The subcommittee met for the first time Wednesday evening since last year's emergency repairs of $1.2 million to fix the collapsed ceiling above the locker rooms and replacement of heating boilers.

The panel spent an hour touring the 50-year-old high school with Superintendent of Facilities Jesse Wirtes to get caught up on the building's problems.

 

In 1960 and 1968 there had been a lot of nice buildings. This wasn't one of them," Wirtes told the group. 

 

Wirtes pointed out flaws from asbestos to outdated science labs to broken pipes that leak sewage into the walls to the terrible ventilation. The group even got a tour and demonstration of the boilers and saw the renovations where the roof had fallen.

 

Once they finished, members got caught up on what has happened during the committee's inactivity. The Mount Greylock Regional High School Committee has already submitted this year's statement of interest to the School Building Authority to build classroom space around the newly renovated parts.

 

"We recognize that a lot of money has been spent so we though we'd save some of the bigger space," subcommittee Chairman Jack Hickey said. 

 

School Committee Chairman Robert Ericson had drawings of such a renovation. The conceptual drawing showed a new two-story building being built in front of the gym, auditorium and boiler rooms.

 

"This is just a really rough conceptual drawing and it doesn't have all the features like staircases and elevators," Ericson said. "We would commission an architect and they will fill in the missing pieces."

 

The hybrid renovation and new construction idea is an attempt to appease not just the MSBA but also the voters who approved a debt exclusion for last year's repairs.

 

"Politically there were two camps. One camp said no to building a new school and wanted to do renovations and the other camp wanted a new building," Ericson said. "The two camps were widely divided."

 

This concept attempts to find middle ground by doing both renovations and a new building, Ericson said.

 

However, the idea did not float easily for some committee members, who expressed discontent over not being involved while the committee was defunct.

 

"We might be better off rebuilding the auditorium than if we try to fix something and improvise," Thomas Bartels said. "I'm not buying this. That this is the only way, that we have to keep the auditorium … This is a building committee and that's what I want to do. I want to build."

 

Wirtes said he has grown frustrated that the committee had not picked up where it left off sooner. 

 

Moving forward, the subcommittee broke down even further with some members looking at the price of various building possibilities, others looking at maintenance practices and a third and final group to refine the hybrid idea.

 

"Within the next four or five months, we'll get a call from the School Building Authority and they'll say 'we're ready to talk to you about your SOI.' So, at that point, we want to have hammered out that this thing is going to work and this is how it is going to work," Hickey said. "We're looking to build on what we think they would find acceptable."

 

The committee will meet again in the next few weeks to continue the discussion about what the process will be for the committee and what types of problems the committee will face.