In Attendance:

Meeting Notes:

Martie Gooze put forth an agenda:

1. Selection of Committee Chair
2. Membership
3. Outline of Task
4. Work Process

I. Selection of Committee Chair:

First business was to pick a chair or facilitator for the Advisory Committee. It was determined that Dale Swanson was interested in facilitating the committee, but was unable to attend the first two meetings. David Taylor added the chair should be a member of the community vs. a board member.

Martie Gooze and Jay Flanders were selected as co-chairs and will run the meetings in the interim.

II. Membership:

Openings in the membership list were addressed.

Selectman of Durham would be contacted to fill Town of Durham Opening.

Peter Macdonald was added a community representative.

K. Starbranch would contact C. Caron to find a person for the ORYA opening.

It was advised to make known that Advisory Committee meetings were open to the public, and the public is always invited to attend.

III. Outline of Task

Martie Gooze Suggested:

1. Define what is educationally needed.
2. Solve 1.
3. Establish cost of 2.
4. Determine how we may assist the board in finding the best way to inform the public the bond is based on factual needs not wants.

It was suggested that for us to make the report most useful for the board, the board should give us more information or guidance on what they are looking for. i.e.; how big a school; how big a bond; how best to inform the public.

Also suggested was the need to find the best and most economical way to get our kids educated and meet as many needs as possible within a reasonable budget.

Discussion ensued about the task and the objectives and the responsibility of the committee.

Attention was drawn back to the Board's charge as defined in the paperwork distributed from the main office, which outlined the Board's charge as well as the timeline and the project objective.

Reminder that the Board's charge requires we "use the results of the survey" to come to our conclusions.

In an effort to better inform the public and facilitate this information, it was suggested that the survey be made more available by placing copies of the survey in the Durham, Lee and Madbury Town Halls, Town Libraries, Town Offices and/or Selectmans' Offices. Articles in Foster's Daily Democrat should be written to either facilitate survey information or at least to inform the community as to where survey results can be found and reviewed.

Discussion ran along these lines:

Acknowledge we have 2 public responses that shot down the previous bond proposals, and we need to treat community members as investors vs. voters.

Determining what voters would approve would be a good starting place.

Referring to RKM's chart "What Projects Voters Would Approve", it was acknowledged that the five bars on the graph "overlapped" needs from other bars, and that we may need to go through and review in detail each denoted line item for this chart in an attempt to better determine facts we would need to use in our assessment.

Since this chart shows voter support in the first 2 bars (bar 1 being a $4M proposal and bar 2 being a $5M), should we suggest possibly going with a 7 or 8 million dollar bond vs. a 12 million dollar bond and determine the trade offs we can make between the two?

Phases of construction over a year to 3 year periods of time in 4 or 5 million dollar chunks was suggested. Taking prioritized needs into consideration first and less demanded items like the gym and auditorium later. Also suggested was designing earlier construction to support construction down the line.

It was generally acknowledged that much of what is needed is needed now and that building in phases may not meet guidelines set by the state, fire department, and organizations such as BOCA, NAFTA, and even OSHA within the given time frame.

It was also stated that codes and standards for building and construction change from year to year. That could work against building in phases, since construction that has been built to accommodate an addition down the line, may no longer meet code when it comes time to build.

It was acknowledged that 80% - 90% of the voters know the school does not meet accreditation standards and they do want to bring the school up to par. We do have a supportive community.

It was noted that though votes were lost due to misinformation or lack facilitation of information regarding this process, the board had discussed in length and great detail much of what we had discussed thus far.

It was acknowledged that it would be overly hopeful to think we will not impact taxes.

It was established that the contractors Team Designs, though they have not been contacted for some time, are still the standing contractors for this project.

We had further discussed the need to replace or up-grade the obsolete and antiquated core facility rooms, like the Gym, cafeteria, and labs. They not meeting state guidelines, being built 30 years ago to accommodate 600 students.

Upon addressing Chris Cairns regarding the facility's academic needs, he distributed the 1986 report for the Oyster River Cooperative School District, PROJECTED PROGRAM CAPACITIES BY EXISTING FACILITY for review. Mr. Cairns added that we needed more technology integrated in the classrooms, vs. more sites in the building to "send" a class to. It is suggested Dr. Carroll should discuss current capacity and educational needs further at Monday's meeting.

We may get copies of the architectural plans, Accreditation Report Summary and the Space Needs Study at the main office for our review. Dr. Carroll may review the architectural plans Monday as well.

Review of previous plans and integration or blending of previous plans may be reviewed at upcoming meetings.

It was determined that necessary infrastructure costs can be found in the accreditation report.

From here discussion ran along the lines of acquiring more information and facts to work with. In our next meeting we should address:

• Establishing/Defining needs
• What is the "threshold"
• What exactly needs to meet code

We need a list of what is educationally needed, delineated

Review of architect's report(s)

What do we need to meet the strictest/minimum Standards

Requesting facts regarding the buildings needs

We need to ask the board exactly what we do need so we may condense and refine needs.

From here we heard in detail how the architect and construction manager were chosen:

The board formed a short list of qualified Architects who built schools and who were based in New Hampshire.

The board then sent out for request of qualifications. Nine out of the eleven chosen responded. Four of the Nine were selected for interview.

The board interviewed the four over two evenings, taking well over an hour with each.

It was determined that Team Design would be best for the job for these reasons:

Team knew the building intimately.

They designed the plan with intense cooperation (30 - 40 hours) with our staff, administration, school board and main office.

Team was then asked to draw up a list of construction management firms in the state for selection purposes. Of them, four were invited to interview, three came.

The board reviewed and chose Baybutt.

It was a thorough and detailed process. It was speculated that the lack of knowledge may have stemmed from the fact this process took place during the summer and that facilitation of this information was not what it would have been had it taken place during the school year.

Meeting adjourned at 9:20PM with the following items to be covered at Monday June 29th 7PM Meeting:

1. Calendar - meeting dates & times
2. Gathered information form previous reports
3. Dr. Carroll addressing architectural plan & educational needs

Last update on 29-Mar-99 at 9:31 PM.

http://www.orol.org/schools/orhs/orgs/cac/minutes_980625.html

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