The School Committee discussed the MSBA accelerated repair program at its Feb. 5 meeting.
Reminder Publishing screen capture by Tyler Garnet
CHICOPEE — At the Feb. 5 School Committee meeting, the committee discussed a potential time change for its regular meetings going forward and the Massachusetts School Building Authority accelerated repair program.
First, the School Committee discussed and sent the item of changing the regular and special meeting time from 7 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. to policy subcommittee.
A survey was sent to the School Committee about changing the time and of the six who responded, five were in favor and one was against.
During the School Committee meeting, a couple School Committee members were not in favor of changing the time due to fear that it may be hard for residents and School Committee members who work full-time to get to the meetings on time.
Recently, the City Council changed their starting time from 7 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. The mayor’s briefing used to take place before the City Council meeting but now it is within the regular agenda and the briefing begins at 6:30 p.m.
The policy will now be discussed in subcommittee and voted on by the School Committee at a future meeting.
The School Committee then discussed the MSBA accelerated repair program.
The topic was requested by School Committee member Donald Lamothe who said he received a notice from the Massachusetts Association of School Committees that there is an open window from early January to March 21 for projects that can be submitted to potentially be reimbursed by the state.
“I know that we’re coming up, when I first got on this board 24 years ago, actually before I got on this board, we did the roofs and that was a $7.5 million bond that had to be floated by the City Council and then reimbursed by the state up to 80%,” Lamothe stated.
He further explained, “I’m looking at it saying we’ve got $13 million that’s now sitting on the mayor’s desk and if we’re going to continue to repair our schools and upgrade our schools, we need to make sure we’re doing our due diligence.”
How the process would work is the superintendent needs to open a claim and then once the claim is opened, an assigned person can come forward with items they would like to see get completed within the schools.
Even if you apply, Lamothe explained, “You may not get them this year anyway but at least if you start, you may get rejected this year and by the second and third year you probably could get the state to say ‘yeah, I’ll give you these number of dollars for your roofs or for windows or for air conditioners’ but if we don’t start we’ll never get there.”
According to MSBA, the accelerated repair program “focuses on the preservation of existing assets by performing energy-efficient and cost-saving upgrades, which will result in direct operational savings for school districts.”
Starting this year, the accelerated repair program will have a biennial Statement of Interest opening every two years. Districts will file SOIs biennially and staff will review invitations for roofs and windows/doors based on a budget of $300 million, representing two years’ worth of projects, and for heat pump conversion projects based on a budget of $250 million, representing two years’ worth of projects.
The MSBA believes that a biennial opening will provide more predictability and flexibility for district officials who are administering facilities improvements in their districts.
Superintendent Dr. Marcus Ware said the accelerated project window was opened and Chicopee Public Schools Maintenance Director Scott Chapdelaine recently attended a meeting about the program and will be discussing it further at an upcoming facilities subcommittee meeting.
Ware said, “That is one of the topics on the agenda, the accelerated repair program in which Mr. Chapdelaine and I will be presenting to the subcommittee which the anticipation would be to push it to the full committee.”
Mayor John Vieau also stated he has a list of capital items and that the $13 million will be used based on discussions he has had with Ware.
