With a vote to choose a design for the renovation of Town Hall scheduled for this coming Tuesday, the selectmen held one last public meeting this week to hear public reaction to its latest plans for the 1872 building and its 1899 addition.
More than 25 residents packed the Town Hall Meeting Room to hear project architect Drayton Fair of LLB Architects of Rhode Island explain differences between two designs—known as Options 1 and 2—that are currently under consideration and which Selectwoman Lucy Wallace characterized at one point during the evening as “extreme alternatives.”
In addition, the selectmen were challenged to explain why they had not consulted with the five-member Town Hall Building Committee (THBC) chaired by Peter Jackson since taking control of the project in October, and two members of that committee rose to defend their work before the evening had ended.
“Why has the Board of Selectmen essentially blown off the building committee since October?”
—Billy Salter
The decision to constitute themselves as a de facto building committee was made by the selectmen nearly six months ago after voters at a Special Town Meeting and at the ballot box turned down a request for an additional $1.1 million to fund the design they had approved in 2012. The additional money was needed because construction bids for the project were dramatically higher than expected. With voters in no mood to spend more than the original $3.9 million granted by Town Meeting, the selectmen decided to take matters into their own hands.
Since then, the board has worked with LLB to come up with designs that preserve as much of the 2012 plan as possible. At stake are the layout of municipal offices, the configuration of second floor meeting space and stage, and the treatment of the so-called envelope—exterior and interior walls, insulation, and vapor barriers—as well as the systems for heating, ventilating, and cooling its interior.
A number of attendees wanted to hear how the latest designs had affected the programs the renovated building was meant to serve. Selectmen Chairman Stu Sklar acknowledged that the design shown to voters in 2012 was more expansive, intended to meet the needs of municipal government for the next 50 years.
The program has gone out the window
“But we’re not at that point anymore,” he said. “We’re at the point where we have a constrained budget … and thoughts on ‘the program’ have gone out the window. We’re here today with a constrained budget … a few options in front of us [for] how we can best restore this building.”
Later questioning revealed that the biggest changes were elimination of a new addition, replacement of a planned elevator with a one-person wheelchair lift, loss of both a “volunteer” and a private meeting room for official business, as well as loss of some workspace for employees. But the latest options do retain a large meeting space on the second floor, the possibility of a stage, and a second conference room for smaller meetings.
“…there’s been a tendency in town to say, since they’re volunteers, which we are too, and since they’ve worked so hard, you ought to take their work product as nectar from the gods. I don’t agree with that.”
—Leo Blair, selectman
A few attendees wanted more details on how the selectmen planned to insulate the building. Acknowledging concerns that simply blowing cellulose into the building’s walls from the outside might not be sufficient, architect Fair presented estimates for two additional approaches, both of which would require the removal of the interior walls so insulation could be added from the inside.
A first option would install a plastic vapor barrier and fill the space between the barrier and exterior wall with cellulose. The second option would not require a separate vapor barrier. Instead, a “closed cell” Icynene foam would be used to fill the space between the interior and exterior walls of Town Hall.
The first would increase the cost of insulating the building from $53,000 to $191,000, nearly four times that of the original approach; the second option would add another $20,000 dollars, bringing the cost of insulation to $209,575.
Eliminating AC and an electrical upgrade
The two options also included the cost of added insulation to the roof, noted Fair. He also said that the more expensive approach could be accommodated with the $2.3 million budget available to the project for construction if the second floor was not air conditioned and if the main electric service to the building were not upgraded.
Paul Richards of Westcott Lane wanted to know what “building science” had to say about which approach to “tightening” the building was the better approach.
“[O]ne is a spray foam insulation, which is its own inherent vapor barrier,” Fair explained. “Being an expandable spray foam, it tends to fill in all the cracks, and the theory is that it does a better job at [stopping] air infiltration, which is one of the worst problems … in terms of energy efficiency.”
Blown-in cellulose with a more conventional plastic sheet vapor barrier on the inside, continued Fair, “is a more traditional way of doing it. It’s … what people did before spray foam. It’s less expensive. There are more chances for air infiltration because you do penetrate the plastic sheathing when you’re putting up wallboard. It’s harder to seal the cracks around the windows.” He added that “there are proponents in both camps.”
Eric Broadbent, a member of both the Energy Advisory and Town Hall Building committees, said foam “was one of the things that we felt good about in [the] original design. [W]e believe we would see that additional money coming back into our town coffers over time with lower operating costs.” The opinion of the Energy Advisory Committee, he added, was that “we’d be happy to see other trade-offs taken off the table … if we could maintain that kind of insulation and envelope.”
The role of the building committee
Another issue of concern to some attendees was the role of the current Town Hall Building Committee, four of whose members were present. “Why has the Board of Selectmen essentially blown off the building committee since October?” Billy Salter of Elm Street asked. “Do you feel that’s worked out well and does that serve as a useful example for how the selectmen will proceed in the future? These are serious, not rhetorical [questions],” he added, “although I have a point of view that has subtly seeped through.”
His question drew differing responses from two of the selectmen. “The building committee was never disbanded,” said BOS Chairman Sklar. “There are differences on this board on how much input we take from the building committee. I think they’ve done a lot of very good and important work that needs to be looked at and considered and when we move forward, we’re going to have to have a building committee. It’s the law. There’s no … I can’t give you a definitive answer if the board’s going to agree with all that, but I think I’d [personally] like to use the building committee and … that’s] the best answer I can give you right now without taking a vote.”
Selectman Leo Blair was the second to respond, noting that his view wasn’t that of the board. The decision, he said was made “for efficiency, because the clock is ticking and as time goes on, everything is going to get more expensive and more complicated.” It seemed to him, he said, “that the most efficient way [was] to build a consensus among the board … and get to a point where we had narrowed down options within [our] fiscal constraints.”
“During the whole process,” Blair insisted, “we did get feedback from the Town Hall Building Committee and that feedback was, ‘We want you to go back to the original program.’ That’s what I was hearing. That’s not an option.”
As for a future role, Blair said, he thought it important for the board to work with committees. But, he added, “I think it’s equally important that if we don’t agree with or like the work of the committees, that we say so. I don’t think that just creating a committee means that everything you’re going to get from them is pure gold. And there’s been a tendency in town to say, since they’re volunteers, which we are too, and since they’ve worked so hard, you ought to take their work product as nectar from the gods. I don’t agree with that. I think a lot of the work that was done on this was not done very well.”
Next week the selectmen will choose one of its half-dozen options, and ask LLB to begin work on detailed design and bid documents. It was unclear whether many of the technical issues, such as whether to go for cellulose or foam insulation, would be settled then. Selectman Ron Ricci suggested that the decisions be “bifurcated.” “Decide the first-floor layout first, then move on to the second floor,” he recommended, as his colleagues nodded in agreement. Selectwoman Marie Sobalvarro said she thought it would be money well spent to have an independent analysis done of the Town Hall envelope to help the board pick the right system for tightening up the building.
A question of scope
“Right now we’re trying to deal with scope,” Fair told attendees earlier in the meeting. “When that scope is determined, when we have direction, when we are told, ‘This is the way to go,’ all the details will be sorted out. All the recommendations will be followed. And we can make clearer determinations and assumptions on what the systems will do and how [they] will do it. But until we know what the scope is, we can’t give answers.”
For more details on the design options under consideration, see “Selectmen call for Town Hall forum” in our April 25 issue. A complete set of designs and their estimated costs is available on the town website.
