school project*

The School Building Committee held its first public forum last week to outline initial steps and emphasize the need for community input and participation in coming up with a school design that voters can eventually approve.

This summer, the SBC will interview, select and negotiate with an architect and owner’s project manager. Part of its work will involve close coordination with the Community Center Preliminary Planning and Preliminary Design Committee (CCPPDC), which is working in parallel with the SBC on a feasibility study for a community center on the school campus. To that end, the Board of Selectmen and School Committee have authorized a Campus Coordination Group to facilitate collaboration between the SBC and the CCPPDC. Members are Superintendent of Schools Becky McFall, Town Administrator Tim Higgins, the chairs of the PPDC and the SBC, or designees, and one other member of the SBC and CCPPDC.

The SBC hopes to develop preliminary design options starting in the fall, with a town vote to choose one of the designs in the spring. If all goes well, the next steps are producing detailed shcematic drawings and thn another town vote on bonding the project in November 2018.

Among the issues that the SBC will tackle early on are where the various functions of the school campus should go (for example, the Lincoln After-school Activities Program, school administration offices, pre-K classrooms and storage); what a “green” or “net zero” building might involve, and what roles that other boards and committees will play.

“We need your help—I can’t stress it enough,” SBC Chair Chris Fasciano said at the June 14 forum. “To bring this project to fruition, it has to be a community project. Not everyone is going to get what they want, but in order for it to succeed, the community has to embrace the process and help us get there.”

Gina Halsted, a member of the SBC Outreach Subcommittee, outlined the various avenues of communication the SBC will use, including social media and LincolnTalk as well as mailings, workshops, forums, coffees, and other traditional methods. Meetings are also live-streamed and recorded for later online playback on the town’s video website, and all meetings are open to the public. Agendas, minutes and other documents can be found here.

Halsted invited residents to submit comments or questions by email to sbc@lincnet.org, though she cautioned that “we can’t respond [via email or social media] unless it’s in a very factual way” due to the requirements of the state’s open meeting law.

The SBC has also posted an online survey asking about residents’ priorities for a school project (building shape, repairs vs. new construction, etc.) as well as how they preferred to informed. The survey is open until July 15.

At its meeting on Wednesday, May 31 at 7 p.m. in the Hartwell multipurpose room, the School Building Committee (SBC) will discuss plans for a June 14 public forum, communications with other town boards and committees, and the committee’s timeline. The full agenda can be found here.

In its two previous meetings, SBC members introduced themselves to each other and elected Chris Fasciano as chair and Kim Bodnar as vice chair. The panel also named an Outreach Subcommittee (Kim Bodnar, Selectman Jennifer Glass and Gina Halsted), and SBC members Buck Creel, Craig Nicholson and Peter Sugar volunteered to begin drafting a request for services (RFS) for the owner’s project manager (OPM).

Residents are welcome to come to part or all of the SBC’s meetings. Anyone who has questions or comments for the SBC to address at a future meeting is welcome to send an email to sbc@lincnet.org (back-and-forth email discussions about SBC business are prohibited by the state Open Meeting Law).

The School Committee is officially seeking four or five community members for a new School Building Committee after voting to create the panel and approving its charge on April 12.

The new SBC will work closely with a community center building committee, whose charge will be discussed by selectmen at their April 24 meeting. Voters last month approved funding feasibility studies for both school and community center projects on the Ballfield Road campus.

The School Committee is seeking four or five community members with experience in fields that are relevant to the SBC’s work, such as architecture, planning or design, project management, or community engagement. Potential candidates should email letters of interest, mentioning relevant experience to the SC at schoolcomm@lincnet.org. The deadline for SBC candidate submissions is Monday, April 24, and the SC will appoint members at its April 27 meeting. The new SBC will hold its first meeting the following week.

The SBC’s charge includes hiring an owner’s project manager and design firm, detailing space requirements for the educational program, creating a plan for communications and community input, preparing at least three design solutions with cost estimates for review and vote by Town Meeting, and developing a partial schematic design and specific cost estimate for the preliminary design selected at that Town Meeting.

“The School Committee promises that membership on the SBC will entail long hours, hard work, difficult conversations, no pay, and uncertain rewards. It also offers an opportunity to participate in the creation of a central piece of the community and the future of this town,” the committee wrote. Residents who would like to discuss the responsibilities and expectations of SBC membership are encouraged to email the SC at the same address.

The exact mechanisms for how the two building committees will work together haven’t been worked out yet, though selectmen discussed the issue at their April 11 meeting with SC members. For example, the groups would have to decide early on whether to hire a design firm with two separate teams (one for the school building and the other for a community center), a single design team, or two separate firms.

With two teams in a single a company, “you have that kind of built-in collaboration in a much easier way,” Selectman James Craig said.

Another suggestion was having one or more residents be members of both groups, “but that seems like a herculean task,” Craig said. Selectman Jonathan Dwyer suggested a “wrapper” group “so the two teams don’t have their silos and it’s more like one team with a single mission.”

“As much as you all may try, without some codified organizational structure to overcome it, the notion of collaboration when the rubber hits the road and dollar signs start flying around is going to get really tough,” former Selectman Sara Mattes said in the meeting’s open forum. “To me, in past experience, liaisons alone don’t do it. Maybe this will be magical and there’s enough good will to carry it forward, but we have some tough slogging ahead and some really important big-ticket projects ahead of us.”

Mattes suggested a five-person executive committee with a member from each of the building committees plus one each from the Board of Selectmen, School Committee, and either Finance Committee or Capital Planning Committee. Such a group could assure various constituencies such as the Green Energy Committee that “they’ve got another sounding board and sort of a mediator in the process,” she said.

Whatever the firm or firms are hired for the two projects will be required to solicit and incorporate substantial public input all along the way.“Whatever you think is normal outreach, double it and be creative,” said Selectman and recent SC chair Jennifer Glass.