By Missy Schrott | mschrott@alextimes.com

The Ad Hoc Joint CitySchools Facility Investment Task Force met Nov. 30 to continue finalizing a report that will be presented at a joint meeting with city council and the school board in January.

When the city established the task force in May, a timeframe was set so that the group would develop a Joint City-Schools Facility Capital Improvement Plan by mid-fall, and then provide recommendations related to further capital project implementation near the end of 2017.

Since its establishment, the task force has developed a joint city-schools facility CIP along with evaluating criteria for projects that fall within it. The revised project list was presented separately to city council and the school board in early November.

The next phase for the task force is to document all of the processes they developed during their six months of meetings so that they can be institutionalized and used by the city and school board in the future. This is the report that will be presented in January before council and the school board.

The report presentation was pushed to January to accommodate a combined meeting between the city and schools.

The Nov. 30 meeting consisted of reports from the task force’s three subcommittees – Capital Planning & Implementation, Alternative Project Delivery Methods and Facility Maintenance & Operations.

Discussion was dominated by the status update from the Capital Planning & Implementation subcommittee. In its final report, the subcommittee will detail the Capability Development & Delivery Framework model they used for projects.

The five steps in the model are capability need validation, demand management, project strategy, project planning and project executions. Descriptions of each phase are available in the meeting materials on the task force’s website.

Drafts of each individual subcommittee’s reports will be further finalized by the task force’s next meeting on Dec. 14.

“What we’re doing is taking the three committees and finalizing those, taking them into a better draft,” Task Force Chair Lynn Hampton said. “Then we’re going to take each of the three committees and look for overlap and try to identify the overlap and make sure we’re clear about that.”

“It’s kind of bottom up … It’s committee work, and then the analysis to see where the overlap is, and recognizing the overlap and then finalizing,” she said.

Hampton said she was proud of what the task force has accomplished so far this year. She said members have worked hard to meet deadlines, and the next step is to bring political decision-makers into the final process.

“It’s been a very intense period and very hardworking committee,” Hampton said. “I think everybody has come with experience and the proper motivation to give the city what it asked for back in the original resolution.”