Special Board of Aldermen Public Hearing — 12/16/2019 Page 16
The building accounts for things like secure entrance, innovative middle school classroom communities, ability
to close off public spaces for after school activities and community access, 21°' Century Unified Arts & STEM
spaced, enhanced sped spaces, administration, nurse and guidance, gym, performance spaces, new cafeteria,
library. And then it accounts for possible future additional locations off the end of each wing which is noted on
that southern side of the picture here is the classroom wing and the upper portion that kind of square piece is
the public space, it would be the cafeteria, the gym, things like that.
There is a second and third floor, those are more classroom wings, they account for some of those same items
we just spoke about.
Mr. Lee
So that, again, is very, very concise summary of what the results of the study were. | think the study process
has been a little over a yearlong effort to engage various stakeholders to develop that as we have really
enjoyed going through that process both with community as well as the School District. As we said at the
beginning, it is a concept design, so that means that the design has to account for all of the major spaces, they
are approximate size and location and building, but it is not a final design. Those floor plans do evolve a more
detailed development of the project itself. But with that we are here to answer any questions you may have.
Chairman Dowd
Does any one from the Board of Aldermen have any clarifying questions they want to ask of Harriman. Ok we
are going to open the public hearing for R-19-191. Again, there are frequently answered questions sheets in
the back, we should try not to ask any questions that are covered by this sheet. We have a lot of people here
this evening. Again, please try to limit your input to 3 minutes or less. If you have a question, you can ask 1
question, if you have other questions that aren’t asked during the presentation from other people, then you can
ask it at the second go around in testimony. So having said that, | will take testimony in favor of R-19-191.
TESTIMONY IN FAVOR - None
TESTIMONY IN OPPOSITION
Doris Hohensee 15 Swart Terrace. |’m on the Board of Ed. | just want to tell you that the Board was not kept in the
loop. We tried to find out information especially when the Mayor said that Elm Street was going to go to housing
for low income. We hadn’t decided as a Board so it was rather puzzling why that decision was made in the press.
At the vote, because as you know, the Board has to vote on the plans in order to authorize this. This is what the
Board President said on the day of the vote, before we took the vote on the motion, supposedly that approved this
project. “I just want to be clear tonight that this motion is not binding us to build a new middle school. It is just
voting to simply say that we are going to go forward with the new middle school option at the JSSBC and if we hate
their designs, we can say no or not and then come back to the Board”. So we didn’t get the impression that this
was a final decision and we voted 7 to 2 or something like that, 20 minutes later our motion which was on one
building, was now expanded to 3 buildings and a special ed unit. | want you to understand the context on which
you are voting tonight.
Next, there is no easement from Buck Meadow, we can helicopter them in, parachute the students in, but we only
have the emergency entrance from the back, unless we get an easement, which my understanding is we don’t
have it and unless we build a roadway across that land which | have priced out at about $2 million dollars more,
then we have access to that property. And then there is supposed to be, in advance of building a school, the State
regulations say that we are supposed to have a statistically valid study on enrollment; well we didn’t do that. We
just like 800 here, 800 there and 800 in the last place. But if you look at our enrollments over the last ten years,
Fairgrounds has gone down 28%; Pennichuck has gone down 17%; overall the District has gone down 14% in ten
years.
