Joint Special School Building Committee

JOINT SPECIAL SCHOOL BUILDING COMMITTEE THURSDAY, JULY 28, 2011 NHS NORTH BOARD ROOM A meeting of the Joint Spccial School Building Committee was held at NHS North on Thursday, July 28,2011. Alderman Tabacsko called the meeting to order at 7:24 p.m. Mr. Dowd led the prayer and Mr. Mosher led the Pledge of Allegiancc. Present: Alderman Cox, Alderman McCarthy, Alderman Melizzi-Golja, Alderman Tabacsko, Alderman Vitale, Alderman Wilshirc, Mr. Dowd, Mr. Haas, Mr. Hallowed, Mr. Mosher, Mr. Vaughan Also Present: Mr, Smith, Channel 99 Videographer Previous Meeting Minutes Approval Alderman McCarthy moved that the previous minutes of the JSSBC meeting held July 12,2011 be accepted and placed on file and the readings be waived. So Voted. Remarks by Chairman Alderman Tabacsko Thank you everyone for coming this evening. Committee Reports Alderman McCarthy moved to suspend the rules to allow for an oral report of a meeting held earlier this evening. So voted. Alderman McCarthy The Construction Projects Committee met earlier this evening and look the following actions: Awarded the painting contract for Ledge Street School to White Diamond for $36,700. That contract is different from the Fairgrounds contract in that it includes all the things we included in the change order. That comes to about $15,000 more than in the budget and will come from the construct contingency. It then comcs to about the same as Fairgrounds with the change order. We approved Prime Order Change Order #6 for Fairgrounds in the amount of $72,988.03; and Prime Order Change Order #1 for Ledge Street in the amount of $365,094.56. That does not represent an expenditure that you haven't seen before. It's just a roll up of the individual changc order requests that this committee has already approved into the contract. The changes we made from Change Order Requests were: Changing the butterfly valves to globe valves at Fairgrounds for $2,589.42; For electrostatic painting of the lockers at Fairgrounds for $6,358.31; For occupancy sensors in the classrooms at Fairgrounds for $9,626.35; For electrostatic painting of the lockers at Ledge Street for $6,190.99; For occupancy sensors in the classrooms at Fairgrounds for $11,055.92. JSSBC COMMITTEE MEETING July 28, 2011 Wc also approved the expenditure not to exceed $4,500 and subject to review by the BOB for carts and equipment for the Art, Music and PE programs for both schools that have been displaced for a year by the construction. ALDERMAN McCARTHY MOVED THAT THE JSSBC CONCUR WITH THE RECOMMENDATIONS MADE BY THE CONSTRUCTION PROJECTS COMMITTEE ON JULY 28, 2011. Mr. HalloweU There are not a lot of empty classrooms during the day at an elementary school. Do the occupancy sensors really have a pay back period that makes sense? Other than having someone go around and turn off the lights when they leave the room? M r Smith I don't know what the payback period is necessarily. It's up to the individual teachers to turn oil'the lights when they leave the room. They leave the room for lunch, art, PE, music, outside recess, etc. Some teachers are belter than others about turning off the lights when they leave. And the custodians come in and out of the rooms, and this just ensures that the lights are off when they're not needed. Mr. Dowd That would also be weekends, holidays, snow days, etc. to keep them off. Mr. HaUowell So can you tell me what the total of all those things were? Alderman McCarthy The occupancy sensors were 2 of the change order requests and in total were about $20,000 for the 2 schools. Mr. HaUowell Would there also be a cost for an electrical switch? Mr. Smith There would be a cost for dual switches. There would be at least 2 banks of lights that would go on and off. That by Mr.itself is additional wiring to make that happen. HaUowell These weren't in the original plan, right? Mr. Smith They were in the original plan, and somehow got taken out and were in the corridors, which 1 absolutely disagreed with. The Commissioning Agent made the recommendation that wc go with occupancy sensors in the classrooms. Mr. HalloweU If we're going to make a decision to use a cost saving dcvice, we should probably do some analysis to make sure it's actually going to save us money. 1 guess I'm willing to believe that probably the cost of installing the regular switches wouldn't result in a cost differential that I really have to worry about, which is maybe why the analysis wasn't done. But it seems like it could have been done. Mr. Smith Wc did paid good money to have a firm come in and actually do an analysis of the drawings and specifications for both schools. And they're the ones who make the recommendations on energy savings and advocated putting in the occupancy sensors in the classrooms. Alderman McCarthy We don't have an additional expense for adding switches, as they're already there. 2 JSSBC COMMITTEE MEETING July 28, 2011 Alderman McCarthy So U comes down to what's the actual draw of one of our classrooms to keep the lighting on in general? How many kilowatt hours? Mr. Smith It would be a wild guess. I don't know. Altlerman McCarthy I would guess that it's in the ballpark of about 25 cents an hour to have the lights ofTas opposed to on. So we'd have to save about 80,000 hours over the life of the sensors in order to save money. Mr. Smith I haven't done the analysis. Alderman Vitale Didn't somebody do an analysis and put a plan in place about turning off the lights and institute a whole program, especially with the new high schools? I remember specific talking about electrical use and the importance of turning oflfthe lights, and there was a cost savings at some time, discussed. I would have assumed that sensors would have been discussed at that time. Alderman McCarthy That was done, and there was a write up done on it recently that showed we saved a tremendous amount of money. But we saved it through behavioral changes. And the question is, having put those in place, how much more do you save by putting sensors for when you don't bother to turn off lights at the end of the day. I'm inclined to put them in, but Mr. Hallowell's point is a good one. If we're doing this right in the first place, hopefully they would not pay for themselves, because we would have turned all the lights off at the right time anyway. Alderman Vitale I would agree with that one. Mr. Hallowell You're probably referring to the Prince of Darkness, Lorcn Swindell. And much of that cost savings come from his half-time job, which is $20,000. So the equivalent of 2 schools being outfitted with sensors. I think in general they're a good idea. But I'm not sure it's been factored in that in an elementary school there's not a lot of activity after hours. Mr. Vaughan I'm not sure they run as rigorously as you might imagine. People come in early and stay light. And they do leave the classrooms several times a day, and I imagine a whole lot of people forget to turn out the lights when they go out. And 1 think what Mr. Dowd was getting at was a little bit here, a little bit there as the Prince of Darkness shows us saves us money. So if we can automate that, 1 think we're better off. Mr. Mosher Do these sensors use power when they're in an active stage? Mr. Smith Yes, because they're wired. Mr. Mosher So we'd be adding power costs as well. We've shown that through behavior changes people can turn off lights. If we're going to add a device that costs more power, I don't see that it's a cost savings. Mr. Powd Mr. Smith, what are the chances that the lights would be turned off as the classrooms are being cleaned at night? 3 JSSBC COMMITTEE MEETING July 28, 2011 Mr. Smith Zero to none. Alderman McCarthy The devices draw an incredibly small amount of current. It's Tar less than the lights draw. That's not a conccm in my book. But 1 think we need to save 80,000 hours to make that savings work. So if we have 50 classrooms and on average we got 2 hours a day out of those sensors, that's 100 hours a day which brings us to about 800 days, which is about 4 school years. So the payback as far as I can tell is somewhere around 4-5 years. And it's probably worth doing it at that rate. Mr. Smith There have been millions of dollars saved over the years with energy savings, but we have done physical mcchanical changes throughout our buildings in addition to behavioral changes that have contributed to that. The occupancy sensors are just another mcchanical dcvicc that will add to the difference. The Prince of Darkness has actually cut back his hours this past year, and I've seen a significant increase in electrical use this past year, partly bccausc he isn't out there as much as he used to be. So any mechanical device we can use to help reduce electricity I think is helpful... especially if the payback is 4-5 years. Alderman Cox As a City with as many municipal facilities as we have, it's just a smart, green choice to be doing some of these. It's not always inexpensive to make some of these green choices, but I think it's a smart choice and something wc should be doing in as many of our facilities as we can. Mr. Hallowell I was a founding member of the Nashua Green Team. 1 can only say that just bccausc something says it's green, doesn't mean it actually buys you... I should have done the calculation myself, but since Alderman McCarthy did that, I guess I'm satisfied. But 1 do think we have to think about these things and not just do them. Perhaps wc should find someone to do the other hours with the Princc of Darkness. Voting on Motion: ALDERMAN McCARTHY MOVED THAT THE JSSBC CONCUR WITH THE RECOMMENDATIONS MADE BY THE CONSTRUCTION PROJECTS COMMITTEE ON JULY 28,2011. SO VOTED. ITEMS FOR DISCUSSION AND APPROVAL ALDERMAN McCARTHY MOVED TO APPROVE PAYMENT TO HARVEY CONSTRUCTION IN THE AMOUNT OF $428,977.41; TO TURNER BUILDING SCIENCE IN THE AMOUNT OF $20,529; TO ENVIROVANTACE IN THE AMOUNT OF $7,100; TO OTHER VENDORS IN THE AMOUNT OF 2,290. SO VOTED. Alderman Tabacsko At the last meeting, there was a request for a financial report, which Mr. Smith has provided. If anyone has any questions, now would be the time. 4 JSSBC COMMITTEE MEETING July 28, 2011 Mr. Hallowell That's the financial report we normally get. But from that financial report I'm not really sure I can tell where we are with the budget. 1 understand that overall we're probably under budget. But it's very hard to know what things we're running high on and what things we're running low on. I'm sure the Construction Projects Committee is keeping track of all that. But it seems like there ought to be a better way to show us. The originally budget is $2 million something, and then it drops to $6 million bccausc we added another school. I can't follow what's coming out of contingency... I'd have to go through every one of these change orders and go back to my original spreadsheet and put them all together. And 1 don't have time to do that. Alderman Tabacsko From an overall budget, can you comment on where we're tracking at the moment, Mr. Smith? Mr. Smith Yes. The $2.5 million was actually money that was redirected and approved from the high school project, so we had that money to begin with. Then we had bonded money that approved for these 2 schools and Elm Street. So vvc ended up with a total of $8.3 million for this project. And as of today, we have about $1 million that has not been identified for anything. At this point it looks like potential savings for future change orders. So financially, we're in pretty good shape. Mr. Hallowell Thank you. Alderman McCarthy The current funding, the current contract number and the 2 contingency accounts arc numbers are the ones that will tell us how we're doing and what's encumbered that we approved. COMMENTS B Y MEMBERS OF THE PUBLIC None. COMMENTS B Y COMMITTEE MEMBERS Alderman Tabacsko The next Construction Projects and JSSBC meetings will be held on August 25th at Fairgrounds so we can see some of the actual work being done. Mr. Haas Will you be recording these meetings for the minutes at Fairgrounds? Alderman Tabacsko They'll bring the cameras there for recording. The question came up with about the makeup of our committee and given the circumstances, what makes up a quorum. With the resignation of Mr. Kelley from the BOE and the untimely death of Alderman Flynn, I think the question in my mind is arc we a 16 or 17 member committee? 1 believe under the current guidelines we are a like number of Aldermen to BOE members, which would make us a 16 member committee and a quorum would be 9. Alderman Wilshire moved to adjourn. So voted at 7:54 p.m. Submitted by Jacki Waters 5