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Brian Laroche of owner's project manager Potomac Capital Advisors, explains the time line for the project up to the town vote on funding.
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The committee voted to ask the School Committee for more funds and decided that water and fuel sources will drive the direction of the project.

Clarksburg Building Committee Seeking More Funds for Study

By Tammy DanielsiBerkshires Staff
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CLARKSBURG, Mass. — Funds set aside for a feasibility study of Clarksburg School are coming up short.

The School Building Committee voted on Wednesday to kick a request for another $45,000 to the School Committee. The study is the first step in determining construction options for the 50-year-old school.  

The town a year ago approved expending $250,000 for the study, with $100,000 from the school's stabilization fund (set aside specifically for this use) and $150,000 from the town stabilization fund with the expectation that money would be reimbursed. The entire project is estimated at $8 million to $10 million.

"I feel that we don't know where we'll end up ... I don't want to go back to a special town meeting to approve a higher cost for a feasibility study," said Superintendent Jonathan Lev. "I believe that would be very difficult at this point in the process."

A solution, he felt, could be to utilize school-choice funds, money that follows students who attend Clarksburg from out of the district, should the School Committee approve.

Margo Jones of Jones Whitsett Architects, the selected designer, presented a proposal of $220,000 for initial design and engineering, more than the $175,000 budgeted. Another $75,000 of the feasibility money is for Potomac Capital Advisors, the owner's project manager.

"If we reject this proposal, we will have to go to second on the list of the MSBA approval," said Potomac's project director Brian Laroche. He reminded the committee that it had not felt that designer was appropriate for the district, but that it would have to go by the Massachusetts School Building Authority's ranking.

The good news was that 62 percent of the $45,000 was reimbursable by the MSBA, meaning that the district would only pay out about $17,000 in the end.

Lev expected to have an answer by next week. In the meantime, the committee accepted Jones' proposal pending School Committee giving the OK for the funding overage.

The proposal from Jones Whitsett includes base fees for architectural and engineering services of $80,000 for the study and of $95,000 for the schematic design. The additional $45,000 is for smaller items such as site and building survey updates, water supply testing and wetlands updates.

"We have cut our base fee dramatically and anticipate the MSBA process to be slightly more flexible for this very unique project," Jones wrote in the proposal. "In talking to the MSBA, and in our previous experience, the Base Fee is typically twice this number. More importantly, Reimbursable Services are usually approximately $100,000."

Further reimbursable services may be necessary, but Jones said the company would do its best to put those off until after schematic design.

"I think it being a small job doesn't mean we're going to do a leaner, meaner process, but we can try," Jones told the committee, adding they had "squeezed the reimbursables as much as we could."

Laroche said more accurate prices will emerge as the project moves forward but for now the $45,000 is something of a placeholder.

Jones Whitsett will begin work off a study it had done in 2006 that included issues with the school's water system.



It's expected that the state Department of Environmental Protection will require the "current non-conforming public water supply" to upgraded.


A rendering of the school property from a past study.

The two options for the current site are to drill a new well or run a line from the North Adams water system from the top of North Eagle Street.

However, the 2006 report states, "it is unlikely that a stand alone bedrock well or municipal water connection will be able to supply the pressure and volume for a fire protection system." The costs for either system ranged from $700,000 to $800,000 a decade ago.

Committee member Charlie Moran said North Adams officials had concurred recently that the conditions hadn't changed.  

"They didn't think it was sufficient supply to get up here even with a pumping station," he said. "And if you had to run into extra bathrooms and stuff ... ."

Laroche said either well or water line would probably require storage tanks and pumps.

"The fear is it could eat up a good chunk of our budget, it would be a big hit," he said. "The worst case our estimate would run $700,000 but without an engineer we won't know for sure."

Moran said he had also contacted Berkshire Gas about running a natural gas line as a fuel source and got an estimate of $45,000 to $50,000.

There was some discussion of where else the school might be located to have better access to water or fuel, which is what the designers will also look at.

"The first things we have to look at are the vital things — the water and the fuel — and see if that's possible to do something with it here," said committee member Mary Giron. "If it is, then we can rule out the other [options]."

"I agree with Mary that those two priorities have to be addressed," said fellow member Edward Denault.

Laroche also shot down hopes that the town could go to a vote by late spring. Jones' timetable puts the vote nearly a year away because it has to accommodate the MSBA schedule. Jones pointed out that preferred options will have to be submitted in March just to make the May meeting.

"What we wanted was to have our town meeting during the school year, in the summer we feel a lot of people are gone and it would be harder to build up the support we need and do everything we would like to do," Lev said.

Laroche said the vote could be done in late September, which will give time to meet with the community leading up it.

"We have to respect the process and there's not much we can do change the date," he said.


Tags: Clarksburg school project,   MSBA,   

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EPA Lays Out Draft Plan for PCB Remediation in Pittsfield

By Brittany PolitoiBerkshires Staff

Ward 4 Councilor James Conant requested the meeting be held at Herberg Middle School as his ward will be most affected. 

PITTSFIELD, Mass. — U.S. The Environmental Protection Agency and General Electric have a preliminary plan to remediate polychlorinated biphenyls from the city's Rest of River stretch by 2032.

"We're going to implement the remedy, move on, and in five years we can be done with the majority of the issues in Pittsfield," Project Manager Dean Tagliaferro said during a hearing on Wednesday.

"The goal is to restore the (Housatonic) river, make the river an asset. Right now, it's a liability."

The PCB-polluted "Rest of River" stretches nearly 125 miles from the confluence of the East and West Branches of the river in Pittsfield to the end of Reach 16 just before Long Island Sound in Connecticut.  The city's five-mile reach, 5A, goes from the confluence to the wastewater treatment plant and includes river channels, banks, backwaters, and 325 acres of floodplains.

The event was held at Herberg Middle School, as Ward 4 Councilor James Conant wanted to ensure that the residents who will be most affected by the cleanup didn't have to travel far.

Conant emphasized that "nothing is set in actual stone" and it will not be solidified for many months.

In February 2020, the Rest of River settlement agreement that outlines the continued cleanup was signed by the U.S. EPA, GE, the state, the city of Pittsfield, the towns of Lenox, Lee, Stockbridge, Great Barrington, and Sheffield, and other interested parties.

Remediation has been in progress since the 1970s, including 27 cleanups. The remedy settled in 2020 includes the removal of one million cubic yards of contaminated sediment and floodplain soils, an 89 percent reduction of downstream transport of PCBs, an upland disposal facility located near Woods Pond (which has been contested by Southern Berkshire residents) as well as offsite disposal, and the removal of two dams.

The estimated cost is about $576 million and will take about 13 years to complete once construction begins.

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