HANOVER – Back-to-back meetings of the South Shore Tech School Committee and School Building Committee on Wednesday, March 20 updated the ballot timing and reviewed the process for selecting a project construction manager.
During the School Committee’s regular meeting, Superintendent/Direction Dr, Thomas J. Hickey noted Town Meeting season was approaching rapidly for the district as Abington holds its Town Meeting on Monday, April 1 and Scituate’s is on Monday, April 8.
Hickey said his evaluation goals for the year include cyber security, the MSBA process and students receiving third party licenses.
Hickey said he planned to convene with town clerks in district communities on April 24.
“At that meeting, my hope is to get updated feedback from them.” he said, noting he has already received one request to consider moving a January vote to closer to spring 2025. “I asked if that meant something like March or April, the answer was, ‘yes.’ … so we are anywhere from 10 to 12 months from the voters of our district rendering a decision.”
Saturday, March 1 or Saturday, March 8, 2025 are both possible election dates, he said.
“We may see some of our communities, which has nothing to do with us, decide that on the same day to have a separate ballot, ask the sequence of A1) Do you support the vote project? And A2) are you willing to pay for it through a debt exclusion? … That way town financial teams would know where they stand.”
“How do we inform our communities?” Mahoney asked.
Carlson said that, aside from the usual marketing materials such as the use of a website and flyers, talking to people is the best avenue.
“To date, we’ve been trying to go to public meetings and things like that,” Carlson said. “Over the summer, there’s farmer’s markets … having conversations with people, I think will be an important part. … Nobody can advocate for the project, but we can provide facts.”
“What can we do to convince the state [that] the cost of vocational education is a lot more than a traditional regular high school?” Salvucci asked.
Franceschi said a recent project by Tri-County saw discussion of the need to get more vocational representation on the MSBA board.
The Building Committee, on which most of the School Committee also serves, heard a project update from the Construction, according to Manager Jennifer Carlson of LeftField. The Building Committee also voted to appoint OPM representative Carlson, architect representative Carl Franceschi of DRA and awarding authority representatives Hickey and School Committee members Robert Mahoney and Robert Mello to the at-risk prequalification and selection committees.
The state requires those representatives to serve on the committee approving the project moving forward with the procurement process, which the inspector general has approved.
The selection committee reviews the statement of qualifications to decide which are qualified to move on to the next round, conduct interviews and, ultimately votes to award the construction manager’s contract.
Abington School Commitee member Mahoney, of SST Dean of Students Robert Mello, who holds an unrestricted construction supervisors license, were selected based on their construction experience, said Chair Robert Heywood who represents Hanover.
“This is a process that’s based on the qualifications, but we do have to see the price before we do the final ranking,” Carlson said.
The aim is to have the process complete for the SBC to approve the construction manager by May 23.
The construction manager feasibility pre-con fee range, which gets the project through schematic design, is between $55,000 to $65,000 from the $305,565 in remaining uncommitted funds.
Whitman committee representative Dan Salvucci asked when town votes on the new school project would begin.
Bringing them back to the matter of the schematic design, Franceschi noted that, while they are not there yet, they “don’t have to wait around” to take the project to the next level.
“The basic goal of this phase is to describe the scope, the schedule and the budget so by the time we submit again to the state, those three areas are well-defined and everyone is willing to live with it because it really becomes a contract,” he said.
Now that the specific site of the new building is better known, DRA’s engineers can go back to make boring and test kits in more specific locations to know what the soils and ground water is like.
“It’s pretty important information from a design point of view,” Franchesci said.
A traffic engineer will also be more closely studying the traffic flow past the school.
“So basically, we’ll be refining the design,” he said. “There’ll certainly be fine-tuning.”
Mahoney asked when the committee would see a “drop-dead date” when they learn MSBA numbers.
Carlson said the budget is part of the schematic design submission delivered to the MSBA in August and, two weeks later, the whole schematic package, which the MSBA will have two months to provide the numbers. Officially, the date would be around Oct. 30.