Nelson Place building committee: UPDATE (link to timeline)

came in a bit late; Lamoreux and Pagano now presenting
in charge of getting us through Feasibility
Here (thanks to Commissioner Moosey!) is the timeline specific to Nelson Place
must include several options, including additions, "no build" (what happens if you do nothing), replacement, different locations

And speaking of biking to school...

...how cool is this?

School repair and rehab projects

I thought it might be easier to sort through if you could just go to the school you're interested in, so I've loaded them as separate Google docs (the full backup is here).
Note that these are executive summaries, not the actual applications. Further note that the Green Repair program is a single page chart including 21 schools that need windows, roof, or boiler, or some combination of the three.

• Nelson Place
• Burncoat High
• Doherty Memorial High
• South High Community
• Worcester East Middle
• Tatnuck Magnet
• Clark Street Developmental 
• Goddard School
• Flagg Street
• Chandler Elementary 
• Burncoat Middle
• Green Repair Program

report of the Standing Committee on Finance and Operations

You've got most of this already...so minimal notes from me...
I will note that the votes we are taking tonight on the Statements of Interests are heading to City Council for Tuesday night's meeting, with our hope of getting them in next week (?).
Mr. Foley notes that Nelson Place has already been voted and forward to MSBA (thus it will not be voted tonight)
O'Connell stops the vote to ask if the Worcester East Middle vote includes the auditorium. It certainly does!
And note that many of the Green Repair window projects are at the schools either built or repaired during the PCB era.
And yes, MSBA does need an individual vote (phrased correctly) for each school submitted.

Environmental Management System report

Presentation by Brian Allen on the environmental management system

A set of management processes and procedures to help an organization identify, assess, control, and reduce the environmental impact of its activities, products, or services.

Using UMass Lowell Service program, an environmental health and safety specialist, and Triumvirate Environmental Inc.
"more of a change in management issue than a technical fix"
reducing our risk of spills and incidents; wastes and emissions; costs; energy use; liability
benefiting: increased awareness of best practices; sustainability; awareness of energy efficiency and clean energy
Chemical cleanouts at 11 school labs have been done
Next we will be looking at school-specific issues, and providing additional training
Five subcommittees:

• asbestos
• hazardous materials
• incident preparedness and response
• inspections and corrective action
• professional development and competency

20 schools constructed during the period from 1950-1978, when PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) were used; another 9 with major renovations during that time. Trivumvirate Environmental hired in Feb. 2010 to conduct a comprehensive facilities assessment regarding PCBs for all 29 buildings, along with ongoing work with EPA, throughout

Mass School Building Authority submissions (and here comes Nelson Place)

Allen: Statement(s) of Interests submittals going to Finance and Operations
note that there is a new science lab initiative this year (Worcester East Middle and others?)
Green Repair (which we submitted three plans to last year; more coming this year?): limited to boilers, roofs, and windows
traditional Statements of Interest
any project that was filed in FY11 that has not changed can simply be recertified
"working with the City Manager...developing some funding discussions..begin in relatively short order"

Foley:  as it stands right now, we can certainly do a reaffirmation of Nelson Place
MOTION: to reaffirm Nelson Place as our first choice schools (and refer all else)
 Passes unanimously

Biancheria asks if getting state money on Worcester East Middle would slow it down
Allen says potentially slow it down, "in our best interest to leverage state funding" at 80% reimbursement, possibly allowing more work to be done at Worcester East Middle
Biancheria doesn't want to see it get lost
Allen: bid results are much higher than amount budgeted by city capital funds, thus having the state pick up 80% could make this all work out

ESCO projects through Honeywell

If yesterday's Telegram and Gazette coverage made you wonder what was and was not on the list, here's the WPS list. 
(note that some names are old names of buildings and programs)
Lots of controls and regulators on the list. Most urgent? Union Hill's boilers, which failed this winter. Most whizz-bang? Solar panels for Tech and Sullivan Middle.


Sorry, guys: not a lot of windows on here. We're going to have to look elsewhere for those.

Outside Union Hill

Tonight Mullen Sawyer of the Oak Hill CDC is announcing that Union Hill School is getting a new playground and that the school will be surrounded by more GREEN beginning next year!

And speaking of greening Union Hill, you might remember the flower bed put in last year? Here's what it looks like now:

Thanks to everyone who donated, gave advice, or watered! It looks great!

Mass School Building Authority presentation

really glad not to have to come up with what happens if Q.3 passed (1 cent of 6.25 sales tax dedicated to MSBA)


$2 billion backlog in funding when they took over
waitlist of 44 buildings when MSBA took over; last 2 are currently building
auditing has made this a much better, more honest process

1776 schools been reviewed
progress payment system: check is in the mail 15 days after district bill is reviewed ("pay as you build")
last year of $2.5 billion of the first five years of the capital pipeline
$500 million to spend a year

Capital spending

$6 million capital approved by the City Council
$51 million in bonding under the energy audit (but that may well not all be spent)
also a motion to plan how we will spend this money as it moves forward

O'Connell is moving that the School Committee be directly involved in the work (from planning to completion) under the capital plan
O'Brien points out that any plans have to go within the city's self-imposed bonding cap
Allen points out that the projects will not involve additions or anything of that sort, but he agrees with the intent.
"plan is to piggyback on the ESCO money and really do complete rehabilitation" of particular schools
(and sorry, I've had my abbrevation on ESCO wrong...Energy Saving Company, apparently)

Discussion by the mayor

An exchange here between the mayor and the manager about the school ESKO funds. The manager says that the ESKO projects will be ready for the August agenda of the Council, as they look at payback time on energy savings.The mayor points out that this will allow the schools to have a five year plan on capital expenditures, which WPS has never been able to do.
I guess we know how School Plant is spending July!

Budget presentation: fewer position cuts

The new news coming out of tonight's budget presentation is that the cut of position is down to 97 positions.
The gas contract has been renegotiated in our favor, and School Committee was informed this morning that enough has been saved to fund 36 tutor positions.
(There's good news on the green front, there, too. I don't have the email in front of me, but WPS is buying green energy...I'll post with more details later.)

Smith comments

Councilor Smith: "shine some more light on the school side of things"
ESKO: do you see energy savings growing?
Allen: won't be immediate savings, but yes, something we're looking at
Class size: any reason why there are over 30 in four classes?
Boone: yes (as she said) no more classroom space in those schools
Smith: if we got $3.3 million due to 75-25% on health insurance, what would you do with it?
restore positions
would that help Level 4/ Level 3 schools?
Mulqueen: any cuts hurt, for certain; "have to reshuffle what we're doing"
Don't any of the councilors read the paper? THERE ARE NO LEVEL 3 SCHOOLS. WE WILL NOT HAVE 29. THE STATE IS USING A DIFFERENT SYSTEM.
Smith: looking at data, using resources
and he just cited Level 3 schools again
Boone expects movement on 100% of schools

WPS and going green

There's some information up on the WPS site on how the Tech department has been going green. To wit:

• in buying refurbished, rather than new, computers, substantial amounts of energy use (that goes into making a new computer) are avoided, and old computers are not headed for a landfill.
• technology that is too old to use is recycled
  
• WPS computers are automatically shut down at night, saving an estimated $150,000 a year in utilities (and, incidentally, that program was written in house, which saved money, too)
  
• computer tech support is managed by area rather than by quadrant
  

Power to Save program through National Grid

National Grid "Power to Save" program : improves energy performance plus curriculum
if the city doesn't continue with Honeywell, we could do this with National Grid, but as it is, this is on a backburner