Watertown Special City Council (Tuesday October 6, 2026)

This meeting is being broadcast and recorded by Watertown Table Access. It is a hybrid meeting with the Zoom information and telephone numbers and email addresses on the city website. I'm going to ask the clerk please call the roll.

Bayes, Feltner, Gannon, Gardner, Izzo, Offei.

President Sideris. President, thank you.

First item on the agenda tonight is an update on the fiscal year 27 to 2030 capital improvement program

I'm going to present from up here so that I can control these slides as I go, because they're kind of a dynamic little story here that I want to tell. And the particular question I'm focused on is the middle school based upon the budget that was set up and presented to the council recently, where we are and what we might be able to do in order to make things work. towards the middle school. So I'm going to take a step back first just to give us some perspective on where we've been on the council's budget policy request as it related to the big projects in the capital plan and going back to 2024, we discussed and prioritized what at the time were unfunded capital plan items. Senior center, maybe including some work with recreation center or something of that sort. the East End Fire Station, staging area for the DPW, implementing the Watertown Square Plan and the middle school. And we were kind of looking at those things as a group and trying to figure out what we could do with them

We took some guidance from the council and we've worked to create capital plans that address each of these things, and make them work as best they can to fit with the annual operating budget. Tonight, what I want to do is focus on as we make a go-no-go decision here in the council and the middle school how that impacts, affects, and works with the other items that are in the capital plan list. and I want to focus on how things have changed since November of 2024 when we started our way down that process. So the first thing you'll notice is that November 24, as we looked at that list, the instruction we got back from the administration prioritize the middle school within the confines of prop two and a half. we expected to be doing borrowing around $70 million for a project that was $84.7 million, which was the estimate that we were working with at the time. So we had plugged in a $70-million borrowing number to try to make that work.

By June of 2025, we got a first preliminary cost estimate for the building at $120 million after the visioning sessions. Two preferred options there. They exceeded $120 which led to in September 25 when I expressed concerns to the council that our budgets are now exceeding their initial estimates and strategy we put together by about $30 million. So I presented an option of increasing borrowing to 98.2 million, but not without significant impacts to flexibility and at the time you may recall when I was doing that presentation, I did this fiscal year 29 and beyond analysis of what would happen with or without the middle school. And I put it into this little four block diagram and it related to that tax home rule petition. That was a concern to us as well, the concern being that if the tax home rules did not pass at that time

and we had to be in a position where we have to tax below the prop two-and-a-half cap in an effort to reduce the risk of major tax increases to the residential taxpayer in Watertown that we were going to be in this situation where we were stuck. So, the way I described it in four blocks one was with home rule passing, and without the middle school we maintain flexibility in options in our budget. If if we didn't do the middle-school but the home rule didn't pass we would limit a lot of our flexibility but maintain some of our options. If the home rule didn't pass and we tried to do the middle school, we'd end up in that right corner with the substantial budget cuts but with the home rule and with the middle school, it would use much of our flexibility. It would reduce future options, but I saw that there was probably a way to go forward with the more expensive middle school if we get the home role to pass. So there we were at that point.

And then in November of 25, we chose to purchase the modulars and that was an important step and so forth. And I think it's important for us to be able to do that, because we're going to have a lot of work ahead of us in the middle school project as well. So thank you very much. to purchase the modulars, pay for it within the high school project budget and sort of take that particular item off the table as a risk item because we didn't know what would cost us to continue renting the modules keeping them vacant through this year doing the middle school project in a future year, that opened up a lot of flexibility for the middle-school project itself. So that was November of 2025. And then the next important thing that happened is it came time for the home rule petition to be decided, which would have potentially put us in one of those two yellow boxes on the right.

If you remember, without the Home Rule petition passing we would have been looking at either taxing below the cap to try and save money or giving the taxpayer of Watertown an 18 plus percent increase in their tax bill. But, the good news being that the legislature with the assistance of our delegation and a lot of work by Rep Owens and Lawn and Senator Brownsburger, we were able to get this thing passed and signed by the governor in August. So preventing the 18% jump in property taxes and essentially taking the two boxes on the right out of the picture for us to have to worry about for where we go, really leaving us with a go-no-go decision on the middle school without the worry about needing to substantially cut the budget other places in order to do that. So at the passing of the home rule petition, we then moved on in September of 26 last month where we got some final estimated revised total budgets for the project.

and the team working on the project with the school building committee has done a lot here to try to bring this project back down that we could work with. And also as we do this, making that price more stable, it's based upon more detailed information or deeper knowledge of the construction program that we're doing and as we refine, the prices came down and they became more certain from that perspective. So we started at that 84.7 million is our original estimate. We ended up with that 124 we brought it down to 112 in October of 25. That's what we built last year's fiscal year capital improvement plan on, and then purchased the modulars. We're now looking at a number about 110.2 and so we built the capital plan last year based upon a number that's relatively similar, a little bit higher but relatively similar to the number we're settling down to right now.

and just to give us a picture of where we built the capital plan. The capital plan was built on funding the middle school at $98 million in borrowing, which then also has 14.2 million in stabilization so you bring those together, you're at about 112 The Watertown Square plan was funded at $20 million. However, this was a placeholder number. We knew that that number was low and we were looking to figure out what it would take to do the Watertown square project but wanted to plug something in We funded the senior center at $17.4 million with aggressive stabilization fund contributions to bring the total cost of the project at $25 million, that's 17.4 borrowing and the remainder of it from stabilization accounts. and we left at that point the DPW staging area in the East End Fire Station unfunded, basically saying they're beyond five years of the capital plan. DPW is staging right now at 148 Waltham Street at the Starrett Lumber site.

The East End Fire Station, we've put some investment in kind of keeping it up and running for now, keeping an eye on the idea that someday if we can find the right site and the right option then a replacement for that also is in our longer term future, but maybe not in the five year capital plan. So that's a snapshot of where we were on the capital plan at that point in time a year ago. Since that time, three things have changed. The middle school cost estimate has been refined to just over $110 million. We now have our first estimates for the Watertown Square streetscape and that's at about 40 million. I want to be clear that what this is, that 40 million number it's very preliminary. Imagine now how the middle school number has converged because we have detailed construction documents the Watertown Square Streetscape number is based upon a substantial amount of estimates, based upon very preliminary designs. But I think it's a very safe and so on.

And I think that's a good circumstance here to say that that number is, it has good contingencies in it and its well built for what it is. That is to do the intersection, the roadway network upgrades, StreetScape, sidewalks, curbs, landscape architecture, park improvements. What that does not include is the cost of anything involved in a redevelopment type project in Watertown Square, the parking lot, parking garage housing kind of conversations we've separately been having. If we were going to pursue that, the goal always was that we would try to use the new development to balance out the cost of the public infrastructure there to pay for it so are not including those numbers in our capital plan. What's in the capital plan is doing the streets and sidewalks over. and the Senior Center Building Committee has been formed, and they'll be selecting a consultant shortly to conduct a feasibility study. So that process certainly is making progress and moving along.

So, those are the three big things that have changed. Not big changes but we need to work off of those adjustments. we have worked very carefully to maintain options and flexibility in our budget as best we possibly can. We fund, we always fund pension plus those other pension benefits the OPEB account plus what we call Building for the Future expanded, which is basically the schools plus the senior center plus Watertown Square. what we've tried to keep is a relatively stable rate at about $34.5 million a year by doing that it sort of separates it out from the bumps of the operating budget We always contribute annually to key stabilization funds that we could roll back if we have some limitations. So, funds we put to affordable housing towards the acquisition of land fund and we've also finally worked

to fund our future capital projects out of stabilization or unspent debt service every year so that we bring down the debt service number the following year and that provides some flexibility in the budget. These have been important strategies for us and keeping as much of it in place as possible is valuable to consider as we do that. Why do we need options and flexibility? First of all, department operating budgets tend to exceed the estimates over the last few years as we've worked to implement the council's budget priorities and focused on offering competitive salaries, essentially implementing the class and comp study adjusting you know getting staff into public works to do some of the work they need to do. You know adding an extra position in the assessor's office, a position in clerk's office. These sort of things have kind of pushed us over the past few years higher than where our initial estimates were. Construction costs escalated significantly in the post-COVID era which has had an impact on a lot of our capital projects

that seems to be less of an issue as it was at that point in time, but it has had some bumps in the budget in recent years. And insurance costs especially health insurance are growing at a faster rate than inflation. That is a trend We have not seen slowdown, and we build into the budget expecting that trend not to slow down. But in past years new growth had been adequate to fund our additional programmings allowing us to grow debt, to borrow more, and limit the impacts of these risks. We have had some low growth years. We're predicting more potentially, and that is one of the reasons why we have to kind of keep an eye on this so you know I don't think it's unreasonable to still say that doing the middle school uses portions of our flexibility reduces our options but at the same time while it does that, the question really is can we do this? Can we afford to do this and how do we do

what I did to try to give you all an answer to that question tonight is kind of take these new capital plan update numbers and run some versions in cases on what our and so on, expense forecast might look like in those circumstances. And basically kind of iteratively run through the expense forecasts up through fiscal year 31-32. After 31 we know things start coming down because We pay fixed principal plus declining interest the way we do borrowing. So when you borrow money, we know that our borrowing numbers start to go down over time so it's really a question of how we end up in a situation regarding those peak years 29, 30, 31 and whether we can kind of make it over that peak with doing all of these projects the way that we've scheduled it.

my goal being not to delay the senior center and not to delete Watertown Square while at the same time putting the middle school borrowing in where we can. So what I try to do here is to build what I call maybe not the worst case scenario, but maybe like a 98% worst-case scenario. It doesn't account for a catastrophic disaster, but when it accounts for is the lowest potential new growth we might get the highest potential cost increases we might get and sort of work from there to kind of see if there's a method here that allows us to remain with a balanced budget. And then if you're there, you realize that if new growth gets a little better or state aid gets a lot better one of these other things get a little bit better than it's going to be fine because we've looked at the worst case and we've kind of worked off of them. So in order to do that, we started with a baseline set of assumptions in that forecast. We held projected new growth at 2 and 1 half million which is lower than where we have been in the estimates in the last couple of forecasts

Two and a half million by the way is generally covered by people improving their houses, adding decks, redoing their kitchens, doing home additions, doing small construction projects. The personal property on office buildings, the kind of people come and go on. It's been a relatively stable low-end number for us to use. We increased investment income in the income side of the budget from 2.7 to 3.5 million dollars and started by doing that because we have blown past this number every year, the last couple years and interest rates are now up again which means we're going to be high on that. We're gonna have more income there than we thought, again. We thought three and a half million is a good safe number to use that gives us a little bit more on the revenue estimate, and it's safe to do. We increased the fee estimates as well. It's been a long time since we've increased a lot of our city fees. We do think we can make this number work It's a relatively small increase, but it is something we think we could do on the revenue side to make things help.

On the expense side, we plan for very limited additions to staff primarily to fund the forthcoming public building study We slowed the projected growth for non-salary expenses. We bought a lot of equipment upgrades, software upgrades, those sort of things. We don't think we need to grow those numbers as much as we have in recent years We stuck with some standard things we do, continue fully funding tax revenue items to the CIP with free cash like we did last year. continuing to keep our commitment to the education line at a 4% increase. Now we're about to head into the process where we do budget policy guidelines every year, I'm telling you I built this at 4%. If the council turns around and tells me they want to do something more than 4%, it's going to get really difficult to do that. We were at 3 1⁄2 for years, we upped it to 4% last year and tried to hold that 4% number in these budget estimates. and maintain our contributions to affordable housing trust at $250,000 a year. Plug all of that in

do an expense estimate and get a bunch of numbers. I'm not going to focus on these numbers. We can go through them next week in the preliminary budget overview in more detail, but the bottom line is if I do just that and nothing else If I focus a little bit on the bottom here, what you will notice is that I have $3 million, $4.5 million, and $3-million deficits in fiscal years 30, 31, 32 by doing Watertown Square and the senior center in the middle school. So then, the question is how do I work to address this particular issue? So in order to make this sheet a little bit more readable, we took a bunch of things that generally don't change and we consolidated them all into one line so that all the other numbers looked bigger. But this is just a simplified version of our expense forecast for fiscal year 27 the current year where everything balances perfectly as it is the current and that's done going forward. And what you see when you look at this is 28 and 29 have pretty good surpluses, and 30, 31, 32 have pretty significant negatives.

And they kind of stretch out on beyond that if we kept on going. So how do we address this? Well, so like I said, we put the sum of a bunch of lines in the forecast in one line to make it a little bit easier. and then with that consolidated forecast, I said okay what can we do to close these numbers and establish if there's a path forward here that could work. And we did find a path for it here that works so we think it makes a lot of sense and I want to lay that out to the council We can talk more about it next week, but my main goal for tonight is just to say here's a path that works. This is a really conservative way to do the budget and I can balance it if I absolutely need to. But there are couple of things we need to understand need to happen in order to do that. The first thing is we close the gap by pausing the acquisition of land funds. We've been contributing $1.25 million to this for a long time, there's $5.5 million in the account, we're not suggesting doing anything with this 5.5 billion at this point. This is what we used to buy... We used it to buy the Walker Pond site. Um, 5.4 million is a good amount to have available to buy something else

if we don't continue to contribute 1.125 to it every year, like I said, it limits that flexibility a little bit but it starts to bring those deficit numbers down a little The second thing we did is we lowered our projections in fiscal year 29 and beyond on what we think our salary increases will be. just a little bit. This is a modest slowing of projected salary growth, but the reason I feel that we can do this is because we have offered competitive salaries through the class and comp study. We offer in a very competitive package in the agreements that we have in place that run through the end of fiscal year 28. If I assume that we are a little less aggressive in the next contract here, it gives us some flexibility and some space here. And then the last thing the last major thing we did, which makes the most sense when you're showing... I want to back up here. Now a $6 million surplus in 28

and a $3 million deficit in 31, is that basically by increasing money into the stabilization accounts and reducing some of the debt and shifting some numbers around in front-loading them to before we do the major borrowing on the middle school, it makes everything work a lot better. So one of the things we did is, we actually took our OPEB money. We've always talked about the possibility of stretching this out and paying it longer. We actually front-loaded in this proposal. We paid a little bit of it earlier Again, finishing by 2031 as originally proposed with a smaller payment in 2031. But we front-loaded it. and then what we did is we plowed more money than originally planned into the senior center Watertown Square stabilization funds. And what that essentially lets us do is it lets us reduce the borrowing on Watertown Square from $40 million to $30 million because we have the money in stabilization. It frees up a lot of borrowing capacity, and then we end up with a budget that looks like this.

for me, where I get to budgets looking three, four or five years out, I'm comfortable with this. The deficits in 3031 and 32 are 800,000 1.9 million 330. Those are still deficit numbers but they're not multi-year deficit numbers and they're disappearing as you get out past 32. If you wanted to show this is a balanced budget just to establish it is doable, if you take the council reserve lines down by that year we could reduce those numbers in that year and just reduce how much we spend on council reserve. That's a fully balanced five-year projection going forward all the way through, it is doable. but as we build our projections forward, I'd probably start without doing that with hope that some revenue lines come in a way to address it. But I just want to show there is a very viable path here with closing off some of the pieces we have. And this is the benefit of the flexibility, the budget that we've had for years.

So essentially if we pause the land contributions, moderately slow their projected salary growth adjust OPEB and put more money into stabilization in the next two years, and if necessary reduce council reserve we end up balancing this with the middle school at the borrowing number that we talked about. I want to talk about the downside and the upside here just real quickly. The strategy is not completely without risk, it decreases the ability to absorb the impact of inflation or other economic shocks that we've had a little bit more capacity to do It requires smaller salary increases in the next round of contract negotiations, which is never easy to talk about. it becomes hard to fund positions required to enhance services above and beyond some stuff that we've built in for the public building study, those sort of things. But it doesn't allow us to substantially grow staff in any area. it limits our ability to add anything new to capital projects.

I can't have somebody walk in and say, oh by the way let's do East End Fire Station in 2031 as well that doesn't work at this point you have to be beyond that five-year capital plan to be able to do the next big project It prevents us from taxing below the cap. I want to be absolutely clear about that. If we do this, we need the full two and a half percent cap on taxes for years going forward. Again, this is done without a debt exclusion but it's also done leaving tax money on the table. It may require a longer time between some equipment replacements, some of the vehicles we've been replacing in DPW we've talking about going a year or two years longer and I think that's doable without much of an impact but it's important to do that. I'll also mention, even though it's not on here, this is built upon a 4% increase per year in the school budget and what essentially the numbers come down and so on. So I think it's a little over 3% increase in the other city department budgets based upon this basic strategy with

with the reduced numbers. Now, all of that is meant to create a worst case scenario. All that is mean to create this is what happens if our new growth is stuck at that 2 and 1 half million number for five years. And I just want to put into perspective one lab building or a few residential buildings would regain the options and flexibility that we are squeezing here very quickly because they go into the budget the year they go in, and they stay there forever. They're in that annual revenue side going forward and we just put for perspective 9 Galen Street, the current proposal to take that old commercial building and tear out the insides of it and turn it into a residential modern high quality residential building meeting the Watertown Square goals. best faith estimate from our assessing team is that adds $982,000 in new growth. So that's almost a million dollars in the year that it pops in and then a million there every year going forward

to go back a second, when you're looking at the deficit here that's 880 in fiscal year 30, that would disappear if that project came out in fiscal years 30. And most of 31s would disappear and 32 would be back in the black after that if I knew that project was going to be under construction. The 153-unit project at 49 to 59 Mount Auburn tough to finance right now. It's stalled and we can't build these projects because some of the financial challenges around it, that's 620,000 in new growth. And just to put a big one out there as a reminder I picked three Watertown Square projects just kind of keep them in the area around the square but 88 Water, the proposed second lab behind 66 Galen if was built out as a lab space is about 2.6 million dollars in new growth that turns every number positive very quickly in this process so You asked for my kind of financial assessment of the situation responding to the middle school, and the best way I can say this is well it's not without some risk.

I believe we're in a moment where opportunity and reality align to make this project work I also will say just one more perspective on this project. I think that the cost of not doing this now likely makes this more expensive over time, and one of the things that I am concerned about is if the Council I mean, the way I would best summarize this is if you would say what we would rather do as a renovation or not to this project then so be it. But if you're going to say we'd rather do this project and we'd like to see if we could wait one two three four more years I actually think that's a tougher place to be than just pulling off the band-aid doing it now because we have the ability in the next two years to set aside stabilization for some of the other projects we're working with. which stabilizes the ability to keep borrowing on those projects reasonable and makes it possible to even in this very, very conservative circumstance find a path to balanced budgets including the middle school in our capital plan. So that's what I have tonight.

If it's okay, I'm going to take my seat over there but I am happy to answer questions going forward and work with whatever the council needs. Thank you very much.

Let me just explain. The reason I think we're doing this tonight was that whatever decision we make could be baked into the manager's presentation next week So I think it's helpful. I know we probably have more questions at a later date, but I think that this was giving the manager an opportunity to hear where we're coming from as we move forward so he presents the preliminary budget overview next week. Palomba. Thank you.

and so forth. So that's an increase of fees piece. Did I read that as $4.9 million increase in fees?

No, it's not an increase asking people to spend. And remember, a lot of that is building permit fees and some of that Hold that number up faster than I can as to what it is today. Yeah, it was a couple hundred thousand dollars. It was probably in the range of, I mean as a percentage, it's probably a 5% increase across the board. That's my best guess and then we increased to 100 year beyond that point which was essentially designed to say that we probably would have not necessarily growth in the actual fee, but growth in amount of activity paying the fee.

4.6 and fiscal 27 up to 4.9.

So it goes from 4.6 to 4.9, so it's increasing by $300,000. So it's probably 7%. It's less than 10%, and then it goes up 100%. Castes, we'd keep that number flat. And the income from it would actually go up a little bit anyway. But we just took a leap to say that we could make some adjustments and make that work.

The argument that if you don't do that carries out for just about any project, I guess. So if you were to say well we don't do 88 Watertown now and they do 88 Watertown in two years, the costs to do 88 water town could be more and it could not happen. So I just want to make sure that logic carries for Income.

The only thing I can say about the developments that we might be banking on for income is that there is some hope out there that if biotech rents start to come back, that the commercial buildings will start building again and whatever. that the ratio of rent to construction costs will work again at some point in time. The challenge in particular with our public projects is, of course, there's not an income source on the other side of this because it's school building and not a biotech lab. so we're not trying to balance an income against the cost. But yeah, in general Costs can go up. The cost of maintaining vacant modulars for a long period of time is also a concern. So I mean, maybe it's more of a gut than a technical analysis.

But I think that my feeling was sort of like, if you want to tear the whole building down and redo it, I think waiting presents more risk especially now that we have a very stabilized number that we're focusing on for the Cubs. Yes, continue.

Dave, first I apologize for not appreciating

It's Megan, Mark, Tyler and Emily have been the committee working with me on this all along.

So thank you. And thank you for it. It's a lot to absorb We have a housing project at 33 that I believe now is having some trouble. Is that correct?

So my understanding, and it's very much secondhand information. But my understanding that they're permitted, and they are not starting construction because they have not yet secured financing from someone who has said this makes financial sense. the reality of debt and equity financing of a residential project is they're looking at these things, Am I better off putting my money here or leaving it in the bank account, or leaving into the stock market, or something like that? When interest rates are high and income from a money-market account is good risk from a commercial project is, or residential project is a little tough to handle. And there's questions about where things are going and it becomes more risky. I didn't put that one up here. I put 49 Mount Auburn with the 620 in new growth Relatively speaking, there's probably about 100-150 thousand new growth out of that project if it took off too.

and I think that, you know... Maybe. I'm not an economist, but it appears to me that we have some headwinds ahead of us in terms being able to continue to develop at the way we're doing it. Now, you presented up a budget that doesn't require any of this. without worrying about any new development. And so I am not asking, and so I have to remember that but some of my concern has to do with things may not be as rosy what we might think in terms of the economy. To me, there's just too many both domestic and international issues that affect

but it also puts pressure on other folks who are trying to build.

It affects both sides, right? The one positive for us is our investment income line comes in over budget but I would rather have interest rates be more competitive because there's a lot more other things that we'd rather do than make a little bit more money in investment income. So, I agree.

Thank you, Councilman President.

Council again.

Yes, thank you Mr. President and both day jobs as a counselor and as a hobby. I track growth in other cities and towns at macro level, but we can't We can't fund a project without borrowing for it. And I've heard at least one or two councilors sharing to other members of the community that Watertown's AAA bond rating would be impacted negatively by even the bonding perspective. I mean, I would think a new lender would lend to us if our funding capacity was going to be at jeopardy but I would just like to hear that from you.

Well, so first and foremost I'll say I don't think there's a circumstance where our bonding capacity becomes at jeopardy. The risk is do we slide below the AAA rating at some point in time? and I will just say that despite the fact that we are closing off some of our flexibility, as we do that, we're maintaining a fully paid pension and we are putting ourselves on a four year path to a fully-paid OPEB to that other pension benefits line. We are one of five communities in the state with a fully are the only one with both fully paid at that point. I'm not saying that guarantees you a AAA bond rating, but I'm sure what else a bond agency can be looking for at that Finance is under control.

So I feel relatively comfortable that with those things stabilized, the risk on us across the board is better than most other local governments.

Can I follow up, Mr. President? We would actually be the biggest once we fund both the OPEB liability and the pension funds, so I can say that without doubt. types of buildings. Watertown has recently opened a brand new beautiful high school, two elementary schools and 90% modified other elementary schools so this The Middle School strikes me as the very largest building project that is remaining, potentially. Is that correct to think about?

of the list of all the things on our capital plan, it is the largest and it is most expensive. By far? By far. I mean the senior center in Watertown Square is less than half the cost, almost a third of the costs. The senior center project is one fourth to one

discussing about the impact of a down economy with no construction so then following Office vacancy rates in downtown Boston are the highest they've been in my lifetime at least of forecasting. in downtown Boston, those high rise towers that we used to see all over the place being built cranes in the sky. They're not there so could you explain about the construction impact on bidding in that type of climate versus if there were a full growth economy with construction going on all over the place, how does the present situation help this project?

Well, I mean, Christy, our OPM may be able to share more on this. But some of the conversations that she and I have had on it is that both construction contractor companies and subcontractors and workers are more willing to dive into a Public Sector School Project, when there aren't a whole lot of lab buildings available out there for them to build. Which means there's more competition and there's interest in doing this type of building. Ideally that also means if you're looking in the world of low bid projects, there's also more capable valuable contractors who are willing to take a shot at sharpening their pencil and coming up with good number for this. We won't completely know how that looks until we to ultimately get the numbers back. But as much as I would like all the new growth on that new growth slide, the flip side of it is, you know,

every construction company that isn't out there building an 88 water is looking for something to build and maybe that helps us on the middle school.

Sure, my final question Mr. President so Proposition 2.5, we are able to increase our budget from one area to the next by an automatic two and a half percent of the levy from last year on top of this budget but also we can add to that the value of new growth, and new growth is the value all new personal and real property taxes that have occurred. So you mentioned before that there aren't a lot building projects out there pushing Watertown's new grade rate up and so forth. And then we have personal property, any time a new lab building gets new lab space if they're renting anew with bring in all sorts of equipment that can also be taxed as personal property.

Could you explain about the value, potential for personal property growth where the real estate tax growth may not be as high. But hearing it, as new labs come in they need new equipment which is taxable by 10%.

Yeah, so the 2.5 million sort of baseline churn number of new growth that is in this... I didn't put up a revenue page in this presentation. I decided to save all that for next week and not get really deep into the weeds on it But what our assessor's office has generally shared is that at $2.5 million a year, which is the base number that we're using when we're not anticipating specific new buildings starting construction, what we are covering in there is two things. one of which is small home improvements, small home projects. That's real estate growth and the other is personal property growth Companies, moving into Somerville. That's it. I have now reached the point where I've not had enough sleep.

you and I spent some time moving into Watertown, and what that actually means under those circumstances. It is not the worst thing in the world. As you look at the trend in the biotech business, we still have a lot of empty space. We still have businesses growing and moving and slowing. You have seen a downward dip employment for the first time in recent months, which is very concerning to me because I've always said as long as we're growing even if we're going slowly we're good. It looks like that's already starting to turn around there's been more venture capital investment into lab around here recently, and I'm hoping that continues to grow. But if these empty spaces slowly fill in the new growth benefit still is there because every time they fill in, they bring equipment. So that equipment becomes new growth that is taxable. That is essentially the likelihood of that happening which seems to have a sort

is baked into that $2.5 million baseline number that's in the revenue as new growth beyond the 2.5% cap. So that's how that's being anticipated in this base case forecast. Now, if someone comes in suddenly and says I want to take that 705 Mount Auburn? $500 million of new equipment or whatever. Yeah, we'll see a bump beyond these numbers and I haven't anticipated that and that's okay. But that's why I built a conservative forecast.

I just want to assure everyone, it's not just new buildings that produce bad property tax growth. It's even the change of lease. That does help. Yes. Thank you. Constant base.

Yeah. I'm very nervous. I'm a very conservative at home where I spend my money, and this makes me very nervous to be spending this much money. Is this the worst case scenario that you've given us? And is there a worse case scenario

I've described this as the 95 plus percent worst case scenario. I want to put this into perspective because looking around and comparing this to other communities in Massachusetts and where we are, there's still flexibility in this budget document that most communities don't have. What I was trying to do was build a circumstance to say, if I had really low new growth numbers and all of these projects staying on schedule, the senior center on schedule or Watertown squared down on schedule and everything else like that happening. Can I use the flexibility in our stabilization accounts and things, and some adjustments to department expenses? And hold this to a point where I can make this happen even if new buildings aren't being done. And I get a yes. where this would go wrong, where that 1% or 2% risk remains is if the market got so...

If things got so upside down that every resident in Watertown decided they didn't want to invest in a bathroom upgrade. that two and a half million is in the baseline, new growth started to disappear. Or if there was a catastrophic situation that went beyond what our insurance would cover and suddenly our insurance rates tripled But if we end up in any of those sort of situations, every other community in Massachusetts is going to be in that situation with us. And most of them are going to even worse off than we are. that risk is always there and we have always buffered ourselves from that risk quite a bit by the amount of stabilization accounts and support we have. But even then, if all of that happened in fiscal year 29 We could slow down Watertown Square. We could delay the senior center a year. We can spend the $5 billion in the acquisition of land fund I mean, there's still a few things left that we can do under those circumstances.

I don't want to do any of those things because we built this budget based upon the idea being very particular about where these funds go and how we do this, and how our community works with this. But yeah that's... everything went haywire. That was the year we were going to put $1.7 million into OPEB and we could say, all right, we just won't do it that year. So those options are still there. I don't want to go to any of those options, but I think that's why I feel comfortable here because those

Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you for your presentation. I appreciate the ongoing analysis and looking for flexibility in how we might be able to shift things around especially stabilization. To me, the middle school remains a top priority. There's been a lot of really good work. We had the update in September on keeping the numbers down, as well as recognizing the opportunity for quality vendors given the state of the economy and who we heard we have even better choices than usual given the slowdown in labs. I don't know where this $40 million number came with for Watertown Square, it's the first I've heard of it and meetings to be, I mean that's like a new thing. So we've had careful planning today, careful conservative fiscal planning today

Proactive Investment, our stabilization funds planning out for our capital improvement plans. And I want to see us move ahead as soon as possible in the middle school and not Delay, any further? I feel like we could have already maybe even voted on this last month as far as continuing on that. I take that as a worst case scenario, as you said. We're still in good shape, yes, compared to communities across the state. Watertown is fiscally amazing and a lot of different areas. And I also would hate to lose partners that we've already identified, that we're already been successfully working with in our building for the future. So that's just how I'm feeling overall right now generally looking forward to not

I don't see, as you said there's yes there's concerns headwinds but we do have buffers council reserve free cash etc. as well so

If I may, Mr. President, I just want to acknowledge one thing. Today's meeting is the first public meeting where I have mentioned the $40 million for Watertown Square so don't feel like you missed anything. that the reason why is because I think I have tried to share at least this, I have been seeking that number from Bowman our engineering firm over the course of the past six months and basically saying I know this is a very and so forth. So I think that's a preliminary step in the process, but do some baseline probable construction costs just to put this into perspective. substantial contingency percentage in it because it's such an early project and on top of that, it has a unit cost inflation with the idea that since this project probably wouldn't start until middle of 2028

I mean, $4 million of this is unit cost inflation just merely because of the idea that it would potentially be delayed until the point where we would be ready to have a full design to go out. this includes traffic signals, it includes landscape architecture, and includes a number of things. And on top of that there's contingency on top this number, much like the middle school number will become refined over a substantial period of time. But that numbers I've been holding to date were really wild off the top of my head guesses. This one, and I'm happy to share with the council the sheet here this is based upon unit price costs of actual things in the ground so that's why I can say, I feel a little bit more comfortable than in this range is what we should be setting aside in the capital plan for project that's you know more than a year and a half away but at that point at least

have a number that's more realistic. And I've been pushing to do this as we were doing middle school because I wanted both numbers in here at a realistic number and not an off the top of my head, hey, I think it might be this kind of number. So that's where we are.

Thank you. you know, addend to that yes the costs are going to increase as you're even projecting with Watertown Square so that would be true for the middle school too and it's just such have all been very difficult and important time as well in these children's lives, middle school period. Yes, I mean we see that in a lot of things but to kind of just feel like...I mean what do we really gain by pausing? I don't really see what we gain. putting an expense and again, delaying with our partners. So I'll stop there.

who's asked this one before. Emily, could you speak up a little bit? I wish we had microphones in here because we're getting street noise and everything else.

Is there any chance that MSBA would contribute anything to this project? Or even the Watertown Square plan, is there any additional transfer, additional funding? I know Capital Market secured $1 million.

500,000. So let me step back and answer both pieces of that. On the MSBA part if we were doing an MSBA project we would have to kind of stop everything we're doing you start over from scratch to get funding for a percentage of the eligible cost, which is only a percentage and it actually reaches a point where sometimes when you're chasing state money, the delay will cost you more than the amount of money to potentially get. And I think we're starting to get in that ballpark so that's why we kind of didn't chase that option. As far as Watertown Square, we have chased a ton of possible resources for Watertown square We have received, through the assistance of our state delegation, some state earmarked funds that are being used to pay for the design costs right now. So the design cost

off that budget because of that, including the federal earmark from Katherine Clark for $500,000 to do that. The wild card number in this is that there's $10 million State Bond money for Watertown Square. And there is on the Senate side of the Economic Development Bill, which is currently sitting in sitting in the conference committee between House and Senate, there's another $15 million in a Senate version of that. Senator Brownsburger has been very active pursuing both of those funds If those two things come together, you have $25 million in state bond money. Now the thing about state bond there's always more money in the state bond lines than is actually available to spend, and it's now up to the governor's office to decide to spend it. And it's a lot about relationship between the delegation and our team and the governor' s office and the conversations we have as to how you potentially get access to any of that money.

I also think that relative to the way that MassDOT funds and pays for construction costs, if we were getting access to that money it is more realistic potentially to spend that money on on the redevelopment side. If we move forward with something on that side, then it might be to spend it on the streetscape side which is why not putting the redevelpment money into this pool there are still some options there. But on Watertown Square there's multiple opportunities for grants and Mark Lang and our planning team chase down every single one of them everyday to see what we can find. So, we're still working towards that.

One more question is would we have to I guess invest any money if we don't do this in the current Building.

So I guess have to is a relative term, but I did long ago present that if we chose not to do a new middle school building, I do think that there I don't remember what the number was. $15, $20, $25 million investment that the building is worthy of having just to make it better, so to speak, to address some of the most pressing needs and address some more pressing accessibility concerns. There was a version of the capital plan that we put together with that in kind of over-conversation Council instructions to be moved us away from that and towards this plan. And that's where we are today. if you all decided you didn't want to do this today I'd probably dust that plan off bring it back and have another conversation about it but yeah I don't think you can do nothing to that building though.

And how, if i remember correctly because this question has come up before, that 15 to 20 million number would only get us like 20 years maximum. Is that?

It's tough to say. I mean, people can stretch old buildings out for as long as you want. What that did is it solved some emergencies. It did not change any of the educational quality of the space, and I think that big concern was you know, it didn't do anything for student learning. It's merely fixed things that were breaking is the best way to describe it and yeah maybe you hold it I don't know, 10-15 years and then you've got to either fix more things that are breaking or you've gotta go back and do this fuck of a project anyway. but I think the real key issue here was at the time, if I could reflect you as a council's comments back to me. I think impression I was getting was that the perception there that's a lot of money to spend for something that has no real educational benefit improvement for students. That basically what it's doing is

and if there's not be ADA requirements even after that.

It's the building, I mean the building meets the codes to which it was built But that does not mean accessibility is easy in that building under the current circumstances. And the improvements don't 100% fix that situation.

anyone else before that hasn't had a question yet?

Councilor Piccirilli. Thank you, Mr. President. So two things. I mean, somebody else's bad fortune is our gain. That's just the nature of government contracting is that we get better prices. And we saw this back when we did projects back in 2011 and

So that's the silver lining in that. The other thing is, back a year ago when we did the budget policy guidelines for fiscal one that said, with the uncertainty of the home rule petition on the tax shift, develop a series of strategies to help alleviate the burden on residential property taxpayers. And we had talked about a variety of things we could do, not cutting anything but basically postponing things. that's why I saw what you presented today was actually sort of a subset of some of those things. We could do more, if we needed to find more we could do because we discussed with the finance and a team of other things that we could do. But this plan you came up with does not involve really cutting anything

Reserve, or anything else. It's just basically pausing some stuff for a year which is a prudent thing that we have the flexibility to do.

to the day-to-day person who interacts with the operational side of government there is no operational cuts in this plan.

So I'm very pleased, you know, it lines up and I am very pleased and I think it really shows what we can do with the financial flexibility So I feel very comfortable with this enhancing plan to make it work.

So we do have another piece here which has to do with the middle school, and I'd like One or two more questions on this because we're going to continue the same

that we're in right now. And if I'm being honest listening to the presentation, I feel like there's been a lot of financial engineering to get us to move to AES. So I kind of want to dig a little bit into like, you know, some of the stuff that haven't been said which is first of all

that is an all-in cost.

That includes design, that includes construction, that include contingency modifications to the modules for a cafeteria

So what are the chances that

So let's put this in perspective. The Hosmer came in right on budget, the CUNFs came in The Lowell School, we had some hiccups which was mainly due to renovating the historic part of the building. That's where we went astray on that project but at the end of the day we closed out the three elementary school project with extra cash in that account, but we were able to move over to the high school project. The high school had a cost escalation that occurred in the timeframe between when we had basic construction documents in order and when we kind of held ourselves through that post-COVID peak to go up to bid. Most of that was caused by the post COVID increase in construction costs, when we stabilized that number, which was 10% higher than what we had originally built our budget at.

We were able to put money into stabilization to make that happen. we hit that bid number pretty much right on. And from that bid up through today, that project remains on the budget and so we stayed on that budget. The one project we've worked with in recent years that has gone over the budget is been a renovation of this building. As much as I love historic structures, the one advantage of the middle school project is when you scrape something, tear it down and start over from scratch. All of the risks that happened here don't exist in that project. finding bricks underneath the bathroom floors, discovering that the third floor ceiling isn't actually insulated and if you put a fire suppression system in with water in it, you actually have to insulate that ceiling. These were surprises that were not in our design because people didn't anticipate them at the time. Now the last thing I will say is that We've learned some lessons from the architectural design on the high school project, and we're working with the same architects.

So we're also working with them to make sure that we keep in line on everything at the middle school so we don't have any of the things we've learned

and so on. So, I think that's it. Thank you. So we'd be over the 20% threshold.

We would be over 20%. Now, so the council's instructions to us on debt service have always been to stay in the seven to eight as it relates to everything other than the school projects, which we have stayed consistent with across the board so far. when you look statewide that does put us at the top of the list or pretty close to the top Yeah, we will probably be number one on that list. But I will say when you look at numbers two through 15, I don't think you'll find anyone who isn't paying a lot into pension and OPEB every year as well. So when you package pension, OPEB debt service together as kind of like a group we would be much more in the middle of the pack. We're able to do higher on debt service because we've covered those other costs

and OPEB over reducing the debt service because I do feel like it's very high, and this project and at what rate do you assume we can borrow to do the middle score?

Do we still build our four-and-a-half as our basic number? So, we built 4.5% as our base number in our debt service. The thing you've got to remember is we're borrowing municipal tax-exempt debt, so we're way below the market for anybody else doing borrowing. A high school project came in at 3 point something? Our last borrowing was under 3%. So even with the jump in interest rates over the course of the last few months, 4 and 1 half is again a conservative number. We have built our budgets at four and a half for a long time, and we actually haven't borrowed. We've borrowed below 4 1⁄2 every single time . And I know people who deal with mortgage rates right now that are in the sevens look at our numbers and say what in the world is

are these numbers, but when you're borrowing in a tax-exempt market where the people making the money off of your borrowing are not paying federal taxes on it because it's a municipal borrowing rate. the numbers are pretty low. When I worked on Somerville High School, we borrowed under 2%. That was when interest rates were really low Four and a half has been the number that's been in our estimates.

The other thing I wanted to know is, in the presentation I didn't see any sensitivity analysis or there was sort of a hint of it. Have you done any sensitivity

I have, so what I showed you was static spreadsheets. Behind this I have a very dynamic spreadsheet where I have changed almost every number multiple times to see the impacts here and there throughout it. And what I did was basically built for you one of the most conservative estimates in the punch. if there's something more that you, if you want me to build a different type of estimate. If you want be run sensitivity analysis on department expenditures up or down certain percentages on debt service numbers, up or down certain percentages. We have the capacity to do that now that we've built the structure to analyze these particular numbers.

My final question is last year, I think it was last year they have found a direct correlation between school building and student outcome. Is there anyone that can share more on this? And if there is actual data there is such a correlation.

I think we're going to leave that to the superintendent. We'll try to let the superintendent answer that during her part of this presentation for the next agenda item.

and I guess my last question, I'm just going to put it out there. If we as a community truly want this is debt exclusion. I know, I don't need an answer for this right now but something that I'm just putting out there completely out of the question instead of you know to a certain extent, juggling with the financial numbers to make it happen?

I'll let the council make that decision. My advice in the past has been something I think what I've described it as is not in Watertown's DNA. It's like, not something that we have done as an organization or looked at. But again, you know? You guys are the elected officials. I work for you. If you all decided suddenly you wanted to do a debt exclusion, I'd figure out how to do it. But I built this without one because generally that's the budget policy guideline direction that I've received from the council over the course of the last four years.

So I'm going to pause the questions here and move on. We can continue to ask questions when we close the other portion, so next item on the agenda is presentation consideration, public comment and action on the Watertown Middle School project. And I want to begin the presentation by asking the superintendent of schools to come up and give us a brief discussion. You know one of the questions tonight One that came up last time. Your thoughts?

Is this where we stand in the... I'm like...

Microphone's right above your head.

Talk to the heavens, dating for me. Before I answer the specific question, I did just want to provide some remarks. And I do have a team with me who also would like to share some thoughts and then certainly happy to answer any questions that you have. So first off, I think our students are learning a lot about municipal government tonight. That's really special and I appreciate that.

Will they get community service credits? Absolutely.

So I think tonight in theory, I'll write those community service hours down. So tonight you're deciding on where Watertown middle schoolers or Eagles will spend three of the most important years of their lives. Thank you very much, I think you took that line earlier. Middle school is definitely when students figure out who they are what they love and whether school is a place where they belong and the building we give them shapes that answer So today, too many of our middle schoolers learn in rooms that were never meant to be classrooms or woefully undersized. None of our sick science rooms meet state standards. Our nurse works across the building from the main office in a suite with no private room for a sick child to rest and students lose precious minutes crisscrossing a building made for eras of addition stitched together. Every fall, some of our sixth graders and a few staff members including me are still getting lost. The design before you changes that

Every grade will have its own neighborhood, classrooms clustered around shared collaboration spaces with small group rooms between them so a teacher can send students next door to build debate or get extra help without leaving the learning community Each cluster has its own science lab sized for real experiments with daylight and room to move safely, and a world language classroom right in the cluster so students spend their day learning not traveling. At the heart of the building, The Media Center opens onto a maker studio and a learning lab where research turns into something students design build and present. There's a dedicated art studio with tall windows in natural light a band and music room, and a multi-purpose room for rehearsal movement and making. And the auditorium and full size gymnasiums sit side by side each with its own after hours entrance so they remain a stage for our students and a gathering place for all of Watertown This building is designed for our students with disabilities in mind.

Specialized program rooms, calm rooms and resource classrooms are built into every floor right alongside their classmates This is what inclusion looks like when it is designed from the start. Outside, our students will have more than twice today's outdoor space with outdoor classrooms, gardens and outdoor dining so learning does not stop at the door I want to say a word about timing. I'm sure that's obviously we've talked a lot about that already because moments like this do not often come to the life of the city right now every condition is in place, the design is complete shaped by our teachers, our staff our students and our families through months, truly actually years of planning. The cost estimates have been reconciled and shared. The funding is planned miraculously and beautifully and the building itself has reached the end of its useful life. It is over 100 years old, I think we need to remember that. Our facilities study flagged several items a decade ago such as HVAC roof and masonry for replacement

and told us our classrooms cannot be reshaped for today's learning without starting over. Waiting will not make the building younger, nor will it make construction cheaper as we talked about. Every other grade in Watertown now learns at a modern building. Our middle school is the last one. If we let this moment pass, the next one may be years away and a generation of middle schoolers will spend their most formative years waiting for it We have seen what a building like this can do. We saw it when we opened the new Watertown High School last month and three elementaries before, and now it's time for our kiddos in the middle. I'm going to close with a few words from our students who walk its halls every day the new school that is, the high school. The new building is not just a new building but provides us with space that is as ambitious as we are. Here we can thrive and go beyond what we had once expected for ourselves that's from one of our students at the high school. It feels safe and protected, which is an upgrade from the last building.

The new science labs provide a much larger space to conduct a larger amount of labs The bigger space also makes it safer as you don't have to worry about bumping into anyone while getting your supplies. The new building is so beautiful and shiny and new, it makes me want to stay longer after school ends to explore it. and another student says, I would say the openness inspires me the most. Our middle schoolers deserve that same feeling. I respectfully ask for your vote tonight This is more than a financial investment. It is an educational investment in our children's future. This, as I have said, is in my opinion one of the greatest moves that this city will make to really complete pre-K through 12 continuum of excellent educational environments that are going to last for decades and generations of Watertown students. and we have this unique moment in hand.

And I think obviously as the superintendent, I do think that this is a really great step for our kids and our future just a quick answer about the question that was asked directly. I don't recall ever actually saying there's causality between a new building and outcomes, I think projecting you know We can't necessarily draw that causality. But when we hear from our students or when we talk to the people that are in our buildings, I do believe that having that educational environment that is inspiring and really says that this town respects you I think encourages people to become their academic and really reaching that potential. So I cannot give you causality, like our scores have increased because of the new buildings but what I can say is the environment that we feel certainly feels like our students are getting everything they can out of the time that they spend within our buildings. Yes.

Let's start with the students, and then we'll go to the principals. So who would like to go first? Come on up. I'll stay back here just for the fun of it climbing over everybody.

So I'm Sean Gillen. I'm in 11th grade, and I currently attend the brand new Watertown High School. I would like to speak to you all about the difference that the new state of the art building has had on my learning experience and what I've seen in my community, and how it has influenced that. So first of all, I'd like to say I've been through Watertown schools from kindergarten through 11th grade. I think it is such an incredible community, the most supportive teachers and I appreciate your time today considering the plan for this new middle school. What I've seen with the new high school is that this building, that spent so much time being built with intention, is keeping students engaged. It is motivating students because it's a building that is a lesson in itself. We're spending six and half hours a day in a building at the frontier of environmental sustainability

It's teaching what collaboration does in a community. It is teaching what hard work over nine years, hundreds of experts involved, uncountable hours put into this building. the students are receptive of that. I personally have benefited in my academics, I am performing better in every class. My friends say the same, my friends are getting to school on time which It's such an inviting space for children. Something new this year for us is something called Academic Commons. We have two on each floor, they're structured between their classes and students are, with the asking of their teacher, allowed to go and independently work. It's encouraging

it's encouraging students to work on their own, to build community talk with students in other classes and they're building independence that will help them in the workforce I think all of the work and intention that's going into this building is being shown in the students. And we talked about the elementary schools being recently reconstructed, Lowell, Cunniff, Hosmer Now the high school. is so modern, so incredible. Now we have a three-year missing gap as the council and Ms. Galston has reported on, a three year gap. And that three years is some of the most influential years in a child's life. They are so impressionable socially and academically, it is so imperative that we give these students what they deserve which is an incredible education

and we have some of the brightest kids, brightest minds in the state and in the world. And I think it's just like it's our duty to them to give them that flexible learning

Okay, hi everyone. My name is Lily Griffith and I am a senior at Watertown High School So today I'm just going to speak on some of my favorite things about the new school and I think it's really important that the middle schoolers get the same opportunity that we have gotten. So to start, as you've heard the new school is very spacious and it's environmentally friendly. lots of new cool things, new technologies all that and I completely agree that I think these have like improved my learning as well as many other students some of my personal favorite parts about the new buildings are the study rooms so as well as the Learning Commons there are these little rooms next to them and they, you can just go in by yourself.

I go on during my study block or I go in during like when I need to take a test and things like that. And they're quiet, and you can go in and it really helps me learn as someone with ADHD I can get very distracted in class and it can be hard to learn around a lot of other students so having this opportunity has been extremely helpful. One of my other favorite parts about the new building is the art room. I would say it's one of the biggest new classrooms and it's so just like cool, and there are so many new spaces for We got these pottery wheels, which we've never had the opportunity to even have before. And it's just given us art students this opportunity to be able to use these new things and explore their creative side and I think that's really cool and something I've never gotten to actually experience in school before. I also love the cafeteria, someone who loves to eat.

I really enjoy it we have three different spots to eat we have like main cafeteria area with big tables and then The upstairs has these high tops which feels like I'm in a restaurant, which is kind of cool. And then the outdoor seating areas, which I love. I love good outdoor eating and this is also really cool because it can get extremely overstimulating cafeterias. I especially know in the middle school, I would try not to eat in there and go to my guidance counselor's office because it's not even if it might not seem like it with a lot of kids is crammed and it's so I really appreciate the new cafeteria. So other than that it just overall, the new school makes me excited to come to school and I think that middle schoolers should have this same opportunity because as who stated before this is a very influential time in middle schoolers' lives.

I think that we don't give them enough credit, I think where middle schooler are like directly preparing for the real world so are middle like going back to art I have liked it since fifth grade and I didn't have the opportunity that i had till 12th grade to experience it the same way so I think that it's extremely important that we have to respect middle schoolers and understand that this New Middle School is extremely important for their learning. So thank you very much for your time and that's all I have.

So before I invite the principals, because both of them one obviously is the middle school principal and the other one actually was the middle-school principal and now it's the high school principal. Just to echo the middle school design is just kind of a smaller version of the high school because there are similar small group spaces, collaborative spaces out in the cluster area. It's a different world I mean obviously it's high school versus middle school but we have that same idea and the cafeteria, same thing. There's kind of a separated area if you wanted to take a little bit of a break from the larger space in the outdoor places. So when you hear that just know that it's a lot of the things you're hearing from the high school are being echoed within our middle schools. So I think I'll start with Jeff and then Joel, and then Kendra. I don't know if you wanted to say something. Let me follow the students. That's a real tough act of all to sing.

Very inspiring though. So my name is Jeff Gagneon and I am the current principal at the middle school. and I am learning a lot about municipal government spending. As a former economics and accounting major in college, this is actually fascinating to me. But I do want to thank everybody for the opportunity to speak. I also want to start by thanking many people who have helped us get to this point Thank you to the design team at AI3 and Vertex for their collaboration in helping us turn ideas into a tangible plan for the new school. Thank you to the parents and guardians who have shared their thoughts and perspectives both formally through our community listening sessions and informally through emails, phone calls and conversations. Thank you to our district leaders and the staff at Watertown Middle School who have shared their ideas about the kind of environment in which our students should learn and grow every day. All these voices have helped us design what we believe will be a state-of-the-art middle school, one that meets the needs of Watertown's 6th, 7th and 8th graders for years to come.

The time for our new middle school is now We don't have to imagine why we need a new building because we see it every day. Just last week following the nor'easter, we had eight separate leaks in the building. Our auditorium control room can no longer project onto the screen so we have to use an alternate USB, Jack on the stage. The curtain at mid-court in our gymnasium is inoperable at this current time because one of the chain supports fell off and broke last week. One of our basketball hoops can no longer be raised or lowered because of problems with the hydraulic system in our cafeteria, One quarter of our students sit behind pillars in the middle of this space, making it challenging to supervise and making the cafeteria feel less welcoming than they should. We do put 200 students in that space at a time. So yes, it is crowded. Our nurse's office lacks privacy, does not even have a sink in the bathroom.

Our classrooms and science labs have experienced ongoing issues with projectors, with phones. Many of the spaces themselves are less than ideal not simply because of their size and age, but also because of the way they're laid out and configured. Don't get me wrong, we do right by our students in so many ways every day. We have an amazing staff, we have amazing kids. The kids rise to the challenge every day and the challenges that our staff and the building present to them and they are again truly special, but they do deserve better. Tonight's vote is not simply about replacing an old building it's about communicating to the students and the staff at Warretown Middle School as well as to the residents of this city that our middle schoolers deserve a building that tells them every day that they matter, that their education matters and the city of Watertown believes in them and their future.

I'll keep this brief. My name is Joel Jacob Ozzie, and the proud principal of Watertown High School. I've been the principal four buildings actually more if you include our temporary spaces. The old Columbia Ave no one likes an old building more than I do , Moxley Temporary Space, the middle school garden level. And then I was the principal of the Middle School. as well as Boys and Girls Club, programs at the Phyllis Building, and kind of seemingly everywhere else in this city when our kids were in a more temporary space. I gotta be honest with you. We have, I have spent my seven years, my six years here shoehorning education to fit into old buildings and it absolutely changes the way we do programming for the first time we as students and staff, we can just take a deep breath in our new building. And it has allowed us to be able, to be inspired by the space. We're all under one roof.

I can spend my day going to a podcast, to the culinary arts room all the way to our fourth floor and see every single type of pedagogy going on at once. And our students are vibrant again, I can't speak to the causality, but what I can speak to is a new building gives opportunities that students didn't even know they needed or wanted. These two students are public speaking tonight because they're inspired by a public speaking room I was on a podcast last week with, to be honest with you three kids I've never heard speak in school and now they want to be podcasters. They're asking me questions that I would have never dreamed getting grilled by and I'm proud of them for doing that. We have kids, we built a new kitchen in the basement garden level of the middle school and we had kids who went on to Johnson & Wales that couldn't boil water when they showed up to us.

So I can't say that there is a direct correlation between a new building and their grades, but what I can say a maker space, a brand new common area where kids can bounce ideas off of themselves each other and their teachers all that creates opportunities students don't even know they need yet and when they get those opportunities, they go on to do amazing things in high school and beyond. So I would urge you as someone that has humbly and lovingly lived through our very seasoned buildings do what you can. The time is now, as Principal Gagnon said, the time is they need it desperately, desperately, and we'll finally be able to find our way around the middle school.

Thank you. My name is Kendra Foley, I'm the chair of the Watertown School Committee. I'm also a mother of three children who've all either in the Water town public schools have gone through my oldest is now freshman in college and my other two are at the high school And like you, I'm an elected official who cares really deeply about this community and is very committed to it. And I thank you for the time you put into this community. It's a lot. And we are really grateful to you. I'm here speaking on behalf of myself and my perspective tonight, not on behalf the full school committee though. About 14 years ago the city embarked on a comprehensive study of school buildings and looking at the needs, and then the options of what was ahead. It laid out a path for all our schools to be either replaced or renovated. And with your leadership over this past decade

The city has made generational investments in our students, our families, our staff and our community. Thank you for your partnership and thank you for leadership in our three new elementary schools and our beautiful new high school. You started down a very ambitious path 10 years ago, in terms of where our 104 Year Old Middle School. I encourage you to support this building project tonight. But again, you've done a lot. You come down a really important path. You've done so much work to get here and this is not easy work. So thank you for your support of the district, your support our students, your partnership, your leadership in your vision for the future

I think we'll open it up now for public comment and then if there's questions of you, if you don't mind hanging out for that please. So I will now open it Just to remind people, you have to identify yourself for the record and council rules allow comment of two minutes. So if you'd like to speak raise your hand we do have one at home but I want to get to the people in the room if there's anybody that

42 Carroll Street, and I'm sharing my individual views as a Watertown resident tonight. Thank you city council members, school staff, building committee members, Mr. Proagus and others for countless hours spent on this new building question as a community, we are very fortunate to even be able to consider a new building. I work in a top performing middle school, one town over where like Watertown Middle School 20% of our students have a disability. It was built in 1936 with additions from 1997 and 2021 So the Watertown Middle School building generally serves our needs and I understand in many ways it also doesn't. I understand, and in some cases support, the rationale for a new building Please understand, the costs of this project are not just financial. They include many impacts to Watertown students and staff

So some of the activities of the last several years are related to changing buildings and moving buildings, and moving-related activities. and generated by the project. And they include some impacts to the city, for example, the slowing of pay increases that we heard and a 4% increase in an educational budget would also likely represent a potential slowing of staff salaries in education. And I just want to share that 4% increase is not what's surrounding school district budgets now, Arlington was 7.3%, 2025, Newton 5.75%, Waltham 7.7%, Belmont 9.3% just as a couple of examples. My general just hope is that in your decision making you weigh this question. Does the new building price tag give you, the city, wiggle room to mitigate some of the negative impacts that any building project naturally has

during a period of significant transition and need for our school district which is going to be compounded by the federal cuts that are going into effect this month with the many, many vulnerable families we have in our district. Does it enable our community to cover other education costs that will arise over the next six plus years? And does it produce a building whose size, space and functionality are a substantial improvement compared to what we have now for the next 10 years. Thank you again for your service and time on this important item.

The years go by quickly, the days are long. I've been in this town for over 50 years. I have sent things out to people all over the country and to Europe with regard to our high school and what you have accomplished in this Quite frankly, I don't think this council gives itself enough credit and I truly want to say what you've achieved is amazing. I wanna go back to high school having toured that school. The art room sends me completely. There's no question that we need to do the school. George, I want to thank you for your presentation but I say what are the priorities? The school is my first priority. A senior center has been asked for a long time as far as I'm concerned, Watertown Square can wait. We see the decimation of small businesses along Mount Auburn Street right now. Do we really want to continue that down Main Street under these economic circumstances? I say let's take care of the people that live here, contribute here and are learning here.

These schools are amazing we're very lucky for the leadership we have I go back to when I was going with John who came after Gene left and going to his meetings, SMMA. All the meetings I've attended at schools. I don't even have children when I'm going all these meetings because education is important. I got everything from quality education in much older schools that our kids are going to, but boy what a motivation. You both spoke beautifully. I'm so proud of how articulate you were. This talking to the heavens doesn't send me, so I'm trying to project. But I want to thank you and Joel, great leadership. Didi, you've been wonderful. there's no question, let's go forward and get it done. Thank you. And wait one more thing if I can add we have the dream team Jimmy Mello and I were the only two people that went into MSBA when we're dealing with the high school.

We saw all the architectural teams, we have Vertex AI3 was magnificent this comes around once folks let's not blow it let's close the deal thank you

Thank you so much for the opportunity to speak. My name is Suzanne Brueggemann, I live at 60 Rutland Street and I'm a lifelong resident of Watertown, a graduate of Water Town High School. I have two young children and professionally I'm a speech therapist with 20 years of experience working in public school setting. Tonight, I'm talking to you as a parent obviously and I want to raise concerns about a number of major initiatives Watertown is taking on at the same time a new middle school, a new superintendent search and new student service leadership and rebuilding CPAC. I understand the importance of each of these, and I have no doubt that the new middle school will be beautiful and an important investment in our community. But I worry we are trying to accomplish too much at once without keeping a clear focus on our most important responsibility, the education and outcomes of our students. As a parent who ultimately had to make the very difficult decision to pull my child from Watertown Public Schools

because his educational needs were not being met here, this is particularly important to me. A new building can provide an excellent environment for learning but it cannot itself improve academic outcomes or ensure that students receive the services they need. As we make these major investments, I hope we will give equal and perhaps greater attention to what is happening inside our schools. Instruction, special education, student progress and measurable academic outcomes. We have an opportunity to make significant improvements in Watertown, I just hope that in the excitement and complexity of these major projects we don't lose sight what all of them are ultimately supposed to support our students in their education. Thank you.

I recognize Eliza Gee, if you could identify yourself, you're allowed to speak

Good evening, thank you. My name is Liza Gimbard and I am a resident and parent and Watertown. I want to thank the students who came to speak tonight, and participate in the public forum. I also wanna thank the other members who have spoken tonight Something that I want to ask and see if it was considered, if the new middle school would be built on the land location where Moxley Playground is as well as the pods. As mentioned last night at the school committee meeting, it was made reference to testing scores being possibly impacted by students at the high school who were having to learn in the pods. as was also discussed last night at school committee meeting students that would be moving into the

the pods who would be going into middle school were impacted by COVID and then having to go to alternate locations for Conniff West. I think it would be greatly in important to be mindful of the fact that these students would now have to go to pods and if it was truly a correlation to as it was mentioned last night poor performance and being in the pods why not consider keeping the middle schoolers at the current old middle school location and build the new building on the location of where the pods are as well as Moxley Field and as a result then creating the old middle school as a new park and or field and or play area for the middle school. thank you.

Thank you and we typically don't answer but this is a little different situation school building committee had many meetings to consider that option and that option did not work and it was a significantly higher cost to replace the field where the current middle school would be, which would have driven the costs even higher. Ilana you are allowed to speak. Oh, I'm sorry, George. One second.

Just to add one other perspective on that if we're dying into answering questions. Our experience of our high school students that I heard from a lot of folks and folks in the room can correct me was the movement from the old high school to the modular building was already considered to be an upgrade by many of the folks who did so. The pods are pods, I get the downside of them but they actually are potentially a higher quality educational space than 102 year old building is.

I would have, as the principal of the middle school, moved our kids over to the modulars immediately. I think that it's a much better place. The issue we have is very different and unique where open campus for our upperclassmen. The need to go to Boys and Girls Club, the middle school, et cetera created a porousness to the building that was very different that wouldn't happen with a middle school.

So yeah, we do keep the middle school kids in this building. I'm hoping it's already an upgrade to their educational experience from where they are now and then a much greater upgrade to the new building when it's done.

Lana you are allowed to speak.

My name is Ilana Minelli. I lived at 97 Duff Street for 30 years. I agree with moving forward with this project overall. I just wanted to raise two points, please. One is just to remind everybody that We still have at least two buildings that the city owns that need some sort of attention slash redevelopment. That's the old police headquarters building and the North Branch Library Building and it seems like there's no room in the budget, the way this is done to do those. And I understand that the middle school is more important than needs to be done now, et cetera. It's just that maybe those buildings end up in worse shape by the time we can get to them. So I'm just reminding people that those are out there, number one. And number two,

does the current plan allow enough community space in the new middle school building for community uses, for evening meetings and maybe for voting?

I'm going to ask the superintendent to take that one.

Yeah, so I can't speak about voting but I do know that now voting locations have changed and actually it's been really beneficial for schools not having voting in schools there would be space, but I'm just saying it's been nice not having voting in schools. But as I said before the way that the building is designed provides a very nice ample gymnasium and an auditorium that are all equally accessed from we're going to call it the north side of the building. So just like at the high school, just like in the other schools, we can separate it off and it becomes a community space and geared for that purpose. But certainly in all of our schools, there's learning The Learning Commons at the Lowell, the Learning Commons is kind of the amphitheater at the Hosmer. Now the high school has several spaces that community members will be able to access and use moving forward so this building would equally have opportunities, not just with the gym and auditorium but other spaces that could be used for community.

Just to answer the other question very briefly and say when we look at capital planning next week's budget overview and the capital plan work we do in January are very important as we discuss those other buildings. But where we stand right now, the North Branch Library is in a hold status in the Capital Plan with the idea that we could potentially seek some support from the Community Preservation Act funds, the community preservation committee to do a renovation of that historic structure. We need to engage in some community conversation about what the use of that would be before we do that I don't want to renovate it without but that is a part of it. The police station building in sight have been wrapped into the conversation about the Watertown Square development I will just say that that particular building, just the structure of it does not lend itself well to renovation merely because are inaccessible with stairways as you approach it. It's much more conducive as a site to be used for something else than as a building to be rehabbed for something.

So one of the reasons why we bought the Parker Building here, looked at that site as a city hall annex and it didn't really work while this building was easier to make accessible and make work for us in the long run. So, that's just the nature of where we are with those two buildings. We haven't forgotten them but there are some steps as we look at both of them. We won't forget them, as we talk about capital play.

Thank you. Is there anyone else here? Sure.

from Watertown, lifelong resident. I go back as a town meeting member when I was a senior in high school that we can try to have a new high school put at the Arsenal site. Well, town meeting members back then I'm getting worried they won't be here because a lot of them were made up of firefighters and DPW-taught employees. They were told by a member of the school committee at the time, if you vote this, you'll never see another pay raise. Well since then we've built two new elementary schools, renovated a third with major addition and a new high school not affecting people's salaries but that was under a different form of government I've been on a crusade for these schools for 51 years. Let's finish it up with the middle school.

I'm going to close off the public comment and ask for comments from the City Council before we ask for a motion from the city council on how to proceed. Hall.

Thank you, it's clear that the majority of folks here are in favor of middle school and I assume most of my colleagues by their applause and responses I want to talk about some of the presentation that George made and i'm not sure you know again we want to look at it more closely but just be clear about what we're not going to be able to do if we do the middle school. So that when someone comes to me and says, I think you need more housing staff I think housing is a very important thing in this city and in the community, and in Massachusetts. And I want you to beef up beyond the housing planner to have a housing departments, similar to let's say we have a sustainability team.

And someone says to me Tony in 30 31 and 32 there is not going to be new hires I want to be able to say to someone who comes to me and says, hey that senior center maybe we should do a rec center with it. Maybe we need another 55 million dollars instead of the 27 that we put out there. And I say to them, sorry, we've already made a commitment of $110 million, the largest piece that we're doing I want to be able to say to someone who says to me, you said no raises. And I look at our excellent assistant town manager, city manager who will have to negotiate contracts in three years.

And someone says, sorry, two and a half that's it. So I just want to be able to, and I'll be voting for this. Let me just say that. But I wanna be able that there are trade-offs beyond the rosy picture that we heard about what this could happen economically in terms of the future. but also for our students. That there are trade-offs, and I as a counselor want to be we say that I'm going to have to deal with those trade-offs. So, I will be voting for this piece when Council President Sideris puts it in front of us but I want to be real clear up front

that there are not, there are trade-offs. There are trade offs for our employees. There were trade-off for our affordable housing there are trade-offs for new growth, internal not internal economic growth. New departments and so please I remember speaking to someone the other day I said, what would Mr. Driskell say? I lived for 12 years under one of the most fiscally conservative City Managers. And I asked this individual, what would Mike Driscoll say about a debt that in 3031 and 32 limits us and is basically

I don't even want to talk about the fact that in this budget and i know that she's great we worked it we're going to work together on the senior building council so but i also know that this 110 includes $1.7 million in estimated mass savings and AIR incentives that we're not sure we're going to get. I'm almost done, John.

I'm sorry.

So I just want to be clear that there are trade-offs and I as a counselor will be having to accept those as I vote for this. but I want people to be it clear that this is tight. Thank you, Council President for letting me get on my soapbox. You let me do that every once in a while.

Gannon. Yes, thank you Mr. President and thank you everyone it's been enlightening to hear all the perspectives of everyone here tonight and first I want to talk about Watertown's finances I work on a day job where my day job is to oversee every city and town's municipal finances, not just Watertown. All 351 special service districts, regional school districts Watertown is the envy, fiscally of so many people statewide. George here has a lot no doubt other members and staff do as well we are the only town that has close to a fully funded OPEB liability, which means we're paying for senior retiree health care and the like. We've funded our pension system already. No other town is even close to maximizing that.

We've talked about maybe we might be a little high in the debt service limit relative to others. But the other communities, they're asking their taxpayers for new buildings. They're asking residents to pay a Prop 2 1⁄2 override, which is a forever raise in taxes We haven't done that. We may be the only community that could ever say that, that has built a school building without asking the taxpayers for additional money and This is unheard of across Massachusetts cities and towns, special districts, regional school districts. Watertown is very unique and look at Arsenal Yards as just about one example we have a lot of venture capital funding projects across Massachusetts.

all over the place. You think of Cambridge, huge life science buildings Moderna founded a cure for COVID treatment for COVID and what's number three behind Boston? Cambridge us, Watertown. Venture capital by far we are the number three leader behind the much larger Cambridge and Boston That is money that's not going to stop, it's coming in. And I mentioned before just a change of a lease and a lab space and a big space doesn't give us brand new real estate taxes, but it brings in personal property taxes. Any lab space New Machinery. I've spoken with the building inspection staff, they look in and say wow! Look at what this new company that just moved in last week had done. That adds to our tax base.

So, it helps to hear other people's perspectives and I'm fortunate enough to hear that statewide. And Watertown has always had a sense of underselling itself We should take a walk around the track, a victory lap. Not yet. Not just getting to that point. and talking about trade-offs. And I'm so glad that Jeremy Mello talked about being a town meeting member back when the Town had an opportunity, this was the mid-1970s to me, probably 75. And I was in the junior high school at that time, The West which is now the middle and to hear as students the prospect of this brand new school is going to be built across Watertown. It's gonna have a pool, it had a pool didn't it Jimmy in the plant?

and to hear, and then have our parents tell us the local newspapers that Saturday Town Meeting didn't fund it. So talk about trade-offs We needed a brand new high school back then, as Jimmy would note. We have 104 year old middle school and it's the trade-offs are right at the backs of Watertown's school kids. So if we had started that new high school 50 years ago, we would have had incentive to see the benefits the happiness factor that doesn't necessarily get measured of going to a brand new school, especially after we're so close to getting a brand new school. So what do they do instead? I was a student when the powers that be in the town decided Let's renovate the existing school.

We can't get the votes for a brand new school. And do they choose to put modulars somewhere across Watertown with air conditioning? No, they've done it around School, we heard construction grills, drills going on, noises, dust everywhere that we found out later contained asbestos. We were forced to breathe that and that was the price we paid, that was and here we have three brand new high schools, three brand-new elementary schools a very brand new High School. And the middle school is not a trade off it's completing the promise that was made well back 50 years ago. We've got other needs, of course. I want to see a brand new senior center. That senior center is 32 years old. I worked on it when I worked as a Watertown attorney

It was great then and it met a need at the time. Yes, we need to build a bigger space for that. Yes we need combine it with a community center and I would love to see that for all of Watertown and that can be done. We talked, we heard the managers speak about we can get to that but the trade-off mentioned by Councilor Palomba, we've been paying for it, our students have been paying I mean, anyone and perhaps students here who were on a math team or on a sports team they traveled to other schools and they saw the impact of other communities having brand new high schools some with pools that we would, the first time we being on a sports team, the upperclassmen would tell us younger kids who'd never traveled before warn us actually.

Wait till you see what this town school that you're going to be running track and look to see what that has. We came back to ours, we didn't have it. and this phenomenon that everyone talked about, the community doesn't care about us. And that started from Jimmy Mello's vote that's been 51 years so students have had to suffer with that from a brand new school that could've been built then, had to wait 51 years. So I applaud our town for getting this far and I've been proud to vote on each of the funding authorizations School, we can do better and as the superintendent said let's have a continuum of world-class educational opportunities straight through elementary through high school. are happy to vote in favor of this petition.

Feltner.

Thank you, I'll just reiterate again. I haven't heard anything that we would gain by delaying there's no Surprise, something that came up that oh my gosh we are in deep trouble or there's a problem with contractors or the architects have left us high and dry. We've been preparing for this for years and even this past year in the last few months getting updates, teams in place. It remains our top priority for capital improvement Projects. The Council's had it number one for a while, so and as others have said we can afford it I appreciate the continuing to look at and pulse on the economy. And good news that Watertown people are still looking to come here, new growth is not a sure thing but we've heard the worst case scenario tonight doesn't

really look so bad. We can still afford it under those conditions, so I don't want to hold back our future education, our kids anymore and We are. And for people who haven't been in there, I don't need to go down the list but you heard it science accessibility connections with the clusters and I just and so impressed with the school building committee and all the team that's been in place with our other schools, that it really makes me feel good about going forward even with concern about inflation and all of the other things. So I will also be strongly

Great, but I just want to be brief and say it seems like this community at one point made a decision to invest heavily in our students and our schools. And I think at this point we have an opportunity investing in our students and seeing through that every student, there will be a break in continuity with education and resources and accessibility. and I think that just the logistics of having a modular already set up where construction can begin as soon as we approve everything. is a real opportunity here that we would be missing out on and I think regretting if we don't act on this now. Thank you to everyone who helped put the plans together. Did so much work to make this work within our budget and I hope this passes, and I'm very excited for

the students and future students to go through new elementary schools, a brand-new middle school, and a new high school.

I'm definitely going to vote for this, and I am excited to do so. but we've talked about a building itself in talking about our schools without actually talking about what goes on inside the school. I want to know, a lot of people don't care about rankings. But I wanna know why our rankings when I see all these Why are we not investing a lot of money in our schools?

I want to talk about our special education. Situation, it's a big topic that has been talked about right now. Why have we not discussed any of that? That's all part of our educational curriculum. It's not just building. I do think You know, clearly maybe the numbers say yes we can do it and it is true that you know We truly can do this and we should do it but If you look behind those numbers, there's a lot of financial jiu-jitsu going on behind the numbers. That says we can do it.

and what else to say, but I do think we need to find a way to decrease our debt service. adding on to it and being the number one in the state with a high debt service is concerning.

So I have sort of a unique view about this, both being on the school building committee as well as being the chair of the budget committee for the town for the last But first, I want to talk about just five things. First, I wanna talk about the vision and our commitment for the future. If you think about 100 years ago and so on. And then there was this increase in population in the 1920s, and in the

Here we are 100 years later. We're doing the same thing, and I just would like each of my colleagues to think about the legacy we're leaving for the children in the next 25 in a century where we're not training people to become built these schools specifically to encourage collaboration, as you heard from the students who spoke. That's what the future is.

Our vision for the future that is what's going to be this council's legacy Second point, in 2014 when we kicked off the facility study for our schools which Kendra Foley had spoken about. The hue and cry came loudest and clearest from the teachers in the school buildings. They were tired of working in buildings that had leaking roofs, crumbling plaster, mold inside the buildings We heard a lot about asbestos in the buildings, and that was the major impetus. We heard it a lot from students, we heard it from parents, but we heard the loudest from teachers. They were tired of working in buildings that So we did that in 2014 into the study. We came up with a plan and a joint school committee, town council meeting back then.

We presented our plan with how to do all five new schools in two tracks The elementary schools in one track, Connick, the Hosmer, Lowell. And then the other track we would do in parallel a new high school and then a new middle school. The new high school opened a month ago, so now we are carrying out that promise that we made to the community in 2017. to proceed with this plan. We called the building for the future, and we knew it was going to cost a lot of money. At first, we were talking about doing debt exclusion

So it should be no surprise to anybody that we're here tonight to talk about moving forward with middle school. Going back to the budget, when I was first elected, the biggest thing that was eating our budget alive was our pension costs and our health insurance. And we decided to get are pension costs under control and our health insurance cost, particularly for retirees. The OPEB costs as you've heard about other post employment benefits. If we could get those two things under control That would free up enough budget space that we could actually do all these school projects without a debt exclusion. Financial Jiu-Jitsu, it was just a really good long term financial plan.

And I will just say that we have planned for this for a long time and what you saw the manager That's sort of the worst case scenario. We always budget for the worst-case scenario. For the last 19 years I've been on this council, we've always budgeted for a worst-case scenario Financial Planning is you budget conservatively and it always ends up coming out better. And I think that's where we are today. I am not scared of these numbers, I'm not concerned about It's not like you take out a mortgage on your house and it's 30 years of writing a check for $5,000 a month.

Every year the debt service goes down and then it disappears off the balance. So I think we're actually in a good place with this. Yes, it's aggressive. not without risk, I agree. But I believe it is entirely manageable within our current structure here. We'll just end with one last thing to talk about what goes on in schools. I agree, 100%. What goes on inside the school buildings is more important than the building itself. We've made some incredible investments in staff, hiring staff. We're consistently able to fill every position every year unlike some other school districts that start the school year in September with vacant teaching positions that they can't fill because

having attractive buildings that are nice to work in is attractive to hiring good employees. People want to come here to work, in our schools because it's a great place to work. Students want to go to school in the morning because it's a great place to learn. It's fun, and that's what we want to do. We want to build that excitement. And one thing I hear walking around town is there are a lot of new people moving into town, a lot families with small children and they all tell me the same thing when I ask them, why did you decide to move to Watertown? And the answer they give me is something I never thought I would hear because our schools are so great. That's the word on the street. Don't take my word for it. take the word of people who are moving from other towns to Watertown because they want their kids to go to our schools. So I'm 100% behind this, Mr. President. Thank you.

Thank you. I want to finish this up. First, I want thank the manager for a great I think that what the manager presented still allows us flexibility to move things around and still do a project like this. This project has been a number one priority since Piccirilli pointed out way back when. We were going to do them in order, and now it's the middle school's time. Many of us that were at the opening of the high school had everybody that came in and walked around for two minutes and said you got into the middle Manager heard it, other Councilors heard it. Councilor Piccirilli heard it and Councilor Gannon. Everybody that was there heard the same thing. Council of Palomba brings some legitimate concerns about difficult decisions and difficult choices that we make, but that's what we're elected for.

And I just reiterate what has been reiterated more than once this was a number one priority for a long time on our budget priority guidelines which we vote The manager, one of the points that I wanted to really touch on before I get to some of my other comments. The manager in his comment if you read it last year this council chose to move the education budget from 3.5% to 4%. He's committing to continue that unless we change it and possibly go higher. I'm not sure how that's going to happen, but that's a commitment. It's not three-and-a-half anymore. it was five for a lot of years, three and a half. Okay maybe there are other cities in towns that do more but I think we're setting an example of we still value. We have shown for years that we have a strong commitment to the education of our children.

Not only by what we provide for funding for operating, but what we provided in the buildings that they live This building has approximately 650 people a day, five days a week, 10 months out of the year. Doesn't include Saturdays, Sundays and summers. That's a lot of people going through one building I would say that's a very highly used building. No disrespect, I want to do the senior center too but you can't tell me 600 people go through there a day unfortunately because there probably aren't 650 seniors that would use that building. But I'm comparing opportunities here, the superintendent working with AI3, working with Vertex, working

has been able to provide a building that's similar to the high school, but targeting it to middle school students. I think doing the fifth school here also provides have pointed out how, you know we have leaks in the buildings. We have not air-conditioned spaces. they can do their jobs and they do a great job we have a great set of teachers here I'm really happy that we are filling all of our positions the superintendent, the school committee everybody has been working together to try to make sure that we have a labor force that wants to stay here and wants to work here, and we value them. I sit on the school committee as well, and I have to say from my perspective, I value what they do for the education of our children.

This is all about the kids. Let's face it, it's all about what they're going to learn in a building like this. And if you walk through the middle school today, they're not going to get the same kind of learning experience that they're getting in the first five years of their life and then the last three years of your life. It just doesn't it's not gonna happen I'm comfortable moving forward with this tonight. I am comfortable with the financing plan that the manager and his team has put in place, and I think there are other opportunities. things that we as a city council can do to provide some opportunities, to help some people want to put some development projects in the pipeline. I think that we can help with that We need to have conversations, very difficult conversations about that. But we should have them and I'm looking forward to putting those on the agenda for discussion and having very public discussions about it because we have a lot of places that had been permitted

for a lot of different things, from residential to labs. And I know the market's not there but real estate is cyclical and cyclical it comes back. It will come back. Lincoln still have flexibility and I'm not concerned that we're not going to be able to meet the needs of all the citizens in the community. So at this point, I'm going to ask Councilor Piccirilli for the motion that you've prepared to move forward.

Mr. President, I'll make a motion that we authorize the school building committee to move forward with the middle school project subject to appropriation.

Is there a second? Second. Any further discussion? and I have one more thing. The school building committee has been awesome. One, two, three, four, five members here tonight They have worked tirelessly through all of these projects. Some came in later, but they've all worked on high school and this middle school. And I really can't thank them enough. They do give them a yeoman's amount of work with Christie's guidance as our lead project manager on this one. This has been an exciting experience, and now we're going to get to move forward. Can I get a roll call please? Question or motion? We did get a second didn't we?

So first I can ask to be, I had a question with regard to the motion and maybe Councilor Piccirilli could read the motion please.

We authorize the school building committee to move forward with the middle school project subject to appropriation.

And just my clarification, Mr. President, so moving forward What does that actually mean?

That's going to get us to a bid, and the bid is going to come back to the city manager for a loan order authorization from the City Council. We're asking the school building committee to go up to bed, to move forward with the project and bring it to bid so that we can put a loan order out to do the work. Okay. And sense of timing? on the moving forward part. We are hoping to put it out to bid in Q1, let's just see, Q1 quarter one of next year. We're going to put her on the fast track. That's right okay that's why I want to make sure we run a fast track so thank you Mr. President I'm ready

Ideally, the 27-28 middle school kids are in the modular building and the new building is under construction as soon after this school year is done. If we're going to do this faster I'm a big fan of the idea that you plan until you make the decision that you're going to do it, and then when you do it you rip the bandaid off and just go. And we'll lose time and money after that if we don't.

Would it be overly indulgent if I asked

and so forth. And then we have a possible completion date. Right now, we're targeting September of 29? 29, the start of school day. So for the kids to stop school in September of 2019. Wonderful. Thank you so much. Absolutely.

I sat with the school building committee and we interviewed five architectural firms for this project, and then the School Building Committee chose AI3 out of those five firms.

That was a public meeting. There were a lot of folks there that night, yeah. Right and the um I just have a question on the makeup of the school building committee I just want to be sure that, you know he says it's for elected officials and four employees. Is this up to date?

I'm not sure quite what you're looking at. That was for the MSBA requirement. The building committee has changed now because this is not an MSBA project. And those building committee members are appointed by the city manager.

I mean, the information may be a bit out of date. I'm happy to provide to the whole council list of the current memberships so that you're aware of who's there.

Okay.

Can I get a roll call please? Councillor Bays. Feltner, Gannon, Izzo, Offei, Palomba.