The Fall River City Council meeting on February 22, 2022, primarily focused on the proposed $293.5 million project for a new Diamond Regional Vocational Technical High School. Citizens' input included strong support for the project from Debbie Kenny and Carl Hessler, citing the school's age, overcrowding, and the significant state grant from the MSBA. CJ Ferry opposed the project, advocating for a city-wide vote due to concerns about increased taxes, especially with the Durfee High School debt exclusion taking effect. A text message exchange involving Councilor Lee, implying ill will towards Councilor Pelletier, was also brought up, for which Councilor Lee apologized. Representatives from Diamond Regional, including Superintendent Elvio Ferreira and architect Greg Joint, presented the project, highlighting the current school's dilapidated condition, asbestos issues, and lack of space for its 1,400+ students. They explained the MSBA's 79.77% reimbursement rate on eligible costs, which, due to ineligible costs (like construction exceeding $360/sq ft), results in an effective state contribution of approximately 49%. The Fall River share of the project's principal was estimated at $111.9 million, with an annual assessment of about $6.5 million over 30 years, totaling approximately $193 million including interest. City Administrator Seth Aikin clarified that if the council approved the project, the city's ordinance 2-131, concerning projects over $5 million with less than 51% state subsidy, would likely trigger a city-wide voter referendum. If Fall River voters disapproved, the Diamond School Committee could still pursue a regional referendum across all four member communities. Councilors debated the financial implications and the role of voter approval. Councilor Kadeem argued the city's budget could absorb the cost due to retiring debt and new revenue from the Durfee debt exclusion, advocating for the council to make the decision as a priority. Other councilors expressed frustration over the administration's lack of a clear financial plan for the project. Ultimately, the City Council voted 6-3 to approve the $293,479,760 project for the new Diamond Regional Vocational Technical High School. Additionally, in the main council meeting, Roger Saint Martin was unanimously confirmed as Fire Chief, and Nicholas Macelini was unanimously confirmed as Human Resources Director. Two statements of interest for accelerated repair programs for Stone School Therapeutic Day School at West Hall and Robert L. Medeiros Resiliency Prep were referred to the finance committee.
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city council committee on finance will now come to order madam clerk counselors kadeem here dion here kilby here lee here mitchell yes i'm here herrera here proposal yeah and president here pursuant to the open meeting law any person may make an audio or video recording of this public meeting or may transmit the meeting through any medium attendees are therefore advised that such recordings or transmissions are
0:31being made whether perceived or unperceived by those present and are deemed acknowledged and permissible first item is citizen's input first person is debbie kenny 571 florence street fall river subject i assume if you just want to go to that microphone sorry
1:08good evening my name is debbie kenny and um i am the president of the diamond outreach committee i am also um and the retiree of diamond having worked at diamond for 29 years as the business manager i'm here tonight asking for your support for what we consider a very important issue and um where you'll see tonight the presentation by the architect there's been a great deal of work done to get us to this point
1:41it's been eight years in in process and and certainly the first five years we were denied at the first the first step but the last three years we have been in the process and we're very excited we consider the grant from the msba of 145 million as if we won the lottery and it is an incredible grant it's a gift should this not proceed at this time we would be set years back
2:11and we're also very concerned that the msba is talking about reducing its percentage of reimbursement and that would certainly have a detrimental effect so i ask you to please support it i'd also like to remind you that of the fourteen hundred and fifty students diamond a thousand of them are fun followers so we we don't treat our students as if they're from different communities but when they come
2:39to diamond the diamond students and graduates but the reality is fall river does have the the majority by a long shot of the number of students i had the opportunity last week to watch the finance committee and the and the school committee um because i thought we were going to be on on the agenda and i heard a city councilman i believe it's councilman lee say something that i think it's important for me to comment on
3:07i believe and you can if i'm saying this incorrectly please please do correctly i believe uh councilman lee you set up i'm i'm not a no vote when it comes to investment when they can reduce when they can reduce long-term costs and believe me i understand that my whole career has been in finance and i thoroughly agree with you this is one of those investments the building is very tired and very old
3:34should this not succeed then investments are going to have to be made one of the in this process we had an evaluation of the building and the architects will address that it it's it's served its life it served its useful life any improvements that we're going to have to make uh forward going forward should this not be approved would would be then follow the regional agreement and they
4:00would be assessed to all the communities with no reimbursement from the state 15 seconds i'm older you're 15 seconds oh okay well in any event thank you so much please please consider this this is very important to the community as well as all of the students the graduates and the students to be thank you very much thank you the next person signed up to speak is carl hessler 195 north ogden street subject diamond
4:33thank you very much good evening counselors my name is kyle hetzel i'm a lifelong resident of the city of fall river i'm also a business owner of h s tool and engineering located in fall river in 1978 i attended diamond actually graduated in 78 10 started in 74 so i am a graduate of diamond i employ their students i served on their advisory board i served six years as a member of the school committee and i
4:58actually even had the opportunity on a couple of occasions to go in and substitute teach in a machine shop while i was on the advisory board so i know a little bit about what i'm talking about here diamond is tired diamond lacks space diamond has a lot more students today than it did when i attended the machine shop that i'm very familiar with is crowded there's not enough room anymore for the
5:22modern equipment that they need to bring in we need to make this investment we need to do it because vocational education and i'm sure all of you would agree vocational education is very very important but being able to teach it in an environment that gives the students the room they need and gives the faculty the room they need for the equipment that they will need to bring in is super super important now
5:49there's a lot of issues that you wrestle with and money is always an issue if money was not a matter here it'd be easy we'd build a new school and all of you would agree with that but we know money's a problem but this is an investment that we have to make this will serve our community for 50 years moving forward and if we don't take the opportunity that's presented to us now the question is when
6:16it's only going to get more expensive financing is going to be the rates on on borrowing money is going to go up it's going to get more and more difficult to make this tough decision if there's any way that this can be done through the normal operating budget of the city of fall river i would ask all of you to look deep into that and find find out if there is a way this is a
6:39defining moment for our community regarding vocational education we need to do this and as a community partnered with somerset swansea and westport we can do this sure it'll be a little difficult it'll be a little difficult financially but guess what in the long term 10 years from now we'll be looking back it'll be like nothing the the money that was we're spending 10 years from now will
7:05will be like nothing compared to today's dollars and 20 years from now it'll even be less of an issue but the school will be here for 50 years serving this community so please as a lifelong resident as a business owner i'm asking this council to do everything possible to find a way to make this happen thank you for your time thank you madam clerk in citizens input yes we do madam president and members of the fall
7:37river city council i'm expressing my desire for the fall river city council to reject the approval of the new diamond regional a vote against this project is not anti-education anti-student or even anti-diamond a no vote would be a vote for the citizens of fall river and the entire region fall river is the last to vote on this project and as such you are the only wall to an automatic approval and
8:05increase taxes into sending this item to the entire region for a vote by the citizens i please and ask that you vote no on the diamond project in order for it to be sent to the district so the voice of the people can be heard no one is saying that diamond is not entitled to a new building and that diamond has not outgrown their existing building but we are saying that this is
8:27just bad timing this year in july the debt exclusion for the new durfee will kick in and add additional taxes to the backs of the full property owner we see annual increases in our water sewer and taxes and we do not see any return for the people of our to the people or for this city please think before you deprive the people the right to be heard nine people should not have the sole authority to
8:54expend this money on behalf of the people of fall river the people must be heard please send this item to the voters by voting no on this project thank you cj ferry and we also got another citizen input this afternoon i am in receipt of the following text message sent from counselor trotley to former counselor chris peckham this message is the most unethical thing i have ever seen counselor lee must resign without
9:24any further delay this was a text message sent between counselor lee and chris peckham do you want me to read the message itself madam president it's part of the it is part of the message um it says dust off your suits um council of petrum replies why what's up leo is going to the hospital tomorrow for a heart condition he's out today oh not good pray is for his family absolutely dust but dust off your suits
9:57um chris peckham replies i'll start but i'd honestly much rather him write off his last term keep me updated of course this is signed patrick higgins anything further madam clerk no madam president counselor and cpa counselor lee councillor bob pelletier has been a gentleman to me from the very first day we worked together as counselors so obviously this is really you know not something that i'm
10:25happy to see uh out there but the choice of words obviously we're wrong but i do not and i never meant any ill will towards council peloter and whether i'm forgiven enough for any of those comments is irrelevant i just know that i didn't mean any negative harm towards the counselor and i have nothing but respect for him thank you i yield thank you anything for the female council thank you
10:46item 2 and citizen in the committee on finance is the presentation of the msba project for diamond regional vocational technical high school if the folks from diamond would like to come down to the table
11:11and before you start if you'd all please give your name and address for the record on the in the mic thank you thank you john push the chair around push here
11:48good evening elvio ferreira 20 miller's lane somerset massachusetts hi i'm tim alex 43 minister brook dr simsbury connecticut excuse me could you also give your title as well if you don't mind sure i'm with colliers international i'm the opm the project the owners project manager greg joint 67 turnpike street eastern mass i work for castle blues associates and i am the architect for the project
12:18rajiv nera 1364 robeson street i represent fall river and the school committee of diamond father j mello 189 essex street also the floor of the school company joan menard 4700 north main street also on the diamond school committee i'll i'll just go back i'm the superintendent uh for greater fall river vocational indictment regional and i do want to thank you for for giving us the opportunity here to share
12:46uh our msba story with you um we know that over the past 20 years the the city of fall river has invested a significant amount of time and money into the promotion of education new elementary schools middle schools high schools have been constructed in the city to support the very best learning environment for your children city leaders have made difficult choices with a clear eye on doing what is best
13:12and most appropriate for the future of the city and for the region on stonehaven road we're at that same crossroads our current campus has been a beacon when it comes to promotion of education and skill development since 1968 and realistically 1912 diamond regional has promoted lifelong learning and introduced thousands of children to content areas which have changed their lives unfortunately our campus can no longer
13:38keep this path the current diamond has given all it can moving forward our current school cannot support the same outcomes that it has for the past 50 plus years we've outgrown our current structure and we have to move in a new direction which brings us to the opportunity tonight to make that vision a reality in 1968 the current campus was constructed for 800 students in the 1980s space was added to allow a
14:08thousand students to attend in 2022 were over fourteen hundred our technical areas are maxed out our historical tradition of preparing students for the workforce is losing momentum because we no longer have the space necessary to expand content and to introduce the most state-of-the-art standards to our students our building is starting to fail not because we don't maintain it but rather because the life cycle of the
14:38materials used for construction has expired the roof needs to be repaired mechanical systems are no longer efficient common areas are simply too small windows and doors need to be replaced we've managed to push forward even with all these mounting concerns but we've reached a critical mass if diamond regional is going to continue to be a producer of skilled workers for the local labor market we have to do something
15:08and at this time our local beliefs are echoed by the folks across the commonwealth the state is willing to assist in our push to improve technical education this push will allow us to continue to support the students and the industries of greater fall river as the current workforce continues to age and retire the next generation needs to be prepared to fill those gaps this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity
15:34for us a chance to promote excellence in our region a chance to ensure continuity in the local labor market and the economy over fifteen thousand students have graduated from diamond regional many of those have become business owners in this city contributors to the economic success of this region this is a chance to keep that tradition alive a chance to ensure our region is prepared for whatever the future brings
16:01a chance to move our region forward and make it a better place for our children and grandchildren we're just starting to come out of one of the worst times in modern history a time where trades were taxed to the highest degree job openings never seen before but no skilled labor to meet the demand how do we prevent that from happening again what steps do we have to make to ensure our economy doesn't have to waffle
16:30through this again how do you ensure we have enough nurses machinists technicians contractors plumbers and electricians to move forward the answer at this time is right in front of us i know many people are going to challenge you with the question on how we can afford to do this from our point of view the more important question is what happens if we don't are we better off letting this chance pass by
16:59or are we better off finding ways that allow us to grab it while it's in front of us can we allow this chance to slip through our fingers knowing that it may never come back around we all agree that the students deserve the best you've shown that in your actions over the years we ask you to show that one more time now i'd like to introduce you mr greg joint from castle booze who is going to
17:27present to you our msba story thank you dr ferrer uh so i'll run briefly through our uh presentation to give you some background history on the msba process uh the conditions uh at the school and then the proposed project and solution uh that we've come to through the course of the study so obviously four member communities and we've talked about the percentages of uh fall river students at diamond is 76.5
17:59i think says on there visible there uh and just a note that diamond does uh an enormous amount of community-based projects uh throughout the member district communities but primarily here in the city i think i got a list of 15 to 20 different projects that they've done for the utility commission over the past decade it seems working on projects to help the city eliminate some front costs and maybe do
18:31projects that weren't necessarily achievable otherwise and just the msba invites projects into the pipeline uh for a number of reasons a lot of them are are outlined uh on the slide i know it's a little small on this screen uh but really uh the the main reason that diamond is in the pipeline as as dr farrar has stated is that the the building is really at the end of its usable life uh once a building reaches
19:02beyond 50 years that is really you know the most it's designed to to you know function for and beyond that you have to either significantly renovate the building or replace the building so maintenance isn't really something that would keep up with that in fact diamond was awarded some kind of extra points in the msba process for their maintenance procedures so the state does certainly take a look at those
19:28maintenance procedures and if a district does a good job over its history they're rewarded for that in their reimbursement rate so just going back 54 year old building you know 219 000 square feet originally for 800 students the building currently is at about 235 000 square feet for 1400 students uh when we compare that to what we would expect for a modern facility with uh the traditional
20:00or the the current space standards outlined by the state we're about 160 000 square feet short of where the building really should be so that that really leads us to the the problem of how to rectify that on this site so you know the existing conditions of the building obviously they have all the existing issues that a 50 year old building would things like you know issues with the exterior masonry failed
20:27you know exterior concrete that's been there for 50 years a roof that really has been repaired throughout the years but is a very difficult roof to maintain and and really needs to be replaced in whole uh and and with that the the deck uh during the original construction was a port-and-place gypsum deck so the same thing your drywall is made out of is the structure of the deck so obviously as
20:51the roof ages and has leaks that gypsum deck is degraded so that requires a lot of extra work that you wouldn't normally see on just a regular roof replacement on a more modern building with a steel you know metal roof again you know other issues around the building but primarily uh you know aging facilities and lack of space are the big reasons why this project was invited into the pipeline for the msba again
21:21the building is of an age where it is has asbestos in it so that asbestos is in the form mostly of spray on fire proofing which while contained in closed areas is is safe and inert when you go to renovate or maintain this building it takes a significant amount of abatement work in those areas to rectify that and abate that before any real you know improvements can take place so annually uh
21:50diamond has been spending between a hundred thousand and two hundred and fifty thousand dollars out of their budget annually to to deal with these abatement issues before they can go in and do maintenance and improvement work uh just to kind of stay on track with where they're going um you know we we are estimating that there's about 6.8 million dollars of abatement still to go in this building
22:12which is a very significant amount of abatement uh this this building has a lot of asbestos uh in what is now safe spaces but as you go in and touch those obviously they have to be abated in a very strategic and proper way also with this building uh you know we have a site uh the the the district agreement has uh the building has to be located within a four
22:35mile radius of the traffic circle uh on eastern avenue obviously another site really isn't available i think you found the same when looking at the diamond uh the durfee project you know the available sites within the city aren't abundant and so this existing site is really uh the option for uh the district this site does have some challenges it's a steeply sloping site i think we drop
22:58about 92 feet from one corner to the other and it is primarily once you get six to eight feet down under the dirt ledge in most places and off on the football and baseball fields there is a little bit of fill that is kind of seems to be off cuttings from one of the highway projects in town so uh through the process we looked at three different enrollments uh 1400 students 1500 students and 1645 students
23:29uh diamond's currently about 1450 students so 1500 was chosen it's probably the closest to the current enrollment uh and it also controls that cost as as you roll up in uh student enrollment obviously the costs increase so balancing uh kind of the regional needs with the new durfee and and the other member towns the 1500 student population was selected we looked at so if you total all the
24:00options up with all the enrollments 28 different options including option one which is a base repair so in this case a base repair really isn't a feasible option what it's there to do is to use as a comparison for other options so that you know if you do nothing essentially what costs will be incurred you know if a project doesn't go through so those those are estimated by a professional cost estimator based on our
24:30assessments of the existing building and our preliminary designs the design that was ultimately chosen was a new construction project located on the football field behind the current building or in front if you are at the front door but anyway a different story so that is the most economical solution it is the shortest construction duration and those two tied together and it is the most compact footprint just because
24:57of the way we're able to organize the building vertically instead of kind of sprawling out like a lot of vocational technical high schools do so you know a couple of things that the building had to do in the design i think the most important is create an educationally appropriate fiscally responsible long-term solution i think you know i can speak for us as consultants the building committee was very clear on their
25:27desire to have both an educationally feasible but a fiscally feasible project so everything that we did throughout the design process was focused on not only meeting educational needs for kind of industry 4.0 21st century learning and all the needs of the students but also making sure that we were being cautious with how we spent money and where we invested the money uh throughout the project so
25:57just to kind of orient people on the screen so stonehaven road would be at the bottom of the site plan you see here and so the building kind of flips the football field moves up to where the existing building would be it's like multi-purpose field not football field and the building goes down onto the current multi-purpose field and track those are rebuilt a significant uh improvement in this scheme is the
26:26traffic pattern of the site the site now has a pretty overlapping traffic pattern which causes a lot of issues not only within the site but in the neighborhood and this also increases parking significantly to kind of eliminate the on-street parking that often happens in that neighborhood with you know district cars so a couple views of the building uh from stonehaven road um this is at the other corner of the
26:59entries uh all of the entries basically stay in the same locations uh that they are now a view of the front entry a view within the we call it student commons but the cafeteria and one of the academic carters and we'll just play a brief video for uh the entry sequence of the building
28:21and so uh to outline the schedule for uh the project uh the the schedule the schedule uh has been going on since 2020 and we've gone through a long process of making sure that we get the program the building and the site all right to make sure that we get that accurately estimated and presented in the budget so we are at the time when it's back to the district after msba board approval for district approval
28:54once the district approval is completed if it is passed the project funding agreement will be ratified with the the district and the msba we would go into design development in construction documents so kind of the last two thirds of the design process uh and then ultimately uh that would wrap up in 2023 and construction would start uh in 2023-24 uh and and go through 2026 for the building and then another year uh to
29:31for demolition and kind of the finishing of the site components uh of the project uh so enrollment we've talked about 1500 and students uh the total building square footage is 394 650 and the total project cost is 293 500. um the msba base reimbursement rate maybe it's the wrong way to say it but the the reimbursement rate for the district is 79.77 percent uh that's a very good reimbursement rate their their cap at
30:04msba is 80 i think you probably all fairly familiar with the msba process having gone through it a number of times uh and so that is for you know eligible costs so ineligible costs i think you're familiar with construction cost over 360 dollars a square foot is really the the big uh ineligible cost uh that that kind of gets you back down to an msba funding somewhere around 51 percent um
30:33that 51 obviously is still a significant number um it's a potential grant of up to 148.7 sure can you explain the reimbursement to 79.77 then you said in practicality and you can use that term uh 49. sure so um the reimbursement rate is a base rate so it's a base rate with a number of adders to get you to a final district reimbursement rate so there's uh incentives for green you know
31:08sustainable design there's incentives like i said for maintenance and things like that gets you to that 79.9 of eligible costs there are um caveats to the msba's agreement those are ineligible costs so ineligible costs are construction costs over three hundred and sixty dollars a square foot we are currently at six 619 617 dollars a square foot for construction cost so that delta between those are not it's
31:38not reimbursable so it's borne by the district that's why you see a significant drop in that there are other things site costs over eight percent of cons total construction cost and the like so there there's a number of things but the the big one is really the the dollars per square foot on construction costs within the core of the building is reimbursable so no no no only up to a certain dollar
32:09amount does the state reimburse the 79.77 anything over the 360 per square there is no reimbursement correct dollars per square foot dollars per square foot right dollars per square foot of construction cost currently is about 619 dollars a square foot the msba cap which just raised i think durfee it was 333 i think they just raised that to 360. um so so that delta between 360 and 619 is non-reimbursable
32:46that helps clarify there's there's some other things but in percentage they just aren't the reason i ask the question i'll continue under item two we have our administration done the issue for me is whether or not this has to go to the voters and a recent memoir i received says the 49 which means it has to go to the voters um because we have a city ordinance as you as you know anything under 50 percent
33:18under 51 which means 50 so we're talking about a 1 difference whether the voters have to lay in on this or not so um i'll reserve my questions later on for the administration that's what we need to calculations
33:39so uh again total project cost uh is there uh potential grant uh so they say potential grant because there's a there's a range in the grant between 140 uh 5 7 to 148 and in that range it picks up the contingencies that are built into the project so so as those contingencies are subject to the same eligibility requirements that that is why there's a range so that results in the district share between
34:13144.8 and 147 million dollars uh depending on you know just how those lie and just to remind you that the base repair that we estimated that kind of don't improve anything just bring everything up to code and repair what's breaking uh came in at 156 to 161 million so so the district share of the of the new project ends up being a slightly less in this case than a base repair that doesn't really fix the educational
34:43things it just fixes the physical building things um it actually probably would result in less usable square footage as we incorporate you know code upgrades for accessibility and the like that would be required under a project like that i should know that the msba generally though i can't speak for them doesn't participate in projects that don't meet the educational need of the district so
35:12just to break down the annual uh for fall river um the annual uh assessment from the district would be 6.5 million uh and and these are estimated numbers based on unibank's projections for a 30-year bond at three and a half percent interest uh and that breaks down to about sixty nine dollars per hundred thousand dollars of value uh on households um and so we were lucky we were the
35:39third project of this uh size and scope uh in the pipeline for msba uh two before us were northeast metro in bristol plymouth right down the road in taunton so we were able to compare ourselves to those projects to see how we did i am accused of being a little bit too data based and for an architect but um you know these numbers kind of let us know that we're probably on the
36:05right track uh so the total cost per student we are are the lowest um and the square foot per student we're right between the two uh northeast metro benefits from having about 100 more students uh with one or two less shops so they get kind of a better square foot ratio uh for for their process but we're right in the middle where we should be and in total project cost uh we are the lowest prod
36:33total project cost uh you know under 300 million where bristol plymouth and northeast metro are both significantly above 300 million dollars i should mention that northeast metro has 1600 students i believe and bristol plymouth is 14 i think they were 1435 or something like that so very very comparable projects uh in a i think six-month window to each other so very very close time frames so um just a an
37:04approval would mean accepting the msba reimbursement building a 50-year solution might have stated that before these buildings are expected to be a 50-year solution to the educational needs of the district that doesn't mean you won't spend any money over those 50 years but this this project should last you through a 50-year duration of education it addresses the overcrowding issues without being overbuilt i think
37:30right-sizing the project was a very important aspect of this project and how we were able to control those costs to make sure we weren't higher than those other comparable projects and it enables the school to develop kind of the next generation for the workforce in the area all of these career areas were shaped on the state's regional workforce development needs these things were taken into account by
37:56the district as they were looking at programs making sure they validated the programs that they had and they did add one program to the um to the the programs here uh for network and information systems uh so that was uh a direct result of the uh local disk the local workforce development needs so a disapproval of the project declines the the msba reimbursement so once a project fails it is out of the
38:26pipeline you would have to go back and start again it's usually i think it took you eight years to get in uh the last project i seen that got in it was about a five year window before they got back into the pipeline and started over from the start so it is a significant delay if a project does fail it it inevitably the school will need renovations things will fail that will need to be covered by
38:56operating costs and assessments to the sending communities so that's a concern uh with this building uh in the the age that it is it's just an inevitability that over time things are going to fail that need to be replaced um and it just it doesn't address the overcrowding i think if you've been to the school you've seen probably the overcrowding it's a significant issue for the district
39:21and that is the presentation i will defer to members of the school committee do you mind if uh mr joint would go back to the second slide of why excuse me i have several people that have raised their hand to speak but before we do that do you have copies of this presentation for the council i do not have hard copies sorry i have a hard copy i can leave okay the clerk will need that
39:50if anyone else to you thank you counselor c3 council vice president good evening thank you for attending this evening so we're looking at a 293 million dollar project um leaving after the after the state's reimbursement of 148.7 144.3 so far of his share would be approximately 110 million 389 000 is that correct of the principle yes we'd have to look into the interest over the 30 years as well but on the
40:25president's strictly the principle yes now of that you would you were discussing uh square footage and the price for square footage what portion of that is do you believe is it will not be reimbursable of the square footage of the building that total number on that principle uh what yes because you you you indicated that because you're at six hundred six hundred dollars a square
40:50foot a portion of this funding won't be reimbursable correct anything over 360.
40:56right do we have any idea at this point what the effect is on that number so of the district share estimated that is the district share oh sorry so that is the district share which includes the the non-reimbursements that would be the cost to the district right right the total cost but we don't know what of that number is going to be is that 79 percent reimbursable what's that 49
41:21reimbursable or what portion of that is not reimbursable that includes all of the eligible and ineligible costs so it it it is factored into the calculations that ends us at that 51 blended rate essentially i i don't know if i'm answering the question so i think for me um you know i understand that we need the new diamond like we needed a new durfee i don't think any of this is an
41:50issue of whether we want it need it it's not a question of whether we want or don't want state-of-the-art schools especially in this day and age you're correct in terms of the needs with wind energy etc the trades are very very important probably more importantly they've been for a very long time i think the problem is we have an ordinance that does not allow this body to vote on something
42:17that's over five million dollars um i think that's where we need clarification because i in speaking to a couple of you i think that has been the real struggle as to understanding the ordinance in the charter who's borrowing the money is the city borrowing the money is it diamond borrowing the money and i think do we do we need is the lawyer for the city here to ask the clarification on
42:52i'm a proponent of ordinances laws etc um i have always fought to stick by them um no matter what the situation is and the bottom line no matter who's cons it's still a taxpayer that's paying sure and if as a taxpayer i want the ability to vote on what i want to spend money on and how much i want to spend and i don't think i as a counselor have the right to take that
43:20away from the taxpayer so i'm just being honest with you um i i read it as for what it is we have an ordinance that we need to uphold um you know there's a there's a section of this that says well if you vote yes it's still going to go to the voters maybe that that that's not good enough we need uh definitive answers um i don't know where this is gonna go but
43:48we definitely i feel have to abide by our ordinances we will get the clarity and we will move on from there again i don't want you to think i'm against the school i absolutely am not against the school you know it's the right of everybody who lives here to determine what they want to pay for what they don't want to pay for what they can afford and you know i i can't tell somebody
44:11i don't care that you don't have enough money you have you have to buy steak instead of hamburg i can't do that and with good conscience i can't do that so with that i yield thank you counselor counselor and c2 council camara thank you um i only have one question at this moment i am a proponent of diamond and if it cut before us here we can vote on
44:30it i will vote for it if it has to go to the voters then so be it but uh i i think this is long overdue i think as you mentioned earlier the longer we wait the more expensive it's going to be for the taxpayers city got in trouble a long time ago when it didn't do the cso project early enough and it ended up costing a lot more later on affecting
44:47taxpayers so we can have these conversations later on with just in finance um but one thing i'm concerned about is the um the hazardous waste that's there the abatement costs i know you've factored that number in how much what is that number that we're factored in so far for that i've been in barcelona so so total abatement cost on the complete demolition of the building is about 6.8 million dollars in the estimate
45:12and these are estimates so well that's what scares me i mean how who did you have a company do it or did you do it yourself these are these are professional estimates uh one estimator is uh retained by the designer another estimator is retained by the owner's project manager they both do independent estimates on the documents uh and then we come together in a reconciliation meeting to
45:36make sure that um not necessarily that every line item matches right uh but that um the the scope is is clear and and defined and that the estimates were within a certain percentage of each other i think we were within one or two percent i think and the numbers you see are are are an average uh that particular item in itself will have to go out to bid correct uh all items that was going to
46:02be people yes so i i would hope that whoever bids that particular item there that they would enter into an agreement or if it exceeds what their expectations are they'd cover up the rest of it they probably wouldn't want to do that i can only tell you and it was prior to me being on this council but council pellet will probably remember the hudner hospital when it was sold
46:27to the city i think they bought it for a dollar because they understood that there was some hazardous waste removal and they had estimates and this was a long time ago prior to me being on the council home but they realized then that when they started getting rid of the hazardous material that their costs were so high they wanted to get the hospital back to the city they couldn't afford
46:50just the removal of the hazardous material i certainly understand the situation and i'm sure those guys are professional and can come very close but that's something that only because you stressed how much asbestos there is throughout the entire building there's a lot of it and it could be very i mean six million dollars doesn't seem like a lot of money to get rid of hazard smash i know it some
47:10projects in boston go for close to that and not nearly as big as this so i just want you to get very cautious yeah no we we we were uh i'd say we knowing uh the the issues here knowing what the school has had to address okay uh and having done a very similar abatement project uh in a similar project in um charlton mass bay path original uh did a renovation project at their school had a
47:40very similar abatement scope uh and and were able to handle that right uh these numbers are as all early numbers are right fairly quickly but i just i think that's some one number that scares me because once you start doing it there's no turning back and you cannot stop doing it and whatever the cost is is what the cost is and i think you want to get your hands around that one pretty as close as
48:02possible understood put that yield thank you and i'll save my comments for later on in finance counselor kibble you had your hand up did you have more for this or you're waiting for administration thank you counselor and seat seven council pereira yeah the only question that i had is i wanted to see the second slide that came the second slide that came up i believe it was the second slide why
48:24they were giving us the money why and there was a whole list of reasons and to be honest with you it you know it caught my eye some of them and i didn't realize that there was asbestos as much in that building i mean i knew it was built several years ago i didn't realize that and i mean the concerning thing is for me is if we don't look at getting a new
48:49diamond we're going to look at spending 150 million to 161 million and that is going to come right out of our budget because that's going to be an assessment very similar to what bristol aggie uh has given us for an assessment but if you could just read those because i couldn't read everything that was there and i think the public at home my people watching might not know if you
49:14could run by it sure so the the building facility needs severe overcrowding approximately 30 percent of qualified applicants are turned away due to lack of space prevention of severe overcrowding expected as a result of the increased enrollment condition of the existing building infrastructure lack of appropriate energy sources lack of building code compliance lack of energy conservation code compliance lack of
49:38seismic structural code compliance lack of modern technology infrastructure lack of handicap accessibility inadequate or inefficient or poor poorly distributed building systems such as hvac plumbing and electrical lack of natural ventilation or outdated mechanical systems lack of a sprinkler system and asbestos located throughout the building where the build the big factors for the msba okay
50:04so that's structural the the other column is educational yeah but i i was just looking at the structure just so that people would know and you know when i saw that there was some concern for ada compliance i know that when the school was first built there weren't those laws in place and you know i'm a big proponent for making sure that things are ada compliant and you know the sprinkler system the
50:30chief of the fire department is here so um maybe he'll want to check that out but uh we need to make sure that you have you know that you have a sprinkler that's working and my my feelings on this and i'll wait until attorney atkins come down but my feelings on this is i believe we need a school but i believe that if we are you know gonna do vote one way
50:56or another way that it's gonna come out of our budget that's not gonna happen there's not enough money in the budget for a lump sum to come out it has to go to the voters for approval and nine of us here cannot make a decision for all of the residents of fall river and i would say sooner than later put in an order whether the council does it or whether the mayor does it and
51:20schedule a time because i believe your timeline is for may 22nd may 20th may 20th so schedule um a special election and get it done and i did talk to mr aya capone relative to the cost of a special election is like 63 000 if we could use opera money to pay for that because then it comes to who's going to pay for this and by all intents and purposes he's
51:45feeling that it can be paid um through opera money so let's do it we're not going to sit here and discuss this over and over at nauseum i think we all know diamond serves a purpose it's a good school and it needs you know look at around the communities they're all putting in new schools with new technology and you have to do it if we don't have education we don't have economic development
52:13you know you need to educate but i think that it should absolutely be a vote of the people and let people hear this is what they do have a tour of the school you know show this presentation to people so that they get an understanding of it and i would wait we did get a timeline and when attorney atkins comes up there's a few questions i had on the timeline i worked with attorneys before
52:38and when i see this likely could be or that likely i don't want to see likely tell me yes no um so hopefully we'll get to that but thank you so much for coming down and i appreciate your presentation with that i yield madame thank you councilman c5 council lee just uh again want to just uh reiterate some of the sentiments that we've made as far as taking taking the vote away from the taxpayer
53:03we we vote on budgets we vote on many things that the taxpayer does not get a chance to vote on you know we vote on sewer rates water rates things like that when it when it came to the debt exclusion vote um that went to the to the taxpayers for durfee and i i feel as though um this this is the same route it should go i feel as though the people
53:23uh who are invested in the community uh if they have this opportunity to make this vote than they should and i do appreciate um the the school i appreciate diamonds history i mean i i'm a durfee graduate but i've i've millions of friends from from diamond and um and and i have and i have an appreciation for for for the school that the program that you want to put together the school
53:43that you want to put together out there uh personally but what i want and what i feel the taxpayers can afford are very two different things um and i and i agree with the citizens input that this is an investment in in the community and i i have no argument against the value that this would bring to the to the community um however at the end of the
54:01day uh the people who pay for it have a chance to vote for this and i and i and i want to give them that opportunity so with that i yield thank you thank you conference one comes up again thank you madam president i guess it's no shock of of anybody i'm going to be on the opposite end of this whole conversation because i just i can never stay in the majority um
54:20i will say that and this is not to be disrespectful of my colleagues however our form of government is that we have city councilors so to suggest that we're going to constantly let's go back to the voters let the voters decide if that's what we want we need to change our form of government and have a town meeting an open town meeting so that every single resident and that's a voter has the
54:40right to vote on every issue the voters vote for us to make decisions now that being said we have ordinances and i and i fully support making sure that we follow and abide by what we've approved in ordinances so if it requires um us to go to a ballot question then i would support that if it's over the if it's less than 51 reimbursement coming from the state if it is not
55:04i don't think we should circumvent what our authority is that the voters instilled in us we just need to make an educated decision and we need to stand behind the vote that we take good bad or indifferent because i will say you run you run the risk it's not just diamond every year we vote on whether or not we're going out to for for debt so does that mean every time we go out for debt we're
55:24going to have the voters uh you know take a vote to say do we support this do we not support this uh or are we gonna say no you know what just because it's only two million dollars it doesn't really impact the voters every bond authorization that we put out impacts the voters so i'm just on the opposite side i think we just need to have a conversation i support diamond just like i supported durfee
55:46i do not support diamond going to the debt exclusion i did not support durfee going to the debt exclusion when we start talking about raising taxes the taxpayers already pay two and a half percent we need to manage our budget and make sure that the priorities align with what we want to see in our operating budget so that means if we need to reallocate funds and reallocate monies to different
56:05priorities then that's our responsibility and that needs to come down from the administration but we need to be clear about that and i've got some questions with regard to retiring debt because there is retiring debt we just had a debt projection that came in and we're we're starting to see that there's retirement debt we've got a document here we've also got additional monies that's coming in from a debt
56:26exclusion which is going to offset this so i think when we start looking just at the general fund city and school we got principal and interest starting in 2023 at 12.8 million going down to 12.7 going down to 12.5 12 million 11 10 seven seven six five five so this retiring debt what's not captured in here is that there's also an estimated of five million dollars coming in additional revenues for the
56:54debt exclusion that the taxpayers are paying for so right off the bat we've got a minus five million dollars off of this we've internally have said that we want to see at least 10 million dollars in our debt line item so if i look at twelve million dollars and minus five million dollars that's seven million dollars so we've got enough to support our costs for diamond now it's just a
57:20matter of whether or not we truly want to support that and i'll go on and we'll have this conversation because i think the conversation needs to be had but more importantly the reason i support durfee is i was on the school committee i was on the school committee when we started going through all these brand new schools under the lamb administration there is not a school in the city of fall river on the public
57:42side that has not seen a new building with the exception of diamond okay we can't lose sight of the fact that 76 of the students that go to diamond are for our students we owe it to forward students if we support education to support diamond now we can ask the difficult questions as to whether or not we think the cost associated with the building is legitimate but i think in all fairness
58:07if we're going to support durfee we're going to support you know the spencer board and we're going to support the green school we're going to support the slave school we're going to support the lateral school what's going to support the sylvia school and the list goes on how do you not support the diamond school diamond came before us two three years ago four years ago with a statement of interest before this
58:28project even went forward to see whether or not this city council supported this project and i know it was a different makeup but this city council not this particular makeup but the city council voted to support the projects we sent the diamond school district forward with the support from the city council to say yes we support this project and we will support it in the future that's
58:53how they went through and and even got their application heard from the msba so to come back now in the 10th hour when everything's ready and all this money has been expended and the time and energy to say now we're not going to support it to me is is not where i personally want to stand so i will say wholeheartedly that i support this i do not support and i want to be very clear
59:12i do not support a debt exclusion because i i think we should be able to live within the means that we have we've already did a solution for durfee like i said i did not support that being said i've got some specific questions because i think my colleague in c2 brings up some very good points in terms of comparing this to the cso project putting things off so when we go back to
59:35when you went back to slide two just to have if we decide that or if the voters i think eventually by the sounds of it it looked like it looks like it may go to the voters so the voters do not support a new building we go to the renovation you've obviously got to regroup do everything what is the inflation factor that you have in terms of this project what does that look like
1:00:00that's a really easy question to answer it's a very difficult question to answer so what i can tell you is is kind of timeline costs based on msba projects because that is uh probably the most solid data that we have so i went back and did a little bit of research to to see kind of comparing average costs now these are going to be for new construction projects not base renovation projects so um the
1:00:31total dollars will be different but construction cost tends to raise and lower at the same percentage so uh over the last uh so if you take a look at between 2015 and 2020 the average cost increase between projects in that time period for all msba new construction projects was about 33 so dollars per square foot raised about 33 percent in that timeline i will note that in that timeline uh
1:01:01msba's contribution uh only raised about three dollars a square foot so i'm not going to try to do the math on the spot but it didn't keep up with that escalation if you take a longer view of those increases between 2010 and 2020 the msba average project cost increase was about 57 so so obviously these increases are compounding uh when we uh estimate uh these projects i i can't remember
1:01:30exactly what the percentage we used in this one was for our escalation uh we estimate from the time of estimate to the midpoint of construction because that's how you average out the construction estimate uh and we average uh i think on this one it was between four and four and a half percent a year uh compounding over uh you know those those years to the midpoint of construction so
1:01:51it certainly escalates i think the other two important factors to take into account is you know if the project was eligible for msba funding which it likely would not we are at the front of the window of that that raised to 360 dollars a square foot so as you as you project forward the msba raises that on kind of their own schedule and that increase usually reflects about a three percent escalation when they do
1:02:19raise it so the the longer uh you you go into that that you know that plateau uh the the bigger the delta is between the msba share and the district cost uh if the project was able for you know to be uh done that said design for a project like that is about a year it's about the same design period um you know so you know in theory you could regroup and start and go
1:02:46probably put you another year behind schedule something like that so um you know but you still don't gain the efficiencies that you're looking for in the added educational value that you're going to get in this new building no right so and as you as you renovate right you trigger code required upgrades uh accessibility is is a big one so as you as you have to go into the building and make things
1:03:08accessible you actually lose usable square footage right a non-accessible bathroom is a lot smaller than an accessible bathroom right and so almost none of the bathrooms at diamond are accessible right they have some to comply with the renovation requirements that they have over time but you know in a major renovation project like the base repair option all of those bathrooms would have to accommodate
1:03:31accessible requirements gets them much bigger which takes away from other usable space which we already know they they lack so ultimately it you know it ends up kind of having a detrimental effect to the educational purposes just to meet the code requirements and that's also assuming it's a quick turnaround if we can't get this project approved and when we look at a base repair we have to get msba to approve
1:03:59that again the average length of time is somewhere between three and seven years now for a system that gets rejected it gets back into the pool and then gets back into line realistically this project in in seven years could cost us 400 million dollars so that number that you presented in in slide two with just the i guess the renovation does that include any ff e or is that solely just building
1:04:24renovations so you're not gaining any new technology or any educational value that's basically taking our current footprint bringing it up to code and as greg mentioned potentially losing some educational space to make sure everything that we're doing is up to code so in terms of for those folks that are extremely concerned and i i'm one counselor as well for for the taxpayer and the value that the taxpayer
1:04:50dollars are going to be used for it's minimal right you're just fixing a building you're not getting any new added value for education it's solely just the envelope of the building and bringing it up to code correct and we would also have to pay close attention to enrollment capabilities once those changes are made right now we're managing with 1400 and some as you start to potentially take away from
1:05:11academic classrooms or technical areas that could impact the enrollment number moving forward because the those areas could not sustain potentially the current numbers they have i should note that a renovation of that sort the life expectancy for the renovation would be a 30-year life expectancy as it is on the msba's renovation option projects as opposed to a 50-year life expectancy
1:05:36of a new building project so there is a significant difference in in life expectancy of those type of projects and then in terms of the the new construction project uh the ff e is is there new equipment coming in there so that would be fully functional with new vocational equipment do you know how much of that is budgeted roughly so let me just clarify so there is ff e furniture fixtures and equipment that has a
1:06:06a line item of i think it's 1.8 million there's a technology line item for another 1.8 and there's also some vocational or in technical career area equipment that is associated with the construction cost so things like kitchen equipment associated with the new commercial kitchen for the culinary arts is not in that ffne line item because it is so integral to the construction of the project that is included in
1:06:34the construction cost and off the top of my head i think there's about two and a half million dollars i will say that uh of technical schools that we have worked on uh diamond is very well equipped in terms of equipment they have done an excellent job managing perkins grant funds the capital skills grants over the course of the years that they've been available and they've been fairly
1:06:59successful at um those capital skills grants uh so in terms of uh career and technical equipment there isn't a huge amount in there there's a lot of really great stuff that they have that can come over uh so that is you know i it's hard to say it's a it's a cost savings but you don't have to reinvest in a ton of new equipment uh to supplement uh kind of old and aging equipment they've gone
1:07:22through the process on a lot of their equipment and you know replaced it over the years and maintained what they have in very good stead so that is a significant benefit to the project because you don't have to spend you know 10 to 18 million dollars trying to fit out these new areas and then for those people you know those folks that are looking at this and trying to compare it to durfee do you have
1:07:45just and maybe you don't have this this answer but um just the rough idea of you know the difference or the the cost increase just for a vocational school versus a typical high school yeah it's about 1.25 okay comprehensive high school versus a voc tech high school the voc text about 1.25 okay all right more all right thank you i i appreciate that and and like i said i know i might not
1:08:12be taking the popular stance i'm ready to support this now and tell you folks to move forward with it because you know quite frankly it's just if we're really concerned about the taxpayer value and looking out for the taxpayers i think now is the time to move on this um you know interest rates are low i think you know when you're talking about inflation of 33 and then comparing it to
1:08:31just doing a cost benefit analysis to a renovation and and and i think and i think this at the end of the day this is this is about education and i know people often say buildings don't teach students i would agree with that that unfortunately in this event this will allow you to help better better provide additional education to students by better space more efficiencies gained because of the
1:08:53space and equipment that you're able to do and that i think that you know number one makes the city of forever better off and quite frankly the the commonwealth of massachusetts if we can you know keep these folks and you know these students in massachusetts with their uh their skill set and and i know some folks go you know some of those students go on to um to college and things of that nature
1:09:12but i i think that all you know kind of adds to uh the marketability of folks and and people trying to create and start their own business i i see you know mr hetzler in the uh in the audience and i know just having a conversation with him and i hope he doesn't mind me sharing this but we had a conversation and we had that discussion from the political standpoint of where folks feel that
1:09:33diamond is just taken away from students because they shouldn't be going to college and you know i personally for one don't don't feel that elected officials should be dictating what the educational path is for students i think we should be providing and offering up you know the vehicle for them to make that their decision and decide where they're going to take them and and quite frankly how many times do
1:09:53we do we see students go to college not knowing what their degree is going to be right we can't expect you know students who are going into high school to know right off the bat this is where i want to go but it gives them the technical aspects in the event that they decide they don't want to go to college and if they do want to go to college they just again have that you
1:10:12know that technical aspect and when i was discussing with mr hessler he he went to diamond and then decided he wanted to go to college and and it helped him bring his his horizons and expand his his abilities and and he's now you know a very um successful businessman in the in the community and and has offered up he's you know we served together on the uh on the cusp building committee so he's been very
1:10:34active in in education not just uh with diamond but across the across the city and and right now when we start looking at the hiring process um trying to to you know get people in the in the trades whether it's plumbers or electricians it is a very difficult thing to do right now and i think if we can kind of force that and and get people more interested in trying to get the technical aspects i
1:10:56think it's going to be better for everybody in the long run um i think some of those technical licenses are going to be you know a license to to print money if you know these students realize you know the demands and the need that's out there so again i support this i know i'm a little long-winded but i support diamond moving forward and to me it's a no-brainer i yield cousins have anything further on the
1:11:18presentation counselor and seat six council penalties get the number right it's cause it's right there thank you for coming down father and miss maynard and everybody else i called you up today my friend i put you here tonight so that's good um you know i feel you know we built 11 12 schools i i lost track and all of it was monies that was reimbursed to the city of fall river
1:11:48some as high as maybe 75 80 percent as we went along for the other schools probably 50 percent whatever but uh you got the the durfee going up so be it we had to get a vote for that uh whether or not we're going to see what's gonna happen you people have been working on this for uh for a while it takes what five six years before you put this together the
1:12:15package we're in year ten you're year ten yes well just think about it to people it takes 10 years to get where we are now we certainly don't want to start over i mean we we're going to do the right thing if we're getting 110 million uh let's do what we have to do to get it done and a completion on this would you say 2 26 26 27 we would be completed and there you go
1:12:45if you have to start over i mean you say you're going to spend 140 million to take care of the old school it's ridiculous it's crazy you're just throwing money away you got all the horses and and the right stable let's go let's get it done you know being here for a while i've been to a few graduations some of my families and some of my kids done good because going to school not everybody
1:13:19can go to school and learn and they drop out because they can't take it but we have something special in fall river that you can learn a trade in fall river and get a job anyway but if you go to diamond you get two choices you got a trade or you get an education and you can move on if you're really really smart to college and do what you want if not you can do something else
1:13:45always become a plumber a baker a cook a nurse uh electrician i miss the boat but it's all right i'm a politicians but that's all right i didn't go to diamond for it but that's okay but uh it's an opportunity i know the people out there gonna say wow this is crazy more money more money but the effort that you put in the last six seven years uh you know i support i have no problem
1:14:16no problem whatsoever i mean uh but you know it's close you know if we don't do it do you start over how can you start looking you've been six seven years at it you're gonna start again come on everybody on the tape was getting old you know you didn't follow me you don't know but don't you don't say but uh i think it's the right thing to do we're going to sharpen our pencils and
1:14:48see what we can do without i support it and i wouldn't want to start over and just bring up that piece of property that we i sold to uh housing and tuesday clinic and that thing they wanted me to get 250 000 for it i said you can't get 250 000 you're going to clean it up so we sold it for 25 000 split between uh the housing at drewsdale
1:15:19well you see the building they put up there beautiful building you know and housing took the rest of the land but it was the thing at the meeting i told him many times you take it as is for 25 000 25 000 that's the deal that's it you can get more money leo now let's get 25 they all agreed 25 000 maybe about nine months later they started the project they spent half a million dollars
1:15:49there's one tank they didn't know about they found the tank and had to take it out so i'm hoping that you guys wouldn't have a problem like that but they come back on us and they want us uh you know they want their money back and no if you agree to it that's it you want it do what you got to do they still put a new building up i'm just hoping that
1:16:13you don't have that kind of a problem at that property um now the the fixed price if we start now you think it's going to overrun um you know you're going to 2026 right our job is to make sure it doesn't go over budget how do you do that we we have a committee that's put together to make sure all the points that we've gone through over the past two years
1:16:42stay where they need to be we understand what it is we do our very best to make sure we we don't miss by an extraordinary amount if you look at the the history of the projects and i think greg can speak to this uh with vocational schools over the past several years they've either been on point or slightly underpoint and we would look to follow that same model well that's good to know reinforcement
1:17:06all right with that idea i support it whatever i can do uh to make it work you know i got a little more time on the council but whatever i can do you let me know if we can work together we should get it done we'll get it done i mean you know it's one more school and it's got to be done it's imperative now all the other communities have said
1:17:29okay yes they all said okay so it's just us today we have big guys right to date we have um we have not received any disapproval from any of the three towns right man i'm chairman i uh president romana are you okay anything further before i go back to counselor and seat too you know council camara just real quick i just want to wrap it up again i thought i'd
1:17:53make myself clear and i would support it if it came before us and if ask voters hope that it would come before us so that we can just support it and do what is right um right now the reimbursement is 89.8 percent i think 79.79 so it's almost 80 percent there's no guarantee what the reimbursement's going to be if we delay this and if the voters turn it down and
1:18:17then if they have to build a school five six seven eight nine years from now that reimbursement could be sixty percent because it's declined we started we started building schools i think i voted for every single school when i was on this council starting in 1997 and the reimbursement started out at 90 percent there weren't too many communities taking advantage of the 90 reimbursement
1:18:37and as they saw we we did two in one year we did two two years later we did another two three years after that and as other communities started to get aware of the reimbursement program and they saw what the city of florida was doing by building new schools and getting that amount of money reimbursement saving our taxpayers an awful lot of money they start to do the same thing and the
1:18:57reimbursement started to dwindle and get less and less and i think durfee was one of the last buildings we built it was one of the lowest reimbursements back of all the schools we built i certainly don't want diamond to lose on the opportunity to build this school at 78.8 which is very good percentage so we should do everything we can to get this school built at that percentage and give
1:19:17these people what they deserve it's a long past overdue they do a phenomenal job with what they have now just imagine what they could do if they had new state of the art facility with new equipment and new uh things to go in there so with that i yield and um good luck guys start those signs stop the campaigns don't be afraid do everything that we had to do to build different make sure people are
1:19:36well aware of what the needs are and why and what the cost will be with that i yield thank you thank you counselor and c3 council vice president dion how many trades are taught at diamond currently we have 18 the project adds one to 19.
1:19:52that's one yes and what field is that in uh internet and network security okay thank you get that i yield anything further from the council no counselor cd council proposal dr farrar two questions it's my understanding that the district is prepared if it's a no vote here they're prepared to pay for the election that will happen between the four cities and towns so so currently we're
1:20:19utilizing the the section of the law that has us go to the municipalities 7116d if there is a disapproval because our regional agreement requires unanimous vote from all four sending communities the diamond school committee will will have the ability to look at a second section of the law 7116n which would allow us as a district to hold a regional referendum vote and and diamond would be responsible for the cost of
1:20:44that vote yes and what does that look like as far as functionality is concerned so we would be collaborating with all four sending communities to make sure every voter had opportunity to get to a polling station we'd have to work out a time frame we'd have to work out locations we work collaboratively with each four uh sending communities to make sure that there are no barriers put up to
1:21:05voters we would agree on a date and times every community would have the same date same times identify locations we would run the the ballot and it's a 51 percent majority vote at that point okay val yield thank you thank you dr ferreira and is that just a simple yes or no yes you're in favor and no you're not in favor of diamonds nothing to do with funding correct correct it's just
1:21:27approval of the project thank you counselor and see forecast i'm sorry to prolong this um however it's important stuff so it's just so uh the viewers know what's going on and obviously many don't many viewers watching a meeting if we take no action tonight it passes you you have based on our last school committee vote the sending communities have until may 20th to take disapproval action okay so if we take no action
1:21:58uh up into that date defaults to a yes it's all set correct if we um deny or reject then it goes to the ballot the diamond pays for that and it goes to all the involved communities for an election if if fall river disapproves the project stops under 7116 d this the greater fall river vocational school committee then takes up the question of if they want to pursue 7116n and run a referendum you guys would
1:22:30ladies and gentlemen so um i would definitely be against that i don't think this council has any right or jurisdiction to intrude on another elected bodies or town sovereignty so to speak so if we approve i know if we approve it may or may not have to go to the voters no in full river only no so again if we take no action before the deadline it passes yes if we reject
1:23:08then diamond has the ability the committee or it has the ability to put it on the ballot you you incur the cost for the ballot for the election for all the involved communities correct if we approve then our city ordinance may kick in our city ordinance make it again because because of the reimbursement may be under fifty percent uh that that question i can't answer okay well i think um uh just i know council camaros
1:23:38and uh council gadim all three of us have been on the school committee i was on for ten years attorney brilliant who's here um it would definitely i think this entire council and it's been said by all are firmly firmly in support of this project absolutely my daughter graduated from diamond and she went to college she graduated with a four-year degree from college and is utilizing her skill that she learned
1:24:06from diamond so the question i think is there's no really no division in terms of us wanting this school build but it's whether or not as council dan quite educated whether or not um we feel that the voters should have a say so i i just found it ironic that if we um when i was reading that legislation if we take no action it's automatically approved um and i i found that um
1:24:37some somewhat odd i must say and just just for full transparency that's an msba regulation that's not a diamond regulation i get it okay okay thank you i'm sorry to prolong um gentlemen is there anything further on the presentation from the council thank you thank you everyone thank you thank you thank you thank you if you'd make sure madam clark gets a copy of the presentation
1:25:21item three on the agenda is the greater foreign vocational school district committee the amount of 293 million four hundred seventy eight thousand seven hundred sixty dollars for design engineer constructing and equipping the new diamond regional vocational technical high school and related athletic facilities we have the members of the administration come down to the table please
1:25:55uh
1:26:19attorney aiken i know you had boarded a um a sheet of facts in a timeline if you'd like to give a summary to the council sure so um not going to belabor a lot of what's already been said uh tonight it seems fairly clear that the council has a very clear idea of what it is in terms of numbers and the possibility of a vote and who would sustain the cost of administering that vote i'm
1:26:49just going to briefly run through what the process as the administration understands it is so we have a estimated total cost of a new high school of 293 million dollars with a contribution from the massachusetts school building authority of 145.7 million which as i do the math is approximately 49 of the total cost which means that the remaining cost is 147.3 million and which is approximately 51 percent
1:27:30shared between the four diamond community 76 of that remaining cost would be the responsibility of the city of fall river leaving the city with approximately 111.9 million dollars that they would be responsible for the cost of the project the position of the of the administration is that we take no position on whether or not the vote should go one way or the other but rather that the process as we
1:28:01understand it is that no action on the part of this council is tantamount to an approval if in fact the numbers are as they have been represented to be where the contribution from the state is less than 51 49 then it would trigger any approval whether it's approval by inaction or approval by vote of this council would trigger our ordinance which is section 2 dash 131 and the language of that ordinance is no
1:28:41order authorizing the issuance of a bond note or certificate of indebtedness of 5 million or in excess of 20 million dollars in a fiscal year shall be effective but by a vote of the registered voters of the city of fall river so the way i understand that is that even though it is the diamond school committee who would actually be incurring the debt from whoever they are borrowing from
1:29:11any vote of the council approving it could arguably if one were i don't know a lawyer and inclined to argue about these kind of things one would suggest that um any approval by this council would essentially be an order approving the issuance of indebtedness something that would that would represent indebtedness now whether that is a an iou to the diamond school committee or whether that is um well our agreement to
1:29:48bond the project or go to the voters and look for a debt exclusion or try to do it within our means as councilor kadeem talked about whatever that looks like it is still an obligation a debt to the diamond school committee which would essentially repay the debt that they themselves have incurred for the entirety of the project split of course between the four communities 76 of that being ours
1:30:14so the little summary that i gave just goes through those numbers and goes through the the two scenarios where the administration's reading of 2-131 our city ordinance suggests that this would go to a vote of the registered fall river voters which would essentially make the vote effective so it's not that the city council can't vote on this it's that the city council's vote is essentially ratified
1:30:43or made effective by a vote of the voters of the city yes ma'am i'm sorry not my job to tell people i'm just waiting counselor and seat for council kilby um i'll yield for now madam okay madam vice president thank you councilman c7 council pereira thank you um but attorney uh aidkin when i got the memo that you sent um or the timeline it said that if the council approves the project the approval is
1:31:18likely is likely only effective if it is then ratified by a city-wide ballot so if we vote yes then this triggers to go to an election that's my sense of it now um when you're dealing with numbers this big um one of the conversations i had with the architect who was just before you moments ago uh and conversations i've had with attorney brilliant um have led me to believe that there is some
1:31:49potential movement in that contribution from the state and there's maybe an argument that what we're looking at is a is a 50 or 50 and a half percent contribution as opposed to 49 could it get up to 51 i suppose so i i think that one of the issues here and the reason i said likely well there's two reasons i said likely one uh is that in my professional life i hedge almost everything that i say
1:32:13because uh attorney brilliant will tell you uh lawyers never want to be held you know exactly responsible for for saying yesterday i saw the word lightly twice so likely we put in there two times yep it's one of my favorites uh um the uh but the other reason is that i am aware that um most of the numbers that have been used uh up to this point have been you know they've sort of
1:32:37rounded off you know after with the first you know 100 000 thereabouts right um and so knowing exactly what that is whether that's 49 whether it's 50 whether we're edging closer to 51 percent that could change what my opinion is of whether or not the ordinance is triggered if it is in fact less than 51 even by the smallest margin i would i would say it should go to the voters under 2-131 okay so it's
1:33:04111.9 million over the length of the bond how how long are we going 30 years on this is that what so what would that be per year so there's been some numbers thrown around um suggesting that the 111.9 million uh would be six and a half million per year or uh if you want to look at assessed value per hundred thousand dollars uh or per hundred thousand dollars of assessed
1:33:32value it would be sixty nine dollars per hundred thousand so a three hundred thousand dollar home uh would be uh just under um what two hundred and ten dollars and that would be going with the debt exclusion that's right that would be going with the debt exclusion correct now mr iacopone when we look at the debt that is coming off and there was a projection sheet here of the debt that's coming off and
1:33:56they're not going to be online and we're not going to stop paying this until what 20 26 2027.
1:34:04yeah probably i mean based on their construction would we be able to absorb into our budget the 6.5 million without it going to debt exclusion what's your honest opinion on that well first of all and i don't know if you have that information right not really and why i want to qualify that is is that you have the debt schedule as president there is some additional debt that's under under
1:34:26temporary borrowing right now that's going to have to be slotted in here and then of course when the council does get the budget for physical 23 there possibly will be some not guaranteeing it but there possibly will be some you know non-enterprise borrowing that made that may be proposed so this ch this will change a little but it's going in the right direction but i mean i can't guarantee that at this
1:34:50point without going doing further analysis you know on that i mean that's that's a question that i have if we can absorb it into the budget and it doesn't have to go to debt exclusion then fine if we can't absorb it into the budget and it is going to go to a debt exclusion then obviously we would need a vote of of the uh people buy our own charter and i wouldn't be prepared to answer
1:35:14that at this at this session okay but that's just i mean that's my feelings on how i'm gonna vote do i do i wanna have a new diamond yeah i do but it's a matter of how do we pay for this so that's the question i have even if we vote yes attorney atkins you're saying that you think if we vote yes you're of the belief that it would still have to go to the voters
1:35:39because of the percentage i'm sorry i mean interrupt no i'm sorry because of the percentage i would say given everything we know now it would i think that um the the issue with that possible flex in the percentage if in fact um the msba contributes more than originally uh committed um that 51 could be could become even more than that the problem is we're going to be too deep into the project to know
1:36:09and so given what we know now it looks to me like 2-131 applies that would have to be so you believe that please point to clarification are you consider are you taking into account the percentage of the other community as well some say what their percentage will be when we get to four of us 51 percent does that take into consideration that the other communities are going to pay a percentage of that as well
1:36:31it is so if you this is actually where this gets a little bit confusing when you start looking at the percentages if you take our percentage and you start with the idea that the msba is going to contribute a certain percentage of this total project cost of that total percentage being 49 you grab any piece of that so our 76 those proportions stay the same so so you know we're going to take three
1:37:01quarters of that pie the proportion of contribution to uh of msba contribution to our contribution that proportion remains exactly the same so if you take a smaller contribution eight percent from one of the smaller towns again the contribution that they're paying uh versus the contribution the msba is paying again stays the same you don't really so you're not taking uh you're not attributing more of the msba uh
1:37:28145.7 million dollars to fall river or attributing more of that to westport or swansea or somerset that proportion is is what it is to start and as you divide it up it stays the same so yes that does factor in the contributions of the other towns okay councillor yeah thank you for um clarifying that but uh miss i capone if we um do vote and it has to go as attorney
1:37:59aiken said it has to go to the voters we can use opera money to pay for that for the election in my opinion i i think it's eligible you could you could uh that we could pay for that as long as the mayor approves you know the use of those funds and do you know attorney atkins akins if their the mayor is putting any of the opera money into any of these school building funds
1:38:22with either this one or um to durfee throwing some some money in to the bill that we owe there or you don't know i i can't speak to whether the mayor's made a decision i know there's been a lot of different things discussed with regard to trying to uh pay down uh debt and make it easier on the taxpayer um i know that's one of his big priorities but i can't in
1:38:45good conscience speak to exactly what he wants to do at this time not a problem i just wondered if that you know was on the table for discussion um and i just think i mean i'm ready to vote yes if you think that it has to go to the voters then it has to go to the voters to be honest i would feel more comfortable giving the amount and giving
1:39:04you know what else we have but even if it goes to the voters if we find that the percentage changes or something or that the city has more money to put into it so that the it would come out of our budget and not out of um you know another bill on a tax bill that could still be done that it could be less than that way correct sure
1:39:26however i will say if i may and i know there's no question you may say whatever you choose to say thank you madam counselor i appreciate that if um under 2-131 our ordinance the matter does go to the voters following an approval by this council and the voters vote it down that essentially still allows the diamond school committee to trigger mass general laws chapter 71-16n which is a vote of all four communities
1:39:54right so even a uh a disapproval vote of the registered voters of the city doesn't end this for the diamond school committee it's only if the registered voters all turn it down that that would be that i would essentially force them back into the queue uh and and trigger that three to seven year right they would have to wait and go back again like that i mean when uh mr orbin was the superintendent there he
1:40:19came down and he talked about it way back then about you know putting in a statement of interest et cetera um to do what he's doing so the the only concern that i have is what do we have to do with our charter and with you know if it's over 5 million a year which it will be because it's 6.5 if it's over 5 million that it needs voter approval and if if you're telling me
1:40:45that's what has to happen then i'm ready to vote tonight we'll vote on what we feel you know on what we'd like to see happen to diamond and then it goes to the voters to be ratified or whatever but if you're saying it has to go to the voters that is my opinion okay because my car thing can seat number one is feeling it doesn't have to go to the
1:41:09voters we can take it out of the budget so i don't know if he's feeling that it doesn't have to go to the voters because it can just come out of a budget but even if it comes out of the budget if it's over 5 million it has to go to the voters correct am i so the ordinance uh is silent as to how we pay for it it doesn't really
1:41:28matter so right so the idea of of you know whether whether it has to go to the voters or not has to do with really just two things well actually three things one is it in order to incur some sort of debt now i think one could argue that the debt to the diamond school committee is in fact a debt it's an obligation that we have to them to repay monies that they are going to borrow
1:41:55right um whether or not we pay for that by incurring our own direct debt i'm not sure is is necessarily contemplated in the ordinance but the first thing is is there is this an order that forces that causes us to incur debt the second point of clarification on this line of questioning so it will just save some time so the one of our options is to take no action that triggers the ordinance as well
1:42:24that's my opinion my opinion is that an approval whether it's an approval by vote or an approval by inaction is an approval and because it still triggers indebtedness it's over 5 million or 20 million aggregate in a fiscal year and has less than 51 percent state subsidy it triggers the ordinance thank you thank you very much no um that's the question that i wanted answered so i'm ready to vote whenever
1:42:54they want to do something we're going to have to do an order this can't just be a regular vote it's got to go through with an order correct so i don't know if the administration wants to send it down if the council wants to put together an order um but with that i yield thank you thank you counselor seat for council kilby the 100 i'm sorry the 111.9 uh councilman c7 asked over how many years
1:43:20and um i didn't i didn't hear a direct answer to that is has there been an actual number as to how i know the 6.5 per year would bring it to about 17 and 17 the number that has been decided upon or has that just been talked about so we have not run the numbers so what i'm using are there are numbers out in both the media and just you know general discussion in the community
1:43:47we haven't run the numbers because this is a slightly unusual process in that it bypasses the executive branch of fall river though section or chapter 71 16 h or n says that the regional school committee can can borrow money either by the permission or uh approval of the member towns or by a regional vote so it doesn't actually require any request or action by the executive branch in a in a plan
1:44:19in our type of planned city uh it goes directly to the legislative which is the council so we actually have tried very hard not to take a position on this not to be seen as as going suggesting that we want one thing or the other to do so we haven't run the numbers we haven't done any of that um i'm just using the numbers that i know are out there uh
1:44:39which is a suggestion of six and a half million dollars a year or sixty nine dollars per 100 000 of assessed value so people watching and actually i believe some of the councils here believe a no vote brings it to the people to be voted upon a yes vote from the conversation you just had also brings it to a vote exactly so a no vote would bring it so a no vote would trigger that second part
1:45:05of master noise chapter 71 16n which is the regional vote so it would it would require the diamond school committee to administer a vote in all four towns so swansea somerset westport fall river a yes vote um if in fact the or the ordinance is triggered which i believe it would be would be a vote just to fall river the first part of your presentation when you when you when you began
1:45:35you gave the impression the impression that we would be obligated to pay if we do vote yes we have an obligation to pay but the administration hasn't decided upon how it would be paid correct that is a true statement if the voters get get a chance to vote yes or no to this in fall river and they vote no are you saying we still have an obligation to pay because we vote yes
1:46:03no okay so if the voters vote no so if if 2-131 forces us to have a community fall river community-wide vote and the voters vote no at that point the diamond school committee can invoke 16n and do a four community-wide vote as if we voted no in the first place that's correct okay got it and just for just for people to know uh who are listening or watching whatever
1:46:29if we do have to do a 30-year uh spread out to 30 years then instead of 6.5 would be 3.7 um per per year on that so um i i believe i i have a feeling it's going to pass tonight and if it does um i think the fall revolt again gets a chance to to say yes and no to this correct yes all right i'm going to be a yes as well then uh thank you
1:46:54concerns you too are those numbers accurate all right so can we have i apologize can we make a motion to have the superintendent come down please and just clarify what countenance five had just said because he made some numbers and some points and he said certain figures and i don't think they're correct so i'd rather get the motion to wave the rules and allow them to wave the rules second yeah absolutely
1:47:19please all in favor aye aye aye just if we're going to be telling people things i just not no no no no no no no that's okay i'm just saying if we're going to be giving people information let's make sure everyone gets the right information i didn't say we're deliberate i don't i'm sure it wasn't deliberate but let's just make sure that if there's numbers that being put out there they're the correct numbers
1:47:40point of information also we're putting out numbers without knowing the actual correct percentage rate in terms of borrowing either right so correct big difference from what i just heard though i i think that's understood by everyone that we don't understand that yet and we'll as this goes on the numbers will tighten i've been through many of these school buildings and it's always the case it's all the same
1:48:02go ahead please just inform us or something that i think we should know sure so our plan is to borrow over 30 years and the the 6.5 annual is the the 30-year the annual payment for 30 years of principal plus interest plus so going our plan is already 30 years it anticipates we're going to borrow our estimated borrowing schedule three times a small chunk about 30 million the first time so for the first few years of
1:48:33assessments for the four sunday communities are going to receive a small bill in in the big picture a small bill the second round of borrowing we would borrow about 110 million dollars that would be the second and third year of construction so the the sending municipalities assessments would go up because now we would have the first borrowing plus the second borrowing and then we would
1:48:59finish off with a third borrowing of about five million dollars for the punch list at the end so at the beginning the assessments are small for a few years then the assessments get larger for a few years because of the 110 million and then at the end the assessments go back to a very small figure but it is 30 30 years principal plus interest for the city at the approximate 6.5 million thank you
1:49:26for clarifying that college institute you still have the floor great you're turning brilliantly yeah if i'm in attorney gregory brilliant i'm counsel for diamond regional um and i'm i'm very friendly with uh mr aikens and while he's trying to speak into the mic while i may um disagree that uh the borrowing is coming from the city and not diamond we'll leave that for another debate however
1:49:49the one question i've had for seth and uh into the council is if you take a vote to send it to a special municipal election okay if that's your vote what are you going to be voting on because if you just vote to allow diamond to build a new school you still have the issue that's going to come back before this council and how you pay for it so
1:50:12i want to kind of make that clear when you guys are deciding that because what are you going to what are you going to ask the voters to vote on you want a diamond school okay they vote yes it comes back to the administration to find in the budget as as counselor kadeem said are you going to have another election or another question to ask for a debt exclusion
1:50:32see so i think you got to take these and you got to bifurcate it as to which issue you're dealing with because sending it to the voters and saying do you want a new diamond school and you get a yes vote then what are you going to do goes back to the administration to find the money i believe the vote
1:51:00for the purpose of the msba project all we need is does the city approve the project or not from whatever mechanism is in place at the city level because this this is and i again mistaken this right if if you if you um accept the fact that a yes vote binds you above five million dollars if you agree with that principle thus triggering this ordinance then it's going to go to the voters but for what
1:51:27for the for the debt then you have to deal with the debt um i think it still comes back to you guys somehow some way so you're right back in this this predicament so i i may be wrong in in but that's how i see it and uh so you know with that uh i thank you for concern do you have a point of summation point of information just so that everybody is
1:51:47clear massachusetts general law is very specific as to how ballot questions are worded so any type of project that goes before a community for a referendum vote for a project cannot include a dollar amount there is no dollar amount associated with that so i just want to be caution everybody you know you're going to send it to the to the ballot you're going to ask voters to vote for it and they're
1:52:09not going to know a dollar amount unless they're following you know the city council and all the discussion so they may just say yes not knowing that it's 112 million dollars or if it's 30 million dollars you cannot put a dollar amount on the question it's it's not allowed on the massachusetts general law that was my point of information thank you counseling c2 you still have the flaw thank you i mean i agree with my
1:52:28colleague you can't put a dollar amount on it but i think anyone who does go vote for this project is going to be very familiar with what the expected dollar amount will be to the community and then whether we want to go debt exclusion or however else to pay for it like attorney green says the choice of discounts and the administration so i think the first thing we need to do
1:52:47is get approval vote right so you can't avoid that so there's nothing there's nothing to stop it from happening um if we you know if it does have to go out you have to get that approval whether it's approved from this body or approved from the vote the tax bids or whether it's just for city fall river because the other communities have already approved it or it's all four communities together because four river
1:53:08initially when they do support if they don't support it they'll go have to go back out for another vote of fall river and the other communities but i think attorney to answer your question we're going to vote for approval to begin with and then deal with the finance aspect of it as we have with the other schools that need to go down this road same thing i don't think i just wanted to
1:53:27clarify it so i appreciate that thank you all right with that on you i think we've gone on enough and i'm all upset thank you culture student one council kadeem i know that that was that was that's just the point of information uh let's see counselor and see three president laval thank you seth i have uh just a couple of things i want to clarify one of them might have just been
1:53:52clarified you're saying that if this body votes yes it is um it would trigger the ordinance it's not the conversation that i had the other day we wouldn't then be automatically bound by our yes vote can you can you repeat the question i apologize if we vote yes yep you said this ordinance would be triggered yes but our yes vote wouldn't in the first place bound the city my no
1:54:23my read of the ordinance is that your yes vote is only made effective i think is the language in the in the ordinance ratified is probably another way to put it by the vote of the the registered voters of the city okay and i agree with um attorney brilliant he he is correct it would just be a yes or no in front of in front of the voters it wouldn't have a funding mechanism that's right
1:54:45attached to it so we would still be in the in the same place i do have one other question about the chart on the debt service um councilman seat one had said that the debt exclusion for derpy is not on here like the we'd be reducing this by five million the um city and school principle in interest is that correct so i i'm not what are you saying though it's about the dead exclusively please
1:55:15speak into the microphone oh yeah completely let's all right sorry about that i think this chat this this debt schedule unfortunately is going to be up upgraded you know when we when we start to look at the debt exclusion my understanding is in fiscal 22 there wasn't any money used in the debt exclusion so now we're gonna look at 23 and see what what that goes and then i'll take a look and see exactly what's
1:55:38going to go long term probably sometime in uh february of 23.
1:55:44no february of 23. a year from now yeah but i mean we'll know before then we'll know what's going to be slotted into the long term yeah so when i've been speaking to people about diamond no one is against diamond at all says that no one was against dervy sending this uh to the voters if we sent it for debt exclusion i think the numbers that were given um attorney
1:56:10akinu said for every 300 000 it was 210 dollars they're about i think it's 290 or 207 added to the tax bill added to their tax bill yes but we don't have the number of what the durfee debt exclusion is going to be added to the tax bill correct that's correct that is correct so there's been estimates if we went for a debt exclusion we'd be asking the voters to take on 210 dollars
1:56:36and still not knowing what their derpy debt is well you know let me let me just clarify that they know they will know what the what the debt is it depends on whether it's all phased in how it's phased in is what what the issue is when are they going to know what the derby what they're what they're going to see very shortly as soon as the budget starts to come together there's a few
1:56:57that process has already started so that's going to happen very shortly and you also said that that was based on 300 000 now the city is doing a full assessment this year right we we paid for that so a lot of the property assessments are going to go up that's i would speculate that that is correct so i would be i think would be hard-pressed to find properties at 300 000. do we know what the average
1:57:21assessment is i wouldn't speculate at this point because i think that's going to change like you just said um if we're using 69 per 100 000 that's the number so i i just used a 300 000 number uh which you know may be more relatable for a lot of folks who might be watching uh but it's it's really 69 per 100 000.
1:57:43okay so um and i appreciate that i just think that there is a lot of moving parts we don't have an order in front of us tonight to vote on this this is a presentation by diamond we have the information from from you folks but we don't have an order in front of us to vote on i want to make that very clear and i think that i think two things sending this for a
1:58:08debt occlusion i i'm not sure that the um folks gonna have an appetite for that even if they have their their derpy number in front of them that's those that's a big hit on on the tax bill um i'd be interested to see what the update of the um the long-term debt schedule is you said we'd have that shortly um and attorney aiken this timeline that you gave us was this before they
1:58:35rescinded their vote and did a second vote so from what i understand and the superintendent can certainly correct me if it says april we have until april 11th but did i hear a may date so the superintendent put out a may date i calculated 60 days from the new vote which i thought was april 10th i'm sorry february sba also gave an extension didn't they and that's probably the extension yes so for full clarification in
1:58:58december when we got our award our school committee voted to start the 60-day clock which took us through february 15th at that time because several sending communities requested uh for us to try to get an extension on the the 120-day window the msba gives us because of their town meetings we did we petitioned the msba we finally have confirmed knowledge and documentation from the msba that they are willing to
1:59:23push our window from april 15th to july 15th with that knowledge at our last meeting our school committee did rescind to the december vote so we weren't working with that february 15th deadline anymore that the new vote has us going from march 22nd to may 20th and that is to align with the three town meetings that are taking place in may if the board of selectmen decides that that has to go before the
1:59:51townspeople at that meeting okay so this council still has time i'm not suggesting that we drag this out for the folks at diamond i know that they want to get on with their project one way or another but i think it would be an unfortunate vote of the council if we don't have all of the numbers in front of us including what the diamond number is if we're talking about a debt exclusion including an updated long-term
2:00:15debt having those numbers in front of us what that looks like and and how it could be paid that way we have two other um letters of intent statement of intent requests in front of us tonight for two other schools they're for repairs they're not for full schools um and i'm not saying that that that that takes president or doesn't take precedent but um you know we we need kids do deserve state-of-the-art schools
2:00:44we just need a very good understanding of how the city is going to pay for them whether it's going to go for a debt exclusion or whether we have it in the operating budget i think we'll be voting yes on the statement of intent requests for the other schools on it's what needs to be done in the city but for the council to take any vote tonight without having all of the
2:01:06numbers in front of us i i don't necessarily think is the right way to go we have two meetings in march that we can have the administration come down with with updates um and we can look at the numbers then with that i yield okay can i just give a point of clarification yes same that we've done to the three towns if there is a debt exclusion necessary by any of the sending communities that
2:01:31debt exclusion vote does not have to happen now right because you're not receiving an assessment until anticipated 2024 2025 for the first bill to come out with our project any of the municipalities if needed could vote on debt exclusion associated with that cost to the diamond costs to the local taxpayers in 22 23 or 24 just just as a point of clarification understood but but we need to know the city needs to know
2:02:00how we're going to be paying for it going forward and where that's going to be is it going to be in our operating budget or is it going to be a debt exclusion just like we did with with durfee agreed i just wanted to we communicated that to the three towns so i wanted to also make sure that the city was aware of the timeline for payment and assessment okay thank you
2:02:20councilman seat five council lee uh just thank you to council on c2 for bringing you down to the floor to clarify because i was walking off of uh 111.9 and the 6.5 that was mentioned in our presentation however uh one of the things that i know one of the complaints from some of some of the some of the constituents from the from the previous uh discussion with durfee was that the interest wasn't talked
2:02:43about a lot in the conversation so i appreciate the fact that you added interest to the figures that you brought down to the floor and that clarified it and i want to make sure when i speak to constituent that i understand exactly the information you are giving out to the public as well so um the 30-year you clarified that it was 30 years and it's at 6.5 um which brings
2:03:04in please correct me where i'm wrong it brings instead of working off of 1 11.9 when you add the interest you add another 84 million uh to it correct so it would make it 195 195 million when you add the interest to it
2:03:25so for for full transparency the the project borrowing um 147 million dollars for for the the municipalities side um with an average interest rate of four percent over 30 years the total cost of that 147 million dollar borrowing is 253 million dollars but 76 correct for the fall river correct fall rivers percentage is would be 193 million so about all right so we're close to that all right
2:04:01thank you very much for that information yeah interest and principle yes appreciate that yes that so now i can tell the public that's more closer to 193 overall and this is all estimated too this isn't exact because again there are a lot of factors involved that can that can make the numbers change tonight and i think people know that too but i wanted to make sure that and i appreciate the fact that you came back
2:04:19to the floor and was asked for that because i would hate to be working off the wrong numbers as well so thank you for that and i yield thank you thank you council receive one casa kadeem thank you madam president so the uh the death schedule that you gave us includes durfee yes okay so and i just just want to clarify because council president asked the question about uh the statement i made so this
2:04:42includes durfee uh the debt exclusion numbers i'm pulling right off of the uh projection that uh the administration provided us last meeting so looking at the projections fy23 debt exclusion parentheses new high school five million eighty six thousand one hundred fifty six thousand so that's new revenue coming in for the debt exclusion fy24 dead exclusion same exact number five million eighty-six thousand
2:05:08actually it's a little higher five million eighty-six thousand five hundred fifty-six thousand fy twenty-five five million eighty-seven thousand two hundred thirty-one fy twenty-six five 5000 84 706.
2:05:21something i wasn't when i said that we need to reduce these numbers by a deck solution i wasn't just pulling them out of air this is everything that was presented to us by the administration so what i'm saying is we've got numbers that are saying in fy23 which includes durfee total debt of 12 million 89994 so 12 million 890 994 dollars five million eighty six thousand one hundred fifty six dollars coming in in
2:05:51new revenue above and beyond the two and a half percent tax levy that we have so that you have to take that off that's paying for that's what i was asking counselor so it's there now whether or not we can afford it is is a different conversation but i think we're losing sight of and we're so hyper focused just on debt and the affordability of that and ignoring the entire fact about the
2:06:17priority what is the priority right we hear about zero-based budgeting all the time so if the priority is diamond when you're putting together the fy23 the fy24 the fy25 because i do not support the debt exclusion so if the debt exclusion comes down from the administration i am voting no i just like i voted no for durfee i do not support the debt exclusion i truly don't feel that the actual average um
2:06:44voter truly understands the implication of you know a debt exclusion and the impact to their taxes so i don't support that i support diamond i support the fact that we need to build it within the operating budget but we need to obviously treat it like a priority i want to hear from the administration what their recommendation is i you know i know we're not getting a recommendation now but it's incumbent
2:07:05upon the mayor to to make a determination as to whether or not he supports it because if diamond is a priority then then when you're building a budget you're going to stop with education you're going to start with police you're going to start with fire and you're going to build a budget that way and then when you look at the bottom line and there's a there's a budget gap you're not going to reduce diamond
2:07:22you're not going to reduce police you're not going to reduce fire you're going to cut somewhere else so we need to know what the what the priority is going to be talking about all the numbers is fine but it's whether or not we support it it's six million dollars which seems kind of high i mean we're looking at three three point i think it was 3.4 3.7 if we just looked at interest alone
2:07:41i mean to say interest is i mean principle to say interest is is double that it seems a little high um so i would think that number is a little bit lower maybe it's not maybe maybe i'm off but we've already have a voted debt exclusion for durfee so to me do we support building a new school and and i got to be honest because i was going to bring it up and i'm glad you did
2:08:04madam president the fact that we can't then say you know the affordability issue right and i know all these various projects have different amounts but we've got two two new schools coming before us for us to stop the exact same process you know to have a statement of interest as to whether or not and i know this is accelerated repair so it's not to the extent that we're dealing with but we're
2:08:30looking at repairs to these schools as well so i mean it's just at some point we've got to do what's fair and equitable and that's that's where i'm coming from so from my standpoint to be fair and equitable diamond needs this we have a we know exactly what the debt and i know there's additional debt coming on but we've got cda money we've got oppa money that we're not hearing about and
2:08:52we don't know how that's being spent there's money out there to reduce to reduce debt or reduce the um added increase to our debt schedule in the years moving out of fy 23 24 25. okay we've got 70 million dollars so i think we need to figure out what we're doing in the affordable affordability aspect but i think we need to get some type of direction and leadership from from the administration as to where they see
2:09:18diamond to be as a priority because from my standpoint i support it i think it's a priority let's do it we've got we're with the debt exclusion not saying i agree going to that entire amount of 5 million for the debt exclusion but if we did then that's freeing up five million dollars in this you know the hypothetical 10 million dollars that we wanted to see year in and year out in
2:09:42debt and interest payments in our in our general fund which again is is just it's an arbitrary number that we came up with just to maintain it for borrowing and capital capital improvement purposes we can go to 15 million we can go to 16 million again it comes back down to the affordability and the priorities so i don't want to lose sight of that i just i just need to see from from the
2:10:02administration where they are in terms of this project i know in the past when it was durfee listen this this entire room was filled right when it was derpy okay so i mean there were people booing me criticizing me when i said i didn't support a debt exclusion because i didn't support durfee and that's not the case we don't have as many people here we don't have any any input coming down from the
2:10:24administration i think it's unfortunate we knew this was coming down you know i think we need to hear from the administration as to number one where do they see this how do they feel like the funding needs to come down because as city councilors we can't go go out for a debt exclusion unless the administration comes down with an order saying they wanted that exclusion so we can't even have that conversation
2:10:44so i think we need some some type of of guidance and direction from the administration to tell us where they see this project and where it falls now the vote that's before us is do we support the diamond projects i'm voting yes and i know you asked the question of the city administrator in terms of it requires going to uh to a ballot question it only requires going to a ballot question because of that that ordinance
2:11:12of the percentage of 51 percent if it was at the 51 it would not require it and if we voted on it or even if it went to the ballot and it got shot down it still as long as we approve it it still goes through right so we with the project would still be moving forward um so again i just i want to see a priority coming down i'm
2:11:36supporting this i'm ready to take a vote to support it and move forward and go on to the next steps and then we can have the conversation uh when the administration is prepared to have a conversation in terms of how we're gonna gonna fund it and pay for it but the question before us now is do we support this project my response is yes uh and i'm ready to take that vote
2:11:56wait a minute can i just say something before you excuse me counselors uh i just want to clarify counselor my question on the that chart in front of us was that the revenue the five million in revenue wasn't on here no no yes it's not on here but it's on the projections that were submitted to us this is just an expense than the one that was sent to us but look so this
2:12:19these are going to be assumedly reduced by 5 million well under that 10 million dollar mark that they starting next year had given yeah i guess what i'm saying is that it's not going to be reduced the amount is going to be increased by by diamond what i'm saying is is that we said 10 million dollars under the tax levy okay now you've got another funding source that's coming in for five million
2:12:41dollars you just don't ignore that five million dollars you got to add that to the tax levy piece that's what i'm saying is is the disconnect and i probably should have chosen my words a little bit better in terms of reducing it but we've got five million dollars that'll be that's being projected you know in years out from fy23 that was my statement that this doesn't reflect the 5 million in revenue coming in from
2:13:00the derby dead exclusion counselor counselor vice president dan just from my i feel like my head is swirling at this point in terms of the ordinance essentially what you're saying is we have to vote to violate the ordinance to trigger a vote of the people to violate the ordinance i don't understand no well the ordinance states we can we can't authorize anything over 5 million dollars it it actually says that an order
2:13:32authorizing over five million dollars is only effective if it goes to the voters so you can vote and then the vote is ratified or made effective by the people's vote by the special elect by the special ballot okay all right thank you so the city council has to act first and then the city and the people would essentially ratify or or make effective that act okay because i've always all right i've
2:13:55always been under the impression that we couldn't vote on something that would be over five million so it's a little bit different okay thank you with that i yield council receive seven council pereira yeah i i just want to say that i agree with my colleague in seat number one relative to the fact they have 34 million dollars in opera another 34 million dollars for mapla plus the 17
2:14:17million from uh bristol county from the assessment the the opera money that we got from bristol county you got like 87 million dollars take some of that money and put some of that money towards some of these schools cut it down help the taxpayer out give something back and we don't have an answer from administration whether or not we're going to do that um i say tell them that's what we want
2:14:42cut throw a little bit of this money into these schools so that it helps our taxpayers that's what our concern is how are we going to pay for this and how we're going to pay for it without really not burdening the taxpayer of course we don't want to burden the taxpayer but there are services we need and unfortunately everything costs money everything so building drifty building diamond there is a cost
2:15:07so if we could have some of that a couple of million here or there put in you've got from now you know you're gonna have more money coming in next year it's there it's like what are we doing if we're not helping our budget with this extra money that we got i don't know mr capone help me on this uh and you know uh seth i was up in the office with him and you and
2:15:32i clearly told him what i thought he heard me loud and clear um but i agree i mean the money's there come on figure out what you're going to do with it to help taxpayers and you know i agree also with what council kadeem said the vote is just do we approve diamond boom that's the vote we have to take tonight and there is no order quite frankly the mayor doesn't have to bring an order on
2:15:57anything the council can do an order too am i right madam clerk so counseling of this council saying yes we want a new diamond pardon i didn't hear you all of this council saying yes we want a new diamond holds us to funding it right and if we have to fund it some other way you've got the money from opera you've got money here or there do what you need to do
2:16:20we're going to be talking and talking and talking at this to nauseam it's a lovely job sitting here the tough part is you got to take a vote so take a vote take a vote you want a new school you well you know do you yield counseling with that i yield i've been here too long too many years to see things going around and around and around and around let's go
2:16:42i'd say so you would yield counseling it would be a bad word
2:16:54so what stops us from just getting a projection of how we're going to pay for it what so there's a couple things um first is that um you know there's been a couple questions throughout the night as to why the administration hasn't either given more information or taken a different position this is very different than durfee or this is very different than anything where the scope of the of the project is
2:17:17limited to the city this is a regional project and because the statute forces doesn't force but the statute directs that the decision making essentially go past the executive branch in a city like ours and goes directly to the legislative it's really at this point until there's an approval by the council it's not really our place to start talking about how we're going to pay for it or even
2:17:44what we think about the project or what a priority it is and i'm absolutely sensitive to uh counselor kadeem's point which is you know we really need some direction from the administration with regard to priorities but at this point we've tried very hard not to give any appearance of a thumb on the scale it is very much within the purview of the council and we're not going to try to invade that in any way
2:18:08until the council then approves it at which point um i know that uh that this administration is is for education i think everyone in this room is um so at that point then we can have a real conversation about where the priorities are how we might pay for it but the first step as uh counselor pereira said is is to understand whether or not the council is going to improve it so at this point
2:18:32if i were to talk about how we're going to pay for that really gets into a policy question that i'm not in a position to talk about which still doesn't answer my question that's true it that and that's and that's my issue is that we're talking a lot of hypotheticals so can we hypothetically put together something that says x amount of dollars will come of of y and z why can't we do that
2:18:58just so i understand the question are you saying that before the council votes to approve or or disapprove that your preference would be to see a hypothetical financial breakdown of how we would pay for it correct okay um i suppose that we could try to do that um given what we know about the proposed cost of the project and the contribution from um an estimate at best i'm not looking for exact to the penny
2:19:31numbers but i'm looking for an estimate of how we are going to deal with it how are we going to approach it instead of we're going to have to pay for it sure and then we're going to figure out later how we're going to pay for it which could be problematic
2:19:52just a point of clarification attorney aiken did you just say that you that the council should take a vote whether we are an approval of diamond or not without having the financial information on how we would pay for it no i asked the council or if his question was or if the question that he was asking required the financial breakdown of how we might pay for it prior to him proposing that the council takes a
2:20:18vote so i didn't necessarily make a statement that they should but i asked if that was what is the intention of this question was is that what you're asking madam president yes counselor poser you have the floor yeah i yield thank you councilman seat one counselor thank you i think that was a great question and by counseling ca and i'll i'll respond for you to give you an answer absolutely and it should have
2:20:41been done last month when they got the letter so i'm not sure why now all of a sudden we're going to wait for the council i mean this is i think when we talk about you know just working in partnership you need to know where the administration stands we can we can put any order together but he can veto it do we have the support like i mean we need we need the information in order
2:21:02to be to make an educated decision so we should have known coming into this meeting where the administration stands with diamond how they plan on on funding it are they going to make it a priority within the general fund or are they going to look to go to to the debt exclusion that's listen that's what leadership is i want to call the spay to spay that's what leadership is that's what the
2:21:22executive branch is supposed to be doing i'm confused by the response but that the simple answer is yes it's easy we should we should have it we should be able to get it and we should know where mayor coogan stands today does he support diamond or does he not support diamond if he supports diamond does he support it with a dead exclusion or does he support it within the general form we just got
2:21:43we just got our our five year projection how does that five-year projection not include diamond coming before us at least a recommendation as to whether or not it stands it's it's outside of it it's not included we knew it was coming down so the answer is yes you should have had the information i yield counselor and see three counts of vice president i would make a motion at this or not now
2:22:12we have to wait till full council it is in full council on priority communications all right i'll make the motion then i yield time i would just also like to clarify that when council vice president and i had met with the administration we had asked them to come down with the financial information on on what this would look like i just because how could we vote on it without having those answers
2:22:39okay anything further from the council the council of c-8 councilor proposal and i just thank you councilman c one for clarifying about and i want to be clear not trying to be a pain in the butt here i just you know when i make an informed decision about something i want to know the facts in front of me in terms of how it's going to affect taxpayers in the city
2:22:58and and i think i'll echo i mean i'm an educator for what he's saying i mean i i live and breathe students and kids in education all day long it's not a question of that my question sitting in this chair in this role is how we are going to pay for it how is it going to affect the taxpayers how's it going affect all of us that is required to make an informed decision
2:23:21to make a blind decision would be wrong of me to do so i and and i don't think it's a question of yes no maybe who knows it's a question of how are we going to go forward and deal with this because my biggest thing short term we vote yay long term how we pay for it and we often forget about the long term part and that's what i'm concerned about we can just keep adding
2:23:46and never really hone in how we're going to deal with it the most effective way so that's that's my concern sitting here that are you thank you okay anything further from the council in finance second motion to journey made by councillor kilby seconded by council of pereira all those in favor all right opposed so voted two minute recess
2:25:44do
2:26:39so
2:27:18so
2:28:17so
2:29:06hmm
2:29:42so
2:31:23all set and let them keep fall river city council will now come to order madam clerk counselors kadeem here camara here dion here kilby lee here pelletier yeah herrera yeah proposal yeah and president libby lebeau here pursuant to the open meeting law any person may make an audio or video recording of this public meeting or may transmit the meeting through any medium attendees are therefore advised that
2:31:53such recordings or transmissions are being made whether perceived or perceived by those present and are deemed acknowledged and permissible would everyone in the chamber please stand for a moment of silent prayer and a salute to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all madam clerk
2:32:26first item before you is the mayor's request for the confirmation of the appointment and approval of the contract of roger saint martin to the position of fire motion to adopt motion to adopt second council camara second by council vice president dion all those in favor all right opposed the eyes have it congratulations
2:33:00that's the last time it's that easy though
2:33:16look buddy
2:33:32the second item on the agenda is the mayor's request for the confirmation of the appointment and approval of the contract of nicholas mcelini to the position of human resources motion to adopt second motion a job made by council vice president dion seconded by councillor kilby all those in favor i opposed the eyes have it congratulations congratulations congratulations here we go again
2:34:23congratulations sir thank you very much item number three is a communication from the mayor and a request from florida public schools and approval to submit the statement of interest on march 25th into the accelerated repair program of the mass school building authority for stone school therapeutic day school at west hall motion to refer to finance mostly referred to finance basis council
2:34:51kadeem second by council vice president dion any discussion on the motion councilman seat eight um just for clarification purposes the number of the items in the packet is mismatched to the agenda no there's numbers for the beginning so number three if i'm correct it's actually number four number four is actually number three according to the packet that we have in front of us you are correct counselor okay so we
2:35:27are going to discuss them out of order technically or yeah adam kirk want to make sure we follow it right yes you are correct yes so do we need to make a motion can we make a motion to take three and four together sure yeah yeah you could do that do that too make a motion to take three and four together second well it's only two it's only one we
2:35:49already have it which is only the backup that's out of water right yeah yeah it's the backup that's out of the agenda yeah yeah we have a motion floor to refer to finance madam clerk do we need to withdraw that motion um no it's the backup material that's incorrect the the left the letters that i'm agreeing to okay that's actually correct okay so we'll make sure that it's correct going for the next meeting
2:36:15did you have any questions counselor yeah so on on the on the part about westall when i'm looking through the packet and i understand it has draft written in it very lightly if you go through the paperwork it's empty there's a lot of empty and a lot of like somebody got angry at a keyboard and just typed in a bunch of letters so i'm just curious why i don't know if anybody can speak to that
2:36:43clerk the point of clarification i did call mr pacheco about that when i was reviewing it and he said he would get us um the the paperwork he'd get it to us have the school committee send it over to us so we'll have that for the next uh the next meeting when it goes to finance and mr pacheco is here somebody wants to ask him madam president can i have mr pacheco
2:37:10come down and you would like a motion to wave the rules emotionally rules well should wave the rules be my counselor opposes second by council prayer all those in favor aye devoted mr pacheco
2:37:27hi mr chico well hello how are you um i am the mad typer okay that's good so yeah i can the the process the arp process the accelerator repair program process it's a very short window it opened up in beginning of february it'll close in march and to put the document together um takes quite quite a bit of work so we got the school committee approval we were looking for the finance referral
2:38:02and then at the finance meeting i'll have your full copy clean that has all of the pertinent information but to hit the deadlines of the way the council meetings were in february and the school committee meeting it was jamming us up a little bit fair enough yeah that's that's what i was really looking for okay that i yield thank you thank you anything further well mr putin goes here justin seat one counselor
2:38:28you said the uh they closed in in march the end of march this march 27th so we have enough time if we do we do we do with it with the referral and uh yes okay i hope thank you anything further from mr pachico thank you thank you we have a motion to refer to finance all those in favor all right opposed so voted and item four is the mayor's request and
2:38:55the mayor and fall republic schools for approval to submit a statement of interest into the accelerated repair program referred to for the robert l madeira's resiliency prep motion refer to finance security motion to refer to finance made by council ferrari second by council vice president dion any discussion all those in favor any opposed eyes have it item number five is the greater
2:39:20vocational school district committee regarding the amount of 293 million 479 760 for designing engineering constructing an equipment the new equipping the new diamond regional vocational technical high school and related athletic facilities to send it to the administration for a presentation and how it's going to be funded we had a motion to approve by my counselor kadeem in a second was a
2:39:48second to the motion to apply i second did it motion improvement by council of kadeem seconded by council pereira discussion on the motions council vice president i'm good thank you any further discussion real quick on the motion to approve counselors kadeem yes kamara yes diane no kilby yes lee yes bellatia herrera yes proposal no president-elect no the motion carries the police chief's report on licenses
2:40:34motion to adopt second motion adopted by counselor kadeem seconded by councillor pereira any discussion all those in favor aye opposed i have it we have applications for renewal of order repair shop licenses to adopt a second job made by councillor camara second by council vice president dion any discussion all those in favor guys have it you have a number of claims for the corporation's counsel
2:41:04promotion referred to corporation council made by council tamara seconded by councilman any discussion take nine and eight together we're still working
2:41:23item number nine is an open meeting law complaint filed by patrick higgins regarding the alleged violation of the city council meeting a motion to refer to corporation council okay commissioner for corporation council made by councillor proposal seconded by councillor kilby any discussion all those in favor all right so voted and item 10 is also an open meeting law complaint filed by patrick higgins
2:41:48alleging a violation on february 11.
2:41:53motion referred to corporation council made by council repository second invite counselor kilby any discussion all those in favor all right oppose you guys have it motion to adjourn we have a second journey made by counselor kilby all those in favor
2:42:30you