School Building Facilities and Maintenance Special Committee

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Meeting Title: School Building Facilities and Maintenance Special Committee
City: Somerville, MA
Date Published: 2025-09-15

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AI Disclaimer: Summaries and transcripts above were created by various AI tools. By their nature, these tools will produce mistakes and inaccuraies. Links to the official meeting recordings are provided for verification. If you find an error, please report it to somervillecivicpulse at gmail dot com.

Time & Speaker	Transcript
Jesse Clingan	Good evening, everybody. This is the September 15th meeting of the School Buildings, Facilities and Maintenance Special Committee, Joint Committee with the School Committee, regular meeting. I am Jesse Kling and I am the current chair, the new chair, as we've had some staff changes around the council with Councilor Pineda-Newfeld leaving and that making Councilor Davis the president. So we had to make some changes there. So before I get started, I just have to read this blurb that allows us to do this meeting remotely. So pursuant to Chapter 2 of the Acts of 2025, this meeting of a city council committee will be conducted via remote participation. We will post an audio recording, audio-video recording, transcript, or other comprehensive record of these proceedings as soon as possible after the meeting on the City of Somerville website and local cable access government channels. With that out of the way, I'm going to open the city council side of the meeting, and I'll turn it over to the school committee so they can open their meeting. So this evening, we have Clerk Delaney. Delaney, what's your last name again? I'm sorry, we've never even met in person.
SPEAKER_03	Yeah, my last name is Fisher Cascio, so Madam Clerk is probably easier.
Jesse Clingan	Okay, Madam Clerk, if you could call the roll to establish a quorum, please.
SPEAKER_03	Yep, this is roll call. Counselor Sait. Present.
	Present.
SPEAKER_03	Perfect. Councillor Clingan or Chair Clingan.
SPEAKER_17	Present. And I see Councillor Davis is here.
SPEAKER_03	And Councillor Davis is here. Perfect. All right. With all three here, we do have a quorum.
Jesse Clingan	Excellent. All right. So just jumping right in, we have a number of memos that have been provided by city staff. I know we also have some items that will be discussed this evening. I see Rich Raich is in the list of attendees here.
SPEAKER_14	Chair Clingan. Would it be all right if we established our quorum as well?
Jesse Clingan	Yes. So, yeah. So my intention is to turn it over to school committee and allow them to establish quorum.
SPEAKER_14	Appreciate it. Thank you, Chair Clingan. This is school committee. We're just going to do our roll call and then pass it over. And my apologies, Chair Clingan, for interrupting. I am Leron Betone, chair. I am present. Sarah Phillips, are you here?
SPEAKER_11	I am here.
SPEAKER_14	And has Laura Pitone joined us at this point? I know she was running late. Not present, but we have enough to do business. So with two out of three here, we have quorum, and I will turn it back to you, Chair Klain. Thank you.
Jesse Clingan	Thank you. Sorry about that. I said that what I was going to do and immediately jumped into the agenda. So my apologies. Okay, so... I have number one is the approval of the minutes of the school buildings maintenance special committee joint meeting of June 10 2025.
SPEAKER_07	Why don't we just do a roll call get out of the way. My apologies.
Jesse Clingan	Sorry about that, so yes, the item number one is the approval of the minutes of the school building facilities and maintenance special committee joint meeting of June 10. Why don't we just do a roll call vote and get that off, get that housekeeping out of the way. Madam Clerk.
SPEAKER_03	Perfect. Councillor Sait. Yes. Councillor Davis.
Jesse Clingan	Yes.
SPEAKER_03	Chair Clingan.
Jesse Clingan	Yes.
SPEAKER_03	Perfect. That is all votes in favor.
Jesse Clingan	Okay. So, yeah, so we do have a number of memos that have been sent along regarding the pool and some other things. I am just going to take off item number two. Some of these are really big items that may not be fully ready yet, but these are requests that have come in with concerns around a constituency plan in the event that a school went offline. These are really important questions that we may not have all the answers to tonight, but these will stay in the box until we're satisfied with them. So I do believe there is a memo for item number two, and that is an item from Councilor Davis and school committee that the administration submit to the city council and school committee, the city's contingency plan in the event of an emergency school closure during the 2025, 2026 school year. So that one would be time sensitive. So on that, we have, okay, I'm sorry, we have Liaison Redassi. Go ahead.
SPEAKER_07	You're muted. You're still muted.
SPEAKER_01	Anything now?
SPEAKER_17	Yes, we can hear you.
SPEAKER_01	Oh my God, I tried all the microphones. Thank you, Mr. Chair. My apologies. I was actually hoping that we could take some of the items on the agenda out of order just because we have staff that would only be here to speak on certain items. I was hoping maybe we could do the pool items first just so that Parks and Rec doesn't spend the entire night here followed by the school readiness memo so that DPW can participate and then hop off and then... happy to do the MSBA update or whatever from there on out.
Jesse Clingan	We'll skip to item number three, which there are multiple three, five, and six are all on the pool. I'll read those. All that the director, and we can take them up, the director of Parks and Recreation report to this council on the cause of the chemical spill at the Jenny Smithers pool in the process to address the cause of the spill and prevent future occurrence. We'll take that one up actually by itself. No, I'm sorry. Item number six at the same time, sorry. That the administration report to this council on the cause of the reported chemical imbalance at the Ginnie Smithers pool and process being used to address the imbalance. And we can take up the ongoing maintenance one separately. So items three and item six, who do we have here to speak on those items? And we do have a memo. I don't know if anybody had enough time to read that one.
SPEAKER_17	before the meeting, but we do have, let me see, I can't see everybody, so I know that.
SPEAKER_01	Through the chair, sorry to interrupt. I just wanted to flag that the memo refers to items three, five, and six in like a holistic picture. And then wanted to let you know that we have Chief of Staff, Nikki Spencer here. We have Director of Operations, Yanni Sirianni. I won't try to pronounce last name. I'm so sorry, Yanni. And then I think we also have Commissioner Jill Lathan as well, and Director Bill Fisher as needed.
Jesse Clingan	Okay, so we'll take out three, five, and six. Let's talk pool. Who wants to go first?
SPEAKER_12	Through you, Mr. Chair, I'm happy to go first. Good evening. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to all three items concerning the Jenny Smithers pool tonight. Earlier today, as we said, we submitted a memo with details in response to these items. I'm happy to discuss them briefly. We look forward to your questions. Once again, I'm Nikki Spencer, Chief of Staff at Valentine, and joining me is... Yanni Tseregatis, Director of Operations for Parks and Recreation. Um, so as you're aware, we currently do not have a director of parks and recreation. So I've been working very closely with Yanni and the management team throughout the summer. Yanni has been personally leading the aquatics team and enacting many of the improvements we've listed in tonight's memo, so I wanted to thank him. And I'd also like to thank both DPW Commissioner Lathan and her team, as well as Director of Emergency Management Bill Fisher. As we stated in the memo submitted earlier, we've seen improved procedures, cleanliness, and overall teamwork around the Jenny Smithers pool. For example, this summer, DPW and Director Tsiragotis have worked hand-in-hand to successfully address a temporary closing of the small fulfillment facility. They have also evaluated the options for long-term management solutions. Each one of these present a high cost and come with their own pros and cons. And so, as a result, both DPW and Parks and Rec are currently recommending that we alter the schedule of the pool by closing for one day during the week and expanding hours during the weekend. This will allow one full day dedicated toward making adjustments and necessary maintenance. We're working to finalize which day will be off during the week, and we'll share that detail very soon. We've been looking at which day has lower attendance and which day will avoid an impact to any school swimming lessons when they start up again. And then Ayani has been working to break back and expand weekend availability. And we are currently working to finalize these hours. So again, we look forward to sharing more details very soon. We also sent you an updated guide for lifeguards and members of the aquatics team. You may recall that following the closure of the Ginny Smithers Pool, Ben ISD Director Nick Antanovica worked very closely with Parks and Rec Director Sue Yerkes and the team to update the lifeguard guide to ensure proper procedures around testing and reporting of chemicals in the pool. Director Siragotis has since worked to make the lifeguard manual a little more user friendly and has been vetted again by ISD and DPW. So what you see before you tonight with the lifeguard manual is a living document. It will continue to be improved over time. Finally, we want to thank you for the opportunity to address the chemical spill that occurred back in June. We take this incident and all safety issues very seriously. After investigations into this incident, the cause was found to be human error via overfilling of a tank of muriatic acid in the storage closet. While the fire department did not find any toxic fumes or readings throughout the school or pool facilities, there was water on the floor of the storage area and also an improperly stored bottle of chlorine. Since that day, DPW and Parks and Rec have worked to clarify the limits of that tank with the muriatic acid, review protocols on proper chemical storage, and DPW has installed a shutoff valve on the water hose in the closet to reduce the likelihood of leaking. Parks and Rec also wetbacks up any remaining water. Finally, Director of Emergency Management, Bill Fisher, who's here tonight, will be convening an after action exercise as an opportunity to train and improve our protocols with all relevant departments and the schools. Thank you all for your attention to this important safety and quality issue. And please know that our departments remain committed to maintaining this important community asset and providing a safe and enjoyable pool experience for all.
Jesse Clingan	All right. You said Bill Fisher? I'm sorry, what?
SPEAKER_12	Bill is our Director of Emergency Management.
Jesse Clingan	Okay, so I just have a couple of quick questions and I'll turn it over to school committee to their questions. I'll first go to, I have colleagues questions as well. Okay, so Councillor Said, go ahead.
Naima Sait	Through the chair. First, I want to thank everyone for all the work that was put into this to ensuring that the pool is safe for users. and more importantly, that this does not happen again. Yeah, thank you for the memo. I have got a few questions. You mentioned closure one day a week. So the question is there, Do we expect this to start? And would that be for until the director is hired or just indefinitely? This is just like the plan going forward?
SPEAKER_12	Through the chair, we will be implementing this very soon. We're bringing together the final details in the coming weeks. So we hope to have more information on which day the closure will take place during the week. and then more details on what expanded hours of the weekend looks like. So thank you for your patience. We are implementing this before we bring on a new director, but we do anticipate that a new director will bring their own improvements and their own thoughts around ongoing maintenance and, of course, partnership with DPW.
Naima Sait	Thank you. For the chair, I just want to understand, is this just we're doing the one-day week closure just because we don't have a director right now? Or is it just this is just like a best practice so that we have time to do all those protocols you've mentioned?
SPEAKER_12	Through the Chair, thanks for letting me clarify. It is not because we don't have a director. It is a practice that we've seen other pools implement some of our neighbors as an opportunity to pause during the week, make the myriad little adjustments and making sure that all of our maintenance is being coordinated appropriately between Parks and Rec and DPW. It gives them an opportunity to make changes and avoid any interruptions to programming throughout the rest of the week and the weekend. So both for school swimming lessons and also the other activities in the pool.
Naima Sait	Through the chair, thank you for the clarification. I mean, my first thought is we need uh, if anything, and what I'm hearing from constituencies, we want to use the pool, um, by also, and we, for example, seniors, I hear that from seniors a lot. We want dedicated, they want dedicated hours, but also understand safety first. Um, and if, um, you're saying that other cities are doing this, uh, and it's a best practice, then, um, Yeah, let's do its best so that we don't have to close the pool again. My other question is, in the memo, there's a list of responsibilities or tasks for DPW and Parks and Recs. And my question there is, how are these responsibilities or tasks different from before? all these incidents, like what are the improvements, changes that were made in order to ensure that, you know, there will be no closure in the future for these reasons.
SPEAKER_12	Through the chair, that's an excellent question. This was an opportunity to redelineate these roles. I think ideally that these have been the roles and responsibilities that Parks and Rec and DPW should be maintaining. There was certainly an opportunity with the closure and with bringing things back on to retrain everyone who was responsible for chemical balance testing. And that is done four times a day by parks and rec staff. However, DPW staff also occasionally test and confer on those results. Routine cleaning, both making sure that that is within our protocols, but also buying other vacuums for the multiple pools that we operate to make it easier to do so. And then we've strengthened sort of our communication protocols, making sure that while some issues should always be a 3-1-1, if it is urgent, if it's after hours, that there is a strong chain of communication to DPW staff in particular, if there's a maintenance issue. And so that we can also bring in our pool maintenance vendor if there was an emergency.
Naima Sait	Great. Thank you.
SPEAKER_17	Dr. Davis?
Lance Davis	Thank you, Mr. Chair. And I'll echo the thanks to everyone who's obviously put a lot of time and effort into figuring out what got us to this point and different options for moving forward. The good counselor from Ward 5 hit most of my questions. So I'll just... to make sure I understand the memo, which came in late morning. I haven't had a chance to fully read all of it because it just came in today. But just skimming through it, it looks like there's several options that have a cost associated with them. And the memo says that, essentially, the decision was to go with the option of closing the pool one day rather than going with those more expensive options. I assume implicitly because cost and then each of those other options do note that there's maybe some uncertainty as to the efficacy. So not sure if it worked. Let's see if this works. Um, I guess, you know, I'll just kind of share the frustration that, that, you know, just that I hear from constituents, um, sort of ongoing about the pool, uh, you know, hopefully with, uh, it sounds like it seems, you know, clearly from what you're saying, uh, a better, uh, you know, better attention and better focus on this asset that we have. Hopefully going forward, we won't run into these problems. You know, you noted through the chair to you, Spencer, you noted that the The most recent issue was a human error happens, but I think obviously we all know that training and procedures and et cetera can really help avoid those. So hopefully we'll have a better system in place going forward as well. And I assume that will be very much part of having a new director that we'll be able to address some of those things. I hope we can get this back to open every day because it is a really important asset. We spend a lot of money on it just recently. you know, as it is. It's disappointing that, you know, you mentioned that in the memo that there's a few other communities that have taken this approach. I don't see it say that it's best practice. I read it more as sort of, you know, a necessity given sort of where we've gotten ourselves. You know, my hope would be that, you know, going forward, if we have a better system and better standard operating procedures, that, you know, that we don't have to do that. I know we did spend a significant amount of money over the past five, 10 years on a bunch of the different systems. I assume the memo wasn't intended to sort of shrug off the fact that, well, it's an old pool and these things happen, but it does kind of read that way. And I want to call out taxpayers who spent a lot of money in these systems. A lot of the systems in the pool aren't that old and really should work. um if they're if they're maintained properly and and implemented properly so uh hopefully that'll be the case there's not much else i can say at this point other than you know thank you for recognizing that this is important and um i think many of the folks in the community myself included will not like that it has to be closed one day people will like more hours on the weekend i can tell you for certain that you know having expanded hours it was already a thing that i've heard about so um we'll take what we can get and move forward and hope for better oversight in the future.
Jesse Clingan	Thank you. Frances, you have another question.
Naima Sait	Through you, Jacqueline, if I may, I have one more question. Since the pool was closed for a long time in this winter and then fall, winter, spring. I know a lot of classes were canceled, rescheduled. There was an email that was sent regarding rescheduling, but then no follow-up. I know this because I signed up my son for one of the classes. I understand that there is right now no director, so we're focusing on the important stuff, but because they received this from Black constituents. Have we reached out to all the folks who signed up for classes, for rescheduling, or are we still working on that?
SPEAKER_12	Through the Chair, I believe the Good City Councilor's question was around outreach to folks who may have missed classes or activities this past winter. I should say that one of the improvements that we have been working on is the way that we communicate with users at the pool. We have a fabulous coordinator on the Parks and Rec team, and she has been working hand in hand with the the core comms team at sort of in the larger city comms team to work on how we update pool users, those with activities using our city channels, and moving forward. So we will take the feedback always, and it's a continual improvement process, but we are proud of the improvements that we have made. I know that back when the pool was closed, not everybody got the right notification. And so we've been trying to ameliorate that process for the future. If folks missed a class, they should have received a follow-up. If there's anyone out there who does need support, please do not hesitate to send them our way. And we'll work with with them or whatever group that they are working with to make sure that they get what they need. Our goal is to make sure that there are no long-term disruptions going forward, but this is a pool. The natural state of our water is highly fluorinated. And so over the many years of this pool, we know that we've struggled with ongoing chemical balance issues. And so we do wanna have both protocols around safety and for notifying folks if there is an interruption of services.
Naima Sait	Through the chair, yeah, thank you. I think just to make it simple, going to rephrase my question is have the users been contacted in order to reschedule those classes, because some of my constituents have been reaching out about that. If not, please do that. I know, not to make it about me, I know for sure I signed up my son. I even emailed, used the email to ask when the class would be rescheduled. They never heard back. I imagine others are, are, have reached out as well. So this is just me asking to please reach out to users for scheduling classes or offering a refund or whatever the options are. I was gonna add something. Yeah, I think those are all my questions. Jacqueline, thank you.
Jesse Clingan	Okay. Thank you. Just before I turn over to school committee, just a few quick questions to whoever wants to take them. So I also appreciate all the work that's been put in and trying to move us forward. And I'm not, I know we can't really like look backwards to the point where we're not going to be pointing fingers, but I'm just curious. Well, first of all, I know we don't have a director right now, but is the pool, the maintainer of the pool, has there been any staff changes there?
SPEAKER_12	Through to you, Mr. Chair, there have been some departures. I'm not sure I can say more beyond that, but the Parks and Rec team continues to program and test and administer the pool on a daily basis. And then we work closely with DPW.
Jesse Clingan	Because I just want to be completely transparent. I mean, we've had this pool for a long time and all of a sudden there was a string of problems all at once. And, you know, all the things I was hearing, it sounded like it was, you know, the way things are being handled. So, you know, again, I mean, with, you know, with pools, I mean, I understand it can get complicated balancing things, but I just want to make sure that we, that the folks have, you know, that we made changes to where we can instill confidence. I mean, beyond this, I mean, this is great. You have all done a lot of work here in terms of moving us forward, you know, with the direction we're going um i i guess so my only other question is um like a so who is who so right now like we've have we always used an outside contractor for pool maintenance or is that a new thing since this is all happened uh
SPEAKER_12	To you, Mr. Chair, my understanding is we do have a long-term maintenance vendor, and I'm going to ask Commissioner Latham to maybe fill us in.
SPEAKER_08	Yeah.
SPEAKER_05	Yes, to the Chair, Commissioner Joe Latham, we've always had outside contractors work with the maintenance and the filter systems, whether that be Western Samson or Wolfpack, we've always kind of engaged with the contractor to come in. These are very complex full systems that we need to stay on top of. And so an outside vendor who specializes in that has always been deployed.
Jesse Clingan	Okay, so that just makes me wonder, like, so, but are they involved in sort of like the balancing of the, like, did they let us down in this? In terms of the imbalance and the closures?
SPEAKER_05	Through the chair, you know, Ms. Fincher's kind of addressed what Parks and Rec has been doing to kind of change some of those practices. We're here to support them. The testing and the balances really comes with Parks and Recreation, which they've done a phenomenal job over these last few months working with Nikki and Liani, the current full staff. I can't really speak to what's happened in the past, but we firmly in collaboration with DPW and Parks and Rec has really done a great job trying to address certain issues.
Jesse Clingan	Okay. And then thank you for that. And I'm just trying to figure out who all the players are in the actual hands-on with the pool. So now I know there's a contractor. So we closed the pool in the spring to do the deep cleaning, which then I think for, made it like we weren't going to do it again in August. So are we now on a springtime schedule for that, or is that going to go back to being in August?
SPEAKER_05	Through the chair, from DPW standpoint, we were going to get that back to an August schedule based on timing and programming and really a good window of time to do that kind of closure that we need to do for DPW, which is really to you know, look at all the systems, do some friendly maintenance, drain, really look at things like tiles and grout. That's really the best time to do that in that August culture time that we usually do. So we will be heading back to that.
Jesse Clingan	Okay. And, you know, I'll just make a comment before I hand it over. It's just, you know, I'm not trying to, like, you know, I've expressed this in past meetings and with staff that this pool is such a treasured, you know, asset to the community that, you know, and it's being handled, you know, great now, but there was a while there where it was sort of an afterthought when you're like, if it would go down and people weren't being alerted, who had already been signed up or they just find out, So I'm glad to hear that we're getting management under control and especially with regards to communications. But just in case if anybody watching thinks that like, you know, making a, it is a big deal. I mean, it is, it is a big deal. And I can see that you're all handling it like it, like it should be handled. Like it is a big deal. So I appreciate that. And yeah, onward and forward. I think hopefully, you know, I know things are going to happen to me. Pools are almost like elevators. They're just like, You know, once they get old, these things happen. But I think, as has been noted, we do invest a lot in that pool. And so hopefully we can keep it open. All right. Chair Baton, if you want to go ahead and take the reins. I see.
SPEAKER_14	Thank you for your patience, school committee. Oh, always. Thank you, Chair Clingan. We'll go right to Dr. Phillips.
SPEAKER_11	Thanks, through you, Chair. Really appreciate this conversation. Really appreciate the complex trade-offs that we're having to make here. I am wondering how the decision to close the pool for one day during the week will affect the third grade swim lessons for this academic year. And also, what is being put in place to make up any missed lessons from the closure last year?
SPEAKER_16	Through the chair. Currently, we're looking at two days out of the week where there are no swim lessons. We're kind of trying to narrow it down. We still are open to the option of moving swim lessons to different days. We haven't really... lock that in yet. It's something that the department's hoping to do in the next couple weeks through the new head of the physical education department. We're working closely with him to try to settle that. In terms of last year's classes, it would be really tough to kind of make up at this point. A lot of them, the lessons are for the third grade classes. It is already a pretty tight schedule, and the majority of them have obviously gone to fourth grade now, so it would be hard to go back and really make up any of the classes that happened last year, but we're hoping going forward, we don't have any other cancellations or any issues going forward.
SPEAKER_14	Dr. Phillips, if you want to follow up.
SPEAKER_11	Thanks for that. I appreciate it. Just a quick follow up. I want to make sure that for this current year, Even though we're moving the days around, we're still going to be able to accommodate all of our current third graders. And then to the chair, I'd like to request you to put an order in through the city related to making up those missed lessons at a different time, not during the school year, but finding an opportunity to get those kids their swim lessons.
SPEAKER_14	noted and I had the same thought, so I'm glad you brought that up, Dr. Phillips, thank you very much. And you also asked my main question, but I do wonder if we have a representative from the school department here who can speak about COORDINATING WITH THESE NEW RESTRICTED HOURS AND THE CHALLENGE OR FEASIBILITY OF THAT WITH RESPECT TO THE CONSTRAINTS OF THE POOL.
SPEAKER_06	THANK YOU, CHAIR. THIS IS AMARIA ANASIQUE, CHIEF OF STAFF FOR THE DISTRICT. I JUST WANTED TO SAY THAT YOU ALL HAVE BEEN GREAT IN TERMS OF KEEPING US INFORMED OF what their situation is in terms of staffing and lifeguarding. They've been mostly working with our, we recently hired a new director of, essentially she oversees the, he oversees the gyms and he also working with assistant superintendent of academics to figure out scheduling. That's something that's been ongoing. And I don't know if Yanni, you have anything additional to add, but we have been in communication.
SPEAKER_07	Thank you.
SPEAKER_14	I see you're dutifully standing there, Yanni. Go right ahead.
SPEAKER_12	Yeah, I think we just wanted to add and thank you to Chief of Staff Amara and CK, pardon me. we have been working very closely to ensure that the day that we select will not conflict with the days that we're considering for swimming lessons. That was our first priority. We do not want to have another interruption or any scheduling issues with those. And we also just want to clarify that last year, we did offer as many makeups as we could at the time. If we've missed folks though, we will certainly show a follow-up and discuss further. So thank you.
SPEAKER_14	Appreciate that future conversation that we'll have. I have no further questions. Seeing Dr. Phillips, neither, we'll turn it back to City Council.
Jesse Clingan	Okay, great. I don't know if I misheard Mr. Deasy, if she said, I know that the Director of Emergency Management is here to speak about contingency plan for school, but did you say that he had something to, or maybe it was Nikki said something about
SPEAKER_01	weighing in on this like as far as like the chemical spill or something is that is that i know his hands are in everything these days with regards to emergency so i didn't know if that's what you were referring to i missed something the chair yeah he's here in case there are any uh committee questions about the emergency response um so if if there are specific questions he's happy sorry i'm speaking for a director um yeah but yeah well i am curious like
Jesse Clingan	the chemical spill, you know, and that was scary to parents who, you know, got a notification that there was this chemical spill. I'm curious, did it rise to the level of, you know, something that Mr. Fisher would, Director Fisher would be alerted to or brought in on? I mean, it might be, I know he's usually supposed to be more big picture, but I feel like, you know, there's a lot that can fall into that bucket of emergency.
SPEAKER_15	through you the chair happy to answer that question because honestly there's no more bigger responsibility than the children so I was notified immediately and I responded to the school and was there for the duration of the event the big thing with this is that when it comes to the emergency response we've been talking a lot about the you know how it happened why it happened which is hugely important but I want to put a lot of people's minds at ease the one thing that worked fairly very well is the response. In the response, the alerting, the evacuation was done through an abundance of caution and concern to make sure that those kids and staff are safe. Because in the end, there was never any toxic vapors, chemicals detected anywhere in the school It was a very safe environment, thank God. But the people that responded knew enough to see that there was possibly a risk and they immediately took action to evacuate the students and send these alerts out. So however scary they are, and they are scary, they were done proactively to make sure everyone was safe.
Jesse Clingan	No, I do appreciate that. I do appreciate that transparency and the fact that they didn't, you know, treat it as no big deal and, you know, whatever. So you get another run. So I do appreciate that. And I'm glad that you were alerted right away. So these systems are working and that you, you know, you have the skills in the background to help handle a situation like that, which is why we hire you. So, all right. So I think if everybody's satisfied with the Jenny Smithers pool for now, I think hopefully we've moved to a new era of pool maintenance and attention. That's the way it sounds to me. And I want to thank the staff that have been working on it, Director Spencer. I can't see Yanni's name. I don't want to say his last name wrong, but thank you both. And of course, always Commissioner Latham. Okay, so we will close those. Madam Clerk, we will complete those items, please.
SPEAKER_03	Perfect. And also just very quickly for the record, Director Yanni, could you spell out your last name for us, please?
SPEAKER_17	T as in Tom, S as in Sam, I-R-I-G-O-T-I-S.
SPEAKER_03	The first letter was S, correct, or did I miss one?
SPEAKER_16	The first letter is T, T as in Tom.
SPEAKER_03	Perfect.
Jesse Clingan	All right. That brings us back to what's next in the agenda. So I guess I'm ready to see, do you have a preference as to what we take up next? Director Raish, I know is here. I know we have some staff here.
SPEAKER_01	You're the chair, yes. If we could take up the 2025 summer school readiness item, that would be great. I think, I don't know if you want to take it as DPW's kind of presentation and questions just for DPW and then I am separately. Amy Nunez, up to you at that point, I just want to make sure that i'm commercially and doesn't have to stay all night if she's not.
Jesse Clingan	Okay. So that's item number nine. Right. Amy Nunez, Yes, I don't know that they have slides as well, did you say.
SPEAKER_01	through the chair. There's a document, a memo document from DPW and IAM has a slideshow. IAM has the updated presentation that I sent out as a handout and DPW should just be the original attachment to the item that we submitted.
Jesse Clingan	Yeah. No, I looked at it. I just didn't know who I'm turning it over to. We need to make them able to share their screen or whatever. Is Director Henry here to do a presentation or am I...
SPEAKER_10	Now we're here through the chair. We're here. I wasn't sure if. This was already loaded up into the agenda.
SPEAKER_13	Yeah, the clerk has it up on screen. Ralph, you can step through if you like.
Jesse Clingan	Alright, so let me just read it directly. So this is item number 9 on the agenda for anybody following. This is a separate discussion conveying an update regarding work completed during summer 2025 on Somerville public school buildings. So this is everything that the punch list that the city had for the summer while the kids were on break. And so they have some exciting things to report in the form of a short presentation. So with that, I will turn it over to Director Ralph Henry to let everybody know what you all did.
SPEAKER_10	Sure. Thank you through the chair, Director Ralph Henry and capital projects. And we appreciate having a few moments just to highlight some of the things that capital projects staff embarked on over the summer, we were able to get a lot of very meaningful work done for the school department. And we can Not sure who's going to control the slides, but the first one we were working on was the Argenziano kitchen expansion, which involved installing a new walk-in freezer for the kitchen area there that's adjacent to the loading dock area as you come in off the back. we were able to utilize a storage area that had a storage cage so we kind of moved over a few things and were able to nicely fit in this this freezer which has about 88 square feet of space in it and it was a great addition to that kitchen area and go out to the next slide And we also added, I had two different pictures of it just from a couple of different angles, but we added an additional electric oven. This is a ventless oven, so it's a double-sided oven as well. And this pretty much added, not to be used double too many times, double the capacity for cooking in that area, in that kitchen. We can go to the next slide. And then part of it was to relocate some items from the original Winter Hill School on Sycamore Street. So we made some use of these flash freezers that the school utilizes when food service is over, they'll put some items in there. And then also the tilting kettle that was placed right in the center of that picture on the left-hand side that they wanted to have move over. So it looks like it was all easy, but there was a lot of gas. natural gas work that had to be done, some additional electrical work, lining up some drainage for the tilting kettle, and just some little logistics for additional electrical plug loads for that area. We can move on. Continuing on at the Agenziano. Now, these pictures don't quite show where we're at currently, but this is that third floor kind of an atrium area that was wide open. That now houses about an 850 foot square foot classroom. It is just about done. We'll be able to provide some additional pictures at some point that we can share. But we're doing a punch list walkthrough tomorrow morning with the vendor. And it is just about ready. We have the cabinetry in. The lockers have been installed on the hallway. The only one item we had a longer lead time was for the actual door to the classroom. But the vendor who was fantastic to work with was able to procure a wooden door with the appropriate hardware on it for now until we get that new door in. But it'll have the same functioning lock capabilities that you would normally have for the classrooms. And this room has all the new technology, smart boards, wifi. We increased the fire sprinkler suppression system in that room as well. And fortunately we had HVAC components that were already in that area. So we didn't have to do anything of that nature there, but we also added a sink and additional cabinetry. So basically it looks just like all the other classrooms in the building. This particular item, Winterhill and Edgley ADA Improvements, was a project really through engineering, through Brian Postlewaite and Rebecca Wright's help with this. This is a modification of the sidewalk area and accessibility ramp that leads to the common doorway that goes into Edgley. that one of the staff members uses on a very consistent basis. And I had the opportunity to talk to Brian and Becca the other day. This has made a huge impact in a very, very positive way for this staff person and for anyone else that may need this type of assistance. Now onto the Kennedy School. We've been over at the Kennedy School for quite a while now. We installed a brand new air conditioning system, which used a modular chiller technology. And part of the next steps on this was to enhance the building management system. So I just put a little definition in there. What is a building management system? I won't read or get into all that. I think it's pretty self-explanatory. But just for the committee, the City of Somerville has been progressively trying to upgrade all the building management systems. We have an old antiquated Honeywell system. And what we're trying to do now is anywhere, any opportunity we have doing mechanical work, we enhance and go to a new Johnson Controls building management system. And that is really a super helpful thing for both capital projects and DPW. It gives the DPW folks a great system to have firsthand knowledge, live screen of comfort, temperatures, alarms, how the systems are doing. how the temperatures are in the classrooms and the you know how the heating and cooling systems are doing so it's really really a very beneficial system it also gives you some trending reports where you can see how you're doing energy wise and um if you're if you're you know meeting the goals of the set points for the building overall there's things of that nature so it's a very very handy tool And for the thing that we did up at the high school was for Mr. Rivas was to install an additional plaque. There should be a picture on one of the slides there. That plaque is located over by the oval berm area that's down by where automotive in that turnaround area from the entry driveway as you come into the back area by the next way full circle campus entrance. And then we have our solar. So we were finally able to get the solar panel system started up in late May, early June, and the system is doing great. It took a little bit of time to kind of work out some kinks and some bugs with the vendor, but the system is fully up and operational. And we did get a question from someone on the committee one night about the power. So I tried to answer that question without getting too technical. As you can imagine, Somerville High School uses a tremendous amount of electricity, roughly almost to 2 billion 600 million watts. So it's enormous. The solar panel system helps differ about 12% of what the school uses annually. And during the summertime, which is really the highest peak for electrical usage in the building, of course, when we're running the air conditioning system, during that period of time, the solar panels help defer about 16% of the kilowatt energy that's being used by the air-cooled chillers that are up on the roof. And that's it in a nutshell. I'd be happy to take any questions.
Jesse Clingan	That's great, great work. I'm glad the classroom is done. Any questions from folks on the council side? Okay, I'm gonna turn it over. I have no questions, just like I said, just comment to say that great work. And I'd like those, I like the pictures of the Johnson control system, like just to understand what you all are seeing and that you have a command of these systems. It's really cool. So that's it for this side. Commissioner Latham, you want to, oh, okay. Councilor Sait, I do see your hand up. You want to let Commissioner Latham speak real quick? She has something on the presentation or whatnot.
SPEAKER_05	Chair, I just want to make sure that everyone has the opportunity to look at the DPW submitted memo. There was a significant amount of work that the buildings department did, some for the schools. I want to make sure that they get the credit due for this enormous amount of work they did that just played out in this little bit of memo. So I want to make sure everyone has a chance to really go through that.
Jesse Clingan	Okay. Did you want to highlight anything?
SPEAKER_05	Sure. If you can put that up, that'd be great. And then Jamie Goldstein, Superintendent Mack Bennett has been on.
Jesse Clingan	Jamie Goldstein, yeah I mean you waited, I don't have any problem with that, I mean this is part of the same update conveying an update regarding work completed.
SPEAKER_03	Jamie Goldstein, Commissioner is there a different attachment, you want me to pull up i'm not seeing another attachment.
Jesse Clingan	Jamie Goldstein, I wasn't I wasn't sure which attachment, they was being referred to either.
SPEAKER_01	Jamie Goldstein, Sorry um. Hold on, Commissioner Lathan. So through the chair to Delaney, it's an attachment to the original item that's submitted in legislature. So if you click into the item itself, it will be the DPW school readiness memo attachment in there.
Jesse Clingan	Why don't we do this? You know what? Why don't we do this? I think there's some questions on the presentation we just saw. So while she's getting that pulled up, why don't we just take one from my colleague, Councilor Sait, and then we'll turn it over to School Committee.
Naima Sait	Through you, Chair Lincoln, I want to say thank you, everyone, for the work that you have done over the summer on the schools. It's always great to get these updates and just to check off things from the list. Yeah, very excited to see that we started the work on the Argosiano School Classroom. other panels on the high school and the Kennedy School Chiller. And my questions, one about the Argonziano School classroom, just asking when will this be completed? It says soon, I think, in the slides. Is it a matter of weeks, months? Yeah.
Jesse Clingan	Sure. Thanks for the question. Good question. I assumed it was done. I didn't actually see that part.
SPEAKER_10	It is, yeah, through the chair. It's not done yet. We have what we call the punch list. We walk through the architect and the contractor. We just identify some small minor details that we want them to fix. And then we bring in fire prevention has to do their final inspection. And then ISD, which is the most important one, does their final sign off on the permit card. And then at that point, we can very happily turn the classroom over to the fire department. to the school department actually it'll get turned over plus uh jill's team will need a day or two to go in and get set up get uh the classroom furniture put in there that kind of stuff so uh i would say hopefully knock on wood by the end of next week oh okay anything else comes to say
Naima Sait	Yeah, that's great to hear. And the other question is also about timeline. When will the Kennedy School chiller be completed? It also says...
SPEAKER_10	The chiller itself is done. It's been up and operational. We just had some minor piping work to do downstream just to make it run in a little bit better, more healthier way. It basically needed a bypass valve so that it could continuously loop the water around the building if different classrooms weren't calling for cooling at that time. It just helps balance the pressure. And the BMS system is, again, fundamentally finished. We're just doing a punch list on that as well and sharing over some information with DPW for those folks just to look at some other short-term, long-term repairs that they may need to make to the system. But the chillers are up and running.
Naima Sait	All right, great. Sorry. Just had the follow-up question to my first question about the Argenziano School classroom. You mentioned that furniture was moved from the Winter Hill to the... Actually, this is about the kitchen. So are we done using the Winter Hill School for storage? A few months ago, we... We learned that we were using the Winter Hill School still. So does this mean that we're done using the Winter Hill School for?
SPEAKER_13	Through the chair, I did confirm with Director of Nutrition, Lauren Mancini, that they have moved everything over to the Argenziano and they no longer have anything at the Winter Hill at Sycamore.
Naima Sait	Awesome, great, thank you.
Jesse Clingan	Thanks, Rich. Great question, Councilor Sait. All right, let's turn over to school committee. Chair Bertone.
SPEAKER_14	Thank you, Chair Kling, and Sarah Phillips.
SPEAKER_11	Thanks to you, Chair. As a leader, I sometimes feel like I'm saying the same thing over and over again, and you all just did exactly that for us. So I just want to appreciate all of you who had to stay late to come. Give us the same presentation you gave the school committee a few weeks ago. I really appreciate it. And I'm grateful for your effort.
SPEAKER_10	Thank you. Much appreciated.
Jesse Clingan	They wanted to come brag anyway. We get that website up and running. We can put it all on the website and then we'll have to stay late.
SPEAKER_10	Yeah, it was a lot of hard work by our staff. And, you know, it's like anything else. With schoolwork, we don't have a whole lot of time. You know, you literally have about eight weeks by the time you get your vendor hired and you get the students out of the building. And then we have a chance to get to going. And DPW, of course, did a whole lot of work as well, too. So I know Jill's like to share that, too. But thank you very much.
SPEAKER_14	Yeah, appreciate it. And I also just want to highlight the accessibility improvements at the Winter Hill, at Edgerly. Accessibility improvements help everyone, not just those who have particular accessibility needs. And they sort of, I don't mean this as a pun, but it levels the playing field a little bit. For those people who have accessibility needs, being able to enter in a location that everyone else is able to enter in as well is incredibly meaningful. I think really goes to the heart of inclusivity. So I'm deeply appreciative of IAM's capital projects work on this as we continue to where this is going to be our home for a few more years. So, you know, these investments will have an incredible impact on teachers, on students and families getting their kids to school every day. So really appreciate that. Um, thank you. I know my colleague, Ms. Patone had her hand up and I just want to give her a moment. If she is still on the line, it looks like she may have dropped off, but, um, maybe there will be an opportunity after, uh, the DPW presentation. So I'll close it for our side. Oh, there she is. Uh, Ms. Patone, go ahead.
SPEAKER_04	Thank you and apologies. I've been in an unexpected series of transit. I had a question. First of all, I do want to acknowledge the amount of work that has been done this summer was tremendous so much work not to say that we don't do a great deal of work in our city for our schools over the summer but this summer clearly decisions were made to prioritize work on our schools and I really want to take a moment just to acknowledge that I think some people on this call have already done that I missed a bit of the call but I got kicked out but I just really appreciate how the city over the past few years and particularly this summer has really made work on our schools a priority So thank you for that. And it's just such a large scope. I had a question about the building management system. I was excited to hear about an update to that. I had two questions. One is, is this building management system currently just being used on our new chiller at the kennedy or is this full scope in all of our school systems and the second question it sounds like a lot of the information in the system is real time which is incredibly exciting i'm also curious are we using this system to keep track of um Our maintenance work in terms of when we're replacing parts so that we have that type of work scheduled. So there's one part of it where I totally see that it's real-time data in terms of performance, but also questioning whether or not we're also using this as a tool to keep track and manage maintenance work on our systems. And I apologize if this question's already been asked because I missed part of the call.
SPEAKER_10	Uh, no, uh, through the chair, um. Thank you for the question. Um, it's. The 1st question is, um. Is this system used just for the chiller at JFK? And the answer is no, um, the Somerville high school. has a very similar Johnson control system. Obviously, the high school had that. It's a much more robust system that looks at, as you can imagine, a building with 400,000 square feet and a very large number of rooms and spaces. So it keeps track of a lot of different points for the high school. We also have it at the West Branch Library. It also uses a very similar Johnson Controls Facility Explorer BMS system with similar graphics that you see here. And then, believe it or not, over at the Cummings School, we replaced the boiler back in 2020. That has a very small mini building management system that helps keep track of that. And then now over at JFK, we have now installed this Johnson Facilities Explorer system throughout the JFK school. So what you have now are two systems in the city. You have the old Honeywell system that we're basically trying to move on from and slowly but surely go through each building to upgrade it to the Facility Explorer. It takes time, it takes money, but it's well worth it. These systems allow, for the case of Jill's staff, They could go to a small little map that we have of the city and you have the different locations on the map. You can click right on that, whether it's the library or the high school or the JFK, and you can pull up the information and you'll be able to link right into the building management website for it. So it's all web-based. We can have many, many users that can go in and utilize it. So we're very excited about it. And it does help in terms of maintenance. It doesn't spit out predictive information, but what it does do, it helps track any trends, any alarms, things of that nature, so that you can look and see if any piece of equipment is having some issues, and then you can track it down depending on what it might need. Go ahead, Rich. And Jill has her hand up. Jill, go first.
SPEAKER_05	Yes, to the chair. Also, so DPW for the last few years has been really doing a sense of cataloging of all our building systems. And that's really been mainly going in adding, creating our system, our building systems manager, Andy, has been working on this along with our preventative maintenance manager. So all of our buildings and school buildings are, like I said, extensive cataloging as far as, you know, from serial numbers to pictures to when they've been installed and that kind of thing to really get a better handle on all of our systems, what the city and preventative maintenance is what's needed. We work with, you know, capital projects and making sure as we identify a need, working with them to make sure that, you know, next amount of years, this is going to be coming on the pipe based on what we've been doing over cataloging over the last few years. So this really is a joint effort. These are great new systems that Capital has kind of installed, but hand in hand with that, we have the manual labor work of going to every single facility and building and cataloging, pain-saving and cataloging everything in every single building, which is what NPW's been doing.
SPEAKER_13	It's almost like we planned it. And then for the next step on that, we have selected a provider for the citywide asset management program, which is a work order management and tracking program. The selected vendor is OpenGov. They're built on Cartograph, which is another a long-term player in that space that has now been brought under the larger umbrella of OpenGov that has a lot more of other capabilities. DPW and particularly Andy from DPW was key among the selection committee for that. And so we're now in the contracting phase and we'll be implementing that for the coming year. Thank you.
SPEAKER_04	Can I do a quick follow up? Okay, thank you. First of all, thank you for that feedback. So what I'm interpreting is, and I did know some of this and it's really nice to share this publicly that through Commissioner Latham's communication that the detail work that has to be done to catalog everything has been a work in progress and that is continuing to happen. And right now we're cataloging it with the intention of feeding this data into the full asset management programming where we can kind of keep track and schedule everything. Now these building management systems are right now only come online with these new systems that are being implemented. So those, and I know that the asset slash management, You know, asset management systems are kind of a global thing that we're going to have to do across the board. And like I said, the idea is, like I said, ticketing, understanding what the work orders are, understanding that, you know, just in layman's terms, you know, every six months we're changing a filter. Every two years we're changing a sensor. All those things that are sort of, you know, that need to happen to make sure that we don't get into the crisis mode are happening. And we're using information technology as best we can to manage all of it. But it sounds like these building management systems, which are much more live data on what the systems are doing, are right now only implemented in these new systems. So High School, Kennedy, and West Library, which totally makes sense. So it's really great to get this update. And I'm looking forward to learning more about the overall asset management system. But I am correct in understanding that the asset management system will be utilized by both ISD and DPW to put all this data in that DPW has been collecting and to schedule the work so that this work is being done in such a, we have such cloud complex buildings. We have such, such so many systems and that this work is being done on a scheduled way, not to say it hasn't been being done, but that we're going to have these systems to help us do this in a much more organized and systematic function. So I hope that's what I'm understanding.
SPEAKER_13	To the chairs, you're correct in that understanding. And they also have the capability to report out. So like these reports that you just got from or that you got from Ralph and will get from Jill are all manual at this point. The software will help us produce reportable data. And buildings is a big portion of the lift on it, but it's also the same concept for water and sewer and and highway and lights and lines. It's across all the asset classes. And the other aspirational thing that we're doing, you know, we just replaced the system at the Kennedy because we did the chiller at the Kennedy. The plan is to continue this on when we do work in the other buildings. So as I've said before, next up is the West chiller. And to the extent that we can also leverage that project to update the systems, to get off the old Honeywell system and onto the new Johnson Controls. That'll be within scope. So it's not just entirely new construction. It's when we hit a building.
SPEAKER_04	Well, thank you so much. And I look forward to getting the updates on this work.
SPEAKER_14	All right, with that, I will turn it back over to Chair Clingan. Thank you. Hey, thank you.
Jesse Clingan	And with that, we have DPW Commissioner Jill Latham here to report out, update us on what the DPW, all the hard work that they did over the summer as well. So with that, turn it over to you, Commissioner Latham.
SPEAKER_05	Thank you, through the chair. So at this time, I'd like to, for Matt Bennett, our building superintendent, Elizabeth, Tim and Mike Bowler is what led the charge this summer in getting a significant amount of work done. So Matt, go ahead and give them the highlights of the incredible work that our buildings division did this summer.
SPEAKER_00	Yes. Good evening through the chair. Thank you. So just to start off real quickly, part of what we do is our general summer cleaning, our general maintenance in each one of the buildings. And so that's from a ceiling to a floor as far as custodians work. We work around our summer programs, getting rooms ready prior to and then cleaning after the fact in each one of the buildings that has that. In the meantime, we start to go through end of year 311s. So you're dealing with plumbing concerns or electrical concerns, holes in walls, painting, general maintenance in general. And it's a daily basis. And we probably deal with two to three hundred 311s a week in reference to just general upkeep. in all of our schools and city buildings. That said, on top of that, we're also running, at this time, we have three boiler projects going simultaneously. The replacement of two boilers at the Brown School with a brand new chimney flue that is safe. The DPW boiler number two for the water department. Same thing, changing the boiler and new chimney. We are putting out to bid the highway and fleet boiler that is in signature process. That one also was an antiquated system. And I think, yeah.
	Yeah.
SPEAKER_00	On top of that, so then we're dealing with hot water pumps at the Capuano School, Argenziano, which we took care of the circulating pump on boiler number three that had failed. Multiple, no, I should go in order, I apologize. Multiple plumbing and kitchen issues at the Argenziano, moving on to the Browns. Dealing with multiple bathroom backups due to blockages and pipes from either root work or ongoing corrosion. So changing that out. skipping past uh coming the coming school new debt we had to put a new damper switch on the boiler room in anticipation that we know uh that that building is still utilized different aspects during the course of the day um repairs to the the pneumatic system and compressor um edgerly working working with uh and around um with uh capital and i am dealing with brian possible weight on numerous projects but also um uh making adjustments to the ramp door at the elevator issues um that we've we've had timing problems with making adjustments there uh exterior lighting in multiple areas painting and patching in classrooms that over the just over the course of the year um you know through general work that's the students have been hanging with you know rips and tears um Going all of the schools while I'm there, but Edgely specifically, changing out a lot of the older lights to LED lights. It's not necessarily consistent, not only consistent with Edgely, but in all of the buildings. East Somerville School, that building we did a multitude of patching and painting in areas. Some rooms that were done a year prior, some that we have not gotten to in a year or so. Repairs to plumbing, electrical, a lot of light switches, patching of the exterior, foundations throughout the building due to rodents, and really looking in different areas to solve that problem. It seems to be knock on wood with the help of the school staff and the reduction of food left out seem to be progressing in the right direction. Tim Jones, A change you know classroom and hallway leds working on the enunciated with the fire alarm company that we're having issues with. Tim Jones, Oh boy sorry I got a lot of schools here, I always forget I apologize i'm the haley school. We replaced multiple sink traps. We had slow leaking, we discovered. So when we noticed there was one or two, we started looking for other problems and we were finding them in a multitude of areas. So we went through and probably made half a dozen to maybe 10 or so complete change outs of traps in classroom sinks, reducing a lot of ongoing leakage that was minor, but was going to be problematic in the long run. Again, changing LED lights and on. The Kennedy School, notwithstanding the change of the pool equipment and working with the pool pack, in that building there had been a multitude of older breakers, switches, plumbing issues with antiquated flushometers, full room painting before and after the summer school. Ironically, the high school, it's one of the biggest buildings, and it does have daily issues, but that seems to be with the help of Kevin Hatcher, who's a greens manager there, working really good communication. We seem to keep up with most of the problems there. Typically, everything that was left for summer work were small, minor things, cabinetry work, some door frames that were bent, window screens, a few broken windows here and there. Our electricians went through, we replaced a myriad of GFI, old outlets to GFI outlets that had failed over the course of time. It's pretty much building shop. It's what we do on a daily basis. I take no credit for that. I have an amazing staff. They work incredibly hard. They don't really complain when I'm giving them constant 3-1-1s or taking them from one job and moving them to another at the last second. Today, we had a problem at 42 Cross Street. We had to go over there, and my locksmith was busy. We were doing... voting set up. So he was able to find time to get over there and make us a minor adjustment with the plan being there tomorrow morning to take the entire lock apart and either change it out entirely if need be or make the correct adjustments so we don't have an issue with the doors and opening. That's a constant in the department. We start at one project and sometimes we get pulled off. And part of our goal in developing that long-term asset management system is to go from what we consider whiteboard maintenance to data-driven maintenance. So we always have it there. We know when things need to be done. But adding that in with the asset management and all of this data that we have helps us actually predict when we're having a lot of these issues. estimated life expectancy issues. You can't deal with plumbing and electrical issues that just happen for whatever reason, but you can anticipate boiler problems, chiller problems, compressor problems. So that's probably it. I'm going to stop talking because my throat's getting hoarse from being sick all week, and I apologize if I rambled.
SPEAKER_05	So through the chair, I just wanted to say that, and thank you, Matt and the team, you know, even though that we're in different departments, whether it be DPW or IN Capital, we really work as one unified team. to get this work done. It's a significant amount of work that has to be done from the time the kids get out of school until they get back into school. And keep in mind, all the schools are occupied through the summer, so we're working around a very busy summer schedule. So I just want to give my official heads off to the DPW team and the IM team for really working collaboratively together this summer to make sure that we prioritize what's really important here in summer, which is our youth.
Jesse Clingan	Yeah, no, thank you to both teams. I mean, this is an immense amount of work, like you said, in a very short amount of time. I do have a couple questions I don't want to take away from the positivity, but it's just something that somebody brought up to me again the other day because it still doesn't seem to be addressed. So the outer tiles on the East Somerville School, like there's still a number of them that are off the building. I mean if we've made any progress and sort of figuring out what are these new ones that are falling off or they might be just seeing the same ones that were off is like what happens with those tiles when they fall off the the cement tiles fall off the side of the building.
SPEAKER_05	So through the chair we're working with. The school department on the title issue and when they do fall off, you know dpw trying to work it on a mechanism to how to repair those and repair those quickly work with the school department to kind of. um, assess kind of why and when these are kind of happening in the behavior that may be leading up to some of the tiles breaking, whether it be just normal kids play and, you know, picking balls against the tiles. It wasn't really intended for that use. Um, so this will be continual conversation we're going to have with the schools and BPW in capital, try and find solutions to that tile, the tile that she's a festival.
Jesse Clingan	Okay, so you think it could be Vandals and it could be, but they're not just falling off.
SPEAKER_05	They're not just falling off.
SPEAKER_13	Yeah, these are new tiles. It's not that the same tile is down for an extended period of time. It does appear as though the frequency of these things coming down is increasing, which is sort of a new development on that. So capital is bringing in one of our on-call consultants to take a look at it, see what, if anything, is new or different, and what, if anything, we can do to prevent this from happening. So we're attacking it from at least three different angles right now.
Jesse Clingan	Great. And then my other question is, before I turn over to colleagues, is... So... And I'm not trying to put anybody on the spot, but we are always pressed for space. And I know that there was some question about, I'll just get to the cut of the chat. I'm looking for an update on the space that was the boxing club. I know there's some environmental possible concerns or remediation situation. Is there any updates on that space, Director Rache?
SPEAKER_13	uh no updates on the space we've been uh again as it has been noted a few times uh in the meeting uh what we did over the summer collectively between dpw and iam uh was a tremendous amount of work and that was the priority of the um it it's really a school um department that helped us prioritize that work um so just we had to um turn our attention away from the boxing club for now. And as we get into next summer and, you know, plan out our work for that, maybe the boxing club comes back in. But as of right now, we don't have any active plans for the boxing club.
Jesse Clingan	No, that's fine. That's the update. Then I just, like I said, if anybody's watching this meeting back or anything like right now that, you know, like you said, I mean, that is an enormous amount of work that you all pulled off over the summer. So I'm not nobody's fault. Yeah. I just, I just wanted to ask the question. That's all I have for the school buildings, like maintenance, summer update stuff.
Naima Sait	Colleagues, Councilor Sait or Councilor Davis, before we turn it over to... Through you, Chuckling, and no questions, just lots of gratitude for everyone working, who's worked in a short period of time to make all of this happen before the students are back. Thank you.
Jesse Clingan	I see Director Onosike has her hand up. I don't know if I should call on her or if it would make any difference. Ms. Onosike, you can go ahead and speak if you.
SPEAKER_06	I also want to say thank you to DPW and IAM for all of the work you did throughout the summer, even though we still ran many summer programs. I really appreciated working with you all on all of those projects. Um, I, I will note that the books that the east from the school districts perspective, we're still curious about what is happening. There's no evidence of vandalism causing any of the next to fall, but we are working with the city to determine what that is and how to solve that safely.
Jesse Clingan	Yeah, just say you were a little garbled, but I think I got most of what you said that your work, you know, school departments trying to figure out from their side what might be causing that as well. Okay, I'll turn it over to the school committee for questions, comments.
SPEAKER_14	Thanks, Chair Clingan. And I don't have a question. I just wanted to share gratitude from my end. That's an eight page small bullet point memo, not full sentences, just item after item after item of just work. The amount of work y'all plugged through in each of our schools is worthy of celebration. And I just, honestly, thank you for your commitment to our kids, making sure they are, you know, this is their home away from home, right? They are spending a tremendous, and our teachers, spending a tremendous amount of time in our school buildings and you are putting in your blood, sweat and tears to make sure that they have a high quality learning environment and that is not lost on us. So just true gratitude and appreciation. I just wanted to, when I read this a couple of weeks ago, I think it was, I was just floored by the amount of work here. So anyway, thank you. Any questions from my colleagues? not seeing them, I will turn it back to you Chair Clingan.
Jesse Clingan	All right, thank you. And just one more comment. I am glad to see that we're no longer using the Winter Hill School for anything, because I know there was an issue with the door being locked and so on. So hopefully that we won't have any more of those issues. Okay, so thank you for those updates. I'll again, pile on with the appreciations because you guys did an awesome job and I really probably could have had its own meeting, um, these, these updates. Um, but, uh, so with that, we will work complete item number nine. I don't know if anybody has anything. All right. And so then we will a couple of items. Um, They're not ready for prime time. The school committee, I believe, is still working on an MOU. So I'll get to those items in a minute.
SPEAKER_14	Chair Kling, and if I may, it looks like Liaison Radassi has a comment. Sure.
SPEAKER_01	Thank you, Chairs. I was hoping we might be able to take up Item 8, that MSBA update next, if that's amenable to you both.
Jesse Clingan	That is a great idea. Exciting updates. All right, so we'll take up item number eight, Madam Clerk. It's that the administration provide the special committee on school building facilities and maintenance with regular updates about the Massachusetts School Building Authority process for the Winter Hill and Brown schools. Here, I believe to give the update is Director Raish.
SPEAKER_13	Go ahead and take it away. Thank you, Chair. We prepared a memo for the school committee's record, so we submitted it here as well. So you have it for the record, but the highlights since the last meeting of this or joint meetings of these committees, we're fully under contract with PMA, our owner's project manager, the OPM. They hit the ground running because it's frankly, the same team that we had for the high school. And they'd also been helping us with some other projects like City Hall. So we rolled right into this. We released a request for services for designers. basically the architects and all the various different disciplines to design the new building. We got six responses, which was very exciting. One of the larger turnouts for current MSBA projects, which sort of reflects how much interest there is in the technical community for this building, because they know this is one of the bigger and more exciting ones that there is in the state right now. We met with the designer selection process is sort of driven by the MSBA. They have a selection panel. We get a say on that. Dr. Carmona, Superintendent Carmona, and I represent the district and the city. We had a third member who is also a Winter Hill parent and a member of our school building committee, Courtney Koslow. It served as the school committee's representative and she did a fantastic job in reviewing those proposals and presenting Somerville's perspective to the MSBA. So we've now shortlisted the six down to three and have prepared questions for them, interview questions. And they will be interviewed on September 25th, which is, I guess, a week from Thursday, something like that. At that meeting, we will select the top firm, top team, and start contract negotiations with them. So we're well into the forming the project team phase, and we'll be ready to hit the ground running with the feasibility study, given all the background information and data that we've amassed as part of the capacity study. In parallel with that, as the committee knows, we have the construction advisory group, the CAG. They've continued to meet throughout the summer, have been making some very good progress in really examining all the different ways we need to look at this question on the size of the building, the location of the building. And a good portion of them are starting to coalesce around some conclusions and the way that we need to approach this. In parallel with that, we have, as I think probably everyone knows or has maybe even taken, a survey out in the field to ask questions around that. We've been getting fantastic response to that survey. I don't know the numbers off the top of my head, Director of Communications, Taylor Wood, but apparently this is one of the highest return rates we've had on these surveys, which I think shows a lot of the interest that we have in the community around that. That survey will close actually the day after the interviews, and then we'll hand over that data to the CAG for their final consideration. So all in all, things are going pretty well. It's been a busy summer on this front too, but there's a lot of excitement from the team and in the community and from all the stakeholders. Happy to take questions.
Jesse Clingan	Yeah, I have a couple of comments, but I see Councillor Davis has his hand up, so we'll go to colleagues first. Councillor Davis, the floor is yours.
Lance Davis	Thank you, Mr. Chair. Through you to Director Raish, thank you for the update. A couple questions. First, the survey that's in the field that you mentioned, this is the second survey that was put in the field, is that correct?
SPEAKER_13	Correct. Yeah. The first survey was without much fanfare, just quietly put to rest and nothing was really done with that as far as the CAG or anybody else. This one, we brought on an outside consultant who worked with the CAG and in particular, a few members of the CAG that were particularly interested in it. So the survey that's in the field right now was the product of a strong collaboration with the CAG members.
Lance Davis	Is the data from that first survey being used in any way in the process?
SPEAKER_13	So our official position on it is, or at least from my perspective, what we're saying is if anyone wants to look at that data, they are welcome to it. but we acknowledge that there was a lot of, um, flaws in the way it was put in the field, uh, and, and maybe some, uh, the, the, the, the, the way the data was gathered, um, isn't quite up to what our standards, uh, were or are. Um, so no one is putting very much weight into that first survey. Um, And so to my knowledge, no one's really considering the data from that first survey. Moreover, the second survey, whilst more streamlined, sort of gets to the heart of what we need to find out anyway. So the second survey is really the one that's gonna give us the most information.
Lance Davis	Okay. So that, yeah, I mean, I think the first survey, as I expressed in previous meetings, less about the way the data collected, more about the way the questions were framed. But it sounds like so. It's still there. It's still live. It's still available. And for whatever reason, hasn't been simply removed. In terms of the process for the selection process that you talked about, you're down to a few candidates. Is that conversation, it strikes me as interesting in how that how that conversation sort of goes or how those contracts will be signed based on how you've at least explained where we are in the process. Are people sort of submitting answers, responses in two completely separate contexts for the two possible types of buildings that would be built?
SPEAKER_13	To the chair, the RFS is worded such that All options are taken through the feasibility study, which is an MSBA requirement. And granted, we're a little bit ahead of the curve. We'll be able to get to the feasibility study faster than some communities that don't have any of the information or haven't even had the conversations. But we have to do a good faith analysis David Gellman, M.D. : examination of the options and document them in the in the feasibility study and then whichever one of those options big school small school winter hill trump that then gets carried through in into design, and this is fairly common for the msb a process. You know, the MSP requires the feasibility study with or without consolidation looking at different sites. So the teams that respond to these things are sort of used to having a large range of options and feasibility and then proceeding on with the, you know, the scope for design once defined.
Lance Davis	Brett KenCairn, Okay, thank you for that i'm through the Chair, and so let me just kind of write some commentary just to because this is the. Brett KenCairn, sort of the venue, I have the channel, I have to express it and and. The first part of what I'm saying is what I've heard. So, you know, I haven't had the bandwidth to go back and listen to or sit in on any of the meetings. So, you know, I acknowledge this is not firsthand. What I've been told and the concerns have been raised to me is that um the conversations at least has been interpreted by some folks as being um sort of steering folks towards one option um and you know the information that's provided might be entirely accurate but it's been sort of provided in a way um that that folks have felt is is sort of intentionally trying to lead towards a result um again you can You can refute whether that's the intent, but that's what I'm hearing. People are hearing themselves. So take that for what it's worth. That concerns me because, and this is now just coming from me, I will have significant concerns if we, understanding what types of environments we have for kids in this district and I happen to have some visibility to the different ways that kids learn and the way that different environments can impact their ability to learn and you know, we're talking about the two, I believe the two smallest schools in the district, essentially being combined into what I believe would be the largest school in the district. That on its own is a huge red flag to me. And, you know, so whatever the financial considerations might be, whatever other things a large building might provide, I worry that those types of considerations might seem really good in the moment, but in practice, X number of years down the road, we will really regret having made that decision. And I gotta say, as the counselor from Ward 6, any decision that takes the only school in this ward and closes it and forces my constituents to not have a single choice in the ward, is a very significant concern to me. So, you know, I don't think it's appropriate for a counselor to sit here in a committee meeting and tell the CAG how they should go about doing their job. But I worry about the process. I've heard repeatedly people raise concerns to me about the way that those conversations have been colored, the way the filter that has been sort of through which that information has come out. Again, I'm not there, but that's what people are telling me they're experiencing. So And as I can say, I just fundamentally for a decision that will ultimately need voter approval, I have a really hard time imagining myself getting behind any plan that will close the two smallest schools and turn them into a big one and have no school in Ward 6. I would anticipate campaigning actively against that. And I don't believe I will be alone in that effort. I was thinking about this a lot in the last week or so. And I thought, I ought to just say this now publicly so that it's not just kind of my thoughts festering. We have this forum, this is an item that's before us. And I think if I haven't made it clear before, I should really make my views and concerns clear so that nothing comes as a surprise to folks. But I'll leave it at that. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Jesse Clingan	Yeah, no, I appreciate it. OK, just a couple of quick questions before I turn over to school committee. So. Two things, one I was going to ask. Well, actually, I just want clarification on the process, because I think a lot of people actually I have to correct the record in the next MSBA group meeting because the chair of that group had said. That the CAG would be making recommendation to the MSBA. school buildings committee. And I thought I was correcting and said, no, the mayor, ultimately it's the mayor's choice, but I've since learned with this MSBA process, never have gone through one with the high school, that the CAG is a body that was constituted to give the mayor a recommendation. The mayor is one member of the MSBA board, one voting member of that board who will you know, vote along with the rest of us on that body. We want that to obviously go to the MSBA as unanimous as possible or, you know, hopefully it'd be like a jury, like after we've all been in a room together discussing this, hopefully we'll come to some consensus based on all of the data, all the information that we're being given. Can you correct me if any of that was wrong, Director Raish?
SPEAKER_13	Yeah, to the chair, who is also a member of the school building committee, if that wasn't readily apparent. That's correct. The CAG does not have a formal part in the MSBA process. The recommendation... That comes out of the feasibility study in the MSBA. The city and the school building committee submits that to the MSBA for approval and for funding. the the mayor um under our form of government um has is on the building committee and like under under you know like the the msba uh requirements the mayor actually fills like three or four different slots within um the school building committee they have a script that that's sort of like commonwealth wide acknowledging that there are different towns and different school districts are function differently. So the mayor is a member of that committee, but also has a lot of, frankly, power within the city. And if the mayor isn't behind that recommendation of the school building committee, you kind of know that it's not going anywhere. And so, you know, this mayor, Mayor Ballantyne, wanted to form the CAG to help inform her decision and her position, which will be expressed through the school building committee and then brought to the MSBA. So I hope that sort of adds on to what you're saying. Your understanding is right. I'm just sort of acknowledging that with our charter, the mayor holds a lot of the cards.
Jesse Clingan	Yeah, no, and I just, I think it's important to get this process clarified just because I think what really turned the conversation a little bit was the communication that went out by the administration about the CAG and where it said in that communication, ultimately it's the mayor's decision, which it ultimately is, but with the CAG giving a recommendation, um, but, but now, and now, and what I'm hearing also is that, and yes, then that she will then take that informed decision and bring it to the MSBA board, but then also impose her will on that body as well. Um, so that's interesting, but I, I, the reason I want to play that up is because at least, you know, people understand that, um, there are other people making the decision. Ultimately, the mayor has to be on board. Absolutely. But the MSBA body of folks is, all right, sorry. So second thing is a little bit in the weeds too, is I just want to get on record of saying two things. One, I did listen to the selection meeting that you three from our community are on. And I, after talking to some sort of industry professionals, which we have an abundance of here in Somerville, two things were brought up. One is that Um, you know, none of the three who are obviously the three top firms, that great firm, you all advocated and did a great job, but I think the sense, and again, take it from the source was that these three, um, they they're sort of darlings, like they're, they're, they're the go-tos right. But like they didn't, this person and some people didn't feel like they have a lot of experience with, um, passive, passive, um, buildings. Like I think Ron has one building at Brandeis that they did that was passive. So I know that a lot of this is a priority for a lot of people in the community. I'm not saying that we can make that a reality. If the numbers don't work, they don't work. We're under tight budgetary constraints. But I do want to put a plug in and anybody listening to understand that, you know, that is something that I hope you all, it's in your questions to the three that got through, you know, out of the six. If that is a question and the second question to those three applicants is, from the Somerville folks. The second question is, I also heard them say, they kind of lay out, the lady reads through the applications and says sort of who the teams are within that project management team. And another thing that was brought to my attention is sometimes they'll read these like all-star casts of people that are really good in these areas and the person who will be in charge of the education component of that project management team or design firm rather will be this one. But then once they get awarded the contract, all of a sudden the A team wasn't available, we get the B or C team. Again, I don't know if that we can get that into as a stipulation as to how to nail them down or if that would be way out of bounds as far as the MSBA folks were concerned. But again, I just want to make a plug for that. those two things that were brought to me from residents that also listened to the meeting. And then the last thing I'll say is that I did hear when the woman was running off the sort of design plan, like, yeah, it's my first time ever going on one of those. It's really weird. They're just kind of reading things off. I'm pretty sure I heard her say that one of the firm's has in their plan included school building that would include the St. Ann's School. Did I hear that correctly, that there was a mention of the St. Ann's School building?
SPEAKER_13	To the Chair, well, you've made three points. They're all valid. These are things that we are thinking about and how to mitigate them in terms of even if they don't have a lot of Passive House experience, this will be the job on which they do it under the watchful eye of our staff and our constituency. Somerville does include a lot more in our contracts than a lot of other cities and towns do. And so we do actually have mechanisms to hold consultants feature the fire on, on the listed folk. And we've had some good success there. And then the, the final, yes. One of the first, so you're, They get very limited space and they try to show their creativity in some limited space. And one of the teams picked up on the possibility of reaching out to the archdiocese and showed a concept that would include that, you know, with the big caveat that they know that that would be dependent upon the archdiocese playing ball. I just think they were trying to be very creative in what they were presenting. And for a lot of people, that's their favorite part of the proposal is looking at their concepts. It's such early days that what's in their proposal is never what winds up getting built anyway. So I take that with a very large grain of salt.
Jesse Clingan	I just, yeah, I just zeroed in on the fact, because, you know, I've been saying that if we're going to, because if we can't build up too high for whatever, we don't have to rely on elevators by going five, whatever, whatever those. constrictions are about going too high on the 115 sycamore site, if it went that way, the only other solution would be to build right off the side to that school building. It's almost perfect. So, you know, my concern is that, yes, while they're just dreaming up concepts and they were getting creative, is if we missed the opportunity to secure that building. And so I don't know what steps we can take to Can we amend a domain from the, I'm just curious, I'm just throwing that out there. Can we, from the archdiocese, are they like immune to that or something?
SPEAKER_13	I wouldn't want to incur the wrath of God. That's what I was going to say. Yeah. So suffice to say that I am in contact with archdiocese real estate people on a semi-regular basis, and it's a subject of ongoing conversation.
Jesse Clingan	All right, those are my three sort of high level in the weeds, I should say, one of the things that have been on my mind, but the MSPA process, the update is great. I'm glad that we're moving forward with the selection of a firm design center soon. And that's it from this. Oh, I see Councilor Sait has a question. You have your hand raised, Councilor Sait.
Naima Sait	Thank you, Chair Clingan.
Jesse Clingan	Council, you're cutting in and out.
Naima Sait	You can't hear me.
Jesse Clingan	I think we can hear you now, so start over.
Naima Sait	Can everyone hear me?
Jesse Clingan	Yeah, we can hear you now. You can just start over from the top from what you were saying.
Naima Sait	Yeah, you all are frozen, so imagine you can't hear me.
Jesse Clingan	We can come back. Can you reconnect or something? Can you hear me?
Naima Sait	Yeah, I'm having internet issues.
Jesse Clingan	All right. Just log out and log back in, and we'll go to the school committee.
SPEAKER_14	All right. I'll take that as my cue, Chair Clingan. Thank you. And seeing that Ms. Patone has her hand up, we'll turn it over to you, Ms.
SPEAKER_04	Patone. Thank you to you, Chair Patone. I have A question and I also have a comment. The question is how the data is being collected and collated with surveys that we've done in the school. We've kind of advanced our practice in equity to make sure that we're balancing perspectives and that we're sometimes in some ways weighting different perspectives to make sure that either a We're not because we got 80% were parents. We're not only waiting in the parents as 80% because obviously our population in Somerville is much larger than that. And it's a very small, smaller percentage of the population that are parents in the city and that we're considering the views of the community at large because they're all taxpayers and will be impacted by less than a long run. So the question is, Is the data going to be collated or managed in such a way that it reflects the distribution of our residents and the demographics of our residents versus the weighting of who actually responded to the survey? And then I have a comment, but I will wait for that. I'll leave my hand up.
SPEAKER_13	To the chair. We are tracking demographic information along with the survey responses. And one of the reasons why we had it or still have it open for such a long period of time is because we've been doing targeted outreach to demographics that haven't responded in as high numbers. So, comms, SPS, SOIA, supported by IAM staff. have been doing tabling. They've done pickup, you know, tabling at pickup time. We're tracking those demographics closely. Before that big push, the last snapshot that I saw was, I guess, not terribly surprising that most of the respondents were higher income homeowners who have been in the city for 10 plus years. And so the point of the targeted outreach was to get more return in the demographics that weren't hitting. I haven't seen how successful they've been since then. I just haven't checked the numbers, but that is being tracked and that will also be part of the report. So not only what the results are, but what the demographics are so that you can interpret the data in that way.
SPEAKER_04	Thank you. May I do a follow-up? So I know the district has, when they did their strategic plan work, they actually did some weighting to make sure that the data we had had that distribution of demographics. And so if we, you know, 80% was, you know, of one population and 20 others, sometimes the 20% was weighted a little bit more in the results. And so I don't necessarily want, I mean, it's one thing to show the full data, which I think totally makes sense. But I also think there should be a view on the data that is demographically relevant. and make sure that we see the big picture of who is responding. Obviously, if we have two responses from somebody who's a senior, that's not helpful. And I will compliment, I was at the senior picnic, and you don't want to wait the two responses, huge or anything. But obviously, we have people that do this kind of research, and I hope the consultant is balancing this in. But It's almost like in some ways, yes, you can see all the raw data, but I want one view of the interpretation of the data that absolutely reflects our distribution. I saw at the senior picnic they were tabling, so that was great to see. So we are trying to get some of our seniors because obviously whatever decision that gets made is going to have a huge tax implication on families and not families, but residents. So. It sounds like we're doing outreach with families. I'm curious, what's the balance of non-families? And are we doing outreach to people that are not families? Especially families maybe that aren't in the schools yet. That's really what families are not in the schools yet or anyone in the city. And then I'll go off and wait for my comment after.
SPEAKER_13	I know there's an effort to do that. I have not been privy to the nuts and bolts of that side of it. But I'll get a report for you for the next committee meeting from the team that's focused on that. Nikki might have a better insight.
SPEAKER_12	I don't have the specifics through the chair. However, we are having... great success in many of the categories that we were thinking of, including, you know, our schools, families, but beyond. So we can get you more information. I also know that the consultant that we've hired to help work on this is working hand in hand with Summerstatt to think about what is the correct analysis? I think you referred to weighting the analysis or not, there are pros and cons, but we are thinking about the best way to portray the data to show Somerville and how representative we are with the data that we have. So that is an active conversation, but we are absolutely considering it.
SPEAKER_14	All right, thank you, Ms. Patone. I see Dr. Phillips has a question. Go ahead, Dr. Phillips.
SPEAKER_11	Thanks through chair, I appreciate all the work that is going into this entire process and has from the very beginning, thank you very much for all that you're doing, I wanted to make one point and ask one question, the point is through chair to remember the tone. I'm sure you all have thought about this, but I would imagine that you could be doing this survey for a variety of purposes, right? One to understand where families want to put the school and one maybe to understand are we likely to pass over it or not? And you would probably want to do your analysis differently depending on that purpose. So just putting that out there to match our analysis to our purpose. And then my actual question, slight tangent from this discussion, but I was wondering how is the design process that the folks who are ultimately selecting going to build off of the design that was already done to figure out the preliminary locations and the preliminary different combinations of schools. I just hate to waste our resources by redoing something we've already done.
SPEAKER_13	Through the chair, it was made clear in the RFS and at the interview that the selected firm is to take the work that we've already done as the starting point. and that there's no intention or interest to relitigate anything that has already been examined. Everything from you know, the hazardous materials survey in the buildings, which were frankly very expensive to do. We're not going to do them again. You're accepting those reports, you know, to the sites, you know, and everyone that's responding knows that they're not going to reinvent that wheel, that they're going to use those wheels and build the car from that.
SPEAKER_14	All right, thank you. I'm going to take a turn myself and then I'll turn it over to my colleague, Ms. Patone, who looks like has another question. So through the chair, I guess through me, to Mr. Raish, we were told last year that you know, we were gonna go through this process with the CAG, that this recommendation that the CAG would develop with lots of expertise and input from different corners of our community would not hold up our process. Understanding, of course, and I think I've seen the deliberate pace with which you've been working as evidence of that, that, you know, we are not interested in wasting time. Constituents have brought to my attention, however, that other communities that were accepted at around the same time or at the same time we were, which was in December of 2023 to the MSBA process, when we were put at the top of the list, right? We were one of the first three communities to start our eligibility period. However, other communities that started their eligibility period after us, and they were staggered by basically once a month, other communities were added in. Other communities have shaved off some time from their timeline by completing their eligibility period earlier than we did. I may not have the terminology quite there, but they were invited to start the feasibility study. For example, South Hadley and Needham both completed or were invited to launch the feasibility study at 240 days or 182 days after their eligibility periods began. Uh, whereas Somerville, it took us 284 days. Now I don't know what goes into, you know, sort of getting us over the line, but I just see those numbers and I worry. that there's something about our process, and I'm not sure if it's the CAG or if it's something else, but that is causing us to... move less expeditiously than we might otherwise. Now, I don't know if you have looked at those other projects and there may be something unique about them, but I'm wondering if you can shed any light on what it is that is allowing those other communities to sort of leapfrog, if you will, and sort of move faster than than we are moving. And if there's anything we can do to make sure we don't We don't move any more slowly than we really absolutely need to. I'm trying to phrase this very carefully because I do not want to suggest that we're wasting time. I don't think we're wasting time. I think community input is important. It's really critical. But I also just... You know, we're in a situation where we have a whole community of kids who are displaced to a different building. Yes, we've done a lot of work on that building, but the faster we can get those kids into a brand new building, the better, and months matter. So I hope that somewhere in there you found a question, Director Raich, and you can respond to it.
SPEAKER_13	Thank you to the chair. I think it's important to remember that every school is different, every project is different, every community is different. So I have not diverted my attention away from moving Somerville's project as quickly as possible to examine the particular details of other communities' progress as a measure against ours, because frankly, I don't think we could move any faster than we are. But it is important to remember that this is going to be a complex school. So it's going to have a lot of requirements. There may be other schools that are less complex. I will tell you from lived experience, as most people here know, prior to my almost 10-year tenure working for the city, I spent about 25 years as a consultant. And the city was one of my clients. Somerville has a lot of requirements of their consultants and contractors, and our contracts are a lot more complex than some of our other municipalities in Massachusetts. A lot of this comes from a lot of the great ordinances that we have that protect a lot of our values that we have as a city and have bothered to ordain that then trickle down into our contracts. So our requirements are probably higher than a lot of others. And we've had to spend the time, the Director of Procurement and contract services, and each step of the process for those had to reconcile the MSBA format with the city's requirements. So we have a lot to get through that a lot of other communities don't. And also, I wouldn't say that any of the work of the CAG has detracted from the overall timeline. Because the community was able to get through eligibility and even through forming the project team and into feasibility, It may very well be that they have a lot more work to do during the feasibility study phase, and that's stuff that we've already completed in parallel or are continuing to complete in parallel. The CAG is essentially part of the public process to decide the location and size of the school. all this work that we're doing in parallel, which is in violation of the MSBA, it's just our community work around it, you know, we'll be able to make up time there compared to other communities. So I would absolutely love it if someone from South Hadley or Needham would then say, hey, we got into feasibility three months before Somerville and they're already done. You know, it's... All of these things go into it. So that's just sort of some important data to understand around the process. Thank you for that context.
SPEAKER_14	Ms. Patoni.
SPEAKER_04	Thank you through you. I just wanted to take a moment sort of in light of hearing from some members about their sort of concerns about choices and decisions and acknowledge how complex the recommendations that the CAG is considering and the data that they're looking at. The survey is not a vote. If we get 51% of the survey answers to vote X that we're gonna do X. The survey is complicated and many people put in a lot of work into this. And this decision is all about, as Director Raich said, the values of our district. And a decision such as retaining or combining current school communities, that's complicated and there's losses to be considered or gains to be considered there. Retaining or removing an option of a smaller school. Addressing risk of a hundred plus year old building. That is something that keeps me up at night personally as a school committee member. And I put a plug in for the city for moving forward on some of the risk planning work that I was very excited to see in our last school committee meeting. That's a thrill for me because that's something that's been on my head and I felt accountable to as a school committee member. But also thinking about possible gains of whatever decision we make around equity and access. Right now we deliver special education in one of our buildings in the hallway. And there's no dignity in that. And we also have some segregation of populations in our district. based on the schools and based on what they can or cannot receive in schools. There's also an opportunity to enhance inclusion. Right now, the Winter Hill, because of its current size, only has two strands, which basically means we have two first grade, two second grade, two third grade, and then we have our AIM program, which is dedicated towards our students with autism. Right now, the amount of inclusion we can do is limited by the fact that we only have two strands in that school. Now, there could be a plan that involves still having two schools and enhancing the size of the Winter Hill and being able to have three stands possibly. Again, I'm not designing the programming that would allow us to do a better job of inclusion and increase our access for our students. And then the other piece, which I know people can write off, but all of these decisions have huge financial implications. One of the things, again, I applaud the CAG. The survey was really complicated, but I do think it's missing a little bit around the finances. You know, when I talk to people about this, obviously it would cost more money to build a bigger school, and then it would cost even more money to build two schools or to renovate two schools. And I think that's the kind of data people need to make decisions. But again, all of these choices, there's losses and there's gains. And all I wanted really to reflect on is the fact that the CAG is the group that has the largest amount of information. They have more data than I have. They have more data than anybody in this. At least I think maybe some of these people in this group are more involved than I am. And just acknowledging that whatever decision gets made, there could be potential, both losses and gains to that decision. And The decision is something not about today, but about 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, 50 years. And what is going to be in the best interest for the city. So I just wanted to flag that. It's more complicated than we're going to shut a building down, we're going to combine schools, or we're going to keep two schools. There's just a lot of other elements that have to be considered. And I just appreciate that there's a body of volunteers that are taking their time to take all this complex information, including the results of the survey. So I just wanted to acknowledge that.
SPEAKER_14	Sorry. Okay. Chair Clingan, we'll turn it back to you.
Jesse Clingan	Okay. I see Councilor Sait. Give your hand up.
Naima Sait	Go ahead. Thank you. Through you, Chair Clingan. First, thank you for explaining all the process tonight and for the update. My questions, the first one, I don't know if this was mentioned when I had internet issue for like a few minutes. But my question is, at what point in the process that you laid out tonight, the administration will be sharing the financial implications? The World Five School Committee member just mentioned how important to have that piece of information that we've been asking for for months. So if you have an answer to that.
SPEAKER_13	Through the chair, as a matter of fact, we presented that to the CAG just last week. I think a week ago, Monday, the 8th, something like that, at the last meeting. And we... I wish I could just tell you what the URL was off the top of my head, but we've posted that with the materials that are available, all the CAG and MSBA materials. So we ran... a few different scenarios that look at different timetables and different configurations of the one and two building options. So I think we had like six different scenarios, something like that. And what we're able to calculate, so we got updated estimates of cost because as you recall, When we got the MSBA enrollment numbers, they were much better than we had thought they might give us when we did the K8 capacity study. So we needed to update the size of the buildings and also bring them up to today's dollars because construction costs have continued to escalate. So we did that. We plotted out like a couple of different time scenarios, gave the cash flow. The finance department then calculated what the debt service would be based on that and based on our current bond rating. And that calculated out to the total debt service for the different scenarios. And so, all that's in a table and available now. There's a lot of nuance and detail on that. And so if we want to put it on a future agenda for this group, I wouldn't be opposed to explaining it to you. But it is information that the CAG now has.
Naima Sait	Great. Through the chair, thank you. That's great to hear. And happy to put in an order so we can discuss that, so you can present that our next meeting. I think that's very helpful information to have right now. And then the other question is related to the outreach regarding the survey. I know we don't have information on that. We don't have the staff members to speak to that tonight. But if we can just add some, my colleagues on the council and on the school committee have made some requests. I'll make some comments on that. The request I'm going to make is to, one, share the data with us at our next meeting. And also, I'm just going to ask if you know the answer now. If not, to provide an answer to the question, what type of outreach are we doing in the proposed for like the abutters in the proposed locations. You've mentioned this survey has been taken by a lot of folks and seniors, families, just, yeah, like everyone. But I would love to know, yeah, if there's any particular outreach that was done to residents that bought in the proposed locations. If you don't have the information, if we can have that next time.
SPEAKER_13	Yeah, through the chair, we'll work with the team that's working directly on that and get a report, depending upon the timing of this next committee meeting and when they're going to be crunching the numbers. I don't know if it can be the very next meeting or the one after, but we'll definitely commit to getting you all that information.
Jesse Clingan	Okay. Um, all right. So we will keep that one in committee as is the custom. Um, and then let's just, we're going to power through one more. Um, cause we did get a memo with a pretty good answer here. And then I think the, um, uh, that would be item number two items, number four and seven, uh, which are relating to the, um, well, sort of the coming school or the MOU with the school committee. So let's just jump to item number two, which says that it's that the administration submit to the city council and school committee, the city's contingency plan in the event of an emergency school closure during the 2025, 2026 school year. So actually this is, you know, very time sensitive and there was a memo sent that we can sort of just, we'll turn it over to, Mr. D.C. in a moment, but I'll just say, you know, it is a plan and it certainly would probably work. So I'd like to hear how everybody on this body is thinking in terms of the memo, if you were able to get to read the memo. But with that, if you want to kick things off, liaison, go right ahead.
SPEAKER_01	Thank you, Mr. Chair. As you mentioned, the administration did submit a memo in response to this item. I just wanted to provide a little context for counselors that haven't been part of the separate but related conversations that have been happening with the school committee in the past few weeks. So earlier tonight, you heard from DPW and the IAM team about some of the preventative maintenance that was undertaken over the summer. And as we've discussed in this committee before, these interventions are a really important way for the city to make sure that we are proactively doing preventative maintenance repairs and upgrades to prevent any future school building failures. I know that I've also shared at these meetings that the city is fully committed to mobilizing in the case of a future building failure, just as we have done before. And last week, the administration shared with the school committee our concrete five-step plan of what this administration would do if a school building were to fail tomorrow. So the memo that was sent to you on this item outlines those steps that we would take if this were to happen in the school year. I won't read through the whole memo. I'm hoping folks had a chance to look at it since I sent it on Friday. But just a few highlights. If a school did fail tomorrow, we would react instantly. Ever since the Winter Hill, the mayor's office and city departments have continued to evaluate and reach out to partners about potential locations. As outlined in the memo, within hours, the city would convene an incident command system and activate an emergency operations center. Next, we would call Tufts and address immediate instruction needs through the Tufts administrative building, the TAB. And the TAB already has some classrooms and Tufts has cleared it for this use. This is a high quality building and we have experience mobilizing quickly to move in and move out from past experience. Step four would be to move SPS admin and city staff from the TAB and we have a couple options for this move outlined in the memo. And finally, the city would work to rapidly evaluate a more long-term solution. Ever since the Winter Hill, we have been in conversation with several community partners with large properties. At their request, these must remain confidential and discussing them may actually jeopardize our ability to use their properties in the future. So just wanted to share that information. We do have staff here in case there's more specific questions about emergency responsiveness or emergency preparedness. That's all I have in terms of an overview on this.
SPEAKER_07	Counselor, you're muted.
Jesse Clingan	So yeah, so as I was saying, thank you for that. And like, you know, the tab, you know, it may not be perfect, but it is a plan. You know, prior to that, this idea, you know, just the sheer, you know, dread of imagining if a building goes down and what we're going to do with these children. I mean, this gives us something of an answer. I'm looking for the part where it says what would happen with the current employees. I mean, they're probably already working high school department. Actually, a lot of them, well, certain areas work five days a week. Anyway, so just can you just hit me with that point? Because I don't see it. I'm scrolling and I'm not finding it. Through the chair, just to clarify, are you asking what would happen with the current employees at the TAB from the school department?
SPEAKER_01	So that's the section that actually Delaney has up on the screen.
Jesse Clingan	Oh, okay. Okay. So yeah, I mean, so really, you don't know. It's like, it's basically remote work, and then maybe throw some in the, you know, possibly in the annex or something. I'm not even sure who's left in the annex. But I know we don't have a lot of room to play around with. So as far as those employees, that would be a challenge. But actually, you know, the first priority would be the children. So to have this as a potential emergency plan, You know, I think it's good. I hope it puts some people a little bit at ease, but I'd like to hear from other people. So anybody on the council have any questions or comments regarding this emergency potential use of the tab? Okay, I don't see anybody with any hands up. So let's just go over to the school committee. Chair Baton.
SPEAKER_14	Thank you, Chair Clingan. I don't have a question. We've already seen this on the school committee side. So I'll just say, you know, I agree with Councilor Clingan that this is a plan. This is, you know, this answers the question about where the students are. would go, the classrooms would go to the tab, at least in the immediate term while you continue to search for longer term solutions. And, you know, is it perfect? Probably not. But it's an answer and I think it does provide with enough certainty for me to share with constituents and families who worry about this sort of thing. We do have a history of events happening and we need to be prepared. And again, I appreciate all of the efforts of the administration that have mobilized quickly to find solutions. I have no doubt that you will do so in the future, but this kind of information is really critical for us. Uh, just knowing sort of where the net is. So we know, uh, uh, you know, how our educators and our students will be supported in such a, an event. So, um, and, and, you know, doing everything in the meantime that we can through maintenance. And we've heard from all of the excellent work that Capital Improvements and DPW have done to make sure that our existing buildings stay clear of major issues that are preventable. So this is all just part of the kaleidoscope of issues that we are doing to make sure our buildings are safe, and that we have plan B's in place. So really appreciate that. I'm getting off my soapbox and turn it over to Ms. Patone. You have a question.
SPEAKER_04	I don't have a question. As you said, we already saw this. I do want to acknowledge, A, that yes, I'm thrilled that we have this. It's an adequate, not adequate, it's a reflection of the partnership between the city, the schools, and the administration that this was clearly, and I think the mayor in her own words and staff also were reflecting like everybody wanted this. This is not something, for years it was something that the The school committee wanted and somehow couldn't get prioritized, but that I just really want to acknowledge that it's been great that this has been prioritized and that there's been a lot of thought put into it both. And I applaud both the process and, you know, where the locations possibly could be. But I also want to, we had several colleagues who were very frustrated in how long it took. And that it really took this warming center desire, which everybody was behind and really wanted, if the city felt like the Cummings was the best location, that we wanted to support that. But that until, unless and until we got this information, which we requested last year, we're really, we're put in a difficult space. So I just want to acknowledge the frustration that many of my colleagues had. But again, I'm all about onward and upward and moving forward. And I just want to thank everyone.
SPEAKER_07	Okay.
SPEAKER_14	Back to you, Chair Clingan. Thanks.
Jesse Clingan	Great. Yeah, thanks to the administration for this. It does definitely put people somewhat at ease because the Cummings is just not a possibility, it sounds like, although that leads us to the last two items that I'm just going to, like, touch upon them, but we're going to keep them in committee because I don't – I think there's – Can you just explain, I'm going to read these and then I'll have Liaison Radassi speak to why we don't have an answer for these yet. So item number four is from Council President Neufeld that the mayor create and make public specific plans that outline the full scope of work necessary at the coming school, including capacity, time, and cost to host some of the public school students in the event of an emergency and provide regular updates to this council until such plans are completed. And then the other one is that the Director of Asset Management developed a swing space plan to accommodate several public school students to mitigate disruption to students, families, and staff while a school building is unavailable or during construction. So these sort of both feed into that emergency plan, which kind of gives us half the answers, but I think the Cummings would be possibly part of the longer term strategy, even if We could guess at some of those other institutions that shall not be named right now. One thing we do know is that we have this building. So the question as to what it would take and what would be needed to get the Cummings online as a school building, for that we have liaison Radassi here to explain what the process will look like in terms of why there's not a solid answer as of yet.
SPEAKER_03	Excuse me, sorry to cut in. Chair Clingan, did you want to mark item two as work complete or do you want to take that up with these other items?
Jesse Clingan	No, item two will be work complete and then these two will, four and seven will be kept in committee.
SPEAKER_03	Perfect, thank you.
Jesse Clingan	Thank you.
SPEAKER_01	Jason? Through the chair, as you've alluded to, the school committee is currently considering a memorandum of understanding regarding the development of a full plan in the case of an emergency displacement. The plan that we just outlined for this school year is our short term. We have something on the books. I think the idea and what some of the language that is may be included in the final version of the MOU, which has not been accepted by either party yet and will be discussed again by the school committee Wednesday night, includes a full continuity of operations plan, which is something that emergency management has been working on Based on their expertise and emergency response and I don't know if we want to get into tonight I know director fisher is still here from oh yeah Thank you director for still being here. If he wants to talk a little bit about what a continuity of operations plan looks like and what we're thinking of in terms of that but that's that's more I think responsive to item number seven in terms of a full. swing space plan is we're looking at a continuity of operations plan that would be more comprehensive. I know Director Fischer has talked to the school committee about how there's a lot of thought that goes in detail that goes into a full continuity of operation plan, and that a lot of it is contingent on different situations, what the cause of an emergency is. I will not try to do as good of a job as OEM in explaining that. And then also related to part of the The MOU touches on evaluation of alternative locations in case of a in case of a school displacement. I think the idea is that the coming school would be evaluated as part of a whole scale evaluation of possible locations and it's it's it is part of our capital. Improvement plan. I hope I got the acronym correctly. The CIP plan. So it's evaluated at the same level as all other buildings. Once we're looking at what improvements are made there. But at the highest level, basically, these are things that are still being discussed as part of the memorandum of understanding that hasn't been signed off on by school committee or city yet. So just didn't want to jump ahead of
Jesse Clingan	Yeah, no, I got it. Yeah, no, I mean, it's past the two-hour mark. It's late. We don't need any further. I appreciate Director Fisher is sticking around, but we don't need to have much. If anything, I would ask the school committee since these most likely, the school committee side that these most likely can't, I believe they came from them through, at the present time, Constable Neufeld. If you want to keep these in committee or do you want to work complete them and then, you know, reintroduce new ones or like, Tom Preston- Again, this was sort of your desire, I would imagine, and. Tom Preston- How do you want to discharge these or do you want to just keep them in committee i'm.
SPEAKER_14	Tom Preston- I would, I would like to keep these in committee if we if we can and and address them. Tom Preston- You know, at the next meeting or you know in the near future.
Jesse Clingan	Tom Preston- Okay, all right so on this anybody have any questions or comments from this Council side. Okay, I'll turn it over to you, Chair Baton, on these items that we're not discussing, really.
SPEAKER_14	Yeah, no, I'm going to close discussion on this at this point. I think we can save it for when we can have a more fulsome discussion, so thank you.
Jesse Clingan	Perfect. All right, so yeah, four and seven, Madam Clerk will keep in committee, and that brings us to the end of the agenda. Clerk, do you, Madam Clerk, do you have any questions about any of the discharging of any of these items? I think we're on the same page, right?
SPEAKER_03	Yep, I think I got everything.
Jesse Clingan	Okay. Procedurally, how do we, do we just motion to adjourn as a council and the school committee is adjourned with us? I forget.
SPEAKER_14	School committee will adjourn immediately after you do.
Jesse Clingan	Okay. So with that, Councillor Sait moves to adjourn. Can you do a roll call on adjournment? Yep.
SPEAKER_03	This is a roll call on adjournment. Councilor Sait. Yes. Councilor Davis.
Jesse Clingan	Yes.
SPEAKER_03	Chair Clingan.
Jesse Clingan	Yes.
SPEAKER_03	All right. With all those in favor, we are adjourned at 8.32 p.m.
SPEAKER_14	And we are adjourned. Thank you.
SPEAKER_03	Perfect. Thanks, everyone.