[Jenny Graham]: All right, let's talk about our D options. So D equals new construction. Correct. Okay. Does that mean it's in a completely different space than the building today?
[Matt Rice]: It doesn't have to be in a complete difference. It just means that everything that we're building at the end of the day is completely new. There will be no renovation associated with it, but it may be overlapping on the existing building. Sure.
[Jenny Graham]: The MSBA has requirements if you're going to build new that would require us to separate the pool. Can you tell us what that means so that we can just sort of clear up the pool conversation as it relates to these options? Sure.
[Matt Rice]: So the pool, if we're going to build it new, has to be a separate standalone project and building from the high school building. And so when I say a standalone project, what that means is that we actually have to go out and publicly advertise and procure a construction team for that project that could in theory be different than the one that is building the high school project. We also need to make sure that the building in terms of its operation is completely detached from the high school building itself. So that means a separate electrical service, a separate plumbing services that go to a pool which are considerable for a pool. And it just has to be fully removed and detached from the high school building itself. The other important thing to note about a separate pool building is that we actually have to approve any debt override for that pool building. as a separate vote from the high school project itself. They can be on the same ballot, but they have to be two separate questions so that the voters can weigh in on their support for the pool structure as separated from the high school structure.
[Jenny Graham]: Great. The MSP will not cost share for the pool, is that correct?
[Matt Rice]: That is correct. Even a renovated pool.
[Jenny Graham]: So this is a Medford only cost when we are talking about the pool. The reason this has a really high modular number, modular classroom number, and that's because some of this new building is sort of encroaching on the footprint of the current building, is that right?
[Matt Rice]: it is yes and so we did do that in a deliberate manner to say well if we tried to take the entirety of this building footprint and build it just on the parking lot and to have zero modulars with this type of approach what it would mean is that the building which is six stories just going from a flat plane six stories up we'd probably be having to add at least another story or two on top of that. And so it starts to become a very, very large building. And we heard that these extremely tall buildings are not desirable necessarily for students to be moving up and down through, even though it's not horizontally a long distance. Trying to get up eight stories of stairs in the course of a school day is also a challenging ask for students. I'll also say the challenge, if we were to try to minimize or eliminate modulars with this site on the parking lot, is that there's a lot of programs at the high school that want to have street frontage down at the first floor, whether it's the main entrance of the high school, whether it is the CTE programs that have a retail component, the early education center. And when we get that tight in terms of just building on the parking lot, we have a very limited amount of linear footage around the perimeter to have that sort of exterior site access. You have to fit a loading dock and receiving area in as well. So that will become extremely challenging to get so tight. And so that is why we extended out a little bit further towards and on top of the existing building footprint with this particular option. And the reason that the number of modular classrooms is so high is because we are impacting the B wing in this case, as well as a portion of the vocational wing.
[Jenny Graham]: Relatively speaking, this I think was maybe the most expensive option. And so can you tell us, are there any other factors that are sort of driving that cost?
[Matt Rice]: So there, when we think about the tall buildings in particular, there's a building code requirement that we have to address is called a high rise building. When we get above or less four stories, the five stories and above. which causes some increases in terms of the amount of infrastructure we need to put in the building both from like a smoke evacuation standpoint and making sure that the stairwells are reinforced from an overall nature. So you just think about building a high-rise building it becomes a little bit more expensive. So there's a premium in terms of the building construction cost when we go tall with options such as this. Really the reason why this one became the most expensive is because it does have all these compounding reasons that you started to cover in terms of driving the cost up. It does have that synthetic turf field over the top of parking. We can always look at going back to surface parking with this option and doing whatever remains in terms of surface field down below. as one way of trying to adjust the cost or work the cost of this one so it's not quite as impactful. The other one, the other aspect of this that's driving up is the modular classroom quantity and that is just directly due to that impact again over the top of the existing vocational wing, the southern portion. as well as the B wing. And so while we could make the building tighter and try to avoid those existing footprints, we're going to again create maybe an environment that is not ideal from an educational perspective.
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