East Kingston Library:

EK New Library Construction Status: As of July 13

The Trustees of the Library are happy to announce we are having a ground breaking ceremony on Tuesday July 24 from 9:00-9:20 AM. We are anxious to start making physical progress on our new public library! The public (and children) are welcome. Please bring a shovel.

The last month has been consumed with initial work such as test pits, progression of structural plans, permit applications, and initial construction prerequisites such as insurance policy riders and such. The test pit results were favorable, and progress on the other fronts is steady.

The Library Trustees are happy to announce Dave Pendell has accepted a role as our “owner designated representative”. Dave is an East Kingston resident and a recent alternate Trustee on our board. As the owner designated representative, Dave is the single point of contact between our construction manager and the library trustees.

Dave earned his BS in Construction Management from Wentworth Institute of Technology. Dave has worked as project manager on many municipal projects in NH and MA for the last 12 years. Dave works with construction contracts, project plans, and construction budgets for a living and has already provided significant value to the project.

Dave offered to expand the donation of his time and efforts to the owner designated representative role to encompass the traditional Clerk of the Works responsibilities. The purpose of the clerk of the works is to provide daily monitoring of project quality and progress as well as reconciling the billing status. Dave’s commitment to the quality and success of the project is commendable and greatly appreciated.

Dave is also our liaison with the Board of Selectmen. Dick Poeleart and Rob Caron are working with Dave to facilitate the requirements from the Board of Selectmen. This is an important step in getting the Library Trustees and the Board of Selectmen work together on the project.

As of July 13th, we have received a building permit. The Trustees will be meeting with the Planning Board at the upcoming July meeting to present the plans.

The bond money amount of $467,500 will be wired to East Kingston on July 19th from the New Hampshire Municipal Bond Bank. We anticipate discussing the payment schedule with the Selectmen at an upcoming BOS meeting.

Fire Chief Alan Mazur has provided an initial review of the plans and concluded we can proceed with a dry sprinkler system. This is excellent news. Many thanks to Alan for this initial review and for a couple other insightful suggestions that we plan to implement.

Hopefully future project status reports will be more frequent and brief! We will try to update EastKingston.org with a project status as we go along.

Happy Summer reading!

Joanna McGarry Postle
on behalf of the East Kingston Library Trustees