Building Committee Minutes
7:30 PM January 27, 2010
Stoddard Town Hall
Members present: Dick Briere, Lou GrandPré, Sandy Holland, Harry Power, David Vaillancourt
Absent: Penny Betz, P. J. Lamothe, Amy Rokoszak, Alan Rumrill
Dick Briere called the meeting to order at 7:31 PM.
Dick Briere noted that through previous discussions with the Board of Selectmen, Jim Coffey and Sandra Rourke of the Department of Revenue Administration, there was consensus that the Committee could pool the funds in Articles 39, 41 and 42 and draw from the pool as necessary. This will enable us to hire Catamount Environmental to perform the lead and asbestos testing in the Town Hall and Gould House.
Before turning over the meeting to Rod Parsons of Baybutt, Dick asked how soon we could stage a Public Informational Meeting and questioned whether we would do better to schedule it for a Friday evening or Saturday afternoon. This will be discussed further next week.
Rod Parsons stated that even though we have made changes to their original proposals for both buildings, additions and deletions, he feels the original numbers still hold up pretty well. However, their estimator will be looking at the numbers again.
Rod’s assistant, Valerie, took us through a 3-D presentation of renovations to the Gould House. The Committee should work on a narrative to go with that presentation for the Public Informational Meeting. The narrative should be available to Baybutt within two weeks. It was noted that should the Gould House be the choice for town offices, it is important to preserve the “red room” and the streetscape inasmuch as is possible.
There was some discussion whether the baseboard heat covers can be salvaged. Rod said that he would look at them again, but they aren’t that expensive to replace. The heating system is good, the distribution is poor. Harry Power said that he doesn’t think the wood flooring in the “red room” can be salvaged.
Harry Power said that we should be looking at the Town Hall in the sense of providing only necessary repairs in the coming year. Those would include a new heating system, siding, and roofing, with electrical and plumbing as yet to be determined. The handicap ramp, front entry and steeple also need to be addressed in the coming year. With a gas fired burner, all the structures attached to the Town Hall building can be removed, returning it to a more original condition.
Rod stated that Baybutt has looked at a number of alternatives to consolidate workers into a common area, including the Aho plan at the Cahill property, which is currently estimated to be $1.3M. He wonders if that alternative might not be too big at this time, too large an operating cost. Lou GrandPré said that the people have to know and have an opportunity to vote.
Returning to focus on the presentation and narrative, Rod said he would like to have a table of contents. Dick sees it unfolding with stating the Committee’s Charter, Milestones, Introduction of Baybutt Construction, then a presentation of four scenarios, putting pricing to function. Rod noted that the weakness at the Cahill property is that we don’t have good information on soils. Lou stated there had been no perc testing done and the Building Committee “shot it down” for the following year.
Dick offered a reminder that whatever the voters end up deciding, buildings will always require maintenance; even with a new building, these two will still require maintenance as well as the new one.
Rod and Valerie left the meeting shortly before nine. Dick asked the Committee to think about the narrative to be able to offer suggestions at the next meeting, how do we want to verbalize the projects(s)? Do we want to present it, or have it embedded into the presentation?
Harry suggested that we look at the Fire Station soon as the structural engineer that looked at it said that nothing has moved. We need to be taking another look at all the town-owned buildings.
The meeting adjourned at 9:20 PM.
Respectfully submitted,
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Sandy Holland