On Monday, November 24th, the Elementary School Building Committee met at HCAM studios for their monthly meeting. Most of the meeting was dedicated to discussing the workshop held the Saturday prior to the meeting.
The board started with a simple discussion of pluses and minuses to the first forum. They cited the location, the structure of the workshop (particularly the closing presentation and distillation), and the incorporation of the children as pluses to the forum. They then discussed negatives, like the noise level with the children in the same room, and the concern that those who attended will not be the same people that voice opposition at town meeting. The board discussed ways to advertise the next set of forums, including advertising in the Hopkinton Independent.
The board moved to allocate $500 to the OPM and design team for advertising and planning purposes for the future forums.
Rob Nickerson, clerk of the ESBC, made it clear that his primary concern was getting some sort of feedback from the community after the event. He suggested an online survey or form for the people of the town to fill out. This way, he reasoned, the feedback would be focused specifically on issues the ESBC was hoping to address, and would give an easy medium for people to voice their opinion.
The design team gave a presentation on how they thought the forum went. They cited some of the primary concerns of the community, including the ESBC’s plans for future town growth, traffic issues, and changing demographics. Tim Bonfatti said after the presentation that they were already working to address these concerns. Cathy MacLeod noted that Hopkinton is one of the fastest growing towns in the state, and so their projected growth is changing rapidly. She also stated that the transition to tuition-free full day kindergarten is changing and shaping their expectations of classroom size and use.
The rest of the meeting was spent discussing the future timeline of the project. They discussed traffic concerns, as those studies and hearings will be coming up soon. The board mentioned that they had to pay particular attention to the guidelines set after the 2011 building project was voted down. As Mike Shepard summed up, the residents of Hopkinton want to be assured that their concerns are being heard, and the board did make provisions to ensure that these guidelines were followed and the people of Hopkinton were listened to.
No date has been set for the next community forum.
The next ESBC meeting will be held on Monday, December 22nd, at HCAM studios, at 6:30 p.m.