[Jenny Graham]: do you think we're mostly good to go with the committee?
[Chris Bennett]: I do, yes.
[Jenny Graham]: Welcome everyone. I'm going to go ahead and read the meeting invite and call the roll while we're still letting people in, so bear with us. Please be advised that there'll be a full building committee of the Medford Comprehensive High School Building Committee being held via remote participation only on June 1st at 7 p.m. The meeting can be viewed live on Medford Public Schools YouTube channel or through Medford Community Media on your local cable channel, which is Comcast 98 or 22 and Verizon channel 43, 45, or 47. The meeting will be recorded. Participants can log in or call in by using the following information. The Zoom meeting ID is 959-3562-1298. I'm going to read, I'll read the public comment rules in just a second, but I'm going to call the roll, um, so that we can get started. Jenny Graham is here. Mayor Lungo-Koehn. Present. Dr. Galusi. Present. Marta Cabral. Present. Joan Bowen. Present. Ken Lord. Here. Libby Brown. Here. Marissa Desmond. Maria Dorsey. Here. Frank Hilliard.
[Unidentified]: I'm here.
[Jenny Graham]: Emily Lazzaro here. I think we'll be joining us a little bit. Um, a few minutes late. Nicole Morell here. Aaron Lopate here. Luke Treisner here. Uh, Bob Dickinson here. Fiona Maxwell.
[Luke Preisner]: What?
[Jenny Graham]: Is Fiona here?
[SPEAKER_03]: Here, sorry about that.
[Jenny Graham]: Hi, Fiona. Chad Fallon?
[Mike Mastrobuoni]: Here.
[Jenny Graham]: Dr. Talbot? Here. Will Pepicelli?
[izVdDtzaCdw_SPEAKER_01]: Here.
[Jenny Graham]: Lori Hodgson? Here. John McLaughlin is absent. Paul Rousseau?
[Unidentified]: Here.
[Jenny Graham]: Phil Santos? And Lisa Miller? Here. So we have 13 present, 2 absent, and we can get started. Thank you everyone for joining us. We have a big meeting ahead, so we're going to do a couple of brief updates, and then we have some presentations both from the City of Medford and from our project team. I think the first thing on the agenda is the approval of the meeting minutes from our last meeting. Is there a motion to approve?
[Kenneth Lord]: So moved.
[Jenny Graham]: I can, is there a second? Seconded, Maria. Maria, I'll call the roll. Jenny Graham? Yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn? Yes. Dr. Galusi? Yes. Marta Cabral? Yes. Joan Bowen?
[Zachary Chertok]: Yes.
[Jenny Graham]: Ken Lord.
[Zachary Chertok]: Yes.
[Jenny Graham]: Libby Brown. Yes. Marissa Desmond. Maria Dorsey. Yes. Brian Hilliard.
[Paul Righi]: Yes.
[Jenny Graham]: Emily Lazzaro. Yes. Paul Malone. Nicole Morell. Yes. Aaron Lopate.
[Luke Preisner]: Yes.
[Jenny Graham]: Luke Prisner.
[Luke Preisner]: But there's a misspelled name in the minutes. So is that something?
[Jenny Graham]: That can be corrected without needing an approval. We'll just take care of it.
[Luke Preisner]: Yeah, you can just correct the spelling of my name. And I think Nick Giurello, I would, I guess, vote to approve these.
[Jenny Graham]: 13 in the affirmative, zero in the negative, two absent. The minutes are approved. Okay, item number three, just a few project updates and some follow-ups. So I did just want to let the group know that you'll probably start seeing some shifts from our left field team. We're getting ready to send Matt off to get married. So he'll be taking some well-deserved vacation time and he has not invited any of us to his wedding. So we'll have to carry on without him. So if you see some shifting around in terms of like you know, who all we're hearing from and who emails are coming from, that's part of what's going on. So we'll see Matt, I think, in at least one more meeting, but then he has informed us that we're not invited. So we'll have to just all be sad together while Matt's off getting married and having fun.
[Matt Rice]: Limited capacity.
[Jenny Graham]: Thanks, Matt. I think the other thing I wanted to make sure that we provided an update on is right before Memorial Day, the project team, the mayor and myself had a chance to have a meeting with the MSBA, where we were able to talk to them about a number of things, including some of their comments and. It was like a super productive meeting. We were able to talk to them a bit about the deed restriction. We gave them an update on some of the changes that we made to the C-2-2 and the C-3-4 option and let them know what had happened earlier that week in our elimination of the D option that was up on the field. And they were pleased by that. I asked them very directly whether we were in violation of the regulations or in trouble in some way. And they said, no, that we are not. They understand that these things do happen. And what they did ask for was a statement from the city's attorneys sort of weighing in on the changes that were made and the sort of prevailing issues with the deed restriction and how that would work with the project going forward. So all of that work is in motion. They went on to say that it's super common that deed restrictions sort of pop up when you're talking about school building projects because of the way schools were built over time on land that changed hands many, many times. So they were satisfied with the disclosures that we had provided, as well as with what we had done to adjust for it, and they were, like, really pleased by that. The other thing that we talked to them a bit about, and I know that I asked them some direct questions about, was their—one of their requests in their comments about our PDP submission was for us to explore a 9-12 only option. I highlighted for them that the reaction here in Medford was sort of a question about whether we had done something wrong or whether the MSBA was telling us that they were going to disapprove of our project going forward if we did not make reductions to only accommodate for a 9 to 12 school. And they unequivocally said that was not the case at all, but that when they saw that we were evaluating a bunch of options that relatively are the same from a square footage perspective, they felt like it was important for us to put some options on the table. for comparison purposes that would explore different square footages. And so that's the genesis of their question. They went on to say that they're very supportive of our community building the building that we need it to be. And they just wanted us to sort of explore all of those choices in a variety of ways so that as we go forward, We can all confidently say that we left no stone unturned in the feasibility study to make sure that we were sort of checking out all of the possibilities before us, because this is the time to do that. So I know I felt good about their comments and the communication that we had. Um, we did talk to them a fair bit about our pathway forward through the month of June, um, including a decision on June 10th. And, um, overall, um, they were helpful and forthright and collaborative and the good partners that, um, you know, we, we have always expected them to be, and they continue to be. So I just wanted to share that update in case it's helpful for anybody, um, and to make sure that, um, we are continuing to, um, address, um, some of the community's concerns, particularly around the deep restriction. So. Um, all signs are ago for the options that we're moving forward with, and I'm excited, um, for our community forum later this week, where we'll get to, um, hear from our community about the things that matter to them in this project and the, um, uh, help us make that choice. So we're. We're down to four or five options and we need to get to one. And I'm excited to hear what folks have to say about that. So those are the updates I wanted to share. The other thing I will mention for the entire group is that we have begun working on scheduling for our next phase of the project, which is really gonna take us from July through February of next year through schematic design. And in the coming weeks, we'll finalize that schedule and we'll be sort of trying to check as many calendars as we can to make sure that we're not tripping on other community meetings. I know that's always a huge concern and that we're making decisions when people can tune in and be part of it. So all of that to come and to say to look out for an updated meeting schedule in the next couple of weeks. Um, with that said, we'll get onto the main event. Um, and we have two things, um, happening, uh, two big things happening tonight. The next item on the agenda is an update from the city of Medford on its capital projects and the preliminary, um, thoughts around cost impact. So just like we have been saying all along in terms of our cost estimates, right, this is a kind of a funnel of information that's going to continue to be refined. really all the way through February on the cost side when we have our final schematic design and the estimates. So everything that we've been doing so far is based on lots of broad assumptions. And many, many unknowns, substantial contingencies and all of those good things. The same kind of process has to happen on the, how will we pay for this side of the house? So tonight, I think we'll see from the city team, some of their first steps in framing sort of the work ahead on the city side. And just a quick note that this is sort of, again, the beginning, not the end of the conversation, which will continue with the project team later this week as we keep talking about how do we refine these assumptions? How do we fund this project? Where do we look? And all of that good stuff. So we are at the beginning. So here we go. I'm going to turn it over to Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you, Member Graham. I'm going to just introduce city staff that are on the call. And I'm sorry, on my phone, because my camera wasn't working for my computer at home. But we have Steve Smerdy, who's our communications director, is going to probably put up the slideshow as he gets access. We also have our CFO, who's a member of this committee, Bob Dickinson. We have Jared Yargin, who is the city assessor, who helped us with these calculations, and Paul Riggi, who is our facilities maintenance director, was our facilities maintenance director, still staying on with the city to do several hours a week. So I just want to thank them all for joining me tonight as we get through this presentation. So Steve, if you could put it up. I'm going to just make a few comments first, and then we'll work through it as a team. I first want to start and just let everybody know that as a graduate of Medford High School, I'm well aware of the challenges of the existing high school building. I'm also aware of the opportunity that our school programming provides and how this is an important step for Medford and our students, educators, staff to have an educationally appropriate modern facilities that supports the exceptional education that our school system is known for. While there are other comprehensive high schools in the Commonwealth, Medford is unique in the path we took to get here, to provide a kid's access to a broader selection of offerings under one roof. Our community asked us to merge the two high schools that operated separately side by side for over 50 years. This year was the first year the school operated as a single comprehensive high school. While this is a great first step, the current building does not support the collaboration and cross-pollination of ideas that we know are possible. Medford currently has one of the most robust career technical education offerings in the state. We have 723 students enrolled in CTE courses across 15 programs. That's over half of our students. We also have 628 students enrolled in honors and AP courses, again, over half of our students. We should be incredibly proud of this, of our teachers and staff and educational leadership that have made this school so exceptional. Their vision for a brighter future for the children of Medford is inspiring and has my full support. We are designing something incredibly special and we have one opportunity to get it right for the entire community. We do have work to do, especially in the early fall to reduce the scope and cost. But I'm confident this committee will do the hard work with me to make this a reality for our students, while also keeping in mind how this will affect everyone who lives in Medford. I'm about to present a look at how our high school project, as it currently stands, costs out from different perspectives. Whether you're a renter, a condo owner, a homeowner, this is a picture of how the debt exclusion will affect you. Please note this is a snapshot in time. And again, we have a lot of work ahead of us through the summer and beyond to make sure this building is right sized for our community. It's my commitment to you that this project team will continue the work to bring costs down to ensure that residents of Medford can afford the type of excellence that our students deserve. So if we could go to the first slide, please. This is just reiterating my commitment to wanting a new high school for many, many years, obviously one that our community can afford. And this presentation will let the public know project costs, tax impacts, and factors residents should understand in order to provide feedback to this school building committee. We got here, this is one building built to support two schools. built in 1970. In 2017, the school committee voted to combine the two high schools. And in 2025, like I said, the new schedule supports comprehensive high school model. And this is just a little bit of why we're doing it. Again, existing building is... Oh. not supporting what our students deserve. Vocational spaces and academic spaces are still separate, which does not support cross-pollination of ideas. And the current buildings layout and infrastructure do not support modern education that seeks to prepare students for the real world. Just a little bit of the stats that I already spoke about. In addition to the first two, 300% increase in fine arts and music participation. with our new schedule, three seasons of unified sports teams, and we have award winning clubs and athletic teams. Also, you have a list on the right of this slide of all the programming that our vocational technical high school offers. And we have new programs coming on next school year and additional programs through the MSBA process. I'll start us off, and then I'm going to turn it over to our assessor, Jared Yajian. But these are the numbers that came out over the last couple of weeks. And we chose for this presentation the high and the low, and then one in between, which was because we do know that the C options are very, people do love the C options. So what you'll see in this presentation is the high of, 607,000, which is the city district share of a high school that's going to be 53% covered by the MSBA. But the MSBA will only cover 53% of allowable spaces. So that's probably the highest debt exclusion we're looking at if we were to go for debt exclusion today. The lowest one you'll see throughout the presentation is the 440. 440,200,000, and then we did pick a middle range of 532,700,000 as our mid-range, and because we want to include a C option, which is the add reno option. I'm going to take you through, and Paul Riggi's on the call, who is well aware of a number of these needs that we've listed out in two slides. These needs are ones that we would or wouldn't have to, quote, to bond for ourselves, but On an average given year or two years, we spend about $3 million in equipment and vehicle costs for all of our different departments. We have our pension liability of $96 million. Our recreation center, as of recent, is having major flooding issues. So we have to do a number of things to make sure that we waterproof the building if we want to continue to offer recreational opportunities at the center on Forest Street. We're estimating $3 million, could be a little more, could be a little less, but we are doing our best with estimates. We have our OPEB obligation. Bob, please also chime in anytime you'd like to of $257 million. Chevalier is always needing upgrades. We do have some casino funds, but we put some money in there because we always are upgrading Chevalier Theater. Hormel Stadium upgrades to get it in a place we need it to be before we rehab or build fields at the new high school location, we need to put in new turf, we need to put in a new press box, and we need to put in a new scoreboard. So we're estimating that about 2 million. City Hall HVAC, anywhere between 1 to 2 million because we need a new HVAC at City Hall. Accounting software, we are pretty behind the times and we have some money to start the process, which we've been doing, but we estimate approximately 2 million more is needed to fully get a new software in line. The city hall bathrooms, none of them are up to code, and we are currently doing two right now. We have then six more to go. The Heckner Center remodel, we have a million dollars from the federal government. We do have another grant application in to the federal government for additional monies. That would be an additional space for recreation, city services, but also our municipal vulnerability preparedness site. And that cost estimate is coming in at 5 million. There's also lead service line issue that Medford has. We're lucky enough to be one of the worst communities in the Commonwealth. And we've, our engineering department, our department of public works are plugging away at it. We're making great progress, but there's 70 million more that we need to do to remove all the lead service lines in our community. If we could go to the next slide, and then I'll turn it over to Paul and Bob to outline anything else that I might have missed on these two. These are projects that we will need to put on the city debt. We all know we need a new fire headquarters. Police station came online about seven years ago. So we're long overdue for fire headquarters. $30 million was the cost we were looking at. back two years ago, that's anywhere from 30 to 35, 40 million. Oak Grove Cemetery, as you see, listed at a few different spots on this slide, design and construction of the buildings. We have two buildings on the site that need full rehab, if not full reconstruction, as well as the cemetery roads. and the expansion of the, we only have about four or five more years of plot space. So the expansion is going to cost 4 million as well. We have the school district HVAC. Those are also MSBA projects, but the city district share is about 16 million. So we have listed here at 15.8. We also have Freedom Way reconstruction. That again is for the entire community, but mainly for our schools. to do with soup to nuts based on the roadway and all the sidewalk work that needs to be done. We're estimating about 20 million. And then we have a street sidewalk backlog as well as water and sewer infrastructure work. Our water and sewer infrastructure has a lifespan of about 100 years and we're at 120 years. So we have to really get started on, we've been planning the last two years and doing work, we need to continue to do that over the next 10 to 20 years. So that's at 250 million. Bob or Paul, if you want to chime in on these two slides, I know you've got the better finance background, better facilities background than I do. So please feel free to.
[Luke Preisner]: Yeah, the pension liability, those are those are great numbers. Um, we're gradually paying off the pension liability, which is great, but then the other post employee benefits, the people who are not there. Right now, I calculated for 2025, the city is paying 7.8 million dollars every 6.15 a month. That's before the GIC gave us a 9% increase for 2026 and another 9% increase for 2027. Just to pay for retirees' health insurance. That's the big part of other post-employment benefits. There are also other moving on the site that provides 50% of retirees' dental insurance too. And the point is that those, We need to start putting money where the pain stands to reduce the amount that the city has to come up with, just like we do for pension money. We need to reduce the amount that the city has to come up with before, actually before, at some point, the Commonwealth is going to require the city to put enough aside. as they did with pension to fund those folks.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Sorry, Bob, I'm having a hard time understanding you and I'm not seeing any captions, but can you repeat the last thing that you said? I'm confused about the pension and how it relates to the high school.
[Luke Preisner]: Well, these are expenses that the city will have to come up with I mean, the pension liability, we know what the schedule is to pay that off. I'm just pointing out that we hope that liability is another large number. It has to do with retiree health insurance. And just like pension liability, at some point, the Commonwealth will be requiring cities and towns to put aside money to pay for those obligations. I don't know if everybody heard that this year it was seven point, by 2025, it was $7.8 million in obligations that just in health insurance that we have to put out for health insurance for retirees. Does that make sense?
[Jenny Graham]: And folks, if you could, if everyone could just hold their questions until the mayor's able to complete her presentation. I want to give you all a chance to give us your presentation until the end, and then we can come back with questions.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you, Member Graham. Thank you, Bob. Steve, we could go to And I just want to also point out, Tim McGivern, the Department of Public Works Commissioner is also on the call. So if anybody had questions on capital items or anything DPW related, the cemetery, we can hold questions till the end. But this next slide is the Medford's debt plan. I know it's small and we will have this up on the website and hopefully the school building committee website. But this kind of plays out the next several years down, if you can see to the left hand column. Down to 2064 and it shows what the city's projected debt would be once you add the fire station once you add Freedom Way to the debt, as well as street sidewalks one or two times, plus the street sidewalks are placeholder for emergencies come up all the time. And as you can see, we're struggling to balance a budget this year. We're doing a decent job, but there is a gap of about $2 million on the school side, plus the Medford Family Network. the debt we're paying back was about five, Bob, I don't know if you have that number on this slide, but five, five million, 500,000.
[Luke Preisner]: To try and, to try and simplify this one, this for 2027, The current general fund debt circumstance is a little over $5 million plus the short-term debt we've incurred for the first school HVAC program, which is another $1 million. When we start to model what we're going to have to come up with, we know Schools HVAC number one, second school HVAC, $15.8 million for that. Fire station, I'm putting it at $35 million. Freedom wedding, $20 million. We only have to do those projects. They're inevitable. If you can push them back, for a year or two, et cetera. But once those projects are fully funded with the debt service, you're talking another $6 million that has to go in debt service for the general fund to do that. And then when you're looking at, for instance, like 2031, I think the schedule, that's 2031 for the first new capital, $19 million, because that's in general, we'll have to, we'll probably have to come up with by then for other capital projects, 500 and another, that one, and $6 million for streets and sidewalks. The 1st, 1 is roughly 1.3M dollars a year. The next 1 is those streets and sidewalks are roughly 550M. These are all projects that are going to have to go on to the general fund debt service. Because right now the general fund isn't carrying a lot of debt, we don't actually have a good reduction in the general fund debt service in college. Actually, the big payoff is around 135. So we can't rely on retiring debt service to fund future debt service until roughly 10 years from now. So that's what I'm seeing when I run these things. And I'm trying to be as generous as possible about when we actually have to pay for these projects. There's a certain lag, I guess, with the school, because we don't have to come up with all the money at once. We tend to have to pay the interest costs down the road. But still, those are large numbers that will all have to be borne by the general fund. And when you look at the other capital applications, you know, City Hall, the City Hall, HVAC, and ADA bathrooms, that's, you know, you're looking at $2.7 million more now if it's in Wagner Center Street. That's about $7.7 million. Hopefully we can get that off the patch. But as the city's budget grows, we can't make all these budgets tighter that you end up generating less free cash every year. So we have to be careful with that one. So these are expenses to the company for the city bill. I don't think there's any real reward.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you, Bob. Next slide. Jared, if I could ask you to take over the average tax bill dollar change, and we'll start with the 440 if we were to do a debt exclusion for 440.
[Jared Yagjian]: So as you see with these slides, we did basically two modeling. We modeled out to when the full debt exclusion would hit, which would be fiscal year 33. And then we also did a modeling using FY 26 numbers with the full debt exclusion at the three different levels. So this one is a multi-year projection. which includes assumptions. So the assumptions are that the new growth grows at 2% a year, that the residential values increase roughly 5% a year, and we take the full 2.5% prop 2.5 on the levy. And then we shift the, levy to the maximum amount over to CIP, commercial industrial personal property. So the other assumption is that the residential shift or the minimum residential factor will remain roughly the same as 26. So any of those threes change, these numbers would change. Just want to make that clear. So it's using those assumptions these figures you have in front of you here start and they gradually work up till fiscal year 33 and that's when the full debt exclusion would hit and it would stay on the levy until it was paid off and then it would come off. Does that make sense?
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Yes, thank you, Jared. So the fiscal year is on the left, and it's shown you gradually, based on the borrowing, how much you would pay at the full, once it's fully implemented in fiscal year 2033, you see that line, which would be the full increase to a single family, a condo, two family, three family. Correct. Yes. Next slide, please.
[Jared Yagjian]: So again, same assumptions, but just at the 532 million. And as the mayor said, we ramp up from fiscal 29 through fiscal 33, and then the full debt stays on the levy until it's paid off. So 34, 35, they'll all carry the same tax because the tax is a constant tied to the constant debt exclusion that stays on the levy until it's paid off. And then again, same, but with 607 million as a debt exclusion.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Yep, and if maybe you could explain, so we can keep this up for a minute. These are based on the average, you know, average single family home, which is 860,000, and then a condo. Do you have any of those numbers?
[Jared Yagjian]: Yes. So the average, right, so we do the, these are all based off the average from 26, and then we modeled it out. So the averages are going up roughly 5% a year. For 26, we had 860,000 for a single family average, 611,000 for condo average, just over a million for a two family, a million million, $1,018,827 to be exact for two family, and then $1,182,000 for a three family, and roughly $7.5 million for an apartment. Thank you. Next slide, please. And then these are our, as it says, top 10 in terms of apartments on fiscal year, fiscal 26 value. So they typically bear the burden of most of a good portion of the residential levy given their evaluations. So this was just to show in fiscal 26, if we had implemented the full that exclusion for the various three different levels, how it would change the total value, and then we broke it out annually and per unit. So it just takes the annual change and divides it by the number of units in that building, respectively.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Next slide, please.
[Jared Yagjian]: So again, same slide, except the different amount that is being added to the levy. And as you can see, the numbers gradually increase for each of the 10 largest apartment buildings. And then again, at the 607 million and same slide, same math, just a larger debt exclusion amount. And then we looked at the seniors as part of another study that we had done. So this just breaks down based on the registrar of voters that we got the most recent census, the number of seniors that are in Medford. And then we paired that against the database that we have for parcels and numbers on this slide here show the number of seniors that own a class 101, which is a single family, 102, which are condos. And then the remainder, uh, one of four and one of fives are two and three families. And then the, uh, number that was left seniors in other parcels, there was nothing to tie them to in terms of ownership. So they were living in, I would assume they were in apartments or some kind of a mixed use apartment where they rented. This just is from the state. This is a state level tax relief program. So anyone could apply for this. If they're a senior, there's certain credentials that need to be met that are spelled out there in terms of income limits and the assessed value on the home. And also if there's a renter, the percentage of annual rent that 10% of the annual income. So as I said at the beginning, this now gets into, this is more concrete numbers because we're working with 26 values now. So this is just saying hypothetically, if we added 440 million to the fiscally 26 levy, which we know, and it's already been approved by the DOR, this is what would have happened. And the percentages are the same across all the different classes, but the numbers vary because of the averages. So the averages are across the top. The second line down would be the, it's the average tax bill. So it's just our fiscal 26 residential rate tie into the average assessed for each class. And then the next one down would be what the tax bill would have been if we increased the levy. And then it's just the difference in terms of dollars and the difference in terms of percentage. Same math, but again, at the 532 instead of the 440. And as you can see, the percentage is going up. And then at the 607 would be the highest percentage, roughly 23% across the residential classes. So this now is the levy. So as I said before, the tax that's tied to the debt exclusion or the amount borrowed is a constant until the debt falls off because the debt payments will be a constant. But the percent of the levy will gradually fall off after it peaks in 33 because new growth continues to increase because we still increase the levy by prop two and a half. So I think there was some people that thought that the tax bill would start to decrease after 33 and it's not true in the sense that the tax is tied to the amount borrowed and the amount borrowed is a constant. And then again, same slide, just going through the different numbers here. This is at 532,000. So this would peak at roughly 13% and then gradually fall after fiscal 33 in terms of percent of the levy. And then the same here at 607, that would peak roughly around 15% of the levy and then start to gradually fall after 33. And then this here is just the debt itself and how it would be if the percent of the levy was borrowed. And as you can see, in fiscal 33 is when it peaks and it stays that way until the debt is paid off. Same for the 532 million. So these would be the numbers tied to that amount. And then lastly, the 607 and the numbers tied to that amount and the percent of the levy. And then again, we went with fiscal 26 because that was our last known year. So the fiscal 26 tax, this is just no class. This is just if your house fell at 400, 500, 600, all the way up to 2.2 million. This is what your fiscal 26 real estate tax would have been in the second column. The third column is with the debt exclusion added at 440 million and the impact would just be the difference. And then that's the annual difference. The second to last column going left to right. And the last column is just your annual tax impact divided by 12, which gives you your monthly. So again, 532 million, same slide, just a different amount added to the levy. And those are the numbers for each dwelling value. And lastly, 607 million, this would be the most impactful and numbers again for the dwelling values.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you, Jared. I'm going to turn it over to Paul Riggi, our facilities maintenance prior director who's still helping us out some. We did these estimates just knowing that the current square footage is 640,000 square feet and what that impact would be as it relates to cleaning and maintenance. So Paul, I'll let you take this one.
[Paul Righi]: Sure, so good evening. The 1 thing everyone needs to remember is that once we build a building, we need to take care of it. Something that has been neglected over the years in Medford, and it's starting to turn around and. This is what projected costs would be to the school system. This is in today's dollars. This is not projected out what it would be in five, six, seven years. Cleaning could be a million dollars if a standard compensation ordinance is enacted. Today's dollars would be 1.2 to 1.4 million. HVAC maintenance, that's not for repairs. That's for a company to maintain the system, a P&M contract, which is going to be needed with this new building. The HVAC needs to be protected, needs to be taken care of annually. A company needs to be brought online to do that. Same thing with the elevators. Currently, that does not happen. Just repairs take place. A contract needs to be put in place for an elevator company to come in monthly and PM the elevators in the building. Now, that's per elevator. So, if you have 5 elevators, that's going to be $50,000. And then utilities. Now, this is a hard one to project. Currently, the cost for the electricity for the current high school is about $690,000 a year. But if you electrify, that cost is going to go up. I have a 40,000 square foot building totally electrified. I'm paying $220,000 a year for electric because you have to remember when heating season comes, it's being heated by electric boilers if it's designed that way. So a very careful choice in HVAC system needs to be made made that it's not only green, it's not only electrified, but it also is going to provide cost savings and real savings and not just use electric. I just need to caution everyone that I really don't want to see the city go the way of Lexington, who just approved their building and their superintendent was just faced with cutting 65 FTEs from the current upcoming budget. One of the reasons is because they're so extended on their debt exclusion that they have no room to go out and ask the voters for more. So we really need to be careful in Medford. I agree, we need a new high school, but we need to make very careful choices, not only for the students, not only for the staff, but also for the taxpayers.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you, Paul. Last slide, I believe. Yep. Where do we go from here? The city and Medford Public Schools will work together over the summer to develop a plan to reduce costs by reducing spaces that are beyond the high school educational programming needs. Beginning in September of 2026, that plan will be presented to the community for consideration and feedback before asking the school building committee to vote to finalize scope for this project to right size the building and in doing so to reduce costs. And the city will continue to think creatively about project funding and ways to lessen the impact. as well as we are looking into the Curtis Tufts School, doing an assessment on that building. Hopefully will take place for Labor Day for the city of Edford. I believe that's the last slide. And I know I mentioned that we have our CFO, our assessor, somebody from our facilities maintenance team, and our commissioner of public works on the call if anybody has any questions. Thank you.
[Jenny Graham]: Thank you for that presentation. Just a point of clarification. The comments that were made on the last slide are news to me and I think to the project team. So of course, we're going to keep working together as we have, but this was the first I've heard that we're going to make the plans that were outlined. So I'm going to take some questions from the committee. I'm going to ask you all to be brief and to follow similar rules to what We are asking of the public, which is to limit your comments to 3 minutes per individual. Um, we'll take committee questions 1st, and then we will take questions from the public. Are there questions from the committee and you can use the raise hand feature to get in line.
[Luke Preisner]: Jenny, I have a question. I don't see the raised hand, but I'm joining through a browser, so maybe that's why.
[Jenny Graham]: It's in the React section, Luke, but why don't you go ahead?
[Luke Preisner]: Oh, I see a heart there. Oh, OK. No, I see it now. So a question to the team. Well, first of all, I want to say thank you for assembling this information. It's good, I think, to have this dimension added to the larger discussion. Certainly, you know, you don't buy a house without understanding how much you can afford for a mortgage. So this is an important step. I wanted to ask the team in the course of the analysis, was it possible to determine where the citizens who fall in the 65 and older retired category who are on fixed incomes, where they reside spatially within Medford? Are there concentrations? Do they seem to be more in one group of wards versus another? Was that looked at? And if it was, what were the findings?
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Jared, I don't know if you looked at that. I know it's pretty spread out throughout the community, but Jared, I'll turn it over to you. I didn't analyze that specifically.
[Jared Yagjian]: Right. So we didn't do it. We didn't analyze it by neighborhood. It was looked at holistically, a very large list. And someone in my office was working on that project. So short answer is no, we don't have it broken out by neighborhood. That is just the entire city. Thank you.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: And I think there was a comment about the last slide that was given to us by the project team. So I'm not sure what that comment was about.
[Jenny Graham]: Any other questions? I have news to the chair. OK. Nicole?
[Nicole Morell]: Sorry about that. One question about the Hegner building. Is all the space in the Hegner building spoken for? You talked about the money that's going to randomize that, but is all of that space spoken for?
[Paul Righi]: Yes, the design we've been working on a design now for almost a year. And we've programmed every space. With the exception of there's a small loft space on the 2nd floor, but we're not doing anything with that because we would have to build some somehow handicap accessible. to get to that space, and with the footprint of that building, it's basically virtually impossible.
[Nicole Morell]: Okay, so safe to say, as I know some of these discussions about the comprehensive high school have been, where can we find and put these programs in other spaces, and knowing that the Hegner building is one of our few kind of vacant spaces in the city that is even potentially available, it's helpful to know that all the space in there is already spoken for, so thank you. Also about the electric cost numbers. I'm curious, was that done in consultation with the architect team or how does net zero play into that? Obviously I live in a much smaller footprint. I have electric heat through the heat pumps. I know it raises things substantially. I have solar that offsets a lot of that. So I'm curious where we're getting this big number where we're tripling, quadrupling what we're currently paying at the current high school to get this giant number when I would assume we're gonna have a much more efficient building.
[Paul Righi]: Well, you get much more efficient building, but it's you have to also remember part of the service at the high school right now is gas not electric because the heat is not coming through electric. So you're converting all your heat. You're electrifying. It's all. to equipment choices. There is a new building in the city of Medford that my feeling is the incorrect choice as an HVAC system was made. That's the building where the city is paying $220,000 a year for electric, for 40,000.
[Nicole Morell]: Can you say what that building is?
[Paul Righi]: I'd rather not. Maybe privately I could tell you. Isn't it a matter of public record, Paul? If the mayor wants me to talk about it, I can. I mean, it'd be helpful.
[Nicole Morell]: We've built a few new buildings. It'd be helpful to know which one is a meeting.
[Paul Righi]: In my feeling, the police station, they picked the incorrect HVAC system for that building. That building is eating electric in the winter. It's built that electric boilers come on in the winter. They come on when it hits 32 degrees. Well, we're in the Northeast. Our winter is usually 32 degrees or below. So the electric boilers are on almost 24, 7 in that building, starting sometime in December through probably March. So the amount of electric that building is used. But when they built the DPW in the library, they made much better HVAC choices and much more efficient choices, all electrified, but the buildings use much less electric to not only cool, but also to heat. And that's why I'm saying is that you need to be very careful when designing a building and when picking HVAC systems. They really need to be vetted. And you really need to ask the tough questions about usage. And am I getting my dollars for the usage? I mean, a high school building is open what 1617 hours a day, almost 7 days a week. So it's using a lot of energy. So. It's an important choice. It doesn't seem like an important choice, but it's a very important choice for money savings. You electrify, but you can also realize some savings if you make some very good, wise choices.
[Nicole Morell]: Okay, thank you. And I just have two more points, Jenny, if I could. One, you know, I appreciate the inclusion of the senior data in the presentation. I think I understand the point that was trying to be made there. I would have liked to see the inclusion as far as student data, you know, how many students are going to be served by this high school. And then also, I think it's a little frustrating to be a little leading towards the end there as far as the capital budget and debt exclusion and then the budget for our FTEs. Medford historically until two years ago, we've never had an override. We don't go to the community to ask for that override every few years like Lexington does. So I think it's a little frustrating to compare us to cities when it's convenient to make a certain point and not otherwise, but that's just my last point. So thank you.
[Jenny Graham]: Thank you, Nicole. I would also encourage people to stay on and listen to our project team talk about life cycle cost analysis and the actual assumptions that have gone into the pricing of the building and what the continuity and the lifespan and the payoff of those are because they are in conflict with what was just presented. So please stay tuned for that later in the presentation. Other members of the committee, are there, does anyone else have questions before I take questions from the public? Okay, I will go to the public Michelle Barkson. And if you can say your name and address for the record, you have 3 minutes.
[Michelle Barkson]: Hi, I'm Michelle Barkson. I live at 23 Diane Road. First of all, I just want to say how very excited I am and thank everybody on the committee for all this incredible work and the amount of time that it is. I'm a teacher actually in Lexington, so I wanted to kind of center some of my points around that. So first of all, a functioning high school is just imperative, not only for students, but really for a full community. I think the high school and the school system is the cornerstone of a community, and I would hope that all of Medford can rally behind that. Second, I want to clarify some points. Lexington did not lose 65 positions because of a debt exclusion, because the new high schools passed. Those were totally separate funding mechanisms. The reason we lost a lot of positions, about 85% of them had to do with low enrollment. We're losing students at Lexington. That's why we're cutting positions. So I just want to clarify that the new high school had nothing to do with the loss of positions and I just wanted to make sure people aren't afraid to pass a debt exclusion here, thinking that it would end up somehow cutting teacher positions, because the debt exclusion is an entirely separate funding mechanism than the yearly budget, which is what staffing is paid under. So my question to perhaps the mayor, or I guess anybody that can answer this. So we just saw a lot of competing priorities. I also, I guess since I'm talking about the debt exclusion, my other question is, I'm wondering why the debt exclusion would actually affect all of these other city services considering, like I said, it's a separate funding mechanism. But I guess my larger question is, what are we doing as a city to bring down the cost? We need a new high school. Our students deserve the best experience they can. I'm so proud of the VOC and the comprehensive that we have here. So instead of talking about all these other priorities, my question is what are we going to do to make sure that this gets funded? Thank you and again thank you for everyone's time.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: I guess I can answer that. I think the presentation was to show the lack of capacity in our debt just so everybody is aware. The city is assessing the Curtis a price tag on what that building will be to rehab and see what services we can shift to the Curtis Tufts. But this presentation was really just to show, to give nothing more than facts based on our evaluation of the numbers.
[Jenny Graham]: I see Zachary Chertok as the next hand. Name and address for the record, please.
[Zachary Chertok]: Zachary Chertock five all month street. First I want to thank the mayor for assembling the team here and presenting what she did regarding the cost that the city's entire debt services, and what the impact of adding that sizable exclusion would be to our ability to continue not just funding our entire operations with leverage. but also you know looking at what it would do to push us to the to the edge of that leverage and what that would mean for our ability to exercise that leverage for a multitude of things that this city has to serve as not just the high school. I also appreciate that after the effort to show what the impact would be to residents based on range cost projections at the high middle and low in the absence of committed costs for the high school project at this point. The numbers are sizable and I would ask the committee to really honor the mayor's request to think seriously through the cost what's nice to have versus what's imperative. And really right size this especially relative to the number of students it's going to serve because the student limit set by the, the MSBA is public you can see it and what we're looking at relative to some of the comparable projects in the last five years. is to serve a smaller number of students with an equal, if not bigger capacity building. And that includes the DESC for the vocational school. So I would really ask that the two sides work together towards what the mayor has asked in her last slide. And that's also coming from someone whose relatives were recently involved on the Salem High School project. Thank you.
[Jenny Graham]: Thank you. Ellen.
[a17_UOV__Vs_SPEAKER_33]: name and address for the record? Yep, my name's Ellen Rushman. My address is 52 Stickney Road. I guess I'm pretty disappointed and confused by the presentation that we just heard from the mayor and her staff. My understanding is that a debt exclusion provides additional funding for a capital project from taxpayers. So the two slides about capital projects that I assume are already included in your plan for our taxes between now and 2060, whatever you said, I don't understand why we're comparing a debt exclusion to that list of city services. I feel like there's a lot of value judgments being made about money right now and about what's too expensive and about where we should spend our money. I was pretty disappointed that the presentation had so much data around the senior citizens in our community and no data about the children in our community. So I guess I would just like to hear from the mayor and her staff why we are comparing debt exclusion numbers to our capital planning budget and what you want the public to take away from this. Cause I'm just like disappointed as a parent
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you, Ellen. We were asked by the committee to talk about the capital improvement plan. We have a new six-year plan. So what you saw were the major projects that we know of that need to be paid for in the next 10 to 20 years and how that models out. The point of that is that we are being asked to put some of this debt on the general fund, and I I think we had to outline that to show the committee and the residents that there's really not capacity if you want to do you as it is you already have to push the fire station and freedom way and some streets and sidewalks, because the modeling shows that we are just not going to be able to. pay that back in the general fund alone, meaning most of the new school building is going to have to be on a debt exclusion. So with showing that, we then showed that the 607, the 532, or the 440 will be the vote depending on what numbers we pan out in the end, hopefully by the end of the fall, that will be the number that the taxpayers will know will be a debt exclusion. And these are the facts to show what that would be per household, per apartment unit renter, per condo owner, per apartment complex owner. per year, per month. This is very fact-based. I know people could be disappointed, but it's just a disappointment about the facts. This is $800, $900 million proposed high school, and I'm just trying to show the facts so that the entire community knows where we're at.
[Jenny Graham]: Thank you, Ellen. Susan Wilson. Hi, this is Susan Wilson. Can you hear me okay? Yes. Great. I live at 97 Winchester Street. I'm a parent of three. I agree with Ellen that I find it really upsetting how unrepresented children and, to a certain extent, parents are in this conversation. You know, I think a lot of parents of small children have a hard time with these meetings and aren't necessarily as active in these conversations because they're just challenging and we're all overwhelmed. But our kids are going to be at this high school. And I think if we focus exclusively on cemeteries and people on fixed incomes. We're not engaging with the people who do vote in Medford, who move to Medford, who want to stay in Medford and pay taxes in Medford. So, you know, the tone, I think, is just really, really kind of offensive. I also wonder, I fully agree, this is about a debt exclusion. This is not about the city's budget. The city budget has issues like every city in our state and country at this time. A debt exclusion is separate. And to a certain extent, we haven't asked the voters if we want a debt exclusion yet. So creating an incredibly negative sense based on facts that I don't think are true. I mean, I followed a certain amount of these meetings so far and we don't have a final plan. So without a final plan, we don't have final numbers. Those numbers are guesses. Those numbers are estimates. We don't know what the MSBA is going to cover or not. We have a guess. But that's a really broad range. So to have seven slides of incredibly granular detail about what numbers we all are anticipated to pay is premature at this time. I think a lot of the conversations that need to happen between now and June 10th are about the pool and like other things. And later we can kind of figure out how we want to narrow it down to make this something that we can all afford. But the truth is, this is something that we need. So, you know, if we need this, how do we make it happen, right? And that's part of the city's job is to help figure out where the money comes from. Are there other ideas for revenue? I think to a certain extent, the debt exclusion can cover a lot of this. I think also on that one slide, what was it? To get the school up to code, is 500 million. So, you know, I think there's also like a separate conversation of it's not just a new building that's expensive. It's getting this building to be habitable and legally acceptable is also something that we as a city have to prioritize. So how are we going to do that? How are we going to put the different needs that we have in the school building currently into a new universe that's not this unsafe, unhospitable building? So, you know, I think that's part of what the role of the city needs to be here is to help propose how we can afford this. Are there new ideas? Are there different places we can put things? Are there creative ways that we can look at things that is outside of the scope of this high school committee and things that the citizens can't come up with on our own? That's stuff that the city has access to, and I would have loved to hear more information about ideas to give Medford the school and the community center and all of these things that we deserve. Thank you, Susan. Ada Gunning, you have three minutes.
[Ada Gunning]: Hi. Ada Gunning, 40 Magoon Ave. Thank you for having me. I wanted to thank everyone here for volunteering so much of your time over this past year on the building committee and for the mayor for putting together this presentation. It was interesting to see all the numbers. I think for me, you know, I have kids who are five and seven. I'm very excited and eager to have a high school that does not look like a prison for them and one that can have a climate where they're not burning up or they're not freezing, where they can learn all the subjects they need to learn and get their educational needs met. And I think what's missing for me is like, what is the city's vision for this high school? I hear it coming from the building committee and it seems like a vision that we can be thinking through, like what are the pieces that we want to include in the high school? What are the pieces we don't want to include in the high school? But I'd love to hear from The mayor, like, what would you like for the high school to have? And what are you going to be doing to improve our funding streams? How are you going to be presenting this to the public to gain support from the public to make sure that we get more people on board? Because people in Medford, we want to be proud of our high school. We want to be excited about this high school and we want your leadership to make this happen. And then my other question is, I'm fairly familiar with like the lack of options. around the city when it comes to buildings to house different programs. And I'm just thinking through the different programs that are currently housed in the high school that have been discussed as maybe we want them in the high school, maybe we don't. And I'd also love to hear from the mayor, like, where do you propose putting these programs? How do you propose funding a move of those programs to a different building. I just would love to hear your proactive vision and how you're planning to sell this to the public. Thank you.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you, Ada. I think that's been my stressor since the numbers have come out. upwards of 900 million. It's how do I first get this committee to reduce space and scope so that I can be an advocate and knock on doors to ask people to support a high school. So I put a number of space reductions proposals before this committee. I think two or three meetings ago, we were going to start working through those. But I agreed that it was the right thing to do to table those until after Labor Day, trying to listen to the project team on when the right time to do that is. So, yes, we're always trying to increase revenue in the community. I have 26 departments trying to manage 18 city buildings, plus all the school buildings. I have the students and schools who I've really tried to over my six and a half years really have tried to push the top of our list. As you'll see, one year we gave I think nine to 10% increase to the schools. But the reality is that I also have to worry about people on fixed incomes or people that are having a hard time affording groceries and gas or people, and I hear from people as I am out and about on the weekends and evenings, family I recently talked to can't afford to take their family way on vacation. So I, I have to worry about, um, all 60,000 residents, all 30 buildings, all 26 budgets. Um, so my, my vision, if I, if I was just a resident shore, I can afford it. And I would love to, um, vote yes for the biggest and best high school in the nation. But I am the only one that has to truly hear from and worry about every single person in this community. And I've been very stressed about it because I too would love an extra playing field on top of a parking lot. for our students, like if anybody knows me, it's like athletics. Myself, my husband, my family, athletics, athletics, athletics. But is that a luxury that we can afford or is it not? And I think that's something we're going to have to decide. When you talk about the city council and the school committee meeting in the, what I consider the school committee and city council chambers in city hall, I feel like that's doing, uh, is serving its purpose. And everybody has Monday nights for school committee, Tuesday, Wednesdays for city council. So when I saw our school committee auditorium or chambers plus school committee conference room and school committee office in this build, I did propose to cut those things. I think they're something that yes, we'd love to have space for our school committee, but again, a luxury. So while I'm trying to increase revenue and trying to take care of our buildings and balance a budget and care about our students, of course, number one, but then our residents who really can't afford this. And my mind going to, if we have more people that can't afford enough, that can't afford this and this debt exclusion feels that's, that's my fault too, that I'm not, that I am not speaking up. And I really am trying to be. fact-based tonight. And I really am trusting in the team, but, you know, the full team, this committee, as well as the project team to guide us and make the tough decisions come the fall, because there's nothing I want more than to say, look at how we've reduced this. Look what we're still offering our students and our, um, faculty, and let me knock on doors to support this. Even though, you know, of course, some people are never going to be able to afford some of these numbers, but there's a lot of work that we have to do, and I'm just trying to get through. that through to the committee and the project team that needs to make the tough decisions so we can be on our way to get a past debt exclusion. That is like the underlying, we must get a past debt exclusion because this building is outdated. It needs to be torn down and we need something new for our students and faculty. But it needs to be something where we have the whole community in mind when we're doing.
[Jenny Graham]: Miranda Bresenio.
[Miranda Briseno]: Hi, Miranda Bresenio to Taylor Street. I don't have any kids in the schools, but I babysit for a lot of families in Medford, and so seeing the success of this project, especially for the families that I babysit for their young children, is something I'm invested in, and as someone who enjoys the Bistro, Medford Community Media, and whatnot as well. I will say a lot of this feels very hypothetical, and unhelpful to the process of actually moving a building choice forward. I myself, I'm a renter, so I'm not seeing these tax bills myself. But even when we passed the overrides two years ago, my rent was not significantly affected. So I'm unclear on how an effect on renters is being calculated, especially because, you know, there's no rent control that we're mandating landlords cap or, you know, we, the city has no saying what landlords are charging for rent. So even if a landlord was suggesting that an increase in their tax bill would mean they need to significantly increase rent, I think that's more of a comment on the irresponsible landlord for not budgeting rather than it is on the project price tag. So I just hope that we can move past a sort of fear-based approach to this project and choose a building that meets the ed plan and meets the needs of students and the community.
[Jenny Graham]: Thank you. Thank you. Mike Mastrobone.
[Mike Mastrobuoni]: Thank you, Mike Mastrobone, 73 Fulton Spring Road. I'll be brief. I think, first and foremost, nobody is pretending like this is a cheap project. School buildings in 2026, they're just not cheap. But we got to remember this is, we have to compare this to the cost of doing nothing, right? Having our kids in a building that eats gas and that isn't heated or cooled properly. I think calling it the biggest and most expensive project in the country, that's not fair. That's not going to be the case. Even comparing this to projects from five years ago is irrelevant, right? Because construction costs have practically doubled or tripled. the cost of bringing our current building up to code we've learned through this process is probably the most expensive thing we can do. And so I just want to make one last point that I really appreciate sharing of financials. I think a lot of residents are feeling like they want to get to that phase as fast as possible. I think we'll be able to have much more healthy conversations about tradeoffs and costs and impacts once we get down to one one design, but something that I'd like to see in future presentations from the team. Mayor is context around projections like this so that everyday residents can understand what these big numbers mean. I think there's a lot of power in sharing financial information, but without context, there needs to be a lot more teaching that's done in these presentations so that everyday residents can understand it, not just you know, folks who live and breathe the stuff like your team. So I appreciate that, but I'd love to see more of that in the future.
[Jenny Graham]: Thank you. Jessica Parks?
[Jessica Parks]: Jessica Parks, 38 Cory Street. Thank you very much for the presentation, and I just want to follow up. You know, we've heard about all of the costs and expenses the city is facing, and it is a lot, and I get that. But one of the things I haven't heard, but I think I've heard asked a few times is about revenue. And, you know, we saw a list of the cost for the next few years, but do we have a list of the projects coming online in the next few years and the associated revenue that are associated with those projects that might kind of offset some of the expenses we're going to be facing? Does that exist and is that possible to see in kind of relation to what we are going to be owing for many of these projects? That's all. Thank you.
[Jenny Graham]: Mayor, did you want to answer that before I move on or should I move on?
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: We'll be posting our CIP plan so it outlines what will be done each year. we just have to figure out when we'll be able to put, you know, something as big as say the fire station on. So we evaluate that year by year based on what emergencies come up as well. But basically everything on those two slides is, you know, needed within the next two to 10 years. And it's just a matter of how much we can afford when.
[Chris Bennett]: I just wanted to say I'm really grateful for seeing all the numbers that were there. That was very helpful to me to see for the foreseeable future what we're going to be dealing with financially. The cost for Freedom Way kind of blew me away. That was a very expensive proposition there. The realism of We have this sort of give and take with our schools currently. The population is seeming to lessen in some spots. Elementary schools that were built are all going to start needing more and more work. So we have to be realistic about what we're spending money on. There's no question that we need to look at the current state of Medford High School. It was built, I believe, the first graduating class was 1974. So it's an older building and when it was built it started with issues. We've had to replace the roof on the gym multiple times. We've had to fix the pool. All of these expensive things that have taken place over the years. Some of them very recently like the science labs. So As much as everybody wants to sit there and have this most pristine, state-of-the-art, large place for everybody to go to, it's just not realistic at this time, in my opinion. I think it's a problem. So that's just, I just wanted to say thank you for showing me all the numbers, all the stuff that's coming up. I've been a homeowner in the city of Medford. I've grown up in the city of Medford. I went to Medford High School. I go in there frequently, so I understand what we're dealing with. but we have to be realistic about all of the expenses that are coming up, and we can't put all our eggs in one basket. Thank you.
[Jenny Graham]: Dean, can you give us your address for the record, please?
[Chris Bennett]: 19 Martin Street in Medford.
[Jenny Graham]: Thank you. Harrison Green?
[Harrison Green]: Hi, Harrison Green. I'm echoing an earlier, kind of much earlier comment. For the presentation, I was hearing that the city doesn't have the debt capacity to fulfill the design and requirements that the building committee is developing right now. So, which leads to my first question for the mayor is what priorities are higher than the requirements that will be cut? on this project. That's what I'm hearing from that presentation. And then secondly, the last bullet point of the presentation said that the city is looking into alternate sources of funding. What are those and what are you expecting or hoping the outcome to be of those possible sources? Thanks.
[Jenny Graham]: Mayor, did you want me to take the next question or did you have answers for Harrison?
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Yeah, I'll have to rewatch. I didn't catch what exactly what the questions were.
[Jenny Graham]: Okay. Maria Daniels.
[Ybtx6JdbanI_SPEAKER_00]: Hi, Maria Daniel, 67 West Street. Can you hear me?
[Jenny Graham]: Yes.
[Ybtx6JdbanI_SPEAKER_00]: Great. Thanks. I want to thank the committee for all your hard work to this point. I also want to thank the mayor and her team for your hard work, too, and for the data you brought tonight. And I want to make a comment about a false dichotomy that I'm hearing develop here. First of all, you know, my sons both recently graduated from Medford High School. I know many current students there now. I know many students who have succeeded through the high school and the voc with the amazing teachers who are there with the amazing educational plan that's been developed and increased and improved over the past few years. I just want to say that for the record, and I think this hellhole narrative is incorrect. So the person who spoke up before and said that she didn't want to send her elementary students there because the school is a hellhole is just not true. There are parts of the school I would never want to set foot in again because I think they're unsafe, particularly the girls' locker room, if anyone wants to go see a really horrible corner of Medford, you can go there. But I think the other side of the narrative that's not correct is the one that says we can't afford a new school. And I just want to compliment and appreciate the mayor's team for trying to start to raise awareness of what some of the costs would be. I agree with whoever said before that there needs to be more education. in the community and I just want to appreciate that transparent sharing of data tonight. I don't think that you were tasked with coming to advocate for children. or advocate for a particular school solution. I think that you were tasked with telling us what the costs were that are sitting on the city budget, and we have a better idea now than we did an hour and a half ago. I also want to just call out and appreciate that you shared some data, especially related to people in the community who are on fixed incomes. They will feel that pain of the tax increases much more than someone like me would. So I appreciate that you raised that. And I would really strongly urge the chairwoman and the committee to have a positive constructive attitude towards these numbers and towards more transparency and more sharing of the details of how the city is going to pay for the school that we can afford. Thank you.
[Zoe Moutsos]: Hi, so we moved says 33 Johnson have, um, I want to thank the mayor and her team for these these numbers. I am always really. I mean, it's gonna sound strange to say, but pleased to see that we have all these things planned and we are have plans for. Upgrading all across the city. At the same time, I know that this high school is going to add to everyone's everyone's taxes in 1 way or another. And I'm hoping that, you know, over time, perhaps we can. normalize sharing this kind of information on the regular perhaps in a way with more context and then also sharing equally at the same time when we finally narrow in and we're so close to narrowing in on an option when that's when we're going to decide to right size and choose the correct correct HVAC and begin to sort of put the context of the high school within the context of the city in a way that creates a an easier way in for folks who have kids, folks who don't have kids, folks who are on a fixed income, to better understand these numbers. Because I don't think most of us don't want a new high school, and I don't think that folks who really want a new high school expect a pristine, state-of-the-art, number one high school in the country. But I think we also are hoping that we can do better than just making sure that their kids aren't going to school in a hellhole. So I think that seeing these numbers on the regular, putting some context around them, and then doing this again when we actually have a plan and a number and we've taken those pieces of feedback and recommendations from the mayor and from other folks on the committee and there will be other places where we're going to be right sizing and value engineering and when we have a real number start to look at that number in context of what else we have because right now. it's kind of hard to make heads or tails of what are we saying. You're saying like this is what the city has on our docket and what we're responsible for. At the same time, the mayor and members of her team are part of the school committee or this building committee who approved the ed plan. So I would assume that that actually is what you want us to work against. So anyway, I'm excited to see these numbers continue to be placed in front of the public because they are really important, but placed in front of the public in context and with a real number on the high school, which we do not have yet. Thank you.
[Jenny Graham]: Thank you, Zoe. Tanya Sherman.
[SPEAKER_14]: I thank you so much for this presentation. Really appreciate all the work that went into it. It's a real window into the work that we need to do to, from my perspective, kind of catch up to cities and towns around us who have invested in new high schools. And I've just seen the amount of pride that it's generated in those cities and towns. And I really I have training as an urban planner, I work in community development and I see over and over again cities and towns make mistakes by not investing in something that will then generate more investment and more investment and more investment both socially and politically and financially. and I just would really hate for us to miss that opportunity. I'm new to this process. We moved to Medford only three years ago, and I was really excited to come here and hear about plans for this new exciting thing happening in our community amidst all of the hard news these days. And I know it is really hard to be in municipal finance right now, but the sense I got from the presentation is that kind of we're trying to place We're trying to fix a long-term municipal finance issue by degrading the investment in the high school. And I don't think that's what you all meant, but that's kind of the sense I got from the way that the data was presented. So I would appreciate moving forward a more comprehensive look at what the positive outlook could be of making this investment and also who it's going to serve and how while we also do of course need to consider how we can fix and make easier those who are on fixed incomes or low income working people. And yeah, just wanted to say, I'm a mom of a five-year-old and a five-month-old, so hard pressed to make time for these meetings, but I really prioritize it. I know there are lots of other families like us who really are hoping and praying, fingers crossed that the city is gonna do the right thing. So just really hoping that we can try to band together and make something really exciting happen as a community.
[Jenny Graham]: Daniel, can you just give us your name and address for the record?
[SPEAKER_14]: Yes, Tanya Sherman, 54 Dover Street.
[Jenny Graham]: Thank you. Um, Harrison Green. I know we didn't get to answer your question last time. Are you wanting to repeat your questions for the mayor?
[Harrison Green]: Yes, that's correct. If if it's an option.
[Jenny Graham]: Yep, go ahead.
[Harrison Green]: Um, Harrison Green to Ronald A Road. Um, the My previous comment and questions were about the messaging of the presentation. I was hearing that the view of the mayor and the team was that we don't have the capacity to fulfill the design and requirements as the building committee is developing. So firstly, what are the priorities in the mayor's office that are higher than the requirements that will be cut? for the high school project. And then the second comment and question are regarding the last bullet point that the city is looking into alternate sources of funding. What sources are those and what is the expectation or hope in terms of financial outcome? Thank you.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Yeah, I just don't understand the first question. The high school is the top priority for our community. But everything we outlined is also things that we need to do, either because we are ordered to do it by the state, such as the lead pipe removals, or because we have a fire station that is falling apart, just like the police station was 10 years ago. It stems from the same building, and we need to place that somewhere on the city debt. So it's just a matter of trying to move this project forward at a constant scope that we think the debt exclusion will pass while trying to manage the rest of the city.
[Jenny Graham]: Harry Babish.
[SPEAKER_18]: Hi, I'm Carrie Babbage 25 Hancock Street. I am. like everyone else, very appreciative of all the work that everybody has put in tonight. I'm a mom of three, a current high schooler, a current seventh grader, and a rising kindergartner. So I have a lot of stake in all the various parts of this process. I've lived and owned my home in Medford for almost 17 years. And this reminds me, in many ways, of the conversations that we had around the building of the new library. A lot of these same kind of financial questions were raised. And where does the money come from? What gets pushed to the back burner? I understand that those are important questions always. But one of the things that really came out of those conversations for me was that a lot of the reason that we have so many of our municipal buildings that are in need of repair or rebuilding at this point in time is that perhaps less thought was put into them when they were constructed as far as future proofing. And they were not maintained well over the years. I know maintenance is something that was mentioned earlier. So as a few people have said, I don't want us to undersell ourselves now at the risk of running into similar issues down the road. all in favor of being thoughtful in our planning and our expenditures, but really not putting ourselves in a situation where we're having this conversation not too long down the road, I think is also important. Thank you.
[SPEAKER_14]: Thank you, Perry.
[SPEAKER_18]: Sophie R.?
[Sophie Ricks]: Hi, this is Sophie. I guess my first thought is I remember reading the report about the state of the high school that came out. I don't know. three, four years ago. And the quote that has really stuck with me is, students describe their flagship school as bleak with a persistent sense of foreboding. So I kind of can't get that out of my head. I have two kids, one at the Missittuck, one who will be there next year. And the idea of spending hundreds of millions of dollars for only a code upgrade really feels like the worst possible deal. As I'm listening to this a lot of people have said things more eloquently than I can but like others it felt really upsetting to not really hear kids mentioned at all as we're talking about this school to focus on every other aspect of the community. like other people I really want to hear directly from the mayor about what are these alternate sense of funding that we that are being mentioned. The other thing that was mentioned I would like to hear more about is the discussion around the Curtis Tufts being rehabbed and For me, that feels confusing. My understanding is that that would be a lot of money similar to doing a code upgrade for the high school. Would we not just be moving hundreds of millions from one project? Maybe it would be tens of millions, but from one project to another to hold those same students. Or I have never been inside the Curtis Tufts. I don't know how much space is there. Is there a lot of other space for administrative offices? Are you imagining moving the MFN there? As you're kind of exploring that now, I guess I would like to have more of a sense of what's even possible. It just feels like we're kind of shifting things from one bucket to another. So yeah, those are my questions. If the mayor could answer those specifically, I'd really appreciate it. Thank you. And I've emailed you my address for the record. Thank you.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Paul may be able to answer the question on the Curtis Tufts a little better than I do. To rehab the Hegner Center, which is in much worse shape, is $5 million. So I was really hoping the Curtis Tufts would be a lot less. We won't know that. We're just starting to commission an assessment, look at, I think we're gaining quotes at this moment, and hope to assess over the summer. So depending on, who we hire to assess, we will let them know of the different options of what could be coming to the Curtis Tufts so we can get proper quotes.
[Jenny Graham]: Thank you. Sophie, did you have another question?
[Sophie Ricks]: Yeah, I guess I was also wondering about the space piece. So even if it was only, quote unquote, only five million, like, is there additional space in the Curtis Tufts to actually house other programs like the many other things that we're talking about for the high school? Or is that literally just kind of saving that one program that's currently there? And I also would like to hear from the mayor, too, about those alternate sources of funding separately, too.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: The Curtis Tufts program students are being moved, hopefully, to the new high school. So it would be just a building that we have to decide what could be housed there.
[Jenny Graham]: Thank you, Sophie. I had two questions from the chair. The first, the very first slide talked about sort of the ranges of what Medford could expect to see in terms of total cost after MSBA participation. And it assumed a 53% rate, which is in fact our reimbursement rate in feasibility. Is there an opportunity and is it likely, and I think this is really a question for the project team, is it, is there an opportunity for, and is there a likelihood that Medford's reimbursement rate will go up from 53% in feasibility when we reach our project funding agreement?
[Adele Sands]: I can take that to this Jen Carlson from left field if you if you don't mind. Awesome. So those that reimbursement rate will likely go up based on the incentive points that the project is tracking. There are incentive points that can be added to that base rate through the MSBA and through this process and through choices that the city and the SBC make along the way. So we are tracking a number of points, and that number would be expected to go up at the end of schematic design.
[Jenny Graham]: Thank you. And then my second question is for our assessor. I think that you said, and I just wanted to confirm this, that the assumptions in your calculations assume a 2% new growth number. Is that consistent with our growth in past years?
[Jared Yagjian]: So the 2, right around the 2 million is consistent. Last year was higher, but that was a one off with a personal property. hit. So last year wouldn't be indicative of future years. We used $2 million conservatively and added 2% a year as the projections.
[Jenny Graham]: And so does that include the 350 units at 4,000 Mystic Valley Parkway, the 289 units at 970 Fellsway, 40 units at Wackling Court, 200 in Medford Square, and 350 to 1,440 units in Wellington that we cited during our enrollment study to the MSBA. All of that is factored into the assumptions that you're making about growth going forward, or has none of that been contemplated in the plan, the revenue planning.
[Jared Yagjian]: It's been contemplated. I mean, that's what's so tough about doing future assumptions and going out to fiscal 30 and 31, 32. So all those projects, there'll be new growth over multiple years. They take more than 12 months to build. So we'll be capturing some of that this fiscal year, some of that next fiscal year. A lot of those projects are on the income approach, so they have to wait to be stabilized. So long, short story on that is there'll be projects that yield growth over multiple years, there won't be one big hits. So it could be slightly higher than the 2% per year over the next three or four years. But I would say that's a fair assumption to increase it by 2% from 26 on.
[Jenny Graham]: It's a fair assumption based on the growth plans for the city, or it's just a conservative assumption because we can't predict the growth of these planned developments? I'm just trying to understand what amounts to like two or three thousand new units coming online, what is going to get us to two percent growth? Or is that two percent not contemplating all of that over time?
[Jared Yagjian]: It's contemplating those projects if that answers your question, but it's also contemplating other Factors say we have a slowdown in the economy and people aren't putting additions on and there's other pullbacks. Those four projects that you said that aren't going to carry us. So, you know, we look, I look at history and what we've had in Medford for our average new growth over the last five, six years. We use that as the modeling and went off that. And it's roughly on average about 2 million over the last five years outside of last year.
[Jenny Graham]: So the modeling that you showed us tonight, is based on our historical growth.
[Jared Yagjian]: Correct. Average.
[Jenny Graham]: Um, I think it would be helpful in future presentations to, um, provide a little bit more information for folks about how those growth numbers are being calculated. Like what is, you know, what is the historical and, and how are we making adjustments? Um, there's a lot of conversation in the community around, rezoning and building and we're talking about transforming Medford square and I just like, I can't wrap my head around how we're going to transform Medford square and we're not going to see an increase in revenue. accordingly like are we going to rebuild Medford Square like it is today or are we going to transform it in which case I would think we could expect to see revenue growth. So it would be helpful for the city team the next time that we revisit all this conversation because I'm sure we'll do that multiple times to include just a more refined set of assumptions around growth for our city. Given all of the things that we hear about in the conversation across our community every single day. I want to thank the mayor's team for presenting this initial look at the finances. Like I said, I think we'll be doing many more of these and. more to come, I'm sure, just more to come on cost. So I'm going to move us on to the next item, which I'm going to turn it over to the project team to review our PSR cost estimates for C2.2a and C3.4a, which we asked for in our last meeting.
[Luke Preisner]: Jenny, before the project team begins, I wanted to ask for a point of clarification to Jen Carlson with left field. You had asked her about incentive points or reimbursement rates specifically. and about the likelihood that it would increase. She said that it would, and that was based on incentive points that the team is currently pursuing. But to be clear, there are many from the community who are listening at home, dialed into the Zoom, who may not appreciate the distinction between reimbursement rate and net reimbursement. reimbursement rate applies to eligible costs only. So Jen, can you clarify to us whether this project could ever reach the reimbursement rate as a realized net reimbursement without substantial alterations to the current scope?
[Jenny Graham]: And Jen, just to add on to that, the slide that we did move really fast by takes that assumption in, but perhaps you can also describe how it is factored in because my understanding was that 53% was not applied to the total cost, that some more detailed work was done to arrive at those cost estimates. So maybe you could tackle both of those at the same time.
[Adele Sands]: Yes, thank you. So that is correct. The base reimbursement rate that applies through feasibility study and schematic design is that 53% number that when we move at the end of schematic design, we'll have enough information to really better understand what additional incentive points this project qualifies for. As an example, you get additional points for the maintenance of the building, you'll get additional points for If a portion of the building is renovated, you'll get additional points through the Green Schools Program. So there's a number of these additional incentive points that will be applied at the end of schematic design when the MSBA is deciding what their grant participation for the project would be. That said, that percentage only applies to the MSBA deemed eligible spaces of the building. And within all of that, there's also various caps on things like site costs and various other things behind their equation. So this project will I can't see this project ever being that 53% across the total project budget, because that's not how the MSBA's funding and total project budget is set up. But once we do know more about this project and move this in further, we will be able to have a clearer understanding of what that net reimbursement rate looks like across the total project budget. And I would invite any of my left fielder team to add to any of that if there's anything else.
[Luke Preisner]: Do you have a sense based on the PDP feedback, the quantity as a fraction of overall project cost deemed eligible?
[Adele Sands]: Based on the PDP comments, they've asked us to go back and clarify some things and just update some items they have questions on. So we don't have the full picture of what they're deeming eligible versus ineligible until we submit PSR and get feedback. based on that submission. So we'll have a clearer cost, a clearer understanding on the other side of PSR when a single preferred option is selected. So right now we don't have the full, full picture until the MSB weighs in again.
[Luke Preisner]: Okay, well, you clarified it. Reimbursement rate is only applicable to eligible costs. And it's very unlikely that our project under its current scope could ever realize the reimbursement rate as a net reimbursement. Or any scope. or any scope?
[Adele Sands]: I'm sorry just in it's in under the current scope of the project was a point you made I just want to make sure that it's clear that any scope you know if you're submitting to MSBA there's caps and there's percentages and there's the reimbursement rate the base rate that they give you plus the incentive points but it is And I would ask I think Lynn Stapleton's on the line as well from left field, but you're never going to get that 53% on the total project budget MSBA participation based on all of the ineligible spaces in the building, no matter what the scope is, and based on their caps within various budget line items.
[Luke Preisner]: Oh, sure. Yeah, no, that's fully understood. But at this time, the team is not prepared to assess what fraction of the project that was proposed in PDP would be ineligible. That is a TBD, down the road, we'll find out a PSR response. That's how I took it.
[Adele Sands]: We don't have the full feedback on spaces within the building. There are some things that need to be clarified with MSBA.
[SPEAKER_03]: I do think that using the cost estimates that were provided for the PDP those were run through a calculator of MSBAs and the anticipated share of the city based on all of these caps and ineligible spaces known to date were, I mean, the actual number that was calculated out was provided to the mayor's team.
[Jenny Graham]: So when we post the presentation, everyone can see the projected estimated real cost to the city of Medford. And you can do the math about the effective rate from there based on the total cost of the project. Thank you, Jen.
[Luke Preisner]: Will those details be shared with the SBC or are they considered?
[Jenny Graham]: We will send a presentation out, yes.
[Luke Preisner]: But the specific details of what was eligible and ineligible that was sent to the mayor's team, will that be made public or at least available to the SBC?
[Jenny Graham]: The only thing that was sent to the mayor was a slide.
[Luke Preisner]: Calculate, okay.
[Jenny Graham]: As soon as those things are available, we will happily share them.
[Emily Lazzaro]: Okay, thank you.
[Jenny Graham]: OK, let's move on. It is 9 o'clock, and we still have a very big agenda. So I do want to move us along, because this information is equally important and timely as we move towards June 10 and being able to make a decision. So I'm going to turn it over to the team.
[Adele Sands]: All right. Thank you. So, as promised, since presenting the C22a and C34a options at our last meeting, we have had those options priced. They have replaced the C22 and C34 options on this chart. I just want to reorient you to what you're seeing here on the left-hand column. There are three levels of program that have been priced for each option. That first row is the high school only, and that represents just the spaces the high school needs to function as outlined in the ed plan. And the next row down is the high school plus the current existing program that is housed by the existing building today. This row shows the A, B, and C options include a renovated pool, while the D options are broken out into both a pool and no pool, that's the NP options. That's because I think we've discussed it this group before. A new pool in a new building build is required to be broken out as a separate project moving forward with the MSBA, but we do understand that there is value in knowing the cost of that piece to help you better compare it against the other options. Finally, that bottom line, that bottom row, is the high school plus all of the programs, and this includes everything in the lines above, plus a couple of new programs and spaces that are proposed to be added to the project. So you'll see that those C22A and C34A columns in the middle, are added. So the C-2-2-A costs range from $716 million to $813 million at the highest point of that range. And the C-3-4-A option ranges from $720 million to $817 million. So that is the update for those two options and factored into that entire, all of the options, the entire chart with all of the options. Are there any questions on the updated costs?
[Libby Brown]: I have a question, but I just can't get my hand up. I'm sorry. I can't zoom in clearly. I'm sorry. Thank you, Jenny. That's okay. I'm pretty sure you'll be clear about this. I just want to make sure I understand it. So D1.1, even though it's a separate project, the estimated cost of a pool is in that number. So we understand what it would cost, even though we know that would be done separately. Is that right?
[Adele Sands]: Yes. Okay. Just to make sure it compares. It's a little easier to compare against the other options since they all include a renovated pool.
[Jenny Graham]: Any other questions from the committee before we move on to the next item? Is that your talk?
[Zachary Chertok]: Sorry, I just want to clarify, are you opening to public or just committee right now?
[Jenny Graham]: Do you have a question? Go ahead. There weren't any hands from the committee.
[Zachary Chertok]: Okay. Zach Chartlock, 5 Almond Street. I just want to clarify, because there was a lot of commentary about the mayor converting cost range estimates into tax range estimates and a lot of discussion about cost proposals and the fact that while we didn't know what exact numbers were, that it seemed a little disingenuous to convert to, you know, those range estimates to tax range estimates. If we're working for, from proposals right now, I would ask the committee to be taking some of these numbers that are being publicly circulated and put them into what it will mean for the public as taxpayers so they'll know how this is adjusting for them as time goes along. It will really help with transparency for us. Thank you.
[Jenny Graham]: Seeing no other questions, the next topic we had is we wanted to give you a little bit of a preview of the project timeline between. our decision and our submission of PSR and this time next year, which will be here before we know it. So, Joan, do you want to take this part? Yes, I do. All right. Great.
[Adele Sands]: Thank you. So, moving on to timeline, you can see here that we have mapped out the next year, as Jenny has mentioned. Starting at the top left, we're showing our upcoming SBC meetings. First, that June 10th meeting where the SBC will be voting on the single preferred option to move forward. That will be followed by a meeting on June 18 for the SBC to vote to submit the preferred schematic report, the PSR, to the MSBA. The deadline to submit that PSR to the MSBA to hold our timeline is June 25. We plan on submitting on or before June 25. Thank you, Matt Rice, for the circle on that. That will kick off the MSBA's review of the PSR document, and we will be scheduled for one of two possible facility assessment subcommittee, FAS, subcommittee meeting through the MSBA. It's a subcommittee of the MSBA's board of directors that previews the project and offers feedback and asks questions at those meetings. So we'll be scheduled for one of those two meetings either July 15th or July 29th. That is leading up to the Board of Directors vote on August 26th. The Board of Directors would be voting to approve the project to move into schematic design. So you'll see just below that board of directors vote, there's a big long blue line. And that shows the schematic design timeline overall. Just under that, we have some tentative SBC meetings. I think as Jenny mentioned at the beginning of this meeting, we're going to be vetting these out. These are tentative for now. We're just comparing against other things. in the calendar as there are many wonderful things going on in Medford at all times. So just a little clarification on what is happening over the summer and what the SBC can expect. So we're looking for a July meeting and an August meeting. During that time frame, the school and the city will be working together, as we've talked about previously, to come up with a plan and really vet the program options that are, I'm going to say, beyond the high school programming, as you saw in that last slide with cost. the programs beyond that many of which exist in the school today so there needs to be some work done to identify where those programs could go in town in the city and so that work is going to be done over the summer and the plan is to present all of that information at the September SBC meeting right now we're targeting September 21st And it will be laid out in a clear way for everyone to understand and consider and ask their questions in that timeframe. We'll also be looking to hold a community forum to get community feedback on all of this work that's happening and on the meeting in October, which right now here is flagged for October 14th, that is the meeting that the SBC will be voting to finalize the scope of this project so that that can move forward and be estimated and be planned through schematic design. So I did just want to highlight that process that's happening over the summer. And then as previously stated, the SBC will be voting to finalize scope in the October meeting. Moving from there, you'll see there are a couple of November meetings that we're looking to hold. There's two there for the advisory teams to bring feedback back to the SBC for consideration. And then there's one other highlight towards the end of SD, schematic design. In February, we're looking to have two meetings to one. The first one is to present the estimate information and confirm a total project budget that would need to be submitted to the MSBA by February 10th. And the second would be to approve the full schematic design submission to the MSBA, which the MSBA has not listed out their 2027 board dates, but it would be the last week of February, either the 24th or the 25th that the SD report would be due to the MSBA. So moving from there, there would be a review period again with the MSBA mostly, working through many questions they have ahead of their board meeting, their board of directors meeting in April of 2027. From there, we will know if they've approved the project scope and budget, and we'll know what their participation in this project will be, their total maximum grant amount. And that is the number that should be, will be the real number for this project moving forward. Then taking that number after that approval, you have 120 days to get city approvals for the project. And that includes a city council approval and a citywide vote. And right now we're targeting that for May of 2027. And once that approval is official, we'll be able to move into the next module, which is detailed design. Are there any questions on this snapshot of a timeline?
[Luke Preisner]: Jed, I had a question about the two board of director votes. And in the PDP feedback, in attachment A. The MSPA notified us. They have not decided, but they leave open the possibility of recovering funding that they have granted Medford in the past. We had a science building that was renovated. We had boilers and some other projects. And they kind of deferred making that decision until they have, I guess, a clear sense of our project. Would you expect that the first MSBA VOD vote in August is the time to reconcile that question and confirm whether we are at risk of having to pay back some prorated amount of prior grants that they have given us? Or do you expect that reconciliation to come in the second VOD vote in April of, I guess, 27?
[Adele Sands]: I'll let Lynn Stapleton weigh in here, but I would say the second board of directors meeting as it relates to the, it will relate back to their grant amount.
[SPEAKER_03]: I will say too, they're probably waiting to see what the timeline of the project is because some of those may fade out. It depends on how many years that any project that they participated in has been in use. And if it's up, I think it's 20 years, then they drop any reimbursement back to them. So they may be looking to see exactly the timeline of how long it will be in use by the time it's actually demolished to determine what will actually be required to be paid back to MSBA.
[Luke Preisner]: And would that amount, whatever it is, be included in the debt exclusion or is the payback?
[SPEAKER_03]: It gets calculated into the total project budget at the schematic design phase. If you ever have seen MSBA's total project budget template form, there's a line item for where they take back any prorated amount for projects that haven't met their time of use limit. So at the end of schematic design, it'll be factored into the total cost of the whole building.
[Luke Preisner]: OK, thank you.
[Jenny Graham]: Are there questions from the committee? Any questions from the public? Okay, let's move on. Oh, we have one question from Dania Sherman.
[SPEAKER_14]: Sorry, that was an error.
[Jenny Graham]: It's getting late. I understand. Um, okay. So we're going to move on to, um, uh, uh, update on our evaluation criteria matrix and, um, a corresponding, um, bit about our life cycle cost analysis, which has, was promised as part of this updated evaluation criteria. Um, from when we 1st looked at the evaluation criteria. Um, back, like, 100 years ago, when we had 29 options before us, so I will let the project team take it over.
[Matt Rice]: All right. Thank you, Jenny. I'm going to start off and then I'm going to hand it over to Martine Dionne, our sustainability director, to run through the life cycle cost analysis information because she is infinitely more qualified to do so than myself. But what I'm going to update us on is the evaluation criteria matrix. That yes, the last time we looked at this, it was a little bit more of a cumbersome document because we had 29 different options that we were studying. And just to refresh the building committee's memory as well as maybe some members of the public that didn't participate in the process back when we were looking at this, the evaluation criteria matrix is a rubric. It's an evaluation tool that was really, it's the building committee's tool. We did help facilitate the development of this tool by proposing some topics, but we did have a dedicated building committee meeting where the committee ran through every one of the evaluation criteria and then the assigned values to each one of those criteria to basically make sure that it was resonating and talking to the goals of Medford High School. And so I will run through this now. The nice thing that we have only six columns now as opposed to 29, it's a little bit more manageable. We've tried to format it here so that we don't have to jump to the Excel document and look at it. So really what we have is a series of excerpts as we run through vertically and we'll just call out the different parts and pieces of the evaluation criteria matrix. This will all total up at the bottom as well once we get to the last slide, so there is a relative enumeration of what the score for each one of the different options is going to be relative to one another and relative to the evaluation criteria that has been laid out. I will say this is the first time that we're presenting this, and so as part of this presentation and the discussion that follows or thereafter, there's still the ability and we really need the building committee to weigh in on any evaluations that they think might want to be adjusted. This is our first pass going through it looking at the updated information. So just to refresh the columns that are running left to right across the top here, we do have six different columns and we have a different number of sort of specific options that we've been looking at. So I'll just explain them really quickly as we go through. The first one is that code upgrade option. There has been no change there in terms of what that represents. Initially, it's the fixing of the building. Our option B1.2 is the more substantial renovation option. There is some amount of addition to that as well, but that is as we have known it previously. The C2.2a option is one of the new options that was developed in response to the deed restriction and avoids the deed restriction to allow a clearer path moving forward in terms of the overall design and sort of site development as we go forward. C2.2a-HS for high school is a response to the MSBA request in the PDP comments that they made for the building committee to review a high school only grades 9 to 12 high school curriculum building and design option. So that's what's been laid out here in terms of of the evaluation criteria that we're going to go through. We're putting it up for consideration against the other options that are there on the table and we can go down to the bottom. We'll see what the score is there. I will also just preface before we get down to the bottom that as we have been talking about earlier this evening, when we talk about a grades nine to 12 building, what happens to all those programs that are currently located at the high school is really unknown right now. And that's gonna be part of the good work that's done over the course of the summer really to determine what the potentials are and the costs associated with those. So there are some unknowns as we go through the analysis of C2.2A-HS. So as we run through that, we've tried to make our fairest assessment of sort of where those unknowns plug into the overall rating criteria. But we're, of course, open to any thoughts from the committee as to modifications to those rankings as we go. C3.4a is another of the C options that was modified to comply with the deed restriction requirements. And then D1.1 is our all new construction option on the southern parking lot as it was originally envisioned. So those are our columns that we're looking at. The metrics have been updated here. This first set of criteria really aren't criteria, but rather metrics associated with each one of the options so that you can compare both project cost that runs along the bottom, project duration, for instance, the number of modular classroom units that are required in addition to field inventory and so forth. I'm not going to run us through every one of these line items at this point, just given the time that we have available. I will point out as we go through though, obviously the C2.2a high school column is all new in terms of the evaluations that run through there. And we did update the C2.2a and C3.4a columns because those options were the prior versions as we were developing the last set of ratings as we went through. Those who were part of this process earlier may recall that there were some lines that were left blank before because we didn't have any sufficient information to make sort of an initial evaluation, but we have done that now. And for instance, in terms of project cost, here, we have updated that based on the new costs that have been just received on the PSR options, including the C2.2a-HS. So again, I'll try to just point out the areas where we have had more information now to work with. The impact on taxpayer burden is another item where there have been some revisions in terms of the evaluations going through here. And you might ask yourself, well, for C22A, the high school only option, why is that been rated a zero, just like the ones that are adjacent to it, even when the school is smaller? It's really because when we think about project costs, yes, that project cost would be lower, but this is where the unknowns from the other programs that are currently at the high school, if we're unhousing them, Where do they go? There is likely a cost to taxpayers in terms of that relocation. We don't know what it is yet, so we're again proposing that it may be a zero and certainly welcome some additional discussion on that topic if there is some. I don't think that there's much here in terms of ed plan and equity that had changed or sustainability. Again, aside from sort of infilling with the C22A-HS, in many cases it's going to be very similar to the C22A because number of stories, the square footage. has been reduced and the building footprint has been reduced slightly as well. So that has modified some of the evaluation criteria as we go through this. The site has remained fairly similar. When we get down to construction impacts and costs, again this is one where you do see that the C22A high school does have a higher score than the adjacent And that's really just due to the building being smaller, so the building construction cost being less. And that's proved out through the cost estimates. But the site construction costs would be sort of on a relatively similar playing field, because we still need to develop the site around, even a little bit more site, if we have less building footprint. And then the operational costs, these were two lines that were all blank previously because we had not had the chance to run through the life cycle cost analysis. As Martine jumps into the next section, she'll give you some more detail here. This was my trying to distill the contents of our presentation into sort of a very simple rating system. So again, here, after maybe folks listen to Martine's presentation, We can certainly revisit that potentially as well if folks have questions. And then as you go down through the community evaluation criteria under 10 are the ones that had the most variation for the C22A, the high school only option. And that's really due to when particular programs that were identified as a specific evaluation criteria previously are either removed from the building entirely or they're potentially moved off site. So if it's 10.1, for instance, that fosters collaboration with community partners because the community partner space would be removed from the building, that was given a zero. For some of the others, like facilitates the use and community access to the Medford Early Education Program or the MEEP Preschool, that was given a two because it could be more accessible to the community wherever it lands, but we just don't know that yet. And so that's the reason why that was ascribed a two versus a five or a zero. So that's the general approach that we followed through the process. You can see where the scores lay out towards the bottom. Again, no one is bound to these scores necessarily. They're relative evaluations to one another for the different options. And then that note down at the bottom is just reiterating what I mentioned at the beginning and just a moment ago. Because those programs that are currently housed at the high school, if they are relocated, if that's studied over the course of the summer, we don't know really what all the impacts are there. So we're trying to evaluate and peg maybe where these might fall in terms of the evaluation criteria. So that was my attempt at trying to get this through this relatively quickly. Happy to answer any questions on this, maybe before we roll into the LCCA piece of this.
[Jenny Graham]: Are there any questions before we do LCCA? Seeing none, why don't we plow ahead?
[Matt Rice]: All right. I'll turn it over to Martine here then.
[Martine Dion]: All right. Thank you, Matt. So this is going to be another set of heavy numbers, heavy set of numbers and criteria. So I would appreciate same with the other ones. If you could hold your questions until the end, try to pull through as much as we can in a timely manner. So we're going to, go through the life cycle cost analysis, 50-year life cycle cost analysis, comparing design options and HVAC options within those design options. We have selected the B.2 and the D.1.1 options, so we're comparing them and each options were analyzed with both the ground source heat pump system and the air to water heat pump systems. We studied, we selected these two options, the B1.2 and the D1.1, because they represent sort of the two ends of the spectrum of design option, one being sort of the more heavy reno add, and the other one being the full new construction. And so all the other options kind of fall in between those. For the HVAC system, we selected the ground source heat pump system. That was one of the preferred systems that came through all the discussions during PDP and early PSR. And the second system we're analyzing here is air to water heat pump. which is a bit better than a typical air source heat pump VRF system. It also allows much less refrigerant, if not at all, in the building. And it has a bit better carbon emissions associated with the refrigerant are not as much heavy in that option. So with that, for everybody, just to refresh everybody's understanding of what a lifecycle cost analysis is, the LCCA is used to assess and compare the associated initial and the operating cost of building systems, HVAC, as well as the the rest of the building system, electrical and enclosure, over the life cycle of the building, in this case for 50 years. The LCCA includes initial cost, replacement cost, maintenance cost, and energy savings that are associated with your monthly and annual utility costs. It includes a 3% cost escalation And we'll have a bit of a discussion on the installation incremental cost and the life cycle cost, incremental cost, throughout this presentation, as well as an early estimate of the incentives. Next.
[Matt Rice]: Martin, just to clarify, that 3% cost escalation is per year, right? That's what's assumed?
[Martine Dion]: Yes, it's per year over 50 years. It's sort of a net. There's also a net percent value that's applied to bring back that cost. So just as a reminder, again, B1.1 is 640,000 square foot and D1.1 is 610. They differ a bit, and that's all accounted for in the analysis. As we discussed in previous presentations, the predicted energy use intensity, which we refer to as EUI, is 35 for this project. Now EUI the energy use intensity is a metric that we use to compare facilities one to another, sort of on the same metric. It's an energy per square foot metric that includes all the energy used in the building. So it includes the heating, the cooling, the domestic hot water, the lighting, all the plug load. all combine, all fuel sources combine. In this case, we're looking at all electric for all. The goal of 35 PEUI is a goal we've discussed and set early in the project. And if you look at a typical high school that does not have a CTE program, Currently, in most projects around the state, they'll target 25 to 30 EUI. For schools with city program, which are a bit more intensive in terms of energy use, the 35 EUI is probably the optimal goal to go after. And that's why we had set that goal earlier on. Now, how do we get there? We get there with using passive strategies. So the way we're designing the building, will optimize solar harvesting, daylighting harvesting. We're going to have a very well-insulated enclosure, triple glazing. Those will contribute to reduce the load, the demand for heating and cooling of the building. compared to your current existing building. And then all electric HVAC, efficient all electric HVAC. I know there's been comments earlier on. We're looking here at high efficiency heat pumps. that are three times more efficient than the 95% boiler that you have now, I believe it's a 95% boiler, than the natural gas boiler. So the three times efficiency kind of help mitigate the higher cost of electricity. And then plug load management, all your appliances, your plugged in equipment, we're going to be, through the design of this project, we're going to be looking at that load and looking at how to manage it and program it so we can reduce that demand as well. Next. So through our analysis, This is the preliminary results. As you can see here, you have the option B1.2 that compared the ground source heat pump, the air to water heat pump. Those EUIs are a bit higher or around 35, but they're a bit higher than option D1.1, which are in the lower 30s. Some of this is just through the nature of the building design. The B1.2 has a bit more enclosures, a bit wider, lower stories, that type of stuff. All of this impacts the results. But when you compare to your existing facility, and one thing before I go to the existing, when you compare the ground source heat pump to the air water in each of those options, the ground source heat pump is a bit more efficient because inherently that system is a bit more efficient than the air to water heat pump. Then when you compare it to your existing facility, design that we're looking at here in terms of overall energy use per square foot is 62% better than your existing building. So a takeaway from this is that all options with a high-efficient HVA system heat pump HVAC system, whether it's ground source or air to water, is, you know, makes the 35 UI goal achievable. We can achieve it with those systems and with those options. Next. So following up from the energy use per square foot, we did a calculation to give you a bit of a high level preliminary cost per square foot. And then again, compared to your existing uh, building. So the cost per square foot, although you have more square footage, the cost per square foot is lower because we're making the building highly efficient. In this design, there is no electric boilers. It's all heat pump. Um, and it's about 40 to 50% energy cost reduction pending on obviously final design pending on the selection of the, um, of the design option and of the HVAC system. This cost includes a fully air conditioned school, where just keeping in mind that your existing school at $2.79 a square foot, and that cost is based from information we got from the energy department, that existing school does not have full air conditioning. So something to keep in mind when looking at those costs. And then the one other component that we're going to dive in more in schematic design is the solar PV system, the battery storage. Including such a system in your project is going to allow you to reduce peak load and demand, peak load reduction and demand costs. Those calculations we're going to fold in through the schematic design lifecycle cost analysis. If you go with a known system, if you go to PPA, there's going to be savings, maybe not as much as the own one, but all of this is going to be evaluated in the next phase. Next. So there would be further savings on that.
[Matt Rice]: And I'll just put a quick footnote in for folks. For PPA, if you're not familiar with that term, it's a power purchase agreement. It's essentially where a third party company would come in and actually supply the panels. And then Medford would actually be purchasing the electricity back from that company. So there's a lot more detail to it. I just wanted to explain that acronym.
[Martine Dion]: So this is sort of a summary of the net present value full 50-year LCCA. There's a lot of numbers here. We're not going to go through each of them. Again, this is a PSR assessment at a high level, and the intent here is to bring some takeaways when comparing the design options in the systems within the design option. So the major takeaway here is one of the challenges presented by the ground source heat pump, the incremental cost. So there's a 28 million plus incremental cost between the ground source heat pump and the air to water heat pump. And that's actually about the same between the option B1.2 and option D1.1. These costs are based on the PSR cost estimate. So there's a 28 plus million incremental cost. And then if you look at the replacement costs, the maintenance costs, the replacement cost is slightly lower. It's about $3 million for the ground source seed pump. It has a bit higher maintenance costs. And then there's energy costs, which has about a million, three, a million, four. savings over 50 years for the energy cost. So when you add those replacement costs, maintenance costs, and energy cost saving increase, it's about $4 million or so. And that $4 million is not really enough to substantiate that upfront $28 million. On top of that, you have the mass save incentives. The mass save incentives for the ground source heat pump are about $3 million. They are capped. We've already had meetings with Massave. We've started the process. We're going to optimize the incentives. They slightly differ for the air to water heat pump. They're going to be probably at around $2 million, $2.1 million, or $2.2 million. Again, fully estimated. So the big takeaway from this is that the challenge is in obviously the incremental cost for the ground source heat pump. If we go to the next slide, there's a bit of a summary of those incremental costs. So the installation incremental cost With and without mass save and then the 50 year incremental cost what I was referring to when you fold in that $4 million. is still in the $20 million. The annual energy cost savings between the ground source heat pump and the air to water heat pump offers between $58,000, right now estimated $58,000 and $74,000. They vary between the two design options because of what I explained before, they're two different building volumes, and that slightly impacts. But those are not enough to make up for the $50 million incremental cost. And then the one other component that we're still working on evaluating is potential incentives. There's a little note at the bottom of this slide, or I think it's the other slide, that we're still looking into the IRA incentives, right, Matt?
[Matt Rice]: Folks are aware IRA is the Inflation Reduction Act. There were some of those program incentives. There are tax credits that are available to municipalities through sort of an equation that I don't quite understand, but it is available to public entities as tax credits. And while some of the programs under that IRA have sunsetted under the current administration, there are still some funds available, we believe, for ground source heat pumps that are not factored in here just because there's additional validation that we need to do on our end in terms of what can be counted on in terms of those potential incentives. But there is something there that may help sort of neutralize or equalize the incremental cost savings that are illustrated here.
[Martine Dion]: Right. A lot of it is based on when the system will be purchased and installed. Those incentives come through your through your tax reports, the first year of your tax reports once the school is open. And last year they had a sunset date of 2028 and it looks like that sunset date has moved or has changed and that's what we're validating. So some of the comments I just made in terms of the takeaways are listed here in this slide. Overcoming the estimated 23 million plus incremental cost between the ground source heat pump and the air to water heat pump is challenging. Currently, the incentives and the savings in replacement cost and energy savings are not enough. The initial cost, the initial incremental cost, which is about 20 plus million, is also challenging up front because of the cap mass save incentive. The bore wells, the wells of the geothermal system, at this time, depending on the well depth, we're still awaiting the geothermal well test that's going to happen, I think, fairly soon, would require 10 to 15 acres. So this is pretty significant on your side. It's about a third of your site, as far as I understand. you know, usually we do not put wells under a building, so this would have to go across your site. And then the comment I made earlier when comparing B1.2 to D1.1, the same relative cost challenges between the ground source heat pump and the air-to-water heat pump apply. In summary, the design option selection are not highly impacted by the HVAC system selection. And the full HVAC system selection is planned for the schematic design. So you don't have to decide on the HVAC system yet. The reason why we provided for this LCCA is to give you an overview and inform your decision on the design option, understanding that the HVAC selection right now is not impacting the design option. The one thing we would like you to start considering, as we are going to have to compare three HVAC systems in the schematic design LCCA, is a hybrid ground-source heat pump and air-to-water heat pump hybrid system would reduce the incremental front cost from the full geothermal. It would also reduce the requirement for the bore wells, the acreage, to about half, five to eight acres from 10 to 15 acres. And that is, again, for consideration for discussion. And so that's our conclusion in terms of the LCCA. Next. So in addition to the LCCA, we have done a preliminary site capacity assessment in terms of the solar PV, both from the roof and from the low angle roof canopy. And we looked at the roof sizes are fairly equivalent in terms of available roof area between the options. there's a range. And that's why we have here in the estimated roof area. So we looked at basically the high canopy and the low angle canopy, because the high canopy optimizes the solar PV at the roof, whereas the low angle roof canopy, that's a solar PV that sits on the roof in between all of your HVAC system or at the perimeter of the HVAC systems. And in general, there's much less area and production from a PV system that's a low angle roof system than a high canopy. The high canopy requires, obviously, a structural framework to hold it. So basically, the high canopy would provide close to half of the required energy production from the solar PV to substantiate 50% or half of the net zero energy. The low angle, only 20%. So what happens with that is that when you between 50% and 20%, you have to make do on the ground-mounted area. So the high canopy requires less ground-mounted area, which is your parking, your outdoor areas, but not your fields. We're not going to be able to put canopies over your fields. It's everything but your field on your site. So the high canopy roof, you would require about 140,000 to 200,000 square feet, whereas the low angle area goes up to 300,000 square feet. It's pretty considerable. And so we're going to be looking at Your parking, the parking alternatives have an impact. So once those are sorted out, we're going to look at that. Your ground areas. And then one other thing that we're going to consider and talk about is the building integrated PV option, which is solar panels mounted on facade. They are half the efficiency of roof and ground mounted, but we may have to at least discuss and look and address those as part of the solution to make an educated decision. Next. So in terms of how do we get to the net zero energy, and for you to understand a bit what that means, we talked about the energy use per square foot, the 35 EUI. So we would have to design a system that produces as much energy as what the school requires under that 35 EUI, which is close to 6.2 megawatt system. And that's what we've assessed in the percentage I showed earlier in the square footage. Next. So what we've been talking about up to date is the operational carbon. The energy use of your building represents operational carbon. And another component of your building are the materials. And those do hold and represent embodied carbon. The way we look at this for projects is we look at it as total carbon. It's important to look at both operational and embodied carbon combined. there's a perception or an understanding that existing buildings have embodied carbon and new buildings create embodied carbon, right? New embodied carbon. And so we're going to look at this next slide, which represents, oh, I'm sorry, excuse me. The next slide represents the embodied carbon analysis criteria. So again, we compared option B, 1.2 and option D1.1, with the understanding that B1.2 is a renovation addition. So it's a full gut renovation. We're not keeping everything in the building, mostly retaining the structure. We, you know, by code and for the net zero goal, we're highly insulating the enclosure. There's going to be a new interior. And we also included the modular classroom. And then at the other end of the spectrum for the options, we have the new construction, D1.1, which is 610,000 square feet. In this option, we've looked at low embodied carbon concrete, steel and insulation. And then we have an option within this option that looks at about 10 to 15% mass timber structure. Next. So here's the sort of comparison between the existing building and B1.2. And we actually did each option because we have operational carbon for ground source heat pump and air to water heat pump. So we did each for both design option. The embodied carbon is measured over 30 years. And so the operational carbon that we talked about, the 35 EUI, that's multiplied by 30 years. The carbon emissions equivalent from those are multiplied for 30 years. Since we have different square footage areas between the existing, the B1.2 and the D1.1, we have brought down this total carbon per square foot so that we were measuring sort of apples to apples here. So the existing building here, so the orange sections is the embodied carbon, the materials carbon, and then the blue sections, the operational carbon that represent the energy use. The existing building, as you can see, has embodied carbon that's existing, so it's a negative because it's already there. It's been created 50 years ago, 55 years ago, and so it's a negative. But then the building is not that efficient. So when you look at the operational carbon, it outweighs the design options. The B1.2 is embodied carbon, as you can see here is slightly, if not a bit, it's because of the classrooms, because the modular classroom, it's slightly higher than D1.1. And where you see the hatched area, the orange hatched area, that shows the impact of that 10 to 15% mass timber. So there's a way to slightly reduce, depending on how much mass timber we can include in the project, there's a way to reduce embodied carbon in the D1.1. A little bit more, not as much applicable to D1.2. And then in terms of the B1, the ground source heat pump and the air source heat pump, the ground source heat pump is a bit lower, 122 versus 126. And that's because of the efficiency of the ground source heat pump versus the air to water. Same thing with the 1.1. And the hatch blue at the top is just the equivalent of that hatch Orange, that's sort of the total that comes down because the orange would come down. It's the reduction from the mass timber. So that's it in a nutshell for total carbon in LCCA.
[Jenny Graham]: Thank you Martine. I know that was a lot. It's so hot. I think the committee may have questions for you again at the next meeting. So I'll talk to the project team about whether we need to make some space on that agenda for people to ask questions. I'm not sure how many people will have tonight, but they may want to take that in and we can come back around. I'll take some questions from the committee Ken Lord.
[Kenneth Lord]: A couple of quick questions. The air source and the ground source, are you projecting that these will need no boilers and be able to accommodate the temperature ranges we anticipate in this part of the country?
[Martine Dion]: Yes, that's what we've provided for. This is for the school. Yeah. That's what we've provided for in our other projects. Okay, good. And that, Ken, that's really important that this is also achievable because we're doing a highly insulated enclosure in all the measures we're looking to do.
[Kenneth Lord]: Yeah. And those replacement costs, you quote, are those over the course of 50 years or a different timeframe?
[Martine Dion]: They're 50 years, including some of the replacements. This is all done through the ASHRAE lifetime, life cycle. So 15, 20 years, depending on the piece of equipment.
[Matt Rice]: OK, cool.
[Luke Preisner]: Thank you.
[Matt Rice]: And I might just chime in there as well, Martine and Ken, that this information is very much hot off the presses for this presentation this evening. We are happy to and will share this information back with the city's team so that we can get aligned there in terms of the costs that are being represented here for annual energy consumption as well as maintenance and replacement costs going for all the different components of the LCCA.
[Martine Dion]: Absolutely. Thank you, Matt, for bringing that up because, you know, we provide this at a high level, right, at this phase, but definitely, especially for SD, we would really want to meet with you and review the costs, specifically the maintenance costs.
[Jenny Graham]: Thank you. Are there any other questions from the committee? I see one hand from the public, so we'll go to Zach Chertok.
[Zachary Chertok]: Is that your top five on Mon Street? First, Martina, it's good to be on with a fellow McGill or I picked that up earlier. That's awesome. And just reverting back to the last question about the cost savings estimates on the energy we had, Paul, the facility side from the city operations team earlier tonight, it would be great if you could connect with him to take a look at the cost projections that he looked at for the facilities and see how these alternative energy sources would start to cut down on that for him and see if you can put your heads together to look at what the offsets would be. First, I do applaud the effort on an attention paid to the environmental factors. They often do pay for themselves in the long run. But I did want to double back to some of the civil and geotechnical engineering limitations for a moment, because I think I heard you correctly that you said you're still waiting on the geotechnical review.
[Martine Dion]: Yes.
[Zachary Chertok]: So as you're coming back around with the committee, as Jenny noted, that they may have more questions for you next week or for the next meeting, meaning you'll be there for the next meeting. Do you anticipate being able to have a rough estimate percentage-wise, for example, on how the costs of some of those geothermal options might be impacted? So thinking about what a high, medium, or low K value in the soil and the rock might mean for at the site, proximity for viable soil away from the building, and even how that might run into the deed restriction, depending on where the optimal locations are knowing that we can't build there, although I don't know if the committee's clarified if we can build under there. Things like the variable presence of moisture and air pockets in the ground relative to insulation ratios, advection rates, and even connection points between the new system and where it would enter the building, and proximity that would need to be located away from things like old aggregate concrete that was used in the existing foundation if it's going to be maintained for the renovation in particular. So I'm not expecting you to have those insights now, but do you think you might be able to have some rough estimates of what that might look like? What those factors might do to the cost relative to the feasibility and the 50-year payback period by the time we look at this again?
[Martine Dion]: So we'll take note of all the levels you've asked for in terms of what's left in aggregate and all of that. But I will tell you with either 5 to 8 or 10 to 15 acres, these bore wells, and I think at the next stage, we'll show We'll show a graphic of what that means. But these acreage of bore wells are probably going to touch upon a variety. It's one site, but the soil conditions may vary throughout the area. And I will tell you that, in my opinion, from experience on previous projects, that it is rare that we find higher efficiency from those tests. So what's in our analysis right now is conservative and it's based on the results of previous projects. It's not rock or it's not a lot of rock. In terms of efficiency, I do not think it's going to have a high impact that could make that $23 million shrink?
[Zachary Chertok]: Oh yeah, no, I'm not anticipating that it's going to take a chunk out of it. I'm just thinking about proximity relative to some of the construction limitations that we've already incurred for the site. So thinking about location remediation, would it trigger a land swap to be able to accommodate the scale that we would go to relative to where the most favorable site locations are on the field relative to what the geotechnical examination results show? So starting to think about that and what that would end up doing to the potential site layout, both for construction and final structure.
[Matt Rice]: So I can chime in here just for a second, Martine, that it is something that we are going to be talking through with the city's land council to make sure that we have sort of their read on it, because at the end of the day, their read is very critical to this entire process. Um, we do have precedent project experience, um, under article 97 land where we're able to put in the geothermal wells. Um, it's not exactly the same as a deed restricted area, but since it's below the ground, um, in this case, um, I think there's to begin another technicality. Correct. Right.
[Zachary Chertok]: Yep.
[Matt Rice]: Yep.
[Jenny Graham]: Thank you, Matt. Um, I see we have one more hand S Dillard.
[izVdDtzaCdw_SPEAKER_01]: Suni.
[Jenny Graham]: Hi, Suni.
[izVdDtzaCdw_SPEAKER_01]: Hi, thanks, Martine. I'm Sunny Dillard. I live at 39 Charnwood. I know it's like Tin Pima already, so I just had a quick question before I get into the weeds of whether or not this is going to be presented to the MEP and Sustainability Advisory Group for sort of, I guess, more nerdy questions later on.
[Matt Rice]: Yes.
[izVdDtzaCdw_SPEAKER_01]: Okay, then it's 10pm. I will not ask my question and I'll just wait for that. Thank you guys so much.
[Jenny Graham]: Looking forward to learning a lot in that conversation. Okay. I think we have come to the end of the agenda here and in just a few short hours on June 3rd at 630, we will have a community forum on Wednesday, although it feels like it's right around the corner here. So I do hope people will turn out and join us and get to chat and weigh in on what they are thinking about in terms of their preferred options so that we can feed that information to the committee on June 10th. And then on June 18th, we will be approving our PSR submission and maybe even having a brief celebration if we can manage a good tight agenda. So all that being said, I am looking for a motion to adjourn and thank everyone for joining tonight. Is there a motion to adjourn?
[Luke Preisner]: So moved.
[Jenny Graham]: If I can, is there a second?
[Luke Preisner]: Second that.
[Jenny Graham]: Ryan, sorry. I will call the roll. Jenny Graham. Yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn. Yes. Dr. Galussi.
[Jessica Parks]: Yes.
[Jenny Graham]: Marta Cabral. Yes. Joan Bowen.
[Sophie Ricks]: Yes.
[Jenny Graham]: Ken Lord.
[Sophie Ricks]: Yes.
[Jenny Graham]: Libby Brown. Yes. Marissa Desmond is absent. Maria Dorsey. Yes. Ryan Hilliard.
[Luke Preisner]: Yes.
[Jenny Graham]: Emily Lazzaro. Paul Malone. Nicole Morell. Yes. Aaron Lopate.
[Luke Preisner]: Yes.
[Jenny Graham]: Luke Pricer.
[Luke Preisner]: Yes.
[Jenny Graham]: 12 in the affirmative, 0 in the negative, 3 absent.
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