[Steve Bergholm]

Our fees can be found on our website, although it is probably time for us to update them as well:

https://www.newburyport.k12.ma.us/domain/125

Steve Bergholm, Director of Facilities, Newburyport Public Schools

[Steve Bergholm]

Newburyport replaced two old courts in the summer of 2022 with bids from March of 2022. The work included removal and replacement of the surfacing, nets and posts, and all fencing. Windscreen was installed on the fencing as well as a practice wall. No lights were included. Bids came in at $186,499, $238,541 & $272,877.  Design work was about $25K.

We are also looking at adding three new courts in a field adjacent to the renovated ones. The designer has estimated the cost to be $300-$350K. Designer costs for this project are $38K.

Steve Bergholm, Director of Facilities, Newburyport Public Schools

[Steve Bergholm]

Hi Gretchen/Eric,

The Verkada cameras come with a 10-year warranty (except the PTZ which is 5 years). So if we have an issue with a camera we can contact them and they will troubleshoot remotely. If  the problem is indeed with the camera they will overnight a replacement to us along with a return shipping label for the defective camera. If their troubleshooting shows that the issue is with something other than the camera, only then would we need to contact our service company, in our case ENE. So far we haven’t had any issues, but its only been about 6 months.

Steve Bergholm, Director of Facilities, Newburyport Public Schools

[Steve Bergholm]

Hi Gretchen,

Last spring we had ENE Systems replace the security cameras in our high school with Verkada equipment. The entire experience was simple and painless. The new system is much easier to use than what we had before, more intuitive and quicker to search for footage. Training from Verkada was thorough and the fact that they automatically send software and firmware updates is a great bonus. They are very customer oriented.

Hope this helps.

Steve Bergholm, Director of Facilities, Newburyport Public Schools

[Steve Bergholm]

We have three buildings. Our maintenance staff work at all buildings.

Steve Bergholm, Newburyport Public Schools

[Steve Bergholm]

We have security cameras in our gyms in all three of our schools, elementary, middle and high school. They have been installed for 7-8 years now and there has been no pushback whatsoever. We also have cameras in the libraries at the high and middle school, and are adding another in the high school library. In fact the high school librarian has found the security video to be helpful on a couple of occasions recently.

Steve Bergholm, Director of Facilities, Newburyport Public Schools

[Steve Bergholm]

Each year we buy the custodial and maintenance staff 5 three-button shirts with “Newburyport Public Schools” embroidered on them, and also reimburse them for up to $300 in clothing that can be worn to work. This can be anything from pants and boots, to gloves and jackets.  We are pretty liberal about it, but I have rejected some reimbursement requests for things like Crocs and shorts.

Steve Bergholm

Newburyport Public Schools

[Steve Bergholm]

Newburyport did exactly this about 10 years ago. Two elementary schools were combined into one new building. We did one SOI for the building that was on the same site as where the new one was going to be built.  So there was just one School Committee and one City Council vote. There is a “Closed Buildings” section on the SOI and if I remember correctly there were questions on there about future plans to close any schools.

Hope this helps!

Steve Bergholm, Director of Facilities, Newburyport Public Schools

[Steve Bergholm]

We are just beginning the process of upgrading our security cameras, starting with our high school. We are going with Verkada equipment, installed by ENE systems.  I got some good feedback from other MFAA members on the Verkada equipment. We did a trial with a camera and vape detector with good results. Easy to use and easy to share video clips. No DVR (cloud storage for 30 days) and 10 year warranty on the equipment and automatic software and firmware updates included, so we also went with a 10 year licensing agreement to keep everything in sync. We expect the installation to start in the spring.

Steve Bergholm, Director of Facilities

Newburyport Public Schools

[Steve Bergholm]

We have one FTE that is dedicated to our athletic fields and have been trying to add a second for a couple of years because he has to work a lot of overtime to keep up. In fact we are on our third person in this position in the last five years due to burnout. Our grounds budget is about $125K but that will increase by about $45K if we can add an assistant groundkeeper. This is for one high school, one middle school and one elementary school.  We have two baseball fields, a turf field in our stadium, and a grass soccer/football field. We also go off-site to other fields in the city when our high school teams are using them during their seasons.

We have a Building and Grounds Technician who spends a lot of time mowing the lawn areas and doing general grounds maintenance. The city DPS does do some mowing for us as well.

Our maintenance crew plows one of our three schools, and the DPS does the other two (usually with contractors).

Steve Bergholm, Director of Facilities, Newburyport Public Schools

[Steve Bergholm]

All three of our elevators failed for this issue. Two were able to be fixed for about $5000. The third has an older controller that we need to have replaced at a cost of about $70K with a shutdown of  4-5 weeks, so we are pushing it off to next summer. Not sure if we need a waiver or not, guess I need to look into that.

Steve Bergholm, Director of Facilities, Newburyport Public Schools

[Steve Bergholm]

Here is a link to the fees for Newburyport Public Schools

https://www.newburyport.k12.ma.us/domain/125

Steve Bergholm, Director of Facilities, Newburyport Public Schools

[Steve Bergholm]

Hi Brian,

We just did a VFD project at our high school with Guardian Energy where the total cost of the project was about $56K and the utility incentives came to $48K.  So our cost was just over $8K with a projected payback time of less than 2 years. Worth looking into.

Steve Bergholm, Newburyport Public Schools

[Steve Bergholm]

Thank you Mike, that is very valuable information.

Steve Bergholm, Newburyport Public Schools

[Steve Bergholm]

Hi Joe,

Watching this topic with great interest. I would love to be paying $148/hour, but we are entangled with Johnson Controls who not only hit us with a bill of $1920 ($240/hour) when we have a service tech out for a day, but in some cases also tack on a “project manager” charge. So needless to say, I am looking for a company that is capable of taking over servicing our existing equipment.

Steve Bergholm-Newburyport Public Schools