Okay.
I'd like to call the
June 22nd General Services Committee meeting to order.
It is 502.
We are doing this meeting via Zoom because of COVID
19, and I'm going to,
since we're online and it makes it more difficult
to do a roll call around the room, I'm going to state somebody's name.
I'm going to start with Don Waller, and then you can say you're
either a board member, a citizen, or what your role is here.
And I'll just go through and when I call your name, you can
you can say here and then what your your role is, please.
So I'm actually going to start with Joe McFarlane.
Jim McFarlane, Superintendent.
Don. Project architect with Warehouse.
Terry Singer.
Terry, you're on mute.
Sorry about that.
Terry Singer School Board member.
Mike.
Like.
I couldn't hear that.
Mike Mike was having
some trouble at the latter part of the last meeting too.
Okay.
Donna, Donna Cronan, Donna Cronan, School Board member.
Dave Coffman.
You're on mute, Dave.
Dave Coffman You're on mute.
Can you unmute yourself,
Dave, You you have the mute button
clicked now
we can't hear you.
Better. Yet.
Yeah. There we got you.
Okay, I'm here in Citizen Advisory.
Okay, Judy, School Board member
Mark Anderson.
Director of Buildings and Grounds.
Anna Elementary Assistant Principal
Jana Jenison Elementary Principal
Mark Reavis.
Good evening, Citizen Biden Thank you.
Kelly Kirton.
Helen Hallinan
I'm here.
Assistant Adviser
I think I got everybody.
Did I miss anyone?
Oh. Okay.
Okay.
That's our roll call.
Sorry, that was more cumbersome than usual.
I would like to make a motion to approve
the approval of the summary minutes from our last meeting.
So move Terry Sager.
Can I have a second, please?
Back in.
Donna Cronan Thank you.
Our minutes have been approved.
Moving on to unfinished business,
we're going to jump right into our elementary facility study update.
So who is going to.
I'll I'll start that.
This is Mimi.
And just to give a little bit of the history and the background of
of the genesis of us looking at the elementary
facility and project
back in the 2017 2018 school year,
we started looking at the necessary repairs
that were going to be needed to the AC and some plumbing
work within the school.
We had a study done on the AC system
that we received in August of 2018.
That elementary chiller for the air conditioning is 22 years old.
By equipment standards, it's a water chiller
versus air cooled chiller and we have an air cooled chiller at DCC
every year.
We have to do quite a few repairs and patching leaks in order to get it running.
And it can also struggle on hot days to keep up with keeping the building cool.
And also when we have large events and if you've ever been
there, large events, you know it can get get fairly warm.
Additionally, the HVAC system is a two pipe system,
which means that we have to physically shut down the chiller fan
to start up the boiler for heat and then in the spring
we have to reverse that process.
All the other buildings on our campus have a four pipe system
that doesn't require that valve will switch over with the two pipe system.
We also have no active dehumidification in the summer.
We only have cooling and there's also no air
conditioning in the hallways in that building.
And then related to the sewer and plumbing issues, we have, we have some
pretty significant sewer pipe
issues in the building and especially in the kitchen area.
And one other thing is a poor layout
and unused space in front of the building with parent dropoff and pickup.
So with that, we we felt like
we needed to do a complete look at the elementary school,
given the current facility, looking at
what our needs were in structurally and educationally
now and more importantly in the future
as we look forward.
So we brought warehouse in.
They did a phenomenal job of sitting down and talking to all constituent groups,
every grade level, every department, every area
of the the instructional team
to look at what were the what were the needs
as we move forward with instruction
regarding large groups, small group, the arts,
all the related arts, special education,
everything, and which has landed us
where we are finally today, where they brought back some options.
So with that being said, there
all the attachments are there.
I will pull them up and show them on my screen as Mr.
Weller sort of walks us through. Them.
And then I'll turn over to Mr.
Anderson after Mr.
Weller is done and Mr.
Friends to talk about
what might be our next steps.
Okay.
Are there any questions about the history of how we got here?
This is Dave.
The one question.
We're all the we're all the evaluations done pre-COVID.
Yes, they were.
How old is that building, Joe?
Oh, boy.
It depends on what part you're talking about.
It's it's it's been a piecemeal building.
I don't know.
I don't know if Mark knows the answer to that.
I believe that the core the very beginning is is 50 plus years old.
And then there it's it's I mean, this isn't meant to be critical,
but it's poorly laid out is they added on to it going forward.
So that also contributes to some of our heating and cooling issues
because of the layout.
But I would say the oldest portion of that is I've been told by our folks
it's about 50 years old.
So does this include the elementary building and building?
Are we looking at this in total?
Yes. Yeah, I think Mr.
Weller will get to that at some point.
Okay.
Yeah.
If I could just jump in real quick on the age of the building,
just to give you guys
a little kind of relationship to what you have there in the elementary school.
The last wholesale renovation on that project
was in 1989, So it's been 30 years
since a major renovation was done.
Typically, school districts run on a 20 year cycle, so this building
is actually already ten years beyond what would normally be done.
The only pieces that are newer
or the band room edition,
which is about ten years old, and the small renovation that was done
in the administration suite and that is, I believe, 15 or 16 years old.
Thank you.
I'm just trying to see if I fixed my audio issue.
Yes, you.
Do better, Mike.
So actually, I don
you can definitely jump in at any point in time.
We weren't quite sure who was going to provide
this presentation, as Don has done a worked on earlier today.
So oh.
Just pick that up and move on from there.
So I'll be going over much of this.
Donald Definitely provide some support in that.
Joe, could you just bring up the the option one,
the one.
The PDF or the Slide one?
They're both PDFs.
Yeah.
So both if you could open up both of those.
Okay,
hold on.
Yep. I'm getting there.
These are just part of the visual is part of what warehouse has done for us.
Will I see.
That? Mike? Yes. Okay.
Four options.
One, two and three
warehouse is provided.
I was about an 80 page document that has a great deal of information.
And as Mr. Macfarlane described,
kind of the research that has been done for this building,
this presentation is really just hitting on some of those high points.
And to give you
that information, we can discuss at a later point
probably the best format to provide
that total report.
That warehouse is completed for options one, two and three,
as there's a lot more information contained in there that you would
we would even be able to touch on at this meeting.
So options one,
two and three are in no particular order.
They were just essentially the three options that we were working on first.
And so option one
maintains both the existing buildings
but provides renovations and alterations
and it takes it from Currently the XY
and the elementary school are a total of 226,000 square feet,
72,000 for the SCC
and 154,000 for the elementary.
So option one increases
the square footage in total by about 46,000
square feet.
One of the things that is
is prevalent for options one, two and three
are that they probably or does contain
most of the wants or all the wants and needs that were described
by the educational staff as well as the maintenance staff.
And going through these,
the price tag on them is extremely large.
And that's one of the things that we wanted to talk about or
look at here is how we move forward from something
to some of these prices I'm going to go over.
We're not recommending those buildings be built,
but we'd like to continue to do the work
associated with these, see if we can't get that down to an affordable level.
What I'm seeing on the on the screen here that Capshaw has raised
his hand is he is is he trying to get into the meeting?
Is he here?
Is anybody else seeing that
thing?
Just the host. My,
I'm not the host. So
now I keep
if you're trying to get in or anything, can you just text me, please?
I don't know what how to handle that.
I'm sorry. My God.
No problem.
So the the the pictures we have of the very.
Screen is really small.
Is it in the orange or the new the new proposed space?
No, that's the gym.
No, we'll go and get a hold.
Of to see where the new proposed. We're not looking at the right.
Your cursor where the.
New that information is on this slide.
So we'll have to wait until we get to the next slide.
Just I guess
you could pull up doing this just like to if there you go.
So there all the orange would be new construction.
So all of that orange. Yes.
And showing in this option, kind of showing how.
It. Together
as that's listed on there
from a from a cost perspective of all of the complete renovation options.
We looked at
this one has a lower carrying cost or lower
per square foot cost as compared to the others.
And a lot of that has to be because it's using the existing building.
There's not not a lot of no demolition
occurring additions being put in there
and, you know, essentially attaching the buildings together
so that they would be one.
So there's minimal disruption to the site.
Existing facilities get to be used, existing parking, those types of things.
We're not we're not paying for.
So so is the orange reconfiguration
or just remodeling or a combination of both.
The orange is actually the new additions.
That's all new construction.
Everything that is in gray is also getting renovations
of some sort, be a new casework, finishes, that sort of thing.
But the orange is actually new construction
and you can kind of see in the back where the existing gymnasium is,
that area
is completely getting reworked.
And part of that tore down for a new, larger
gymnasium.
You remember sorry.
I was going to say is in my is my memory crack.
So does it look like at least three of the atrium areas would be built into?
Actually, all four of them have some sort of additions
happening inside just to try to avoid taking away, you know,
parking area play area, that sort of thing around the perimeter of the building.
Did you have a seat, remember?
Go ahead.
Oh, I was going to say, did you have a sheet
that identified what the needs are?
I mean, we heard what the
she and some of the other, but you're adding a lot of square footage
and you're jumping right to the options without really defining
what the need is to tie into this square footage.
They that was part of,
as I referenced the beginning, that that kind of that 80 page document Mr.
McFarland did hit on a couple of the needs
and maybe some of the instructional staff could put some more highlights
of some of the instructional needs that were identified there.
So I mean, I can throw out a few.
There were some, you know, classrooms that you guys
currently don't have that they want for the curriculum.
You have,
you know, staff that don't have offices.
They're living on a cart going back and forth to each building
or, you know, multiple people sharing an office or, you know,
you've taken storage closets and so forth and made offices out of them
just because you had no other space.
And in that case, now you've lost the storage that you need for the building
and. And the reason I asked the earlier question about pre-COVID,
maybe you've had these discussions, but how does that change the picture?
In other words, are you looking to adding more class space to reduce the size
or distance, or how does that factor into the elementary plans?
One would think it has to.
Yeah,
I'm sure it will impact things in some way.
Right now, everybody is still too early in this and in all honesty,
trying to figure out what things are going to look like.
One of the things we are doing
and I can say is we are enlarging,
I would say probably 90% of the classrooms in the building.
So they are getting larger.
There were many that were undersized.
So your your classroom
population isn't growing per say,
but the square footage of the rooms will be increased.
Okay.
So what we're looking at will most likely change.
Once, once there is a better understanding, correct?
There will be some tweaks.
I mean, and I think everybody I hope
being understands that,
you know, there are so many things online right now
and people having knee jerk reactions to some of this stuff.
Everybody, you know, we've got to kind of step back
and really think about what this is going to look like down the road.
I mean, this was something nobody could have anticipated
when this was being done.
And if I could just speak that to part of what one of the needs was flow
of of students and also sharing of staff
across buildings, because right now our buildings are not connected.
So we were looking at the space needs,
the instructional needs based on changing demographics
of students, the flow of students throughout the building.
So a lot of those factors were taken into account.
Thank you.
So one of the
one of the cons to this option
is the proposed length of time
that it may take for the construction to occur of the options.
I believe this has the longest,
the longest construction in the proposed construction
period of up to four, four years.
Four years? That's correct, Mike.
So definitely
something from the standpoint of
having disruption of education or limiting disruption to education
obviously becomes a little more difficult the longer
the contract goes on.
This also does not contain every every one of the four
programmatic requirements or wishes or needs,
well, I should say wishes.
And part of that being because we were using the existing
layout for both building and not changing
essentially the footprint of those building.
All of these all the options contain some challenges
in terms of what we do with students.
And those types of things will remain to be to be worked out as
we go through the details of figuring out exactly what project
like like to get to
construction.
Cost of option one is anticipated to be above $70 million
or about 200 million square foot.
There's considerable costs
for phasing $29 million, almost $30 million.
The phasing is due to the fact of the project
being multiple years or possibly being multiple years.
It's covering obviously everything, especially goods,
would continue to increase each year, and so
there would have to be an allowance for that.
For that, I understand there's a lot of other things, other costs
in here too, that warehouse has assumed
in terms of costs for
like a trailer, classroom space.
What do we do with the students
while we're renovating a certain part of the building?
So there's there's costs for that as well.
Option to
most of the cost of this, Mike, you said was 79 million.
The construction cost is just over 70 million in total.
When you include the cost of phasing and some other requirements, it's
$112 million.
And I
just if you have the agenda, the general services agenda, open
the pros and cons that Mike is going over is an attachment there.
It's a word document.
So you can actually look at that as he's as he's speaking as well.
And then we'll get to talking about the
the costs in total for all three when we get to the end of that.
Because as I said before, these these are rough figures from
a planning standpoint.
We are not recommending $100 million renovations of elementary schools.
We're just show you where we are through the process of the project
and we'll talk about budget
after we kind of go through
each of these options.
So option number two
provides for the largest square foot coverage of all the options.
This adds about 60,000 square feet.
It maintains the existing SCC, which
is which would include renovations of that as well.
And then the construction of a new elementary school.
But the pros in this,
we get to keep some of the current drop off locations.
Some of the parking lots gets to say stay the same.
This does have the highest
yes it does have the highest proposed cost associated with it as well.
Carries resources in place of that.
So this would be getting rid of the current building.
This is basically, like you said, a new elementary in lieu of the old one.
That is correct.
And where it's supposed to existing is just the layout of the SCC.
Correct.
But yes, it would be demolition of the current elementary school
and then be the addition
as you see laid out there roughly.
Okay.
This has proposed construction period of three plus years.
So once again would require or may require planning
or what we're going to do with students during the construction period.
It does not provide much of
a adjustments to the SCC.
It notes that those classrooms will remain at
the current site.
The price tag for this from a construction cost
standpoint is over $94,000 just for construction,
which comes out to be about $331
per square foot of Don.
I don't know if you might be able to speak
to some of those here, but the options two and three
kind of get into that point where they're just from a cost per square.
It perspective
seem to be
not something we would be able to go through.
So I don't know if you could talk to that a little bit.
I can will point and, you know,
one of the things that you are running into here
and it is just you guys are
very different than most school systems.
You've got all your elementary school kids
in one building, and this is a massive building.
I mean, I have done district high schools that are smaller than this.
And just because of that, you get some economy in scale
but not what you would think.
And it's just the overall square footage and what you have to put into this
building is what is driving the cost up.
I'm sure you'll look around the area and see
other school districts that are doing elementary schools.
And why is this district doing something
for 30 or $40 million?
Those buildings are, you know, a third
maybe the size of your building.
And as you get into that square footage,
the bigger the building, the more of
what is not actually program space.
It's the circulation
and all the kind of extra
things, the corridors and so forth that
they don't really help your program, but they're kind of they're a necessary evil.
When you get a building this big that really starts to drive the cost up.
When you get into a building this large.
Thank you
for just moving then to option three.
And option three is completely
no, this would demolish the SCC and the elementary building
and build one new school that would house
all students K through five of
this does
have the shortest period of construction.
However there are and provides for all of the needs
and the ones that were defined during the planning process.
Mike if I could just clarify there, the SCC
could be repurposed in this.
Thank you.
Doesn't necessarily correct down.
Clarify the location of that.
Is it primarily where the Karen Elementary is?
I usually try to use the parking lot as my
campus really confused where we are.
This all. New. That's where you are Dr. Krohn In the parking lot.
What what footprint is this over?
Pretty much
the whole area of yellow at the bottom of the screen.
That is the the further down
that the middle school would be at the bottom of the screen,
the parking lot you see at the top,
that is where the current elementary building is.
So this is between the elementary and the middle school.
Oh, so it's in that parking lot? Yes.
This would be constructed portion where the existing elementary is toward.
Okay.
Thank you.
A major challenge with that
obviously is mothballing of the SCC
that is is our newest building of
so we have not we don't have any plans of what
that would be used for if it was if if we would go down that road from that.
But that would be that along with some of the parking issues
would be one of the largest drawbacks.
And once again, just construction costs
alone or $96 million.
When we add in the other contingencies itself, over $30 million.
And then we
get when do we get to the part of like really what we can afford?
Because these.
All right.
Any one of these you've obviously gone through all this work
and they've done all these interviews.
But like, that's what I'm curious,
how do we start that conversation?
They're all big numbers, like, so I don't want to jump in
and hijack the meeting, but we can
I just kind of anxious like we could talk
about these designs for 13 hours, but what can we afford an hour?
How how's that going to play out?
So and we'll get there in a minute.
Maria, if option four and five are definitely within that affordable
range, it actually would not require a tax increase.
So I'll get there.
But if I can just go through to see if there's any other questions for for option
option three,
if not now, there are no visuals for option
for and option five,
but option
four is a renovation to the elementary school.
Only it would not change the footprint layout of the existing buildings
or the footprint layout necessarily of any material effect
of the actual classroom spaces.
So it would address
the HVAC upgrades, provide renovations
to the cafeteria as well as all the classroom spaces and other areas.
It once again would not change the physical footprint layout.
The cost associated with that renovation is estimated
to be a little over $28 million.
And so that would be
that was kind of the renovation part
that we set out on when we looked at this and what was actually brought forward
at first from Warehouse, I would consider that more of the traditional renovation,
upgrading, providing new
the items that are in there, but it does not change the footprint.
Layout of the building does not expand
any additional square footage.
And then finally, we asked
them to look at what would it be only to, as Mr.
MacFarland noted,
kind of why we started this whole process because of the antiquated
AC and heating system.
And so we asked for a proposed price.
If we were only not, we weren't going to touch any educational spaces.
If all we were going to do was fix the AC
and mechanicals.
And they also have some some items being
worked on in the pick up and drop off to improve that.
That has a price tag of
just a little over $4 million cost.
Mike, could I just throw a little bit
more information on to what option four is
that would be what we would consider a modernization of the building.
You've got a building that is 30 years old,
and most of the areas your case work year finishes
at this point, everything is beyond their typical lifespan.
Most of those items have on average, a 20 year lifespan.
So you're half again beyond that.
This would be upgrading all the finishes, the casework,
it would be
taking into account accessibility
upgrades, which that building is.
You know, even that last major renovation was done prior
to most of the handicapped accessibility
regulations that are out there.
This would be addressing that sort of thing.
So you guys don't run into any issues with that down the road.
And this actually does include a connector link to the SCC.
So you would have an enclosed connection between those two buildings
for staff and students to get back and forth.
And a couple of quick notes before we leave that part of the project.
First of all, as you enter this building, you you kind of it's
a little bit of Alice Wonderland because you are now exposed to current
ADA laws and we are well aware there is some asbestos in the building.
The the
$28 million water is Asian
would not include, according to Craig's notes to me, design fees, permitting fees
and for me which is traditionally consider
a fixtures, finishes and equipment so
that figure may flow higher
depending on what would what is included in the finished package,
but clearly does not include design or permitting for a project like this.
That is correct.
That is just your hard construction cost.
Any other questions on
what mark has some additional things to go through as well?
Any other questions on this?
And obviously we're talking about large numbers.
So did asked Mr.
Anderson just to look at some things.
And so I wanted him to be able to share
some comparisons and talk. And then, Mr.
Friends, to talk to your question, Mr. Mimi,
what can we afford
or what are our next steps?
Right.
Mr. Anderson Do you want me to pull up the comparable sheet?
If you want.
I get Lindsay Drew has our hand raised.
She said six.
Can you hear me okay?
Lindsay,
can you hear me?
Yes, go ahead. Thanks.
I wasn't sure whether
it would be appropriate for questions, since I'm not a committee member
and I'm just participating as a board member in the audience.
But I did.
Just as we go through the
the different things I had two questions that were standing out
there.
Any of these options incorporate making a multi-level building
or are they all on one floor
and would is there the possibility
to add a second floor onto the existing building is my first question.
The second one is, would any of these create
an issue with their internship zoning ordinance for impervious coverage or
any other, you know, standout items?
Those are good questions, I think. Mr..
Well, are you could I speak to both of those, couldn't you?
Well, at least to the to the multi floor
in regards to the existing
elementary school that it's a masonry load bearing building, meaning that
the roof structure bears on the walls
that was not designed to carry a second floor.
So to try to do a multi-story building
with the existing add a second floor, you would be adding
a significant amount of steel inside and in.
I've done it in an existing building, but that is very costly
to try to put a second floor, a building that was not designed for it.
So for the the option one,
that's not really an option for option two,
that was keeping the SCC and building basically a new elementary.
That elementary school was two stories.
And this new building that you see here
that is multi-story as well
to try to keep the footprint as small as possible
in regards to the impact obvious,
I know in some earlier kind of conversations
we had had with Mike and Mark, I believe that's not really an issue
with the township due to some things that they have done.
Is that correct?
And certainly my understanding that
they would be willing to, I think, work with us through this process.
Okay.
I ask that simply because separate from being a board
member, I'm on the zoning board.
So just understanding that process and everything
that goes into the time frame and
and different plans, I just wanted to make sure that was accounted for.
And Lindsay, the other thing is, in a building you really have to format.
Don describe what is a masonry load bearing wall.
And in a multistory building, you have what's called a steel superstructure
that really holds the weight.
And if you will, the brick facade or the outside is just that facade.
The weight bearing is in the steel structure on the inside of the building.
One of the benefits of using the proposed site
is the fact you have a natural drop off in the in the
the land, what you could potentially use to your benefit
in designing a building to take advantage of the geography.
That's correct. Mark. Okay.
Thank you.
Yeah.
So Mark,
can you, can everybody see the spreadsheet?
I'll make it bigger.
Do all right.
Let me explain what I did here.
I was a school board member for 12 years, a man on township
who was part of three or four building
renovation, new build projects.
And I think that warehouse did a very good job
of leading us through the facilities needs study.
And what I looked at here when I first saw the numbers, there was discussions
early on, about 300 to $350 per square foot,
and I had not seen numbers that large in in my time as a board member.
So the first thing there is the Middle Man Township Middle School,
which is currently under construction.
It's 245,000 square feet.
And the cost per square foot is 214.
Now, I want to
stop right there for a minute because you have to understand something
In this example.
There is what they term is FFP, which we discussed earlier, which is
fixtures, furniture and equipment, and there's also soft costs,
design fees permitting fees, insurance fees.
Traditionally in the world that I'm accustomed to working in, if you take the
the the the square foot number
and you add a multiplier of anywhere from,
I'd say 17 to 20% to
cover those additional costs.
So it's just one make sure we're talking about the same thing here.
So the square foot number is for construction only.
So the soft cost equipment, fixtures and furnishing are beyond that.
The main township high school which I came in at the very end was
a combination of renovation of an existing 1954
building and a 1968 building
and an addition of the academic wing
that is three stories tall, taking advantage of the landscape
to for all the academics.
And those numbers are there.
The intermediate center, which Jason Rice started, was a part of designing,
is also listed.
There are are 28,000 square feet and it's important
to know this the $148 per square foot likes.
Holy cow was in 2008 when the economy bottomed out.
So just in in reference point.
So it doesn't seem like we're really comparing apples to apples here.
Like I mean, I think this is a good reference point,
but I'm I'm I'm like if this doesn't does does the warehouse ones
like the two 2014 you said I'm getting lost.
I'm getting lost here.
So are we comparing.
I'm not sure.
I'm not sure what I mean.
2009, that's so long ago.
I understand. And I'll get to that in just a minute.
If you give me just one that you'll see here,
you can an elementary which
is being built, a school teacher right now is under construction.
And that came in at $80 per square foot.
I'm a little surprised it's that high.
And then Royce Rossmore, an elementary in the West Shore School district,
it was built in April 12th
for a 90,000 square foot building.
And they're a little bit higher, but they had some significant site issues.
And that's the research
that I've been able to get hold of at this point.
I did call PBT and spoke with a Jim Vogel and they wrote a report
called A Report 30, which reports
on construction, and the current report was done ten years ago.
But Jim said to me that if you were to take that report
and adjust it 2% per year for ten years, the current build rate would be somewhere
between 210 and 215 per square foot for construction costs only.
What I did in the next part of this slide was talk about construction
costs only for options one, two and three.
So construction for one would be $260
per square foot or $70 million, 332
or 94.9, almost 95 million for option two
and 96.4 or $350
per square foot for the build project.
And I'm just trying to give you a reference here
as to what my
research has indicated in conversation with architects
and with other districts and with Penn State about education.
Thank you.
Dave Carsten,
I know that you've had some experience with
building
commercial structures, not, you know, not not school buildings.
Any any of your experiences
with American water
can be can be.
Instructive, has to do with the timing and the phasing
for commercial.
I would say, you know, ideally you'd like to be in that 200.
Square. Foot range.
You know, we did a $100 million job and that was
that lasted about a little bit over two years.
So, you know, when you start to talk four years or so, you're adding a lot.
Of overhead. On the construction job.
I've often found that when.
You try. To build.
When you try to sequence stuff and build on to it and renovate,
that just jacks it cost up and clearly does the square footage.
Some of those other comparative when the square footage is there,
you're going to have a higher cost per square foot.
So I still go back and say, you need to see what your needs are.
If you're gravitating towards options, four
or five is or is or someplace in between.
Did the district look and say what I truly need to do?
Maybe there is a full array
that you'll find some medium ground.
And then I would still go back and say, you wouldn't want to start a project
without factoring in the COVID situation. So
that would be my $0.02.
I could get very.
One point I want to make because I was
somebody just reminded me via text that
I think it's important for all of us is
we only have one
elementary building to consider like that.
Like these numbers are big and it's overwhelming,
but we only have one building, so we're not dealing with I think
a lot of our surrounding communities have two and three elementary schools.
So I thought that that kind of helped me
wrap my head around what we're dealing with here.
So I'm really I'm glad you brought that up, because sometimes that gets lost
where other districts may have four or five or six elementary schools.
This this is one we have one for about 1500 kids.
Like Cathy Seger reminded me of it as we're going through it.
So I want to give her credit for that because
I think that how I think that helps for sure.
But could I jump in or just.
Is there anything that the district
looked at with regard to what classes you actually need to.
Accommodate in
one versus two.
Buildings?
Do you still want to stick with the K through five
all in one building or do something different?
Mr. Kaufman Are you talking more
about like neighborhood schools or no.
On that campus?
But is there something that you would look
out of box at and say, Do
I want to keep all of the
it is K through five, right?
The xk1 and the elementary building has two five.
Okay.
Anything you'd consider. Doing differently.
When you're spending these sort of dollars?
Well, option three has K five under one roof.
Okay. Yeah. And the other ones connect them.
So it's really one one building in the end.
Mr. Colvin One of the things that we did look at was to
look at I mean, a lot of the square footage is programed,
and when
the original building was constructed and renovations done,
I can't say because I wasn't there, but I can say that
I'm not sure that the program was at that time.
When I say programs, arts, special needs,
education, those kind of things, all were where they are today.
We're talking about a pretty dated building and certainly Jenna and Anna
could speak to to more of that issue.
I can say that based on, again, my research,
traditionally an elementary
building would be 5 to 600 students for building
and you would figure out roughly 165 square feet per student.
Now in a larger building with 1500, that doesn't necessarily correlate
because you would not build three gyms, for example,
you'd build one large gym and maybe an adaptive used gym.
You may upsize a little bit of the cafeteria
space, both for kitchen and for eating for students.
That's also part of it.
So that that rule does fall apart. To to Mrs.
Mamet's point about, you know, we're all in one camp,
so we are looking at a large student population of 1500 students.
Okay, So there are some economies of scale
that we recognize but understand there are also
some drawbacks.
You have to be really careful in applying a rule of thumb like that.
I would say the other issue is that in the existing building circulation is,
as Don will point, that is a large issue because of hallway width.
And we also have a ramp that goes from
the main part of the building down, which is not ADA compliant,
which would have to be addressed
at a certain point in this process because it is not compliant.
Could I throw something out just to kind of
you know, you said about the building being dated? Mark
You know, I was doing schools back in the eighties
when this was renovated the last time and things have changed
so much in those last 30, 35 years
as to how curriculum is delivered.
You know, in the eighties, it was,
you know, not unusual that we were designing these classrooms,
which are smaller than what they are now, but we were designing them for 30 kids,
whereas now you're looking at your typical classroom population,
you know, is you know, 24, 25 kids max.
So, you know, over the years,
rooms have gotten bigger
class sizes have gotten smaller.
That equates to more space.
There are a lot of codes that have changed over the years.
When that this building was done previously, it was under the labor
and industry fire and panic codes, which really had no stipulation options
as to how many toilet facilities you needed,
you know, what
sizes you needed for corridor width and stuff like that.
We now have to deal with the international building code, which is very stringent
on as you get into different building types,
what these sizes need to be, how many square feet
you need to allow for students.
There's now a plumbing code that dictates if you have this many kids,
this is how many fixtures you need.
This is how many have to be handicapped, accessible and all that.
Just makes these buildings keep growing and growing
from what they used to be,
right, wrong or indifferent.
That's
some of how we've gotten from where you were in 89
to what we're looking at here.
And I wanted to throw something else out
when we were talking about those square footage numbers.
Unfortunately, all this stuff is happening
during this whole COVID mess
and not just with you guys.
I was just a meeting on a completely different type of project
where an estimate came in and it was double what the owner was expecting.
And part of that is right now contractors have no idea
how to estimate where things are going to be
6 to 12 months down the road.
They're still trying to figure out what's going to happen with this mess.
So there is a lot of uncertainty right now.
I would be willing to bet that the folks we had estimating this
aired on the side of caution
rather than giving you a number that,
you know,
if something happens and things spike, then you're surprised down the road
again, right?
Wrong or indifferent.
I think that's people are scratching their heads right now.
And we're hearing that from multiple clients.
This is all good conversation and I appreciate that.
But we have 5 minutes left and we have to go into another meeting
and then, like I say, like ten more after that.
So I do want to just kind of
see if anybody else has anything to add.
I don't know
if Mike wanted to go back into, you know, because we're still coming down to
this is all great, but what can we really afford?
So I want to use our last 5 minutes to kind of wrap it up.
And so we
we have an idea of where where we are
and what what is expected of us now going forward as we're facing this.
Emery, I would like Mike to talk a little bit about the dollars
because that obviously is a big factor so that the board
at least has an understanding of what what we can afford,
what beyond that would do and what we're looking at.
So yeah, I would like him be able to share that with everybody.
Okay. Part
of what
I'm going to have to write is essentially what
what the cost or proposed cost would be
if the debt if we had to issue debt.
Well, when we have to issue debt to to pay for the project,
as I stated before, the $28 million
option for item that's there,
if we were willing to
issue debt for approximately 20 years
for that amount of money, we could fit that into the current debt
service payments that we already pay our current.
We are currently light on debt from a district perspective
and in fact, by 2026,
2025 due to 2025, we will have paid off all the current debt that we have.
We're about we have about $30 million outstanding
that will be paid off at that point in time.
So looking at,
I used about a two and a half percent tax increase.
What how much could we borrow if we were willing to put in
a two and a half essentially up to the index taxing for you
and continue to provide the same level of debt payment
that we currently pay, which is about $4.8 million a year,
we could borrow up to $75 million
around for this project
increase.
We'll have a one time tax increase of two and a half percent and then the tax,
the new tax in conjunction with what we already are paying on debt
would go to pay that that all one of the things we're trying to answer
or get an understanding of of the appetite of moving forward is
would we
consider a tax increase if we needed to to borrow
the additional money to do something similar?
Not similar, but in the vein of options one, two and three, obviously the cost
would have to come down significant slightly, but from a planning standpoint,
that's where I think our group has kind of landed at this point.
Are we planning for
the issuance of essentially 15 or 20 years of debt
that we don't have to raise taxes for or would be?
Would we entertain some sort of tax increase?
And if so, to what amount,
once again, just to fund this project.
So again, if if we raise taxes by half a mill,
which is about 2.5% around about what
the index would be during good times,
one year's tax increase would
have to go to pay for that $75 million
bond issuance.
So that's where we want to.
Before we go any further in either one of these plans,
we're looking at anything in any further detail and really
putting a lot more time and effort into them is getting that understanding
of where we're all comfortable from a taxation standpoint of,
you know, essentially the pain that comes along
with any large decision like this of how we're going to pay for that
and really wanted to lay out what we have in that way
so that whether or not we would go back
and put a lot of time and effort with warehouse or
whoever, we need to be involved in that to say, look, we need something
that looks like options one, two or three, but you got to do it within this go.
My did you tell us I'm sorry to cut you off, but we're running out of time.
Did you did you tell us
how quickly if we don't do
anything, do we know like projected
enrollment?
Like, would we be out of space eventually?
You know, is this I'm trying to figure out between what we want
and what we need and when are we going to have our backs against a wall like now?
I feel like we're just kind of talking about what we want.
So did you say that in any part of your presentation?
I'm sorry if I missed it.
We that has a bit of an effect, obviously.
But the information that Joe and I gleaned from the projects
that are out there is it would increase our
enrollment by about 200 students.
At one point in time, we had over 3600,
almost 3700 students come through the district.
And so adding that addition to what we have
now would put us back at what we were at capacity.
And I don't know, Joe,
if you remember what those kind of dates were when it was that that large.
But we have compared,
you know, that we've we've actually had more students in our school district
than what we're proposed from the Hershey West,
kind of building the new enrollments that may come from that.
Right back in around 2005, six,
I believe, was our highest elementary enrollment
there.
We had sections of 12 and 13 per grade level.
Right now we have about 12 at every grade level.
So raise your question directly, Maria.
If all the students come as part of that, Hershey West will be packed to the gills
and we won't have any room to expand.
So in that it may need additional space.
The other thing is just math.
Why is this whole process started?
It started with the fact that that is old, it needs constant repair.
And that's that's the genesis of this process.
Along with that chiller last, you tell me now what change numbers are.
We should be downtown, My son.
What I've planned on is that that chiller, for example,
won't start up next spring.
I have a plan to bring in one on the tractor trailer
and park it there until we resolve this issue.
But for me, the issue really is addressing
the HPC things we can nurse things through if there is a larger plan
or if the district determines it's committed to that footprint
and wants to stay there, then we move, you know, in that direction to
to keep it,
right.
So I mean, just we.
Yeah, right. This is our first conversation.
It's a no brainer to replace the chiller if this is.
Yeah I, I understand.
I understand what you're saying.
It's going to be hard for us to determine
the need for a project, especially up, up in these numbers.
I mean, personally, I feel like we need more teachers
helping, you know, the kindergarten and an elementary students
because those I've sat in those classrooms and I don't know how one
person can manage them.
So there's some needs that I know, right?
The chiller and some staffing needs and some other things.
But, you know, I mean, I just need to stop talking because we're out of time.
This is a larger discussion and I'm not really sure
I'm going to have to ask Joe some direction.
Like where do we where do we go from here?
Because this was just like a lot laid out on us.
Yeah, it was.
And it was bringing it to general services where it starts.
I think my recommendation next set would be
and there were several board members sitting in as attendees too, but to give
all this information to the full board and do another full board
look at it either in our July meeting or early in August,
and then look to the board for some direction
moving forward because it is a lot to chew through and look through and
unpack.
So that would be my recommendation not to make any
recommendations coming out of here except to take a presentation
to the full board.
Okay.
Well, we have to I feel like we could go on for another hour.
So I apologize for people that didn't have an opportunity to speak.
I would have loved to have hear from Anna and Janna as well.
So I guess, Joe, we can talk about I don't know,
we can talk about this and see if we need to slide another meeting.
And so everybody can be properly heard.
But at that, I'd like to call this meeting.
I'd like to adjourn the General services meeting
because we have to get on to our executive session now.
So I do apologize.
This is a big subject and I'm sorry that it has to end so abruptly
and I appreciate everybody jumping on, but I'm kind of I think, like I said,
Joe and I have to talk.
Maybe we can get together and
and everybody can think about it, read everything
and come back with different questions, like kind of digest it a little bit.
I mean, it's like Joe
said this comment a couple of times, and it's it's applies to this.
We all basically were just drinking out of a firehose right now.
So we shouldn't have to
we should be able to have more of a conversation than have it end like this.
So with that being said, I'd like to adjourn the General Services
meeting at 605 of kind of a motion.
Sorry, I moved on again back in.
Terry Singer Motion move, Meeting adjourned.