All right, it is 502.

Thank you, everyone, for being here.

Um, before we get to public comment, I want to welcome uh Miss Pamela Steele to our committee.

Thank you for joining.

We now have a full committee of seven.

Um, and we have five on tonight, which is fantastic.

Well, thank you for having me.

Um public comments.

Um does anyone want to um speak at all?

I see we have just one person from the public, I believe, on here, Judith.

I I believe Judith is with the um economic and community development office here in Middle East.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

So I so we'll go on to approval of the minutes from December 22nd.

That was our last meeting, believe it or not, three months ago.

Um is there a motion to accept the minutes from December 22nd.

I make a motion.

Thank you, Julie.

Is there a second?

Okay, thank you, Phil.

Any discussion on the minutes.

All in favor.

Aye.

Any abstentions?

Any nays.

That wasn't here.

Okay.

Motion passes.

Thank you, everyone.

Uh, we're gonna go to unfinished business.

Um, we don't have our consultants on here, but Ramona, give any updates from the consultants.

Um, really just that, and it it sort of relates to item um 5A under new business, the environmental impact study.

So I had gone back and looked through the charge of this committee because I know it is a technically a temporary committee, and uh just to make sure that um the committee was on track for completing all of the duties that you are charged with.

And you pretty much have.

Um, you know, we've done the feasibility studies, we've gotten cost estimates, but one thing that is mentioned in the ordinance creating this committee is the environmental impact study or any necessarily necessary environmental impact studies.

Um, so I did contact Chris Nardi at Silver Petrucelli, our architectural firm that's been working with us and um just kind of picked his brain on what that would look like.

Um what kinds of uh what kinds of things an environmental engineering firm or you know who who whoever uh would do.

And he said he was going to um look into a couple of firms that he's worked with before and just get some quotes for us.

Unfortunately, I don't have anything back from him today to tell you in terms of a dollar amount.

I will say that um if he does kind of subcontract with a company to do that here for the library site.

Um there is about $22,000 left on a purchase order that we have open with Silver Petruselli.

Um, so we could potentially work it that way.

Um, you know, typically what you're looking for with an environmental impact study, at least a you know, a phase one um is for lack of a better term, yucky substances like asbestos lead and PCBs.

Um typically, you know, they're also looking at records in terms of what was your property used for in the past.

Fortunately, you know, we were never saying a gas station, uh, we don't have any buried fuel tanks, anything like that.

But it's always good to know um, you know, the landscape, if you will, of what we are what we have here.

We obviously have a facility that's been on this site, um, the library site for 150 years, the church was built 200 years ago, obviously many generations of um construction and renovation and additions.

So there might be some things that going forward, um, should we end up doing the big project, um, you know, the the rebuild and expansion, we're gonna have to know about, right?

Um, in addition to that, the the uh footprint of any new construction would also include the house that is just to the north of the library at 139 Broad Street, and that was a private residence, again, not a gas station, um, not a nuclear power plant, anything like that.

But um, there would be some, you know, you'd want you'd want to do a study on that as well.

So that's not an update from the consultant, but that's my update regarding the consultant, and hopefully I'll have some information um soon on that.

And Ramona, you're confident that with 22,000 that would be enough for the study.

I have no idea, councilman.

I've never um this is new to me.

This is uh I've never done an environmental uh impact study before.

So I actually really don't know.

I don't think that it's an thing in depth that we would have to do again just from my initial conversation with Chris Nardi.

But you know, which would require you know digging anything up or or what have you but again I I really just don't know at this point.

I don't have enough information.

Okay.