Despite entreaties from other town entities to hold off on any decision, the Park & Rec commission voted unanimously at its Sept. 15 meeting to tell the Pollard School Building Committee it does not plan to surrender jurisdictional control of DeFazio Park land to facilitate a new Pollard Middle School.
Commissioner Cindy Chaston noted in making the motion prior to the vote that Park & Rec members have been “open and vocal that we do not want this project to happen at DeFazio.”
The vote came during a conversation the commission was having with School Committee Chair Michael O’Brien regarding the Pollard project and the plan to hold a “summit” Sept. 25 that would be a meeting of seven town boards with an interest in the Pollard project. The intent of the summit is to have the boards meet to review the Pollard options under consideration and start eliminating some of the seven schemes provided by the design consultants.
“This is an opportunity for us, as town leaders in our roles, to come together and have an open dialogue, ask questions, probe with our designers as we continue to move forward with this process,” O’Brien said.
But Park & Rec was not interested in waiting until the summit to take action. “I’d personally like to see this option not considered, taken off the table,” Chaston told O’Brien. “Is that something you would be looking for? Would that be helpful?”
“What I would ask of the commission is we’re looking towards the summit and how this (DeFazio) conforms as we move forward with these seven options and trying to narrow things down,” O’Brien replied.
“I’m not feeling as open as you’d probably like me to feel,” Chaston said. “I’m feeling like this project is really focused on DeFazio.”
“I think we, as the Park & Rec commission, should get something on the record,” added Commission Chair Chris Gerstel. And after further conversation, the commission voted “to request that the DeFazio site option for the Pollard project be removed from consideration for the construction of a new school.”
School Building Committee sees it differently
At the same time Park & Rec was meeting, the Pollard School Building Committee was also meeting to discuss the Sept. 25 summit and what issues needed to be discussed to meet the project’s goal of deciding on a preferred Pollard option before the end of December.
The summit will be held at the Broadmeadow School and include the Select Board, School Committee, Finance Committee, Park & Rec, Planning Board, Conservation Commission and the Pollard School Building Committee. While the format has not been finalized, it is expected to include workshops and breakout sessions.
It will be open to the public but is not intended as a public hearing with resident comments.
At its meeting, the school building committee discussed four broad questions that need to be answered to produce a schematic design for the eventual building:
- Will the school be built at the current Pollard site or DeFazio?
- Will it be new construction or an addition/renovation?
- Will the grade configuration be 6-8 or 7-8?
- Will it include an enhanced auditorium/performance space?
“Coming out of the meeting on the 25th the question will be asked ‘Is it appropriate to drop DeFazio as an option at this time?’ That’s a difficult question to answer,” said Hank Haff, the town’s director of building design and construction.
Committee member Stuart Chandler spoke favorably of the idea of holding a summit while also noting that such a complex gathering presents numerous challenges.
“I think these are very tough things to do effectively and not have this be slow as molasses,” he said. “And at the end of the day, we know what the elephant in the room is. It’s DeFazio.”
| Schools have a foothold on DeFazio When seven town boards convene jointly for a “Pollard Summit” Sept. 25, School Superintendent Dan Gutekanst hopes to provide them with a rendering of what would be possible to construct at the DeFazio complex without the Park & Rec Commission relinquishing the adjacent land that is under its jurisdiction. About a decade ago, in anticipation of the need for sufficient town-owned land to be under school department control to facilitate anticipated school construction projects, the town engineered a land swap in which the area generally comprising the DeFazio parking lot and adjacent tot lot was transferred to the schools’ jurisdiction. At the time, it was expected that the site might be required for either a new elementary school or “swing space” to accommodate modular classrooms to house students temporarily displaced by construction. The land at DeFazio currently under school jurisdiction is not considered sufficient to support the larger building footprint needed to accommodate what is currently being considered for a new Pollard Middle School. “Choosing DeFazio as a site has significant constraints, both in terms of construction and in terms of spacing,” Gutekanst told the School Committee at its Sept. 16 meeting. “There’s a lot of activity. There are fields on that site. The DPW is on that site. And then you would have a school on that site on a very busy street and narrow street.” With the Park & Rec Commission having declared its intention to not relinquish the land under its jurisdiction at DeFazio, Gutekanst has asked HMFH Architects to explore what might be possible without that real estate. “The designer is focusing on just looking at the school committee jurisdictional boundaries on DeFazio to see what could be designed. And they expect to provide something next Thursday at the Board Summit that would show a model of what a possible edifice would look like on just school committee jurisdiction land.” “I was told by the designer today that part of that would include a parking garage, just given the constraints on that site,” he added. School Committee Chair Michael O’Brien emphasized in an interview after the meeting that the design would be rudimentary at best. “The design team has been charged with providing a 3D rendering of a building,” he said. “This is not a full plan. This is just to give a little bit more context to the spaces that we’ve been studying.” |
Committee member John Connelly also supported the notion of the summit, but with reservations that the process was perhaps moving too quickly.
“I’m not quite sure we’ll have enough information in two weeks to eliminate a site because so much goes into eliminating a site and/or choosing a site,” Connelly said.
“I’m just fearful that we’re rushing ourselves into an incredibly important and expensive decision for the sake of rushing. I just like to make sure we study as much as we can possibly study and discuss as much as we can discuss before we start eliminating something or deciding that’s what we’re going to do.”
In the course of the conversation, Haff reminded the committee that Park & Rec had already sent a memo unequivocally opposing the use of DeFazio as a site.
“Then let’s get the site plans out and let’s talk about how they use their site, when are the critical times, how they do it. I think that that should occur,” Connelly replied. “I think for them to be able to say no to that in an educated way, then that should happen.”
Member Lynne Deninger echoed Connelly on the need to act on more complete information. Referring to Park & Rec, Deninger said, “Their meeting where they were looking at plans without any direction, oversight or conversation was an unfortunate meeting.”
At that point, committee member Alisa Skatrud told the meeting that she had received a text message informing her of Park & Rec’s vote to request that Pollard be taken off the table.
“If Park & Rec is emphatic that they would not grant (jurisdiction), are we kind of knocking our heads against the wall with that option?” asked committee member Irwin Silverstein. “Can anything force them to change that? If they’re obstinate that they are not, under any circumstances, going to agree to the school being on DeFazio, is that in effect the end of that option?”
Overruling the Park & Rec’s jurisdiction would require a multi-step process that involves receiving a two-thirds majority at Town Meeting as well as actions by the state Legislature that would take many months to execute.
Building committee Chair Rich Creem concluded the meeting with the hope that the Sept. 25 summit might provide some clarity. “I want to understand more about Park & Rec’s thinking, what the impact is on their operations and why they’re making this definitive decision.
“That’s something that hopefully will come out in the meeting. It will help me understand what their issues are and whether I agree with it or not.”
Interviewed after the meetings, Park & Rec Chair Gerstel said it is doubtful that a majority of Park & Rec members will even be able to attend the summit.
“They never even consulted any of us about this,” he said of their possible inability to attain a quorum Sept. 25. “They just threw a date up there and said, ‘Hey, this is when and where we’re having it.’”
“We can’t make it,” he said, citing schedule conflicts for multiple commission members. “And that’s one of the reasons why we wanted to make what they are calling a ‘premature’ decision. Because we know that we can’t be part of all those focus groups or breakout meetings that they’re going to have on the 25th.”
“No one should be shocked about this,” Gerstel added. “We haven’t changed our stance from the beginning, and I think we’ve been consistent on our stance the whole time.”
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