okay um okay so I'm gonna go ahead and read the meeting notice so we can get started and um hopefully will not take us entire time so um we will see what we see um Okay so so um please be advised that on Wednesday May 29th at 6m there will be a strategic and capital planning meeting and sorry a finance subcommittee meeting of the Medford High School comprehensive School building committee um held through remote participation via Zoom the meeting is being recorded um the meeting can be viewed live on medord public schools YouTube channel through Medford Community media on your local cable which is Comcast channel 98 or 22 and Verizon Channel 4445 or 47 since the meeting will be held remotely participants can call or log in by using the following meeting number it's 963 3633 4995 um questions or comments can be submitted during the meeting by emailing Jenny Graham at M.K 12.ma.us those submitting must include the following information um your first name and last name your Medford Street address and your question or comment um so I will call the the rooll um let's see where did it go um here we go uh member Graham here mayor lungo Kar do not see her yet uh Libby Brown here and Ain elap here um Larry Brown don't see Larry yet uh Bob Dickinson my Bob and Fiona Maxwell oh you're new but I think you [Laughter] said um okay so for attendance purposes we have um three present one absent um so the meeting can be called to order um we also um thank you Alicia for joining us um I invited Alicia who's the our head of um everything it seems um development and sustainability and something else right Alicia Planning Development and ility thank you I knew I was forgetting something um because a lot of the things that we'll be um talking about um certainly have some uh crossover into Alicia's world and um so thank you for uh for being here and for joining us um we have just two items on our agenda for tonight and um certainly if if we have if people have questions along the way um it's a small group and you can feel free to stop me um and I can I'm happy to feel those questions as as best I can we have two agenda items so one was um to start a discussion about potential sites for the for Medford High School um that would inform our next steps in the process which ultimately is you know getting towards a feasibility study um and then the other thing that um we have on our agenda is to discuss the anticipated budget for the feasibility study um and if the mayor is not here we may um just table that but um when we talk about potential sites um there I think there have been some questions raised in the community certainly over over the period of years around um how to um think about a new Medford High School and where it might be and I think you know certainly where it is right now is one very viable option but I think there is um a like a sort of a broader sense of possibility potentially in terms of what we might be thinking about and I we don't need to make any decisions tonight but I wanted to start the conversation because if there is a broadening of like what needs to be studied in the feasibility study we need to know that um in order to start to sort of weave that into our to our process and our application so um so that's our first agenda item um and um I am happy to um take any comments that you all have so um you know Fiona and and Bob you may not have as much to say about that that's totally fine um but just trying to start to Think Through um you know as a group where do we um you know where do where do we begin um in terms of sort of um what is possible um and so Alicia thank you for being here that's um certainly a very helpful person to have on the on the team um so I will stop talking and see if there's any questions comments thoughts that kind of thing um I have a question um sure I I'm not sure what other sites have ever been discussed I this project have been kind of in the you know Daydreams for a long time and clearly when they built the high school in the you know 70s I would assume what was there was Woodlands before was part of the fs so I can't imagine taking any other chunks of of woods or any other sites in in the city so I don't know if there's already any places that have been thought of or city owned land that could even be an option um feels like it might not be a lot of other places yeah I think that is certainly possible I have I have certainly heard people talk about Place dead Park as a possibility yeah um and and I guess if you're going to talk about plac you could talk about potentially any of those like sort of open green spaces which all are under City control um not that I want to sort of be the committee that takes Parks away takes Parks out of Medford I'm not saying that I promise it'll be a swap but um that you know I know that that at least sounds like it has been a discussion over the course of years um in the city um and certainly you know as people speculate about what this project could be um that that comes up fairly often and I think it comes up often because at some point in time there was a discussion about if there was going to be a new high school could it be somewhere else and and somehow that seems to have been the that sort of stuck in the public perview right and criteria I assume for thinking about this you obviously there are lots of pars but I mean centrally located access to if not Transportation like major roads so easy to get to um I mean I know play said the benefit being it it backs up to a train line so it's not necessarily butting up to a bunch of houses um as those the sort of the criteria um it's definitely not centrally located in the city but neither is the high school right right now so yeah not much better yeah I do hear um I hear a lot of people talk about how it is not Central in the city and it is not particularly easy to get to um I can sort of speak to like our busing situation so currently we provide buses um at at uh for those those students who are more than two miles outside of the school zone in the secondary level so that includes middle schoool and high school um the way we do that at the high school is in part through MBTA buses um and then there is some yellow bus service to North Medford where there is no MBTA service um so certainly um central location has H is something that's been discussed a whole bunch of times um you know over the years so um that um that certainly uh is a fact a fact when we think about the high school um and the you know the sheer amount of traffic that has to get to and from every every day Lisa there's a lot of stuff that I could um that I could say about these various things and I was wondering if you wanted is is it more useful for me to sort of throw out a bunch of information um because as you were talking that there have been speculation for a very long time and in the planning office we've thought about these things as we did things like comprehensive plan and what could change and why should it change and honestly um as planners we lament the fact that Medford High School ever moved out of Medford Square because that was such invigoration to the to the business district here it really change things people talk about how the square was used to be a long time ago much more vibrant well frankly if you had a thousand high school students here it would really but don't get me wrong high school students come to the square and so do middle school students perhaps not in the droves that they would have when the school was here um I like in my mind anything is literally possible with enough money I don't think unlimited money and I want to recognize that like that is attention right one could in fact buy that old location and like knock it down and build like it's it's possible it's just not possible for Medford at this time in this financial situation I'm assuming but I I wanted to say that I like to State my assumptions explicitly in case I'm missing something that other people see um I do when you mention the transport ation issue there are a couple of things that I should flag no matter where in this the city you put this transportation is going to be an issue for North Medford because it's hilly it's windy um MBTA doesn't get buses up there I was literally talking to somebody from the state about that today um about why do our school buses fit but not MBTA buses and they thought it might have to do with the clearance and um how low to the ground the buses go because that's why there's no MBTA I me it's not the only reason but there's actual like MBTA has said to us we cannot run our large um Ada buses through Fon Heights they it doesn't literally work um so when you say well it's not accessible the the problem is it's always not going to be accessible somewhere the MBTA system is not the best and we do have a working group on Transportation that is talking about the transportation issues that's why I was talking to the state today so we have some City counselors um Peter and some oh my gosh uh Megan Megan from the schools are meeting with us along with some Transportation companies um staff from my office our traffic director um the Pam from the senior center someone from West Medford Community Center we're we're starting to try to talk about this and we're talking to other communities how do they do transportation we're looking at Grant around electric school buses and whether owning our own school buses would be coste effective and would also solve some of our transportation Equity issues um so I'm not saying that we're definitely doing it but but we were going to look into it to see if is this something that's worth proposing to the schools and to the city as something that could make sense and we were in fact talking to the state today about uh technical assistance and grants for microtransit which is what they call when you run your own little buses and stuff within the city so it's all stuff we're looking into and I wouldn't want to site a new school just on Transit simply because you can move Transportation you're you're really can but once you pick a site for the building that site is done um I did grab I pulled out our open space and wreck plan because one of the things that that does do is that there is a map that has and I'm sure I could get it online and point people to it but at the moment I had a copy sitting on my desk um okay there is a map in there and the the map I'm currently looking at is regional context but it marks which green spaces are permanently protected and which are limited protection and the reason I do it with quotes is because in my experience even something that's permanently protected can be swapped for something else like here's a space that's not protected we'll permanently protect that to lift this protection over here so there can't be a net loss and it's not always easy but it can be done and I say that because two of the the places that have kind of percolated there's Place dead um that is not permanently protected that's got limited protection on it um and but my concern is it is taking it this the school from what is somewhat centrally located it's like in the making it worse middle and you're really shoving it into the far corner with the wealthiest families through all the wealthiest neighborhoods and the biggest houses they can walk and everybody else has a long haul to get there so I don't really love it and it's near station but it's commuter rail it's completely useless to our students in any and every way um I mean for school yeah so that's kind of where I'm not I'm not loving it as a location but if one had a need to say what are possible locations and then let's like check off the pros and cons it's rational to put it on the list so one can say we did a comparison of possible sites the other one that has been bounced around more recently is tough part Park um that one does have the label permanently protected on it and I'd have to poke a little harder into this to see what that quote permanent protection is um I like that as an area a little better because it's if you're going to push it into one corner of the city that's our lower income area those are the students for whom if the bus isn't running it's more likely that Mom and D can't hop in a car and come pick them up it is making it more accessible to the people who have fewer resources so that's sort of a rational thing um and there are bus lines that go that way and with the MBTA improved bus services um they want to run bus more buses down Main Street I'm not loving it because main Street's so narrow um that is a highly congested area you'd make things wor um but there is a big green open space there um I don't know if you would have space for a school and parking there is the tur Curtis tough school and I mean I I think it was at a school committee meeting where they were very recently talking about whether we should be reconsidering the future of that um My Hope Is that that building could be repurposed for recreation or Community Center that the city could desperately need um but you could certainly include the Curtis tough's property it's our only outdoor pool I'd hate to lose that too [Music] yeah the car park doesn't make any sense for a whole lot the transportation is the worst possible yeah for everything and it's in the middle of an 7 million renovation so please don't do that to me um I'm not clear there are any other open spaces there are commercial areas that we don't own um we did do some site survey kind of like assessments when we were looking for a new for the police station when we cited the new police station where it is we actually did do some due diligence about are there other locations in the city where you could put um a new police station and in that case we really came down to even if we bought something almost everything would not be as centrally located um yeah and we we were trying to see if we could get it out of flood plane areas um yep property in Medford right now is really really expensive um for us to purchase something doesn't doesn't seem reasonable in this climate what about like hormell that area I mean I know that would involve moving hormell but that's so hormell is yeah it's more complicated protected its level of protection at this point is we do have um conservation restriction through the state and a federal conservation restriction on the whole on this is it on the whole prop oh you know what we did not end up doing the federal conservation restriction um it was going to be part of the clippership it was going to be our donation to the Clippers ship connector was to um increase the federal restrictions and we it was I think approved on the city's end but then the the federal government didn't the state didn't move forward with that piece of it um so you would have to deal with State con conservation restrictions when we built the schools the miglin and the Andrews there was actually some conservation restriction swap for the footprints of those so those buildings are exempt from the conservation restriction and then there's land over in River's Edge that is has a conservation restriction in lie of those two buildings the Footprints of those buildings so there would need to be a conservation restriction put somewhere else um I'm wondering what the it's not completely irrational I don't know what the I was just looking at a map to see sizewise it would be tight it would be that and then you would be dealing with all the buses yeah already three schools there yeah for three and the congestion of three schools worth of students all in one comp here here I'm sorry to to interject here here's a question has there been some thought at all about the the moving of one of the middle schools that's in that area and with placing it with the high school because I know that I've spoken to some people in the community and this a question of my own where if you were to have the high school be more centrally located as we're talking about let's say it were replace it with the Andrews let's just say for for for the moment you move the Andrews closer to the West Medford area so you have both an elementary school in the Brooks and then you have a middle school in the West Medford slightly more North Medford area for for example and then you have the kindergarten through high school you know more Central Central to South Medford located so would that be I mean that's not crazy I think the reason I hadn't thought about it is because I'm still stuck in the new school's mindset that building is too I mean and the reality is the reason we're looking at the whole electrification HVAC upgrade is because the building itself is too new to be saying oh we should replace it it it really is only 23 years old no absolutely I think I mean it's not it's not a matter of oh we should just remove the building is it is it at all possible to again just as because we're just you know FR on Hail Mary's here could you could you uh redo the Andrew for example and make it high school age student and and that age appropriate for example because I don't want to I don't want to level the building or start from scratch I think you're right it's too new of a building to do what you would in theory do and start from the beginning but could you use that as a foundation to say we know how much space we've been using thus far for the Andrews could we work off of the the standing foundation of the Andrews that it it holds 600 students it's got a cafeteria that serves as their Auditorium and a gym could you basically what you would do is add on to that building right like you've seen high schools where they have the old wing and the new Wing I went to school in a building that was an old school and a new school put together with the the building in between them back in my town [Music] um you would have the issue we would need more of the land around it so you would need to um deal with some of the conservation restrictions that are on there and replacing that somewhere else I'm sure yeah in theory the M Glenn would be almost better because it's just got more space that's not already Green Well me it has forml but of course then you're displacing two schools because the elementary schools there too and yeah have a new playground can't do that I think that's partly why I was thinking that mlin wouldn't make as much sense because to your point about the two schools they have a bigger student population and they're having the new playground installed the Andrews less students but it's an older it's an older amount of St the students are a different aged grouping that wouldn't be pre that would that isn't and wouldn't be present if we were to remain keep the high school for example where it is um so if we were to have the Andrews be close to the West meford area that would then mean you could have students be able to potentially stay closer to home for example that might not be a big thing we need to worry about right now but I think the mlin might need to stay because of what it offers even though the space itself is more consistent with what we would need to consider bad bad choice so but what we would end up with would be the the cost of doing a major addition and possibly renovation to the Andrews school and you would have to rebuild some sort of or renovate the existing you would still have the structural issues school right you still need to put a middle school up there and yeah you would be talking about two building projects not one at that point that makes sense um okay when we look at the high school I some of the questions I've had is it helpful I can't do this without looking at a map and visualizing it so I'm I'm have it up on my screen if I don't know if anybody wants me to share it but sure um can you share or do I need to let you share you need to let me okay try that yeah I just I I need to be seeing it in order to and then I think if I make my screen smaller like this H make that TR to zoom in on this because I kind of look at this and I think there's I've had an understanding that the high school is very large for our population and one of the concerns is that we are um not going to get like the that there's square footage calculations that come out of msba I'm not terribly familiar with them but I look at this foot print and then I say I assume we don't need to replace or that we're not going to get a footprint that's this big I don't know that stories are probably gonna be a smaller footprint it's my guess yeah I think there's a couple of variables there Alicia um one is that the school committee has voted that um they want to see Curtis tus come onto the site of the high school in some sort of collocation um perspective um so that's one thing that um and obviously that's like 20 kids so it's not like substantive in terms of the number of students but um the space needs are um very specific and the other thing that is part of this grant is um our early childhood programming so there is a possibility um of changing the amount of Early Childhood programming happening um on the property in a way that um would expand it so the other thing that I think is like sort of dicey is like once you throw in the vocational programming the space conversation is completely um different than the space conversation about a new high school but msba you're correct will go through and they will size the building um you know they will size the well they will size the enrollment and then I believe the feasibility study will size the building based on that enrollment and I assume at this point everybody who's part of this conversation um is familiar with the the existing what's here existing I am extremely familiar with it from some of the work that I've been doing over the years one of the things I've been wondering about is could we do something where this is the pool in the gym where we're able to keep the pool in the gym and then maybe build back here on the field of dreams so somehow becomes you build a new front door or something but this becomes remains as part of the new building um that is something that I've wondered about it's already built into a hill where it's you know three stories here and back here you are literally entering onto what is the third floor if you walk to the front of the building yeah yeah I think that's definitely um something that we'll consider because edile is I mean you can even see it in the picture you can see more rubber in the picture than grass wow W so yeah so we will you know have to contend with that as well but I you know I think some of that all of that can be studied you know anything about like the current the current space can certainly be will certainly be part of the feasibility study it's really just a question of like you know where are those other possibilities so and doing this are there any you know um if it's helpful for you all to know this is a field that the is part of the school this little area um has recently been up for sale and I was just not I was just contacted today by a developer who has the option to buy and he wants to build I want to say eight a subdivision of Eight houses here um I was hoping that maybe there I couldn't imagine though that the city could have moved fast enough to try and buy that property um yeah but uh if anybody hears talk about it apparently it used to be a horse farm so y yeah I I think that there's if we're staying on the same site which I think is entirely feasible there'll be a fair amount of using any either one of those two Open Spaces even if just temporarily while construction happens I mean I think it would probably be better to build onto the existing parking lot that's down you know right when you pull in just so that when you arrive you're arriving at a school at a front door um and maybe move parking to another location or or it moves once you take something else down but there's enough swing space in here to build and then take down or renovate to make the site work I'm I'm sure of it it's definitely not it's definely like more tricky than unnon separate site since we're obviously not going to move students somewhere else temporarily but it's doable yeah right well and Colo you know moving things around during um Construction becomes really tricky with our vocational program so all of that will be part of the feasibility study as well but just to say like you know it's it's not the same as like moving a classroom it's true um it's it's an entirely different sort of undertaking so that's something that we'll have to consider as well so so yeah um so Alicia are there any other spaces that come to your mind I I think this is a perfectly fine working list by the way um right and I was just sort of like as we go across here like we have there are these commercial industrial areas the other thing that I I don't see how the the city could really could do it but we own this parcel and this parcel in the middle of Medford Square and this one and there are active plans we have literally signed the contract in the last few days Within consultant to help us put these out to bid um to put housing ground floor commercial housing on these properties with the assumption that we would also build a parking garage over here and we have vision and ideas this is a parking garage that we feel is highly underutilized but it's privately owned and I'd love to like capture this somehow and be able to use it um in a dream world what if you put the high school here right across these properties and that would be really interesting um but I'm not sure that we can move that this boat that quickly to Pivot to something like that and we would lose out on all the revenue that we're anticipating from developing this's housing I mean it's not huge Revenue it is revenue but what if you did that and then you allowed the High School site to be redeveloped and have that site to become to become housing instead right like I I was wondering about those parking lots that seems like a great spot but um but it's also good for development just anything that's not a parking lot right yeah yeah it's it's the project has moved slower than I would have liked but it's we do have we we signed a consultant today so and none of this we don't really own any of this it's all private a lot of this is Rip for redevelopment I will say some of this is so ripe for redevelopment that we have been having conversations with various developers who are talking about what could they do here be allowed how can we help them with it um I I can't imagine that we actually would want to put the high school on Mystic AB but again it would be more Central um it would really make it hard for anybody to walk to school because of that um but in theory you would improve your streets and your sidewalks and your Crossings in your bike paths if you did that but that's State Road right it is a state road well it's a state road it's local from about um I forget exactly when I'm on it I can you can tell where it drops oh here I think this is actually the line cuz you can see the pavement change um I believe that that's I I do believe that that is this from here North this is City and the the UN part there that's State because um eversource paved it is part of the project for the city got it um this must be a really decent photo so yeah so this part is is um and interestingly a lot of the owners along here are actually longtime Medford residents they're not investor developers at this point so I I don't see it as being impossible to negotiate a deal but I'm I'm not sure it's a great idea yeah okay I feel better to be thorough and to say we thought about it we talked about it and then it and this area this is all owned by I'm going to call him an investor developer uh The Core Power my yoga studio okay he says it's hugely popular I met with them last week so yeah oh yeah they they pack them in there um Alicia thank you for all this I think this was really helpful um I have to I I just got access to um the mba's portal that requires us to submit a bunch of information um that feeds enrollment projections and so Bob and Alicia there's definitely some tentacles there that will require your input around um grow planned growth um and that kind of thing so I will I will sort of funnel that off to you I've just started looking at it though I'm not sure I don't think there's anywhere where we have to sort of describe this just yet but um perhaps it has to be described in the RFP when we are at the point of like going out either to the OPM or um or out to uh the actual feasibility study so hard to say like exactly when this information will be useful but I think it's sort of on the minds of lots of people so um I'm glad that we had the conversation because now I can assure people that we are talking broadly about all the possibilities and you know really thinking through all of that so um I think that was uh that was very help helpful thank you um the other item on our agenda for tonight is to start to talk about um the anticipated budget for the feasibility study so um and you know I can talk a little bit about next steps so before um before we can get out of the eligibility phase we have to um the city has to authorize a feasibility um the cost of a feasibility study and demonstrates msba that we have the money whatever that mechanism Miz um and um you know an amount so that um I I know I have been talking to the mayor about that and um I believe her plan is um to use free cash um at least that's where she was at the last time I spoke with her um and um so we won't need to take a vote to do a a bond or a debt exclusion but the council will have to take some sort of vote that authorizes its use um and there it needs to be in a pile that is demonstrable for the msba in order for them to sort of flag us into the next phase so procedurally that's what needs to happen um as I've been talking to people about sort of what the the budget needs to be um I've heard you know a variety of numbers between two and a quarter and $3 million for the feasibility study roughly half of that a little bit more than half it's sounds like um would come back to us eventually in this process um if we get all the way through with msba they do credit you back the same thing as your reimbursement rate um and when we had our kickoff call with them I think they said our reimbursement rate was like 52.7 or 52.69 as of that day so it changes apparently it can change all the time um but 52% of that would come back eventually but not but the city has to put the money up front to do the feasibility study um the other thing that uh was raised to my attention was that uh and actually we took a tour of um Arlington High School and they're in the middle of their project so part of the building is open part of it is not and they you know they said something sort of related which was we're still learning how to use this building and there's all kinds of things that happen in the building where they're like oh there's something wrong with the building and it just turns out like they don't know how to use the building like the entire infrastructure of the building is different than what they're used to and so they're very much in the likey learning process um so our CFO at the schools said that it's not uncommon for districts to in addition to Bringing on the OPM um and ultimately the designer to bring somebody on on the district side to ride sort of side saddle with the project and really intimately understand all of the the various components um of the of the build and how it works and how it's envisioned to work and how the plan changed to the actual and all of that um from a facilities maintenance perspective and that that's a job that's sort of bigger than like the director of facilities just being able to do that in in addition to all the other things that he does already um and that um Jerry was saying that the other thing we might consider is and I need to connect back with him on this but the other thing we might consider is making that that set aside funded this like this position um that sort of helps us like sort of smooth that out and bridge the gap over time so that's sort of another thing that we need to think about in terms of funding um so I you know by all the accounts that I've heard somewhere between two and a half and three is probably the right amount of money based on all the things that have to happen um but um Bob and Fiona I wasn't sure whether you had resources that you could tap into in terms of other procurements um and the budgets being set for um communities like ours um for this for these processes that might help inform that that ultimate number that needs to be set aside um and I don't know what sort of digging and investigating you all have done in your free time um on this up till now and I don't know you know sort of how you are connected to other communities but I wanted to give you some space to talk to us about what those you know where you might have information that could plug into that or even Alicia if you have those connections like how can we sort of Leverage the city side and talk about all of that um as well sort of actively well really I I don't have any experience in building a school or doing any of this so okay I you know I really don't know okay n Tucket built a new Intermediate School six seven years ago um so I could call up my buddy Martin and see if he knows anything about it but again it it's that you know that process we had you know n Tucket had the land they knew where they were building it and the entire budget for it was on10th of what we're talking about so yeah there's a big difference between also then you have building on Nantucket which is entirely different than building here yeah yeah um you know the the ncka thing is that I think probably a good 10% of the cost of building the new school was simply staging costs for the contractor to get equipment and people over here and rent housing for the people to build it which would be slightly different than it is in Medford where you know hopefully there's somebody around here with a crane if you know what I mean so just UK cran yeah no I I I could talk to Martin about it I yeah I I mean I think that Nantucket is a a very different place for all those reasons you cite I don't know Fiona if you are connected to other um purchasing folks that might have something some light to shed and Libby I know you sort of work in this space um if you have any light to shed so it's really just more to sort of get the juices flowing and thinking about before we go too far I I do have a group maybe some surrounding communities um I think you mentioned Arlington more recently y um I know Summerville you know is also um another community that has done a new high school yep um I think of ston him um in the last few years which is a little different it's a town a lot smaller um and I'm pretty I have a pretty good relationship with the procurement officer in um Stoneham as well as sumerville so I can certainly reach out to um some of the group and and see um you know how things worked with them uh I'm going to just say this similar to Bob I don't have a lot of experience um you know building a new school other than the community that I lived in but um that was on the different side of it so um so this is um yeah something I can definitely I haven't thought I haven't done that yet but I can c okay if you could that would be great I think the other thing that would be helpful Fiona to start the wheels turning in um in a related way is to to find out if they have copies of their procurements for their owner's project manager that's going to be our NE you know that's going to be our like big thing is to like get ready to issue that RFP because once the OPM gets on board um life for all the rest of us gets easier hopefully so oh yeah I'm looking forward to that that's be our hero yeah yeah so and the city does have um templates for rfqs for OPM for designers um you know we've we've done it for the library we've done it for the police station we've done it for the fire station and we're doing it for the mcin and Andrews right now we just hired an OPM so I mean we're we definitely have you know some templates and some foundations yeah and Fiona I'm thinking that there's also um some very school specific things about building with msba that maybe your counterparts in those other um communities could provide as well because the mba's process is very prescriptive sort of at every step so anything that they can tell us because my goal you know my goal whenever we're done with eligibility and they invite us um to the next phase which is hiring our OPM is like my goal is that the next day RP goes out the door and we are moving right along um and so obviously we'll we'll sort of convene a working group with you between now and then to to sort of get that procurement ready to go and make sure that it has all of its moving Parts but um if you're talking to them anyway maybe grabbing that stuff too from them would be really helpful okay thank you if I might I was on the committee for all of those OP M hires um and a couple of things that I have noted is that that is the right time and place to sort of set a tone for the city's goals and what's important to the city um when we've hired different opms for the library versus the police versus the schools we had different core issues and goals in mind and I like set aside the fact that I'm the sustainability director I was the sustainability director and all that so we were like oh we want low Green net energy school but like what are you thinking about with the library right like the library director knew what her strengths and weaknesses were and looked for an OPM that could sort of fill in like be a good partner for her where she had these strengths and these weaknesses they would have the other as opposed to be like together it it was actually interesting when we were coming to the final decision around that um when we were interviewing for the um OPM for the uh HVAC work it was interesting that I kind of wondered if some of them were aware that there was a new school on our Horizon um there was one firm that bid uh or that put in a proposal that clearly that they did was big new schools with real big with MSB a experience heavy and I kind of I didn't ask them I wondered though were they did they feel like they were um uh being a preview for what for us to get used to them with this idea that maybe they did a good job there we would want to hire them for the high school my is yes they were doing that yeah what I did notice is that some of them really spoke to their experience and abilities with MSP ba which is why I wondered because that project is not msba funded right right um but some of them really seem to have a good understanding of that and I did work on when the city did the uh boilers at the high school that project not high school not the boilers the um we did a boiler project too but it was the new the science labs that msba funded and it was really important to have somebody who understood those details yeah um simply because like things would come up and we'd be like can we do this and they'd be like while that might actually make sense if you were paying out of pocket it doesn't because of these msba reasons or msba won't pay for that and so that of did shape some of what what we did um and I it seems like it would go without saying but you want a project manager who is going to lead and drive the project to the sense that they're going to say we need to meet who's available to meet this is the times let's set this up let's set up our meetings you know and then rally and be an advocate for the city because I have watched uh opms just sit back and say oh the CL the city should if this is the city's project we're just here to help and then you're like you didn't tell us and you didn't warn us and we didn't know and I've seen other opms who were like here's what you need to know and we need to push back on this contractor and we need to to argue with the architect over what's possible um yeah and so you need to be or at least call it out like yeah no you can do another iteration or this or have you looked at it this way versus that way and be another set of eyes on it um and that's helpful to to look at um I did think when we did the library and the police station that literally the fact that the staff person in the room besides the chief of police of the library and was the sustainability director set a tone for them I'm not saying I want to be in on those interviews but it said up front like this is green is important to us we value this and I think that it's important that the the school department put forward like this is important like this is going to be a net zero school right like what would it yeah and the school committee has already outlined that set of goals and objectives so um we're sort of on our way with that for sure but um yes like making sure that sort of what we envision is well outlined is definitely sort of top of mine yeah that you don't need your OPM telling you that that's a bad idea IDE yeah I've had them say it like I know no I've had I've worked I worked for opms a lot or I obviously have a client but the OPM kind of is between us and in a good way you know helping things along and you need to make sure that they Vision alliance with the with our vision city of Met's Vision because um oftentimes they're very experienced and they have been doing this for a long time and they kind of know how to do things or how they've done things we to make sure they know how we want to do things in the future yeah that'll be very important um I don't how you set your budget for a feasibility study but I think going to the other cities I mean I get this question all the time Alicia you did this plan or this kind of project can you tell me about it what did these things cost can you give me the rfqs you used you know can you tell me what the bids were like there's a lot of stuff that Fiona will what is legally uh public record so it's fine for us to ask other communities for this information yeah that's what I want to know is it okay to act like do you share you do share that if as long as it's the right documents right yes so we can ask yes often okay cool yeah and Alicia the um the numbers I've been hearing are pretty consistent from you know multiple sources in terms of like people familiar with Medford and this project um the numbers are not all over the map so I think that's a good thing for us um and I think the mayor is hearing the same so that is and this is mostly the fees to cover OPM Architects ability Y and mostly just like consultant fees most right yep yeah exp um and you know ultimately we will the city council will have to take a vote with some very precise language but um I don't think that's anything for this group to be worried about I will like work with msba to make sure the language that goes forward is is compliant and and sort of ready to go but um yeah I think those were um those were our two agenda items so thank you all for joining 6:55 um we're done early so hopefully you can take your hour back um and then Bob and Alicia I will um reach out to you separately about some of the things that we need from a like planning and projection perspective um it may be more Alicia than Bob I'm not sure I've just literally got the access like two hours ago so I will keep you both posted and Jenny I know I told you this but I'll just show so the mapcs are Regional planning agency and they do population projections that's part of what they do in for various purposes and ways so I've actually already spoken to them and they just asked that we provide them with the exact language because sometimes the the different words are nuanced and mean things but they can help us uh develop some projections that they can put data behind and it's not using up staff time that's so limited but they they have the bandwidth for that great okay um so if there are no other questions um is there a motion to adjourn uh motion to adjourn motion to adjourn by Aaron seconded by liby liby liby time that's okay um and roll call uh Jenny Graham yes mayor Longo Kern absent Libby Brown yes and Arona yes three in the affirmative one absent the meeting is adjourned thank you thank you everyone thanks Alicia