how does this plan play into future accreditation and what's required to meet accreditation I wish I could answer that well but knee ask the accrediting new agency is undergoing a serious revision of their standards and their expectations as a result of considerable pushback from a number of associations they are trying to realign their standards with the current expectations of the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education because at times they were contrary to what the department expected of us and we often felt we were operating under two different sets of standards so they have not finished that revision process so there is conversation that they may do a tailored process depending on what
▶ 1:08:27 city or town needs so for example if we were a city or town that whose building was in really bad shape and we hadn't done the work it may be possible in the future that you would ask me asked to do a facilities review or you may be a district that's been a district for districts like a level 4 district like some of the gateway cities you may end up asking me asked to do a programmatic review I really cannot answer you at this time Alderman because I do know that they're they're revisiting their standards okay but it's seems like it's fair to say that if this project were to go forward that we're much more likely to be accredited than we are if we just leave the space alone actually if I can
▶ 1:09:21 just speak to it we just submitted our five-year report and of the recommendations that were given to us we have completed many of them almost everything and they're all facilities a lot of things one of the things that we put in there because they asked about what are some of the exciting things that are happening is that that we had this project that we had been talking about and they knew about it because originally ten years ago when this all started there was talk of doing this space and then mid cycle we changed it to the science so they're always asking so what happened to that project so we did say that that was our next project coming up so you know they're aware of it and they have asked us about it and it does have a huge impact on teaching
▶ 1:10:01 Francis X. Wright Jr.: and learning great thank you and to confirm what I believe I heard earlier when it came to designing this space in addition to speaking with staff and what their goals and desires might be for the space as a team you looked at what new schools include that are being built through at the MSBA process and the space that we're looking at here either meets or exceeds that fair to say for a similar type space great thank you switching gears how many students will this I don't know if you can even put this in terms of student accommodation but I'll ask it anyway how many students will this space accommodate versus the spaces as it exists today is that I know it's not strictly classroom space but I think it accommodates all the students and the staff right now there's
▶ 1:11:04 Francis X. Wright Jr.: no benefit necessarily for a teacher to take a class down to that space because it doesn't have some of the features they're looking for but again with new technology with two very innovative staff members down there they're really drawing people back to that space and doing the best that they can and with more technology and more workable space in there you're gonna have to hold them back because everybody's gonna want to use it it'll become viable space as opposed to dead space thank you and I don't want to I'm tempted to get into issues about academic and education use uses you know all that but I really want respect the school committee because that's their role and I think our role here is to approve the money and to some extent we have to step into what the
▶ 1:12:01 Monica C. Medeiros: space is going to be used for and how the money is going to be used so at least for the moment I'm going to kind of defer those questions back towards the school committee so keeping in mind what our vote will be for by when do you need us to vote on that in order to meet your timeline so that would be the first meeting in April thank you very much thank you mr. chairman thank you alderman right get it done most next we have alderman Monica Medeiros please thank you mr. chairman I I do want to say I think having served until recently Alderman Lemmerman is the new appointment by President Kahn to the school building committee but up until January as the member of the school building committee I feel like I have a little bit of an advantage here and that
▶ 1:13:01 Monica C. Medeiros: I've been involved and seen you know many of these things it's not so new to me but you know in fact I think you know people have said tonight that this is the first time we're seeing this slide show and the detail and I do think it would make sense for us to take a little bit of time as the Board of Aldermen and I didn't I have had the opportunity to tour the space myself although the last time I was there I think that Dan Richards was still the principal in the high school so this has been going on for some time but you know I think that it would really behoove us as a board to plan a time and schedule a tour when it's when it's a time that that we can all go probably not during the day and
▶ 1:13:46 Monica C. Medeiros: and go together and maybe bring you know some of the kids from the current school with some TV cameras to tape it as a matter so the people at home could see it too I know having also been a student at Norris high school I know some of those classrooms room spaces like the one that's the little triangle with no windows I happen to have two years of classes in that room way back when and to go in and see the old middle school library completely vacant and unused was kind of shocking to me at the time I there certainly are some needs there with the spaces I know superintendent a more talked about a bunker I think maybe Maybe she didn't describe it as well as it could be that those walls are just thick concrete
▶ 1:14:37 Monica C. Medeiros: not made to encapsulate the wires and the Wi-Fi into their blockage to wireless signals and such. There's some real reasons to do this there. was hoping that while we have Charlie here if perhaps if the clerk of committees could maybe bring this slide back up with the kind of amphitheater part and I think that the mayor said that we could fit 200 and this is not an amphitheater this is a platform a low platform is probably two steps high and then movable seating so seating on stackable seating we intend to put creates chair storage so that the seating can be put away it can be brought out and the view of the educators is that this thing is going to range from between 75 and 200 people dependent so the intent with everything
▶ 1:15:45 in here in terms of the design is that it is movable it's flexible it can be re-accommodated so one of the questions about walls there are walls being added they're actually classrooms being added the school is actually gaining educational construction space by doing this however to some degree flexibility is a watchword here you want a flexible space you want a space you can adopt over time you want the space to be able to change in 20 years because you're using it in a different way so the degree we can put things on casters we will the degree that you can move things around later we will and that area is intended to have movable seats like this right so let's see you can pick up put down but we need to accommodate the space for it so that it actually works
▶ 1:16:36 Monica C. Medeiros: now I I know ultimate rights that he might defer some of this but these are some of my questions are and I was hoping that superintendent teamwork and and perhaps principal Farrell can speak to some of these things you know we've heard a lot about about the possibility of the space being opened and utilized as late as 430 in the afternoon you know using these classrooms using different kinds of spaces in a different ways than we are currently using it what I'm wondering is what kind of effect because you know yes we're here and we're going to take a vote on expending this bond money which you know does have it's within our 5% goal of of our operating budget but it's about three hundred and seventy five thousand dollars a year that would be paying towards this and
▶ 1:17:32 Monica C. Medeiros: and responsibly I think we have to ask does this configuration to use this is this going to have an effect in our operating budget within the schools like are we going to need more staff in order to monitor this space this I hear all the time about how there's so many restrictions on time and learning and you know will we have the time to be able to bring classrooms in and students out will students have the time during the school day to use this if students are coming to you know often here that the biggest one of the base expenses on the city budget and the school budget is toner I heard the mayor say you know as kids come down and print the paper if they needed to will those kinds of things add you know have we thought about how that would work and what that
▶ 1:18:27 Monica C. Medeiros: might add to our budget do teachers need more prevent you know more and new different professional development in order to be able to utilize this space and you know kind of I'd like to know how we can use what we've got because I don't think we have a lot of money to be bringing in a lot of new positions and well I think when it comes to the technology piece of it I think the more technology we can get the less paper we actually need with all of our students now going to have Google accounts I was in a classroom yesterday and the teacher talked about how all the students had Chromebooks and they had already she had already been able to review all of their material without a piece of paper and
▶ 1:19:16 right now I believe we have a pilot at the middle school that's doing a similar project so students are going to come to us already with these skills and the paper is going to become obsolete but again if that technology is not being being able to be used in every inch of that building, we're at a standstill. Happened at a faculty meeting the other day, 60 staff members all had Chromebooks in the library. And we were trying to do an activity and half of us couldn't get on because the technology just was not allowing for that. That's where we want to be, whether it's in our faculty meetings or in our classrooms, that's the way we communicate. students are electronically sending work to their teachers on weekends and at
▶ 1:20:05 night and you know it's that exchange so really more foundational now than paper and pen is the PD is ongoing in all aspects of our lives the need for professional development for staff never ends you know things change too rapidly so a lot of the instruction on instructional strategies and a lot of of the technology tools are already being implemented we just cannot implement them to the extent we would like because we're running into space obstacles technology obstacles equipment obstacles and as you know the mayor is going to address that as a separate issue we're in the middle of completing the technology assessment and plan which will be presented to the school committee in a few weeks and that will address a lot of what the steps that
▶ 1:20:55 need to be taken in order to make sure that we truly are up to speed on all those skills and all those capacities so there's a lot of things happening at the same time in terms of staffing we're very fortunate in a lot of ways I can't I can't tell you how many of our staff are there it's seven o'clock and how many of them are walking out with us at five six o'clock at night but there's creative ways to handle it as to how you schedule classes in there how you you scheduled teachers duties you know whether or not you you need some paraprofessional help could be discussed but we've talked about that when we were talking with the librarians and the academic facilitator about what are they running into obstacles when there are 150 kids in there we've already started
▶ 1:21:47 Monica C. Medeiros: to talk about what are the ways that we can use the current staff the staff we have to better monitor that space and on all of these meeting rooms it will have you know the small classrooms they'll all have windows and just for safety we're doing glass walls and so I appreciate that and I'm glad to see that we can hopefully do it with with what we've got and just one to go back one so this this is already this kind of concept is happening at the middle school already is what you're telling us and that when the kids now are getting to high school they kind of have to stop learning the way that they have been learning I wouldn't say they stop learning it's not as the environment is not as responsive to their needs as the middle school may be so this should be a
▶ 1:22:44 Gail Infurna: more natural transition right exactly thank you Thank You Alderman Medeiros next in line we have Alderman Inferno please thank you very much mr. chairman thank you all for coming this evening and I think I have Alderman McAteer Margolis speak because Charlie and Pat I think we met 15 16 years ago doing the Lincoln school so well a lot of my questions have been answered but I just want to you know say that to quote the late Whitney Houston the children are our future what better way can we you know invest in but to invest in the schools which are our future so I commend you for the work in this I commend you for the foresight and seeing that we're working towards the future that it's going to take us 20 25 years down the road for our future I think it
▶ 1:23:36 Gail Infurna: is the right way to do things I did have questions about the accreditation all right had asked that and the quest the answers were all set in the time frame so I really don't have much to say at this point but I wanted to get that out there that thank you for all your work on this all right thank you very much all them in Inferno seeing no one else requesting to speak for the first time we're going to start the queue so this is Alderman Forbes would you like to proceed yes Alderman Forbes please thank you waiting patiently thank you sir as a student that did go back and forth between the junior high school in the high school to grab a book and going forward back and forth from that bridge I can understand and appreciate the project and I am encouraged I was at
▶ 1:24:19 Scott M. Forbes: UMass Lowell recently every building has a space in these pictures that we see today and I am encouraged by by the project obviously there were a lot of questions here tonight and I appreciate your patience but I I just had a couple of quick questions about the construction I know you said nine months I was just wondering if you could just kind of be a little bit about the timeline itself I know you said if it was approved it would start in December and be ready for the school year in 2016 could just kind of you just kind of mentioned that we start kind of give us a brief the intent was to bid the project this fall so that you had the city had a contractor on board early enough that they could mobilize get organized and be prepared to start the
▶ 1:25:10 beginning of the next semester if we give them the full period between January and and August of 16 that is certainly at more than adequate time to complete the two larger spaces the the what is now the library and the classrooms upstairs they would be given that whole space for the duration of the period to do that construction. There's a separate entrance they can use, which is a stair to the side, which will not interfere with student operations, with student activities. The first floor offices, however, would be phased. They would happen during the final summer. So they'd be under the auspices of the same contractor. They'd be bid at the same time and be the same contract. The contractor wouldn't be allowed into those offices until
▶ 1:25:57 the end of school because the school can't afford to lose that space during the school year but the good another great positive about this project which is unusual is the opportunity to really take that whole space at once coordinate off have dust control have sound control make it impossible to get into by any student or staff and do the whole thing at once so there's an efficiency there and there's some real benefits relative to safety and all but it's a reasonable schedule okay and I know when you had your your list of costs for construction costs you gave yourself a 5% which I think was for as a cushion any type of overruns for contingency right there are contingencies built into this it's an
▶ 1:26:47 Peter D. Mortimer: early estimate but we understand we need to work to the budget okay and you're comfortable with the five percent number just given the age of the building yes okay okay that's all i had thank you alderman forbes uh before we proceed to the uh second round of questions from each of the aldermen may i have the latitude of asking one quick because we may move on to financials now or we may not but uh is there any plans for any alteration of the uh cafetorium no that was discussed that was discussed as part of the master plan and it was considered to be a much lower priority it's not there there were some really creative ideas about how that space could be used educationally that it isn't being used now however the view was you'd again the the goal here was to
▶ 1:27:34 Peter D. Mortimer: stretch your dollars as far as you can educationally in one project and there's no question that the project on the table is has the greatest single possible impact you could have to the school uh under the auspices of one project without doing a much larger renovation i agree i had just seen it on the master plan it was on there it was just a lot of things were discussed and i didn't see it filter to through this project so this is my question i'll let some of the other other oldman uh next in line for the second round we have president khan first bob boisselle is next and who am i seeing did you did i see you okay alderman 11 11 please proceed thank you mr chairman um alderman wright kind of kind of cut to the the
▶ 1:28:20 central issue here uh i'm not sitting here to be an alternate or backup school committee member and i'm not here to develop plans for the space for us this is about the money and i feel that in a circumstance like this we owe it to the public to give thoughtful deliberation to whether we're going to spend 5.3 million dollars and what we're going to spend it on and when i end my diatribe here this evening i'm going to move that we hold this order in committee so that we can continue to consider it and the board of aldermen has a breakdown and the financial impact on the bond that's been provided to us from mr del russo i agree with the mayor that we are not in a position where we can build a new high school that's not in the cards a couple of things that
▶ 1:29:17 i i don't think the public understands um that you've all heard me hop on many times but you're gonna hear it again as long as i'm still sitting here uh we talk a lot about the five percent in the budget i wish we would stop talking about it because i think it's confusing people need to understand that we we have indebtedness the city of melrose of 61 million six hundred ninety seven thousand one hundred and forty six dollars that's that's what the city has bonded uh for projects like the uh debt exclusion for the middle middle school which i supported because i thought it was the right thing to do and it was a great project and things like the athletic field project which is a result of some forward-thinking funding mechanisms by the mayor and bonding for the the
▶ 1:30:13 flood mitigation that was very successful but if we vote at the end of the day to take this project on we're going to have 66 million 997 dollars at 146 dollars give or take a few bucks of indebtedness our budget i think for the next year is going to be 72 million 500 000 so i understand that five percent of our operating budget goes for debt service but we owe approximately 90 of what our annual operating budget would be uh in debt that we've incurred for significant projects that are have been done or will be done so you i never i never take these kind of votes likely i think we need to consider this we need to consider the impacts we need to consider whether we think this is the best use of 5.3 million dollars of our of our bonding capacity um i
▶ 1:31:17 appreciate the information that you folks have given us tonight I would like information to see how you determine the cost of this project that's significant to me and I think that's more within my realm of authority than determining how you lay out the space or how you staff it unless you come back and you tell me that you need more staff in your budget because because of that that then it becomes our issue but I'm gonna move mr. chairman that we hold this order in committee um i think we've got a lot of good information this evening but i think we have some more uh some more diligence to do on this topic and before we decide that this is something that we want to support so at this point i move that we retain this order in committee okay
▶ 1:32:03 Peter D. Mortimer: president khan has made a formal motion uh which is an order at this time to hold the order and committee and a formal motion would require a second second and that motion to hold this order and committee at this time before we continue with discussion has been seconded by alderman bird i will now consider that the period as committee work is done sometimes with under suspension informal discussion this is now discussion on a motion which is on the floor to hold the order and committee and later in the evening we will have a vote on that motion which was first and then if that passes it will be done this evening if it does not pass then other motions would be possible such as a motion to recommend or not to recommend or place the order on file those motions
▶ 1:32:53 Robert A. Boisselle: are available to us too if the motion to hold the order and committee does not pass then a motion to recommend may be in order as well so next in queue we have alderman boy cell talking about money the cost and so forth now you mentioned that you went out for grants or some assistance for lowering the cost of this project and you were refused or no no i mentioned that we explored the idea of of whether the school building authority would entertain a grant for a project like this and well why did you go to them and not to the digital connections partnership school grants group there's an IT school technology bond that's out there and has of January this year five million dollars of that bond was issued
▶ 1:33:48 Robert A. Boisselle: to close to 50 schools in Massachusetts that is for infrastructure only that's That's for, the focus of that is expanding technology access to districts that do not have sufficient technology access. And it's for infrastructure, it's not for building a library commons that requires reconfiguration plus furniture plus hardware. Well, the priorities, as mentioned, maximums the access of broadband, improve efficiencies, productivity, provide student access to individuals, maximize taxpayers' values. access into information technology information technology and it's for urban rule and suburban communities and that did anyone did you apply for it mr. pesos and I discussed whether it was appropriate for this district it is not
▶ 1:34:43 Robert A. Boisselle: on the same scale as the project it what it would do would be providing some wiring for the project we do not feel that Melrose was a good candidate if you If you look at the list of districts that got it, many of them are what we call gateway communities. In other words, low income communities. Well, there's still $30 million that's out there in the bond, according to what's being published here. I don't think it's been released yet. We can certainly explore it at that time to see if it could offset anything we're doing, but I don't believe the rest of the bond has been released yet. well not only 5 million has been released and there's still another 33 million in matching funds for K through 12 and for technology infrastructure and
▶ 1:35:29 Robert A. Boisselle: so forth I would like to see an application to this group and have them refuses refuse it at that point but if you're not trying I mean we're not we'll never know if we can get anywhere from 10,000 to a hundred thousand or even a million I don't know but I think there should be an effort to make an application out and see what happens also my second question is after the school is built do you think it will be outdated or this particular project be outdated as I said previously the intention here is to make as much of as flexible as possible well in other words what it accommodates is furnishings and spaces for learning but there will be the opportunity to reconfigure it over time so from that point of
▶ 1:36:31 Robert A. Boisselle: view it's quite flexible well that's why i would not expect it to be dated it's pretty progressive in terms of its intent well i'm taking a comment made from the principal space for technology is not there and we're producing that from this project that space I mean we have three rooms here would identified as WB with almost a hundred of desktop computers if you pick up any journal in any of the trades or professions everything is going mobile are we looking at a mobile future for these schools or are we sort of stagnating in desktop operations when the world is going mobile we are looking we're looking at two classrooms with specialized desktop computers a graphics lab and a CAD lab well I'm not talking
▶ 1:37:28 Robert A. Boisselle: about those labs I understand those labs I have second floor rooms identified as wb or coding and there's close to discounting roughly uh about 80 to 100 desktops well i think to excuse me arctic alderman boy cell like i see uh our it director mr pesos and uh he may be able to weigh in with some information that's responsive to your question sorry thank you glad you could come in question that's coming forward here at this time is that from what i see in the drawings these are all sort of like desktop computers and space for technology is not there was the comment that was made but the technology is becoming very mobile and do we need these particular desktop units here so frankly you may not have these desktops one of the deuce one of the things that we've been
▶ 1:38:29 preaching about and one of the reasons that the district has been leaning heavily towards Chromebooks you may have heard me use the term we're trying to be device agnostic we're trying to get away from being pigeonholed into using a particular device so you've seen us push a lot of things out to the web Google Apps for EDU is a perfect example of that term again please what was that term Google Apps for EDU no then one that ended in a stick agnostic device agnostic device agnostic yes sorry I have a cold I apologize that's alright so Google Apps for edu is a perfect example of that Aspen is another example of that we have several applications as a matter of fact all of our applications are now web-based so we have very little that we need on a day-to-day basis where
▶ 1:39:14 Robert A. Boisselle: you see the need for those devices are those labs that you're talking about CAD lab we don't do that in the cloud not talking about the CAD labs I'm I'm talking the second floor, where you have one, two, three rooms. This is number four, screen four. Is he talking about SUSE room? We're not doing laptops in SUSE room. Yeah, I think you may be looking at preliminary plans. This was done as a study. The point of showing computers is to show that the opportunity is there to have them. There has been no detailed discussion about precisely what devices are going in these particular rooms. All right, I didn't, I wasn't informed and there's no documentation saying that at this time. We're waiting to have a project.
▶ 1:39:59 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: Now, if you're looking to do mobile in the future, that's a great idea. I mean, at this point, and you're going to have a lot of room to have your technology there. I'd say that the district is right now positioned to do mobile. That's how I would respond. I'm glad to hear that. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Waldemar Borsell. Next in line, we have Alderman Lemmerman, please. Thank you very much. Just one question, and actually it was a good segue from Alderman Boisselle, around the computers and the plan here. It sounds now like it may not be. You may be able to answer this one. It's not too deep in the technology. It sounds like it, some clarification is that it may not yet be worked out.
▶ 1:40:41 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: But I was wondering if, you know, we look at the renderings and there's some big, beautiful new Mac computers and there's lots of computers here is the budget and with it being as you mentioned pretty technology heavy does it include reusing anything we already have or is this where we really looking at all completely brand new I was thinking of the computers that are sort of in yeah so part of the issue that we find ourselves in and the reason why we've had the most recent discussion that we have had with the mayor is our replacement schedule for our technology has been rather constrained we typically have about forty thousand dollars a year in the budget we have not kept pace with our replacement policy with our
▶ 1:41:34 replacement requirements so much of what we have already is nearing the end of its lifespan it's beyond its lifespan to specifically in this space if you look at the CAD lab by the time this place is this space is open those should be due for a replacement the same with the business labs and the graphic studio really what's in there now is is not adequate so it would definitely need to be replaced so within this plan we would recycle or do whatever we do with our with our technology and it would all plan to replace it correct okay great Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Alderman Lehman. Next, we have Alderman Byrd, please. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I had seconded Alderman Conn motion
▶ 1:42:21 Jaclyn L. Bird: to hold this in committee and I hope that the other members of the committee will support that as some of us, you know, still are trying to work through the size and the scope of this project. So, you know, my understanding, $5.3 million project that according to the debt service schedule we had attached to the order we won't finish paying out until or paying on it until 2043 is that correct okay so I don't want to move too quickly on this until I feel like I have a good grasp of exactly why we're doing it and what we're doing and how it fits in with all of our spending for the city to that effect what I was hoping to do was outline a couple of items that I wanted requests from those present tonight instead of getting into tons of detailed
▶ 1:43:10 Jaclyn L. Bird: questions at this point I was hoping to get a summary of and we talked a little bit about this but to how it was determined that this was quote this is quoting mayor Dolan's opening speech the most pressing infrastructure need in our city right now and quote so I was hoping Denise if you could provide us a summary of our capital improvement plans the priority prioritizing process how this becomes sort of the most pressing need right now I'm sorry okay but we obviously have to set priorities right when we are going to fund admit you know projects and make sure okay so we're not basing it on an overall capital improvement plan yeah I get that okay if we take mandolin's quote out of it I still have a question about how we prioritize this process process in this
▶ 1:44:10 Jaclyn L. Bird: funding you know if we fund this particular project obviously something else is going to be you know held in waiting so because we can't be funding everything at the same time so I'm just looking at how do we prioritize it how was this process how did this process unfold to that end I would love more information on the school building committee I tried to look up when they meet where they meet who's on the committee and what the meeting minutes are for the last couple years regarding this and I couldn't find any of that so if you can send that along that would also be great I would love a detailed project cost breakdown right now and I know you're just providing an overview but the sort of 1 million dollars plus 4 million dollars equals 5 million dollars
▶ 1:44:50 Jaclyn L. Bird: just isn't specific enough for me for this project and I'd like a summary outlining from the superintendent a brief summary outlining how our current operating budget for the school department can support this project so my concern being that I remember back when the Roosevelt School grand opening happened and the library was a gorgeous facility it was the only room that hadn't been unpacked and it was lacking a media library media specialist because we couldn't fund that particular position so I just want to make sure that as we go forward with approving this this 5.3 million dollar bond that we have an idea that we can in fact support it with what we have right now in place library has to to faculty assigned to it full-time full-time and
▶ 1:45:38 how many CAD instructors there's one full-time kid there's a there's a whole there's a whole technology instruction department all they're doing is being moved physically to this space right I believe Alderman McIntyre talked about where McIntyre talked about where the CAD lab used to be all it is is being physically moved that staff that are there are just being moved nobody is getting at it okay I guess my concern is if we have state-of-the-art CAD facilities how many students do we currently serve with our current CAD facilities it might that's why I'm looking for a summary we don't need to get into this tonight but that's why I'm looking for a little bit more time yeah and I just want to make sure we have the staff to support it that's all great I
▶ 1:46:39 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: think it would be great if I can get some of that in detail I think you know We've had a couple of hours officially to look at this information, and I hope that we'll be given a little bit more time to go over something as large as this project. So thank you so much. Thanks to all of you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Alderman Byrd. Next in line, we have Alderman McAteer-Margolis, please. Oh, thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just a couple of quick comments, and then a question for Mr. DellaRusso to talk about what, as Alderman Wright said, is really our role in this. programmatically, if we build this facility with you, I'm personally going to hope that the programs grow, that you're going to find a way to do that.
▶ 1:47:23 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: And because of your excellent management and the school committee and the staff that you have, I think you will find a way to do that, whether it 10 years from now involves more budget money or reconfiguring what your offerings are. I'm confident that that is your role. Our role is to figure out a way to help you make that happen. And in that respect, Mr. DellaRusso, I just wondered if I could ask you a couple of brief questions on the bond. Or Art, Mr. Flavin, either one, both of you. We can just move over, how's that? Thank you for coming. Oh, great. Good evening, Mr. DellaRusso. Good evening, Mr. Flavin. evening thank you for your presence here this evening you have exactly what I'm gonna ask you for don't you you have the bond the indebtedness showing what we
▶ 1:48:43 have now and when it's coming off probably right thank you If I may just preface with a three-foot note through the chair. Please. In the big picture of debt service, this community right now retires 75% of its principal within a ten year period. Seventy-five percent of the principal is retired within a 10-year period. That's creditworthy, and I think it needs to be put out there. We're very aggressive in debt retirement, so we're proud of that. The two charts that both Art Flavin and myself put together for you, the first is on the graphic side. it demonstrates the lower portion the gray and the upper portion the darker color the lower portion represents the amount of debt service that's currently outstanding
▶ 1:50:10 that we've already committed to and is fully bonded the upper portion the darker portion represents the issue we're discussing this evening as well as any other protected debt that we have in the portfolio As you can see by the nature of the graph, our debt is doing what it should do. It's going down. We ensure that at no point does the debt service exceed 5% of the operating budget for the life of all our debt service. The next page that you should look at would be this one here, the actual statistics that demonstrate that as you can see starting in FY 16 the debt service is three point six seven percent of the anticipated budget as Alderman Kahn mentioned seventy two point five million dollars then it goes from three point six seven to three
▶ 1:51:17 point nine six which corresponds with this graph three point eight three right down to 2.26. So that is everything over the next 10 years that we have. Our model, as everyone needs to understand, is a 30-year model. We go 30 years with the certifying bank. This is just a snapshot of a 10-year period, but the bank has all the exact data that we have here. Also, which is very important to understand, we use rates that are almost twice what the market is currently producing. So our debt service here represents a fixed rate of 5%. The market's probably about 2.5% now, and I believe, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, in temporary interest we're using 3%. The market's probably about 1.5% or less now.
▶ 1:52:12 But we're not market timers. However, I would be remiss if I didn't say Similarly, if in the big world I had a decision to make, I would try to bond something when the market is favorable versus unfavorable. Just simply do the duration of the note. In this case, it's 25 years. In the next page on this chart, too, we call it, same representation of the years 2014 to 2024. The far right column demonstrates the variance. In this case, for example, in 16, 962,697, it would take of additional debt service to hit your 5% threshold. Obviously, we don't recommend that. We prefer to be as conservative and prudent because this has been discussed here this evening. is one project of uh i'm sure of a number of projects that will be coming down at some point
▶ 1:53:19 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: uh for a discussion for this board but again um our flavorings here myself any specific questions on this debt service this evening but i'm confident that if in fact the board did approve it that city can accommodate the debt thank you mr de la rosa do i still have the floor mr chun you do thank you um mr de la rosa do these projections um include uh this 5.3 million yes they do okay thank you and um where we see that it's uh peaking to 3.96 in 2017 that's with the anticipation of this bond going on coming online that's correct that's right and you would customarily do a short-term bond for a year or two if you make if I may that depends on spending schedules and work completion and how we want to manage it
▶ 1:54:21 as far as impacting a certain budget you know if is we sometimes we'll ban it for a couple of years where money's been so cheap but I think going forward would probably be better served getting to the real market as quickly as possible because interest rates apparently are gonna go up I don't know I mean but they look like everybody's saying you know that's the word on the of all the experts and we've really enjoyed wonderful rates for the last three or four years cutting a lot done with them so if this project were if we were to vote in the next month let's say to to approve this project when would you seek to bond it again depending on what I get for spending schedules I'd borrow what I need next to some I mean when she start when they start the work you know and
▶ 1:55:17 then with time it we like the issue in November it's a prime season with short-term borrow a number of periods that's to be worked out that's but it wouldn't hit the it would not hit us it will not hit 2017 it won't hit till 17 in all likelihood it would be under $100,000 but I think I'm showing 159 in there in that model that's the 3% but yeah I don't think would borrow the whole 5.3 right away but we just always really conservative with these models and also in terms of your interest rate your you've really built quite a cushion on this we stand at three and five percent I mean that's it it's technical there's a thing called the coupon rate we last time we borrowed was at two point five one but the coupon on the first couple of years the way the
▶ 1:56:17 banks sell the bonds and market them and charges the coupon on the first year is four percent so we have to stay in the range on coupons and what we did in November runs from you know in the early years for four point I think the highest is four point five and then it trickles down to two point three seven percent those types of numbers it's all got to do with the pricing and the black art of bond sales does it have to do with our rating as well absolutely has an impact I don't have it with me tonight, but we have an analysis from First Southwest saying what our superior— we're one step away from being perfect in S&P's eyes. I don't know how we get that last step, but we're going to try. And it definitely—the bigger, stronger banks are interested, and they're willing to take more risk and liability with us.
▶ 1:57:16 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: Great. And Mr. De La Russa, on the other chart with the two different colors, the gray and the black, the gray is showing what we already are bonded and committed to and how it's basically rolling off. Correct. And so it's really just a visual of this because this is the same. This is also showing how our net payment is changing with what we have out there. is there are there any particularly large bonds from that we're gonna i know the middle school is separate from this is are there any others that are coming off like you know we had the lincoln and the roosevelts or any of those that are coming off soon that we should be aware of yeah um this year the 185 000 is coming off from the land acquisition we did in 2003.
▶ 1:58:08 um 2017 there's 43 000 coming off of public works equipment we borrowed 18 is 175 000 for a previous high school remodeling project that's going to be paid finally paid for 17 there's a hundred thousand from a refinancing bonds we did in 1999. i'm sorry what was that last one again for re we we refinanced a 1999 debt issue to take advantage of low rates a few years ago and saved quite a bit of money and that was for projects like memorial hall fire station tank removal school roof city hall remodel and a field project and that was 75 000 did you say that's a hundred thousand a hundred thousand and then we jumped to 2021 87 000 comes off the textbooks okay and then some big numbers start hitting down the line but i mean a lot of
▶ 1:59:01 of numbers it was too much to enumerate here but right you can see by the graph okay and if i mean the two the two critical factors we we always have to be mindful of is is the fact that um the management of debt service is critical in the eyes of all the rating agencies how do you manage a debt service two is that you have it and um it's important that they see you're making improvements whether it's this or to a library roof whatever the case may be they want to see improvement on a regular basis they want to see you manage well but they want to see you doing the work because that shows value in the community when you stop doing the work and the value is begins to corrode in this deterioration that occurs they say well you know
▶ 1:59:51 they look around they go what's going on in this community they take notice of that and we show them a progressive that's why they always ask us where's your capital improvement plan what are your plans for the future they want you to be progressive whatever the case may be they don't want you to stand still they want you to move ahead because that's how you increase value not by standing still so that's truly a mark in our favor is because we we take on debt service but as everyone here appreciates we have to be very conservative and proven and when what we take on and when we take it on so that we never take on more than we can service properly and never take on more that would cause us any stress with the rating agencies because that impacts the interest
▶ 2:00:32 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: rate that we pay but it's a healthy healthy thing to do and i i stand by that i think it's a wonderful thing we've done in the past and i'd like to see that continue because it does pay dividends for us and i appreciate that and i thank the board for the time um thank you and um i would say if we're one step below superior we've you know you've done a pretty decent job of that as a team and as a community and i think um i trust that this board has had a good hand in that and and hopefully have made and will continue to make good decisions uh for the improvement of um our future as alderman uh inferno said thank you mr chairman thank you alderman mccarty margolis next we have Alderman Medeiros please thank you mr. Flavin you just mentioned
▶ 2:01:24 Monica C. Medeiros: that a high school renovation is gonna come off the books do you know when that was first instituted and what that was just out of curiosity high school remodeling 175,000 I'd have to get back to you I'm mad you can go through this she I I have limited a lot of this stuff I just have I think that you don't have the institutional memories meeting would be would be great to have it's just absolutely that we can look at as we're about to embark on something that would take us out to 2043 that you know who knows who will be sitting in those seats then probably not me and you know so we can see what what in fact that renovation and remodeling was. Mr. Del Rosso or Mr. Flavin, I'm not sure if you have this
▶ 2:02:23 information with you tonight. What is the actual amount that we budgeted for in 2014 and 2015? For your net service, if I may, it's right there on the sheet that you have. For general fund net exempt for 14 it was two million four five seven two twenty two the 15 the year we're in two million five seventy two five oh two and what's projected for 16 is two million six sixty three eight sixty six so those are actual general fund debt service obligations that we have in the budget that's what we budgeted for for the amount general fund right now there's there's exempt debt there's general fund debt there's debt service provided by enterprise funds there's debt service paid by the golf course debt service paid by the cemetery but in the world of two and a half that's
▶ 2:03:15 Monica C. Medeiros: what we're using that's correct but in our short term i know actually it's probably two different line items and this might be better for um next meeting for maybe for next meeting is break those out for you yeah and i mean i know we talk about the five percent limit in terms of you know not going above this cap as a matter of policy uh and i applaud the mayor and the administration yourself for for leading that because that's not written in any of our ordinances that's a policy choice that that it's coming from and that's a good one I think but just to point out are we budgeting and say you know our anticipated budget for the FY 16 is going to be 72 million 500,000 are we budgeting three million six hundred and twenty six thousand dollars towards debt
▶ 2:04:10 Monica C. Medeiros: service or we're budgeting what we actually have on the books what's on the books that would be the two six six three eight sixty sixty three six two six which is five sixty three would represent if we went to the full five percent of the budget which we're not doing but so we but still this money needs to come adding actual has to actual has to come from when it says net debt is the actual number the net debt is the actual number I guess my my point is that it would be good to know in the next immediate coming fiscal year what is coming off and what's coming on and and just you know obviously if we're adding another three hundred and seventy five thousand dollars in in debt or maybe the next two fiscal years, that's going to have an impact in some other budget line item, right?
▶ 2:05:05 You have to take it from something else. And what happens is this actually takes into account the debt service, and it takes into account that debt service that's rolling off as well as debt service coming on. So that's why I call it the net debt. What rolls off plus what comes on, that's your net. So that takes into account, as the chart would demonstrate, that's all factored in here, what's coming off and where it's coming off. Those are all real numbers. Those are real numbers. So we're seeing an increase of about $90,000. Is that correct? Between FY15 and FY16. The 257, 2502, and the 266, 366. that doesn't necessarily mean that the funding source for that will be strictly to an app that could be 75,000 for example from the cemetery to pay for
▶ 2:05:58 Monica C. Medeiros: their debt service so I think that's the last year actually for that as well probably in the relevant line items of the budget would be increasing them by by $90,000 approximately your net debt service would increase by that much correct and what percentage of that line item of those line items is the thousand dollars is you know is that two percent of the two percent increase in our overall line item is that a I could find I can get that yeah it's just I do support the motion by President Kahn to to hold this and obviously if you know we just got this now we could do a little more calculations ahead of the meeting thank you just a quick point of information if you know that 2003 land acquisition that the debt that was required um the debt that was retired from the 2003 land
▶ 2:06:53 Francis X. Wright Jr.: acquisition what land was that for if you happen off the top of your head if you don't it's all right i don't i'd have to look at that all right information i think it was the expansion of the city yard the city yard yes thank you very much president khan next in queue we have alderman wright thank you mr chairman um i don't want to rehash too much of what we've already gone over but just for my purposes if no one else's debt service the standard for municipalities as I've always understood it is that magic 5% number trying to keep it below 5% is that a fair way to represent it as a non accountant finance person which I am for the shit for us yeah that's very young it's a very good figure given our capacity and our capability as far as new growth some
▶ 2:07:53 communities as you are aware can go up as high as 10 or 15 percent and some actually do a little bit more but we're very conservative at five okay and we've talked I'm sorry through all the finance and everything we have to fill out a debt statement to give to bond council and our it's based on your percentage of your assessed valuation and what we did in november we are we are able to by law borrow 187 million dollars have 187 million dollars in outstanding debt which is three times where we are today okay so the five percent is a good policy where we can work and take care of other departments and where we are today has a lot to do with what our bond rating is yes okay and if we were to approve this we would continue to be within that five percent zero to five
▶ 2:08:47 Francis X. Wright Jr.: percent correct okay and if memory serves annually we seem to visit the issue about the MWRA's debt service and that's somewhere north of 60 percent is that my memory or you're absolutely correct it's it's somewhere north of 60 percent and it really restricts them I think in a lot of ways on the operation side and that's one thing I'm proud that we've we recognize here is that we don't want to restrict ourselves on the operating side because their debt service and that's because of that type of debt service we see the rate increases that we do you know it's not your business but that's my understanding of the explanation we get annually um i don't want to jump ahead too much but i i guess the
▶ 2:09:41 Francis X. Wright Jr.: way i'm looking at this is um you don't get what you don't pay for you may not always get what you pay for and i guess our job is to make sure that's what happens but i do know this my life experience is if you don't pay for it you don't get it there's no no one's going to hand you something for nothing so if we've got this opportunity and we've got low interest rates and we have underutilized space which is in a building which throughout my decades here in Melrose I've heard is not a great building we can continue to use a colloquialism put lipstick on a pig or we can invest some real money in and I appreciate all your efforts and I look forward to getting the additional information that my fellow aldermen have asked for and I look forward to moving
▶ 2:10:41 Peter D. Mortimer: this item on thank you thank you thank you all right Thank You alderman right are there any other alderman wishing to be heard we see no other alderman wishing to hurt to be heard since we are under suspension are there any members the administration or some of the contractors and architects we have here who wish to make any closing comments before we call for the motion that is on the floor city planner gaffey please thank you i was just hoping to encourage the board to um to try to schedule a meeting you know within the next couple of weeks we can i mean i appreciate the desire for more information about the budget and we can absolutely provide that and some background on the master planning process which I can easily provide and
▶ 2:11:32 Denise Gaffey: would love to take you on a tour of the of the space so I'm just hoping we can maybe try to schedule tour within the next couple of weeks and perhaps schedule a continuation of this meeting within the next couple of weeks it would be great if we could meet back here in front of the full board in the first meeting in April simply because we really have an aggressive schedule I mean the materials that you're looking at tonight are very preliminary I mean based on a lot of planning work but they're still very preliminary and we have quite a bit of design work in order to get to the point in the fall where we can bid this project and stay on schedule so i'm just just wanted to throw that out there our interest in just trying to move this along
▶ 2:12:14 Peter D. Mortimer: thank you very much in as much as your comments seem to imply that the motion to hold this in committee is likely to prevail i can assure you as committee chair that i will do everything in my power to have another appropriation meeting should that message should that motion prevail and so we can have the full board meeting on this on april 6th our first meeting of the month president khan did i see your hand sir yeah um i understand your sentiment but we have a fairly significant obligation to make sure that we do what we need to do before we spend 5.3 million dollars and we will act with all deliberate speed but um we received most of this stuff tonight for the first time sometime after four o'clock uh and the way i look at things
▶ 2:13:08 is uh i need to have all the questions that i have in my mind answered uh before i take a vote on something like this so you know we will act as quickly as is prudent to move this thing along I'm sorry I didn't mean to put any undue pressure I'd my my real point is that we will make ourselves available and provide the information that you need as soon as we can and as quickly as we can I appreciate that and we appreciate I'm pretty familiar with the space due to my children's attendance at the high school so I will not be taking another tour of the open space I've been there many times but we do appreciate the offer that's been made for anybody who wants to to go that's all thank you Thank You president Kahn
▶ 2:13:53 Peter D. Mortimer: anybody else in the chamber wishing to be heard seeing none we have a motion on the floor to retain this order in committee and by president Kahn duly seconded by alderman Byrd seeing no further discussion all in favor please say aye any opposed hearing none this order will be held in committee our Our clerk of committee has been assiduously taking notes and has a list of the information. I'm sure she'll be sending out emails to the appropriate people. We'll get that information as fast as we can, process it, and we'll have another meeting on this matter at the earliest possible date. Thank you very much. Motion to adjourn, please? So moved. Second. We have a motion to adjourn by Alderman McAteer-Margolis, duly second by Alderman Forbes.
▶ 2:14:37 Peter D. Mortimer: All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, hearing none, the Committee on Appropriations is hereby adjourned. Thank you, one and all.