Back to Permanent Building and Facilities Management Study Committee Meeting Minutes
Town of Hingham
Permanent Building and Facilities Management Study Committee
November 18, 2010 Meeting Minutes
Hingham Town Hall
Present: Committee Members MacKinnon, Manley, Seelen, Wilcox.
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1. Call to order
Jerry Seelen called the Committee meeting to order at approximately 5:30 PM.
2. Approval of Minutes
Minutes from the November 3rd meeting of the Permanent Building and Facilities Management Study Committee (PBFMSC) meeting were reviewed and approved.
3. Discussion of Public Comment to Date
The Committee discussed public comments to date regarding the idea of establishing a permanent building committee. A question of concern for the Committee that had been raised on more than one occasion is would a permanent building committee, if established, have dedicated support staff or would support needs be shared with existing staff from other Town departments and/or committees? The Committee agreed that this would need to be explored further as part of the development of its recommendation to Town Meeting.
Another open question that came up when Jerry Seelen presented to the School Committee was why do some towns with Permanent Building Committees exclude school projects? Jerry agreed to get some more feedback from those towns that are set up that way.
4. Discussion of Potential Components a Permanent Building Committee
Discussion then turned to roles and responsibilities of a permanent building committee and below is a summary of the key points.
• All Town properties would fall under the jurisdiction of the permanent building committee (PBC)—including fields—with the ability for the Committee to exclude projects for which they do not feel they need to be involved.
• A permanent building committee (PBC) would be responsible for commissioning and maintaining a comprehensive facilities study that covers all the Town's assets. (DJ MacKinnon will obtain some additional cost estimates for facilities studies for the next meeting.)
• Town owned roads and utilities (light poles, power lines, sewer equipment etc.) would be excluded.
• There may be certain properties that would also be excluded from falling under the PBC due to legal reasons such as the South Shore Country Club, Sewer Commission, Light Plant, Housing Trust (Lincoln School Apartments). Ben Wilcox and John Manley will look into each of these and confer with Town Counsel and the Town Administrator to get an understanding of how these would be handled.
• A PBC would be allowed to do a feasibility study for a certain project, but would not be the only committee with the ability to do so.
• On-going regular maintenance of Town properties would not be the responsibility of the PBC.
• PBC should be the only body that oversees projects from purchasing of land, to design and site review.
• Post construction evaluation should be a required responsibility for a PBC.
• The PBC would be responsible for establishing a formal mechanism for returning left over money to the Town in the event a project is completed for less than what Town Meeting authorized.
• Any design work project that costs over ten thousand dollars will need to be reviewed by the PBC. (Not including peer review by other Town boards.)
• All construction projects costing more than ten thousand dollars and requiring a building permit will need to be brought before the PBC.
5. Proposed Structure of a Permanent Building Committee
Following the discussion of the roles and responsibilities of a PBC, the Committee's discussion then turned to a proposed structure of a PBC.
• The Committee agreed that a 9 person PBC would be optimal.
• 3 members would be appointed by the Moderator, 3 by the School Committee and 3 by the Board of Selectmen.
• Of those 9 there must be an architect, attorney, maintenance/operations specialist, engineer, builder and a financial professional. These requirements would comply with the MSBA guidelines for establishing building committees.
• Committee members would be expected to serve 2 three year terms, with the understanding that if a particular member was deeply involved in a project that was not yet complete, they could stay on until its completion.
• Subcommittee members (ideally representation from the end user groups of a project) could be appointed for particular projects and would have voting rights for matters only involving the project they are working on.
• Ex-officio members that are Town employees would not have voting rights.
• There would be no limitations to the number of appointed Town boards a committee member could serve on, provided they recuse themselves when potential conflicts arise.
• Question of whether or not elected officials could serve on the PBC was raised and Jerry Seelen will follow up on that open issue.
It was agreed that the next meeting of the PBFMSC would be on December 2nd at 5:30 PM.
6. Adjourn
Meeting was adjourned at approximately 7:20 PM.
Respectfully submitted,
John Manley
Secretary