uh good good day everyone uh this is uh the July 22nd meeting of the school committee call a meeting to order 804 uh the meeting is being both audio and video recorded uh we'll skip all the formalities and we'll move on to our first order of business if you want to take it away Gordon please okay so uh today we're joined by Steve cruel and Peter sherck and they've been working with East Long Meadow softball Association to put together plans for um building dugouts at the two softball fields on buron Park's uh campus uh the dugouts obviously would both be uh a great service and um support to elhs teams but also recreational softball and the teams that uh play uh for East Long Meadow with that I can hand it over to either Peter or Steve whoever would like to start I'll start and I'll hand it to Peter for some commentary so just by way of background and unfortunately I'm not able to share any screens today so I can't put up the stuff that was sent around I will try to do that for you right now do you want the over overview of the fields first yeah that'd be fine okay thank you you're welcome if I may interrupt Steve for a minute just um for the record school committee me members and attendance is that Sarah and Antella is that all that's here today nope uh we have uh Sarah Amy and Kate okay as well as yep now I see it thank you you good Greg yeah go ahead Steve thank you okay so Pete and I were coaching together three or four years ago and we were both on the uh newly formed uh Youth Softball Association for East Long Meadow and one of the topics that kept coming up was the lack of dugouts at these two fields and there was a lot of it seemed like there was a lot of history to it and anyway Pete and I kind of put our heads to it we started thinking it through and we figured that if we could come up with a design and we could largely self finance and it was just a matter of getting the town to say yes then that seemed like a pretty comping argument uh so we did go down that road um I personally have spoken to virtually every stakeholder involved in these fields I've spoken to Kevin McGee at the the ad I've talking to Donna pra at wreck I've spoken to Bruce at DPW I've spoken to Tom Christensen I've spoken to Gordon I've spoke to uh Tim Allen when he was still there and Steve Pearson since then everyone seems to think it's a good idea the typical response is yeah that sounds awesome I hope you're not asking for money because I don't have any we're gonna we're gonna take a shot at that ourselves so you know then we just kind of went and did our thing uh Pete if you'd like to or if you could speak to just some of the efforts that the ELA put into you know assembling some of these funds and supporting these ideas that'd be great sure thanks for having us by the way um thank you for being here of course um a few years ago since we became a 501c3 we've really um intensified our our fundraising um we've always had dugouts as like that's the cream of the crop that's ideally what we would like to do with this money but every dollar that we that we spend with our fundraising money it just goes back to creating a better environment for our players coaches and and fans alike so we didn't know that this time would ever come so in the meantime we've you know done things like we've offered free uh first aid and CPR certification for all of our coaches um so like 95% of all our coaches are CPR certified uh We've invested in in pitching machines and in popup tents and um we've even provided like really really inexpensive um Player Development clinics um we've developed a a really good relationship with high school by the way and um in Jenna web so so over the last two years we've been we've been kind of lock step in what we've been doing um anything that we're doing with with dugouts and if these come to fruition um I'm I'm making sure that Donna um that that Jenna is aware and um Julie Ryan the president of of high school softball is aware so we have a really good relationship going with with high school um softball the Youth Softball program has more than doubled in the last three years so this past spring we were at almost 130 participants and with that number we've been able to to fundraise quite a bit so um we have our levels are from t-ball all the way up through 14U and then we're passing the torch these players onto onto Jenna web so um it's been great and and we would make sure that every single age group would be able to experience these dugouts and and playing a game where um they they can sit in a Dugout um we just think that that experience alone would be pretty darn cool so um it's been going really well so far but um with all of the money that we raised we have allocated some funds to to to do this project if if you would allow it thanks Peter so what we're looking at right here is an overhead of the fields at burland and when we were thinking through how to to you know come up with a a basis of design for this for this exercise you know we wanted to leave as much of the existing fencing and all of that in place right to to both manage the cost and not make this you know something that was going to be unbearable for for anyone involved so what we had settled on if you can Gordon can you zoom that just a tiny bit sure there's probably a way to do this faster but you know I'll speak to it while you're looking so if you look closely you can see that the dugouts are effectively in line with the field fence right and then the Dugout is obviously you know sitting proud on the other side so what we were trying to come up with is a way to Simply remove that section of fence that is currently right in front of the bench turn that into a Dugout and that way we've still got all the protection that we need to have and we're able to simplify the the construction a little bit Gordon if you could flip to the next image which should be the I was so successful with the [Laughter] zooming how's that is that the one nothing changed yet Chang here oh it didn't if you change on your screen Gordon yeah I did I don't know why it paused sharing hold on a sec yeah it said it paused me sharing and I don't know why okay hold on a sec no I think it's my end let me go back let me stop sharing and I'll reshare perfect thank yeah sorry about that so so the next step in this exercise while Pete and the Gang were out trying to raise funds we wanted to with something that would serve as a a template for us so these are the dugouts up at Smith college and as you can see you know they're pretty robust right pretty pretty comfortable you know these are lit these have heaters these have a lot of things that we're not going to have but just from a layout standpoint and from a kind of showing how it all comes together we we thought that this would be a good thing to kind of start from and then we figure out what we could afford so Gordon if you could flip to the other sketch package sure see here so in the nature of my work I work with a lot of Architects and one of the groups that I work with has a pretty substantial Sports practice practice and I actually asked them to develop some sketches for us and yeah Gord you can kill the tools on the side yep close them so they came up with some sketches and these are what I've I've shared with Pete and you know a few others that have taken a look we didn't want to spend a lot of money necessarily on just happened on things that might be uh you know don't really have a value add to them right it have you know function first and then form afterwards so anyway they insisted on giving us a little bit of architecture up the top with the beam that can of levers and so on so excuse me yeah Gordon if you could just go down so here's what the bench looks like in plan view right so from overhead this is what we'd have so there's a bench along the back it's roughly 24t long by about you a little over 8T deep and then we've got the bench we've got a rack for equipment at one end we've got some space for whiteboards we had anticipated either reusing the existing you know benches themselves or we would have something new fabricated uh but it's basically just you know it's concrete with block walls on top of it one of the things that DPW was very adamant about is this thing needs to be as low maintenance and as durable as we can make it so rather than going with you know something made out of wood or wood siding we went with concrete block a wood framed roof with shingles on it and then a little bit of trim around you know and talking with Pete and obviously this would you know this is something we would want to get your feedback on you know we're thinking we're likely to paint the whole thing inside and out maybe put some graphics on the outside you know ghost Spartans kind of thing but we can sort that out down the road uh so we have been able well actually we'll get through the rest of the sketches Gordon you can keep going okay and if anybody has any questions please just fire them out as we're going hey Steve just in case I don't forget if you are putting graphics on or plan two could you run those by us first before you do that just so we're all on the same page yeah no 100% yep and you know I don't know this would probably be like you know the more typical things you see around town it wouldn't be anything you haven't seen before I don't think but think we'll we'll make sure that you you guys have a chance to bless it so this is the roof just you know showing where the the carrying beam sticks off on either end there's a single column in the center uh we couldn't afford we couldn't avoid that without making this thing significantly more expensive uh so Gordon we can keep going on the sketch so here here's a section of like if you were standing on one end and looking through it so we've got a doorway at either end you can see the slope of the roof given some guidance to the the framers on what we think the sizing should be for some of those members uh so again fairly straightforward going for as as robust as we can make it within reason so you can see where we've got P painted block uh they did throw in some some ground face which is a it's also a concrete block it's a little more of a premium look they just you know the difference in price is probably $2 a block so it's not a lot of cash that's one of the things that you know in discussing this with P it's like well you know what let's let's see where the numbers shake out if we can afford to do it it sounds like it'd be great but you know we're not going to go crazy trying to make this thing an architectural tribute so we can keep going down Gordon so now we're just going to get to so here's just a sketch of what the racks have looked like I've spoken to a vendor who's willing to provide some of this work you basically as a right off towards the 501 and then going down from here there'll be a sketch of yeah there we go so now we just got a section of a bench if we were to you know build our own bench it would be something that kind of looks like this uh so we've got enough information that we've been able to talk to some contractors they would be contracted through the Youth Organization directly and we've got a combination of donations both of material and of work in kind and some work that has to be paid for and we think we're at a place where we've got enough funding that's been approved by Pete's board to be deployed on this so we're here to ask your permission what is that budget uh Stephen come to the main office sorry about that Pete I'll let you speak to that um I I got approved to to spend um no more than $14,000 on this project so hopefully Steve and and team can come in under that number and um okay the in terms of painting I'm a little worried about the painting aspect and I know Bruce mentioned his concerns about maintenance is there a way we could wrap the fa shows with aluminum I know that's an additional cost but that would certainly cut down on on the maintenance issue um yeah yeah for some of the trim we were thinking that would be more like a PVC or solid surface so that you don't have to maintain it ever yeah good similarly and I'm sorry I didn't clarify this earlier so the budget that Pete just described that's enough to outfit one field which in our view would be the larger Varsity Field um you know to the extent that we're either ible to save some money or shorten a learning curve or develop some other options if this you know if assuming that we got permission and things went well and people were happy with the product we would certainly want to move into the other field you know as as soon as we had the funds available you know so yep and Steve as you know um accessory structures in in town over 120 square feet require building permit have you gone to the building inspector at your calcul you're like 192 on each of these yeah my my my code book says 200 feet well maybe maybe that's a town I thought it was 120 in Eon Meadow is that what you're looking at or is that no I double check it I Gordon had mentioned the same thing and I'm happy to you know go in and walk in through all this yeah so if we could have a sign off from the building inspector either a permit or the fact that we don't need a permit um I'd ask for that because I think it's 120 but we can look into it and then um and then when we're done as you can understand you know being a public facility uh if we can have the building inspector sign off on the finished product uh before we allow any students or or athletes to use them as you can understand uh why would we would do that yeah not a problem at all and then the only other thing I would say is and it just worth mentioning you know once these things are built and done the town owns them um and it won't be the Softball Association or anything that that that can schedule I just want to make that clear that that this is a donation and we're very thankful and and I know it's obviously takes a lot of work to raise that kind of money so very appreciative of all your efforts um but just worth mentioning that once they're finished uh they would be Town property not not softball organization owned yep fully understood okay I guess my question would be do you have any plans to do anything different with the two softball fields at burland in the next couple years are you gonna are you planning on ripping them up in in three years because that might change things no p and I did ask the same question because now that we're putting uh we as you Pro probably know we're putting two more softball fields at the high school and new new um new Fields um so in the future potentially they could come out uh there's no near future plans for that um and certainly an investment like this you know you want to get multiple years out of it right um can I commit seven eight nine 10 years from now they won't come out I I I can't do that because there's a need for additional parking at that school no doubt and um but we have no plans to knock those downs I guess I could I could put it that way um okay yeah thank you and and as you know there's not enough fields in this town for anything so getting rid of fields is not any of our uh right uh expectations other than if it was an absolute necessity so okay yeah understood any other Gordon or any other Gordon any other questions there's only one Gordon Steve you know that trying to get a few more Gordons but we we'll see one's enough for me sorry sorry no I don't have any Kate and Amy anything else no questions for me yep I'm I'm all set thank you okay um if there are no other questions I would entertain a motion to approve the plans for as of now uh the two dugouts so that would be is that the um East East Side field or the West I don't know which one's the varsity the right or the left that's good question the way that I explain is if you're standing on the soccer field looking at the school it's the one on the left okay great yeah it's field one there's a sign there actually the sign of sign one and then two so it's field one okay so so it would be it would be two two individual structures one on the third Basel line and one on the first Bas line Greg do you want the motion to project into the future that should they raise money for the um JV field that we give approval for those or do you want that to come back Steve would that happen the next year you think I I don't I'm not sure why don't we have you come back then if if we if we're you know two three years out I don't want to tie some other school committee I mean at that point if everybody's happy with what we did it should be won't be a problem yeah that's fine all right so then I move to approve the plan for building dugouts at the burchland Park Middle School softball field field number one um as presented and pending the um information about the permits okay motion made by Sarah second second second by Kate any uh any other discussion uh we'll roll call it uh Kate yes hi either way Sarah yes and Amy yes and I'm a yes as well that carries four to zero okay um Pete and Steve really appreciate all your efforts uh anything we can do to improve uh Islam meow is is certainly appreciated so uh great we you guys pulling this together so quickly yeah our pleasure very when's uh when do you think you might get a get a start on it I think it's probably best case a couple weeks out to start doing something but Our intention is to have it done before the kids come back awesome and you'll keep you'll keep Bruce in the loop as you go along I know you I know you know him but um yeah okay thank you I'll look into I'll Circle back great thank you Steve thank you Pete thank you everybody really appreciate it appreciate you guys have a good day you too you too have a good day okay for the rest of the committee anybody have anything else nope then I would entertain a motion to adjourn the moved motion made by Sarah Oh second by Kate uh we'll roll call it Kate yes Sarah yes Amy yes and I'm a yes as well that motion carries four to zero thank you we are adjourned thank you