Facilities Steering Committee, Phase II
Town of Princeton, MA
meeting minutes for 10/15/18
7pm at town hall annex
Attending for the committee: Richard Chase, Noelani Chase, Rick McCowen, Dennis Moore, Larry Todd
Public safety: police chief Michele Powers, BOS liaison Karen Cruise
There were also ten members of the public in attendance
The meeting was opened at 7:00 pm.
The minutes of 10/1/18 were approved.
The Q & A 3rd version was reviewed and some change made. There was a question if the construction could be done in stages.
Bill Holder was asked to talk about the finances and recommended a balanced approach to spending and debt. He gave some details from the previous ad-hoc finance committee. He suggested we set a budget limit for the project of $4 to $6 million. He noted future interest rates for borrowing are hard to predict.
Richard initiated a conference call by speaker with Brendan Rhodes, an architect working on public safety projects. Brendan has been working on public safety for 9 months. There are public records related to their work on fire station 3 in Townsend.
He described the process they go through with a project:
Feasibility study with alternative designs and detailed cost estimates. This is given to the selectboard for presentation to the voters. The architect does not go beyond this stage until the town approves an option. They then look at schematic design and detailed design.
Richard described the situation in Princeton; Brendan didn’t have much to offer. Takato ( an architect who has attended several meetings of the FSC) asked what would be needed to get to the schematic design stage. What Brendan described was done by JWA. Brendan pointed out there are many regulations related to public safety construction.
There was general discussion related to communication and cost.
A visual layout, including color, can be effective in presenting to the public. We need to remind the voters of the regulations related to police and fire. The National Fire Protection Agency has the regulations.
A suggestion was made to invite Steve Mirick and Chris Conway to a meeting because they have expertise in construction and were both on previous building committees.
A comment was made that we need to show where are the costs are coming from; we need to be more specific. The documents available to the public are too complicated.
We need to sell the need for a new public safety facility, perhaps go door to door to inform people.
There was a concern expressed that we could be pushing too hard and the added cost could be a burden for some residents.
Can we define and describe what the minimum cost for the project would be ?
At this point we went back to the agenda to discuss the proposed revised charge for the FSC2. Richard when through items A through F; there was discussion but no agreement. Will need to review further at our next meeting.
We need to provide greater detail for design and cost options. We could present a basic design and then show addons with associated costs. A layout with color would be helpful.
We agreed to work on questions for JWA to help us decide on the next steps.
The meeting was adjourned at 9:05
Submitted by Larry Todd, clerk
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