School Building Facilities and Maintenance Special Committee

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All right. Good evening, everyone. This is a meeting of the, a joint meeting of the city council's school building facilities and maintenance special committee and the corresponding meeting of the school committee. It is Tuesday, June 10th. I am Lance Davis. I serve as chair of the city council meeting. I use he, him pronouns. Before we get started, I'll let you know that pursuant to chapter two of the acts of 2025, this meeting of the committee on special building facilities and maintenance is being conducted via remote participation. So that means we'll post an audio recording, audio video recording, transcript, or other comprehensive record of these proceedings as soon as possible after the meeting on the City of Somerville website and local cable access government channels. We have been assisted this evening by Clerk Peter Forrest-Alesi. Clerk Forrest-Alesi, would you please call the roll?

This is roll call. Councillor Sait.

Here. Here.

Council Clingan. Present. And Councilor Davis.

Here.

Mr. Chair, all members are present. We have a quorum.

Thank you. And like doing that so much, we're going to do it again in a minute because I'm going to put this committee in recess briefly while the school committee brings their meeting to order. So we will stand in recess.

Excellent. Thank you, Councilor Davis. My name is Leron Betone. I am the chair of the school committee's Subcommittee on School Building Facilities and Maintenance. Appreciation to City Council for continuing these productive meetings. I will call the roll. Sarah Phillips, are you on?

I'm here.

Laura Pitone? And I am here. That gives us a quorum to conduct business. And we'll turn the gavel back over to Chair Davis.

All right. Thank you, Chair Baton. Clerk Force Lisi, one more time. Can we call the roll to reestablish the quorum?

This is roll call, Councilor Sait.

Here.

Councilor Clingan. Present. And Councilor Davis. Here. Mr. Chair, all members are still present. We have a quorum.

All right. Very good. Thank you. The first item on the agenda is approval of the minutes of this committee's meeting on April 14th. I will move for approval. Is there any discussion? I see no discussion. Let's table that. We'll lay that on the table to take up at the end of the meeting, along with the anticipated motion to adjourn. And then we had a request from the administration to take item three on the agenda out of order. Kirk, if you could scroll up to item three so folks can see that. If there's no objection, we will take item three out of order. Seeing none, item three is 25-0989. that the Commissioner of Public Works appear before the Special Committee on School Building Facilities and Maintenance to discuss the recent break-in at the Winter Hill School Building and the measures being taken to secure the building. Chair Baton, do you want any background or, I mean, this is somewhat self-explanatory, but before we turn it over to the administration for their update report on this, anything you want to...

Yeah. Contacts you want to share? Thank you, Chair Davis. This item appeared all over the news. Suffice it to say, last month, I believe it was, emergency crews reported to the Winter Hill at Sycamore Street, the old building that is now closed and is unoccupied and to which access is presumably precluded. The emergency responders were responding to reports of smoke and several small fires apparently had been set off by people inside the building. So that is obviously a concern not only for the welfare of the people who may have entered inappropriately, but also for the for the safety of the neighborhood and for those emergency responders. So, you know, I don't know anything beyond what has been reported by the city and in the media. So I'm certainly looking forward to any additional information that can be provided. In addition, I think it raises some serious questions about how we are ensuring that people can stay safely away from the building because it is not supposed to be occupied for various safety concerns. So that is the reason the school building is closed now. The students are relocated to the Edgerly building. And we want to be able to use that site in the future and not have additional problems happening there. So that's the only background I have. Turn it back over to you, Chair Davis.

Okay, thank you, Chair Baton. I see that we have Commissioner Lathan in attendance as well as Chief Breen from the Fire Department. Liaison Redassi, who would you like me to turn it over to you to lead the response or... Chief Breen or Commissioner Latham?

Sorry to interrupt, Mr. Chair. Through you, I think maybe Commissioner Latham can give some background and then Chief Breen is here to answer any questions about the fire response and anything associated with that.

Okay, excellent. Very good. Thank you. Commissioner Latham, would you introduce yourself for the record and then tell us what you can tell us?

Yes, Commissioner Jill Lathan. Thank you for this opportunity, committee and Mr. Chair. And thank you for the opportunity to present some facts of the situation. This is going to be a factual account, not based on injunction or reception. So actually what happened was there was a malfunctioning door alarm, malfunction communication error on the 9th of May for that building. It was a door alarm. So that required us to put in an IT help ticket for them to come to try and resolve this communication error to the door alarms for that building. Since IT was going to have to contact and reach out to Verizon and get this kind of set up and fixed, DPW decided that we would go in frequently every single day until that door alarm was actually to make sure that that building was safe and secure. So it was because of our daily checks and our frequent checks because of the door alarm communication error, that's how we actually found these smothering fires. If it was not for DPW doing these checks, frequent checks because of a communication error for the door alarm, this could have been a much larger and significantly worse off situation for not only the building, but the neighborhood. So I want to thank my DPW custodians and crews for doing their due diligence and doing these regular checks because of this doing wrong issue. We were there. We smelled smoke. We immediately called the response, the fire department, and they responded. That's when police fire responded to the scene. I had my custodians in there actually stomping out fires and using fire extinguishers. I was waiting for the fire department to get there. They were smothering kind of little pocket fire, vandalism fires that some folks had set. We immediately following that, you know, make sure that there's some windows that were open. maybe busted in or cracked open. We've worked with the school department. Food service goes in there regularly in the mornings. We've worked with them about making sure that doors aren't propped up and open while they're in there to make sure that the building's soon secure. IT has, you know, then the IT came and finally had gotten fixed the door lock systems. And then as of the 13th, the security was, the door locks were fully functional again as of May 13th. So just to wrap it up, May 9th, there was a communication error with the door alarm. We mainly notified IT, which we had to get Verizon involved. So that was on Thursday, I believe. So Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, we were doing regular checks on the building. Monday the 12th was when we were doing our regular checks. That's when we noticed the actual smoke in the building and notified the proper authorities. The next day on the 13th, IT was able to fix that system and the door launched and fully functioned as of the 13th. So that's kind of the factual events of what happened. Again, thank you to DPW for being able to clearly take care of what they need to do and be in that building and actually see the smoke.

Okay, thank you, Commissioner Latham. I see Councillor Clingan's hand up and then school committee member Phillips. Can I just ask a clarifying question? I guess two really, you said that there was a door alarm And so your DPW folks were going in regularly, which I appreciate and certainly sounds like that may have been a significant factor in avoiding something worse. So was the door alarm issue such that the door wouldn't then lock? Do I understand that correctly?

Mr. Chair, it was because the door alarm, if the door was forced open or if something was, the door alarm wouldn't have triggered. So somehow they forced the entry into that building so that the door alarm didn't get triggered. So anytime you try and force a door open, you'll have an alarm go off. Notice that there's children trying to enter the building or they're in the building. That happens with all of our buildings and school buildings. If you go to one of our buildings and try and get into that building, the alarm will sound. And that's how we get notified immediately that there's someone either in the building or trying to get into the building.

Okay. And so I guess maybe my follow-ups might be more for the chief. I'm going to want to understand, I think, how folks got in, if they did force the door or break the door if it was Windows or whatever. My other question is, you mentioned food service goes in regularly. Is that, and forgive me if I've missed this in all of the conversations, but is our food service, are our food service folks still using the kitchen there? Or some other part of the facility?

Mr. Chair, my understanding is it's a storage that they're using, not necessarily using the facility. They're going maybe to use some storage in that kitchen area. And they're there early in the morning, but that's that's more of a the school department and kind of explain what exactly what kind of storage that they're using but. we've worked with him to make sure that sometimes like if they're going in and they popping the door open there to get items in and out, we said, please don't use the door popped open and make sure it's secure.

Okay, all right, thank you for that I'll recognize Councilor Clingan.

yeah Mr Chair, thank you, through you yeah this was my order. You know, this is my building, it's in my ward, and I'll say that I feel satisfied that this building is secure. It sounded like the way it was described to me was the perfect storm in that technical issue. I do have a question, though, because I'm not hearing what I was told. There are sensors in that building, correct? Are there motion sensors? Yes.

Do the chair, I have to really kind of make sure I'm answering that correctly. My understanding, our issue was the door alarm, not necessarily motion sensors, because we would have picked up on motion sensors. So I need to kind of clarify exactly what's currently happening in that building. But this particular issue was just due to a communication error with the door alarm.

Okay, well, I was told that the motion sensors were off because of an electrical, like of an issue with Verizon. And that Food service, they just go in the one door on Medford Street. They don't go beyond that set of double doors past the thing. There's motion sensors throughout the hallways. This is what I was told. So basically, they are using that part of the cafeteria. And I haven't been told how we thought... the individuals got in, I think it was still thought that it was a window. So I really, I felt really good about things. But now it just seems like there's even more confusion. And I'm just but, but, you know, the fact that we, I believe we have motion sensors in the building that happened to be down for for a technical reason. allowed for these kids to mess around the building. They threw paint all around and lit a couple pieces of paper on fire. But definitely don't want to see that happening, continue to happen. So I've been in contact with DPW, and it seems like the building is secure. That's all.

Okay. Thank you, Councillor Clingan. Chair Bitton, I'll pass to you to recognize your members. And I do want to suggest, you know, I'm happy to hear the questions from the school committee first, but I also want to give Chief Breen an opportunity if there's any detail you could fill in. Actually, I see Member Phillips, did you lower your hand? Do you still want to have a question?

Yeah.

I'm good. Jesse got to my question. Thank you.

Okay, very well. Then I'll recognize Councilor Sait and then Chief Green. Then if you want to jump in after this or Councilor Sait, you may have questions for the chief, of course. Go ahead.

Through you, Chair Davis, you've asked this question about the food service using the building. I was also curious about that. I thought the building was not occupied at all. Is there anyone here from the school department to tell us a little bit more about that? Because it was just under the impression that it was not occupied and would be helpful to know. how it's being used.

I can't speak directly to that, but I can say that it's ending the end of this year. They won't be using it anymore, but somebody here must be able to answer that.

So I know we have Chief of Staff Anasika here. Is there anyone that can address that question on behalf of the school department?

Hi, can you restate the question? I'm sorry, I missed it.

So if I may, Councillor Sait, please correct me if I'm wrong, but to summarize the question, it was mentioned that the food service staff accesses the old Winter Hill school building periodically. It sounds like perhaps just in some mornings for some storage, but the question was to just provide some more context there. two members of the city council committee here. That was the first we've heard of it. And I suspect some members of the public may also not have been aware of that to whatever extent it's relevant. Can you speak to the degree and manner in which the school department is still using that building for food service or any other uses?

Yeah, exactly. As you said, it is for storage. There's nothing more to report on that, but that's the extent of the use.

I don't want to try and extrapolate myself. Can you let, you know, Councillor Sait asked for an explanation. Could you sort of take it from the top and explain to us how the school department is using the Winter Hill building?

Through the chair, I can report any additional information that I have after speaking to the food services director. That being said, that is the extent of my understanding that the space is being used for storage without a production kitchen, which is about to go online. Once IAM is done with that project and they are slated to be complete with that project, the end of the summer, the schools have quite a lot of students to feed without a production kitchen. And so for that reason, there is limited storage that is used at the Winter Hill and the spaces of the building that are safe for people to continue to access. But if there's additional information needed, I just don't want to say anything that's inaccurate and I can bring that back at another time.

Councillor Sait, your question, I do see Commissioner Latham's hand up. Commissioner Latham, did you want to help address Councillor Sait's question?

Through the chair, no, I just need to clarify an answer for the council claimant when available.

Through the chair, yeah, thank you for providing that information. It's certainly the first time I hear of it. I mean, I learned about it by email when members of the public notified the administration that the door was not, they saw a door open. So, yeah, my questions would be, I understand that you don't want to provide any information that's not accurate, but would be like, how often are they going there? Like, is it every day, every morning? And I'm certainly glad to hear that now the door is fixed and there won't be an opportunity for anyone to go in who's not allowed to be in there. Yeah, so that's... And again, you're saying at the end of the summer... they will no longer be using, by the end of the summer, they will no longer be using the space? Is that what I'm hearing?

Through the chair, I can confirm that, but I'm not sure. My understanding is that use of that space will no longer be as critical with the new production kitchen coming online.

All right. I'll say councilor say. Does rich raise with anybody know anything that's going on? I'm sorry, Mr. Chair. I'm just, it's frustrating. Commissioner Lathan, I saw, I thought I saw, yeah, I see your hand up. Can you speak, do you know, in your conversations in, you know, helping to address the issue when it first came up, do you have a sense for how often, how frequently this food service use is happening? Did you get, I mean, I know it would be kind of hearsay, but we're out of court. Anything you can help us understand a little bit of context here?

Yeah.

Mr. Chair, I really have to refer to the school department on that. I mean, I think we know that we, it seems to be frequently that they use that space and we've been supporting them in that endeavor. It's never been an issue whatsoever. I just want to clarify that the door alarm system is connected to all the motion sensors like they do in all our buildings. So if the door alarm is a miscommunication with sensors go off as well. I just wanted to make sure that was clarified as I was confusing in my statement.

Okay, thank you for that clarification, appreciate it. So I guess, Councilor Kling, and I think shall we have a motion come out of the discussion here that the school department clarify to this committee, any and all uses frequency matter of the Winter Hill building currently and plans going forward in terms of timing, does that sound appropriate?

Mr. Chair, I mean, I don't even think that's necessary. I mean, we have the head of engineering here who would have, I would imagine, cleared the building. If there's some use being used, then it's, you know, endorsed by everybody here on this call. Therefore, if there's no concern with safety, actually in that part of the building, and this is only going to happen for about two, like a couple more weeks, I mean, I know that I was told that they're going in and out of there for storage purposes. I'm okay. I'm okay with that. If all the powers that be are okay with that. I don't really need much more information than that. I just, I do find it concerning that no one's able to come up with an answer right now as to what exactly is happening. Like, does the food service just kind of have free reign?

Director Raish, I saw your face pop up and you were mentioning it. Are you able to address any of those questions?

Sure. Richard Raish, Director of Infrastructure and Asset Management. As everyone knows, we had a project over the winter to move the production kitchen to the Argenziano. We're in punch list on that. Everything is operational. We've just got a few tidying up to do. That will be complete within the next couple of weeks. Once the students are out, we are actually going to have a formal training session with the food service staff on the new equipment, which is just part of the contract. Frankly, they already know how to use it and have been using it, but it is an item. And it's my understanding that once we have that and the school year is done, they will move all the remaining items that they will be using over the summer or possibly next year to the Argenziano. And I suspect that they won't need to access the Sycamore Street building much past late June, early July.

Okay. Thank you for that. Any other questions on that specific piece of the discussion?

I yield to school committee.

School committee member Petone, Chair Petone, if I may be so bold as to recognize one of your members.

Thank you, through you, Chair. Thank you for the detailed information update. on the unfortunate scenario and the quick response to that. I did have a question about, and I apologize if you guys hit it earlier and I just missed it. What is technically the status of the building? You know, like the old high school building, the 1895 building, I think has a status of like nobody's allowed in there. The Cummings has this curious status, which I don't always quite understand where we're using it and not using it at some capacity. So in any way that we can just at least formally articulate what the status of a building is, what that means and who has access to it, I think would just be helpful in general. But it's not something I need to have answered in detail right now.

Director, I see your hand up. Can you speak to that?

Sure, to the chair. It can be confusing because we do have various different statuses. The 1895 cannot be occupied by anyone because it doesn't have any life safety items. It doesn't have heating, cooling. It only has partial electric. It doesn't have plumbing. And frankly, there's a lot of dangerous conditions in the building. So there's a prohibition on sort of occupancy of that building. The Cummings has very limited use for construction personnel who are safety trained. It does have heat. It never had cooling. It does have heat. It has a lot of code deficiencies that would preclude it from serving as a school at this point. So were we to reoccupy it as a school, inspectional services would require a large number of code updates to use it for that purpose. The Sycamore Street building has life safety and It's fine, particularly in the area where food services have been in and out in storage. There are no issues around that occupation there. from a code perspective, I don't know if there's anything that would preclude us from using it. However, from a condition perspective, once we moved the students out of that building, we continued doing our testing in advance of the assessment of the building reconstruction. And at that point, honestly, we didn't care what condition we left it in. We did a lot of destructive testing. And then there were some issues with some water damage that required some remediation. So the building is not pleasant to be in. There would be a lot of work that would need to be done to reoccupy the building, but it is not an unsafe building from sort of a life safety perspective. So again, we don't currently have any projected uses for it. Were we to try to reoccupy it, there's a lot of, i don't want to call it cosmetic but you know just work that would need to be done in terms of walls and things like that um so that's really not on on the table right now but it's not an unsafe building as opposed to the the 1895 which is an unsafe building right now miss baton further questions thank you just a follow-up thank you for that clarification

So just an additional understanding is that as a school building, although it's not being occupied by students right now, it's still under the purview of the school committee. And so then the way that we authorize the school to be utilized as a heating and warming center, which I think that probably has finished as it's been quite warm out. I know there was a timetable to it and I'm sure it expired.

Through the chair, they finished operations in April.

I want to make sure I understand and maybe I'm wrong, but I think that at any point I'm assuming, and I'm not assuming, I'd like to know that, clarify that once the kitchen is operational and all the, I'm assuming, and I want to know all the equipment is going to be moved out. And at that point, the building will be empty and it will not be utilized unless an authorization is given by the school committee moving forward. Is that correct?

Through the chair, I think that would be a correct assessment of the situation. Okay.

So like no storage, no like construction work, nothing. Like it won't, unless it comes to the school committee, it wouldn't be utilized. All right. Correct. Thank you.

Chair Baton, I'm happy to leave matters in your hands for the moment and then I'll go back to Councilor Clingan.

Sure. Although I see Commissioner Lathan has her hand up and I defer to her if she wants to add something here.

Yeah, to the chair, I just want to make sure that DPW does regular visits and site visits to that building, regardless if it's alarmed, the alarm is working or not. We go frequently in there just walking and making sure. That's not something we've come before the school committee to get permission to do so. We need to make sure that we frequently check all of our buildings, you know, even if they're not occupied to make sure that everything is okay. And there's no, that's how we sometimes we found like water leaks or things like that or So we're in there. We're in there frequently. So I just want to make sure you guys are understanding that.

But it's not an operational. I apologize that I'm just commenting. It's not operational use. It is safety checks, which is, like you said, your responsibility and obligation to do that work. And I really appreciate it.

Yeah, thank you. And Commissioner Latham, I want to return to something you said at the top. which was acknowledging the excellent work of your staff who identified the smell, responded to it, called in the fire department, worked to put out or to address immediate dangers in the vicinity at that event in around the May 12th timeframe. i i want to just commend your staff uh and you for that response um i do think the the bigger question that's um that rises here for me is around something that you just stated commissioner lathan around know the safety checks that you're doing and i'm heartened to hear that that is something that's a purview for a closed building uh where people are not supposed to be entering so i guess my broader question is is this something that we do for all of our buildings uh uh director raish stated a few minutes ago that There is an unsafe condition at our 1895 building. I doubt your staff, Commissioner Lathan, are going in to that building on a regular basis. And I could be wrong, but how do we assure and how frequently do we check that people are not entering, that there are not people residing in the buildings or getting in there when they shouldn't be?

Yeah, so the chair, that's a great question. So 1895 is a different sort of category. We're not, that's, I am kind of working with that building. But we do have buildings that are closed, that are sometimes used, like non-school buildings. For example, we have 19 Walnut Street that is not used, occupied, it's used for storage, for parks and recreation. It is alarmed with both the door alarms and motion sensors. So, you know, if anything would get triggered, we'd be meeting to go over there. But we do do you know, random checks in our buildings. We try and do it, you know, frequently, depending on the location, especially, you know, with that 19 Walnut Street, just for an example, you know, how that's located. We have to kind of frequently check that at least, you know, nightly or every other night, depending on the weather conditions to make sure that that's, you know, airtight and secure. There's no one that's broken in to try and to live there and things like that. So there's not a lot of buildings that we have that are like this, but That's just one of our examples. Some buildings that are not occupied by anything, because as Mitch said, they can't be, those may not be checked as frequently because the systems aren't in place to kind of trigger something. But, you know, I have nighttime custodians and nighttime supervisors that go and kind of look at all of our buildings throughout the night.

Thank you. Chair Davis, back to you on your side.

Okay, thank you. Councillor Clingan. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Real quick, just through you, I just want to put a ball on this, because like I said, I put this order in and I've been dealing with it, talking with the DVW, and I just want people at home watching or anybody to understand that there are motion census throughout this building, throughout these buildings. The door thing broke, which then broke the motion sensors, which happened to be the same night that some kids maybe went through the window. All the windows have been secured. Everything's buttoned up. There's been wood put over where there was a broken window. But these motion sensors will go off if anybody moves around the building. So, you know, like I said, I feel safe. I feel secure that the, I feel good that the building is secure and I do appreciate the DBW going in that building because, you know, when a building's not in use, you know, they, they, you know, they break down things that, you know, or, or some, or nobody's there to notice like a leak or something like that. So, so but yeah, I, I have faith in the DBW department and everything they're doing at the winter.

Yeah.

Thank you, Councillor Clingan. As I mentioned, we do have Chief Breen here from the Fire Department. Chief, thank you for being available this evening to answer questions. Anything that you wanted to add or context or information you feel like would be appropriate for us to understand in the context of the discussion at all?

Sure. One thing I can add is that I did get some questions immediately following the fire as to why the fire alarm system.

If I may interrupt, my apologies for failing to give you the reminder. Give us the formal introduction of yourself just for the record.

My apologies. Chief Charlie Breen, I'm the fire chief. As I was stating earlier, I'll address one thing. I did get some concerns from different individuals asking me why didn't the fire alarm system notify us? And that's a great question. The fire alarm system was functioning. However, the system that's in the school is protected by heat detectors, not smoke detectors. So the fires that were set in the building did not create the amount of heat that would have been required to set those detectors off. So the system is functioning. However, the size of the fires in the building did not rise to the level to trip the alarm. If they were not discovered by the DPW when they were, they no doubt would have grown to the point where they would have eventually tripped the fire alarm system.

Okay. Thank you for that, Chief. Any follow-up on that bit? All right. Seeing none then, thank you, Commissioner Latham, Shifreen, and Dr. Raish for your help in addressing all those questions. Unless there's any objection, I think we can mark this one work complete. Thank you very much. Thank you, Chief. All right. Quick for us, Lucy, would you take us back to the top of the agenda? We can go to the regular order, which would bring us to item number two, which is that the Commission of Public Works install appropriate soundproofing materials in the Arthur D. Haley School Cafetorium. Chief, actually, Chair Bitton, this one came from you folks through our school committee representative, President Bittenfeld. Do you want to give us some context before we go?

Yeah, absolutely. I'll take chief any day. That sounds good. So this is a longstanding request from students and educators at the Healy School. the the cafetorium uh combination cafeteria auditorium uh is a large space in the healy school and the walls as i understand it are concrete and when you pack a ton of kids into a concrete box and everyone starts know socializing that room can get extremely loud and some of our students especially those with sensory issues find that space to be very difficult to be in And so the request has been to install soundproofing materials on the walls to ensure that more students, I'm not going to say every student will be able to be in there, because as I said, lunchrooms are, you know, hectic places, but at least to be a more welcoming environment for most of our students. So this is something that we're trying to do. PTAs and administration advocated for for many years under Superintendent Mary Skipper and then Interim Superintendent Jeff Curley and again, it's something that popped up on the has popped up on the list to be addressed in the current administration and so I believe at some point it had been agreed to, although I don't have the history on that. And yet this is still something that I think, you know, I don't know what the cost would be, but I think improving the conditions for our kids in this building, putting up fabric tiles in this space to make the acoustics more welcoming would be very much in our interest to better serve the kids in that school. So that is the request. And certainly happy to hear any updates that administration has on that.

And I will go right ahead.

She is on Go ahead.

Yasmine Roudassi, Thank you, Chair.

Yasmine Roudassi, Thank you.

Yasmine Roudassi, For the record, my name is Yasmine Roudassi. I'm a legislative liaison with Intergovernmental Affairs in the mayor's office. Yasmine Roudassi, So just wanted to provide a bit of context around this. So at the beginning of each school year, the mayor's office, along with SPS administration, DPW, IAM, and SPS principals do walkthroughs of each school building. The last walkthrough would have been in September, and it resulted in a list of priorities. An example of the top three were a new classroom at the Argenziano, the new commercial kitchen at the Argenziano, and the science room at the Healy School, which I think this committee has already heard a lot about under different items. The soundproofing of the cafetorium was not identified during the walkthrough. If at this point it is being identified as a priority, we will work through our typical channels to get a better sense of the ask and propose solutions.

Okay.

Thank you, Liaison Radassi. Chair Davis, I see there's a question on your side. You guys can start.

All right, very well. Councilor Clinkett.

Mr. Chair, no question, just a statement. This is the first I'm hearing of this as the councilor who has a school in my ward. So I appreciate you all bringing it to my attention so I can help advocate as well. We're not privy to those walkthroughs, but happy to help advocate. I actually, when I saw this order, I thought you meant in between the cafetorium and the gymnasium, because if you've ever had a meeting at nighttime in the cafetorium, the sneakers squeaking and all the stuff happening can be pretty disruptive to whatever meeting or activities going on. But yeah, no, I am full and full support and happy to help in any way I can. And thanks for bringing this to my attention.

Excellent. Well, I guess... I'm happy to raise this to Dr. Carmona and Chief of Staff Enosike to bump up the priority level of this item. I do think that this is a priority for the Healy. It has been for many years. I also don't think this scales at the same level as perhaps building a classroom or, you know, the production kitchen, these sorts of things that are our major infrastructure projects at a school. And, you know, I understand we need to learn a little more about this, but what I'm envisioning for this and Director Raish can slap me over the head if I'm wrong, but is that it's simply, you know, installing soundproofing tiles in an existing space. Oh, there he is, raised his hand to slap me. But yeah, I mean, so in my mind, this is not raised to be a major infrastructure project. In my mind, it's a more medium or minor infrastructure project, but I'm happy to be corrected. Mr. Raich, if you'd like to speak, I welcome the input.

Yeah. Thank you for bringing this to our attention, Chair Baton. And you articulated very well the impacts of those loud noises in confined spaces with children. As you might recall, last summer, we did acoustic treatments throughout the Edgerly for the active use of the Winter Hill there. And I've had several comments from parents, teachers, and the administrative staff at Winter Hill at Edgerly at what a huge difference that has made in it. Um, so I think this is a, it's a, it's a great item. Um, it's unfortunate that it was not brought to our attention, um, at the beginning of this school year when we walked, you know, uh, Commissioner Latham and I walked every school and including the, the Healy with the principal and Chief of Staff Anna Soke. Um, but it's, it's in the pipeline now. We've got it on our spreadsheet. Um, and, uh, it's, it's, I think you're, you're right. You know, the, the acoustic treatment, um, and, and for, uh, to clear up, uh, councilor Clingan's confusion, the, the, um, more appropriate term is acoustic treatment rather than soundproofing. Um, soundproofing would be like a resilient wall between the gym and the acoustic treatments are more like what you see behind me.

I'll own that mistake, Mr. Raich.

Yeah. It's a little late to look at this fiscal year, but as we're planning out projects for the summer, we'll see what we can do within our existing building budgets to see how we could do it. If not, at least in the near distant future.

Ms. Petone.

Thank you, through you. I appreciate and I'm glad Mr. Petone is going to follow up with administration because obviously it has to be deemed a priority in that perspective, although we may have constituents bringing it up and I hope that has an impact on the priority decision. I don't think it should be directed from this group. I will, I did kind of do a little searching online and I did see that in the Healy 2021 school improvement plan, there was something stated that there had been a commitment to do soundproofing in the following year. So it was definitely something that I knew was on the agenda at one point. Clearly, we didn't hold ourselves accountable to it. Could have been because of other really pressing items that happened with the edgerly and the Winter Hill. So we all recognize that maybe this is something that got dropped down on the list. So I don't think anything here is a critique. I appreciate that it's going to be vetted through the administration, both the city and the schools. And I do think as a parent who had both of our kids at the Healy, it is... a really difficult experience to have any kind of event of any kind in the cafetorium, including lunch. It is very loud and it's very uncomfortable. And there are populations of students who don't eat lunch in the cafeteria. I mean, the city would have a better assessment on whether or not this cafeteria in particular is much louder than the other ones. But other ones, they do have sound baffling and different things. So any kind of acoustic treatment that can be done would be very much appreciated. And I hope that we invest in the long run in this space better. That generation of buildings are wonderful. I know there's some real, we've really benefited from the design of those buildings, but the sound in particular has been problematic. So I just wanted to chime in that I did see reference to the fact that it was supposed to happen and it was referenced in the 21 school improvement plan that there was a commitment to do this work. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Patone, for that insight from the history books. That's great. I remembered it was somewhere in there too, so glad you found it. Ms. Enosike, I see you had your hand up. Did you want to add something?

Through the chair, I just wanted to reiterate what Director Raish commented. While it wasn't brought up in September at the walkthroughs, it has since come to our attention as a priority and it is on our radar and excited to work with the city on next steps.

Excellent. Grateful for the collaboration and thank you for the great work that you all are doing in partnership. Seeing no other questions, Chair Davis, I will turn the gavel back to you.

All right, very well. Thank you, Chair Bertone. And shall we mark that one work complete for now? And as we see improvement on that, we can always come back if there's any issues and concerns, but sounds like appreciate the work and finding a way to get that done as soon as possible. So that'll take us to item four on the agenda. This is 25-0987 that the commissioner of public works provide an update on preventative maintenance plans for all school buildings and progress on providing the public with tools to view preventative maintenance plans and actions. This one came to us, I believe through y'all chair Baton. So do you want to give us some context first? It's pretty self-explanatory as well, but happy to.

It is, although I will defer to my colleague, Ms. Patone, from whom this derived. So if I can.

Happy. Thank you. Through you. This was something that came up. It was a big issue and concern. in kind of the first generation of this meeting when former city councilor Beatriz Gomez and I were the co-chairs and there was a great deal of progress made on this and there was work done on creating kind of a detailed database and that was demonstrated with this committee. The person who designed that database has since left the district. I understand. I mean, the city, I could be wrong, but this is my understanding. And I thought it was a good time to sort of check in because it doesn't seem like we've come up with a way to figure out how to put the highest level information. We recognize that not every sensor, not every... Changing of whatever we do on these buildings has to be public, unless obviously if somebody puts a request for information, but creating a celebrating the work that we're doing and then being public about that as a celebration, but also continuing to build the confidence in the city, the city community. resonance that we know this work is being done. So I thought it was good timing to sort of say, let's check in what's happened with that work. What are the thoughts about being more public about this information and the progress? And if we don't have a full report, I get it, but I'm just curious what the status of that is.

I saw a few hands go up on the administration. Liazor Adasi or Rich Raich, Director Raich, whoever wants to go.

I'm going to hand this off to the IGA.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'll just do a quick overview, and I'm sure Director Raich will have more background to add to my response. Just wanted a thank you to committee member Patone for that context. happy to get an update on that. I wasn't aware of that context going into the discussion on this item. I know that we have an existing 311 dashboard that's public and our DPW, IAM, SPS administration and mayor's office meet regularly to review 311 submissions and discuss school building conditions and address any issues that may arise. And I know, I think A few weeks ago, maybe it was a few months ago, there was another item in this committee about internal tracking tool to keep track of those requests and coordinate across several departments. So just wanted to remind that that's something that we use internally.

So before I turn it over to city council, I guess I just want to clarify, because I had gone back to watch the joint meeting that Ms. Patone and Councilor Gomez-Milchad had chaired, and this interview with a city staffer who had developed this database product, the focus of it was actually not on responding to 311 requests, which are responsive actions, but rather around preventative maintenance actions and planning. So it could track actions that have been taken to address a system. So let's say the boiler And when was the boiler serviced? When is the next planned boiler date? Different components of the boiler. So the burners in the boiler or the pipe fittings, when had each been checked? So each item, they had kind of parent-child relationships in this database. And I'm now reaching the limits of my understanding of what had been built, but it looked like a fairly robust product. And to Ms. Pitone's point, this product doesn't, we haven't heard anything more about that great work that had happened. And so just to sort of separate that from the 311, very valuable 311 collaboration that's happening between the city and the school department, this I think is looking a little more proactively about what the planning is. So just as a matter of clarification, and I'm happy to share the recording that Ms. Patone had forwarded to me to anyone who would like to review that. I see Mr. Raich has come on screen, Mr. Raich.

Sure, I'm happy to provide a progress update on that. So we are in the process of procuring software that will serve as a platform for both of those things. For 311 emergency or work order requests and generating work orders based on preventative maintenance schedules. The software program is envisioned to consume that dashboard and database that had been shared with this committee last year as sort of a back end. in terms of the data that defines all those building systems. And the software then takes it to the next level and allows us to program in automated work orders based on what your preventative maintenance schedule will be. It will also interface with the 311 queue alert system. The idea is that QAlert and 311 is very well established for a broad range of things in the city and will continue to be managed by constituent services. And 311 is part of constituent services. But the two software programs will interface and give us a lot more ability to perform preventive maintenance, react to 311 requests, and then also report out on them. I guess the good news is that we had a lot of interest on our request for proposals. We had 22 submissions. The bad news is that we have 22 submissions to review. We are in the process of doing that and we'll be narrowing it down. We hope to narrow it down to a manageable number. I'm hoping around three to bring in four interviews and it'll be kind of two stage interview. One talking with sort of the DPW staff as well as the water and sewer staff and the engineering on sort of the backend work order. management and then also talk with Steve Craig and 311 on the interface with how well it can be integrated for public reporting. So all of that is in process. It will likely move at a pace that none of us will enjoy. It will take a while both to select the software and then stand it up and integrate it with all that. But we have the commitment to continue doing that. The IAM budget this year includes the cost of the software and it includes professional technical services to help that integration and commitment of staff time to it. So it remains a priority of the administration to lean into this heavily in fiscal 26th.

Great, thank you for that information. That's really helpful. Chair Davis, I will turn it over to you. All right, very well. Councillor Clingan and then Councillor Sait.

Oh, thank you, Mr. Chair, through you. I just must, you know, I'm only bringing I sound like a crank tonight, but when I'm listening to this conversation and I want to just do a reset on this whole thing where it's like this was post-COVID or during COVID when there was a lot of issues with the filtration in the school systems. And this committee was formed out of a lot of that frustration and breakdown between school side, city side. And the part that gets me frustrated, this isn't a knock on anybody or digging about it. It's just one counselor's perspective is that we like hire these positions. Like I thought we hired somebody on the school side that was going to talk. And then we hired somebody on the city side or there's somebody in DPW that owns buildings to some degree. Like I just, where are we with, and then Rich is now talking about it as engineering, but it's like who on the day to day is like, managing these buildings. And again, I'm not picking on anybody. I just don't, I feel like we're all kind of still feeling like who really has their hands on this. The system sounds great when it comes online at some point. But in the meantime, you know, if we go back to sleep, we could end up in another situation like we found ourselves in. We had a bunch of mechanical problems and, you know, once we got Honeywell in, things were good. But before that, we were getting ripped off or something. What's, is there any update in that area? Councilor Latham, can I see your hand up?

Councilor Latham, Commissioner Latham. Sorry, I wouldn't curse you with that.

I just wanted to address Councilor Clingens. So DPW, just so everyone's aware, we do have a permit. We have a building systems manager. We have a preventative maintenance manager. We put those positions in the budget years ago, as you guys know, to do this exact kind of work as far as identifying our systems and our buildings and kind of striking making categories about that. So we have a DPW system that really just categorizes our preventive maintenance and our systems and our boilers and HVAC and things like that. That's an internal DPW system. We are working with IM and Rich's team to take that information to make it to a broader system that's going to be more, you know, available like Rich was talking about. So we are managing our buildings. We are on top of what our system, both my PM manager and my building systems manager are phenomenal. They are in our buildings daily, looking at our systems, HVACs and boilers, which is why we have been doing some replacements and repairs to some systems and boilers that, you know, because of these positions that we put in place years ago. So just to answer your question, we are managing the buildings, and we do know what systems we have in place and what they're doing and what needs to happen in the future and X, Y, and Z. We are supporting Rich's team. What he needs to do is broader for the city and all of our buildings and facilities and that kind of thing. But BPW does have an internal system that we have categorized our HVAC systems and our bullish systems. And we have, we're very on top of when is needed, when, and we're trying to advocate to get those replaced and make sure funding's secure for those reasons.

Perfect. Thank you. That's what I'm looking for. And Mr. Chair, I will just follow up on my question. the aspect of things as far as on the school side, I know that they had created a position so that they, does that position still exist?

Ms. Berry, I don't know if you want to answer that or Ms. Hanosike? Okay.

Through the chair, we recently hired a facilities safety and transportation coordinator who is Ms. Danielle Berry and has years of experience in the district, has transportation experience with special ed, has management experience at a building that was a hotel. And she started about a month ago and has hit the ground running She's doing an amazing job. In terms of that interacting or interfacing with a dashboard, so the tech piece of, I believe that's what's going on in terms of maintenance, having a reporting dashboard, I think that's something that will continue to take ongoing partnership with the city who, as Jill said, is managing our facilities.

Yeah, thank you for that, Mr. Chair. It's just, and that's great if, you know, the position morphed into something else. It's just that it's hard also to remember everything. I'm like 95% sure that they hired a specific buildings person on the school side. It's neither here nor there at this point. It's just I was wondering how that was, how, you know, kind of looking back as to like a report, like how has everything worked out? And I know things change and that's fine. I just wanted to like just kind of name that and reset as to how we kind of got to where we are and And so that's good to hear.

Okay. Thank you, Councillor Clingan. Councillor Sait.

Through you, Chair Davis. First, I would like to thank Committee Member Pitone for bringing this up again and for her advocacy years ago with my, along with my predecessor and for having us have this conversation today. I'm just trying to understand because back in the fall we had this conversation and this committee was the first meeting we had in September of 2024 and shortly after that an infrastructure and asset management work to benefit some of the public schools summer 2024 presentation was shared with both the school committee and The city council, I was from August 3rd, 2024. And this was just shared by email. I think after that request was made and remember very specifically making the request. And I followed up with you, Mr. Raich, and you have mentioned two positions. So I'm trying to understand how does this relate to the two positions? So one is hiring a construction liaison position to focus on planning and design phases of infrastructure improvement projects. And the other one is a construction liaison position So where are these positions filled and will these staff members be assigned the task of working on a reporting dashboard? Yeah, let's start there.

To the chair, the construction liaison positions are focused more on future large capital projects. And the position is filled. Magda Gomez is proving herself invaluable to two of our teams. One, the CSO long-term control plan update team. The other is the MSBA replacement for the Winter Hill School. And so she's actively involved in that big school replacement project. We just had a coffee hour with Winter Hill parents last week. We're going to have one with Brown parents later this week or next week. She works on things like that. This sort of... you know, day-to-day preventative maintenance is not the sort of thing that that position is envisioned to work on. As I say, from IAM's involvement, we're standing up a software system and interdepartmental system for reporting. And we do have a dedicated senior project manager to that project. But, you know, I'm Apologies if there's any confusion. That's not sort of the function of that liaison position to actually communicate out what, you know, at this moment, you know, DPW is managing.

Okay. Through the chair, thank you for that clarification because my request, and I'm trying to go back to that email, was... which I made during one of our joint committee meetings. That was, I think, the first one in September, is to have a project website. So it's for updates on school building facilities. As committee member Pitone was saying, it's to just get progress on the things we're doing in school buildings and have that transparency, which is something that parents have been asking for over and over. So what you've mentioned earlier about software, Is that to do the work on having this project website? I just want to understand because there's a lot of different conversations about a project website, now this software. And again, the goal is just transparency and that we are showing progress on all this work. So again, I'm making this ask and what's the update, if any.

Yeah, to the chair. At the moment, we've stood up the project website again for that large MSBA funded project to replace the Winter Hill, somervillema.gov slash MSBA. And that is, we're keeping that up to date. I think we just pushed some updates to it this week. In terms of the sort of broader building maintenance and improvements, we have yet to stand that up. And again, I think that getting the software in place is sort of a precursor to that. So it's still on the horizon, but we've got a few steps. before we can get there. Certainly any other individual capital projects that happen in the meantime will have their own website. So we've got project pages, for example, for the work that's happening on City Hall right now with regular posting and updates on the work that we're doing on City Hall. The next school project in our pipeline will be the replacement of the chiller at the west and the roof at the west. Design on that is advancing right now. Once that becomes a construction project, we'll have a project page for that with updates. And the next one after that in the queue is the boiler for the Healy. That's maybe about six months to a year behind the West. And again, we'll have a project page for that when that moves into construction.

Through chair, if I may continue. Thank you for the clarification. I understand that some projects, they do have their own project website. But again, here the ask is to have a project website for all the building maintenance. And I'm glad to hear that the software is going to be like the starting point. So question there, when are we expecting this to start? And do we have funding for it? What does it involve?

Through the chair. Right now, there are too many precursor activities for me to project a date. I think once we've selected a software and signed the contract with both that software vendor and the integration vendor, we'll have a project plan that we can roll out. But right now, it's far too early for me to project when we'll have those up and running.

Through the chair. Okay. So can you say if it's something that we can start this fall, potentially? And the other question is funding. Do you have funding for it? Do we need to allocate funding for it?

Yeah, to the chair, as I said earlier, our fiscal 26 IAM budget has the funding in it. We go before finance committee. It's coming Monday, the 16th. So I'm hoping that that funding will be safe and not on the chopping block. But as of right now, the proposed budget has that in it.

And then just the other piece of the question was this fall, any chance?

Oh, yes. So as I mentioned to Chair Davis and Chair Paton, we're reviewing 22 proposals right now, looking to advance them to interviews in July, sign the contract in August, and hit the ground running in September.

All right. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that.

Chair Paton to you.

I see Member Paton has her hand up. Member Paton.

Thank you. I have a couple of hopefully quick questions. Naima hit a lot of what I wanted to touch on. Is there a timing? I know we can't necessarily commit to when this is going to be complete, but one would be a good estimation of when we could check in and see the status of this based on so that, you know, we might close this item out, but that everybody has it on their radar that we should check in in the spring, check in next fall. When is a good time to hear, you know, what's going on? What would the timeline look like? And then I think the thing that is most concerning from my perspective is sort of the scope of public information. What are you imagining and envisioning what that might look like?

Through the chair, I think it's going to take us the better part of the fiscal year to stand it up. So, you know, in terms of another touch point, I could probably put it out about a year. Okay. And the scope of the public interaction is actually going to be one of our selection criterion for the software. You know, as I say, we've got 22 right now. We've got to narrow it down to three or four to interview. And a big portion of that, perhaps as much as half, will be the interaction with the 311 and QAlert. And Steve Craig is on our selection committee. And, you know, I really want to get Steve's and, you know, frankly, Denise Taylor's input on that on that side of the house.

All right, well, just as a follow-up, so just to ping it for all of us, maybe this time next year we check in, see where it's going. The last comment I wanted to follow up on was from Kelser Seid about this idea of where would like a master view of school projects sit. So when you said, I really appreciate hearing like, all right, the chiller at the west and the roof on the west are the next things happening. And then the Healy boiler. And I know you have a list. It's not just those three things. I know you have a list of like 15 things. And then we also know that in so many years, those things are going to come up again. And it's almost like, I'd love to at least capture that level of detail so that we don't have to bring you back in all the time to ask these questions or like, oh my gosh, I just saw a temporary chiller over at the X. Having an idea of what the master overview plan for the big items would be helpful. Maybe it's already there and I just don't know where it is. So I apologize if I'm asking for something that exists, but that's the kind of detail I think that creates confidence in the community that we understand how the city is now really putting the energy and the money and the time to invest in these buildings in a way we have not. And I want that to be transparent to the public.

To the chair, in terms of the capital projects pipeline, we don't have that posted. The plan is once we get through the annual budget in June, that the finance director Bean, budget director Mastroboni, and I are going to sit down and hammer off the capital. investment plan, including better ways to communicate what's in the pipeline. So once the three of us have recovered from budget in June, we'll hit it in July.

So that might be something that we could follow up in the fall?

Yeah.

and see what you were envisioning and how to publicize that level of detail. So I'm just pinging my friends on city council as you put the orders in for this meeting. If somebody can flag that and say, let's follow up later in the fall on this topic, that would be great.

Mr. Chair, if I could just jump in just to make a quick note. So, yeah, I mean, this has been discussed. You know, we talked about Chelsea and how the Chelsea School Department has a list on their website. I know that it's a little bit outdated, but And we talked about having something similar here and, you know, like a clearinghouse, like you said, where all the projects are listed and then maybe even anticipated projects. Like you said, there's a life cycle on some of these systems too. So, I mean, that doesn't seem like it should be that heavy of a lift, Director Raish, just to get this stuff up on a website. Is that something we could do fairly quickly?

Through the chair again, we're... we're all hands on deck with budget water and sewer and the MSBA process for the Winter Hill. We understand that's a priority and we've had discussions with the web specialists in communications about standing up something like that, but You know, I'd love to make more progress on it, but every day something else comes up where it's still in the pipeline, just not as moving as quickly as we'd like it.

Real quick, Mr. Chair, have we replaced Melissa Woods yet? Chair, yes.

So as of last week, acting director Ralph Henry has been officially I guess promoted to full time not acting like official capital projects director which will then open up the deputy director position which technically he held for the past year and we couldn't advertise it while technically he was acting director so good news there thank you

Commissioner Latham, I see your hands up. Was there something you wanted to add to the discussion?

Yes, the chair. I just wanted to also just talk about, Laurie, you talked about just some transparency and communication. I think there are some, in the interim, as Rich is working on the project, and we are trying to get to this budget season, there are DPW maintenance items and projects that we, you know, we can maybe discuss about how we make that more available as far as things like the boiler stuff we're doing at the Brown Company, the things we've already got in the pipeline, the kind of our permanent maintenance plans, X, Y, and Z schools, whether that be through a quarterly kind of updated report. DPW is a process, just so you guys know, of revamping our websites. That's going to be very interactive and public-facing and have very interactive, popping kind of website, people's little website and DENISE GLUHAN- was going to be like a commissioners corner and we have talked about X, Y and Z, but we're going to have videos we're going to have updates and kind of showing next. DENISE GLUHAN- So there you know we are going to intend to have a section on our new website that's going to have. DENISE GLUHAN- public facing they can click on this button, this is where we are with this, and so we can definitely incorporate some of what you're asking into that and this DP W scale so that's something that once we get through budget season. Chair Merrilees, You know, we can work on with my building systems manager and I've been a maintenance manager, just to give some updates of our dpw maintenance projects that are going to be school related and I think will be helpful and kind of lead to that transparency, we asked him for.

Chair Merrilees, Okay, thank you chair baton through you to. Chair Merrilees, yeah Dr Phillips go ahead.

Dr. Thanks chair through you just want to um. Elevate commissioner Latham's point. I think, um, communicating to our constituents about the extensive amount of money in the city is pouring into our schools is something that we as a whole don't do very well. Right. I think even my colleagues had no idea. The city council, you just, if I'm correct, allocated like half a million dollars for this boiler. at the brand, which is a significant chunk of change. And I feel like our constituents really need to understand the extent of all that money. So anything we can do until the system is built to just get the word out about how much money we are actually putting into our schools for preventative maintenance, whether that's through regular reports, however it is, I just really encourage us all to do that.

Point well taken. All right. Oh, chair Davis.

Yeah. Can we remember Phillips? Thank you for saying that. I just want to say, I just want to add to that. Since there's a lot of work that happens over the summer, and as Commissioner Lathan mentioned, just the presentation we received from DPW, September 3rd, 2024, I was thrilled to see it. Just like, work is happening. Here's someone trying to keep track of all of this and share it with the school committee and the city council. So just something like that, and these are just slides, was very helpful for me as a counselor. And that's what I use to share with my constituents, the parents who are asking, what are we doing about this? What are we doing about that? So I think this will save time to all of us and again, will help that piece of transparency and just again, be public about the progress we're making because we know we are invest in money we are doing the work it's just again we're constantly having you here like this committee this time we're here is the only time we get to discuss these things and it's the only time for the public to get to learn about this progress we're making. So again, I encourage the administration to do that. And ideally start the school year with celebrating these things, right? September. Here's a report of what we've done over the summer. And here's, um, here's the list of things that we'll be doing that we're anticipating to do, um, like the school year, something as simple as that, instead of waiting. Because again, it's been over a year since we made the initial, since I made the request and few years since my colleagues on the school committee have started this conversation. So let's get to it.

Chair Paton, back to you.

I feel like we're playing ping pong. Ms. Paton.

Through you, just to respond to Councillor Sight, we do as a school committee get a report every August about all the work that's been done. We often, I don't know if we've gotten it this year, but we often will get one in June about what's planned. And I can make the request that city councillors are copied on that. There's no reason that I don't think you can, because it usually comes in a memo format that you couldn't receive that memo if that's going to be helpful for you in communicating with constituents and then of course eventually move to the point where that information is more easily accessible to the public. Obviously if it's in our minutes that people can get at it but it's not on a website.

Um, through the chair, um, yeah, thank you. Um, it was shared last September. That's actually the one I was referencing, uh, for the first time was just like, it was, it was thrilled to see it. So again, let's work on getting that out there to the public. So unless you're a parent and very involved and know how to where to find materials for like school committee is just hard to get your hands on it. So that's, again, the request they're making. If we can just start off the school year with something like that and make it public somewhere, that would be really helpful.

All right, any further discussion on this item? All right, seeing none, I agree with your request or I'll echo the request to make sure that we do again, get that list. And I would ask whomever might be sitting on the school committee at the time to nudge whomever might be serving on the school committee as president of the council to remind that person to have it sent over if it's not that way. Um, all right. Uh, so thank you for that. Um, we can mark this one work complete unless there's any objection to that. Um, and I see, so see, and now that'll be marked as work complete. The next item is item number five. So the next, the next two items are similar, but different enough that I thought it was appropriate to take them up separately. Um, certainly there's a bit of overlap or perhaps there's a bit of overlap, but, um, We can hit the specifics of these last two items each on their own. Item five is 25-0587, that the administration worked with the Director of Infrastructure and Asset Management and Commissioner of Public Works to accelerate maintenance schedules, invest in preventative repairs, and develop a clear contingency plan for school displacement. So this was submitted by Councillor Bayh. It's similar to an item that we had discussed previously, but Chair Bertone, you had suggested that it might be appropriate to come back to this discussion using this item as the means to do so. Any context or additional color you wanna bring to the discussion before we launch into it?

I mean, I'll just say that I think the first portions of this item, I believe we just talked about the one glaring item is developing a clear contingency plan for school displacement. That is something that we have talked about in this subcommittee in the past. And there is actually a separate item that is still in the box waiting to be talked about. But I think perhaps this can serve as an appetizer to that larger discussion at a later date. So my hope is that we can, you know, use this item to talk about any additional information we have about contingency planning. And then, of course, we will not solve it in this meeting. So it can be something we talk about at a later date.

Very well, thank you. Liaison Radazzi, I see your hand up.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm happy to provide a small update. I won't read what I was going to read, which was basically identical to the last item on the preventative maintenance plans and such. But I did want to share that our city solicitor is working or has been working with their following up with the Somerville Public Schools legal team to follow up on that MOU for the coming school that was requested by the school committee in the subchapter. So I just wanted to provide that update. It's still in the works, so I don't have any more detail than that, except that they are working on it, and it's based off of some of the information that was in the resolution that was passed by the school team. So I should go.

Appreciate that. Yeah, I think this might be a little bit of a loaded discussion, given my understanding of what that MOU was supposed to be. So I'm going to step back into the bush here and let Chair Vuitton take this.

Oh, that's fine. We are right in the middle of it. So Dr. Phillips, go right ahead.

I have a question and then a comment. My question is just clarifying. So this MOU that we asked to be created in advance of opening the warming center on Prescott Street, we are just drafting now. Is that what's happening?

Correct. Our understanding from, and I did go back and review the meeting where the resolution was discussed, was that we get outreach about the MOU. So we're circling back to it right now.

So my follow-up is that was not a, that was, that's not the intention of the motion that we made, right? We made this motion that this MOU would be created and signed before the warming center was open. And so it's kind of shocking to me that we are just drafting it now. Putting a pin in that the district has emergency plans that we don't make public for what happens in a range of emergencies. I think what we're asking the city to provide is what is the emergency plan for if we have to close a building during a given school year? And I would expect that the city would want to update that regularly as things change. So can we get an update on when we can get a sense from the city on, because this is the issue, right? We've had it happen in the past. Multiple times that a school has gone down in the middle of the school year and we need to move all those kids somewhere. And where we move them changes every time we have to do it. It's really important to us that we know from the beginning of the school year what the plan for that year is. So we've got the summer now. And I guess I'm wondering, can the city commit to get a plan in place if we have to close the school building in the 25-26 school year before we open it?

Ms. Rodasi, go right ahead.

Thank you. Through you, Mr. Chair, I definitely understand the concerns you raised. We are working, again, like we've mentioned throughout this meeting, on investments that are being made for preventative maintenance and repair so that we don't get to a place where we would need to relocate a school. When that has happened in the past, this administration has pulled together every department and resource to make sure that we are able to relocate an entire school. And at the same time, make sure that we do everything we can to mitigate the impact of that relocation on teachers, students, and staff. Unfortunately, there is no straightforward, simple solution to having a swing space, but we are working in collaboration with city departments and SPS administration to come up with a plan.

Dr. Phillips, do you have a follow-up?

Ms. Patone can go first.

All right, Ms. Patone.

Thank you through you. Thank you, Dr. Phillips for framing the two different concerns, obviously addressing the issue and the original MOU associated with the Cummings, those conditions and those expectations are still there in terms of the status of the building and what would need to be done to do with that building and everything else that's outlined in the request and that resolution. So I look forward to hearing it. It is unfortunate that it's happening after the fact, but yeah, I still would like to see that information. The second piece is around coming up with contingency plans and I guess the answer I haven't, I appreciate Ms. Radassi's feedback that they are working on a plan. Is there a time when we might get the plan or an idea of a plan, which I know is not our favorite term, but I know that there could be multiple contingencies, but having some of that work already done in advance and research hopefully will help the whole city and the school in the unfortunate event if this does happen to turn something around a lot quicker then we have been able to.

Go ahead, Ms. Ferdowsi.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Through you, I can double check and get back to you on a timeline. I'm sorry, I did not come with that information. Thank you.

All right, Dr. Phillips.

Thank you to you, Chair. I would like to formally request that we put a motion to receive the city's emergency plan for what it will do if we have to close the school during the 25-26 school year on the agenda for the first fall meeting of this subcommittee.

Noted, and I will submit an order so that we can get it on this committee in the fall. Thank you.

or the discussion on the item?

Not seeing any here. Shall we leave this one in committee then to bring back around with the other item in the fall or how do you wanna approach this?

No, we have another item that is expressly focused on the Cummings School and Swing Space. And my recommendation would be to close this item and use the other item as the vehicle for this further discussion.

Solid plan, seeing no objection on the council side. So we'll mark this item as work complete. And that'll take us to the next item on the agenda, which is item six, 25-0933. that the administration work with the Somerville Public Schools and the Commissioner of Public Works to effectively budget for and fund current equipment maintenance costs, including but not limited to air compressors and ovens at the High School Career and Technical Education Program, and develop plans to include CTE equipment maintenance needs in future budgeting and funding cycles. This came through me in serving as providing over the council, the particular week it came through from the school committee. So Chair Baton, I'll hand it over to you to give us the context and lead the discussion.

Yes, thank you, Chair Davis. This item came out of a discussion we had in school committee when our career and technical education program lead came before us and discussed a number of equipment-related maintenance items that he was concerned about in a larger package of funding needs for the CTE program. But in particular, items like air compressors, ovens, and other large pieces of equipment that happen to be housed in the CTE program in the Somerville High School are apparently part of the school budget for maintenance. Whereas if any of these equipment might have been in a different building, they would sit firmly in, you know, the maintenance for that would be the responsibility of DPW or I assume DPW. I'm not going to assume I'm not going to say I'm an expert in how the city's budget is put together. But needless to say, you know, this raised a lot of questions in school committee about why schools are paying for this because it happens to be equipment in a school or as part of a particular program. So I think the request here is that public works and just pointing largely at quote unquote, the administration work to budget these items out of the city budget rather than out of the school's budget because I think the sense among school committee members was that these items do not belong in our budget. We're not facilities experts and the expertise and also efficiencies that come out of the city side of oversight of Again, these maintenance of these large items seems more appropriate on the city side. So that was the genesis of this, and I'm happy to hear from Liaison or DASI or others in response to that.

Just take it away. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you.

If that's okay. Yes. Okay. So thanks for raising this issue. I do want to share that we're actually having ongoing conversations with Somerville public schools on this in terms of long-term financial planning. So because those conversations are ongoing, I don't really have much more to share than that, but I did want to let you know that those are conversations there.

Okay. I am curious to hear from our school staff if there's anything they would like to add, but I am grateful to the administration for opening that conversation and beginning that planning process. Ms. Anosika, did you have something you wanted to add?

Yes, through the chair, just to underscore what Mr. Rossi mentioned that we are having conversations, we've had conversations with the mayor at being in mayor's office and others about being clear on where the funding source should come from for some of the maintenance that's happening at CT and other areas of our facilities that historically may have been under our line item or theirs. So we're working on clarity there. And it's been very collaborative when we mentioned this. So I'm happy to report that.

That is good to hear. Dr. Phillips.

Thanks through you, Chair. I really appreciate the collaboration that's happening around this. I think it is really great. I think there's efficiencies of scale that we can only get by linking our equipment maintenance to the city's equipment maintenance. And so the more we can develop contracts where You know, part of maintaining the vents in CTE is whoever is maintaining the vents elsewhere in the city. So I just want to encourage us. It's not just who owns the equipment and therefore is responsible for paying for it. But what efficiencies of scale can we get by including this equipment in whatever maintenance contracts we have elsewhere for similar equipment?

Thank you. I agree wholeheartedly. Chair Davis.

I learned how to push a button properly. Councillor Clingan.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just want to ask a question to be directed at anybody, although anybody who maybe was in those discussions that have been taking place thus far. This can't be the first time this discussion has ever taken place. So I'm just curious, like, what, you know, what was Ed Bean's reaction, you know, to whoever was in that meeting? Like, what's the initial response? Because this conversation, you know, probably has taken place for all we know, you know, multiple times, and somehow we arrived here. So I'm just curious if anybody can add anything, any type of historical knowledge to this discussion.

and hoping that people can add bleeps as appropriate. Ms. Ferdasi.

For you, Mr. Chair. I obviously haven't been with the city for very long, so I can't speak to anything predating my time here. I can certainly follow up if information I end up sharing is incorrect. But as far as I know, this specific ask, this is the first time that I had heard it flagged.

Okay, Mr. Chair, did we lose Lance?

No, he's here.

Oh, yeah. That's all. I look forward to seeing how this discussion plays out. But I just I always, you know, I want a little more like, you know, we come to these meetings, and I'm it could be a quick answer. Like they're like, yeah, we tried that in 86 and this is what happens when you do that. And that, you know, and so, you know, we think we're like reinventing the wheel and then turns out that there's maybe mass general, who knows? I mean, who knows what the answer is? Ed Bean probably knows. So I'd like to look forward to hearing that answer.

Thank you, Councillor Clayton. Councillor Sait, we'll go back to the school committee.

Through you, Chair Davis. So glad to hear that this collaboration and understand that the conversation is still ongoing. My question is, Once a decision has been reached, should this come out of the school budget or DPW, like city budget, would this go into effect in this coming fiscal year or the one after? Are we expecting a decision before July 1st?

Liz, I'm going to ask you.

Thank you. Through you, Mr. Chair, my understanding is that the funding for this, and I think it's reflected in the language for the item, is that it's taking into consideration these maintenance needs in future budgeting cycles and funding cycles and making sure that we have a dependable funding for these items. And so my understanding is the conversation is focusing on how we can sustainably fund the funding. sustainably fund, sorry, I'm mixing up these words, sustainably fund future equipment maintenance needs.

Councilor Sait, all set?

Yeah, I think I'm all set. So it sounds like not this upcoming fiscal year. Is that what it means? Like when you say future, at what point does that start?

Would we be correct, Liaison Radazzi, in assuming that to the extent that we have funding designated for these types of things, they currently sit in the current proposed school budget for fiscal year 26?

Through the chair, yes, that's correct. And I've just lost my train of thought. Yes. Sorry, I forgot what I was going to say.

Yeah, just wanted that to be clarified. Thank you.

Okay, thank you.

Chair Baton, back to you. Oh, yes, Ms. Patone.

Thank you through you chair. I'm glad this is an item. I just want to give a little context. I think Councilor Clingan is right. It's a really good question of what we've done. What have we done for the last four years when we've been offering CTE education? I do believe that we have newer equipment. We have more complex equipment. Our enrollment has increased dramatically. And I think that has all led to greater cost for maintenance. And I think also with the new building, there's a greater expectation. in the quality of how our built equipment is maintained. So yes, I think we have been doing it some way in the past. I don't know if some of the maintenance was done by the teacher, who knows, because some of that equipment wasn't necessarily all computerized. It might've been a mechanical lathe and that person knew how it operated and did the work to maintain it. So I just think that we're in a different space. The quality and the technology and the equipment is much more advanced and unfortunately, everybody was kind of surprised by, hey, you know, there's like over $100,000 of maintenance that needs to be done for next year. And my understanding, at least, and I apologize if you've covered this, we've taken some funds, some contingency, not contingency, but efficiency dollars from our current budget to prepay some of this out of the current school committee budget. But we don't want to be in the position where The school district is absorbing these costs every year, and they're not in the budget explicitly. And whether or not that dollar amount exists on the school budget side or exists on the city, it needs to be a new bucket, as opposed to the cost being absorbed by the old buckets that weren't planned to allocate that. So again, thrilled that the city and the district are working together on this, and I'm looking forward to hearing wherever it goes. As long as we're funding it, I'm pleased. So thank you.

All right, seeing no more questions on the school committee side, I will hand the gavel back to you, Chair Davis. All right, very well.

Councillor Clungan.

Yeah, I just want to make a comment, Mr. Chair, through you that, you know, the saddest part will be as if that everybody just goes, oh, we never, we just, you know, we just did it sort of case by case and we never really, you know, thought of that or something. So, yeah, no, I mean, the idea that, you know, systems being broken maybe for multi years and kids missing out. Um, although I will say, I hope that kids will be extra responsible with this stuff too, because, you know, it's like, that's kind of, um, sometimes goofing around can, can end up costing us a lot of money. Um, so there's, there's a lot of, uh, there's gotta be some accountability too, um, with some of these things, but certainly if a system goes down, we shouldn't, have to wait until the school department's able to scrape up the funds to get something fixed we should be able to to help with that so hopefully we'll see where where we end up with this

Okay, thank you, Councillor Clingan. I appreciate this discussion and thank you, Ms. Paton for your comments. I completely agree. It wouldn't surprise me at all if to some extent, not only the educators, but also some of the kids may have been helping with some of the maintenance as part of these incredibly valuable programs that we have. But I just, I want to kind of add to the conversation a much, you know, sort of a higher level, excuse me, yeah, higher level kind of filter for, you know, through you, Leah Zamardazzi, and Ms. Anasike, and Director Raish, and anyone else who is listening. you know, this committee and these joint meetings of these two committees were created pretty much exactly for these types of things, because in the past, you know, we've seen that, you know, folks that came before us for the most part, weren't keeping up on maintenance of buildings and facilities. And that was a very, very specific driver of the creation of this body, of these subcommittees, so that we didn't fall into that situation going forward and that we make sure that we keep a focus and a spotlight on areas where ongoing preventative maintenance and any other kind of maintenance needs to happen so that we don't end up in a much worse situation for having failed to do that. And so I think many of those conversations were in relation to the buildings themselves and the conditions of the buildings and the You know, the primary systems, life safety systems that service those buildings. But to me, this is no different, right? As it was noted, we've invested an incredible amount of money as a community in this high school facility. It's wonderful. You know, I think it's entirely likely that the increased enrollment and participation in these programs that was mentioned is because these facilities are so good. So, you know, let's make sure we take care of them and protect those investments with smaller dollars now so that they don't become bigger costs and headaches later. I just want to add my voice to that, to this, and I appreciate that that sounds like that conversation is already happening. I certainly look forward to hearing how we will approach that. Chair Baton, your hand up as well as Chief of Staff Anosike, I'll pass it back to you, Chair Baton, and to lead the conversation.

Thank you, Chair Davis. I just wanted to pile on with what you just said, but also add to it, and Ms. Anosike, I will get to you in a moment, but I couldn't, just wanted to take this moment to also recognize the exceptional leadership of the Somerville High School principal, Alicia Kirsten, and Jim Hashi, the head of the CTE program. Without their phenomenal leadership and attention to these matters, we wouldn't have this individual item before us. Because of their efforts, CTE has grown tremendously in recent years. And I think it's a testament not only to the facilities that we have been able to build and are continuing to maintain through partnership with the city, but also the school leadership. So just would be remiss with not also calling out their contributions. Ms. Anosike, did you want to add something?

Through the chair, thank you, Chair Patone. And also I wanted to underscore what you and school committee member, Ms. Patone mentioned. The CTE department has grown by 48% since 2021. And this is a huge priority for the district. And in terms of maintenance for their equipment, it's something that we've been following very closely. So we're actually really excited that these conversations are happening. And it's something that the programming and the increase in access for students is something we're really proud of. So thank you all for your attention to this. I did want to underscore how important it is to the district.

Excellent. Well, that's a great place to close that item's discussion. So, Chair Davis, I will turn the floor back over to you.

All right. Very good. Thank you. Mr. Clerk, I believe the only item we have left is the item that is on the table. Is that correct?

Correct.

All right, very well. Well, thank you everyone for all of your discussion to members of the administration, the school department, fire department as well. This was really helpful. I think we had a good meeting and we're five minutes ahead of our target end date. So another incredibly effective, efficient meeting. Thanks to you all for helping accomplish that. We have two items, well, Councillor Clingan will move to adjourn. Seeing no discussion on that item, we'll take that motion to adjourn up together with the motion to approve the minutes off the table. Would the clerk please call the roll?

On approval of the minutes and on adjournment. Councillor Sait?

Yes.

Councillor Clingan? Yes. Councillor Davis? Yes. Mr. Chair, all members have voted to accept the minutes and to adjourn.

Chair Baton, thank you.

All right. Thank you all. We are adjourned as well. Have a good night.