Facilities Steering Committee, Phase II
Town of Princeton, MA
meeting minutes for 5/1/19
7pm at the town hall annex
Attending for the committee: Ian Catlow, Richard Chase, Rick McCowen, Dennis Moore, Larry Todd
The FSC was invited to present their annual town meeting warrant article and supporting material to the advisory board.
Wayne Adams opened the advisory board meeting and introduced the members present. They are meeting with several town committees. First up is the FSC phase 2.
Richard opened the meeting at 7:11 pm. He read the FSC warrant article. The additional $28K will allow the town to hire an architect with significant experience with public safety projects to provide design, elevations and detailed estimates.
He explained the committee moved from using the previous architects, JWA, to look for a firm with more current experience in public safety work. The FSC thought they could cut the cost of a new public safety facility but extensive research and review of many similar projects confirmed that this was unrealistic.
Richard showed slides of the information for town meeting. He mentioned the state bond bill but said there was little chance the Princeton public safety project will receive funding.
There was a question regarding the design option which would try to provide for minimum options at the lowest cost. Are we going to eliminate needed requirements ? It was suggested if we do a good job of presenting the requirements for a public safety facility the idea of offering a reduced cost alternative will not be needed.
There was a question: why is the FSC is taking this step of using $50K for design when JWA already did this. Ian explained this will take the project from 5% to 20% preparation. We are getting another step closer to a new public safety facility.
There was a slide showing the addition of the public safety project as a percent of the town budget.
This concluded the review meeting with the advisory board; the FSC moved to the new senior center and the public meeting reconvened at 7:40 pm.
The meeting minutes of 4/17 and 4/18 were approved as written.
There was discussion of the questions raised by the advisory board.
We hope to have the next step completed and ready for a special town meeting in the fall to approve the full design with engineering specifications. This next step could take up to 9 months. This will make the project “shovel ready”.
Ian did research into the process of money being allocated in the state budget. There were only a few municipal projects funded.
We discussed the need for the support of the police and fire chiefs at the town meeting.
Can we simplify our presentation, perhaps eliminate some details while making the new public safety building the goal of the process. For instance, can we reduce the slide showing the project schedule to four bullet points ? To be reviewed at our next meeting.
It was agreed Richard will have some backup information on slides that can be used at town meeting if specific questions are asked.
We discussed the need to quickly work on an RFP for an architect after town meeting. We will review a draft at our meeting next week.
A suggestion was made that we have a property survey done now to have available for the architect selected - this will speed up the process. Ian will look into this.
The meeting was adjourned at 8:34 pm.
Submitted by Larry Todd, clerk
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