I’m a frequent blogger, but this is only the second time I have actually posted something to Village 14. Tomorrow evening, the Board of Aldermen is scheduled to vote to appropriate $2.4 million to purchase 3 homes on Beacon Street to help accommodate a new and enlarged elementary school on the site of the current Zervas School.
I’m a member of the Newton Highlands Neighborhood Area Council and some of our members have been at the forefront in advancing Plan B. Be that as it may, I have been an observer rather than a real participant during the recent debate between the two plans.
I’ve reviewed as best I can both the Plan A and Plan B proposals and an aggressively crafted rejoinder to Plan B by the Zervas Working Group that was circulated to Board members this afternoon, only one day before the Aldermen are scheduled to vote.
Most importantly, I also listened with keen interest to comments by Alderman Ted Hess Mahan at a recent Board meeting along with several pungent comments on this blog by a very thoughtful and articulate individual who blogs under the name Patrick. Both emphatically argue that there is simply not enough land space available at Zervas, with or without the 3 properties, to adequately accommodate 24 classrooms, 490 students and all the teachers, support staff and related facilities that would be required to operate a school of this size. They also argue that this size problem will exist, under either Plan A, Plan B, or any other Plan or revision that calls for this many students at the Zervas Site. I’m not certain whether or not this is true, but it’s a major concern and deserves to be debated.
The City will claim that the process has been open and extended to everyone in the community, but that’s not what I’m hearing. In fact, I’ve talked to many people in our community over the past several months and I just know there isn’t a consensus in favor of the School Committee’s change in strategy from neighborhood schools to these larger commuter schools. In fact, virtually everyone I talk to either is emphatically against it, or doesn’t understand the logic behind it.
I just believe that fast tracking this process the way this is being done could ultimately come back to haunt the City. Stepping back and letting the community in on big issues such as school size could lend a degree of credibility, consensus and fairness that can only stand the City in good stead in the years ahead, particularly if currently unforeseen problems or cost overruns occur.
Bob, it is more than just the size and scope of the project that is proposed, although many issues flow from the plan to “supersize” Zervas. It is about urban planning and, as importantly, transportation planning. In another blog post, Nathan Phillips points out that the reduction of the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions, i.e., transportation, is conspicuously missing from a recent op-ed by Newton’s sustainability director about reducing our carbon footprint. The two issues are inextricably intertwined.
I was on Land Use for 8 years and chaired it for the last 4 years, and saw a lot of projects come through for special permits. Traffic studies are done on large commercial and residential projects early in the planning process because of state and federal requirements for environmental impact reports. This project has a traffic impact similar to an office building that will bring hundreds of employees and customers to the site every morning and afternoon. Although we are told these properties are not being acquired to build a parking lot, in fact, Plan A has 75 or so parking spaces within those boundaries. Moreover, the exit and entrance are placed close together on Beacon Street–which will mean cars and buses making left turns–where backups frequently occur in the morning.
Ald. Norton asked about a traffic study at the last board meeting, and I followed up a few days later by email. It was not until this past Friday that I got a definitive answer that, no, there was no traffic study that had been done to determine whether the proposed configuration of the site and traffic flow will work to improve matters or just make things worse as 50% more students and faculty will be coming to the site. Vehicles sitting in traffic or idling in the Blue Zone will only add to Newton’s carbon footprint. And a larger building generally consumes more energy than a smaller one. So, if we are going to spend $2.4M for something, I would prefer to spend it on making this a Net Zero Energy Building, to offset the impact of increasing the size of the school.
Thank you, Ted, for highlighting the transportation issue.
A few traffic mitigation tools for Zervas that can (still) be studied/planned:
– Paid parking, with revenues subsidizing transit passes. A revenue neutral incentive.
– Parking as an employee choice in place of a salary raise – let’s value parking, not give it away free.
– Priority parking for carpooling teachers/staff (credit to Andrea Downs for the idea)
– Single occupancy parking at (underutilized) Cold Spring Park – a short walk away.
– Secure/covered bike lockers at Zervas AND at Waban and Highlands T stations, allowing last mile bike commute for able-bodied teachers/staff.
– Improve life course trail and allow bike travel on the connector portions to Zervas (perhaps during restricted hours). Safer for students to bike than competing with cars and pedestrians on Beethoven.
– More ridesharing/carsharing at transit + school hubs.
– A shuttle vehicle from Waban/Highland T stations to/from Zervas.
Using a combination of these tools, could we reduce the parking need to 45 or 50 spaces?
That’s Andreae, not Andrea – apologies!
I live quite close to Zervas and, once my youngest graduates, will have been a Zervas parent for 13 years. The Zervas physical plant is a disaster and an insult to the families who have attended this school for the past few decades and the people who work there. An expanded Zervas will allow the city to better meet its education needs. It will also allow for a degree of programming flexibility that is not afforded by the current small size. I have seen/suffered from the results of this constrain more than once in my time there.
Now the Zervas Working group is staffed by some very competent individuals from the community whose professional expertise concerns projects such as the one under consideration. Anyone attending the public meetings would know that this well-qualified group has, over the course of these past few months, considered the Plan B features and dismissed each and every one on solid technical grounds. Indeed, had all of the aldermen reviewed their materials prior to last week’s meeting, they all would have realized this. Thus, if one believes in the value of having these community working groups, then there is absolutely, positively not one legitimate reason why Plan B should be taken at all seriously.
As for Alderman Hess Mahan, if you have applied your Zero Net Energy approach to each an every vote you have taken conceding renovation and reconstruction of city owned property, then I suppose there is no argument that a concerned Zervas parent could make here. If however, you have supported or approved allocation of funds to e.g., NNHS, the Angier, Carr, and Cabot projects in the absence of a ZNE approach, well then sir, one is let to wonder where the consistency is.
Bob – The School Committee didn’t change policy to develop “commuter” schools. The city has had a huge influx of young families whose children are occupying the same square footage of classroom and common spaces. They have every right to send their children to the public schools. This trend has resulted in a serious overcrowding problem at the elementary level and the city is developing multiple solutions to alleviate. Over the years, families in other school districts have been redistricted, buffer zones have been created, and tacky modulars added to buildings, as examples of such solutions. This overcrowding problem is a citywide and requires all school districts to compromise to ensure that young children – throughout the city – will receive a quality education. Just like every other elementary school in the city, Zervas has to be part of the overcrowding solution.
Many of the elementary school sites are tightly constrained. The usable/buildable space at Cabot is very small, as is the site at Burr. I’m sure there are other schools with tight sites as well. Some of these schools back up to a park, so the sites appear much bigger, but it’s not usable or buildable space. The park space at Burr cannot even be used as play space for reasons of safety and supervision. Buying the three properties abutting Zervas is merely one part of a solution to a growing citywide problem that threatens the quality of Newton schools.
The truth of the matter is that we don’t even have a Plan A and Plan B. Plans for building projects are named by the architect in collaboration with the city, and until this weekend, I thought “Plan A” and “Plan B” were two plans they had developed, with the School Committee preferring Plan A. But now I’ve learned that a group of citizens took it upon themselves to name them Plan A and B, and the BOA is actually calling them as such. This Irish gal finds the Yiddish expression chutzpah to be well suited for this situation.
What we really have is a plan the city has developed with classroom and common spaces in compliance with the new MSBA guidelines for classroom and common spaces and adequate staff parking, and a sketch of a building by a citizens’ group with no data about whether the interior spaces comply with those guidelines and has a very serious flaw to it – the parking. The citizens’ group places the parking lot directly against the wetlands and the Conservation Commission has said from the get-go (well before the citizens’ group developed its plan) that it will not approve any plan with the building or hardscape in that area. That means the number of parking spaces for staff in the citizens’ plan will not have anywhere near the number of parking spaces for staff it claims to have and teachers and staff will have to park a significant distance from the school. This will be a burden for decades into the future for elementary teachers who often have to carry bulky loads to and from school. I now work at the HS level, park in the most distant lot daily, and enjoy the walk with my light carry home load of papers to correct. It’s very different at the elementary level. Accessible parking is essential. The city plan provides much more staff parking. Teachers live miles away from each other in the wider Metro area. Carpooling is simply not practical.
On a final note, if a citizens’ group can present a plan and name it (not to mention give the city’s plan a name), then you invite total chaos into the building project process moving into the future. Until this time, I’d be willing to bet virtually no one realized that it was possible to submit plans to the BOA to consider. Frankly, I think going down this road is a very bad idea, but if one group can do it, why not everyone? Assuming we can all present plans with official names, then I have Plan C. It’s one I’ve thought about, talked with people about, is very doable and relieves the overcrowding on the northside of the city.
“to alleviate it”
“a citywide problem”
Had to write really fast this AM
It’s depressing that the acquired space is allocated almost entirely for car storage. Why is it that you can still clearly see the residential lot boundaries in plan A? Is it simply a contingency plan? It’s as if they built the building, then demolished the houses afterwards. Is that actually the plan, or is there a lack of creativity going on? A sea of parking visible from the street may be the design firm’s idea of good planning. So was a drop-off loop. We should demand better.
THM makes some excellent points about the way government treats transportation when it comes to development. I’m reminded of state reviews for Chestnut Hill Square (blame this on the state, not the city) Increased auto traffic was treated as a benefit in the CHS environmental reviews, which were more about sewer and other issues. Idling down the hill didn’t seem to be a factor. On one other point made by THM:
Generally true for new buildings, but not necessarily so for teardowns. Even without heroic “Net Zero” efforts, building to today’s energy code can produce far more efficient structures than those built 50 or 100 years ago!
Ted, what is the official reason behind the missing traffic study? And is there any chance of getting one before moving further? Thank you to both Emily and you for pressing the issue. Not to be snippy from the sidelines but I can’t believe it was a lack of funding…it suggests either a lack of planning or intentional oversight. Both are unacceptable in my book.
I agree 100% Jane – well said!
I, and I’m sure many people, thought from all the previous discussions that “Plan A” and “Plan B” were both developed in the same manner. Thank you Jane for the enlightenment. It’s also a surprise to learn that the Zervas Working Group doesn’t see the citizen’s plan to be technologically viable. I had assumed this new plan was developed by that group and to learn the Conservation Commission would not approve its parking specifications. These are important details. I suggest the BOA, and THM in particular, to refer to them appropriately. There is a city wide developed plan and a citizen’s group proposal. Has that group done appropriate traffic studies? Any studies? Or are they trying to pull a stunt with the whole proposal similar to the fake parking lot? With this exposure, I’m with Jane on Plan C.
Jane, if you study plan ‘B’ a bit closer, you’ll find that it uses the same building layout — so your complaints about interior spaces may not apply. Yes, there is the issue about two entrances, hardly the same as the old Angier. It would be two doors entering the same lobby. Still a 9/11 issue, yes… they’d have to open it when the buses arrive. That’s it. And the argument for parking in the back of the building has very sound planning principles behind it. The parking is intended to make use of a new type of permeable pavement to help with run off and protect the wetlands. The building committee is quick to reject this as unacceptable. Did they do the research? Did you?
Chutzpah? For engaging in the discussion? What should NHNAC have named their plan, Fred?
I am surprised that anyone would complain about citizens taking it upon themselves to organize and suggest what they think is a better path forward for legislators to follow. I consider that the basis of our democracy. Do we really think government always gets it right? If only I had 8 million hours to sit here and type out counter-examples.
I welcome suggestions from constituents on issues large and small. I won’t please all the people all the time but I will virtually always learn something and often my decision-making will be much improved.
Can someone from the Newton Highlands Neighborhood Area Council tell us whether they ever met with elementary teachers from various schools to hear what they had to say about the needs of students and staff? Has anyone on the Council taught in an elementary school? I could easily have gotten you a small group of teachers to meet with you to give you a student and staff perspective..
I mention this because it’s quite typical for the teacher’s voice is often left out of these conversations. We know a lot about the needs of students, and could have answered some of the parking questions in particular. We could have explained that elementary teachers often carry material, such as 25 Mead composition books, home at night in order to be prepared for the following day’s lesson. I typically had 2 LL bean size canvass bags that I toted back and forth from school. Do you expect teachers to put these materials on their backs and ride a bike down Beacon from the subway?
As for carpooling, many teachers are assigned to multiple schools making carpooling most difficult at best. Others have frequent offsite meetings and different schedules. It’s a far more complex educational world than our childhood experiences. Most teachers live far from Newton. Here is just a partial list of communities where teachers lived who taught in one of the elementary schools where I taught. Give me a reasonable carpooling plan for this group:
Stoughton
Acton
Attleboro
Marlboro
Somerville
Natick
Arlington
Boyleston
South Boston
Brighton
Fitchburg
Medford
Do you expect these people to become second class citizens, sent to park at Cold Spring Park because they can’t afford to live in Newton?
I do to, and often offer input. What shocks me is that the BOA did not inform the community that they could submit a plan to be considered. I would have done so if I’d know it was possible. It also shocks me that the BOA has allowed a citizens’ group to provide what appear to an official name to a plan they didn’t develop.
In fairness, citizens meddle all the time, and public officials are sometimes too quick to give in to public pressure, as is often the case with street design and traffic (Beacon and Centre comes to mind). The difference is when those who submit the plans really do their homework and follow the public process, as I think was the case here. Anyone can submit whatever plans they want. It doesn’t have to be taken seriously.
Jane, comments on carpooling and parking further from school on this thread were interesting but not part of NHNAC’s so-called plan ‘B’, which proposes pretty much the same on-site parking as plan ‘A’. You’re complaining about the wrong citizen proposal.
The main issue with the Zervas project is the capacity issue. All the other major design problems flow from the fact that the SC wants to jam a 500 student / 24 classroom facility onto a site too small to handle it with or without the added 3 properties.
Nathan, the transportation and traffic issues would be mitigated with an 18 classroom / 400 – 425 student facility. The parking could be reduced to the range you propose. That is still a 33% increase in the student body over the current numbers.
Elmo, I am already a 13 year Zervas parent. I agree the Zervas community deserves a better facility for their grade school children. A better facility with 18 classrooms would still provide the common resources of a 21st century school: library / media learning center, cafetorium, gym, music room, ELL room, SPED room, pottery room, open play/green space, etc. And if there were 100 less students at the facility, the students would enjoy and use those spaces in a better way.
Jane, the citizens group, to whom you are referring, is the Newton Highlands Neighborhood Area Council. They are the duly elected board with the responsibility to represent the interests of the residents of NH. They are chartered to provide input to the city officials regarding village issues. That they provide a visual aide (you call it a sketch) to help present their proposal is a help to the BOA, in my opinion. If you look at the sketch, you will see that the building is a mirror image of the one so carefully designed by the professionals so I do not understand how you can question “whether the interior spaces comply with those guidelines” since they are the same. The visual aide is intended to address the site issues, not the educational program issues within the building.
Technically, the Zervas School site is within the Waban Area Council’s geography so the WAC should have presented a community proposal. However the NHNAC could represent a significant portion of the new student body depending upon how the SC redistricts the area.
Adam, as explained by the design professional at the BOA meeting on 9/2/2014, the parking can go anywhere on the site. The parking is on the area of the proposed acquired land because that is where it is best suited based on current project parameters. I encourage you to watch the replay of the BOA meeting on NewTV to appreciate the design professional’s full explanation. There are landscaping techniques to mitigate the less-than-perfect visual presentation of a parking lot on Beacon Street in a residential neighborhood. Hopefully, the designers can incorporate some/most/all of the healthy, mature trees currently on the site.
The SC has a legacy of bad decisions. Those decisions date back at least 30 years to when they sold the other elementary school properties. That was followed by replacing Phonics with Whole Language English which failed a decade of our students, the NNHS fiasco and other examples. The SC is now trying to justify the 500 student facility by stating a “4 classroom per grade” configuration is the best approach to student learning. I believe the SC owes it to the community to prove that statement before they build the mega school, which Alderman Fuller said will last 100 to 200 years.
Jane, I fully agree with you that the teachers should have parking close to their place of work. Neither Waban center nor Cold Spring Park are a short, easy walk on a rainy day let alone a cold dark evening with snow and ice on the sidewalks. Making either of those treks carrying the identified supplies is not the right thing to do to our teachers. Unless the mayor and the aldermen would also park at CSP, which is about equidistant to Zervas as the Waban Library is to Zervas.
If the other proposal is from the Newton Highlands Neighborhood Area Council and the Zervas Working Group, please explain what Elmo said: “… Zervas Working group … considered the Plan B features and dismissed each and every one on solid technical grounds. Indeed, had all of the aldermen … they all would have realized this. Thus, if one believes in the value of having these community working groups, then there is absolutely, positively not one legitimate reason why Plan B should be taken at all seriously.”
If the Conservation Commission won’t approve the proposed parking and it is then left up to teachers to get to work one of the (ridiculous) ways suggested, then I assume all future building proposals will be required to have their employees get to work in one of those ways too.
Emergency access is on grass, on a playground? Snow?
The throw-up-the-hands, can’t-do sentiment expressed here about car travel shows just how far Newton needs to go. The reasons given for why teachers are a special class of worker that can’t not drive are not convincing to me (as a teacher myself). This is a very deep seated cultural issue. The car is still very much king in Newton, and car comfort trumps our kids’ lungs.
All this surprise from Jane and Marti that “Plan B” is not an official city alternative plan reminds me of something … what, what does it remind me of? Oh yes, how a lot of people were surprised to find out the “renovation and expansion” plan was not a renovation at all but a brand new school. Because they hadn’t done enough research, or gone to the right meetings.
All you had to do was read Bruce Henderson’s original post http://village14.com/newton-ma/2014/09/nhnac-zervas-working-group-proposes-plan-b-to-save-trees-open-space-and-2-4m/#axzz3DPiGwznK to see who was proposing it. It even put “Plan B” in quotes. The fact that it’s making aldermen stop and think is a tribute to the work that went into it.
With regard to teachers having to carry stuff so they need close parking spaces: I’m surprised they’re not already using little wheelie things like flight attendants walking long distances through airports, or those handy folding metal shopping carts that all those downsizing seniors who are supposed to be flocking to Austin Street will be using to get their groceries home from Shaw’s — unless they decide to drive.
While I may have sounded critical of Nathan’s note, I only meant to point out that criticism of carpooling seemed misdirected at the plan B proposal. Nathan’s ideas are anything but ridiculous. I remember my Angier elementary school teachers carpooling from different towns like Andover and Winchester. With traffic as it is, there’s plenty of incentive. On-street parking is also being treated as forbidden by this proposal, and we’re acquiring property for parking when we could be using the public way for at least some of the parking.
But when it comes to green transportation alternatives, we should really start with the parents, not the teachers. When the vast majority of kids are driven to the front door of the school, that’s got to have a measurable impact on our environment, not to mention our kids. Our community does have a long way to go… just to get back to where it was just a generation ago.
Yes, I am one of those people Julia mentions. How did the Zervas renovation change so quickly and without any real explanation. This entire project is being rushed through. Sandy Guryan has been pushing the S.C. for months to hurry up on this project. For me this is a big mistake.
At the previous Board meeting Emily Norton asked this very question.How did the Zervas project change so quickly and what was the process? Not many people know anything about the decision making process here because it is being rushed through.
I particularly disliked the way Lenny Gentile prevented S.Guryan from responding to Emily’s question. He was rude and dismissive toward Emily and managed to block a needed response from Sandy G.
Adam, I do not want to argue with you because you make multiple good points. Yet I would say your comments about how students arrive at their school would have more credibility if the SC provided a school in the Upper Falls for that community’s children.
You do not want to start with the teachers as the problem to better green transportation alternatives, but rather place the problem at the feet of the parents. I do not want to point at the parents until the SC addresses the missing village schools.
Patrick, I’m all for walkable schools whenever possible, and very sympathetic to the Falls, but that’s really not the issue. Even at Newton’s more walkable schools, and as well as at the current Zervas, the majority of kids are still driven to school, some from within 1/4 mile. It would be best if everyone was in walking distance to a school like they were in the 70’s, but for kids beyond walking distance, the primary mode of transportation should be the (free) school bus.
Adam, again you make a good point. Now go convince the helicopter parents, who have a different definition of “walkable” than you. I wish you good luck.
I’m not sure it’s accurate to say that the SC changed its strategy from small neighborhood schools to bigger commuter schools. Given an infinite amount of money, I’d guess that most, if not all, School Committee members would love to have walkable, neighborhood schools. Who wouldn’t? But that’s not the situation our community is in right now. We have too many students and limited money. It would be irresponsible to build a school that would not accommodate a larger enrollment. That’s the part that I don’t understand about this whole “Zervas will be too big” argument. Why should taxpayers spend money to rehabilitate one of the most centrally located schools in the city and not expand it?
This is the quote: “… some of our members have been at the forefront in advancing Plan B.” Read again: “some” of our members have been at the forefront, and that means those who put this plan forward were not the Newton Highlands Area Council, but a citizens’ group. There is no indication that the NHNAC were in agreement or took a vote on the plan that some of their members backed, and there’s nothing in its charter that says it can create official plans and place names on city projects.
More importantly, the plan does not provide dimensions or data about square footage of various indoor spaces. I can’t tell from the drawing if it’s a true flip if I don’t have dimensions. If we don’t have that data, then we have no idea if the classroom and common spaces conform to state standards. We do know that the Conservation Commission has said placing hardscape in the area where the citizens’ group places parking is a nonstarter, so their plan does not, in fact, provide adequate parking.
We do know the city plan does conform to state standards for classroom and common space size and is a solution that is not perfect, but addresses capacity issues on the southside of the city. As far as I’m concerned, that’s a “can-do” attitude. We can deal with this serious overcrowding problem if residents from every school district are willing to give up some of what they want. But the Zervas community simply cannot be exempt from being part of the solution.
Julia – A number of elementary teachers do use little wheelie things to tote materials. That’s my point. They carry bulk to and from work and that’s why accessible parking is such an issue. The little wheelie things don’t function on city streets in the winter. As far as why I’m finding out about this so late, that’s personal and private. This is probably the first time in 25 years, that I’ve not been on top of large city issue, attended multiple meetings, and contacted Aldermen and SC repeatedly. However, if the NHNAC was actually discussing a building plan, then they could have and should have had a conversation with a group of elementary teachers from various parts of the city. I would have been happy to pull together a focus group for them.
Patrick – my concern about building a facility of 400-425 relates to what I see happening all around us in Waban. There are teardowns everywhere. Fewer people are aging in place (hey, we’re staying the course though). Developers are approaching seniors and empty nesters and offering to buy their property, then new residents move in with 2 or 3 kids to educate. This isn’t some wild eyed rumor – I’ve been approached. Then there’s the Phillip Neri property – most likely housing will go in there. I’d hate to see us build a school that hits capacity very quickly, leaving Zervas right back where it is now – a school that has to give up its common spaces to create inadequate classroom space. It’s exactly what happened at Bowen. At Bowen, the city did a comprehensive renovation and within a year or so, two Avalon apartment complexes were built within the district, resulting in the need for 4 modulars because the majority of the classes had 27 students.
Adam – I’ve lived though multiple school renovations and a new school building over the last 32 years. I’ve never seen the BOA take a citizens’ plan and have it added to the list of proposed site plans. Never. In the past, several architects have offered plans, but none has ever became part of the process. If the BOA has made a change in policy in this regard, then it had an obligation to inform the community that anyone could submit a plan for review. As far as I’m concerned, this policy will lead to chaos in the future but given that it exists, I would have managed to submit a very credible plan that addresses the overcrowding problem. If the BOA rejects the buying of the three houses, I hope the city will reconsider building the new school in another district where it would be embraced while addressing the overcrowding problem at the same time.
Jane, it’s a flip of the building. Those presenting the plan said so. And they present at almost every NHNAC meeting. There may have been a vote. Ask them. It’s a concept, it needed a name so it can be discussed. You’re really hung up on the moniker thing. I don’t understand why. Aldermen can and should consider ideas based on their merit. I’ve lived here more than 32 years. I think I can count the major school renovations and brand new schools built on one hand.
And again, sticking to the facts, Bowen overcrowding was not the result of Avalon bay. Our district (already expanded by the closing of the Hyde years ago) did it on its own, thank you very much. Our “affordable” and rental housing tends to turn over at a shocking rate, and the birthrate was a bit high, too. Avalon developments crowded neighboring districts of Countryside and Mem-Spaulding, which didn’t help matters much. Avalon Chestnut Hill was somehow went unnoticed by the administration and they redistricted it away from Bowen after the first week of school.
Adam – I’m not stuck on the “moniker thing”, but I object to the concept of the BOA allowing one particular citizens’ group to present their plan when they have not opened up the process of presenting options to the whole city. As I’ve mentioned, other people have other options in mind. If they had known that the BOA was open to reviewing them, they very well might have presented them. I certainly would have.
The citizens’ group claim it to be a flip of the building, but have presented no hard data. Saying it is so isn’t data – specific dimensions of classroom space, common spaces, specific square footage of setbacks, etc. is data. I don’t see it in the powerpoint that the citizens presented.
I also want the facts and I’m not getting them. The more I hear about this situation, the more I think we should shift the funding for a new elementary school to a community that would appreciate a new building and leave Zervas as is.
Adam – Would you, the citizens’ group, or the NHNAC be willing to give up the funding for Zervas so that it could be used to build a new school on the northside of the city?
It’s rare that I agree with Jane, so I’ll admit when I do.
Teachers should have a say in these plans. But as a parent and taxpayer, the last thing that I care about is how they feel about walking a couple of blocks from their car to get to work.
Were teachers ever asked how they feel about teaching in a building of 500 students? Has the NPS ever done a survey about why elementary school teachers choose to work in say, Newton with a 350 student population vs. a K-8 in Brookline with 800?
Anecdotally, I’ve got to tell you that I have heard that the smaller schools and communities are a big draw to teaching in Newton at the elementary school level. When a family member of mine was hiring teachers in Westwood, candidates would say that the smaller size of the schools had great appeal. I believe that a former Newton principal said that “after 350, it’s hard to know every child’s name”.
I also had two children at Zervas, right at the peak time when parents were lobbying for modulars and the most basic physical plant replacements. Even under the worst physical conditions at Zervas, with failing boilers, crowded classrooms and leaky windows, I still heard teachers say that the small community feel and the close relationships that the size of the school fostered was a huge asset. That’s why a higher than average number of NPS staff members enrolled their children at Zervas through the years — despite crowded conditions, no auditorium and very little space for specialists. The sense of community made the school special.
We’re completely altering the model that many teachers signed on to when they came to work for a system that previously believed in and advocated for small neighborhood schools and the communities and working conditions that they fostered.
Another point from Jane’s argument that is very much a contradiction is this mention of teachers going back and forth. The whole benefit of this larger model, as told to us by the NPS, with 4 classes per grade, is that you no longer have to share specialists. There’s one OT per building, one psychologist, etc. That means less traveling about, not more, from how I understand it. Fewer parking spaces.
I also have to speak up for the citizen meddlers being dissed here. I have to say that I went to a Zervas Working Group meeting attended by these awful usurpers. It is because of them pointing out that we were putting a school for 500 on a plot of land originally sited for a school population of 250 that the ZWG pursued purchasing these properties. They expressed serious concerns about recreational space for children — recreational space that is currently insufficient for the existing population.It is because of their concerns — not the vision or priorities of the ZWG — that this is even being discussed. Their advocacy made the plan’s priorities shift to put more priority on recreational and open/tree-filled space. The design that broke up the wings by grade and created a community gathering space? That wasn’t proposed by the architects until there was pushback on the design presented. This makes me really suspicious about how much real community input went into the original designs. The community input meeting that I went to in the Zervas gym was a disgrace. Sandy Guryan droning on like a condescending school marm while the community was prevented from asking questions and put in a position where we had to fill out 3x 5 cards so that our questions could be screened and only the ones that they wanted answered selected.
To answer the question headlined in Bob’s lead-in article, yes, Zervas is too big. If, however, we have to accept this size school, let us do everything that we can to prioritize providing recreational space for children and preserving trees and open spaces, not parking.
Of note, Brookline is experiencing the same increases in population that we are. The Devotion School on Harvard Ave. in Coolidge Corner will be undergoing an expansion that will increase its population from 800 or so to 1000, also on a very limited site. The plans that were recently submitted are up on Brookline’s web site. What is interesting is that they will be building UNDERGROUND PARKING. What’s even more interesting is that the plan is to provide underground parking for 65 cars plus 20 spaces on site and on street. That’s a total of 85 spots for a school with a post-renovation population of 1,000. Zervas is to have 500 kids and 75-80 spots.
So here’s what I want: If we can’t build a 16th school for less money than the current Zervas site with underground parking, let’s build the big huge Zervas that the School Committee and these pro- eminent domain Zervas parents (most of which, like Elmo and Mrs. Elmo who have posted here live right within the square block area that would be most affected by off street teacher parking, so let’s take their opinion with a grain of self-interested salt) are advocating for. But let’s initially do it without buying the properties so that we can put the money where the override voters said it should go: into a school building — without taking budget that could be used for green building stuff or technology or anything that benefits education and advances our community values.. One can argue back and forth about whether the override was a vote for a school of 500 kids, but it can’t be denied that it was NEVER a vote to spend such a proportion of the amount to fund a staff parking lot. Initially, with this “plan B”, parking would be cramped, but true educators definitely care more about the quality of experience for children over their own convenience, right? Then put a debt exclusion override up that would purchase those three properties and build underground parking so that Zervas kids get the same allotment of recreational space to run around, climb trees, etc. that kids at other schools with more land have. Consider taking even more properties in the area to achieve this. And factor it all against the estimated cost of building a whole new school in Upper Falls.
Just came from tonight’s Board meeting. The question is momentarily on hold. One of the property owners has chosen to not extend the Purchase and Sale at the negotiated price. Hence, the current docket item (to fund the purchase of the three properties) is no longer valid and the matter has been referred back to the Finance Committee.
So Alderman Hess-Mahan was correct two weeks ago when he was concerned that one of purchases had a 9/3/2014 date associated with it. Alderman Baker also indicated he was of the same mindset that not voting on 9/2/2014 could impact the project. The legal counsel for Newton indicated delaying the vote would not cause a problem.
So now, what happens?
I’ve come to believe that the funds for the Zervas project should be shifted to building a new school in another district. We have more than enough dilapidated, dated elementary schools whose staff and families would love to have the new building. If the Zervas community is satisfied with what they have, then that should be okay and it appears that that’s the case. Sometimes you just have to move on.
Glad to see that the project has been delayed. It provides other citizen groups with an opportunity to develop and present plans, now that it’s public knowledge that the BOA allows for the review of citizen plans. Chris – do you know the timeline on the delay? I think it’s time to push the BOA for an extension so that other groups can submit plans.
True educators take a lot of work home so they can be prepared to teach their students the next day. At the elementary level, that means bulk – reading/writing journals, workbooks, etc. The issue is not about walking a couple of blocks – I love to walk. But one idea presented here had the elementary teachers ride bikes from the subway station while carrying their materials – I assume on their backs – in rain, sleet, snow, and below freezing temperatures. The other plan had teachers who couldn’t afford to live in Newton and no one to carpool with from their community, be relegated to an offsite parking lot. The parking issue has nothing whatsoever to do with convenience.
No idea on the duration of the delay or in fact the next steps. We’ll all have to wait for the next Finance Committee meeting (9/22).
@Marti, my colleagues and I have been doing our due diligence. You are misinformed about the Conservation Commission. I invite you to read the information provided by Ald. Baker regarding the Conversation Commission. The Conservation Commission has not formally taken up anything yet. Moreover, the relevant regulations themselves do not prohibit putting parking spaces in the Buffer Zone. Indeed, “Plan A” has both a building and parking spaces located in the 100′ buffer zone around the protected wetlands.
@Patrick, the agreement with the homeowner stated that it would expire on September 3rd, “or such other date as the parties mutually agree to.” Apparently, the homeowner did not want to extend the agreement for the proposed purchase price (which was $200,000 less than the offer made to the immediate abutter, whose house has a virtually identical assessed value). We will have to see how this plays out.
@Joyce, after the September 2 Committee of the Whole Meeting, where the design team presented their rationale for acquiring the abutting properties, the aldermen were invited to submit questions. Ald. Norton asked at the meeting whether a traffic study had been done, and I followed up a few days later to request a copy of any traffic studies that were done. Neither of us received an official response until Sunday afternoon by email. No explanation for the delay in responding was offered.
@Jane, there is no site plan currently before the Board of Aldermen. The only issue is whether to purchase the neighboring properties, which requires a 2/3 vote of the board. “Plan B” was submitted by members of the Newton Highlands Neighborhood Area Council as an alternative that would not require buying these three properties. That is all it is. And no one is seriously suggesting eliminating onsite parking for teachers, merely questioning whether 75+ spaces are reasonably required for 24 classroom teachers, staff and visitors. Speaking only for myself, the parking requirements appear to be somewhat inflated.
Bob Burke’s original point that fast tracking may come back to haunt the city is well taken. While we do not always agree, I respect his length and breadth of experience and insight. This is not the first rodeo for either of us, and I share his concern that we get it right.
Just as a point of reference, yesterday between 9:45 and 10:15 a.m. there were 57 cars parked in the 57 spaces available at Zervas. A headcount (tough to do, as adults were in and out of the building, there may have been some in a restroom, backroom, etc.) indicated 60 adults present in a 17-classroom building (this is not the elementary experience any of us had – present day school services require staffing levels much higher than just a classroom teacher count). There were a handful of cars parked in the blue zone out front and a couple up the street just beyond the blue zone.
The building staff reports that the building has more adults in it an hour or two later and that Wednesdays are the busiest days. On the busiest days, staff overflows park on Beethoven and across Beacon Street on Amy Circle. Many also note that some staff will block other cars in if they expect to leave before these cars will. The new Zervas will have a significantly higher student count and though the associated adult count will not increase in proportion, it will also rise considerably.
One can argue (and many have!) about whether we should accommodate our staff parking onsite or push some out onto the surrounding streets. Reasonable people will disagree. But the notion that more than 75 adults will drive to the new Zervas on a given morning is hardly an exaggeration.
Ted, I know you you didn’t mean rodeo but I like the comparison. Rodeo, circus all this seems to be a wild and crazy show.
Steve, your count would indicate that every single person drove in a single occupancy vehicle. What about the possibility of reducing the need for people to drive, or drive alone? If we are urbanizing our schools, shouldn’t we consider more urbanized transportation modes? Or are we urbanizing our schools but keeping the suburban travel model?
There are so many innovative and effective strategies to improve and mitigate parking issues, including through influencing people’s travel choices. It appears these have just not yet been considered in this project. The numbers of parking spaces called for don’t have any firm support other than anecdote or simply counting cars and assuming that car counts are a fixed parameter.
Here’s an example of the innovative planning and policy discussions that should be informing our parking designs:
http://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/event?oeidk=a07e8tybstub1a897d6&llr=jqfo5obab
I’d say 75 is a very low estimate and we’ll still have staff parking on the street. In addition to 24 teachers, there will be 4 specialists, learning center teachers, many aides to accommodate children with special needs (just about one to a class at this point in time), psychologist, social worker, PT and OT staff, inclusion facilitator, literacy specialist, literacy aides, math coach, the office staff (principal, admin. asst., custodian), spaces set aside for handicap parking, and the list goes on.
Nathan – I agree that our public transportation system is abysmal. Unfortunately, the state legislature didn’t agree when the Governor proposed spending $500m to upgrade the system, so we have what we have.
@Jane, your numbers are even higher than the principal’s estimate, and many of the staff are part time (e.g., assistant principal, lunch staff, specialists, ISS, building aides, math coach, etc.). So not everyone needs a dedicated space all day long, and there is on street parking available right next to the school after dropoff and before pickup. So if the parking lot is the rationale for acquiring these properties, then I think the need may be overstated. Over the past 4 years, I have rarely seen the NNHS faculty parking lot on Lowell full during school hours, and I drive by there quite often in the daytime. My own children went to an elementary school with only 22 spaces on site, which now has 18 classrooms and over 400 students.
Hi Ted,
Certainly not everyone needs a dedicated space all day long, and if they did the space count to accommodate might be higher. But there is something to be learned by looking at the specific situations at our schools today.
Here is a suggestion: Let’s tour three elementary schools together, count cars onsite and nearby, and I’ll find out if there is time for a short conversation with the principals and a few staff. Of course this isn’t definitive, it isn’t a formal study, and it isn’t in itself the basis for locking in parking policy. But as a reference point for what is happening today in Newton elementary schools, it will certainly provide insights and help us both ask good questions going forward. Let’s block out two hours. Give me a call.
Steve
Just one clarification Ted — Your kids went to Horace Mann, yes? Where teachers who cannot find a space onsite park on the immediately adjacent public parking area along Abermarle Park?
Jane, I don’t think Newton’s public transit system is abysmal at all. In fact, I think it is the envy of many communities and one of Newton’s greatest amenities, if underused and undervalued. We have 7 T stations and 3 Commuter Rail stations. Bus service can be improved, and so can first- and last-mile options. With modest investment in the travel bookends, we could dramatically change travel modes to/from/in Newton.
I agree with you that we also need to make it more affordable to allow teachers to live in/near Newton – that is also part of the larger transportation and housing problem, which as Ted pointed out, is an intertwined problem. I’d love to see an increasing percentage of teachers in Newton be residents of Newton and directly invested in broader dimensions of the community.
Jane – You should definitely offer your ideas to elected officials. You have an important perspective and you obviously have a lot to say. So call or write your Aldermen.
That’s part of what we do as an area council , which is an elected body and a legal entity of the City government whose mission it is to facilitate communications between residents and the City. The Zervas project affects people in our village, so we formed a subgroup to be involved – attend meetings, provide feedback, etc.
But why are you surprised and upset that we felt the need to offer a different idea for a site plan that got the attention of some Aldermen? Sure anyone can present a plan, but nobody else did. The BOA might have dismissed it but they didn’t. Perhaps that’s because the plan presented a compelling reason to question the need for the property purchase. Perhaps it’s a cogent, well-thought out plan that was presented clearly. The Aldermen do have an obligation to spend our tax dollars wisely. If there is a way to spend $2.4 million less on a plan that might be better for the community, don’t you want your Aldermen to consider it before committing those extra tax dollars? After all, $2.4 million could cover multiple other school building projects in the pipeline (see recent CIP)
There’s nothing mysterious about Plan B. It basically says that if you flip the building around, move one wing 16 feet and put the parking in the back, you don’t need those properties, you get more contiguous play space, you get a sunnier main entrance that faces the approach of 80% of the students arriving at the school, the gym opens up onto the play area, the housing stock and greenscape on Beacon is preserved, and some other benefits. I’m not saying this to start an A vs B debate. I’m saying it to highlight that Plan B is simply a counterexample to the claim that you need those properties. Now, people can and have argued that it’s not. But it’s created a healthy discussion.
Your assertion that NH residents don’t want or deserve a new Zervas is unfounded. We’re not talking about reducing the capacity or quality of the facility, just the configuration of the property. Plan B doesn’t reduce the educational program, the number and orientation of classrooms, and it doesn’t even change the number of parking spaces very much. We have 5 fewer spaces (the claim that the Conservation Commission won’t approve spaces within the 25′ wetlands buffer is erroneous. The law allows construction near wetlands as long as mitigation is adequate and in the case of parking, the use of pervious pavement is adequate mitigation. The commission would have to determine that the construction will change the wetlands in order to recommend that the project not proceed. Also the fact that Plan A’s building resides 34% within the 100′ buffer zone is actually more impactful to the wetlands than a pervious pavement parking lot partially in the 25′ buffer.)
One more thing: The parking spaces for staff are closer to the building in Plan B than they are in Plan A.
I’m happy to chat with you any time if you have questions. You can reach me at [email protected].
I didn’t include ISS, assistant principal, or lunch attendants or other part time employees on my list, though I did forget inclusion aides who are typically full time. The other staff members I noted are full time and work in several schools. Because their travel time is limited, they run on a very tight schedule, and they in fact need onsite parking more than other staff in order to maximize the time they spend with students and minimize “road time”.
Nathan – I agree that we have great public transportation options if you happen to want to go to certain places. I’d never drive into Boston, nor would anyone in my family – it’s the subway for us. However, let’s assume a teacher lives in Westwood (just to pull a name out of a hat) and teaches at Pierce. What’s the public transportation route for that teacher? Or one who lives in Natick and teaches at Mem-Sp.? As a parent of young adults looking for housing, the mantra for that generation is Go West, Young Man!
Ted-I agree we don’t need as much parking at NNHS at this point in time. But as the cohorts of overcrowded elementary school students move up through the grades, we’ll have additional staffing/parking needs at the HS level. That’s what long range planning is all about. BTW, just by chance, my citizens’ plan includes H-M in part because it has so much natural parking along Albamarle Rd. and a wide sidewalk that’s easy to clear of snow in winter. This alone provides a savings for the city and it’s much safer for young children to have the designated parking spots in a place where children typically don’t cross.
On page 4 of this document you will find a parking estimate that was submitted to Josh Morse by Design Partnership of Cambridge.
http://www.newtonma.gov/civicax/filebank/blobdload.aspx?BlobID=61019
It estimates 75 spaces plus 5 visitor and handicap spaces. This assumes that virtually no staff would carpool or take public transit or bike. It assumes no staff would park on the street.
I have to admit I was surprised that there would be 25 full-time SPED teachers and aides in a school with 20 teachers.
Steve – You’re probably not aware that I was involved with the NNHS project and was very unhappy with the site plan that any clear thinking individual could see was well over $140m. We had an architect develop several alternative plans that were really interesting and attractive and more cost effective, hired at significant expense a well respected traffic engineer who developed a workable traffic plan (the present plan, which works quite nicely, was not on the table at the time) and it was most definitely a cogent plan, – no I’m not referring to Anatol’s plan. We notified the Building Commissioner, the Aldermen, and maybe even the Mayor (but memory isn’t serving me well on that one) about our plans and were told flat out that they would not even look at them, that the process didn’t operate that way.
Given that experience, what was I to think? There was no reason whatsoever for me to assume that the BOA had changed its policy on reviewing citizens’ plans. In fact, I’ve spoken to several Aldermen (and I think one or two SC members) to say that I didn’t think the renovation or rebuilding Zervas was the best way to address capacity issues as part of a citywide solution to overcrowding, and once again, was shut down from the get-go. In my opinion, the BOA needs to make the change in its policy on reviewing citizens’ plans public knowledge. I don’t think that’s asking too much.
Steve – I need to see the data on your plan. I need to see dimensions of classrooms and common spaces, setbacks, etc. You’re asking me to accept on faith that this is a true flip, not to mention, depending on approval of a plan by the ConCon when it relates to wetlands is really taking a huge risk. I’m also disappointed that the NHNAC didn’t choose to interview teachers who had no horse in the race about the needs of students and what teachers and staff needed to provide the best education possible. But, yes, we should talk and I will get in touch with you after my happy family event this weekend.
On a final not, in all of this discussion, it has been lost that the Zervas plan was not just about replacing a rundown school – we have plenty of those in the city. It was part of a larger citywide plan to address overcrowding and capacity issues. If Zervas is not part of that plan and just wants a new building, then the project needs to be moved to a place where it will address capacity issues on a broader scale.
I can’t speak regarding the differences between Plan A and Plan B, but I’ll reiterate what others have said. Zervas doesn’t exist in a bubble. It isn’t an ideal site, far from it. Come visit Cabot sometimes. Same challenges in a lot of ways. New school will be big.
Capacity is a huge problem. Older buildings and overcrowded buildings are big problems. The Zervas community doesn’t get to pick and choose like a spoiled child (I’ll take the new gym and library, but no additional kids for our special community…). I’d love that for Cabot too. But since we effectively got bumped for Zervas to start its rehab first (and considering that multiple folks have expressed doubt regarding the Cabot timeline due to the Zervas timeline, I think if nothing else Cabot’s rehab now takes on the risk of Zervas delays, so don’t feed the line that it will all work out…) I’d like the Zervas expansion opponents to look around the city, look at the hard choices being made, and address where that extra capacity goes in the next few years.
For instance, do folks know that Cabot is so crowded right now that the after school program is busing its kindergarteners to a nearby church for afterschool programs? And that Cabot can’t even host a full afterschool program since there isn’t enough space? Parents are struggling to find placement for kids that don’t fit into the CASP program due to the lack of space.
A lot of us have similar stories in other school districts. I really can’t see a way to justify any money spent on Zervas if it doesn’t expand capacity.
As for the parking, I would think that the delay from Sept 3 might cost the city some money. Why was there a 200K difference between the offers?
And as someone who parks near Zervas frequently, I think there is plenty of street parking nearby. But I’m guessing that is going to anger the neighbors, who have some very lovely homes.
Steve, it is true, as Yogi Berra said, that you can observe a lot by watching. But we are talking about projected parking needs as well as roadway improvements to address added traffic from increasing the size of the school. For me, this further highlights the need for a parking and traffic study that contains actual metrics from a representative sample of dates and times and makes projections based on those figures. That really is the only way to get to whether adding a lane on Beethoven (which will require drivers to cross two crosswalks and make a right turn into a traffic lane on a busy street with single lane traffic in both directions) will even work and to know whether a large parking lot with entrance and egress in close proximity to each other on Beacon will work during the morning rush hour. A parking study could also tell us what the supply and availability of on-street spaces are, to determine whether it is really necessary to put all those spaces on-site.
Did we elect a Mayor or a Mouse? These Plan A, B, C and Ds come out of the woodwork every time we’re set to move forward. Parking lots, light bulbs, schools… Can you imagine Newton knocking on your door saying we need your house and got a wheelbarrow full of cash…, then a weeks pass and say never mind?
But Hoss, neither Plan A, B, C or D includes a bona fide traffic/parking study. It’s hard to argue we’re set to move forward without considering this crucial element – especially since is has emerged as the central issue.
In reality, Plans A, B, C and D don’t even exist.
Hoss – in past projects, the iterations of site plans came from official sources. Typically, the architect presents site plans to the Design Review Committee which is made up of experts in various design fields and they vet the site plans, vote and send a recommendation to the BOA. During the NNHS project, the DRC was a pretty dysfuntional group, in part because they were told not consider the cost of a site plan in their decision making, and that clearly bothered some members.
Obviously that was a mistake, but my understanding is that there have been changes in the membership of the DRC and that the cost of a design is part of the evaluation. But ultimately, the BOA votes on the site plan, and that’s my concern. They appear to have changed their process and have not informed the community of this change.
What Fig said, tenfold. There is no reason whatsoever to pursue a school building project that doesn’t contribute to solving the overcrowding in elementary schools throughout the city. The idea of building a new elementary school without increasing capacity just because it happens to be in bad condition is a nonstarter. We have elementary schools in deplorable condition all over the city.
Nathan, I can agree with you that traffic/parking has become the central issue, but only because the SC has decided to increase the building’s capacity by 50%. If the SC had decided upon a more reasonable capacity increase, the traffic/parking issue would be much less significant.
Jane, you want the SC to use the Zervas money for a north side renovation. Let’s not forget that the SC renovated a north side school as the first in this large, multi-school project, the Carr School. Then the SC decided to use it to house two south side student bodies while their schools are renovated. Maybe you can get the SC to explain to the public why Angier and Zervas received preferential treatment over the H-M student body.
Well, I voted to contribute more to Newton’s needs because I really want to be proud of these new schools and know that a few of the bricks are mine that will be there after I’m gone. That’s not an exaggeration either — those bricks are ours, a gift to the grand-kids of kids of kids not get conceived. Wake me up when this is over. If I see that we forced an expanded school in back of someone’s house because we caved to a group that didn’t want to hurt a tree, and a group that didn’t want to buy an old lady’s house — that’s not gonna sit well with a the greater Newton.
Julia Malakie, since Hoss raised the issue of the trees, let me ask this of you since I am not a forestry expert with your knowledge and skill set.
If the city acquires the 3 properties and decides to save the trees, hopefully you will be involved in that decision. When the time comes to assess the viability of keeping the trees, does it make sense to know the elevation of the proposed new site? The current elevation varies from the wetland boundaries rising to the Beacon and Beethoven street level. If the elevation is to change in the new configuration, will that affect the trees? I ask this because I was told by a gardener that I had placed the pine bark mulch too high around the base of my trees; there is a correct height for the root ball. If the ground is raised around the trees, will that have a negative impact on their viability. I assume there are landscaping techniques that can address this situation, if it is identified. Or is this a non-issue? Thank you.
I wanted a northside plan but the city went with another one. That happens – you don’t always get your way because other people/communities/schools have serious problems as well, which is Fig’s point.
I have no complaints with the SC. If you don’t want the new school, let them know. As far as I’m concerned, over half of the elementary schools in this city are completely inadequate, so I’m just glad that after decades of neglect, the city is addressing the problem. I had a #1 plan, but I’m more than happy to go with plan #2, #3, or #4 as long as the plan is part of a citywide solution to the citywide problem of overcrowded schools.
If I may be clear, by plan #2, #3, #4, I meant I would have supported building a school in any part of the city as long as it addressed the citywide problem.
Ted, of course we both agree that we need (and will get) a comprehensive traffic study. That is a requirement before the BOA votes on site plan approval.
I am simply inviting you to look at elementary parking with me since your tie your skepticism to your anecdotal experience. Yet one of your references is NNHS (which may not offer lessons about elementary parking) and the other is Horace Mann, the elementary school adjacent to the endless Abermarle Field parking strip. We both have questions to ask the consultants. I think that seeing what is happening on the ground will make our questions more informed.
Patrick, the City is interested in saving trees on the three Beacon Street properties. Building Commissioner Josh Morse notes that we will have considerable flexibility to work around many of the trees. Using Bruce and Julia’s excellent tree map, I figure (I am speaking just for me now as a lay arborist and site designer) that we can save as many as half the trees. I found this interesting piece when I looked up “landscaping around existing trees”. I imagine strategies such as described here might be used at Zervas where the grade will rise. Perhaps Julia can comment.
Jane, not only can the DRC discuss cost, but this is central to energy concepts and sustainability issues that are part of DRC review. Budget impact is a constant factor as designs are vetted. The DRC is informed, thoughtful, and functions on the broadest and the most focused of levels; based on my observations they have no externally imposed rules about what is off limits for consideration so this is a different group than existed during NNHS. Their meetings (all public), and especially the smaller ones at the library, function like architectural design crits where possible design solutions are probed, tugged, and tested against broad standards and fine concepts. It is this process, and not the perspectives of any one individual, that makes the work of the DRC so invaluable.
And Jane, I’ll pick up and emphasize one of your last points – Zervas is a beat up old school but there are others like it in Newton. It is precisely because of its ability to help with the student enrollment growth of nearby schools (Mason-Rice, Bowen, Countryside, and to a lessor extent Angier/Riverside, and Pierce) that the Zervas project moved up ahead of some other schools. The Zervas community is getting a new school now because it can grow.
Patrick, the gardener is correct, you should not pile mulch or anything near the base of the trunk. The root flare should always be visible. And grade changes around an established tree will be damaging and can kill the tree. Most of the trees roots are in the top foot or two of soil, and often extend beyond the drip line if there is nothing blocking their outward growth (like curbing for example). So you couldn’t lower the grade by very much without exposing a lot of roots. And you really can’t raise the grade over much of the roots because it will compact the soil and prevent the roots from getting enough oxygen, smothering the tree. If you google “tree roots grade change” you can read more and see some of the possible techniques to mitigate damage, like retaining walls and aeration systems. But it would be best to preserve the exisiting grade within the drip line at least.
Even temporarily piling soil on a tree’s roots can do damage. There’s a really horrible example of what not to do at the Dartmouth St/Comm Ave site which was clearcut for the teardown, where the one big tree they didn’t cut down has been buried under many feet of soil. It would be a violation of the Tree Preservation Ordinance, but they filed for an extension of exemption.
Steve, you have the burden of proof that we need to spend $2.4M ($2.6M?) to buy property that is currently assessed at roughly $1.63M. A traffic and parking study would bolster your case. That is, if you want me to vote for it.
Ted, I want you to vote where your clear-eyed vision takes you. But do focus Ted 🙂
, for as Yogi Berra says, If you don’t know where you are going you might wind up someplace else. I keep inviting you to gain some insight into elementary parking with me and you keep changing the subject. Join me if you will; truly the invitation is open.
You well know that an acre by Zervas holds much greater value (to Zervas) than a nearby acre containing my house and a couple of my neighbors. Every single one of our tight school sites will benefit from space relief, whether we need it now or whether it will take the next generation to use it best. You have always smartly noticed how valuable it would have been to the NNHS project to acquire the adjacent Walnut St properties. Too, a former School Committee member unsuccessfully pressed for us to buy the first house against Angier when it came up for sale a decade or so ago and that would have been tremendously helpful today as we’ve tried to squeeze the full program into the Angier site.
From your question I gather that you are good with these property acquisitions at appraised value but stumble over the higher offer price? Let me suggest this: Think about planning for the next 100 years, and make the case for why smaller school sites will be better.
Steve Siegal Said – the other is Horace Mann, the elementary school adjacent to the endless Abermarle Field parking strip
I guess SC member Siegal forgot about the Day Middle School- whose parents and teachers also use that endless parking Strip. And maybe he also forgot about the additional Students that were added to Day so that now we have about 900 kids at Day and that the Park are also used for Sports. So for example last week during Back to School Night at Day while the field was being used for a Soccer training and hundreds of parents were trying for find parking- it really ISNT an endless field.
Good morning Joanne.
No, my point to Ted is that HM teachers aren’t fighting over 22 spaces onsite; those who don’t fit in the lot have immediate access to the diagonal parking along Abermarle, which accommodates them during the school day.
Steve
Steve – just like the Coldspring Park lot (1600 feet away) would accomodate Zervas teachers.
For some, its not the property taking that is the issue; its that the property taking is being used for a parking lot, at about $35,000 per car storage space.
Steve, the city made a big mistake when it failed to do a professional parking study to back its plans for the Austin Street parking lot before issuing an RFP. A year and a half later it has a developer but no project. You want the city to spend $2.4M/$2.6M to solve the problems created by trying to supersize Zervas. You promise we will have a traffic and parking study to make sure it will all work, but only after we approve spending the money to acquire those properties. Respectfully, that’s just not good enough for me.
Newton has a recent history of school projects that have gone way over the original budget estimates, from the high schools to Day to Carr and the elementary school modulars, because of issues that could and should have been anticipated and fully explored before committing to a plan. Unlike the Angier planning process, which benefitted from close MSBA oversight, the fast tracked Zervas planning process, as a result of flipping the schedule for the Cabot and Zervas projects, makes me uneasy. And, like Bob Burke, I am not hearing a consensus from the community that this is the right way to go, as even endorsers who have been emailing the aldermen use words like “grudgingly” time and again to describe their support for the plan. Now we are hearing from Cabot parents who urge us to approve the acquisition quickly so that their school project does not get delayed or derailed.
To quote Yogi Berra one last time, “It’s like deja vu all over again.”
Hello Nathan,
I am curious: If the best layout of the expanded Zervas site placed 75 spaces at the southern end of the site and the building or playfields were placed where the houses are, would you still be talking about the cost/space for parking? Or would you just be arguing (and you’ve been doing this respectfully I might add) that we should not provide as much parking as project planners propose?
I ask because we have a full site program that is intended to accommodate the building, playfields, parking, bus drop-off, and site circulation. We are trying to get all these pieces into a best-fit arrangement and as it happens, because of wetlands issues, the efficiency of a shared bus driveway, building massing and position onsite, along with other factors, the parking happens to be best placed where the houses are. This is unfortunate, because it makes it incredibly simple to be distracted from the bigger picture of full site program.
And the biggest picture is what I posed to Ted a few posts up this thread, which I’ll pose it to you too: Every school site in the city is too tight. Consider our obligation to plan for the next few generations at least, with needs unknown, and make the case for smaller school sites.
Thank you, Steve
If the City says to a consultant that we need to show certain BoA members the Zervas project needs every inch of the anticipated space, can you do that by Thanksgiving, what value is that giving us? If we’re not trusting the Mayor, let’s let him earn it with a spend that amounts to $200k per year in operating funds, not $2.6 million all at once. If we did a parking study with Angier (which is down the road from this), why do we need to do it again here to determine a similar parking allocation?
Hi Steve,
Its more about justifying the number of parking spaces than where they would go that concerns me. More parking spaces means more traffic congestion on the roads. The number seems to be based on a status quo travel model of increasing parking and road capacity to absorb a perceived immutable traffic load increase. Transportation planners have realized that induced demand from increased capacity doesn’t solve a traffic problem; it exacerbates it. Its like solving a weight problem by loosening one’s belt. If the status quo is the only way, then a legitimate study needs to show that Newton has exhausted its options and is helpless to do anything other than promote more single vehicle travel.
For what its worth, in spite of withering criticism, you’ve been amazingly and consistently civil, respectful, and constructive, and clearly trying to do what you believe is best for our schools. Thank you for that.
Nathan – Cold Spring Park is used for a Farmer’s Market, NN sports practices and games, etc. In addition, during my last walk down that stretch, the sidewalks were not in great shape. At H-M, the sidewalks are in very good shape and the pedestrians are buffered by the cars parked in tandem.
The citizens’ plan has a really terrible parking solution that is at high risk of being rejected by the Conservation Commisssion. For it to be viable, they need to come up with a better plan.
Joanne- for goodness sakes, for years you’ve been whining about the southside, and Waban in particular, getting all the goodies and special privileges. Now, someone suggests we look at a northside solution that includes a brand new school and you’re still whining. In a positive way, explain what building plan that increases capacity for a number of schools do you favor? You can’t possibly be against everything.
Steve, your point about grabbing adjacent properties at Angier or other sites to accommodate future needs is well taken. However, arguing for taking properties for future Zervas needs is more suspect. Those plans are being set almost immediately. That building footprint is unlikely to move for 100+ years, and options for that space will be extremely limited. If there’s a good reason to take that land other than a parking lot, now is the time to make that case. Yes, for me, if those houses weren’t simply replaced with parking lots, if something in the plans impressed me with clever use of space, like permeable paving used to protect the wetlands and properly hide parking behind the school, I’d feel a lot better about the acquisitions. Better still, if we consider at least a few alternatives, like limited on-street parking, even based on permits, to create less parking and more open space, I’d be even more enthusiastic.
What Nathan said.
Jane, I admire your consistency – you have a naysayers answer for everything! But here’s an example of where we see things so differently. You see a 0.3 mile stretch of bad sidewalk and throw up your hands. I see a bad sidewalk and say – let’s fix it!
The farmers market is a non-issue – too few days, and the teachers would be parked before anyone else anyway. But since you mentioned the farmers market, what a traffic disaster that is during prime time. Its the kind of mess we can expect from the new traffic-oriented Zervas development.
Julia Malakie and Steve Siegel, thank you for your explanation and information respectively. I hope the two of you are involved with the construction phase of this project if (when) the properties are acquired. It would be a shame if the healthy trees are initially saved, and then fatally injured during the construction and/or by inadequate landscaping. Compressing the ground under the drip line for parking spots could be an issue for the plan’s designers.
Again, the City wants to CRAM this project in BEFORE Cabot. Now that there is NO FIRM design and NO FIRM plan regarding the private property, should we be focusing our resources on the CABOT project? Is the design phase active for Cabot?
I don’t think that Newton will be ready with a plan by Jan 2016 for Zervas. Maybe we can “speed” up Cabot, and then really focus our resources on a ZERVAS plan. And come up with a PLAN to create additional space on the SOUTH side for the kids in Upper Falls, and other places that don’t have an elementary school. Just an idea.
NewtonMom, FWIIW I believe it was Steve Siegel (since he is the only SC member that contributes here on a regular basis) that explained the Cabot project’s timeline is basically controlled by the state. The city controls the Zervas timeline since the Zervas project is funded by Newton property taxes acquired through the override.
It would be good if Cabot could be moved more quickly; however good luck trying to get the state to move any faster especially with the turnover of the governor happening over the next several months. Also, the Boston Globe had an article last Sunday highlighting problems within the new MSBA process. The Cabot project was not mentioned, yet the process may go under an evaluation, which would most likely slow all projects including Cabot.
Steve Siegel – When is the SC and NPS going to share the redistricting plan with the public? That seems to be the thing that is driving you to build a 528-student Zervas instead of doing a limited renovation and building a new south side school.
According to the School Committee, on the agenda for September 29, 2014
is a discussion of REDISTRICTING
September 29
Superintendent’s Report
Monday
Summer Professional Development
7:00
p.m.
Calculus Project Initiative
Discussion & Vote: CIP
Discussion: Redistricting Process
Future
Topic
Discussion re: ELL Update
Jane
Go re-read what I wrote – I was commenting regarding Steve Siegals comment about Endless Parking at Albermarle. There is not endless parking when you add in HM, Day and the Park. Sometimes there is NO parking when many events are going on in that area.
Not sure what your real issue is with my comment.
Is the real issue here for most folks the parking or the expansion of capacity?
As for Cabot folks wanting Zervas to move faster to protect Cabot, Ted that is just a complete misread of what all the Cabot folks have said (namely, me!). We are annoyed that Zervas jumped us. We don’t believe the city or the mayor or the aldermen (including you) have your heads together enough to actually get Zervas on a timeframe where Cabot won’t be delayed. We aren’t pushing for a Zervas outcome, we are pushing for Cabot. You want to say that we are pushing for the acquisition quickly to help Cabot? Actually we are pushing for Zervas to go to the back of the line, no cuts. If you don’t have your crap together, you don’t get to jump us. Wait 5 years and fight as much as you want, Zervas community!
fignewtonville – Cabot can’t be moved up because of the MSBA’s schedule. The Zervas project fits into the gap in the schedule, which saves money on having to prepare a second swing space. If Zervas gets delayed, I imagine Cabot would go before Zervas, which does not involve the MSBA. So complaining that Zervas jumped in line is not based on reality. If Zervas went after Cabot, then Carr would be sitting around empty for a year and a half (or whatever the project duration actually is.) OK?
528 students?
This whole process of renovating/rebuilding schools has always (way before the override questions were approved to be on the ballot in spring 2013, at least a year before) been about meeting the needs of Newton’s students growing numbers and spreading them out as equal as possible on the north side and the south side. All schools were projected to be able to educate over 400 students, except Underwood, with many at 450-490. Zervas was selected at the beginning stage for increased size, 8o,000 sq feet ($40 million, 24 classrooms) because of its site size, its central location and its south side location to help even out the student population. Angier will be 75,000 sq ft (22 classrooms) which is pushing it site wize.
As for “fast tracking” Zervas, it just isn’t so. The feasibility study, with all committees involved working for almost a year, has been presented countless times in open and public meetings and has evolved over time while trying to address all questions and concerns. The first six site plans for review prompted many citizen questions and comments which led to the various committees to address the various 1, 2 and 3 story heights, moving one site plan with 3 floors facing Beathoven that upset citizens across the street to finally an elbow, then after input on the 3 story section’s back to Beacon concerning buses being too close to the backs of the houses on Beacon and the need to have the Cafitorium and Gym being closer to play areas, was flipped so that the back is facing wetlands and away from Beacon, then doing away with the driveway loop, etc. The public was definitely being listened to. (FYI, the site plan that was flipped to satisfy concerns is basically “plan b” that was presented by SOME members of the NHAC, but is being represented as being from the council itself, and is the plan being fast tracked.)
So after careful planning and consideration, we have a site plan with a building that will be LEED certified Silver or above that requires lots to be purchased, part of the evolution this project had gone through, and has been approved by all Newton Committees responsible for this project and the BOA, that can’t go forward because a few citizens and alderman in Newton representing a small number of Newtonites didn’t want it to and the others listened.
Buy the property, which it seems may cost more now because of the stalling, and move on to the next stage so the students who will go to the new and improved Zervas can go there before they’re too old.
@fig – For me its neither. It is the cost / seat.
The cost/ additional seat at Zervas is way too much than constructing a new school on the south side. As someone so eloquently pointed SC has a long ranging history of making bad decisions. Lets see if BoA does their job this time.
This was not the SC’s decision.
Adam, I’ll ask you what I’ve been asking others today: Most every school site in the city is very tight. Considering our obligation to plan for future generations, with needs unknown, can you defend not expanding a school site when we have an obvious affordable opportunity? I think about Brian Yates, and Steve Feinstein, and Emily Norton, who all ask “How could we have been so shortsighted?!” about giving up old school properties 30 years ago, when the powers that be couldn’t imagine a future use. Unforgivable if our kids ask us this about Zervas in 2040.
An interesting twist on permeable parking – for spaces against the wetlands it may cause more harm than good, as it can allow contaminants and runoff from the cars to flow directly into the wetlands. Recent Con-Comm rulings have insisted that we prove zero negative impact on wetlands from construction within the 25 foot buffer. I have zero expectation that we can prove this with permeable parking hard up against the wetland edge, as Plan B advocates.
There is another precedent from a recent Con-Comm ruling on a school site that undermines Plan B – they had discretionary authority to accept a least-cost site plan option with only minimal impact on adjacent wetlands. There were two other options presented and only the most expensive one was viewed as having no impact. Con-Comm ruled that if there were any solutions available that had lesser impact on the wetlands, regardless of cost, they would not allow the more impactful scheme. The parking from Plan B clearly has an greater impact than the plan sanctioned by our designers and the DRC. I wouldn’t bet the farm on Con-Comm accepting Plan B.
Regarding the simple notion that this is a land-for-parking deal, David Krawitz from our OPM firm Joslin Lesser responded about as clearly as one can at the September 2nd meeting. Go to the 2:22:00 hour mark of this link: http://www.newtv.org/video/BOA/090214/
Steve, I looked at the video, and its actually really revealing about the overall problem. Mr. Krawitz called parking “a zero sum game”. That’s a really defeatist perspective on Newton’s transportation problem that basically is predicated on an assumption that we will continue to operate in business as usual mode, and just assume that more people equals more cars. If we don’t start to change here, when do we start to change business as usual in Newton?
Never once did he question the amount of car traffic or amount of parking spaces. He only considered where to put the 75 or 80 spaces. Where is the discussion/justification about the need for that number of spaces? Did Joslin Lesser originate the number of parking spaces originally? Was it just scaled up based on the increase in staff numbers?
I looked at Joslin Lesser’s web page. They have no expertise – or at least never mention anywhere – traffic mitigation or transportation planning. They are builders and architects – and I’m sure they are top rate at what they do. But this project can’t be built in a bubble. The traffic cannot be externalized from the site design. It has to inform the project design with respect to the true parking need.
Incidentally, I counted 40 free parking spaces (not including the parallel to roadway spaces) at cold spring park at 11:15 am yesterday, 0.3 miles from the site and a pleasant walk. Four spaces were taken. There is an abundance of available parking near to Zervas.
@Steve:
Interesting cases you brought up regarding ConCom decisions. Please share the specific cases so I can follow up with our ConCom.
By chance, did you or any of the other electeds respond to the fact that despite the statements made in the memo from the electeds who serve on the Zervas Working Group that the ConCom said that parking in the buffer zone was a “nonstarter” that – that statement was never made and the ConCom has not officially or unofficially met to discuss the project?
Its ironic how much careful attention is paid to the contaminants coming from cars in terms of runoff, but no consideration at all about the contamination from vehicle exhaust going right into our children’s delicate lungs, let alone into the climate system the pain from which they are going to feel much more than us grownups.
Can someone point me to the meetings or the documents on the School Department’s website that shows when the decision to go from 450 students to 490 students took place? I have only been able to find an October 15, 2013 presentation to the Board with a 450 student Zervas and then a February 24, 2014 document calling for a 490 student Zervas. I couldn’t find any School Committee meeting minutes publicly discussing increasing the student population size.
@Fignewtonville, I do read the virtually identical emails we received from a number of Cabot parents differently. Thank you for clarifying your intent. As for not having our “crap together,” as you so eloquently put it, the fault does not necessarily lie with the aldermen.
Over two weeks ago, I requested some fairly simple information: the maximum number of classrooms in the proposed building (i.e., 24 or 26) and the maximum student capacity. I have yet to receive a response. I cannot imagine why it should take so long to come up with an answer.
I am also puzzled by a recent change in the delineated wetlands boundaries. MassDEP and City of Newton wetlands maps clearly show that the wetlands next to the Zervas site slice through one of the properties the city wants to buy. The earlier iterations of the site plan options, without the additional properties, reflect those previously mapped boundaries. Yet, inexplicably (not to mention conveniently), in the more recent iteration showing the expanded site with the parking lot located on the properties the city wants to buy, the wetlands boundary has been pulled away from the property the city wants to buy but is now much closer to the existing Zervas site in other places. I have requested an explanation of how and why that change occurred.
@Marti, the Board of Aldermen is not a rubber stamp, nor should it be. We are told this building will last for 100+ years. Like the rest of my colleagues, I want to get this decision right. Recommital of this item to the Finance Committee will, I hope, provide enough time to get answer to these and other questions posed by the aldermen.
Steve, you may very well be right about ConComm, but it doesn’t sound accurate to call it a non-starter, and it’s not clear whether due diligence has been done.
You raise some very interesting questions:
It’s not a simple answer. We have to weigh the future unknown vs. the proposed plan rather than only the hypothetical, with the possibility that we could simply end up with the blight of a parking lot for generations to come. That, too, has a cost, as have other city infrastructure with future extensibility that haven’t worked out. The Circle of Death, for example.
I was only a kid myself, but I, along with most Newton Highlands residents realized selling the Hyde was a huge mistake. There was vocal opposition. It was clear to many that we were at the bottom of the enrollment curve and that it would come back up someday. The need for that property is hardly a surprise. It’s ironic that the Alderman shepherding the Zervas plan today served on SC in the 70’s and voted to close the Hyde.
Alderman Sangiolo, thank you for asking clarification for when the BOA was told about the capacity change at Zervas. Based on your comment above, the BOA was told in October 2013, a full 7 months after the override had secured the funds for the new building, that Zervas would be a 450 school. And then 4 months later in February 2014 the number jumped to 490.
Let me add two more numbers that maybe you can have the SC explain to the BOA. The November 2012 Enrollment Analysis Report has Zervas headcount at 378 for FY’18. This document was released 4 month before the override vote, and it reflected expected growth within the Zervas district. Then in November 2013, the most current Enrollment Analysis Report identifies Zervas’ headcount decreased to 355 (the equivalent of a full classroom) for the same FY’18. These documents were released surrounding the date of the override vote with Zervas’s growth declining after the override passed.
I ask this because multiple people have stated on V14 that it was clear to the voters in March 2013 that Zervas would be a 24 classroom / 490 student facility. I too am missing that clear statement by the city and the SC. Given the scenario that transpired this summer regarding SC agendas and meeting minutes, I think we deserve to have clarification.
@Steve S: It may be that “the powers that be couldn’t imagine a future use” for those schools, but citizens at the time certainly could. Sometimes citizens have important insights that we should listen to.
I believe we agree on the need to “plan for future generations.” Where we differ is on the path. I see a city that closed six elementary schools when the population went down, but now that the elementary population has expanded by over 1000 – equivalent to 2 supersized schools – we are not even considering opening one additional school. (While Carr has been re-bought and opened, it is planned as swing space for decades, so is not a net gain.)
We are going to spend $40M to build a new school to gain 174 spaces, rather than even consider spending an equivalent amount to gain 400 spaces, and by the way also restore a neighborhood school to an area that lost theirs.
You say “Unforgivable if our kids ask us this about Zervas in 2040.” Perhaps instead they will say “Unforgivable that you did not restore a neighborhood school when you had the need and the opportunity.” Actually we don’t have to wait till 2040, some are asking that question today.
Great points, Emily. But that link works better without the slash at the end!
http://www.boston.com/yourtown/news/newton/2009/05/newton_sold_off_city_schools_b.html
Whoops thanks Steve! Interesting what the article says about surplusing property too.
THM, I don’t expect the BOA to “rubber stamp” any project. But sending it back AGAIN to the Finance Committee seems odd after it had been approved by July, but rescinded back.
When the BOA met July 14, the Finance Committee report said that they had voted to approve the purchase of the 3 properties (5-0 with Ald Norton abstaining). Then the chair of the Finance Committee asked that it be sent back to the Finance Committee and that the purchase approval and the appropriation be held until Seotember when all the Alderman could discuss it.
There were 22 out of 24 Aldermen/women at that meeting so why was it that all voted to send it back until September when the September 3 date was known to void the Purchase and Sale agreement with the owner of the corner property who had already purchased a new home in Newton Center before this subject came up and was happy to sell it to the town for a nice profit, moving expenses and other monies.
Now his sale is off and his closing, with costs paid by Newton, on Oct 1 may have to be moved.
So, since it was put off until September to be discussed, the BOA meeting in August didn’t have it docketed.
Here we are now with 1 purchase and sale off and the a Finance Committee is back to square one.
I can’t find the discussion of the increase from 450 to 490, yet. But back when the questions for the voters were being worded, the size of Zervas was always to be 80,000 sq ft (24 classrooms), with Angier at 75,000 sq ft (22 classrooms) and Cabot at 85,000 sq ft. These were never going to be small community schools. They were planned, with the other schools, to meet students’ increasing numbers and spread it as equally as possible in the north side and the south side.
THM, of course it was sent back this time because the date set to for the sale agreement was passed and that alone made it mandatory to send it back. It’s funny how you try to make it seem as if it were sent back because it was the right thing to do for Zervas. And others say the owners were not getting enough money, because their neighbor got a higher price than they did.
It was clear from the get go that Zervis would be 80,000 sq ft. Did you think that would be for the 300 something kids there now?
Zervas School will be an 80,000 sq. ft. building and is a $40 million dollar project. This school is important in that it is on a large site and in the center of the city. We have an opportunity to increase the size of the building while keeping it within what residents want for a neighborhood school.
http://www.newtonma.gov/civicax/filebank/documents/47935/11-14-12%20COW%20Report.pdf
Marti – 80,000 sq ft and $40 million might have been on a couple of documents somewhere, but they were not advertised to the public very well and certainly not on the ballot question or press reports or override summaries. Most people in this city were not aware of the scale of the project. Even many aldermen were not aware. You’re pointing to comparatively obscure references. Even if someone saw the sq ft figure, that doesn’t mean much to most people. Even student counts don’t mean a lot to most people – who don’t know what the enrollment numbers are at certain schools, what is large, what is small.
I would also point out that Question 1 failed south of Rte 9 and north of Washington St. despite all the bait in that bucket of funding. Voting no on Question 1 meant saying no not just to Zervas, but to the fire department, public safety, roads and sidewalks, as well as to general capital expenses for the schools. It passed city wide by the smallest margin of the three questions.
As to the question about P&S expiration, I would say it was unreasonable to set up a situation where the BOA had to act on the first day of school, first day back from summer vacation, on committing to taking three homes for a parking lot. I’m very happy to see that we have some Aldermen that are responsibly questioning the expenditure of $2.4 million, not including the loss of future tax revenue from those homes.
Finally, a lot of people are questioning the wisdom of this project. I believe your quote about Zervas:
“Zervas School will be an 80,000 sq. ft. building and is a $40 million dollar project. This school is important in that it is on a large site and in the center of the city. We have an opportunity to increase the size of the building while keeping it within what residents want for a neighborhood school.”
I think that was from David Fleishman’s presentation to the committee, so perhaps we should attribute that quote to him. (ehem)
Yes the SC and NPS think of Zervas as centrally located, but the problem is we have three adjoining villages with growing population and no schools. Instead we are building two large new schools in a village that already had two schools – one was needed due to conditions and the other, Zervas is not needed.
What we should be doing is renovating and doing a small expansion of Zervas – which has already had some work put into it (new sprinklers, new boiler). We should address the city wide enrollment issue by building a new school at Braceland Park in Upper Falls. That would alleviate overcrowding at Countryside and Zervas. It could also absorb some Lower Falls kids opening up space at Angier. Some Zervas kids could be moved to Angier and then you could possibly move some Mason-Rice students to Zervas.
And all that for the same $40 million plus some for the Zervas renovation which – despite claims to the contrary – I believe should be doable for the price of a Day or Carr renovation. It needs new systems and interiors, plus a cafetorium.
That’s the kind of solution we should be doing, not destroying 320 seats and putting up 490 or whatever the real number is for the price of a brand new school. That’s not a good use of taxpayer money.
Funny, the original Long Range Facilities Plan from June of 2007 had a 16th school in all three of its options. Then the enrollment figures turned down, so it was taken out. Now the enrollments continue to grow. But instead of going back to the original idea, we are stuck on supersizing Zervas.
So to go back to Bob Burke’s original question, yes, the new Zervas will be too big. Too big because it doesn’t really solve the capacity issue but it spends money like it does.
Marti,
Having been the SC member who wrote the TAB SC case for YES in the override campaign, it would have been death to YES if I’d argued that Zervas was planned to be a 490 student new school.
No doubt in my mind!
The Zervas project was the Archilles heel of the operating override. It had not been discussed by the SC in recent years and it simply appeared in the operating override with no public SC input.
It was totally undefined despite these claims that it was all set in stone. No plan. No SC debate. All of the project numbers were place holders. Straw man stuff.
I characterized the Zervas project as an expansion of up to 125, making it clear that the real plan needed to be fleshed out.
The current plan rockets Zervas from a tranquil smaller school to an overstuffed mega commuter school.
If that had been clear back when the override campaign was being argued, I would have never written the TAB op ed and the operating override would have failed.
Zervas needs to be brought up to the standard we have for other elementary schools, more on the scale of the Day project.
What Ald. Norton said!
Plan Z: Convert the 3 properties into affordable housing duplexes for teachers, retaining the woods, reducing traffic and cars, and investing teachers directly into the Newton community. The zero commute would help attract the cream of the crop of new teachers.
“It was clear from the get go that Zervis would be 80,000 sq ft. Did you think that would be for the 300 something kids there now?” Several people have asked here where that information was shared. At multiple meetings during the override campaign – in every part of the city, in the Tab.
“What we should be doing is renovating and doing a small expansion of Zervas”. There is no way that parkland will be taken for anything without putting the project in court for years. Just a simple fact of life. Remember when the fourth middle school was supposed to be placed at Cold Spring Park. The city gave up on the idea and placed two MS’s next to each other, precisely because the project was going to end lost in the court system for years.
Joanne – You complain constantly about the privilege of Waban residents, and how the northside is shortchanged as a result. So what plan would you consider that would increase capacity to overcrowded schools and replace a dilapidated building on the northside of the city? You certainly have a number of choices considering the condition of at least 3 elementary buildings.
The purpose of the Zervas plan is twofold: increase capacity in a section of the city and renovate/rebuild a disgusting elementary school. If the Zervas community doesn’t want to be part of the solution, then fine. There’s overcrowding in the northside as well, so why not let Zervas sit in its squalor if that’s what the community wants and rebuild on the northside where a new building would be welcome. Of course, that means that the Zervas School goes back into the MSBA list for rebuilding projects and it will not be renovated for many years.
Amy – you know very well that the ConCom (as well as the Historic Commission) are adamant about their charge to protect various parts of the city. For the BOA to adopt a plan that is so likely to to be rejected is shocking at best. The BOA has never been an ally of the elementary schools. Everything is a battle – every modular, every site plan, everything. You love your high schools and your middle schools, but when it comes to elementary students, families, and staff, we are nothing but chump change to the BOA.
Jane,
I visited Zervas multiple times. It is not a disgusting elementary school. It’s largely a case of class rooms cannibalizing other space. That can be fixed by adding space for a cafeteria and ensuring that there is enough gym space and other space in addition to the standard class rooms.
A small scale renovation can fix Zervas , much like Day was fixed by adding 6 classrooms, adding other smaller rooms and expanding the cafeteria. All for $12M or less.
The condition of the Zervas facility does not warrant a knock down. It’s in sufficiently good condition that we cannot get state money through the MSBA for rehab. That’s worth remembering!
We can right size Zervas to 400 or so and make it a really sound facility and also solve the play space problem if the land from the 3 houses is added. [One could use CPA money to convert that land to playground!]
All the while keeping it small scale, 1 level, with manageable traffic, parking, tree preservation and reduced wetland threat.
Investing $12M in Zervas is well worth it for those purposes.
That leaves about $30M to deploy for further sound capacity expansion projects which will be sorely needed if the current 5 year student population projections turn out to be as wrong as the 5 years projections made in 2008. Those projections underestimated the population increase by 600-800.
Small scale projects at Williams, Lincoln-Eliot and Peirce could make great use of that money, apart from the option of adding a 16th school on the south side if that is where the greatest population pressure develops.
A smaller scale Zervas puts us in a position where we have a flexible set of options for pretty much any population increase scenario.
The mega Zervas approach kills all of our options and if it prevails will be another grand opportunity for sound planning lost.
Please forgive this double post.
But I have to take exception to the comment about the BOA not being an ally of the elementary schools.
Back when Yeo and Kusiak were trying to take all of the CIP money for the Day expansion, it was the aldermen who came to the defense of the elementary schools, including Zervas, to ensure that they got the modulars they needed.
I was at a BOA meeting where multiple aldermen questioned the SC push to shut out the elementary modulars. It was heartening to see them come to the aid of the out voted minority on the SC who were fighting to make sure Zervas, Burr and Horace Mann got the space additions they needed.
I see the current Zervas tussle as a very similar battle, where the “planners” want to grab all of the operating override money for school capital projects and spend it all on an overblown Zervas project and shut out all of the other legitimate space expansion needs in the elementary school system.
It’s the same battle.
And I look to the aldermen to ensure that we proceed in a sound fashion, just as they did back in 2011 when the Day project was going to suck up all of the money and leave the elementary schools busting at the seams.
The aldermen are a great ally of the elementary schools and the students in them and they can demonstrate that by scaling back the Zervas project and making sure that we invest override money wisely in other elementary school space expansion projects as well.
Jane wrote: “Amy – you know very well that the ConCom (as well as the Historic Commission) are adamant about their charge to protect various parts of the city. For the BOA to adopt a plan that is so likely to to be rejected is shocking at best. ”
If the Conservation Commission gave them an indication that the plan was likely to be rejected – that’s one thing but when I went to verify whether such “conversations” or statements about it (parking in the buffer zone or even Plan B) being a “non-starter”, such statements and conversations never happened. No one person on the Conservation Commission can make such a determination without a review of the plans and certainly the Conservation Commission cannot act without an item before it, in this case, a Notice of Intent, would be required for a review for such a statement from that body to have been made.
There are plenty of reasons why we should purchase these properties as there are plenty of reasons why we shouldn’t. For those of us on the fence, we just need credible facts. This is not a question about moving forward with Zervas or not. This is about whether we purchase 3 residential properties on Beacon Street in order to expand an institutional use. That means taking 3 residential properties off of our housing inventory- a notion that runs counter to the policy that we need more housing not less, and putting in it’s place, and replacing those units with a parking lot which is designed to contain parking on the site rather than the residential streets – a notion that runs counter to planning professionals – who for years advocate (especially with large scale developments) – that we need to be building less parking not more.
@Jane: “The BOA has never been an ally of the elementary schools. Everything is a battle – every modular, every site plan, everything. You love your high schools and your middle schools, but when it comes to elementary students, families, and staff, we are nothing but chump change to the BOA.”
Nothing can be further from the truth. The BOA has never done anything to substantiate that statement. The school department and the school committee are the ones who set the priorities.
Finally, there is no reason to disparage or marginalize those who question the purchase of the 3 properties. We should all be able to have a civil and respectful debate based on facts.
The arguments are predictably getting weaker as the thread grows to a close. We need to preserve three over-priced homes in Waban Massachusetts (and squeeze an expanded school behind them) because they serve a public good? Maybe they got nice halloween candy, but otherwise I see no public benefit
Thank you Amy
I don’t know where to start, but, what Geoff said.
The official override webpage is still on the city website. so rather than debate what was or was not disclosed, I invite you all to visit it. For the record, I still believe we should have had a debt exclusion for Zervas, just like we did for Angier and Cabot, so that the scope and cost of the project would have been clear to voters. Because I still remember when Maureen Lemieux came to the BOA in late 2012 to explain the override, she triumphantly announced Zervas could be renovated while the students remained in the building and raised more than a few eyebrows by trumpeting that’s the way they do things in Nashua.
I note that in Brookline, where I am informed they love their children too, the town completed renovations/additions at two K-8 schools with over 500 students each for less money (state and municipal) than the City of Newton wants to spend on a new Zervas–which will receive no state funding. Brookline faces the same problems with capacity and school conditions that Newton does, but has made some different choices. (To be fair, Brookline’s School Committee is now debating whether to spend up to $100 million for a substantial renovation/addition at the Devotion K-8 school, which has over 800 students. The issue has divided the BSC not over whether to seek a debt exclusion, but rather for how much. Having a vigorous debate over the scope and cost of a project, however, is not necessarily a bad thing.)
And what Amy said.
From the same document that Marti cites above:
“Ms. Lemieux stated that she is not convinced that the projects have to be done sequentially because Zervas is a large site. She believes that there is the possibility that an addition could be built while the school is being used, then move the students to the addition and renovate the current spaces. “
I would add to Paul’s comment that I was in attendance at the Zervas Open Parents’ Forum which was a presentation by NPS leaders (Sandy Guryan, Joe Russo and David Fleishman) and building committee members (SC and BOA members and others). I asked the question “Are you talking about an addition and renovation, or are you going to raze the building and put up a replacement from scratch?” Answer: “We don’t know. That will be determined by the feasibility phase”, spoken with the most innocent your-guess-is-as-good-as-mine expressions on their faces.
So a mere six months ago we were being told it might be a renovation/expansion.
I also think it is worth noting that, as recently as this past April, the Board of Aldermen were told that the design team had come up with a plan using the existing site that would satisfy all of the program requirements except for the number of parking spaces.
Ted is right. Although the fuller story comes from the second line quoted below from those April 16th minutes: “However, one of the plans (A1.2c) meets all of the requirements except for the number of parking spaces. The architects have developed that plan further, although it is not considered the most desirable.”
Keep in mind that design is a process, and April 16th happened to be only a snapshot along the Zervas design timeline. Although A1.2c (a scheme most close to the NHNAC Plan B) met the core design requirements of academic program, it had somewhat less playspace and much less parking. In addition many other highly desirable attributes of good design were absent. These are eventually what drove the designers and our DRC to advocate for an expanded site – the desirable attributes I refer to are found in the Board’s Friday packet from 9-15-2014, slides 5 through 9. Great rendering on the cover of the packet by the way — Take a look!
Some of the highlights of an expanded site, as found on the referenced Friday packet:
• Single point of building entry;
• Safe, pedestrian friendly approach; students do not need to cross traffic;
• Meets full playspace program;
• Meets entry plaza program;
• Bus access from Beacon;
• Improve traffic flow on Beethoven;
• Consolidates parking and reduces vehicle site circulation;
• Meets parking program;
• Maintains 25’ wetlands buffer;
• Bioswales/rain garden drainage;
• Snow storage.
You can be sure that the site and building design will keep evolving and improving 1, 2, and 4 months from now, as this is a hallmark of the effective evaluation and vetting process used by the DRC and DPC.
@Steve, you had me at “Ted is right.”
Have a good weekend.
I would also add that the site plan the design team came up with (A1.2c) looked an awful lot like Plan B, except for the placement of the parking lot. Move the parking spaces from the Beethoven Avenue side to the rear of the school, with mitigation to control runoff into the buffer zone to the wetlands, and it just might work. 😉
Ted, you really did stop at “Ted is right”! I noted the similarity between A1.2c and Plan B in the second paragraph. And then noted how the current design is a serious improvement on both.
TED IS REALLY SMART. (Comment at end of post — hopefully you read what is above it 🙂 )
Steve Siegel, thank you for providing the most recent presentation. Once again, I commend you for trying to keep the voters informed. That said, I do have a couple of questions about the presentation after a brief review of the information.
1) Slide #20: Once again an SC presentation identifies 20 general classrooms for grades 1 – 6 (plus 4 others for kindergarten). This is at least the third presentation with this reference to including the 6th grade (2/27/2014 and 6/26/2014). The first two times I chuckled at what I thought to be typos. However since July we have had that confusing issue about the SC possibly withholding information about some graduation speeches, and I have also been told by multiple people that I should be able to automatically translate 80,000 sf into meaning 24 classrooms. So I ask: is the reference to grades 1 – 6 a typo or an announcement by the SC to change the structure of the NPS school system? I hope it is a string of uncorrected typos by the design team and not a way to address enrollment expansion problems in our middle schools.
2) Slide #20: I see that the classroom net floor area sizes are the same for both Zervas and Angier. Yet the average students/classroom is different; Angier is 21.1 and Zervas is 20.4. Why is that? If Zervas was to use the Angier average, that would put Zervas’ enrollment projection over 500 at 506 (and still a fairly low average at 21.1).
3) Slide #9: The snow storage is shown to be on the strip of land between Beacon Street and the parking lot. How will that be impacted if the landscaping designer recommends building that berm higher so as to hide viewing the parking lot cars from Beacon Street? There appears to be close to a dozen trees planted on that berm. What impact will the piles of snow have on those trees? Maybe Julia Malakie can offer some insight before they are planted.
Hi Patrick,
Good questions! I can only give you some of the answers….
1. You picked up something on that chart I never noticed. There will be no 6th grade classrooms in this building; it goes from K to 5. I’ll mention this chart error to the design team! But check the classroom count — there are 20 (4 each for grades 1 through 5) plus 4 (special K classrooms).
2. Your math is right (If you were Ted you would stop reading now :)). Sandy Guryan has discussed this before. If memory serves our design elementary class size is 20-1/2 or thereabouts but the MSBA had us use a slightly higher number for the Angier design count.
3. You are asking a refinement of detail that will come once we know what site we have to work with. But this is just the type of question that the designers and the DRC will eventually wrestle with to get right.
Patrick — I just studied the chart in more detail. The typical classroom size is 900 sf for Zervas and 925 sf for Angier.
Steve–
What is the difference in cost between addition/renovation vs new building for Zervas? How and when did the SC decide the incremental cost was merited?
Steve, thank you for your comments.
Then there is another typo on Slide #20 on the 3rd line where the NFA for each general classroom for both schools is listed as 925. I assume this is a spreadsheet because the total NFA column reflects using the value of 925 for each school’s configuration.
The size of the single SPED classroom in each school uses the room sizes you offer for the two schools.
Since the SC has decided that the 4 classroom per grade model is the best approach going forward for student learning, at some point it would help me to understand how Angier will address this situation given only 18 classroom for the 5 grades. How will the enrollment be handled when some grades will have 4 classrooms per grade while others will only have 3 rooms? Will some of the students be moved in or out of the building during their elementary years? Or will the 4th group be divided adding roughly 7 more students to the other 3 classrooms?
I now see from the chart on slide #4 that the snow storage and the drainage/bio-swales programs can not be addressed until the added property acquisition is resolved.
@Steve, my point is that, comparing A1.2c and Plan A (the current preferred plan), what we really get for $2.4M is an additional 30 or so onsite parking spaces. That comes out to about $80,000 per space. In the Boston market, the average construction cost per space for a parking garage is around $25,000 per space (conservatively speaking). Even if you spread the acquisition cost across all 80 parking spaces that Plan A gets you ($30,000 each), it is still cheaper to build a garage. I am sure you have an answer to that, but it nevertheless really sticks in my craw.
This might just be hitting a record for the number of comments per post. I would normally be much more active, but the obligations of life interceded. Also, I have felt so very, very well represented by both community voices and elected officials posting here. Let me say, in brief (because I have a habit of being verbose) that:
-This thread represents the big difference between the SC and the BoA. Okay, ordinary citizen, let me spell it out: B0A is transparent, open, pragmatic, and considers that citizens have good sense.. The SC is “we know better than you folks do”, considers the citizenry incapable of making smart decisions with a common view on the common good and is insular and generally more concerned with getting along with NPS employees and administration than actually advancing the interests of the people that elected them. Even “upstart” SC members like Geoff Epstein were lulled into a mentality of being forced to “get along’ for the sake of the harmony of the board. In the case of Steve Siegel, he has gone from member of the rebel alliance to compliant member of “the borg” Yes, there are both Star Wars and Star Trek references here, but I’m just that kind of geek.
When not being a geek, I consider myself to be an above-your-average informed Newton citizen. Somebody who has voted for every override that increased funding to schools. Somebody who wants pragmatic, practical solutions to our population challenges, Yet, folks like Jane made me feel like I had not attended enough meetings or been exposed to the clear cut clarity of the plan for my neighborhood elementary school, even though I had gone to the trouble to attend two public meetings on the topic — far more than any of my neighbors.
What THM’s posts confirm and Amy’s scrutiny validates is that the SC’s intended plans for Zervas as the disproportionate savior for southside crowding was not adequately or honestly communicated. If highly engaged aldermen didn’t get the intended plan…how could we rationally expect that the average citizen like me would? Geoff Epstein’s post validates that this current goal was not part of the override messaging. Thank you, Geoff, for validating reality as I have known it.It’s good to have sane, rational elected officials validate that I am not crazy or seriously out of grip with the truth of the times.
Amy – The elementary schools battle for everything crumb. The BOA authorized $300m for HS renovations and rebuilding, while a Ward 4 Alderman telling the community the elementary schools “they can wait”. Very convenient position when all four Ward 4 aldermen live in the district that had a comprehensive elementary renovation.
How about the fact that elementary parents have had to battle for every modular for badly overcrowded schools? Or that several aldermen actually considered building a new elementary school without air conditioning. Among your allies is an alderman who opposed putting air conditioning in the new Angier School It seems 5-10 year olds aren’t worthy of what we expect our high school students simply must have.
Or replacing the Brown windows and not even acknowledging the fact the plexiglass windows at Burr were so bad that snow gathered on the inside window sill?
Or authorizing a substantial addition of classrooms to Day MS so the students would have “elbow room”? Elbow room? How about basic instructional space? Now there’s an idea. Until the override vote, it appeared that the city didn’t think young children needed that.
Parking for teachers and staff? A huge deal for HS teachers. Elementary staff? Not so necessary for those elementary teachers – they can ride bikes from the T station.
Karen – I didn’t say people didn’t go to ENOUGH meetings where the city explicitly spelled out exactly what Question 3 would cover in our section of the city. I said that virtually no one showed up an ANY meetings, then voted Yes and are now complaining about getting a brand new school. Most meetings had fewer than 20 people in attendance. If you had attended even ONE meeting, you would heard the plans for the override funds from Question 3 clearly spelled out – explicitly and honestly.
Frankly, I see no reason why the funds need to or should go to a renovation or rebuilding of Zervas School. In that, we are in agreement. I think it should go to rebuilding a northside school which too often ends up receiving the sort end of the stick in this city.
Hi Patrick, sorry for the delay. Saw your question about trees and berm and snow, but was kind of busy and not sure which question to answer.
If they do what’s in the slides, which looks like cutting down all the existing trees and planting new ones (hopefully not all the same species as depicted — monocultures not good if a species-specific pest or disease comes along), they can probably build a berm as high as they’d want to screen the parking lot, and the new trees would be fine as long as they’re planted at the new grade.
If they want to preserve some of the existing trees, raising the grade would be bad for the trees as noted earlier. How bad would depend on how much of the root zone was buried under more soil, how deep, and how much of the original grade was preserved with a retaining wall. I’m not qualified to say how much mistreatment a particular tree could take.
On the snow question, natural snow cover is actually good for native trees. We had BU professor Pam Templar speak back in January about her research on warmer winters with less snowpack being bad for trees. Less insulation for roots, and changes in the organisms that live in the soil. I think you could also dump a fair amount of clean plowed snow around trees, but I’m not sure how much before the weight or density got to be a problem. I believe that even in winter, trees’ roots may need a little oxygen. Look at what that huge snow pile in Newton Centre Playground last winter (2012-13) did to the ground underneath.
Salt could be a problem, if the plowed snow included salt left over from the previous plowing or previous storm. And you wouldn’t want plows pushing snow into the trees, or front end loaders (?) dumping onto young trees and breaking them. Saw a newly planted elm broken by snow plowing in the Richardson Street parking lot a few years ago, but it’s an elm so it made an amazing recovery.
@ Jane: You can’t say on one hand that there were “meetings all over town” about the the override explaining this 500+ student capacity and on the other hand say that no one showed up, yet come to the conclusion that everyone was adequately informed.
This is the second largest building expenditure that this city is undertaking after NNHS, yet a diligent lawyer like Ald. Sangiolo can’t find anything in the public record or better yet, some kind of vote on the size of this school? As far as I can tell, the only proof anybody has that a 500+ school at Zervas was part of the override is a buried line about square footage on a powerpoint presentation shown at an override information session (I’m assuming that these were not considered public meetings or we’d have minutes on them, right?) that nobody went to.
Zervas does need renovation and expansion. The throw-the-baby-out-with the-bathwater attitude is overly dramatic. The capacity issues are on the South side. And if the North side needs another elementary school, they now have one — Carr.
I AM looking with a long range view. My family is not affected by Zervas. Our children are in high school now and we live far enough away to not be impacted by street parking or traffic. I am watching this because I feel the need to “pay it forward” to new families that are as unaware of Newton goings-on as I was when my children were preschoolers. The people who preceded me at Zervas kicked the can down the road or made short-term solutions that benefited their children directly at the cost of those who followed.
It is precisely because I think that we should be nimble, flexible and opportunistic about future needs that I think we should establish another elementary school on the Southside, while expanding Zervas proportionately (say by the same percentage over existing population or original building capacity that Angier is) and building another building. Another Southside school would give us a foothold in another neighborhood and more opportunity to expand if actual growth exceeded the projections that we are working with now. Considering the NPS’s dismal track record for making population projections (10 years ago projecting that Zervas’ population would go down so much that it would be closed!), we might need that. Or will we be building modulars on the Zervas swamp in 10 years bc it’s easier than redistricting? The one constant and finite thing here is the land and the land at Zervas is more finite than at other sites..There is currently a big land grab going on in this city by developers. I’d like to think that our city is keeping up with this trend by grabbing land for the schools that this development will create even more demand for. With this reality in mind, it seems downright stupid to overdevelop a site like Zervas– putting 500 kids on a plot of land originally sited for 250– so that there is no possibility for expansion, vs. creating 400 seats someplace else for the same money.
KarenN, a number of aldermen are very concerned about the need for additional capacity on the south side, and feel the need for a 16th elementary school is probably inevitable. In addition to the Wells Avenue proposal (324 units), the Starck Co. property off of Needham Street is currently being marketed for sale as a residential development opportunity. At the same time, there are elementary schools on the north side, like Burr and Horace Mann, that are well over the capacity they were designed for, and/or lack amenities like a cafeteria/auditorium, and special education rooms that are part of the Angier and Zervas projects. I am not interested in playing off one school community against another; I am merely questioning whether the current long range plan is adequate to address the district wide demographic changes that are in the offing.
I guess after all this discussion I’m back where I started from. According to the Commonwealth, doing Zervas doesn’t qualify for state funds, unlike Cabot and Angier. Zervas clearly needs some work, but I’d argue that many elementary schools (excepting Ward 4 schools like THM mentioned) equally need help.
So why did Zervas get to jump the line? Not just jump Cabot, why are we doing this without State help? I always believed it was due to Zervas both (a) needing the work and (b) being a centally located school where we could increase capacity. In other words, we got a two-fer.
Plan A or Plan B doesn’t concern me as much, because I’m not local to that neighborhood. But capacity does concern me, because if Zervas isn’t expanded it puts more pressure on the entire system.
So what would Zervas parents say to backing off this proposal and waiting a decade or more for State funds? In the meantime we build new capacity elsewhere.
I’d also note that folks throw around the number of kids like a guaranteed maximum. Is that really the case? In Cabot, one of the grades has 4 classrooms, others have only 3. Is that being handled by the school system with moving kids that border districts around?
Finally, to those who question why Cabot parents find this whole debate rather annoying, the delay risk is real. Anyone who has done any type of construction knows how often projects, especially projects like Zervas, get delayed. Even if the assurances the Cabot community received regarding the “slotting in” of Zervas between Angier and Cabot’s timeframes at the Carr school is true, Cabot is now taking on the risk of Angier AND Zervas being delayed. If those projects suffer delays, Cabot kids won’t be able to move to the Carr school location, and we just get pushed further down the line. And for the record, our site is equally small, and our school will be equally big once it is renovated. And since we qualify for state funds, we get to wait another 5 years before construction is completed (or more if there are delays).
I will agree with the Zervas folks on one thing. Not exactly feeling warm and fuzzy about the School Committee lately.
Finally, for the folks who are most opposed to the expansion, is your objection the educational experience at a large school or the parking/driving aspects in expanding the school on such a small site? And if the later, will it effect you personally? As in, do you live on Beethoven? Or close to the school?
As a parent to a child in a 4 classroom grade, I have to say my fears thus far have been unfounded about the expansion. Mostly it seems to be about the quality of the teachers and not the number of classrooms. 4 classrooms means fewer established teachers at that grade, so perhaps that is an issue.
You’d think the MSBA would apply a penalty for waiting too long to address school buildings — instead they supply an incentive. Some of the pictures we saw at override time of Cabot/Angier exposed real health and safety issues for both students and staff. If it was a Walmart and not a school with leaky roof and inadequate heating, the state would be on their back to make the building safe.
I think Fignewtonville has a point. Since the MSBA when approached by Newton for a debt exclusion for all three schools, replied that Angier and Cabot would qualify but Zervis wasn’t in a bad enough state to include (although I know it is in bad shape) why wasn’t Newton’s first priority addressing the two schools deemed worse with MSBA help? Because Zervas is on a site that allowed it to be expanded and that helped spread the student growth around all of Newton. Building an appropriately large school to house, depending on whose talking, 450, 490 and then the jumps by two posters to 528 and 500+ (don’t think it was ever officially that high, but, you know, hyperbole distracts) is the only reason it was chosen but has become a non starter to some who continue to stall everything. So, forget it, let them keep their school small and do Cabot next and Zervas whenever. There are many people waiting for the renovation/rebuilding of their schools. See if they meet the MSBA requirements next. Sometimes kicking a gift horse in the mouth gets you bitten.
In the beginning, when being presented the questions and CIP, an Alderman asked why Zervas was #33 on the CIP. Robert Rooney, Chief Operating Officer, responded that those items before it were “life safety” issues. The alderman then asked if the formula used to rank items could be changed so it would move Zervas higher on the list of projects.
Well Zervas is moved up. I would think all concerned would be happy.
@Marti: Not looking at a gift horse in the mouth. Just trying to stop a Clydesdale from being permanently forced into a stable originally built for a pony (site size).
I think that people are also putting forth really inaccurate information about the MSBA and its role. The MSBA did not advise Newton about its override concerning Zervas. Zervas does not concern MSBA because Newton has never thrust Zervas into the public funding arena. The MSBA simply has established rules that MSBA funded projects cannot be funded by operational overrides . Overrides for MSBA projects must be debt exclusion overrides. This is a rule they made, I must add, in reaction to Newton North. Newton chose to wrap Zervas up into an operational override, to the dislike of some smart people in this city.
Also, the MSBA did not refuse or reject Zervas or any other school project in Newton for whatever reason because Newton DID NOT APPLY FOR funding for any other school projects other than Angier and Cabot. We don’t know what they would have said about other schools — unless funding for other schools has been applied for without public notice.
Yes, Hoss, the conditions of Angier and Cabot were deplorable. According to the last needs survey by the MSBA, both of those schools ranked as “3”, with “1” being best. Not sure if I can post links here, but anyone can find this “MSBA Needs Survey Report 2010” via googling. The report ranks schools by “Building Condition” and “General Enviroment”. Angier and Cabot both got “3”, but while Angier received a 2 for general environment, Cabot received a 3.
So, if MSBA funding was just about need and building condition, one would think that the MSBA would insist that Cabot would precede Angier, but it obviously didn’t.
After Angier and Cabot, H-M and Zervas are equals in need. They both get a “2” in both building condition and general environment. Mason-Rice follows, a bit ahead because it earned a “1” in general environment.
There’s a document on the MSBA website:
http://www.massschoolbuildings.org/building
It shows all of the MSBA approved projects in MA. The majority of those in the pipeline are rated “2” for building condition. In 2010, the majority of Newton schools were rated as 2.
In 2010, every single Brookline school was ranked by MSBA as a “1”, yet Brookline since received MSBA funding for projects at two elementary schools and is in the process of an MSBA-funded project at Devotion school in Coolidge corner that will increase its capacity from 800 to 1,000 k-8 students. In fact, if you compare the list of MSBA projects already in their approved pipeline, school condition can’t be the only criteria. Most of the projects are for schools rated at 2-2 or 2-1
And it can’t be about evenly distributing projects so that everyone just gets their little piece of the small pie. THREE schools in the Southwick-Tolland district are receiving MSBA funding for buildings rated at “2” for condition.
So, golly-gee folks, maybe you can get MSBA funds to expand your capacity because of population surges? Worth looking into?
Is anybody applying for MSBA funds for Horace Mann or Mason Rice?
During the override campaign, there were meetings all over the city explaining the specifics about how the override funds would be used. That is a fact. The meetings were well advertised. That is a fact. Attendance at each meeting was abysmal. That was a choice on the part of residents, and now the city is blamed for not informing people. Sorry, I just don’t get it.
Without question, the School Committee has been very late in addressing the inadequate facilities and the overcrowding problem elementary in our elementary schools. Cabot, Burr, and Horace Mann parents have spoken out repeatedly at the public comment time during SC meetings. And trust me, SC members over the last 10 years will tell you that they’ve heard about the seriousness of the problem from at least one resident/teacher over and over again. Yet the middle schools and high schools have taken precedence over the capacity and condition of the elementary schools for years. Aldermen can search for minutes of meetings, discuss building a 16th in the hallways outside the aldermanic chambers, and criticize every other segment of city government for their lack of action all they want. But it’s time to get moving. If the Zervas community doesn’t want the school, then fine. But if that community thinks for one second that this city is giving Waban a second brand new school that does not address the citywide overcrowding problem, they’re living in dream world.
No one’s playing school districts off one another. One district was offered a new school, and from all appearances, seems to be saying “no thanks”. Other school districts would love to have a brand new school, so why not change gears and build the school where it will be appreciated? We have elementary schools all over the city that have outlived their usefulness and are overcrowded. Think about this – both HS’s and 3 of the 4 middle schools have been rebuilt, had comprehensive renovations, or had significant additions in the last 20 years. Three of the 15 elementary schools have had a comprehensive renovation in the last 40 years and the other 12 have received only minimal upgrades. That is a disgrace.
As for the MSBA funds, do people think that Newton is the only community with dated, dilapidated schools? The state has limited funds and must make judicious decisions, with fairness to all communities. Newton has received funding for two new schools. I suspect that’s in keeping with what most communities have received.
If you want to know why B’line is receiving extra MSBA funding, just look at its increase in enrollment. Unbelievable. It has experienced the greatest increase in students population any community in the area. Comparing Brookline’s issues to any other community is comparing apples to oranges.
Jane — You’ve mentioned the breathe and scope of the Mayor’s override campaign many, many times. I don’t know who goes to school committee meetings, BoA meetings, commission meetings or override meetings as a demographic, but it certainly doesn’t include me nor do I guess it includes the greater population of Newton. You’re labeling greater Newton as lazy group of voters, disinterested in sitting through the technical aspects of gov’t and the weeds of keeping kids in respectable schools. What you’re doing is no different than the lawyers of insurance companies where they see an injured party that isn’t covered and they point to the person as an idiot that bought a policy they didn’t understand. I shouldn’t need to read every rider and research every aspect of an override, including what is and what is not covered by MSBA. If we need an override for dummies campaign next time then we should do it. At a Sesame Street level — where they say which one of these things is not like the others — in the override where Cabot, Angier and Zervas were the issues, clearly from a ballot perspective Zervas was not like the others. Yet now they say it is. Did I fail the Sesame Street test or did City Hall provide a confusing ballot?
I dont’ think that it is out of line to compare ourselves to Brookline. I think we should be watching Brookline very closely, learning from their experiences and following their example when they come up with effective solutions to the same population surge challenges.
Wellesley isn’t going through this and we seem to be increasingly deploying more “urban” approaches to our development, so all eyes on Brookline. For instance, if the land ain’t there and we value recreational and open space around our schools, well then “urban” solutions like underground parking, such as Brookline is calling for might be just the ticket
I posted a lot of that information about the MSBA to counter this messaging being generated here that the MSBA is like some building conditions triage nurse that is deciding which schools get funding based on how poor their conditions are. It’s pretty clear that MSBA is also about providing seats for children in communities experiencing populations surges.
The thing is, when you DO take MSBA money, you have to also do what they want. MSBA would not greenlight Angier going up to the higher population that NPS originally wanted for that project. So, Angier will have a smaller population than Zervas and be built as it always was, adjoining rolling fields of protected parkland that the school’s children use as recreational space. It makes me wonder if, when we hear that MSBA would not approve Zervas, if it is because the condition of the school is not bad enough — or, based on the Angier experience, that MSBA would not approve such a large school on the site?
As for the meetings. We live in the digital age. A voter/taxpayer should be able to get all the information that they want on any public issue simply by going online. Important details such as the scope or vision for an expensive public project should not be in non-recorded verbal comments at dismally attended meetings. If the meetings are public meetings, there should be minutes filed for them that any citizen can get online. If a public record can’t be found, it’s because clear and explicit public information was not generated at the time.
KarenN — I’m sure others may have more current numbers, but the construction cost of putting one car underground is about $25,000. Assuming use of 20 days per month, all year, that’s a debt cost of about $5 per day per car. It’s a hard sell unless it’s the only alternative
???? Just the opposite is true. The MSBA defaults to an average class-size that is higher than Newton’s. Newton negotiated the class size number down because our full-inclusion model is more effective with a lower classroom student count. Also the Angier site is so tight that the original enrollment suggested by the MSBA might have resulted in a four-story building which was absolutely what we didn’t want to place on Beacon Street. The Angier design enrollment of 465 students reflects an MSBA starting position adjusted downward for a Newton-specific teaching model and space constraints.
Also, the MSBA was not going to allow Newton to start a second project until Angier was complete. However the Angier project has been the poster child of excellent process and has essentially been acknowledged as such by the MSBA. Because of this, once we appealed to allow a schedule overlap of Angier and Cabot (listed along with Angier as one of the 30 highest-need school buildings in the state) the MSBA agreed. That’s why Zervas, a school we moved up the project list specifically because it not only needed repair but offered enrollment relief, is not an MSBA project.
So back to the issue at hand: The question is not whether to move forward with Zervas or not. The question is whether to expend $2.4 million to purchase 3 homes on Beacon Street in order to expand the Zervas site – which still appears to have only 2 current and primary objectives: 1) allow all teacher.staff parking on site and not spill onto residential streets and 2) allow for a cut – in off of Beethoven Avenue for drop off – essentially widening the street in front of the school.
Hoss – I’m not labeling anyone as lazy, and certainly not disinterested. But in truth, there were several clear and concise options that voters could access in the comfort of their own homes to learn how the override funds would be used: the Tab website and the hardcopy of the Tab are two examples. In addition, NewTV is an outstanding local cable access station and a terrific source of information, with several programs that cover current local issues. Though I don’t remember specifically if Tom Sheff or Ken Parker did a program on the overrides, they both deserve acknowledgement for their efforts to keep the community well informed about local issues. Even with all that information available, a small group of people voted yes and didn’t bother to find out what they were voting for.
Being an informed voter isn’t brain surgery, and it certainly has nothing to do with lawyers and insurance companies. It’s a right and responsibility that Ald, Jim Cote so eloquently expressed on his Facebook page on Primary day several weeks ago – a right that people fought and died for. In my mind, that’s what makes it a responsibility. I campaigned very hard for two candidates who lost in that election and life goes on, and that’s the beauty of the democratic process.
Amy – Yes, buy the properties. Elementary teachers need easily accessible parking due to the bulk they frequently have to cart to and from home. Even with 72 spaces, there will most likely still be off site parking. In the age of inclusive educational programs, elementary schools have a much larger staff than they had just 20 years ago. Providing fewer parking spaces than 72 is a mistake the city will regret for decades into the future. Also, I still haven’t heard an explanation for why HS teachers need on site parking but elementary teachers do not, when logic indicates just the opposite should be the case.
Amy,
As you and I have discussed and as shown in text and graphics in the 9-15-2014 Friday packet, the $2.4 million purchases allow for:
• Single point of building entry;
• Safe, pedestrian friendly approach; students do not need to cross traffic;
• Meets full playspace program;
• Meets entry plaza program;
• Bus access from Beacon;
• Improve traffic flow on Beethoven;
• Consolidates parking and reduces vehicle site circulation;
• Meets parking program;
• Maintains 25’ wetlands buffer;
• Bioswales/rain garden drainage;
• Snow storage.
Our architectural consultants, the DRC (the qualified body to whom the City delegates the vetting of project design), NPS, city departments represented on our DRT, and the majority of the neighborhood enthusiastically support these purchases. That carries a tremendous amount of weight for me.
And I’ll ask again – in a city where all our school sites are tight, our population continues to grow, and we have the responsibility to create flexibility for future need, please defend not expanding school sites when it is easy to do so! Personally, I think that passing on these properties is shortsighted and something we will immediately regret. But that’s just me.
The greatest consequence of not expanding Zervas now is that we will strongly, negatively impact Mason-Rice, Bowen, and to a lesser extent, Countryside. These are the largest-population schools in our city, and an expanded Zervas will serve as a critical pressure-release valve for all three of them.
The kids are coming…. Without permanent new construction to house them, it is certainly not the end of the world. But we absolutely will continue to expand our modular classroom farms, and I think this is a poor choice for our city.
Back to Zervas: This school should grow as this is the right time and Zervas is located in the right place in the city. So please give me the logic – we are expanding the school on an already tight site, yet not expanding the site while we have the chance? Expanding the site gives us the best options for safe traffic flow to and by the site, yet we are arguing to not expand it?
Steve,
Could you please answer the question of the difference in cost between addition/renovation vs new building for Zervas? How and when did the SC decide the incremental cost was merited?
Aside from comparisons with plan A1.2c (still shown with the rejected drop-off loop) as the only possible alternative, I think Steve makes excellent arguments in favor of expanding the site, but unlike other investments for the future, it’s impossible to separate that from the plans put before us. Given a tighter site — and I’m not suggesting a tighter site is desirable — I feel there is pressure for a more frugal use of the land. Expand the site, and it is filled with cars. I wonder how can we have it both ways — take that land, but still pursue the tougher path of using that land for education and open space, and prevent the vacuum from turning into parking and suburban sprawl?
@Steve, the same design team said Option A1.2c met every program requirement except for 30 parking spaces without acquiring the additional properties. So, in reality, you want the city to pay $2.4M for 30 extra parking spaces. That comes out to $80,000 per space.
@Hoss, even if you spread the acquisition costs over the entire 80 parking spaces, the cost per space is already $30,000 each, not including construction costs ($2.4M/80 spaces=$30K). Structured parking becomes more cost effective once the cost for surface parking exceeds $2.0M (80 spaces x $25,000 per space).
@Amy, based on 18 years of observing the pick-up and drop-off zones at Horace Mann (one-way traffic on Albemarle Road) and Franklin (two-way traffic on a narrow section of Derby Street) on a frequent basis, I am loathe to create two-way traffic next to a Blue Zone where it does not already exist, unless it is absolutely necessary. Whether parents double park or not, I have seen too many children (not to mention their parents) dart out of a vehicle on the driver’s side over the years.
Moreover, I am skeptical that a right turn lane on Beethoven Avenue will improve safety or efficiency. Drivers will have to cross two crosswalks, and merge into a single lane of eastbound traffic, on Beacon Street, a major thoroughfare, at the busiest time of day for both vehicles and pedestrians. Moreover, the close proximity of the access and egress to the parking lot and bus dropoff and pickup area will create added conflicts for left turning vehicles on Beacon Street. (Truth be told, of course, the city already owns the strip of property where that right turn lane would go.)
Of course, if we had a proper traffic study which simulated traffic movement and density at these locations, based on the increased number of trips required for increased student capacity, we would have a much better idea how all this might work. (Sorry, Steve, but a single page letter from a traffic engineer doesn’t do it for me.) Since there is apparently no intention of doing such a study until after the city acquires the property, we are left without that important information.
@Jane, at the new NNHS, the plan was to provide the same amount of onsite parking as before. The city and the school had 35 years of experience with a similar number of students and staff to go on.
In my mind, this is about whether we need to buy these properties, and as far as I am concerned, the proponents have still not carried their burden of proof. They may want it, but that is not the seem as needing it. Y’know, you can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you get what you need. (I heard that somewhere.)
THM writes:
Two-way traffic actually does exist on Beethoven; although you might argue the street is defacto one-way, it is a timed do-not-enter restriction and the width of the street is not reduced to make it any safer for kids getting out of the wrong side of the car. Either way, traffic is likely to pass cars in the blue zone in the same direction rather than oncoming, so I’m not sure I see the safety benefit here. The issue with the restriction IIRC was about traffic and gridlock. If the blue zone eventually is widened, the timed restriction, a traffic council override and policy mistake, should be undone. That should be explicit in plan ‘A’. Catering to school traffic patterns is wrong for many reasons, and reducing oncoming traffic actually works against traffic calming.
Hi Paul,
That question was posed for Angier where a rational renovation/expansion plan was considered, but this option was somewhat more costly and yielded an inferior site and building program. Angier grew in size from 49,000 up to 75,000 square feet.
Zervas is now 32,000 square feet and will grow to nearly 80,000, so most of the future footprint will be new construction regardless. One of the options explored by the architects worked with the existing building but it took up too much of the site and was positioned poorly. Therefore it was quickly abandoned for programmatic reasons, but I expect there would not have been a cost-savings had we reworked some of the old framework into the new project.
You may know that depending upon the type of construction and extent of renovation, renovation can be more economical than new construction. In my structural engineering practice one of our specialties is historic preservation and adaptive reuse of older structures, and we know how to incorporate existing construction into new. But associated with this specialty is knowing when to “pull the plug”, and my conclusion is that the existing Zervas frame and foundation is a detriment and not a benefit to this project.
I hope this helps.
Regards, Steve
So Steve, let’s look at the return on investment, if capacity expansion is the goal:
Current plan for Zervas expands it by around 150 for around $40M.
Building a new school at the DPW yard on Elliot St would cost the same amount but yield a capacity expansion of 450, specifically relieving population pressure on Countryside, Angier, Memorial Spaulding and Bowen.
That 3 times the pressure relief of Zervas for the same money.
Plus transportation costs go down etc as now many more kids can walk to school.
If you also do a Day-scale renovation of Zervas for around $12M and use CPA money to convert the 3 Beacon St properties to playing fields to serve Zervas for play space, then for $12M you get another 80 spaces if Zervas is right-sized to 400-425.
In total then for $52M you get 530 added capacity seats. That would have a huge impact in ensuring that we can deal with any population expansion.
And the cost per added seat is about $100,000, compared to the current Zervas project which has a cost per added seat of $250,000.
Which option would tax payers choose?
Every parking space reduction is a money saver, means more space for educational/outdoor space, and reduces traffic congestion and air pollution. Plans so far totally externalize the true cost of parking. And no options for traffic and parking mitigation have yet been explored.
Ted, ignoring all the positive attributes of an expanded site and asserting that it is just about parking leads to neither constructive discussion nor responsible policy decisions. We elected officials owe the public better.
Beyond that, please make the argument for growing a school while not expanding the site. And keep in mind that we have the chance now to permanently expand the Zervas site, all for the cost of the last two rounds of temporary modular purchases.
Geoff, sure we can build at the DPW yard instead of expanding Zervas.
• It will cost $8 – 9 million dollars to relocate existing functions onto one end of the DPW site;
• This work will take three years; any new school construction will not be able to start until after this interval;
• The cost escalation, assuming we can get a building designed and ready for construction in 3 years, will be another $8 million;
• Add another $1.5 million for additional modulars to house students while the DPW School is not on line;
• This results in $18 million spent for non-educational purposes, essentially half the cost of a new school (comment for those who cannot get their heads around the $2.4 million Beacon Street purchases);
• The site is just down the block from the busy Rt. 9 divided highway;
• Would you bet that the subgrade of the site is clean? If not, add more time and cost to the schedule for remediation, and then reassure parents that this site is suitable for safe school construction;
• The available site will be smaller than the currently constricted Zervas site;
• Taking more DPW land than what they can make available will permanently compromise DPW functions at the only large yard in the City.
Are you feeling good about this idea?
And finally Geoff, you know that the goal of our school work is to simultaneously fix our buildings while adding capacity. So the cost per fixed vs. new seat of capacity is the same.
Steve: Neither Ted nor anyone who questions the purchase of these properties should have the burden to “make the argument for growing a school while not expanding the site”. Presumably, the decision was made that Zervas would go from 300+ to 450 to 490 – BEFORE even knowing whether the properties were available. That decision was made regardless of whether parking could be accomodated on site.
Even if I were to support the purchase of these properties for this site, I would not be in favor of doing it for every other school site in the City. I would not want to set a precedent that it is okay for institutional uses to expand into neighborhoods by purchasing housing stock and either tearing them down or reusing them for their institutional uses- regardless of whether the use is the City’s or a private institution. Newton Wellesley Hospital, Boston College, Lasell College – all come to mind. Each proposal would have to be evaluate for its own merit.
@Steve: what Amy said. The onus is on you.
The parking for a new Zervas seems to be planned to accommodate infrequent, near-peak demand. The Staff Parking Estimates (page 4 of this PDF) offered by NPS point to a need for 75 spaces, of which there are 19 shared spaces for 23 part-time staff. With those 75 spaces, if everyone were to show up at the same time — including two “other itinerants” in the list — then a total of four people would have to park on the street. Steve S has noted that the peaks are on Wednesdays, particularly at mid-day. At mid-day and much of the school day, the 20-25 spaces in the Blue Zone are available. Could it be that we will be creating year-round asphalt that will be used only during some mid-day hours on 36 Wednesdays — plus some other days, I’m sure — during the school year?
Steve,
Mercy! Why on earth would it take 3 years to relocate the DPW facilities? That sounds totally bogus to me. Can you point me to the analysis which came up with that time frame and costing?
I’d love to see some aldermen comment on that!
I think that the $18M estimate for non-educational costs is totally overblown!
The site objection is also bogus as we currently have all of the kids in that area shovelled across Rt 9 each day. Think how that site would serve them so much better and all of the other kids on that side of Rt 9.
Next the environmental objection. Can you point me to any analysis which estimates the environmental remediation costs? Or is this more off-the-cuff guessing?
Next the site size. The DPW site is 3 times larger than the Zervas site with the 3 houses included. Take a look at the Google map view of it and you’ll see that 90% of the lot is also empty space. So the smaller site argument is also totally bogus.
Where is the analysis which concludes that DPW functions would be permanently compromised? There are always other alternatives which could be developed if you have the will.
In summary, these kinds of arguments remind me of the time when NPS central admin argued that building a new elementary school would be impossible because of the increased administrative costs. Just a year later, they quite happily added 3 new assistant principals to Countryside, Memorial-Spaulding and Bowen.
Most of the road blocks to a new school have been erected and continue to be erected, as in this latest set, to keep the mega commuter school Zervas project on track.
It’s just mindset and the inability to realize that the current expansion of Zervas will not be nearly enough to handle the population increase that is coming from residential developments encouraged by the city planners.
150 added seats will be too little and use up all of the working capital.
530 would be a whole lot better and could be accomplished in a faster time frame as the new school would not need swing space etc.
But the suppression of sound Zervas project modifications continues.
Amy and Ted,
I continue to made the argument — it is in my bullet points from two different posts up this thread. You may not find this argument to be strong enough, but neither have you acknowledged the bullet points at all and I don’t know what to make of this. So many professionals who know more about design than the three of us find the reasoning to be compelling, yet you two keep discussing parking as though that is all you’ve heard. ????
Bruce, the school staff reports that middays on Wednesdays is the peak parking time, but the Zervas lot is full or nearly full for the entire school day. I’d be happy to take a couple days at random times and walk the lot with you.
Anecdotally adult staff and visitors routinely use the blue zone and Amy Circle now and this is how the current 57 space lot suffices even though the adult count is highly variable during the day. As noted before, the design goal is not to accommodate every staff and visitor car (estimated to be as many as 95 for the new Zervas, according to early design program outlines), but to accommodate a sufficient number of cars to maximize efficient, safe, timely access to the school building by those who are working with our children.
Geoff, the DPW and building department did a full space needs and timeline analysis and presented it to the public many months ago. That is where I got my data.
Steve,
Hmmm.
I doubt if the DPW would like to give up its space.
Only an independent consultant could make an objective assessment.
Plus the DPW would hardly have any reason to get in a fight about Zervas.
In any case, could you point us to that analysis?
A little extra to Ted’s comment on the very expensive cost of a parking space. The below is a rough financial analysis of the cost over 30 years (Thanks to my statistician):
1. $3 Million property valuation currently (likely acquisition costs).
2. $36,360 in foregone revenue in year 1, increase by 2.5% annually for at least 30 years, $74,407.37 in foregone revenue in year 30, $1,596,302.29 in total foregone revenue over 30 years.
3. Estimated cost of building a parking lot: $2,000 per space, 75 spaces, $150,000 total.
4. Annual Maintenance Costs: $500 per space, 75 spaces, $37,500 total
5. Total Project Costs: $4,783,802.29
Amy’s point on the school is right on: The only thing left to decide on, and save costs on, is this land acquisition.
Ald Cote — City gov’t is of course a zero sum arrangement; the City gains no profit. So for every homeowner where your numbers say $36k in forgone revenue, there is a forgone cost of City services, including schooling of the exact same value across all situations. The costs of #3 and #4 are inconsequential, so you’re basically asking should we squeeze a expanded school behind existing homes to save the great City of Newton $3 million less the retained property value. $3 million is worth a discussion about a school that should be useful when the year 2100 is here? There must be a argument other than costs to get us a thread that is 150 comments long. $3 million is what we probably will spend on signage alone in all these schools.
@Steve – I’ve “walked the lot” at Zervas twice this week. Each time there were empty spaces after 9:30AM. Today there were at least half a dozen empty spaces – I counted 43 cars parked on site, none on any surrounding streets.
We’re building a school that will have 24 teachers when fully enrolled. To put things in perspective, the *current* parking lot would hold more than twice that number of staff in the new building. If you build a 72 space parking lot, you have enough spaces for each teacher and 48 other staff or 45 with a few handicap spaces. The 20 space blue zone should be enough to handle the visitors and peak days, i.e. Wednesdays at mid-day.
@Jane – Regarding teachers who have to sometimes “carry bulky loads”, there are only 24 teachers max. Even if you provide an on-site space for every full time person in the parking estimate provided to the city by the design team, that would be only be 56 spaces. Add a few handicapped spaces and a buffer of 5 spaces, you get 64 spaces.
Beethoven Ave is a fine place to park. I park there almost every day myself.
Alderman Cote: Does it make sense to subtract projected tax revenue from the properties if you aren’t also balancing the savings that the city would realize from no longer providing city services to the occupants of said properties?
@Gail, it is plain to me that the total operating budget will not differ by a single penny whether these three houses are bought by the city or not, but neither will the total revenues if the city continues to levy to the limit. So if these houses come off the tax rolls, everyone else will have to make up the difference.
Ted Hess-Mahan — The next family could have 9 kids, two special needs, three with criminal issues and a young one that likes to light fires. Come on now, if those three addresses aren’t using City Services which other three homes are using twice the level of the average home? We spend more than a town half our size so someone is using services.
Ted – You refuse to answer the question. Why was it necessary to spend $80,000 for parking spaces for high school staff but now it’s not for elementary staff? You voted to spend $80,000 for parking spaces – not only for high school staff – but for high school students! What kind of a message is that to send to the elementary staff? Not to mention that you’re admitting that you voted for millions of dollars for parking spaces without thought or deliberation. You accepted without question a very poorly conceived plan.
Steve – It’s not just teachers who carry bulk, it’s many staff members. This is not 1970; it’s the post 766 era with inclusive classrooms that require an extensive support staff. The 24 classroom teachers are tip of the iceberg. In this day and age, elementary schools have a far more extensive staff.
Bruce et al – This school is not being built just for this moment in time. Long range plans plans for school facilities need to provide flexibility for future needs. For all of the facts and figures about the present and the future, the fact is that none of us know what an educational facility will need 10, 20, or 30 years down the road.
However, you all continue to ignore what we know to be true about the past: $300m has been spent on two high schools in the last 10 years, 3 of 4 middle schools have had comprehensive renovations or major additions in the last 20 years and three, count ’em 3, elementary schools out of 15 have had comprehensive renovations in the last 40 (as in FORTY) years. That’s a statement about how much we value students who don’t win awards that make the community look good.
Jim-if you think this discussion is about parking spaces, then you haven’t done your homework. This is about a group of people who don’t want this building. Their plan is to make this site so tight that the new school can’t be part of the plan to alleviate the serious capacity problem in the elementary schools. If you think voting against acquiring these properties is the end of it, just wait. That’s when the real battle begins. Either buy the properties or move on and build a new school in a different district. Personally, I’d rather the city move on and build a new school in a different district.
@Jane, we did not acquire land for parking at NNHS (or for any other purpose), so I am not quite sure what you are talking about. And we all had a lot of questions about the site plan, which ended up being a compromise of many different interests. Many changes to the site plan were made in response to neighborhood concerns on all sides. In particular, as I recall, some of the neighbors did not want anyone parking on “their” streets and wanted the driveway moved away from “their” street. I am sure you remember that too.
Adam and Nathan, your points are well taken. I am not enthralled with this automobile-centric site plan.
@Hoss, we live in a Commonwealth, where we all share in the costs and benefits of government services, i.e., the “common weal.” Those three houses could just as easily have no children in the public schools at all. Indeed, statistically, fewer than one in five households in Newton have children in the public schools. The way Prop 2-1/2 works, if the city continues to levy to the limit, we all share in the tax increase, although not everyone will see a 2.5% increase in their property taxes. Property taxes are based on assessed value, not impact on city finances.
Ted Hess-Mahan — Some families have 10 or more children, enough to fill half a classroom . When these three homeowners die, leave for Florida or rent out, the laws of averages say things will come back to the fact they use the same services over time as the next house. The tax amount is so inconsequential that it’s not worth the extra effort of defending it’s inclusion in some analysis.
Jane – that it is being built for the long run is why it’s so important not to disregard how it affects the neighborhood school model and traffic on residential streets for years to come. Neighborhood schools build strong communities. Increased traffic weakens communities. People don’t get to know neighbors who live across from them on busy streets.
Lucia _ I’m not understanding. They say we need an expanded school because of area growth. The traffic comes from that growth, right? If we want to set a limit on the school size to a set a student limit for each school, that’s fine but we need to pay for the duplication of resources for each new school added. Those principals, nurses, cafeteria workers, gym teachers, etc and the area they work in would not be needed otherwise.
If I use Ted Hess Mahan’s argument that I don’t agree with, I’d say that individual students in a school add little/no direct expense, but they theory breaks when we add new buildings thus think override again.
At 172 plus comments, I apologize if this has been asked and answered. What did the study say (or not say) about underground parking?
The DPW site has enough acreage for a new school, all of the DPW services and equipment, and a recreation area behind Avalon and parallel to the Fire Department. Future thinking should include building a middle school on that site, if not a 16th elementary school. Where are all the future 5th graders going to go since our 4 middle schools are already operating at capacity? What is the long range strategy?
I still come back to the fact that Zervas wasn’t able to state money because it didn’t yet qualify. I’m not even sure it was 3rd on the list. That is not to downplay the state of Zervas, I’ve been inside it and I’m very familiar with the site. But I really do believe it got added to the list for funds because of its expansion potential.
In an effort to be reasonable here, can we divide the issues up? I see the parking issue, the purchase of the homes being part of that. Then I see an expansion issue. Are the opponents to the parking/homes fighting that to try and eventually lower the size of the school? Or are these really separate issues?
I tend to think that quality of teachers are FAR more important that school size or physical plant. I also tend to think that our schools could be run more efficiently. Finally I think our city has failed to invest in the schools physical plant for various reasons and now we are getting our “just” desserts.
When Newton North was being redone, many decisions were made that made no sense in hindsight. Some of that was driven by very determined individuals who saw negative change in their neighborhood and rallied to stop it. Some of it was driven by very connected individuals as well. Such is life. But as someone who lives in that neighborhood, the aftermath has been far less dramatic than I feared. The city helped us deal with parking. The students and the parents obey the rules for the most part. We got used to the traffic (mostly). Life moves on.
Finally, we either trust our city or we don’t. Geoff mentioned that he needed an independent analysis of DPW need for that yard everyone talks about. Are we really at that point? Perhaps we are.
@Hoss, does it really matter whether a child with special needs who needs a $100,000+ per year residential placement lives in an apartment, a ranch house or a mansion? We do look at net fiscal impact when dealing with large new developments, because they have a corresponding impact that may or may not be matched by anticipated tax revenue from “new growth” which is added to the 2.5% levy. I hope that helps.
Hoss,
I think the idea of asking the DPW whether it makes sense to give up some of its space is asking for the answer NO. The DPW will be biased for sure, as would any department asked to give its assets to another department.
It’s human nature. DPW will defend its turf.
It’s not a sign that we have come to some parlous state.
An independent consultant was totally useful when the SC reviewed the NPS food service operation. Same for the SPED operation.
That is not to cast aspersions on the food service staff & management or the SPED leadership. They were simply not in a position to conduct a thorough, objective review.
Both reviews lead to very important changes.
The DPW yard is a critical asset in the space expansion discussion for the schools.
When a lot is so large and largely vacant, the question has to come: Are we using it effectively?
The powers that be will disparage use of the DPW yard because they are locked in to the Zervas project as our only near term space expansion option.
An independent assessment of the role the DPW yard could play in solving our future NPS space needs is long overdue.
A new school at that location could solve many more problems than the mega commuter school at Zervas,
Geoff Epstein _ If municipalities ever created elected positions to run DPW Enterprise operations, I just might run. Maybe you’d like it too? There’s no public focus on the operation because Massachusetts sets no limits on budgets. Unlike police, fire and schooling, they can ask for the moon without much notice. (I’m particularly glad though Newton’s DPW respects that authority and hasn’t included the moon in rates)
Ted, Take a look at any financial report for any public company. You’ll see all costs allocated by revenue source. Gov’t doesn’t think that way? Sorry, you should change that
Hoss – student population goes up and down, like the stock market. Unless Newton becomes an undesirable place to live, in which case it would just go down. We don’t need to build a new school building for ever bump up. In Boston there are several public school in reconfigured office space.
The larger the school’s catchment area, the greater the traffic impact.
Lastly, the staffing costs of an additional school are minimal, unless you’re changing class size.
@fignewtonville: To say that Zervas didn’t qualify for state money” is simply not true. The state does not go around giving out money because public schools are in bad condition in order of some list that they have come up with ranking conditions. Point of fact is that Newton did not apply to the state regarding any schools other than Angier and Cabot. It’s kinda like saying “Joe didn’t qualify for social security disability because he wasn’t disabled enough” when Joe never applied for it to begin with.. Two things that I have learned: 1). MSBA funding is definitely not based solely on the condition of buildings because, as I mentioned in an earlier post – many, many projects for schools rated in the same condition or better than most schools in Newton have received state funding, including funding to expand because of population increases. 2) a big part of getting MSBA funding is showing how you are going to pay for your part of the project. From what I understand, you have to commit to a debt exclusion override or some big pot of funds from some other source. Someone who knows more can jump in here, but my understanding is that, for Newton, short of selling off some big asset or something, we’ll have to continue to have specific debt exclusion overrides for specific amounts that represent our share of payment on school buildings (without any other projects or earmarks attached), as we did for Angier and Cabot in order to get any state funding. In other words, getting our school buildings up to the standards of conditions and lack of dependency on modulars already attained/maintained by most school districts in Massachusetts will require us to have many other project-specific debt exclusion overrides. I know that I have probably not used the right financial or funding terms here. What I mean to dispel, again, is that the state somehow selected Angier and Cabot because of their conditions for money that other schools in Newton would have qualified for. We can qualify for as much state money as they’re willing to give us. But to do it, we’ll have to come up with a very substantial share of it.
fignewtonville — The override said Zervas. No one is going to come back to the voters and say can we do _______ school instead. If there was a mistake, we’re dead in the water if we dwell on it. Newton North showed us that. Here’s the ballot: http://www.newtonma.gov/civicax/filebank/blobdload.aspx?BlobID=50200
Lucia — You’re talking teaching costs, not operations cost. Two cafeterias. two gyms, two libraries, two nurses offices, two front desks, two principals/vice principals, two auditoriums, twice number of rest rooms, more labs, more wood shops, duplicate heating/AC systems, etc. etc, etc, etc. Two buildings cost more than one. We budgeted for one
@Hoss, the additional funds raised by a Prop 2-/12 override are “earmarked” for the stated spending purpose only in the first fiscal year. The additional funds raised by an override to fund a stabilization fund are earmarked for that purpose in the first fiscal year and in subsequent fiscal years upon appropriation. The ballot question says nothing about a stabilization fund. So I don’t know whether you are correct.
Ted Hess-Mahan _ You’re responding to my comment to Fig, correct?
In my mind, there’s what’s technically right. Then there’s what’s right. If Massachusetts says we can use funds gained by a ballot question about Zervas for another school, the right thing is to use our own judgement and go back to the voters in some way. There’s shouldn’t be any gotchas in voting, at least not here in Newton.
There are political realities to working with the MSBA as well. When Newton was trying to figure out how to fund Cabot, Angier and Zervas two years ago, the city was still recovering from the stigma of Newton North. Steve Grossman was only 2+ years into running the MSBA as state treasurer and was planning on running for governor. I doubt he would have done anything that would make it look like he was favoring Newton, especially given the spotlight of Newton North. We can only guess and hypothesize about what did or what would have happened, but I think it’s unlikely that the MSBA would have approved funding to overhaul three elementary schools in Newton.
When we started Angier, Newton was told by the MSBA that they would only fund at most one of our projects at a time. But they considered our internal prep work including our long range plan to be exemplary, and as Cabot was in such poor condition they responded to our appeal and allowed us to overlap Cabot with Angier.
They would not allow us to overlap Zervas and Angier, but since Zervas not only needs considerable work but also offers us capacity relief the City opted to finance it on our own and fix it now.
Zervas has poor space organization and is in poor physical condition. If we had no other MSBA projects running and we applied for MSBA funds for Zervas, I imagine that the MSBA would have used whatever objective standards they use on all school building requests to determine whether or not they would participate financially in the project.
Hoss – I hope they’d add bathrooms, if they enlarge a school and add kids. Likewise, over a certain number of students, they’d need to add a vice principal, etc.
But my argument has never been it’s cheaper short-term. Quality of life – small school build stronger communities and reduce traffic. Economic downturns impact Newton’s housing prices less because of our cities reputation re Quality of life.
I think a reasonable way to approach this is to say that the operating override allocated money for Zervas but that the project was not specified in detail. Voters expected that we’d figure out a reasonable solution.
Note that the size of the Zervas expansion could have been specified, but it was not. The specific description was:
$2.4 million – Debt service for either the expansion or construction of a new Zervas Elementary School, relocation for Fire Wire Division, renovation and reconstruction of Newton Centre Fire Station #3 and Fire Headquarters.
So if the Zervas expansion was a small scale renovation costing $12M with annual debt service of say $1M for 30 year bonds, it would be compatible with the override description.
[No one has yet talked about how much the other projects are going to cost.]
My take is that there is a lot of flexibility in how we might do Zervas and if we do it at a low cost, override money is freed up for other capital needs.
The question to the mega commuter Zervas option supporters is: Once you have spent all of the operating override capital project money on your 150 seat expansion of Zervas, where will you get funds to pay for the additional 400-500 seats we may well need within 3-5 years.
It took forever to get money for Angier and Cabot and a mega commuter Zervas will sour voters on further capital project overrides, so I firmly believe that Newton will face a real capacity crisis in the not so distant future.
If however, a small scale expansion of Zervas is done, leaving money for a 16th school, voters will believe that we are really trying to spend their money wisely.
If we then find that after we do a 16th school, the population pressure continues, they’ll be amenable to debt exclusions for further capacity expansion.
A mega commuter Zervas will provide so much ammunition for a NO vote on future overrides that Newton may end up in a very difficult position indeed.
So the powers that be should be very careful about which path they choose here.
And the community should keep on fighting for sound solutions.
In 3 years, it is likely that the leadership of the city, the School Committee and NPS will be gone.
But the community is here for the long term and they have a very big stake in the outcome of the current Zervas engagement.
Fair enough, Hoss. I agree that the city should go back to the voters if we plan to do something other than what was specified in the override ballot. Not to beat a dead horse (no pun intended), this is just one more reason why we should have done a debt exclusion for Zervas.
Ted – No, Ted, we didn’t need to spend funds to purchase land for parking for NN. We just spent an extra $60 million for a site design for which you were a prime proponent.
Will someone answer this question: why do high school students deserve designated parking while elementary teachers do not?
As for NN, we’ve been over this too many times. No one was trying to stop the project. However, the neighbors had had it with a situation that had completely spun out of control with students who smoking, drinking, and selling drugs on the streets that spider out from NN site. Unfortunately, the drug and alcohol problems in Newton were well known to NN neighbors and ignored by too many parents and the community, and it was not until the neighbors spoke up that the BOA addressed the problems. As Fig noted, the situation is greatly improved, but that was the result of many hours of meetings with the school, the neighbors, and a few aldermen. The fact remains, it took too many years for the city to acknowledge the serious and growing drug and alcohol problem that existed on the NN campus and on the side streets that spider off Walnut and Lowell at that point in time.
I presently live much closer to Zervas than I did to NN, and have no problem with elementary age kids walking, driving scooters down the street or having their parents park in front of my home. As for the traffic, it lasts 20 minutes in the morning and 20 minutes in the afternoon and is no big deal at all.
Lucia – I completely agree. That’s why we need as much on-site parking as possible.
Ted Hess-Mahan — If we take a look at the 20 year CIP, it calls for $1 Billion in spending over the period. This is $50 million per year over a very long time. This thread gives me the feeling the Newton School Committee is the primary oversight committee for the school pieces — an amount which is about one-half the total needs. Does the BoA have any authority to require their input in the long term priorities with this spending similar to the way they have oversight on the DPW projects, etc? I’d feel better if the City used the extensive resources on the BoA for this.
“we need as much on-site parking as possible.”
Jane, thank you for making your position crystal clear.
Hoss, under the state laws and the city charter, the school committee is responsible for school buildings. Under the charter, the school committee may spend up to 2% of its budget for maintenance (although I do not recall that it ever has). When the school committee determines that it needs a new school or make material alterations to an existing school, it must communicate the locality and nature of the further provisions for schools which are needed in writing to the board of aldermen, and the school committee must be consulted as to the proposed location and plans and given a full opportunity to set forth its requirements. The board of aldermen reviews and approves the site plan, including holding a public hearing, as with any other public building. The site plan review and approval process (Section 5-58) was adopted in response to issues that arose with the planning and construction of the first Newton North High School back in the 1970s. It is a cumbersome process, but necessary to ensure that plans to build public buildings, including schools, are thoroughly vetted in an open, transparent process. There was a working group including aldermen, city officials and others that was tasked with reforming the site plan review process, but as far as I know there has been no recent progress on that. I hope this answers your questions.
Ted Hess-Mahan — Thanks for the description of process, very helpful.
From a distance, it appears the flow over the last 5 years has been;
1) Mayor Warren formalized/instituted long term planning; five years rolling, 20 years periodically.
2) Mayor Warren sold the idea for this ongoing five year plan to the BoA, getting approval for an override ballot
3) Questions are arising about priorities and site plans including land-taking (and will eventually arise about the design).
With respect to 3); since 1) and 2) took place very quickly (in Newton terms), do you feel the BoA now has advance involvement in the rolling 5-yr plans such that issues can be reduced going forward?
Unless things get disrupted, we should need another override in 4 years (after the current 5 yr plan is completed) — with it be deja vu all over again?
But hasn’t the revamped process being employed by MSBA improved things? I think someone indicated Newton got high marks for its process on Angier so far with MSBA., thereby allowing us to get started with them on Cabot.
How does Newton’s “process” help or hinder? We must have had to bend to MSBA on some approaches,yes? Is there a de facto “better process in place already because of MSBA and our adjustments to that?
Could this be a Village 14 record? 195 comments on one thread. Bob Burke you certainly know how to get a timely discussion going.
Uhhh, Jerry, that’s 196.
Steve
As much as I hate to disagree with my good friend Steve Siegel, that’s 197 comments.
Fitting the Alderwoman Hess Mahan gets last comment.
Oh wait, 198?
I take issue with the frivolous comments simply to up the count. Having said that, ehem, 199.
Oh stop counting.
Going back to a comment made on Sept 22 @ 9:47am, why is the City not seriously considering purchasing the Starck factory site for a 16th elementary school that is so desperately needed in that community. It seems a perfect location. And if not for a school itself, at least for a “land swap” with DPW for their yard.
OK, I have to post just one more. It’s annoying when people post definitive statements that just aren’t true. Zervas, along with all the elementary schools, was submitted to the MSBA on 11/8/2008 with a Statement of Interest after a decision to replace 4 of them in June, 2008, even though the MSBA’s most recent Needs Survey rated it a 2 for building condition, with 1 being worst condition. In the NPS completed Long Range Facilities Master Plan at that time, it was ranked 3.1 for facility condition and 4 for educational space needs because of its severe overcrowding using the same scale. Subsequently by 2011/2012 there was a strategic plan to address obsolete buildings, overcrowding resulting in program inefficiency, and growing enrollment among other things. In order to address the student population increase anticipated but not spread equally over Newton, the plan became to try to increase student population as evenly as possible in North and South by enlarging all the schools, except Longwood, to 400 or over. The plan was schools with less than 400 students would increase capacity to over 400 with a cap originally at 450. Several schools already had close to 450 students. The MSBA would help (estimated $10 million each) with Angier. considered a first priority school, and Cabot, a second priority school. They both would not help with 3 schools at one time and would not take on Zervas because it was considered a low priority. (Knowing someone who teaches at Zervas, I don’t understand why, but I haven’t been in the other two.) Zervas, according to Newton, needed to be done at the same time because it was way over capacity and had run out of space, using a closet for parent meetings with SPED teachers, the stage for a music room, etc. and it was a site capable of holding a larger school. Not a mega school, but a school with enough students to expand the educational program to accommodate a kitchen and cafeteria with a stage, a large gym, dedicated classrooms for music and art, actual rooms for the psychologist and social worker, OT, PT, etc. Zervas, like many schools, didn’t have a kitchen so food was delivered for them to eat in their classrooms and had no place to assemble. Without increasing capacity, the gym should be 3000 sf instead of the 6000 sf planned. The kitchen should go to one of the other larger schools. These schools that already have 450 students are not mega schools or commuter monstrosities, they are neighborhood schools.
As to parking, the classroom teachers, SPED aides in almost all classrooms, librarian, music, art, social worker, psychologist, nurse, principal, staff, cooks and all the people I’ve left out deserve to park at their employment. I know several teachers at Zervis and while they do enjoy the community feel, were excited to expand their teaching possibilities and additional resources, but now are stunned at the animosity directed their way because they want to be able to park. And as for Ald Hess-Mahan,s reasons for why the high school provides parking for teachers, staff and students with no fuss, during the community meetings for Zervas, one of the most often heard request from residents was not to have parking on their streets or block their driveways. So again, why are high school attendees more important than they are? And since I live in the NN neighborhood, I am happy the sign on the tall wooden fence across Lowell from what is now a parking lot, surviving with hardly any buffer and new trees, doesn’t need its NO SMOKING sign and that parked cars aren’t lining the side streets.
1 is Best Condition in the surveys. Sorry.
Thanks, Nathan! I try to be clear. So here’s a clear question for you: why are the parking needs of high school students more important than those of elementary staff? Third time I’ve asked it and no one has an answer, or at least not one they’re willing to state out loud.
Everything that Marty said.
Marti, a correction and a point of information: The maximum design size dictated by the steering committee for elementary schools was limited to 500 students (see page 2 of the Exec Summary of the June 2007 Volume 1, Long Range Facilities Plan), and the December 2007 plan update set the design size for a brand new Angier, Cabot, and Zervas at 441 students each.
And to describe the new Zervas as a mega-commuter school is…peculiar. Currently 8 of our 15 elementary schools have enrollments between 400 and 500, and yes, the families that attend describe them as neighborhood schools. For 30 years we’ve had 15 schools across the city and that’s how many we’ll have when Zervas is complete. The distance to walk to them hasn’t grown over these 30 years.
Dan, from the MSBA point of view, Newton and Angier represent poster children of good process. The application into an MSBA relationship is complex and data-heavy. There is a tremendous amount of paperwork that must be submitted in a very specific format. Our Angier submission was detailed, accurate, and early. The MSBA was seriously impressed with our administrative, organizational, and planning capability, and this is one reason they let us enter the process with Cabot before Angier was complete. Kudos to Sandy Guryan, Carol Chafetz, and their colleagues for terrific work.
Jane, I think about the onsite parking need a little differently than you’ve said it: I think we need a level of onsite parking that maximizes our staff’s efficiency, effectiveness, and safety in the service of our students. Although they could walk from Cold Spring if we had no closer parking, picture them lugging classroom supplies from there in heavy rain or along snowy sidewalks — I don’t think this achieves the objectives I’ve just stated.
Barbara, I am not sure whether most city leaders are even aware that the Starck property is on the market. Or that it could end up being another 40B residential development on the south side of the city.
Ted,
Do you have any suggestions on how residents could bring the Starck property to the attention of city leaders, so the city could take an active interest or role in marketing the property for business use? It would be ideal to maintain it as a commercial property to maintain the commercial tax base. Perhaps the EDC has some strategies or suggestions as well.
Dave, I’m on it.
Dave, I have confirmed that the Chairman of the EDC is aware of it.
I am guessing that the NNCoC is on it, too. If only there was a way to get through to someone from the chamber on this blog.
Jane, I can’t answer that question until I know how many parking spaces there are for how many students, if the parking is free or what it costs, and whether there are have been any programs put in place that give our high school students practical and safe options to walk or bike to school. You know, like would be outcomes of a parking and traffic mitigation study and traffic demand management plan. If there was/is no plan, that is not an excuse to perpetuate a lack of good transportation planning policy now, especially since the acquisition of land is a $2.6M proposition for the assumed “zero sum game” parking. Maintaining the status quo in Newton on issues of transportation is the last thing we should be doing.
What Nathan said.
I’m I reading things right… THM is interested in blocking a potential 40B site?
Did the earth change direction as well?
Nathan, sweetheart, it appears that you don’t understand what at least part of the real issue is. Parking spaces are given to important people.
As for your point, the payment for high school student parking is a pittance compared to its cost.
Hoss, because of my position as both an alderman and a member of the Massachusetts Housing Appeals Committee, I cannot take a position on any 40B project in Newton. My point is that the long range capital plan for school buildings really ought to take into account potential residential development when deciding where expansions and new schools are needed. In my experience, there is something of a disconnect.
Did Jane really just pull a Charlie Baker? Stay classy, Jane.
I’m really not understanding the beef over student parking at Newton North. I just double-checked the student handbook and it clearly states:
STUDENT PARKING LOCATIONS:
All student parking areas are OFF-CAMPUS in these designated areas: Hull St & Lowell Ave , Lowell Ave. @ Claflin Park; Lowell Ave. @
Elmwood Park and the Austin Street parking lot (Please refer to the parking map enclosed).
Students are not permitted to park on-campus at Newton North and if they do their vehicles will be towed. See page 16 of the Newton North handbook. I understand that students parking on residential streets in the area is an issue for residents there, but students pay a $25.00 fee for the privilege of parking on adjacent streets and not in any of the parking lots that are on campus.
Ted, Thanks for your prompt reply about the Starck property.
I’d be interested in hearing Chris (EDC) or Greg’s perspective (NNCoC) if the city or business community would (or is) considering taking an active role in attracting a business to the site, or similar large scale sites which come on the market. In some cases the business community or city may even become aware of potential sales before they are on the market, and could act proactively to promote sites for business use, which would help retain the commercial tax base.
Thanks to all who may have insight into this.
Jane, you’re right – I have no idea what you are talking about. But I’ll take the complement!
Next time the Marshalls Plaza / HC Starck parcel is looked into, I hope the planners are intending to include the Newton Upper Falls neighborhood from the start and with complete transparency. Several years ago, the parcel was up for sale and the design scheme included a large apartment complex, restaurants, retail, and decent landscaping. The problem was that when the design was unveiled, all of the parking and truck entrances and dumpsters of the parcel faced Newton Upper Falls. The CDC took swift action to push back on the proposed design. Chestnut Street in Upper Falls is lovely and now a part of the Greenway. Upper Falls would love to have new retail, restaurants, walking paths, greenery, but not at the expense of turning our neighborhood into the dumpster/loading docks for the property. That sale was blocked. I believe that after that, the commercial market tanked, and the parcel was broken into chunks.
Steve Seigel, yes, it was 500. I think I typed too many numbers at a time. Sorry.. The last report I looked at had Zervas at 450, but I don’t remember the date. I agree that it can’t be emphasized enough that many schools have the number of students planned for Zervas and are certainly considered community schools. What is so much more special about Zervas? Nothing. To spend money giving the community a new school would be ridiculous if Zervas wasn’t being built to maximize its potential , as others are, to help alleviate overcrowding at all the schools
Lisap, students pay more to ride the bus than to park. That would seem to encourage them to drive rather than it being regarded as a privilege. And to the point about the parking lot, like the plan for the current site design for Zervas, it runs along Lowell, rather than Beacon, but has no buffer, just a chain link fence and newly planted trees and we survive the traffic during the time of arrival and departure.
What Jane said. It is demeaning to elementary school teachers to be treated worse than high school teachers. It implies no one really gives a rats behind about the important job they do or cares about their safety. I’m sure all of you knew that.
I don’t have skin in the game at Zervas, but I live in Newton and believe that this long range plan to address elementary issues is a Newton priority, not each village for themselves. I’ve posted before that these school plans have been in the works a long time. Innumerable open meetings have been held with the BOA, every initialed committee there is such as the DSC, ZSBC, DRC, DRT, OM, SC, CFO, COO etc. for the purpose of completing a feasibility study to create a plan to suit the needs of as many Newtonites as possible. In my past post I described the community input and the impact it had on changes made during this process, so the people who wanted to badly enough either came to one of those or one of the public meetings or had someone else go instead. It has been a fluid process, changing constantly, and had to be approved along the way by all those committees. And it wasn’t until the point of authorizing the purchase of the lots which already had contracts negotiated that it stalled even though the finance committee had approved it but changed their minds. So here we are. It boggles my mind that the BOA, among others, approved $1,000,000 to fund the feasibility study, with continued participation, and now want to just stop. We paid someone from every profession that has anything to do with evaluating school sites and design, after lengthy and exhaustive evaluation to determine the right person/s for the job, to complete this study and a few people/Alder people come forward at the last minute to say they know better than all those people in committees who approved it, the professionals and their firms. It makes no sense.
Village 14 leadership – do you think it’s time to close this thread, and perhaps begin a new thread about development? I think we have strayed quite far from the original question about Zervas capacity.
Lisap — They charge $25 for parking along a public road? That can’t be legal, can it? The Commonwealth allows only so many mechanisms to charge the public, metered parking is one but the meter does not discriminate on who is allowed to use it (students versus visitors). Many years ago the MBTA had placed signs on a few Boston streets for employee parking (High St, Purchase St, and down by City Hall) and that was ruled illegal.
Another place we probably have illegal parking restrictions is in back of the Police Detective annex (in back of the West Newton Cinema). That is a public road, our road.
I’m guessing it is just a permitting thing, similar to resident permits, with these streets being specially zoned for the school and students.
Marti: “We paid someone from every profession that has anything to do with evaluating school sites and design, after lengthy and exhaustive evaluation…”
Except for the traffic/parking study.
@Dave – Yes, the EDC is VERY interested in helping to draw a new corporate user (or users) to that site, and to the N2 corridor generally. We’ve been working to develop marketing materials to do exactly that, and we’re also working with the NNCoC to develop the organizational capacity to better engage with companies who may be seeking a location in the inner western suburbs.
Yes. Yes. Yes. The 2007 plan set 500 as the elementary schoolmax, but just after I started serving in 2008, a number of SC members asked where that 500 number came from and asked the Superintendent to look into it.
The Superintendent looked into it and came back with 360-400 as the optimal school size.
The SC then moved to make the limit 450 based on that and other input, especially from the Countryside principal who having suffered for years with the largest elementary school in Newton suggested strongly to the SC when they visited Countryside that 425 was a much better size for her to deal with.
So that 500 number was just a guess and then got changed to something which had some rational basis.
Just like the $1.7M debt service earmarked for Zervas in the operating override was a guess and needs to be changed to something more rational.
I’d like to highlight the two closing paragraphs of Bob’s inspiring post. He raises concerns about the process that Newton uses to decide big issues such as school size.
Yes, there have been many public meetings, in multiple waves. But in my experience, these meetings have been to announce a decision already made, not to gather community input. The override town hall meetings presented the size of a new Zervas and announced it would be funded in the operating override rather than a debt exclusion — but where was the community discussion before those decisions? At the forum last March (to which only current Zervas parents, not neighboring residents, were invited), the 490-student size of a new Zervas was presented, but where was the community discussion before that announcement? Where was the broader community invited to engage?
This is a long V14 thread. I urge people to re-read Bob’s last two paragraphs, way back up top. The importance of his message extends beyond Zervas.
Here is the response to the aldermen’s questions.
I am disappointed albeit not surprised that the answer to my question about the “maximum student capacity” was evasive, in that the response was that the “design capacity” is for 490 students. My question was directed at what would be the maximum number of students that the building could accommodate if the enrollment were to exceed the assumptions of the team. Perhaps at next week’s finance committee meeting I can get a straight answer to that question.
Please also note that the expanded site at 4.2 acres is still smaller than the recommended minimum size of 5 acres, which is more or less what I have been saying all along. Indeed, Massachusetts previously endorsed a 10 acre minimum size site for an elementary school with 490 students, with an additional acre added for each 100 students. In other words, the supersized Zervas school is just too big for even the expanded site.
The lack of adequate traffic and parking studies continues to be a concern, as you will see from the number of questions addressing that issue.
In all candor, I am still struggling with this.
Thanks Ted. I’ve started a new thread here and especially for the benefit of those trying to follow this conversation on their smart phones I’m going to close this conversation here and invite folks to continue the conversation there.
But before I go, congratulations to Bob Burke for starting this and to all of you who have kept this conversation generally civil for a thread with this many comments. Both (especially the second) may be Village 14 records!