School Committee: December 17, 2024

Transcript captured from YouTube auto-captioning. No speaker labels; proper names and dollar figures occasionally misheard. Click any timecode to jump to that moment in the source video.

0:07 is Brian is Brian on Ryan is not here yet okay you should be here in a minute we know who’s gonna share I know we talked about it but yes David I’m gonna share yep you’re the okay yep and we tested it out already um Sarah and I got on a little bit early and Mike too I am going to admit all just so everyone knows

0:38 okay um just letting everybody know we are waiting on I believe one if not two of our Consultants still and so we’re going to give them one more minute and I don’t quite have Quorum yet so I’m just gonna um wait till I have quorum to call us oh you are here I didn’t didn’t see that pause yeah I just got in I just got so I will call us to order at 3 to I saw Jean Raymond is on the call so I think we have all of our consultants and I will hand it over to our assistant superintendent of finance and operations Mike piering to make introductions and to walk us through um next steps in this presentation great thank you so much Miss Fox uh so first I just want to introduce um our friends from leftfield

1:25 and from RDA Raymond Design Associates uh from RDA we have Jean Raymond and Molly Paris those are our design designers or our Architects and then from left field we have Lena long I don’t know if Brian D’s on yet and we have Davis Sanden uh also from a field those are our owners project managers uh by law we are required because this project is is an excess of $300,000 of public building construction to hire uh both an OPM and a designing firm so um with that uh also on the call we have um our two chair uh two school committee members Sarah Fox and Jen Schaffner and uh superintendent John Robo Robo uh Alicia Benjamin from the town finance

2:11 office uh Christ Morel my assistant business manager and Todd will be joining us momentarily so just for the record and I think I also saw uh Dan Fox maybe from uh the town Board of Select uh select board so uh just to give a little background um back in 2022 the town did approve an appropriation of$ 5.36 million for the replacement of a roof at the model head high school um at that time I believe I wasn’t here but the school administration uh submitted an application a statement of interest to the Massachusetts school building authority that would have been submitted in early 2023 the application period is only open in the spring and only for a couple of months each year uh and then they usually take 6 8 12 months to

2:57 review the applications and get back to people uh unfortunately the mobad higho School roof did not meet their requirements for age limit sorry uh did not meet meet the age requirement uh for a new roof so um we were denied our request to the mass School building authority and um through other reasons that I’m I’m unaware of we actually got the the project kicked off in early 2024 um when the previous administration uh reached out and did a request for services and left field was awarded the contract as our owners project manager shortly after that I did come on board July 1st and uh with the support in the efforts of left field we did another request for services for a

3:45 designer project designer and that was uh awarded to Raymond Design Associates and I have to say RDA has been um quite helpful to us he you know we we notified them that they had been awarded the contract or they would be awarded the contract but I had to go through our legal department and then the select board and then our school school committee RDA knowing the town of mobel head and having its familiar being familiar with mobble head I can’t get the other word out um they did get some pre-work done which which really got us a little bit of a a jump start some people may say well you’re already two years behind yes we are but from when we actually got the project moving RDA has been um a big partner with us to get some of these estimates done uh along with the prodding from left field so uh I believe I’ve covered

4:30 everything needed to cover in the opening I would like to turn it over to Lena long um David Jean Molly and Brian Brian’s here now so uh H Lena you have a presentation to put up yes sir I do great thank you okay um so as um Michael just said we we put together over the last seven months we’ve been um very busy uh leftfield was brought on in May of 2024 and we helped um the district procure a designer and that is how RDA has been brought on board RDA um over the last few months has been working on documenting existing conditions and the feasibility study report there was an infrared roof scan

5:16 done and also a construction estimate that was done um to review all the options we’re going to take you through about 10 slides today um and uh discuss each of the options in detail that were studied as part of the feasibility study um this brings us to today um with the subcommittee meeting um the budget summary so the 5.36 million that was appropriated that is $845,000 for designer and OPM and miscellaneous costs with construction costs at 4.2 million and contingencies at 236 and of that $420,000 has been um committed for left Fields contract and $425,000 for rda’s contract I’m going to turn it over to

6:02 Molly now for um review of the next few slides thank you so this is a view of the roof plan the existing roof plan Marblehead high school and uh We’ve designated roof areas and as Lena mentioned we performed infrared moisture testing uh the blue areas indicate all of the wet insulation that was detected so this is a test that uh detects trapped moisture beneath the roofing membrane in the insulation layer without disturbing the membrane and then they’ll do small test cuts to confirm that those areas are indeed wet so there you can see that there are a considerable number of areas spread throughout um mostly

6:50 areas A and B the green circles indicate uh fresh active leaks in the roof um that have been evidenced in the building interior so MPS is currently work working on getting those repaired um but these just happened in the major storm we had so they’re very current December 2024 and then I will say also that you can see um the rectangle the various siiz rectangles Lena if you could just point to them um that aren’t colored in but those are the rooftop units various rooftop units uh for hbac equipment that are on the building and next slide

7:33 just so this is a more detailed diagram again showing the wet areas and the leaking areas and then we Tred to break out each uh roof area with its own costs based on the cost estimates that were done um so that for various budget scenarios we can analyze uh what areas would fit in the budget depending what we’re looking at um the hbac equipment is always considered um part of the roofing scenario because the way that they’re installed they’re integral with the roof flashing so with any Roofing replacement um the cost for lifting this large equipment and setting it back down

8:23 on freshly flashed curbs is um is part of the roof recover construction cost um and so our process always in includes checking the condition of those units so that uh we understand what’s going to be involved with lifting them up and setting them back down and so next slide and I’ll turn it over to Jean who will speak about that equipment great so um as Molly said there’s a lot of equipment up on the roof um there’s a lot of words on this slide in the there’s a variety of pictures um but in the upper upper left um all the equipment’s 24 years old um it’s been subjected to a lot of weather

9:10 and a lot of Salt Air so there’s a lot of corrosion there’s also a lot of um just worn out Parts uh and various problems but as a summary there’s 43 exhaust fans Up on the Roof there are 20 comat compact condensing units for air conditioned portions of the roof there’s eight of these big rtus rooftop units that you know you can walk in a door and and there’s coils in there um there’s five heat recovery ventilators and there’s one makeup air unit which brings fresh air into the kitchen as the kitchen Hood exhausts a ton of air when it’s when it’s operating um I’m going to go to the

9:57 lower right hand side where there’s you know a quote in uh in bold and italics in summary this is oh and I apologize I’m going to back up we had a uh Garcia Gesa DUS sua ggd engineering do a um uh really an existing conditions analysis of all the rooftop units so this is quoting from their report which was quite detailed in summary all of the existing HVAC rooftop is either at or in its expected useful service life and should be considered for replacement as part of the upcoming roof

10:42 project so we could we could kind of ignore the situation uh we could lift up units and put them back down but you’d be left with um a lot of issues uh and then you’d have to come back and address them later and then you’d be paying kind of twice for a lot of the roof tie in for them so there’s two you know the uh second picture from the right with the Rusted you know steel door that’s a big rooftop unit serving the gym there’s two of those units you know both are at their end of their useful lives one is not even operational at this point uh there’s some units serving the locker

11:27 rooms that need Supply fan replacement but the recommendation is just to replace the whole unit um you know etc etc you can kind of read these things and I don’t want to take all your time doing it but there’s a number of units that have condenser coils that are packed with debris uh and just cleaning those or trying to repair them could cause even more damage to them which then Rel results in having a replace them in a lot of expense so the bottom line is we went back to the the district and said really uh you should be considering adding HVAC replacement to the scope of the roof work because you’re GNA have to

12:12 deal with all this stuff and you might as well do it

12:20 now so I think yep sounds good thanks Jean so as part of the feasibility study we studi these six options and we are bringing four of these options forward and recommending one of them um I’ll touch upon each of them briefly so option A is a full roof recover so as you remember we have 5.36 million do appropriated for the budget this option here is $11.56 million over that option A1 is the recommended option and that is a full roof recover and replacing all of the HVAC rooftop equipment that is 8.1 um 8.61 million over we also priced out option A2 if the town and District

13:06 wanted to do two separate projects completing the roof recover and then the roof HVAC recover that’s 11 Point um $1 million over budget we wouldn’t recommend this one as there would be um there would be double costs for um things like General conditions and um actually picking up and putting down the equipment and then we have option C which is this is that $5 5.36 million this would fit in fit within that Molly’s going to discuss um each of these options in a little further detail um but this one you would not be um re able to recover the whole roof to fit within the existing construction

13:50 budget right so to just go into a little more detail as Lena said um the roof recover option uh is slightly over your current budget um however the um there is you’ll see in red in the middle of the page um there’s existing what’s called R22 refrigerant in a number of the existing condensing units these are some of the smaller condensing units on the roof um so we do still have HVAC cost again like I said we have to lift them um and you know that includes disconnection and reconnection in order to disconnect the

14:36 uh smaller condensers that R22 refrigerant needs to be drained um and then they need to be recharged the the R22 refrigerant is no longer manufacturer and it comes at a premium cost um so as Lena touched on part of the reason that we would come to you and say uh that we recommend doing doing hbac work is because of the efficiency of the dollar spent with that approach um this option A is an inefficient option because you’re going to be coming in um in a few couple to several years and doing full hpac replacement these units are not going to the new units will not be the same size most likely as the units that are there

15:23 and so you’re going to be facing structural work to create new openings in the roof deck um which then carries structural cost uh I’m sorry um uh structural modifications will require more demolition of this new roof that you will have just put on um and then reflashing and patching um and it’s just a an efficient way to go about it can you go to the next

15:55 slide so here um we’re replacing the refrigerant lines um with the R22 refrigerant and the interior uh terminal units that are associated with them so you’d be having all new uh current refrigerant put in and one stop you know you’re not draining it recharging and then purging again and re and um going through the whole uh cost twice um and I I also wanted to clarify that the roof recover means that we are going we perforate the existing m membrane and then we’re going over that membrane with new coverboard and a new uh membrane fully adhered

16:43 system and uh so I think that’s all I have to say about this so this one is our recommended option because of the efficiency and get everything

16:55 done option A2 um again as Lena had touched on assumes that there would be roof recover one project and then the HVAC that comes next and you can see that the the um difference is nearly $2 and a half million doar uh so compared for doing it in one project versus two separate projects you incur at least that much um in duplicated General conditions hoisting rigging um repair costs um and duplication of effort for a product that in the end um your Roofing warranty may

17:40 be uh U nullified and um you you’re ending up with a lesser

17:50 product and then option C is okay we’re we’re going to stick to this budget what will your current budget um likely by you for new Roofing we still have to recharge and you know disconnect reconnect those ACC uh units you see there that’s still going to be part of the project no matter what and then I believe the next slide this is just putting it into a simple graphic to kind of wrap it up so we have those leaking areas in the wet installation highlighted again option A with the entire roof recover no HV vac replacement and um an additional debt

18:37 authorization of $1.56 million you get the whole roof recover and then you’re still left with the hbac issues that Jean was explaining and on the right option C if we stick with the existing budget um you can get most likely all of the roof areas shown in Gray but not roof areas J and D Ro area J is over the library that’s a sloped asphalt shingle roof and uh we have detected no signs of leaking there so far and then D is the gymnasium roof which has uh produced several minor leaks and a little bit of wet insulation but we feel that uh at least in this scenario all of the

19:25 majorly compromised areas are um included

19:34 we kept this pretty brief to um get straight to the point so thank you so much and I’ll let Lena close as

19:45 well um I’m GNA open it up to questions from the subcommittee in one moment I just want to um make a few clarifying points because there is some misinformation out there in the community um that the entire project the the scope of this entire project was bonded we did not out uh there was never an understanding that this would cover all new HVAC units when it was priced out um it was a single unit over the gym that was priced out um as part of the original project this the idea that all these units need to be replaced as something that was not um previously brought to town meeting or presented to um the committee prior to leftfield and RDA coming on and getting there and

20:33 getting this new information um the another piece of information that came to my attention um today actually um was that when this when the pricing in estimate was brought to town meeting that was based on an estimate provided by left field it is was brought to my attention today that um that number left field was asked kind of for a rough estimate and they took the square footage and multiplied it by the the estimated price per square foot to cover that roof which is what they were asked to do and they they absolutely did what they were asked to do it was not made clear to that time when we brought this project to um town meeting that the administration had not had someone get

21:18 on the roof and and take a look at everything so that was our past administration and um this is a I just want to assure everyone the estimate mes that have been provided by Le field all the way along through the brown project everything were very good tight estimates if anything um throughout that process what we saw was they they came in under budget when we when they delivered things their estimates were so tight David sandon’s Excel spreadsheet magic was um was totally on point so I have complete faith that these numbers will not be exceeded um now that they’ve gotten on the roof and it just was never um made clear quite honestly that these

22:04 estimates came from not being boots on the ground on the roof um and that is of no fault of left field no fault of RDA um what was asked of them was accomplished it was kind of not made clear to the rest of us that estimates were not based on eyes being on the the roof and on the product so I just wanted to make that clear um Jen I want to offer you the opportunity to ask any questions if you have them this was a very thorough um presentation so I do appreciate that from Gan Molly and Lena um yeah thanks sorry I’m I’m standing in for Al Williams who’s away so I haven’t been a part of this um I think that um one I know there were some questions out in the community around uh the timeline which I think Mike you

22:50 addressed a little bit at the beginning on how we got here but um and S I don’t know if you have um some details on you know how how these projects work over time um from the time of the approval at town meeting or at the ballot um to when we actually have um uh contracts ready to go and the project ready to

23:14 begin so Mike can you talk a little bit about the msba timing and how there’s an open window the initial Hope was that we would have Buy in from the msba which would give us some reimbursement but I’m going to ask Mike to talk about the timeline and when the windows open at the msba and how that lined up with our town meeting yeah that’s great um so so it’s my understanding this was approved in town meeting in 2022 which would have been what May June of 2022 um the first opportunity the school department would have had to submit a statement of Interest would have been January to March time frame of 2023 uh msba currently only opens up their statement of Interest once a year for approximately two to three months uh they do have two projects one is called an accelerated repair program that

24:00 that’s what we would have applied for uh the other project is the core project which is similar to the Brown School um when you’re when you’re actually doing a new school construction or a major renovation to a building um typically my experience I I’ve had a little bit of experience quite a bit actually with uh accelerated repair programs uh it’s usually six months at a minimum before you hear back from the msba inviting you into the next phase of the project so um the earliest I’m guessing we would have heard the absolute ear as we would have heard would have been the fall of 2023 um before we heard anything and I you know I can’t speak to that seven months between the fall of 23 and the spring of 24 five months um spring of 24 before we got an RFP RFS on the street

24:48 or request for services on the street in which left field was the um most uh highly rated um vendor that had submitted an application or a proposal so um there might have been a few months in the middle there and I can’t speak to that time frame I wasn’t here I know there was a lot going on in the district at that time there was taking up a lot of other people’s time so um you know the time frame well it seems like it’s been two years msba uh typically does uh spend a lot of time uh evaluating and crossing their eyes and dotting their tees uh and ultimately uh msba has a pretty strict guideline that that roofs typically have to be at least 20 but more 25 or 30 years old before they’ll accept AC them in and every year they ass set that guideline based on how many

25:34 applications they receive they only have so much funding so if 30 schools apply and 10 of them meet the guidelines and 20 don’t um they may set that guideline high enough so that the 10 schools who are in the highest need uh receive the funding and the other schools can reapply next year the other districts so that’s kind of been my experience I know with core projects it’s usually two or three or four times you apply before you get approved um accelerated repair usually they kick you off at least once maybe twice and um you know the accelerated repair program um I I do have to say that we just got an announcement today that the msba is only going to receive uh accept applications every other year after 2025 so January 25 we can start submitting

26:21 applications but they will not accept them until again January of 2027 is what I heard today for the accelerator repair the core program they’re going to every year but not the accelerator repair and uh my experience with the msba is if you think the past two years have been drawn out um typically msba uh projects are drawn out much longer uh because they have certain requirements uh and everything that we’ve done so far would have to be redone we’d have they would assign an OPM and they would assign a schematic designer um we wouldn’t have any say in those I don’t believe I know with the OPM we don’t but the schematic design we might did that I can’t I can’t recall exactly um and then it goes through many uh rounds of approvals by msba uh they have to do the feasibility study they

27:06 have to determine the best course of action it is usually a two-year project to get a roof uh from the time you actually approved and they assign a uh OPM to completion is at least two years so uh even if we applied this January we would not even see something probably even start until next January 26 which means we probably wouldn’t see a new roof completed until sometime in 2028 and that’s on the basis that we even get accepted in because our roof is still relatively young in comparison to other roofs out there and and what is the typical reimbursement for accelerator is it does it vary based on the Comm yeah it’s based on your community um I think mobble head’s probably in the 30 to 40% range I don’t I have not done a pro pro project here

27:52 project here project here um same as the other ones yeah probably would be yeah it would be the same reimbursement but certain things again are not eligible okay um and yeah so so to speak to that the the HVAC units would not be eligible for reimbursement am I correct in that Lena and and Brian and David is that you’re understanding also the it’s only the roof so the HVAC units would still be on the town of mobad to uh fund that 100% On Their Own that’s correct I believe you’re correct well okay um the only other question I had Sarah and it’s probably a little delicate um on the call today we don’t necessar have to answer it but just doing a back of the envelope the OPM and um design fees are about 25% of the

28:38 construction budget so I just wanted to at some point kind of understand how that works um doesn’t have to be right now but I would and I think you know the full committee may also want to understand that at some point yeah I will um I’m going to get with Lena after and just review the contract that was in place um by the previous administration and just um understand a little

29:07 better okay um now this could be a question for Mike Alicia’s on or actually to be perfectly honest I think David sandana is gonna probably the best one to answer this because he has the most historical knowledge I know we have some money left in the bonding of the brown school project and Alicia Benjamin did talk about this last Wednesday that it would be her suggestion at town meeting if I understand correctly that um that be repurposed um for the use of on this Capital project um does that number include the msba reimbursement because I I know that that msba reimbursement is still not fully complete is my understanding or when that reimbursement comes in do we actually have more money

29:53 left in that project that could be reassigned therefore not increasing any tax feas from what I’m aware they spent everything and then they included what they thought they were going to get from the msba so I didn’t fully borrow everything it hasn’t been fully B so there’s still another 1.6 million out there if there are additional items that come back as eligible from the msba then I may have to borrow those funds to cover

30:21 those but that number of 1.6 isn’t going to potentially get larger no great thank you for that information you’re

30:34 welcome okay so we absolutely will have to relay this information to the full committee um I think you were really clear on how we got here um the timeline seems you know a a matter of waiting on the msba pipeline and then when we got to last fall um I know at that point it be I think it was at least what was really to me it was more after the first of the year that um we became clear that we were going to be separating the projects from the town at one point we thought we might be doing those together um there might there might have been some cost savings if everyone did it together but it turned out that um the size of the Town Projects did not require all these additional steps of having an OPM and all those additional items so it was

31:20 actually in the best interest of the town and taxpayers to separate those out at that point and let those projects go under the threshold and by removing this this school project it it kept us only the school in that Threshold at which point it became a school project not a townwide project and that’s when we put out to bid um the RF put out the RFP out where we ultimately determined we would be going with left field and then the next step would be to do the next um stage of that which is where we ended up with RDA so um that’s kind of just to fill in that that void of information was that piece of um realizing it would it would not behoove the other roof

32:08 projects to be held up because of the size of this one um if I get that got that incorrect at all please you know let me know um so we have some decisions to make as a school committee these are time-sensitive decisions um we have a meeting on Thursday we will be relaying this um and Mike pierine and Alicia Benjamin have been working very very closely together and we’ll continue to do so to talk about the financial implications and what what the recommendation is of those two you know Minds coming together on how to approach this um what are the funding mechanisms what are the Avenues um and what is the best choice for balancing the needs of

32:54 this project and the and um the fiscal um realities so I want to make sure that people’s questions on the committee have been answered um for anybody else on the public just feel free you can come we’ll be redoing this update um to the full committee on Friday this really was for our Consultants to be able to make their presentation which is also going to be available on YouTube for folks to see um and then we’ll be recapping on Thursday Jen do you have any more questions uh no just you reference Friday do you mean I mean Thursday I I apologize so this will be I don’t have it on the agenda it’ll be part of your update for it will be under the subcommittee updates yes yes absolutely

33:40 um which we both can be making because you’re the standin for Al right now um so thank you very much Lee David Molly Jean and Brian um we will forward any further questions we have that arise on Thursday and we will absolutely be working through the subcommittee and the committee to um get answers and to continue this movement quickly thank thank you I will Jour us at