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A weeks-long cliffhanger came to an end on Tuesday night when the Select Board voted 5-0 in favor of allocating $100,000 of American Rescue Plan Acts funds for a schools HVAC project that will replace the internal components of HVAC units on the roofs of Ephraim Curtis Middle School and Josiah Haynes Elementary School. There are two pieces to the project. The “base bid” replaces the HVAC internals. The “add-alternate”, which this allocation funded, is a control system for the updated HVAC units.
The allocation was the final piece needed in a patchwork of funding sources to keep the project moving forward. It had stalled after the base bid came in over budget, and then the project team learned that the bid’s add-alternate for a new control system was actually required. Those controls were priced at $223,000.
According to Sudbury Public Schools (SPS) Superintendent, Brad Crozier, they are funding them with $100,000 in ARPA funds, $80,000 from the Town’s budget for school maintenance, and $43,450 from the SPS Building Use Revolving fund. (2:15:10)
The news will likely be well received by parents who heard about uncomfortably warm temperatures in various buildings after students returned to school on Wednesday, but it’s unlikely that the work is completed before average daily temperatures drop.
The discussions about this project may not be over. During the Select Board meeting Town staff and Superintendent Brad Crozier were unable to identify all the sources of funds they pulled together to cover the base-bid funding shortfall.
Member Janie Dretler pressed for a full accounting of the funding sources for the full project, not just the controls. She wanted to know how they closed the funding gap on the base bid as well as the control system add-alternate. Superintendent Crozier could only provide an accounting of the funding sources for the controls add-alternate. Dretler was not satisfied, and indicated that while she would likely end up supporting the allocation, she wanted full transparency and clarity on where the money was coming from.
A long silence ensued after she concluded her initial questions and remarks, until Member Charlie Russo added “The silence is deafening.” (2:19:00)
After Chair Jennifer Roberts asked a question about the original appropriations from Town Meeting and Combined Facilities Director Duran began to answer, Vice Chair Dan Carty jumped in and tried to focus the discussion on the control system add-alternate. “What’s really a question here is the controls, right? There was this add alternate that is now a requirement, so how much is that?” (2:22:10)
Duran responded that it was $223,450 for the controls. Carty added: “Okay, so let’s focus on that.”
Dretler jumped back in to press for direct and specific answers on the funding for the full project, and eventually unearthed that SPS was using unspent funds from other projects funded by the prior Town Meeting articles to close the gap on the base bid. Basically — portions of the work funded by the articles came in under the estimated budget, but nobody could say which pieces of the work or by how much.
Superintendent Crozier explained that he was unprepared to discuss the nearly $1 million main portion of the $1.2M project:
“As we completed those other projects that were listed in those warrants they came in under. I don’t have those exact numbers. Had I known that was going to be a topic for tonight, I thought we were only talking about the controls tonight, so we wanted to make sure that we had the calculations and that’s why did the presentation the way we did to explain how we could close the gap for the controls.”
Dretler lamented the incomplete information:
“I just have to say the numbers are not adding up for me for the whole project. The 1.2 million-dollar project. If the board wants to move over $100,000 or $73,000 to add to this project, but I would really like to see a breakdown of all the funding sources. Whether it comes from the town side or the school side, I think that we have a responsibility to understand where these dollars are coming from.”
Later in the discussion, Member Russo commented: “It seems like we’re painted into a corner on this, which is a very frustrating place to be.” (2:31:50)
Russo, along with Member Lisa Kouchakdjian, voiced support for a full accounting of the funding when they made their comments. Russo also suggested that the motion include language that requires SPS to return any unspent funds from the project to the Town first. He eventually went on to make the motion for the board. The board voted unanimously in the affirmative to allocate the $100,000, and for any unused funds to come back to the Town first, then they moved on to other business.