[Matt Rice]: For those of you that are joining us a minute early, that is appreciated. We will hang out, probably give people about five minutes or so just to log on and get settled before we get going. So stay tuned. risk of saying something to make sure that I'm now front and center, zoomed in on everybody's Zoom screen. I'll just reiterate for everybody again that we'll get going here in a couple minutes for the folks that have just jumped on. We're just giving folks another couple minutes to get logged and settled. If anybody wants to provide some entertainment in the next three minutes to keep everybody occupied, we're happy to let anybody chime in. The floor is yours.
[Matt Gulino]: I was going to say, you need some waiting music or something, Matt.
[Matt Rice]: Elevator music. Yeah, there you go.
[Matt Gulino]: Maybe not elevator music, but.
[Matt Rice]: I don't know. I fear that if it's not elevator music, then we're going to have to figure out what music is appropriate to everybody. And that may be equally as challenging as trying to design a high school. But thank you for the suggestion, Matt. I appreciate that. For those of you that joined us for some of the meetings yesterday as well, I definitely recognize a few names from yesterday. Maybe I'll just get going a little bit early so that we have the potential of letting folks escape a little bit early as well, given that it is still fairly nice outside. All right, so just want to welcome everybody again to our advisory team meeting for exterior interior design for the Medford High School project. This is our third meeting in the series for each of the individual advisory teams, all four of them. So we're doing those as a group. Yesterday we held our MEP systems and sustainability advisory team meeting as well as our educational planning and equity team meeting. So this is our second day of these and the first one this afternoon. So I will hang out for a second before I start sharing my screen just because we're going to be looking at an Excel document for a little while this evening and try to minimize that to whatever extent possible. But it is a good activity that we're going to run through. I just want to start off by orienting us to sort of this format for the meeting. We are doing this meeting today as an all virtual meeting as opposed to the hybrid meeting that we had. for the prior set of meetings, the second iteration of the meetings. And that's for a few reasons, but primarily because we wanted to make sure that the participation opportunity, as well as the audio visual experience for everyone was a little bit more common across for both all participants. What we experienced, I think, during the hybrid meetings, to some extent, to different levels between the different team meetings, was that the folks that were in the room were having a little bit better ability to interact than the folks that were online. And so we wanted to sort of normalize that experience and give everyone sort of equal footing in terms of the conversation, which is important. We definitely did appreciate seeing everyone in person and being able to interact with those that were able to make it. So we'll have to evaluate as we move forward whether or not we're going to stick to all remote meetings or if we want to sort of oscillate back and forth between hybrid. But for today, we're all remote. And because of that, we would just ask that as we progress into the conversation, if people want to offer comments, please do use the raise hand feature and we can work our way through individuals that want to talk in the order that they put their hands up. That's been working very well for this latest round of meetings that we've been doing so hopefully that continues this evening. I'll also say that there is the chat function for the meeting which people are welcome to make use of. We have enough representatives from SMMA as well as left field on the call today that will monitor the chat and we can communicate and read chat items out as well as questions if anyone is having challenges. So that is sort of the preamble. Let me go ahead and share the screen now and bring up our PowerPoint real quick. I'm not sure why I can't get that to figure out to come up correctly the first time, but there it is. So a very simple agenda for today in terms of what we're going to walk through. We're going to just do a quick sort of calibration. We'll run through introductions just visually on the screen. We're not going to necessarily take the time to introduce ourselves or have the team introduce everyone just again because at this point hopefully we're familiar enough with each other. And really what we want to do is get through that introductory piece and spend the lion's share of our time going through the advisory team recommendations. So this is the Excel document that I was referring to earlier. And when I bring it up, I'll go through the organization of a little bit, but this is essentially going to be the document that we're starting to craft together as a group. to eventually give recommendations back to the full building committee and we'll go through that process a little bit and then we'll wrap up just by talking about next steps and forecasting what's going to be coming as we've been doing at the prior meetings. All right, so this is us again. I will just take a second here to say that Sarah is on with us today, Sarah Long. She has been kind enough to join in where she has a cold and sort of a quasi laryngitis situation. So we're going to try to save her from herself and not make her talk as much as possible, but she may also not be able to control herself and jump in at a certain point. So just so folks are aware. I may be playing the part of Sarah Long this evening in terms of trying to run through the items.
[Rosemary Park]: Thank you.
[Matt Rice]: Was that Sarah? You just jumped in. See? You can't do that.
[xARk0471UWA_SPEAKER_41]: I can't help myself. Sorry. Thank you, everybody.
[Matt Rice]: Just so no one thinks I'm lying. That's definitely sounding like Lester has no voice.
[Jenny Graham]: Sorry.
[Matt Rice]: All right. And this is the full team members as well for exterior and interior design. Just a quick refresh on the overall schedule in terms of where we are today. We're just about halfway through, a little bit more than halfway through the feasibility study at this point. Just about two weeks ago now, we submitted our PDP report. to the MSBA. And so again, just from the acronym perspective, PDP is the Preliminary Design Program Report. It is the first part of the MSBA feasibility study. We'll get that back with some comments in the upcoming weeks. But that activity allowed us to proceed into the preferred schematic report, which is where we are now, the PSR. It's essentially at this point that we're at number three. There will be another touchpoint scheduled in September of this year, but in the start of the fall semester for the new school year. That is a little ways out from where we are today. There may be some associated discussions that need or want to happen. between now and that time, and we can certainly schedule those if the need for those comes up. I think the different advisory teams have different sort of activities that in some cases warrant that, and as we go through the recommendations, we're happy to talk about that if that makes sense as something that we want to do, or if somebody feels like there's a need to get together again as a group between now and then, certainly that's on the table as a consideration. We're happy to talk that through, but this is sort of what the plan is for the time being. And then just really quickly, this is the same slide that everyone has seen previously. I won't dwell on this much other than to say, or just reinforce again this notion that the four advisory teams very much have overlapping considerations at various points. And as we jump into the listing of the recommendations, you will see that in some cases we are putting a particular recommendation potentially outside of the purview of this particular advisory team and maybe into another one and then vice versa. There may be some that are coming from others that will be primarily recommended here. And that's really just because we don't want to duplicate recommendations amongst the different advisory teams. We're just trying to find the most appropriate one so that we don't end up with some potentially conflicting information, just so folks are aware. All right, and so I will hold this down and try to bring up this spreadsheet here. So the organization of this, everything is, thought it was all set up and it was not, now it's not set up. So this is the document that was sent around included with the agenda. So everyone should have had the opportunity to review this in advance. The, The Excel document that generated the PDF document is what we're looking at. So this is sort of the native file. Just to explain this a bit in terms of what we're looking at, if you haven't had a chance to completely acclimate yourself to it, the C column here that I'm highlighting is really the listing of individual topics that came up either during the introductory meeting where everyone, all the different team members from Medford identified their own priority goals, or it came up through the discussion that we had during the second meeting when we were sort of reviewing some topics in more detail. And what we've done is tried to group these together with like-minded items just to give some organization to the overall list. So you can see the groupings as we run through here. And we have a good number of items to get through, but we do think we have an approach that will allow us to do that as we have successfully done for the other advisory teams as well. This column here that somehow got a little bit squished, but we'll be going away in a second, is essentially what is going to be filled out as an outcome from this particular discussion. What we'll be doing is converting, evolving these statements, common suggestions, into actual recommendations that will go to the building committee. So we'll have some discussion here. We won't be filling out live as we go. But what we're going to be doing is going back and referencing the recording of the meeting in our own notes to be able to put all that together. But for the time being, I'm just going to hide this column here just so that I can maximize the size of the text for us on screen. And hopefully, that all fits pretty well. very close to. The next set of columns, just for reference purposes, so we have sort of our green, yellow, red light, traffic light analogy working here. So the green items in this given category These are items that are already assumed from our perspective to be incorporated into the project in some way, shape, or form. This could be because they're potentially been discussed in another forum, either with the building committee, through educational visioning, in the educational plan. In some way, shape, or form, we believe that these may be a given as we go through. It's not to say that this is set in stone at this particular point in time. Anyone, please do feel free as we're going through. If you think that an item is not a given or it needs some additional discussion, we're happy to talk that through. But for the purposes of trying to get through the content here, because we have close to 80 different items, we're not actually going to touch on each one of these that's indicated as a given today. Again, unless somebody chimes in either in the chat, or raises their hand, we're happy to stop and have a little discussion more. But in terms of making our way through, what we'd like to do is focus on talking about the items that have been identified as just needing some further discussion. It's really the further discussion that would happen at this meeting today. as a group so that we can talk through different things. The reason for that additional discussion, in some cases, is highlighted in the comments field here. In some cases, we'll just talk through some additional rationale as to why we're designating it that way. Hopefully, just try and clarify the intent of the comments so that when we move forward and convert these over to recommendations that everyone is in agreement and clear to the extent possible. And then lastly, we do have a column that is sort of these red lights, which is a is a comment or a suggestion that potentially has some challenges in terms of implementing as part of the project. And what we have not done right now is filled out any of those. as part of this initial first pass that we've done. Really, it will be the function and the dialogue that we have in this meeting today. If there's anyone that feels like something is really something we should not be moving in the direction of, We're happy to have that discussion as well, and I think it's a good, healthy discussion to have just to make sure that everything that we're listing out here seems like it is appropriate for the project moving forward. And we can talk that through as well. And then lastly, before we jump in, I'll just state that the list of topics is our best attempt at going through and trying to synthesize all of the various comments that came from everyone, which were great. We don't assume that we have gotten every one of these 100% correct, because sometimes there was some implication that maybe didn't come across in our notes or in the recording quite clearly. So in some cases, if you were the author of a particular comment, and it needs to be corrected, please do let us know that. That's part of the reason that we're here, to try to make these all as accurate and reflective as the team's intent as possible. And if we've missed things and we need to add things, happy to do that as well. We don't need to focus necessarily on the groupings. We can always move things around in terms of the groups. Or if there's something that's on here that we think is just Maybe too given is just sort of very apparent in terms of what would be assumed. We're also happy to take things away as a modification process. So this is not written in stone at this point. Really, the intent of this meeting is to craft, revise, and fine tune this document. That is sort of the general overview. I will pause for just a second and see if anyone has any questions on sort of the activity that we're going to run through or anything that I just went through in terms of orientation purposes. But if we don't have anything, then I will turn it over to Michael and he'll start us off running through.
[Michael Pardek]: All right. Hearing none, I think we'll get started. So we'll do our best to kind of run through the list here. First section is materials, health, and sustainability. And we'll go down to the line 10 here. So this first one designated as needs for the discussion is healthy, environmentally friendly material should be provided wherever possible. This one will actually probably exist in the sustainability and MEP advisory team recommendations. Matt, I don't know if you want to fill in typical construction materials might have limitations in the current market, if there's anything there to expand on.
[Matt Rice]: Yeah, so I think the footnote here is just the fact that as we're looking to sort of put additional criteria in terms of what we're selecting materials based on, and if those are grounded in some aspect of sustainability, we still need to make sure that we're following Massachusetts public procurement rules as we're looking at materials and specifying materials. In most cases that'll mean that we're looking to make sure that there's three equal comparable materials that we can create a competitive bidding environment for just to keep all the subcontractors honest in terms of the process and to get the city the best value for the products of what we're specifying. It's not to say that if we find something that is amazing from a sustainability standpoint and collectively the building committee feels that that has enough value to it, they can indicate through a vote that that would be a proprietary specification, which indicates it would only be a single product that might be listed in the specification, which is allowable. Everyone just has to realize as part of it that there will likely be some sort of premium that comes from the lack of competition in terms of the bidding process. So that's what that particular sentence was meant to imply.
[Michael Pardek]: Then we'll slide down to line 17 and 18. I'll kind of bunch these two together. I see Libby has her hand up. Sorry, Mike. Yeah, go ahead, Libby.
[Libby Brown]: I just have one thing to say about it. I totally think it's fine because we did talk about this yesterday in the sustainability groups. So if that lives there, that's OK. I just wanted to say that I think This could be narrowed, whether it's us or a different group to talk about it just to suck about like materials in the breathable space, just because it's gonna be possible to get like all PVC pipes and things out of the building but if I think as it comes down the pike, we talked about materials and design, so it might overlap a little bit in our discussion, I think that would be. just the way to prioritize it and not try to take that as like a holistic, every material has to meet these criteria. But anyway, that's just two cents about that. I'm happy to keep moving.
[Matt Rice]: I appreciate that, Libby. And I think part of our charge as well as we go through this is to make sure that we're not doing something like this in terms of the advisory team. So we're making sure that the right one has it. So we'll circle back as well and make sure that's not occurring. But also, we can wrap in that particular prioritization in terms of trying to get maximum benefit from those interior materials that are exposed to human inhabitation. OK.
[Michael Pardek]: Let's move on to 17, use the site geology or excavated materials as facade inspiration. That one of course needs further discovery and discussion as we figure out what is below the buildings and sites. And then the line 18, preference for concrete and brick. And that cost efficiency was important. And that one, because we don't have a building yet, that was a little bit harder to maybe say that's a given. Number 19, line 19, landscape durability and stormwater resilience is required, and that one will be handled by site safety and security advisory team recommendations. Line 20 was minimize use of carpet to selective acoustically sensitive spaces, and as the program of the building and spaces develops, we'll address that.
[Matt Rice]: Yeah, I think that one in particular we'll spend some time reviewing in a little bit more detail with the operations team from the district as well, just to understand from a maintenance standpoint where they feel comfortable with it and really what those acoustically sensitive spaces are, right? Because one could argue that offices maybe are acoustically sensitive spaces, but whether or not we want to be putting carpet in all the offices is something that we'll just need to make sure we're clear on. as we move forward in the process. So I think just that unknown is the reason why we still have that in the yellow category.
[Michael Pardek]: Line 22, consider use of CMU or other durable alternatives in lieu of drywall, especially in high traffic areas, mostly for increased durability. That again will, as the program develops and our building develops, will develop the right strategy for the right spaces. It just needs further discussion down the road.
[Matt Rice]: And I think that there's also some additional options for what we might consider durable alternatives there. Certainly CMU and glazed CMU are some well-used and highly valuable materials from that perspective, but there's another probably subset of different materials either in the masonry world or tile or other some other synthetic products as well that would have to be evaluated for different reasons especially when we sort of come back to the the notion of healthy materials but I think that's the reason here that we just wanted to put in some need further discussion just because we don't want to necessarily narrow ourselves down to just CMU and glazed CMU just yet. So we could also modify that through the actual recommendation as it moves forward so that we're clear about what the general focus on durable materials are and ideally probably low costs associated with that.
[Michael Pardek]: Right. And then 23 is blend materials across renovated and new areas. Probably, I think the spirit behind this one was not to have two separate buildings at the end of the day if the renovation addition option was chosen. So I think that one, again, depending on the scheme, that's ultimately selected. But I think the The goal there is to have one school at the end of the day, not a renovated school and then a brand new one and have disparate parts.
[Matt Rice]: Before we move up to the next one. Okay, good. We have some hands. That's what I was going to ask for. I didn't see whose hand went up first. Anne-Marie, do you want to go and then we can pivot to Jenny? Did Anne-Marie take her hand down?
[Unidentified]: My comment is it piggybacks really well onto the end of that statement with sort of the uniformity. Just being mindful that the flooring doesn't change from section to section. In a lot of buildings, I notice that the type of flooring changes as you move into different areas, but for people with mobility or processing, here, I'll
[Michael Pardek]: Yeah, we can hear you.
[Matt Rice]: Yeah, you're just a little faint, but you were coming through clearly. Yeah.
[Unidentified]: Sorry, um, so, so just making sure that the, that the flooring is uniform, obviously, notwithstanding the carpet, but uniformity of the hallways or the, the flooring spaces in general for people with mobility challenges or visual processing challenges. Um. On a similar note, making sure that the use of color, which, I mean, it does say being intentional, but not just from a wayfinding perspective, but being mindful of things like coloring, highlighting stairs, any sort of level drop-offs, anything that might be, you know, a hazard, using color to really highlight that, I think is really important to note.
[Matt Rice]: Appreciate that. Some of that is guided by code, whether accessibility code or, in some cases, building code. But I think thinking of it beyond just sort of a code required minimum and sort of leveraging that concept in multiple areas just to try to create a safe environment for everybody throughout makes a lot of sense. Jenny?
[Jenny Graham]: Yeah, thanks. I think, in my mind, this feels like a green to me. Because my understanding so far is, even in the spaces that we are talking about renovating, what I've heard so far is those spaces are going to come down to the studs. I haven't heard of any spaces where it's like, this is just going to be some new paint, right? Because of the massive amount of work for code update, right? So I guess in my mind, this seemed a little bit more given, because it's simply not going to be an option to not put flooring in everywhere, because flooring is going to be needed everywhere. But maybe that's not true. And so I just wanted to ask that question.
[Matt Rice]: To me, that makes sense. I wouldn't argue the point that there's some logic to shifting this all into a given area. Even if it was an all new building, I don't think it's an untrue statement to say that we want to have consistency across. So maybe it's just in the wording of the recommendation in terms of how we put it together. We can pull in some of those additional thoughts that Anne-Marie offered in terms of describing it a bit more. But we can shift it over to green unless anyone takes issue with that. That I could probably do now live as we go. Some things I'm not brave enough to do, typing notes. OK, that's great. Any other thoughts on this first collection for materials, health, and sustainability, either in the green items or items that we went through in the yellow? All right. Let's go over here to identity, belonging, and school pride.
[Michael Pardek]: All right. I'll run through these, Matt. So design should highlight Medford's core values. Probably it does feel like a given, but we need to have further discussion to determine which values to integrate. Is it the school? Is it the city? So it just needs to be a little bit more specificity around this one. The one right below it had more to do with the, I guess, the Mustang mascot or the high school brand and how that gets deployed throughout the school. So it's not just the Mustang just appearing on whichever wall, but there's a real strategy behind the graphic design of the space, whether it's athletics or academics. Next one, line 30, celebrate Medford history, culture, and important figures while avoiding focusing too much on nostalgia. And these elements must be given context to be used, not just as a decorative item, but as a teaching tool. So this one needs some additional research and conversation.
[Matt Rice]: I think this might be the first one that we encounter in this particular advisory team list where it makes sense to potentially have a separate group spun up to start talking a little bit more about sort of what that history and sort of the culture is that will help inform some of the graphic design, some of the the interactions that we might have with the larger community moving forward. We found it helpful in past projects to have sort of a separate timeline of discussion that happens there. This can be something that pulls in folks from the historic side on the city, as well as alumni from the high school, folks that have really a vested interest in trying to pull together the larger perspective on the history of the high school and the connection to the city as well. So that may be something that we look at moving forward as sort of part of the reason for the needs further discussion here as an activity. And that would be something that we on the SMA side wrap in our environmental graphics folks into as well as Sarah and the interior design team as well. So if we can also solicit volunteers, if you're interested in that and in participating in it, if you just want to drop a note in the chat, that'll be helpful for us moving forward. Or if you have some suggestions as to individuals or departments or commissions within the city, that would be good to wrap in. That would also be appreciated and helpful.
[Michael Pardek]: Yeah, probably line 36 also plays heavily into this. That's the intentional location for things like student murals, which we know are prevalent throughout the existing school. There's just a lot of pride that happens and gets affixed to walls. So it's having a really strong strategy to allow that to happen over time and for students to be able to showcase their work and their ideas and messages that are important to them.
[Matt Rice]: And we do have the opportunity, in case folks are curious, sort of salvage existing murals that are located throughout the building. Maybe not necessarily salvaging like the masonry and the block that are there, but we have had success in doing photo documentation of in-place murals and then recreating those as part of environmental graphics in the new building if that's deemed to be of interest as part of the process. So that's another reason for just why this one was flagged as a yellow.
[Jenny Graham]: Yeah, I think we can open up Jenny if you have a. Yeah, I think that would be a place where I would want to hear from students. Like, they encounter these murals all the time and like. Is it some sort of a, like, important anchor to them about their experience in Medford high? Or is it just a mural on the walls that somebody they know created or. Has it just always been there and it's not material to them like. You know, things that we think are important today are not going to be important to to people in 10 years. Right? So, like. I think that's the whole, like, not getting wrapped up in nostalgia. Like, I think there's a way to, like, nod to the history of Medford without, like, suffocating us in the history of Medford and letting the building be a place for kids to, like, make new history, right? Like, I think there's some good examples, like, in Bistro, 489, there are some lights that are hanging in that renovated space that came from like the old Brooks School or the old this school or the old that school. And they're cool. And they're not, they just are part, they work as part of the landscape without feeling like heavy or like we're stuck in the past, right? So I think like, there's, I, we have to, I want us to find like the right way to like be full of pride about Medford, but understanding that like pride is about, I think pride for people who have come through the school in the past is about their experience there. But what we're trying to do is provide an experience where pride can take on its own life, right. For the students that are there. So I don't want the, the design to, discourage that, I guess, is my point.
[Michael Pardek]: Paul, I think you're next.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Thank you, Jenny, for saying that. You took a lot of what I had to say. I wanted to also add that one of the things I worry about is a building that the teachers, the students, the principal, administration are afraid to touch. You know, a brand new building. I'm just worried that we're going to be like, well, we're not going to just have the art class or whatever club or whatever, just start painting on a wall. Because it's a brand new building. Do we have to wait 40 years before we allow kids to start painting on the walls? And so I think when we think about know, when I've traveled, I went to a couple of schools not related to this project, related to something earlier in my time on the school committee. And, you know, you couldn't put stuff on the walls, it had to be in cases because of fire code and all this other stuff. And I want to make sure that we allow the building to organically change in the halls, in particular, so that people can decide that they're going to paint the wall. I mean, I don't just mean some kid brings a bucket of paint to school, but that it's not a forbidden thing. We're not building a tile wall here. We're not building a museum. It's got to be a living place. And as much as I dislike the high school, one of the few things I really do like is the murals They're not the same murals that they've been for nine years, although some of them probably are. And that freedom I worry a bit about if we make it, I don't want to say too nice, but make it seem like it's a museum and it's not a museum. So thank you.
[Matt Rice]: Yeah, schools do a pretty good job at resisting feeling like a museum, whether we want them to or not. And that's interesting, but I think it's a wonderful point to try to think about how to accommodate that as opposed to letting it maybe happen in a way that is damaging to the finishes over the longer term. So I think that there's a nice tie-in also there to some of the earlier discussions we're having about durability as well. But definitely something to move forward with. Appreciate all those clarifications. Jennifer.
[izVdDtzaCdw_SPEAKER_36]: Um, yeah, so I just want to like, second or third, whatever, Jenny and Paul both said, I think that one of the nicest things about working in the high school is that, like, the mural that I love the murals around the building, but they're like, the kids have done the most of them were like, the like, the one in my classroom was the art, the honors society, like the kids came in, and we're like, what can we paint for you? And so I just want to emphasize that I agree, I think just having places to put things, areas to share work or whatever is great, but I do like the walls. I also think that it needs to be... Like some of the kids have like painted like current event stuff. It doesn't have to just be the Medford Mustang logo. Like that's like all I can picture is like, oh, we need something here. And just blue and white and Medford Mustang logos everywhere. And I 100% agree with Paul. I think it's one of the nicest things about walking through the halls and through the classrooms is they feel so much more welcoming because of that. And like all the all the CTE, all the shops have like a nice like mural thing or something outside their classroom that's individual. It doesn't have a Mustang on it. It is not blue and white, and as much as I, you know, love Medford Pride, I do think you need a little bit more flexibility and individuality. Otherwise, like Jenny said, or both of them, it will feel very museum-like.
[Matt Rice]: It's going to be a good challenge for Sarah as well to accommodate the potential of students putting whatever strikes them up on the walls in different locations.
[Libby Brown]: I'm excited. You can't tell because of my voice, but I am genuinely excited.
[Jenny Graham]: I just think what the building looks like this year and what it looks like four years from now, we should be promoting that that can be different. You know, like, it's great that you have a mural in your classroom. What if somebody comes in and is like. I want to give you a different mural. I've seen that for three years. That's OK. There's that crazy mural in the foyer. And every time I look at it, I'm like, what is that? And I'm like, I'm sure it was really meaningful to somebody at some point in time. But just because we popped some historical figures and an eagle on the wall doesn't mean it has to be there forever. It's okay, like I just want this building to be okay with like the creativity that happens in it and instead of trying to like restrain it.
[Matt Rice]: It's a great set of thoughts, I think, because it's not something we honestly hear a lot talking with different school groups. The sort of willingness to embrace sort of the culture and have the culture reflected authentically on the walls and sort of the apprehension to sort of touching it and ruining it. and sort of taking that mentality. So it'll be really interesting to figure out sort of how we implement that moving forward. It's sort of, it's a really good positive sort of challenge for us.
[Jenny Graham]: Yeah. I mean, the most important thing about healthy culture is that it is always evolving, right? Like culture is not static. So I just want to make sure that we like lean into that every which way that we can. Got it.
[Matt Rice]: I'm sorry, I scrolled down before I asked if there was anything else remaining on here, but I know that the hands dwindled. So it's going to shift us down into cutting off the bleed in here of the flexibility and adaptability. And just a quick preface on this grouping altogether is that a lot of these we're talking about particular spaces, and so primarily that's going to be looked at through the lens of the Ed Planning and Equity advisory team, but it's certainly worth just touching on them here just so we can make sure that we have the right intent behind the overall comment. I don't know, Michael, if you want to run through them.
[Michael Pardek]: Yeah, happy to. First one, line 42, dedicated rooms for after hours clubs are desired. I mean, I think this one just needs to get a good handle on which clubs are getting rooms and how all the after school programs are being handled. What else do we have here? This kind of ties into what we were just talking about. Student ownership is important, but it must be designed intentionally so ownership can change hands. So I think that kind of sums up a lot of the sentiment we just talked about. And then moving down, the 48 roof terraces are desired for both learning opportunities and event spaces. And of course, that'll develop as the program develops and how to weigh. I think what that probably mostly gets at is outdoor spaces, whether they be on the roof or at grade. It seems like those are important, but needs further investigation. Especially the event, you know, having a roof space as an event space comes with a whole bunch of code and safety requirements. And that last one, ensure flexibility for community use and civic functions. Somebody or a few people noted that Medford doesn't have many public meeting spaces. So I think maybe identifying what civic functions and other community uses could happen in this building. Paul, you have your
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. On the roof terraces, which I absolutely love the idea of, I believe it was Waltham. They have some, and they made sense and seemed to work. Somerville's, however, are, I mean, the principal was giving us a tour, and partially because of their site, it felt like we're just waiting for a student to die, because it's like a thousand foot drop. on the terrace there. It's not a thousand feet, but it's a massive drop that the principal says is a major issue. And so I think that having terraces is fine, but I'm worried because if we end up on the hill and we have stuff overhanging off the hill, that we make sure we don't end up with terraces that have drops that are potentially I mean falling one story is one thing or falling onto the next roof below you or something is one thing, but I don't want us, and they literally do close parts of the terrace. So students can't use it because of the safety concerns. And while we have a very different site, I do think we could end up with a design where we could have such large drops. So I do think thinking about how a drop on a terrace goes to another terrace or another safe surface rather than a very long drop is just a concern I have.
[Matt Rice]: Paul, I might just add, I think safety, as Michael noted, I think is one of the priorities in terms of this entire conversation about how roof terraces are viewed and sort of what everybody has a level of comfort with, and I think we need to evolve certainly like fire department, police department, and that as well as district staff, as well as administrators, students, teachers, really to get full sets of feedback on that. I mean it is interesting at the the Waltham High School outdoor terraces, those were designed with certain layers to prevent students or dissuade students both to going anywhere near the edges that are exposed because they those do have exposed edges but there's much more of a buffer in between to prevent students from getting there and the fact that students are never allowed out there without staff oversight to them and probably not more than maybe a class or a class and a half at a time. The Somerville example is interesting because there's a whole variety of different roof terraces that are there. There's the ones that you were referring to that are located off of the dining common spaces, but there's also one up above on the third floor that's located outside of the Library Media Center, which is enclosed on all It's not four sides because it's not a rectilinear shape, but it is an enclosed environment. And that actually does get a tremendous amount of use, most specifically by one of the special education programs, a subseparate program that is immediately adjacent to it. And that courtyard serves as their therapeutic garden environment, which is required as part of their IEPs. And so that's, it's an interesting way of using those outdoor courtyards in a way that is very safe because there's like two stories of building around. It could probably have the same function, the same level of safety if it was a single story, a sort of recessed courtyard, not too dissimilar from the interior courtyards in the existing building right now that are down at grade. It's a different dynamic when you're up above. But that's something that we can look at as an option or opportunity, but definitely want to talk that through so that everybody has a level of comfort.
[Michael Pardek]: Yeah, and you really want it to be purposeful, not just like, oh, we could put a green roof here, because we're always competing. The roof area is always very competitive. We have mechanical equipment. We have photovoltaics and we have potentially rough terraces. So it's always a good, healthy discussion when you're talking about how precious all that square footage is.
[Matt Rice]: And some amazing views from up there as well. I know we've heard that in multiple occasions that that's really, if you had the opportunity to walk up onto the roof, I'm not sure how many folks have, but it's pretty amazing, sort of the vistas that are available from up there. Other thoughts on these topics?
[Michael Pardek]: Probably a good segue in the nature, landscape, views, and outdoor connection, Matt. I don't know.
[Matt Rice]: Again, I may have just walked that one through. Yeah. That first one, I don't think we have to talk about any further necessarily.
[Michael Pardek]: Yeah, the two on here were mostly provide outdoor classrooms and terraces. We just talked about this. Again, coordinate closely with our ed planning and equity advisory teams. And then the kids' corner playground requirements, which are probably more than what's out there today. Again, that's site safety and security advisory team.
[Matt Rice]: And I think part of that is certainly complying with regulations in terms of what is mandated from early education perspective for that age group with Kids' Corner. And then I think part of it is also just thinking similarly along the lines of what we were just talking about for high school students, but at a much younger age group. age levels or what is appropriate and how can we still try to focus on all those thoughts about well what connections, authentic connections can we make to the surrounding environment, as opposed to just sort of taking a an abstract type of place, set of structures, and just sort of dropping them into the environment, but thinking how we integrate that as sort of a larger design move alongside sort of the building design, as well as sort of other age-appropriate pieces for whether it's the preschool students, which will have a slightly different requirement, or the high school students itself and their outdoor learning environments.
[Michael Pardek]: Jennifer had a comment in the chat. Expanded playground for moving all the MEEP up here. And do they share that space or not?
[izVdDtzaCdw_SPEAKER_36]: So right now MEEP is at the elementary schools. So I just wanted to point out because we have the, right now the kids corner has one little mini playground area and the preschool kids that the CTE kids work with have another one which is nowhere near their classroom might I add. And then, so they have two separate small spaces, and then if you're gonna include MEEP, I know right now they don't share playgrounds, so I wasn't sure what you guys are planning, but it definitely needs to be considered, because if you're putting four or five MEEP classrooms up here with Kids' Corner, with the preschool, and kids corner is like babies on up. You're gonna have to think that one through. I think it needs to probably be bigger.
[Matt Rice]: Most certainly it will need to be bigger. Like the number of preschool students that would be on site is gonna be a dramatic increase from the number of students that are there today. Both in terms of just the quantity of classrooms and then students in the classroom as well. But we will be required to have separate dedicated players that are age-appropriate in terms of any apparatus that are in their safety clearance zones, all that type of thing. Even at that younger age, needs to be separated and thought about so that they can be used concurrently and safely. But I definitely appreciate that perspective, Jennifer, and making sure that we're attentive to that.
[Michael Pardek]: Yeah, that's a whole really interesting design problem. Square footage per child and adjacency right next to their classroom. So it'll be interesting to see how that plays out on the site. Okay, we can move on to community hub and civic role. I think that first comment we had before, provide public gathering spaces, event areas and performance spaces. We had a similar comment a few lines ahead of this one. Creating intuitive circulation for after hours community use. So that's vitally important, especially even when entering the site, not just the building. But obviously, it helps everybody out if it's just visually you understand a building and where you can go and where you're not supposed to go. Next comment connect high school to Medford civic architectural legacy and if you remember last time I presented, I presented a wide range of civic buildings in Medford and just kind of illustrated that each one happened. with its own set of restrictions, its own time and place. So I think that one deserves a little bit more discussion as we start looking at architecture and trying to decide what this building wants to be and if it wants to or does not want to tie into anything that's come before.
[Matt Rice]: This next one, I can hop in on the Japanese Language School. Just so folks are aware, there are some dedicated conversations that are happening, maybe just recently happened even, on a couple different occasions, talking with both the Japanese Language School as well as some of the other community partners that are located in the building currently. And I think that's something that is going to come through the district and dedicated conversations as well as the school committee in terms of understanding how things are going to move forward. So it may be outside the purview of this particular advisory team. Completely understand that this group is interested to understand sort of what the future holds there. But it may be more of a reporting activity as we come back to provide some updates there. I don't know that there's anything just yet that is cemented and can be shared, but I just wanted to outline sort of what that process is going to look like moving forward.
[Michael Pardek]: Okay.
[Matt Rice]: I think we're at the last section here, wayfinding circulation and XGD, which just to remind everybody that's- I just wanted to pause for a second and just make sure that if there's any comments, thoughts on any of these items, either the yellow items that we ran through or the green back under community hub and civic role.
[Paul Ruseau]: Sure. I think I guess I'm not privy to the Japanese language school considerations. So I think needs further discussions on that. OK.
[Matt Rice]: I don't know if others that have had more direct conversation there want to add any additional detail there. Happy to have it shared. I just don't know that there is any additional information that can't be shared right now.
[Kenneth Lord]: We have, we're actually meeting with them later this week.
[Matt Rice]: Yeah. Okay. All right.
[Jenny Graham]: Yeah. And I, I think, you know, we have such a long history with JLS, um, and they're good partners. So we're trying to make sure that we're talking to them before information is published out to the community about things that might impact, um, How they use our spaces going forward and certainly starting to talk to them now about planning for any impacts of the renovation that are happening. So all that is. Like, yet to come, but we just want to chat with them before there's anything that is sort of pushed back towards the building committee about what happens next.
[Matt Rice]: All right, and maybe just jumping up back to line 61 about the public gathering spaces. I know, Paul, you were championing sort of that concept earlier. I just want to make sure that item, and then I think there was a prior topic as well that Michael mentioned, that we're sort of adequately capturing that piece of it in terms of just letting the high school help fill some of that void in terms of sort of public community meeting spaces.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, I think it does. I mean, I think does not have many is sort of the understatement of the year. We can revise the wording. Yeah, that's fine. And, you know, the, that space that I was, you know, proposing also, I'm noticing that there's Chad Fallon, the director of vocational school sent me a link to Oh my gosh, I forget which school it was, Durfee? Durfee? Whatever replaced Durfee. Anyways, Model UN and... types of activities where a large community space similar to a school committee chamber or something would have other uses in the education domain, too. The library has the large room with the big screen that can come down, but when we say large room, it's probably smaller than any of our new rooms we'll have for lecture halls. So really large, large is very relevant. relative here. So I think a much larger space, such as the one I was showing you before, would have a lot of real uses. I mean, the community, we couldn't start hosting a movie night for the community. Like, it's just not a thing. We couldn't do it. There's no space for such a thing. And, you know, when we host, the school will host a you know, like a wait till eight for cell phones or, you know, a distracted driving show things. And we have to use the Cairn Theater, which is too large. And the new theater will be dramatically too large and probably in high demand. So I think really the lack of public spaces to gather more than a few people is, is a crisis, frankly, in Medford. So, you know, we don't get to build something new very often. So I hope we can keep that, keep that going. It's a priority.
[Matt Rice]: I think as we're talking, Paul, I just am thinking also to maybe a connection with the ed planning and equity advisory team as well, because we heard the ELA director talking a little bit about some opportunities for the space that you're envisioning from some of her programs. And I'm forgetting the specific one, but I think if we just provide an opportunity for that group to brainstorm a little bit on different activities that could potentially be well-suited to transpire in that type of space, that might be some good additional rationalization behind it.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, the other thing also is, um, you know, one of the uses that I certainly I don't think I've. And hiding it is I would like to see if the school committee could start meeting in this space instead of at the high school at the city hall. And, you know, as the city hall begins development of the spaces behind their. Parking will become an issue. I think there's already parking problems when the Chevalier has events and. I just think that City Hall is also overcrowded with offices and all these other things. So not to mention, of course, that it's 100 years old or whatever it is, and looks like it from the inside as well. So I just feel like there's a lot of opportunity to make a future problems be much less of a problem. I mean, it's someday they're going to renovate City Hall, right? Where's the government going to meet? they could meet in one of these spaces without us taking the entire theater and closing it down for a year. Those are real problems that are coming for us as a community. If you've ever been in a bathroom at City Hall, you know that we don't need a couple of $100,000 renovation of that space. We need a massive renovation. Anyways, thank you. I'm glad it's still on the list.
[Michael Pardek]: Thank you. And it probably extends the exterior. I mean, we're kind of talking about interior spaces, but certainly exterior spaces as well. Wayfinding, circulation and XGD. Provide clear, effective signage and multilingual options. So we'll just need some discussions on, you know, what languages should be incorporated into XGG and signage throughout the school. Next one is provide clear sightlines for safety and supervision. probably will be a big part of the architectural design, but it will also be working with the site safety security advisory team on that aspect of how you, you know, it's a big facility, both the site and the future building. So it's how do you create something that can be more easily supervised than it is today. probably goes toward the next point of resolving confusing circulation patterns within the current building if that does stay intact. I think I was just mentioning this to somebody today. It seems pretty logical on paper, these very long corridors and these cross corridors and courtyards, but when you get into the high school, it is very disorienting. no matter where you are, because everything kind of has a sameness to it. And real, even though you're in the middle of the fells, you don't always sense that you're in the middle of the fells. It feels like you're in the middle of concrete block and ceiling tile and fluorescent lighting. So that'll be something that definitely gets scrutinized. That last one, 74, traffic flow, parking challenges at the entry areas. And I think this also ties into those times when it's not just the regular school day or you have after hour uses or events happening where the community is coming in. So that's a really clear progression from your parking space to the appropriate door and into the building. That last point, support storytelling through murals, artifacts, educational content. That was also brought up earlier, but there are numerous, even just in the lobby during the community meeting, spend a little time looking at all the plaques, the Amelia Earhart, the photos of the old school after the fire. So there's numerous, numerous things that need to be at least cataloged within the building. And then a different group, like Matt said, to maybe evaluate which ones we want to bring into the new space and which ones we want to retire.
[Matt Rice]: And also the stone Mustang sculpture as well. People haven't noticed that in the corner. We're just out in front of the auditorium as well. I'm not sure where he will be ending up, but.
[Paul Ruseau]: Good question. There's no pile of hands. Sorry, I'm just jumping. You know, at the library, there is the history room, and I'm sure MSPA won't pay for such a thing, but it's not a big space. And, you know, as I mean, I sounded a little bit earlier, like, like I was not interested in the history of Medford and all that other stuff, and I am, I just think that where and how it gets reflected in the building is such an important thing. But why not have something similar to the library with us, like a history room, where we don't have to decide whether to just throw something into a dumpster when we, I mean, we have a lot of things that we will have to have this conversation with, not you all particularly, but the school committee and the school community will have to decide, you know, which benches do we keep and all this other stuff, but, and maybe some things really do belong in the dumpster, but a lot of things might mean something to a lot of people who are still in Medford and maybe the white place isn't a wall, but I don't mean just a closet, because then it never can be seen, but like a little history room. I don't know if any school has done such a thing before.
[Matt Rice]: There is over in Wakefield, which is currently getting built, a particular archive space for historical volumes. And so I think that we do have a lot of flexibility as part of the design of the media center in terms of how we partition out that space. And it's a fair amount of space. that we'll have the ability to work with. So if we wanted to take some of that square footage and establish a smaller room that could house some of these volumes, that's certainly something we can investigate as we move forward in terms of the schematic design phase is most likely when we get to that level of detail. But it's also worth thinking about it, maybe not exclusively as just sort of an archival room, maybe there's a a large table like a conference table that's in the middle with stacks that surround it so that it can get used as well for other purposes besides just the storage of volumes. That's really a question about how secure and disparate from the rest of the volumes do they need to be. Could it just be a series of shells that are out in the broader circulation area? Or does it really make sense to try and keep some higher level of control, security, and preservation associated with it? So those are all conversations that we can definitely have as we move forward. And it's a good point as well, Paul, because I'm not sure that we heard it during the program meetings. I'm trying to go back, and it was a little while ago, and there were a lot of meetings. But we'll make sure that we touch on that as we go through the next round of programming meetings as well, so that we can get Maria's feedback, or Maria's successor.
[izVdDtzaCdw_SPEAKER_08]: When they were doing Somerville High, I had found my father's wallet. from 1939 with his senior dance ticket in it. And I gave it to them and they were gonna do a little historical thing, but I never made it up to the Sonal High after it was done to see if they actually used any of it. But it was pretty old wallet with this picture in it. And then the principal dug up my father's picture from the senior, from the yearbook and sent me the picture from the yearbook. I don't know if I have any old stuff from the high school.
[Michael Pardek]: Yeah, I think Matt at Somerville, we had some sprinkled throughout the school. We had some display cases, I know. So we were like outside the drafting room, for example, we had a bunch, we had a case that had a bunch of old drafting, uh, architectural tools. So it doesn't all have to be like in a room. There's, there are opportunities to purposely like create space for some of these things, uh, integrated into the, into the design. Yeah.
[izVdDtzaCdw_SPEAKER_08]: That's what they had mentioned that they were going to do a case and just put the historical stuff in a case someplace in the high school. Yeah.
[Matt Rice]: I can't remember where that might be, Paul. There was a couple of different principles that moved through. Was it John that you gave it to?
[izVdDtzaCdw_SPEAKER_08]: He actually graduated with my wife. My wife knew him, but I forget who it was because it was quite a while ago. Okay.
[Matt Rice]: But I think we can certainly provide opportunities for that. And when we're talking about that group that we may form to sort of pull together some different thoughts about what might be reviewed, and then eventually, I think, Paul, you're correct, that we would go to the school committee with sort of an official list of both sort of artifacts that may be within the school that we want to salvage. potentially include some other things as well. We'll eventually develop sort of a centralized list. It gets codified as part of a specification section so that the construction team actually owns that process in terms of salvaging things that need to be protected and stored and then reinstalled down the road as well. It's a fairly involved activity to make sure that we have everything accurately represented in our deliberate in terms of what the disposition of everything is, but it'll be an important part of the process as we move forward.
[Michael Pardek]: Yeah, the other thing that stands out, Matt, is all the athletics trophies, and there's a ton of that in the school. So that's the other, I don't think we have it explicitly said in here, but that's another aspect of a lot of a lot of hard-earned trophies and awards throughout the years.
[Matt Rice]: Yeah, there's a lot of particular fun there. I know maybe, Ken, you're the only one that's gone through it, but in terms of saving banners, making sure that they're not fire hazards for modern codes when we put them in, cleaning them, getting them reinstalled, it's a particular joy in terms of trying to sort out all those nuances and details that we will It's tremendously important to the school cultures just due to the physical characteristics of those banners. They're not as straightforward as you would think in terms of just, well, just take them down and put them up someplace else.
[Kenneth Lord]: They often end up in a closet someplace in the new school, not mounted. And then if you don't carefully catalog and capture everything, someone shows up at the open house and says, where is that plaque? Whatever for somebody and you've got mud in your face because it got demoed, you know, so it's something that's very, very important that you capture and collect everything. But as you said earlier, you know, perhaps it's not saving the actual banner, but getting good photographic, you know, replications of things that you can put up and archive and keep at least so you have some remembrance if you can't save them.
[Matt Rice]: Yeah, in some cases, we actually end up reproducing the banners as well out of modern fire retardant materials. And then we get into a whole nother question about sort of what is going into those banners to make them fire retardant. And so it's sort of a wonderful, vicious cycle of different considerations that we have to look out for.
[Kenneth Lord]: A lot of the murals that are painted on walls, you can't take a CMU block wall with you. So taking good pictures and preserving that stuff would be a good thing.
[Matt Rice]: All right, let me, we can certainly keep, if there's any other conversation on that topic or any of the topics, happy to step back to it. But I just wanna bring us back here to start with next steps and swap this around again. So this is just a recounting of the process of the organization of the four meetings that we have. We're here, oh, this is actually a 311 day today. So we'll correct that. But this slide, and just in terms of forecasting forward to September, what we'll be doing when we get together is looking at hopefully a pretty close to finalized version of the recommendations. We will do that migration in advance. So that everyone can review and distribute similar to what we did for this meeting so that people can review it in before the meeting and provide some thoughts and comments during the course of the meeting. But ideally have a document coming out of that that everyone feels comfortable that can be shared back to the full building committee and then. We'll work into the building committee meeting agendas a time when all the advisory groups can share those recommendations in an abbreviated fashion. We won't have the time to run through all 80 to 100 recommendations per group, but some highlights and We have had some success in the past if advisory team members rather than ourselves are the ones that are actually sharing that back to the building committee, just to indicate sort of where those priorities are. So if anyone is interested in doing that, I'm happy to sort of project that forward into the future. And then the other thing that we'll be doing in September with the advisory team here is looking through the lens of each advisory team at the preferred alternative design. So just to understand sort of how the rest of the project is progressing by the time we get to September. We'll have completed the preferred schematic report phase, and just as the name indicates there, that phase concludes in the feasibility study by the building committee identifying a single option that they want to advance forward into the schematic design phase. And so this will be right at the beginning of that schematic design phase. And then we'll have the opportunity to say, from exterior interior design, what are the things that are important? We'll probably have some three-dimensional images that we can start looking at and providing feedback on. So I think that there's actually the most direct connection between this advisory team meeting and sort of that review. As we move forward, we won't have a completely granular finite level of detail, but we'll be starting to look at exterior massing and materials and interior space and materials. That should be a good productive part of this discussion for this team in September. That's all we have in terms of presentation material. Again, I don't know if there's any parting thoughts or any reaction to any of that at the conclusion, but definitely have appreciated all the input to date and the dialogue today.
[izVdDtzaCdw_SPEAKER_08]: One thing just did occur to me. My son was in the marching band. And when we used to come back from the shows, trying to get the instruments back into the area where they stored them. could be a pain sometimes trying to get them up the ramp. And I was just wondering, wherever the music room is in the storage for that, the instruments are having access like an outside exterior door that they can pull those things in through would have been nice. It wasn't that bad because it was pretty close at the height, but you still had to roll them up the ramp and over dirt and broken cobblestones and things. So some of those marching band instruments are pretty big.
[Matt Rice]: Yeah, no, that's a great point, Paul. And I don't know that we heard that specifically, even from the programming discussions, but it's something that we can wrap back with the educational planning equity advisory team, as well as discussing that particular topic during the programming meetings that'll be coming up as well with all the educators, performing arts included, when we get there in the fall.
[izVdDtzaCdw_SPEAKER_08]: Yeah, thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: just to follow up on that. Can you hear me? I'm just pushed into my car. Yep, we can. Yep. Thank you. You know, I just having my kids for each in the band as well. I mean, is it really an option to like have a back it up like you do every time you see like a Walmart truck backed up to a Walmart or something? Like it just backs right up to the spot. And then from the inside, I mean, you don't have to unload even. You can just leave it there and use it if you want it inside, or if you're just going to the next. I just feel like the actual activity of loading and unloading that thing is such a huge lift, so that if the actual trailer was the storage, I mean, I don't know if that would actually work because I didn't do a lot of that myself, but I do think we should revisit this to make sure we don't create a scenario where the band has it even worse than they do now.
[Matt Rice]: Yeah, definitely that's that's not the desired outcome in terms of creating some additional challenges. I think let us let us circle back with like the band director when we get to those programming meetings and make sure that we can have this type of conversation with them. Because I in my mind I can't visualize yet sort of what would be the ideal situation. I'm a little concerned just in terms of the notion of backing the trailer up to the buildings. Essentially what we would be talking about is another loading dock bay, where we would have the band trailer parked, which could be better than having it parked out in front of the building like it is right now. But if it didn't want to be next to the loading dock, which I could also understand, then we'll potentially have some loading dock-like space located around the perimeter of the building. It's always a challenge to sort of design the front of the building in the back of the building. So the areas that that you don't necessarily want to be staring at all the time and to create another sort of quasi loading dock in a different area disparate from the from the real loading dock. maybe a challenge when we're looking at sort of all the competing interests for the building perimeter down at grade. Again, I'm not saying right now that that couldn't be viable. It's something that we can certainly look at as we move forward, but I think we also want to get a better sense of exactly what would be the ideal situation from sort of a band operations perspective, and then try to design to that goal.
[Paul Ruseau]: Sounds complicated.
[Matt Rice]: It's a little complicated, yes, but it's a great point. I certainly appreciate the focusing on sort of that band topic because that trailer is out there every time you walk up to the building, it's hanging out right there. And we know that they're out there in the parking lot, which is also something that we're looking to avoid moving forward because that is not ideal in terms of a practice environment for a lot of reasons. So I do hear that the temple down below does appreciate sort of seeing and hearing the music from up there. We did get that feedback. All right. Well, if there's nothing else, again, truly appreciate everyone's participation and willingness to stick inside with us when it is still fairly nice outside for a little while. For those of you that are also engaged with the site safety security meeting, that'll be in the same link. So you could just hang out here if you want to, and we'll get going with that probably in five to 10 minutes. But everyone else, thank you. Thank you all. Bye.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you, everyone.
[Matt Rice]: Bye now. Hello everyone that is here for the site safety and security advisory team meeting for the Medford High School project. We have been just giving everyone five minutes or so to log on to these meetings and get settled. So that will be the plan here as well. And we'll get going in a couple of minutes. We have some folks that were still hanging around from the last advisory team meeting. But I think there's probably a few folks that were still waiting to hop in. I want to give them that opportunity. Um, I don't know, Ken, do we stop and then restart the recordings or when we post these recordings, is it really the two meetings combined and people just have to scroll through them?
[Kenneth Lord]: It's one recording. You know, stop and started zoom. We'll stitch it together.
[Matt Rice]: Oh, no. Regardless of whatever we would prefer. Zoom does its thing. It knows best.
[Jack Buckley]: Yeah.
[Matt Rice]: But thank you for those of you that were hopping on right on time. We do appreciate that as well. We'll have a couple of awkward minutes here at the beginning while everybody hops on and there's not a lot of great things to discuss unless people have a topic of the day that they want to throw out there for consideration. Favorite breed of dog, for example. Just go. Anybody.
[Matt Gulino]: Probably golden. It's not very original though.
[Rosemary Park]: I like my mutton.
[Amanda Centrella]: bigger and dumber they are, the more I love them.
[Matt Rice]: I could probably have gone for something more contentious like cats versus dogs. See where the cards fall there. But I don't know that we want to get everybody riled up before we start into our meeting here. Those that have just hopped on, we'll get going here in about a minute. All right, I think I will just jump right in here. Just want to welcome everybody to the site safety and security advisory team meeting for the Medford High School project. Again, this is our third meeting in our series of four meetings that we're having with each one of the advisory teams. So this is sort of our third iteration opportunity to get together as a group. I will share the screen in a second, but I just want to go over a couple things before we dive in and stare at an Excel document for a little while, which I know is rough on everybody's eyes, including mine. So we'll try to avoid that for just a couple seconds. I want to point out the fact that this meeting this evening is entirely remote. as opposed to the last meeting where we had a hybrid approach to the meeting. And really we made this conscious decision to go back to an all-remote meeting format to try and make sure that everyone had the same experience from an AV and opportunity to participate perspective. I think what we observed the last time is that the folks that had been able to make it in person had a little bit better ability to interact with everyone because of the AV challenges that we had in terms of just getting the the owl to work consistently, which I know we figured out towards the end, but also some of the audio was challenging as well. And just the fact that getting all the hands to be up versus folks that were in the room. So this will provide a more equitable experience for everybody. It's not to say that there was not positives that came from the in-person meetings as well, because we really do value the opportunity to see everybody in person and have that face-to-face contact when folks are able to. But at the same time, we know that this format actually probably allows for a higher level of participation for folks that have to manage things like childcare at the same time as meeting participation. We don't know exactly as we go forward whether or not we're going to keep the all remote, or maybe if we have some better opportunities for hybridizing the meeting, that we may do that going forward. But for today, all remote, and that's sort of the reason why we're shifting to all remote for this discussion today. So with that, let me go ahead and share the screen. Let's see if I can find the right set of buttons here to bring it up for everybody. OK. So this is us today. So the agenda for today is a fairly simple one. We'll take a minute and run through just some orienting information. We'll just do the introduction visually as part of the slides. We won't take the time to necessarily run through all the introductions because we get the sense that everyone is at least familiar with each other. This is our third meeting of the series. But we will do a quick acclimation process. And just to go back, something I didn't mention as I was just going through that remote meeting format, pre-log or log. is that because we are virtual for this, we do ask that everyone makes good use of the hand raising feature in terms of offering comments and just allowing us to be able to manage sort of that input that we're going to be getting. So when we see hands come up, we'll pause and we'll go through the hands in general order as they go. But also do feel free to use the chat feature as well if you want to drop in a thought or a comment. piece of information that we can reference moving forward, or if you're having audio visual issues for any reason, and you want to use that as a communication tool, we can pause and read out comments that come in through the chat as a secondary way of interacting. But after we do the introductions here, we will pivot into looking at that live Excel document, which is the document that generated the tables that were circulated with the agenda. So hopefully everyone has a chance to at least look at that document, familiarize yourself with it. If you have any questions that you want to start off with, we can certainly jump through it, but we will be running through it in order and I'll get into a little bit more detail of what that's going to look like when we get there. That's our second item on the agenda and then we're just going to cover some next steps to forecast what's going to be coming at the fourth meeting that we're looking at later on in the process. So again, the introductions, this is the group of us from the design team, as well as some of our consultants on the landscape side and security side. I'll just point out that I don't believe that Kate is able to join us today from agency, but we have Kezia here as well, or in Kate's stead to represent agency. And then we also have some team members from our owner's project manager left field as well. And then this is the Medford group for the site safety and security advisory team members. We're going to circle back here just on the schedule for a minute, just so that people can acclimate to where we are in the overall process again. It has been a couple months since we got together last. We are currently just a little bit beyond the halfway point in the feasibility study. So, if you don't recall this, the MSBA process breaks the feasibility study down into two parts. The piece that we have just completed is the preliminary design program or the PDP portion of the feasibility study. So, that was submitted to the MSBA, Massachusetts School Building Authority, just a couple weeks ago. We are waiting for comments to come back from them in a couple weeks. But we are proceeding into the preferred schematic report phase, which is the second part of the feasibility study, which is sort of just right about where we are now halfway through that overall timeline. That's where we are today. And then that fourth meeting that will happen for each of the advisory teams will be happening at the beginning of the schematic design phase, which will be just right at the outset of the fall when we all get back for the new school year. And then this slide is one that everyone has seen before, and we won't dwell here too long. We're just, again, going to reiterate the fact that there are overlapping considerations. from all four of these advisory teams that is a natural and inherent part of the process. You will see as we jump into the recommendations that there are some that we've flagged for some additional discussion because really it's going to be taken under consideration or have a recommendation formed potentially as part of one of the other advisory teams that are listed here. And not to say that it's not important, But what we try to do is not have the same recommendation replicated in two different advisory teams, just because there's the potential for conflicting information there. So we'll try to designate which is the primary, certainly if anyone feels otherwise, and you want to suggest that we shift and sort of keep it under the umbrella potentially of site safety and security, happy to have that conversation as part of the discussion this evening. All right, so I'm going to hold that down, and I'm going to bring up the actual working document that we have here for this evening. So again, this is the live Excel document that we're going to be working our way through. It is what generated the PDF versions that everyone has had a chance to look at that were attached with the meeting agenda. If you haven't had a chance to look through it, don't worry. We'll be going through this. at a pretty consistent pace so you have the ability to sort of review things that are up on screen as we go. I'm just going to explain the organization of this, and I'll apologize in advance for those of you that have sat through multiple advisory team meetings. This is going to be very much repetitive. I wish I had sort of a script that I go through it, but Hopefully, the information is consistent and it's not too repetitive in terms of what we're going through. The first column, column C, that is listed here is really a collection of the feedback and input that we've gotten through the course of the first two advisory team meetings, which includes both the priority goals that every team member was able to offer up as thoughts, as well as some topics that came up during the course of discussion during the second meeting that we had. So it's really like an amalgamation of those two items. We have generated these based on our own notes from those two meetings as well as the recordings from those two meetings. But if there are items that you don't see here that you want added, even if it's a topic that just comes to mind today in the particular groupings, We're happy to add that in. We're happy to modify, delete as we go. This is not something that is set in stone yet. It is very much intended to be a working document that we're going to craft through the course of the discussion this evening as we go. Please feel free to weigh in on whether or not any of these don't resonate based on the prior discussion. In some cases, it'll be really great to have some discussion here if they're not resonating yet. Um, I will also mention that these are grouped. Um, what we've tried to do is find the like-minded items. Um, so these may not be exactly chronological in terms of what the prior discussions were. Um, but we're trying to put them into logical groupings, uh, cause there are a fair number that we want to get through as we go. The second column here is suggested recommendation to the school building committee. This is all blank right now. Again, that's intentional at the moment. Really what's going to be coming out of this conversation today is we want to understand whether or not we're hearing things correctly. And then as we proceed to the next meeting, get into the next meeting, we'll take a stab at really evolving some of these topics into some recommendations to the building committee that are aligned with the topics themselves. And then this group will have the ability to edit and comment on those as well before they actually get passed to the building committee. But that'll be an activity for the next meeting that we get to. So just for the ability to read everything that's on screen, I'm going to hide that column for the time being tonight as we run through. But that column will come back as we move forward. I am going to just take a second to explain these next three columns that we have. These are really our traffic light color codings of the different topics that are found in column C in terms of the comments and suggestions. What we've done is gone through and looked at each one of the comments and tried to give it some designation as to whether or not it might already be given as part of the project. Something that is inherent because it is either reflected in past conversations that we've had. It may be represented in the educational plan. It may have been a discussion topic with the building committee or set out by the school committee, even in advance. So there's any host of reasons why it might be a given. This is our initial pass at what designation should be given. It's certainly fair game as we go through to potentially think about shifting any of these items from one column to the next in terms of the color light given to it. So this is just our first pass in terms of items that are in green. The items that are in yellow are items that we feel just need some additional discussion really here this evening as part of this meeting before we're fully understanding and agreeing upon what the path forward is or what the recommendation might be. So we'll really value The additional discussion that we have here and just in terms of managing the time as we go through, we're going to go through the given items without much discussion on them because there's a good number of overall items and just if in terms of time management, we won't have enough time. to jump through every green item in particular. We tried that at the first advisory team meeting, and we sort of corrected ourselves during the course of it to make sure that we could get through all the items. We will take a pause, though, with each group just to see whether or not there's any overall comments, say, with this first topic in terms of security and monitoring, in case anyone has any thoughts or comments that want to get added in there. And then the last comment, the last color designation would be these red items where we perceive that there would be challenges. or it may be a recommendation that the entire collective team does not believe is something that wants to be moved forward. We haven't designated anything intentionally with red to start off with. It really should be the advisory team that is making that recommendation if we go down that path versus the design team really dictating that in advance. But again, it's completely fair game to suggest that something gets shifted over into the red category. If there is a sentiment or a thought about why that should happen, we would just want some discussion as to why that would be recommended. So we do have some comments as well in this final column that will just help guide the conversation in some ways as we move forward. But that's really the overall organization of what we're going to look at and run through. Before we dive into it, and I'll hand it over to Laura in a second, is there any question about the formatting or sort of the activity that we're going to run through or initial thoughts that people just want to offer up? OK, so that means it's clear or that everyone just wants us to get through quickly and be able to get back outside. Either one is OK. But we'll start off with security and monitoring. And again, this is one that we don't have any yellow items in. So we can just take a second. I don't want to go through and read each one of them. Again, it'll just get challenging in terms of the time. But if anyone has any thoughts on these particular items, they are all sort of indicated as a given. But if there's additional detail that needs to get added there, or if anyone feels that one of these should be shifted into other categories, happy to talk about that now. All right. I don't think it was strategic in terms of the grouping, but for whatever reason, the other advisory teams, we started off with some items that definitely warranted some discussion and had lots of energy right at the outset. So maybe that's as we go forward, we can sort of slide around the different topics so that we can jump right into the conversation. But I guess, Laura, you can start off here then with site access, HECRAS and fire safety. And we'll maybe go through those first three items, then open up for some comments.
[h56i5SspnTk_SPEAKER_08]: Sure. Thank you, Matt. I think the first comment that we thought needed further discussion was the historic difficult site, the access and ingress challenges, and how some of these might, the site elements, like where the driveway will be located, its width, will depend on which buildings remain. There's that famous sort of pinch point by the pool. And that can't really be widened much more against the property line to allow for more traffic. There are other ways of trying to move cars and vehicles around the site and make for better circulation. But depending on which buildings remain, There might still be these legacy issues that we would have to just live with. I'm curious if anyone has any comments or thoughts about this one.
[Matt Rice]: I might suggest also what's worked well is that we can do a grouping of them, maybe these three, and then we can see whether there's any additional feedback there. Or Teresa, if you want to chime in.
[xARk0471UWA_SPEAKER_41]: That works for me. I think that's fine. Let's just go through the three, and then we can talk about it.
[h56i5SspnTk_SPEAKER_08]: All right. OK. Yes, the need for more than one road, the dead end is problematic for fire apparatus, where we have definitely committed to looking at improving this site circulation. It's something we've heard from multiple groups. We don't yet know where the building would be placed on the site, but getting traffic around, providing for turnaround at least for fire apparatus is going to be key. So this is definitely something to be studied, as is the secondary access, improved fire lanes, the hydrants, the field access. There's meetings going on currently to investigate the options for this, like a secondary emergency egress from the site. And there's going to be more meetings scheduled. It means talking with, you know, the neighbors to the site and figuring out what can and can't be done.
[Matt Rice]: Or I might just add some the context here that I think this is it's probably the emergency egress is maybe the single most critical sort of site topic that we have heard about moving forward, especially from police and fire in terms of trying to improve the public safety of the high school site itself. So there is a tremendous amount of energy that's being put in right now to try and figure out what opportunities and options we have. And as Laura mentioned, we have been having a lot of dedicated meetings since we've got together as the advisory team the last time. dedicated meetings with police and fire, with DCR, joint meetings as recently as earlier today in terms of trying to understand that. And I don't know that we're at a point yet where we have sort of a magic bullet, a silver bullet that can help sort of alleviate all the challenges that are associated on that particular topic. but there is definitely a tremendous amount of energy and effort that we're expending to try to figure out what options to alleviate things and provide a safer site for everyone exist. We're just really in the midst of that process at the moment.
[h56i5SspnTk_SPEAKER_08]: Yes, thank you for clarifying that, Matt. I don't know if we want to sort of separate emergency
[Matt Rice]: um access from a sort of secondary um traffic related access in yeah yeah that's a good point reading the topics as well yeah i think they're they're a little bit conflated in terms of those different pieces and so when we're talking about emergency access it would really be for police and fire vehicle access only in the event of an emergency versus providing a secondary day-to-day access going through. We are looking at both of those, but I think reading through these items, those two things may have intertwined, so that's one thing that we can do is clarify those two different topics here. That would be good. All right, so I know we want to start with Teresa, and then we can go over to Nick afterwards.
[xARk0471UWA_SPEAKER_41]: Thank you. And I guess I just have two questions. So when you say it's important, it will be studied, I would hate for the next time we hear from you, for you to be like, yeah, we studied it and it's not going to work, so sorry. So can you, do you mind just explaining like what that decision process looks like and how you will kind of circle back? You know, I know we're just advisory, but just like how you're going to share information. And then the second question that I have is when you say emergencies, secondary emergency access, Would not be open to, I think, general purpose traffic would it be open to walkers or cyclists on a regular basis? Thank you.
[Matt Rice]: Or do you want me, I can. I'm going to take the questions in reverse order because that's how my brain works in terms of remembering them. I think the walkers and bikers access is an interesting question. It's one that we haven't talked about specifically with either the first responders or DCR yet. I would think that from a DCR perspective, they would welcome and encourage that type of thing, because that's really what the Fells is, their mission in terms of trying to get people to experience it and through there. But I think we would need to have that conversation. It's a good point to bring up, and we can wrap that into the conversations that are taking place. In terms of the process, just so folks can understand, I think what we're trying to do is sort of facilitate the conversation. It really ends up being like a negotiation. as to how we can improve the situation for everyone, not just for the high school site, but also improve the situation for DCR in terms of their access to and maintenance of the fells. So that's what we're trying to do is find something that raises up the condition for everybody. But it really is a back and forth. And I think the first responders have been great in terms of their willingness to communicate with us and indicate priorities moving forward. And DCR has been great as well in terms of trying to bring all the different individuals that have purview over the topic to the table so that we can have the conversation to understand where are those priorities and what does it mean. Because it is a challenging thing to consider in terms of Providing an improvement that might be off of will be off of the high school site itself. There's land ownership that comes into play. So there's some very intricate topics that have to sort of be worked through. And I think we're still also reaching out to additional folks at DCR as we get a clearer sense of what the different implications are in terms of who the right people are to talk to and make sure that they have the ability to input into the conversation. So we are really in the midst of that process right now in terms of making sure that we're pulling in all the correct voices. And we are definitely making headway in progress in terms of the conversations versus like being in a scenario where we're just spinning our wheels. So that it has felt productive in terms of the conversation moving forward. I don't know how to ballpark exactly where we are in the process, like on a percentage basis or where we're getting there. And certainly we don't want to be coming back to this group and saying that we don't have any option in front of us. We will be looking at sort of what the ideal is and what some other opportunities might be. But I'll caveat by all of that by saying I think this group probably is acutely aware that it's a it's a challenging thing to be able to find opportunities to do this with. We're just incredibly landlocked by incredibly valuable natural resource that surrounds us and trying to find ways that we don't upset any of the apple carts and find a way to improve things. It's not an easy task. I think there's a reason why it hasn't been done to date, but we're not dissuaded from continuing on the path to try to find that improvement. I think we'll go Nick, and then Ethan, I see your hand up as well. So we'll just hit people in that order.
[MCM00001753_SPEAKER_02]: Hello. Good evening, everyone. I hope you can hear me. Yeah, we can hear you. You're perfect. I think Laura kind of touched on my question about the access, because, well, obviously, when you're talking about handicapped access, it's just as much, It's just as much of an emergency exit as it is a day-to-day exit. Can someone be able to get out in case of anything? I just wanted to put that out there, especially because of those are the ways this is worded right now. I wanted to ask just about all that. But I think that might also come in later if I read this document correctly. So feel free to table that if need be. But yeah, thank you.
[Matt Rice]: Yeah, so I think just to respond specifically, there's I believe there's other items as well that we get into that specifically address accessibility, but completely happy and understandable if we want to modify, say, even that first one to be a little bit more explicit about what access means there and or potentially. add accessibility to it as sort of a primary consideration that wants to be addressed as part of that recommendation. And if you have a suggested rewording that you want to even drop into the chat, we're happy to take that in and try to wrap a proposed recommendation around that as we move forward in the process. Thank you. Ethan, do you want to go ahead? Yeah, sure.
[SPEAKER_02]: Excuse me, I'm a little sick today. But I think it sounds a little bit like reading between the lines here that we're talking about building a road through the fells. And I think if that's the case, that item should be moved into the red category, because I think that's really problematic for a number of reasons.
[Matt Rice]: It's a great topic to discuss, right? I think there's the potential of needing a road. Emergency access is something that has to be able to support fire apparatus as well as police vehicles. But the fire apparatus in this case, I think, are the design driver in terms of access through. And I don't know if Chief Buckley is on. And wants to sort of provide any additional commentary or clarity there but that is really the ask is that we find some way of getting a separate emergency egress path into the site and short of. taking eminent domain and taking people's houses down, really the fells, the DCR land is the only other path that we have available open to us. So that's why we've gone down the path that we have, or I'm sorry, Chief Buckley and Evans, I've gotten you guys mixed up, but Chief, do you want to weigh in since you have your hand up?
[Jack Buckley]: Yeah, I think it's all so good. But before I get it, you could go first.
[Todd Evans]: I was just going to mention that. Yeah, the road would be based on basically the we have the bigger vehicles, so it has to be able to support our largest vehicles as far as weight goes and things like that. But also, this is a this would be a road that would actually probably benefit people in the fells because this road is a road that would have to be maintained throughout the year, including the winter time in which snow would have to be cleared off this road and people that actually want to go into that section of the fells would actually now probably have an area to walk for most of the time that's clear of snow and things like that. And we would, it would also benefit like DCR fire crews and things like that to access that area as well that we do have difficulty getting in there when we do have fires in those woods in that area too. So there is kind of a benefit to the fellows in a way they're also having an area for, obviously there's gonna be a lot of people walking in that area and that they can use that access road obviously when we're not utilizing it ourselves.
[Matt Rice]: All right, let me keep buckling and then I see Tim has his hand up as well.
[Jack Buckley]: I just wanted to go back. Sorry. Thank you. I just want to go back to the original sort of ask here from public safety is we need more than one entrance egress. That is a basic public safety design for any sort of. property that we want to secure. And the question would be, where would that come? And we're limited in that, in the area of where we can do this, right? So we have one area right now that's Stephen Miller Drive, it's not really acceptable. And we couldn't just continue with that path. The problem is, is we're looking at all different areas. One consideration is going to part of the fells. But I'm okay designated in terms of what we're talking about here as an emergency access. in the sense that it's not going to be open 24 hours a day or on a daily basis. But if there's an emergency, you're going to see police, fire, EMS, everyone coming up the main entrance because we're not going to stop to unlock a gate and delay things. We need that in a practical sense to decide how we're going to get assets into the property and out of the property in an emergency, right? So if you sit there and say it's only designated to police and fire, they're the only ones who can use it. Not really what we're thinking. We need two access roads, an in and an out, to be able to support any emergency up there. The question is, where is it going to go? How big it can be built? And again, that's just going back to the original ask. And I just wanted to sort of make that clear. We're not looking for a path through the woods that will provide some benefit, but it's not going to solve all of our public safety needs. If that helps, probably doesn't, sorry.
[Matt Rice]: And do you want to chime in?
[Tim McGivern]: Oh, sure. I was just curious if the end of Ronald Lee road was being looked at as far as a. Secondary access point, because I agree with the, with the chiefs in regards to having 2. And in and out, or, you know, multiple entrances to this large site.
[Matt Rice]: And I appreciate you asking that question, Tim, we are not. currently looking at all at the end of Ronalee Road as a potential connection opportunity. Primarily because to get from the site to the end of Ronalee Road we have to go through wetlands, directly through wetlands, a fair amount of them that are located in the parcels that connect. There's still DCR land so it doesn't alleviate the potential of having to go through DCR land in that direction and it adds the complication of going through the wetlands, which would involve a lengthy and not even guaranteed permitting path to go through there in terms of wetland preservation from the environmental department. So that's the primary reason we're not going in that direction. And we're looking more so to the south and the east opportunities to address what both chiefs have been conveying to us in terms of access needs. I see Brian and Jenny. I'm not sure which of you got your hands up first. Jenny, do you want to go and then Brian?
[Jenny Graham]: Sure. I just wanted to say overall, I think Matt is trying to walk a very fine line here because there are active conversations going on with our neighbors, which is DCR. And obviously, there's a slew of considerations when it comes to talking Um, to a state agency about this kind of project. So, some of it is about, like, how can we be a good neighbor and do happy things, like, restore the Mustang loop, right? Like, but then there are other, like, more complicated things about, like. Fires in the fells that require access via the high school and, um, you know, the emergency access needs that we have. So, um, I don't want anybody to leave this thinking we're going to, like. Raise a 2 mile road through the middle of the fells. It's not what we're talking about. That's not on the table. I just think we have to there's some more conversation yet to have with DCR to even explore. The things that the team is thinking are maybe possible before they are ready for. Broader discussion, so I just going to ask for everyone's patience while we do that. So we don't get out of order in terms of who. Um, who needs to know what and when, um. But, yeah, it's the site is very complicated in its surroundings. Unfortunately.
[Matt Rice]: Thank you. Brian, before I let you chime in, I just want to add some context back to Ethan's original point. The folks that we've had initial conversations with at DCR and even following up as earlier today, their environmental staff are involved in the conversation and are certainly paying attention to the impact from an environmental standpoint. of any proposed activity or intervention that would impact the fells. We do have plans moving forward to make sure the friends of the fells are also involved in that conversation, so that we're looking at it from a variety of perspectives. We understand it's a tremendously valuable natural resource, and that will be part of the considerations as we work through the process. I didn't state that earlier, and I just want to make sure that was clear. Brian, do you want to go?
[Brian Hilliard]: Actually, I think you guys pretty well covered it. So I appreciate that. I think, Matt, it was sort of an East versus West and possibly South and DCR question. And Jenny nailed it just with basically having an abundance of caution about getting ahead of ourselves. So I think you guys clarified it. And we've just got to be a little bit patient there. But I think it's on the right path. But as long as we're not putting a runway from west to east through the fells, people will be happy. Thanks.
[Matt Rice]: Yeah, obviously a lot more conversation there. I just, Ethan, I don't know if you want to follow up at all or if you have anything that you want to add in there.
[SPEAKER_02]: No, thanks for all the context. So I guess I'm just curious, is it like, is it looking at that portion of DCR land immediately west of Steve Miller Drive to try to get like two kind of separated access points or?
[Matt Rice]: So that is, I think that's part of the solution. Yes, in terms of addressing what Chief Buckley was talking about trying to have multiple ways in and out, so that there's less potential for bottlenecking or obstruction, and also to try to alleviate that we'll get down to that topic as well. Certainly the traffic concern coming onto the site and leaving the site at the beginning and end of the day is also a huge challenge. There's only so much that we can do in terms of solving the traffic woes of Medford at a larger scale, but in terms of the immediate challenges around the site, having that some ability to create a second access point and have potentially even in and out that are separated by looking at that parcel to the west of Steve Miller Drive is on the table. In terms of the emergency access, it's more of a thought of trying to actually utilize an existing fire road access point that DCR does have a little bit further east of Victory Park. That's what would be considered more from an emergency access standpoint. I think there's still multiple things that are on the table and all of them are not at the point yet where we even have definitive feedback from DCR as to the viability, but we're trying to advance all those conversations concurrently as we go.
[SPEAKER_02]: Do you think, would it be possible to maybe make the add some kind of geographic qualifier to the, to these rows as we're, cause I just like to my point about like, depending on where it is, maybe it becomes more contentious and like goes into the red bucket, like to Brian's point. But I think like these options that we're talking about on the South are more tenable and yeah, yellow, more discussion.
[Jenny Graham]: I'd make a suggestion that we move off of this topic because we're sort of dancing into the space of getting out of order really fast. So maybe there is an offshoot meeting once of this group, once we have a little bit more information. Because I just don't want this to become a thing in the like, public, I just have flashbacks to how we responded, rightfully so, about Winchester wanting to build a hockey rink in the Fells and Medford. We don't need that energy at this moment. There's nothing sort of flaring like that. And we don't even know what the options are. So I would strongly prefer that we table the rest of this conversation and bring this group back together if we have a little bit more. And when we have a little bit more, where our partners at DCR in particular would be comfortable with this stuff being posted for posterity on the Internet, because that is where this meeting is headed. So I just want to make sure we're not upsetting the apple cart.
[Matt Rice]: Certainly happy to progress, and I think that's good advice, Jenny. Thank you. All right, moving on to mobility, circulation, transportation. Laura, do you want to take it from here again? Maybe we'll start on like line 25 and go through the yellow items.
[h56i5SspnTk_SPEAKER_08]: Sure. First was need sidewalks on both sides of the access road. Right now, as we've talked about, Steve Miller Drive is very constrained. And we do want to make that sidewalk accessible. And that might mean taking the sidewalk away from the driveway and putting it on its own path. Perhaps ramps will be needed. That might be an option. We're still studying this and taking a look at it. So that's why this is in the yellow column. public transit limited, need more MBTA buses, and need the struggle to reach buses on time, late bus options desired. These are kind of together. We are going to do a transportation survey of the staff and students, actually first staff and teachers, separately students, to better understand some of these transportation and transit needs and are certainly planning to meet with the MBTA and discuss that. We understand that there's a struggle right now to get on those buses and that they get very crowded very fast. So that is definitely going to be part of the conversation moving forward. I don't know if anyone wanted to talk about any of those items before we scroll down and we lose that?
[Matt Rice]: Oh, sorry. Yes. OK. So we get these three items. See if I can get the trails back in there as well. Here we go.
[h56i5SspnTk_SPEAKER_08]: The next two items are kind of related, which have to do with the Mustang loop the trails being the trails accessible with proper signage, potential conflict with the wetlands there, and just general maintenance and changes to the Mustang loop. This is, I think, part of maybe having a more neighborly relationship with DCR about some of these issues. I think that there's certainly been some issues of like water intrusion from the trails that we were noticing this spring. And so a closer relationship with DCR and understanding maybe who to talk to. how to coordinate the maintenance or improvement of these trails, that's certainly part of a bigger discussion. Putting money towards improving the trails may not be part of this high school project, but it may be in conjunction. So at this point, this part, maybe set aside as outside the scope of the high school project, but not set aside entirely is what I'm saying.
[Matt Rice]: Yeah, Laura, I think it's probably going to fall back into just thinking about Jenny's guidance in terms of the discussion, right? The trail discussions are really wrapped into the larger discussions as well with DCR. And I think we're really in the process of trying to understand that certainly these topics have been conveyed initially in terms of some thoughts that have come from the advisory team and sort of they're swirling around with the project. But I think we're going to need a little bit of time to be able to get back to the group as well with just some more. specific guidance or updates regarding sort of the designation or attitude towards the trails and what we're able to accomplish or what DCR might be able to accomplish moving forward. So I think we'll have a little bit of a pin in this item as well moving forward. But Tim, do you want to weigh in on this one?
[Tim McGivern]: Sure, and we can stay away from the DCI side of things. I was just curious about the approach to really the edge condition of the site and how the site would interact with the existing trailheads that are there. I know that people access the fells, whether you like it or not, from here and also, as was mentioned, fire fire department use of the access to the fells from that point as well. So just curious about the edge condition when you're designing the site.
[h56i5SspnTk_SPEAKER_08]: Yeah, that's certainly something that we are looking at and very cognizant of. I know that our landscape architects agency have thought a lot about the way that the site and the fells meet and that's going to be part of the design going forward. Part of that too is this continued talks with DCR and understanding what they need and what they are sort of expecting in terms of interaction with the high school site because they are so closely intertwined. So it's hard to say at this exact moment what that will be in the future.
[Matt Rice]: I think the word we used earlier today to describe that relationship in terms of like the trailhead access is a symbiotic one. In terms of DC are really needing and wanting to leverage sort of the parking opportunity that exists currently in the high school to be able to provide access into the fills and the high school property really needing. to facilitate something like that happening. So it's not like we can either group sort of ignore sort of the access points for the other or the ways of interacting. And I think there's some commitment from both sides to be able to understand, okay, how do we facilitate maintaining this access in some way, shape or form? We don't know what that's gonna look like yet, but there's definitely something that we have to sort out in terms of sort of negotiated um, access moving forward. And I think that is going to be right. I'm sorry to keep going back to this notion that we're wrapping it in to the larger discussion, but there are a lot of parts and pieces, um, to DCR itself and sort of how, um, the different departments there also view all of these topics. Um, and we just need to make sure that we have those, those folks also wrapped into the process as we go through, but, um, certainly some focuses is being given there. No doubt. Good luck. Nick, you want to go?
[MCM00001753_SPEAKER_02]: Yes. Hi. Thank you. Kind of on the topic of DCR as well, because regarding the accessible trails, I know Friends of the Fells, I believe, is trying to work on an accessible trail, a map, I believe in Medford actually, come to think of it. And I'm not sure if they would be of some help or some advice and stuff, because I know, just because of the comment on the form, there are ways to make them in wetlands. And I think I had a conversation with one of them about that. So I think that is something that we could look into if it's really proving to be a to be a problem because it has been done before and is trying to be done even in our own cities. So I hope that helps.
[Matt Rice]: I wonder, Nick, if it would be helpful and productive to maybe to the contacts that you have in terms of the folks that you've spoken with at DCR to sort of wrap them in, not that we need to bring them necessarily into this advisory team, but if we have sort of a sidebar meeting where we can talk about the context for what is being done elsewhere in Medford and how So the trails around the high school site, maybe in their plans and sort of what modifications to plans might exist I think that could be a productive way of getting some traction there, because we did mention the topic of the accessibility of say the Mustang loop. But there wasn't a lot of ability for them to react immediately and I think it, it may just be the the challenge of having the right people in the room and I think the people you've been speaking with are obviously going to be the ones that have the most knowledge and I just want to try to tap into that I think that's that's been our. our best opportunity is making sure that we have the right folks that we're talking with. If you'd be amenable to that, we can work with left field as well to try and schedule that type of discussion to happen and maybe get a little bit more immediate traction there. Yes, sir. Okay. Sorry, Matt Galeno, we're going to give you some activities follow-up from this one. Is Matt on still or is it Jen? Jen, did you switch on with us?
[Matt Gulino]: Oh, nope, I'm still there. OK. Thank you.
[Matt Rice]: I can't see everybody.
[Matt Gulino]: Nope, not a problem.
[Matt Rice]: OK. I'm going to pivot us down through to community access and open campus.
[h56i5SspnTk_SPEAKER_08]: Thanks, Matt. I'm going to read through some of these. all together because I think they're very closely related, which is the balancing the welcoming environment with security needs and the idea of having an open campus, but also ensuring safety for public use. In addition, there's the increased visibility and presence from Winthrop Street. and include interpretive signage about designs, sorry, the one below that. Address concern about informal fails access via MHS parking. This is a lot about who will be on the site and when, who will be granted access and allowed to park during different times of the day, maybe different days of the week. And really warrants a larger discussion. with the school, the community, and just understanding and getting people to understand what the needs of the school are and what the needs of people using the site for access to bells, services, the pool, everything else that this site has to offer.
[SPEAKER_02]: Go ahead, Ethan. It seems like maybe some of that could be resolved just with a basic operational model and parking designation. If you know you have X number of students and teachers, whatever, that need to be there during the day, you reserve a certain amount of guest parking or something like that. Or are we saying we're walking down the whole site for every school day? I guess I'm not clear on what the issue or concern is. Because today, if I'm a taxpayer here and I don't have a kid, but I want to go drive over there and take my dog for a walk, am I not going to be able to do that in the future?
[Matt Rice]: I don't think I heard that from the last time around, and I just want to make sure that I'm not sort of oversimplifying it in terms of what's going through, in terms of what's been conveyed here and sort of how that might translate to the recommendations. I appreciate the request for some clarity here. I don't know some of the folks that brought up these items previously, if you want to clarify or expand. So there's two different models of just designating areas where parking may be. required, suggested for certain needs and whether that could change during the course of the day, right? When school is not in session, I think it's a much different parking landscape in terms of where the needs are. But I also don't think I heard any suggestion to like put a gate down at the base of Winthrop Street to prevent access after hours. Sorry, I don't see it, but there's. Hands up at all.
[Tim McGivern]: My hands are up, but I was just about to put it up. I was going to ask about. if the size of the parking areas are gonna be changing all that much. I guess you guys don't really have a concept plan that you're moving forward with, right?
[Matt Rice]: We don't yet, and that'll, it's sort of forecasting towards the end when I circle back to the PowerPoint, that that'll be the subject, one of the subjects that we cover at the next meeting when we're in September, because we'll actually have a layout, a site layout and then a building plan that we can look at and sort of respond to, and maybe make some of these things a little bit more tangible for everybody.
[Tim McGivern]: It seems most of the time, most of the time, most of the time, a lot of the pocket lot is empty. But anyway, you guys know how to figure this stuff out.
[h56i5SspnTk_SPEAKER_08]: Yeah. And if it's not the case in the future, yeah, how does that work for accommodating guests, visitors, students, and the additional staff and programs that are coming to the school?
[Matt Rice]: Sure, yep. Amanda, you wanna go ahead?
[Amanda Centrella]: Yeah, I don't know how helpful a suggestion this will be, but just throwing out there, I just wonder if there are some lessons, and maybe this is already underway, but I'm wondering if there are lessons learned from some of our other schools in Medford on this. I'm thinking of McGlynn in particular where they You know, I know it's much simpler, I think, in a lot of respects, but McGlynn School has a playground that is also open and accessible to the broader community, but not during use. You know, that school is used for events and it's surrounded by a public park. So just wondering if maybe we can mine some of, if we haven't already, from the experience of some at some of our other schools and how they're handling and balancing that line of access versus security.
[Matt Rice]: I think it's a great recommendation. I don't know that we've explicitly done it. I think there's been sort of anecdotes that we've heard, but it may be a more organized way of sort of doing that type of survey. And then just learning from the challenges and the opportunities that we see there, right? And seeing if there's models that we can follow. I think it's a great thought. Teresa, you wanna go ahead?
[xARk0471UWA_SPEAKER_41]: Yeah, and thanks, Amanda. I love the inspiration of the McGlynn because I was raising my hand to talk about that. increase visibility and presence from Winthrop Street. And I feel like that's another example. I'm not sure it's a positive example, right? Like it's really hard for Riverside to know that you've got the middle schools and the McGlynn Elementary School right there. But there's, I guess I would encourage you in your conversations, like there is limited school property along Winthrop Street, but, you know, creatively, what could you do to increase the visibility or kind of let people that are driving by know that there's a big school there and I do think that there's something that you could do to increase the visibility of the high school site. And I'm thinking the McGlynn It's so sad, but they have done the colored sidewalk, right? And it's sad because it's wintertime and it hasn't held up very well, but what can you do to maybe the pavement treatments or the sidewalk treatments or the landscaping or signage at the entrance that maybe could work within that context of your small physical property lines there, but could still get that point across of I am passing the Medford High School property.
[Matt Rice]: Appreciate all those ideas, Teresa. I think we're going to have to be creative in terms of grappling with that particular challenge, just geographically and sort of being surrounded by neighbors in terms of improving the visibility to it. Something along those lines may be really helpful in terms of alleviating the current scenario. Any other thoughts before we pivot down to the next group? All right. Amanda, go ahead, sorry.
[Amanda Centrella]: Sorry, this is such a small thing to feel small in the context of this, but I just feel obligated to say that the city is about to finish up a wayfinding study and will hopefully move into implementing, installing wayfinding signage and just, you know, in the spirit of ideas that wayfinding signage as part of a larger network to and from the high school may be another, you know, way one way to help a little bit with connecting people to the school from Winthrop Street and beyond.
[Matt Rice]: No, that's great. Is that something that would be available online for us to take a look at? I just think we want to be aware of it. And if there's any sort of thoughts or approaches that we can dovetail into in terms of local to the high school site, that would be a great opportunity just to align thinking and strategy on that topic.
[Amanda Centrella]: For sure. We don't have a draft yet, although I think we'll probably receive one at the end of the week. So this study is in its final stages, but it's not finished. But once we have something that we're comfortable circulating, happy to do so.
[Matt Rice]: Okay. That'd be great. We'd appreciate that. All right. Now to athletics. Nick, sorry. Do you want to go back to that prior topic?
[MCM00001753_SPEAKER_02]: Sorry about that. I had wrote it in the comments, but I'm not sure if you saw it. I know visibility from Winthrop Street is a bit tough, not only because of property lines, but also because of the trees that are there. And I'm wondering if maybe, like, because as far as I'm concerned, if you're not looking for the sign of the high school, you can miss it very quickly. And so, maybe having better signage, like something that's more like that, and something that pops out at you from the road so that you know, oh wait, that high school is up here. A lot of things. having to look for a sign that you might miss. Yeah, I don't know if that helps.
[Matt Rice]: It definitely does. I think we've heard that in some other venues as well. I think there's a lot of opportunity to improve the signage condition along Winthrop Street. I don't know exactly what form that will end up taking, but there's certainly room for improvement there in terms of visibility and awareness of people that are passing by in terms of just designating it as the entrance to the high school, because it is something that is very easy to miss right now. All right. Fields and outdoor space.
[h56i5SspnTk_SPEAKER_08]: Yeah, I think I'm going to run through all of these kind of at once. Interest in a domed athletic field. explore bringing football and track onto the site, perhaps softball and baseball, which are currently offsite, located offsite, which is an equity concern, need to coordinate shared field use across sports, interest in a mountain bike pump track, and continue the Fells Athletic Trail use, which is one mile. So I will just say that all these are in the yellow because the field program is still being reviewed and evaluated against which of the building options we'll be going with, what can be accommodated on the property. This is also field and parking sometimes need to be stacked in order to accommodate as much field program as we would want. There's also sort of limiting geometry. So something like a football and track, which is actually quite large, might only be accommodated with certain options with a building footprint on the existing site. If there are certain fields or uses that would be a priority, then I think it's good to discuss what is expected and help us understand what the site program should be and put that up against what the building layout would look like.
[Matt Rice]: And I might also just sort of in terms of the organization of this advisory team and how they work is that the eventual decision as to which fields are on site really does lie in the hands of the building committee in terms of taking input, especially from the athletics department and sort of school operations at a district level as well. This group is here to provide recommendations and additional thoughts, but the decision as to whether or not any one of these things is included doesn't necessarily rest with this group. This is sort of a recommending and advisory body as implied by the name. So if that's just helpful in terms of understanding of sort of the discussion here, but I do echo Laura's sentiment that if folks would like to advocate for any of these particular items or ward us away from any particular items, that would be a great discussion to have now. But it's also okay if we just want to let the process play out with these options as they are laid out here. That's perfectly fine.
[Tim McGivern]: Can I ask a question about the mountain bike pump track? What exactly would that be?
[Matt Rice]: I forget who brought this up, but I think that is a great question that we have as well. It's not something that we have designed at school locations previously. So I would actually also love a little bit more detail about what that might look like.
[SPEAKER_02]: That was me. Guilty. OK. But I remember not too long ago, there was actually a skateboard park out in that back parking lot. And so that was taken down, I don't know, five years ago. But Arlington recently built one of these tracks over by their hockey rink off of the Minuteman path. So it's just like dirt and berms. So I'm sure. I'll pop a link to it into the chat.
[Matt Rice]: Yeah, that's super helpful. Thank you for clarifying and we can definitely take a look at the precedent to get a better sense of sort of the area that might be required for it and where it might be best located on the site. Amanda.
[Amanda Centrella]: So definitely not wanting to discourage that idea, but I looked a little bit into bike pump tracks and have concerns about I think my understanding of those dirt ones is they're like very difficult to maintain or that they move and shift constantly and require a lot of maintenance. It's just something for us to think about if we're considering this more seriously. For a little bit of color, I'll add to that while it's not a mountain bike pump track, there are some There's some organizing in the works actually from community members about installing a pump track slash kind of skate space at Playstead Park, which I know is not right next door to here, but just as like a similar type amenity possibly. And then mountain biking is there are trails through the fells. Yeah. That allow for that as well. Is that true?
[Tim McGivern]: Yeah, certain trails I think are designated for mountain biking. The roads, the fire roads, and then the green trail and the orange trail, I think. Yeah.
[Amanda Centrella]: Anyway, just throwing a little bit of that context out there.
[Michael Pardek]: Thank you.
[Matt Rice]: All right. I'm going to keep moving down. Under CTE student experience and educational opportunities.
[h56i5SspnTk_SPEAKER_08]: Yes, I think for this one there were just two items that required further discussion. One of them, I think it's such an interesting idea, like building a model house with the hands-on learning, getting different CTE groups involved in the same project. But that would have to work with the needs of the different CTE shops and really would be part of the ed planning. A space will be made for these different programs on the site. And then the space for the global collaboration and community learning. Yeah, the specific types of spaces are still under discussion. I wasn't quite sure what global collaboration meant in this particular context. I'm trying to remember. I don't know, Matt Rosemary, if this was like for any classroom to be able to use outdoor space, or if this is within the CTE.
[Matt Rice]: I would just say, yeah, if the individual that mentioned, I think it was super helpful, Ethan, when you explained on the bike pump track, um, just to provide some additional clarity, I cannot again, recall who made this note, uh, or maybe if we even interpreted it correctly. Uh, but it would be helpful if it maybe has some additional information from the team on this one. I think we can hypothesize, um, if we need to, but definitely better to hear it from folks. If they're on again.
[Jenny Graham]: Jenny, I don't think this was my comment, but all of the meeting, these meetings are blending together in my brain, but I do remember somewhere along the way us talking about. Um, examples of how the community uses space in buildings. And so the, the example that always comes to mind for me is like Arlington's continuing ed program that, like. In Somerville, I think as well, like, where they use spaces for their continuing ed program, which is very robust and unlike anything that we have in Medford. Because they have access to, for example, in our context, like, the automotive shop, where you could run an adult ed class. So that's what I read into. This was like. If we are talking about, like, wanting to use our building for, like. re-imagining of what we call community schools in Medford Public Schools, that we should be thinking about that in the context of the new build as well. So not that it would be different space, but that it would be like an ancillary use to the educational space.
[Matt Rice]: That is super helpful, I think, because there's some CT programs where that will be a sort of a natural affinity between providing access for after hours community use and then also providing access for the community coming in as patrons for retail activities, potentially during the course of the day, like auto technology is a great example of that. There may be other CT programs that are suitable and desirable for after hours education, but might not necessarily otherwise have that proximity for easy access from the exterior. So that's something we can definitely study and take into consideration as we move forward. And also just suggest that we have some follow up discussions with Director Fallon on that as well to make sure it's sort of aligned with sort of the but the Chapter 74 use as well. whatever the vision for continuing education, adult ed might be.
[Jenny Graham]: And Matt, I do, I think you will want to talk to Chad and to Rob O'Leary. when I think of what Arlington provides in its like cohesive community ed program, that offering is like much smaller here in Medford, but it's also very fragmented. And so there are classes that go on in our CTE spaces right now. And I don't think they are called community schools things because they sit in Chad's bucket. And then there's community schools things that are really like, kind of the same. And then, you know, so there's not in Medford been a rationalization of some of these like out of school offerings yet. Although it's very hot on a lot of people's lists to get there. So just make sure you include probably Ken and Dr. Galussi and Rob and Chad, who could probably give you the guidance there, so.
[Matt Rice]: I appreciate that. Is there any purview there as well for school committee in terms of the initiatives, or is that outside?
[Jenny Graham]: I do think so, because all of those things sit under any sort of thing that falls under there is subject to school committee approval from a rate card perspective. So, like, we have to approve if we're going to offer something to the community, we have to approve that because it's part of the school budget, but not the operating budget, but it's under the purview of school finance. via their revolving funds. So yes, there is a connection there, at least in the construct that we operate in right now. I don't know what Arlington Continuing Ed does. Maybe they just rent Arlington space and they're a completely separate entity. But for us, for our purposes for right now, that would fall under the school and school committee purview.
[Matt Rice]: Okay, great. So maybe we start off with that first grouping of people that you mentioned, then we can circle back with the larger committee.
[Rosemary Park]: So Matt, is this something that we want to keep under site? Or do you think this is one that should possibly get moved to the educational equity?
[Matt Rice]: And playing in equity? I think it does make sense there. It makes more sense to sort of be considered through that advisory team.
[Rosemary Park]: Okay, and I will amend this comment to talk about how further discussion is needed with this folks that Jenny had listed.
[Matt Rice]: I think that's perfect. Great, thanks. Unless anyone disagrees, I certainly don't mean to sort of drive everything in that direction if folks think otherwise, but it does seems like it has a natural affinity there. I appreciate the clarification as well. All right, there's nothing else on that item. I think we are getting close-ish down towards the bottom. We have a little bit more time. So Laura, do you want to take us to the next couple?
[h56i5SspnTk_SPEAKER_08]: Yes, so the physical site environment and hydrology, two of the yellow comments are closely related. It's the 54% impermeable surface. And there's major stormwater challenges and the desire to restore natural hydrology and protect it open spaces. And this is kind of coming up against the desire, the increased building size and the lack of existing sort of infrastructure treating rainwater on the site. So I mean, these are big priorities for the site. How this water is captured, treated, and handled is going to be like a big piece of the puzzle going forward, especially because there is so much roof space that's going to be a given on the site. A lot of it will depend on which parking option ends up being the most desirable that we go with, because that is the other huge impervious surface. But I mean, there environmental laws and regulations about what is expected and also goals that we have in building a sustainable building that we hope to accomplish. And this is all part of that.
[Michael Pardek]: Tim, do you want to go ahead?
[Tim McGivern]: Sure. I was going to ask if you've made any progress on any sort of geotech work. I don't think there's a lot of soil up there. You guys probably already know that. So I just don't, I want to be careful. You know, my background is civil engineering. I just want to be careful that we're not spending lots of money on stormwater if, you know, the existing hydrology doesn't really do much. And you're up in a hill there too. So just, you know, I just want to make sure that we're staying cautious and continue to stay in the yellow in this one. So anyway.
[h56i5SspnTk_SPEAKER_08]: Yeah, a lot of the reason why this is yellow is because we don't have all the boring logs and geotechnical information back yet. There is going to be a... Efforts to sort of map where bedrock is underneath the site, but it has to wait till after the snow is thawed. So yeah, if the ground is frozen, it turns out it doesn't work as well.
[Tim McGivern]: So is that more planned in the spring?
[h56i5SspnTk_SPEAKER_08]: Yes, yes, there's going to be continued geotechnical investigations.
[Tim McGivern]: Can't wait. I love that stuff.
[Matt Rice]: I think it was it was the beginning of April, right, Laura, that we're targeting the geophysical. Is that right? Or mid-April?
[h56i5SspnTk_SPEAKER_08]: I think so. Yeah, they they need basically snow off the ground and, you know, bod, top layer of soil in order for the ground penetrating radar to work.
[Matt Rice]: Oh, good. All right. I'm going to shift forward to accessibility and inclusion.
[h56i5SspnTk_SPEAKER_08]: Yeah. Matt, this is another one where I wonder if it is moved to a different category or if it If it's best here because the building must be compact to facilitate student navigation, a lot of that will depend on which option, which building option is selected. Some of them allow for easier navigation and shorter travel times than others because they're more compact. They're maybe a little more vertical.
[Matt Rice]: I think you're right on that sentiment, Laura, and I will point out as well that in the evaluation criteria that is going to be in front of the building committee, one of the items specifically talks about wayfinding and ability to navigate the building in an intuitive way, even without the use of wayfinding, where the building geometry is more apparent and understandable. than what exists there today, which has a little bit of challenge to it given how circuitous it is. So I think that will be a consideration moving forward even beyond this recommendation. But I do think because it is tied to the building design specifically, it may want to shift potentially to educational planning and equity as well as an alternative category or advisory team purview. But Nick, you are the expert. So what are your thoughts there?
[MCM00001753_SPEAKER_02]: Well, thank you. I don't know if an expert would be the proper term, but I guess so. No, but thank you. I will say, from personal experience, leave alone for me, practical point of view simply from personal experience. I know that the size of the high school is definitely something to be considered. It is difficult to get from point A to point B to the point whereby I chose not to go to Medford High School because of that. And so definitely it is something that is necessary. As you said, it is more in the hands of the designers as to how that is played out. Because also, Medford does only have one high school, so you don't want to make it so compact that we're all squished, that they're all packed in there like sardines. But at the same time, you also have to realize that, like, if you have two minutes between bells, going from the East Wing to the West Wing is not gonna get you there on time. So definitely, it's a fine line, it's a fine balance. I would definitely be more than happy to help in that process. But I think seeing as design has not happened yet, I think that's all I can say right now. I would also like to like to say though that it's not just about compact, it's also making sure that you have ways that are wide enough for wheelchairs or walkers to walk through, make sure that you have space for navigating a hallway that's packed with kids at the same time as walking with a walker or roaming through with a wheelchair. These are all things to be considered as well. So I think, yeah. I hope I made sense there.
[Matt Rice]: Yeah, you know, you did for sure. And I think what we can do is probably elaborate on this particular recommendation when it's formed. And then I do think shifting it over to educational planning and equity will make some sense as well in terms of dealing with the internal modifications or machinations of the building. So we will definitely move forward in that direction. Perfect. Thank you.
[Brian Hilliard]: Yep.
[Matt Rice]: Yep. All right. So construction, logistics and safety. I don't know that we have any yellow dots on this particular topic. Again, I just will pause here for a second and see whether or not there's any desire to to elaborate on any of these items or if these seem fairly accurate and aligned with what we talked about previously. All right, and then.
[Tim McGivern]: Just one question, does the logistics plan include getting to and from the site to the city?
[Matt Rice]: in terms of like a trucking plan, in terms of how they're actually gonna bring materials, equipment in through? I believe so. I'm not the expert on terms of, but I know that that is a consideration. I'm just not sure whether it falls under the umbrella of logistics plan, or if it is sort of a separate trucking plan, or maybe if it goes by a different name, but that would be their consideration. Is that something that eventually would wanna get reviewed through your office, Tim?
[Tim McGivern]: Yeah, exactly. And I think this may have been generated by me. I think that was how it was written down. I'll just explain. So, I think.
[Matt Rice]: Okay, well, we can definitely add that in there in terms of as well that there needs to be purview from the city over trucking routes as well through the city, accessing the site.
[Tim McGivern]: We just want to be involved in that conversation.
[Matt Gulino]: Yes, yeah, and Tim this, uh, from left field, uh, we, we received approval from the building committees to proceed with construction manager at risk, which gives us a lot more control over procurement of the construction manager. And oftentimes, uh, logistics is, is one of the biggest things that they touch on. So we can, you know, sync up with your. office to make sure that when we're issuing the request for qualifications and their proposals, we're highlighting like, hey, this is a big thing. We really need to make sure that we understand where trucking routes are coming from. It's a pretty common thing for construction managers to do to show full trucking routes and stuff. So we'll definitely work on that with you. Sounds like you guys are doing it right.
[Tim McGivern]: Seeing them at risk is the way to go and we'll be happy to be involved. Great.
[Matt Rice]: Right, and then the last topic I know Matt Lane wanted to jump in here and he's been waiting for the whole meeting to be able to have a little bit of air time. So I will just point out to start off with that we have all these noted as green in terms of trying to follow the septic principles and this really these recommendations are elaborating on those natural principles. I'm not sure, Matt, if there's any additional clarification or feedback input that you're looking for from this group, but I'll just give you a quick opportunity here to weigh in.
[SPEAKER_13]: No, I don't think there's anything necessarily that needs to be further discussed. I mean, there's a lot of these practices we're going to actively be looking for as we design the site and look at the site. Obviously, there's constraints that we're going to deal with, but in terms of natural surveillance, natural access control, the territory reinforcement, maintenance and visibility activities. There's going to be a few things that we're going to have to discuss with the school in terms of operationally how a lot of these things are dealt with, you know, specifically, you know, the maintenance and invisibility of the site. But other than that, I mean, these are goals that we're going to try to do our best to achieve as we, you know, work through the design.
[Matt Rice]: I think there was agreement the last time around that this makes sense to follow. And I think that's why we shifted them all into the given category with the understanding that yes, as the site options develop, as the building options develop, we'll have to do some additional study, but definitely things that we want to move towards. I don't know if there's any other questions on these particular topics or principles or thoughts. All right. So that is the end of the list of recommendations. I'm just going to hop back really quickly over to our PowerPoint just to wrap things up. And then I'll give folks an opportunity just to weigh in with any concluding thoughts. So just to give a quick overview again of our process through the advisory teams, the times when we have met today, and then the notion that we're going to be getting back together in September. This slide actually runs through the forecast of what's going to be coming at that next meeting in September, which I think, as I mentioned earlier, we'll be going through. The design team will work through the notes from this meeting and the meeting recording, formulate some recommendations. we will give each advisory team an opportunity to review those in advance of the meetings so we can hopefully keep that portion of the meeting as brief as possible but then also provide some time and opportunity to look at that preferred alternative design which would include both site design as well as building design through all these particular lenses that we've just covered as part of recommendations just to to see what feedback can be shared to the building committee on the evolution and design as we get there. So that again will be right at the beginning of September most likely as we're coming back to school. We'll figure out that exact date and time. We may again be fully virtual for that. We'll sort that out and are certainly willing to feel thoughts or comments on sort of the ideal meeting format as we get there. So that is where we'll land. I'm going to stop sharing for a second, and Nick, give you an opportunity to weigh in.
[MCM00001753_SPEAKER_02]: Thank you. I am so sorry. I just remembered something regarding accessibility that I wanted to also just point out. I know that design will probably be looking to the ADA for all the guidance and whatnot, but as time and culture and more research has gone on, there is a concept that is being called universal access. And while DGADA is fantastic, it often gets to the bare minimum, and not to necessarily all that can be. Now granted, your universal access is not perfect either, but I think it is a better way forward, so I don't know how we can point that out to the design team and all that. But just to keep that in mind, ADA and also universal access are two, I guess, paths of guidance that will be beneficial to accessibility.
[Matt Rice]: Yeah, no, it's a great point, Nick. It has been brought up in a couple different venues, but it's definitely worth reiterating here for everyone that from a compliance standpoint, we have both the Massachusetts Architectural Access Board regulations, which is 521 CMR. That is code. That's what we're required to follow in terms of the state and comply with. And then we have the ADA regulations, which is law that we have to comply with as well. So we have those two things as a public facility that is just a baseline that we need to adhere to, and we will obviously. We do very much believe in the principles of universal access and universal design from a physical standpoint, and trying to make sure that people can experience the building in similar ways, that we're not being exclusionary in terms of really how we're thinking about the design of space and access to particular elements within the building. So that will definitely be part of that process. I also just want to point out that we also think about universal access from an educational perspective. And there it's referred to as universal design for learning and really acknowledges the fact that everyone learns in different ways, regardless of whether we're talking about something that is focused specifically in special education, or it may just be neurodivergence in terms of how people experience the world and how they take in educational information in general. And so we will also be thinking about how, say, the furniture within different spaces can respond to and react to different learning styles. There's definitely a connection to the curriculum there as well, and we'll be talking about that as part of the educational process moving forward. But I just want to sort of reinforce the notion that we very much agree with that sentiment that you expressed, and there'll be some additional work to be done on that front for sure. All right. Other closing thoughts. This is a pretty good closing thought as well. If we just want to leave it at that one. I do like that. But don't want to cut anyone else off. All right. Um, well, certainly appreciate everyone's time this evening. Happy to give people 18 minutes back, um, so that you can have the opportunity to, uh, to get out and get a little bit of exposure if it's still kind of warm out there. Um, but really do, uh, appreciate everyone's time. Um, you know, it's a little bit of extra time, so thank you. And we look forward to circling back with everybody in the fall. Thank you all.
[Matt Gulino]: Good luck. Thank you, Matt. Thank you, everyone.
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