AI-generated transcript of Medford Happenings Episode 59 Nick Giurleo

[John Petrella]: Hello, everyone, and welcome to Method Happenings, a show for and about the city of Medford, and I am John Petrella. And the purpose of this program is to give Method citizens facts and information to help you make informed choices and to discover city services or businesses you may not have been aware of. And our guest today is Nick Gileo, who has been following the Method High School building project, among a lot of other things. And if you're not following Nick, all I can tell you is follow him on Facebook, wherever he is. He's someone you need to follow. Nick, thank you for joining us.

[Nick Giurleo]: Thanks so much for having me. I'm very happy to be back.

[John Petrella]: It's our pleasure. It really is. We're going to get right into it, Nick. So, you know, the first thing is, can you tell our audience, you know, what are the major milestones of the Mass School Building Authority, otherwise known as the MSBA program?

[Nick Giurleo]: So yeah, so to begin, some people might not even know it, believe it or not, but Medford is in the process of building a new high school, a new Medford High School. And we're going through a process in which we're collaborating with the Massachusetts School Building Authority, also known as the MSBA, to obtain some reimbursement for the funding for that project. So the project's been going on for quite a long time, but we're in a very late stage and not a lot of residents know that. So what's going on right now is the project began, as you can see in this diagram on your screen, with a feasibility study and is now moving into schematic design. And we're working towards a deadline, a very important deadline in October. And that October deadline is to finalize the scope of the project. So what had happened up to this point is various designs were considered for a new school, and those designs were then narrowed down into one design. The school building committee has been doing, and the school building committee is the committee of residents and educators who are working to try to get this project done. They're working currently on the scope of the project. So the project started at a certain cost and a certain amount of square footage and is now being reduced in size to an amount that residents would feel comfortable financing through exclusion. So that's where we're at currently. And like I said, in October a very important deadline will be met in which the scope of the project will be finalized.

[John Petrella]: So basically it's down to one. project so to speak. It's one design now.

[Nick Giurleo]: Right, so we started off with multiple designs. You can see in the screen the final design that we're at. This option is labeled C2.2A. I can give you just a rundown of some of the highlights here. It's a renovation addition and a portion of it will be new construction. That would be for the A and C buildings. The pool is going to be preserved. That was something that a lot of residents were concerned about. There will be above ground parking. They had contemplated at the time maybe a parking garage, underground parking, but it will be above ground. And they'll be building a new field close to the Winthrop Street entrance. The size is about 30 acres, is what we received, and there'll be about 450 parking spaces. And they had initially estimated this would take about 80 months to complete. When the project started, it was at about $813 million for total cost.

[John Petrella]: It's a lot of money.

[Nick Giurleo]: Yeah. That cost has gone down since then. Okay. And we'll talk about that. Okay.

[John Petrella]: Well, certainly we will.

[Nick Giurleo]: Yes. As various scope changes remain. Right. Okay.

[John Petrella]: All right. So, you know, we're in the process, you know, you just described is the Method School Building Committee, and I guess it's advisors. I understand you just said they've narrowed down the design for the building. Where are we at? Like right now, where are we at?

[Nick Giurleo]: What's going on? That's a good question. So where we're at right now is, like I mentioned, getting the scope down to something that everybody can agree on. And they've been doing this kind of piece by piece. So I can run through some of those piece by piece changes. That would be nice. To the scope of the project. I think people need to know. And again, this is decisions being made by the school building committee. It's also decisions being made by the school committee. So, school building committee and school committee, they sound similar, but they're different. School committees, you know, are school committee members who we vote for in elections. The school building committee was essentially created by the school committee to deal with this school project.

[John Petrella]: Now, I keep seeing, I'm not going to throw too much at you, but I keep seeing there's voting members and non-voting members.

[Nick Giurleo]: Right.

[John Petrella]: That's accurate.

[Nick Giurleo]: That is correct. So, some of the members have voting power at these meetings, others do not.

[John Petrella]: Okay.

[Nick Giurleo]: The key decision makers are names you've probably heard of, the mayor, the vice chair of the school committee, and others. There's another school committee representative on as well who's voting power. So that's the difference between the two. But like I said, I'll go through just some of these scope changes that have been made so far. So one of the first major ones that was discussed was the Teen Health Center. That was estimated to be at 1,460 square feet. There were discussions about that and ultimately it was decided that will stay in the project. So some had called for removing it and argued it was a little more of a luxury than a necessity, but the school committee and the school building committee ultimately decided they want to keep those. They were talking about how other municipalities have teen health centers, so Cambridge, Revere, and Somerville, for example. The cost of that estimated to be about $2.4 million. Another that came up was community partner rental spaces. So this was discussed back in July. And what that means are the school district has some long-term renters. So for example, the most notable, the Japanese language school. It's been in Medford since 1974. And we learned that it actually gives the city of Medford about $150,000 a year in rental income. So spaces were allocated for that, so for educational prep and for storage, as well as for a community library. So some of that hasn't been decided yet, but the educational prep and storage space were voted to be removed from the project. So that was another. There were other more minor changes as well, things like to the athletic part of the building. So they got rid of, for example, a yoga studio and CPR room. They reduced some of the locker space, for example. It was originally almost 8,000 square feet. They reduced that to about 7,000.

[John Petrella]: Okay, that's still 7,000, that's still, well that's a big locker room.

[Nick Giurleo]: Right. Yeah. They reduced the size of the auditorium as well. It was 10,000 square feet, they moved it down to about 7,500 square feet.

[John Petrella]: Still a big auditorium.

[Nick Giurleo]: And all of this gradually brought the cost of the project down. But they're still going, and I can fast forward us to actually the last meeting, where a lot of different changes were made. For example, to what is being called the core academic part of the building. So what is that? Primarily classrooms.

[John Petrella]: Yeah, that's the most important thing. The education part.

[Nick Giurleo]: Right. So they were deciding on classroom sizes and they decided to bring that down from 950 square feet per classroom to about 900 square feet.

[John Petrella]: Okay.

[Nick Giurleo]: And it was interesting. There was an interesting debate about this. I'm sure. The mayor had motioned to do like a half and half with 900 square feet and even smaller, but the building committee actually did not even second that motion, unbelievably, and it wasn't even decided or voted on.

[John Petrella]: Nobody seconded that motion?

[Nick Giurleo]: Nobody. Yeah, the mayor had wanted to do a half-and-half model, but the motion wasn't seconded. Wow. So that was interesting to me.

[John Petrella]: That's very interesting.

[Nick Giurleo]: Some other major decisions were made as well, such as with the Curtis Tough School. Okay. The MEEP program, the Medford Early Education Program. So both of those are going to be included in this project. So obviously the Curtis Tough School now is on Main Street. And South Medford, yeah. Right. I know it well. It's going to be moved into the new high school. That's the plan. So that's going to become part of the high school. It's going to be incorporated into the new high school. and the Medford Early Education Program is gonna be totally centralized in the new high school as well. Currently, it's a neighborhood-based model. Right, that's the way it should be. It's currently at two different public elementary schools in the city. Yes. They're gonna all be moved into the new high school. Okay. So obviously, both of that adds to cost as well.

[John Petrella]: Yeah, that's a lot. I mean, they're going to have 10 different entrances for all these cars and people and bikes and everything else coming and going?

[Nick Giurleo]: Yeah, there have been discussions about entrances. Oh, boy, they're going to need a lot. Especially separate entrances for, like, the Curtis Toffs and for the early education program.

[John Petrella]: Yeah, OK. All right.

[Nick Giurleo]: So that's, in a nutshell, some of the changes that have been made so far. But honestly, I could talk for hours just on that alone because of how many have been made to date. I'm sure you could. Yeah.

[John Petrella]: Yeah, I mean this, I don't know, I mean, the early education, I don't know, my opinion, which is just my opinion, I don't know why that belongs up at a high school.

[Nick Giurleo]: Yeah, some people were arguing, and this has really been kind of the scope of the discussion, is what should this project be? Should it be just a high school, or should it be a high school plus something else? And you have to keep in mind that the vision for the school is based on two planning documents, primarily. Number one is what is being called the educational plan, which was developed by the school committee, which educates the, sorry, highlights the educational vision for the school. And another is called the space summary, And the space summary essentially is talking about space allocations in terms of square footage.

[John Petrella]: Okay, alright. So there's a lot of square footage up there.

[Nick Giurleo]: Right.

[John Petrella]: There's going to be.

[Nick Giurleo]: Right, right. So I can give you currently where we're at. So we're currently at about 750 million. For cost total project cost. Okay. Like I said, we started when we decided on this final design about 813 million Yeah, it's since been reduced and you can see the graphic on your screen kind of breaks that down Yeah to about 750 million and you can see that equates to about five hundred and seventy thousand square feet So, cost is really, you know, another part of this project. Obviously, we care about the educational vision. We want educational services that will give our students the best education possible.

[John Petrella]: Absolutely. We all want that.

[Nick Giurleo]: But we have to think about cost as well. Absolutely. Which is going to be a question of, you know, what residents can afford.

[John Petrella]: Right. We don't want to be throwing some of the older folks out of their homes because they can't afford this new school, put it that way, plain and simple.

[Nick Giurleo]: Right. Yeah. And it will all depend on how we get it financed. So primarily that's going to be through a debt exclusion next June, which is something residents will have to vote on.

[John Petrella]: Yeah. So. So. All right. Let's talk. You know, there's a lot of talk about the size of the facility. Can you give us. I mean, you gave us some of the I guess I call them space reductions. Is that what those are basically?

[Nick Giurleo]: Right. And the other word they've been using is efficiencies as well. Efficiencies. So this isn't just getting rid of spaces. So for example, getting rid of classrooms, getting rid of toileting rooms. It's also trying to make rooms more efficient. Okay. So for example, there were two large space instructional spaces that they decided to make more efficient rather than have them as separate rooms by putting a partition, essentially, between them. That could be removed at will to make one larger room. And also thinking, like I mentioned earlier, like a yoga studio. They said to themselves with that, oh, you can put that somewhere else. It doesn't necessarily need to be a separate thing. So I would call it reductions and efficiencies.

[John Petrella]: Okay, all right. I gotcha. So, besides space reductions, what other things have been, you know, what's being considered by the school building committee? I mean, you're talking teen health center, community partner space, theater, MCM studio. I mean, there's a lot that they're looking to put up here.

[Nick Giurleo]: Yeah, so. A lot more than a high school. Yeah, I would break it down as, you know, there's smaller things that we can look at in terms of classrooms and toileting rooms and individual rooms within the project. And then there's more of these discussions about programming. So the Teen Health Center, like you mentioned, these community partner rental spaces for the long-term renters, like the Japanese Language School. The theater as well, which would have a community function too. So that's been the discussion is what can we keep in the project and what can we take out? And we're kind of in somewhat of a dilemma with it because we do have to kind of base this off of the educational plan that the school committee members developed. I understand that. But also residents and other school building committee members have opined on, regardless of what the educational plan says, does this actually make sense? So for example, like with the Teen Health Center, is it beyond the scope of a high school given that we have a nursing office and there'll be a nursing suite? In addition to this, should we have a full health care clinic in the school? Some have argued it's essential and it needs to be in. Others have questioned it.

[John Petrella]: I would be one of those that question it, that's all.

[Nick Giurleo]: Yeah, I had some questions. Yeah, I mean, that just doesn't make sense to me, you know, with me and that, you know, another thing that we were thinking about is, you know, could this be financed later, through a separate project, right, doesn't necessarily have to happen now. And that's something people have been discussing as well. I did want to add also to this, you know, in addition to talking about our project, there's been discussions as well about projects, or how our project compares to other projects in cities and towns across the Commonwealth, especially cities and towns that have done a project recently, Arlington, Lexington for example. So you can see in this graphic on the screen here, it kind of does a comparative analysis of the various projects. One of the things that kind of stands out, at least to me, is, you know, our project is considerably bigger than the projects in other cities and towns. You can see, you know, when we started here, we were over 600,000 square feet. That is a lot of space.

[John Petrella]: Absolutely.

[Nick Giurleo]: And obviously the cost too, I think, Everybody kind of recognized initially this is quite high. Yeah. So, you know, my concern is because we need to get financing for this from the public, we need the public to approve the debt exclusion.

[John Petrella]: Correct. Yeah.

[Nick Giurleo]: Is this a cost residents are going to feel comfortable approving when it comes time to decide? You know, in my opinion, we want to do everything possible to get this to pass. You know, I want that yes vote like nothing else.

[John Petrella]: I'm going to tell you, I believe that 100% and I believe if you ask 90% of the people in this city, you'd say they all want a new high school. No doubt about it. But I mean, yeah, I would say 90 cost is it's that's to me. Yes. And a lot of other people, it's out of control.

[Nick Giurleo]: Yeah, I'd say 90 plus percent of the residents I've talked to want a new school. Yes, absolutely. And, you know, the question is, though, you know, is this an affordable amount? And, you know, we've had some data on that, but really not a lot so far on the cost. the data I've been primarily looking at is the data that was compiled by the city assessor okay earlier in the year so the city assessor did an analysis to indicate you know what would the average tax impact be to residents based on various amounts that were calculated at the time and of course again I'm not an economist so I can't give you the details of this analysis but Various assumptions were made as well, including, for example, new growth was factored into it. So the city assessor basically provided some data to the building committee that was presented in a meeting, indicating that for the average homeowner in Medford, we're probably going to see about somewhere between $1,000 to $2,000 a year added to the average annual tax bill.

[John Petrella]: I would say that's at a minimum.

[Nick Giurleo]: Yeah.

[John Petrella]: I mean, I understand. I'm not an economist. I'm not a financial guy. But, you know, if I'm going to build a building and it's going to be 800 million and then I got to go see whoever give me the loan or the city's going to, you know, the people are going to pay for it, whatever. But there's still interest. There's still a lot more cost associated. So it's not, in other words, it's not, whatever the final number is, it's going to be more. It has to be more.

[Nick Giurleo]: Yeah, yeah, there's all different factors that go into this, and for me, you know, I think it's important for residents to, you know, rely on economists to do this.

[John Petrella]: Absolutely.

[Nick Giurleo]: I mean, obviously, you know, you can do your own work to try to figure it yourself, but this is very complicated math. Oh, I'm sure. So that's why I've been looking to data that, you know, I think comes from a reliable source, like our city assessor, who's a very competent individual.

[John Petrella]: Yeah, I would say that person should be competent and reliable, yeah.

[Nick Giurleo]: You know, rather than private citizens necessarily doing their own facts and figures. So that's what I've been looking at.

[John Petrella]: So what you're basing it on is the assessor, and that makes sense.

[Nick Giurleo]: Yeah, I think those are the best numbers so far. Others have attempted to calculate.

[John Petrella]: Well, there seems to be a lot of different numbers out there.

[Nick Giurleo]: I would probably defer to the city on this. Another thing to take into consideration is our debt capacity. Again, we're bonding the money. So you're gonna have to look at our credit as a city and whether or not we're capable of taking out this kind of loan. So that's another factor as well, again, that the city assessor's office is looking into. And I'm hoping that the city will have some updated information. Yeah, that would be nice. Because that data was from a while ago. I think it was from before when we even didn't have our final design yet. So it really should be updated.

[John Petrella]: I mean, we need a new school. But, you know, you build a new school, and then two, three years up the road, you can't buy a fire truck, you can't do this, you can't do that, because we're... Yeah.

[Nick Giurleo]: Our city has... This was actually part of the assessor's analysis from earlier in the year, where he looked at other major projects at the city. needs to have done yeah right like think about roads for example yes you know how rough shape they are yes um getting rid of lead pipes things like that fire station the fire station is a big one new equipment yeah and and even with this new high school nick it's

[John Petrella]: Everything you're talking, that all costs maintenance and everything else.

[Nick Giurleo]: It's... Yeah, maintenance costs too. The city assessor had figured that in. Yeah, so it's all figured in. Into his analysis.

[John Petrella]: There's a lot. Yeah, there's a lot.

[Nick Giurleo]: And so far, I don't think we've really gotten any data on that, maintenance costs, how that will be affected.

[John Petrella]: Yeah, right. Yeah. Interesting. All right, Nick, so can you share any feedback from the MSBA, you know, the Mass School Building Authority? I mean, I've heard things about deed issues, restrictions, you know, some of the project costs, funding efforts. This is covered. That's not. We'll help you pay for this, but we're not paying a penny for that. You know, maybe a lot of stuff in there. Maybe you can help us out.

[Nick Giurleo]: Absolutely. OK. So the Massachusetts School Building Authority, MSBA, like I mentioned earlier in the show, is a state agency that could reimburse a portion of the project if we go through all of their essentially rules and regulations. And the MSBA is governed by a state law, state regulations, as well as various advisory and guidance documents. So in order to get that reimbursement money, you have to comply with MSBA rules and regulations. And they're actually quite complicated, and not just for the average ordinary resident. It's also complicated for an attorney like myself. But in any event, I've studied them to some extent.

[John Petrella]: I know you have.

[Nick Giurleo]: Generally understand. I know you have. Generally, understand, you know, what they kind of are asking for and requiring. So, the MSBA, you know, requires at each stage of the process that various planning submissions be sent to them and they review and then they typically give feedback on those submissions. So, at the most recent board meeting of the MSBA, they decided to move our project into its next phase. And at that meeting they talked about two things in terms of potential concerns that they might have with the project to date. So one of them you had mentioned was the deed restriction.

[John Petrella]: Right.

[Nick Giurleo]: The other is the cost, which we've talked about at length. I won't belabor that anymore.

[John Petrella]: Yep.

[Nick Giurleo]: And I'll focus on the deed restriction. Sure. So this is really my wheelhouse because I'm an attorney and this is kind of an area of law I focused on when I was studying law. And a deed restriction, first of all, what is that? It's a restriction on development for land. So to really understand what happened here, you kind of have to look back at history. So portions of what is known today as the Medford High School campus belonged to what was called the Metropolitan District Commission, which is the predecessor of DCR, the Department of Conservation and Recreation. So basically state agencies that protect the environment. So that land was originally owned by the Metropolitan District Commission. And what had happened was it was given to Medford for the purposes of building the original high school. But it was given with deed restrictions, which basically said these need to be kept for athletic purposes. You can't be building structures on them. So back before we had finalized our design, what had happened was some of our designs for the new school conflicted with those deed restrictions. So this caused a significant problem. And I was actually the first person to give it any sort of publicity in Medford through the Facebook page and website that I run. I actually identified this before the school building committee had went public on it. And residents were immediately concerned. So the building committee ultimately, we don't know exactly what they did, but I think it's likely they talked to some attorneys at some point.

[John Petrella]: Okay, I think we have that on the screen. Yeah, right.

[Nick Giurleo]: You can kind of see the map of the high school campus So you can see the upper field, um, edgar lee field and then the practice field is really what was affected by this.

[John Petrella]: Okay Um, so that's a lot of territory.

[Nick Giurleo]: Yeah, okay So what they ultimately decided to do was adjust two of the designs and strike one of them Okay, try to get around the deed restrictions. Okay, the other option was doing a Procedure in which basically that they would get the restrictions lifted But that would have been long and it would have required a vote of the state legislator So that would have been a problem that would have delayed the timeline So the building committee said we're more interested in moving this project along. Okay, then taking the time to Resolve that through Beacon Hill. Okay, so ultimately It's still it's still an issue. The MSB still wants some clarity on what's going on with that. Yep, but they building committee kind of circumvented it in their decision-making. Okay. But of course it caused a lot of anxiety. It cost us money to correct this as well as... Why?

[John Petrella]: Yeah, I'm gonna ask you this. You probably... Yeah. I would be upset because why is it costing, you know, we're all the taxpayers, it's our money. Why would it cost us money if someone made, some company, I don't know who did what, but.

[Nick Giurleo]: Yeah, so various surveys were done up to that point, and the survey should have picked up on that. Absolutely. So really, you know, something happened with that, and I did some digging into it. I'm not gonna get into the details. No, we're not looking for that, but. That shouldn't have happened in my opinion.

[John Petrella]: Yeah, of course it shouldn't. You buy a house and there's a problem with the deed.

[Nick Giurleo]: Yeah, a real estate attorney is going to be looking for encumbrances before the transaction is completed. This is essentially an encumbrance. You need to look for that.

[John Petrella]: Okay, that's interesting. All right, so what project milestones, I mean, we're in the fall, so what's going on now, Nick? What decision will be made by the, you know, the School Building Committee, the Mass School Building Authority, MSBA, you know, and I keep hearing October 7th. I don't understand what that is, but I keep hearing everything has to be locked down and done by then, by October 7th. That's like the big date. I'm not sure why that is, but Maybe you can yeah shed some light.

[Nick Giurleo]: Yeah, my understanding is that's a deadline that's been set by the school building committee Okay, and this is basically to finalize scope Okay, and what we're gonna do once we finalize scope is then we're gonna submit again our planning to the to the MSBA, and we'll make a decision on reimbursement. And again, there's laws and regulations that decide the reimbursement percentage. Again, complicated math. And ultimately, we'll get that figure. But then after that, and my understanding is before we even get the reimbursement money, we have to make a decision on the financing, so the debt exclusion. So that brings us to next June, where we'll have that debt exclusion vote.

[John Petrella]: So we have some, a project, I guess they call it a project timeline, that's on the screen now.

[Nick Giurleo]: Yeah, and you can see that goes even further than the vote. The vote will then take us then into construction, of course. And eventually building the new school and opening it.

[John Petrella]: So October 7th, is not the MSBA telling us, oh, it has to be done by October 7th.

[Nick Giurleo]: That's the... My understanding is the School Building Committee is deciding the pace of this project for the most part.

[John Petrella]: Okay. All right.

[Nick Giurleo]: Okay. But of course, they do have to comply with the rules and regulations... Absolutely. ...that require their various planning submissions.

[John Petrella]: Okay, all right, so that makes sense. I didn't understand what that was all about. I mean, it seems like, you know, it's all I keep hearing, I keep reading everywhere and seeing October 7th, October 7th.

[Nick Giurleo]: Yeah, this project is, it's very complicated and it's very difficult, even for a person like me. And, you know, I'll say it, you know, obviously I'm an attorney. I talk about the legal stuff.

[John Petrella]: You study this stuff.

[Nick Giurleo]: Not an economist, though, or not an engineer. And most residents, I imagine all residents, are not going to be able to say they're all three. Right. No, no. So it makes it kind of challenging to keep up and follow what's going on. And that's why it's so important for the city and for the school building committee, the project team, to really communicate with residents and not only tell them, you know, when meetings are happening, but explain to them what's being accomplished at various meetings.

[John Petrella]: Because I've gone on to a few of these meetings, Zoom, whatever. I'll be honest, I haven't been on a lot, but I have gone on. And I got to tell you, I'm just disappointed because the scope of this project, everything that we're talking about, and then I go on and I don't see very many people.

[Nick Giurleo]: yeah yeah i can tell you that's a shocker the last meeting i went to which was um it was earlier this week actually that we're recording um there were only three people from the public attending in person yeah see one of which was me another was a school committee member

[John Petrella]: I'm not saying it's anybody's fault or there's a reason for it, and I'm not saying, I know there's been a lot of meetings, I know they're trying to get it out there, but whatever means, it just doesn't seem, nothing seems to be working. Because I would think that any homeowner in this city, even people that rent, I mean, you gotta be concerned about this.

[Nick Giurleo]: Yeah, you know, there's all different things to think about. Right. We obviously have to think about cost, but it's not our only concern.

[John Petrella]: No, I understand.

[Nick Giurleo]: We care about education, too. We want to provide our students the best possible education. Absolutely. Absolutely. But yeah, there are a lot of things to think about. And residents need to be thinking. They need to be weighing them all when it comes to time to decide on that debt exclusion vote.

[John Petrella]: And like you said, I agree with you. Ninety percent of people want a new high school. No doubt about it. It's just how are we going to get there, I guess. That's the main thing. So the building of a new high school, and a vocational school, it's a major, major financial undertaking by this city. It's going to affect everybody. you know, renters, taxpayers. You know, how can people stay involved? How do they learn how much it's going to cost? You know, it costs them personally, too. I mean, how do they have a say? You know, what's the process, Nick? Everything's done. Here's the project. How do people get more involved? How do they learn? And, you know, they're going to end up voting on this one way or another.

[Nick Giurleo]: Yeah, I've personally been committing to trying to help residents understand what's going on through my social media and website. And you're doing a good job, I'll tell you that. But obviously, it's going to require more than just reading my stuff. You'll want to look at these documents. The building committee does have a website. And on that website, there is a documents section that has all the documents, for the most part, uploaded. So those are some documents you can look at. I'd encourage taking a perusal of those. Um, the most, the two most important are by far the space summary and the educational plan. If you don't have time to read anything else, please read those two documents because that really helps you understand what's going on now and really what this project is all about. Um, but also, you know, I would encourage residents to go to the meetings. That's important. I try to advertise them as much as possible. The city does a fairly decent job advertising them. Um, so that's something to do as well. I would say engage with programs like this, Medford Happenings, where people who are connected to the project, or just citizens like me who are very invested, can provide some education as well. Talk to your neighbors too, that's important. Maybe your neighbor doesn't even know we're building a new high school, or your neighbor knows and doesn't really understand where we're at and how we're this late in the game. Get them involved too. Encourage them to really educate themselves on what's happening.

[John Petrella]: I'm out there a lot. You know, I have coffee here, there, whatever. I'm retired, so not that I, you know, just have coffee all week long, but I get out with some friends and stuff. And, you know, this is something, I don't even know where people come up with this stuff, but I've been approached on more than one occasion. And, you know, a couple of guys discussing the school, whatever, could be any subject, but you discuss the school, everyone's, Yes, we got to have it. And what's the big deal? It's only five years. And I look at them, I'm like, what are you talking about? Five years in terms of the payment. Yeah.

[Nick Giurleo]: Yeah.

[John Petrella]: It's only five years. And I'm like, wait a minute. Wait a minute.

[Nick Giurleo]: Yeah. So my understanding is a 30 year bond.

[John Petrella]: Yeah. We're in the world of these people getting this like you're going to spend 800 or a billion dollars, whatever it is. And it's going to be five years and it's done. It's not.

[Nick Giurleo]: Right, it's a 30-year, my understanding is a 30-year financing agreement. It has to be. So obviously that's going to be happening. The financing burden is going to be lasting that long. So this isn't just in terms of up to the point when we get MSBA reimbursement, up to the point when the construction is completed. This is a long-term financial decision we're making and I think anyone would advise, you know, when you're making a long-term financial decision like this, you obviously want think deeply about, you know, what you're committing to.

[John Petrella]: Yeah. Well, like I say, it's affecting everybody in this city. And I tend to agree with everybody, 90% of everybody, let's build a school. But we have to make sure that We build a beautiful school, but we also watch out what we're spending and how much it's going to actually cost people. I agree with that 100 percent. And the bottom line is people. I'm going to say before they vote, need to know, you know, what does it mean to me? You know, what's it going to cost me? How am I going to do this? You know, and that's it, right? Basically. I know there's a lot more going on, but boy oh boy, I tell you. I could talk to you, Nick, for another 10 questions. Where did the time go? Yeah, I know. I know. I know. I know. Well, I'm going to tell you right now, we will be doing more shows on the high school. And whoever you are out there. Everyone knows how to get in touch with us. Please, get in touch with us. You want to come on the show, you know, I don't care if it's the assessor or whoever. You know, come on and help us get the word out, you know, what's going on with the school. Like I say, I think a lot of people really want this school. You know, Jenny Graham's been on the show. Rick Alondo's pretty informed about schools. Anyone else wants to come on, you know, don't hesitate call us We'll have you on because we want to just get we want everyone working together on this project. That's what we want That's what the city needs. So I want to thank you very much, and I hope you're gonna come back on I hope I hope so. I really do Nick, but I want to thank you again I want to thank Nick for joining us and You know, it's a lot, his reporting on the school building committee process. It's really good what you're doing, Nick, and we appreciate it. I also want to take a minute. I want to thank everyone who has been watching the show, and we're getting a lot of feedback. Thank you for that. If you would like to appear on the show, please contact us at methodhappenings02155 at gmail.com and you'll be able to watch the replays of this program on Medford Community Media Access Channel. Please check out our website. It's a good one. It really is methodhappenings.com. Uh, you can now either view or listen to a podcast of this program, and Bruce, who handles that for us, is really doing a lot of work in updating the, uh, the site. Uh, you can also find all of our shows on YouTube, of course. Just go to YouTube.com, search for Method Happenings. That's simple. please like and subscribe to our channel and videos you can also find us on facebook at method happenings and we also have our own subreddit the subreddit you can find us at reddit.com slash a slash method happenings And finally, for the Method Happenings team, for Paul Marko, Bruce James, I'm John Petrella. And remember, stay informed. Thanks again, Nick. Thank you so much.