===PAGE 1=== Meeting Minutes September 9, 2024 5:30pm Members Present: Brian Lehtinen, Michael-Ray Jeffreys, Greg Roy, David Blatt, Matthew Allison Members absent: Kristina Masaitis, Tom Gray Town Employees: na Community Guests: Anthony Sculimbrene Meeting called to order at 5:30pm. This is the first meeting of the year and the first time we've met since last November. Mr. Jeffries gave a quick recap. We just did a space needs assessment, we met with multiple departments, the architect met with multiple departments, we met with different community organizations. We came up with multiple different plans, and then landed on a hybrid plan that would use the current Town Hall as a meeting house. It would have three meeting rooms on the first floor, and the primary meeting space remaining on the second floor. We looked at the Ritter building, which would be repurposed as the new kind of office for the superintendent for the Ace Program and district offices related to the school department. We also looked at building a new Town Hall, which would be collocated with the Ritter building. Our mission was to go forward with the town in 2023, but due to tax issues we were advised to not pursue that. We were advised toward the end of last fiscal year that May would not be a good year to bring this project forward due to concerns about a potential override. We have $225,000 allocated to us from ARPA, but we need to have everything under contract by October. The purpose of our meeting tonight is to go over the RFP that was sent out to the committee. Discussion took place on the $225,000 cost. The town manager and Mr. Jeffries reached out to an architectural team. ===PAGE 2=== This is a competitive process, and we intend to select not only on qualifications but also on price. Mr. Allison talked about getting the software to create a conceptual plan for the Ritter building, the new Town Hall, and the current Town Hall. The school committee is in the process of moving forward with a needs assessment of Turkey Hill and a Municipal Building Design product. The town manager wants to allocate capital funds to both projects and the select board fully agrees with that strategy. This RFP is similar to the one that we published before, in that we outline what the criterias are of how we are going to evaluate the different proposals, and then we go with the vendor that meets all of our needs and that comes out as kind of the highest rated. We have to allocate funds for the project before the RFP can be published, but we are projecting a release in October. As we walk through this RFP, we will identify things that need to be fine-tuned. The release date is determined by the day that this gets published, so the sooner we get it to Julie, the sooner it can get published. The Town Manager was clear that they wanted to keep the cost as low as possible, so we are going to adjust the goal year and then hit the key points where we want to talk about. Discussion took place on adding that they should provide a digital copy, and Julie agreed to scan the paper copy. The Town of Lunenburg has been working for several years to identify a municipal building solution that allows for the consolidation of school and administrative offices and public meeting spaces. The new Town Hall will be located on the same parcel as the Ritter Administration building. The Municipal Building Design Committee met with staff, Community stakeholders, and various Town departments or officials to work through space needs and finalize schematic designs. The vendor firm selected will be expected to meet with the Municipal Building Design committee to develop and review plans and estimates. Matthew Allison said that he was not happy to see the previous Town manager go, and that the contract seemed rushed through. Mr. Allison and Mr. Jeffries were trying to work together to come up with CAD drawings to push this along, but we haven't made any progress. Some design firms may want to meet with the group twice a month, but others might have a different take on it. If we leave that final call up to the selected firm, they might have that worked into their price. Anthony Sculimbrene thinks that being more specific about what the deliverables will be will help keep the architect engineering firms on the same page in terms of pricing and that it would be better to let them decide how long it would take to do those deliverables. The designer will be required to prepare detailed room data sheets and diagrams, establish necessary adjacencies and proximities as appropriate, and evaluate any state or Municipal zoning or regulation, including local design guidelines, that might impact the concept. ===PAGE 3=== For schematic level drawings, you probably don't need to have field evaluations, although if you're looking for a real cost, you might want to know if you have to do some exotic Foundation on the site to get something that will fit your plan. Soil borings and geophysical work could use up a big chunk of the money, but it's a pretty small area. If we are talking about a 4,000 foot addition to the north of the Ritter building, we probably won't need a lot of soil boring work at this point in time. We don't necessarily need to go and get a detailed survey yet, or a detailed civil engineering civil engineered parking plan, if we use publicly available information, and get a preliminary site plan based on publicly available information. The meeting adjourned at 6:15pm due to loss of quorum.