school project*

The School Building Committee on Wednesday started the process of changing and removing elements of the school project to meet a voter-mandated budget, making a handful of adjustments from a list provided by SMMA Architects that totaled just over $1.4 million. But the group has more work to do to reach the target total reduction of $8.97 million.

A week ago, the SBC was presented with two independent cost estimates of $102 million and $109 million for the project. Since then, architects and Daedalus, the owner’s project manager, took a closer look at those figures to try to reconcile them. The lower estimate rose while the higher one fell, and the resulting higher figure (the one that the SBC must use for planning) is $104.28 million.

Over the next two weeks, the SBC will continue the “value engineering” process of voting on items to cut that add up to $8.97 million. That figure represents the difference between the $76.01 million construction portion of the total $93.9 million budget approved at a Special Town Meeting in June and the latest construction cost estimate of $84.98 million.

The full project budget also includes non-construction “soft costs”—fees, contingencies, escalation percentages, furniture, technology, permitting, etc. Since June, the estimate for those soft costs has also risen from $17.9 million to $19.3 million.

The areas where cost estimates rose the most compared to June were site work, which went up by $5.22 million, and temporary modular classrooms, which rose by $2.94 million. Before the June vote, the site work plans were more incomplete than the rest of the project and it turns out the required work is slightly more extensive and costly than expected. The earlier estimates had also assumed that some space on the Hartwell side of campus could be sued as temporary “swing space” during construction, but since the spring, it’s become clear that the pods can’t be used for this because they are fully occupied and would also require costly code upgrades to be used as regular classrooms.

The value engineering list includes line items of possible cuts but also a few additions. The SBC on Wednesday approved one of those additions—$150,000 for a tweak to the layout of the learning commons.media center portion of the building that members already approved in principle at their previous meeting.

Some of the biggest dollar items on the value engineering list are program changes, such as eliminating all work to the auditorium except HVAC, sprinklers and fire alarms ($1.59 million); eliminating the media center wing and putting that function in the learning commons area ($1.26 million); eliminating the link between the Reed gym and the main building ($1.17 million); and keeping preK in the main Hartwell building rather than adding it to the renovated building ($1.01 million).

School officials are understandably resistant to these sorts of reductions. “We hate to see programs cut before other things,” said Superintendent of Schools Becky McFall. As for the idea of not building a link between the school and Reed gym, middle school principal Sharon Hobbs was more emphatic, saying it’s “unacceptable” to keep the two buildings detached from each other for safety reasons.

A covered walkway was actually in the initial plan when the gym was built in 1970, but ironically, “it was value-engineered out,” said Buck Creel, Lincoln Public Schools’ administrator for business and finance.

Other ideas floated

Several other cost-cutting ideas were floated as well, but officials need more information before deciding if they are feasible. For example, if the town is able to buy the modular classrooms now being used at Hanscom on favorable terms, it could save up to $1.7 million. Another possibility is reducing or eliminating the direct cost for the photovoltaic system, which would save up to $3 million. That would require amending the town’s solar bylaw to allow selling excess electricity to the grid and working out a favorable contract with the PV vendor.

Yet another possibility is moving the cost of furniture and equipment from the construction budget into the school’s operating budget. This could save $1.06 million on the project, but that money would still have to be appropriated as part of the annual budget process.

Also at the SBC meeting, Town Manager Tim Higgins reported on preliminary research by officials on possible supplementary funding sources for the school project. These include:

• The Community Preservation Act, which might be applicable to recreational items in the project such as playgrounds
• Chapter 90 state roadway funds and the Complete Streets state grant program, which might be tapped for Ballfield Road and/or walkway improvements
• A town fund that receives annual fees paid by cable TV companies, which may be applicable for work in the Brooks auditorium, where televised Town Meetings are held
• Grants to help pay for photovoltaic (PV) solar panel installations on or near the school

Officials are gathering more information on all of these ideas, but meanwhile, the clock is ticking. The SBC is due to finalize the cost-cutting process on October 17, which will be followed the next day by a multiboard meeting; the annual State of the Town meeting on October 20; a second multiboard meeting/community forum on November 15; and bonding votes by residents at a Special Town Meeting and the polls on December 1 and 3, respectively.

Town officials were chagrined Wednesday night to learn that preliminary cost estimates for the Lincoln School project are substantially higher than the $93.9 million budget approved by residents at a Special Town Meeting in June.

At its meeting Wednesday evening, the School Building Committee (SBC) and others heard the two independent estimates for the project—one at $102 million and one at $109 million—in shocked silence. Those numbers are 8.6 percent and 16 percent higher than the original figure, respectively.

On Friday, architects and representatives from Daedalus, the owner’s project manager representing the town, will have an all-day meeting to go over the cost estimating figures in detail and try to reconcile the two estimates by making sure they used the same set of assumptions as to scope, quantities and costs of materials, etc.

“We need to understand why” both figures are significantly higher than the earlier estimate, said Delwyn Williamson, director of cost estimating at Daedalus.

The gross square footage of the project has changed slightly in design tweaks since June, but square footage “is not really making a difference at this point,” Williamson said. One of the contributing factors for the increase may be in the cost of modular classrooms, because early proposals incorrectly assumed that the Hartwell pods could be used for some of the swing space during the two phases of construction, she said. The cost of reusing the modular classrooms from the recent Hanscom projects is also higher than anticipated, but it’s still unclear exactly how much these issues affected the estimates.

Between this Friday and the next SBC meeting on October 3, SMMA will come up with a list of “value engineering” items for the SBC to look at as they consider what aspects of the project to change or remove in order to meet the mandated budget.

“We have a very high level of sensitivity to the community’s need to have that price as low as possible while still preserving the program,” said SBC member Kim Bodnar.

On a hopeful note, Buck Creel, the Lincoln Public Schools administrator for business and finance, noted that the initial estimate for the 2012 project came in at more than $60 million, but the SBC was able to get that amount down to $49 million (although the project eventually failed to get the necessary two-thirds majority at Town Meeting). Part of that reduction came about when the SBC elected not to relocate preK from the Hartwell building to the main school—a move that is also in the current plan, at least for now.

More meetings coming up

The SBC is scheduled to approve a final cost figure on October 17. The group may add another meeting on October 10. There will be a multiboard meeting on October 18 (two days before the annual State of the Town meeting) to gather questions from other town boards, and a second multiboard meeting/community forum on November 15.

A two-thirds majority is required at a Special Town Meeting on December 1 to approve bonding for the project. There will also be a December 3 town-wide ballot that must win a simple majority for the project to advance.

The $93.9 million Option L3 was the mid-priced choice among the three options presented to voters in June. In the final vote, 74 percent of residents voted to move ahead with Option L3, compared to 17 percent for Option C ($94.3 million) and 9 percent for Option L2 ($83 million).

To the editor:

We are approaching a critical vote on the future of Lincoln’s school facilities.  There is a long history of the various deliberations that have gone before. It is often difficult for people to become fully informed of what has gone before. As someone who has been involved for a very long time, I offer this Cliff Notes version of how we have come to the decision we face on June 9. Please become informed and come to vote.

Recent discussions on LincolnTalk and letters to the Squirrel pose numerous questions suggesting that a significant number of the commenters may be unfamiliar with the lengthy saga of efforts to address deficiencies in Lincoln’s K-8 school facilities. Many of the questions asked and the expert review requests made have been raised and addressed in in the past, but the complete record of the proceedings to date is voluminous, so it’s perhaps unreasonable simply to direct inquisitive citizens to plow through all of the documents on the subject available on the school and town websites. It may therefore be helpful to provide a short history of these efforts. For those of you interested in delving more deeply into the history, click here.

Let me say at the outset that I do not have a unique perspective on the school project proceedings, but I do have a lengthy one. I was the Selectmen’s representative on the original SBC, and eventually became co-chairman. Along with a few others, I represented Lincoln’s interests before the MSBA [Massachusetts School Building Authority]. Since then, I have served on every committee that has evaluated the options for addressing needs at the Lincoln Schools, and now am the Planning Board liaison to the SBC. 

The story begins with the so-called 1994 renovation project. In the early 1990s, the town began considering renovation of the school facilities. Architects were retained to evaluate the physical plant and to come up with an improvement plan. Their original proposal would have remedied building deficiencies, added kitchen and dining facilities common in other schools, and connected the Smith, Brooks, and Reed Gym buildings. The cost was estimated at just above $22 million.

Lincoln’s leadership, faced at the time with also building a new public safety building, sent the architects back to the drawing board to develop three options at a range of price points all significantly below the initial offering. These options were presented at Town Meeting, and the middle option, at less than $12 million, was selected.

This project obviously did not provide central dining room and kitchen or the link to Reed. It also did not address some of the glaring deficiencies identified by the architects, such as the below-grade heating system boilers in the Smith building that periodically flooded (and have on occasion been under more than 50 inches of water). Many people have interpreted the 1994 project as a complete rehabilitation of the facility, but this is simply not the case. Portions of the building needing attention remained untouched.

Because the 1994 project left a lot of needs unmet, it wasn’t long before the schools were seeking annual capital infusions to ameliorate them. In 2003, Lincoln’s Capital Planning Committee concluded that a piecemeal approach might not be the best way to deal with facilities issues and asked the School Committee to take a more comprehensive approach.

This led to studies by two architectural firms in 2004 and 2007 which identified significant facility needs. The latter of these, by [current consulting school architect] SMMA, developed a range of options running from simple repairs at $35 million to a significant rebuild at $65 million. By this time, legislation establishing the MSBA was passed, and the possibility of state funding arose. Lincoln took the opportunity to make an application to participate in the process.

Lincoln was on of 21 schools selected from among 238 applications to start the MSBA feasibility study process.  This involved a rigorous review of the condition of Lincoln’s facilities and how they matched up with both the school’s educational program and MSBA standards. This turned out to be a long and arduous process because Lincoln’s physical plant is so far beyond the norm for peer K-8 facilities in terms of size and number of classrooms, having two gyms and a large auditorium complex (needed for annual TM)—unusual in K-8 schools.

The MSBA staff questioned everything in terms of educational and facility needs, and we pushed them way beyond their normal boundaries in terms of time and effort, taking twice as long as normally allowed. Ultimately we reached an accommodation and got very favorable reimbursement rate—44 percent of qualifying facilities and 42 percent of the overall cost, a better rate than most projects in surrounding towns. 

The Preliminary Design Plan approved by MSBA had an estimated cost of $61.3 million. Scope reduction and value engineering in the development of the subsequent schematic design process cut the cost from $61.3 million to $49.9 million. With the MSBA contribution of $20.9 million, the cost to Lincoln taxpayers would have been $29 million.

Because of concerns about the cost of the project, Lincoln’s Finance and Capital Planning Committees commissioned an independent study of potential repair approaches. The resulting Maguire Report confirmed that there was no cheap way out of the problems on the school campus. It concluded that the best approach to repairs needed within 10 years would cost $33 million (in 2013 dollars) and yield little educational benefit.

In the end, the effort went for naught. Town Meeting in 2012 failed to muster the required a two-thirds vote to bond the MSBA-approved project. Lincoln applied three more times, but the MSBA bureaucracy, once burned and with many other applicants, turned Lincoln down. Lincoln is not barred from participation, but our chances of being admitted again are slim, as the MSBA can legitimately question whether or not Lincoln can effectively organize support. Town Meeting in 2017 thus decided to go it alone without MSBA participation.

So here we are, years later, facing the same basic problems, but with no MSBA support. Again, two major capital projects are looming, but we seem wisely to have agreed to sequence them. The question before residents is, how much can we responsibly spend on the schools? People’s opinions can vary, but there is no question that, at minimum, there will need to be a major investment.

MSBA evaluators, trying to pinch every penny, agreed to this fundamental need. Four different architectural firms have also agreed. All these professionals and Lincoln’s own Capital Planning Committee have favored a single, comprehensive project over serial, remedial repairs. The current Finance Committee has recently added its weight in favor of a comprehensive approach.

With years of cost escalation in a booming construction market, essential repairs will cost on the order of $49 million. The only question remaining for Lincoln residents is how much we are willing to invest in the educational enhancements that our own educators, and education professionals elsewhere, believe would benefit Lincoln’s school community, both students and teachers. 

Sincerely,

Gary Taylor
2 Beaver Pond Rd.