N.S. Town Council moves ahead on plans to upgrade town offices

NORTH SMITHFIELD — The Town Council opted to move ahead with a revised $4.5 million plan to complete renovations to the former Kendall-Dean School for town offices and a smaller update to the police department’s facilities at the Bushee School under a unanimous vote Monday night.

The five-member panel’s action in the middle school cafeteria-auditorium followed its acceptance two weeks ago of the Municipal Building Review Task Force’s recommendation of a revised plan for the town’s municipal building improvement bond project outlined by its consultant, Saccoccio & Associates Architects of Cranston.

The plan includes a $3.5 million overhaul of Kendall-Dean that is expected to create office space for town employees now located at the municipal annex in the Bushee School on Smithfield Road and the Memorial Town Hall on North Main Street as well as the school department’s administrative offices.

Another $1 million would be spent on making improvements to the police department offices at Bushee, including the creation of an security area for the transfer of subjects in custody from police vehicles.

The funding for the improvements will come from $5.2 million in bonding originally authorized by local voters in 2014. The voters also approved $4.3 million for school improvement in the 2014 election and the Town Council and the School Committee accepted a plan to use that funding for updates at the North Smithfield Elementary School and High School during a joint session of the panels last week. That plan, which still must go out to bid for design and construction, would create six new science laboratory classrooms at the high school and install four new classrooms at the North Smithfield Elementary School to facilitate the long-anticipated closing of the Halliwell Elementary School off Victory Highway.

While explaining the next step of the town offices project to the members of the council on Monday, Mark Saccoccio of Saccoccio Associates said his company is recommending a design, build and construction option where an approved bidder would take on the design and construction of the project and complete all work before turning over the keys to the town.

The town would need to have a listing of the scope of the work to be put out to bid based on the approved plan and then use that information to secure the proposals for design-build to complete the project within the terms of the approved bond issue.

Although residents and members of the former Public Building Improvement Commission, which had also created a prior plan for the bond improvements recommended the council hold a new hearing on the plans allowing for a review of the differences between them, Council President John Beauregard and the rest of the council moved forward on approving the new plan without taking that step.

Town Councilman Paul Zwolenski asked a few questions of Saccoccio on the work to be done at Bushee, all for the police department, and features of the improvements at Kendall-Dean, such as a new meeting room for the town council with seating for at least 50 people, before the panel voted. The panel also took a vote to authorize Saccoccio to work with the town on the bid specs for the project but ended up rescinding it after noting the action was not listed separately on the panel’s agenda. Beauregard said the authorization move would be added to the agenda for the panel’s next meeting.

Michael Clifford, one of the residents asking for the panel to hold a new hearing on the plans at the council’s Jan. 22 meeting, said Monday he was not surprised that the panel did not pursue that option before its vote of approval.