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[Jenny Graham]: Do we want to get started? I see somebody in the waiting room. Do we? I don't know who that is. Okay. Okay. We'll let them in and see what happens.
[Kenneth Lord]: No, no, no. That's the, we think that's the Zoom bomber.
[Jenny Graham]: Oh, okay.
[Kenneth Lord]: They try to join every single meeting.
[Jenny Graham]: Oh, okay. So just leave them.
[Kenneth Lord]: Yeah.
[Jenny Graham]: Got it. Um, okay, then let's carry on. Um, okay, so I'll. Kick us off here, so please be advised that on December 8th. 2025 at 5 PM, there'll be a strategic and capital planning subcommittee meeting held through remote participation via zoom. This meeting is being recorded. The meeting can be viewed live on Medford Public Schools YouTube channel through Medford Community Media on your local cable channel, which is Comcast 9, 8, or 22, and Verizon channel 43, 45, and 47. Since the meeting will be held remotely, participants can log in or call by using the following numbers. So meeting ID is 951-8266-2234. And questions and comments can be submitted during the meeting by emailing jennygrammedford.k12.ma.us. Those submitting must include the following information, your first and last name, your Medford Street address, and your question or comment. So I will call the roll. Member Ruseau? Present. Member Reinfeld? Present. And Member Graham? Present. So three present, zero absent. Um, okay, so since we met last. And actually, just right immediately before this meeting, I was trying to do some work to get our winding conversation onto 1 page. And I think I have a plan to do that. So I wanted to talk to you all through that. And then I have some specific questions to move things into the right place. That we can go through and then if there's any members of the public who have questions or comments, we can hear from them as well. So that sounds like a plan. Okay, so let me share my screen. Okay, can you all see my screen? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So. As I was looking at this, I had some question, I just had some questions about some of these projects that are in progress. Namely, like, are they finished or are they still in progress so that I can put them in their rightful home? So the district wide security updates.
[Kenneth Lord]: Yep, so that is an ongoing project with cyber calm as the vendor motor rollers, the manufacturer. They have completed probably 95% of the work at the high school. Same at maybe 90% of veterans. They're working at Andrews. They're at Curtis Tufts now, actually tonight. And they hope to be completed by like the mid-January range. So they've got all the wiring run. They're now doing the device installation. So they're going around installing cameras, door hardware. We're training users. We've got the halo sensors, which are vape and noise detectors up and running at the high school and the McGlynn. We actually have some training on Friday scheduled with the high school and the McGlynn and Andrews admin team about the software and searching and all that kind of stuff. So it's in full swing and we hope to be completed mid-January.
[Jenny Graham]: So I just said January, February because, you know, blizzards and snow and whatnot. Okay.
[Erika Reinfeld]: And then that's great. That's elementary, the work hasn't begun or that is also 90%.
[Kenneth Lord]: They've got all the wiring done at the elementary schools. They'll go do the hardware next. So I would call them 50% done, the elementaries. Yeah. At the high school, they did all the wiring, all the devices, a few punch list items left.
[Jenny Graham]: And you said 50%?
[Kenneth Lord]: I would say at the elementaries, because all the wiring is done at the Brooks, the Roberts, and Mississippi. They need to go now install the devices and configure things and put the server in. And it's roughly, I would say, that's half the battle. That's the hard stuff to do. The easier stuff is putting out the devices.
[Jenny Graham]: And then the next one was the freight elevator and motor controls at MHS.
[Kenneth Lord]: Yes, so the motor has been replaced. They found some additional issues. They were replacing those, some parts have been replaced because it's not been used for long enough for a while. And then they are going to do an inspection. So we hope that's finished in the next couple of months. Elevators are notoriously hard to get everything done and inspected and whatnot.
[Paul Ruseau]: And expensive.
[Kenneth Lord]: Yes, very.
[Jenny Graham]: Got it. And then the network closet mini splits, I had this as part of the HVAC project. Is that still true?
[Kenneth Lord]: So that's a good question. We actually had a discussion about that last week, as we reviewed the budget and started to talk to jail about the presentation they're going to be doing about the project coming up in December 15 at school committee. So original the original budget for the project listed $180,000 to do the mini splits at all of the schools. Um, so the Roberts was done path this past summer and was actually the last fiscal year. We have not done the Brooks or the Mesa tuck the McGlynn or the Andrews. Um, but now they're kind of saying that that money was not part of that project that was moved into the school. Budget. That was what I was told the end of last week. Um, I do have extraordinary repair money with that's listed as part of the work to be done. Um, but those have not been launched yet.
[Jenny Graham]: So do we have funding or do we not have funding?
[Kenneth Lord]: So there is money in the extraordinary repair project that could be put towards it. The extraordinary repair project has a lot of things that need to be addressed in there. Um, and so we're looking at, you know, what we can afford this year and potentially fault something next year if necessary, but that's something that Noel and I and Jerry are working on. Um,
[Paul Ruseau]: Ken, who said that the money was moved into the schools?
[Kenneth Lord]: I believe it was Brenda. Brenda Pike was talking about it, because we were working with JLL talking about where the change orders are and how those are being funded and the extended time of the project. And so there's three lines outside of the project. One is the mini splits, the other is the McGlynn roof, and then contingency for the roof.
[Paul Ruseau]: I guess I don't know what that means, though. Like, was the allocation we got for July one, just assume to include this amount or additional funds. I don't know what that means moved into the school budget.
[Kenneth Lord]: It was a little foggy to me. I know that the original from Jerry, that the original, um, extraordinary repair line was submitted much higher. And then at the end in June, in June, when the budget was finally resolved, that it got cut back. So I don't know if that's part of the, where the money kind of went and it's not all there or not. Um, so the extraordinary repair list that I have, as far as what was, what was the project assigned to it is much greater than what was left in the budget at the end of the, when the budget was finally approved.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay. Um, I know Noel is on the call. Um, Noel, can we get, can we take the fuzziness away on this somehow and find out, you know, the funds that were, those were funds that were still in the city side, if I'm correct. or were those on the school side already in last fiscal year?
[SPEAKER_00]: So they started off on the city side. Well, no, I apologize. They started off on the school side when we wanted an extra about $600,000 in extraordinary maintenance compared to what we finally approved of. In June, the mayor allocated a couple of, worked with Peter I had to pull those projects with Jerry for a couple of free cash projects that was approximately $400,000, $400,000 to $500,000 earmarked for a few of the extraordinary projects that Peter had wanted to put in to start July 1, that we moved to that area. And then we took on, Jerry and myself kind of put this under our extraordinary maintenance umbrella. to either finish this year and or move to next fiscal year, depending on how much money we had left. As we were, A, completing the budget and looking to see what we could actually take on fully shorting maintenance.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, so it sounds like this wasn't part of our fiscal year 25 budget. It was additional funds on the city side that were free cash. They didn't get used in time and then they were just sort of treated as, well, here's your FY26 allocation. Figure it out.
[Jenny Graham]: I think that's what happened. So I was involved with those free cash asks. And there were many split.
[Paul Ruseau]: That is not me. Do not admit that person. Pretty good. I was wondering if somebody would get smart enough to do that.
[Jenny Graham]: So those asks never included the McGlynn and the Andrews.
[Kenneth Lord]: Right. That was what I understood too.
[Jenny Graham]: I can find the documentation about that because I wrote it. Let me see if I can dig it up. But it was never intended to be part of, not for those many splits, I don't believe. But I will go back and check my notes. Um, so this work has not been started.
[Kenneth Lord]: Nope. It's not been specter quoted yet. Only the Roberts has been done. It's done at the end of last year. So I've got the information to put the spec out, but then we also have several other items in the extraordinary repairs. We need to get through. We've got, um, the main office AC air conditioning at the high school, the Brooks, the Mesa tuck, the Andrews, the McGlynn split AC units. We've got, um, some auditorium seating work, the Karen railings, if that doesn't get done this year. And then we also have the Brooks turf and the repairs and all the drainage work there.
[Unidentified]: Go ahead, Erica.
[Erika Reinfeld]: I was just going to ask, do we have the, how much it costs to do that at the Roberts? And is that translatable? Just thinking.
[Kenneth Lord]: So I'm taking that using the Roberts as an example, I would estimate that the Brooks is about $35,000. The Mississippi is another $35,000. The McGlynn and Andrews, if you just do the network rooms, the McGlynn's about 50 and the Andrews is about 35. Those are rough estimates. And then the high school office air conditioning, just doing the high school office itself is about $20,000. Those are my rough estimates at this point.
[Jenny Graham]: So we can maybe get to the bottom of this and then I can add those rows appropriately once we have clarity on that.
[Paul Ruseau]: I mean, I just want to be clear. I'm worried that things we didn't think of as our budget could lead to the end of the year if we spend all of the budget on the things we were going to spend it on to this, uh-oh, we're out of money, and I don't want to be a news story. So I mean, this isn't millions of dollars, but at the same time, we expected this money to not be part of this budget. that we've approved, so spending it outside of our approval is a concern. So I know we'll know more, but thank you.
[Jenny Graham]: OK. Can the fields flashing?
[Kenneth Lord]: At the McGlynn, that was part of the project, and that's been repaired.
[Jenny Graham]: OK, so complete.
[Kenneth Lord]: Yep. They did the liquid applied roof, the whole thing.
[Jenny Graham]: Okay, then I have from from last year bike rack modernization at McGlynn Andrews and NHS and that it was grant funded by the CPC. And it was in progress. Do we know anything about that?
[Kenneth Lord]: So, I know the bike racks themselves are complete at McGlynn and Andrews and then we had 3 bike repair stations. Both the McGlynn and the Anders have been installed. The high school, I literally just met, the voc is going to pull the pad for it. We have it here to install it in front of the high school. Yay.
[Jenny Graham]: So McGlynn.
[Kenneth Lord]: And Anders, they're done. Oh, that was done. They completely did that for us.
[Jenny Graham]: High school nearing completion. Yep. OK. And then I had MHS classroom phone access, no capital needed, but the project was going on.
[Kenneth Lord]: So what was left, so when they did the Zoom phone integration, they bought new phones for all of the existing phones in the district. So that was all the McGlynn Andrews Elementary classrooms, they had phones, they replaced phones, and then they replaced the phones in the high school where there were phones, but that was not in the classrooms. The idea was to take the old phones from the other schools, repurpose those into the high school classrooms. Our IT team is still working on that. It's quite labor intensive to repurpose those old phones. We've got most of the phones done. We're now having to backtrack and set up network ports and access and everything else. So it is a project ongoing. We are short-staffed in IT right now with someone being out on medical leave for a while. So we're doing the best we can to get that going and hope to do that this year.
[Jenny Graham]: Stick with me for a minute.
[Erika Reinfeld]: We're going to skip down to this other bucket of things. We still don't need new capital for that, right?
[Kenneth Lord]: No, no, no, no, no. It's confirming. It's really just a labor issue of getting the work. Yeah. Yeah.
[Jenny Graham]: Great. Thanks. OK. So the other status questions I had, we had this historic assessment of the front stairwell for Curtis Tufts. And last year, we said we had an application pending with the CPC.
[Kenneth Lord]: I have no knowledge of that going forward at all. So I don't know if the application was I have no knowledge that we ever got funding for that or the application was approved or not approved. I can check into that.
[Jenny Graham]: Okay. And so I can update that once we get that information. And I think my other question for maybe for this group is, um, whether given the decisions to integrate Curtis Tufts on the main high school campus with the high school project, um, whether, we should be pursuing this at all at the moment, or is it something that we should be pursuing because the state of affairs is that bad?
[Kenneth Lord]: My understanding of the stairs are not in great shape. I've seen them myself. There's not good railings, things like that. They're not falling apart, but they're not in good shape.
[Jenny Graham]: These are the stairs outside?
[Kenneth Lord]: Yes, the front steps.
[Jenny Graham]: Okay. So let's check on the application and then we can, Ken, you can make a recommendation on where you think it belongs on this list.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay. I did just check applications. I don't see it as a FY25 or FY26 application.
[Kenneth Lord]: And I can search our internal records to see what the status of the application, whether we filed it, if we wrote it, if I'm not sure.
[Jenny Graham]: Yeah. OK. So we'll put a pin in that one for now. So here's the rest of the network, many splits, Roberts complete. So we talked about that one already. And then the drainage at the fields.
[Kenneth Lord]: This is the Brooks?
[Jenny Graham]: Yep.
[Kenneth Lord]: So we have quotes for the turf repair, for the enlarging of two drains, for the installing of the berm. Because of the total cost, it needs to be all sent out to bid. So we need to write a bid spec and hopefully get that out to bid for the spring to have the work done. But it's gonna be a cost issue with the other items, whether or not we can afford it this fiscal year or not.
[Jenny Graham]: So we are thinking that it could be FY25.
[Kenneth Lord]: Potentially, yeah. I mean, if we can hold true to what we have in the... 26.
[Erika Reinfeld]: We're in 26.
[Kenneth Lord]: Yeah, FY26, yeah. Be done in the spring, hopefully.
[Jenny Graham]: And this 22.5 includes the repair and the drainage?
[Kenneth Lord]: That number's low. It's closer to 30. And that's from the estimates we have from one vendor. When we spec it all together, maybe it'll... go down a little bit, but we've got to get that onto the street to get some quotes. We can't just, because of the amount of money, it's over $10,000. We can't just have one vendor give us a quote. We have to get multiple kids.
[Jenny Graham]: Got it. So I think my idea is that We would have a completed project section, so anything that's complete would sort of float out of those 2 categories. We were just talking about would float up to completed projects. Then we would cover the accelerated repair projects. Sorry, then we would cover the in process, like, the funded projects, which is primarily all things like McGlynn. Andrew's HVAC that's in progress, then we would cover. The accelerated repair projects, and then we would have just 1 category for, like. Future as yet unfunded unfunded projects. Does that make sense to everybody? Sure, yes. Okay. So forget about all the things we've just talked about. I wanted to. skip down to the future unfunded projects. So the sort of timeline starts at FY27. And these are all the things that we talked about a couple of weeks ago.
[Kenneth Lord]: Actually, we were on the first tab of the sheet, the prioritized list. That's where we'd work from the last meeting.
[Jenny Graham]: I think it's the same, though.
[Kenneth Lord]: Well, it's a lot of added stuff, because this has all the added stuff from the facilities condition assessment report. Which would not be on the capital plan. I don't believe it is maybe it is maybe this was the probably prioritize it at the last meeting.
[Kenneth Lord]: And then I made some changes to push things out as we discussed.
[Jenny Graham]: Okay, so I think my idea is that we would. port all of these things over onto the capital plan, which I can do. The one thing I was thinking about, Ken, is that we have all of these items down on the bottom here that are like all the pieces and parts right from the facilities conditions assessment. And so I think my vision was perhaps to say like, In total, at each building, here's what we're recommending for allocation over the coming years. And then with an acknowledgement that once you know how much money that we have, we can figure out the sequencing, as we were talking about last time, of the most important work to be done. Like, are we going to do all the doors at the same time? Or are we going to do doors in one place? You know what I mean? So that all can be considered by you. as you look at what your staff has capacity to do. and all the other work happening in the district so that we're not rendering buildings inoperable because we have too many things going on, right? During various points in the summer or whatever. So I think my vision was to just simply try to sort of wrap all of these up together so that we could say like, over the next five years, this is the recommended investment. And then down here, like this could just be like, like a bigger description of what the need is. And we could talk, we could tally up by school. Like what's the, what's like that net total for the school.
[Kenneth Lord]: And what's not in those lines in that FCA item area is the money to study and develop specifications. So we had talked about the money necessary to develop specifications for the fire alarms, for instance, and the paving.
[Jenny Graham]: Yep. We have that here, so we could drop those in and then spec out those estimated amounts. Does that make sense to everybody? It feels like there's so much information and you need all of that to tick off what's being completed and whatnot. At the same time, like, trying to get all of this onto something digestible, not just for us, but for, like, the rest of the school committee and the mayor and the council, because ideally, this is going to go with a memo that says, here's a recommendation. This is the amount of free cash that we are or allocation that we are seeking. So that work can begin enough by 27.
[Kenneth Lord]: I have had communication with Niner in the mayor's office. They're looking for a spreadsheet with a specific format to send to the, I'm dropping a blank on the name of the firm that does their capital planning. I'm going to see. Oh shoot, what is it? I'll find it. Hollings Group is it? call and center. Yes. So they want a spreadsheet ASAP listing all the projects on their spreadsheet format to send to the call and center.
[Erika Reinfeld]: How close is their format to what we've got here or the simplified version that we presented last year to the full school committee? Completely different. Yeah.
[Paul Ruseau]: Can we see that? Because I just want to make sure. Yeah.
[Jenny Graham]: I think Nina needs to understand that we have a capital planning process here that we are like literally just, and we can certainly pass this information to the calling center and ask them to, you know, let us know if they have questions or have a meeting with whoever they need.
[Kenneth Lord]: Um, yes, they've been asking this information for a while. And I explained that to her that, you know, we are going through our strategic capital planning committee and that was going to school committee. Um, so they're looking for this, like, ASAP after that.
[Jenny Graham]: Okay, well, we can put it on the next agenda. That's pretty close to ASAP. Okay, and I can connect with the mayor and Nina as well, just to give them an update.
[Kenneth Lord]: I can share this with you now if you want. So it's like one project per page.
[Jenny Graham]: Oh my God, this is nothing like what, oh well.
[Paul Ruseau]: This will take exorbitant amounts of time.
[Erika Reinfeld]: Yeah.
[Paul Ruseau]: Well, I mean, we have a, I don't know, why did we have a plan and process if we're just gonna do something else?
[Kenneth Lord]: But I don't know what role the Collins Center comes in. Are they going to be coming back and advising us to make changes to our capital plans?
[Paul Ruseau]: Well, that's not an option.
[Kenneth Lord]: I don't know what role they play in the process. I don't either.
[Jenny Graham]: I see what I can find out.
[Erika Reinfeld]: Yeah, this is like completely different. Was it our goal? It was not our goal to present this at the December 15th meeting. We're looking at this in presenting in January, February, because our hard deadline is grant application deadlines for CPC.
[Jenny Graham]: I mean, last year we presented it and passed it in December because we were ready. Right. And I think we're ready to do that again. We're not ready to fill one of these out for every single project. But we are ready to do what our approved policy dictates that we do.
[Paul Ruseau]: I mean, a lot of these questions impact on operating expenses are, I hope some of the, many of these are just recommended, because like, how long would that take to even calculate? It's just an Excel spreadsheet.
[Jenny Graham]: So yeah, I can't, there can't actually be required fields. But I think given all the information we have, like that we maybe need to have a conversation with the call-in center so that we can figure out a better path forward.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, I mean, I don't mind this format at all. What I do mind is that we're going to make changes to our spreadsheet on a regular basis. How do we get those into this every single time there's an update?
[Jenny Graham]: Well, it could be that what goes on this is just some view of the specific ask that we make rather than every single thing. So whatever the FY27 ask is, maybe those things get formed eventually. I don't know.
[Erika Reinfeld]: Let me see what I think. There's a big question here in terms of project name, even the location. Is all elementary schools a reasonable location, or are they looking for four versions of the same piece? Yeah. So definitely a conversation with them about what they're going to do with this information, how it gets integrated.
[Kenneth Lord]: And then how does the accelerated repair parts go in here? Right.
[Erika Reinfeld]: I mean, I haven't known exactly when to bring this up, but the other piece of this is going to be, how does this fit in in revenue planning for, or in allocations for the new high school and crafting a potential debt exclusion? But that's a whole other layer, but it's one we need to be thinking about. was what fit in this form? Not the form, the decisions. If the city is doing their capital planning, some of the money that is being used for buildings, presumably, we're thinking about what will the city absorb from non-reimbursable expenses, what will go into a debt exclusion, what won't. And it's not too early to start having those conversations. It was not.
[Jenny Graham]: I've not been asked to be part of any of those conversations as yet, so I can find out.
[Erika Reinfeld]: I mean, I'm happy to put a resolution that we ask for that plan from the city as part of the capital planning, but we need to get our spreadsheet. We need to get our capital ducks in a row to say what we know our expenses to be for our requests. for the continuing maintenance of our schools. OK.
[Jenny Graham]: OK. So if I go back to screen two. This was the order in which we described the need. I will port these all over to the one-page spreadsheet. Well, it'll probably be more than one page, but then we'll have completed.
[Erika Reinfeld]: This capital progress tab, the third tab down there.
[Jenny Graham]: Yes. Yep. So it'll basically jump in here.
[Erika Reinfeld]: And is it, I think it's probably reasonable to, we're going to study things all together because it doesn't make sense to, oh no, there was one, there was at least one project here that we were going to stagger the studies and the.
[Paul Ruseau]: I think that's the top one there.
[Kenneth Lord]: Yeah. The ARP is staggered because they have dates where you have to approve the money and do them. You can't join those together. The fire alarms, you may do multiple schools the same year for studying. Because of code issues, I wouldn't plan those too far in advance. The network refresh phase two is not allocated. I spoke to Jerry and knew all about that. So the only phase one was allocated money. Ken? Yep. Can you remind us what phase two was? Phase two is the wireless and network switches at the elementary schools, the middle, and the two middle schools. Phase one was the core switches at the elementaries, all the switches at the high school, and all the wireless at the high school. Okay, good. Thank you. It's still underway. I did get some more information about the playground renovation. Um, I spoke with someone in Alicia Hunt's office, and she got me into contact with Copley-Wolf, and I gave them a broad spec of what we were looking for for a design, and they suggested it'd be about $100,000 for the design, not including site and civil work. So I put a $150,000 number. You may remember that. Habib had suggested it was like $350,000. Yeah. Theresa Dupont was like, well, it's probably closer to $200,000. So that money, that number is coming more into focus as far as what a study of those three playgrounds might be. Keep in mind that the CPA, Theresa was suggesting they'd want to see them as three separate projects for fun.
[Erika Reinfeld]: And was that a purely architect design, or are we looking at inclusive design? Because one of the strengths of the McGlynn project was the community input and that it was a design that came out of.
[Kenneth Lord]: It was a design based upon what we wanted. So we would have to give input of all the things we wanted. Yeah.
[Jenny Graham]: Yeah, and Copley-Wolf is who did that project for us.
[Kenneth Lord]: Yeah, that's right.
[Jenny Graham]: Yeah.
[Kenneth Lord]: And if you speak to the DPW, you would ask it. They had room and bandwidth to do a lot of these paving projects. They do not. They can do small repairs, but they can't do a parking lot or a whole bunch of sidewalks, things like that. They farm all that kind of stuff out.
[Erika Reinfeld]: OK. Well, I feel like those are free cash. That's free cash ask. That's not. School budget built for sure. For sure.
[Jenny Graham]: Okay, so I think. If I just sort of, like, merge these 2 spreadsheets together, we'll have something presentable. I will leave this piece of it intact so that. We all can work from the places in this document that makes sense for us, but.
[Paul Ruseau]: I think that's- I like this format better, Jenny.
[Jenny Graham]: You what?
[Paul Ruseau]: I like this tab's format better, by the way.
[Paul Ruseau]: I know, I just- What do you like about it? Can you switch to the other one? Yeah, it just feels more structured. That's the main difference. but whatever, I don't care the format.
[Erika Reinfeld]: I mean, I think that's probably true. I think what we need to present to the larger school committee and then eventually the mayor and city council and the mayor's mayor capacity rather than school committee capacity is that executive summary of what we're asking for, what we're putting in our budget, what we're asking for from the city side and that timeline. Yeah. I just, I think the snapshot is what says these are our priority projects for this year and how we're paying for them. These are our priority projects for next year and how we're paying for them. I liked what we did last year.
[Paul Ruseau]: I love your memory, Erica. It was digestible.
[Erika Reinfeld]: I was able to say, OK, this is how much we're spending this year and how much of it is coming from the school budget. But I fully grant that we didn't have the luxury of this detail from the assessment, which is hugely useful. And Ken is nodding vigorously. This is the level of detail we need to actually manage the project on it. But to get the approvals,
[Kenneth Lord]: Yeah, just have an outside agency come up and say, this is what you need to do. Gives it credence, documentation, backup. Yeah. Yeah. Massive.
[Jenny Graham]: I'm just trying to, I think there just might need to be like, we just might, I don't know, maybe we could just add a couple of columns or something. All right. Let me think. think about if we could do that. I just, I do think it's helpful visually for people to see like chunks of things, like here's completed, here's in progress, here's what's funded. Because otherwise, like, it's just like, it's overwhelming unless you're like really willing to dive into the details. And not everybody always is. So. Okay, yeah, let me see if I can make that work and then we can get ready to present it. So, which I think we can be ready to do next week, unless there's any reason you all think we should wait until January.
[Paul Ruseau]: I think January is already a little funky.
[Jenny Graham]: Yeah.
[Kenneth Lord]: I'm more concerned with what we have to report to the city.
[Jenny Graham]: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I mean, I will follow up with the mayor and Nina in the next day or so and report back, Ken, what I find out.
[Erika Reinfeld]: Yep. And do you still have, I think you were the one who presented that spreadsheet last year. Me? Yes. Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, I'll try to find it too.
[Erika Reinfeld]: Yeah, I'm currently looking at the Google Drive and I will not find it before this meeting ends. I can guarantee that.
[Paul Ruseau]: It was March 26th, 2024. We were later, wait, no. That's not right. That's not right.
[Jenny Graham]: Yeah, there were just a handful of, there was just a legend on the top, which I have. Oh, I found it.
[Paul Ruseau]: All right. Put it in the chat since I need to see it to have my memory work.
[Erika Reinfeld]: Yeah, it's going to be a drive link that only people with access to the school committee drive will see. But wait, now I just lost my Zoom window. I think this is it. It's very tiny. I'm in the process of downloading it so I can actually look at it.
[Paul Ruseau]: Oh, yes, and it's crooked.
[Erika Reinfeld]: Where's that rotate button? Yeah, and it's oriented, right? Tools, rotate. Yeah, that's the spreadsheet. Yeah. Oh, yeah, that's a scan of the spreadsheet, isn't it? That's what that is. Yes. Ken, have you seen this?
[Kenneth Lord]: I have drafts of, I have the prior two years that Jenny had given me. That's what we created this year's from. We took this year's from last year's copy that started editing it. Right, because this is. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
[Jenny Graham]: Yeah, this is the capital plan tab.
[Kenneth Lord]: Yep. Yeah. Yep, from the prior year. Yep.
[Jenny Graham]: Yep. So if we get this cleaned up, it can probably look like that. Sure.
[Erika Reinfeld]: Is there any moving around of things that we need to do in this meeting in terms of integrating our priorities from the facility review with our priorities from last year for the next fiscal years? Like we know accelerated repair is the top priority because that is dependent on those dates.
[Paul Ruseau]: and free money.
[Erika Reinfeld]: Yes.
[Jenny Graham]: Yeah. Well, but I think like I'm considering those somewhat separate, the council will, the council will take care of those approvals in January. That's already identified. Um, the thing that we still have to work on Ken and I is just coming up with the number for feasibility that we're going to authorize. So, so that's just a separate thing.
[Kenneth Lord]: We've asked a few different people. We talked to left field. Suzanne reached out to superintendents. We're not getting any clear information from anybody. I'm not surprised. Really disconcerting. Once we get through one of them, I think it was Robert's first. Once we get one done, we'll be able to inform the other two how we will budget for those. I don't know if we budget a number knowing that we might have to raise it once we start negotiating with the assigned team. you know, so we don't inflate this huge number that they designed to their budget. You know what I mean?
[Jenny Graham]: Yeah. Yeah. And we, um, we had that conversation when I spoke with the finance task force and they understand that there's like a lot of just gray area in this number. Um, so I think they're just looking for us to do what we can to come up with something that is reasonable. And if they're, if it has to change, we'll deal with it at that time.
[Kenneth Lord]: The only worry I have is this has to be voted on, and it has to be voted on with the MSBA language. So I don't know if we say, we approved $10,000 for this, and then they say that's not enough, but they haven't given us clarity. There might be some back and forth at that point.
[Jenny Graham]: Yeah, we talked about that as well. I think there's a decent plan to address that.
[Erika Reinfeld]: I think in preparing the spreadsheet, one question that I will have, since we can't answer it in this meeting, but is how much are we deviating from our fiscal year 26 plan that we approved last year? Are we still within the amount that we approved last year for the plan? Have we gone over? Have we gone under? Are we bumping something from 27 to 28 because 26 was fuller or that?
[Jenny Graham]: So I think what didn't go great last time is we built a plan. And we said, these are things we recommend proceeding with. I think it was not clear enough what the ask was when it was passed off. And so what ultimately happened was there was spot funding of certain things that floated up. that I helped broker between myself and the rest of the finance task force, which is fine. But I think this time, we need to say this is the ask for free cash funding. so that these projects can kick off in FY27. I think the timeline of the projects was a little bit more all over the place the last time as well. There were some things that had to start right away. So I think we're at a more planful point now. And we can say, this is an ask of free cash in FY26 so that work can happen in FY27. Right.
[Erika Reinfeld]: That's great, and I just think my question is, what did these new projects that we discovered through the facilities assessments do to that ask? Did we just insert a whole bunch of new things, and so we're asking for a lot more than we anticipated asking for? Just understanding the magnitude of that deviation.
[Jenny Graham]: Well, I think we knew last year that we were doing this assessment. We heavily budgeted for the assessment. So I think there will be a several million dollar ask to feed FY27. So I think it's going to take a little bit of a memo that says, we did this assessment. It revealed this. here's our capital plan, it addresses FY, so the ask for right now is this, and this is what it will enable us to do, which are the highest priority items as justified by this very long, detailed report.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah. So thinking about longer term than even our plan here, we're not going to have to spend this kind of money every year forever. We're going to have to spend, you know, the appropriate amount to maintain the buildings, but we're not going to have to try and catch up forever. And so like, are we thinking if we follow this plan that like in five years, will be sort of set to do the normal expected things and stop asking for multiple millions a year, or is it seven years or 10 years? I'm just wondering if, Ken, I mean, I know that's, you know, where's your crystal ball, right? But, you know, if we did everything on this plan, and regardless of what it costs, we just did everything on the plan, at the end of the day, everything on the FCA should be tidied up, all the big ticket items are done, and we can, I just don't want anybody in the public, the mayor, to think that every year forever, we're gonna be asking for millions and millions and millions to do this stuff, and I just, I don't think that's cool.
[Kenneth Lord]: I would think if you completed all the items in the FCA, which is a lot, and the three accelerated repairs for the Brooks and Roberts and Missituk, you would be in excellent shape. You would still need to do things going on. And that assumes that the high school project completely gets funded and get completely finished. Because if the high school project doesn't, you've got a boatload of stuff in this building you'd have to deal with. Yeah.
[Jenny Graham]: And I think the other thing that we have done is we've dramatically increased the amount of like, Operating budget repair money funding that. We have historically had in the budget, right? So it may still not be. Completely right sized, but it is dramatically closer than it was like, 2 years ago. So I think the other thing is, like, why do you have all of this deferred? Maintenance that is has this huge price tag. It's because you under invested for an extended period of time and now like bigger repairs are needed. So. To me, yeah, yeah, and the buildings are getting older, right? So there's there's and they were all built at exactly the same time. So it's kind of not shocking that. They would all need the same things at the same time. Like, we built 5 schools all at all at once. Right? So that's not.
[Erika Reinfeld]: Yeah, it's not surprising. I think in that case, maybe this is a comment for Noel, I think it's really important to emphasize the fact, the ways in which the school budget has accommodated this, that it's not an extraordinary, that we are, that the school, that we have gotten closer to right-sizing this within the school budget. And so the asks outside of that are not for everything and they're not, mad grabs for the cash, that this is really thoughtful in saying what the school budget can absorb in terms of general repairs, maintenance, everything coming due, and extraordinary maintenance of being able to be flexible when something else comes due that we didn't know was going to come due. So I think that's just a communication point, but I think it's really essential to make when we're talking about these numbers and looking at what a new high school is going to cost. And I really appreciate what you said about identifying that if the high school doesn't get funded, these are the new things that are going to be part of this budget. And these are the things that go away if we have funding for a high school.
[Kenneth Lord]: And the feasibility study will give you that. It's going to give you the repair only option. It's going to tell you how much it's going to cost just to repair the building to a functional code compliance state in its current layout that doesn't meet your educational needs, but still. So you'll have that big number there to compare to.
[Erika Reinfeld]: So that's a few months away, I admit. But I just want to be really clear that this plan that we're presenting takes these things into account and is thoughtful.
[Paul Ruseau]: That's actually one of all the exciting things about the new high school that we have going on.
[Erika Reinfeld]: All the things we don't have to fix in the old building.
[Paul Ruseau]: That is the thing I am, frankly, one of the most exciting things in the short term that I'm looking forward to is what is that number? Because it's going to be staggering.
[Kenneth Lord]: To get this building to meet current heating code, seismic code, electrical code, fixing everything, ADA, yeah, there's a lot there. A new building is still going to be a lot more money, but that fix will not fix any of the spaces we're using. fixing the structure.
[Erika Reinfeld]: Well, that's the question we're getting from the public. Are there specific spaces that would do better being renovated? And anyway, that we don't have to have that conversation right here right now. Okay.
[Jenny Graham]: Um, so I think if we're all in agreement, we can put, we'll put this on the agenda on Monday and I'll like write a little memo that tries to like wrap all of this up. Ken and I can maybe work on it together. Um, that anticipates like that, that memo will go to the mayor and the council so that the committee can review that as well. So that there's a clear pathway. And then I'll follow up with Nina about the capital plan. And Ken, you'll check on CPC for Curtis Tufts and the bike racks, right?
[Kenneth Lord]: Well, the bike rack stuff was mostly completed. We're just waiting on the last one with the bike repair station.
[Jenny Graham]: There was a second one, though. Hold on.
[Kenneth Lord]: They're the ones, the McGlynn and the Andrews as part of the project. They mounted them for us and everything.
[Jenny Graham]: High school's nearing completion. OK. Sorry. Oh, I had another row from Missitech, Roberts, and Brooks.
[Kenneth Lord]: Yeah. No, that was done. OK.
[Erika Reinfeld]: I think there was a conversation on whether we're going to be submitting CPC applications for playgrounds, but there were studies needed before we could. Yeah, and that's on here. That's the other piece that this subcommittee does, is to say what are the things that we are submitting CPC applications for. And it doesn't sound like there are any new ones that we need to hit that we're ready to submit for in this upcoming cycle.
[Kenneth Lord]: The playground design.
[Erika Reinfeld]: The playground feasibility. Feasibility, that was it, not the design. Yeah. Okay, got it. All right. Are we ready for the closing motion?
[Jenny Graham]: Yeah, actually, I think we just need to recommend that we'll put this on the agenda, that we approve this and want to place it on the agenda for next week. I move. Seconded by Member Reinfeld. Member Ruseau.
[Unidentified]: Yes.
[Jenny Graham]: Member Reinfeld? Yes. Member Graham? Yes. Three in the affirmative, zero in the negative. Motion is approved. And motion to adjourn. Motion to adjourn by Member Reinfeld. Second. Seconded by Paul. And Member Self? Yes. Member Reinfeld? Yes. Member Graham? Yes. Three in the affirmative, zero in the negative.
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