[Speaker 1] (2:10 - 3:07)
Welcome to the special planning board hearing of March 21st, 2022, Foresight Plan Review for the new elementary school. I'm Angela Ippolito. I'm the chair of the planning board.

This is on my far right, Mike Rosa, Bill Quinn, Dave Zucker, Ted Dooley, and that comprises the entire board. So, tonight we're going to be looking at the aspects of site plan for the new school. We'll be focusing in on several areas of greatest concern first, or greatest interest, impact, I would say, regarding site plan.

But before we get there, I'm going to introduce, is it, Lee, are you going to, do you want to open up the meeting? I think we have a...

[Speaker 10] (3:07 - 4:32)
Suzanne. Suzanne wants to speak. If that's okay.

Great question. Of course. I just quickly wanted to say that this team is really happy to be in front of this board and excited to be at this stage of the project and so much has gone into getting us all here because this school is really happening and we can feel the excitement build in town lately.

Like, it's been really palpable over the last couple, three weeks, I could say, because the kids at Stanley got to meet an engineer and learn about geothermal and then go out and see the drilling well. We have elementary staff. I was taking a walk the other day and she just said she, her and the other teachers in the building just keep happily responding to difficulties with the refrain, it'll all be good in two years.

So that's exciting. And then the community meeting on the 10th that we had, it was like just a great buzz after people saw the renderings of the building and started to like really think like, oh my God, this is so awesome. This building is going to get built.

So to that end, the Stanley kids are going to be moving into the Blaney Street School at the end of the school year and then, I mean, out of Stanley School at the end of the school year and into Blaney in the fall. And then hopefully in fall of 2024, we have a new school building for all our elementary school teachers and students. And it's going to be amazing.

And I want to have Max introduce our design team here. He's been, Max has been a critical part of this project and happy to have him take the reins here tonight.

[Speaker 8] (4:37 - 6:53)
Thanks again. Hi everyone. Hi Max.

Stand up so you can see me. My name is Max Casper. If you don't know me, I'm the town's facilities director and I'm an SPC member along with Suzanne and part of the project team.

Thank you for being here for this hearing tonight. Just, you know, big, big picture for the project schedule. We are, you know, we've been working on this for, for many years.

So this is a, an important step, but a culmination of, of really, you know, years of work and years of anticipated work as we, as we get into the project. As Suzanne referenced, we're excited to have construction planned to begin this summer with a demolition of the existing Stanley School and the, and the early site work. So it's really exciting.

And this is an important step here in these few months where we're working our way through the different land use boards. We've been to historical commission. We just met last week with the conservation commission to discuss the wetlands issues and stormwater and things like that.

And then moving into next month in April, we're meeting with the select board and the earth removal advisory committee for the construction management plan and the earth removal permit. So it's, it's really exciting. There's a, there's a lot happening.

This is a really critical step. You know, we're here tonight for a modified site plan review as it was, it is an educational use but, but a really important step and you know, we're happy to kind of work through the details. We have an excellent team here with us.

We have from, from LBA, which is our architect, we have David Harris and Lee Sherwood. They've been instrumental working with, with LBA is the civil engineer, David Conway from Niche. We have Rebecca, sorry, I just blanked on your last name, I've seen her a thousand times, from GPI, the traffic consultant and thanks Andy Vo from Hill International, our OPM.

So thanks again. We're going to, I'm going to turn it over to Lee and he's going to start the presentation. We have a lot of good information for you.

Great. Appreciate it.

[Speaker 1] (6:57 - 7:02)
Let's see. Um, I suppose we have useful plans that we can pull up on the screen, correct?

[Speaker 6] (7:04 - 7:15)
Oh, well you can probably do it from here if you're comfortable. So this podium right here, do you have a device to connect to?

[Speaker 15] (7:17 - 7:18)
Oh, okay.

[Speaker 6] (7:18 - 7:24)
If I have a microphone, it's not, then I'll just do it from here.

[Speaker 1] (7:24 - 7:26)
Perfect. Thank you.

[Speaker 3] (7:28 - 21:03)
Um, thank you. Uh, very nice to meet all of you in person and it's kind of nice to be speaking without a mask, even though I'm a little paranoid right now about it. Um, it's kind of nice so I can hear myself.

So, um, a little bit of context and for architects, that means a lot of different things. Uh, for us, this has been a two year process. Um, we actually met here, uh, two years ago in person and listened to community and had paper up on the walls.

And this is where we did our first visioning sessions. And then COVID hit and we went virtual. Um, during that time though, this has really been a team effort.

This is a town project and it's, it's also a partnership with the MSBA. So there are milestones we all had to hit and have to hit. But I do want you to know that during this process, not only have we met with neighbors and community, but we've met with, um, the police.

We've met with the fire. We've met with the emergency. We've met with the DPW.

We've talked about snow removal. We've talked about, um, sight lines. We've talked about scale.

We've talked about many, many things. Um, when you do a process like this, it's complicated. In order to get this kind of, um, package together, it takes a lot of work.

And I would, I'd like to say that this represents a substantially complete set for you to look at. Meaning that, is it perfect? Nothing's perfect, but we really put a lot of time and effort into coordinating it and trying to answer your questions.

But because it's so thick, and there's so much information, how can someone take all that in? Um, Swampscot's a green community, and one of the things I like to say to planning boards and to others is that we have, we approach this as a, um, we have, we have approached this to become a model of sustainable development for your town. A lot of times when people come in here, they're trying to do something, and you say, you can't do that, can you do it differently?

Our first approach is to try to do it at least the way we believe is the right way to do it. For example, the building is going to be fully geothermal with wells underneath. That means it, that's all the heating and the cooling.

Um, it's essentially an electric building. So, at this point, the only carbon that we have is the generator's oil tank, or pro, you know, tank. Um, that's because we want to cover the entire, um, roof with photovoltaics.

There is a sustainability committee in town, and other groups, and we've met with them over and over, and you have a very, very strong, um, uh, presence. There's a lot of engineers in this town, a lot of really smart people. So, we've taken their lead, and whenever we were given that support by the community, we use it.

When you look at the building, um, on this site, we know that there's no perfect place to build a building in Swampscott. There's almost no sites left. Every building has rock underneath it, and something above it, and there's a lot of traffic, and we're going to hear about that tonight.

And, um, there is, uh, there's a lot of issues and a lot of neighbors who really are close, close-knit, but also close together. And we heard that over and over. When you look at where the building is placed on the site, it's actually along the south edge along Ewing Woods.

And that was, it was placed there for a couple of reasons. One, it's a building that has some breadth to it, but when, Ewing Woods has a scale to it, and it's like, you know, 60, 80 foot high trees, and that was a place to put it up against an actual backdrop, believe it or not, because this is a two-, three-story building. And, um, it also allows us for all of the classrooms to either face due south or due north, and that is the way to do it in a sustainable daylit building and energy use.

So it's very well, uh, placed. The other big reason is that it is the furthest away from the neighbors. So there's a lot, we wanted as much open space, and it's efficient.

And then outside the back of the school, where the kids are looking out the windows in the cafeteria, they're looking right into the beautiful woods, and they're connecting to nature where they're going to learn. I just wanted you to know there's some architecture to this, but also it's good planning. Uh, next.

I hope this is okay that I'm giving a little bit of an overview. We'll get into the meats and potatoes. Um, so when you see, uh, you can see that here, right?

When you see this drawing, this is all about the idea that when you come into Whitman, in front of you is the center of the building, which is the library. And it's kind of like, in my mind, it's like your library in town reinterpreted. It's like, but it's also the fishbowl.

It's like the tank. And the idea is that blue is the water, and blue is Swamp Scott, Big Blue. And, um, on one side you see some gold, and on the other side you see, um, some green.

That's because this is not one school, this is two schools. That's because it has a larger population, taking three schools together, and we created a lower school, K through two, and an upper school, three through four. This developed over time, but it's a really great way of breaking down the population of the kids, but it also, when you see the way that the queuing works, it actually splits and breaks down all the queuing in all of the cars.

Uh, so the other thing I'd like to point out here, if you look at that section down below, there's been a huge effort here, at least by the architects, to step this building from front to back. So when you're, you see the house, the two-story house down there, when you're on the field and you're looking across, you see one-story, two-story elements, like the kindergarten coming out, and then it steps up to the three-story, and the one place where it is the highest is the gymnasium popping up, and that's by the woods. So you don't really perceive that in that way.

A lot of effort put into that, and also I want you to look at the materials, how warm they are. Next. Um, the intent here, here's one of the entries, and the intent here is to create a safe, covered, warm, and welcoming place for the different kids at each side.

The truth is the golden side is supposed to represent the ocean, and the sand, and the sun, and the green side, and this is going to go inside, too, by the way. That's going to be the theme. And the other side's the forest.

So I'm, Scott is, well, we have a forest, and that's how we're conceptually doing this, but it also has a practical sense. Little kids need icons. They need a place to go.

They recognize colors and forms, and so also along here you'll see that this is where the drop-off on one side starts. Next. This is probably the nicest site plan that we have right now.

It is rendered by the landscape architect, and it's a little softer than all the diagrams we've seen in the past. The idea after many, many, many months of listening to people and working with Rebecca, who is a bit of a genius when it comes to traffic and flow and all of these things, the idea was that if you brought in everybody along in Whitman, and then they split into two lines, and half of the people went to one side and half of the people went to the other, we can actually bring them around and disperse them out Whitman and disperse them through the UU parking lot and out the other side, and what that does is it creates dispersal of traffic after the drop-off.

Rebecca's going to talk about that more, but I thought we went through a lot of different options, and that was by far the easiest. That way, those exits, that exit for the UU is a one-way, and it has a gate and would only be open in the morning and the afternoon and then be closed. The other gate is down by Forest Ave at the bottom, where that's just emergency access and a place for the buses to leave, and we've already talked to Forest Ave a little bit about the idea that the buses would park around the corner, they'd pick up, and then they'd come out and they'd go down that area.

We're trying to make this as safe as possible. You may notice that we have quite a large playground. It has those kind of resilient bed now, and so it's very safe, and it has a fence around it, and the playfield there, which is actually a good size for a U10 soccer, and that also has a fence there.

We have kept all setbacks. The only thing that's different here is the height of the building, which exceeds the residential height, and you can see what lengths we went to kind of mediate that, but the open space, all the other regulations have been met. Not that much of a challenge.

It's just good planning, and you can see that the service area is tucked around the back. We've gone through all of the turning radiuses and things like that for all the trucks and things to come by, and you can also see that all of that space around the school is very valuable. That's all play and outdoor classroom areas.

This is a 21st century school. The kids can come out, and they can hang out in little groups. This is bigger than you think.

When we actually made circles for the outdoor classrooms in those areas, hundreds of kids could be out there, and believe it or not, hundreds of kids could be out there, or like a class here, two classes here, like that, in a very safe way so that they could switch and they could do different things. The intent is that that wonderful area, play area, K-12 in the back, that's along Ewing Woods, that's like a little kid playground, very safe and very nurturing, while the bigger kids can go to the bigger one in the community. So I just wanted you to know that we've looked at just about everything we could.

Do I got everything here? Next. We can always come back to that drawing.

It's nice to look at. In your package, you'll have planting plans, and what I will say about the plantings is that within our perimeter, we have buffers, a lot of buffer for the neighbors. We've actually spoken with neighbors who would speak to us earlier on.

It was probably a year ago at this point to start the process of asking them about what they like for buffers. They each will probably have their own desires, you know, like this kind of bush, this kind of tree, and we're going to work with them on that. But right now, we've clearly bought fencing and buffers and things like that all the way around for them.

And we have all native plantings that are supposed to be good for low watering and things like that, which again is another sustainable thing. The materials on the site, obviously we have asphalt, but we have mostly concrete walks, poured concrete, and the majority of our curbing, or actually all of our curbing at this point, is granite. There's different ones sloped and ones not, but we talk to the DPW and the maintenance, and as you all know, granite goes a long way when it comes to snow plowing.

We even have a place to dump the snow right now, so we went over all that. So I've... Next.

Lastly, I thought I'd cover this one just because it's electrical. We all know how important lighting is, but also controlling lighting. All of our light fixtures on the outside of the building are night sky compliant.

That means, you know what that means, but others, that's shaded. That means that all the light only goes down in a cone. And people from the houses should not be able to see bare, you know, like, hot spots.

And this photometric basically shows that you have zero lumens going over the property line. If it says .02 or something, we can always do something with that. And that's really important for safety.

We put as many of the lights, actually, on the building as we could, because we feel like that's nicer, but we feel it's safe, and it's kind of minimal, I hope. We like to be minimal there. And I think it'll do the job, but you may have questions about it.

Obviously, there'll be timers on it that can be negotiated. And for me, that's about it for my piece. I was going to hand it over to Sybil to quickly hop through the drawings, if that's okay with you.

That's in your package as an overview.

[Speaker 4] (21:07 - 25:02)
Hi, I'm David Conway, P.E., project manager at Niche Engineering. I've been there for a while and work on a lot of school projects. But this is actually one of my favorite.

It's a good design team, and there's a good community. Up first, I'm not going to walk through it, but this is just the site demo and erosion control plan, so basically how we're thinking about protecting during construction, debugging properties, keeping a neat job site and not tracking dirt or dust onto, like, neighboring properties or the adjacent streets. Next, Dave.

Similar plan for the adjacent property, the UU Church. There's a very light intervention over there as far as the amount of work. But again, showing perimeter controls around the work, just, again, just to make sure we're not...

the work's not causing any off-site impacts or even impacts beyond constructive ways. Go ahead, Dave. Lee already went through a more stylized version of this, but just this is the plan that is in your sheet, layout materials plan.

We're going to call the bottom of the plan the rear. That's actually the south side. So the school's on the south side of the site.

There's a service area behind on one side. Then in the center section, there's a patio. And then as we move to the left, there's a play area for the younger students.

Moving around kind of clockwise from the service area, there's a driveway area and the emergency access, which is gated. There's another play area. That drive where David's cursor is right now is adjacent to the bus area.

There's two parking areas. The larger one, I think, is 65 cars. That's the four rows of parking, with three accessible, included in the 65.

The other parking area, I believe, is 19 cars. Three of those are accessible. As we move across to the play area, a U-10 soccer field adjacent to a larger playground area.

The heavier black line that's kind of U-shaped that runs along the sides, a portion of the side of the soccer field, along the edge of the soccer field, the northern edge of the soccer field and the playground, and then up the side of the driveway, which really, you know, Whitman Road, if you would keep walking up Whitman Road. That's a small wall to hold the grades up there. The site generally is higher in the rear, towards Ewing Woods, and lower at Whitman Road section, the north end.

The building's about going to be elevation 64. The area immediately around it will be 63. The soccer field, playground area is around 61.

The wall is not particularly large, but it's a good way just to hold up the grade, not have our grading run off to, like, the edge of the property line. And it also kind of presents a nice, maybe an additional buffer for the abutters, where, you know, the students just won't be going beyond. The wall in what we'll call the northwest corner at its highest is only 4 1⁄2 feet at that corner, and then considerably smaller as you move along.

The stylized rendition, which I think was the second one with the people walking up Whitman Road, was a little bit deceptive. That adult was 6 feet tall. That's not quite correct.

That person would have to be, I think, 12 feet high, because the wall's about 3 feet along.

[Speaker 3] (25:02 - 25:14)
The wall, we've made great effort to lower that wall, so what you see in that rendering is higher than it would be, for sure, and more extensive. So if you look at this, it's much, much lower.

[Speaker 4] (25:14 - 27:47)
Yeah, it's about 3 feet as you walk up, if you were to walk up Whitman Road and walk up the drive. The grading is such that on the left-hand side, because of the wall, the grading is far more gentle. The parking lot, we don't need a wall because we're able to take up that difference in grade just by contouring it down as we move across the parking.

So there's no walls there, but the grades step down. It's a nice arrangement. The driveway doesn't take you through the parking area for the larger lot, it takes you around it, so that people who enter the parking can go, they can park, and not hold up people behind them, or people aren't going to be wanting to cut through.

Also in the back, I'm sorry. In the back, running from the service area to the patio is another small wall. It is retaining on the Ewing Wood side in the service area.

Again, it's about 2, 3 feet, and it transitions to retaining on the patio area about 1 1⁄2 to 2 feet, and that is retaining back the patio area. At that point, Ewing Woods is a little bit lower than us. The split in the wall, you can kind of see there's like a wall, offset a wall.

That's the access path, accessible access path, so that teachers who want to incorporate lessons from Ewing Woods in there can access it without having to walk around. We can go to the next one, David. And also, if any, any questions or something, we can draw those back.

The church site, again, we're looking at like a small intervention over here as we possibly could. We are breaking through for the vehicle traffic along the property line. We're using the existing parking lot to move cars through.

There's a... At the ends of the existing traffic island, we are rationalizing the curb line a little bit so that just to slow people down, make sure they stay in their lane, no one's cutting any corners. To move pedestrians through there, we have a new walkway along, coming off of Forest Ave, along the west side of the site, crossing you through the island to the east side of the site, a sidewalk again that will then bring you into the school site.

So we're really trying to minimize any... And Rebecca will go into all the... Trying to minimize the conflicts and just some good planning.

[Speaker 3] (27:47 - 28:08)
These kinds of connections, I think you'll find them from Whitman, a strong connection to Forest Ave at the top of it and Safe Walks, and this connection so that bikers and walkers can enter safely from all sides. And that's developed over time as people have raised concerns about how do my kids get from here to here?

[Speaker 4] (28:10 - 30:34)
Yeah, and to have defined paths where we can have supervision at key points along the way as the school develops. Next one, Dave. So I talked a little bit of the site grading already.

This is, again, this is in your set. It's the actual grading for the site. Again, the building itself is around 64.3. The area immediately around it's around 63. Whitman Road's about 54. So it's... There's not a lot of topography on the site.

And that's one of the reasons that the site plan has been able to... We've been able to get the site elements in there as well. All right, next one, David.

Again, the very slight intervention on the neighboring property, the grading associated with the regrading of a portion of the parking lot over there is really to make the crossing there accessible. So if you were to look really, really closely, which I'm not going to ask David to do, we're not really changing the grades there more than a fraction of a foot. It's really just to kind of space out the contour so that the crossing can be accessible.

The walkway through there is shown not in a straight line but in an effort to work around significant trees. Site utility plan. The major systems on the site, or the site utilities...

Well, one of the major systems is if you look and see the lighter circles that are populating the front of the site, generally called the front of the site, the north end, those are the geothermal wells. So... And the little solid smaller dot is the actual well itself, and then the radius around it is really just a planning tool that the...

I forget what our well is. It's 20-foot diameter? 20-foot diameter offsets for the wells.

So no well should be closer than 20 feet. So really, what you would get there is a series of very small... I forget if they're 4-, 6-inch drill holes, with 40 feet between them.

Because I think it's a 20 diameter... There's 20 feet between them, sorry. It's a 20-foot diameter circle.

[Speaker 3] (30:34 - 30:42)
It's actually a really good way of understanding scale. If there's 40 feet between each of those holes, you can see actually how big this is.

[Speaker 4] (30:43 - 36:36)
Now, all those features are below grade. There's no visible evidence of the wells at the surface. The only visible evidence of the wells at the surface is they come together in a...

in a vault, which is located in the traffic island. So they're kind of piped together. The wells are all...

have closed-loop piping that comes out of them. They come into the vault. Some of the wells are ganged together at that point, so then a smaller amount of lines then run to the building itself.

The... On the site, we'll have all new water, sewer, and drainage facilities. Currently, there's a water line that runs up Whitman Road to an existing water line that runs in the unimproved portion of Forest Ave, the Paper Street.

The new school would break that connection, so we're running a new line up and around on the surface end to continue the loop and to give some flexibility and resiliency for the water system in the area. So it basically can be fed from both ways, turned on, turned off. A new sanitary sewer system for the site, really just with a grease trap collecting flows from the cafeteria and the kitchen, and then other connection points from the building tying into the sewer system, which then flows to the north and ties into the existing town sewer.

On-site, just inside of the Whitman Road property line. The storm drainage on the site will be an all-new compliance system. We will meet the Massachusetts Stormwater Management regulations as far as addressing not just rate leaving the site, which has always been, like, the big standard, but also the quality of the water leaving the site, including total phosphorous.

In general, what is going on is the water is being collected in a new drainage system consisting of catch basins with deep sumps and hoods and manholes. It's then getting routed to one of two large underground detention systems. It's the rectangle-shaped features that one is under the soccer field, the other one is under the parking lot.

The docker row in front of those is actually a treatment row, so the water is directed to that treatment row first, where it's then forced to filter through a different filter medium to remove any sediments, suspended solids, pollutants, and the phosphorous. Small exception to that is because of elevation. A small portion of the driveway is beneath those two systems.

So we're picking that runoff from the street up in a catch basin and directing it through its own small filter treatment system. These sites, these larger sites, not just treat the stormwater, but they're large volumes that will hold back both stormwater and just release it slowly from site so that we're not in any way impacting downstream waters or the town system. Water sewer drain...

Oh, a small exception to that is there's a wetland to the south of the site in Ewing Woods. The desire there is not to make sure we're not either sending too much water or too little water to the wetland. You don't want to dry those features up.

So there's a smaller system, which is taking roof runoff, treating the roof runoff, and directing it off-site into the direction of that wetland. This is all being done in, actually, the peer review for conservation. He was actually good enough to kind of flag that early on so it's something we could consider and take into account as we move forward with the design.

We can dive deeper. I believe your submission was like the stormwater report and all that fun stuff, which we took great care in preparing. Next one, Dave?

What am I up to? Oh, utilities for UU are fairly limited. At what we'll call the northeast corner of the existing church parking lot, we have two catch basins where we're picking up a portion of the runoff from their site and bringing it back over to our site to treat and to detain.

So then that's a way to mitigate any impact, stormwater impacts that we might be causing on their site. There's a small increase in impervious area. Because even though we are taking out some of the vehicle pavement where we're kind of rationalizing those two corners of the traffic island, we are adding the sidewalk, the pathway, and the sidewalk.

And then the scallop-ly looking lines along the west side of the sidewalk, that's just a... Those are conduits. They won't actually run out that far.

They'll run in line along the sidewalk, actually under the sidewalk. There's small bollard lights along that side for the pedestrians. That's just a stylized way that the electrical site engineers show their conduits.

But it would run under the sidewalk. We're not running 15 feet into the woods to put in a conduit. Next one, Dave.

Oh, and so Rebecca Brown from GPI. Becky, any ways? So is this going just how you'd like it to be so far?

[Speaker 1] (36:36 - 36:49)
Sure, and I think that, you know, I'd like you to have the chance to go through all this, and then we can begin to talk about site planning, what it is that we will be reviewing. But I think it's probably helpful for us to have an overview of the whole project.

[Speaker 3] (36:49 - 36:56)
And I felt that even today, how valuable it was to listen to...

[Speaker 15] (37:03 - 37:03)
600.

[Speaker 1] (37:06 - 37:10)
662 to be exact. But what I would say is that that's not fair.

[Speaker 3] (37:10 - 37:15)
You know, you need somebody to dissect it for you.

[Speaker 2] (37:17 - 38:46)
All right. Thank you very much. Just so everyone knows, my name is Rebecca Brown with Greenman Peterson.

We're located in Wilmington, Massachusetts. And unlike most of the team who kind of started looking at this site about two years ago, I actually started looking at this site over ten years ago while I was working as MassDOT's consultant performing Safe Routes to School assessments. So I actually worked on the Stanley School Safe Routes to School assessment years and years ago.

It was part of those first initial improvements that happened right at the front door. So it's kind of exciting to me to be part of this team and get to see a new school coming through in this area and some changes happening. So as part of the traffic study that we did put together, we really wanted to take a look at the entire neighborhood as a whole and what impact it would have, because obviously this school is so close to the middle school site that the traffic between the two really interacts a lot with parents that are going to be dropping off now at both schools, that may have previously only dropped off at one, that are now going to be going to both. So we really wanted to focus on the entire neighborhood and how it would all interact. So you can see up here on the screen the study area that we looked at.

And if I use this laser pointer, will that be no bueno on the screen or...

[Speaker 1] (38:50 - 38:51)
Yeah?

[Speaker 2] (38:51 - 45:51)
Oh, yeah, I can see it now. Okay. So I was just going to point out kind of where the site is located in relation to some of the roadways around and the intersections that we looked at.

So we looked at all along Forest Avenue from the middle school driveways all the way down into the UU Church site, and then the entire kind of Mason Road, Orchard Circle, Orchard Road neighborhoods, and then out along Humphrey Street down to the intersection with Atlantic Street and Route 129 there and Puritan Road, because that intersection kind of all operates together. And the traffic counts that we did as part of this traffic study were collected back in May and June of 2021. And we did that, the timing there, partly because of COVID-19 obviously prevented us from doing much in 2020.

So we kind of stretched it out to the end of the school year when a lot of businesses had reopened, school was back to normal session, and also because that generally is a peak month for traffic as well. So based on MassDOT seasonal adjustment factors, the traffic volumes in May and June are anywhere from about 8% to 12%, depending on the type of roadway that you're on, higher than an average month condition. So we knew right away we're looking at a peak condition.

And we always try to do that whenever we're doing traffic studies. We're either adjusting up to average month or peak month conditions, and we try to build in as many levels of conservatism as we can so that we're really looking at a worst-case scenario so that even if we're wrong in all of our projections, we've got a lot of buffer built in there. So in addition to collecting in a peak month, we also adjusted to account for COVID-19 as well.

So we looked at some traffic volumes at the intersection of Humphrey Street and Reddington Street that had been collected back in 2016 prior to COVID taking place, and even though that wasn't part of our study area, we collected new counts there again so that we could see how had COVID really affected traffic volumes in the area. And then we looked at some permanent count stations that were nearby that were collected on the same days that we collected our traffic counts and compared to those same days back in 2019 prior to the start of COVID and then grew those traffic volumes up. And those were anywheres from 2% to 13% lower than pre-COVID conditions.

So we grew those volumes up by anywheres from 2% to 13%. And then we also grew these traffic volumes out to a future year condition. So we looked at both opening year conditions when the school first opens, and then we did an opening year plus 10, so 2034 condition.

And when we projected that out, we wanted to account for any growth that might happen in the surrounding area. Obviously, Swampscott is a community that's pretty well developed already, but there could be some redevelopment or a handful of properties that haven't been developed yet and just general population growth from people moving into the community. So we also grew all the traffic volumes in the study area by 0.5% per year. And we estimated that growth rate based on historic traffic volumes collected at count stations around in the area that MassDOT had on record that had generally showed a 0.2% per year growth. So we went a little bit higher up to that 0.5% per year growth to account for some of that additional volume. And it does also account for some changes that we know are down the road for the middle school as well, because we know that school is going to be redone at some point.

So including that 0.5% per year does account for that as well. And when we go out through the 2034 condition, we're talking about a 14% to 15% growth overall that we're applying to the existing traffic volumes in the area. And that doesn't even include the traffic from the new school.

That's just background traffic on the roadways that we're talking about. Next slide. So one of our big concerns really was safety, safety, safety.

That's the biggest concern when we're talking about school-age children is safety. So we did look at what are the current safety issues surrounding the school and in these neighborhoods, and were there any high crash locations? And this is showing over a five-year period, the most recent five-year period pre-COVID, what was kind of happening for crashes in the year.

And the neighborhood streets had relatively low crashes, but obviously Route 129, as we would expect, had a decent number of crashes that were occurring along that street. So we kind of saw that as sort of a barrier to kids being able to walk and bike for some of those safety issues along Route 129. But the streets around the school are extremely safe, which was great.

So one of the things we wanted to do in our study was make sure they stayed that way as we're looking at improvements. Next slide. So talking about kind of traffic flow and how things are all going to work at the school, I know there's a lot of stuff going on on this slide, but you can see in green here is showing you kind of the parent vehicles and how they're going to get into the school itself.

So the parent traffic is all going to be coming in off of Whitman Road to get into the site. And then once it gets into the site, that traffic can split depending on where they want to pick up or drop off their children and where they're going to when they leave. And as we were looking at kind of where we thought people would be coming from and where they would be going to, one of the things that we did was we actually got the existing student address information and used GIS mapping to map where all these kids live and then looked at how would kids actually get in and out.

And what we found was that about 50% of them would be coming to and from the 129 and coming in Orchard Road in that direction, and about 50% would be coming in Forest Avenue, which worked great for the layout that we're talking about here because that allowed us to disperse the traffic as it was leaving and send about 50% of that traffic out through the UU Church and back out onto Forest Avenue, and the other 50% would make a loop on the site itself and go back out Whitman Road and out Orchard Road towards 129.

And we wouldn't have...

[Speaker 3] (45:51 - 46:03)
What that means also is that the two drop-offs are not necessarily based on lower school or upper school, but parent choice of where do I want to end up. Right.

[Speaker 2] (46:05 - 57:50)
Yeah, and in the morning there's certainly more opportunity because it's sort of a rolling drop-off pattern for parents to choose where they want to drop their children off. They can drop it off in the direction they want to head out or they could drop off where their youngest child is located. So if they have a kindergartner, they'll probably want to drop off near the lower school.

If their kids are in fourth grade, maybe they drop them off in front of the upper school. So there's a lot more choice in the morning. But as we get into talking more about the afternoon period where there's a heavy volume of queues that are happening from parents waiting to pick up their kids, we want to make sure that that queue is moving quickly, that kids are getting in their cars and getting out of there quickly.

So in the afternoon we would anticipate that there would be an assignment so that parents know I'm going to pick up my kid at the upper school or the lower school. And that can be assigned based on where their address is so that those parents that are going to be headed back home and off towards 129, they're going to pick up at the upper school. The parents that are headed back out towards Forest Avenue, they're going to pick up at the lower school.

And that way it minimizes the circulation of traffic through the Orchard Road, Nason Road area so that we don't have overlapping flows of entering and exiting traffic through there. And really helps to control the traffic a lot. In terms of emergency vehicle access, so throughout the day when there's not that heavy queue of traffic on the site, emergency vehicles would be able to come in through Whitman Road and access the front of the building just like a parent vehicle would.

But we wanted to give them a secondary means of access so that in that afternoon period when parents are queued up, God forbid there was an emergency and they needed to get in, they would have a way to do so that wouldn't be blocked. So we have provided an emergency vehicle access off of Forest Avenue extension so that they would be able to come in through Forest Avenue extension and access the school that way where it would not be blocked. In terms of busing, all of the buses would be coming in through the Whitman Road access and then they would circulate, as they get to the front of the building they would take a left-hand turn and kind of circulate around the easterly side of the building where they would load on the far east side of the building.

We would anticipate that in the afternoon there would be a staggered release of the upper and lower elementary schools where the lower elementary school kids would be released first and they would be able to be loaded on the buses because those kids take a little bit more time to get loaded and then the upper elementary school kids would be loaded onto the buses and those two releases would be about 15 minutes apart based on the time that it would require to get that first platoon of parent vehicles off and start loading the second platoon of vehicles. And then the buses would end up also going out through Forest Avenue extension so that they don't have to intermingle with that parent traffic. So they're loading in their own separate area and then exiting out through Forest Avenue extension.

In the morning for drop-off though, those buses could unload right at the front of the building with the parent traffic and scoot their way out. We would just have them go out through Forest Avenue extension in the afternoon so they're not intermingling with that heavy volume of parent pickup traffic that's queued up in that area. In terms of parking, I know that David already mentioned kind of the areas of on-site parking that we are planning for.

And David, if you want to go to the next slide. So we did do a parking study to assess how much parking demand there would be at the proposed school. And there are a total of 85 parking spaces that are going to be provided at the new school.

And we looked at both an opening year condition and then a maximum enrollment condition of if every classroom space was full, the new school could handle 900 total students, even though there's only about 725 or so that are currently enrolled in those grades. So under an opening year condition, we would anticipate that there would be about 100 parking spaces that would be required at a peak time period in the middle of the day. And under maximum enrollment, there would be about 119 spaces that would be required.

So as I mentioned, there's about 85 parking spaces that are being proposed. So we have an overflow of about 15 to 34 vehicles, depending on opening year versus maximum enrollment. So we were looking at ways that we could accommodate that traffic, that additional parking.

And we really wanted to be able to maximize the play space on the site and, as David already alluded to, provide a sustainable design. So when we did our initial observations of this site two years ago when we were at the feasibility study, one of the things we noticed was an abundance of parking at the middle school, particularly in their lower-level lot that's kind of in the back towards the athletic fields that was heavily, heavily underutilized. So that school currently has about 187 parking spaces at it.

And when we went out and actually did parking counts, they were only using about 118 of those spaces. So right now there are just about 70 parking spaces that are open even during peak times at the middle school. So by kind of reassigning the parking at the middle school and getting people to use more of that lower lot, we can open up that pink lot that you can see shown here that is just to the east of the middle school and make that available for some overflow parking from the elementary school.

And we would provide an upgraded sidewalk connection along Forest Avenue, connecting all the way down and going through the UU Church site, as David Conway mentioned, and right up to the school. And that would all be lit as well so that teachers who are staying after school hours or coming in early in the morning that are parking over there would easily be able to walk through a lit path all the way through, as well as ADA-accessible routes. Next slide.

So the next step that we wanted to do was estimate how much traffic is really going to be coming into the school. And to do that, we looked at a number of different methods. So typically for estimating traffic, we would use trip rate data that's contained in the Institute of Transportation Engineers Trip Generation Manual.

But what we found is this community is really different than a lot of the other communities that have been studied as part of that manual because you have such a high population of people who are not bussed to school because the population is almost entirely within a two-mile radius. Most people are either walking and biking or being dropped off. So we looked at alternative ways to estimate traffic using some of the other data that was available for private schools.

But the private school data was for K-12, and we're talking about elementary only. So we were worried that that might be too low because it wouldn't be accounting... In a K-12 setting, many of those kids might be driving themselves to school.

We also looked at charter schools, but in that setting, almost everyone is driving because they're living further away, and it didn't take into account walking and biking. So we really looked at Swampscott in a unique way and looked at what is the current enrollment, where do the kids live around the school, and what is a reasonable walk area around the school? What's a reasonable biking area around the school?

And we looked at that for both fair-weather days and for poor-weather days because obviously on a poor-weather day, not as many people are going to walk and bike to school. Then we looked at what are after-school programs and how many kids are actually involved in those before- and after-school programs and how would that impact the amount of traffic that would be generated. And then what are typical absentee rates and how many kids are coming from the same address as well with sibling pairs.

And what we estimated was that there would be roughly about 450 cars, parent vehicles, that would be dropping their kids off in the morning and about 420 dropping off in the afternoon. And we already talked a little bit about kind of how these kids are going to get dropped off and picked up, that this would happen in kind of two areas. So parents would enter into the school from Whitman Road in the morning to drop off and then they would choose for themselves based on where they want to go and their child's age whether they want to drop off in front of the lower school or in front of the upper school and then circulate out through either the UU Church off to Forest Avenue or back up to Whitman Road.

In the afternoon, the parents would be assigned a pickup or drop off area. And those cars would come in and they would be stacked up right in front of either the upper or the lower elementary schools. And the pickup, once the kids are released, would happen in stages.

So the intent is that walkers and bikers in the afternoon would be released first. And this gives the kids a chance to get across the crosswalks that are immediately in front of the school and access the sidewalks that are on the opposite side and start to travel out towards Whitman Road, out towards Forest Avenue, along the walkways before that parent traffic starts to get released while it's still stopped and waiting. Then the next stage would be to release the lower elementary kids, the kids that are in K through second grade.

Those kids that are taking the bus would be transported down to the easterly end of the school to get on the bus. The kids who are sole children, I guess, in the household would start being loaded in platoons into their parent vehicles that would be stacked in either area. So the kids would be loaded into platoons of cars that are being loaded about 18 at a time.

So we'd have two rows stacked of nine vehicles that are being loaded at once. And as I mentioned, the parents would be assigned those pickup areas.

[Speaker 3] (57:50 - 58:36)
One of the big things we learned from Rebecca is that the morning, and she has a diagram of this, but in the morning, things flow very differently. They kind of move along, people show up at a certain time, and there's not so much waiting. And it just kind of flows through the site, even though there's 447 cars at that time.

But in the afternoon, people come up early, people come early, they get in line, and they wait. And what that does is create a very different situation. That's why I think Rebecca's talking about the idea of the staggered releases, because that breaks that logjam in half right off the top.

And I appreciate her showing that she talked about those things, because I had no idea. Yep.

[Speaker 2] (58:41 - 1:03:05)
So yeah, those vehicles would be loaded in platoons, and then the entire platoon would be released out through, and the next set of cars would be brought in. So there would be periods, and it would take about two minutes per platoon to kind of load those cars and get the next set of cars in. So while the vehicles are loading, if there are stragglers of kids coming out of the school, they would be able to cross those crosswalks, get across to the playground area or the sidewalks and everything, while the vehicles are being stopped.

And we would expect that there would be crossing guards that would be located at those crosswalks right at the school campus, and then a number of locations that I'll point out in a minute off the school campus as well, to be able to assist those kids in getting out, in addition to the staff that's helping loading the kids into the vehicles. If you want to go to the next slide. So one of the things that we also looked at was different busing options to help reduce down the amount of parent pickup traffic.

And what is mandated by law is that any kids that live outside of a two-mile radius be bused. So we looked at what would happen in that type of scenario. And then we also looked at a one-and-a-half-mile buffer.

And then we looked at 1.25 and 1.0 and kind of went down from there. But what we found was that anything beyond or closer than a 1.5 mile started to get these little pocket areas of outliers of kids where we would need separate bus routes to be able to go access only a handful of kids and where it starts to become less cost-effective for the community to start busing some of those kids on those larger buses. So we really focused our analysis on the two-mile and the one-and-a-half-mile.

And I mentioned before that when we're doing traffic impact analysis and we're looking at queuing and delays and all of that type of stuff, we really want to come up with a worst-case scenario. Even though we want to design everything to reduce, reduce, reduce impacts, we want to say, but what will happen if it's a worst-case scenario? So we looked at all the rest of our analysis within our study in terms of delays and queues was based on a worst-case condition.

If it's only the two-mile buffer area that's bused and it's a poor weather day and most kids are getting dropped off by their parents, what's going to happen? Next slide. So we looked at the morning time, and as David mentioned, we looked at queuing on the site and what would happen in the morning as kids are being dropped off.

And it's really more of a rolling queue scenario. So what we found is that because there are more kids at a younger age that are within the K-2 group and a draw for people to head in towards Boston and stuff after they're dropping their kids off at school, that we'd have a little bit longer queue over by the lower school of about five vehicles. And then over on the upper school, we'd have about three vehicles that would be queued up waiting to unload their kids in that lower school at a time.

Next slide. But as was mentioned in the afternoon, parents obviously arrive early. They want to get their kids, and they're stacking up a lot more.

So what we found here is that on a fair weather day, we would have just under 60 vehicles that would be queued up. And again, this is assuming two dismissal periods. So we're breaking those kids in half, so there's about 200 kids being picked up at any one time.

Sorry, 200 parents coming in to pick up at any one time. So we would anticipate having a queue stacked of about 60 vehicles. On an inclement weather day, that would be about 70 vehicles.

So on a fair weather day, all those vehicles can be accommodated on the site. But on a poor weather day, we would expect to see some stacking that might happen back onto Orchard Road.

[Speaker 3] (1:03:05 - 1:04:12)
Here was our main point of emphasis with Rebecca in the beginning. Right now, everyone parks on the street and walks their kids in and out, and we're changing the whole methodology here to get the cars off the street and all that kind of congestion and the traffic and people parking in front of people's driveways and things like that. Our goal with this was always to get people off the street, get the parents off the streets, and get them onto our site.

And what this kind of diagram shows is that on a normal day, at the worst time during the afternoon, they're on Whitman, only to Whitman. And in a really bad time, when it's really raining, they never get back to Mason in a line. And that was really important to us, because the second day you get to Mason and you have to wait, you're causing real traffic.

And what I mean by that is backup. And so diagrams like this were very powerful to us, and we pushed it to make this work. So thank you.

[Speaker 2] (1:04:14 - 1:09:17)
And one of the other reasons why hitting Mason Road is so important is that with the way the streets are laid out now and the way that we intend to lay them out in the future. So as you know, right now, Orchard Road and Orchard Circle, during school arrival and dismissal time periods, operate as a one-way traffic flow, and the rest of the time they are two-way. But one of the things that we were looking at was converting Orchard Road permanently to a one-way roadway for a number of different reasons, the majority of which are actually more safety, pedestrian, and bicycle access related.

But what that also allows us to do is utilize Orchard Road as kind of that stacking area for queued up traffic going into the school. And then Mason Road going up to Neighborhood Road and Orchard Circle can become kind of a bypass for the neighborhood traffic to be able to get through in those times when traffic does queue up back onto Orchard Road. So it kind of gives us two benefits there.

And if you want to actually advance to the next slide. So this is kind of showing that traffic flow pattern that we're talking about. And this graphic here is actually a little bit old, where we were still considering moving Orchard Circle to a one-way road as well.

And even though that's kind of the direction traffic will flow as it's getting into the school, and then will come back out through Orchard Road, Orchard Circle and Mason Road will remain as a two-way roadway. It's only Orchard Road that will get converted permanently to a one-way road. And with that, we would also widen out the sidewalks on Orchard Road.

Because if you're walking along those sidewalks now, although there are some pretty decently sized sidewalks, there are very, very often trees located in the middle of the sidewalk that in some cases block the entire width of the sidewalk. And there are really some old, beautiful trees that we wanted to be able to maintain. So we looked at what can we do to keep these trees, but still give these kids a safe, accessible route.

So we looked at expanding the sidewalk into the roadway, because the roadway is actually pretty wide today, to give an ADA-accessible route that would go around these trees, but still maintain access for vehicles to be able to travel through. And then it also allowed us to still maintain on-street parking along one side of the roadway, and provide a bicycle lane for those kids that might want to bike to school along the other side of the roadway as well. And we kept that bike lane located on the school side, so that as the bicyclists are coming from Mason Road, and there's that future rail trail as well, if kids decide to use that as an access into the school, as they come in along Orchard Road, they can take a nice, easy right-hand turn, and follow up the multi-use path that's along the side of the school driveway, and in without having to cross all of that parent pick-up and drop-off traffic as well.

And then we also looked at installing some new crosswalks across Humphrey Street to get some of those pedestrians that may live in the Atlantic Crossing and some of the other neighborhoods on the opposite side of Humphrey Street across the street safely. So we would have those rectangular rapid flashing beacons that would be located there, where you press the button and the sign starts flashing with the alternating lights to let people know that they need to stop for the pedestrians crossing the roadway. And we also looked at a number of traffic-calming types of improvements in the neighborhood as well.

You may recall when the bump-outs were constructed right in front of the Stanley School several years ago, that those are the types of bump-outs that we would be installing throughout the neighborhood, particularly at the intersection of Mason Road and Neighborhood Road, and Orchard Circle and Neighborhood Road, where there's some pretty wide sweeping turns. And we want to slow the traffic down and get these kids a safe route across the street. So the less time they have to spend in the roadway and the slower we can get the cars going, the better.

And then we do similar improvements over at Forest Avenue and Laurel Road as well. Because of the number of vehicles that are going to be coming out that way, we really want to put in a high-visibility crosswalk there with some bump-outs to get added visibility of those pedestrians.

[Speaker 3] (1:09:17 - 1:09:51)
I would clarify and add, Rebecca, that a lot of these improvements are not part of my project. Do you know what I mean? The school itself?

But that the town, after listening to all of the neighborhood meetings and you talking about how you could improve the overall safety and flow, is funding and doing these projects throughout to make this all work better. I think is the benefit of it taking two years for people to hop on like that.

[Speaker 2] (1:09:51 - 1:12:59)
That's a very good point, David. The next slide actually covers the area around the middle school. So while we were out doing the feasibility phase of this, still considering which site would be the best site before we even started really looking to solve things, we did a number of observations of traffic flow at the middle school area.

And we noticed some significant deficiencies in that area. We noticed that on the opposite side of Forest Avenue from the school that there was no sidewalk located in that area, which was creating some really awkward pedestrian crossings that didn't quite make sense where they were located. So we recommended to the town that they install a sidewalk there.

And that sidewalk has since been installed. Also, the location of the crosswalk right in front of the middle school entrance, because it was located just to the west of the school, required all of the kids that were walking from the westerly side of Forest Avenue up to cross the road. All of that heavy left-turning traffic that was coming into the school required them to cross twice, essentially.

So they were all crossing the left turn, and then the crossing guard there had to cross them again to cross the school driveway. Since then, we recommended to the town that they relocate that crossing to the east side, so that at the same time that cars are turning left into the school to drop off in the morning and pick up in the afternoon, that the kids can be crossing Forest Avenue. We also recommended some improvements right at the drop-off area to extend that drop-off further into the site, because what we found was that all the parents were turning into the site and stopping and queuing up traffic all behind them.

So some of those changes have already been implemented since then, and we've heard nothing but good feedback. I think Suzanne can probably echo that about how that's all worked. So those are the same types of improvements that we would be looking to do here, really just maximize the flow with some simple changes in the neighborhood that can really help things out as well.

And one of those other locations that's kind of off-site that we're looking at for the town for long-term improvements is that intersection of Atlantic Avenue, Humphrey Street, down at 129, where there's kind of that hill there. There's a wide open expanse of pavement, there's the awkward island in the middle. So we're looking at different ways that that can be reconfigured as a separate town project.

We've looked at what's the minimum that's required to make this school work, and really it can work with just some minor geometric changes to open up Forest Avenue extension so that the buses and the emergency vehicles can get access in. But long-term, there's some additional safety improvements that can be made there, some operational enhancements and stuff that we're looking at separately with the town now to evaluate that as well.

[Speaker 1] (1:12:59 - 1:13:33)
I wonder if we should take a pause here and have some questions about this, because I'm very happy that you've taken the time to go through these plans with us in such detail. It's very helpful. And I'm just out of concern for making sure that we have enough time to review all of the site plan criteria.

I just want to make sure that we have a chance to begin asking some questions. So I don't know where you're at.

[Speaker 2] (1:13:34 - 1:13:45)
We only had a couple more slides just to show you a little bit of some of the detail of some of these improvements. So one of them is up there if you wanted to see some of kind of how that was.

[Speaker 1] (1:13:45 - 1:13:48)
It's all in the traffic report, which we all get access to.

[Speaker 2] (1:13:48 - 1:14:19)
It is, yeah. So when we had the community forum, there were some people asking about what would Orchard Road actually look like. So we just wanted to show kind of this is the layout of what Orchard Road itself would look like with the parking on the sort of northerly side and the bicycle lane up against the school side of the roadway.

And then out at Humphrey Street where it would widen back out to provide separate left and right turn lanes coming out of Humphrey Street there.

[Speaker 1] (1:14:20 - 1:14:23)
So where does it go one way then? We're looking at...

[Speaker 2] (1:14:23 - 1:14:29)
So all the way from Mason Road down to Humphrey Street. I know this is kind of awkward the way it connects through.

[Speaker 1] (1:14:30 - 1:14:40)
Circle. So in other words, if you came in from Orchard Circle and you dropped down, you would not be able to make that little right-hand turn. You would not be able to make the right-hand turn, correct.

[Speaker 2] (1:14:40 - 1:14:43)
You would have to go Neighborhood Road to Mason Road to get around.

[Speaker 1] (1:14:43 - 1:14:48)
Or some people would have to know that they can't or they could be done with signage, I suppose. Yep.

[Speaker 2] (1:14:49 - 1:15:24)
Okay. And then the next one is just showing the other side out at Forest Avenue down by the middle school where a number of these improvements have already been made. But we would be looking to, all within the existing back of sidewalk to back of sidewalk, look to construct the five-foot sidewalks with a little grass buffer and then bicycle lanes that would also have a two-foot buffer strip there to give a little bit more space for younger kids that would be bicycling on the road as well.

[Speaker 1] (1:15:24 - 1:15:35)
And still maintain... Would the bike lane... Because I can't quite see it from here, but would the bike lane be sort of sidewalk, bike lane?

Because people park on that other side of that street now.

[Speaker 2] (1:15:36 - 1:16:05)
So it would be bicycle lane and then the two-foot buffer strip in there so that if people are parked, they're parked in that bike lane and buffer strip area, essentially. And then the 11-foot travel lane in each direction. And then there's some of those bump-outs that I mentioned at the intersections that would kind of narrow the roadway up and draw people's attention more to the pedestrians crossing the road.

[Speaker 1] (1:16:05 - 1:16:06)
Yep.

[Speaker 2] (1:16:06 - 1:16:07)
Thank you.

[Speaker 1] (1:16:09 - 1:20:16)
Okay. So what I'd like to do is... We are going to have questions and answers.

Then we'll do the part of this process. Thank you very much. So I'm glad that you expanded on so many of the explanations because I think it's important, as we look at site plan for this particular site, it really is geared around safety.

Okay? So we're not just moving cars. We're moving people.

And the challenge here is that we have a very large infrastructure project that is going to require that now we have more cars converging on one spot and more people converging on one spot. And with so many little kids, this is all about keeping those children safe, getting them to school on time. You're building this beautiful facility for children.

If we can't get them to school and get them there safely, that's how I look at our job here, is to really make sure that that gets played out with some really good strategy. So, you know, clearly with site plan and the other considerations, just, you know, kind of generally speaking, we look at social, economic, community needs, which are served by the proposal. I think that's obvious.

We look at the traffic flow and safety, adequacy of utilities and public services, neighborhood character and social structures, impacts on the natural environment, potential fiscal impact, including the impact on town services and tax-based employment and so forth. So when we look at new construction, our main concerns would be minimize the volume of cut and fill, the number of removed trees, the length of removed stone walls, area wetland vegetation displaced, extent of stormwater flow, soil erosion, threat of air and water pollution, maximize pedestrian and vehicular safety, both on the site and for access and egress, which, in my opinion, is one of the most important things that we are going to be looking at here. And that's the most, I think, the most work that we can do as this board in terms of site plan special permit is making sure that we have a safe site.

And I think you've done extraordinary work. The traffic study is complete. It's thorough.

You gave us tons of analysis. It's a lot of information. I admit I did read the whole thing.

Wow. Yep. So I had some time, so it was all good.

But what I'd like to do is I went through the other considerations. So there's minimize unreasonable departure from the character materials, minimize contamination of groundwater, ensure compliance with zoning bylaw, minimize adverse traffic impact. But I thought what I would do for the purpose of our review tonight is to prioritize some of the discussion that we would have.

So I've provided the board with a little outline of site plan criteria, understanding that there are particular things that we should be focused on for site plan for a site like this. And so I thought we would get started in that way. And I do have, as the first topic, minimize the volume of cut and fill, and then we move on to pedestrian and vehicular safety.

The traffic, pedestrian, and vehicular safety is probably going to be, I'm guessing, will be the biggest topic for us to discuss. But I would see if there are any other thoughts. If you'd like to begin with the volume of cut and fill criteria, we can do that.

[Speaker 5] (1:20:18 - 1:20:33)
My only thought is if traffic is going to take up the bulk of our time, are there some of these that we can knock out? So that we have a few things done. Because otherwise I'm worried if we get into traffic, we're going to hit the end of the night and still be on traffic.

[Speaker 1] (1:20:33 - 1:20:52)
Which quite, that's a good guess. So I think I'd rather focus on the traffic and then, I mean, I don't know which one you're thinking about really.

[Speaker 5] (1:20:52 - 1:21:00)
There wasn't one in particular. So if you want to just get started with it, we should just keep in mind not to spend the whole night on traffic.

[Speaker 1] (1:21:03 - 1:23:29)
So let's start with the first one that I have on the list, which is the minimize the volume of cut and fill, the number of removed trees, the length of removed stone walls, the area of wetland vegetation displaced, the extent of stormwater flow increase from the site, soil erosion and threat of air and water pollution. So I've obviously watched your meeting with CONCOM the other night. The good news is for our sake that CONCOM is really, they're really going to be looking very closely at the drainage.

So it's not something that we have to spend so much time focusing on, which is good news for us. I have discussed it with CONCOM members. So I know where they're at and I understand where you left off with them and what's happening with the peer review, which I know that CONCOM had requested and that's going on.

So that's moving ahead. One thing that I, a couple of questions that I had regarding the wetlands and the drainage issues are, is the filtration going into Ewing Woods? So I know this will be addressed again.

So, but I just had one kind of additional topic on that, which was that Tony mentioned to me that there is a filtration system that will be kind of making sure that, that you had mentioned it, that small area at the, you know, sorry, the South is a wetland in Ewing Woods, right? Where you'd be filtering out some sediment and phosphorus and so on and so forth, and then allowing a certain amount to, to drain into Ewing Woods. So it's my understanding that they're on Forest Ave extension, that Ewing Woods drains extensively onto that road and that there are no storm drains on Forest Ave extension.

And I know they're already kind of on their gate, they get inundated with, with drainage issues there. So I didn't know if you were aware that there weren't any storm drains on Forest Ave extension, because, you know, we're, that's how it is in this town. I think we've got so many little, you know, quarks, maybe is a good way to put it, but there are just some things that even because it's a private road, perhaps it just, you know, never had storm drains put in, but that, I just wanted to make sure that, that you are aware that that would perhaps come into the calculations and whatever work you're doing with.

[Speaker 4] (1:23:30 - 1:25:20)
Right. So anything from our side is, is, is being treated and we're trying to keep the mass balance for the water going to going to the Ewing woods wetlands so that we, we know, we don't flood it or we don't dry it up. Now, Florence Ave extension, I believe is doesn't have any drainage, but it mostly, it flows, I think out towards, flows out to Humphrey street out to Humphrey street.

So there's in the conservation commission that there, there, they, there was a discussion of there's a, the right away the path is kind of compacted and there's like flows running to that. Any improvement to that area is basically beyond, I know it's all town land, but it's beyond the school site. So improvements to there would be something that the town would probably take on and not the project itself.

You know, I think what I heard from the conservation, we actually met with the peer review today and we're, we're working back through that, that comment. He attended the meeting remotely was, you know, what they were, and he was going to pull that thread a little bit more of the conservation of what they were exactly looking for as part of that comment. It sounded to me more like a, of a stabilizing bit.

It's kind of bare earth back there. I think there was some sound of like having that stabilized the, the flows to the wetland, our sites, not going to impact them in any, any negative way. We're not going to, we're, we're in the flows.

We are sitting there, we're sending it out through, let's call it a device called level spreader. So we don't cause any erosive throw flows. So it's when it does come out, it's a sheet flow, but the, that other comment we're working with the peer review and the, and the conservation commission to kind of like pull the, kill that onion back to see what they're looking for and what we can do to help.

[Speaker 11] (1:25:28 - 1:25:28)
Yeah.

[Speaker 4] (1:25:29 - 1:25:31)
And it'll probably be like my utility drawing.

[Speaker 5] (1:25:40 - 1:25:40)
Okay.

[Speaker 11] (1:25:40 - 1:25:47)
I was just looking for a general drawing. Yeah. The very first one that we liked the best.

Oh, the cold one.

[Speaker 3] (1:25:47 - 1:25:52)
I like that one the best too.

[Speaker 11] (1:25:52 - 1:25:57)
Thank you. So you're talking about the lower, lower left.

[Speaker 1] (1:25:58 - 1:26:04)
Right. Exactly. Where, you know, that road will be, there'll be an access road.

[Speaker 11] (1:26:04 - 1:26:07)
And you've already gone to Concom with this and they're, have they voted?

[Speaker 1] (1:26:08 - 1:26:11)
No, they're they actually, it's, it was continued, I believe.

[Speaker 4] (1:26:11 - 1:26:12)
Yep. We just met with them Thursday.

[Speaker 1] (1:26:13 - 1:26:14)
Peer review that they're doing.

[Speaker 4] (1:26:15 - 1:26:16)
And we've continued to like 20.

[Speaker 1] (1:26:19 - 1:26:36)
So, I mean, I feel, you know, very confident that, you know, all these, I, this was just a question that I had that, that came up tonight. And then you mentioned that the runoff off the, the roof of the building is going to be directed into Ewing woods. Is that right?

[Speaker 4] (1:26:36 - 1:26:45)
A portion of it again, just to, to, to make sure. So it's a, it's a calculated portion of the roof. We'll go to Ewing woods just to kind of match that amount that's going there today.

[Speaker 1] (1:26:45 - 1:26:53)
Okay. And I noticed you have a couple of those, you have those big call tech tanks underground. How far underground are they?

[Speaker 4] (1:26:53 - 1:27:31)
They are, which is actually a peer review this question today as well. They are approximately the playfield one I think is between three and four feet to the top of them. And then the one under the surface parking, because the surface parking is angled it's like three to four feet on the low side and then like five to six feet on the high side.

And he actually requested and we're providing it to him just that the manufacturers information on like the, the loading, but the, the loading for those off the top of my head is fine at a minimum, the 10 feet, it might be 12. What's a, what's 120 inches. Yes.

I think it's either 144, 120 inches of depth.

[Speaker 1] (1:27:32 - 1:27:32)
Okay.

[Speaker 4] (1:27:32 - 1:27:36)
So we're right in the sweet spot as far as those for the traffic loading for those.

[Speaker 1] (1:27:37 - 1:28:21)
Right. One of the reasons I asked is, and I understand that they're, they're passive, maybe a big, a big pipe going in small pipes coming out, right. That's how you kind of control the flow.

All right. But I'm concerned. My concern really is like how I know you have to do blasting on the side.

I mean, I saw the gentleman who did the, at the forum, the gentleman who did the presentation, can't recall who it was, but at any event that there's quite a bit of blasting on site. So my concern is how deep is it? Does it have to go?

You know, and I know you did the deep test pit borings to see where it's really hard and where it's really soft and you know, how that's going to impact footings on the building and so forth. But how deep do you think you're going to have to blast just to get those tanks in there?

[Speaker 4] (1:28:23 - 1:28:51)
Not particularly because the site now kind of also slopes in that general direction. So I can't give you one answer because the site varies, but it's, Andy, it's three to four feet of blasting. Cause there is overburden of soil out there now.

Right. And then also in some of the locations, especially let's say the play field, the the grades coming up. Right.

So the, because the grade is flattened up, we're actually putting some of the fill there and our end.

[Speaker 3] (1:28:52 - 1:28:53)
Yeah. That's what you're saying. Yeah.

[Speaker 13] (1:28:58 - 1:29:00)
Thank you.

[Speaker 1] (1:29:00 - 1:29:00)
Okay.

[Speaker 13] (1:29:01 - 1:29:02)
Thanks Mike.

[Speaker 1] (1:29:02 - 1:29:09)
Thank you. Have you got any questions about that?

[Speaker 5] (1:29:09 - 1:29:12)
It sounds like Concom has this one.

[Speaker 1] (1:29:13 - 1:29:23)
So I just had, so we can skip to something else. And if no one else has questions about that, Oh, please. That's under this topic.

[Speaker 7] (1:29:23 - 1:29:28)
Okay. So you said there's a third area. That's not the two catch basins.

[Speaker 4] (1:29:31 - 1:29:44)
So the, the two are the two I call the bigger ones, one under the play field, one of the surface. Large detention areas. And then the third I know some mentally is the one to the rear Ewing woods.

Right.

[Speaker 7] (1:29:44 - 1:29:50)
And then you said there was some other intervention that had to be done that goes around because that's a low point technically.

[Speaker 4] (1:29:50 - 1:30:30)
Yes. Yeah. So at Whitman road, because the grade goes down and we can't get that water into our treatment train that the two bigger ones up front, there's a, there's a small individual filter system that we're putting in just for that small area.

It's within, it's, it's really capturing within like hundreds of feet of impervious, but it was really an attempt to draw a line around the site. And, and instead of saying, okay, this is de minimis, it's no big deal to say, no, we're, we're, you know, we're kind of commit. This is kind of the path we're walking as far as resiliency.

Gotcha. Yeah. Cause I was noticing the grades, right?

Like the, I'd call it the parking loop.

[Speaker 7] (1:30:30 - 1:30:32)
Is that like 60 feet or whatever?

[Speaker 4] (1:30:32 - 1:30:32)
Yeah.

[Speaker 7] (1:30:32 - 1:30:34)
It's drops off a few feet to the neighbors, right?

[Speaker 4] (1:30:34 - 1:30:44)
So if you're got to catch that water, yeah, it's that last, I guess, you know, I guess the traffic thing would be like the last mile, right? But just the last couple feet of elevation that it's yeah.

[Speaker 7] (1:30:44 - 1:30:44)
Okay.

[Speaker 4] (1:30:45 - 1:30:46)
Gotcha. Thanks.

[Speaker 1] (1:30:53 - 1:32:10)
No other questions on that. Okay. So probably one other that we could take Dave's advice on and move through more quickly.

It could go into scenic use. So we'll go Okay. So minimize the obstruction of scenic views from publicly accessible locations.

Anyone have a question they'd like to start with? I do actually. So if I'm walking down forest ave extension and I'm, I want to take a walk through you in woods and I, so there's still plenty of room there because you're kind of turning that kind of turning in fast, I guess.

I'm guessing that's like from the midline of the paper street, maybe to up to the site. And it looks like you've probably got, I don't know, five feet or so going up, but that's not my question. My question is what am I looking up at?

How many feet am I looking up when I'm on, when I'm there? Cause I know, I mean, so if it's, I think that you said you were already like, I'm going to let you answer. You are like 64 feet or something.

[Speaker 3] (1:32:10 - 1:32:34)
When you're on the trail, when you're walking in the woods and on that little path, which is, it's pretty clearly shown in the grading plan. I think we should go to the grading plan. And David, she wants to know when you're on that path, what does it feel like as it rises a little bit through the school area right in there from that path goes.

[Speaker 4] (1:32:35 - 1:32:37)
So you want to see, you want to know what the building looks like?

[Speaker 1] (1:32:37 - 1:32:45)
Yeah. I'm standing on that path kind of, you know, you know, strolling along and I'm want to take a little stroll through Ewing woods.

[Speaker 4] (1:32:45 - 1:34:40)
So it's, it's fairly level. We're not really changing that. It's, it's, it's forced to have extension.

It's down at like, say where the payment ends. It's about 56. Yep.

And then as you walk along that back path up to you, you get to the back of the school that is 62. So that would be like kind of the center of the, of the school. So you're, so that's why you're kind of like a good a visualized.

So you're walking along the path of schools on your right. First thing you come to is the service area. Now the service area, there's a very small wall about two feet because at that point the service area is higher than that, but you're then continuing up.

So at a point where then at the patio area, which is the center, there's a little wall that holds back the grade on Ewing woods because you're about, um, it actually flips. Yeah, it flips. I have my cheat notes.

That's what I'm looking at a foot at that patio area. Okay. So then as you walk along, this is the back patio area.

You get to the last third of the school. Um, the, the, there's a play, it's the play area. There's a, again, there's a small wall shown for grade.

That wall doesn't get any higher than a foot and a half. And we're at that point because you'd have Ewing forest ave extension, Ewing woods keeps going up. It's, you're just a little bit scoot higher than the play area.

And then, then you transition off into the, into the rest. So it's, it's, it's not a big roller coaster or anything like that. Um, we kind of took care to kind of like make those walls work.

And then also, I think, you know, kind of screen some of the, some parts, but then, I mean other parts you don't like will be, so there's a wall there now and I know it's, it's a, you know, it's got rocks and cement.

[Speaker 1] (1:34:40 - 1:34:58)
It's pretty old. I've been there for a long time. Is the, you're going to take that one out, I'm assuming.

Um, and will the wall you're putting in just going to be cast concrete or are you going to do anything like, you know, some stones in there, make it look like it's against you in woods or, well, right now it's concrete.

[Speaker 4] (1:34:59 - 1:35:03)
And it's not more than, and it's only like two feet high. It's only like that.

[Speaker 1] (1:35:04 - 1:35:08)
The wall that you're building, is it bigger or it's not bigger?

[Speaker 3] (1:35:08 - 1:35:58)
No, it's, it's, it's, you know, the purpose, it's really weird because, you know, since it, it goes up, the wall is there to mediate the water mostly, right? I mean to stop any water from going that way. And it really, it's a little bit of a barrier.

And I do know that on one, at one point it's like that, and because it's on the other side, and then it becomes on the Ewing Woods side. If we did a, if we did like a section through there and looked at that wall, I think, and we haven't, I think that would be a really interesting idea. And, and I could see you could, a person could, I'm saying it like this, a person could put rocks along the edge of that towards Ewing Woods that are available, and it would be very easy to do.

[Speaker 1] (1:35:58 - 1:36:11)
I'm not even really suggesting that, honestly. I was just kind of wondering. Honestly, my biggest concern was, so I'm right, I'm smack in the middle, and the gym is on the top floor.

I'm going to look straight up. How tall a building am I looking at?

[Speaker 3] (1:36:12 - 1:36:18)
That's your question. How many stories? The gym is 50, 53 feet solid.

Yeah.

[Speaker 1] (1:36:19 - 1:36:22)
So it's like a five story building from where I'm at.

[Speaker 3] (1:36:22 - 1:36:33)
Four. So what you're, what you're looking at is, because it's 13 foot four floor to floor, what you're looking at is about a, a big, a lot of glass.

[Speaker 1] (1:36:33 - 1:36:33)
Yep.

[Speaker 3] (1:36:33 - 1:36:56)
Into the auditorium in that area. Remember, the other portions, that middle portion is the tall part. No, I, I know that.

The other portions are one story and then up to the three story. And so when you're in the woods, you look through the woods and there's a building through there. And I, and it's there on purpose, I mean, like that.

And it's a lot of glass, so what you really perceive is a lot of glass.

[Speaker 15] (1:36:57 - 1:36:57)
Mm-hmm.

[Speaker 3] (1:36:57 - 1:37:18)
And probably some reflection and you kind of see, see the woods and stuff like that. And then up high, there's a building. And it's, and it's the gymnasium floating above.

So it is tall. I would also, though, say is that it's the south side. So it's not blocking any sun.

Do you know what I mean? All that stepping. So you're actually seeing that.

[Speaker 1] (1:37:18 - 1:37:19)
That's a good point.

[Speaker 3] (1:37:19 - 1:37:23)
Lit. And if, yeah, if it was the other way around, it could be.

[Speaker 1] (1:37:23 - 1:37:24)
Yeah.

[Speaker 3] (1:37:24 - 1:37:43)
Bad. But in this particular case, actually the trees, when they, when they have their leaves, they're actually shading the building. And when they lose their leaves, they're letting the, in the winter.

So we're actually using the woods in that way. But I understand that there's a completely different experience than you have.

[Speaker 1] (1:37:43 - 1:37:46)
So that's, I mean, that would be the, that's, that's the comment that there's.

[Speaker 3] (1:37:46 - 1:37:46)
Yeah.

[Speaker 1] (1:37:46 - 1:37:49)
That, that'll be, that'll be a, it's a big shift for people.

[Speaker 5] (1:37:50 - 1:37:54)
But I. But it's done that way in order so that the view from the front is.

[Speaker 1] (1:37:55 - 1:37:56)
I don't, I understood. Right.

[Speaker 3] (1:37:56 - 1:38:02)
Yeah, there's a real, there was a real focus on, on, when you're in the woods, you're in the woods and there's something there.

[Speaker 1] (1:38:02 - 1:38:02)
Mm-hmm.

[Speaker 3] (1:38:02 - 1:38:11)
I mean, it's hard to imagine. And, and the closer you get to it, the more exposed you are to the building. But that is why it's done like that.

[Speaker 1] (1:38:13 - 1:38:15)
Anybody else have any comments about that?

[Speaker 7] (1:38:15 - 1:38:22)
I guess my only comment is it has to go somewhere, but the other view you're going to get is of the dumpsters as you're walking next to it.

[Speaker 1] (1:38:22 - 1:38:26)
Right. So that was, I was going to ask you with this. So the trash is going to be back there too, right?

[Speaker 7] (1:38:26 - 1:38:29)
And I guess that gets into the next. Well.

[Speaker 5] (1:38:29 - 1:38:34)
Minimize visual intrusion of park storage and service areas. So it's a natural transition.

[Speaker 3] (1:38:35 - 1:39:25)
Yeah. Well, that is interesting. You know, to, to imagine walking along in, in Ewing Woods, I think that's a really, a really valid kind of visualization.

The idea that we put the, that we put that around the edge, again, it's, it's the most protective and all of that. One could, again, one could imagine some sort of screening there. We just, we tried to, whenever we were doing anything, we were trying to be minimal and less invasive, because once you put up a fence or a wall, you're actually building something in your face.

Yeah. And sometimes it's almost better to look at it and then to do it, what feels right after. You know, I, I know this is a planning, but to see what feels more natural after and which is less intrusive.

I don't know.

[Speaker 5] (1:39:25 - 1:39:27)
Like some sort of natural buffering potentially.

[Speaker 3] (1:39:28 - 1:39:48)
Well, I mean, obviously wood fencing and slats and things like that are ways to block things that people don't want to see. And especially on these edges here. And what we've tried to respect is really that border around the edges.

But being in the woods and looking back out, that is a, that's a different, it's a different world.

[Speaker 1] (1:39:48 - 1:39:51)
So it's nice if you're in the building, but not so nice if you're not in the building.

[Speaker 3] (1:39:52 - 1:39:52)
Well, I mean.

[Speaker 1] (1:39:53 - 1:39:55)
That's, I guess, the whole point. Yeah. And I'm not suggesting that.

[Speaker 3] (1:39:55 - 1:39:56)
No, I understand it.

[Speaker 1] (1:39:56 - 1:40:03)
You know, that's the spot. We could probably end up with that spot. Can we make that a little nicer of a transition?

[Speaker 3] (1:40:04 - 1:40:10)
I think, I mean, right now when you go in that area first from, from Forest Ave, there's like this big berm there.

[Speaker 1] (1:40:10 - 1:40:11)
Yep.

[Speaker 3] (1:40:11 - 1:40:26)
And it's not very nice right now. It's very, it's almost like somebody built something, dumped all the dirt over the side. Right.

And it's just like this big berm. And what we were trying to do was mediate that with things. So it's much more of a smooth thing.

On the other hand, berms are great because they hide stuff.

[Speaker 15] (1:40:26 - 1:40:26)
Yep.

[Speaker 3] (1:40:26 - 1:40:31)
So maybe it's a matter of, of really hitting the plantings there.

[Speaker 15] (1:40:32 - 1:40:32)
Yeah.

[Speaker 3] (1:40:32 - 1:40:53)
And really good buffers and stuff that's right along that wall. But that would be the most natural thing to do. And I will say that having a loading dock that you actually drive down, it's down a little bit.

But having it, because we go down below that grade. So some of that stuff is a little bit lower than you on purpose. So that kids look over it from the, anyway.

[Speaker 1] (1:40:54 - 1:40:54)
Yep.

[Speaker 3] (1:40:54 - 1:40:56)
That's the situation.

[Speaker 1] (1:40:56 - 1:41:04)
Okay. So we can see what kind of creative. Okay.

Ideas might come up with a little bit of buffering there.

[Speaker 7] (1:41:04 - 1:41:05)
Thanks for bringing that up. I think that's a good idea.

[Speaker 1] (1:41:05 - 1:41:06)
Yeah.

[Speaker 7] (1:41:06 - 1:41:07)
Yeah. Okay.

[Speaker 1] (1:41:07 - 1:41:18)
Okay. Anything else on that one? Okay.

Minimize glare from headlights. I'm not terribly concerned about that. I don't know if anyone else has a question.

[Speaker 11] (1:41:18 - 1:41:21)
I think they already addressed it in the lighting plan.

[Speaker 1] (1:41:22 - 1:41:25)
Oh, from headlights. So cars. I just don't, I don't, you know.

[Speaker 11] (1:41:25 - 1:41:26)
Right. No, no.

[Speaker 1] (1:41:27 - 1:41:31)
I mean, I can't find a, I can't think of a scenario where that's an issue. So.

[Speaker 7] (1:41:32 - 1:41:34)
Okay. There's that one house.

[Speaker 1] (1:41:35 - 1:41:35)
Not what, what?

[Speaker 7] (1:41:36 - 1:41:45)
There's like one house. Like on Whitman road. As you're going around this.

As you're coming into the school on the left. As you're like leaving the school. Oh, as you're leaving the school.

[Speaker 5] (1:41:45 - 1:41:46)
Straight ahead.

[Speaker 7] (1:41:46 - 1:41:49)
Yep. I don't know if they have a fence or not.

[Speaker 3] (1:41:50 - 1:42:23)
And it's interesting because if that neighbor were here, we'd ask again, but those neighbors there, we did talk to them. Yeah. On either side.

And they were more in favor at the time. They were more in favor at the time of the being, not having fencing of any kind or, or, you know, would slap fencing. But having it be natural low buffers and maybe different thicknesses and sizes.

They were more into that. We also have about 25 feet distance there. So it's a little bit further back than you'd think.

[Speaker 7] (1:42:23 - 1:42:23)
Okay.

[Speaker 3] (1:42:23 - 1:42:31)
And then up to the, up to the parking lots a little bit higher. So anyway, that was their hope.

[Speaker 5] (1:42:31 - 1:42:41)
And I guess that makes sense. Cause there's a school there now and granted there'll be more volume, but like it's natural there now. Yeah.

There's no fence. There's no like, so that must be how they want it. Okay.

[Speaker 1] (1:42:42 - 1:43:46)
And, you know, because of the neighborhood, I, I, well, I don't know what the, what the plan is for evening programming. I'm guessing it's, you know, this is a, this is kind of an illogical location for evening programming. But I would imagine that, you know, because of parking and the light and the noise and it's kind of different setting, it might not be the most, I, not that I could speak to evening programming there.

So we're going to let that one go. So no concerns then really about where from highlights. Okay, great.

That's that's done. So I'm minimize unreasonable departure from the character materials and scale of buildings in the vicinity as viewed from public ways and spaces. Well, I don't know how it's going to look like a house in the neighborhood.

I don't really, I think it's, I think that there is, is it's a school.

[Speaker 5] (1:43:47 - 1:44:15)
I mean, there's no way it could possibly, but my thought on it actually was when I saw it for the first time, the design for the first time at the forum the other day and this whole like green, yellow color scheme idea. Like I, I really liked that. And my, my kindergartner really liked it.

And I was like really excited to go to the green school when he goes there in third grade. So like I do think that they appreciate some of the work that's been done to make a school reflect our community to the extent that it can.

[Speaker 3] (1:44:15 - 1:44:50)
I mean, you know, it's not a two story house, so it can't look like two story house, but in some ways, because it's a civic building, we drew upon not just the wood of, of like the teak and the stuff on the, on the water, but the library and the, those beautiful buildings you have in town and that the kind of the granite like bases, the, the banding, the brick, those kinds of things. Now it's a contemporary ish building, but that kind of scale. And, and I mean, this high school has brick and so it's a civic building.

It's not a house.

[Speaker 1] (1:44:55 - 1:45:35)
That's understood. Okay. Ensure compliance with the provisions of the zoning bylaw, including parking and landscaping.

Well, I don't know if anyone has any thoughts on that. I think your setbacks, you pretty much are, you know, consistent with the zoning for the most part, you've got at least 25 feet from the back. We've got 10 feet on either side certainly have, well, probably you probably don't have frontage to you, but we're going to, we can let that slide.

What was that? I'm just saying you probably don't, but I froze on Whitman road.

[Speaker 3] (1:45:35 - 1:45:35)
Yeah.

[Speaker 1] (1:45:35 - 1:45:40)
We do have a hundred foot or more.

[Speaker 3] (1:45:40 - 1:45:41)
Yeah.

[Speaker 1] (1:45:41 - 1:46:27)
I was thinking of that this comes into the property and that's the frontage, but whichever way we're going to talk about the parking and the landscaping. I mean, I think your landscaping plan was complete. I mean, in terms of, you had mentioned people sort of picking and choosing what might go around the edge.

And again, I would defer what neighbors I met. You also said that, that the plantings that you were looking at are native species plantings and you're right next to the wetlands. I mean, that would be, you know, whatever Concom recommends.

I mean, I'm, I have no, I have no nothing to add to that. And, you know, from what I can see, the landscaping plan looks nice. So I don't see anything that I feel needs to be added.

[Speaker 3] (1:46:27 - 1:46:35)
I will say we were, we were very careful to have plenty of budget towards those buffers.

[Speaker 1] (1:46:35 - 1:46:36)
Okay.

[Speaker 3] (1:46:36 - 1:46:39)
Make sure that we didn't like run out of trees at the end.

[Speaker 1] (1:46:39 - 1:46:46)
Yeah. I want to do that. As far as the play field goes, that's not, that, that's a natural grass surface.

[Speaker 3] (1:46:46 - 1:46:47)
It is natural.

[Speaker 1] (1:46:47 - 1:46:55)
The other night someone asked about irrigation and they said there wasn't any, but on the plant, it says it is irrigated. Okay.

[Speaker 3] (1:46:55 - 1:47:58)
So yeah, the story has to do with the latest round. And when we put it in and we still had some irrigation, some irrigation, which actually things like lead don't really like the irrigation. And in our last round of discussions with Max and with the, with the committee, there was a decision that we could do without, if we handle this properly, we could do without artificial irrigation for the, for the field, which when you think about fields, the field is there right now, it's not irrigated.

And yes, it, and why, as I explained, hey, it'll get brown sometimes and you'll have to work on it. It'll be very well drained. So that's different.

It won't get the same mud and stuff. And then some of the plantings over time will have to be replaced. If you go in that direction, trees should do fine and all of that.

So that is a, that is a difference than if it, if it shows, it probably just shows the field as being.

[Speaker 1] (1:47:58 - 1:48:03)
Yeah. Well, no, it's yeah. I think it just showed the field.

And I don't know what page it was on. So I'd have to.

[Speaker 3] (1:48:03 - 1:48:12)
Yeah. And there's not many things like that that have come up, but that one specifically came up as, as a sustainable thing. And what's the best way to handle that.

[Speaker 1] (1:48:12 - 1:48:20)
Okay. And the, the playground. So something in there said the rubber surface.

[Speaker 3] (1:48:21 - 1:48:34)
So the play. So the play areas these days, it's for AD, for accessibility and for safety. They have those really nice colored rubber.

You've seen them now. They're more modern playground.

[Speaker 1] (1:48:35 - 1:48:35)
I haven't seen them.

[Speaker 3] (1:48:36 - 1:48:36)
It's not the wood.

[Speaker 1] (1:48:38 - 1:48:39)
So I think it's a board surface.

[Speaker 3] (1:48:39 - 1:48:52)
If you, and I wish we had a couple of pictures, but if you, if you go to some of the newest schools, you'll see they all do it now. And our landscape architect was not going to, wherever you have play equipment, they're going to have that surface now.

[Speaker 1] (1:48:52 - 1:48:55)
So it's not from rubber type of stuff. That's the off gas.

[Speaker 4] (1:48:57 - 1:49:00)
It's not exactly rubber. It's a resilient.

[Speaker 1] (1:49:02 - 1:49:14)
Yeah. I know when we did the field, you know, we looked at, you know, coconut shells and cork and all kinds of other stuff because you know, it's you don't want this stuff running off into the wetlands and you don't want your kids with the off gassing and all that.

[Speaker 3] (1:49:14 - 1:49:37)
It's it's, it's not like those turf fields where they had the little rubber pellets in it. No, this is a poured material. It's and it's colorful and it can be green and blue and it's actually and it's super safe, very durable and lasts a long time.

And our landscape architect says that they really shouldn't put any play structures without this now.

[Speaker 1] (1:49:37 - 1:49:48)
Okay. Good enough for me. So I had some, any other questions about that?

[Speaker 7] (1:49:49 - 1:49:58)
Just on plantings. I guess it goes back to storm water. A lot of the storm water is, is captured, but is there any, it doesn't look like there's any bioswales or that kind of plant.

[Speaker 3] (1:49:59 - 1:50:08)
I'll say it first. We really, really wanted a rain garden in that area.

[Speaker 1] (1:50:08 - 1:50:11)
And that triangle was there for a long time.

[Speaker 3] (1:50:11 - 1:50:15)
It was there for a long time. This is what it was really big.

[Speaker 1] (1:50:15 - 1:50:16)
And then it got like small.

[Speaker 3] (1:50:16 - 1:51:12)
Well, this is the, the truth of it is that as we did testing and as we did borings and rock and all of that, we find that underneath this site is a lot of, well, if it's not just ledge lower, it's bedrock and ledge. And there's very little infiltration and especially in most of those areas, and especially that area right there, in order to make that a bio, a bioswale, we would have literally have to have blasted out this huge pool, like way down and created this fake thing. It doesn't even, then we'd have to take that water and literally pump it into the system.

So what we did instead was we made it natural on top and a place to be in a place to sit. And I love rain gardens, but this site is not built for it. It's not really built for infiltration, is it?

It's built for non-infiltration.

[Speaker 7] (1:51:12 - 1:51:23)
I wonder, this is just a whimsy question, maybe you can take it or leave it, but is it, is it educational to expose the ledge somewhere, you know, because there's so much of it.

[Speaker 3] (1:51:23 - 1:51:39)
Well, it can, it can be, I mean, we may actually decide in an area like that, like, Oh, there's a big rock and we'll, or we'll keep, what we want to do is keep a certain amount of boulder and that material and use it in the back gardens to sit on and different things like that.

[Speaker 1] (1:51:39 - 1:51:44)
It's like that now at the Stanley school playground. I mean, they literally have it kind of bulging out.

[Speaker 3] (1:51:44 - 1:52:15)
And I think if we, if we're, if there's some way to do is kind of like keeping a really nice tree, like do we keep that ledge and we'd have to be really on the ball to do that. But what's, what's now we're, we're right next to you in woods, which is like the greatest lesson there is. And if you went to Stanley at the time, they have the little rocks.

There's like little learning areas and stuff. And so we're hoping that that all really just becomes like the place to go and learn.

[Speaker 7] (1:52:16 - 1:52:16)
Yeah.

[Speaker 3] (1:52:16 - 1:52:19)
But I understand. We should keep some of that material.

[Speaker 4] (1:52:20 - 1:52:20)
Something.

[Speaker 7] (1:52:21 - 1:52:21)
Yeah.

[Speaker 4] (1:52:22 - 1:52:22)
Yeah.

[Speaker 7] (1:52:22 - 1:52:25)
But there's as much of an identity as this town is woods and ocean is rocks.

[Speaker 4] (1:52:27 - 1:53:30)
So at the lower left, the play K2, two area, Tara Inc is showing that if you look at the entrances, they're trying to frame it with natural boulders. And then if you look on my, which is Lee calls my horrible plan. Well, this is much more beautiful.

Yeah, it is. But there's a, there's a small adjacent wall, which we could actually even, cause the wall is not more than a foot high. That's the type of thing where we could, we could continue that.

It shows up better on my plan, but you can see how she's trying to frame the entrance into that play area with the boulders. And we could continue that a little bit and the grading can go, the grading could go away. But it may be that it's placed and not like the exact right.

We don't have the relief to leave, leave, to blast out and leave like a scale thing, but it would, it would be the, if we get something of size, we could or it might just be more of a inspirational type of look of, you know, yeah. Those existing playgrounds are really cool that way.

[Speaker 3] (1:53:30 - 1:53:34)
And that is part of who you are. So yes, we, we will.

[Speaker 1] (1:53:34 - 1:54:11)
I think that would be a really important feature. Work that in. Thanks Mike.

Anything else about that? Cause I had one, I have a, brings me to blasting. So back to the blasting question, there's a lot of blasting on site.

You don't know exactly how much, isn't that? I know you haven't done the Iraq thing yet. So my question is because there's going to be extensive blasting on site and you've mentioned that you're going to use some of that for Phil.

So will, are you going to, will, would the storm be crushed on site? What's, what's going to happen with all that?

[Speaker 4] (1:54:12 - 1:54:15)
I don't think we've committed. We haven't committed to that.

[Speaker 3] (1:54:16 - 1:54:18)
Yeah. I think when I said some as Phil, I didn't mean the rock.

[Speaker 1] (1:54:20 - 1:54:20)
Okay.

[Speaker 4] (1:54:20 - 1:54:24)
I didn't speak clearly. Right. I think so.

[Speaker 1] (1:54:24 - 1:54:26)
What will happen to the rock then?

[Speaker 4] (1:54:26 - 1:54:30)
More than, more than likely it will leave the site.

[Speaker 1] (1:54:30 - 1:54:32)
And how, in trucks or ground up?

[Speaker 4] (1:54:33 - 1:54:51)
Trucks. I, I'm probably getting ahead of myself as, cause it will be up to like the contractor. But it, it could be grounded and then, and then transferred off site.

But it's just the kind of logistics of it having been worked out. What's, what's Mike having to say from home?

[Speaker 1] (1:54:52 - 1:55:12)
Well, you know, because it's, as you know, I don't have to tell you anything. I'm not the, the person doing it, but I know in, from past experience on this board, that not only is it very loud, but it causes a lot of pollution and dust extensively. And it would be considered, you know, hazardous for the wetlands.

So that's something that we could bring up with CONCOM.

[Speaker 8] (1:55:14 - 1:55:23)
Angela, just, you know, looking at the site, the logistics of the site, it seems very unlikely that crushing is going to be viable. We'll be looking at it next month. Okay.

[Speaker 1] (1:55:23 - 1:55:24)
Just need to nail that down. Okay.

[Speaker 8] (1:55:24 - 1:55:29)
Yep. Thank you. Mike said this is a main in Memphis by, by the contractor.

[Speaker 13] (1:55:30 - 1:55:37)
So we need to see what the, the arrest date on the, the rock question. But this is a main in Memphis.

[Speaker 1] (1:55:38 - 1:55:46)
Okay. Thank you. Just going to make a note.

Okay. So are we ready to? Let's get to traffic.

Let's get to traffic.

[Speaker 3] (1:55:46 - 1:55:51)
Are you saying that you've covered almost everything except for traffic?

[Speaker 1] (1:55:52 - 1:55:55)
Pedestrian vehicular safety and traffic. That's a big one.

[Speaker 11] (1:55:56 - 1:55:57)
Okay, let's go.

[Speaker 1] (1:55:57 - 1:55:58)
So. Yeah.

[Speaker 11] (1:55:59 - 1:56:00)
Just be.

[Speaker 1] (1:56:02 - 1:59:12)
So. Very nice conversation with Rebecca today. Just to go over some of these details.

She knows what some of my, my initial concerns were. Great. Helping me.

Understand more. But. So the traffic study.

A lot of, you know, what I see in the traffic study. Is. I felt that I, it didn't give me a sense of comfort that the conclusion that was drawn at the end, which was that we could efficiently handle.

You know, the volume. It doesn't match what I saw in, in, in some of the charts were where it, it clearly is. With the ratings and the, you know, the, the volume versus the capacity of the area or the level of service was clearly, you know, and the E or F zone.

Which I understand that doesn't mean, you know, you can never do it, but it's not, you know, we have enough E or F zones. We're going to have a problem. And.

And what I see with the traffic study is that it's, I mean, there, we do have a whole piece there on pedestrians and movements and kids and who's going where and all that. But. The traffic study, all of those numbers are, they're all moving cars.

It's just about moving the car. So when we talk about. The.

When we talk about the queuing. Talk about the number of cars for queue length, you know, we talked about, you know, how many cars we're going to get in the queue and how they're all going to move in at one time. And somehow in 30 seconds, you're going to get a five-year-old out of the car seat and boom, you're off.

And that's, that's not realistic. It's. I mean, it might be on a perfect day, but it's not realistic.

Anyone who ever dropped a kid off at school knows that's not going to happen. The older kids it's going to be a little better probably, but you never know. But at the same time.

So. That being my concern, you know, just in terms of moving into the site and I know that the goal was to try to get the cars off the street onto the site. And try to figure out the best thing.

And I remember the meeting at which we talked about, you know, when you talked about, you know, Whitman road coming in and then splitting when that was like a, that was huge just being able to make that change, but it's still. You know, the volume just coming into the site is. Is enormous and, and.

And compounded is the fact that people will try to park when you, there are even turning this orchard road one way. You're allowing for parking all along one side. There's parking on nascent people are going to try to park and walk in.

So you've got the people that are actually going to queue up and say the heck with this. I'm going to queue up and I'm going to wait. And some of those wait times in these queues are, I mean, they're, you know, they're long.

You're trying to, you know, get to work or anything like that. It's, it's, there are some extensive queue times.

[Speaker 3] (1:59:12 - 1:59:17)
Are they long? I mean, that's a statement. I was just wondering.

[Speaker 2] (1:59:18 - 1:59:52)
Yeah. So to answer the question about are the wait times long. So with the two dismissal periods that we were looking at it takes about 10 to 12 minutes, depending on whether it's a fair weather day or a poor weather day to get those vehicles loaded after school is initially released and the cars start moving.

It's about 10 to 12 minutes to get those cars off the campus. So that's why we were talking about 15 minutes staggered time. So that, you know, that first platoon of cars that's coming in is off and then the second.

[Speaker 3] (1:59:52 - 2:00:01)
So I don't know if that, I mean, that qualifies as long, but it is a certain amount of time that people would have to get used to.

[Speaker 1] (2:00:01 - 2:01:51)
Well, in the morning, it's all, it's all at once in the afternoon. You do have, you know, right. It's all at once.

And even if people, even if the kids are going to go in at different times, I mean, people go to work, you know, people go to work and they have to, not everyone has the luxury of kind of, you know, being able to wait in a queue for a long time. So there's that. Some people do.

I get it. So it's fine. You know, a lot of people will stop and get out of the car to avoid the queue of the old park someplace else.

They'll get out of the car. They probably could have their dog with them. They could have another little kitty in the carriage and they got their little, you know, smurf on their hand and they're trying to, you know, get up.

And now there are crosswalks literally intersecting this queue everywhere, which of course we need. So don't get me wrong. I love the, the crosswalks, the raised crosswalks, the bump outs, all so necessary.

However, we're trying to move cars here and all of this, all of these calculations are based on a pattern on a formula of moving cars and we're taking the human factor out of it. You're taking all of these people walking up to the school, then having to cross once here on the exit ramp and then having to come again. And then just as cars are either coming up Whitman and making the right to go to the lower school or making the left, just as they're turning, there's a crosswalk and that's where all those kids and parents or kids alone or kids and friends or kids coming off the playground, that's where they're all kind of gathered and waiting to cross.

So that is that. And then two kids are going to cross and a second later, there's going to be more kids crossing. And so my crazy comment to Rebecca today was, I mean, I'm, you know, what do we do?

Put a bridge there?

[Speaker 2] (2:01:51 - 2:02:40)
I mean, I don't know, but is there any way to like, you know, and a lot of those little types of things that it's not necessarily talk about. Why was that the location we looked at for a crosswalk? What makes sense when you look at it, you know, but the reason it's there is because the queuing area for, or the loading area is happening in front of where those the parked cars are.

So if you're looking here, yeah, you can see that car drop off area. So that's also the car loading area. That's where all the active loading is going on.

We didn't want the kids who are crossing going in between those cars and everything while the kids are being loaded. That's too chaotic. But everyone behind that will be stuck.

We intentionally crossed.

[Speaker 5] (2:02:40 - 2:02:44)
That's where you're loading. Those pods is in that car drop off square.

[Speaker 2] (2:02:44 - 2:02:47)
Yeah. That's going to be where the active loading is happening.

[Speaker 5] (2:02:47 - 2:02:50)
And so there will be a point where more cars have to move in there.

[Speaker 2] (2:02:50 - 2:02:59)
Right. And when that happens, crossing guards will stop the kids and then the cars will flow in and they'll be loading for the next couple of minutes.

[Speaker 5] (2:03:00 - 2:03:03)
What about a pickup where it's more rolling? How will that be?

[Speaker 2] (2:03:04 - 2:03:26)
So in the morning, as the kids are coming in, we would expect the crossing guard would wait on the far side. Obviously, there are going to be kids that might walk in either direction, but we would want to locate the crossing guard on the far side where most of the kids are coming up so that they can hold the kids there and then periodically stop the cars and let the kids go.

[Speaker 5] (2:03:26 - 2:03:39)
So sort of the opposite of the way it works now, because right now I drive off to Stanley every morning and kind of like Angela said, every time a kid or a parent walks up, the cars have to stop. But you're saying it's more going to be the opposite, that cars will flow through.

[Speaker 2] (2:03:39 - 2:03:45)
Yeah, they want to hold them into a group of kids and then stop the cars and let that group across.

[Speaker 3] (2:03:45 - 2:03:48)
It will be, in that way, will be orchestrated.

[Speaker 2] (2:03:48 - 2:03:49)
Right.

[Speaker 1] (2:03:49 - 2:03:58)
It sounds like it's very much so orchestrated. It's going to have to be a precision assembly line. And with little kids, that's the part I would have a tough time with.

[Speaker 3] (2:03:58 - 2:04:33)
But I guess what I would say is this, this is how they do it at all the other elementary schools. You guys had a very different situation here. And because of your extreme neighborhood traffic issues, this was really the best approach for the whole.

But I'd also, I wanted to go back just for a second to the human factor thing. And there's differences. I mean, little kids, human factor, safety, that's the most important thing.

[Speaker 1] (2:04:33 - 2:04:34)
It is, yeah.

[Speaker 3] (2:04:34 - 2:04:52)
But when it comes to the timing of it, it's my understanding, Rebecca, that that is when you're talking about the queuing, the kids getting out for an elementary school, and how that works, that's built into your timing. That's part of, I mean, when you do queuing calculations, you have, that's part of your structure and your timing.

[Speaker 2] (2:04:53 - 2:04:53)
It is, yeah.

[Speaker 3] (2:04:54 - 2:05:31)
In that little way, I just wanted to make a point that the timing is built, the human factor of the kids getting out and knowing that they're different ages, if it takes time, is built into those numbers. It's the orchestration of this. If Pam were here, and that would actually be good, I know that she talks about how to get that orchestrated and how to make that all work and how much care they're going to take in that.

But that's going to be a human, that's going to be a lot about how the school functions and how they do that. Because things do cross each other. I wish they didn't, but they do.

[Speaker 1] (2:05:32 - 2:06:30)
And like you said, there's only so much, I mean, with this site, it's challenging because you have a lot of little roads. Like, for example, there's another 900-student school out in, like, I don't know, Acton-Boxborough, some regional school, but they have this massive campus, and they have all these kinds of roads, and they've got everything they need to move people around. Unfortunately for us, we don't have that.

So it's really tricky. It's really tricky just being able to... That's my biggest concern, is it's not going to be as organized as you think.

These are 720 kids. They're kids. Even the fourth graders, they're little kids, and they see their friends, they get distracted, they're on the swings, they're on the bikes.

It's going to be a huge challenge with the queuing and the timing and the crossing and all of that. So...

[Speaker 7] (2:06:30 - 2:06:31)
Can I ask a question?

[Speaker 1] (2:06:31 - 2:06:32)
Please.

[Speaker 7] (2:06:32 - 2:06:45)
So I kind of want to distill that thought into a question, which I think you brought up, is that other districts have a precision watch version like this for pickups and drop-offs?

[Speaker 3] (2:06:45 - 2:07:13)
Well, some are actually more stacked and more... When we were first looking at some of the examples, I didn't like them because there were too many cars stacked all at once and all of that. It felt to me like no matter what, we always wanted cars to come and others to be able to get by.

Because a lot of times what happens, you don't want to stop everything by having cars, and then there's no way out. You always want to be able to drive by and get out. So you answer this.

You have the experience.

[Speaker 2] (2:07:13 - 2:08:16)
Yeah. So, I mean, every school is a little bit different, but we've seen some schools that are, you know, very precision and everybody is off the campus within 15 minutes, and then other ones where we're coming in and doing these safer school assessments because it takes them over an hour to get their kids off campus. You brought up the Acton-Boxborough school.

That's actually one that GPI has been working on for a long time, working on that traffic flow and, you know, their busing routes and all of that as well. There are amazingly efficient ways to make things work, and I know you mentioned the kindergartener kids, and it takes a long time to get them out. It is anticipated that there will need to be aides there to help the kids get out of the car.

We do not expect that this is just going to happen by some miracle that everyone is just going to get out of their cars in 30 seconds. There will need to be aides ready there to help move the kids out of the cars, particularly for those younger ones that are going to need assistance.

[Speaker 3] (2:08:16 - 2:09:26)
I think it's interesting the dichotomy here is the old way was that parents parked all over the place in the chaotic way, but the beauty was that each of the children, well, either they let them run through or they escorted them all the way in as a parent escorts them in. So you have all these adults escorting them, and this is kind of different where the teachers, like most drop-off situations, even with my own kids, the teachers are there, they go out and they have assignments, and even in the afternoon when they call names or whatever, and they orchestrate and they come up with their system for how this works the very best. And I know that Pam is, she is not naive to this.

She is dedicated, I know if you were here, she's dedicated to making this function well, and she's very open-minded to the idea of having different dismissals and whatever it takes, scheduling-wise, to make this flow the best. And she's admitted that if it needs to be improved and tweaked, you improve and tweak it. But the overall thing has to function.

[Speaker 1] (2:09:26 - 2:10:19)
So I have no doubt that she has every intention of, I've known her for a long time, and she was the principal at Stanley when my kid was there, and I know how important this is to her. So there's no question there. I still think that if you've got a situation where the kids are just a little out of, they're not being little soldiers on the edge of the crosswalk and they're running around and cars are getting kind of jammed up, I mean, it's too late to fix the crosswalk situation.

You can't go back and say, oh shoot, how are we going to fix this? Because then that's not going to work, I don't think.

[Speaker 3] (2:10:19 - 2:11:20)
They can make rules about the playground or field use before school. They can try that. They may not have to.

I know that during the day they intend to close off that whole area with cones so when the gate's closed after drop-off, they intend to put some cones there, like a mini-gate, so that cars can only loop around and go back out and not drive through, and that way the kids can all day long go through there safely and there's just nothing else going on. So they've thought about it, but until it's actually functioning and they get the kinks out, I think there will be issues to look at, and all we can do is be as efficient, as focused, as safe as we can in this condition.

[Speaker 1] (2:11:20 - 2:11:33)
Of course. Have you thought about doing any kind of computer-generated modeling, some AI type of stuff, so we could actually look at stuff happening in real time, like let's look at what could happen?

[Speaker 2] (2:11:34 - 2:13:33)
We have, yeah, and so we use computer modeling programs. Synchro analysis is what we use, and that gives us a very good picture of what the delays, the queues, things like that will be on the streets, and it takes pedestrian and bicycle inputs, on-street parking inputs, all that stuff goes into it, but to be able to create the type of model that you're talking of, like a 3D visualization, costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to put that together for the scale of this, and we looked at it, we considered it, but we didn't think it was worth the town's money to spend that much money to create this picture and collect all the data.

The program that we have, although it may not create that pretty picture, it does a very good job of analyzing what the traffic impacts will be and how we can improve things, and a lot of the pedestrian safety stuff comes a lot out of common sense, thinking about where are pedestrians going to want to cross, what are their desire lines going to be. We could create a pedestrian route that went out around the parking lot, but who would walk there? No one.

The kids would just walk right up the middle of the road. So knowing that kids are going to take the shortest path, we wanted to find a way to create a crossing that can be as safe as possible, and that's why we located it between the loading area and the sacked cars so that cars aren't moving. It's an organized place for the kids to gather right near the front doors and cross them to either the one that goes across to the parking lot and then continues out to Whitman Road, or there's the one that goes to the play space, which David mentioned that area can be closed off during the day so that no cars go through there and the kids can go back and forth.

[Speaker 3] (2:13:35 - 2:13:41)
It doesn't look so in this diagram, but these are eight-foot wide crosswalks?

[Speaker 2] (2:13:42 - 2:13:50)
No, actually, I think they're ten-foot wide crosswalks. Yes, ten-foot wide. And they're raised up.

[Speaker 3] (2:13:50 - 2:13:54)
And the walkways are eight, right?

[Speaker 2] (2:13:54 - 2:13:56)
The actual crosswalk.

[Speaker 3] (2:13:56 - 2:13:57)
No, I'm just asking are there walkways.

[Speaker 2] (2:13:57 - 2:14:03)
The sidewalks. Oh, the sidewalks. Are they eight or are they ten?

[Speaker 4] (2:14:03 - 2:14:09)
I think they're eight. Remember, we moved it in to have the buffer on the landscape side. No, we just moved it all in.

[Speaker 1] (2:14:10 - 2:14:13)
So how big are they? I believe they're eight.

[Speaker 3] (2:14:13 - 2:14:22)
So what's interesting about that is like eight feet, wow, but that's so that the kids can be nudgy and because a bike can kind of scoot by.

[Speaker 1] (2:14:22 - 2:14:24)
Right, it's a baby carriage, a kid, and a dog.

[Speaker 3] (2:14:24 - 2:14:34)
So we did that for safety as well. But it's weird because when you look at this site plan, you don't really get a sense of that kind of scale like that, wow, that's a really wide thing.

[Speaker 1] (2:14:34 - 2:14:42)
How wide is the road here? Because I don't see any. You know, it's just that it's tiny and perhaps I can't read it.

[Speaker 4] (2:14:42 - 2:14:43)
The Whitman Drive?

[Speaker 1] (2:14:44 - 2:14:51)
Well, actually, Whitman Road, but really where the crosswalk is in front of each of the schools, how wide is the road at that point?

[Speaker 4] (2:14:51 - 2:14:53)
I believe it is 24 feet.

[Speaker 1] (2:14:53 - 2:15:04)
24 feet tops. And is there a sidewalk? The sidewalk only goes, it doesn't look like the sidewalk extends to the crosswalk, but this must be all concrete here.

[Speaker 3] (2:15:05 - 2:15:15)
Yeah, it is. It becomes more of a plaza. We actually created, thinking like you, we created an area there in front of the playground and everywhere for kind of this kind of like queuing.

[Speaker 1] (2:15:16 - 2:15:17)
Yeah, for them to sort of gang up.

[Speaker 4] (2:15:18 - 2:15:25)
So that's like 30 feet wide. It's shown as green, but it's really, it's walk. It's walk.

[Speaker 1] (2:15:26 - 2:15:29)
Yeah, okay. So 24 feet, that's, yeah.

[Speaker 3] (2:15:29 - 2:15:49)
I kind of like the idea, you know, when you bring that up, I like the idea of nodes, creating places on either side where there's a little more space for the kids to be nudgy and to collect before they are asked to walk across and all of that kind of stuff. It just seems like a nice idea.

[Speaker 1] (2:15:49 - 2:16:27)
So 24 feet wide, and if you have to go into two lanes, okay, we're looking at, you know, we're looking at a pretty narrow road really, whether it's just, you know, cars pulling out, whether it's kind of moving the pods in and out. I mean, if we were doing a subdivision, for example, we'd want a road, you know, 44 feet wide, okay? So it's just from safety standpoints and so forth and curb radii and, you know, the fire truck's going to make a corner.

It's not always going to. I don't even know. We haven't gotten to that yet.

I'm not sure how they're going to get in and out and back around. Maybe there is plenty of room there.

[Speaker 2] (2:16:28 - 2:16:34)
One thing to know is this is one-way, though. So typically for a one-way road, you want at least 16 feet.

[Speaker 1] (2:16:35 - 2:16:39)
But there are two lanes here. So you've got to go around the lanes.

[Speaker 2] (2:16:39 - 2:16:45)
But they're side-by-side, and it's not really a road, per se. I mean, we don't want people driving fast.

[Speaker 1] (2:16:45 - 2:16:49)
They are going to try to pull out and go around the car in front of them.

[Speaker 2] (2:16:50 - 2:16:52)
Actually, we don't want them to do that.

[Speaker 5] (2:16:52 - 2:16:55)
Is it sort of like a double-striped line sort of idea?

[Speaker 2] (2:16:55 - 2:17:23)
Right. So we want them to be kind of pulling up in groups. So there's going to be the groups that is about to load.

They're all going to pull up together. Be stopped. No one will be released until the kids are safely in the car.

That group will flow out, and the next group will be allowed in. That's for the afternoon anyway. Yeah, so you're talking about the morning as people are pulling to the curb.

And then you've got doors opening on both sides and stuff. Yeah, so in the morning, you would have kind of like a bypass area.

[Speaker 1] (2:17:23 - 2:17:30)
You've got a driver's door open, kiddie door open in the back. It's just my concern about that. I think the road's too narrow.

[Speaker 5] (2:17:30 - 2:17:41)
So if you had two cars next to each other, you will have two cars next to each other both opening their doors. But I'm just trying to think of practically how much – how wise it is to open a door.

[Speaker 2] (2:17:41 - 2:18:08)
Yeah, so if you think about like an on-street parking space, it can be as small as 7 feet, but typically the design is 8 feet for an on-street parking up against a 12-foot travel lane. So we're talking about a 12-foot and a 12-foot. So you have more than the width of a typical parking lane.

So that's going to give you extra space to open your doors. If you think of a parking space where you would be like parallel parking, that's a 9-foot.

[Speaker 1] (2:18:08 - 2:18:12)
Yeah, 9 by 18. And I'm assuming that's what these are.

[Speaker 2] (2:18:12 - 2:18:21)
So a 12-foot space for loading is perfectly large enough and still be able to safely maneuver in and out to be able to get onto the road.

[Speaker 11] (2:18:22 - 2:18:25)
What does Stanley do now? Do people drive in?

[Speaker 15] (2:18:25 - 2:18:25)
No.

[Speaker 11] (2:18:26 - 2:18:26)
Nobody drives in at all?

[Speaker 5] (2:18:26 - 2:18:31)
Unless you're faculty or you have like a special dispensation, you cannot drive onto the property.

[Speaker 11] (2:18:31 - 2:18:42)
You can't. You're not allowed to. So two of the other three schools do it in the public street right now.

They have a queuing up Reddington and Hampton, Ellis, and Norfolk.

[Speaker 3] (2:18:43 - 2:19:13)
I can't imagine that this is – I just have to – I'm pushing back a little bit. But considering the situations that you have at Clark but at Hadley right now on that street with the cars backing up through the entire neighborhood, no place, people parking everywhere, and here the way it is right now, people parking throughout the streets and blocking people's driveways and all this stuff and all the kids crossing wherever they're coming. It's chaos.

[Speaker 5] (2:19:14 - 2:19:29)
The worst-case scenario with this plan, the new plan, is better than what's happening now. Like the fact that occasionally in bad weather, some queues are going to back up into the neighborhood. Today, every car that comes to Stanley is parking in the neighborhood.

[Speaker 1] (2:19:29 - 2:19:34)
So these are queues to get into the site. You're backed up.

[Speaker 5] (2:19:35 - 2:19:43)
Yeah, but there's queues now to find parking. There's queues now to find a place to park because there's not enough on-street parking in the neighborhood for the people that are dropping off.

[Speaker 1] (2:19:43 - 2:19:48)
What if we could reduce the volume of cars coming in? So that's where the whole bussing idea comes in.

[Speaker 3] (2:19:48 - 2:20:01)
Right now we have two buses that are required and they're paid for. And in the future, you've done bussing studies. How many kids on a bus?

60 to 75?

[Speaker 2] (2:20:01 - 2:20:04)
Yeah, the capacity is 70 for a typical bus.

[Speaker 3] (2:20:04 - 2:20:33)
Real capacity? Yeah. Imagine in the future, if this is something that the town can get behind, because obviously it costs money to add buses.

Every time you do that, you've taken, say, 65 kids and cars off the list. It's amazing. And it's something to really, really consider.

So this is with a two-mile radius?

[Speaker 2] (2:20:33 - 2:20:44)
This is based on the two-mile. We need to get more cars off the list. It's a mandated by law.

There are lots of options to get more buses off the area.

[Speaker 5] (2:20:44 - 2:20:48)
And that's two buses at the two-mile radius? How many buses would it be to serve the 1.5-mile radius?

[Speaker 2] (2:20:48 - 2:20:51)
Five buses to serve the 1.5-mile.

[Speaker 1] (2:20:51 - 2:22:24)
And we still have some. Well, the 1.5 still has. We looked at those charts before, but I can show them.

It doesn't matter. They're in the traffic plan. But it still has a considerable number of households, literally on the other side of the railroad and the other side of Paradise Road that are going to have to drive.

So I just mentioned just briefly to you today, and I don't know if this is something the town would even consider, but it's just an idea because busing is outrageously expensive. We don't have a lot of room for a ton of buses on site. So if they were to do stuff like, for example, if you had sort of a smaller bus and you had a bunch of households that were in one of those dense locations where we can't get the buses even into the streets to pick up all the kids, if, for example, you had a bus like a group pickup behind Phillips Park, like where the playground is, nice and safe, off the street, all the parents that are going to try to go up in queue from a certain group of parents that need to drive their kids, they can get into that area. There's a group that kind of clusters there. They're well off the road, safe place to go.

And then the bus is there, and they get on the bus, and those parents take off. I mean, I don't know if that's an equally expensive scenario. I have no idea.

[Speaker 5] (2:22:24 - 2:22:25)
This just becomes a town finance thing, right?

[Speaker 1] (2:22:26 - 2:22:36)
It's going to cost us one way or the other. When we look at the improvements we're going to have to do on the roads just to try to make this thing better, maybe there's some other solutions for it. So easy solutions.

[Speaker 2] (2:22:37 - 2:22:42)
As far as the improvements on the road, a lot of those are for safety.

[Speaker 1] (2:22:42 - 2:22:43)
Oh, absolutely.

[Speaker 2] (2:22:43 - 2:23:17)
I understand that. Pedestrian and vehicle access. So if you actually look at the improvements, other than the slight widening at Orchard Circle and Humphrey Street, there's really none that are building more capacity into the roadway.

They're all focused on making it safer for the kids to walk and bike. So no matter what busing scenario that you do, you're going to still need those improvements. What would change is how much queuing you might potentially have back onto the neighborhood streets and whether you need to have one dismissal period or two dismissal periods.

[Speaker 1] (2:23:18 - 2:23:39)
I think these sort of things have to get played out because as it stands right now, and I don't know if you guys have had a chance to go through, look through all the final numbers, but it's massive congestion.

[Speaker 11] (2:23:39 - 2:24:05)
It certainly is. It's three times as much as each of the other schools, but the other schools have far more challenges. So when you combine everything in one school, I think they've gone a long way to allow a lot of those cars in there.

Certainly what you see at Clark in the morning and Hadley in the morning is far more dangerous. I think we can agree with that. And you could do that but take away the play field.

These are the options. These are the tradeoffs. That's what we've got.

We've got that square.

[Speaker 5] (2:24:06 - 2:24:16)
And a bus might happen in the future if the town can figure out a way to make it happen financially, but we can't plan for that because we can't plan for it one way.

[Speaker 7] (2:24:17 - 2:24:18)
Is there queuing for five buses on this site?

[Speaker 3] (2:24:19 - 2:25:42)
There is. There is. Well, what we did was that aside is that so we could, in the end, we could stack buses alongside each other on the side there in a way that you could put more.

This is how you work, right? You plan for that. You plan for something good to happen like that.

So you set it up so that you can accommodate the buses. Yes, you can have two layers of buses. What they do is they do lines and they stagger them, and the kids just go out and they get on the buses, and once all the buses are filled, then they leave because that's only in the afternoon when they do that.

I would say that we hired the best person we could, and we've learned a lot. I don't know if this is the most challenging thing. You worked in Watertown, and Watertown is as congested and more people than here, and you solved problems.

You look at it very, we listened to neighbors when they talked about people parking on the streets and the danger and all those things. We tried to resolve many situations. The biggest thing that I know we did was we learned that this is a whole place, not just on site.

[Speaker 1] (2:25:43 - 2:25:44)
Absolutely.

[Speaker 3] (2:25:44 - 2:27:26)
We can look on site, but what we've done, and other people have followed suit, is look at the entire area as a whole, and that is a testament to your town, who hasn't always been able to do that sort of thing. I think you're improving things, and I think that this school can and will work really well, and I think that these issues or these concerns you have are real concerns, but they will be, there are numbers involved, and then there's the idea of how does it function and how does it play out and how does it work, and that has to do with the commitment of the school and the parents and the training and all of that, and whenever I say, you know, we have to train people to drive well, everybody does roll their eyes and get scared to death of each other, but I will say that this is, in the last two years looking at it, this is the best plan we've come up with, and if there are tweaks that we can make on site to make it better, we will do it, but we feel like this is a real plan. Now, does it have effects?

Does it have effects to have more cars in the area? It does. It actually just moves some of the, when you talked about those zones, the capacity, the level of service areas, it actually just moves a couple of them around from what I could tell, but there are more cars at the same time, and then you have to ask yourself about the middle school versus the lowest school, and it's really a matter of scheduling.

[Speaker 1] (2:27:26 - 2:27:27)
It is.

[Speaker 3] (2:27:27 - 2:27:28)
More than anything else.

[Speaker 1] (2:27:28 - 2:27:33)
Well, there's also the issue with the middle school is that the kids are older. I mean, the kids are older.

[Speaker 3] (2:27:33 - 2:27:33)
Yeah.

[Speaker 1] (2:27:33 - 2:27:47)
I never, you know, I don't know about, most people, well, I don't know, maybe if you live really far away, you get a ride to school when you're in middle school, but I don't know, maybe, you know, I didn't, anyway, it doesn't matter a lot.

[Speaker 3] (2:27:47 - 2:27:55)
Did you drive, like, when my kids were in kindergarten, I drove them, I dropped them off, they got out of the car, and I drove away.

[Speaker 1] (2:27:55 - 2:27:58)
No, I'd walk them up to the door when he was that little.

[Speaker 3] (2:27:58 - 2:27:59)
See, I think that's...

[Speaker 1] (2:27:59 - 2:28:01)
I walked him to school for a long time.

[Speaker 3] (2:28:01 - 2:28:04)
I know. We didn't have that problem. Well, you were able to, and you could if you were...

[Speaker 1] (2:28:04 - 2:28:08)
Then he rode his bike with his friends when he was older, and they'd go bombing up for us to have extension.

[Speaker 3] (2:28:08 - 2:28:09)
Which they still will.

[Speaker 1] (2:28:09 - 2:28:10)
Which has no sidewalks.

[Speaker 3] (2:28:10 - 2:28:11)
And it still doesn't.

[Speaker 1] (2:28:11 - 2:28:13)
Which, you know, it never will, but...

[Speaker 3] (2:28:13 - 2:28:19)
So, we all have... This isn't a conversation between the two of us, but we all have...

[Speaker 1] (2:28:19 - 2:29:08)
I think it's an important conversation to have, just, you know, just to... And Rebecca knows that I've been more than... I couldn't be more...

I mean, I've told you, I told Max, and, you know, I did go through this really thoroughly. I'm just incredibly impressed by... I mean, it's thorough.

She didn't miss anything. And it's, you know, I really... I really appreciate that.

And I just have, you know... You can't change the reality, you know. But the work you did was, you know, without...

It's like, you know, there's no... I couldn't ask for anything else. It's complete.

It has all the information you could possibly want to look at. You can't make those numbers any better just by willing it to be that way. I mean, it's just...

It's gonna be what it's gonna be, so...

[Speaker 5] (2:29:08 - 2:29:11)
Can I just ask a logistical question about the staggered drop-off?

[Speaker 2] (2:29:12 - 2:29:12)
Sure.

[Speaker 5] (2:29:13 - 2:29:15)
Yeah, the staggered dismissal times, I mean.

[Speaker 2] (2:29:15 - 2:29:16)
Dismissal, yeah.

[Speaker 5] (2:29:17 - 2:29:32)
And I'm just thinking for myself selfishly. Do you have a kid in the lower school and a kid in the upper school in the lower school that's out 15 minutes early? Will that child be, like, held back to dismiss with the upper school students?

[Speaker 2] (2:29:32 - 2:29:42)
They will, yeah. So it's assumed they'll likely go into the cafetorium that's kind of in the center of the school and wait a little bit there to meet their older brother. That makes sense.

That makes sense.

[Speaker 3] (2:29:42 - 2:29:48)
And then the buses, yeah. I guess the buses would all wait until the upper students...

[Speaker 2] (2:29:48 - 2:30:02)
The buses will all wait until both are released because the lower school is on the opposite side anyway from where the buses are gonna be loading, so that gives those younger kids time to get down to the buses and get loaded on and everything as well.

[Speaker 14] (2:30:03 - 2:30:04)
I have a sidewalk question.

[Speaker 13] (2:30:04 - 2:31:58)
Please. So I've done a lot of school projects, especially in my elementary school and middle school, and the biggest concern is really after you do a school, everybody's concern is traffic. So it's a lot of learning curve.

So, for example, in Revere, Lexington is a middle school. When we opened the school, the district, usually they put a lot of the cross drive, like double up, and the first week is the most challenging. It's a learning curve.

People, you know, they have to literally teach a parent how to drop off the kids, like walk them over. I understand your concern, and it's a learning curve. And after the second week or the third week is very successful, people know what to do.

Like, they don't, like, run over across the street. They have to go through the crosswalk. But I think it's a good learning curve.

But looking at the drawing, I think we did a great job. I think it's gonna be every project, it's gonna be a learning curve at the end of the project. So we'll work with the school superintendent.

Even before, you know, school open, we'll have a dry run on the bus and have, you know, people driving through the school. You know, that's what we've been doing in the past, and it's very successful, but it's always a challenge in the first two weeks. And it's a learning curve for everybody.

And, you know, not only elementary school, middle school, high school. But I understand your concern, and especially Swamp Spot has a very tight site. But I think looking at the flow, it's gonna be a learning curve, and we'll work closely.

[Speaker 7] (2:31:59 - 2:32:10)
So I think it bears repeating, because I think you touched on it before. Obviously, this has been discussed at length with the school leaders, and they are aware of the plan and are buying into this plan, right? Right.

Right, so...

[Speaker 3] (2:32:10 - 2:32:11)
You had a question? Yeah.

[Speaker 7] (2:32:11 - 2:32:17)
Yeah, just out of curiosity, the sidewalks closest to the entrance to the upper and lower school, those are raised.

[Speaker 5] (2:32:18 - 2:32:24)
The one just north of the parking, the major parking lot, that's not raised? The crosswalk.

[Speaker 4] (2:32:24 - 2:32:26)
The crosswalk, I'm sorry, not sidewalk, the crosswalk.

[Speaker 2] (2:32:27 - 2:32:29)
The one all the way down towards Whitman?

[Speaker 4] (2:32:30 - 2:32:33)
Yeah. Richard? From the perimeter of Buffett.

[Speaker 15] (2:32:33 - 2:32:35)
Yeah, right where that is, yeah.

[Speaker 2] (2:32:35 - 2:32:36)
It could be.

[Speaker 4] (2:32:37 - 2:32:39)
Is there a reason why? I'm just curious.

[Speaker 7] (2:32:39 - 2:32:43)
I'm not suggesting it should be, per se. It should be. I was gonna say the same thing.

[Speaker 3] (2:32:43 - 2:32:56)
Okay. I guess it should be, only because, I mean, if we're doing it to slow traffic, everyone coming to the site is probably coming slow. That's a very logical suggestion.

Every once in a while I have that, so I appreciate that comment.

[Speaker 7] (2:32:56 - 2:32:57)
Well, Ted, on your point...

[Speaker 3] (2:32:57 - 2:32:58)
Well, I don't hear...

[Speaker 7] (2:32:59 - 2:33:15)
I had a couple more crosswalks I saw. So, like, when folks are exiting the other way, right, and they're going out of the UU parking lot, there's a crosswalk that crosses that traffic zone. Right.

And that should also be raised, I would say. It's gonna be the same 50% volume of cars.

[Speaker 4] (2:33:15 - 2:33:29)
So that one will have a crossing guard. And the grading doesn't really, and the nature of that site doesn't really allow it, because it would create a dam. Well, that's a good reason not to do that.

[Speaker 15] (2:33:30 - 2:33:30)
There you go.

[Speaker 4] (2:33:31 - 2:33:38)
And that site has a very specific vibe, right, that we're trying not to interrupt. Fair enough.

[Speaker 1] (2:33:38 - 2:33:48)
And did I understand that you actually were gonna move that crosswalk down a little bit, or is that not happening? I thought maybe it was sitting in a wetland or something. That's a con-con thing.

[Speaker 4] (2:33:48 - 2:33:49)
It's a con-con thing.

[Speaker 1] (2:33:49 - 2:33:50)
I don't need to know.

[Speaker 4] (2:33:50 - 2:34:03)
And actually, just, it helps to... There's only one crosswalk that's in conflict over on the UU site. The other one is before...

We're moving the students before the traffic over to the school site.

[Speaker 15] (2:34:03 - 2:34:04)
Yeah, it was just the one.

[Speaker 4] (2:34:04 - 2:34:06)
Yeah, it's on the western side.

[Speaker 3] (2:34:06 - 2:34:59)
I mean, right now, people park... Right now, people park on Forest Ave extension all up down the street and drive everybody crazy. The kids get out and then back up, and they try to turn around.

Right now, people drive into the Unitarian lot, and they park all over the place in the hand. They park their car, and they're not supposed to. And they do all that, and they bring their kids in.

Right now, people park all over the place. And we're trying to bring some order to it. I personally believe it's a lot safer, and all of the tendrils that are coming out are going to be much safer for all of the children.

And we've taken it really, really seriously. And if there are things we can do on site to continue to tweak and make it better, we will do them for safety of kids.

[Speaker 5] (2:34:59 - 2:35:08)
In a way, this formalizes kind of what's already happening but applies safety precautions to it, and applies crosswalks, and applies crossing guards.

[Speaker 3] (2:35:08 - 2:35:20)
A lot of people don't. I'll tell you, a lot of towns don't go past their site. They want kids to walk, and they don't make it safe for them to get there or a way for them to get there, and you're doing that.

[Speaker 1] (2:35:21 - 2:35:56)
Right. Well, we're bringing so much more volume there. I mean, I think it's not only do I think we're doing the right thing, you know, making it really safe.

And this is another question, and I don't know whether Peter, Mr. Spalios can answer, or Suzanne, you might know. But in terms of all the other improvements around town, has the town agreed to do those, and are they committed to them? I mean, that I just wasn't clear on, because I know that's not part of the full project per se, even though you've included it.

[Speaker 8] (2:35:56 - 2:36:25)
Angela, I can speak to that a little bit. You know, we look at the off-site improvements as integral to this site and have every intention of having those completed with the school site. The one exception that is going to take a little bit more looking into and may not happen in the exact same sequence is the improvements down at the intersection of Humphrey and Atlantic and the third road there.

Well, it's Humphrey and Atlantic, really.

[Speaker 1] (2:36:25 - 2:36:31)
And Forest Ave. Extension, is that what you mean? Yes. Okay.

All right. So...

[Speaker 8] (2:36:31 - 2:36:41)
Angela, one other thing I just want to mention, and not to shut the conversation down, but just to be cognizant of the time and taking public comment at some point.

[Speaker 1] (2:36:41 - 2:36:44)
I was just about to do that, but thanks for the reminder.

[Speaker 8] (2:36:45 - 2:36:46)
I have one more question before you go.

[Speaker 1] (2:36:46 - 2:36:50)
Yes. I'd like to make sure the board is done with their questions.

[Speaker 5] (2:36:50 - 2:36:53)
Has it been mapped out where crossing guards are going to be on this site yet?

[Speaker 15] (2:36:54 - 2:36:56)
Like which crosswalks are they going to be?

[Speaker 2] (2:36:56 - 2:37:06)
The two closest to the school? So all the ones that you see on the site shown up here, those three, would all have crossing guards located at them.

[Speaker 12] (2:37:07 - 2:37:08)
The one we just talked about?

[Speaker 2] (2:37:08 - 2:37:47)
The one that's over on the UU Church would have one. At Forest and Laurel, there would be one. And down at Whitman Road, where it meets Orchard, obviously right at the front door.

The other two locations where we would expect would very likely have a traffic control officer, so not a crossing guard, but an actual police officer out there directing traffic because of the heavy volume and the type of traffic being controlled, would be out on Humphrey Street itself at the intersection with Orchard Circle and Orchard Road, as it's controlling traffic coming in and out of the school.

[Speaker 1] (2:37:47 - 2:37:49)
Orchard Circle, Red Palmer, where those two...

[Speaker 2] (2:37:49 - 2:37:52)
Orchard Circle and Palmer, and then Orchard Road and Atlantic.

[Speaker 1] (2:37:52 - 2:37:53)
There's a crossing guard there now.

[Speaker 2] (2:37:53 - 2:38:27)
Right. So we would expect that that likely will need to be a traffic control officer that would be located at those locations. And that's partly for the 10-year projection of maximum enrollment, where we're looking at some pretty poor levels of service in terms of the level of service after the amount of delay and the queues get long there.

So having that officer there helps to make sure that it's not going to back up all the way back to the school and create this gridlocking situation that we don't want to have happen.

[Speaker 15] (2:38:28 - 2:38:28)
Thanks.

[Speaker 7] (2:38:28 - 2:38:30)
I have three questions.

[Speaker 2] (2:38:30 - 2:38:30)
Please.

[Speaker 7] (2:38:31 - 2:38:46)
The first one is back to Max. Those off-site improvements, except for the Humphrey Street intersection, when will those happen? Will they happen concurrently with this project?

And is the review period part of this project's process, or will there be a separate public meeting about those?

[Speaker 8] (2:38:47 - 2:39:11)
Well, I mean, I can't give a specific date as to when it would happen, but I can say that it would happen for the opening of the new school. So in that respect, it would be concurrent. And I think that the expectation is, and I'm not certain of this, but the review, I think, is also concurrent with this project.

[Speaker 7] (2:39:11 - 2:39:16)
So technically, I mean, technically, the board should be reviewing those plans for those streets, too.

[Speaker 10] (2:39:17 - 2:39:17)
I'm sorry?

[Speaker 7] (2:39:17 - 2:39:23)
Technically, the board should be reviewing the plan for those other street improvements as part of this, even though they're not on site, technically.

[Speaker 15] (2:39:23 - 2:39:24)
I agree.

[Speaker 7] (2:39:24 - 2:39:24)
Yeah.

[Speaker 11] (2:39:26 - 2:39:28)
I don't know. So that's infrastructure, right?

[Speaker 1] (2:39:28 - 2:39:31)
Yes, but it all has to do with the traffic and everything.

[Speaker 11] (2:39:31 - 2:39:35)
Yeah, so it's DPW. I don't think it's off this site.

[Speaker 1] (2:39:35 - 2:39:39)
Well, I think that those are things that we can certainly comment on.

[Speaker 8] (2:39:39 - 2:39:40)
Yeah, we can comment on.

[Speaker 5] (2:39:40 - 2:39:44)
If we hadn't included it, we couldn't really have said you need to do these off-site improvements.

[Speaker 8] (2:39:45 - 2:40:12)
I think, you know, the detail on the off-site improvements, we've given kind of a big picture of them to think of them as how they're impacting the traffic on the site. But there is further detail that can be developed, and there could be a possibility that they would need to come back if they were jurisdictional at a point in time. But I don't think you need to think of them as needing the same level of review as the items that we're talking about on the site, just to clarify that.

[Speaker 1] (2:40:13 - 2:40:29)
Everything that's happening around this site has everything to do with how much traffic is pouring into it. So that's, you know, that's why it's important. But I agree.

I mean, just outside of reviewing the plan, we're not going to, you know, it doesn't make sense really to, you know.

[Speaker 3] (2:40:29 - 2:40:57)
Yeah, because this plan has so much, I mean, first of all, there's a schedule, there's milestones, there's all that stuff. And that's its own thing. That's my project, right?

And these other things are things that can be actually done pretty quickly because they're road improvements and sidewalks. And you can, given a couple of years, you've already done some of them and you're not worried about it. I guess selfishly I just want to make a comment on them later.

[Speaker 15] (2:40:58 - 2:41:00)
You wanted to what?

[Speaker 7] (2:41:00 - 2:41:26)
I want to comment on them at some point. Okay. So the other thing is, okay, now we're on site, right?

We're talking about, I read your entire traffic report too, except for all the charts. So that's about only a hundred pages. But the multi-use path, I guess you're calling it, that connects through the sidewalk, from the exterior of the site to the entrance.

You said it was eight feet wide. I mean, technically a multi-use path is like 10 feet wide, right?

[Speaker 2] (2:41:27 - 2:41:30)
So, yeah. So the minimum for a multi-use path is eight feet wide.

[Speaker 7] (2:41:30 - 2:41:57)
Is it eight feet? Yeah. I just would think that 10 feet would be better, obviously, if there's room.

If the design team could look at that as being 10 feet wide, because it's sort of the main path in and out of the site for pedestrians. The big sidewalk on the right, right? Especially if, you know, you have, like Angela said, kids in strollers, dogs, lots of people walking up, little kids toddling on bikes and scooters, 10 feet would be better.

[Speaker 3] (2:41:58 - 2:42:02)
How far back do you go with something like that? I mean, there's a time when it's not.

[Speaker 7] (2:42:03 - 2:42:04)
Yeah, I know.

[Speaker 3] (2:42:04 - 2:42:16)
And then all of a sudden it gets wider. But I have no opinion about eight versus 10. I mean, if it's better, whatever.

But I think that we were just following your suggestion.

[Speaker 4] (2:42:16 - 2:42:17)
Is it the playground side?

[Speaker 2] (2:42:17 - 2:42:21)
Yeah, I was going to ask that. Are you talking about on the playground side or the parking lot?

[Speaker 7] (2:42:21 - 2:42:24)
I was talking, well, whichever one you consider to be the main path.

[Speaker 4] (2:42:24 - 2:42:26)
Probably the playground side.

[Speaker 2] (2:42:26 - 2:42:27)
Yeah, I would consider that.

[Speaker 4] (2:42:27 - 2:42:55)
Okay. I mean, there was a desire to move that sidewalk away from the edge of the traffic and give a little bit of a landscape buffer. Which we did.

That's true. I mean, there's eight feet of pavement, but there's, I think, 10 feet or more of buffer. I mean, it was kind of just a ‑‑ Right, so you could get more width, but you'd be sacrificing safety.

Some grass, I guess.

[Speaker 7] (2:42:55 - 2:42:56)
Well, I mean, it's safety also.

[Speaker 4] (2:42:56 - 2:43:10)
They wanted to move, I think it came from the land, they wanted to move, because that was going to be the main one, they wanted to move the pedestrians away from the curb a little bit. Like a little bit, right? And give them that buffer.

Okay. So it's how you want to use the space.

[Speaker 2] (2:43:11 - 2:43:14)
It is flush with the playground that's immediately next to it too, right?

[Speaker 4] (2:43:15 - 2:43:16)
No, no, playground's above you.

[Speaker 2] (2:43:16 - 2:43:16)
Oh, it is?

[Speaker 4] (2:43:16 - 2:43:23)
Okay. Yeah, so it's like a wall. If you're walking in to the side.

It becomes flush as you go up. Yeah, it becomes flush as you get up.

[Speaker 3] (2:43:23 - 2:43:27)
All those pathways are ADA, you know, one in 20 or less.

[Speaker 7] (2:43:30 - 2:43:56)
Okay, I just know how narrow the sidewalk is getting to the high school, and obviously that's like a five‑foot sidewalk, right? Okay, eight or ten. Eight or ten.

That's just a comment. And then I know you don't have it indicated yet, I don't think, but will there be stop lines at basically each, I'll call it, intersection? So as Whitman Road comes down and then splits two ways, will there be a stop line there and then will be stop lines at either end, I guess, to control the queuing?

[Speaker 2] (2:43:57 - 2:44:03)
So there will be yield lines where the crosswalk is located. They're the ones that are referred to as like shark teeth.

[Speaker 7] (2:44:03 - 2:44:03)
Yeah, yeah.

[Speaker 2] (2:44:03 - 2:44:23)
Yeah, so those will be located there. We hadn't intended to put any type of stop line there because it's all one‑way traffic flow, so traffic doesn't technically need to stop there unless they're yielding to the pedestrians. We can do that if that's desirable.

[Speaker 7] (2:44:23 - 2:44:41)
I was only thinking about it on the main way in because if you're kind of having these folks queue up, right, they're going to have to, I believe, they're going to have to stop while the other areas are queued and loading, right? So technically they're stopped anyway, right?

[Speaker 2] (2:44:42 - 2:44:45)
They will be stopped, but the entire line will be stopped going around the corner.

[Speaker 5] (2:44:45 - 2:44:47)
Yeah, it will not stop at the corner.

[Speaker 7] (2:44:47 - 2:44:48)
They're not stopping there.

[Speaker 5] (2:44:49 - 2:44:57)
Actually, it would be confusing if you stopped halfway up and then you were leading the pack to come in and then you had to stop all of a sudden at the corner.

[Speaker 7] (2:44:57 - 2:44:58)
I guess you're right.

[Speaker 1] (2:44:58 - 2:45:05)
But you're only going to have one drop‑off lane, right? You're not going to have drop‑offs on both lanes.

[Speaker 2] (2:45:05 - 2:45:11)
Correct, yeah. Pickup will be double stacked, but drop‑off is one so that people can do that. Thank you.

[Speaker 7] (2:45:11 - 2:45:22)
Forget that comment. Last tiny comment. If there aren't already, if you put some bike racks by the playground.

I know there's bike racks by the front of the school, but I didn't see any by the playground.

[Speaker 1] (2:45:22 - 2:45:22)
They are there.

[Speaker 12] (2:45:23 - 2:45:23)
Are they?

[Speaker 1] (2:45:23 - 2:45:26)
Yeah. Way, way, way back here.

[Speaker 7] (2:45:26 - 2:45:26)
Okay.

[Speaker 1] (2:45:27 - 2:45:33)
I saw a bike rack here, and I know I saw another one in the back somewhere.

[Speaker 7] (2:45:33 - 2:45:34)
Yeah. At the Baskerville?

[Speaker 5] (2:45:35 - 2:45:38)
There's a bike rack in the back of the school. No, not that one.

[Speaker 7] (2:45:39 - 2:45:42)
I'm talking right next to the main playground.

[Speaker 1] (2:45:43 - 2:45:47)
Yeah, that's a good point. I think that's an excellent point. Absolutely.

[Speaker 7] (2:45:47 - 2:45:49)
I have to say it every meeting.

[Speaker 1] (2:45:49 - 2:45:50)
All right.

[Speaker 3] (2:45:50 - 2:45:54)
Are you a biker? I am. I meant to say it to beat you, too.

[Speaker 1] (2:45:55 - 2:46:15)
Yeah, yeah. Too late, Dave. Okay.

Anything else before we open it up to public comment? No? Okay.

So why don't we close this part then, and Marissa, do we have ‑‑ well, first off, I'm going to turn it to people that are here. Anyone here would like to speak?

[Speaker 6] (2:46:17 - 2:46:18)
Yes, please use the microphone right there.

[Speaker 1] (2:46:19 - 2:46:24)
Just identify who you are, where you live, please. Thanks.

[Speaker 9] (2:46:25 - 2:46:31)
Good evening, everyone. My name is Terry Warber. I live on Forest Ave extension.

I'm also a town meeting member of precinct five. Can you hear me?

[Speaker 3] (2:46:32 - 2:46:32)
Yes. Yes.

[Speaker 9] (2:46:33 - 2:48:18)
Thank you all for your hard work on this difficult site. I think the plan has improved over time. If I could ask that you show the elevations again on the screen, I think that would illustrate the issue that the chair was requesting earlier.

Not that one. Yeah, that one. So, yeah, that shows the cross section that the lead architect was referring to earlier through ‑‑ that's the elevation on both sides.

I know a lot of time and effort has gone into creating two entrances. I'm wondering if a single entrance would not only secure the building more readily, you know, one entrance to watch instead of two, and maybe there's a budgetary issue around the number of security officials, but also would ease drop‑off. You know, we talked, the comment earlier was that parents would be allowed to choose which side to use for drop‑off, depending on where they wanted to egress.

So there might be the case where a lower school parent does not want to drop off their child at the lower school entrance because they want to go out to Whitman. So, again, parent choice being an issue, and maybe forcing everyone to use a single entrance might improve traffic patterns. I don't know, but I'm wondering.

I also think the visualizations would be helpful. Synchro analysis, does the synchro tool have some type of output that could be used to visualize, just numbers. I think maybe I've seen that in the traffic plan.

Is that the result of the incoming and outgoing traffic?

[Speaker 2] (2:48:18 - 2:48:27)
Yeah, so the synchro analysis tool has, it looks like little chicklets moving on the screen kind of thing. Yeah. That's overlaid on the screen.

[Speaker 9] (2:48:27 - 2:51:24)
I think that'd be great, just to show parents what they're getting into. I'm reminded of one of the first town meetings, not town meetings, but community meeting I ever went to prior to the last school vote. It was held at the middle school in the library and was packed with residents up in arms about traffic.

I was the only one there that had walked to the school for that meeting. Everyone else that was there concerned about traffic had driven there. As a prior Stanley parent and a current abutter, I'm not an abutter, in the neighborhood, this leads up to my other question.

Parents, as was mentioned earlier, parents park all over the place. They park on my street, which will be used for emergency access. I'm wondering what would be parking restrictions to ensure emergency access of vehicles on this road?

My wife and I have taken photos, and my neighbors have taken photos to send to public safety about cars blocking the pathway. Excuse me, blocking the roadway at these times. Then, again, the last, and more concerns.

Back to, I think the chair mentioned budgetary changes to expected budgets as part of the criteria for reviewing this plan. Correct me if I'm wrong. I've heard mention of crossing guards, so I know I can think of one at the Stanley site now.

I don't know how many are at the current, the other two elementary schools. How many crossing guards total will be required by this plan? Is that more or less than we have now?

I've heard that school aides will be used to mitigate pick-up and drop-off. How many school aides are used for that purpose now across our three elementary schools will be more or less in the future. We've had this discussion about buses.

Buses require operators, of course, but the bulk of our expenditure is for people in the school district. This is a very expensive building, $100 million, but it's a drop in the bucket compared to our labor force. Additionally, it's also, I've heard police, traffic officers, police officers.

How many officers are on the streets around our elementary schools right now every morning? If we're going to require one for this building, is that part of our budgetary plans in the future? With that being said, I enjoy the use of narrowing roadways, increasing the raised crosswalks to force drivers to slow down.

I do have these concerns. Oh, finally, as a Stanley parent, I do remember all cars queuing on site around that parking lot for drop-off at Stanley School. That has stopped.

I don't know why. Maybe we could bring it back. Was it hard to implement?

Why was it hard to implement? What can we learn from what we did in the past so that we don't make the same mistakes in the future? Thank you very much.

[Speaker 3] (2:51:25 - 2:51:29)
Thanks. May I answer a couple of those? We don't work that way?

[Speaker 1] (2:51:31 - 2:51:31)
No?

[Speaker 15] (2:51:31 - 2:51:32)
Okay.

[Speaker 1] (2:51:32 - 2:51:37)
I think we'd like to get through some questions, but it might...

[Speaker 15] (2:51:37 - 2:51:37)
Okay.

[Speaker 1] (2:51:39 - 2:51:48)
Thank you. Anyone else here that would like to speak? Okay.

Do we have anyone online, Marissa, that wants to speak?

[Speaker 6] (2:51:49 - 2:52:08)
So if there's anyone online joining us via Zoom who would like to voice a public comment, you may do so by using the raise your hand function. Okay, I see a couple. I'm going to call first on Gail Brook.

Brook. Brook, excuse me. Gail Brook.

[Speaker 14] (2:52:09 - 2:53:34)
Gail, yes. Hi. Hi, Gail.

Go ahead. I live in the general neighborhood of this proposed school, so I have comments about the height, because this is a 60-foot-high building built along a secret trail. I think it's basically unacceptable to build a building this high in a residential neighborhood, and it will effectively make that trail through Ewing Woods not a scenic walk at all.

That's my first comment. Second comment is when the cars approach the school, there should be a way for pedestrians to walk to the school without them having to be crossed by a crossing guard, so we ought to be able to figure out a traffic flow that does not involve pedestrians going to the school walking across the traffic flow. And the third comment I want to make is that the traffic from the middle school currently extends as far as the UU church, so we have to look at the dismissal times for the middle school and how traffic is going to flow when there are parents who are going to the middle school and to the elementary school, and I have not heard that addressed tonight.

And those are all the comments I have to make.

[Speaker 6] (2:53:34 - 2:53:46)
Okay, thank you, Gail. Okay, and I believe there was another hand raised, so I'm going to call on Maurice Greenbaum.

[Speaker 12] (2:53:51 - 2:53:52)
Hello.

[Speaker 1] (2:53:53 - 2:53:53)
Hello.

[Speaker 12] (2:53:54 - 2:56:01)
Okay, good, you can hear me. Yes, I can. Yeah, Maurice Greenbaum.

I live on Forest Ave extension, have for 35 years, and just have a couple of questions. First of all, let me congratulate, again, all of the planners for this project and our wonderful planning committee. You guys did a great job tonight, and I think you asked superb questions and raised superb concerns.

So the two questions, a couple of questions. Number one, about the building itself, I haven't heard anything about noise coming out of the building in terms of machinery, et cetera, whether there will be noise at night as well as the day. If somebody could comment on that, I'd appreciate it.

There was also a mention of the lighting and the fact that it will all be going downward. I was not able to appreciate how many lights were on the building. I can't read the figures too well, so if somebody could just comment on that and state whether that would in any way affect the neighbors and in any way affect the wildlife and the vegetation of the Ewing Woods.

And lastly, a question for the person who commented on the intersection of Humphrey, Atlantic, and Forest Ave extension. I'd like to know why that discussion is being delayed on that because I have a significant concern that that is a dangerous intersection if we're going to try to get more pedestrian traffic walking down Forest Avenue, which I believe is one of the desires in this situation. It should be fixed before the school is built, so please comment on that.

Thank you very much.

[Speaker 1] (2:56:01 - 2:56:02)
Thank you.

[Speaker 6] (2:56:09 - 2:56:26)
Do you want me to just make sure that we are all set? So if anyone else has a question or comment to make, please use this opportunity now. I'm seeing none, so I think we are okay.

[Speaker 1] (2:56:30 - 2:58:16)
Okay, so seeing as there weren't many questions, I know there were a couple of issues that Mr. Greenbaum wanted to know about, Dr. Greenbaum wanted to know about. I have no way of answering any of those. I suppose you could summarize for us or we could let someone know about that to get them the information that they need.

At this point, I think what we need to do is to discuss where we think we're at. We're ready to close the public hearing. And go through all the criteria?

Are we at that point? No? All right.

So we'll begin with I think that in terms of the... So we'll just start with the... We can just go through the order that we...

I don't know if I have actually wrote down the order that we went through everything. But why don't we look at the first thing that we looked at was minimizing the volume of cut and fill, then we'll remove trees, remove stone walls, wetland area, vegetation displaced. Do we have any kind of concerns, any compliance issues, anything that we wanted to make a recommendation or comment on there?

[Speaker 7] (2:58:17 - 2:58:22)
Do what Tom says. Yeah, I think that's what it was pretty much.

[Speaker 1] (2:58:22 - 2:59:01)
Yeah. All right, and we had some issues with the... Some more information I'd like to know about the blasting and the crushing of the stone.

That can either... I don't know if I'd put it under that or someplace else. It doesn't...

It might have been the one that has the... Well, this was probably just a good place for me to put that, so I will. And you're going to check on the storm drain situation on Forest Ave extension just to make sure that, you know, the way that it is being designed or it is designed kind of takes that into account and that you're...

Not causing any additional... Comfortable with how... Right.

[Speaker 12] (2:59:02 - 2:59:02)
Yeah.

[Speaker 1] (2:59:02 - 2:59:49)
Okay, so I'm going to make that note. And the blasting crushing note there. We need to get comments on that.

So we can... I'll go through the other ones that we know are a little easier. Minimize the glare from headlights and lighting intrusion.

As far as headlights go, no one seemed to think that that was an issue. Is that correct? The lighting intrusion, I think Dr. Greenbaum brought up an issue about whether or not there was...

You know, how much lighting there was and although I don't know the exact number of fixtures, I don't know that I read that exactly. I think the photometric plan...

[Speaker 5] (2:59:49 - 3:00:02)
I think I understood from the photometric plan, at least as it was described, was that there is essentially no light. Right. A stage of light from the bounds of the site that the measurements were like .02 in whatever scale that is.

[Speaker 1] (3:00:02 - 3:00:31)
And my comment was that I don't know... I think he had asked how many lights and I didn't count how many lights, but I think that what's probably most important is how much is it going to shoot out into the neighborhood. And we can tell from this photometric plan that it stays fairly tight to the building, at least from what I looked at.

Anyone have any concerns about that?

[Speaker 11] (3:00:32 - 3:00:33)
Zero all the way around.

[Speaker 1] (3:00:33 - 3:02:01)
Yeah, that's where it's looking at. That's .7. I don't think we need to. Okay, so we're okay with that.

So there's no issue there. Minimize visual intrusion by controlling the visibility of parking storage or other outdoor service areas. So this is where we talked about the back of the building and, you know, any kind of screening that we might want to consider for the dumpsters and any kind of, oh, let's say, aesthetic improvements that might be made to the retaining wall area around the rear of the site.

Okay. You know, clearly the issue of how tall the building is from the back of it is going to... It's going to be an issue for a lot of people.

Even if the... You know, my feeling is, yeah, it's going to look quite large. And even though it's something that I would find kind of jarring, I don't know that even if you brought it down 10 feet, it would matter.

You know, I think it's going to have the same effect, honestly. And that's just the truth. We were also talking about the part...

[Speaker 5] (3:02:02 - 3:02:17)
Yes, there is a walkway back there, but it is the back of the building for a reason. And, like, it was designed so that it steps away from where the vast majority of people are seeing it. Like, to fit this building on the site, you have to put the height somewhere.

[Speaker 1] (3:02:17 - 3:02:17)
Oh, I understood.

[Speaker 5] (3:02:18 - 3:02:19)
It's there.

[Speaker 1] (3:02:20 - 3:02:24)
And you said the height was, what did you say, 61 feet, I think?

[Speaker 3] (3:02:24 - 3:02:27)
No, no, no, 53 or 4.

[Speaker 1] (3:02:27 - 3:02:28)
Oh, 53 or 4.

[Speaker 3] (3:02:28 - 3:02:33)
People added on some height.

[Speaker 5] (3:02:33 - 3:02:35)
Is that 53 or 4, like the gym bubble?

[Speaker 3] (3:02:35 - 3:02:38)
The very top of the gym, the gym back there.

[Speaker 5] (3:02:38 - 3:02:39)
53, okay.

[Speaker 3] (3:02:39 - 3:02:49)
It's right here. It's 53 feet, 4 inches. 53, 4 inches.

But before that, it's obviously 3-story and then 2-story and on.

[Speaker 1] (3:02:49 - 3:03:07)
Do you anticipate, one thing I didn't ask, and I know the deep boring tests are going to give us a lot of information, but do you have any indication of whether where you plan to put the footings right now, the slab, is going to be where it's going to be, or is there any kind of? Okay.

[Speaker 3] (3:03:08 - 3:03:17)
So you don't think you're going to have to raise it up? There would be no change in the elevation for any of the slabs. Okay, thank you.

No, we're not. That is the height. Okay, thank you.

It was the right height.

[Speaker 1] (3:03:17 - 3:04:44)
Thank you. Let's see. We talked about that.

We talked about the D we did, the obstruction of scenic views we did, minimized glares we did. So minimize unreasonable departure from the character, material, scale of buildings in the vicinity. Well, you know, I have no comment on that.

Okay. So we're not going to include that. Minimize contamination of groundwater from on-site wastewater disposal systems or operations on the premises involving used storage handling containment of hazardous hazardous hazardous substances.

It's getting late. Okay. So this was all about the water running off the site.

This is going to be handled by Concom by, again, this is where I think I had originally put the comment about the blasting, but I think we've already made that. So other than that, any issues? Okay.

Okay. So let's see. That we're under a land use plan.

Ensure compliance with provisions of zoning bylaw, including parking and landscaping. I think from the parking standpoint, we understand that we're under where you're lacking the number of total number of spaces that are really needed on site. There are.

85 Total spaces. I understand. How many are for staff and how many are visitor places?

[Speaker 2] (3:04:44 - 3:04:49)
I'm not sure what the exact breakdown is. David, do you know what that is?

[Speaker 4] (3:04:50 - 3:04:53)
I believe on the diagram.

[Speaker 1] (3:04:54 - 3:05:08)
Okay, great. And so the overflow for staff will be at the middle school, correct? Okay, so we really don't, I didn't have any problems with that parking scenario.

I think that makes them, you know.

[Speaker 7] (3:05:10 - 3:05:28)
My only comment, which you've already talked about, but we didn't talk about in depth tonight, is just the connection for folks to have to walk there. We talked about that the sidewalks are gonna be improved. We have a bike lanes on the road, so we didn't get to review it in depth, but it's just something to note.

[Speaker 1] (3:05:29 - 3:05:29)
Right, and.

[Speaker 7] (3:05:29 - 3:05:38)
Some of those have already been made though, right? Yeah. The sidewalk up, the middle school's on the street, excuse me, middle school's on.

I think so, yeah. That's the one I understand.

[Speaker 2] (3:05:38 - 3:05:41)
Yeah, that was constructed last summer, yep.

[Speaker 1] (3:05:43 - 3:06:11)
Okay, so as far as on-site parking goes and the on-site landscaping, I didn't have anything else to add there other than what we discussed. We did say that maybe we, you know, on-site landscaping, I think the one thing that we thought was important is that there could be some kind of huge erratic or whatever it is, something blasts up and it's this gorgeous shape and you end up using it someplace else.

[Speaker 3] (3:06:11 - 3:06:11)
Use ledge.

[Speaker 1] (3:06:12 - 3:06:13)
Yeah, ledge.

[Speaker 3] (3:06:13 - 3:06:14)
Because it's slumscot.

[Speaker 1] (3:06:14 - 3:06:46)
Right, so if there's any, you know, any opportunities to work some wonderful piece of ledge into the landscaping, that will be, that can be done. Great, okay. Exposed ledge.

Okay, so let's get to the traffic issue then, I think is where we're at. Okay, so maximize pedestrian and vehicular safety both on-site and for access and egress. So I'm gonna let.

[Speaker 7] (3:06:47 - 3:06:49)
I would just have to raise that back sidewalk.

[Speaker 5] (3:06:50 - 3:06:52)
The back crosswalk. I'm sorry, crosswalk, yes.

[Speaker 11] (3:06:53 - 3:06:55)
Do you wanna raise all crosswalks?

[Speaker 5] (3:06:55 - 3:07:06)
Well, no, the two that are listed as raised and then the one out by the entrance. But not the ones on the UU's site, we talked about that.

[Speaker 3] (3:07:06 - 3:07:12)
We're sorry, on Forest Avenue. No, I think this is, in my opinion, this rear one wouldn't necessitate that.

[Speaker 15] (3:07:12 - 3:07:13)
No, back by the service area?

[Speaker 3] (3:07:13 - 3:07:16)
Yeah, the service area. No, not that one, yeah, yeah.

[Speaker 1] (3:07:19 - 3:07:24)
Okay, so to raise that sidewalk, bike rack on the playground area.

[Speaker 7] (3:07:27 - 3:07:36)
We didn't land on the path, but do we want a landscape buffer or do we want a wider path for the kids coming to school?

[Speaker 1] (3:07:36 - 3:07:37)
That's what I was, yeah, where I was going.

[Speaker 5] (3:07:37 - 3:07:48)
My immediate reaction is we want that landscape buffer because we're talking about six-year-old kids running to school and you'd like a barrier from them running into the street. I guess I get it.

[Speaker 11] (3:07:48 - 3:07:52)
Two or three feet of concrete's not gonna make it any safer because they're gonna walk on the grass anyway.

[Speaker 5] (3:07:52 - 3:07:57)
I guess. It gives you more room for more people to walk down side-by-side, certainly.

[Speaker 1] (3:07:57 - 3:08:08)
What about, what if there was the landscape buffer, what if there was some kind of, you know, when we say, if we talk about right on, it's between the sidewalk and the playground, isn't that right?

[Speaker 3] (3:08:08 - 3:08:12)
Between the sidewalk and the street, we have landscape buffer and some trees.

[Speaker 1] (3:08:13 - 3:08:18)
So I was looking at it the other way. I'm looking at this as sidewalk and this as buffer, see what I mean?

[Speaker 5] (3:08:19 - 3:08:25)
No, no, the buffer is, there'll be grass in between where people are walking and where cars are coming in.

[Speaker 3] (3:08:25 - 3:08:46)
Hey, Mike, may I offer something, a different way of looking at it? Kids are small. And I know that sounds funny, but they're smaller than adults.

So even on bikes and walking and all that, they take up a lot, they take up less room. I know that sounds interesting, but it's just something to consider that they are of a different scale.

[Speaker 15] (3:08:47 - 3:08:47)
Yeah, I know.

[Speaker 2] (3:08:47 - 3:09:05)
I was gonna note another thing. So one of the reasons that you would normally provide a 10-foot multi-use path is because you have two-way traffic flow, where the flow for the most part is gonna be everyone going to school and then everyone leaving the school. So you're not gonna have that flow of people trying to cross by each other.

[Speaker 7] (3:09:05 - 3:09:09)
Okay, we can drop this comment. Plus, we have two giant sidewalks. The other one too, right, is also.

[Speaker 2] (3:09:10 - 3:09:12)
We do have the other one too, so there's two options.

[Speaker 7] (3:09:12 - 3:09:12)
That's fine.

[Speaker 1] (3:09:20 - 3:09:27)
Anything else you wanted to say about the traffic? So you're okay with everything else about the traffic study, or are there any concerns or questions?

[Speaker 7] (3:09:30 - 3:09:44)
I had a comment I didn't get to mention. For the kids that are going to the buses, is that experience somehow secondary, or is it a nice experience on that side of the school for them, you know what I mean? Because it's kind of near the service entrance.

[Speaker 3] (3:09:44 - 3:10:07)
Well, what you actually see, so we have to imagine, but if you walk along that edge there, you're actually right next to the whole play area, and there's gonna be buffer and play area right there. So the service area's tucked behind. So if you look at where the buses are, and then there's trees in the house.

So I think that you haven't quite gotten to that spot.

[Speaker 7] (3:10:07 - 3:10:11)
And they wouldn't exit from that side of the building, right, they'd still exit from the front, basically.

[Speaker 3] (3:10:12 - 3:10:32)
It's essential that there's an exit on either end of the wing for the kids to go to the playgrounds and for them, you know, if you know the plan. But it's essential that those two entrances in the front are the major in and out for security and safety and for the running of the school. Yeah, okay.

[Speaker 15] (3:10:35 - 3:10:35)
That's it.

[Speaker 1] (3:10:38 - 3:11:44)
So just in terms of, just for clarity, we actually do have, I think she could have brought this up at the beginning when we were talking about egress and access and so forth. The town did execute a land taking on the UU property last Wednesday. And took that land by eminent domain, as far as I understand.

And that that has been filed and completed. So we actually do have access through the property. And simply because we can't talk about permitting a road that we actually don't have.

So that's an important piece that I want to make sure I get in the record. As far as the egress on the Forest Ave extension side, you don't have to take any land on the corner lot. Do you mean, how, is that just gonna go over, are you just planning to kind of go over the?

[Speaker 4] (3:11:44 - 3:11:45)
Paper street.

[Speaker 1] (3:11:45 - 3:11:49)
But only half of it, because we need half of it to walk on, right?

[Speaker 4] (3:11:49 - 3:11:54)
Yeah, so there'll be, we'll meet the pavement at Forest Ave extension, which is very narrow.

[Speaker 1] (3:11:54 - 3:11:55)
I know where it is, yeah.

[Speaker 4] (3:11:56 - 3:12:13)
We're doing that, we're not doing any of that on the abutters land. And there's a gate actually, obviously, although there's only emergency exit out of there. But that's the point, we're not touching any of the abutters land on that.

[Speaker 1] (3:12:14 - 3:12:21)
Okay, so, but you've probably got, what, to the midline of the paper street, is that what's gonna happen? Because that road's about 20 feet wide right there.

[Speaker 4] (3:12:22 - 3:12:29)
That's a good approximation, maybe not quite the midline.

[Speaker 1] (3:12:30 - 3:12:31)
To the midline?

[Speaker 4] (3:12:31 - 3:12:31)
Yeah.

[Speaker 1] (3:12:31 - 3:12:42)
Okay, so then your lane is gonna be half of the 20 foot, or how are you gonna? I'm just trying to understand, so where Forest Ave ends, where the pavement of Forest Ave is.

[Speaker 4] (3:12:44 - 3:12:57)
You know what I'm asking. So, let me walk you up Forest Ave extension heading to the school, okay? It's a very narrow paved way.

[Speaker 15] (3:12:57 - 3:12:57)
Yep.

[Speaker 4] (3:12:58 - 3:13:26)
At the end of that, the pavement will widen. Now we don't need that pavement for the traffic, it's for the turn, it's for the sweep of the turn, to get onto the existing pavement for Forest Ave extension. So as we come, oh, there we go.

As we leave, if we leave, it sweeps on, so it widens out a little bit, and then it meets the existing pavement. So we're not widening the pavement on Forest Ave extension, or we're not.

[Speaker 1] (3:13:27 - 3:13:35)
So how far, you probably have to extend it down, so past the current paved area, where it ends.

[Speaker 4] (3:13:37 - 3:13:38)
About 15 feet.

[Speaker 1] (3:13:39 - 3:13:43)
Where you'll be paving that part of the Ewing Woods path.

[Speaker 4] (3:13:45 - 3:13:52)
Yes, and we'll provide a sidewalk on that, on one side, to bring it into the site, or you can veer off and walk down.

[Speaker 1] (3:13:52 - 3:14:04)
I was gonna ask, what about kids that walk and ride their bikes down there, will they be able to just, because they are gonna do it in the event, but will there be, so they'll be able to hop on that sidewalk, even if the gate is closed?

[Speaker 3] (3:14:04 - 3:14:10)
Yes. Yeah, we remember your concerns earlier. No, we did.

[Speaker 10] (3:14:10 - 3:14:12)
It was like a couple of years ago, good memory.

[Speaker 3] (3:14:12 - 3:14:27)
Come up that road, but then, yes. So there's the gate, and off to the left side, there'll be a little pathway, sidewalk, that loops around, it gets right into that line right there, so that kids, the second they're on the site, are safe, and know where to go.

[Speaker 1] (3:14:28 - 3:14:36)
Okay, great. And CONCOM knows that you're paving that piece, not that it's that much land, but as long as they're aware.

[Speaker 4] (3:14:36 - 3:14:41)
Yep, and it's all included in kind of our analysis as far as the stormwater goes, as well.

[Speaker 1] (3:14:41 - 3:14:51)
Okay. Thank you. Okay, so, other, Bill, no concerns?

[Speaker 11] (3:14:51 - 3:15:17)
Nope, so I think they've gone to extraordinary lengths to maximize a poor situation. So, I don't think there's any more we can ask from the traffic study. I think we've got pretty detailed information there.

It's not an ideal situation, it's the situation we have, and the question is, maximize pedestrian and vehicular safety on the site for access, and I think they've done that.

[Speaker 1] (3:15:19 - 3:15:20)
Mike?

[Speaker 7] (3:15:22 - 3:15:42)
I'm good, all right. Went through this set of plans, and the only comment we haven't even talked about is actually back to views, which is, we have all these lovely classrooms on the back of the building. Are there doors under the back of the building for them to exit that way, or are they?

[Speaker 3] (3:15:43 - 3:16:01)
The, see that bump out there where the patio is? Yep. There's a couple arrows from the, from the cafeteria and the, you know, that public and community space, you can go out, right out to that area.

That one. And then out into the woods. Again, the wall's like two feet high, so you just see it out.

[Speaker 15] (3:16:01 - 3:16:02)
Right.

[Speaker 3] (3:16:03 - 3:16:07)
At one point, we had doors from the kindergarten, but for safety, it's best to come out and around.

[Speaker 7] (3:16:08 - 3:16:11)
That's what I thought you were gonna say, safety, yeah. So, there's really just one exit.

[Speaker 3] (3:16:11 - 3:16:20)
Changing, yeah, things have changed in terms of, because of the world, because of how the world is, yeah. Thanks. That's it.

[Speaker 15] (3:16:20 - 3:16:21)
Okay. No?

[Speaker 8] (3:16:21 - 3:16:34)
No. Okay. Angela, can I make one comment?

Sure, of course. You guys did a really nice job of going through the list of the findings, but there is one that's a little newer at the bottom.

[Speaker 1] (3:16:36 - 3:16:37)
The coastal flood area?

[Speaker 8] (3:16:37 - 3:16:40)
Yeah, I know it's not really relevant, but just for completeness.

[Speaker 1] (3:16:40 - 3:16:52)
That's right, we did, there is, well, you saw on that list, and this was from an old list. So, it's, we had added it, we had added it on there after we passed the coastal flood area overlay district a couple years ago.

[Speaker 5] (3:16:52 - 3:16:54)
Right, is this property in a coastal flood zone?

[Speaker 1] (3:16:54 - 3:17:02)
Well, it's not in a coastal flood zone. It's, it has, it's surrounded by wetlands, and because of that, I figured it didn't apply.

[Speaker 8] (3:17:02 - 3:17:35)
And then there's two others that are kind of baked into 5480, which are also sort of findings, and they are that, you know, any new building construction or other site alteration shall provide adequate access to each structure for fire and service equipment, and adequate provision for utilities and stormwater drainage consistent with the functional requirements of the Planning Board's subdivision rules and regulations. So, you know, you touched on that, but just when you're enumerating the list of the findings before, I think it would be advisable for the decision to include those.

[Speaker 1] (3:17:36 - 3:18:01)
So, we do require, what I have is adequacy of utilities or other public services. We did get comments from fire. I understand we got some comments from police, but I haven't seen them.

I have not seen anything from the Board of Health. Con Com is obviously in the works. So, you know, I would certainly like to see those recommendations.

[Speaker 6] (3:18:02 - 3:18:03)
I'm happy to share the comments from the police.

[Speaker 1] (3:18:04 - 3:18:04)
Sorry?

[Speaker 6] (3:18:04 - 3:18:08)
I'm happy to share the comments, since we emailed them to me this afternoon, I can pull them up now.

[Speaker 1] (3:18:08 - 3:18:09)
That would be good, thanks.

[Speaker 6] (3:18:30 - 3:18:34)
I can, should I read it into the record?

[Speaker 1] (3:18:34 - 3:18:39)
Would that be easier? That might be best, because I can't read it from here, and I can't read it with my glasses or without, so.

[Speaker 3] (3:18:39 - 3:18:42)
It looks like it was written by someone who doesn't, who we didn't meet with.

[Speaker 6] (3:18:44 - 3:23:54)
Let's see. So, this is from Chief Kurz, Interim Police Administrator. As the Interim Police Administrator, I am at a significant disadvantage in providing the Swampscot Police Department's input towards safety concerns associated with the development of a new elementary school.

Obviously, my unfamiliarity to the specifics of the project, the uniqueness of the topography, roadway infrastructure, and community preferences caused me pause. One strategy I could have embraced would have been, quote unquote, kicking the can until the new police chief arrived, but that seemed inherently wrong. However, as a police professional in a consulting role, I can provide you with considerations that any project of this magnitude must contemplate, despite my unfamiliarity to the issues noted.

With that caveat stated, I offer these points for your consideration. With any school construction, the building should be designed as a school which will foster a safe learning environment and not in any way resemble or be lightheartedly referred to as a prison or bunker environment. There must be acknowledgement that school safety also encumbers the ability to reduce loss from fire, water, or burglary with a focus upon technology that would reduce the fear of criminal violence while acknowledging that any technology incorporated into the new facility will never resolve all school security problems.

However, that should not stop the quest to identify technological initiatives that could be integrated into the broader prevention and intervention philosophy of the school. Additionally, there must be significant discussion as to how much security can be afforded and defended within political constraints by a school administrators and where those limited school safety funds should be focused. Ultimately, a determination may concentrate on technology that would simultaneously support and sustain the safety plan while minimizing the impact by keeping danger outside of the facility and keeping those inside safe.

Without question, using crime prevention through environmental designs, CPTED, a focus upon access control, surveillance, video monitoring, and egress management to reduce external threats and vulnerabilities while curtailing hiding opportunities within the complex should be paramount. Technologies designed to prevent a crime from occurring with others minimizing the effects of violence during an active incident should be considered. Having accomplished some research in this area in the past, I suggest that the design team focus technology enhancements upon Smith and Brooks' strategy of deterrence, detection, delay, response, and recovery for the new elementary school.

These five mission areas identified by Smith and Brooks' plan may serve to align vocabulary, process, and overall mission that highlights deterrence. While there has been significant research that debates the pre-planning that those with ill intentions commit to their violent acts, the creation of the perception that security measures are sufficiently strong and perceived as too difficult to defeat through appropriate signage, lighting, defined boundaries, and response personnel, such as the school resource officer, may prove to be effective while also fiscally responsible.

However, perception creates the illusion of impregnability. There must be a hardening of the egresses into the school or the deterring of those with ill intentions becomes just a facade. Some topics to consider for incorporation into the elementary school safety strategy are equipment, including entry control equipment door, locking mechanisms, or access control doors, peepholes for classroom doors, school site alarm and protection systems, such as motion detectors, metal detectors and x-ray machines, including handheld tools, appropriate lighting schematics around building and school grounds, technology, including communication technology, such as emergency call boxes, intercom or public address PA systems that adequately covers the entire complex, panic and immediate alarm notification systems, designated two-way radios within the complex, emergency alerts, automated text messages or email, identification technology, ID scanning devices for staff and or students, maps of schools and bus routes, GIS software, tracking systems, smartphone applications, video surveillance technology, surveillance cameras and or systems. Additionally, due to the significant construction use of metal beams and studs that the new school will undoubtedly incorporate, public safety radio communications are often compromised.

Ensure that repeaters and other communication technology is embedded within the complex, ensuring radio communications will be effective both inside and outside of the facility during the construction phase, not after. This memo is obviously not specific to the Swamp Scout project for the new elementary school. However, I hope it accomplishes my dual purpose of providing a number of talking points critical to a safe learning environment while providing newly appointed police chief, Ruben Quesada and his team, the ability to input after his arrival.

Thank you very much.

[Speaker 3] (3:23:55 - 3:24:08)
I would just say that that was extremely well-written and the kind that we have security consultants and all kinds of stuff and most of the things that we are doing, he mentioned.

[Speaker 6] (3:24:09 - 3:24:27)
Thank you, Lee. And to your comment about the Board of Health, I did look at the plans briefly with Jeff, but I have not received anything from him. So I am not sure where those comments stand.

Thank you. Thank you.

[Speaker 1] (3:24:31 - 3:25:08)
It would be, we should have comments from the Board of Health, certainly. In terms of the fire department, we had an excellent letter from Deputy Potts and he outlined a lot of the strategies that he had discussed with the team. The one thing I didn't see was any kind of a schematic that showed, usually we'll look at, we'll have a little model of what the fire truck looks making all the turns, and I haven't seen that, and I haven't.

[Speaker 4] (3:25:09 - 3:25:10)
Your turning radiuses. Yeah.

[Speaker 1] (3:25:10 - 3:25:11)
Okay.

[Speaker 4] (3:25:11 - 3:25:13)
We did do that. Okay.

[Speaker 1] (3:25:13 - 3:25:15)
I mean, we did that early. In the plans, that's all right.

[Speaker 4] (3:25:15 - 3:25:16)
Early on, yeah.

[Speaker 3] (3:25:18 - 3:25:24)
Right, so he, so that might be something that you would like to see.

[Speaker 1] (3:25:25 - 3:25:34)
Right. Right. Right.

Turning radius. And essentially, what we do is we take, you know, I don't have to tell you, but the biggest fire truck has to make all the corners.

[Speaker 4] (3:25:35 - 3:25:36)
No, it already exists, it just.

[Speaker 1] (3:25:36 - 3:25:38)
Okay. Thank you.

[Speaker 7] (3:25:40 - 3:25:43)
Is that the reason the exit road is so wide?

[Speaker 3] (3:25:43 - 3:25:44)
It has that double-spread line?

[Speaker 1] (3:25:44 - 3:25:45)
We can make the turn.

[Speaker 3] (3:25:45 - 3:25:55)
Right, we did some extra work back there, and also for the dumpster truck, you know, all the different, you know, to get in and out. Right.

[Speaker 1] (3:25:56 - 3:25:58)
So the trash truck will be going in that way as well?

[Speaker 3] (3:25:58 - 3:26:04)
A good service area makes everything, makes everyone happy.

[Speaker 1] (3:26:05 - 3:26:22)
So that's one thing we didn't discuss, was the trash pickup. So we'll, how often will that be happening? I don't know whether we even know that, or, and would it be sort of a, you know, would a dumpster, would it be backing up into the site, or how are they going to do that?

[Speaker 3] (3:26:22 - 3:26:29)
What I do know is that, so we do a sawtooth thing if you went to the plan. We kind of are not there anymore.

[Speaker 6] (3:26:30 - 3:26:33)
Oh, coming down with the bus route, you mean? Of course he's coming.

[Speaker 3] (3:26:38 - 3:26:45)
So we, for some reason, take it pretty seriously, but there's a loading dock, and you see that sawtooth down there?

[Speaker 1] (3:26:46 - 3:26:46)
Yes, I see it.

[Speaker 3] (3:26:47 - 3:27:05)
That's got three dumpsters. One is trash, one is recycling, one is compost. And they're all there such that a front-loading truck comes in and kind of swings around, goes right to them, dumps, and then backs up, turns, and gets out, because they're not that big, those ones.

[Speaker 1] (3:27:05 - 3:29:05)
Okay, thank you. Yep. So again, you know, that just kind of, also that I think that, you know, the thoughts of some additional buffering back there for that area would be an important feature.

So we were still kind of back on the traffic issues. Everyone else had commented and felt comfortable with that. My opinion is that, you know, as I've said before, and a couple of times during this meeting, I think the traffic study is thorough.

I think what we have is we are in a tough traffic problem here. I would like to see more modeling done to see, you know, how we can improve on some of the areas that, you know, some of the intersections where we don't have any mitigation planned, and where we're still getting really bad level of service ratings and, you know, congestion, and especially the intersection between Orchard Road and Atlantic Crossing as it goes across Humphrey Street, which, because it's an exit for the drop-off, and it's a real trouble zone, if that gets backed up queue-wise, then the whole drop-off area is gonna get backed up. And I just have concerns about how that's gonna work.

And I don't think that's been fleshed out enough. And, you know, I don't know if that's, I think, I don't know whether that's even part of what you would do. I mean, if this is complete on your end, is that like a separate piece of work altogether?

[Speaker 2] (3:29:05 - 3:31:42)
I mean, so. Yeah, so that location, the reason that we are recommending a police officer be located there to control traffic during the morning arrival and afternoon dismissal is for that exact reason, to make sure that the queues don't back up into the site and create a gridlock scenario so that we can get that traffic out. And when we're showing that there's gonna be that level of service F that you're talking about with that, you know, amount of delay, that's assuming that the police officer is gonna also want to maintain traffic flow on Humphrey Street and not create a situation that backs that up all the way down to Atlantic Avenue.

So he's gonna be kind of balancing the two. So he'll be watching, kind of making sure, because from there, there's a visual line down to the Orchard Circle intersection and kind of using that as a guide to say, okay, I don't want traffic to back up beyond here. I'm gonna, or else cars aren't gonna be able to get out of the school.

But at the same time, I want to keep as much traffic flow going on Humphrey Street. So when we're kind of doing our analysis, the reason that you're seeing a level of service F there is because we're assuming he's gonna let the traffic queue back to get as much traffic moving on the main line as possible. And that level of service F, like I mentioned before, that's happening in the 2034 maximum build-out of 500, or excuse me, 900 students being enrolled here with the two-mile busing scenario and everything.

On top of it, it's got the COVID adjustment, the growth rate out to that condition. But then what it also does is right now, there is middle school traffic in the area with parents dropping off there. Some of the cars that are coming to this area to drop off elementary school kids are already coming there today.

But when we did our analysis, we assumed that they are all new cars coming to the area. And we compounded the peaks of the cars all on top of each other so that in case there was one dismissal time period, what would that look like? So when we were analyzing the operations of each individual intersection, we said, let's look at one dismissal and see what's a worst case of what's gonna happen.

So we actually think the operations are gonna be a lot better than what you're seeing, but we wanna tell you what could be the worst case scenario.

[Speaker 1] (3:31:43 - 3:33:11)
Okay, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. And so as I told you earlier, I mean, I wouldn't even consider, I don't think that we need a peer review for traffic.

I think that this report is complete and there'd be nothing new to add to that. I don't know whether there is anything else that the town should consider doing, and I'm not a traffic expert, so if there's any other kind of additional modeling, consulting work, anything else we need to do to have a more, a plan that's not so based on, we hope that it works out okay type of thing. And not that that's, I understand that you have an onsite plan, and that I think it's as good as it can get based on where we are and the information.

No two ways about it. I'm talking about outside and sort of, are there other things we can do to manage flow? I don't know if that's something that the town has an appetite for.

I think that we should be looking at that. And again, it's because we're moving cars and moving people, and because we have this big infrastructure that used to be dispersed all over the place, and now it's all coming here. So I just think that it's, I think it's important that we study it more.

That's my opinion.

[Speaker 5] (3:33:11 - 3:33:36)
But I also think this is a little different than what we typically see, or sometimes we see. We sometimes see the best case scenario brought to us, and then we say to them, well, wait a minute. That might be what the best case scenario is, but what happens in the worst case?

And here, actually, it's more of what we're hearing is what the absolute worst case is. So it's not so much hoping it works out as we're hoping it doesn't end up being like what is being told to us.

[Speaker 2] (3:33:38 - 3:34:24)
Yeah, we believe it will be a lot better for a lot of reasons, which I mentioned with all those different models in there. But we wanna show what's the worst case in case we get it wrong. And I know it's hard to believe that all that traffic could fit on the roadways because there's so much congestion that's happening there today.

A lot of that congestion that's happening there today is because there are very poor drop-off and pickup procedures that are happening with all the on-street parking and everyone trying to maneuver in and out of parking spaces that those parking maneuvers create a lot of the backup. And when we can get the cars on the site, get them moving through efficiently, a lot of that congestion goes away and opens up the roads to allow cars to go through.

[Speaker 5] (3:34:24 - 3:34:49)
Yeah, right now at Stanley you have like a combined rolling drop-off and parking all happening at the same time. Like someone pulls up right in front of the school and starts to unload their two kids and then traffic's backed up for five minutes because no one else can get anywhere because that one car is holding everything up. Then you have other people trying to parallel park on the street.

Just a lot going on without very much process at all.

[Speaker 1] (3:34:49 - 3:34:55)
So you think that process would, so does that require education for parents?

[Speaker 5] (3:34:56 - 3:35:31)
Learning curve was a huge thing and it's gonna be the first couple weeks are going to be intense for everybody because everyone's gonna be learning a whole new thing. So I think we have to trust the educators a little bit. There was a question about aides and I know right now even at the gym teacher is often out helping the crossing guard.

Like a bunch of teachers are out and visible as it stands today. And there must be some sort of plan there. There's gonna have to be like a much more, even more organized plan, but I think that everyone's up for it.

[Speaker 1] (3:35:31 - 3:35:53)
Is that something that I don't know enough about what happens in school committee and in discussions with teachers and I'm looking at you Suzanne because I'm assuming that this is something you know. I mean, are there, okay, so they're willing, the teachers are on board with being out there and doing that stuff too.

[Speaker 10] (3:35:53 - 3:37:27)
So we've visited a whole bunch of schools and we've had a lot of drop-offs and pick-ups with Pam and with the staff that's helped and you know the customer and the science of her men's property engineer, right? We know that she solves these problems. So if we have a good plan, everyone's willing to make it work.

I mean, this is gonna be a whole, but we know this is an opportunity because we educate everyone how to drive in town. Like we know it's a way of re-educating the middle school for parents how to drive and the elementary school parents how to drive. So we will have growing pains.

We've heard from schools, it can be a year to 18 months to figure out what carpooling looks like and what traffic drop-offs and pick-ups look like, but they eventually work and I think we will have growing pains, but the commitment is from the middle school to get more kids on the rail trail because those kids are old enough to get themselves to school. So why are their parents driving them? So that's another whole thing because we can eliminate a lot of that middle school traffic that's helping too and third and fourth graders can certainly ride their bikes to the school by themselves.

So yes, the school's 100% committed to safety first and foremost and having this pick-up plan and drop-off plan is a gigantic part of it.

[Speaker 5] (3:37:27 - 3:37:50)
And getting the rail trail finished in that area is a huge thing too because I know where I live, then when my kids get older, they could walk to school on the rail trail. There's a whole bunch of neighborhoods around there that could walk to school on that trail if it were done. Is there gonna be some sort of sticker system?

Like we have beach stickers. So if people are being assigned which way to go for pick-up, are they gonna get a sticker so that somebody can enforce that?

[Speaker 2] (3:37:50 - 3:37:54)
So part of that will be giving each parent like a placard type of thing.

[Speaker 5] (3:37:54 - 3:37:56)
So that someone can enforce, like you go this way, you go that way.

[Speaker 2] (3:37:57 - 3:37:59)
That's part of a plan that I'd wanna know about.

[Speaker 1] (3:37:59 - 3:38:09)
I mean, that makes a difference. When I say a plan, I mean, that's like how do we get people to do what the diagram says we want them to do?

[Speaker 2] (3:38:09 - 3:39:35)
Yeah, and that's obviously something that we'll be working out logistically with the school and with their staff to do that. But when we first came up with this system, we talked about that exact type of thing of in the morning having one to two aides out there in each of the two drop-off areas to assist a kid getting out of the car. In the afternoon though, there will be much more substantial assistance needed where as there'll be a couple of aides in each area helping the kids get in the car.

But then at the same time, you will have people calling off the placards through like a walkie-talkie system to release the kids out so you know which kids are released into the next platoon. So then the kid is only looking in that row of nine cars that they're loading into to find their parent and can get in their car very quickly. And we've seen this done at other schools too.

Like out in Fitchburg, they were using a similar system, although not as well organized. When we first went out there, that was one of the ones I mentioned took an hour to get the kids off the school because they had six lanes deep of parents picking up at the same time and they were only calling the very first kid in the row. So you know, if you load more of those at once, you don't take an hour to get the kids.

[Speaker 5] (3:39:35 - 3:39:47)
There's a question for an app here. Like if someone could scan the placard as you're driving through the entry to the site and then that could like beam to the cafeteria, everyone's sitting and you see your name come up and you go outside.

[Speaker 2] (3:39:48 - 3:39:51)
As technology advances, that may very well be a possibility.

[Speaker 3] (3:39:51 - 3:40:05)
We actually have large lobbies also with seating area under the stairs and stuff. So the kids could actually be pretty much right available with the windows to go right out.

[Speaker 5] (3:40:05 - 3:40:17)
Oh yeah, are all the kids gonna, in order for this to work, are all the kids from the lower school gonna have to come out into like the entryway so that when their parent is there, they're nowhere to be found?

[Speaker 3] (3:40:17 - 3:40:18)
They'll have kind of a system, but.

[Speaker 5] (3:40:19 - 3:40:19)
Yeah, I mean, yeah.

[Speaker 3] (3:40:20 - 3:40:22)
We have lots of places for them to queue.

[Speaker 1] (3:40:26 - 3:40:46)
Okay. Thanks everyone. So I appreciate everyone staying to the late hour, but the intent was that I know that there are, you know, you wanted to try to get through this tonight.

[Speaker 8] (3:40:47 - 3:41:01)
Angela, I did just want to let you know that as the applicant, the town has a proposed motion if the board is interested in seeing it that kind of covers the legal elements of a motion if you're interested.

[Speaker 1] (3:41:02 - 3:41:03)
That's how we do it, yep.

[Speaker 8] (3:41:03 - 3:41:04)
Okay. Okay.

[Speaker 1] (3:41:06 - 3:41:30)
So that, but thank you. You're gonna have to, you might have to be on the board with us, Max. Any event, so this is, we are at the point where we need to make a motion, and because I have the list, I suppose I should read it off and then one of you can, unless someone else has a list of all the things we talked about.

Okay.

[Speaker 11] (3:41:30 - 3:41:42)
I don't know if I have an exhaustive list. I've got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven items that are conditions, but if we do, do we have proposed text or what do we do? We make it up from scratch?

[Speaker 7] (3:41:42 - 3:41:44)
Sounds like Max has proposed text.

[Speaker 8] (3:41:44 - 3:41:46)
Yeah. Yeah, we have a draft of motion if you'd like it.

[Speaker 1] (3:41:46 - 3:41:48)
Do you want me to sign your draft?

[Speaker 8] (3:41:48 - 3:41:49)
Well, if you'd like it, yeah.

[Speaker 1] (3:41:49 - 3:41:51)
Oh, I'd like to see it.

[Speaker 15] (3:41:51 - 3:41:53)
Yeah. Sorry.

[Speaker 1] (3:41:53 - 3:42:03)
I guess everyone heard that but me. Okay. My apologies.

No problem. Thank you. Thanks.

[Speaker 11] (3:42:17 - 3:42:18)
Yeah, I'll read it to you.

[Speaker 1] (3:42:20 - 3:43:16)
Where the board has recognized both that the project would meet the requirements for a special permit, for a site plan special permit you're talking about, under section 5320, and that the use is exempt from the requirements of a discretionary special permit under GL-40A section three, which is the Dover amendment, and has discussed and reviewed each of the relevant approval criteria for site plan approval under section 5480, and found that subject to the conditions set forth herein, those criteria are met. I hereby move that the board approve the application for site plan review, it's actually for a special permit, for the new elementary school at 10 Whitman Road, subject to the following conditions.

Is there a name for the school? Are we calling it the Hadley School or we don't know yet?

[Speaker 3] (3:43:16 - 3:43:22)
Right now it's, well, it's only the Hadley with the MSBA. We are all calling it the Swanscott Elementary School.

[Speaker 1] (3:43:22 - 3:43:25)
That's okay, it was just a point of curiosity, thanks.

[Speaker 5] (3:43:26 - 3:43:26)
Naming contest.

[Speaker 1] (3:43:27 - 3:43:44)
Naming contest, right, naming rights. Okay, so, the subject to conditions set forth herein, subject to, this is, I don't have any problem with that language. Works for the lawyers.

[Speaker 7] (3:43:44 - 3:43:46)
So then we add the conditions.

[Speaker 1] (3:43:46 - 3:44:03)
Yeah, the conditions I would list then, in which case are, well, we still don't have written plans from I want to have the written plan submitted from the fire department and the board of health.

[Speaker 15] (3:44:03 - 3:44:04)
Fire department did, right?

[Speaker 1] (3:44:04 - 3:44:12)
Not, they only have it for the interior of the building and not access around the site. Let's see.

[Speaker 11] (3:44:12 - 3:44:13)
Oh, that was the turning radius diagram.

[Speaker 1] (3:44:14 - 3:44:15)
Yeah, that's right.

[Speaker 4] (3:44:16 - 3:44:18)
You've done that? Turning diagram?

[Speaker 1] (3:44:18 - 3:44:22)
He says they have it, we just need to have it. We haven't seen it, so it needs to be submitted.

[Speaker 4] (3:44:23 - 3:44:24)
I couldn't access my server.

[Speaker 1] (3:44:25 - 3:44:40)
But they have it, so what we want to do is just make sure that, you know, that's part of the record. Part of the record, and I'm not suggesting that we have to have another meeting, okay? I'm suggesting that these are things that need to be added to the plan.

[Speaker 11] (3:44:40 - 3:44:45)
So the condition would be that the fire turning radius plan.

[Speaker 8] (3:44:47 - 3:44:49)
We could submit it to community development, if you'd like, is that?

[Speaker 1] (3:44:50 - 3:44:50)
Pardon me?

[Speaker 8] (3:44:50 - 3:44:52)
Submit it to community development. Okay.

[Speaker 1] (3:44:53 - 3:45:31)
That would be okay. That, well, you know, there are issues that we need to get some assurances on. So I don't know how you want to do this, if we want it to happen by a certain date, if we want to, for example, you know, we want to know in terms of the blasting, what's going to happen with the stone?

How much is, well, you know, we can find out some of this information, but is it going to be blasted on site or not? Because this will be something that's very important in terms of the hazardous material and the damage to the wetland area and.

[Speaker 5] (3:45:33 - 3:45:36)
But that's contractor-based, I understand, right?

[Speaker 13] (3:45:36 - 3:45:46)
Yeah, we can specify and inspect it, but that doesn't mean that it's going to be contractor-based.

[Speaker 1] (3:45:47 - 3:45:59)
Right, you're going to confirm the storm drain issue and that you've made all necessary adjustments, at the end of Forest Avenue extension.

[Speaker 13] (3:46:01 - 3:46:04)
We're going to follow the requirement from ERAC.

[Speaker 1] (3:46:04 - 3:46:06)
Okay, that's a better way to put it.

[Speaker 13] (3:46:07 - 3:46:08)
Okay, thank you.

[Speaker 5] (3:46:11 - 3:46:14)
It was ERAC, is that for the blasting or for the storm drain?

[Speaker 15] (3:46:15 - 3:46:16)
For the blasting.

[Speaker 1] (3:46:16 - 3:46:50)
For the blasting, which you will, but it's also, you know, right, they'll, and if they decide they are going to crush on site, then that's going to have to be part of your CONCOM thing. So I can let Tony know about that, and you can, you know, I'm sure that's still in process, so I'm sure you guys can figure that out. Okay, the raised sidewalks at the points that were.

Crosswalks. The crosswalks, sorry, where the points where they've already been identified on site.

[Speaker 5] (3:46:51 - 3:46:52)
There was one additional point, right?

[Speaker 1] (3:46:52 - 3:47:04)
That's the one right here? Yeah. At the entrance, right?

Okay, the entrance of Whitman Road be raised. That, did we say yes to a bike rack on the playground, or?

[Speaker 7] (3:47:04 - 3:47:05)
That one's still good.

[Speaker 15] (3:47:06 - 3:47:07)
What? Yes, yeah.

[Speaker 1] (3:47:08 - 3:47:33)
Okay, that's still in there. So we talked about the experience of the buses. Let's see.

That along the back of the building, there would be efforts to create more, better, better, what am I looking for? Screening.

[Speaker 15] (3:47:33 - 3:47:33)
Thank you.

[Speaker 12] (3:47:34 - 3:47:34)
Buffering.

[Speaker 1] (3:47:34 - 3:48:41)
A plant buffering to cover the view of the trash and the loading area, and also that there be some aesthetic improvements to the retaining walls at the back of the site. Let's see. The crossing guards, let's see, how you're building, drain.

That any efforts to expose ledge on the site would be appreciated. And then I have a recommendation that I think we should be doing more of the analysis and modeling for the traffic scenarios and to identify what this traffic plan is going to be. Because I don't think we have enough solutions for the problems that are still out there.

If I may.

[Speaker 5] (3:48:41 - 3:48:46)
Are there gonna continue to be public forums relating to traffic mitigation and things like that?

[Speaker 3] (3:48:46 - 3:49:02)
Yeah, I guess I was just gonna define it as being we have the site and the immediate areas. What you're asking is for the town to consider more areas around.

[Speaker 1] (3:49:02 - 3:49:08)
No, we talked about just that the modeling for the just cars moving on site. What's it gonna look like?

[Speaker 15] (3:49:09 - 3:49:09)
Gotcha.

[Speaker 5] (3:49:09 - 3:49:18)
And that's my, is part of the process moving forward involving the public in discussions about how to make this as safe as possible?

[Speaker 2] (3:49:18 - 3:50:47)
So I'm not sure exactly how much more public discussion is going to happen. There's certainly gonna be discussions moving forward. I imagine it because it involves funding, there's gonna have to be some type of public involvement, but there may be discussions moving forward about busing scenarios or things like that.

I think we've provided you with what the plan is to move forward with traffic improvements on the road kind of conceptually anyway, to say these are what it's gonna look like. Yes, we still have to work out the details of the design, like are there drainage improvements that are gonna be needed to handle the sidewalk changes and things like that, but this is what we're proposing. It is based on what is really a worst case of traffic impacts and anything else we do is just gonna make the flow of traffic better through the area.

So if we add more buses to reduce down some of the traffic, if we do offsite shuttle systems, if we look at doing like walking school buses to encourage more kids to walk, all of those things will continue to work with the community over time and probably even after the school opens to help reduce down the traffic impacts. But what we've shown is a plan that we believe 100% works for the traffic that could be generated by maximum enrollment of this school and will work well for both middle school and elementary school traffic.

[Speaker 1] (3:50:47 - 3:52:40)
Thank you, and I have no doubt that you're the person to do that and you've shown that you've put together an outstanding plan and the team, I mean, all of you have done great work and I really appreciate it. I mean, I know even at the forum the other night, a couple of people stood up and they expressed their concerns about traffic and I have, I get a lot of comments and phone calls and emails ahead of time about people's worries about traffic. So I don't have a kid in the school anymore.

It's not my problem, but this is something that I really care about. I really care about this school. It'll be, it's a big building, but I think it's gonna be, we're gonna make it, it's such an investment for this community that it just, making it safe and accessible is just, to me, it's like you can't, you just gotta have it part of the package and I feel very strongly that it merits a lot of this discussion and people really need to be heard and I feel like that's part of my job is to make sure that I listen and I express the concerns that I know are out there and I have every, you know, I really do, I actually do have a lot of confidence in that this team can get it done.

So, you know, I obviously have a hard time with it myself, but that's, again, I'm expressing confidence. So all of that being said, you know, I will write something that summarizes my own concerns, but there's no condition in there.

[Speaker 5] (3:52:42 - 3:52:44)
Other than that. What do you mean by that?

[Speaker 1] (3:52:46 - 3:53:08)
By just putting it into the record, just like I've just said, that I have concerns about, you know, about the execution of being able to mitigate the traffic flow and that, you know, I feel like it's been, we've been told that there are ways to do it and I feel as if it's important to recognize that we're up against some serious challenges.

[Speaker 5] (3:53:09 - 3:53:16)
But I guess, isn't the question that we're answering is does this plan maximize pedestrian and vehicular safety and does it minimize adverse traffic impact?

[Speaker 1] (3:53:16 - 3:53:37)
Well, I don't think it does. I don't think it does. I don't think we can do that right now.

I mean, I think the hope is that with the, with, you know, the right education and the way it stands right now, today, I think in the future, can we get there? Probably, but I don't know that this does. Now, maybe you feel as if it does.

[Speaker 5] (3:53:37 - 3:53:57)
But I don't think we've identified a single thing that we can change that would make the traffic flow or the safety better. So I don't know. So I think, in that respect, I think it does maximize safety and minimize traffic impact.

[Speaker 1] (3:53:58 - 3:53:58)
Okay.

[Speaker 15] (3:53:59 - 3:54:00)
I agree.

[Speaker 1] (3:54:00 - 3:54:01)
You feel the same?

[Speaker 7] (3:54:01 - 3:54:17)
We had very minimal comments on how to improve pedestrian safety tonight. So I feel like there's not much we could do otherwise within the site, right? Outside the site, there's other things being planned that we didn't have the time to talk about.

[Speaker 1] (3:54:17 - 3:54:45)
Okay. So those are the, so those are the recommendations. So that being said, do you need me to repeat them again or the ones that I read off as recommendations?

Those are the recommendations that we, or the conditions that we're going to request to.

[Speaker 8] (3:54:47 - 3:54:53)
Angela, you might wanna consider voting to close the public hearing, just to beat the formality.

[Speaker 1] (3:54:54 - 3:55:02)
Thanks. We'll vote to close the public hearing. If you're done, then we'll vote.

Unless, we've been having some.

[Speaker 5] (3:55:02 - 3:55:11)
Right, no, I just wanna make sure I'm clear on where we're coming out, as far as, that we're not making any, we're not making any specific conditions as far as traffic.

[Speaker 1] (3:55:12 - 3:55:19)
No, there are none. Okay. I mean, aside from the issues that we've raised.

[Speaker 5] (3:55:19 - 3:55:21)
Right, the crosswalk. The crosswalks.

[Speaker 1] (3:55:21 - 3:55:52)
I mean, I raised my concerns about the bussing and the fact that there are other things that we could be considering for to get cars off the street and raised my concerns about kids walking across, you know, having so many crosswalks going across the roads and that, my personal opinion was that it didn't seem safe, but everyone else, you know, I've been told that this is the best way to do it and none of you have issues about it, so, you know, that's my opinion.

[Speaker 5] (3:55:53 - 3:55:54)
Right, but that would be part of the.

[Speaker 1] (3:55:54 - 3:55:56)
If there's nothing we can fix it, then there's nothing we can do to fix it.

[Speaker 12] (3:55:58 - 3:55:59)
Okay.

[Speaker 1] (3:56:00 - 3:56:16)
So, that being said, with all of those conditions in terms of, so we talked about storm drain on the Forest Avenue, the blasting and crushing on site, we're gonna follow up with CONCOM and get recommendations from ERAC.

[Speaker 11] (3:56:17 - 3:56:28)
As painful as this is gonna be, I think we need to read an official version into the record with what the conditions actually are. So getting recommendations is not a condition, right?

[Speaker 1] (3:56:30 - 3:56:30)
I'm sorry?

[Speaker 11] (3:56:30 - 3:56:33)
What is the condition that you're putting in for getting a request?

[Speaker 1] (3:56:33 - 3:56:37)
We're not, there are, the conditions are raising the sidewalk.

[Speaker 11] (3:56:38 - 3:56:40)
Yeah, yeah, so we need to read the motion.

[Speaker 5] (3:56:40 - 3:56:43)
Make sure we're clear on what the specific conditions are.

[Speaker 11] (3:56:43 - 3:56:47)
Unless I just, I wanna get it all in one place, so it's all official.

[Speaker 1] (3:56:47 - 3:56:51)
Okay, so would you like me to read the letter again and then read the conditions?

[Speaker 11] (3:56:51 - 3:56:55)
I think it's important enough, but if you guys don't agree, then.

[Speaker 5] (3:56:55 - 3:56:57)
Yeah, I think it can be, the letter's quick, so.

[Speaker 1] (3:56:58 - 4:00:02)
You'd like to read the letter again? Yes. Okay.

Where the board has recognized both that the project would meet the requirements for a site plan special permit under section 5320 and that the use is exempt from the requirements of a discretionary special permit under GL chapter 48, section three and has discussed and reviewed each of the relevant approval criteria for site plan approval under section 5480 and found that subject to the conditions set forth herein, those criteria are met.

I hereby move that the board approve the application for site plan review for the new elementary school at Ted Whitman Road, subject to the following conditions. So I'll start with what's missing. The recommendation from the Board of Health, the on-site radii plan for the fire department, the final recommendation or order of conditions from CONCOM when it is available, the, that in terms of the site itself, that the storm drain and the stormwater drainage onto Forest Avenue extension be, you know, be secured as to, you know, to make sure that the plans that are in place for the drainage coming off the back of the building and onto Forest Avenue are being managed without the storm drains on Forest Avenue extension, you know, if that's taken into consideration, that any blasting or crushing, that if stone is being crushed on site after blasting, that you will follow the recommendations from CONCOM regarding how to dispose of it and that you will follow the requirements from ERAC in terms of removing it from the site, that you will raise the sidewalk on closest to Whitman Road, that the, yes, I wrote sidewalk and I keep saying, sorry. Okay, thanks, now it'll be crosswalk.

We're not gonna have a raised sidewalk. That there will be a bike rack in the playground and I think that is all I have. Oh, did I forget what I've already, I've already said at the beginning that we're gonna, there will be some buffering with vegetation, okay, behind the building and improvements to the, aesthetic improvements to the retaining wall in the back of the building.

And I think.

[Speaker 5] (4:00:03 - 4:00:08)
Was that a, was that something that was like agreed to that would be done or that it would be.

[Speaker 1] (4:00:08 - 4:00:10)
I think we agreed to it.

[Speaker 3] (4:00:10 - 4:00:15)
I don't know what that, I don't know exactly what the wall improvement means.

[Speaker 1] (4:00:16 - 4:00:17)
If possible, then.

[Speaker 3] (4:00:17 - 4:00:21)
If possible, the buffer thing is a piece of cake.

[Speaker 1] (4:00:21 - 4:00:23)
Okay, let's say it's possible. The other thing, I just don't know what it means.

[Speaker 3] (4:00:23 - 4:00:24)
Yeah, oh, thank you.

[Speaker 1] (4:00:24 - 4:00:32)
Okay. Is that gonna be a problem, Robin?

[Speaker 2] (4:00:33 - 4:00:37)
No, no, I just, okay, I'm gonna come back. I have eight conditions, so.

[Speaker 1] (4:00:39 - 4:00:39)
Okay.

[Speaker 2] (4:00:39 - 4:00:40)
I have eight.

[Speaker 1] (4:00:41 - 4:00:50)
All right, so I'll have to, good. Maybe you can, you can, because I can't keep the, I can't even keep focused on it right now, so that's fine.

[Speaker 6] (4:00:51 - 4:00:55)
All right, so. I had eight conditions and I had you add a site plan special permit in there.

[Speaker 1] (4:00:55 - 4:01:06)
That's right, correct. So, does someone wanna say, I read it in. I mean, I suppose I can make a motion.

[Speaker 15] (4:01:06 - 4:01:06)
So moved.

[Speaker 1] (4:01:06 - 4:01:10)
So moved, okay, can I have a second? Do you wanna have it moved before we close the public hearing or do you not?

[Speaker 12] (4:01:10 - 4:01:10)
I'm sorry.

[Speaker 1] (4:01:10 - 4:01:20)
I don't know, come to your meetings, also. I didn't know if you normally, formally move to close the public hearing. Well, we actually just did that, but then we, someone spoke afterwards.

[Speaker 2] (4:01:20 - 4:01:21)
You didn't move.

[Speaker 1] (4:01:21 - 4:01:24)
No, we didn't. Oh, sorry. No, you never.

We usually don't.

[Speaker 15] (4:01:24 - 4:01:24)
No, you never.

[Speaker 1] (4:01:24 - 4:01:29)
We usually don't. We have never voted to close it. We can say the public hearing's now closed.

[Speaker 15] (4:01:29 - 4:01:30)
We usually don't take a vote.

[Speaker 1] (4:01:31 - 4:01:45)
Previously, so I thought it was still open. Yeah. Okay.

No, it's not. Okay. So, okay, so, that being said, so you moved, you made the motion, Dave, and can I have a second?

[Speaker 9] (4:01:46 - 4:01:46)
I'll second.

[Speaker 1] (4:01:47 - 4:01:50)
Ted? Okay, all in favor.

[Speaker 15] (4:01:50 - 4:01:51)
Can you do a roll call?

[Speaker 1] (4:01:52 - 4:02:01)
Yes, all in favor, Ted? Aye. Aye.

Aye. Aye. Aye.

Can we, sorry, just for, we're just rolling.

[Speaker 15] (4:02:01 - 4:02:03)
Want our names? Yeah. Okay, go ahead.

[Speaker 1] (4:02:04 - 4:02:08)
Ted Dooley. Aye. Dave Zucker.

Aye. Mike Procia.

[Speaker 15] (4:02:09 - 4:02:09)
Aye.

[Speaker 1] (4:02:09 - 4:02:10)
Bill Quinn.

[Speaker 15] (4:02:10 - 4:02:10)
Aye.

[Speaker 1] (4:02:11 - 4:02:24)
Angela Ippolito is an aye. Again, thanks. Thank you.

Thanks.

[Speaker 7] (4:02:24 - 4:02:26)
Thank you. Thanks for staying this late.

[Speaker 1] (4:02:27 - 4:02:38)
I mean, that was just, you know. 11.02. 11.02. Well, you know, it was, I know that there, it was important to them to get it all done tonight, so we could have gone, you know, broken it up in two meetings.

[Speaker 3] (4:02:38 - 4:02:43)
This was fast for us. Thank you for letting us show you stuff beforehand.

[Speaker 1] (4:02:43 - 4:02:44)
Oh, please.

[Speaker 3] (4:02:44 - 4:02:44)
We just made it longer.

[Speaker 15] (4:02:45 - 4:02:45)
I think that made it go smoother.