[Kimberly Talbot]: Would you mind doing it, Matt?
[Matt Rice]: Happy to do it. Let me get things queued up here. Probably all that you're looking at right now is a lovely screen background courtesy of Microsoft. Does everyone see that slide up now? Okay.
[Nicholas Karinge]: Yep.
[Matt Rice]: All right, we'll give everybody the customary five minutes to hop on with us here.
[Kimberly Talbot]: Yes, Matt. But remember, we only have 530 because we are backed back with another meeting. So maybe three minutes.
[Matt Rice]: Three minutes. All right. I like it, Helen.
[Kimberly Talbot]: Sorry.
[Matt Rice]: One minute of which has already elapsed.
[Kimberly Talbot]: Yeah. Well, while we're waiting, we won't embarrass her too much, and we won't sing to her, but it is Laura Swan's birthday today, so.
[Laura Swan]: It is.
[Kimberly Talbot]: She's spending it with you. Happy birthday, Laura.
[Kenneth Lord]: Happy birthday.
[Kimberly Talbot]: Oh, OK, OK. So don't give her too much trouble on her birthday. Not that you would.
[Matt Rice]: No critical comments to anything that Laura presents.
[Kimberly Talbot]: That's the rule of the season. Exactly, exactly. Positive vibes today. There you go.
[Matt Rice]: I think this is a pretty positive vibe advisory team anyway.
[Kimberly Talbot]: This is a positive group, yes. All right, I'm going to say one. I'll vote for one more minute. It's not that we're looking for quorum per se, but there's still quite a number of folks not on. All right.
[Matt Rice]: I think we're good. We're going to jump right in.
[Kimberly Talbot]: I think so. I imagine a few more folks will jump on, but let's get going.
[Matt Rice]: So again, just thank you everyone for joining us for this meeting number four of the site safety and security advisory team for the Medford High School project. We're going to be running through a couple of topics today, really with the goal of both advancing the advisory team's understanding of where we are, but also trying to get to a point of having a recommendation to share with the full school building committee at their upcoming October 6th meeting. So we'll talk a little bit more about that as we get into the discussion in the presentation of the information that we have to share. We do have a suggestion of what that recommendation would be, but we obviously want to talk it through with this group to make sure that there's consensus buy-in. And then we'll actually look any volunteers, or we can nominate any individuals from the advisory team to share that with the SBC. At a fallback scenario, we can certainly do it as the design team presented, but typically it works better If there are members of the advisory team that can share the thoughts in the materials, we would obviously provide the materials visuals for the recommendation piece. But we can get to that as we get to the end of the meeting. As Helen was saying, maybe as some of you hopped on, we do have a slightly abbreviated timeframe for this meeting because we have an MEP and sustainability advisory team meeting right afterwards on the heels. So right as we get around, what is it, 530, there may be a transition over and you may see some folks hopping on for the next meeting as well. But we'll manage that as we get there. So with that as a setup, provided I can get the slides to advance here. I don't know, Laura, if you want to take us through the agenda here, I will say that we'll probably skip the introductions in the interest of time, just because this group has gotten together a fair number of times, and we'll try to just jump right into the content if we can.
[Laura Swan]: Um, good idea, Matt. Um, uh, the recommendations that we are hoping to develop today have to do with, um, well, the parking program has been accepted by the school building committee, but we're going to go over it today. There's an updated site layout. Um, we are going to share our thoughts for the Edgerly track and field and discuss a little bit of the pedestrian experience and the ECC breezeway. which will make more sense when you see what it is. And just stop at the end and look at those call for assistance stations slash AEDs and where those might be located across the site.
[Matt Rice]: Let's see. This is most of us.
[Laura Swan]: I have to say there is someone new joining us, Eric Bangsness, our senior landscape architect from SMMA.
[Matt Rice]: All right, Eric, you get to introduce yourself because you're new.
[Erik Vangsness]: Go ahead. Yes, I'm Eric Banks. I'm a senior landscape architect with SMA working with Laura.
[Brian Hilliard]: All right.
[Matt Rice]: So this is our team. We're going to keep going through as well. I know that there's a good critical mass here.
[Laura Swan]: I would say the big update on this project timeline and construction phasing approach is that we are going to probably need one more advisory team meeting just because there was so much material and a few things that we still need to figure out and settle with outside groups before we have everything buttoned up. But today is going to be meeting for, we are in the middle of schematic design. so you can see where we are in this timeline.
[Matt Rice]: And we'll schedule the exact date for that as we move forward here. We'll work with Will and the rest of the district team to get that into everyone's calendars at a time that works.
[Laura Swan]: Okay, without much further ado, the parking program. So we looked at the existing inventory on the site, counted the striped and the informal, but commonly used spaces on the existing site and came up with 451. And it's been pretty well utilized, less so behind the school, more so to the CTE yard and in front of the school, the staff and student parking. We did do a transportation survey of the students and staff and got a lot of responses. That let us know to expect that most students, they do rely on either parent drop off or another mode of transportation to get to the school. But a large number of them do use the bus, whether that's the school bus or the MBTA.
Teachers are the ones, though, who do tend to drive every day, and we expect that behavior to continue. So much further ado, this is the numbers of teachers and staff spaces we anticipate, the fleet vehicles, the visitor spaces for these different programs, and then we added in student spaces. We did make an adjustment for the number of teachers and staff that use alternative modes of transportation and were not driving their car. We were also hoping that visitor spaces could be used for different programs and shared in such a way that we would not need to dedicate them to a certain program only to have them sit empty during other times of the day.
And we are also reserving spaces for 100 students. So you can see on the right, this is about that amount of pavement that's necessary to make that many spots. This is 477 spaces. So a slight increase over what is on site currently.
[Matt Rice]: And maybe Laura just might explain that note in the bottom right hand corner. We have designated Ken. as having the authority to, if the program sizes within the school reduce, because we have this parallel process going on with the full building committee of looking for efficiencies, and also confirming which programs stay or are coming to the building. If that modified for any reason, we would make an analogous adjustment to the parking counts that are shown here based on the affected program. But just so that eventuality is covered, we're just wanting to give Ken that ability to modify the parking program from this baseline is what is shown here, the 477.
[Laura Swan]: That's true. There are a few programming decisions that are about to be finalized. So let's go into the updated site layout. This is what we had at the end of PSR. And you can see it has the rough outline, I would call, of what we're trying to do on the site. Accessible access, plazas. spaces that can be used to support the educational program. We heard how difficult it was to have a driveway that went only three quarters away around the school. So 360 degrees for emergency access, as well as just the ease of navigating behind the school.
Parking that will meet the new program needs. The athletic track and field we have is new to this site, but we are going to keep sort of a rectangle field like we have, or is currently at Edgerly, and put that in front of the school.
[Matt Rice]: And not noted here, but the practice field is still maintained as a natural grass field as well on the western side of the site here, but will be completely replaced from what is there. We're not looking to just keep that existing condition as it stands.
[Laura Swan]: Yes. Okay. So this is a side-by-side with what we had at PSR on the left and our sort of evolved and evolving design on the right, which has two drop-off loops. We are moving the rectangular field up towards the school and trying to move play for the ECC next to it. This is also sort of distributing the parking instead of one gigantic parking lot. It will be, you know, both around that field and also distributed next to the practice field and next to the track and field that will go up on Edgerly Field. So we'll give people the opportunity to park next to these amenities and make it easier for people to access those fields.
[Matt Rice]: Let me just sort of reinforce one of the rationales behind this change. We did hear from the MSBA when we went in front of their facilities assessment subcommittee that the image that you see on the left in terms of the parking is maybe reminiscent of a big box store or something when you drive up to it, a large sea of parking that can feel impersonable. impersonal as well as potentially just from a safety perspective you have a lot of pedestrian students and teachers crossing drive aisles to get a pretty good distance all the way over to the main entrance. And so what the MSBA encouraged us to do is just to reconsider that they didn't point us in another direction but they just pointed out that fact and that could be a challenge. And so what you see on the right-hand side was really our response to that, to try to create a more pedestrian-centric experience, but also coming up to the site, something that's a little bit more welcoming from a visual experience as well. The other consideration that comes into play here and is a little bit of an overlap with our next advisory team meeting that's coming up is that potentially this parking lot, wherever it ends up, has the potential of having photovoltaic solar panels on canopies over the top of it. In this particular instance, what we'd be putting directly in front of the building is a large, fairly tall structure that would obscure the sight lines to the main entrance of the school if we end up putting in like a full photovoltaic canopy over the entirety of this parking. In this scenario, we have the ability to pull those canopies a little bit further away from the building. We're creating a sight line when you come up that is not obstructed by those photovoltaic panels. Yes, they would still be there, but you'll have a much clearer view as you enter into the site of where that main entrance to the school is, and that experience will again be improved. So there's a variety of improvements that were located sort of around this general concept of adjusting the field location.
And I think the next slide is really, yeah, next slide is sort of a prompt, right? That we would like this advisory team to go through a formal vote process. And unfortunately, I don't have the list of everyone here. So I'm not sure if there's maybe somebody on the left field side that could help with sort of a voting activity or the roll calling or I don't know, Helen, if you have the ability to do it just off of the participant list of who we have up. This is just a way of conveying the level of confidence that this advisory team has in terms of the recommendation of this. And before we sort of open it up for discussion and questions, because I imagine folks may want to talk this through, I think we do also want to point out the fact that What we're going to be voting forward, and we can talk about a particular motion if we want to, is really the general site configuration. There are some circulation nuances that still need to be resolved with the overall traffic pattern and drop offs across the site. It's something that we are engaged in current conversations with the district on, as well as other interested parties. But we do feel that with this general rearrangement of the field and the parking in the bottom right-hand corner, we still have something that A, is an improvement over the prior layout that we had, but also allows itself to be evolved and developed to address those circulation nuances that need to get sorted out between say buses, parent drop off, the pickup and drop off for the kids corner as well as meet the preschool programs that are coming here. There is still work to be done. Really what we're looking for is just a confirmation that this general shift from the PSR site plan that we had to this rotated field distributed parking site plan is a positive direction to move forward with.
It's probably easier if I leave this up here. If there's questions, maybe.
[Kimberly Talbot]: Yeah, questions. Yeah, and I can certainly call the roll, as it were. Go ahead, Alicia.
[Director Alicia Hunt]: Thanks. I was looking at this, and it does look like a definite improvement to my eye. I'm not a traffic expert, but I look at these things and I think about these things. But I had a couple of questions, and I just wanted to clarify a few things. And why don't I just tell you what they are, and then you can respond. I think they're pretty straightforward. I was trying to match your legend to the stuff on the map to make sure I was finding everything, and I never found number four pedestrian access, which I thought meant a door, but that, oh, that's the walkway at the bottom.
[Laura Swan]: So that's the show yeah there's going to be pedestrian access on one side of steam Miller Drive, but not on the other in order to have a wider median and a bit of a buffer which is what we kind of heard back from the fire chief and police police chief might. be a good idea to have some sort of separation. And so that pedestrian, we're trying to get them all on the south side, so they can cross the on-site traffic just once, instead of, you know, having to cross multiple driveways.
[Director Alicia Hunt]: That makes sense. And I just hadn't even processed what it was. I think I may have missed a meeting. The other thing that I was hoping this could provide, solve, and I think it either one solves, may be solving, maybe it's something you're thinking of. And that's sort of, I've heard that once buses are loaded after school, it can take them a half hour to get off the property. And whether this is actually a way of giving buses some priority access to get back off the property. They won't be waiting in lines of cars to the same extent that they used to without a person, a human flagging them through. And then the other is just sort of, I wanted to reconfirm what you were saying about the solar, that I do believe the ground mount solar is going to be very important to the net zero. and that that's possible on here, and that I'm assuming these green spaces along the parking would be involved with pedestrian access, so people would walk across the field. There's going to be desire lines. How are they going to walk so they're not walking through the middle of the parking lot to get safely to the entrance? Thanks.
[Matt Rice]: Do you want me to take some of that, Laura? So in terms of the bus circulation on site, yes, Alicia, the idea was we're trying to get buses on and off the site as quickly as possible to alleviate some of the backup and congestion that's associated with them. And they're starting and stopping, whether, again, be it the MBTA buses and or the Yellow School buses. What we found in our recent traffic site circulation discussions is that the school has recently shifted the quantity of the buses and the cadence of the buses and how they're queuing up, especially in the afternoon, which I think is really the more challenging part in terms of dealing with everyone getting out efficiently. From a bus perspective, and there was just some overlap in terms of potential for kids corner drop off and potentially high school parent drop off as well in terms of coming in circulating back out and sort of entering this zone where the MBTA buses might be going. So we're currently going back and sort of taking another look at that to understand what opportunities exist as we go forward. So again, from a site circulation standpoint, we certainly understand people rightly are should be interested in how that gets addressed. We are just currently working on it to try to find the best solution possible. We think we have a lot of good circulation area a lot of good queuing opportunities. It's just a matter of orchestrating it with the various drop-off times and pickup times and when everyone is sort of coming and going. So we'll just have to pause on sort of that larger topic for a moment. I don't know, Laura, if you want to take the pedestrian or Eric, that question or portion of the question.
[Erik Vangsness]: Yeah, I'm happy to take it. So, what this new plan does is by kind of directing all of the primary circulation around the perimeter of the site, once you get into the parking lot we will have to look at the the number. The parking number, we're still working on achieving that. You see it here, but you can see the kind of the cream colored areas are the pedestrian walkways. So those the intent is to minimize the number of places where people pedestrians have to cross vehicular paths. I mean, it's a large parking lot with a lot of parking spaces to some extent. Pedestrians will have to maneuver through the parking lot, but we'll try to make that as safe as possible. What we're trying to avoid to the greatest extent is for them having to cross drive aisles where the speeds are typically higher. And then sort of related to that is the PV. And one of the things, because of how tight this area is that we have to work with, is we're going to be looking to see if maybe we can position the vertical supports for the PV at an intersection of striped parking spaces. And if we can do that, that will reduce our need for maybe making the paved area bigger to accommodate areas that are just reserved for those foundations for those supports. But yeah, that'll take more coordination. But we are thinking about it in the back of our mind.
[Matt Rice]: All right, I see Tim and Brian's hand up. I'm not sure who put their hand up first.
[Kimberly Talbot]: I think it was Brian, if I'm keeping score.
[Brian Hilliard]: It's all about keeping score. So I just want to say, I think this looks great. It's a huge improvement. And for all the big reasons that you said, particularly the approach to the building, I think this clearly opens the line of sight, which is nice. A couple of questions I have. Like, I love pushing the field up closer to the building so that it does give sort of literally a big green space in between parking and the structure itself. Um, obviously the bulk of the parking is kind of shifted. Further away from the main entrance, and I'm a locker, so I have no problem with this, but just generally speaking, do you guys think you'll have pushback from the people who are attached to their cars who say. You know, there's just not enough parking up close and front and do you have a good answer? Because hopefully you do.
Again, personally, I like this much, much better. And I like forcing people to walk. So that's kind of question one. Question two is, whether or not there's any concern, you know, if I'm looking at the new diagram and sort of bottom right corner, page bottom right, if kids are parking there or staff or whatever, and the shortest path is directly across the fields, is that a problem? Like, do we ever care if people stroll across a soccer field? And again, I literally, I don't know. I just don't wanna, you know, like Harvard Yard have all these cow paths across there, and how do we keep people on the walkway? Again, I'm all about making people walk as far as they can. So, you know, is this like a gated thing or what do we do to keep people from wearing, you know, paths through the field? And third quick question is, I love the rotary. I love the idea of it. I think it solves a ton of issues. This one looks complicated. And Matt, you may have alluded to having the school buses Drop off there, but I wasn't sure. And would that alleviate sort of Alicia? I think you talked about speeding up that in and out of the MBTA and the yellow buses themselves. Is that an option to allow buses to use that smaller loop by the kid drop off or not?
[Matt Rice]: That's all. Yeah, so let me, I'll start on reverse order, and I'm probably going to hand it off to the folks that are more educated on these topics than I am. But I'm going to start with that last one again, just by putting a little bit of a pin in it, Brian, in terms of the circulation. We were thinking that buses, I'm sorry if I move my cursor, that buses may be queuing right over here in terms of providing direct access, no crossing of any traffic back to the school main entrance. But again, we're really looking at that given the potential for sort of overlapping circulation patterns that may come through there and especially any buses, be they yellow school buses or special education vans that may have a stop sign out while they're loading or unloading and could sort of create a log jam in that in that central rotary piece. So we know we need to do some more work on that. We're working through that at the moment.
And then I'll take the field one as well because of the fencing, because I think it's low-hanging fruit. We will need some type of perimeter fencing around the field, and potentially netting as well for ball control. We'll get into the design of exactly what that looks like. But there will be some type of control to prevent students and teachers, anyone, from walking directly across the field if they're trying to get into the high school. There will be amenable plazas and pedestrian environments like Eric was talking about on either side. So it's really a matter of getting to those sort of safer situations and working your way around the field as you come in.
But I'll let someone else take the proximity of parking.
[Erik Vangsness]: Yeah, and I can add on to the field. In order to get a field in this location, there's going to need to be retaining walls on both the north and the south end to sort of cut this and balance it into the site, given the topography out there. So those walls too will couple with the fences to help with that. And I think your question about the parking is a great one. So you can see we did provide accessible parking at the North Loop, and we provided accessible parking, infant drop-off parking, and some additional parking in the South Loop. It's all going to be a part of that re-looking at this.
When you create these multiple different drop-offs for different uses, you have to meet turning requirements for fire trucks and buses and things like that. So we'll take a look at that. We got the, in this option, you know, we got the parking as close as we could. We prioritized again, accessible parking. There's actually going to be an excess of accessible parking here just because of all the different building entrances, just to make sure those people do not have to walk as far. And, you know, we'll, we'll do our best to minimize if there's ways to minimize in this concept, the distance that people have to walk, we will explore it.
[Brian Hilliard]: Yeah, I think again, it looks great and I love distributing the parking in the, I'll say the least desirable area of the site because that's how it should be. So, but if there's anything I've heard, um, over the years in town, people, people like their cars. So, um, I just, I hope, hopefully we can, you know,
[Laura Swan]: I will make a good case that there are 100 student parking spots and we can always make the put that burden on the youngest members.
[Brian Hilliard]: Awesome.
[Erik Vangsness]: And, you know, there's a part of this where we also want to educate people on, you know, just because the parking is close to the building doesn't make that a safe condition. In fact, sometimes that makes that a less safe condition, right, where you tuck the parking up by the building and you have to cross a big driveway for, you know, everybody has to cross a big driveway to get to it. hopefully bringing up some of the advantages of a layout like this might offset some of that. Not always, but we hope.
[Brian Hilliard]: Well, actually, I think that's a good point. And it might behoove us to really indicate very clear paths, you know, like super highways for pedestrians from the parking into the building or towards the building so that you can see that it's easy to flow from, you know, bottom right to top left in the diagram. Because again, I think You know if if people can see those yellow pad or tan pads really clearly and say this is how I get from parking in that might help.
[Laura Swan]: And I will add that there's some spots like the like the lower the most southern lot that. seem like they're far from the main entrance, but they are next to the ECC and where the central offices are going to be. It's like 100 staff members that are going in that door. And also, there will probably be some sort of access for staff to use the parking by Edgerly Field or the practice field. They can go into doors that the student population can't.
It might actually be more convenient for them. Yeah, good point.
[Kimberly Talbot]: Can we get to Tim's question?
[Tim McGivern]: Yeah, thanks. In general, I think a big improvement and I can support the change and I'm glad to see the site design morphing and changing as it should be in this stage. I like this, the idea of splitting up the parking lot too, so you don't have a sea of parking, I like that. I was a little, so this talk about parking, access to the building and field and all that, the field does seem like it's kind of like surrounded by parking. One of my questions was, did you guys look at maybe uh swapping the location of the field and the right uh up and down parking uh bay like if you put the parking close to the building just kind of swap those two so you have access road on the outside field parking and then plaza building just just a thought um so is that you know i was just curious like what do you guys because i know grades are a big issue on the site for that west driveway I was curious at how that's going to happen if it's a cut I think there might be some rock there. What kind of slopes are using for that.
And then what else? Yeah, I think with the broken up parking lots and the way you get the different loops and stuff, and it's one way around, wayfinding is going to be really important. So people aren't driving in circles trying to figure out which lot they need to be at. I think that's going to be important when we're talking about breaking up the lots. But in general, I think this is headed in the right direction. So thank you for your presentation.
[Kimberly Talbot]: Who wants to take on grading?
[Matt Rice]: I was just going to offer up the fact that just a little bit earlier today, Tim, we were looking at some three-dimensional modeling of the topography through there. I think when we get together for that next meeting, we'll be able to show it. It helped me understand it a lot more going through there. I think the site and civil folks, you guys can intuit what's in through here. But to be able to understand that field, as Eric was saying, there's a lot of great changes happening across the level of it. We have to pick a relatively flat plane to try to insert there so you get high retaining walls at the bottom or a cup retaining wall at the top or something in between. Then yeah, that road up to the side is something that we know works, but there's going to be some earthwork and potentially some rock removal associated with there. There may also be just some fill to be able to make it work because where the slope is right now starts to drop off pretty quickly on that side.
[Laura Swan]: I think what we're looking at on the eastern edge is mostly cut, though you are right that there's a little bit of a bluff up against the fells.
[Tim McGivern]: Do you know enough as far as like what you're maxing out on slope when you're coming from the high point to the low point there on that side?
[Laura Swan]: In the roadway or for the... In the road, in the circular road. Oh, okay. We're looking at trying to keep the grades below 8% everywhere and to have below 5% in most places, so it's accessible. That won't be possible for every stretch, but you can kind of see right next to the five, for instance, there is a ramp, an accessible ramp that will be at 8%. to get people from one level to another in that location.
[Tim McGivern]: And you're trying to hold the road at 8%, do you think?
[Laura Swan]: I think it's going to be at around seven to 8% is what we were looking at. And that's what we're aiming at as our high side for grades.
[Tim McGivern]: That'll be good to see. If you get to go up to 10, I think, in isolated spots, that probably is okay. You've got a grading challenge. I'm excited to look at the grading plans when they're available.
[Matt Rice]: And maybe just to transition into the next question, I just wanted to clarify, Laura, something that you mentioned. So we will keep the 8% or 5% where we can. Where we can't, we have introduced ramps so that we do have an accessible path also all the way around the building for pedestrians. But we do need to incorporate ramps in some cases just to deal with the obvious reality of what's on the site there, topography-wise.
[Erik Vangsness]: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. And I should point out, we always build in a little bit of wiggle room in terms of the slopes. Like, we try to keep the ramps even under sometimes 8% just so the contractor has a little bit of wiggle room when they go out to build them, because they can get long.
[Tim McGivern]: You should. You know it well. And I didn't ask this question, but what's the pinch point for the road there at the corner, the upper right corner? And what do you have for a width of that pinch point? Yeah, there.
[Laura Swan]: I'd have to double check off the top of my head. I know that we have a minimum of 22 feet for one way circulation, but we try to keep it at 24 feet. The real pinch point is between the pool and the property line in that corner.
[Tim McGivern]: That's what I was wondering if you can get your 22 feet through there. That was really my question.
[Matt Rice]: It looks like it through there, but we'll go back and check it. And certainly it's a fair point. Something that we have to accommodate.
[Tim McGivern]: Yeah, I'm more curious than anything, because that's a fixed corner. That's your existing.
[Matt Rice]: It is right. Yeah, that's the corner of the pool building. And that is our property line.
[Tim McGivern]: So yeah, similar to the existing condition, unless you have a little bit more space, you can move to the right, which you probably don't. So.
[Laura Swan]: Actually one of the nice things is we are removing a mechanical room that's behind the existing pool building that right now is causing a lot of issues with the sight lines. So it will be a little bit, there will be a little more room to the north.
[Tim McGivern]: That's wonderful because I hate that corner. So if you can get rid of that corner.
[Kimberly Talbot]: Everybody hates that corner.
[Tim McGivern]: That's terrible. Yeah.
[Kimberly Talbot]: All right. Can we get to Nick's question?
[Matt Rice]: Yeah, and then I think we may want to try to just see if we can get a vote, maybe after that, because we have a couple other slides that we just want to go through for informational purposes.
[Kimberly Talbot]: Exactly. Go ahead, Nick.
[Nicholas Karinge]: Thank you and good afternoon everyone. Thank you all so much for all your work. It's looking fantastic. I just had a couple of questions on the disability end of things. Well, first of all, are we voting on the two, on which one of the two pictures we want to see
[Matt Rice]: So what we're voting on, Nick, just answer that first question. We're voting actually on the adoption of the image that's on the right, the revised site plan that's even going forward.
[Nicholas Karinge]: Yeah. OK. That's what I thought. Thank you. But my question would be, one, Accessible parking, given how the parking spaces are set up right now, and seeing especially right here.
[Kimberly Talbot]: Uh-oh, I think we're losing you a little bit. We did hear, I think we got Nick, you're asking about the location of accessible spaces. And I know you were still trying to say something, but your audio broke up.
[Matt Rice]: Yeah, we're only still getting about every other word, Nick.
[Kimberly Talbot]: Yeah.
[Erik Vangsness]: I'm certainly happy to proactively just jump in. The way the accessible spaces work right now is that we have some up at the north entrance near the number two. We have more down at the south entrance near number one. it's very important when you have a building with this many entrances that you spread out the accessible parking spaces you don't want them all in one place right and then so what we will do is there is a there's a requirement 521 CMR based on how many parking spaces you have in your facility dictates how many you're required to have and we will have at least that number of accessible spaces just for the school. For the track and field, we're adding, based on some experience we've had recently, we would be providing eight additional accessible spaces alone just up in that area. And it really is helpful for larger events, things like that, if this wants to be a pillar of the community. it's very important we have a separate, dedicated amount of accessible parking just for that use. So we will make sure that there is ample. And if there needs to be more, we can always add more. That simple striping can always do that.
[Nicholas Karinge]: Thank you. Another thing, if my memory serves me correctly, The current high school also has a place where students from across the city can come for physical therapy. And so I was wondering if that will be having having an access point so that people are not having to walk around the whole school just to get to that particular level.
[Matt Rice]: Just to cover the programs within the building, there's both an alternative PE and physical therapy space that will be in the building. I can't recall that we've talked to that program specifically, but if it exists today, there certainly will be facilities within the school to accommodate it moving forward. And I do think because of what Eric was pointing out, the fact that we are distributing accessible parking spaces really around the majority of the perimeter, maybe with the exception of where the old skate park is, but there's really no main public entrances. There's a community program that is for the auditorium and the pool. which will have an elevator up to the pool within it, as well as the gymnasium. There's the main entrance. There's the entrance from the north. There will even be an access point into the building. I think, Nick, while it maybe has not landed, I'm fairly confident saying that we will have an accessible parking location in some proximity to that program wherever it lands because we're pretty pervasive around the perimeter of the building with various locations of accessible parking spots, both van and traditional.
[Erik Vangsness]: And just because the regulations set out a certain minimum number doesn't mean you can't have more than that. So if this site needs more than that, then we'll look at that. Like for instance, at the northeast end of that parking lot, right? maybe we want some dedicated accessible parking near that events entrance, right? So even though it's not the primary high school entrance, if it's an events entrance, we might want to incorporate some there. And we're happy to move those pieces around and make sure that you all have what you need.
[Nicholas Karinge]: Right. OK. And then my last question, the sidewalks around the school, they go all the way around continuously, right? That's correct. Okay, that is perfect. And of course we already mentioned about decorating for the ramps and whatnot because we do not want a repeat of what we already have with the gigantic ramp at the front.
[Matt Rice]: All of our ramps will be fully code compliant as well as ADA compliant.
[Nicholas Karinge]: and the access to the fields will also be American compliant, right? Correct, yes.
[Matt Rice]: 100% across the site. All right. Thank you all.
[Erik Vangsness]: We check it with a two-foot smart level, Nick, during construction.
[Nicholas Karinge]: Thank you.
[Kimberly Talbot]: He's not kidding. I'm just quickly address Alicia's question in the chat. And then I will, if you all feel ready, I will call for a vote.
[Matt Rice]: Yes, so all the parking Alicia is up at the track level and you may have noticed as well that we, if we go back to the prior 1. Oh, no, we had already incorporated it, but from the prior layout of the track that was up here, we did increase the quantity of parking spaces up by the track and field, which we think is advantageous. And yes, it will be actually up at the field level, as opposed to having to navigate the multiple switchback and or the really high vertical stairs up there. So it should be a significant improvement in that regard. Indeed.
[Kimberly Talbot]: All right, are folks ready if I call your name to say yay or nay or abstain if you wish to recommend to the SBC to proceed with the updated site plan? Knowing it'll continue to evolve. Ready to go for a vote?
[CAS00002547_SPEAKER_01]: Yep.
[Kimberly Talbot]: All right. I'm just going to go down the list as I see it. Ken?
[Kenneth Lord]: Yes.
[Kimberly Talbot]: Okay. Our people are not voting, Tim. Yes. Great. Alicia? Yes. Amanda? Yes. Brian?
[Unidentified]: Yes.
[Kimberly Talbot]: Oh, people are shifting on my list. Okay. I may miss someone. Let's see. Matt Galussi?
[Mike Cabral]: Yes.
[Kimberly Talbot]: Great. Thanks. Melissa Young? So you may be muted if you're trying to talk. Yeah. Okay. I can try you back, uh, Nick.
[Nicholas Karinge]: Yes. Thank you.
[Kimberly Talbot]: Uh, Rob White.
[Nicholas Karinge]: Yes. Thank you.
[Kimberly Talbot]: Great. And I will try Melissa again. Melissa, are you able to say yay or nay? Okay, we're not able to get her, but a boat passes. So, everyone who responded was a positive vote. Thank you very much.
[Matt Rice]: Okay, so the next series of topics we have and I'm gonna. really stress to everyone, to folks that are on the SMA team, you have literally two minutes. I will stop you. So you need to be able to say what you have to say really quickly. The rest of these topics are for information only. So we just want to give people a little bit more of an update on different parts and pieces. So apologies that we don't have a lot of time for a dialogue on each one of them.
[Erik Vangsness]: Very simply, track and field here, synthetic turf. A is a new concessions restroom building. There will be probably a slide gate there and a perimeter fence around this stadium area so that it can be secured for ticketing purposes. There will also be a slide gate and emergency access at the east end, probably for emergency vehicles. I think that's the crux of this. Bleachers at the north, number four, just so everyone can visualize where the access will be.
[Matt Rice]: and I'm going to just violate my own rule here. I did want to mention to people that we have had conversations with DCR. They have given us an initial indication that it is acceptable to build structures on the deed-restricted land, all of which this is, provided that those structures are in support of the recreational use. In the specific cases of, say, a toilet building and ticketing, concessions building at the front, the bleachers themselves, and if there's a storage building for track field equipment that can all be located on the deep restricted property, we will be getting some written documentation of that. The MSBA will be requiring that as part of the process. So that is to come, but we are proceeding with this overall general approach as Eric just described it.
So I think this is just a general section through the site that gives a relationship of where the field is going to be, but spoiler alert is at the same elevation that the current Edgerly field is going to be. So there's not a lot of update there.
[Laura Swan]: Well, Matt, there was one question in the chat about how many lanes on the track.
[Erik Vangsness]: Yep, so right now what we are planning for on that is an 8 lane straight and a 6 lane oval because of the space constraints. That is a pretty typical configuration, maybe not ideal, but it's pretty typical for a high school.
[Matt Rice]: And just as a group, Eric, myself, the athletic director and the track coaches, we did make a visit over to both Hormel as well as Dillboy stadiums to sort of compare and look at those tracks and the layouts. And this will certainly be an improvement over the Hormel condition in terms of how it is laid out. And I think it's even a little bit of an improvement over the Dillboy sort of configuration as well in terms of just surrounding perimeter space beyond the field dimensions.
[Kimberly Talbot]: Can you address Nick's question about the press box accessibility and our assumed approach to that, Matt?
[Matt Rice]: Sure, yeah, no, I didn't see that. But that's a great question, Nick. You are very sharp there, but we have you covered. The idea is that we're going to be creating the press box within the building itself. So there will be an elevator located within the building immediately here. So we're actually going to be able to get up pretty high, potentially even to have scoreboards maybe in that area. I think we're also showing a scoreboard out here. But we will have accessible route up to the press box wherever it ends up.
Okay, I see that there's other chats. I'm not, I actually closed that down.
[Kimberly Talbot]: Teachers have space for wheelchair companion seating on an accessible route.
[Matt Rice]: They will yeah, that that is part of the accessibility requirements from the Massachusetts architectural access board as well. So we will, we'll be complying with that.
[Erik Vangsness]: There'll be ramps leading up. If the bleachers are raised, we always incorporate ramps to get up to those that are appropriate.
[Suni Dillard]: Great.
[Matt Rice]: Okay. ECC breezeway. Is this me? Am I taking this one, Laura?
[Laura Swan]: I think it is architectures.
[Matt Rice]: I will adhere then to my general sense of brevity. What we're introducing is something called the breezeway, which is a pass-through through this portion of the building. Really based on the concept that if we have to have people that are in the parking lot, regardless of whether it's this layout or a revised layout, come all the way down to the southern end of the building and all the way up, it's an extended route to get through there and it's not quite as amenable if we can create essentially a shortcut. through the building to get up and through. So, in addition to sort of that primary circulation, if people are parking down here and coming up to a game, even though we do have more parking spots up here for a large field event, there's still going to be a fair amount of people that are parking down and having to walk up. So we have that sort of desire line that we're creating or respecting with this breezeway concept, and we'll show you what that looks like in a second. The other real main benefit of this is it allows us to create a separate and dedicated entrance for the Curtis Tufts program, which wants to have a separate identity from the main high school entrance that's really part of the educational plan. and the IEPs for those students that are coming in to have a separate sort of sense of entrance and being. So this allows us to create another frontage that's quiet, a little bit more off the beaten path than the main high school entrance, and it provides some immediate access into their space, which is located through here. So as we walked around the building, we didn't find a really great spot otherwise to achieve that. But by creating this breezeway, you'll see in a second, we have a really amenable spot to create an access point, both for the Curtis Tufts to the north, as well as to the preschool programs just located on the second floor in this general area.
In section, I know not everyone can read or sort of get through sections, but this is actually cut through this breezeway piece. If you look in the little plan, the key plan that's in the upper right hand side of the slide, you'll see this section cut through this heavy dark line right through the center of the building. So there is a pathway. The grading is not, it's not a very dramatic grade change from one side to the other as we rise up. We're actually not looking to incorporate any ramps, but rather sloped walkways as it comes up through. So it's a very amenable path for anyone to travel, whether you're in a wheelchair, or if you're just walking up through, there will be some stairs and ramps and stramps and things just to make it a little bit more amenable as you pass through it. And what this could look like, and again, these are just some early sort of conceptual images of what this might feel like. We don't want it to feel like a tunnel or something that is imposing as an environment for pedestrians to move through, but we will have the ability to sort of view the existing tree line back through daylight. And also during the evening, right, there will be ample lighting across this. so that it feels like a welcoming environment. There is a piece of the building that connects up above so that we can have program linked up above on level three. And we actually do have the ability as well to connect program below at level one. So this outdoor pass through is really gonna happen up at the level two elevation. On the right hand side here is where that Curtis Tufts High School entrance would be. On the left is where you have an opportunity to bring in the preschool students. So we do think that this is going to offer a large improvement from overall pedestrian site circulation, as well as a couple of the specialized programs.
So I will pause there quickly. I think we have about three minutes, so maybe I won't pause. But, Helen, if you see any other comments there, and I think just some thumbs up from Brian.
[Kimberly Talbot]: Okay, thanks, Brian.
[Matt Rice]: Um, is this Cody? Do you want to. Give a quick run down here. Yeah, I can do it.
[Unidentified]: Yep.
[Mike Cabral]: That's okay. I was I was muted before just because I was in the car picking up my daughter, but I'm back in the office now. So, um, but, yeah, I wanted to quickly go over the call for assistance stations around the site. If you're not familiar with what they are. You know, you typically see these on college campuses, but they're a way that you can communicate with police and first responders. And in some of these cases, we're also looking at including a D cabinets as part of the call for assistance stations where they're in close proximity to the athletic fields. So there's a few locations that we've identified. And really, we try to put these in locations that are You know, they're not regularly occupied spaces away from the building. So, you know, in those dark months, when you go out to your car, and you're parked in the back parking lot, you have some means of feeling safe with the means of communication back to somebody if there is an emergency, or if you do need assistance in those specific areas. So the blue dots are where we're proposing these call for assistance towers. They do have a blue light on top of it and they're always illuminated so people out in the parking lots can always see them and know exactly how far they are away from them if there is some type of emergency. And then up at the athletic field we put two in opposite corners, one of the concessions and one at the storage shed in the upper right-hand corner in the event there is some type of emergency out at that field. And then we're co-locating two in the bottom near the soccer field on the multi-purpose field where they do include areas of the parking lot as well as the field themselves. Um, you know, and then any, any other situations, if they get close enough to the school, uh, there's other means of communication on the school itself. Uh, but these would be the locations that we've identified for, for the site, including the parking lot and the, uh, the athletic areas.
[Matt Rice]: All right. That does get us to five 15. Um, the next steps, I think we mentioned, um, that we're going to have an additional discussion with, um, uh, The district about site circulation, vehicular circulation primarily on site, and that we are going to be getting some review by DCR and written confirmation of those allowable uses on the deed restricted land. And then we're going to set up that subsequent advisory team member meeting early in November. So that is the plan moving forward.
And we probably have a backlog of next advisory team folks that are ready to jump on. We probably have like 27 seconds left if anyone wants to ask a final question. There is no one in the waiting room.
[Kimberly Talbot]: Yeah, I think the next one starts. Yeah, I think.
[Unidentified]: Oh, at 530.
[Kimberly Talbot]: Yeah, but I think leaving a tiny gap is not a terrible thing for those of us that are.
[Unidentified]: Okay, okay.
[Kimberly Talbot]: Continuing on. No, no, no. I think the time spent to review the plan where we're asking for a vote was well spent. And I thank everyone very much for the excellent discussion and comments. Yeah, there was something in the chat. I think it's a More of a comment, Brian. Oh, another. Okay. Go ahead. Do you want to speak to that?
[Brian Hilliard]: Just a quick thought about having one maybe in the top right up by the back of the pool there. I was thinking sort of by your number six. Yeah, sort of in that corner.
[Mike Cabral]: Somewhere in that zone.
[Brian Hilliard]: Just a thought, just a thought.
[Mike Cabral]: Yeah, no, it's a good point. What we can do too, I don't know if those necessarily need to be a tower. That could be something that could be mounted to the top image on the building, but it's a good point. We can look at that to see where the best location for a device like this in that back area. But it's a good point. We'll take a look at that.
[Brian Hilliard]: Because it's its own private Idaho back in there. It's a tight little play. It's a little canyon back there. Sure. Awesome. Thanks guys.
[Matt Rice]: Yeah, I think the trailhead probably for the Mustang loop is going to end up, I mean, it is in there right now and it's going to end up somewhere in that area. So that would be a good adjacency to just for anyone that's coming out of the fells from that pathway to have access to some emergency notification features.
[Kimberly Talbot]: Nick has a question in the chat. Is there going to be a CFA station in the breezeway?
[Mike Cabral]: So we wouldn't plan on putting a call for assistance station in the breezeway, but we would have a means of communication in there. There would be intercoms inside that area. We will have camera surveillance in that area as well. I'm not saying that it doesn't have to be a CFA station in there. It certainly could be, but we will have, for sure, we will have a means of communication in there. I imagine that the doors will be on the left and right. So we'll have a way to communicate if there is um, an issue, an issue in there, and it might look like, uh, you know, similar to that other, that other station, but we can certainly work, uh, with the design team to identify the proper location for something like that. So absolutely, Nick, we'll, we'll, we'll take a look at that.
[Kimberly Talbot]: Right. Alright, so you saw the next step. We would like to reconvene this group. Obviously we're actively continuing to develop the site plan and after we've had that working session on site circulation with the district reps, I think that would be a great time to reconvene with you all and share the latest and greatest as we move towards getting this set priced in the middle of December. So that's that's where we are. in our process. So if there aren't any other comments, suggestions, we can adjourn.
[Tim McGivern]: See you in November.
[Kimberly Talbot]: Great. We'll be in touch. Thank you so much.
[Unidentified]: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
[Kimberly Talbot]: Thank you all.
[Unidentified]: Thank you.
[Director Alicia Hunt]: Is it the same Zoom link?
[Unidentified]: It is the same Zoom link. I was just going to ask.
[Director Alicia Hunt]: I'm going to mute and turn my camera off.
[Matt Rice]: Yeah, I think we're all doing that. And I get the sense when you turn your video on that it's time to start the meeting. It's time to start the meeting.
[Kenneth Lord]: I'm nothing if not regular.
[Matt Rice]: All right, let me find the PowerPoint here.
[Unidentified]: All right, is that up there for everybody?
[Matt Rice]: OK. I've seen a whole bunch of folks hop on, which is excellent. We'll probably give a few minutes for everyone to get here. We were a little bit abbreviated in our last advisory team meeting that we just wrapped up. I know some of you were on it. But we had some success just starting three minutes into the schedule of time rather than five. Felt better, so maybe we'll stick to that as our new normal and get going here in a moment.
I think that would be valuable just because we have a fair number of topics to get through this evening with a lot of really important, some dense information, but we do have some confidence that we'll get all the way through.
[Kimberly Talbot]: Yeah, Matt, maybe just note that You have Andy Oldman subbing in for Emily Ehlers this evening from our mechanical team. So he might be a new face to this group.
[Matt Rice]: You want to say hello, Andy? Hi, everyone.
[Kimberly Talbot]: He's been working in the background.
[CAS00002547_SPEAKER_01]: I'm here to serve. I got some cliff notes from Emily. I've sat with her a few times, so hopefully I can support the conversation that might happen.
[Unidentified]: Thanks.
[Matt Rice]: All right, so we are three minutes in, so why don't we just dive right into it. Again, folks that are maybe watching after the fact, this is our seventh advisory team meeting for the sustainability and MEP systems group for the Medford High School project. It is impressive that we are on meeting number seven, our last site safety security. We're only on meeting four, so there's been a lot of input and we appreciate all the hours. that folks have dedicated to contributing to the development of the high school design trajectory that we're on here. So we will move just really quickly into the agenda.
And folks on the SMA team will note that I added one agenda item right at the top, which is a recommendation of our HVAC system. If for those that were at the last advisory team meeting that we had with this group, you'll recall that we got through the discussion on the HVAC system. There was a recommendation that was made, but because we did not advertised in advance that we would be making sort of a vote on a recommendation here. We decided to table that until the start of this meeting. So we're going to do that right at the outset before we jump into the rest of the topics. And just a reminder on what we are voting on here. I know we mentioned this at the last meeting, but it is worth repeating. The process that has been established is that each advisory team for the scope items that are put before them, sort of their areas of expertise, What we vote on for each of those items is a recommendation back to the building committees. The building committee is the entity that is making the decision on whether or not scope gets included, modified, eliminated from the building project moving forward. But the building committee is going to be leaning on the expertise of each of the advisory teams. And I do have some faith that there will be trust and appreciation for the thought that has been put into each of those recommendations that comes to the building committee.
And I'm not sure if anyone wants to do just a quick summary. I don't have any slides queued up in here. So I think that is intentional that we don't want to dwell necessarily. We did send out a quick note summarizing sort of that this was coming to the entirety of the advisory team in advance to see if there was any questions in advance. I don't believe that we received any questions specifically on this particular topic. As we go forward, but certainly wanted to provide an opportunity for any additional discussion if folks have it. I don't know if if Andy, you want to give just a quick description of what that recommendation is just so that folks that are listening as well understand what we're going to be voting on a recommendation for sure.
[CAS00002547_SPEAKER_01]: The recommended system was the full air source heat pump system. So that's roof mounted air to water heat pumps generating both chill water and hot water as seasonally required. This option complies with the all electric desire as I understand it. And it also works well with the phasing of the project. It eliminates the need for any temporary rental systems that would have to be in place to support the phased construction. So these air source heat pumps can just be installed, you know, a group of them on phase one to support the phase one scope, and then the remaining group on phase two to support that scope.
[Matt Rice]: And maybe just some of the quick points in terms of why we arrived at this decision. I think the biggest things out there are that on the first cost side of things, this is the most cost effective system will represent a reduction in the total project cost. from what we had assumed in the PSR budget at our previous milestone. It is the most cost effective on the 50-year life cycle cost analysis as well in terms of the overall operational replacement costs, energy consumption costs over that 50-year life. That's what we presented at the last meeting. And then I'm not sure if it's most importantly, but maybe most notably by moving to this air to water heat pump system, all of our Heat rejection and accepting equipment is up on the roof and avoids locating any geothermal wells on deed-restricted property that would come along with the real Article 97 permitting process and everything that is wrapped up into that. There was a variety of benefits that drove us in that particular direction to the recommendation. I guess are there are there any other thoughts or comments from the advisory team before we go ahead and make a motion to vote on?
Sunny, go ahead.
[Suni Dillard]: Thanks Matt. Sorry I missed the last minute. I just have one follow up from the conversation that was had and I know that the pool is represented separately and maybe not part of this LCA, but I'm just curious if. because it will still be one building and because it's operational use is so extensive, if incorporating that into a full whole building life cycle cost analysis would show either of the other systems as more beneficial, if that's something that, it doesn't sound like you've done that analysis. I just sort of gut check wondering if that would be something that you could talk about.
[Martine Dion]: Yeah, it's in progress, but really, Sunny, that would not impact the decision on the air-to-water heat pump, because for the pool, what we're comparing really is the pool hot water heating between fossil fuel and electrical. The pool HVAC system is the you know, it's the same, it's going to be the same as the school.
[Suni Dillard]: Okay, that makes sense.
[Martine Dion]: Right, right. So it's only the, you know, the pool heating that we're comparing that LCCA.
[Suni Dillard]: Okay, no, that's really helpful. Thank you.
[Matt Rice]: All right. I'm not seeing any other hands. So I guess we always sort of struggle with our formality. Jenny does this much better at the full building committee. But I guess if our motion or our suggested recommendation that we want to vote on is the air to water source heat pump mechanical system for the project moving forward. I think what number option was that in our? It was option three. Option three. I'm going to lean on Helen to do her roll call, because she did a very good job at the last advisory.
[Kimberly Talbot]: Libby, did you have something to say? Do you need someone to move? Make a motion?
[Laura Swan]: Yeah, there you go. I move to recommend option three.
[Kimberly Talbot]: Second. Thanks, Ken. All right. I will go down the list. Although it's funny, your names keep moving in the list. All right, I'll go with Ken first, because he doesn't say Ken. It says Medford Public Schools. Ken. Yes. Libby.
[Director Alicia Hunt]: Yes.
[Kimberly Talbot]: Elizabeth. Yes. Austin.
[Andre Leroux]: Yes.
[Kimberly Talbot]: Jessica.
[Andre Leroux]: Yes.
[Kimberly Talbot]: Paul.
[Member Paul Ruseau]: Yes, although I'm a non-voting member, so I don't know if I'm a voting member of this.
[Kimberly Talbot]: I think you are. If you're a named person, yes, then yes. Paul is yes. Sam.
[Martine Dion]: I don't think I'm a voting member of this.
[Director Alicia Hunt]: You are, because everybody is.
[Matt Rice]: Brenda was.
[Martine Dion]: Yeah.
[Director Alicia Hunt]: Great.
[Matt Rice]: We're very welcoming here, too. We just want everyone to know.
[Kimberly Talbot]: I feel so included. Alicia, did I call you yet?
[Director Alicia Hunt]: You did not call me.
[Kimberly Talbot]: OK, Alicia.
[Director Alicia Hunt]: I vote yes.
[Kimberly Talbot]: OK, Sonny.
[Suni Dillard]: Yes.
[Kimberly Talbot]: OK, did I miss anyone? Because, again, Keep shifting in the list. OK, that was 100% affirmative. Thank you and I will tally that up for the notes. Thanks everybody.
[Matt Rice]: Maybe I should have told everyone before we all voted on it, but we will be looking for a member of the advisory team to actually share that recommendation back to the building committee. We can certainly do it if we need to as a design team, but we feel it comes better from one of the team members. So those that are both here and also at the building committee, we may tap you to share the recommendation with the larger group once we get there.
[CAS00002547_SPEAKER_01]: Am I safe to jump?
[Matt Rice]: I think so, Andy.
[CAS00002547_SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[Matt Rice]: All right. Thank you all.
[Laura Swan]: Thank you, Andy.
[Matt Rice]: We're going to turn it over to Martine for a walk through some photovoltaic information.
[Martine Dion]: Yes, so I won't repeat everything. The first few slides are what we already presented briefly last week. So I'm not going to go into details, but we are looking at a mix of high canopy and low for the roof, low ballasted, and the stripped what we call parking cover. parking space cover only in long span for the parking. Next.
[Kimberly Talbot]: I'm not seeing Matt's screen. Is everyone else seeing the screen?
[Unidentified]: Yeah.
[Kimberly Talbot]: Okay.
[Kenneth Lord]: Up at the top, you might have to flip between. You might be on the meeting tab instead of Matt.
[Kimberly Talbot]: Okay. I just want to make sure it was just me.
[Matt Rice]: Give me a heart attack, Helen.
[Martine Dion]: So basically from last week again, we did a preliminary assessment of the site capacity both at the roof level and at the parking level to see how close we could get to the 100% net zero. And we can be very close with these sort of hybrid high canopy for a lot of the new construction and low ballasted canopy at those existing roofs. And then a mix of the long span and more sparsely covered areas for the parking. So we are working with Solar Design Associates for these assessments. Next.
[Matt Rice]: I'm just going to point out on this slide as well. I believe these are the red areas. We're showing them as red and we're breaking them out right because we do not have the ability to put solar canopies on the deed restricted property as we understand it from DCR because they would not necessarily be directly supporting the recreational use similar to how the bleachers or the toilet rooms are. So we are working within the other acreage for sort of viable ground-mounted canopy areas.
[Martine Dion]: Right, and these are going to be continued to be updated as some of the site design progresses. Um, so last week we talked about sort of the, the ownership of the PV system, the solar photovoltaic system and versus power purchase agreement. Um, there's pros and cons there's, you know, the, the PPA owns everything. Um, and then provides for a negotiated 20 year fixed utility rate. And, but in, you know, that sometimes can bring some challenges in getting the, depending on the contract agreements, details, and fully obtaining the full commissioning, required commissioning documentation from the PPA is sometimes challenging. And we've had projects where those points were not approved by GBCI.
um and when the school owns then all of the financial benefits go to the school so tonight we're going to show you again on a schematic design level what does that look like in terms of of money in terms of the life cycle of the the solar pv um i just want to note that we learned this week um Thankfully, before this meeting, we learned that the City of Medford has an agreement on many of their municipal buildings through PPAs and through power options. So we were able to meet with them, which was great. So some of their feedback and information is folded into what we're going to show you tonight. It looks like you have a great, Medford has a great sort of established collaboration with this entity. And I think that's going to help if that gets, you know, if they get sort of folded into the process here. So next slide.
So last week, again, we presented sort of the high-level cost of the system. We only had the kilowatt hours last week, but with some good recommendation, we went back and brought sort of the kilowatt or megawatt sizing. So for the project, we need between 5.5 and 6 megawatts to get to 100% net zero energy. Right now, what we were able to assess at schematic design level gets us up to pretty much 5 megawatts. We're slightly short, but as we go through the design things get often when with PV what I've seen in most of our projects is things get honed enough that we can expand a bit the capacity.
So what will be important tonight to understand is that we're going to show you what the capacities for the site, the life cycle analysis of the solar PV system, but we're also looking for you to make a recommendation similar to what you did for the HVAC system, make a recommendation for ownership or PPA for the PV and at what level. In the schematic design, to the right here in the comments column, you'll see three options, PV1, PV2, PV3. In the PSR estimate, we had these three options priced. The first one was basically a low ballasted PV system on the roof.
When you look at the allocated area that could be usable for PV, it's probably about 50% of the roof. And that option only brings us 20% of the net zero energy. Whereas if we optimize to what we've assessed with solar design associate on the roof with a hybrid low ballasted and high canopy, we can go up to 50% net zero on the roof. For the parking, we looked at the majority of the parking, like I mentioned earlier, and then a hybrid again of long span and parking space only. For the PSR estimate, we'd looked at 100%, which that parking assessment brings another 50%.
What sort of is equivalent to that in terms of the pricing, it was the PV2. So the PV2 had 100% net zero energy provided by a PPA. And what the PSR estimate alternate provided was for the structure for the panels at the parking. And that was about 28, almost $29 million. What we found out this week is that the majority of PPAs now pay for the structure. So in the life cycle analysis, we accounted for that. And I'll show you that in a minute. And we reduced that alternate to what it would be, or would be estimated to be. So So the PPA is PV2. And then the fully owned system would accumulate to about $40 million. And the battery storage, about $5 million. So it's about $45 million, more or less, to own it.
What was priced in the PSR was a bit higher. It was $59 million, including the battery. Just to explain the difference between the two is that we work with Solar Design Associates, and we also just got very recently some systems to be constructed pricing. And so a full design system that's being priced. That image disappeared, Matt. And so our price here at $45 million is based on these very recent estimates versus the estimators' high-level pricing. Next.
[Matt Rice]: Sorry, Martine, I'm just going to clarify. And that's why I pulled this down. And I realized I was on mute. So I was explaining it. And then you guys couldn't hear me. But I think this is.
[Martine Dion]: OK.
[Matt Rice]: I think this will help just clarify this also for folks that are viewing it afterwards at home. So let me put this back up. And it looks like our notes down below also need to get tweaked. So we'll do that for the last one. Or when we post this up.
[Martine Dion]: OK, so this is it. So when we look at PV1, which is only 20% net zero and about 1 megawatt overall, no battery storage included, the estimated cost of that, about $3 million, the estimated annual savings. And there's a lot of notes below because we were putting some of our estimates. The option one, the PV1, owned as a 8.7 and about nine-year payback. The option two, which is 100% power purchase agreement, to which we have reduced the cost from the PSR estimate because the PPA would provide for the canopy structure, that has about a 14-year payback.
And then the PV3, which is where the City of Medford would fully own the solar PV system, parking, roof and battery storage. $45 million. This, as you can see here, it brings a lot of revenues. It's a high number because the different revenues from the utility on the battery, peak load management, peak savings, just energy savings overall, and then the state smart programs, some of the state incentives, all accumulate to this estimate. However, it's still quite high as a cost upfront, and it's got a payback that doesn't make the life cycle of the system. Most PV systems are 20 to 25 years. The life cycle is 20 to 25 years. Now, that said, many last longer.
Some of their parts, the panels last, but the inverters, some of the components need to be replaced, and that's all built into what we're going to see in the next slide soon. The one thing I want to mention is these yearly savings would bring some you know, cash flow savings, the debt savings. And some communities do calculate that and sort of look at how much that would impact the payback. So that's why I put that there. This is not something that we do, but that would need to be done at the city level.
And so we just wanted to have this there for you to understand that there could be some more reduction. That said, my understanding is that the senior Medford has a really good, like I said earlier, really good collaboration with some PPAs. So next we're going to see the life cycle, the 20-year life cycle. So the PV1, over 20 years, saves It's a small, you know, it's a small, I shouldn't say small, but it's a smaller system. And it brings, you know, some considerable annual savings. And you can see here some of the estimates for the incentives. So it has a, it has a saving over 20 year, estimated at $2 million, whereas The PPA with zero, but not zero, but a bit of cost upfront, but zero, you know, some of the estimated financial benefits are much lower, also comes in at, you know, I would say cost neutral, you know, a bit of savings there.
The one thing to note for the estimated 20-year annual savings or revenues for the PPAs, what we learned this week is that our original estimate was much lower. We learned this week that some of the contractual agreements of recent PPAs are really compelling. in terms of providing you for a much lower fixed utility rate for 20 years than your current utility costs, but also than what we've seen in the past. So the 20-year savings are pretty compelling compared to what we've seen in the past. And then the PV3, the fully owned system, as you will see here, even with all of the estimated savings, which is a lot, it doesn't recuperate the full amount of the initial cost invested. And again, we've seen other community to do their cash flow analysis and that helped, but there's a 21 million gap here that is quite a challenge to catch up upon.
So this is where we are now. I believe that's the next one is just takeaways, Matt. Next slide.
[Matt Rice]: Yeah, let's go forward and then I want to come back and just, cause I want to make sure that we touch on the asterisks that are here, Martine. I know you explained the one on the right hand side in terms of the cashflow debt savings, but I want to make sure that we cover these as well.
[Martine Dion]: And I'm sure, yeah. And I'm sure people will have questions about a lot of the numbers here. So, so, so PV1 obviously, you know, make, you know, is, is feasible, affordable to own. What we have here as a takeaway is that I think it's important to consider that if you only do the roof, that the electrical infrastructure is sized for PV readiness for future expansion because of the process to go through with the utility. If there would be more upgrades in the future, you'd probably have to have more upgrades to the infrastructure and have to go through the utility process. So what we're recommending for PV1 here is that the whole infrastructure is built for 100% NZE. So you have that flexibility and you don't have to go back through the utility process. PV2, obviously, you do not have, you have a small upfront cost, a little more than PV1, but then you get 100% net zero through a PPA agreement.
That cost that we have, that $4 million upfront cost for PV2, includes everything that has to do with the underground site infrastructure conduits and components that would be needed for the parking canopy. And I know there are options to buy or own following the 20-year contract. And then PV3, most expensive, it's got considerable annual revenues. But again, it doesn't have a good payback. And then it means PV3, you own the system, so you have to maintain and manage all the utility net metering in the peak, the battery storage management, energy management, et cetera.
That's it, Matt.
[Matt Rice]: Okay so I see there's a couple hands up and I think it's a great point to stop and have a discussion. I do want to circle back to this if everyone can see my cursor the asterisk that's on this number which is the estimated installation costs associated with PV2 because well it's not up here I think what this asterisk stands for is this is where Martine and Matt were haggling on to like what the correct number should be in terms of this particular scope that's represented in the 4.3 million dollars. And Martine did note it on the last slide, is it's really the infrastructure that would have to get added to the baseline scope to enable the ground-mounted PV canopies to get connected back to the main electric room and additional space allocations and conduit to accept the additional electrical equipment that would be in the main electric room, not the equipment itself, but really the space considerations. So I think the only thing we can tell you with a complete level of certainty right now is that we don't know exactly what that number is. I'm of the personal mind that it is probably less than $4.3 million. I think Martine is thinking it might want to be a little bit more than $4.3 million. But we honestly don't have the ability to tell you exactly what it is right now.
It will be something that we can estimate once we get to the end of the schematic design phase when we're running the rest of the estimates and give a much harder number. And then that's when the bet between Martine and I will be won. But I want people to understand that this is a little bit of an unknowable at the moment. and understand that we could caveat the vote to approve it given that we may not want to be looking to add $4.3 million worth of initial capital cost to the overall project by making that vote going forward. I wanted to point out that nuance and happy to talk about that a little bit further if we go.
I did not see who got up their hand first between Paul and Austin.
[Member Paul Ruseau]: It was Austin.
[Andre Leroux]: Um, I've got a few questions, but maybe I'll just run on what you just said. Is that cost 4.3 directly related to. The canopy project. Or is it stuff that's additional because if it's directly related to the canopy project, that cost is 0.
[Martine Dion]: No, the canopy is out, but the PPA stops their canopy support at the canopy foundation. The project has to bring conduits from the electric infrastructure all the way to the parking lot. And we also need to have certain, like Matt said, there's certain like sizing of electrical rooms and that type of stuff that all have to be part of the, it's part of the owner's cost. And then the structure itself, which was 28 million. So there's 23, 24 million that got reduced from that 28 million. That is the canopy. That was the canopy.
[Andre Leroux]: I guess I would just say, I think, I mean, Everything's negotiable, right? That I, in my personal and professional experience, I have signed PPAs where we, as the owner, have said we will take it all the way to the electrical room, right? So I think that that is something that can be considered. I wouldn't I would view that as hard and fast to the commitment.
[Martine Dion]: I think that's a good point that, Matt, we could add as an end note. It's a good point. Everything's negotiable. So it could be negotiated. And that's why we have it in italic there. I know it's a small nuance. I think there's more to be provided with the schematic design estimate in terms of what that would be if it was our cost, and then maybe that would be negotiated as part of the PPA.
[Andre Leroux]: My second question, and it's not something that we can necessarily see here, but I'm just wondering if we can run some of these analyses and some of these savings estimates with some of the electricity rates and some of the other items that Alicia has given to you all. Because it sounds like the cost, the electrical tariff that the city would be subject to for this building is maybe a lot lower than some of the modeling here would indicate. I just want to see, are we comparing Are we conducting like a pure apples to apples comparison?
[Martine Dion]: So, yeah, if you look at the 1st note. Right now, your rate right now, your current rate with the utility is 22 cents a kilowatt hour. And that's what we were given by Brenda when from the conversation with power options and select. They said that the rates, they gave us a very much lower rate, but they said that was just for the supply, not the peak. So we made a reduction within the blended rate. So their reduction is not affecting the demand charges. It's only affecting the portion of the bill that's the charge per kilowatt hour.
[Director Alicia Hunt]: Martine, can I just, we should just follow up and make sure, I'm curious, I'm gonna check in with Brenda where the 20, if the 22 cents was supply plus distribution, like the all in, 15 cents.
[Martine Dion]: 15 cents is what I got from the discussion with Select, their comment about what their reduction was. And then I made a conservative, because they said it ends up in the upper teens. And so I made an assumption at 15 cents for the blended rate, but we can certainly follow up maybe, you know, Alicia and Austin and look at your rates and the cap, you know, which, you know, is it 12, 13, 15, 10, you know, we can adjust that for sure.
[Director Alicia Hunt]: And I just like to be careful because sometimes when we're talking with electric suppliers, they're talking about the supply rate versus the all in. And so I want to check my numbers.
[Martine Dion]: And that's what he mentioned. The select representative did mention that. And it doesn't include the demand charges. And demand charges are often about 30% to 50% of your bill. So that's why I was a bit conservative there.
[Andre Leroux]: And I think those demand charges are going to be a pretty healthy sum.
[Martine Dion]: Yeah, they already are. And remember, we have a 3% cost escalation that's in there over 20 years. So we can certainly dive back, dive into that, Matt. Maybe that's a separate, we can follow up, Alicia, maybe through emails and then set a separate meeting. Would that make sense?
[Director Alicia Hunt]: Yeah, well, we'll coordinate with Sam and it might be useful to pull some current electric bills to look at these things.
[Member Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, I'll go ahead. Um, so the micro micro grid means we could use this facility as an emergency shelter for the city, correct?
[Martine Dion]: Nope.
[Member Paul Ruseau]: Nope. Okay. What is the micro grid then?
[Martine Dion]: The micro grid is really the, the sort of the, the, the, the, the electronic brain of the PV system and the battery storage to manage how You take utility and you give to utility.
[Member Paul Ruseau]: Got it. I understand. Sorry. So for PV2 and PV3, they both include batteries and microgrid or no?
[Martine Dion]: So PV3, yes. PV2 may or may not, depending on the PPA.
[Member Paul Ruseau]: I guess my question, though, is how can we compare those two if that line doesn't include batteries for PV2, but PV3 does? I mean, certain batteries are very expensive.
[Martine Dion]: They are. So the battery in PV3 is $5 million and the battery brings you a big chunk of that 23 million, there's the battery savings in there, right? But that 23 million with the battery doesn't get you to your 45 anyway. The PPA, will the PPA, it's really, it's a reduction on your utility costs. It's a different financial component, right? It's a different financial sort of setup for the savings. They make their own, you know, pro forma in terms of what their financials are with all the benefits that they get from the incentives and selling the RECs, for example, or not if you own the RECs. But in the end, for the PPA, whether you have a battery or not, it's not going to change that savings, that utility fixed rate that they will give you. What they told us this week is that they've seen, and they're gonna definitely consider the battery, but it seems that sometimes the financials and some of the incentive programs are not panning out to be what they looked like they were gonna be on their end.
[Member Paul Ruseau]: Okay. And I guess I have one more question about, so what happens I mean, I don't know if these companies are 20 years old, but what happens if 15 years from now they go belly up?
[Martine Dion]: That is a really good question. We have not seen that, Matt, happen. I mean... Would you like me to speak to that a little?
[Director Alicia Hunt]: Absolutely, go on. I've actually seen, there was one of the solar companies that we looked very closely at, Contracting within 2012 went out of business in 2013, and I really realized we had dodged a bullet there because there were buildings left with half installed solar arrays at that point. But we had not contracted for better or worse. Usually what we've been doing in our contracts is that we write in stuff, right? So when a It's much easier if you've bought it, but if it's a PPA, there are stuff about what happens when a company goes bankrupt, what happens with who buys it out, and who built these things get taken over, like a company will get taken over. And there is also the potential for, if it's a PPA, for the ownership of that to get sold from the company that originally installed it. to a different company. That's actually what happened with DPW. We've seen literally no change because of that, because they contracted with the original company to do the ongoing maintenance and operations of it. But all of a sudden, because we actually pay them for electricity rather than paying the utility company, And all of a sudden these invoices were coming from a company nobody had ever heard of, because I got notice about the changing company and DPW got the bills.
So, so it, it happens, but that's why we have really good. Lawyers who look at solar contracts and I will say it's one of the expenses my office has been carrying is these high bills for these high really, really good lawyers, but they'll look at them very carefully. So that is a thing. And the other piece, just to sort of put a little bit more color on the battery thing, it's sort of like, what is the end goal of having the battery? And one of the things, so I've actually talked to two different agencies about batteries this week. And what was really interesting is that one of them was pretty gung-ho about like, I have investors who would pay to like, finance having a battery at your building so that we could operate it and get revenue off of it. And you could also see some savings through your electric bill. And then the company that does the PPAs that we were meeting with that is the company that we are doing PPAs with as a city right now. They basically said that all the stuff around solar and PPAs, those are like long term, right? Smart program, you get in the smart program, 20 years, you know what your payments are, you know what your incentives are. And the state understands that. But the battery programs right now are only five-year programs. So there's some really great incentives to have a battery on your system right now for the next five years. And we don't know what's going to happen to those incentive programs in five years. And that's one of the issues that they're sort of pushing back to the state is if you really want people to make these investments in things that are 10 and 20 year products, we need to know what the financing structure and symptom structure is going to be for 20 years, not five years.
[Martine Dion]: And Alicia, to your point about the five years, thank you for bringing that back. Because I remember they mentioned that the system here that we're talking about wouldn't be installed in five years. So that whole program may be different in five years pending. Because if they only have a program that goes for five years, you know, they'll learn in the next five years what's happening with those batteries and they may modify it, hopefully to the best, but there's a big risk there.
[Director Alicia Hunt]: Right. So that's part of like this idea of not shutting off these opportunities, but also not committing to them right now, because it may be that in three years, the state has figured this out. And there is a 20 year incentive program for batteries. And all of a sudden, it makes complete financial sense. And we can get a PPA, no upfront costs to us. that include battery storage. But some of it is how are we going to use the battery? Is it, I'll be a little technical here, but is it for the peak shaving so we lower our demand costs? Is it to play into the battery systems where we discharge the battery every day as part of the peak load shaving? That's what we do with our DPW battery right now. But we don't know if that peak load shaving program will be there in three or four years, let alone 10 years. So that's part of it. And I did just sort of, I thought I could maybe also address what Austin was asking about the structure and the cost, the dollars you have with the PPA. Because part of it, if I understand you correctly, is literally that our building has a dollar per square foot attached to every square foot. And you need a bigger electrical room if you have a bigger solar array. And so therefore, that is part of your literal architecture building per square foot that may, once you do real estimating, making an electrical room bigger might actually be a different cost than making a classroom big, adding another classroom. Because it's a more, right, even if it was literally the same square footage. So that's one piece of it. The other piece that we heard from the company that we met with is around the carports, is that yes, they do everything. But when a project is new construction like this, and the ground is getting torn up, and we are putting in a new parking lot, and we are putting in new underground infrastructure, it makes, they would want to have us put in the stuff that's underground as part of our general contract or doing that work. And so we would then carry the cost of it because they would not, it would be kind of silly for us to do everything, install our parking lot, and then have them come back separately after the GC leaves and do the underground work for the, uh, the structures, right? Whereas if we're not doing the arrays, then we wouldn't be putting that stuff underground. So that's kind of where there's this, it doesn't quite make sense. It's different because it's new construction than if it was a retrofit situation.
[Member Paul Ruseau]: Very true. So I know that the thing we just decided on a minute ago, the other topic, I mean, as a school committee member, I can say like number one isn't an option. Like we want net zero and 20% means where are we going to get the other 80% to get to net zero? We're not. So, I mean, I don't, I'm not speaking for this group, but like, I certainly wouldn't accept this, the number one, but number two and number three, Well, number three is wildly expensive up front. What's in the original numbers that everybody's talking about out in the public? Is that the 59 million?
[Unidentified]: Yes.
[Member Paul Ruseau]: So this is already a reduction of 14 million from the number everybody's talking about.
[Matt Rice]: No, no. No, sorry. I think, Martine, the baseline assumption of what the PSR project scope covered for photovoltaics is not listed here as a baseline, but the baseline was assuming essentially the PV1 scope purchased through a power purchase agreement, right? So we had a solar-ready roof The panels that would be putting on the roof, they had no capital cost built in there. We were starting versus the mechanical system where we had a very robust baseline assumption, what we cooked in. For photovoltaic panels, we were having actually the minimal initial cost. Anything that we're looking at here will be additive to the project costs that are out there right now.
[izVdDtzaCdw_SPEAKER_18]: I guess, Paul, I don't know that you're completely ruling out future PV, right? Because the building has to be designed for 100% net zero readiness, right? Which to me says electrical infrastructure, the electrical room, your switchgear is sized appropriately, things like that, such that you could achieve net zero in the future. Is that a correct assumption?
[Member Paul Ruseau]: I mean, that's not my assumption. My assumption is we open the door and it's net zero, not we open the door and it's someday we could be net zero. Because if we are doing 20%, I'm assuming this building in the winter, the electric bills are going to make our current electric bills look lovely and a nice memory. I mean, I heat my home with heat pumps, and I know they're not the same, but it is expensive. So That's why the 20% scares me is because this is Medford. We never have enough money. So I don't know where we think we're going to get a whole lot more for electric bills. And the answer is going to be, we're just going to take it out of teachers and kids. And I don't know about you all, but I don't want to do this project for all these years to then start cutting teachers for our kids.
[Member Jessica Parks]: And just to jump in, the goal is strive to achieve net zero, but it's also focusing on the, with a focus on the long-term operating costs of the building. And so that's that part and being PV ready doesn't help us focus on that as well.
[Andre Leroux]: That's much more. You said being ready doesn't doesn't help with long term. I just didn't hear what you said.
[Member Jessica Parks]: Uh, the other part of the goal is, um. Strive to achieve net 0, but with a focus on long term operating costs. and minimizing those costs from basically day one. PV ready doesn't necessarily do that. It just allows us to, at some point, as Paul said, reduce our operating costs in the future when we can get the money to do so. an eligible cost, where does it fall in terms of reimbursement? I know that it's not necessarily what's going to get us an added percentage because the specialized stretch code basically says that we just have to be PV ready. But can it be?
[Martine Dion]: Just to be clear, the stretch code PV ready is not 100% PV ready. The stretch code PV ready would be about that 20%. Right.
[Member Jessica Parks]: Right.
[Martine Dion]: I know. So there's that. The reimbursement from MSBA does not uh, is relating to compliance with the specialized stretch code. And because we're going to an all electric pathway, then as you said, Jessica, we don't have to install the PV. Right. And so the MSBA, you know, doesn't, it doesn't impact the PV system will not impact the MSBA reimbursement positively or negatively.
[Matt Rice]: Sunny, did you want to chime in?
[Suni Dillard]: I happy to once everyone has finished this.
[Matt Rice]: Is it on this topic or different?
[Suni Dillard]: It's not no, no, it's on this topic. I just know that there's a decent back and forth already. Okay. It's on this topic, and I have more thoughts on the back and forth, but I'm also curious about the pool and if that does go toward heating with gas. My assumption is that we will need to put solar on the roof.
[Martine Dion]: Yes.
[Suni Dillard]: Does this 20% cover that? Good question.
[Martine Dion]: We will address that, Sonny, within the pool LCCA when we're going to present it. It's probably close.
[Suni Dillard]: So, I mean, based on that, I think we have to go with at least one, right? One plus something, right? Because if the option is to use gas to heat the pool, we have to do this for specialized search energy code, because otherwise then we would forfeit our incentive points. So based on we have to do that, that has to be included in our cost, right?
[Andre Leroux]: You're saying one of them. The option is not on the option is one of them. No.
[Suni Dillard]: No, what I'm saying is that you can't choose just option two because a PPA doesn't count for the specialized stretch energy code. You have to own the system, which means that in order to include the cost of this, if we were to go gas on the pool, you would need to own 20% of the solar. So that just baseline, we have to add $3.5 million, right?
[Martine Dion]: So, Sandy, what you're saying is that that 3.2, $3.2 million needs to be in the basis of design if we select the fossil fuel heating of the pool hot water.
[Suni Dillard]: You tell me. That's my assumption. If I were designing it, I would say yes.
[Director Alicia Hunt]: Right. I don't want to look into that. I've never heard that you had to own it, only that the solar had to be on the building.
[Member Jessica Parks]: It does have to be owned. It does have to be owned to meet specialized stretch code. But I think that question, which is one that was brought up at the last meeting, is whether or not the pool being gas basically negates us meeting this. in a sense, requires us to then go do a few.
[Martine Dion]: So let me clarify. Let me clarify. In terms of MSBA, MSBA is not looking at the pool. So.
[Suni Dillard]: No, that makes sense. But we got to make code. MSBA is like tertiary to that.
[Martine Dion]: Well, no, but because there is the reimbursement of MSBA that was brought up at the last meeting. Does the pool affect the reimbursement? Oh, I see where you're going with this.
[Suni Dillard]: That said, but do the incentives for mass save get negated?
[Martine Dion]: Well, let's do them separately. So the MSBA incentive focuses on the building without the pool. and that building will be specialized code compliant, right? So that's fine. Then the energy, stretch energy code, specialized stretch energy code, we just talked about it. We'd have to put the PV if we go natural gas. The incentives have provided us with, when we've met with them twice, And they told us that the pool, because again, it's not part of the MSBA project, but it is on the site, right? And they told us it would be exempted. It wouldn't affect the whole pool building. But that said, I'm trying to get that, to go back and get the writing of that. okay yeah to make sure that yeah this is like i mean yeah you know i want to re relook at the mo you can and make sure that it's in writing somewhere that they won't come up at the end and say well yeah yeah no that's great thanks everything so yeah so where it's a really good question okay option martin in that in that vein you don't
[Andre Leroux]: You don't have to do 100% cash ownership or 100% PPA, right? You can pick and choose, right? So you could, if you find yourself in a situation where you have to own a portion of it, well then own the cheaper portion, which is the roof, and then finance the more expensive portion, which is the carport.
[Martine Dion]: Well, yeah, or yeah, the roof portion, that's equivalent to the pool fossil fuel. That's all you have to own.
[Andre Leroux]: Or, yeah, whatever it is, right? Which I think is probably less than 2 megawatt, because the 2 megawatt is the entire roof, right? Which assumes a high balance of structure.
[Martine Dion]: It's kind of, it's kind of, it's kind of challenging. I think, you know, it would be much easier if you could just clean, you know, be clean with a PPA and have just the whole, You know, the whole site under PPA versus having to own a piece of it.
[Andre Leroux]: I don't disagree with you. I think you could, you know, you could sign the same O&M contract with whoever is doing the O&M on the PPA portion to have them just do the marginal.
[Martine Dion]: True.
[Andre Leroux]: Cost of.
[Martine Dion]: Yeah.
[Andre Leroux]: Yeah.
[Martine Dion]: Absolutely true. Absolutely true.
[Andre Leroux]: You're paying sort of what you have to pay for and being able to take advantage of some of the financing for what you can't or what you don't want to.
[Martine Dion]: Right. And the one thing I want to make clear as well is the pool heating, again, I just want to make that clear. The pool heating, it's only for the pool water. natural gas would be only for the pool water. Like the space heating is air to water heat pump. So it's only that pool water, but it's still a considerable amount of energy.
[Matt Rice]: So I just want to do a quick time check here in terms of overall. So we're at 630. We do have some other topics to get through, and there is at least another one that we are looking to try to get recommendations, go for recommendation vote. So I'm wondering if we can at least try on a vote here just to suggest the path forward on the PV as a recommendation, even if there are caveats that folks want to add into the PV 1, 2, or 3 options.
[Suni Dillard]: make a recommendation to go PV1 with PV3 as an alternate. I think, though I respect the desire for this project to be Net Zero Energy, and as a designer, I would advocate for that 100%, but I think I do feel concerned about the upfront costs of this. Um, even though the operating costs are also a big issue, I think. I think this needs to be studied more to really understand, like, can it be. 20, maybe not 100. I mean, honestly, I think, like. I personally believe that not every building should be an island and operate in on its own. I think that the city needs to figure out how to manage this as a collective as opposed to every building kind of doing its own thing. So I know that's really hard, but we have to have a plan.
[Director Alicia Hunt]: We can have some offline conversations about that because It's, yeah.
[Suni Dillard]: It's not like, it's not, it's not a diss on the city of Medford. I think like, like we need the utility companies to do better. Like, like we can't just expect the taxpayers to just like pay for all of it on these huge projects all the time. I think I'm a little concerned about that. I do want to keep PV3 in as an option, because if we can afford it, and that is something we can do, I think we should absolutely go for it.
[Martine Dion]: I just want to make a little something very clear that if you go with PV1, we mentioned how there's going to be a huge process going through with the utility. It's much better to do it once for 100 percent net zero to prepare for the future. Maybe when we talk about PV1, we make sure that 100% net zero readiness is in the electrical infrastructure. So that, because if in five years, as I said earlier, in five years, if you decide to add 20% or 60% or whatever, you'd have to redo the whole infrastructure, which is very expensive. So this has been made clear by our electrical engineer. It's better to do it once, because this process is going to take two years with the utility to go through. So I just wanted to bring that up that with PV1, we should make sure we tag on the 100% readiness.
[Andre Leroux]: I think you can tell that you can tell ISO New England and National Grid to study whatever you want them to study, right? Like the whole.
[Martine Dion]: Well, they need load letter. to go to start the process, we're gonna need to provide for some design level.
[Andre Leroux]: So that's why I'm... I mean, yes, but you're also about to become the biggest payer in the county, quite frankly. So I don't think that that's... It doesn't matter to them.
[Martine Dion]: Could we just give them the 100% load letter then? That's what I was suggesting that you consider so that that's going through and you get what you get the process to address that.
[Andre Leroux]: Yeah, I think the conditions, you know, the environment for battery energy storage is so wildly changing on like a yearly basis, like even like every six months, that by the time, I mean, I think Alicia said earlier, like by the time this building is getting around to being constructed in several years, Um, you know, we could be in a very different environment. So I think that. Yes, enabling enabling add ons later. I think is important, but I, I guess I would tend to agree. With sunny that from from the cost perspective, like, being. Being mindful of that, I mean, that's been a that's been a through line for this entire effort. Um, that that sort of looking at that now, and I don't think that that precludes you from from maybe making a different decision later.
Yeah, go ahead.
[Suni Dillard]: Could we change it instead of it being like 20% like. We know that it's not fully designed, right? Like can can we say that we want to maximize PV on the roof as much as possible and just like, make sure that that's the thing in there while also planning for 100% Um. Just for that load letter and all of that. I mean, who knows? Maybe maybe the roofs will change and you'll be able to get. 60% on, I know that's not totally feasible, but I mean, is that an option?
[Martine Dion]: That's what I showed at the beginning. The roof has a potential between high canopies and low ballasted to get to close to 50%. So that's our early assessment. So there's, so I think if I get this right, Sunny, you're suggesting that PV1 becomes 50%.
[Suni Dillard]: I'm just saying not put a percentage on it. I want to say maximize the roof area. We want to be able to have the most cost effective system and maximize that as much as possible because we know that even though I don't believe every building should be an island, it does have to participate and be part of the conversation. I think that that's really important.
[Martine Dion]: We're going to have to price it though, right, Matt and SD? So we'd have to provide for a description of a system.
[Matt Rice]: Yeah, but I mean, I think it's maximizing the low ballasted roof panels that we can get on the roof.
[Martine Dion]: I think if we do want to- That's what's showing there. That's what 20% is. If you want 50%, you need to have high canopies on the roof with a bit of low ballasted over the gym and pool.
[Andre Leroux]: It's not actually two megawatts, it's more like 500 kilowatts.
[Director Alicia Hunt]: So I want to put forward some stuff. One is what I don't know that everybody is aware, that I actually firmly believe we should go with 2 in the PPA. And I want to be clear that we and I personally with SAM manage solar arrays for the city on multiple buildings, both PPAs and rooftop. and that we're contracted for additional ones as our roofs are becoming ready for solar, because they needed new roofs, we're adding additional arrays. The reasoning here is a couple of things. One is, I think we need to prep the building for 100% net zero electricity, right? We need the right size electrical rooms, we need the right electrical infrastructure installed, and we need National Grid prepared for it. But two, a lot of the incentive monies that exist right now are with the ITC, the tax credits, and those are still going to exist. And we cannot take them anymore as a municipality. There was a short window where we could take them. We're going to get them on the Andrews School. It's I would love to think that there'll be new administration and we'll be able to get them again in 2030 2032, but they're gone as of.
anything now we're going to contract for. But the solar companies still can. So they can do it literally the same project for 30% cheaper than we can do it. Granted, they have to pay off their, you know, their investors and everything. But they have that savings back from the government that we don't get. And I think that's a huge piece of what makes it more cost effective for them. That's a piece of why I think We should do it. We should plan for the canopies. This is also for the last 15 years been the largest opportunity the city has had to put solar on any of our buildings. And the reason we haven't done it is the state of the roofs at the high school. I will say that I am extremely nervous about the gym roof and the pool roof without something being done structurally there. We need a structural engineer to tell us we can put solar on those roofs. Because even when we've been pricing it before, we always exempted those two spaces because of our concerns around the structure there. So I think that getting doing a PPA is the most likely way that we can get a good cost. I think we can work with the PPA installer from the get go without signing any commitments. because of our relationships with power options and with select. So I do think we can make it move forward that way because of this, but we won't know the pricing. We won't know it for years because they can't future price something at a good rate because they don't know what all their incentives will be. by the time they're installing, they'll have to come on after the fact and do it. So those are kind of some of my concerns, and I think we need to go for as much solar on this site as we possibly can.
[Matt Rice]: So, let me just jump in and say, Alicia, that we are planning on reinforcing the roof structure about for both the pool and the gymnasium. There's a lot of other issues with the pool roof and the gym roof that need to get addressed, but we're adding additional loads regardless. And so to be able to accommodate the ballasted load of panels going on those roofs is just something that has already been accounted for. So. We will have that as an option available to us as we're going and all of Martine's members have assumed that in terms of our available area. I also just want to, going back to time and then I'll let us keep going. I think what it makes sense is to not try to squeeze in additional topics after this one at this point. The other vote that we were looking for is on mass timber. I just don't think we're going to have enough time to have a good substantive discussion, so I'd like to actually use the remainder of our time here to close out and try to wrap up. But I do want to make sure that we get to a point of running through a vote on the photovoltaic scope so that we can bring that recommendation. Then we'll schedule another advisory team meeting a little bit later where we can handle mass timber. It's less impactful in terms of our design and estimating process as we go.
So, sorry, that was a little bit of an interlude there.
[Director Alicia Hunt]: Can we clarify what Suni just said about the net zero and selling the RECs? It's actually dramatically cheaper that we buy class one RECs off the market for the building. That's what we did for the library. We bought 10 years of class one RECs up front as part of the construction project, and then participated in the SMART program because the SMART program is so lucrative. So actually, we hadn't mentioned that in this at all, but I had discussed that with the consultants yesterday.
[Suni Dillard]: That's just an added cost though, so.
[Kenneth Lord]: Yes, a couple of questions. One, can you, Matt, clarify as a schedule of decisions, what our requirements are at this stage for making a decision to be able to keep this project on task, on track with the MSP schedule. Do we need to make a decision now? Or can we, as some people say, have been asking, continue to search this more? Or we're really up against, I think I know the answer is that we need a decision now.
[Martine Dion]: Yep.
[Kenneth Lord]: Yeah. And in that case, if we need a decision now, I have to agree with Alicia. Option two would be my recommendation. It meets the school committee's goal. It is reasonably cost of the three and gets us as far as possible as we can with solar. But that's just my point of view.
[Matt Rice]: Tony, do you want to respond to that one? And then I can let Jessica jump in.
[Suni Dillard]: Yeah, no, I think that's great Alicia. I just want to, if that's the plan, we should make sure that that's also included in the cost. If the goal is to call this project net zero energy, we have to know that in order to do that through a PPA, you need to buy SREX. I just want people to know that.
[Director Alicia Hunt]: Yeah. And so I just put it in the chat. I'd like to ask the consultants to like for dollars as we're doing these things to like lay that out and where those are and what's participating. I think the PV3 numbers here might actually have us participating in the SMART program, for example.
[Martine Dion]: It is there. If you look, there's an estimated the OER SMART incentives. That's $800,000 and that was confirmed through our solar design associate consultant. And then everything else of the peak, the savings on the electricity and the peak, that's in the 23 million. But what we don't have there is the 3 cents. The $0.03 is going to be fairly small, as you mentioned, Alessia.
[Director Alicia Hunt]: The $0.03 is what the cost of if we bought the class one. And to be clear, for those of you who are in the technical, the class one REX is what we're talking about. That's what we're looking at.
[Martine Dion]: It's about a hundred, you know, I just did a quick math here. Cause I know the 6 million kilowatt hour, but it's, it's about, is it three? It's 3 cents per kilowatt hour, right?
[Director Alicia Hunt]: I have no idea right now.
[Martine Dion]: Oh, okay. So we should, we should, I'm not going to give any numbers. We should double check, but they told us three, they told us 3 cents. So, um, it's usually per kilowatt hour. So. But I'm not going to give a number on that. It's megawatt hour.
[Andre Leroux]: Yeah. Yeah. REC is the attributes of one megawatt hour.
[Martine Dion]: But is it, but the REC is one megawatt hour, but the cost of that one megawatt.
[Andre Leroux]: Correct. What cost per megawatt?
[Martine Dion]: It's 3 cents per megawatt.
[Andre Leroux]: Yeah. They're 38 bucks a REC right now. So 33.8 cents per kilowatt. If that's how you want to do it.
[Martine Dion]: Okay. Okay. If you want to continue that and I'll do, you said 38 cents per kilowatt.
[Andre Leroux]: 38.25 on SREC trade presently per megawatt, which equates to 3.8 cents per kilowatt hour of generation.
[Martine Dion]: Okay. Thank you.
[Matt Rice]: Jessica, you want to go ahead?
[Member Jessica Parks]: So. Well, it seems like PB2 is. The direction we're going, we just need to confirm the. Either a, we say that we are not going with gas for the pool or we need to confirm that we can go with gas. or the pool and still do a PPA per the specialized stretch code, because my interpretation of it is that we cannot. So I just want to make sure that we have that understanding. And then, you know, just looking at it from a maintenance perspective, I think, you know, One less thing to maintain over time also speaks to me as a benefit from PV2.
Obviously, there are pluses and minuses, but there is a definite benefit to not having to maintain the panels and everything else that goes along with it.
[Matt Rice]: So, Jesse, I'm not sure if you saw my wildly uninformed AI probe that I dropped into the chat, but it did feel that – or did indicate that we could do solar panels with a PPA on the pool roof to help compensate or address the code requirement for the fossil fuel burning under the specialized opt-in stretch code. And I believe that Alicia and Sam are going to look into that in a little bit more detail so that we're not just relying on AI for a fairly important decision. But their general sense was that we could also do it through a PPA. So, I'm wondering also if we can do a recommendation for PB2 with that caveat qualification that we need to confirm sort of the code compliance paths for the fossil fuel burning offset, if that made sense.
[Kimberly Talbot]: Sorry, can I ask an architect aesthetic question? If we are going for 100% NZE, are we talking about high canopy over the roof? And is everyone good with that aesthetic pursuit?
[Martine Dion]: It would have high canopy over the roof. Over the whole roof? Over a large, large portion of.
[Kenneth Lord]: On PV2, I thought that was parking lot canopy structure.
[Suni Dillard]: Matt, did you have a diagram you could go back to?
[Kimberly Talbot]: Yeah, I think that would be helpful. I just want to sway us back over to... Good point. I can't follow everything you all are talking about, but I want to be clear about what this is going to look like at the end of the day. And if it's high canopy, does a PPA provide the structure for said high canopy? Established, they'll do the parking canopy. But it seems to me that's a bigger endeavor. I don't know.
[Suni Dillard]: Helen, are you inferring that you might need to add more to that asterisk number?
[Kimberly Talbot]: I'm just asking. And I want to be clear that everyone understands that the high canopy would be over that bar, the Western bar. That's what you're pointing at, right? OK.
[Martine Dion]: Right, and it's a very good point. I think we, my understanding was that yes, but I do think we would need to circle back with power options and clarify that part. So PV2 can, to be clear, PV2 is 100% PPA. The cost in PV2 was only of the parking canopy, because that was the, at the time, that was the understanding. But when we're discussing and talking about a PPA, 100% PPA, it has to include the roof, and any PPA will optimize the PV that they can put on the site. So they would consider both the roof and the parking as part of the PPA.
[Kenneth Lord]: Yeah I'm just confused again. On the screen it says PV2 solar PV parking canopy structure. You're saying that option has to have roof as well?
[Martine Dion]: Yes, the reason it's named that is because that's the name that was in the PSR estimate. Because the PSR estimate had priced the PV parking canopy structure and the rest of the system was by the PPA. So the rest of the 100% solar PV system panels, all the panels on the roof and the parking canopy was by the PPA.
[Matt Rice]: We'll rename it, Ken, if that's a fair point, just to make sure it's clear and represents sort of the intent of the scope in a concise manner.
[Kimberly Talbot]: And I think Jessica just put in the comment something along the same vein of the high canopy being needed. We did just ratify a decision to go with full air to water, which we know has more equipment on the roof. So presumably it's some combination of a ballasted system where it's not indicated in the diagram and plus some high canopy. But of course, we probably don't know exactly yet.
[Martine Dion]: So in our diagram, we just had put hybrid high and low. Okay. Okay. And the high on the bar, like you said, Ellen, and the low more in the horizontal.
[Kimberly Talbot]: To the east.
[Martine Dion]: To the east.
[Kimberly Talbot]: The east-west.
[Martine Dion]: Yeah, OK. But to Jessica's point, between the CTE program and the air-to-water heat bump, there is going to be a lot of equipment, which is why we would have to go to a mixture of high canopy and low ballasted. And we found out that even with a hybrid on our other project, we're finding out that large schools such as this one end up even with a hybrid geothermal and air to water, between that and the ventilation and everything else, it's still a lot of HVAC on the roof.
And therefore, that's why we looked at the combined high canopy and low canopy and the low ballasted on the roof.
[Matt Rice]: I just want to bring us back with six minutes here. So I think technically for following the order of motions and things, I think, Sonny, you had made an initial motion for PV1 and PV3. I don't know if you want to retract or modify or exactly how all that works, but.
[Suni Dillard]: I, you know, I, I, I'm grateful that Alicia's here to talk about how the city manages it because I think that's really helpful to understand. I'm not opposed to the PV2, but I think with this school committee goal of net zero energy, it's important to then also include purchasing those SRECs in this. So I think. If I were to amend any of that it would honestly I'd still like to see us own some because I know that that like financially works out better but if I understand why it's better on a municipal level sometimes to do PPA. Anyway so I think PV2 is fine however I think it should also include the SREX. I don't know for how long maybe it's the same as the library so that there's some Similarities there to manage that so that this community could call this net zero energy, but I think that that's important. Sounds like that's important.
[Martine Dion]: The asterisks will also contribute to lead.
[Suni Dillard]: That's right. That's a good point. And then I guess I'd also love that the city make a plan to help manage that after the 10 years is up to because we know this is a 60 year building so it'd be really helpful for them.
[Director Alicia Hunt]: Then it becomes a political budget issue. We need support of residents for that to happen.
[Matt Rice]: So I know we have, this is not nice and clear, like our mechanical system selection in terms of a topic. So I do feel with whatever we end up with, we probably want to put some caveats on it, some asterisks so that there's some associated bullet points either. additional follow up that needs to go forward with, but it would really be great to get a direction to proceed in. Even if we have homework to do back on our end and or the city is going to do a little bit on their end as well. And we're happy to wrap in those specific caveat points so that we can convey that back to the full building committee. Ken, you have a thought?
[Kenneth Lord]: How about a shot at this as a motion that we want to include a solar array system that gets us as close to 100% net zero as possible, including the necessary SRECs and that PV2 is the direction we want to go in, but that further design and I don't know what you want to say is necessary to make that happen over the next whatever. It's not a very clear motion but it seems like I'm a little uncomfortable myself at this point just saying PV2 is it and then trying to go to the building committee next week and explain this. That's just not going to work.
[Matt Rice]: I was going to nominate you Ken to present this to the building committee for us.
[Kenneth Lord]: I feel a root canal coming on.
[Matt Rice]: Elizabeth do you want to
[izVdDtzaCdw_SPEAKER_24]: Yeah, this is a super small point, but it would help me and it might help someone else. It would help if you uncouple the ownership of the system from the percentage of NZE in that column so that maybe the ownership is part of the system type or its own column. I was getting a little confused with between 100% PPA owned and 100% NZE. Those are separate concepts, right?
[Suni Dillard]: We can do that.
[izVdDtzaCdw_SPEAKER_24]: OK. Thanks.
[Suni Dillard]: Can I add just something to Ken's motion about confirming with the pool and adding that into the? Yes, the base bid as well, please.
[Kenneth Lord]: Yes, I know that is an excellent addition.
[Matt Rice]: So Ken is accepting your your suggestion. Revised motion.
[izVdDtzaCdw_SPEAKER_24]: I'll second the motion if that's needed.
[Matt Rice]: That would be great. So Helen, do you want to? Vote. Sorry, call the roll.
[Kimberly Talbot]: Unmuting and pulling back the list. OK. All right, Ken.
[izVdDtzaCdw_SPEAKER_24]: Yes.
[Kimberly Talbot]: Elizabeth.
[izVdDtzaCdw_SPEAKER_24]: Yes.
[Kimberly Talbot]: Libby. Yes. Paul.
[Unidentified]: Yes.
[Kimberly Talbot]: Alicia. Yes. Austin.
[Unidentified]: Yes.
[Kimberly Talbot]: Jessica. Yes. Did I get you Libby?
[Suni Dillard]: Yes, you did.
[Kimberly Talbot]: Yeah, when you speak, that's when the name pops up. That's what's going on here. This is not the way to do it. I apologize. And Sam?
[Laura Swan]: Yes.
[Kimberly Talbot]: And Sunny?
[Unidentified]: Yes.
[Kimberly Talbot]: Did I get everybody? If so, you guys have it.
[Matt Rice]: Sounds unanimous. Thank you everyone for the time. I know everyone sounded a little bit less than enthusiastic. I'm guessing that's more just because we are late into the evening and it's not because people are not excited about photovoltaic panels or PPAs or any of the above. But really do appreciate the detailed discussion. have a lot of confidence in the fact that this group got into all the necessary details there, and there's just an intense amount of detail and nuance to all this. And we will need to find some way of distilling it, I think, for the building committee so that we don't delve into a similar level of time or content. But that will be our charge for next Tuesday when we get to the full building committee. Again, thank you everybody for the time and we will pick up the rest of the topics at a meeting that will schedule in the not too distant future.
Hi, everyone.
[Unidentified]: Thank you.
|
total time: 2.42 minutes total words: 423 |
total time: 3.06 minutes total words: 348 |
||