The Wellesley Board of Selectmen held a meeting on Monday, November 4 at 7pm at Town Hall. Here’s what happened on the facilities management front:

Facilities Management Department (FMD) Director Joe McDonough shared a detailed and exhaustive hour-long Power Point presentation that laid out the FMD’s plans for the maintenance and operations for the Town’s 28 buildings, as well as capital projects.

Those projects are estimated to translate to spending of over $200 million. McDonough said, “These projects are either in design or in study, so they’re real projects.”

The FMD is responsible for 1.2 million square feet of space for all schools and municipal buildings in Town, with the exception of Municipal Light Plant buildings.

In the FMD’s summary budget presentation, McDonough said there are 119 cash capital budget requests over the 10-year plan.

Out of those 119 requests, there are seven municipal projects over $1 million. Those seven projects are estimated to cost $51 million, ranging from a new million-dollar MOPO bath house (FY25) to a Town Hall Annex building (FY21/22) and the Town Hall Interior Restoration project (FY22/24), which together come in for a projected total of over $32 million.

For the schools, there are nine projects over $1million included in the 10-year capital plan. The nine projects come in at an estimate of $180 million, ranging in cost from $670k for paving at Sprague and Bates to $125 million for the Hunnewell School project and the Hardy/Upham School project.

Highlights of the 2021 cash capital projects

The 2021 cash capital highlights come to a total of $2 million (for context, the total for FY2020 was $1.85mil). Projects totaling over $100k each:

Sprague Chiller (so the freon doesn’t leak again, like it did in May 2019): $900k
Recycling and Disposal Facility sprinkler: $400k
High School LEDs, phase 1 of $2mil HS program: $225k
Main library roof replacement design: $100k
Supplemental Town Hall feasibility study: $100k

The FMD presentation should be up on the town website pretty soon at this link.

You can watch the BOS meeting here on Wellesley Public Media.

Check back for our upcoming posts on the following BOS meeting agenda items:

Special Town Meeting warrant
Supt. of Schools David Lussier’s voting status on the School Building Committee
Boston Marathon charitable invitational entries
School Building Committee project updates
Citizens petition to appoint a committee for governance for the Council on Aging