Capital Planning Committee Present: Mike Benjamin
February 12, 2007 Jim Bilancieri
Frank Chiodo (at 9 p.m.)
Kerry Hoffman
Barry Joseph
Liaisons: Panny Gerken
Burt Shnitzler
Anita Scheipers
The Capital Planning Committee met at 7:30 p.m. at the Town Hall.
The Capital Planning Committee met with the Bolton Space Needs Assessment Committee (B-SNAC). Members in attendance were Bill Spratt (Director of Facilities), Ken Tucker (Principal, Florence Sawyer School), Richard Fly, and George King (Assistant Superintendent for Finance).
The meeting commenced with Panny Gerken reviewing why the B-SNAC was formed in the fall of 2005. She explained that there was pressure from the growing population in Bolton and 40B projects providing impetus to form the committee. The objective of forming the committee was to assess the space needs for the next 15 years and to make recommendations to the Board of Selectman on how to meet the needs. It was decided that a committee needed to be formed to look at the rest of the Emerson School building and other alternatives to determine the best way to move forward to accommodate school growth. This was for Bolton Schools, K-8 grades only.
Ken Tucker explained that modeling was used as the basis for predicting the population growth for the next 20 years to be used for the B-SNAC recommendation. In addition, all the committees got together and the school administration was consulted to try to determine what the trends were with regard to growth and to predict when they would begin to hit pain points. Pain points are when the school space affects the school experience and the ability to deliver the curriculum. This was broken down into short term (8 – 10 years) and long term (12 -20 years). The actual occurrence of pain points is dependant on how the population growth actually plays out. It is very hard to predict what is actually going to happen with regard to the population and it is
also dependent on housing growth in Bolton as well as the economy.
According to the study, it was determined that the near term need (pain point) would be for the 2009 – 2010 school year. The study looked at options such as adding on to Florence Sawyer, building a new school, leasing space in other facilities, renting or buying portables, or renovating the 22/52 wings at Emerson.
Ken Tucker said that the K-8 school population grew to 808 from 750 from the 2005/06 school year to the 2006/07 school year. The incoming kindergarten for the 2007/08 school year is a bit smaller than this year so Ken Tucker predicts that the enrollment will remain flat for the 2007/08 school year. Ken Tucker said that he can absorb some extra enrollment for a couple of years, but will need to have increased space by the 2010/11 school year. The final recommendation of B-SNAC was to renovate the 1952 and 1922 sections of Emerson school to address the short-term needs and depending on the population growth, which would continue to be tracked, this may even suffice for the long term need as well. If not, a new committee would have to be appointed to revise the
plan for the future.
In order to stay on schedule, the issue will have to be brought to the Town Meeting in May of 2009 to contract the work in July of 2009 so that the new space will be available for use in the 2010 school year. It was determined that the next step is to get a building committee together to get updated costs and to do a feasibility study. The cost estimate to take care of the short terms needs by renovating the 22/52 sections of Emerson was 2 million including asbestos removal and new HVAC and electric. Since the design work and costs were from 2 years ago the updated information will be needed in order to make recommendations.
We then reviewed the information that Bill Spratt brought with him and distributed. This information consisted of a Capital Expenditure Summary for the FY2008 through FY2012 years, a 5-year capital plan for the NRSD (Nashoba Regional School District), and detail pages of the Capital Expenditures, including copies of actual quotes. This was the specific information that was requested of all the committees the Capital Planning Committee plans to meet with that was sent out by Anita Scheipers and this is the information along with the in-person meetings that will be used by the Capital Planning Committee to determine rankings and prioritizations for our recommendations.
Bill Spratt walked us through all the information he brought. 3 main requests are on the schedule for the next 5 years. These are the school security system, playground updates and Florence Sawyer window repairs. It was determined that both the security system and the playground were submitted with Harold Brown’s requests as well. Bill Spratt said that the ballpark cost to complete the playground is $80,000. He broke these down over the 5 years focusing first on the smaller maintenance issues, safety hazards and code issues. Window repairs were spread out over FY2009 and FY2010. These repairs are necessary due to window design issues. Bill Spratt put a placeholder for the boiler replacement on his schedule. This is something
that is going to need to be replaced at some point, but it is hard to know exactly when it is absolutely necessary so he has it on there so that it does not fall off of the radar.
After B-SNAC members left we discussed whether we would need final budget numbers in order to prioritize the capital requests or whether these are made solely on the basis of weighing them against other capital projects based on looking at a schedule of requests that go out 5 years. It was determined that our purpose is to do our due diligence to prioritize all potential capital requests that the town of Bolton will be facing weighing these requests against each other. The challenge is trying to benchmark these requests against any special interest projects that come up.
Our next meeting is on February 26th at 7:30 PM at the Town Hall with Police, Fire and Ambulance. Frank Chiodo will take the minutes at the next meeting.
The meeting was adjourned at 9:25 p.m.
Respectfully submitted, Kerry Hoffman
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