Watertown City Council (Tuesday October 28, 2025)

I'd like to call this meeting to order. This meeting is being broadcast and recorded by Watertown Cable Access. It is a Zoom or hybrid meeting. all of that information is available on the city's website, as well as a telephone number and an email address. At this point, I'd like to ask the clerk to please call the roll.

Bays, Feltner, Gannon, Gardner, Izzo, Palomba, Piccirilli, Sideris.

to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. Next item on the agenda is public forum. Is there any member of the public either here or at home that wishes to speak? Seeing none, I close the public hearing and move on to the next item, which is the examination of minutes. Can I get a motion on the minutes of October 14th?

I'll make a motion that we accept the minutes of October 14th as written.

Is there a second? Second. Any discussion?

All those in favor?

Aye. Opposed? The ayes have it. Next item is President's Report. I've been neglected not giving some school committee updates, but I just wanted to give one from last night that we did a very deep dive into MCAS scores, and it was a very interesting discussion, and for all that would like to see it, you can go to the the school website and take a look at the presentation from last night and some of the information. It's very helpful and we're doing a pretty good job. The next item on the agenda is discussion on special matters, and this is discussion on options for the Watertown Middle School. Normally I would recognize the city manager but I'm going to recognize him after the presentation at this point. I want to give a little bit of background about what we're doing this evening.

The school building committee has been very involved from the beginning of the process. And one of the first things that Christie Murphy is here from Vertex, who's our project manager, is gonna begin with some of the information that the school building committee has gone through to continue the discussion on what we were going to do with options for the middle school. So you're going to see a lot of numbers. The manager has already shown a lot of these numbers in his discussions and his preliminary budget overview. but then the manager had tasked us with looking at what we could do as an option if we didn't do a new school or a completely renovated school and do items that have been on our capital improvement program.

and so Vertex tonight is going to show us some of those options and she will probably tell you and repeat what I'm saying but she worked with Denise Moroney for public buildings, the superintendent who's here and her staff to get a sense of what really we needed if we were not going to be doing a complete renovation. So at this point I want to introduce Christy Murphy, our project manager, who's been with us through the high school, middle school, and Modulars and she's our expert and she's our eyes and ears and we're all very pleased to have her and fortunate that she's willing to stay with us. Christie, it's all yours.

Thank you for that nice introduction. I did want to make that point that we're also your OPM for the high school project. Why? Because of the modulars, right? I think everyone's aware of the swing space work that needed to happen in order to build your new high school. So if you have any questions around how that scenario works, I wanted to make sure you understood that. So thank you, everyone. So we're gonna start off with the feasibility study. This right here is a representation of what was presented to- Christy, can you do full screen? I did.

Oh, okay.

Oh, so I see full screen, they see this. Let me see, hold on, we'll do something different. So if I go back to this.

So these slides will all be provided and be put on the website after her presentation this evening.

Great, thank you. So this is a summary of the work of the feasibility study that we did with AI3. and what I wanna show you here, this was presented to the building committee back in June. I'm not gonna take you through all this detail, but essentially what was studied is as if we were to do a feasibility study for a new MSBA project, we looked at a base repair option, if you focus on the red box here, a base repair option essentially bringing your middle school up to code, all codes. ADA, Life Safety, Current Building Code, not fixing anything related to the educational program, just simply bringing it up to code. That is an $87.8 million scenario. Then we looked at an option where it's more of a comprehensive renovation.

It's all of the things of the base repair, but it was also reconfiguring the second floor to try to make more spaces speak to the way teaching happens in the middle school. essentially their cluster model. So trying to make some improvements. And as you can see, that was a $133 million option. Each of these have obviously very different durations. This is all, as a reminder, using the modulars that are on Moxley Field from the high school. The plan was to take them right over when the high school moves out try not to have any gap and any extra expense to the city, having them sit there empty. So the goal was to try to go right into them as much as possible. So then we looked at addition and renovation options and we looked at new building options. And that's what you see here. The school building committee voted

that the preferred options would be option 1a which was an addition and renovation project for 121.4 million roughly and then a new construction option of 124 point 5 million roughly. We were asked at that moment to go back and study further those two options and do what we could to get those to be as tight as possible. and that's this effort here. Additionally, as you can imagine, those two options were quite a bit more than the $84.7 million value that had been brought to this council and I believe approved as a base budget. So that was also why we were going back and revisiting those options to see if we could make them as tight and efficient as possible.

what we did with AI3 is we brought in a middle school education planner we met with the superintendent and the principals and we looked at their operations and how to find efficiencies and essentially we were able to if you look here, we were able to take out almost 7,000 square feet out of the option 1A, which was the addition and renovation option, and we were able to take out 11,700 square feet. from the new building option. All of this still keeping a new school for 630 students. We also brought in three contractors. We brought them in to look at the schedule and the logistics and how to make this as tight of a schedule as possible. Again, trying to minimize the duration that you are paying for these modulars.

and so we were able to reduce the new building but unfortunately with contractor input, the ad reno actually went up by a couple of months. So in the end, this is where we landed. We revisited first on the left the $84.7 million original budget. We aligned that with what we were doing with the modulars, the same type of soft costs, and so in today's dollars, that 84.7 that you had seen before is really 103.15 million. Now we can properly compare that to a revised addition and renovation option at $116 million and a new building option of $112 million.

and the last thing I'll add is that we also decided and this represents in that pricing to look at a different procurement option which was construction management at risk. By doing that, it would allow us to do early packages to start some work while the rest of the design was continuing in order to use those modulars right away. So that is what this summary here represents. This was brought to the city manager. And then as Mark said, we were asked to look at this third scenario, which is this slide. working with the superintendent and the public buildings, they shared with me the capital improvement planning. This list here represents on the left only construction costs. These were estimates, most of them from the public buildings group, some of it I did or checked, but essentially it's a high level estimating.

and we applied that to the same budget structure of using the modulars for one academic year. and to use them as quickly as possible. Again, to minimize downtime of them sitting empty and you paying rent. And what we came up with is a project cost range of between 13.9 million and 27.7 million. the reason that range is so big is we have to be mindful of the assessed value of the middle school and not reaching the threshold that would require us to do a complete Upgrade, which as you saw is more in the 80 million, right? If we were to do a complete upgrade, it was that 87 million. The big picture here is that we could work our way through some of the critical priority items here, something like the roof.

putting on a new security vestibule. That is a significant priority for the school. Some of that would improve ADA, actually. certainly dealing with some of the doors and hardware. We could do some of those things in year one, use the modulars to move the kids into, that's the big disruptive work, and then as we would work very closely with the city's building department, the assessor, the disabilities commission, and the Massachusetts Architectural Access Board and there would be essentially a strategy built to look at how to proceed with some of these other items over the next two or three or four or five years, depending on the assessed value. So that's why that range exists. But the idea was use Moxley, do the most significant work in year one,

and then create the rest of the strategy from there. That's it for now, Mr.

Chair.

basically what, it's a complicated formula that triggers ADA requirements. 25%? It's 30. 30. So we've already done some work as well there this past year, so that would count. So it's a complicated formula and how much work we can actually do with the modulars there. So what I'd like to do at this point is open it up for questions from the city council. because there's a lot of information here. And the manager gave us a lot of information as well. And some of us went on the tour. Oh, I'm sorry. Before I open it up, I'm going to turn it over to the manager. I already forgot what I was going to do. Mr. Manager.

Thank you Mr. President and I do look forward to hearing the thoughts of the council this evening and certainly I'm available to answer any questions the council may have as we go through it. I also have available here some of the slides from last week if there's anything or two weeks ago if anyone has any particular questions and wants to review anything in the numbers and the circumstances that I went over last week. but I just want to share in case there's anyone in the midst of this who didn't see last week's presentation it is kind of the the the the threshold challenge that led us to where we are here today. I shared at the last meeting my best perception of what the situation is with or without the middle school. And I think it's important to understand that while we've been able to use new growth to meet our needs, even through years where a number of things have gotten more expensive, from the high school project itself where we were able to set aside money and stabilization.

The council was very thoughtful working how to do that. as its price increased by 10% to keep our borrowing at the same number, to the costs in departments where there's been various things, insurance costs, insurance costs and there's just been a couple of big ones that, what's that? Solid waste costs, I'm sorry, the solid waste budget that have been kind of taking off beyond the normal levels of what you would expect them to do and we've had those new growth years that have been high that have been able to allow us to absorb that and we're heading into a time when I'm not seeing that when I'm seeing total budget growth in the 3.1 percent per year numbers, and we don't know where inflation is. We don't know where interest rates are going. We don't know what risks may exist from those circumstances. And that's the thing that really caused me to say,

and to be clear, I want to be clear about this, not that we can't do the middle school, but that if we were to do the full project, we would lose the flexibility and options in our budget that allow us to do other things. and in this case, it would really cause us to have to be very careful about figuring out circumstances around the senior center, meeting our downtown plan and the Watertown Square area plan goals and launching anything that's a new program in the coming years. and looking at where those are relative to where our likely deficits are in our projections right now, having to close those and go beyond the borrowing we originally planned for the middle school. So we built a $70 million borrowing plan. I shared last time, how costs exceeded what I presented a year ago and what I consider doable based upon that. because it pushed the limits of the budget. But then again, like I said, it's not like anything can't be done. It's just understanding the trade-offs and the circumstances surrounding that.

the work we've been doing with Christie we have a bit over 17 million dollars to work with if we don't do the school we also remove 70 million of borrowing from the capital plan some of that would involve moving Moxley up earlier because if we took the modulars away in one year or zero years versus three years or four years, some of that could be repurposed to addressing the senior center. I wanted to take a lot of the new growth that's in Watertown Square and put it towards doing the Watertown Square streetscape work, albeit most of the new growth that we're seeing in our projections is in Watertown Square. that's an interesting thing to note as we look at this. But that's where we kind of face the challenge of determining should we do this What should we do and where should it go next? I want to stress on the whole ADA question. It's not that we don't want to do everything we possibly can to make the building more accessible for people who need it as much as we possibly can.

it's just that one needs to understand the way that our rules are set up around construction and disabilities. If we build a new entry point that is there for the purpose of creating better accessibility, and doing that entry point triggers a threshold that requires us to bring the entire rest of the building up to code. We probably need to go visit the architectural access board and ask for some relief, some waivers, maybe some extra time, but definitely may be saying, hey, this section or that section may or may not be able to be done. And it's really important to acknowledge that we need to do that because there comes a point where you're chasing a bunch of challenges on a building where what we really are trying to do is hit the major important things. One of the major important things is having an accessible, safe, secure, high quality entrance to the building. It has been a priority on the capital plan for a very long time.

If we're not going to build a new school, I really want to make sure that gets done because it's something that's really important and we just have to figure out how we work through the issues of some of these thresholds as we do it. So a couple people have asked me in the last couple weeks why we're in such a rush So I just want to make sure if I didn't clearly answer that last week. The reason we're in a rush, as Christie said, is because we have a set of modular buildings that are sitting out there that have a monthly cost for us to continue to hold on to them. and we also don't exactly see other costs going down at the same time as we do this. We, in September, when we got this 112 million dollar number, we told AI3 to stop designing the new building. because we didn't want to design a new building that we didn't have a path forward to afford. If the council sees fit to tell us that it's time to ramp up doing that new building, we'll ramp up doing that new building. But we are a couple months behind now and we needed to be because I think we need to have this conversation.

If we decide we're not doing a new building, there are still decisions to be made that reflect the modulars. For example, if we wanted to do this whole list over the course of six summers or seven summers or eight summers, we don't need modulars at all. But if we want to fast track a key number of sections of it, we want to get those things designed and out to bid as quickly as possible and get the students into the modulars so we can use them and get out of them without having to keep them there longer than we have to because they're particularly expensive to hang on to. So there are some decisions that really need to be made in the very near future in order to determine what we're doing here. because I mean the other piece of it is really simply I'm determined to keep on the council schedule putting together the next capital plan and really looking for the council's direction on how to do that and make sure that we have the right numbers, the realistic numbers the numbers that really make sense because last year we built a capital plan based upon 70 million dollars of borrowing for middle school and now we know that that doesn't work so

I'm, Kristi and I are based, we are here to answer questions tonight. We are here to provide any guidance we can. I'm happy to go over anything that was on any part of my presentation from two weeks ago. but I just look forward to hearing the council's thoughts and answering the council's questions as we figure out where we go from here. So thank you very much, Mr. President and members of the council.

Thank you Mr. President, thank you Mr. Manager for your insights and thank you to our OPM for her insights as well. I see, I mean, I recognize that it's worth doing something at the very least when we have the modulars and I guess we have a 2% borrowing rate as well. Are we paying this out of operating? That's what the manager had said.

The manager gave a slide last week and our borrowing is in the fours.

is in the fours now, even for short term.

I don't have the exact number, but the borrowing is in the 4% plus.

I can pull that back up again, but it is indeed in the fours. it was it was as interest rates have gone up ours have gone up I think as I noted our interest rates don't go aren't at the same level of like a home mortgage because it's tax-exempt bonds but essentially they have been creeping up at the same rate that other interest rates have. So we were in the twos when we did the elementary school borrowing. And every year that number has crept up. It has, I believe, Yeah, so April of 22 we were at 2.489. June of 23 we were at 3.6. June of 24 we were at 3.8. Our last borrowing was at 4.28.

and so we've heard about the numbers but I want to see what the educational benefits we got from the proposed fixes as stated before so I was struck by the superintendent's comments when we were looking at doing a substantially renovated building that this would be great for our students to go through world-class modern learning environments all the way from elementary school to high school. perhaps I could Mr. President have the superintendent address what I did have a question.

Let's first start with questions for Christie. Okay. Okay? And I can answer one of the questions. The first item on the list is the roof. no kid is gonna see what's going on on the roof. So you're not giving them anything by doing the roof. And the only way, our energy manager wants to put solar panels on the roof and he can't do it if we don't do the roof. So the first part of that question is, we say we're upgrading the building, but you're giving them a roof, the kids don't see the roof.

No, I got it. So my question really...

Yeah, and you can, I will ask the superintendent if she's willing to come up, but we want to ask as many questions of Christy first, if possible.

Thank you. Wonderful, thank you. So my concerns go back to way back in the day when I went to middle school in that very same building and maybe two more of our counselors did as well so it was outmoded back in the day and the front part certainly so So the upgrades we're looking at, would they impact the learning environment of our students? Would they improve the learning environment of our students? Are we just talking hallway renovations, new roof? How about the classroom? Are we changing anything within the classroom?

Something like the auditorium and the gym having HVAC. We did hear on the tour on Thursday that that's something that is challenging in a gym. I would say that would be an improvement. I do think the doors and hardware probably are an improvement for the experience and also for accessibility. We do have one here. maybe trying to do something with outdoor learning and fixing some landscape areas. The courtyard is a mystery still to everybody. We'd love to figure out how to do something. We did put a budget in there for that. Don't really know what it could be, but try to do something. For the most part, the majority of this was what I would call maintenance improvements from a building standpoint.

Okay, so with that in mind, so what's the comparison between what a new building would give the student's learning environment versus this plan?

I think that the superintendent should do most of that talking, but I will say the biggest thing is the teaching to the model, the cluster model, and having the room structure and configuration to teach that way. there's only one section of the middle school where that really works right it's the eighth grade section one floor where the rooms every discipline is represented and then they have a little gathering space in the center that's how they teach but the building doesn't support it

Okay, and a follow-up question concerning free cash certification from the city. So I note that the Division of Local Services, Department of Revenue certified Watertown's free cash at $33 million to be used as the council needs for one-time types of purposes. So in general, city and town budgeting, you budget conservatively. You plan for the worst and hope for the best. generally there's free cash which is the value of budgets that weren't spent and the like so Watertown got a total of 33 point something million so What would the debt service over a 20-year be for the original plan that we were talking about?

what for specifically the middle school, what the debt service would be?

This is our first time asking questions about the projects.

Yeah, that's okay. Just a second. I just need to...

We don't typically ask questions during the preliminary budget overview, so this gives you an opportunity to have your questions.

So prior to At the $70 million of borrowing, the top year on the debt service was fiscal year 29, and that number was $5,408,000. It goes up by about $2 million in that fiscal year, 29 year, when you add, when you bring that debt service number up to about $98 million, $98.5 million.

and what's the five year average of free cash certified by the division of local services over the last five years?

Five-year average? Just average. Well, I only have three years in my calculations here. That's fine. But let me take a look at where... where we were on those numbers. so we were actually, so fiscal year 21 we were at 22 million, fiscal year 22 we were at 30 million, 23 we were at 25 million, 24 was the outlier because we had the, we underspent 11 million dollars and we ended up at 43 million and this year we're at 33. So I mean if I roughly try to average that it's around 30. although fiscal year 24 is a bit of an outlier, I don't think we're gonna ever have a year quite like that again.

Okay, and so with that in mind, with the debt service for a 20-year project or 20-year borrowing at conventional rates, Is it your opinion that this project cannot be funded by free cash, which can be appropriated for any municipal purpose?

So we have a tradition here in Watertown where we take $2 million of free cash every year and place it into the operating budget. And the reason we place that into the operating budget is only to cover the value of essentially pay as you go Capital Projects. So could I say, okay, we're gonna put $4 million of free cash into the operating budget, use the other two million to cover a portion of our debt service. There's nothing legally that stops us from doing that, but at the point where the free cash into the budget is higher than the pay-as-you-go Capital Projects. It's just, it seems to feel more like we're starting to use free cash to fund the operating side of the annual the total of the budget.

The other thing I will say is our goal on free cash is that free cash plus general stabilization is supposed to equal between 8 and 15 percent of the budget. I wouldn't want to get in a circumstance where we start committing a certain amount of free cash such that we start dropping below that 8 to 15. last year we had 43 million. We spent a significant amount of that in funding middle school stabilization. We spent a significant amount of that in the purchase of the site on Waltham Street. That brought our number down. to about 26 million left, which put us at about 11%. The 33 million takes us back up to 15. I think that I explained last time the reason I like being at 15 right now is because there is a substantial amount of uncertainty in the world of

just in the world I think in general and thought that as a rainy day fund it was safer to be on the higher end. But like I said when I began with, it's a matter of trade-offs. If the council wanted to create a budget policy and basically say that they're willing to put more free cash into the budget than what we spend on pay-as-you-go capital projects then I give you a budget that does that. I'm not sure it's consistent with what we've done before though and with kind of where the council's guided me to date.

And one more question, Mr. President, before I respect my colleagues and let them ask questions. So I know the budgetary plan is to pay down our OPEB liability. by 2031. That's roughly five years, six years from a budget. So what do we pay per year on average to our OPEB debt service or liability reduction and will that money become available in 2031 for other purposes such as the middle school improvement?

So let me just pull my forecast slide here for one moment. there's 200 slides in this presentation so it just takes me a moment to find the right one. So pension and OPEB total well, let me break, I can break pension and OPEB apart, but.

And I note that we do have continuing OPEB and health insurance.

Yes, so pension numbers were, Oh yeah, got the same one. Okay, so... here so the numbers are basically in the three to four million dollar range for the most part going forward our fiscal year 26 number was 3.5 million our fiscal year 27 number is projected to be just over 4 million, 28, 4.6, 29, 3.99, fiscal year 30, 3.5. There's one more year there which I think is about the same. It's off this chart of projections. and yeah after that you probably pick up about three and a half million in annual operating costs is available being available to you so if we maintained the plan to pay OPEB at that level then there would be a bit of a a bit of an available funding source beyond that circumstance. And like I said last time, you know,

if we do the middle school, one of the things we're gonna have to do is reduce OPEB starting in fiscal year 2027 through 29. And I put that little chart together with the four options of with middle school, without middle school. If we do the full project, we're reducing OPEB, were reducing senior center contributions. And by fiscal year 29, I'm having a hard time fitting the open space and the affordable housing contribution into the budget as well. and the entire senior center contribution. So like all of those things disappear by fiscal year 29. Will things get rosier in fiscal year 32 when OPEB is fully paid off well if if I don't delay it too much then sure but if we're delaying it to pay the building that does push that 2031 number a little later and opening up that $3.5 to $4 million in the budget doesn't happen until the point that we fully pay off that particular line. So, thank you.

Okay, thank you, Mr. Manager, and thank you, Mr. President.

And thank you to the auditor for giving me those numbers so quickly.

Thank you, Madam Auditor. We have a team effort here tonight.

Yes, absolutely.

Councilor Palomba.

I apologize to have you do this, Christy, but I need you to go back to the first slide, please. I don't have any, and I'm just... I just want to be clear. Which one of those slides is a completely new building? Sure. Which one of the columns? I'm sorry.

2B and 2E.

But go to the next slide.

But if you go to this slide, this, sure.

Yeah, but truth in lending, the real number is on the next slide.

2E is, right.

We'll stay here. 2B and 2E are complete. Knock them down, build them up. Correct. Why are there two?

there are different configurations that's all yes yep this was the full feasibility study and looking at different layouts

Addition, the one with the checks around it must be the addition with some renovation, with some knockdown and some build.

Yep, that's 1A and 1C.

Thank you. Can you move to the... Sure.

And so 1A, addition and renovation, and 2E, new, were the preferred options. from the school building committee. Oh, 1A and 2E.

So from the previous slide. The C and E, E was the choice.

Yep, 1A and 2E, correct.

and from the first slide to this slide, the numbers have been reduced. Yes. After reducing square footage.

Right, right, I see, okay. So you presented in 618 and you revised recently. Yes, yes, correct. I just need to study them for a second before you move off of them, please. and Hayes. Thank you.

Sure thing. I should note the alternates include PV and a battery, so being equal to the other schools. That's what that alternate's line is.

But the next slide, how does the next slide, which shows a 14 or 13.9, where does that fit into this slide? Tony, put your microphone on. Sorry, I apologize for that, all that. It wasn't that important. I caught it, I caught it. Where does this slide... match into the previous slide.

It's a completely different scenario. We were asked at this point to look at the capital improvements planning that the public buildings group has been doing with the superintendent. and they have many of these exactly iterations. And so what this list on the left is is like the priorities. the priority tier one options that they've been looking at, some of them for many years, as the manager said. And so what we did is we took this priority list and essentially if we did them all, if we could just do them all right now using the modulars, that would be a $27.7 million project. but that's still. To do them all. To do them all, but we still wouldn't have brought the building up to code.

Up to code.

Exactly.

Do you have a figure that would bring the building up to code?

We only have the 87 million on the first slide, which is bringing it up to all codes. In this case, what we were saying is what we have to focus on is the accessibility code. then the reason is because of that 30% threshold as soon as you start renovating and hit that 30% of the assessed value, building assessed value, that is when you trigger having to bring the entire building up to code. I don't have a value for that.

But if we went with the 87, which is way on earlier. Correct. and that's still, is that figure still good, 87? Yes. Okay, that would bring us up the code. Correct, all codes. Every code. Correct. Okay, and then just one final question for the town manager, city manager, excuse me, George. What is the annual, the monthly cost for the modules? I know it was in your presentation two years ago, I mean, a couple,

It's roughly $136,000 a month. The lease value now is about $136,000 a month. that's that's just the lease values after we built it right so we had to build it and then we leased it 136 million I mean 136,000 forgive me a month 136,000 a month

So it costs us $136,000 per month to keep it as it is. Correct. Okay. Thank you, Council President.

Thank you. Councilor Gardner.

Thank you Mr. President, thank you for joining us this evening. Could you just explain like the timing around this 30% triggering the full ADA compliance because for example I might do something this year and in five years and hit 25% of the building. And then in five years I might do something else. And I'm assuming at that point they would look at the assessed building value and would I go over or not. So it seems to me We talked about doing this as rapidly as possible versus over summers. I'm just wondering how time impacts the assessment of whether or not you've triggered. and do you need to have a quiet year in between or a quiet three years or what have you?

Great question. It's a continuous 36 months. So over 36 months, you cannot trigger the 30% assessed value. So after year one, they're looking at the next three years, if that makes sense. So you don't get to start over after the next year, unfortunately. It's continuous 36 months.

Okay, great. And then one other in the weeds question, but if you go back to the very beginning, I think at one point you said we moved from 84 to 103. Correct. and it seems to me that was I think what you said was that was partially inflation but I think it sounded to me also like partly re-scoping the project. and I'm trying to understand how much of that was cost inflation. I think you used the word today's dollars, which is what triggered my mind. And how much of that was actually change in scope? I wouldn't call it scope creep because it was by design, but it was scope increase.

that $84.7 million was not a whole total project cost.

Go to the next slide.

Sure.

what wasn't included in that first 84 was the modulars and the soft cost construction cost. I don't.

Yep, exactly right.

So technically, I'm gonna take a step back and try to answer this first. We hired an architect as the school building committee. And we probably should have done a feasibility study and then looked at the numbers, but we didn't. we looked at what the architects told us in a presentation to the school building committee and took those numbers. But those numbers didn't include the modular, so really.

Okay, so it's just not an all-in cost because the all-in cost includes the modules.

The total cost would have been 103. and that would have been what the manager would have looked at and said, oh no, we're not borrowing that.

Okay, I got it.

So I think the true number we should have been looking at was 103. and then we would have been able to cost out. Mr. Manager?

Got it. So just to reinforce the Council President's point and be absolutely clear, the $84.7 million project it turns out after getting deep into the numbers costs 103 million dollars right but the hundred and three million dollar project also once doing the educational studies and meeting with the teachers and meeting with the superintendent and everything was deemed by the school department to not be worth doing because it did not achieve certain educational goals. So the delta from 84 to 103 was caused by the refinement of the numbers. The delta from 103 to 121 was caused by introduction of improvements to the program.

Do you mean the 112 and the 112?

I'm sorry, 112. I'm looking at 121. Yeah, I didn't look at the lower number. Right. From the revised 2E, from 103 to the revised 2E of 112 is programmatic changes from what we originally intended to do.

after the feasibility study was done, which was 1200 pages.

A third question. I think a source of great pride and satisfaction to this town is that we built three net zero energy schools. and we did a lot as well at the Lowell. Under these scenarios, so when you have new, like what are the standards, not around the educational portion, but what are the standards around sustainability, et cetera, that are being assumed and built in. And where it's partial old and partial new, ditto. So I'd like to hear more about that.

Absolutely, the goal of 1A and 2E was to be equal to your high school and elementary schools, meaning net zero and- Net zero energy. Correct. Correct. So that alternates the second to last line. That's included in that 4.7 million. 4.7 million. Ah, yeah. that we did it as an alternate so that you would be able to see, okay, maybe we can't do that right now, but we can at least get the new school done. So we broke it out. So it would be basically net zero ready at...

Above the line of the alternate. Above the line, exactly. Yeah, okay. And if we... if we were to do the difference between net zero ready versus net zero energy, does it actually cost more to do it later or is it actually A plus B equals C? Do you know what I'm asking?

I do, other than Escalation. And as you know, really, we're outside of any real opportunity for a lot of the you know, former IRA grants and such, you know, so incentives, I should say, incentives. So that's what this cost represents. no incentives, and a continuous project if it were to start now. You could escalate that, but you could do it later. And hopefully something new would come up.

Okay, one more question then I'm going to yield, but I may come back with more. If you look over the last, I don't know, three to five years, and this is kind of a flyer question, so you can say I don't know and that's totally fine, but if you look at what construction inflation both materials and labor have how they've been moving and kind of deferrals of supply chain interruption and things not coming when they're supposed to and that adding on uncertainty and risk etc. like can you just help us those of us who have not been in the building world I don't know I know my kids are happy that they bought their stove pre the start of the year because they knew they're gonna do their kitchen and they end up saving a lot of money but I I really don't know like what's the rate of inflation and do we see any reason to think that that's going to change and has it been actually increasing over time so anything you could give us sure that'd be great

I will tell you the last three to five years have been sometimes hell on wheels, frankly. It's been terrible, but that's not where we are right now. We do have the tariff thing that comes and goes, but essentially these numbers include about 3.5% escalation, which is level. That's kind of what it was before COVID. and we've seen that. Again, taking the tariff thing and separating that because it depends on what you buy and when and all the things that are happening. but if we just look at right now escalation, 3.5% we feel is, it was like 3.7% to be honest with you, is what we would call a normalized escalation. but prior to that it's been some of these costs were 10, 15, 20% more to be honest with you.

Councilor Izzo.

Thank you, Mr. President. So I have a question on the CIP improvement plan for like 14. So that 13.9 million to 27.7 million, that's the range of possibility to... basically update basic updates in the building, right?

Right, the 13.9 being doing the amount just up to the threshold of 30%. And then the 27.7 million being the full amount.

Okay, so I don't know if you can answer this question, but I guess my main question on this possibility is how many years does that buy us until we'll need to come back and say we need to fully renovate this building now? Does it get us 10 years or does it get us 30 plus?

I'm going to answer you from the population and number of students standpoint. the majority of our classrooms from a Massachusetts school building authority standpoint, the majority of your classrooms are 5% or more smaller than their recommended size of classrooms. OK, so you are right now at 597 students, I believe, as of last Thursday. And I heard class sizes are about 26 or so average. if that were to continue at the growth rates you've been seeing, which is how we got to, if you don't mind me going back for a minute, how we got to the 630 student design, We looked at your last 10 years of growth. We looked at your kindergarten class and escalated based on that average.

And that came out to about 648 students. but the design that AI3 did allowed for flexibility so we could design to 630 and accommodate 650. with sharing spaces and efficiencies. So it really has a lot to do with, I think we can keep your building in good shape doing a lot of this, but growth will be one thing. And I'm sure the superintendent could weigh in on more of that.

Yeah, so when she comes up later. And then the second part of my question is, so when you say getting rid of square footage, Can you just explain, are you just making the project smaller or can you just elaborate?

Efficiencies. Yeah, so finding efficiencies, shared spaces. Okay. When we used the educational planner and we met with the principal and superintendent and others, we looked at the way they schedule rooms and could you use this room for this particular function and this particular function. so that's how we did it. By finding efficiencies and understanding the schedule and maybe even looking at different ways of scheduling, that's how we were able to make some reductions from the initial assumptions.

Okay, thank you.

Feltner.

Thank you, Mr. President. Could you remind us again if I'm, the numbers match in the feasibility study in terms of the assessment of what we're, the assessed value of the middle school now?

the building assessment is just over 24 million.

Okay, so we're staying with those numbers and so

May I just add one quick thing to that? I just want to stress that when it comes to the assessment that has been done on a public building that's not paying taxes, sometimes that information isn't quite right and up to date. And I haven't had a chance to have a conversation with the assessor as to whether or not that that is the number that it should be today. City governments don't file abatements and say, okay, your number's too high or too low because it's really just a total and a base. It's not an actual, not an actual thing. Before we determined what 30% of the assessed value of the building would be, I would ask the assessor's office to to just take a top to bottom look at the building and say, is it 24 or is it 25 or is it 23? I feel like I'm not trying to steer them. I would never try to tell an assessment office what a number should be. What I want them to do is take a look at it and give us their professional assessments. It's very important in the world of assessing. I just want to absolutely clearly say this. City managers

take a very hands-off approach to assessing assessors because what they do is very much a technical process that is important that people understand the integrity of that process and the way that it works with that said the difference between assessing a middle school and assessing say a somebody's house is that if the middle school is a little off, no one's going to come complaining about. So assessing offices have to make sure they get the houses and all those other things right every day. before I absolutely say you know that number in the last thing is 24 so that's the end all be all of it and it must be that you know one of the things that's interesting is if you go and you do the vestibule that may add a few million dollars of value and then you have to reassess it at that point like we would constantly ask the assessing office to provide us their best professional understanding of what that assessment number is to determine what that 30% is because that determines whether or not we're doing something or going to the Architectural Access Board or saying that it can't be done because we're triggering these code upgrades.

It's a very technical conversation and it's very important and I just want to stress that while the number but the number we have is in that 24 million range. Before we absolutely say that's the number, I want to make sure that we are sure we have given it its best look at that point. Great. I'll carry on from there.

I'm sorry. Thank you. I appreciate that. So just to be clear in my mind, but the – so this would trigger the ADA – requirements because they're obviously way over.

If we were to do the whole list, correct.

Right. And then we also have the fire suppression system that gets triggered as well, right? About 33%?

has been upgraded, that's what I was going to say. Oh, okay. You're current with that.

Okay, I was just looking at that feasibility study talking about that. I mean one of the things that really jumps out at me is the ADA and people, my experience is you know you generally focus on the physical attributes of that. the entrance to the building. But when you talk about the educational programming in the interior of the building and okay we have one cluster unfortunately just one cluster that can be there and we have an elevator but the but I guess I liken it a little bit to a redevelopment project and you imagine yourself as a pedestrian circulating through the site and in the school and then well technically you can get to that part of the middle school but you've got to get to the other end of the school and then you have to think

what does that mean for the student because that takes a lot of time of the day not just whether you can do something and how that interrupts the day and If we go back to your other chart where we were talking about the 2E versus the 1E, that's not a huge difference in number if I'm understanding correctly, the 112 versus 116. One is a brand new school, one is, Addition, Reno, not really fully meeting your educational needs?

I'm just very big picture here. The idea was that 1A would... would respond to the cluster model and do that. So essentially what that 1A would be is keeping your 1998 edition, the gym and the auditorium, and that one classroom wing that is the one with the cluster model that works. It would be the 1922 section that would come down and the addition be there and it would be designed almost like 2E in that it would have the proper configurations.

But, Mr. President, if I may, just to be clear here, Councilor, sorry, just the... once we did the last pass through this the conclusion we came to was the full teardown rebuild is actually the lower price one by a small amount they flipped in that last tightening because the full rebuild was about 3 million more and then it went to being about 3.8 million less. If you all said plow ahead and do a middle school, unless something has significantly changed since we last looked at this in August, I think our solution would be to do the Teardown Rebuild project because that's the 112 on this number. it's faster, right? It's a 22 month project versus a 29 month project. Time is money. We've lost a couple of months now having this conversation, but if we all said, hey, we're doing this, We're going to find a way. We're going to do this. We're willing to take the risks that I laid out. We're going to do this. We do the 112 project. We do the teardown rebuild. It would be a completely new, completely accessible.

There would be no issues with any of those sort of things.

And less risk. We carried higher contingencies for 1A than you would in a new building.

Right, and the difficulties of retrofitting sustainability efforts and all that. So that's just something that jumps out. I want to clarify that I was understanding that correctly. again you know we say ADA a lot but I also just think about the adaptability of the learning spaces and I know that's very highly rated across the whole school community and in the study and so I appreciate all the work you did on population growth. you know 10 years ago even let's say was a big effort to really focus on the schools and making them our top priority and responding to all sorts of things but population growth, inflexibility, classroom sizes and

I do have concerns about not moving forward just even in the science area. We want to stay competitive. We want to be competitive. We say we want to excel and not just meet the standard. but I know it's a big number and there's a lot of concerns as we know with Unknowns, and New Growth, and Watertown's been well managed for so many years. So I guess that's not a question obviously, but more of a sharing that I am taking this very seriously and appreciate this newer information and detail and

just concern about the continuity of education as well from elementary to middle and then high school traditionally this is a cohort that we've lost to private or other means of education and I'd really love to have every member of our community stay in our schools, be part of the schools. So I'll leave it there for now.

Council Piccirilli.

Thank you. So can I just ask one question? Is that $112 million still a good number?

it's a good number but we did as the manager said we have lost a couple of months so you know I would say there's probably a couple more months of lease we have to restart the architects we would have can we would have been continuing So there's that. The numbers generally work the same, but I would say there's a little bit more lease needed to be added onto that.

Okay. So we don't really know. And I'll point out that when we did the high school project, when we submitted it to the MSBA, it was $198 million. and then after a year of architectural design, it was $20 million higher and then we did the value engineering, we cut out $20 million worth of stuff and then it went out to bid and it was another $20 million higher. So it's at $19 million higher. It's $219 million now, right? The high school?

The bid numbers came in good.

But after we did all the value engineering, cut out a whole bunch of stuff. But I'm just pointing out, it came out good, but it was still 19 million hires higher than total what was approved by the MSBA. So we don't know, right? There's a lot going on with these numbers. I mean, we think, we hope that it could be that, but I mean, if... how certain are we gonna be? It's gonna be 112 or 115 million. We don't know.

That was the historic escalation time that we spoke of just a few minutes ago. You really hit it at the worst time. Yes, I know it was. It was terrible. It was terrible.

It was terrible. So I think I want to talk about expectations, right? Because a year ago, we weren't planning on building a new middle school. We actually had $10 million in the CIP to do renovations like you showed some of the stuff on the last page of your presentation over the next five years at the middle school. but we decided to do the feasibility study to see if it was possible, if it was feasible. and the numbers are the numbers. We know that it's more than we think is prudent. But I want to just point out that we'd never planned, a year ago we were not planning on doing this.

and the fact that we did the feasibility study I think raised expectations that we were going to do it and both here at this table and out in the public and at the school department but I think it was a good process because I think it gave us information that we didn't have a year from now. And believe me, there's nothing I want more than to build a new middle school. But I think the question is, the question is not are we gonna build a new middle school or not, it's a question of when we're going to build it. And I think if you go back to the 2017 Building for the Future plan, that we sat with the town council and school committee together deciding on a fit plan forward. It was a two-track plan. It was to build, to do additional renovations of three elementary schools, one after another, and then do an MSBA program to build a new high school and then when that was done do a second MSBA project to build a new middle school.

That was the plan, that's what we promised to the public, that's what we promised to to the school children and the parents in this community. But we did the feasibility study to see, because we had the opportunity of using the modules, could we do it? So I just want to say, it's not that what we're proposing about, if you go to the last page of your presentation, that's just whatever is here is not instead of building a new middle school this is just a bridge until we're ready to build the new middle school So I was at the school committee last night and Dr. Galison did a nice job in terms of laying out their fiscal year 27 budget goals and priorities. and it was interesting the data sheet pointed. So when we did in 2017, we started this, we had anticipated, we had two different population studies.

Both of them showed our population, school population declining over 20 years. We did projects for both the elementary school project and the high school project assuming that the population is going to grow 1% a year. The numbers that superintendent presented is that our school population this year compared to 2016 is 11% higher in nine years. So we've had 11% growth. It's 2,800 students now, the highest it's been in the last nine, 10 years. So, and that shouldn't surprise anybody in this room or anybody at home listening to this because we built some amazing schools. We've added a ton of staff, teaching staff in the schools and we've added some exceptional programs in the school. English, foreign language at the elementary school. We've done universal pre-K. We have done some amazing things. So it's not surprising that

parents with small children are moving to Watertown to go to our schools because they're great schools. So we owe each other a pat on the back for doing that. But now the question is, maybe those assumptions that we did back in 2017 in the school population are not valid anymore. So we've been seeing in kindergarten and first grade some big numbers coming in. The high school, once the high school's done, I don't know what that's going to do in terms of bringing more people in. and I think some parents who would normally send their kids to private schools now choosing to keep them in the public schools. All of these are good things. I think we need to take some time, go back to what we originally planned and take some time to really do a more thorough feasibility study Is that $112 million going to solve the problem for the next 30 years? Or are we going to find ourselves 5, 6, 8, 10 years from now saying, oh my god,

we can't fit all our K-5 kids in the three elementary schools. So then what do we do? Additions to those schools? do we decide we have an opportunity we're going to build a new middle school maybe we'll do it five through eight maybe that solves the problem but I don't know at this point I don't think any of us knows what the future is going to bring So I will go back to where we were a year ago. If we didn't proceed, if we didn't vote to proceed with this feasibility study for the Can we build a new middle school? Can we do that renovation add for the middle school? Maybe we need to do a little more work. Maybe we need to think about it. Maybe we need to do like a full MSBA style feasibility study and actually do some planning for the future so that what we do five or eight years from now is really going to meet the needs for the community for the 21st century education for the next 30, 40 years. Just a thought, just a thought.

Believe me, I want nothing more than to build a new middle school. I absolutely do. But I just think we're trying to rush this and it makes me nervous. because we can rush and get this done. And I don't want to get it done, and then the day it opens, it's already overcrowded. I think that will do us a disservice to the school district and to our children. So I think we really need to think about this and plan some more, which is what we were planning to do a year from now. I mean, I've spent more time than the council president on this thinking about how to do it, but that's just my observation, so thanks.

Councilor Bays, did you have your hand up?

Yeah.

Before I recognize some others again.

Yeah, I mean, I just had a couple of questions.

Be my guest.

And I don't know if you even know the answer to this, but I'm just curious if you know, do you know what percentage of a building, like a school, What percentage of it is sourced? The materials that they're using are sourced from outside this country? Do you know that percentage? Do you know anywhere where I could find that out? I'm just curious.

I could look into an average, but it's hard because it has everything to do with the design and the materials that are designed.

I was just wondering if we could look at what the high school has done and how much was... We don't know that. Okay. I thought you might not, but I am curious to know that answer, because I do want to assess a certain amount, like, if there's any risk, what the risk would be. This might be to, does anyone remember, maybe George, when during the course of the legislative, Session. The home rule petition was passed that did the the tax shift to commercial that allowed us to have the greater percentage to the commercial. Do you remember when during the legislative session? I'm just wondering. I'm trying to figure out when we might have an idea whether or not that's gonna get passed.

So I can find out the answer to that within a couple of minutes, but what I will tell you is when it comes to the legislative schedule, the best thing I can say is that past performance will not predict future results because The time they did it last time had a lot to do with where they were in the political structure, what they were working on, and this session's a different session than the last session. just because it's been submitted doesn't it hasn't been sent to the committee for its first step of scheduling yet so like I don't know but give me a moment and before the end of this meeting I can at least answer that question of what the what the timeline was last time and what it would look like if it was the same. What I have said to our delegation is that the first moment in time when it is absolutely helpful for me to know the answer to that question is sometime around February or March of 26 because that's when we start putting together the budget for fiscal year 27.

If I put the fiscal year 27 budget together, assuming it's gonna pass, and not worrying about tax increases that would be caused if it doesn't pass, and then you pass a budget based upon that in May or June, and then we start spending on that budget in July, I come to hear a year from now next November when we're setting the tax rate if it hasn't passed and we are five months into using that new budget and it hasn't passed. and then that means a huge tax increase in order to cover that budget which is why what I've said to our delegation is I really, really need to know what's going on by that February-March timeframe. So if you say to me, hey, this isn't happening this year, we can talk about the contingency plans related to that. The likelihood that I'm going to get information before that, being that we're heading to the end of October, is pretty limited. But I can at least lay out what happened last time and take a close look at it.

Okay, thank you. My assistant here, my vault of knowledge, we submitted the request in August of 22 and got an answer back in October of 23. Thank you, Councilor Piccirilli for keeping such good records. Councilor Bays, did you have anything else? No, that was it. Okay, Councilor Palomba?

Thank you. I hate to do this. Can we go back again to the first slide? Just more for clarification for myself, if you don't mind. Thank you. So the reason that I understand No, I'm sorry, the second slide, I apologize. The reason these numbers vary so much seems to have a lot to do with the square footage and the the square footage and the construction costs. Am I valid in saying that?

And the duration.

Oh, duration meaning the modules. Those are the three basic things that keep changing here. Because we went from 103 to 121 and then down to 116. and a lot of that seems to have to do with the construction costs and I didn't notice the duration. Is duration up there?

Yes. You see the number of months, 24, 26, 29.

about five lines down.

Number of months. Oh, the number of months of construction, which then translates also to the number of months we keep the modules. Is that the basic? Correct. And then can you go to the second line, the last visual? So the 13.9 to 27, are you saying that if we hit the 27.7, Mullen, if we spent that much money, plus the money we spent on the windows years ago from the MSBC, would we hit our 30%?

that would be over. That 27.7 million represents just simply doing a total project budget to do everything on the priority list.

But the priority list comes up with 14.

That's just the construction cost. Then there's the modular lease and the other soft costs that make up the full 27.

So that's where you get to the 27. So this 14 jumps to 27. If we do all the 14, it actually is 27. Is that right?

Right, but unfortunately, we really can't do that. We just were trying to understand the range.

Okay, I didn't catch the relationship between the 14 and the 27, that's where I was. And then one final question, I think it's final. When we walked through the building the last time, just recently, the other day. A theme that I constantly heard was storage space. Every place we went, there's no storage space. We're here, we're there. I know this is a hard question. Is anything in this 14-27 million do anything to alleviate some of the concerns around storage space?

Yes, the superintendent had a very good idea. if you look up from the bottom, four from the bottom, repurpose lower locker rooms to storage. and then that would allow to free up other spaces that could maybe be used for more programs.

So we would take the whole locker room section that we saw from right and we would just turn it in storage right this is the 1922 building yep yep downstairs yes correct okay thank you appreciate it

LeGannon. Yes, I thank you Mr. President. I want to go back to the original number that the city manager quoted us before cost rose that this was the number that George was comfortable that we can pay from operating expenses before the numbers went up. what was that original lab George that we could live with?

So the original plan that I had brought forward to you a year ago when I asked you to prioritize everything was an $84.7 million project of which we took essentially 14.7 from various sources including the sort of windfall of free cash that we received in 24 from underspending significantly. that sort of one-time circumstance and then we built into the capital project 70 million dollars of borrowing and that 70 million dollars of borrowing I'm just going to add again was very painful to get into the capital plan but we did it by pushing off other projects, by slowing down other projects, by making various adjustments and that 70 million of borrowing plus the 14.7 million

set aside in stabilization allowed us to say we could spend $84.7 million on a school project. that is the number that we've been carrying through this process and through our projections up until this point.

Thank you for that. My way of background, I have been a city and town attorney for over 100 communities and I've worked as legal counsel to school building committees for about a dozen projects. and some of those projects were even in more lean fiscal times during what we're facing now. I mean, we're talking mid-year state aid cuts along the way. but the solution then was to go back to re-engineer to see what we can afford and if we can start with that amount that George quoted, can we improve our learning environments in our schools? One thing, I've been polling a lot of middle school parents I bump into on the street, block parties and the like.

to a person they want they want to push for what we can get now and some people blocked at paying extra for that but what can we do I mean there's a lot difference between 14 million dollars spending to upgrade the roof or point some masonry. What can we do with that difference of 84.7 and 14 million to improve learning environments? maybe we can't get the net zero that we're seeking maybe we can push that part off maybe we can you know so there's got to be something more than some bigger number we can't afford and $14 million on repointing masonry. I've seen in those circumstances, engineers go back to the drawing board and say, here's the number we can live with. What can we do with that? I've seen it on the Green Line construction.

It was a larger project. It was very costly. they found plenty of solutions to knock off a billion dollars off the project ultimately. I'd like to see that something attempted here. I mean there's a really big difference between that and as the superintendent noted and I thought that's a great idea to provide our students a continuum of world-class learning environments from the elementary school which we've done we're the envy of our of our neighbors and in the state We are completely the envy of Massachusetts in that we've done all these great projects, built three new schools and substantially modified a fourth with no debt exclusion, no proposition two and a half extra cost. West.

So now we're talking about there is seemingly not an appetite to do a debt exclusion in this town, but what can we do with that extra 70 million on top of the 14 that would just go toward safety features and such. I have to say that I was Watertown's first Americans with Disabilities Act coordinator 30 years ago when the ADA was initiated. I went through so many buildings and saw so many problems and I worked as a volunteer to do the self evaluation and transition plan that qualified us for the library, I'm sorry, for the elevator that's just down the hall from us now. It got upgrades, it got state funding for upgrades for the senior center as well as the middle school. and ironically, my son is a disabled student. He went through the schools.

I don't like to hear us say, oh, thank God we don't have to get up to a threshold where we're doing ADA improvements. Improvements to me, that's a civil right. Everyone should have the right to go through a public building whatever limitation they may have. and I'd so not like to see us pushing a project down 15, 20 years when the needs are here. The needs are old right now and I'd like to see us go back to the drawing board and see what can we do to improve the learning environments, improve the accessibility with the money that George stated was livable? and to me it is a missed opportunity. We know that if we wait a long time, the cost of materials is not gonna go down. The cost of labor is not gonna go down. tradespeople, working families, they need raises to support their families.

So we're kidding ourselves if we think, oh, things will be much rosier down the line. I've seen other projects cost engineered during worst economic times. I for one support doing something better by our students, by our families, by our residents of Watertown and pushing for a better project than repointing masonry. Thank you.

Dr. Galston, John had a question for you earlier, if you don't mind stepping up. and if anyone else would have a question for the superintendent, I'd be. So you had a question for the superintendent. I don't recall what it was at this point. I'll rephrase that.

and thank you, Madam Superintendent, for being here. The question was more or less a rhetorical question. what improvements in the learning environment do we get for a $14.9 million allocation? Maybe you can explain what the difference between what we would get in $14.9 million and a better improvement. What is lacking? that you would like to see at the middle school in terms of modern education environments?

Sure. I don't think I have an hour. I'll try to put that in a tight little package. So first off I just want to say that it's hearing I mean I've got like notes everywhere but um just hearing the conversation amongst you and knowing that it seems like no matter what, someday we're gonna have a beautiful new school for Watertown Middle School. It sounds like that's the direction that everybody wants to go in, and I know that you're stuck with the question of when, and is now the right moment or not. So I can't make that decision for you. I can just obviously advocate for the schools. and one thing before I launch into the answer to that question that you asked. I know it's, having gone through the high school project process and trying to find space for the high school going through everything and looking at all the different options and ending up where the high school is where it was originally. I wonder and worry about where.

you would end up putting someplace without the swing space that we have with the modular. So that's just my own personal feeling around that. So let's just talk a little bit very quickly about what What would be an ideal educational environment in this century? So one thing we know from the 1922 school is that it was built for, we called it the factory model of education, you had kids in rows and you had kids down hallways and everything was very compartmentalized and there was no interaction amongst the kids that was frowned upon you just wanted to have control and education just in that old fashioned way. And so we've struggled for the last probably 30, 40 years trying to push in a model that is not that, which is the cluster model, otherwise known as grouping kids in a truly

social-emotional way that acknowledges who they are as pre-adolescents and adolescents in those smaller learning communities that really rely on adjacencies and being together and having those common spaces to learn away from the larger idea of a high school, say, for example. So that's one thing. and it's really big because you can't do that in the 1922 part of the building. It's just not possible. We try really hard but we can't make it happen. Kudos to our teachers who work in the conditions that they're in and do amazing things, but I see how much better that might be if they were actually in a building that promoted that type of collaboration. One thing we don't talk a lot about that I think is important is it's not just the general education classrooms that we're talking about, but over the last 100 years, we've had a different understanding about specialized programming.

Our middle school has three very intensive, substantially separate programs. We have a therapeutic program, the ISP program, We have a program called the Learning Support Program for students who might have cognitive delays. And we have our Connections Program, which is for our students with autism. and those spaces require very specialized classrooms, smaller spaces within the classrooms, et cetera. And again, if you saw that in the tour, what we're trying to do within the classrooms that we have is not exactly what would be best for those particular programs. Not to mention the fact that, we've gone from, I don't know, 5% of the middle school of multilingual learners to 17%, which is truly significant. And so again, having spaces where we can provide those specialized instruction for those students is something that we are lacking within the building that we have.

and then you know I think that just the overall feeling of innovation and joy I think when you walk through the building yeah you can go to school and you can learn I mean that's what's going to happen because we have great teachers and kids that are eager to learn but We don't have that real sense that we're going to see at the high school and that we see in our elementary schools with innovation and joy. So I don't know how to quantify that in a building project, but I can tell you that that's something that would be missing if we don't have an actual new building. In terms of the renovation, a couple of key points up there that not much, honestly, really will impact the educational environment from that, but there are a few pretty good solid moves that will help a lot. and it's funny because while people say we don't have enough storage, I think within our little 600 square foot classrooms which are way undersized,

there's these large closets that we had at the Lowell Elementary School as well that if we were able to kind of not get reno but if we were able to you know get to the studs or get to a place where those closets were no longer we could capture more space within the classrooms thus providing a little bit of a better learning environment within there. So to me, that's one of those big things along with the entrance. But other than that, there's not much that you can do without reconfiguring the actual building. I would say that I can't emphasize enough that the landscaping and the outdoor classrooms and the outdoor spaces, if we can't do anything inside, then we need to be looking outside. So to me, that's a really important part of that $14 million is, How do we expand learning outside of the regular classrooms? We just started recess again. It's kind of funny. You think about middle schoolers and recess, but

what a dramatic change to be able to tell our kids that after their 15 minutes of lunch they can go out to the lovely dirt patch that is on the corner of Waverly and Bemis and they love it and they come in covered in mud which is fabulous but the change in who they are as learners by being able to go out and get out their energy is dramatic so whatever we do Please, we need to do a lot with providing some outdoor spaces for our kids. And then while I have the podium, two things. And I'm glad you went on the tour. Thank you to everybody who went on the tour. Again, we do such a good job of keeping up our buildings. Kudos to the Department of Public Buildings. but this capital improvement plan in Watertown is like no other. Most districts probably are just, even just having a capital improvement plan is not the norm. I think that we've done a great job, but the building just really feels tired. And it's kind of reached its point of no return. I'm just gonna say it.

And then the last thing I wanted to, I love data, and trust me when I tell you, I understand that you can't attribute causation to a correlation, whatever. So, but I would say that in 2022, at the Cunniff Elementary School and at the Hosmer Elementary School, the state likes to rank us against each other and they call them percentile rankings. So that's us against the rest of the three to eight schools in terms of performance. and the kind of elementary school in 2022 was in the 41st percentile. In 2025, it's at the 73rd percentile. that is dramatic. Our Hosmer Elementary School was in the 53rd percentile and is now at the 72nd percentile. That's in three years. So what happened in three years? Oh, I don't know. We opened up these beautiful new schools. So I think there's something to be said for what we're going to see at the high school. Right now, our percentile rankings at middle and higher are very stagnant.

they just haven't moved probably for decades. I did look back 10 years and they really haven't changed. So are we gonna see that same level of, somebody asked, do these buildings actually have an impact on student learning? I would have to say, I can't say for sure, but I really do think they do. So that's where we'll leave it. That was a very long answer that I took some liberties and I appreciate you for allowing me to do that. But any other questions, I'm more than happy to answer them.

Thank you. Thank you. So my question was if we just did the CIP improvements, which was that $13.9 to $27.7 million range, how what is your opinion or guesstimate of how much time that would conceivably buy us before we'd have to go back and say we do need to do a complete renovation or

that's a crystal ball question. You know, I think we just continue to do the improvements that we've all, I mean, we just did air conditioning, right? We did forget two rooms and they'll tell you every day that we forgot two rooms, but that's okay. but that's, so I think all along the way we've done things that help to get us to a place where we can say we need a new school. I would say right now we need a new school, but will this get us a little more time? Sure. If I were saying, you know, it's hard. I mean, you're asking the wrong person because I don't know. educationally what that's going to buy us. It's going to buy us a better learning environment, it's going to buy us some cheer, and kids are going to feel they will feel more joy going into a building that feels like it was really a good solid renovation. but I don't think educationally we're getting what a new building would be.

So I would say as soon as it's actually possible, if this is what we do, I'm the one that would advocate start planning now for when you wanna actually do your new high school. and start thinking about MSBA and start thinking about all the things to get you there, but I would not wait too long, educationally, especially given the fact that these elementary kids are coming in having been in a different environment. And then it just kind of sends a little bit backwards.

Councilor Gardner.

Sorry.

Thank you, Mr. President. So thanks for all the things you're doing for the school, you and your staff, all of them. It's tremendous. And every time I go to the Hosmer, I'm wowed. and I do believe that the joy and innovation is palpable and we see it in the score so kudos. And I think we want that for every child that lives in Watertown and goes to our schools. Certainly I do, I think all of us do. Gannon. The question I have for you is a few minutes ago Councilor Gannon was talking about what could we get for the 80, which is affordable, versus the 112, which is, you know, We can take different positions on this. I've given the risks around our financial situation, given the international, national, and at the state level. That makes me quite anxious. I don't want to settle for what we can do for the 80 because I think what our kids deserve is what we should be building for them, right-sized and just as innovative, just as designed for their needs, which are complex, right, given the things you've just been describing.

So I guess I would ask you, if we quote, settled, my word, for what we could afford now, Do you feel confident that that would give us what we actually need for the next two, three, five decades? Five is too many, but the next two, three...

No. Meaning, no offense. I mean, it's not what I, but what I would say is given the options, right? If you don't want to move ahead with a new building right now, I would advocate for waiting until you're ready to do the full package. Having been through the whole entire feasibility process, I think we realize that the $84.7 million idea isn't really yielding any kind of true academic benefits. So I would say whatever you decide as long as there's a future for a new building then it's we'll we'll make do we'll do what we can and tell that magic moment that there is a new building but I wouldn't I would not invest that much money into something that isn't gonna yield the educational outcomes that we want.

And then a follow-up question on that. I'm mulling over the housing that we expect to come with the Watertown Square area plan. And we already have, I think, four developments that have come in almost no time. And I think it's going to continue to be like that because I think we have a lot to offer. and that's tremendously exciting. So I know there was a look at population. I'm listening to what Councilor Piccirilli said earlier about what we thought and what's been emerging. I know from parents in my district whose kids go to the Hosmer it already feels a little bumping elbows you know and it's only been around for a few years I mean if you I don't know if you can endorse or not endorse the numbers that are being assumed under these scenarios, but I wonder if you feel that they give us adequate growing room given the things you've been watching.

Wow, I feel like I'm being put in a little position.

We put you on the spot tonight.

I know, no, seriously. Because I do think that Councilor Piccirilli did bring up a lot of really good points about the future. And when I think about the high school project, When we got our approval, we had 660 students in the high school. Our high last year was 760. We've moved down to about 738, but as you know, the climate in the world might be part of that reason, but 738 is solid. So we built it for the maximum 720 and we're already over and we haven't even opened it yet. Just wait till we open it. I think that we're gonna see even more students, but to Christie's point, we build buildings in a way that if we had to, we would figure it out, meaning share more spaces in terms of the day. MSPA expects 85% utilization of classrooms. you know right now we're probably at 60 65 because teachers they like their classrooms but you're gonna have to move around and share classrooms so

that's just a really tricky question that I'm not sure I can answer. I would just point out though that our kindergarten class this year right now has 252 students in it. So I think when I started, the average was about 180. And then we just kept creeping up and up and up. So I can't answer, I can't.

I think we want the growing room for later though and not for the first year, do you know what I mean?

630 is higher than we are right now and 650 is when we start utilizing even more of the spaces. you can never truly predict the enrollment as it goes.

Councilor Feltner.

Thank you, Mr. President. I'll just touch a little bit, you know, memory of this. We have various and robust discussions about numbers, population growth, a lot of concern about the new apartments on Arsenal, bringing students that we weren't planning for enough growth. It sounds like we got the number pretty right. There's still room. There's growth. Look at any community when you build new schools, especially what we're doing, the numbers do go up somewhat. I appreciate that. I also appreciate that I think it is important that we look at this now. We have a big decision to make. and we identified for many years middle school as top of our list, like I said.

and I appreciate the extra look we're taking now that we do have the modulars here. Things change and I think it's good that We did the feasibility study and not stick our heels in the ground and say well we decided this 10 years ago or this was a track and we're going to stay on track because regardless of what happens and we don't know what's going to happen. the future is unknown I think it's important to address the needs that we've already identified that have been long-standing needs they're not going to change it's not going to get any cheaper and I'm not saying necessarily that I'm ready to vote all in tonight because we need to absorb this and think some more. But I'll just reiterate again the base option or the 14 million. not only triggers things, but it doesn't even touch the science.

I mean, the science rooms, I don't know if people are really aware of how science has been taught even starting 10 years ago, let's say. and there's no way you can adapt the rooms any further just without physical Rebuild. I wonder if, Chris, you'd just talk a little bit about that of, again, the numbers. And I really appreciate your points and your guidance on the educational program because We have these wonderful teachers, but we are being held back. I feel like there's only so much you can do. with a 100-year-old building. I mean, it's amazing. And other communities saying, oh, well, our school's 20 years old. We've got to start thinking about rebuilding, or our school's 30 years old. we've done a good job of capital improvement and keeping things going but maybe we fix the storage but

I mean the bathrooms, there's so many physical spaces that without rebuilding, you can't even put a Band-Aid on anymore. You can't and the accessibility truly is not there. I mean the dirt patch is not accessible now. So, no joy for the students that, you know, there's no outdoor space really. So anyway, if you want to just touch on that and my understanding in terms of the building affecting the program and what we get for our people saying, please tell us all the great educational programs we're going to get by spending the least amount of dollars because that's all we have right now. I don't see it. I see the roof. I see door handles, I see maybe storage. If you could just touch on that.

I think the superintendent said it best, without being able to reconfigure the floors, there isn't we aren't actually we're not actually improving the educational program at all right and and that's why We looked at 1A so seriously, the addition renovation, because it did actually fully meet the educational program with the addition and was able to maintain your nice size gym and auditorium. But as you can see, it came in more than a new building. Gardner when really looking at it in a firm way. I do want to make a point, if you don't mind, Mr. President, for Councilor Gardner and for you, Councilor Piccirilli. actually the superintendent got to tour Middleboro High School. We were the OPM on that project. And it was exactly the design, MSBA design amount of students of 720 students.

So we designed and built a new high school for them for 720 students, and they opened with 850. And to this day, they are operating in that range fine. because the classrooms when you build them to MSBA standards are 850 to 950 square feet, not less than 700 or more like 600. So there truly is flexibility in current school design. And that's just an anecdote.

Council Palomba. It's a little confused just for a second there. Well, a couple of questions. Let me focus on this one while our superintendent is up there. Are you saying that option 1A, this is the knock down some but not all and renovate, which revised as of today, the 28th came in at $116 million. are you saying that doesn't give us I thought I heard that it does give us exceptional quality education is that true or are you saying we shouldn't be doing this because in the long run it doesn't do enough and we need a new one, new building?

No, I think that what I was referring to was option one, just the renovation, not the renovation addition. So the actual renovation addition where you take down the 1922 building actually would yield the academic goals that you would have.

It's my fault.

No, no, no. There was a lot of columns.

Gannon raised these questions. I want to make sure I understand the figures. $27 million, which we'd have to go in a little lower so we don't trigger the ADA, right? Would give us most of what we saw on the left hand side, right? added on to that is some soft costs and some rentals which gets you up to 27, but we'd have to cut it down. So that's the figure we're working with, right? That's the real figure, not the 14, but the 27.

Correct. To do everything essentially on the priority list. but it would have to be over a number of years and a strategy with the assessor and the Massachusetts Architectural Access Board.

Okay, and it'll be over a number of years. Correct. Okay, and the other figure that we hear about is the new schools, which as of today, as of your revisions today, is 112,000. and I think what I heard from Councilor Piccirilli, and I'm not sure I got this right, is that we also have to think about a few more months of rental and maybe bringing the architect back in and that might increase this cost of $112 million to a little bit higher but we don't know exactly what that would be. Right.

I would say the numbers are good as far as construction and soft costs. It's that we would need to extend the modulars a little bit longer. that's the biggest change. Correct, because we didn't start. The intention was to have started.

If I can clarify that a little further, the architect isn't costing us any more money because the architect stopped in June it's costing us money three, four, five, six months of additional modular for the architect to catch up and start redesigning the school. That's the relationship with the architect. The architect is not costing us any more money. it's strictly related to the rental of the modulars.

and I would add and there may be some escalation in cost by the mere fact that we're running slower and then there's one other cost that isn't in here which is paying back MSBA for some things that we owe a little back I mean I'd say the 112 number could I don't want to guess but it could slip up into the 115 range but it still seems like we are at the point where the If you want to go forward with a project that has substantial educational impacts, that's what it actually costs to do. There doesn't seem to be an $84 million solution. I guess I want to just clarify to answer the question as it keeps coming up. but that's a 112 plus solution or we do what we can to improve the building and continue to figure out a time to do this.

So the final question I have, if I might, and this comes off a little bit of what Councilor Gannon said and other people said. We had an original of $84.7 million. And that jumped up significantly when it was changed here. It went up quite a bit. We could afford the 84-7, I think, as City Manager Parokas laid it out at one point. Is there any educational benefit Is there any educational benefit by thinking of something between the 27 and the 84-7?

I'm going to say no. OK. Again, I think that if you're going to spend $87 million on a building, I would wait. Just wait and do it five to 10 years from now. I mean, I'm not here to tell you you need to do this tomorrow. I'm here to tell you you need a new building. you do and whether it's you know within the next three years or whether it's in the next 10 years don't put in I'm just going to recommend not putting 87 million dollars into renovating that's not going to do anything academically. Thank you. Thank you. That's my opinion. Just my opinion.

Piccirilli. So this is a question for the manager. So a year ago when we met, we talked about the $84.7 million, which turned into $103 million. that's about nine million dollar increase, right? That was soft costs, the rentals and all that other stuff. So my first question is what was the plan if we were going to make the project work for that $84.7 million. which included the $70 million loan order plus the stabilization fund. What was your plan for making up that $9 million difference?

making up the difference between 84.7 and... The soft costs totaling 103.

It's about $9 million.

Well, so, I mean, as a starting point, it was my understanding from the conversation with the architects who were doing some back of the envelope assistance with us that The feeling was, and the way I explained it to you was my understanding was that for $84.7 million, we could do a quality project here. and that the things that I thought were not included in that 84.7 were the modulars, which were tough to nail down because we were not sure what the monthly costs would be under the circumstances. the cost of paying back MSBA for some things that we probably would tear out of the building and and that was essentially it. I didn't even think the number would get to 103 and so the general feeling there was that

you know we had put 14 and change into stabilization if we got into the point where we needed to put another two million three million something into stabilization. We had the money that we had projected in the budget for senior center stabilization. We knew we were coming out of the elementary school project with a little bit of surplus there which is why the number we have available has already gone up from 14 to 17 so I've already said we've gone from 14.7 to 17.2 so there's already two and a half million more that could go into this project right now from the elementary school holdover that's available. But those were small numbers. Those were, you know, relative speaking, that was $2.5 million extra from the elementary school project. If our budget calculations weren't showing deficits next year and I knew I could put six million into senior center stabilization, if I had to put two into middle school and four into senior center next year, we could make that happen.

What I wanted to do was I wanted to hold borrowing at $70 million, much like when I arrived here, you had a plan for a high school, about a $200 million high school that had borrowing at $150 million. And the thing I pledged to work with you all as a council and do was keep that borrowing number at $150 million so the debt service never went higher than what we had originally calculated. and when the budget of the school went up to $220 million, working with the council, working with your committee councilor, we were all able to find ways to establish through stabilization to cover the additional costs to meet those needs. we were in some really good years on new growth sometimes new growth came in higher than expected mid-year and we kept putting money to high school stabilization we'll keep putting money to high school stabilization and we worked a way to do it

that now we have a $220 million building that's on budget, that remains on budget, that with its contingencies, it's meeting all its numbers, and that we can say that we can cap the high school borrowing at 150. If I could say that I could cap the middle school borrowing at $70 million, I would still feel that really, really pushed the limits of the capital plan. It got us to a point where I could say, all right, there's a way to do this. Not an easy way to do it. It was always a tough way to do it. But there's a way to do it with the borrowing at $70 million. If I could turn around and say we could do what we did on the high school and start cobbling together stabilization money to cover the difference. I would encourage us to do that. The challenge is I'm not seeing the growth projections in the next five years that I was seeing in the last five years to be able to say, Oh yeah, these things are going to come out over budget. I'm going to have another year where we underspend our operating budget by $11 million like we did in fiscal year 24. Those are just not happening anymore.

That's just not where we are and what we're doing. So yeah, could I have gotten an 84-7 number to a $90 million number? We probably could have spent a couple of years setting aside money in stabilization doing that. Can I get it to 112? I'm just not finding a path to do that, and that's what I tried to present last week. Two weeks ago, I think what I see is trying to plug deficits rather than having a path that's easy to figure that out.

So if I could just follow up. So the task a year ago that we came up with for the feasibility study was can we do the ad reno for 80? the 84.7 million dollars is that feasible and it turns out based on these numbers the actual cost is to do that what we had planned what we were tasked to do, the team for the feasibility study actually would cost 116 million, not the 84.7 that you would budget.

Yeah, a version of that that meets the educational needs of the students and does that version of an ad reno that we originally expected. The number I was given in June was 121. and when I asked Christie and the team to do everything they could to bring that number down as low as they possibly could, 116 is where we ended up.

And so that's, we're talking Again, if we look at the 2E, which is actually cheaper, it's still $27 million different than the estimate you gave us back in last November.

That's right. And while I've been able to cover $2.5 million of that with the funding from the elementary school, I'm looking at $25 million in additional borrowing.

If, I'm just saying, if this council was to vote to say we want to proceed with 2E, where would you get that 25 extra million dollars?

I would recommend to the council that we move from a 70 million dollar borrowing circumstance to a 95 or so million-dollar borrowing circumstance. Maybe there's a little bit here or there from creating another stabilization fund, but we'd probably be at about $95 billion in borrowing. and that would have impacts particularly on the fiscal year 29 budget. 28, 29, and 30, and 31 would be pretty tough. After that, I don't know, maybe 28 to 33 if we have to stretch out OPEB would be pretty tough.

Councilor Feltner?

I just want to clarify, I thought I heard a misunderstanding about what the $27 million gives us. To Councilor Palomba's question, it sounded like he thought that included Educational Benefits, and the ADA improvements that would be triggered. I just wanted to point out that's not the case. I do think there would be a lot of reluctance to ask for a variant from the state on that once we did a new front to exempt the rest of the building basically. will clarify it. I might have misheard the question.

If I may just write, if the $27 million total project cost number that is up there on the high end of the range. If we decide to go in in one year and do 27 million, we would have to either do additional upgrades in certain areas or do a variance. I don't think it's realistic to ask for a variance on all of the ADA upgrades to a building just because we want to do it all at once. There are some strategic questions that Kristi and I have been talking about. If we do the entry vestibule project, which is the most important accessibility upgrade that building could use, like if we were going to try to substantially improve accessibility of that building, the most important first thing you could do is rebuild the entrance to provide a welcoming accessible entrance that would provide access for everyone without any barriers or limitations from accessibility, getting people in through the entryway of the building, past the front office and all those sort of things.

That is substantial. Now, if that in itself triggered something else, there's a world where you could say this in itself is an accessibility improvement, asking for a waiver from having to do accessibility improvements to create an accessibility improvement is something that is worth at least considering what that circumstance is. you know putting a financial penalty on a school system for doing an upgrade that the sole not the sole purpose but a major benefit of it is actually accessibility in itself There's a conversation to have there versus going on and saying, okay, we're going to do the roof and the air conditioning and suddenly it triggers ADA and we're going to go to the access board and say, we don't think we have to follow the rules everyone else has to follow. that's a pretty tough thing to explain to them. So there's some nuance of difference to this. And I just want to stress because it came up earlier as it relates to this.

Our goal is to provide the best, most accessible building to students who need it as most we possibly can. the reality of the way that these construction rules are set up obviously if we build a brand new building we would provide all of that accessibility if we do nothing to this building and leave it we are under no obligation to make any of the improvements we're already saying at a minimum the the entryway and the access points into the building need those upgrades like that's one of the reasons why we want to do the entrance but to pour tens of millions of dollars into doing upgrades in a building where our plan is to replace it in so many years is also just not a fiscally responsible strategy either.

If I could just follow up. But this also doesn't include addressing any of the bathrooms that are currently not accessible, including near the special ed places, correct? Correct. Okay, thank you.

Gardner, then Councilor Gannon, and then I'm going to wrap up because we've been two hours here plus, and I have suggestions how we're going to move forward. Councilor Gardner.

Thank you, Mr. President. I want to go back to a remark that the manager said earlier about the impact of growth. which we have been experiencing wonderful growth over the last while, particularly with the lab build out, and we don't see that coming down the future. but I do think because of our Watertown Square area plan, both the streetscape and the hoped for housing development and mixed use development that we hope will come and is already beginning, That will create economic well-being and economic growth. In terms of where would we get additional revenue going forward, it's going to be if those buildings get built. and for that to happen it seems to me we increase the odds of that happening and happening close in if we get the streetscape done and I'm not saying this is the exact priority but either or both the streetscape to improve flow and the end user community experience.

And in my mind particularly actually the demonstration project. the demonstration project will absolutely bring housing and commercial growth and I think could really begin to make that place a lively vibrant place and that will bring yet more development so It's taking me a long time to say this, but I'm thinking about this. We continue to talk about school versus senior center. And I do think a multi-generational community center is really important to us. I'd prefer to see it multi-generational personally. but I think the other place that we haven't been talking about is money that we would be spending or might not be spending on the streetscape or the development project and we don't even know what that range would be because we don't yet know what it will be but if we were to prioritize those and bring those forward in time it seems to me that could help goose growth and the more we goose growth early on the more we can have additional funding later for these other projects

because I think the you know the other thing I think we've all been saying this is we we want to do this but we I don't want to do it on the cheap I want to do it the right way the right size with all the design elements built in that we think are best in class at that moment in time I don't know if there are scenario analyses you could do on the notion of reversing the order of these, but I really question whether that could help us in the medium and longer term.

So, Mr. President, if I may, I can provide a number of deeper analysis on what would happen if we did things in a different order. I just want to share that and I know you know this but up until this point the reason why we are where we are is because a year ago with a $84.7 million middle school project and the council's directive to prioritize that. I came in with a capital plan that had no funding in the plan at all for a senior center, a rec center, or the Watertown Square Plan. Both of them were listed as TBD unfunded items in the capital plan in order for me to open up enough space with the work of our auditor and our treasurer running these numbers with us to open up enough space to borrow $70 million for the middle school and meet our expectations in terms of how debt service is paid through fiscal years 28, 29, 30, 31.

So that's where we got. If you want to look at different scenarios and you want to go like a level deeper to say, well, if we do investments in the square and the square creates new growth and the new growth creates New tax benefits and where does that lead to our growth? We can look at that. One of my strategies in removing it from the capital plan was to just say, okay, we'll just try to get more growth in Watertown Square to pay for the Watertown Square intersection itself. but if you kind of flip it the other way and say borrow and get the Watertown Square Plan going and then hopefully that creates new growth that gives you more capacity to do the school later, that's worth considering as well the challenge and the reason why we got here though was because those modular buildings were sitting there and and we still will need to figure out what the plan is on that. I'm ready to dig deeper into this with everybody if there's another iteration to be done.

Gannon, and please be brief. Yes, thank you.

Well, I can state from the halls of Watertown High School when I was a senior, my favorite history teacher, John Cucinato,

had a... John, let's focus on the... Let's not focus on past history about teaching history in high school.

Focus on the project in front of you, please. My question is Watertown has seen deferred maintenance in our schools. We hadn't had a new high school built, new elementary school built, or any school built from 1966. We built the kind of school as the first, but we didn't do this by virtue. We didn't do this because, oh, we think this would be the best opportunity to create world-class learning opportunities. We were facing accreditation issues, weren't we, because of the lack of the crumbling infrastructure. So I mentioned that I was the Americans with Disabilities Act coordinator in 1993. I handed in my last

Councilor, please don't go back in history. Let's talk about the middle school project.

The largest building at the time that had accessibility issues was the middle school. stated as a priority back then, those repairs haven't happened. We're still facing a building that we're hoping any improvements we make doesn't trigger ADA compatibility. First question, are we facing accreditation based upon the limitations of the middle school at this point?

so accreditation actually only happens at the high school level so I mean they think about the full context but really it's all about the high school and that definitely made a difference for getting the MSBA funding for the high school, but it doesn't impact the middle school.

Okay, so well thank you for that. So my point is, Watertown defers maintenance. We push issues down the line. Costs are not going to go down over time, they're gonna go up. and maybe I could ask the manager, you can't predict the short term, but can you see us building a brand new middle school within the next five, 10 years?

the triggering item that would make it easy for us to build a brand new middle school is the ramping up of the biotech lab business again. if some of those buildings, so let's take a step back here without getting too deep into this. Alexandria sold a portion of their development site down at the mall. They sold the mall. they kept another portion of that site that still in their plan has the capacity to build a couple of buildings. If buildings like that were pulling building permits and going under construction, the path to borrowing for large buildings gets a lot easier again. And the problem I don't know is I don't know if that's a two year or five year or 10 year or 20 year problem. I am not sure. I can't predict that. But I can say, as I've said all along, boy, if Alexandria was in the ground with two buildings right now, this would be a whole lot easier of a conversation.

And just as a follow up to that. you think it's possible we can build a brand new middle school without seeking a proposition two and a half debt exclusion?

under the circumstances where we're getting new growth at the level that we were getting three or four years ago, that would be the path that I would look towards. there's only two paths really available to communities to be able to make projects like this possible. One is what I would refer to as aggressive new growth, not just occasional small mid-sized housing developments, but the type of aggressive new growth that we got in fiscal years 22, 23, and 24. And the other is going to a community for debt exclusions, which we've talked about quite a lot. so I'm looking for where that next path of aggressive new growth is that that that's what I'm looking towards and and the challenges as I explained two weeks ago are all embedded in the

circumstances at the national level and the circumstances surrounding everything from where the industry is to where interest rates are to whether or not there's a research path towards new biotech growth. and right now, as I explained a couple weeks ago, we're in a precarious position where the biotech business in Watertown is still growing enough that the vacant spaces we have are filling up. that's generating some new personal property growth which is good for us. But there are enough trends that could go the wrong way that if that started to contract we would be in a whole lot more trouble. What is not happening is it's not growing fast enough right now to cause somebody to say, I'll build another new building right now. there's tens of millions of square feet of space vacant in the greater Boston area and it is filling up at a very very slow rate and we are doing better than most. 66 Galen is on its way to being full.

We're a better position than most. But we've got to get through the process of those spaces filling, and developers willing to be able to take a risk or willing to sign up a tenant and build a building. And I don't see where that is. I don't see it in the next two years, but is it in the next five to 10? I really hope it is because we've built a, a strategy around that and that would be a moment where we might say okay there's a piece of commercial growth that's taking our you know we're having a year where we have six million dollars in tax growth and we can dedicate that six million dollars to borrowing against that six million dollars and that would allow us to to add additional borrowing to do this. At the end of the day, the peak year in the $98 million program is about $7.5 million of borrowing. If I had $7.5 million of sudden new growth drop on my desk, I would tell you we should do a middle school with it.

How about the Watertown Square development? Housing, we know, is in demand. Do we see success and growth?

Councilor, you're asking him to predict the future, and he's already told you he can't. This is more immediate. I'm going to stop now because I said... if we wanted to do brief it's been two hours and ten minutes.

Well it's been a robust discussion.

It's been a very good discussion and we're going to continue the discussion but I haven't had an opportunity even to speak or ask a question. I'm concerned that I'm going to spend $27 million of tax dollars and then ask the Massachusetts Architectural Board for a waiver. which means, hey, we're gonna do these improvements, but we're not doing anything for the kids that really need accessible areas in the school. And for those of us that continue to go into the school, we can see where we're lacking. I'll leave that at that. We're looking at and I'm not sure how many people have gotten waivers to this extent. I don't know that information. I will say, first of all, given what we're dealing with there, I want to give credit to the superintendent and the teachers in the building. The teachers in the building make that building work and do what they do. So kudos to the teachers and kudos to you and your administration

because we couldn't do what we do in that facility the way they do it in our other buildings if it wasn't for the teachers. So please pass that along for me. have to consider overall what's going to happen here to other projects as well. And I'm concerned that we're going to spend $27 million part of that is going to be modulus then the module is going to go away and then we're still not done and it's at what point do we continue to put money into a building and and say that we're getting a return on our investment. It's a concern. I'm concerned about the other projects that we need to do as a community. and according to the auditor and the manager, our biggest hit for if we did this project would be in fiscal year 2029.

Well, let me go to the Onco Casino tonight and say, I want to put $100 on the patch to win the Super Bowl in 2029. We don't know that that's possible. I mean, so we're gambling no matter what we do here. I'm concerned that when we say we're going to do the roof, the kids, as I said earlier, the kids don't see that we did the roof and they don't care that we did the roof. I think that I think we need to, you know, again, there's a lot of information tonight and I'm going to not request any votes tonight because I think we need to take a step back and think about next steps here. because one of the slides that we talked about was the real cost. And everybody said it was a $40 million different. No, the real cost of that project would have been 103. and as I said from the outset, if we had done the feasibility study in the beginning, we would have known that we wouldn't have gone down the path of saying we're borrowing 70.

Our challenge right now is how do we How do we balance the needs of the school with the needs of all the other issues that we have going on in the capital improvement program? So there's a lot to be determined, as the manager said. We're not able to make this decision tonight. I don't feel we should be making this decision tonight. So I'm going to thank everyone for their presentation. the manager and I and Christie met right before this. There's a couple more pieces of information that we want to provide the city council. One in particular is what is the assessed value and what kind of, what kind of repairs are gonna trigger this request for a waiver. That's an important piece of what we're talking about, because if we're gonna spend any money, we need to know that information. So we wanna get some of that. We talked about some other options for modulars as well that Christie is gonna respectfully look into for us. So we wanna provide some more information.

So again, thanks everybody. Thanks for all your questions. We can continue to ask other questions, but I'm going to end this discussion right now. Thank you. motions, orders, and resolutions. And 7A is the first reading on a proposed loan order. that the sum of $2,200,000 is appropriated to pay the cost of construction and oversight of roadway, sidewalk, and utility reconstruction of Fifth Ave, as more fully described in the city's fiscal year 2025 to 25 capital improvement program. Mr. Manager.

Thank you, Mr. President. Before us is a first reading for $2,200,000 for the reconstruction of Fifth Avenue. It's been a long time coming to get to this particular project and with appreciation for our DPW team of getting us to this point. this particular item aligns with line 323 of the capital improvement plan, CIP recommendation number 27 and specifically the reconstruction of 5th Ave that has been a Priority as the Council has worked with the Public Works team on our streets program. This is a first reading item. We look forward to getting into more detail with you on it at the next Council meeting. Thank you, Mr. President.

Thank you. Next item is a resolution authorizing a transfer of funds in the amount of $175,470 from the fiscal year 2026 City Council Reserve to the fiscal year 2026, transfer to capital projects, public buildings account. Mr. Manager.

Thank you, Mr. President. a request to transfer $175,470 towards mechanical equipment on the DPW roof. I'll note that we're doing the roof as a larger project. but this is to replace four rooftop units. Being that this is a particularly time sensitive and valuable project for us, we are requesting a transfer from Council Reserve to cover this particular project, thank you.

Thank you. Can I get a motion on the transfer of 175-470? So moved. Is there a second? Second. Any discussion? Roll call, please.

Councilor Palomba. Yes. Bays, Feltner, Gannon, Gardner, Izzo, Palomba, Piccirilli, Sideris

7C is the first reading on our proposed order allocating the property tax levy among and between property classes for fiscal year 2026. Mr. Manager.

Thank you, Mr. President. In the package with the council today is the presentation on the tax classification hearing as this typically occurs at the second meeting, at the first meeting in November. This is the moment for doing our first reading for the tax classification hearing which will be held at the next meeting. You can see all of the details there. They are online with this particular meeting agenda. and as always we will have our assessor here to discuss them through in detail at the next meeting. As I noted in my preliminary budget overview at the last meeting, there is a reduction in commercial value and an increase in residential value, which is causing a little bit of a shift in terms of where things go on residential and commercial taxes. Although this is the last year of the existing home rule petition on the residential commercial tax split, so it does allow us to split to the maximum 175 this year.

and the assessor will be at the next meeting to provide more details. Thank you, Mr. President.

Thank you. Communications from the city manager. Mr. Manager.

Just a couple of announcements. Just a reminder that our local election is Tuesday, November 4th from 7 to 8 o'clock. Early in-person voting started today in the lower hearing room on the ground floor on the park side of the building. there are two more days of early voting one is tomorrow October 29th from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and another on Thursday October 30th from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and then of course Election Day November 4th from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. and just a reminder for those who haven't followed along on the previous council meetings, please check carefully the information online or the postcard that you received to make sure you know where your polling place is because some polling places have changed. The Swap Shop is open for one final day thanks to the support of the Solid Waste and Recycling Advisory Committee and Watertown Faces Climate Change. The Swap Shop will be open on Saturday, November 1st from 10 to 2 at the Watertown Recycle Center at 76 Stanley Ave. This free resource lets residents share household items.

Shoppers must park on Green River Way or Stanley Ave and donation donors may drive into the recycle center to unload. and finally if you aren't yet getting it stay up to date with news from the city of Watertown through our What's Up Watertown newsletter. If you visit the city website and click on connect with us you can join our mailing list. That is all I have today Mr. President.

Thank you. Requests for information? Any requests for information? Councilor Feltner.

Thank you, Mr. President. Two requests. One is when should we expect the city annual reports for years 2023 and 2024? My second one, and I'll send a little more detail on this in the email follow-up, but what is the punch list for Arsenal Park, including ADA concerns such as addressing inaccessibility of the gravel, amphitheater, lack of automatic doors, on the bathrooms, and there's some other details, so I'll include the email. Thank you.

Any other requests? Announcements? Any announcements? I just want to, for the general public here and at home, our next meeting is technically supposed to be on November 11th, but November 11th is Veterans Day, so our meeting will be next time on November 12th. so the people are aware not to come looking for us on a Tuesday night. Public forum, any member of the public here or at home wish to be heard? Please raise your hand. Seeing none, can I get a motion to adjourn? So moved. Is there a second? Second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? The ayes have it.

Thank you.