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Committee hears environmental-study update and purchase-order status ahead of library referendum planning
Summary
Engineers visited the site for an environmental impact study but had not yet delivered a written report; staff said purchase orders remain open with roughly $18,800 on one contract and that hazardous-materials assessments will add about $14,000 in costs.
During unfinished business the committee received a status report on the environmental impact study and budget implications for the Russell Library project.
A committee member reported that engineers from Ty & Bond were onsite for several hours recently but that staff had not yet received an initial written report. "They were here for several hours over the course of an afternoon and a morning," staff said, and added they would report back when an initial draft is available.
On funding, staff confirmed there is money to cover the engineering work and that an original purchase order with Silver Petrucelli remains open with about $18,800 left. Staff said uncommitted funds previously cited (about $26,126) had been reduced by additional orders and that roughly $10,000 may be returned to the general fund this July after current encumbrances.
The committee identified additional expected costs: staff said a hazardous building-materials assessment for the Russell Library property is about $9,500 and a second assessment for 139 Broad Street is about $4,500. Committee members repeatedly raised remediation and demolition as unknowns the environmental study must quantify; those remediation costs, they said, need to be fed back into the projects total-cost estimate.
Committee discussion also compared local cost estimates with other recent municipal library projects and per-square-foot estimates: one committee speaker noted Manchesters new library (about 80,000 square feet) had very different site conditions and rebate structures and that the towns per-square-foot estimate had been higher (transcript figures cited around $750 versus $1,000 in different places).
What happens next: staff will share the Ty & Bond findings and value-engineering options with the cost estimators and the committee once the environmental information is available; the committee signaled it will remain active through 2027 to shepherd the project toward a possible referendum.
