Building Sub Committee Delayed Action Jan 8,2007

THE DISTRICT 12 BOARD – BUILDING SUB COMMITTEE

After the failed referendum in June 2006, Mardie Ford, Ed Wainwright and Jerry Ronan met with David Wedge of the State Aid Grant Department in early August. We concluded from that meeting that State Aid would be very difficult to get in the normal way. The State Representatives would probably have to prepare special legislation to obtain funding. A proposal for the Burnham School was prepared with less renovation costs and without state aid. This proposal was presented to the Superintendent, Dr Carmelich in late August and subsequently to the Board on September 11, 2006. The Chair of the BOE, Irene Allan insisted on referring the Burnham and another Booth proposal to a special Building Sub Committee Chaired by Gary Steinman and established that night to “Compare the Proposals to the Education Specifications for Spatial needs”. Gary selected three other members of the building committee to serve with him. On their own they expanded the review scope to include a review of budgeted costs. Two meetings were held and although repeatedly asked for a report, none was issued until January 8, 2007.

Kevin McQueen gave the verbal report to the Board and quite correctly addressed only the spatial comparison requested by the Board. The actual written report to the Board included many budget and cost comments that were inappropriate.

The Following E mails happened after the meeting of January 8, 2007:

-----Original Message-----From: GRONAN0137@aol.com [mailto:GRONAN0137@aol.com] Sent: Tuesday, January 09, 2007 3:12 PMTo: KEVINMCQUEEN@ARCHT-DESIGN.COM; STEINMANG@REGION-12.ORGCc: ERWAINWRIGHT@SBCGLOBAL.NETSubject: Your Sub BC Report last night

Hi Kevin,
The last sentence of your report last night indicated there are 4 areas that failed to meet the Education Specs.

Area................ Current... Proposed ...Ed Spec... Short
Health Rm.......... 155............ 391.......... 500........ 109

This area was increased by two and one half times.


Media/Tech...... 1136........ 1600......... 1952........ 352

This area was increased by over 40%

Kitchen................. 0.............. 832......... 1200........... *

*The SLAM plan in June called for use of the old kindergarten and that 832 ft was accepted.
We assume these are correct assumptions and will address these problems.


You show a line for Support Services of 4300 Sq Ft on your schedule for Ed Specs. Please provide the detail of that number as soon as possible.

We note that the total of your Ed Spec column adds to 21,112 NSF. This means the GSF is 31,668. This is more than the first Master plan referendum of 31,077 GSF and the second referendum of 29,077 GSF.
Our proposal shows 29,148 GSF which is higher than the last submission to the voters.

We do feel that we can make the necessary changes within our current proposal.
Look forward to hearing from you soon.
Jerry

Gary, -----------------Forwarded Message:
Subj:
RE: Your Sub BC Report last night
Date:
1/10/2007 8:18:04 A.M. Eastern Standard Time
From:
garysteinman@charter.net
To:
GRONAN0137@aol.com
CC:
ERWAINWRIGHT@SBCGLOBAL.NET, KEVINMCQUEEN@ARCHT-DESIGN.COM, andrewkotas@sbcglobal.net, irenka@charter.net, dbaron@baronengraving.com, CPAVJA@aol.com, alan@brown.org
Sent from the Internet (Details)

Jerry – Andrew Kotas of the Subcommittee, who analyzed conformance to space program specifications, has addressed your questions, as follows:

Page C-5-2 of the master plan item 10 support services section a is 4100 existing plus the additional 200 mentioned in section b = 4300 total under support services.

The handout received from Ed/Jerry (10/3/06) lists a NSF of 19,432. I do not believe that I have seen anything with the numbers that Jerry mentions.

My recommendation at this point is that you not make an effort to resubmit your proposal with revisions to the space program.

First, to be meaningful, there would have to be full disclosure of your budget at a more detailed level and sufficient basis for it to evaluate the budgets accuracy and implications. Further, the proposal would need to address the full range of educational specifications, not just the space program.

Second, we have entered a 6 to 7 week period during which the feasibility and acceptability of build-to-suit as a concept will be determined. If that is the route to be taken, then proposals such as yours would need to be submitted to architects hired by the Towns for further evaluation and possibly development before any evaluation by the Board would take place. If B2S is not the route forward, the BOE will proceed with a full Building Committee and its own architects who, together, would need to evaluate any incoming conceptual proposals.
Gary

Final E Mail To Gary

Gary,

The purpose of this E mail is to encourage you to correct the Sub Committee report that was handed out at the Board meeting on January 8, 2007. Kevin Mc Queen properly addressed only the spatial comparison to the Education Specs during his presentation to the board, but your Report included many other items.

At the BOE meeting of September 11,2006 your "Sub Building Committee" was formed to compare the Bridgewater and Roxbury renovation Proposals to the Education Specifications. The Memo dated September 14, 2005 by Dr Carmelich is the Ed Specs document that should have been used by your committee for your review.

The following numbers are from the Slam Report and are not Ed Specs.
4100 is the basement (Mechanical/Storage)
200 Custodian


The Referendum in June had the Gym remaining at 2795 Sq Ft (NSF) and the Kitchen at 832 Sq Ft (NSF). We intend to use these room sizes as agreed to by the Board of Education in June 2006.

The request for 500 Sq Ft (NSF) for the Heath Room and 2000 Sq Ft (NSF) for the Media Center has been referred for evaluation to our Architect.

OakPark Architects, LLC of West Hartford has been hired by the Town to estimate detailed costs for this proposal. Their Design team has toured the Burnham School on January 15, 2007 for the start of the Feasibility Study.

All of the comments that you made in your report about costs and budgets are premature at this time. You can make an appropriate review of the proposal's cost estimates when the architect's estimate is produced and presented. The proposal outlines a renovation of the School that is less than "renovate to new" but far more than "renovate to code". Stating that the project is underfunded is not constructive.

I have asked Dr Carmelich twice to have Administrative representation on our Building committee and have been turned down. We are disappointed in not having this important input during the formulation of our proposal for the board of education's consideration.

In August 2006, Mardie Ford and I met with Dr Carmelich and discussed the room sizes in our Proposal. We expected a two week Administrative review with suggestions for some changes. What we got was a Building Sub Committee, and delay of four months. You should modify your report.


Jerry

No action has been taken to correct this Sub Committee report!