Name: School Committee: Missituck Elementary Geothermal HVAC Selection - 2026-10-19
Uploaded: 2026-10-19
Duration: 2 h 22 min 29 s
Description: The MPS School Committee reviewed after-school programming and infrastructure updates, voting to select a geothermal HVAC system for Missituck Elementary and approving a Construction Manager at Risk model for Roberts Elementary. The committee also received a first-quarter financial update.

AI-generated summary. Written by gemini-3.6-flash from the transcript below, which is the record. It may be incomplete or wrong; it does not report votes. Every item links to the moment it began.

The MPS School Committee reviewed after-school programming and infrastructure updates, voting to select a geothermal HVAC system for Missituck Elementary and approving a Construction Manager at Risk model for Roberts Elementary. The committee also received a first-quarter financial update.

1:25 Consent Agenda — The committee approved the consent agenda, including bills and payrolls, meeting minutes, donations, and a quarterly collaborative update.
2:10 Personnel Statement and Mustang Moment — Superintendent Suzanne Galusi addressed a personnel vetting matter published in the news media, after which Roberts Elementary after-school students presented a video on their cardboard chair design challenge.
18:43 Before and After School Program Update — Managing Director Katie Doucette presented an operational update on district after-school programs, highlighting a 50 percent increase in enrollment, reduced waitlists, and new student support positions.
50:18 Missituck Elementary Feasibility Study — The committee selected Option 2, a ground-source geothermal heat pump system, for the Missituck Elementary Accelerated Repair Project following a review of building energy usage and long-term costs.
1:57:59 Roberts Elementary CMR Application — The committee approved utilizing a Construction Manager at Risk delivery method for the Roberts Elementary School repair project.
2:07:46 First Quarter Financial Update — Finance Director Noel Velez presented the first-quarter budget report, outlining spending, encumbrances, and risk management in special education transportation and facility heating costs.
2:21:39 Condolences — The committee expressed condolences to the family of Arvin Halliday and observed a moment of silence.

[Mayor Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Monday, 2026, regular meeting at 6 p.m., and it's held in the Howard Alden Memorial Chambers, Medford City Hall, and via remote participation, and this meeting is being recorded. You can view the meeting on Medford Public Schools' YouTube channel or through Medford Community Media on your local cable channel, Comcast Channel 9, 8, or 22, and Verizon 43, 45, 47. Participants can log in or call using the following Zoom link and the meeting ID is 98281274787. Member Ruseau, if you could please call the roll.

[Member Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham. Yes. Member Mastrobuoni. Yes. Member Olapade is coming in shortly. Member Parks? Here. Member Reinfeld is also about to arrive. Member Ruseau is present. And Mayor Lungo-Koehn.

[Mayor Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Present. Five present. I didn't, I missed, is anybody on Zoom? Five present, two absent. And we do have our student rep, Mr. Topper. Thank you for being with us tonight. If we all may rise to salute the flag, please.

[SPEAKER_08]: I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, One nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

[Mayor Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: We have our consent agenda, approval of bills and payrolls, approval of donations, Zealous Consulting Group, a $250 donation to Medford High School DECA Club, and short collaborative newsletter quarterly update, approval of the meeting minutes from our regular meeting October 5th, 2026. Is there a motion on the floor? by Member Ruseau, seconded by Member Mastrobuoni. All those in favor? All those opposed? Five in favor, two absent. Consent agenda passes. We do not have any reports of subcommittee.

We have five reports from our superintendent. So our first report is our Mustang moments. Bring them on in. Not yet. Not yet? Not yet, one second.

[Suzanne Galusi]: Oh, I'm so excited for Mustang Moment. There's a lot of lovely activity out there. But before we have Mustang Moment, I did want to just acknowledge, as many people, as this body knows, and many people in the community know, today I sent a update to all MPS families and staff, as well as to this school committee, to provide some context about a personnel matter that was reported in today's Boston Globe. In the interest of time, I will not go into great detail as I did in the letter here tonight about this matter, but I am entering a copy of my letter into the record of this meeting. The letter provides important background about the circumstances under which this employee applied for the position, falsified records, was vetted and background checked, and then later exposed, immediately placed on leave, investigated, relieved of all duties, barred from any contact with students, and dismissed at the end of the school year. I would also like to say that we're an organization committed to continuous learning. We're constantly striving to improve how we do business. This unfortunate event, series of events, has shown a light on some of the areas in our screening and hiring process in need of improvement. We take those gaps very seriously and we are taking action including an external review of our hiring practices to improve those mechanisms moving forward so that MPS only hires the very best and fully vetted professionals to work in our schools.

Thank you. And now it feels a little awkward to segue to the Mustang moment, but I'm just so happy about this Mustang moment today, this evening. So our Mustang moment is tied to our first report of the evening, which is an update of our after-school programming. And so to kick us off with all the wonderful things that have been happening in our elementary schools across the district, Our managing director of the after school program, Katie Doucette, is going to do a little small bit of framing before we have quite the impressive group of after school students share all of the really cool things they're doing in after school, especially around some STEAM education. So would you like to come up?

[mD9hKvWcadU_SPEAKER_00]: I'm really excited to be with you this evening. I'm just going to speak for less than 30 seconds and then turn it over first to Ms. Emily. She is our full-time STEAM specialist at the Roberts after-school program and she is here with many students from her STEAM program to share about what they've been doing. So I will let Ms. Emily take it from here and you will have a chance to hear from the students directly.

[SPEAKER_12]: Students, if you want to just kind of gather around, I'm going to talk at the beginning, and then the kids will fill you in after we see this video. But my name is Emily Schiffer. I'm one of the newly hired STEAM specialists charged with making after school joyful, exciting, really, really exciting and engaging and a place where everybody belongs and wants to be. And so I'm going to share what we've been doing, which is called the Cardboard Chair Challenge. And what you're about to see is a stop motion animation that is written, designed, photographed slash all filmed entirely by children.

And so they have created all of it with me supporting them. In our classroom, they have the option of working on their cardboard creations, animating, or writing songs and making title transitions. What you're about to see is a work in progress. It is not even close to being finished. We will keep working on this for as long as the kids are interested. That's the beauty of afterschool, is we get to follow the kid's interest and go as deep as they want to. And believe me, they want to go deep. So if we can go to the next slide. Actually, would you mind presenting? Yeah. So the next slide, this is just to share the one before it. The kids storyboarded all of the scenes that you've seen. And if you can see, you probably can't, it shows the camera angle that they want to film each action from. So sometimes they photograph from underneath. You'll pay attention to the camera angles that they have chosen. If we go to the next slide, this is a worksheet that was a prompt for the kids to write a jingle. Only one jingle has made it into the trailer that you're about to see, but this one, kids are writing a jingle about unbalanced forces. So they're showing what they have taught themselves about physics by writing songs that will eventually be layered into our animation. And with that, let's watch the trailer. Oh, actually, before we start the trailer, I want to say we're going to have a screening, which is going to be as fancy as people want it to be. It's going to be entirely designed, and the lift will be done by the children. And it'll be when we decide we're finished. My guess is December. But we invite all of you to join us for that. All right, go ahead.

[-Ad9b17iUII_SPEAKER_03]: We realized that people who weren't in our classroom, the outsiders, didn't have a clue how educational cardboard could be. So we made a movie for the outsiders. We had to build chairs out of cardboard. Dun, dun, dun!

[SPEAKER_18]: Your chair has to be at least one foot above the ground. And it can't just be a box on the ground.

[Cole]: They had to be strong enough so that Miss Emily could sit on them without crashing to the ground.

[-Ad9b17iUII_SPEAKER_03]: It felt like a lot of responsibility because she's kind of heavy. And we don't want her to, like, break her tailbone. Or we have to call the hospital. Or, you know, other stuff.

[Cole]: First, we were chair detectives. We went around the school and investigated chair features. We had to figure out what makes a chair a chair. We drew in our notebooks, and we drew the chairs we saw, and we drew all the features we saw on those chairs. We made hypotheses. Hypotheses? Hypothelomas? No, no. It's hypothesize about each chair part strong. The chair leg problem.

[SPEAKER_18]: Womp womp. We had to turn cardboard, which is usually something floppy, into something strong. We figured out that rolling cardboard makes it stronger.

[SPEAKER_17]: We finally found a way to make chair legs strong enough to hold our teacher. We realized that attaching them was not a piece of cake. Cake? We love cake!

[Cole]: The Failure Dance is something that we do to celebrate after we fail because we learn a lot from when we fail. We learned if cardboard is hollow she's gonna crush it! Failure is my personally favorite, favorite part because I really, really like dancing. Triangles are the strongest shape on Earth. If you put something heavy on the top corner, it sends that weight down the triangle sides. This spreads the load.

[Mayor Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: So you still, can you tell us, are you still working on it? This is a work in progress and we're going to build a chair strong enough for your teacher and after school program teachers? Okay.

[Suzanne Galusi]: Could someone explain how close you are to finding a chair you think might be successful?

[SPEAKER_17]: I think like really, really close because I think we're doing a pretty good job of it.

[Mayor Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Just come right over to the microphone so everybody at home can hear you.

[SPEAKER_14]: So some people have already made chairs that are strong enough to hold the teacher, but we are very close to getting other chairs done. Some of the chairs aren't finished yet, though. That's great. Some of them are. No one of them is finished.

[Mayor Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: What questions? Member Ruseau? And then Member Olapade?

[Member Paul Ruseau]: So what's the hardest part of making the chair that you've found so far?

[Mayor Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Good answer. Member Olapade and then Member Graham.

[Member Aaron Olapade]: Thank you. I have two quick questions. Are you all in small groups? Is it just individual chairs? How do the groups work?

[SPEAKER_18]: So basically, we kind of pick our groups, so it doesn't really, it's not really a, there's not really a limit.

[Member Aaron Olapade]: And then my second question, are there points for style, for design, or decorations of your chairs, or is it just purely who can hold the most weight?

[-Ad9b17iUII_SPEAKER_03]: Oh, we got an answer? Oh, go ahead. It's really just who can hold the most weight.

[SPEAKER_01]: Do you want to talk about some of the design stuff? Anybody want to share?

[SPEAKER_15]: Go ahead. A lot of chairs were very different. I heard there were a hamster chair and there's a chair I was working on. I called it like a jewelry chair because I put lots of different things on it to try to make it look fancy.

[Member Jenny Graham]: Member Graham. Oh, do all the chairs have the same number of legs or are there different numbers of legs?

[Member Jenny Graham]: Zero legs? Some people... Is that chair still a work in progress?

[Member Erika Reinfeld]: Member Reinfeld? I'm just wondering if you guys are going to share this at Robert's STEM night.

[Mayor Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: I'm going to suggest you do that and bring the challenge, yeah? Go ahead, this little gentleman in the green. You want to answer that one? You might walk in a few times.

[Member Erika Reinfeld]: Awesome, because I think lots more people need to learn about this activity.

[Mayor Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you so much for sharing. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for coming and amazing. We cannot wait to see your final product. Maybe you could bring them one Monday night after STEM night and we can display them. Well, we need a picture of you all, I'm assuming. You want to go on the microphone and share it?

[SPEAKER_16]: I thought we could share the whole school morning meeting, or maybe we could share not just the trailer, the thing that we're working on, the full thing.

[Suzanne Galusi]: We're going to do a quick picture, so if everyone could come around inside here, we'll all line up for a picture.

[Mayor Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Just waiting for the door to close. All right. Thank you. Next up, our before and after school director, Katie Doucette, is going to give us an update of the after and before school program. So welcome.

[mD9hKvWcadU_SPEAKER_00]: Thank you. I know I had a chance to meet you all briefly earlier in the year. It's nice to be back. Nothing I'm going to say will be as important or as exciting as what we just saw, but I will. But I will provide you just with some updates sort of a state of after school where we are now. So I am going to just go over some staffing updates and update our on our enrollment and wait lists.

A little bit about what the after-school schedule looks like and our communications to families. A little bit about our continued work with BASIC, the consulting team that I know you all had a chance to meet last year. A high-level overview of some successes and challenges, and then I'll be happy to take any questions. So it's been helpful for me to think about this year in these three phases. So I started in July, and we really hit the ground running with hiring. We've increased our enrollment by 50%, which we'll talk more about in a moment, and that certainly meant bringing in more staff members. And we had also done a little bit of rethinking about what the staffing structure would look like. So I'll talk more about that. But really the summer, hiring and training. September was just launching, right, getting up and running. And really the rest of the year is refining, assessing, refining, assessing. And so those are our phases.

So on the staffing end, we have first our full-time staff. So we now have four full-time site directors. Two of those were previous site coordinators and have returned to step into that site director role. And two of them are new to Medford after school. We have, and some of them are in the audience. We have four STEAM specialists, so you just got to see Ms. Emily. She's one of them. And again, two new and two returning. So we did not have the full-time STEAM specialist role last year, but we did have some folks working part-time in the after-school program doing some STEAM activities. Two of them have now become full-time. The same is true with our kindergarten specialists. So four full-time, two who are new, and two who returned and stepped into this new role.

two sports and movement specialists, one of whom is brand new to us, and one of whom is returning, and one family engagement specialist. We are in the hiring process for an additional family engagement specialist for the Brooks, and one more sports and movement specialist who will be split between Missituk and McGlynn. And then that'll round out our full-time staff. And I will say over the summer, so I was really leading the hiring process, but it was incredibly collaborative. So those returning site directors were, gave a lot of their summer hours to be a part of that process. We also had principals and caregivers involved, so it was a very collaborative process. Also was a great just entry, entree into Medford for me to see how invested in after school everyone was and how collaborative everyone was. And so then on the part-time staff, we have four senior group leaders, 23 group leaders, two of whom are new, 21 returning, 15 assistant group leaders, four new, 11 returning, one student support specialist. This is a brand new position that we're really excited about. This is somebody who essentially serves as a one-to-one for students with disabilities in the afterschool program. We have one hired now and we have, we're currently hiring two more and putting that out to the universe. And it's really a position that allows us to continue to do an even better job of living up to our commitment to being as inclusive as possible in the after-school program.

We also have 26 high school aides across our four sites. It is such an asset to have high schoolers, many of whom did the after school program when they were in elementary school, come back and support and connect and mentor with the younger kids, and they are I know it will not surprise any of you to know, but they are an incredible asset. They bring so much to the program. On the part-time end, we are still actively hiring, as I mentioned, two more student support specialists, one to two group leaders, depending on how many days they're available, and about five assistant group leaders. So we are still hiring.

The next slide is just a summary of once we're fully staffed. We expect to have about 95 total folks on our after school roster. And, you know, staffing is always a bit dynamic, but I think that's about 30 to 35 more than we were at this time last year. So the next slide, I mentioned that the summer was really hiring and training. So we brought folks together for three days in August. This was during the same time as new teacher induction over at Medford High School. So there was also just energy of being part of the Medford Public Schools training and community.

And you can see on the slides, Sessions that we held together, so building relationships, anchoring in purpose. So that was really a lot of team building and getting to know folks. And again, anchoring in what is the purpose of after school. Going over new program structure, roles and expectations. A session on lesson planning. A session on giving and receiving feedback. So we're really committed to, as a team across all four sites, creating a culture where we're all giving each other feedback on a regular basis with just sort of that collective commitment to continuously improving our practice and our program. And then we had a training with two Medford public school teachers on responsive classroom. And that's an effort to do a little bit more to bridge the school day with the after school so that there's a consistent set of expectations, a consistent culture.

And so that was in the summer. And then just to say, in order to continue that work of team building and skill building, we continued to meet. So through September, all of the full-time folks met weekly. We've now moved to bi-weekly. I'm also meeting monthly with the site director team, and I do one-on-ones with each site director. Again, those were weekly for the first part of the year, and we're moving to bi-weekly now. Purpose of these meetings, again, continue building that team cohesion, deepening our relationships both within the sites and across, excuse me, all four sites, continuing to build shared knowledge and shared skills, and then, you know, obviously, as all good meetings, providing whatever information is necessary. So you can see the structure there. We always have some time dedicated to just kind of a problem of practice or an opportunity to share best practices across sites.

And so then moving along oh you know I forgot to say it if if we could go back two slides to the orientation and training down at the bottom. So at the end of training we just did a kind of popcorn I invited. three people to share one word that was, you know, encapsulated how they were feeling at that moment after training. And the three words that we heard were belonging, structure, and gratitude. And so we're trying to hold on to those three words and continue to lean into them and build that culture as a team.

Thank you. So we'll go to the enrollment updates slide. So you see here kind of a comparison to the fall of 2025 as compared with October 2026. So we've increased at each site significantly, as you can see there, and collectively across all four sites, we are currently serving 160 more students than we were at this time last year. And that is pretty much on target with what the projections were. We're actually over what we initially thought we would be at both Missituk and McGlynn. At Roberts and Brooks, we're actually at about 95% of what our original projections were.

When we did the lottery, we were at 100%. A few people either said no to the lottery or after some schedules settled, ended up withdrawing. We did then add a few people from the wait list. So it's kind of a dynamic number. And I'll say a little bit more about that as we go to the next slide and look at the current wait list. So again, if you compare this year to last, last year at this time we had 212 students on the wait list. We do still have a wait list this year, it's 78, but we have decreased that by 134 students year over year.

At the time of the lottery, Brooks was the only school with a wait list. But as, again, either as new families move into the district or just as schedules change, we're getting new requests. And we're just adding folks onto the wait list right now. As you saw earlier, we continue to hire, and so almost bi-weekly meeting with site directors just to get a sense of, you know, are we at capacity? Can we bring more folks off the wait list? So again, that's a dynamic process between staffing and enrollment, and my site directors and I are looking at it regularly.

We, I do want to highlight that, you know, even with the increased enrollment, we're still able to provide, at the moment, 73 students with financial assistance to make sure that finances are not a barrier to participation in the program. Right now, that's totaling $148,000 worth of financial assistance. I will lift up a note here, which I know you're all aware of, but for the, for the greater public. You know that the after school program is a self-sustaining revolving fund, so that financial aid is not coming from the operating budget. But it's coming from within our budget and our revolving account. We've made a couple of changes to the process this year. Really just refined the review process so that there is greater consistency and clarity. And we've expanded the tiers, so typically we had been using the HUD housing and urban development categories. So there were like three levels of need, extremely low income, low income, and modest income or moderate income. We basically spread that out because we saw that there was a huge You know, you would, it would be like $70,000 difference between the income of level one and level two. And we just wanted to recognize and address that there's a lot of nuance and a lot of change in the experience going from, you know, one of those salary thresholds to the other. So we basically just spread it out. And we actually now have eight different levels of need going from 20% to 80% discount.

The next slide shows, I know that is incredibly difficult to read, but it shows a sample schedule. And this one is pretty true to what's happening at the Roberts. So I'll just give a couple of high level kind of overviews of what that looks like. Our kindergarten and first grade groups each function as their own cohort. And then we have a grade band of second and third grade spending time together, and fourth and fifth grade. Across each of those grade bands, the first part of the day, in some order, is some combination of a community meeting, similar to a morning meeting with responsive classroom, a snack, and typically some outdoor time for recess as well.

From there, we get into enrichment and choice blocks. So typically, at a given time, a group of students might have a choice between, for example, a STEAM project, or going to the playground, or doing facilitated gym games, or having their homework block. And then they'll kind of flip-flop throughout the day. And that's a little bit different than what it had been in the past. It allows for more choice, for more movement across groups. And that is the schedule that was more or less recommended to us by the basic team last year as well.

So within that schedule, you get the opportunity for things like we saw during the Mustang moment, a deep dive into a STEAM project. Also just a few additional highlights. So across our sites, we had our kindergarten friends having an apple-themed week. So this didn't make it in there. I don't know if you can see this, but students measured themselves how many apples tall are they. And then they charted that or graphed it. So you can see it's seasonal. It's also a little bit of math, a little bit of STEM, a little bit of art. So you can see some images from those activities on the slides. I also want to just highlight that the kindergarten specialists are meeting regularly to share curriculum, share activities, share ideas. That's also happening with the STEAM specialists and the sports specialists.

The next page is just another example of some fun fall-themed activities, making characters with leaves. So you've got fine motor skill development, kind of character development, that sort of thing. The next slide, just a few more highlights. You have the newsletter from the Roberts, some Legos. McGlynn in particular has a fierce group of Lego makers. And so just some highlights from those programs. The next slide is an update on our continuing work with BASIC. So I am incredibly fortunate that our engagement with BASIC goes through, I believe, January. And so when I started in July, weekly I was meeting virtually with members from the BASIC team to kind of help get ready for launch.

In October, they joined me for a round of observations and site visits. We spent an entire afternoon at each of the four sites, took copious notes, and then they came and joined one of our staff meetings to provide some of the feedback, and we really focused in on those community meetings. They were already running well, but that's something that we're really lifting up as an important piece of program, and so we just refined it, talked about, made sure we knew what the purpose was, How do you differentiate a meeting for, say, fifth grade versus kindergarten? And made some improvements to our practice. I will also be meeting with them, the basic team, again next week to do more site-specific, basically action plans based on the feedback that we got. We'll do one more round of observations while we still have them later this year. And the findings from those observations will essentially be our charge for the rest of the year in terms of any ongoing professional development, modifications to program and practice.

And so then just to kind of summarize some of our early successes and opportunities for growth. Again, we've enrolled safely 160 more students, two new site directors at our largest sites. Really continuing to build a strong sense of team both within and across sites. Increased inclusivity with that student support specialist position that I mentioned. Increased student engagement and participation as you saw with our Mustang moment. And that extension of the responsive classroom from the school day into the after school. That said, it's still definitely year one of a new program, and so there's definitely, we're tweaking, we're pivoting, we're learning all day, every day. You know, one of the things, you heard me mention it about the meeting, but continuing to think about how do we differentiate our programming across our different age groups.

The transition from school day to after school is always, there's always a lot of activity going on, and we're always looking at ways we can make that even smoother. As I mentioned, we continue to hire, so finalizing staffing. And then just evolving the program schedules. There's a lot that's really great about what's going on. It is new, it's new for returning staff, it's new for students. I'll be perfectly frank, we have some of our oldest students who've been in the program the longest.

are noticing some of the changes, happy with some of the changes, and want to let us know the ones that maybe they're less happy with. But that's creating opportunities for us to bring in our fourth and fifth graders to help shape program. And so, as I say, we continue to assess and pivot, and we'll do that indefinitely. And that is all, I'd be happy to take any questions.

[Mayor Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you for the presentation and for expanding it so well along with the superintendent's help. And I know there's a committee working on this for quite some time. So great work. Thank you.

[Suzanne Galusi]: I just want to comment, I know that Katie spoke about this, but this really was a total, it takes a village, Herculean effort. We had a lot of very dedicated caregivers as part of the after school task force. We met regularly. And Katie came in and just never stopped moving. She understood the assignment from day one. And I think you can see from her demeanor this evening, she's very collaborative. She takes a partnership stance with everything. And I feel like she's been here for a very long time. But it was an extreme amount of work. And she did highlight it in her comments. But I do want to say, on their own time, we did have The site director from the Missituk, Jacqueline Holmes, is here tonight. The site director from the McGlynn, Kathy Hunt, and the site, at the time, the site director from the Roberts, Kathleen Keenan, who on their own time this summer really helped Myself, Katie, really work on the hiring and getting this program to launch. And those are the things that sometimes you don't see behind the scenes, but just how deeply this community cares about its students and about caring for their students after school. And that was just so evident this summer when people gave up their own time to participate in, in hiring and transitional work. So, thank you though Katie, cuz she has not stopped yet and I'm very grateful you're here.

[Mayor Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Next up we have the missus, oh. Member Parks, Member Reinfeld, Member Ruseau.

[Member Jessica Parks]: I just want to say thank you so much. I mean, you've been here since July, I think, and done so much. You and your team has been amazing. This has been, you know, obviously such a lightning rod of a topic in this community for so long and amazing things have been done. And I also want to thank you for especially for this the student support specialist. I'm just taken by that because I think it provides an opportunity and the fact that you're expanding that provides an opportunity for students to go to after school that may not have necessarily felt welcome at after school previously. So I think that's a great opportunity. And just thank you for everything that you have done and jumped in along with your team.

[mD9hKvWcadU_SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely. I just briefly want to say that when we met as a team over the summer when we were doing training, we looked at sort of like a draft program philosophy, and it included words like, you know, inclusive and belonging. And as a team, people were really kind of pushing on that question. When we say inclusive, are we really? Who are we not letting in, and what can we do to, you know, live up to that commitment even more? So thank you for lifting that up.

[Member Erika Reinfeld]: Thank you. I'm dying to know what the students thought was the best changes and the changes that they wish hadn't happened, but we can discuss that offline. I had a couple of quick clarifying questions, I hope. In regards to the high school aides, are they distributed across all four sites? Because I know one school is easier for high school students to get to, but I want to make sure that all of our students younger students have that mentorship near peer experience?

[mD9hKvWcadU_SPEAKER_00]: Yes, great question, and yes, they're at all four sites.

[Member Erika Reinfeld]: Great. And are City Year students involved in afterschool? I know they have been in the past.

[Member Erika Reinfeld]: Okay. And then in terms of the costs, thank you for elevating the revolving fund question. Does this seem sustainable year over year? Do we think we're going to be facing major increases? What does that look like as we look ahead towards rates?

[mD9hKvWcadU_SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, it is, I would say at first blush, my response is yes, it seems sustainable year over year. That said, we are, again, where it's very new, we're still figuring out what it costs to run this well and to run it correctly. You know, as I say, we've added, for example, the student support specialist position. You know, just continuing to think what is the right staffing structure and what additional resources are necessary to run it well. And so and I think it's probably gonna take a full year cycle to, to fully be able to answer that question and then be in a place to have kind of more precise projections.

But I, but I still, even with those kind of unknowns and that learning curve for that first year with the, the full time staff that we've put in place and with some of the other changes. It does, to me, seem sustainable. I know there was an increase in tuition this year, and I recognize that that has an impact on families. And again, we also then tried to expand our financial aid categories to try to mitigate that a little bit. But yes.

[Member Erika Reinfeld]: That was really helpful to hear because I know one of our priorities in making this program was to make sure that it stayed affordable for Medford families and could meet that financial need. And then my my last question is just around coordination and I recognize this is the first year of the program. I love that responsive classroom has come in because that just underlies so much of how we approach students and students in groups. But I'm curious what other coordination might be planned for teachers in this school day kind of beyond responsive classroom in terms of knowing what the curriculum is or what homework students are working on. And also I know that our past after school programs have had some knowledge and coordination and professional learning with other after school programs both in Medford and in other districts around. So I'm wondering what that coordination piece looks like, recognizing that the priority right now is getting things running and efficient in the first year.

[mD9hKvWcadU_SPEAKER_00]: Yes, yeah, no great questions. On the sort of like... you know, with other before and after school programs, that sort of thing. So as I mentioned, we had the basic folks come and do observations here. We also, I know this happened a little bit last year, but a subset of the team and I visited the Belmont sites recently, and then others of us are going to be visiting again on November 3rd. So those sorts of things we'll continue to make possible. I forgot to mention, and so I'm glad you asked this question, that the collaboration and coordination with the principals has been remarkable.

Everyone is so supportive, and so right now each of our site directors has a regular standing weekly meeting, 15 minutes, with the principals. They all tell me, you know, we barely need it because we're checking in on the regular anyway, but it is there as that standing meeting, so they know they have that opportunity. And that allows for, you know, there's coordination, for example, when the school is having a PTO meeting or an ice cream social and it has an impact on what spaces are available in the after school. Those sorts of coordination, that sort of coordination is happening.

[Member Erika Reinfeld]: Sorry, on that note, does that affect, I know a lot of the elementary schools do enrichment programs that the PTOs run after school, and are those conversations happening to make sure that those can still run for the students who are not involved in after school, or sometimes the after school kids do want to do an enrichment, and I know space is at a premium for those.

[mD9hKvWcadU_SPEAKER_00]: And I would say I think those conversations are happening actively at some sites and starting to happen at others. So at McGlynn in particular, just where Kathy Hunt is very seasoned and skilled and knows the folks. I know she's already meeting with sort of the PTG and kind of reminding us and the other site directors that that's a really important relationship and conversation to have. And then, you know, I think, I, with some of the principals, I did talk earlier this year about the possibility of kind of shared opportunities for professional development. We haven't done any of that yet, but it's definitely kind of on the radar. And then the other thing is, or two other things. One is, we've talked a little bit about the possibility of maybe having our full time staff start their day at 10 AM. And so, you know, it's during the school day and they're on site at the school. So there may be opportunities for some of our team to shadow or be in a classroom.

And then in addition to that, something that has happened that's been, I think, really powerful is when we have on occasion had to have a meeting with a caregiver and a child, like a reentry meeting, for example. some of those meetings have been with our after school team, the parent, the child, the principal, the assistant principal, and the special ed coordinator. And so there is that kind of collaboration happening between school day and after school staff around just wrapping our arms around a child and providing that support.

[Member Erika Reinfeld]: Great, thank you. So I'll just end by saying thank you to everyone who made this possible. I know it is a real team effort and, and, and a big investment of time and thinking and yes, money to, to make this happen. So thank you for doing this for Medford families and students. Yeah, thank you.

[Mayor Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you, Member Reinfeld. Member Ruseau, then Member Olapade, then Student Rep and Tapa.

[Member Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I'll start with a thank you for all of this, just because I tend to forget at the end. The amount of aid awarded to date, is that actually how much has been expended or is that like, you know, if we are going to give you a lower rate for the year, is that the whole year number in here?

[mD9hKvWcadU_SPEAKER_00]: Great question. It's for the whole year. Yes. It is. Thank you for asking that.

[Member Aaron Olapade]: Thank you. I have two quick questions. My first question is regarding transportation. Is there any offer of transportation to our participants, especially with the increase of students? I'm assuming that there are families who have communicated with the time of day. It just might be challenging for them. If there's not, transportation has not been something that's been discussed.

[mD9hKvWcadU_SPEAKER_00]: So, I want to make sure I understand the question. So, from, they're immediately dismissed on site to the program. And then for after, we haven't, I mean, we, the site directors are in communication with each of the caregivers around what that pickup is at the end of the day. And so, it's either a caregiver or some designee is picking them up, and there's a, you know, ID and a check in and all that good stuff, or there's a walk, a walk, permit or a walk contract. And I haven't heard a lot of other needs for transportation but I may be missing something if there's more that.

[Member Aaron Olapade]: No, it was just a question I wondered. We know with the increase in participants, maybe there are new families who had questions about opportunities for transportation due to the timing of the day. But maybe it doesn't seem like that, or so far at least.

[Member Aaron Olapade]: Exactly. And my other question was regarding the high school aides. Do they go through a formal process, like any other employee, through front line? Or is there another process where we, as after school, go meet the students and kind of convey what we're doing after school? And then they communicate interests and things like that?

[mD9hKvWcadU_SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's a great question and one I've been thinking a lot about in terms of how we might want to even build on this program with the high school students going forward. At the moment, well, a lot of them are returning, so they've been part of the program either as students themselves and or as high school aides. create and distribute flyers to the guidance office at the beginning of the year, and they shared it with their high schoolers. Students do apply through Frontline, and we do invite them in for a formal interview and then also ask for reference checks. Yes, we want to vet them, but mostly we think it's a good learning opportunity to go through that hiring process.

[7eh2EusWqec_SPEAKER_02]: Thank you. I just want to say something that really stood out to me that I was really happy about was the wait list decrease. And that in September 2025, you had 212 students and now you have 78 students. I just wanted to ask, with the increase of staff that helped out, would that decrease the wait list? Or is it students that are dropping the before and after school program?

[mD9hKvWcadU_SPEAKER_00]: Yeah great question. So it's definitely increase in staff and then also kind of intentionally changing the way we structure our schedule. And so that there are just sort of at any given time during the day more activities happening so we can spread more children out. And so it was really a pretty strong commitment that this community made before I even got here to be able to expand to meet the need. And so, so it was both the hiring and the structure of the, of the day.

[Mayor Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Next up we have the Missittuck Elementary Feasibility Study. I'll invite Mr. Ken Lord, our Chief Operating Officer, up.

[Kenneth Lord]: Thank you. Tonight we have representatives from PCA 360 and RFS Engineering to present the MISITUC Accelerator Repair Feasibility Study. You'll recognize many of these gentlemen that are with us tonight. They also performed the Roberts Feasibility and Schematic Design Study. And we were just recently notified that they'll also perform the Brooks project as well. So I'm going to turn it over to PCA 360 first probably, and they'll introduce themselves as they start.

[7eh2EusWqec_SPEAKER_22]: Thanks, Ken. Brian LaRoche of PCA 360. I'm the project director for three school projects. So like Ken said, the Missituk is very similar to Brooks, but there are a few differences at this school, which we'll highlight in the presentation. But generally, this is going to be a similar presentation that you've seen before. We are at the feasibility study phase of the project, so there's still one more presentation in about two months. We'll come back to you with the schematic design. And that's the one that will go to the MSBA board for their vote and ultimately be the one that's designed. So tonight we're here to present to you three options. And that's what we're going to go through. So let me just show you briefly the schedule.

It's a little different because we're out of phase with Roberts. So this one is going to be built over two summers. It's going to be 28 and 29 where Roberts at the moment we're targeting 27 and 28, just because the MSBA is staggering these projects. That three months made a big difference. And so we're looking to bring this project to the February board meeting for the MSBA for their approval, where the Roberts is at October 28th. And then ultimately when Brooks comes along, It's also going to be three months behind and so we'll be at a different timeline as well. But we are also targeting the same construction period at this time for that project. But we're just getting engaged. We're waiting on the signed contract for the design team. So we're literally just getting started on Brooks. So we'll go on to the next.

So just like the other project, Roberts, this is also an MSBA accelerated repair project and will be partially funded by the MSBA at the reimbursement rate of 53.32. So pretty And the way the project's designed and structured mostly is reimbursable. So there's very little that is excluded. On Roberts we had the solar as a purchase solar. Since we've come around on that and now we're going to do a PPA here. So in this particular one there's nothing in the scope at the moment that we see as being ineligible by the MSBA. Next slide.

So very similar scope is what we presented to you before. It's primarily an HVAC modernization replacing the existing equipment that has reached the end of its useful life. So we're focusing on the HVAC where we're going to electrify and move away from fossil fuels. We're not fully moving away from fossil fuels, and you'll hear in the presentation that there's some elements still like the domestic hot water heating that will be the gas-fired heaters. The kitchen will remain, but we're positioning the building for the future by upgrading the electric service so that as time goes on, these other things can be migrated over into the fully electric. So the other component is the roof replacement, same as what we were doing in Roberts, full roof replacement. Unfortunately, this roof is in a little bit worse condition than Roberts. So in this case, we don't have the option for just a recover. The insulation has been damaged significant enough that the insulating value of even the existing is you're not getting much value at all. Because as soon as it gets wet, it actually conducts heat instead of insulates, so it does the opposite. And the amount of damage in this roof is so much so that we have to replace the roof insulation. So in this case, you'll see that isn't an option compared to what we presented to you before. And then code compliance upgrades are the same thing because we're exceeding 30% of the assessed value in the building. It triggers a full look at the building to make sure we're fully code compliant in terms of accessibility. So next slide.

So as I mentioned, the roof is pretty heavily damaged. There's more water intrusion. So it's going to go back with a PVC roof. It's going to be an 80 mil roof. And it will be designed for solar ready. So it's going to have the more robust system to withstand the ballasted solar system. So this building will be ready for a full solar array. And we'll present to you a conceptual design for that in just a little bit. But other than that, you know, we'll be bringing this because we have to replace the insulation, we'll be bringing it up to current code and all of that work will be fully reimbursable through the MSBA program. Next slide.

And then the code issues for accessibility are very similar to what we encountered in Roberts. It's extensions of handrails, signage. Heads up, it's not a small amount. But between the two schools, it's only about $61,000 more here. And mostly, that has to do with some additional site work that we have to do to make the building compliant for accessibility. And that's really the biggest difference. With that, I'm gonna turn it over to our design team to talk engineering with you and then I'll come back and we'll talk about the big picture of the project. So, who's gonna go first? Griffin, Griffin is our HVAC engineer is going to begin the presentation.

[7eh2EusWqec_SPEAKER_21]: Hi, my name is Griffin St. Onge. I'm the project manager for the design team mechanical engineer. So can you go to the next slide please? So the existing building is very similar to Roberts, where there's three big air handlers serving the big spaces in the offices. And then all the classrooms are served by unit ventilators. That's what those louvers are on the outside underneath the window. It's important to note that all of these airside systems don't have any energy recovery right now, but this was typical to the time that it was built in the early 2000s. So the heating plant is served by two gas-fired heaters that creates hot water for the entire building, and then the cooling is all done on the roof by air-cooled chillers, and it creates chilled water for the building as well as cooling for the air handlers.

Next slide, please. So we're presenting three different all-electric options, all reimbursable by the MSBA, like Brian mentioned. So these are all heat pump options. So the difference between a heat pump and a boiler is that heat pumps move around the heat, so they become more efficient than a boiler that's generating heat. So each of these options are all heat pump based. An air to water heat pump uses the air to reject and extract the heat, while a ground source option uses the ground. And the reason why a ground source heat pump option is more efficient is because the ground has a more stable temperature. It only fluctuates 10, 20 degrees while the air can fluctuate from zero up to 95.

And so we have an option three as well that's a hybrid of both of these. Next slide please. So all these options are very similar. The only thing that differs is the thermal plant. So this option one is our recommended option. It's an air to water heat pump plant. All the heat pumps will go onto the low roof mechanical well. And it'll create hot and chilled water for the heating and cooling for the building. And we will also be replacing the air handlers as well with energy recovery. The big difference between Missittook and Roberts that we found so far is that the Missittook mechanical room is a lot bigger. So we'll actually be able to fit these new air handlers and get some energy recovery, which will be good. One problem with heat pumps is that they only create low temperature hot water. So we, instead of using 180, we have to use 130. So that means we have to replace all of the unit ventilators, the variable air volume boxes, the radiators. So we just basically have to put in bigger coils.

But this won't be a problem with the unit ventilators we're looking at to just replace them one-to-one. So we won't have to redo the penetration through the building or the louvers. Next slide, please. Option two is the ground source heat pump option. We're looking at the adjacent Columbus Park for our wells. We're looking at 60 wells for this option. So there won't be any rooftop heating, cooling equipment. It'll just be coming, there'll be a geo well going into equipment in the mechanical room. And other than that, this option is the exact same as the first option, where we'll be replacing the air handlers, the terminal equipment, Next slide please. And then I'll, back one please. And then our option three is a hybrid where we're kind of looking to find like, to find a sweet spot between the two. It still is a lot of, it still is expensive. It'd be about 30 to 40 wells in Columbus Park. And then a air to water heat pump plant as well. The geothermal plant will be the primary source in this option because it's more efficient. and the air to water heat pump will be the smaller plant. And then everything else in this option as well is the same. New air handlers, new terminal equipment.

Next please. And this is just a preliminary layout for what we're looking. We do have room. So for our option two, our all ground source heat pump option, it would be this entire image. It would be those two fields. But then our option three would only be the left field. And these options would put the park out of commission for probably two to three months. But after it's done, it gets completely redone, completely usable. There'll only be about one manhole cover for, it's called a vault, where it'll be off the fields.

[Mayor Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Next slide, please. Through the chair, what's the price difference? And it sounds like you're recommending option one, which would be the most inexpensive.

[7eh2EusWqec_SPEAKER_21]: Yeah, so we're recommending option one. It's the least upfront cost. It's the most proven.

[7eh2EusWqec_SPEAKER_21]: Could we go to the next slide, please? So we do have some more upgrades. So again, we're looking to upgrade this classroom unit ventilators, do a new student-teacher count, make sure we're hitting all of our code-required ventilation to make sure that the classrooms are healthy. All of the rooftop fans are at the end of their life, and we're looking to replace these as well as part of the electrification and modernization of this building so that they'll have VFDs, they'll be more efficient. And we're also looking at a duct cleaning and recommissioning of everything in the school so that once this project's done it'll be like just everything will be clean and new.

Next slide please. So again, like Roberts, we're looking to replace the entire building automation system, the BAS. This is, we're looking to continue the standardization that we did in this town with McGlennon Andrews, and he was in Niagara 4, so that it's standardized across these different buildings. This is also what we recommended for Roberts as well. And then again, just some more information about, quick information about heat pumps and modules. So this system, it'll be modular, so if there's a problem with one of the modules, air to water or ground source, if they need to go into defrost mode, it will not shut off the entire system. It'll just shut off that one module.

And all the equipment we'll be looking at will be selected for this area of the country as well. Next slide. So like Brian mentioned, we're trying to set this electrical upgrade up as well for the future. The domestic hot water in the kitchen are currently gas, but we will be sizing the new switchboard in the new electric room to take on these future projects. So once we want to upgrade the kitchen or the domestic water, we won't need to do any more upgrades to the electric room. It'll be ready to just put in the new electric equipment.

Next slide, please. So this is, we have a preliminary solar analysis. We're looking at about 183,000 kilowatt hours generated annually, which would be about 15 to 20% of the building's total electrical consumption. And then with our analysis, we also found that we think that we'll be able to get, or we'll be able to sell back 10% back to the grid. And this just has to do with during the weekend, if we fix the controls so that it goes into like an unoccupied mode, we don't need as much cooling, but it's sunny out like in the summer, we'll be able to take that electricity and sell it back.

Next slide, please. And just to conclude the options, option one is the lowest first cost. It is a reduction in EUI and it's the most proven system type. The option two, the ground source heat pump option, it is the highest first cost, but it does have the most incentives and the lowest EUI. It also has the lowest operating cost because of the increase in efficiency from using the ground opposed to the air. And then option three is a mix between the two with the pros and cons.

General cons, option one and option three will have noise producing equipment on the roof, but that's pretty similar to the existing conditions right now because there already is condensers up there making noise. And then again, talking about Columbus Park, it'll have to be closed for a couple months for options two and three. Other than that, we can start getting into the cost of these things. I'll give it to Stratton.

[7eh2EusWqec_SPEAKER_17]: I'm Stratton Newbert. I'm project executive with RFS. It's important, one thing to talk about, that we will need to shut down the park to do the well fields. That does not have to be concurrent with the work that's going on inside the building. So I would say that the summertime when we'll be working in the building, is prime use of the fields so they do not have to be concurrent. Okay, into the next slide. The important information here on cost which you see in the left column is the total construction cost of each of the three options we've presented. As Griffin has mentioned, Air-to-water heat pump is the lowest first cost. This is similar to what we are proceeding with at Roberts. What we've done in this presentation is break it down to the Medford share of the costs. And then you'll see the incentives in the third column.

Another advantage of the ground source heat pump systems is that they have additional programs that are available for rebates and incentives. So then that you'll reach the, when you net that out, and you'll see a cost differential. It's important to note that this is the total first cost. So if we go to the next slide, this gives you a picture of what those costs will look like over the 25-year life cycle. So we've analyzed all the parts that go into that life cycle, including the first costs, maintenance costs, energy costs. So this gives you a bigger picture view of what you'll be looking at over the life of the equipment.

And one thing you'll notice here is that it starts to bring the options more in line with each other. And one of the reasons for that is if you're sharing the first cost with MSBA where you're getting the rebates for the equipment cost whereas Medford gets all the incentives rebates and gets the advantage of the lower utility costs. While they do come in line, you still have that large differential in the initial costs. And for that reason, we are recommending the option one.

There's a bit of inherent risk in counting on all these things happening over a 25-year life cycle versus the more certainty of the construction costs that we've estimated, if that makes sense. And then if you go to the next slide, you'll see this graph puts that in perspective, where everything on the left is the option one that we're recommending. You'll see as you move to the right, the orange column is the energy costs are less. And while the overall cost over 25 years, so you'll see the option two is $27 million and option three is $26.9, the actual Medford cost is $13.5 and $14 respectively. So this gives you an idea of what your cost will be in comparison.

[7eh2EusWqec_SPEAKER_17]: Yeah, we have those there in case they come up in questions.

[7eh2EusWqec_SPEAKER_22]: Okay. I know we were trying to keep this to 20 minutes and we have like 30 slides, so. The next slides we have in the deck really get into the life cycle cost analysis with a lot more technical information. We're happy to answer any questions that you might have. Otherwise, we can skip down to the total project budget of each of the options. Okay. So I put Robert's up just so you can see as a comparison between the two. So again, the recommendation of the team is option one, the air to water heat pump system and stacking it up against Robert's. There are some things that are different at Missituk that were driving the cost up. versus Roberts, like I had mentioned, the roof was, you know, there's more work there, a little bit more in the accessibility. And then at Missittuck, we're able to replace the air handle units in the mechanic room entirely and not just do a coil and fan. That actually does make a lot of sense because your payback is only eight years. So we built that into the project because we can do it. And it is, from a financial standpoint, is the right way to go.

[7eh2EusWqec_SPEAKER_17]: Not only will they be new, but they will also have energy recovery, so you'll get the.

[7eh2EusWqec_SPEAKER_22]: Correct. Yeah, so that's really why there's some differences between the two. So we did, you know, the incentives that we have are similar to what we presented to you before. We have mass save on option one. Option two, which is the geothermal, We do have the federal tax credits that we are applying, and that's what's making the incentives at that one much higher. And then option three is a combination of the two, and that's why you're seeing sort of a blend there on the incentives. And then the MSBA reimbursement is pretty flat all the way across. If you do the math, you'll see it's not exactly 53.32 and that's because change orders which are part of our budget are not automatically eligible. So, you know, there may be some things over the course of the project that they would discount. So, I didn't put the full rate in there just so you could see that. The other thing I would mention too is at this point, we're only at feasibility study. So we have another round of estimating to go, a more refined design. And one of the things about cost estimating at the feasibility stage is there are more contingencies built into the estimate. So we do think that when we go to schematic design with, you know, a clear design, we can start to pull back on some of those contingencies. I fully expect that this project will be very similar to Robert's if not a little less at option one.

I know we have another presentation after this, so I'll open it up for questions.

[Member Jenny Graham]: Can you put up the slide, the life cycle cost slide? What is the building's EUI now?

[7eh2EusWqec_SPEAKER_17]: So we actually have that and we didn't show that, but if.

[7eh2EusWqec_SPEAKER_22]: So it's in the 25-year life cycle cost analysis results. So the EUI for option, oh, so you want to know what it is right now?

[7eh2EusWqec_SPEAKER_17]: Yeah. We do have a slide for that. If you go for a few more. Down towards the end. Keep going. Keep going here. So it's, I believe it's, I can't read that number, but I believe it's like 66. 65.2. We're, you know, we're taking about 30% out with option one. You can get an additional 25% with the ground source heat pump options, as Griffin has mentioned, just due to the inherent efficiency of the ground as your heat source.

[7eh2EusWqec_SPEAKER_22]: So option 1 is 42.3 EUI where option 2 is 33.9, option 3 would be 34.6.

[Member Jenny Graham]: And how are the estimated maintenance costs and the life cycle energy costs scaled over 25 years? Like what are the assumptions that are shifting those numbers over years?

[7eh2EusWqec_SPEAKER_17]: All these assumptions are based on the NIST handbook. NIST is the National Institute for Standards and Technology. It assumes that in year 15 there's an overhaul and that you'll be replacing 25% of the equipment. So that's how we get into the, you know, how we get that number in terms of the life cost of it. There's another note that our team gave us is that on the ground source heat pump, because they have a longer expected life, that it accounts for that residual value at year 25. The wells are assumed to have more of a 50-year life, so you account for that residual.

[Member Jenny Graham]: And so when you are arriving at the life cycle, like the energy costs, if it costs us $1,000 today, it's going to cost us $1,000 and something next year, and $1,000 and something more the year after that. So what is that assumption?

[7eh2EusWqec_SPEAKER_17]: That escalation is included, and that's provided by the NISC guidelines.

[7eh2EusWqec_SPEAKER_22]: Okay. We'll share the life cycle cost report. It's 100 pages. There's a lot of detail in there. So we'll make sure that gets around to you.

[Member Jenny Graham]: And just to be sure I'm clear, tonight you need us to make a single decision. We can't carry multiple options into SD, is that correct? That is correct. Okay, thank you.

[Member Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Other than the insulation, do you know that there will not be significant damage under the insulation that would drive up costs on the roof? I mean, I don't know what the roof is structurally, physically.

[7eh2EusWqec_SPEAKER_22]: We did do some roof cuts, test cuts. I don't expect it's metal, corrugated metal deck is the supporting structure. I don't think that it's going to damage that deck. It's galvanized, so I don't expect anything other than wet insulation.

[Member Paul Ruseau]: Great. Thank you. Do any of these options include what will happen if the federal government finally becomes sane and we actually start getting charged for our carbon emissions? I mean, we all should start having to pay for our carbon emissions. And 25 years, I mean, seems like maybe there's a chance we'll finally start doing that. So that differential between option one and two doesn't look so big if we're not actually paying for carbon emissions. But to operate the air source is significantly more carbon emissions.

[7eh2EusWqec_SPEAKER_17]: So I would say that the head of our high performance building group makes that warning, gives that warning quite frequently that there could be, start to be taxes on carbon emissions. So you can see here the yellow part of this, this is our energy usage chart. The yellow is related to the gas and then, I'm sorry, it's the other way around, yeah. Yeah, so the orange is the fossil fuel. So you can see that those go down with each option but are less, You know, our overall energy use is less with the ground source options.

[7eh2EusWqec_SPEAKER_22]: But in terms of carbon, the three options are similar.

[7eh2EusWqec_SPEAKER_17]: So you look at the orange. Yeah, so the top is the, I believe.

[Member Paul Ruseau]: But electricity costs carbon. I mean, I see that the 42 is the same because we're going to operate the same equipment on gas until we eventually get rid of that stuff. But 230 to 173 is a huge difference if we are now paying on an additional amount per metric ton of carbon emitted a year if there's a tax. So, you know, that's what, whatever that is, 57. whatever this unit is.

[7eh2EusWqec_SPEAKER_17]: Because it includes, you know, there is, at least at this point, there is carbon in the production of the electricity as well.

[Member Paul Ruseau]: Oh, so that 42 has nothing to do with our running our, like, gas stoves and stuff.

[7eh2EusWqec_SPEAKER_17]: This is... That it does, right? So the 42 is our current or would be our gas, our on-site combustibles.

[7eh2EusWqec_SPEAKER_17]: But this doesn't include the carbon that would be included in the production of the electricity.

[7eh2EusWqec_SPEAKER_17]: So in metric tons. So for instance, the option we're recommending is 230 metric tons of carbon. And then the lower option, option two, would have 173 metric tons for the electricity component.

[Member Paul Ruseau]: And this is all based on the assumption that pumping more carbon into the atmosphere is free?

[7eh2EusWqec_SPEAKER_17]: So the life cycle cost does not include that, you're right, and it's certainly a potential risk.

[Member Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, I mean, I certainly feel like as a school committee member, I mean, this is my ninth year talking about how we've gotta stop just adding more for the future to figure out. And if somebody finally gets a brain and we have taxes that make the air to water source system, you know, the taxes are a lot, because hopefully they're not going to be like a penny per, you know, metric ton or something, because then it will be meaningless. But if we finally get a substantial additional cost for every metric ton we're emitting, I realize both options become more expensive. And equally, like, there's no difference. But when we're talking about the life, the 25-year life cycle costs, those are going to add up every year.

I mean, I also feel like this is the only site we have of all of our schools where doing geothermal is the duh option. I mean, there's no other school with a gigantic field that we can put all this in. So, I mean, other than the high school, but that was a totally different conversation. The other question I have is, so The 20 to 30% of production for the solar is based on which of the options of electric use? Because your slide said it was 20, 30% if we put solar on the roofs. 20, 30% of what? Shouldn't there have been a different percentage?

[7eh2EusWqec_SPEAKER_22]: It's option one, but the reality is it's not gonna change that drastically between the three. It's not that significant of a difference. But it was modeled after one, on option one.

[Member Paul Ruseau]: I don't like to make choices when I don't get all the information about all the options. Because it sounds like we've already been told what the options are going to be.

[7eh2EusWqec_SPEAKER_22]: Yeah, I think the carbon tax that you're speaking about is the expectation and the push on the building codes is to push everybody to the electric grid. they'll find other alternative sources. So the idea is that the tax probably wouldn't be on the electricity, it'd be on your fossil fuel component. And that could easily be changed out in the future if that were ever, a tax were implemented. But the reason that we're present, this team has decided that domestic hot water heating with natural gas makes sense right now, is the technology isn't quite there. So the domestic hot water heating, it's like $450,000 to about $50,000. The payback isn't there.

[Member Paul Ruseau]: No, I certainly have no question about the hot water heating situation. I just don't know why. We wouldn't just use the earth and this gigantic field sitting right there to heat and cool the building. With 50 years minimum for the wells to last, and I realize there's equipment that, you know, turns that before it gets in, when it's getting into the building. Like that equipment doesn't last forever. But a whole roof full of equipment that has to be replaced every 25 years, right? Or 15 years.

I mean, do we all think Medford's gonna have more money than we know what to do with in 15 years? I don't. I think we're gonna still be trying to figure out how to do our roads. So I'd rather spend what is frankly a small amount more money. It is, you know, we're talking about it like we're talking about $100 million. We're talking about less than a million dollars difference. And the 25-year life cycle differential is it would save us $778,000. That's a lot of money I think we could use for other things. So, you know, with that saying a pound, that Pennywise pound foolish here.

This is not the high school situation where we're talking about hundreds of millions of dollars. We're talking about like 800 and something thousand dollars more to do it in a way that will save us all that money. And it will last a lot, lot longer. So we won't be having the same conversation about why all of our schools need all this new equipment all at once. Because by the way, we do all these schools the same with air and water.

You know, the next school committee, 15, 20 years from now, is going to be doing all the schools again. And whoever's the mayor is going to be like, all of them now? Where are we supposed to get the money for all of them at once? This seems like the one option with all of our buildings where we could do one and get it a little out of sync from all the rest. And I'm just waiting for Ken to tell me how hard it is to maintain.

[Kenneth Lord]: Just one thing I wanted to put in is we have not looked into the article 97 implications of using that parkland. So we just said we haven't looked into that part. It is parkland. Whether or not we have to go through that process or not is unclear. We didn't get that answer going through the high school project because we kind of stopped that process. That's one thing we would have to come back with that answer to make sure that that would not be an issue. And also discuss with the other town departments that kind of oversee those properties. Those aren't school properties. Those are under Brecken Park.

[Member Erika Reinfeld]: Okay, I wish we had that information. That seems really important. The question, I had a similar question on future facing. By doing, because I was going to say the same thing that Member Ruseau said, that this, if there's going to be a geothermal option anywhere in our schools, this seems the option because the McGlynn and Andrews ship has sailed. Roberts, we couldn't make happen. Brooks, I don't see a nearby park. So I think my question is, Does doing this geothermal work open up any other options for city projects relying on geothermal? This is also me not entirely knowing how our connection to the grid works, but does this open up other options for other projects, or is the work that would happen in Columbus Park specifically for this project, and there's no way to leverage that or build on that for something in the future, recognizing that the schools and cities.

[7eh2EusWqec_SPEAKER_17]: I wouldn't say no way, but it would be designed specific to this building. It is possible where you make a well field that can be shared between multiple buildings. That is not the case here. And there is, if you recall back to Roberts, one of the things about extending it up to the park along the Fellsway is that it's quite a bit of digging and pipes that just adds cost. So when you're extending it to another building that isn't as close, there's just exponentially more cost to that. But if you did have a cluster of buildings.

[Member Erika Reinfeld]: But I'm wondering if there's a basis that would make that easier if we discover that geothermal is something that we want to be at in 15 years, even before this project.

[7eh2EusWqec_SPEAKER_17]: Do you mean if you were to experience the efficiency of this?

[7eh2EusWqec_SPEAKER_17]: Absolutely. But there are also, this is now a fairly common practice, there's lots of data, which is partially what our presentation is based on, on what that can do for your savings.

[Member Erika Reinfeld]: Right. But the primary recommendation for option one is the financial cost of the initial installation, right? Correct. That is the main driver.

[7eh2EusWqec_SPEAKER_22]: Yeah, and one other thing we should mention too with the federal incentives is that government can change their mind. We don't, we're not allowed to submit until we're complete and operational. And that would be three years from now. And I just don't know, I couldn't tell you if for some reason Congress decided to change their mind and could pass a bill and take it away.

[Member Erika Reinfeld]: I mean, that's true. Because they did do that. Any project, yeah.

[7eh2EusWqec_SPEAKER_22]: They did do that with solar in the last, in the big beautiful bill removed the incentives for solar. Geothermal wells still remain, but we can only tell you what we know right now.

[7eh2EusWqec_SPEAKER_17]: Specifically, there's a 30% tax credit, but that's three years down the road, and that's a lot of the risk of option two and three where there's more certainty to option one.

[Member Jessica Parks]: The calculations and I mean member of Reinfeld and member Ruseau, I share their feelings very strongly about this. I would love geothermal. I think it's a great site for it. But just specific questions. When you modeled the costs did you use our community aggregation rate for electricity?

[7eh2EusWqec_SPEAKER_17]: I believe so, I believe we were given the utility bills for all the schools.

[Member Jessica Parks]: Okay, because I thought I saw 25 cents or whatever and I wasn't, I thought we're at, like our rate should be 14 or something like that. Is that not for the schools? I mean, okay. And then, oh blended rate, yep, there we go, okay. I mean, similar to how we're talking about grants, incentives can go away, the cost of electricity continues to rise. So that differential could get greater. As more and more things come online and switch over to electric, the cost of electric could continue to rise even more because the demand is greater, the grid has to take on more. So, I mean, nothing is actually guaranteed and there's that side of that too. So I just kind of want to put that out there that when we were talking about Roberts I think there was what was it. I completely forget. But was it more of a three million dollar differential between the two options. Like I don't feel like it was under one million between the two options. It was well over a million I think between the geothermal and the

[7eh2EusWqec_SPEAKER_17]: It was a greater differential is also more disruptive.

[Member Jessica Parks]: Yeah it's incredibly disruptive. But I mean the cost was also much higher. This is under a million. So that's kind of how I'm looking at it.

[Suzanne Galusi]: I just have a quick clarifying question. Between these options, is there a change in the timeline and or like what the implications are for school functioning and operational use between like let's just say option one and then options two and three?

[7eh2EusWqec_SPEAKER_22]: So, well, they would be in the same time frame but as Stratton had mentioned, the geothermal well field, is kind of a key to that project, but it could be done during the school year and even during the winter. So you could start drilling the wells in February and, you know, put a schedule together, has the park restored by spring. But they would, overall duration is about the same. Sure.

[Member Jenny Graham]: How does this choice factor into the city's climate goals more broadly?

[7eh2EusWqec_SPEAKER_22]: The goal is to go fully electric and this building will be set up for that in any of these options. Again, at this time, we're only suggesting that the domestic hot water heating in the kitchen remain on fossil fuels at this time. But, you know, it could be, a future project could convert that. So it could be fully electric building.

[Mayor Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you. From a financial standpoint, although Member Mastrobuoni could probably speak to it best, just from speaking to Bond Council, we are bonding The 25 to 30 million for the McGlynn and the Andrews. These have almost doubled in cost since the initial onset. So I, I do have, I, I of course have concern about finances as it relates to then having to go for a very large bond and wanting the best interest rate for a new high school. So just the big picture on how much we are, the city is bonding over, The last two years and the coming three years, never mind the high school, is just something to be aware of. We want the best bond rating we can get for the largest project we'll ever have done.

[Member Jenny Graham]: I thought that once a debt exclusion was passed, that made that bond very, very favorable and essentially does not impact the city's like otherwise debt capacity because it is being backed by a guaranteed payment in the form of temporary increase in taxes. So I agree with you that we want and need the best rate possible for that project, but I'm not sure that conflating that project which will be financed in a completely different fashion with this project or any other project is accurate. And I continue to not entirely know where we are saying these projects have doubled. Like these costs have been pretty consistent across all the presentations of the team here. And so I don't want people to think these projects have doubled in cost because they just they haven't. They've kind of moved around a little bit. And I think the question is are we willing to pay 1.1 million dollars more up front for lower maintenance costs and lower operating costs in the future which no one is going to cost share with us. Right. So if I am looking at this sorry I'm just trying to find the right slide.

Well based on this page it's 1.1. Anticipated city share. Option 1, 11.7. Option 2, 12.893. So the difference is 1.1.

[7eh2EusWqec_SPEAKER_22]: Yeah, the slide before was just showing your construction costs. This is the total project budget, which has soft costs and your contingencies and so forth. So this is all in.

[Member Jenny Graham]: Where we talk about, sorry, why am I not finding the one I wanna see? The estimated maintenance costs, so selecting option one means we are selecting an option that is gonna be $200,000 more in maintenance costs than option two over the life of this analysis and our energy costs are going to be like six and eight hundred thousand dollars more. So we're so we are like we are buying a more expensive ongoing process by going with option one. And I I just want to say that out loud because that's a choice and it's a choice like we could make. but we should think carefully about because the thing that we talk about forever is our constrained operating budget where hundreds of thousands of dollars like sort of represent like the grand total increase to our budget and can't represent like spikes in, you know, electrical, spikes in maintenance that are sizable, right? Every time those things happen, we feel the pain and we make cuts to education. So I'm just trying to, sort of think through for myself, because I sort of came into this presentation thinking one thing, and now I'm sort of, like, leaning in a different, slightly different direction. I'm just trying to understand, like, if we are really thinking about how we, like, finance this project. Medford has plenty of debt capacity to finance the project. Paying for it, I completely understand, is a separate topic.

But are we comfortable with the increase in operating costs that the schools will need to operate these this option one versus option two. And I think that's a broader question for us to think about and for the for the city to think about because it is its revenue is constrained. So I'm just trying to figure out like in the balance of all of that like I know what the life cycle cost analysis says but it basically says we're like We're netting this all out to less than a million dollar differential. And I think that's worth some consideration because there's also a lot of unknowns and variables and all of those things in these numbers. So how do we? How do we make the right decision here? Are we solely focused on like what is the cheapest way out of this right now versus are we looking at that broader scale of what our operating budget impacts will be is the question I'm trying to consider myself.

[7eh2EusWqec_SPEAKER_22]: So the slide you're speaking to is slide 22 if you want to put it on the screen because that illustrates what you're speaking to.

[Member Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I do have the climate action plan, climate action and adaptation plan here and net zero energy, 50 percent by 2030, which is sadly very, very soon. And either of these options can get us there. One will require us to build a boatload more solar than the other. So, sorry, the air to source will require more electricity, therefore it will require more solar, and solar is not cheap. And so I guess I'm wondering if we have an analysis of the cost of getting this to net zero. based on the cost of the additional solar we would have to do. And I have no idea where we would do it, because we can't do it over the field. That doesn't make any sense. And the roof isn't big enough to do enough solar to get to net zero. But, I mean, this is, I didn't write this Medford Climate Action and Adaptation Plan. I certainly support it. But, you know, 2030, we're supposed to have our emissions cut in half.

And then by 2050, which I'll still be around for, zero emissions. That means solar everywhere in the city just to run these buildings. So I'm really quite confused as to how we get there if we don't, you know, we're not talking about a 5% differential here. So even if we were, by the way, 5% is still 5%. And we can just kiss these goals goodbye if we aren't willing to spend another million dollars for what is a substantial difference in carbon emissions.

[Member Jenny Graham]: Member Graham. Is it reasonable for this body to assume, and we won't hold you to this answer because we know you haven't started your work at the Brooks yet, but is it reasonable to assume that the Brooks analysis is going to look more like the Roberts given its site constraints and that the differential is going to be much, much more clear on that project than we're seeing right here? a very close call situation and the question, I think what I'm trying to understand is like, is the Brooks gonna be a close call situation or is it gonna be a like Robert situation where like between the cost and the dollars and the site and all the disruption that it's just not going to, we're not gonna, this isn't gonna be viable. I guess that's sort of what I'm wondering. And I won't hold you to anything that you're saying, I'm just trying to like understand are we making like one geothermal decision, potentially two,

[7eh2EusWqec_SPEAKER_17]: I haven't even been to Brooks yet. I've spent a lot of time looking at, yeah, there is more land at Brooks than Roberts. So it's going to be somewhere in between. We were able to test fit a well field that would work at Roberts. We also explored going up the street to the field. But it you know it took every every paid service in the playground and we know that parking is constrained there it's not as constrained at Brooks. There are more play surfaces more parking.

[7eh2EusWqec_SPEAKER_17]: So there will be disruption right where the main advantage here is I think that it can be phased in a way to minimize the disruption. Not to muddy the waters, but I'll throw out one more item is that drilling wells is very loud. And there are even recently a project in Jamaica Plain where there's just tremendous complaints from the neighbors. I mean, everybody wants this until it starts. And then you can't hear yourself think. So the other thing about Brooks is that it is more dense.

So it's not to say we're going to have noise wherever. It's part of construction. We all know that. But that risk is definitely higher at Brooks.

[Member Paul Ruseau]: I mean, I feel like I've heard from several of my colleagues, as well as myself, of course, that I feel like I want more information. And there's a lot of information here. But, I mean, going into this, you thought option one was going to be the option, so you provided the most information there, which that might be what I would have done. But what's our timeline on a vote here? And I don't know who has the answer to that.

[7eh2EusWqec_SPEAKER_22]: If you need another few weeks, we could allow for that. We have a little bit of time. This one, because it missed the summer, so it's going to skip to the following summer. It gives us some float in the schedules, so if you did want to take a little bit more time before you released us to proceed with schematic design, we could handle that.

[7eh2EusWqec_SPEAKER_17]: I'd say certainly days, maybe a week and a half. There's a lot more information we have to put together for the schematic design and detail drawings. The systems are different and there's a lot of work that goes into that to get it priced properly. So there is some float and I think I would like you, we would like you to make the right decision and we can, we have a tremendous amount of data that we didn't want to inundate you with. So I think if we could get a list of very specific questions, we could get you very specific answers and if we, can get a commitment to turn that around as fast as possible, I think we can work together on that.

[Member Paul Ruseau]: The only other thing I will say, thank you very much. Unfortunately, our next meeting is not for another three weeks, which is unusual. I felt like I wanted more information, and then I'm looking at the Medford Climate Action Plan, and I feel like I don't need more information now, because 15 years from now is past 2030. And I'm not sure who's keeping the math on how we're doing, but I'll go on a limb and bet we're nowhere near 50%.

I could be wrong. I mean, we did build the library and the police station are net zero. And I think one of them is better than that, actually. So, like, I could be wrong, but I don't think I am. And so, like, I just feel like I'm ready to just say in this particular school with this unusually available field, and I do understand we don't know if there's any like, you know, the state might be like, you can't drill on this, in which case we have another conversation, but I mean, I'm feeling more than ready to say we should be doing geothermal, but there's other hands up.

[Member Mike Mastrobuoni]: Thank you. I appreciate the conversation. I think this presentation is really clear, and I just want to make sure I understand I'm of the same mind as my colleague members. Am I right in saying basically what's before us is we can pay $8.8 million for a 27% reduction in our energy use in the building, or we can pay another 12.5%, another $1.1 million to get down another 20% is another $1.1 million worth a 20% decrease in energy usage plus $700,000 over 25 years. It's a pretty straightforward math problem that feels like... Leads me to believe that ground source heat pump makes a lot of sense.

That being said, I'm hesitant to... jump a capital plan, I'd love to see, I'd love to hear how this fits into, what do we have budgeted for this project before tonight? Where does this fit on our CIP? Did I miss that? I'd love to know that.

[Kenneth Lord]: Are you asking what was in the capital plan for this? I believe we budgeted $7 million for each of the three projects. This was back in October, November, when we couldn't really get any good numbers out of the MSBA or really anybody.

[Mayor Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Yeah, that's when we thought they were about 15 million apiece, 30 million total, 15 city share, 15-ish MSBA share.

[Member Jenny Graham]: With the Roberts we now know what the so these parts like to back up a step right like these accelerated repair projects are fairly new. They suspended the program. That is why we are paying for the entirety of the hybrid gas and electric systems that are going in at the middle schools. And when they restarted these programs The requirement of the program, if I'm correct, is that it's an electrification project, and then the roof is a roof project, right? So these are two things that the MSBA is considering. We put these three applications in together, not really expecting to get all three of them at the same time, unfortunately. For us, we did because otherwise the program cycle runs every two years now. So we likely would have missed the ability to do all three of these projects on an MSBA cycle because of that with the roofs aging as they are and the systems breaking down the way that they are. And so When that was happening, we were in extensive conversation, Ken and I, with MSBA about how to estimate. And that estimation, the reason we were doing that estimate was to come up with a percentage cost that we could then attribute to the OPM and designer fee. So the point of that estimate was not to estimate the cost of the project. It was to say what is the amount of money we're going to make available for this study. So I just want to be clear about what those numbers were and the caveats implicit in that, like the roof costs were like pretty easy to come by. All the rest of the electrification was not because the MSB hadn't done, didn't yet have projects through a cycle where they could point us to relevant data because the program had been suspended. That's like a little bit of the background of how these like this like doubling idea is coming to pass. It was never about the cost of the project. That's not why we were using that number. And I understand that from a capital improvement perspective you have to use what you've got. But now we know what the Roberts cost so we should be moving forward with more accurate reflections of cost in our capital improvement plan. I don't know that I've seen the city's CIP. I know that last year at this time we were asked for a bunch of information about our capital needs and with some urgency. So I don't know where that stands or what that looks like or what even is competing with these projects. I have this sense that there's a lot of competition, but I couldn't tell you what the names of those projects are and what those are estimated at. So I would like to see how this fits into the capital plan if that is available. But if it is not, then I think, like, we still have to make a decision on this because we cannot move forward. And if we delay this too far, this will end up exactly on top of the Brooks, and we will be paying for and constructing both of these projects at exactly the same time. Three. Sorry. So and there is a limit to when these projects must be concluded to remain part of the program which is 2029. Is that correct. So we are trying to stagger these projects a bit so that everything doesn't hit all at once. But in the end like they are all going to be online you know sort of from a cost perspective all at once. So. I would like some more information if it's available and could be presented to us. If we have to schedule a separate meeting, that's fine. But if that information isn't available, for whatever that reason might be, we shouldn't delay waiting for that information because that delay is going to stack this project on top of the others. And we heard at the earliest part of tonight that this roof is in worse shape than the Roberts, so my concern is If we delay this project to collect more information with a worse roof than the Roberts is and we miss a whole other summer, which is what will happen.

Will we be inviting like cost. that we did not anticipate because of the failing of those systems at Mississippi, which are in worse shape than the Roberts. And we can't change that the Roberts went first. At the time, the Roberts appeared to be in the worst shape, and the MSBA agreed with that, which is why it went first. So, yeah, I guess I'm just curious where, like, the capital improvement part of this conversation comes into play and whether it makes sense for us to try to schedule another meeting with the right folks to talk about that or if we should just be making decisions tonight. And I'm just curious, Mayor, what your thoughts are.

[Mayor Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: I think we should make a decision tonight. We don't have a meeting until the 9th.

[Kenneth Lord]: One question. Do we also need to engage with the other city departments that control that park to get their permission? collaboration in that.

[Mayor Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Yeah you should make sure it's not deed restricted. Figure out 100 percent who owns it. There's a park commission that would need to be need to be approved by and the neighbors should be aware if it's going to be disruptive for them for two to three months.

[Kenneth Lord]: I did make them aware that it was being discussed but I thought we were going the other direction.

[Mayor Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: No, six in the affirmative, one in the negative. Paper passes. Option two is chosen. Thank you.

[Mayor Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: I think you're up again for Roberts Elementary CMR application for AARP project. Kenneth Lord, Chief Operations Officer.

[Kenneth Lord]: Welcome back. Thank you. So we have the same group again for the Roberts So we have to make a presentation to you about the option of using a construction manager at risk for this project rather than a design bid bill process. So, welcome back.

[7eh2EusWqec_SPEAKER_22]: Thanks for the introduction. So we're here to present to you and have a discussion about CM at risk as an option for the Roberts Elementary School project. I don't know if you have the slide deck or who's controlling it. Go to the next slide. So what is CM at risk? So in 2004, the MAS, so you can go to slide two, under the construction reform laws, they introduced an option for municipalities to use another form of constructing projects, and it's CM at risk. And so we have that as an option here because our project is of a dollar over 5 million, so that we've exceeded that threshold, so it does give us this option. And if we were only talking about Roberts as one project, and we didn't have two others coming behind, I probably wouldn't be talking to you about CM at Risk. We'd just go lump sum, design, bid, build. But this is a different situation with the three, and there's some efficiencies, so let me just go through that with you now.

We would need to get prior approval from the OIG. And as part of that application process, we have to go through two government bodies to get approval. Normally, it'd be like a building committee for the city or town. In your case, we report to you, so you'd be the first vote. And then after that, it'd have to be the city council that'd have to vote and approve before we could even submit our application to the OIG. Next slide.

So CMIT risk is more of a collaborative open book process versus design bid build. And in this case, we would have a construction manager versus a general contractor. And the construction manager will be giving us some pre-construction services early on. We would have a budget that would have been built together collaboratively. We see everything. It's open book. We're in a lump sum design bid build that is all closed. You don't get to see that. So when would you want to use something like this? And usually it's when you have a multi-phase project and it has some complexity to it. And in our case, it's scheduling. And because we span over a couple summers, it makes it pretty challenging when you're going out to bid with the file sub-bid trades. which are your plumbing, your HVAC, your roofer. They want to know with certainty when they're going to give you a bid exactly how this is going to go. And if anything deviates, you leave yourself open to change orders. So next slide.

So I think there's some benefit here in getting the contractor involved early on, especially at Roberts where we have some equipment in a very tight mechanical room A lot of coordination and having that construction manager on board early engaging, you know, say train who has the units now to help us through some more of those design aspects. And then, as I mentioned, the construction phasing is going to be quite challenging. And then long lead equipment is another challenge that we see now. We're seeing a lot of electrical switch gears 32 weeks and then these air cooled heat pumps on Roberts that they could be as long as 52 weeks, almost a year. So, it's pretty challenging. These projects have a very long procurement and construction and shop drawing process, and then you start your ordering. And because of the, you know, we have to get this done in two summers, the first summer is really going to be focused on enabling and getting a lot of the work in place so that when this equipment arrives, it's plug and play. And so that is where a construction manager is really going to help make this successful. So next slide.

And so again, some of these slides kind of repeat, and I want to be efficient with your time. But the one unique thing here is we do have three schools that are almost identical. They were built at the same time, designed by the same architect. When you're in the buildings, it's sometimes hard to even realize which building you're in. They're so much alike. The systems are almost the same. The square footages of the buildings are almost the same. It's the same size boilers. It's the same size air handlers. All the fans are exactly the same. And I think that if we go construction manager at risk, there's an option where if we, so it's based on a qualifications process. They'll submit their fee to manage the project, their pre-construction fee, and that portion's competitive. But after that, they work with us to develop the cost.

But there's some efficiency there with the management. So if we, say, select one company for Roberts, well, we're going to come to you with the same exact request on Misatoch and then for Brooks. And if we deem somebody qualified for the first project, we're probably going to deem them also qualified for the next one and the third one. So if we do end up with the same CM, which is very likely on all three projects, now you have an over-management that is overseeing all three. And there's a lot of learning that will happen on the first one with Roberts that then we can apply that to the next two. So I really do see a lot of efficiencies here if we do go that route on these. And again, if I came to you with just one project, it was just Roberts and that was it, I'd probably be telling you that we should go lump sum. But this is unique, this is a very unique situation that we have here. So I did give you in the slide deck some of the pluses and minuses. I've kind of talked about them here. Some of the big things that you'll hear on the pros and cons are design, bid, build inherently is less expensive up front. That is true. That oftentimes happens. But what happens in that case, the risk is shifted to the owner and the owner is probably going to see much higher rate of change orders. on a CM at risk project, the construction manager is given a GMP contingency and they will be absorbing a lot more of those things as changes. So that is why the cost on a CM at risk is a little higher because they've got a contingency on their side. And so that's really the biggest differences. But on a lump sum 149 bid project, We will pre-qualify the contractor, the general contractor, and we'll do the same for all the trades. And the one thing I will say is all the trades are competitively bid the same. So whether we go see them at risk or we go lump sum, it doesn't matter. The HVAC bid is gonna be the lowest bidder will be picked, and that's the one we're gonna go for. So it's still a very competitive process for most of the trades that are gonna be bought out. And so that's sort of the overview of it. I've given you some pros and cons on, if you go to the next slide, that's on Chapter 149. Oh, one more. Sorry, I have my slideshow here. I guess I moved ahead. So 149, I've given you some pros and cons. And then next slide, you'll see 149A, which is CM at risk.

You know, so again, I've given you a lot of the highlights, and I'm happy to entertain any questions that you might have. And then the next slide will give you a matchup between the two. So with that, I know we've already gone long on the prior presentation, so I just want to open it up if you have questions. I'm happy to answer them.

[Member Erika Reinfeld]: My question is quick, does the fact that we're using two different heat pump types, does that change this calculation at all? Not at all. Great, thank you.

[Member Jenny Graham]: Motion to approve the use of CM at risk for this project.

[Member Jenny Graham]: Does this have to be a roll call vote? Does anybody know, does this have to be a roll call vote?

[Mayor Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Yes. Seven of the affirmative, zero of the negative. Paper passes. Thank you.

[Mayor Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Next up, we have our finance director, Noel Velez, for a quarterly financial update. Welcome.

[Noel Velez]: Good evening, everyone. One second. Good evening. Well, if you have a moment, we'll put our The chart up. Does everybody have it in front of them? I can start talking. I just want to, I don't know if we can. Okay, perfect. So we have it up in the thing. So what we have in front of you right now is just a, What I think is a clean, simple outlook of where we are right now in the first quarter of our Medford Public Schools budget, showing, of course, the original budget we approved of, budget transfers we've done in September, showing our new revised budget for each general funding codes, encumbrances, which refer to open purchase orders. Those are current POs that are open at the moment. Some of them are maybe blanket or larger contract POs or cleaning contract, things of that nature. Expenditures, what we've currently have actually spent. Total spending, just combining encumbrances and expenditures as I like to, you know, for budget purposes and also projection purposes, we like to look at what our encumbrances are as actual spending hopefully. We spend it all as we move forward. And then last but not least as of 930 2026 our remaining balanced budget in which we will then be using these numbers going forward with our continued salary projections with what we believe is a good amount of all our new hires coming in. from any vacancies we had in September. So our October-November numbers give me a great idea of what we look like total salary-wise. And by the second quarter projections, we can not only give you the numbers, but show you where we are projecting-wise with the budget, including costs, with any extraordinary maintenance, and anything that we didn't budget for, we can always talk about in the future.

[Member Mike Mastrobuoni]: Thank you. Briefly, it would be really helpful in the future if we had the general fund or the codes by salaries and by, like, ordinary maintenance, right, supplies and services. I think it's great that we have this data. This is helpful. I would love to know, I would love to be able to understand, you know, where we're pushing on our supplies and services basically. And then be able to compare across schools, right? Like I think when we have Medford High School having its own grouping is great. The middle schools, elementary schools, it's hard to parse out, you know, like, what are we allocating from a supplies and services and a staff perspective to each different school. I would love to see that in the future as we sort of evolve this presentation. That being said, the big question that I think only you can answer for us is, like, what risks are you looking at right now? What have you identified as potential issues going forward, whether it's overtime, you know, operations and maintenance, fuel, like, you know, winter. Winter's coming up. It's something I have a lot of stress about.

[Member Mike Mastrobuoni]: What have you identified and what are you watching at the moment?

[Noel Velez]: So whatever I identify, the three biggest things I like to identify is I like to look at where we are for leave of absences, specifically both paid and unpaid. Currently right now with the new agreement with the teachers union, they are allowed to tap into their sick bank. So I have to keep track of that, making sure that we have that up to date and anyone who normally would have gone unpaid. when the original budget was set up, and it's currently going to go pay for how many of the days they recommended. I'm keeping track of that, which then, of course, coincides with either mis-prep work and or substitutes filling in for that. Keeping a great eye currently on special education, transportation, and tuition, which right now, I just met with Ina earlier today, and so far so good. After our first quarter, we were very happy with the numbers of where we are transportation-wise. Regarding fuel, We did increase that number a bit. We do do the chargebacks to kind of alleviate some of our electricity and gas charges. We didn't see anything too too major in air conditioning spending the first quarter. We knew we had to bump that number up overall just based on the projections of the last year where we ended as a fiscal year. And then just looking at how our chargebacks look. So sometimes that number can be a little can look a little low regarding what we budgeted for because we can't throw the whole, we can't throw that whole number in the budget nor we're going to have some chargebacks to our MEEP and after school program. But regarding extraordinary maintenance, during the summertime we did, we did have all of our capital project accounts created by the city. So we were able to charge some things to our general ledger and general entry them back out. So far in the first quarter, I don't see any too many big concerns. I'm more concerned really second quarter with the heating cost. That's really where I'm like, you know, where we're looking at that. And then secondly, any, any surprise move-ins special education wise, which may be collaborative schools. But what I do know right now based on our circuit breaker numbers and our IDEA grants which got approved. Just right now in transportation, we have about close to a $400,000 buffer that we haven't used totally yet. I know that can go away very quickly, but that was something that we want to look at. And right now with our circuit breaker IDA and general ledger, we were looking at right now, we have a buffer of approximately 1.9 million because we had some leftover circuit breaker fiscal year 26 that we charged so that we didn't have to tap into our fiscal year 27 right away.

Also, just to go back on that, also just keeping track of all new hires based on what we budgeted and everything else so far, that forecast has looked really good.

[Member Paul Ruseau]: I'd like to clap, but it doesn't really translate well. So thank you so much. This is the first quarterly update we've ever received in the nine years I've been here, and I'll bet for a long time before that. We don't have Munis, so for those who are still watching or don't have any idea what that means, with Munis, I believe you literally push a button and you can get something like this. Without Munis, this is an enormous amount of labor that went into this, and I really appreciate that you that you understood, of course, how important it was for your role, but also that we want to know this. And the two columns I would add, I did send you an email, were the actual percent used slash committed, and then the percent actually paid out and spent. And I did those on my own. And I'm really happy to see that other than finance and technology and I mean, the undistributed doesn't really count, because that's just paying past contracts. We are not over 25%, really, anywhere.

And that makes me very happy, because if this is 25% of the year, and we're not over 25%. And my understanding in education, at least in public education, is that the first quarter often has higher than normal expenses. Because like, teachers are ordering all the books, and all the other stuff that we order. And we might pay things for the whole year for technology and other licenses and stuff like that. So these numbers are great. I'm very happy about that.

I am wondering, in operations and maintenance, we have 77% of it is encumbered already. Yes. What's the big hit there that we're doing ahead of time?

[Noel Velez]: So with operations and maintenance, you've got, of course, certain contracts that we put out right away. So our cleaning contract, which we knew. We have our waste management contract, which is, you know, And then anything other than that is usually going to be blanket POs for gone green electricity or fire alarms. I can give you a whole list next time. I don't have it off the top of my head. But usually what it is, it's a lot of...

you know, emergency slash extraordinary maintenance blanket POs that we can legally create open based on each school. So kind of like that's why that number is always the most misleading is, you know, Ken does a fantastic job of creating a spreadsheet regarding how many vendors we're going to use, how much we spent with them last year, what some of their new costs were, and then creating blanket POs. And then, you know, just to give you an idea of what we do internally, usually around March, we start looking at all those blanket POs. And then we run monthly reports on them until about mid-May. And then mid-May, me and Ken meet on a regular basis discussing any of these blanky POs, whether they need more funding or some of those POs can be decreased. Again, you know as well as I know, I can say that all I want and then a boiler can go down tomorrow. That number means nothing, but usually what we try to do with any time you have a blank APO, especially in extraordinary with facilities, I really like to keep around March, we start talking about them in May, we start tracking them down, and then by June we're sort of triggering them down little by little, cutting those POs off, and then moving those funds if we need to, to cover other costs, or Ken may have another project that he may want to fund.

[Member Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I signed the warrants, so everybody here probably already knows this, but a blank APO is like, this is how much you can spend for the year, so that it can just be used over and over again. It doesn't mean that it all gets spent, and it doesn't mean that 77% has been spent so far.

[Member Paul Ruseau]: Yeah. The other one I was curious about, is this the same situation for people transportation?

[Noel Velez]: Yeah, so people transportation is similar. You know, you've got, we've got our eastern bus, so that's a very simple contract forward. We already know what the cost was when we agreed to the contract. We know how many buses we're going to need, late buses, after school buses. Similar with our transportation, we've got NRT who does most of our in-district and out-of-district transportation. And then any new move-in students, we kind of created those POs. And the creation of those POs is based off of what the bid cost came in, how many days of school that student may have, and you just multiply that, and that's kind of. So it's a similar situation where, similar to that, usually around January is actually when I start meeting my transportation. So I start meeting with INA, which we just had our first meeting quarterly yesterday, just going over, making sure all the POs were created. Are there anything else? And then in January, we'll then start looking at, hey, looking at POs, whether to close them out because a student may have moved out or a student may have gone to a different school. So if they go to a different school sometimes, hopefully, for an example, if they're on a D&E transportation, but then they move to an NRT school, so we can put them on an NRT bus, which then lowers our cost and we can close out that D&E transportation, put a little bit more money in there. You try to balance it out by the end of the year. I always feel like special education is one of the hardest things to really it's such a moving target. But we have a great team that really we meet, you know, we kind of have since I've been here in 2023 with Jerry and then when I took over in 2024 we've we've put a lot of procedures in place to make sure you know. We're not, not that I, not that we can never say, you know, just to make sure that we can sort of catch any shortfalls and making sure that we're just discussing how we want to use our circuit breaker to, to of course cover anything that we couldn't just cover in our budget. Just because again, anytime a student moves in we are normally held responsible, fiscally responsible when they move in, depending on what school they go to and how their transportation cost is, is, is divided up.

[Member Paul Ruseau]: Well, thank you. I appreciate knowing this is not just at the end of the year. No, no, no, no. Have a great.

[Mayor Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you. Thank you for the presentation. Thank you, everyone. Appreciate the quarterly update.

[Suzanne Galusi]: Could I mention one? Oh, Dr. Luzzi. I just wanted to thank the members. Thank you, Director Velez. But I also want to thank the members for their input and feedback and questions and guidance. This, as you mentioned, we're trying to, you know, do a little better and be transparent with the community. So I appreciate the suggestions that you've provided. So we will take those into account and adjust. So thank you.

[Mayor Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Okay. We do not have any presentations of the public nor Student Advisory Council. No continued business, new business reports requested. We do have one condolence. Members of the Medford School Committee express their sincerest condolences to the family of Arvin Butch Halliday, father of Bailey Halliday, kindergarten teacher at the Missittuck Elementary School. I may rise for a moment of silence, please. And our next regular meeting is November 9th, 2026, here in the Alden Memorial Chambers, Medford City Hall, in addition to Zoom.

Breanna Lungo-Koehn total time: 6.62 minutes total words: 1027	Paul Ruseau total time: 12.51 minutes total words: 1982	Aaron Olapade total time: 0.94 minutes total words: 219	Jenny Graham total time: 12.54 minutes total words: 1903
Erika Reinfeld total time: 4.03 minutes total words: 728	Jessica Parks total time: 2.68 minutes total words: 398	Mike Mastrobuoni total time: 2.54 minutes total words: 376