so why do we have 60 lockers when we you know we don't even have close to that so that's what I'm saying is that's kind of trying to maximize those spaces make it but don't spend all the money on these lockers that we're never going to use right I mean again reality is reality they don't use them so but use it for you know obviously we already know the showers I mean my first thing on that PE locker room is let's get it take off take out that shower and connect to that storage room right beside it and there's how many more square feet of storage you know of this does these locker rooms include like the coat that coach's office is yes the whole area and rolling the weeds too the outside doors too does that include doors to the gym right we all know that that's might be something else but the well yeah I think that was that was part of it too but no just the locker of course oh yeah yeah slowly yeah does this include a sauna for the coach's room let's turn the shower he's got a singer one of my thoughts to tag on the Scott's thinking a little bit I mean this is separate is to upscale those varsity locker rooms a little bit so not that we're gonna have high Furnishings in them but they haven't they're upgraded so that if you're Varsity or you're related to a Varsity Sport you know I don't know there's somebody stole your stuff they get the Milwaukee dialogue so you have to have all Locker doors and all that or you have it like professional sports where they're open and you have an assigned space I'm just thinking about the generation has higher expectations than if we could upgrade okay anyway yeah so so I mean yeah that that idea is if you wanted to build and just have cabinets right you know I'm just saying I just I'm just you know looking at all I can do to go into those locker rooms and all the kids do and they're pissed off at halftime there's a door to spray in order to kick it you know so I just less things that can tear up the better and make it look nice I kind of like the uh the concept of the two Marine too yeah well not the glory with a story about sitting down there at the Y the other day watching my grandson play first time around basketball you know he's sitting on the sidelines and shacking away with a kid you know he didn't care about the game I told my daughter that that is what sports is all about really is that so much yeah okay somewhere encourage that with our facilities absolutely unfortunately prior to increase the bottom of the blue line here if you want to totally clean see that number bumps up too I mean that's a good run that's a good renovation that's a serious renovation but it's still not brand new it's still not totally blowing it up yeah things are expensive unfortunately well I I'd do anything to help encourage participation in athletics I think it's one of the best classrooms in the whole building I guess I you know we're talking about storage and stuff like that you know just continue thinking but I mean obviously if we're we're not able to use those facilities out there and you know for AG and all that you know is there any space out there that we can help the principals out of storage I mean you would have to build so I'm just saying but I I a lot of wasted space out there yeah that's what I'm saying so if we got it we're eating it and everything I mean is there ways to create a little bit of whatever they need in fact we've got two what two stories in some of those areas where you could just what are the short on storage for what do they need just stuff I mean equipment is you mean there's equipment for all kinds of different things for all your different sports and so when you purchase new equipment or a different type oh so you're saying that the Athletics needs storage I mean the discussion was more around the the athletic facilities uh when we were talking about the locker rooms um because that would be the most common area probably to store stuff um no it's kind of like a building buildings just more commands value in certain spaces command more value and have more value than just storage right you know so where's the location at that type of thing so if it's in a prime utilized spot then to me it doesn't deserve to be used for storage sure I don't disagree and some of it maybe they just need to clean some of their stuff out they need help with that I like throwing things away so which these types of projects are always good for cleaning stuff out too so obviously this is a small piece of the bigger puzzle when we talk about the district and so our Hope was that we would be able to get something started for 2023.
homework can get stressful on top of our daily lives so this is a great opportunity for reggies to reach out if they need extra help and there will be late buses provided as well our spring sports are right around the corner registration is now open for Reggie's looking to participate in any one of these Sports in March we have boys volleyball softball track and field for boys and girls baseball and tennis uh they've designed Reggie gear for the class of 2026 and even some Reggie gear for future reggies um students got emails and with the links to purchase and lastly student council is brainstorming events and ways to celebrate Black History Month it takes place February 1st to March 1st similar to Hispanic Heritage Month they are discussing decorating doors as a contest and more all right so that concludes my presentation thank you all for your time and attention thank you do we have any uh questions do we have any questions for our student Representatives Vivian not necessarily a question just a recommendation and not specifically to you Maureen um I'll bring this to uh principal Solinski are we able to make sure that the talent show the Reggie gear that we're able to promote that um via social media try to get the word out and get everybody in the community involved okay hey you have any questions for us thank you again for an outstanding report and uh back to the regular order of business Finance report Mr Stefano if you give us a cash balance report please sure cash balance report as of January 10 2023 count balance on December 23rd 2022 was 939.75 we had deposits from December 24th to January 10th for 2 million 849 510.01 less payroll on January 5th of 962 748 and less warrant number 26 on January 3rd of 273 444 spot 46 in one number 27 on January 5th of 650 leaves us with a book balance on January 10 2023 of 1 million 648 606 spot 44 and a corresponding bank balance on the same date of 863 spot 44 in our mmdt account um the account balance on December 23rd 2022 was 9 million 429 108 spot 48.
this is a long-term Adventure that we're already working on in the planning committee again there's no budgetary impact for this year but that is a state mandate that requires all schools to have zero Mission buses which essentially means electric buses by 2040. and the rest of the items on the list I won't go into into a lot of detail because they each have some um varying degree of cost impact but the point is that mandates you know do continue these typically come unfunded if there is a cost required to um to meet the mandates and so we've done our best um to build a budget that would enable us to fulfill these mandates but you know none of these mandates are requiring significant dollars in this year's budget state and federal grants this is uh more of a of a reminder that we do receive about two million dollars in in state grants per year um the only thing that's really changed over the in the recent years has been the Esser fund Grant so for next year we have about 449 000 that will be remaining in the professor which is the last of the Esser funds that we received during cobit so we will be utilizing that through the 23-24 budget year that we're working on so that's roughly well it's exactly half the balance of that Grant so we we do have that as a as a Federal grant that will be available um other than Esther the grants really haven't changed and these are paid directly to the district and they cover part of the cost of Education that differs a little bit from revenue revenue we do budget um and this revenue is paid directly to the town but the town accounts for it on the books so that they know it's coming and that's why we do need to budget it not much change from the current year the largest revenue Grant we receive is educational cost sharing from the state that's 9.4 million dollars and then the second largest is the special education excess cost that only kicks in if we have a student whose cost of the district is greater than four and a half times the average per pupil expense and that is a reimbursement Grant a little bit different than educational cost sharing which we just receive automatically that 10.5 million is an important number because it does help reduce the impact to the taxpayer you could see there's some math down at the bottom but had we not received the 10.5 million dollars that's budgeted or predicted for next year the average taxpayer cost would be 996 dollars higher in order to support schools through their taxes that covers Revenue yes um is our first degree program polling funded it is it is so it's included in our operating budget as an expense and that town gets that funding gets paid directly to the town but it's all netted out so it doesn't cost the taxpayer anything it's just the way the operating expense versus the revenue works I'm just looking at Miss Hamp because there may be a question there I just want to all right so um thank you all right so um the request is for roughly 85 points um eight right um so then we're taking in 10.5 projected revenue and then 2.03 in Grants so our total operating budget including all of this is going to be 97.33 roughly well let's just talk that through so the the operating budget is 85 million this 10 million offsets that so you don't add it on right so that's enough we take it off so it's 75 million that plus the 2 million so excuse me 95 million plus two so 87.
thank you so much well it's June 30th 2024 we have to expend all the money you know invoicing by September 30th 2024. thank you yep you're welcome are there any questions on the grants thank you guys and I'm gonna now turn this over to uh John who's going to dive into our energy and utilities uh background and what's going on there in transportation sorry and I need you guys need to talk to Ken about how you want him to move in terms of presentation uh Ken I sent uh very recently three documents and there's one that's called uh q a but you put that one up that's it uh well what I'd like to do as we go through the the budget cycle meaning our our series of meetings is um answer the questions that come up in the previous meeting as best we can or and then for example if there's questions tonight that come up we'll try and have answers for you uh on Thursday night and questions Thursday the following so I have put together um memorandum that I I think captures all the questions that were asked uh at our last finance committee meeting uh the first one I believe came from Al uh where he pointed out the difference in our uh numbers the um uh for salaries we had two different numbers and we found a mistake when we looked carefully and that was corrected uh the other night when we presented the the budget to the full board uh we also had discussions about uh line item budgets um you received that the other day there are three uh the line item book that I gave you actually has three separate I'll call them sorts and what we'd like to do on Thursday night is to vote a portion of the agenda uh just call it a line item budget review and during that period you can act what I'd like to do first is just briefly walk people through what the three different sorts mean how to read them how to drill down on a number it might have a question about and then after that just take your questions of um what what you're interested in knowing more about or what's in what and um we'll answer answer them um right there on the spot as best we can so that'll be uh Thursday there was also a question last week about what could we do now at the state level so I spoke with Ryan Bingham uh he's our our lobbyist uh for these kind of things and uh what he said was that he said it's still a couple weeks early but he did give me the date give us the date that the governor is going to present his spending proposal it's February 8th and right after that that's when everything starts to kick in uh but he did mention and we talked a little um before then uh some of the legislators are submitting bills and proposals and things like that you may have seen a few of them in the newspaper like I have uh they haven't gone anywhere yet and he expects to see a little more of that in the next um a few weeks but if there's anything real important it comes up he'll make sure we know about it and um just as as everybody knows what what happens is the governor goes first and he'll present his budget and then the legislature which is uh in two bodies they could accept it as is or they could the state senate could come back with their own version of the budget so could um the house come back with their own version or it could be a combination but that's when everything starts to happen uh it's all uh I'll say versus the governor's budget so that's um that'll be here pretty soon uh Ken if you want to scroll down the next page okay um right so uh there were questions about the positions uh that were in the budget and when you saw the presentation uh for the full board uh we provided a little more information um can can you uh go down to my attachments for a minute and can you I don't know if you can spin them uh the board uh I mean uh 90 degrees maybe or 45 degrees but um the the board will remember these we showed um exactly uh the positions uh the FTS the money uh where they were going to go uh this is our our big slide this has the high school on it Ken are you able to rotate it at all from your can you rotate it 45 degrees clockwise I think not um okay uh so uh there are three or four pages in there uh they're in your what you got and what we we're going to do uh Thursday night is is delve even deeper into these Pages uh we're going to have uh our high school principal Dan Donovan uh with us uh he's going to explain uh describe why he needs the 13 and a half positions uh and uh white amount of detail he also has requested for para educator positions that are on the top line there and then following him uh we have Dr casamoro come on and and talk about about some of the other positions we've asked for you know some of the Middle School positions we asked for three she'll explain uh why we we need those uh as well the safety Advocates are in there too so uh Thursday night the first two uh items on our uh agenda will be uh Staffing because that's that's what's driving this budget as you saw that's uh whether we call it a budget driver or pressure or something like that but um there's uh they're attached to your your um memo here as well see can you go back up Ken to the memo I had yep that's it we also had a question on the number of students uh that I want to say excluding the stated way that they combine things remember we saw our carawanzer in the fall and the state likes things a couple things combined I'm confused by that too uh but we're gonna uh lay out exactly uh the student count for you uh on Thursday so that that's the one question I kind of uh just said that's uh Coming Attraction and then uh finally there's a question I think it was Kate asked about the uh sr2 uh coveted relief grants um this right here you can see uh is from our uh the original application we made uh to the state um these are the positions we put in at this information comes over from our HR department and when you add up the salaries uh for next year uh it's a little over two million dollars that's uh that's why one of the line items in our our budget for next year is if you remember it's 4.5 million we'll we'll talk about that but uh two million is restore is carrying forward the assessor positions you can see how important they are and the other 2.5 million of the 4.5 that's the new positions you you just saw lay down and so I think by the end of Thursday night we'll have a very thorough understanding of why we're asking for that okay uh questions on the questions do you like this way of doing it where we uh come back and say Here's here's how we answered it and okay we'll uh yes John can I ask is this um something that you could send us a physical like a copy of an email I'm particularly interested obviously in that sr2 list so yeah my mistake I I thought we were meeting in person today I had everything ready to hand out uh I'm usually the last one I thought I missed it I thought I missed it so oh I'm going crazy okay sorry I say I'll uh you know what I'll do I can even send it out uh tonight before I go home so you can have it that'd be fantastic thank you I'll send it around um okay um let's so we we were going to talk we want to talk about uh energy and utilities a little bit so I'm wondering Ken if you could go to the second package that I I sent along there it is that one's in there right um so these are the uh four or five categories I I call them energy and utilities and let me just grab my um folks all right what uh if if you could uh indulge me what I I'd like to do is um do the heating oil last and uh go down the list I'd like to talk about natural gas first um and what uh the way we built that uh particular budget is we compared um what we're paying uh right now to what we paid uh last year and it's very uh but let me say this so we um we're very fortunate I think here in Danbury to have uh a guy uh on the city Side as knowledgeable as chip Volpe I don't know how many of you you know him he's very very skilled particularly when it comes to uh energy and things like that he's he's he saves the taxpayers a lot of money as I've gotten to know him he's he's very impressive he's been very um open and providing guidance and um he's uh I I trust everything he says after listening to to how he thinks um so what uh we did on the natural gas is um and we get our natural gas uh from eversource that's not the case across the state but that's how it is up here a year ago we were paying and you pay um the the unit of measure is uh 100 100 cubic feet so a year ago we were paying um are called five 0.972 cents per 100 cubic feet 5.972 cents last month last let's see the last invoice we had uh was December and that had gone up quite a bit it had gone up to um 8.628 so the increase there was right there on our chart of 44.4 now what that means is uh two things we're not budgeting any difference in usage we're budgeting the same level next year's this year that's a common way to do it unless you're planning to open or close a building or uh some type of change from from gas to oil or something like that so same usage of the current prices we don't think uh prices are going to go any higher in fact they've come down uh just a hair lately the market is very very difficult to predict these days so we're looking for uh increase over last year's budget but nothing more than that and you can see right there in the numbers that's a that's a big uh increase okay the electricity [Music] um go to that we did the same uh kind of approach but it's a little a little trickier uh check to his credit uh and by the way we we do a lot of Cooperative purchasing with them chick locked in our well let me go back electricity uh comes really in two parts you have your supply part and your delivery part the supply part are things that you can bid yourself you can find other providers of that I know some of us as homeowners were frequently Asked do we want to buy our electricity from someone else you can can do that since deregulation came on the scene but what what chick has done is he is locked in uh our electric rates on most of our accounts uh at a rate of 7.86 cents uh per kilowatt hour but the the good thing about that is it's locked in until December of 2024.
um the current station 4 is 127. um and The Benchmark nationally is 79 we're at an estimated Design Energy use intensity currently at 25. so that's how you get to Net Zero and real quick this has the potential as long as we get funded to be the first Net Zero in Michigan in one of the first two east of the Mississippi so kind of fingers crossed assuming that we don't take too much yes next slide yeah oh this is just a plan in case we want to go back and refer to it during question and answer and and I think that's it for us Jeff thank you yeah staff presentation from Mr Khan uh I don't have much more to add thanks thanks very much we're we were excited to review the project it's really our first uh Net Zero proposal that we've seen for any public facility in Ann Arbor we think it will be a demonstration project and has the potential to be here for a century or longer and that's that's all I have to report we do recommend the Planning Commission to prove the motion um regarding the public project uh so we'll now move to the public hearing so if you want you could have a seat and we'll call you back up when it's time for questions thank you uh so for the public hearing and opportunity for persons to speak for up to three minutes about the proposed public project at 2415 South Huron Parkway we'll first call on individuals present to address the commission then remote participants to speak during the public hearing remotely press star nine if listening by phone or use the raise hand feature if viewing through the web link for phone access call 877-853-5247 and enter meeting ID 977-6634-1226 City staff will select callers that have raised their hand using the last three digits of their phone number or by name if available for those accessing through the web you'll hear an automated announcement that the host is allowing you to speak when speaking please move to a quiet area and mute television or background sounds so that we may hear you clearly for either method of participation please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments is there anyone present that would like to speak at this time yeah thank you commissioner Abrams my name is Ken Garber I live at 28 Hammer Hill Court um yeah this is a fantastic project of course for the city's first Net Zero building that means it will produce as much energy as it consumes on an annual basis um I'm really pleased that the city staff has modeled the energy use intensity for the building you know I think we should require this of every petitioner um it's it's basic knowledge and it's not hard to do um the big question I have about this project is the on-site energy storage or the lack of um I'm disappointed to hear that we won't have on-site battery um storage it sounds like it was a cost issue I'd be interested in hearing what the calculus was behind that decision um I assume this means there's going to be a gas line connection for an emergency generator but that's so that's another question I have um and you know I just I'm no expert obviously on this subject but there are companies out there for example energy port that have installed lithium ion battery storage systems for fire stations I don't know if TCA Architects is familiar with them if not then yeah with others be curious to know if TCA has done battery storage for their other fire stations or not um glad to hear though that sounds like there will be accommodation for future battery storage um presumably when it becomes more affordable um so that's a minor quibble overall really happy with this project um I Heard um just now that a little conditionality to this project as long as we get funded this has the potential to be the first Net Zero building in Michigan so I'm just curious on presumably this is federal funding so I know the economics of the project probably aren't the purview of Planning Commission but I'm curious about uh what we're waiting on to move this project forward so those are my questions overall um really looking forward to seeing this project be made reality thank you thank you Mr Leonard is there anybody that would like to address the commission remotely there is James damore you can unmute yourself and address the Planning Commission for three minutes thanks friend um this is James damore again I live on Maplewood Avenue and I live about two blocks away uh from uh Shepherd's Park um I walk uh my dogs there um just about every day and so I'm very familiar with this property and uh um I've been so in the 15 years that I've uh lived here and uh it's interesting to see the park you Bob over the years we live in a single family home since we don't share walls with neighbors a few years back uh Jeff Kahan will know this I work with him in the Northeast area plan we were carelessly burned out of our apartment by careless Neighbors on the second floor and we wouldn't be alive today uh without the help of the anniversary fire department so I'm grateful to them every day for the work that they do and I applaud the fire department um for what they do and I appreciate their being willing to step forward on this wonderful project here and I urge the plan commission to support this excellent project that's coming before you this evening um so I would say again to uh Chief Kenny thank you for all that you do well I also mentioned about plant process I'm a former planning commissioner so let me uh step into my former roles applying commissioner per minute uh Mr Garber had some concerns I think which are interesting um Let me throw a couple of mine here which are nowhere near the scale of this but I'll play planning commissioner and say that I'm glad that for the replacement of the basketball court um it's at the site where it is but because I'm familiar with this park I've been familiar with some trees that were planted there not long after I moved there and I've seen them turn from seedlings into beautiful trees and I see that two of them are being slated for removable um I would ask the commission if they could to find a way if we could keep those uh trees that are there I think it's uh I have to move my screen a little bit I'm looking at the age 10 of the site plan uh uh um uh document and I see I see two trees slated for removal on The Closer end of uh um towards Edgewood which is uh one I can't look at the numbers right off hand but it's something to that effect at any rate if you can find it in your heart to keep those trees I think we can work around it since what we're talking about is is the mere uh placement of a basketball court maybe we I'm not sure if the fence is necessarily needed for something like this I'm playing with the weeds at this point but uh if we're going to make changes uh this is probably the only change I would recommend um I'll wrap it up here Brent uh I think we got a fantastic Plan before us here and with those changes I suggested I urge your approval thank you no other speakers okay I will now read the proposed motion and I will turn off the buzzer thank you whereas the city administrator is directed to obtain comments and suggestions from the appropriate City departments with regard to certain city projects meeting private development regulations prior to recommending that city council approved funding for them whereas such projects are to be reviewed by the City Planning Commission prior to city council approval whereas the city administrator shall indicate which private development regulations are not being met for such projects resolved that the Ann Arbor City Planning Commission finds the city of Ann Arbor Fire Station Number Four adheres to City private development standards notwithstanding the following the right-of-way screen along South Huron Parkway would be required to provide 230 lineal feet of landscaping the project is providing 162 lineal feet a total of 555 square feet of interior landscape Islands would be required the project is providing 540 square feet 35 Street trees would be required 15 trees are provided a 15 foot wide conflicting land use buffer would be required the conflicting land use buffer has been provided where possible can I get a commissioner to move this motion moved by commissioner Mills seconded by commissioner weich will now move to discussion of the proposed motion is there anyone who would like to begin our discussion commissioner Mills thank you um again I'm really excited to see this project come before us and I I feel like it has been on the CIP for a while um you've been working at it it's great to finally see what it looks like and how you know how it's going to achieve Net Zero so I I really appreciate that um what I'm curious is if staff or maybe along with the petitioner can walk us through each of those four deviations from the private development standards um and help us understand kind of the the challenges about why or why they're not achievable or my in being met in this so um I mean I can read them off to you or if you want to what make whatever you prefer Mr Khan maybe we should pull up the uh a safe plan sheet I'm gonna I'm gonna encourage the architect of record to join the discussion um the the first one was the right-of-way screen along South Huron Parkway um right-of-way screen is intended to provide a vegetative buffer um for a non-residential project such as this in this case the project has extensive curb cut width to accommodate a one-way drive so that there are two curb cuts that that limits the amount of of um right-of-way screening I'm gonna I'm gonna see if the architect has has any additional comments on that issue yeah and I may if I could call on our civil engineer um to comment as well the other issue that I see is sight lines for safety the truck's coming out got it so would it be possible whoever's driving I don't know if you're able to show your mouse like uh point out where there is right-of-way screening along that along kind of the road and where there's not yeah gotta grab the landscape plan and Pull It in that might help thank you um okay so part of the issue also is that because this is site planned for the existing fire station site and the entire park property a number of these variations are the fact that the right-of-way screening and the street trees apply to the entire Frontage of both Edgewood and Huron and Platte along with property boundaries so as far as what you're screening for a majority of that is parked um that's part of the reason and also as Don mentioned sight line that corner is flat turns into here on um there is a sight line issue around that corner got it and um just to be clear we wouldn't normally have the right-of-way screening from a park like we want that to be visible and not screened from the road so those things together okay and if I made that that's also the answer to the number of Street trees question okay I we're including the entire Frontage of the park there and um and through discussions with staff it was determined that we would just do the street trees in the areas that were affected okay and I was just going to ask that as a follow-up question the staff that keeps an eye on the street trees that we have are comfortable with this okay super landscape Islands the landscape um Island square footage was minimized in part because of a desire to shrink the size of that parking lot to as small of a footprint as physically possible it could be expanded a little bit to accommodate the extra 15 feet or maybe what might turn into 20 feet but I think the the intent was to keep it as small as possible so that the amount of impervious surfaces would be minimized I'll I'll defer to Don and Jonathan if they want to add anything to that John do you have anything uh no I think the other thing too was part of that was that the the bio bio retention area kind of eats into that a little bit and it is such a small lot I mean usually we've got a big light got numerous islands and peninsulas and stuff and a lot is so small that there's only a couple little areas that qualify as that parking lot Mass do you think so you can see there's a lot of landscaping around that parking lot it's just the matter that the definition of that of that criteria it doesn't all mean it except for these little corners okay and then the landscape conflicting land use buffer this is I would just note that in preparing for tonight's meeting right when I went through the notes from the previous um the or the the minutes from the previous meeting that we approved tonight what I put into the record was hey let's reconsider the conflicting land news buffer again because this comes up an awful lot so why is it required where would it be required and yeah and here it is again showing up as not really workable right it it is required when properties of bought um residential uses or Parkland in this case the petitioner and their design team is working with a triangle which is a terrible uh um a site to to work with there's just not a lot of efficiencies here and so um in in this case uh portions of the uh significant portions of the of the building and access drives are encroaching in areas that would otherwise accommodate a a conflicting land use buffer the petitioner did successfully provide it where they could but looking at the site holistically in terms of of how to fit every you know every single aspect of this facility um uh the the design team was was very challenged but again uh did did provide uh the completely language buffer where they could I'll defer to Jonathan if he wants to to see if he wants to add anything to that uh no I think it comrade Jeff I think I've traced and read the property boundary of the actual fire station site as you can see to the South or kind of yeah we're not seeing it I was just gonna say yeah maybe we're looking at something different than you are uh what are you seeing right now let me uh we're seeing that um part of the slide presentation the overall dimensional layout plan is up we have not seen anything other than the slide presentation so I've been showing you lots of stuff all right yeah okay is that better it is take us on a tour too if you can show there was something before that you said and maybe the landscape Islands or something yes yes so to answer this latest question this is just trying this is the fire station site okay so as you hit this little corner in the back you're into wetlands and floodplain mm-hmm well they're not conflict amount of commercial but to this side we're blending right into the park so we provided Landscaping sort of between our parking and the driveway and the park and we kind of come right into the park um I think it's not a whole lot of space in those areas to provide more screen over the guy God so we are running into just to be clear the them as we are running into the situation where public land needs to be screened from public land because of our conflicting land use buffer a public service the fire station needs to be screened from but as right just if I could just jump and remember we're we're valuing this as if it were a private development so right so it it's not public land from other public land this is being um this is being reviewed as if the city had a private contractor running its Fire Protection Services got it okay so in this situation definitely makes sense and also I was kind of concerned that it was that I don't know the Eastern property line the Eastern side of the wedge yeah because I was like that's ridiculous to screen from that there's parking right up to the corner like right up to the property line on the other side like that okay well that makes me feel a little bit better about the conflicting land use buffer to be honest and obviously this that's infinitely reasonable here this is where I was zooming in before for the discussion about the landscape um I believe this so I think so here's the parking lot s of landscaping all around it but I believe only these cross-touch areas are the areas that meet the requirement for uh parking lot Landscaping so calculation wise for that requirement were like 15 square feet short but part of it also was this biosoil or bile retention Basin comes into that area and it's just such a small lot there's not a lot of peninsulas or Corners that meet that criteria got it so your options are to make it bigger to add more green but that eats into the park or yeah okay super got it makes sense um thank you so from my perspective these are all reasonable I mean I think it's really I like our practice that we say are we holding ourselves as the city to the uh to the standards that we would hold private development to um I think in this case all of these things particularly because of this intersection with Parkland that's public property onto Parkland it like um these all seem reasonable to me and again I I think it's useful to see what it's difficult for us to achieve to evaluate those standards overall this does not suggest to me like it's not any worse for the conflicting land use buffer but I still think that we do need to come back to that at some point um but I don't see anything in here which suggests maybe this is unreasonable for um would require changes to our standards overall unless somebody else does or yeah and then you can propose it during commission proposed business thanks thank you commissioner dish okay I also want to just make sure that I'm understanding that there are a couple ways of making parking green and one is to keep it small and another is to put in landscape Islands so you're opting not to make it larger in order to make it Greener which okay that's which would cause us to use more Park land and yeah yeah um okay so is there any difference between a junior high sized basketball court and other basketball courts yeah high schools bigger you know oh okay full-sized it's a slightly downsized version because the facilities in junior high is just aren't as big okay and uh so it's a it's you're replacing an aging half court with a full court oh and that's the park standard as well oh it's the park the park standard is a junior high size Court yes oh that's interesting I didn't know that yet okay um all right so I did want to ask uh return to some of the questions that Mr Garber posed so um I was wondering if you could say a little bit more about um has TCA done battery storage for other fire stations that they've designed is it a financial constraint that precludes it here and will that create a need for a gas line for an emergency generator I don't recall it them telling us whether they have on other projects I do recall him commenting on the expense being prohibitive but I I would actually call on our engineer to respond to your question about I mean they looked at it and we had discussions with Dr Stoltz regarding it and she'd like to see them too we'd like to see a future microgrid in that area that we could hook up to but that not being the case yet we did look at it and our Engineers looked at the expense of it and I would ask Aaron are you there could you comment on on promoting Aaron France should be joining the meeting here shortly thank you I think I'm here I think Zoom crash when you hit that yes can you hear me yes good evening thank you hi yes Aaron France with Peter Brasso Associates Consulting Engineers so the design team has been engaged with Dr Missy Stoltz in terms of the city's expectations for sustainability and local carbon emissions uh this has been a lengthy design period and we met with her in January of 2022.
so next year we had Mesopotamia in Egypt a switch between fifth to sixth grade there's lots of things all ancient history so this is a sizable jump and yeah correct material I'm looking I'm looking at this book right now online there's other stuff here like inquiry journal and topic tests and lesson quizzes that include the whole package teacher student and then these other kind of ancillary enrichment we'll call them yes or digital access to them and that's what the teachers were so impressed with this vendors uh kind of package yeah compared to the others the others had some quality texts uh one of them they weren't very happy with um which is the text that we currently use they have dropped the ball kind of on this specific textbook even though that vendor puts out some really good quality textbooks on some others but the other items uh to answer your question is what really made the difference uh between number one and number two their choices I opened right to the Jewish section just because I thought that was amazing share that that's information I'll come back to the organization next month textbook will be on display yep all right that concludes tonight's meeting we need a motion and second to return a new executive session second Falls yes Nolan yes Rabe yes a thief yes Gorman yes thanks again for coming out have a good evening [Music]
uh and then have further discussions about some of our other facilities and what what those will look like down the road and so whatever we end up deciding to borrow that that whether it's six million up to 7.8 or whatever uh number that ends up being that will kind of set us up into how we build our debt out into the future so we got to keep that in the back of our minds as well as this will kind of allow us to start setting a a debt rate to some degree that we would continue to work off of as we look at other pieces of the puzzle would you try to work in though the Florence Southwood this year like the roof yes we try to get all these I mean we try to get as much as we could started in 2023 because that's when we're gonna that's when we would borrow the money and so we'd want to get that started as soon as we could and like some of these things we might be able to try to get a jump start on like maybe in the gym to try to get a jump start on some of that stuff as well because part of the bond issue is does allow us to pay ourselves back if we wanted to kind of pay in advance to get those part get those projects started and moving before we had our bond money that was the case but we could probably get our bond money pretty quick if we jumped on it pretty quick as well too so Steve the roof itself in elementary would be number one but yeah everything yeah right now sooner those bids have been out that you think the more they would come back out of favor yeah I would agree um I mean roof pricing has gone up like everything else you know the last year and a half or two um but materials things are slowing down like you can get materials a little better now it used to be last year was just crazy you can actually get Roofing now so that's a good thing um and the roofers that you've had are interested in this I'll get some lookup's already and willing to help you know go through some rep course and take a look um yeah yeah I think yes sooner the better for us maybe it needs to be done top down okay keep it dry and then start working on the building but if it's yeah so early I think our next steps would be you know our board meeting is next next Tuesday so I'd like to bring a recommendation to you to go ahead and improve uh the beginning phases because obviously this is just a work session that um just a week from tonight uh we can make a recommendation to move forward so the question for me trying to this like if you're building something you don't get estimates you know and see what they are and then you far away in this sense we would be borrowing how do we know what we want the bond issue for not knowing the locker room at the extent of the locker room and all that we do that's kind of what a chunk of money and then what you Adam was referring to as you decide on what chunk of money you're willing to borrow and then you gotta you're gonna have to build off of that that chunk now we also have I don't want to call them Reserve funds but we also have operational funds that we can offset a little bit to some of that right that's what those operational fund dollars are now there's operational fund dollars alone can't support these types of projects or most projects but we can offset any issues we might run into if we need to go a little bit higher on something or whatever the case might be locked rooms are unknown thing which are large dollars so I believe in everybody here at the table and you guys what that you have disciplines but if you go get bond issue for x amount of millions and then it has to be used on certain projects that just cut before the horse kind of thing I guess the part of it too is that since we're going to have various priorities and steps in the future if we did not Bond enough then we could continue to do something else to to make that work you can't use the overage here on something else yes you can okay yeah so you don't have to Define it yeah if you land about 10 million dollars you could have over it if you ended up having overage and you could use it on something else so you just don't where's that money sit there is it actually borrowed because the bonds are issued so it depends on the type of bond you get so a lot of times that money's if we do a lease Bond typically sits in with the bank and it's been U.S Bank for us um so it sits in the bank and then we write out the requisitions for payments when we receive those and the bank pays them we don't pay on the bank pays them so the bank is holding the money okay but then say there's two extra million dollars and is there a time by which that has to be spent on something sooner the better you can't just have it sitting there um so yeah you need to spend it at some point because we had a little bit of these discussions with the possibility of the new High Street about approaching it a little bit more like a private sector would you know accumulate funds right now we've had some bonds mainly Geo bonds that we received in dollars and they sit in our account and we pay them from there but with these types of projects I would assume the lease Farm is probably going to be the better route to go and like I said that would sit with a bank so on the lease one then we'd have to have that all formally drawn out but lawyers Council yeah and the whole thing and find people that want to participate I mean and we do have legal expense for our dollars if we're not careful either thinking of the other side like you're better off to have a 10 million dollar program than you are a three or four nine novel and sometimes some of those contingency costs kind of reflect some of that stuff like payments to the architecture payments to bond counsel those types of different financials to do that yeah the soft costs not the hard construction costs so that's figured into this but your main question about how do you arrive at that bond amount it's based on estimates so if you're concerned that the locker rooms need to be blown up and have a appropriate dollars per square foot to totally you know erase the page and redo it then we can give you that estimate instead of the seven point pay that you know it'll be something more than that so but it's based on yeah the scope and the dollars that you want to spend so what kind of like we talked about the you know quality cost and quantity you pick two I get the third one I mean that's that's how we get there so if it's if it's eight Max we're gonna max out the best way to spend dollars in locker rooms we can do that or if it's no we need to really blow them up and you're willing to go above the eight okay but then we just need to I just kind of scope I just don't want us to borrow a bunch of money and then say okay we've gotta spin this all of them a list of things here that we've already discussed we have flexibility if it came back that we had extra I guess I wanted to say so you could use that on other projects yes I believe there is a time limit I smell it can help but I yeah I believe there is I know it's sooner the better but I don't I don't know that it's foreign contractor and then these subs or how would that all be put out that's how we've traditionally done it for you it's a design bid and then build that's kind of the traditional way to do a job doesn't have to be but that's how I would expect this to go unless there's a reason to entertain anything else I mean for something like that like a lack of motivation it doesn't make sense for me to do it that way um but there's still other delivery methods and ways to do it and we'll talk about those in the past you know for larger projects we might use the CMC or somebody like that to help manage that these aren't that hard one of the things that have been under consideration was painting of the main gyms so I mean that's certainly not on the list here correct so there's having the four up doesn't really matter they cover that anyway yes expensive doesn't matter I mean I was trying to think when we had those gems pain to go and see if they were in it wasn't that long ago when one of the tamper was here and that's a great alternate that's a really easy alternate to put in if you still like to get a number on good day to paint things or or you know the hard parts of the deck the starter should have duct all that that falls are easy but yeah if you wanted to get a number that's a great alternate um [Music] and they're just sure I mean yeah you might want to change the mural or something like that but I mean the rest of it is some things and I don't go into the whole list of things that I could see being I would like to see that as itself but it seems like the entrance off of 124 is so dark you know if there were some lighting there at the entrance on the drive and then drive since so narrow now I know I'm getting old no it is dark it's almost good we don't have any lighting out by the entrance yes curves because they can't see is that Kevin I don't know but I yeah it would be hard to do but if you can make I know we talk about the Aesthetics of our schools to look nice you know they have entryways they're going to get one of those big TV screen things that they uh oh the right things right signs that light up the whole front end yeah well the nepheus too will that will make a big difference too well yeah I mean would we stick with the same Dynamic of colors or would you change it up a little bit you could change it up it was a great chance to really change something that's a good chance to change it up at least at minimum you know we've added we added those new entrance ways it'd be at least at minimum to match that but you could like I said you can do it whatever at that point two ideas I think if you're doing that it might be a change okay looks every time you paint a room it looks like you redid remodeled something well you know you change those corners of those areas looks like yeah and it's really good at that though too with some of the schools we saw with the some of the carpet and walls and different things like that you've showed us in elementary and different things like that so I'm sure there's a handle on that part of it all right anything else for Adam you wouldn't say talk more if you want but there's a you know actually with our priorities that we want to continue to look at you know we probably want to invite Adam several times so uh gives me a helicopter or something like that well this says this is a close drive for me so that's fine and I don't mind like go a lot further but I'm happy to help thank you for having me I think you can sense from us that you know if we if we do it we need to with the terrible thing yeah absolutely yep I guess I guess the only thing I would maybe just ask Adam if they would give us a number on the left maybe a total blow up would look like and then we can find a range in there or what we feel like is comfortable to borrower yeah absolutely and I think it's all right we'd like to give that recommendation to you guys though to get going on this next Tuesday so we can officially get started so if you would have time to maybe throw that together yeah absolutely yeah that's just uh plugins plug the spreadsheet and see what feels comfortable you know where your range is and where your top end is and then you'll get the scope to that the locker rooms have uh it's a good space I mean there is uh I think if you can't quite go to the full blow them up and start over I don't think that's a problem I think you have really good stuff to work with there now some of the old yes shower old small areas yeah you probably want to open some of that up and change that but I don't think we have to totally wipe it out and start over to make a very functional a huge impact on the schools on the showers do they I mean I look at the showers but obviously they're just one big open room do they do just like like individual showers like two or three of them and then just say that's good you know yeah the group showers are definitely going away but very few schools that want to still have that um think of like a YMCA where it almost has the individual stalls or like a grind stall with a shower behind it type of thing so that's that's becoming pretty common there's normally a family type restroom and shower in the mix too you can use for anything or anyone in any so um so yeah the individuals are definitely definitely more popular there was a toilet area because we were talking about that when we were there like doors only toilet area and stuff they don't have Scott was talking about between next yeah well the other idea I've seen them be great too so you know hand dryers you have but they have full full body dryers too I think you know why we're doing a clean sheet actually I wonder if you get about the locker room maybe they took a shower now one here so I'm not a smaller all right okay all right I'll revise this for that another number and then yeah any other questions along the way if you can make some morning Quarry into the gym floor time thing yeah yes yeah absolutely okay yeah at least the other lead time Center if it doesn't if there's a delay in getting materials well it was interesting I I told someone here that um there's several people maybe also that uh you know South Adams had their gym floor that happened on Christmas um last Friday I was in the superintendent meeting with that superintendent they already had that late last Friday wasn't painted yet and obviously ours is a lot different because we have all the renovation or you know the tear up and yours was already kind of torn out but they just had to lay it back down but they did get the material a very timely fashion obviously yeah throughout all of all of us last you know 18 almost two years I haven't heard anything but like the maple if it's a problem um in Lumber in general when it All Began was a bit of an issue that slowed down quite a bit but I haven't heard of Jim before it's being a specific problem like I said if you're open to a range of Manufacturers or there might even be two or three or four systems that are all very very similar that might give you more options to get something quicker or a faster installation you know there's all those things that go along with it as well but yeah I'm happy to ask uh there's some installers that I know they'll help us out give us some opinion and at least give us an idea time so I like the lightness in Northfield or you know the salad of course it's aged with coats along the strip probably several times um all right very good thank you thank you appreciate it thanks have a good night thanks Steve I guess everything else I told you an hour or less I thought you just later so are we done yeah one more finish yes any other discussion we're here okay
we had um interest for the month of 37 802 spot 34 and then mmdt balance on January 10 2023 of 9 million 466 910 spot 82 and a total operating cash balance of 11 million 115 517 26.
the way you're looking at it and then you subtract the 10 million correct all right good all right next topic um this is something that the board members are familiar with but we do look at what are our pupil expenditures you know across uh District reference group b which is communities that are similar to Cheshire social economically and you could see that the range is South Windsor's per pupil expenditure is 16423 this is as of last year and on the high end is Greenwich at a little over 26 000 and this is something that Dr Solon covered in his presentation but what I'd like to add here is this green bar that shows up on the bottom that's the the educational cost sharing grant that we receive from the state and so you could see that there's a few communities that get a lot more than the rest Greenwich gets practically zero as does Madison as does Fairfield but you'll see South Windsor Cheshire Granby and West Hartford they get a fairly large um ECS contribution so if you take that and look at it a little bit differently what it does is if it weren't for ECS our cost per student would be over 18 000 but considering that educational car sharing brings us down to sixteen thousand five thirty two and so you could see where we rank relative to the other Derby Community so as Dr Solon you know made in or stated in his presentation we give excellent value for our taxpayer dollars here in Cheshire on the education side so here we go into the budget presentation the request this year is 6.46 percent it's an increase of 5.208 million and the total budget request is 85 million 872 591.
so if they're you know these increases that we're fearful of that we hear about on the supply side uh he's protected us um and I think at a pretty low rate he's had this in for a little while so the the spikes that the rest of us are seeing this month as homeowners uh the city of Danbury is going to avoid those so I hope he gets some credit for that uh but the delivery charge uh that that can go up that's um something I'm I'm very worried about the eversources um they're pretty good at what they do um the on a typical bill of ours the uh it's about 50 50. the elect uh the supply charge is about half the bill and the delivery charge is about half the bill so we've protected half of it um but the other half is uh inched up and if it's you know when you look at your electric bill there's eight or nine ten different components of that under the delivery charge I won't go through what they all are but they're uh they're a very uh easy way for eversource to get increases and to bring in new things this year alone our delivery cost is up uh 13 percent now remember that's only half of the the total uh cost but we think um it will also go up our prediction is it electric rates the delivery will continue to go up and we think it'll go up another 13 uh from now until June so that's uh 26 over the year but since it's only half the cost let's put that aside as a 13 hike and then what we said is we think the same thing is going to happen uh for the next two six month periods the same increase we don't really don't feel um we have a it's so volatile that we should predict anything other than the increases that are going on now but if we look for another 13 13 twice in the budget year then we've gone up uh 26 or chick fields we should have 27 percent on top of our budget this year so to recap uh we're taking the increases we've seen on the delivery charge over the last six months in projecting them to continue when you do that your overall bill would have a 27 percent increase that's that's how we did um elect they're all different they're all different then uh propane um you know our school buses are propane uh powered in our our contract with sta uh we paid for fuel in this case it's propane and uh just show you the bills here we did the same approach which I got this right um we've gone from and this was a this was another one uh chick had locked that in for us uh for well over two years and and he he sent me some data he would go back four or five years our our price for propane was very very steady it didn't vary hardly at all but the contract uh was expiring uh last June it's um contract in what by last June when it expired our prices were much much higher uh he felt and I agreed uh that it wasn't smart to lock in at the high prices so we decided to wait well we took a small quantity and locked it in but we wanted to wait for the prices to come down and they've started coming down he still feels it's too early to lock in the price but they're they're they're still very much higher than where they were so we just we looked at the bills uh that we were paying last year and um the summer and this year in the summer uh last year we were paying less than a dollar per gallon actually 0.997 cents and this year we're 1.62.8 so it's gone up 62 percent uh just in in a few months so that's uh that's tough but what um we think is that um we ought to hedge that a little bit more and so you can see we've put in uh an 82 percent increase uh just in case um and what I might recommend to us tonight is let's take a a fresh look at this before we adopt our budget in a couple weeks and see if maybe we can bring that line down a little bit more uh but it it reflects a very a very sharp increase that we've we've had okay uh gasoline uh that's that's merely the the gasoline that's in our facilities our sites and Facilities trucks um next year uh we think uh gas prices uh are at their Peak uh we put in inflationary factor in it uh but boy they're they're very hard to predict too um I'm not sure anyone really knows so this seemed like a a conservative uh move to take and then um let me go back up to the heating oil and there that's also uh bid by the city for us Mitchell has the account uh right now Norbert Mitchell and uh this was the recommended increase that chick suggested uh we put in a 30 increase over what we were budgeting um we get a pretty good price per gallon last let me just see last uh summer let me see if we have it here just a couple dollars sit up up provide that in our answers well well here it is um I'm sorry as recently as December is he December 7th email uh he had a price of uh 3.28 cents a gallon that's how much we purchase uh and uh he wants to hold off uh thinking it could improve even more than that so that's um that's pretty good so that that's how we came up with these five I I think you'll agree it's all all very different um I hope you agree that it's it's so hard right now to predict um you know I mean you have to predict world events and pipelines and things like that and demand and recessions and um very difficult folks we think we've probably applied a conservative approach to each of these John do you have a recommendation on when you would have some kind of final recommendations on these numbers I don't know if you have a plan meeting with this gentleman on these projections and kind of when we can finalize these numbers I don't know if you're really anticipating any big spikes but yeah just curious um you know he watches the market every day before he comes to work and there's some prognosticators that have been pretty reliable uh we could do it a couple days before uh we adopt a budget I would think it wouldn't take long and we can quickly uh change the price if it's favorable or like that's why that would be my suggestion a couple days before we stopped thanks John yeah okay all right uh transportation school buses all right um there's a couple sheets here and let's just start let's start with the one um there and so this is what you saw um the other night uh now um so we uh they're not that hard to do this year because tickets will be the third year of our extension with sta so we have the prices so that part's easy and um next year they'll be going up uh 3.5 percent so uh and what the state uh likes us to do when we do our reporting at the end of the year they want to see uh what we do divided into three areas of public school transportation uh non-public school transportation and special ed the non-public's uh very quickly the law requires us to provide same level of service to not bus service to non-public schools as we do to Public Schools which means if you have to live um more than a mile from the high school to get bus bus service to the high school we'd have to apply the same criteria to Immaculate high school we couldn't we couldn't make the non-public school students walk more or make their runs any longer you have to do the same thing and the way it works is if the non-public school could be a private school or a parochial school if they have more than 50 percent of their students residents of Connecticut then the following year that the city or board has to provide transportation and sometimes border communities like ourselves the schools will have a number of kids from Westchester or maybe Putnam I'm not sure so they have to file with the state once a year uh their enrollments and we look at them and that that decides but um so uh I'll get to that in a second the public school budget line that by far is our biggest one that's um 6.5 million and the reason uh that's not going up uh 3.5 percent is really uh an accounting adjustment in previous years and I'm going to show you an offset in a minute we also have to budget uh kids who decide to go to abbotek or kids that go to the voag program uh currently at chapak but what we had been doing up until uh last year was showing the budget for the Abbott Tech kids in the high school budget location 10.
uh to the point of the batteries you know they are going to be appreciably expensive and right now the the focus is just to make sure that we have a station that's going to be within budget because as was knowledge during the presentation the eui of the existing station is something in the neighborhood of 125 by going down to our proposition if we can make our design current goals of 25 you're you're making a was it a uh you know 80 Improvement in overall Energy Efficiency even before batteries which is huge in terms of broad Energy savings with Dr still with Dr stoltz's Direction the design team has been proceeding in a realm of batteries if we can but if constrained by budget just making a battery ready so the designs of the of this project are going to be evolving um subject to uh funding subject to um City approval and we will be looking at that there but right now our initial reaction is the batteries are going to be out of budget but it absolutely will be ready for it to the point of the gas meter it was understood that having a gas meter on site was not something the city was interested in just from a values point of working towards a decarbonized future um we investigated what it would take to use batteries for the standby power that would be required for this you know critical uh infrastructure building by building codes and by fire department regulations and it's batteries similarly were non-viable what is presently proposed is a propane tank uh generator propane fire generator what that would allow is that if the price of batteries can come down and if the carbon impact of producing those batteries can come down that the propane can be removed from the site without tearing up the paving if the a resilient microgrid grid can be developed in the area which has a level of operating reliability that is acceptable for what is needed for a you know 24 7 resilient through power outages fire station then the propane could be removed but there will be no natural gas brought to the site thank you I appreciate that explanation I also really appreciate your doing the math around the um that slide went very quickly but doing the math around the 80 percent Improvement in eui even without batteries that's a very impressive thing to put forward I appreciate the explanation about the propane fired backup tank um I wanted to ask uh I can't seemed like there was something else but I did want to know um if if uh if you all had thought about more than four bicycle hoops or if you don't think they're useful it did I I think that's what I read in the description that there would be four um honestly I I need you to answer that yeah there's I believe there's four at the fire station side of the park an additional two with two bikes per loop at the other at the Edgewood side well six total groups 12 possible bikes yeah so on that bike path the Edgewood side is by the basketball court so maybe they would be some utility to having more there unless there are some Lots in the park that there are several in the park that I'm not seeing because we're so zoomed in it's just a question I'm not yeah I don't have an answer for you I'm sure she did but I would need Shannon to confirm that further discussion oh commissioner Clark hi there so this might be a little um I'm just curious if uh there are any resilience uh measures incorporated into the site so you know istm and there's other guides now coming out um tied with critical infrastructure like uh fire stations being useful for things like water distribution in case of water plant failure I'm just curious if there's um I'm sure you've already considered that in the planning um oops Yeah I appreciate everything that you're bringing forward tonight but I just wanted to ask about that I'm sorry clarify um so I was just asked about resiliency measures um things like uh water backup systems it sounds like the propane kind of covers running and operating the facility um the reason I ask is just I know that there have been other stations that have been really critical of um in other cities across country for things like for responding especially water infrastructure and distributing communities and I'm just curious more on my own curiosity if there's like a backup system for water things like that I don't I don't believe so but Aaron can you confirm that at present time there is no uh redundant or backup water system the the extent of water considerations that have made so far have been about uh site drainage and minimizing uh water use by the building itself so some Community resiliency was part of the initial design plan there was the balance of square footage site location um a potential shared community center on the site but that would have dramatically increased the square footage of thus dramatically increasing all these other requirements and dramatically increasing the cost so that was deliberately by City Direction my direction taken out just because um the funding of this has been a a big Challenge and I'll be very upfront about that so the trying to keep costs down on this have been Paramount and this is currently an unfunded project so we're trying to do the best we can with right now no funding so sure thank you um looks like a great project overall obviously that zero is pretty incredible um just taking a procedurally speaking I know we're supposed to evaluate this as a private development so um looking at this from my standpoint permitted use under the pl under uh table 5.15 I would think that it falls under government office right we don't really have a specific category so I was like I think this applies so I think on a used side we're fine and then form development standards massing I don't think there are it just says None across the board so it was tough to say hey we're going to apply this pursuant to the UDC simply because it is a public land but it looks to comply with both so I don't see any issues there I wanted to address the speaker's question about the tree removals I saw that there's a wild black cherry and swamp white oak that is being removed um I think the speaker was speaking specifically to the two trees that are getting affected by the basketball court and I was wondering if there is any way to potentially accommodate that speaker's request John can you speak to that I wasn't a hundred percent clear exactly he just said that I believe the speaker was saying two of the trees are being impacted and removed by the basketball court yeah so if there's a way to you know accommodate great um I can't answer that definitively here and now um but we could certainly with Shannon and Joe my engineer I must take a look at it and see if there's a way we can enable that get the volume and area we need in that Basin and and save those and we can take a look yeah I would hate to I would hate for the solution to be moving the basketball court at this point you know considering that we've gone through the community engagement and everything sure location so um but yes we should look at that gotcha understood thank you if we could take a look would be great if uh not I'm still in support of the project overall I just want to recognize the commenters yeah um uh wishes since he does walk the site and traverses it um frequently uh last item just my comment my understanding is the the Capital Improvements prioritization plan is something we pass um and then city council is the one that allocates the funding so I was wondering if anybody knew if there was any kind of federal funding I think you had indicated uh that there is no funding currently for this and it would have to be allocated by city council grants is that correct correct um so at direction from uh so that this Project's been going on for several years I had direction from some uh previous City administrators along with Mr dehoney currently who has supported our continuance of this um my marching orders would have a shovel ready project so should funding become available this is as as shovel ready as we can pretty much possibly get it at this point um it was in contention for the community allocation of the arpa funds it did not receive strong support for that unfortunately we are in the process of uh staff recommendation to the administrator for fiscal 2425 improvements this will be not not a surprise to anyone will be part of my proposal but costs are only going up with inflation we're expecting this is going to be every bit north at 10 million at this point so that's a tremendous amount of money and as with all City projects 10 million for this is 10 million not for something else sure so um This truly becomes a we we've gotten this to the to the one yard line yeah and it's just whether or not there's Federal funding in terms of Grants there's really not a a grant program for this sort of stuff like specific to fire stations we've some of the federal infrastructure I know City leadership has been looking at that as to this point we have been unsuccessful of identifying Federal sources I think that if the city were to move forward on this it's going to have to be through city funding I I'm not optimistic about external funding I I I don't want to speak too broadly on that but I also don't want to say there's this path of federal funding that's available for this because thus far we have not been successful with that and we have been diligently trying so understood thank you for the comments um I think overall the project looks great um I think the energy use intensity improvements in themselves Merit an improvement the safety considerations as well as kind of the Antiquated nature as you were speaking towards gender Mutual facilities for our firefighters so um overall I think again use and form seems to apply pursuant to the UDC the overall building mass and materials and the rendering looks to be in line we don't have anything that's you know crazy out of scale looks to continue well with the kind of environment and so yeah overall I think I'm in support so thank you for answering my questions thank you thank you commissioner Hammerschmidt thank you I just have to think a few clarifying questions um quickly back to the the comment was made no natural gas is being brought to the site is there natural gas there now there is so we're going to be removing that yes cool awesome good answer um okay uh I also noticed kind of a lot of flood plain around the site um is it is it your opinion and maybe this is a Shannon question too that this the proposed stormwater detention is enough to sort of mitigate any impacts of like Creek overflow or like have you kind of sized it you know because climate change and things are just getting Rainier we have above ground detention and below ground detention for this and John is the really the best person to answer this well perfect right yes we are I mean we're uh we're meeting all the city and county requirements of storm water equality and volume and when you're this close to the ultimate Outlet being the creek um yes when you get a flood it's going to back up the system but um really your turn serving the intent of detention is to hold it past the peak so it doesn't uh that's not an issue as far as it being close to the creek or the floodplain elevations um we've kept also the building has cut the foot above the 500 year as required for fire stations and we're not actually doing anything in the floodplain or Wetland here okay great I read in the staff report two sidewalks are proposed to connect pedestrians directly to Scheffler Park where can can somebody pull up a map and just I was just curious where that is because it looked like there were sidewalks are they new sidewalks this is the existing are here okay the added sidewalk from the building is connecting oh okay okay the park system okay thanks um and then oh one of you mentioned something about when you were going to the floor plans public areas to engage the park maybe I heard that wrong they're public are there something about public areas within the fire station know what I'm what I was talking about is the way it opens up oh okay the entry to the fire station it faces the park okay oh I so it's I get it it's like engaging with and you know the amount of Glass on the on the apparatus Bay um is really intended to do that as well yeah that didn't help us with Net Zero but right um I mean overall it's a beautiful building I hope you get the funding I mean a net zero fire station across from a new net zero neighborhood is a really cool narrative maybe that could help in the ground I don't know um you know another way to make parking green is to use a permeable Paving instead of proposed well we Limited in the areas that we could do that just due to the weight of fire trucks ah but now you know about that new product Chief Kennedy so we'll try to prove that out before uh you get this built but yeah this is going to be a beautiful Edition I drive by that old fire station all the time and it'll be great when it's replaced with this thank you people commissioner Lee uh thank you just really quickly this isn't a floodway zone right I just want to make sure because as a critical facilities it does I was noting on Section 5.142 critical facilities cannot be in a flood way John can you confirm that oh yeah that we are not enough we're not in the flood okay okay perfect thank you any further discussion commissioner white uh thanks for the presentation just looking um at this as we're supposed to I wanted to come back to commissioner dishes um question about the bike racks uh both the ones that you have um adjacent to the fire station as well as the ones that you're proposing in the park um a couple things they are one there is a better bike rack design that we should be advocating it is the Boston uh post sign um bike rack it allows you to attach pretty much any kind of bike to it and they take up a smaller footprint so you can put more of them in the space the UDC says that if you're building a plaza it have to be 96 square feet for every two bikes but because this is not in that space I don't think you're subject to that is that correct Mr Khan and and I guess it doesn't matter because you're not subject to any of the requirements for the bike but if you were a commercial or non-city uh one we would have a little bit more and we would ask probably instead of just Class C that we would have better bike facility um there and especially since you're taking that half court away um at Huron River Drive and Platte and moving it to the neighborhood side having more facility for the folks who would use a bike like kids going down to the park and having a place to park their bikes and lock their bikes I think it you know it's not a it's not a huge cost you've already dedicated the space putting a few more facilities in there for that purpose I think it's good my church is right there on Platte so I come in and come out of that space a lot and I and people use that Park all of the time and they are playing basketball on the court as you noted that needs TLC um and so just because that facility ability is being moved it may be easy enough for us to just get a little bit more bike parking there or maybe hit up parks and see because we approved their plan too and maybe they can lend you some money to get that established so that was it it was just the recommendation on the Boston Post design instead of the hoop design because you can get a lot more of those in and you can arrange them in a way that you could probably get about 10 to 12 bikes as opposed to just the four that you might be targeting thank you I think that's a good suggestion and the fact that it's easy to do makes it a great one yes yep thanks thank you any further comments for discussion all right I'll just say I agree with all of the excitement around the project and um also hope that funding is secured um all right Mr Leonard I think we're ready for a roll call vote all right the motion as presented Mr Hammerschmidt yes the commissioner dish yes commissioner Lee Yes commissioner Clark yes commissioner white yes commissioner Abrams yes commissioner Mills yes uh the motion is approved so this will be forwarded to the city council um compliant with that resolution thank you so moving on to agenda item number nine this is our last opportunity for public comment an opportunity for persons to speak for up to three minutes about any issue not listed as a public hearing on this agenda but really any issue right anyway sorry um we will first call on individuals present to address the commission then remote participants to speak during this public hearing remotely press star nine if listening by phone or use the raise hand feature if viewing through the web link for phone access call 877-853-5247 and enter meeting ID 977-6634-1226 City staff will select callers that have raised their hand using the last three digits of your phone number or by name available for those accessing through the web you'll hear an automated announcement that the host is allowing you to speak when speaking please move to a quiet area and mute television or background sounds so that we may hear you clearly for either method of participation please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments is there anyone present that would like to speak at this time seeing no one is there anyone that would like to address the commission remotely Mr letter you're moving so efficiently I'm just going to take my time to respond to that to give a few seconds in case anybody would like to which the answer is no very well thank you item agenda item number 10 commission proposed business is there any commission proposed business from the commission not proposed but just a question um on the update from the review of the Capital Improvements plan um what's that oh whether we have any additional updates because I think you mentioned that there were two finalists that you were looking at oh for the comprehensive plan yes sorry I thought I saw a comprehensive plan yeah so uh so the comprehensive plan we received seven proposals uh the Review Committee uh including Commissioners Hammerschmidt and survey from the Planning Commission and City staff have recommended two finalists for interviews those interviews will be conducted later this month after that we have anticipate a recommendation the two finalists that we are bringing into interviews at this point are interface Studios and housel Levine Associates so those are the next steps the next steps on the evaluation will be those in-person interviews we're bringing the project teams on site we will be um hopefully having a productive interview session with them maybe a little bit unconventional but helpful and like I said hopefully in my goal will be sharing the at the a conclusion of that a recommended consultant to share that with both the Planning Commission and ultimately present it to the city council for a contract consideration to get this exciting work going is there a how do I work this correctly is there any objection from staff to add a line item to our agenda where the where updates could just like just a text update of like okay here's where we are we have this part because it's just otherwise I feel like I'm always asking for information as opposed to and since this is a big process and the last time you mentioned the two folks I had to go back and listen to the transcript to try to figure out which two it was and you know to do all of that so you had to do the dreaded relive the meeting by watching it again no actually I I I I did it in a more efficient way I asked the computer to tell me what you said absolutely absolutely um absolutely sure but but let me take it a step further once we have somebody on board we're going to be putting together a much more detailed product no I know that I know that's coming and there will be a subcommittee and we'll interface with them and I imagine there will be reports but just while we're still in this episode just a little text line that's like hey we have these meetings because you say the end of the month yep like when are they actually going to be scheduled and how does that all work and how can people ask questions yeah yeah that's all I'll start including that in the uh planning manager report as an upset on that that's a great place yeah thank you and first more a little bit more specificity again those those interviews are again they're scheduled for January 25th and 26th okay um they'll be held um here at City Hall um the format of that interview is we're going to actually sort of go through a bit of role playing like have the consultant team actually run through a problem statement or an issue because we want to see how they work through that process with our group we're going to go through a very what I would say more conventional question and answer period and then we're going to talk to that team about a particular project more in depth that's all this is a little bit different I would say since the last time we went through this experience where we had I would say a more perfunctory presentation by the develop the proposed consultant teams almost helpful we learned a lot about them but it was I found it personally to be a little bit repeating a lot of what we learned from them in the written proposal so this is um the the evaluation team is trying to really get to more to the heart of how are they going to function in our community how are they going to function on their feet what x of course what expertise do they bring to help problem solve so um uh these two were I think again they're the highest rated um I think the team is really excited to have these conversations but Absolutely I'll do a better job of being a little bit more proactive because it was not a criticism yeah no I think it um it's it's a it is appropriate and then um that's an inappropriate transition until we get to that more detailed project plan which will be able to to share more uh details there'll be schedules and that'll be shared more publicly of course once it's developed sure and just uh one more follow-up since I won't be um able to interface with these two finalists before you select one I'd like to ask uh again that as you do the role playing that you craft some kind of interface that asks these Consultants how they would interface with children about our comprehensive plan so how do we get the folks who are actually going to inherit the work that we're doing to have a voice so that they're not excluded from that and I think it it's vital for us to not just include youth but actual children um to this process and children have a lot of insight because they used our planned environment a lot and I have a eight-year-old who refuses to bike to school because the way that the road is just is designed she doesn't feel safe and every time we come to the intersection she says this intersection could be better if x y and z and I go will you come and tell us that and she says no uh no did they they're often embarrassed by me that's their one thing please don't embarrass us um and then the other aspect of that is I've heard from other parents uh who try to use our planned infrastructure like biking around the city and having to wait at uh extended times at lights in summertime and then making maybe not the best decisions because you don't want to wait too long for the light so you sort of run the light so just how do we these Consultants at least these two finalists how they would approach bringing kids into this conversation so that it's not just us that they're hearing from but they're hearing from those who they are actually planning our city for not that we won't be here but it's primarily for them in case someone calls in and says something thank you any other commission proposed business I would just like to Echo that technically wasn't any proposed business there was no any other comments foreign all right I think we're on to item 11 adjournment commissioner moved by commissioner weish seconded by commissioner Mills all those in favor say aye we are adjourned
okay this time to chill except the motion to accept the uh the cash balance of a second discussion follow those in favor anyone opposed thank you very much okay in the uh there's a handout of Consolidated cash Reconciliation Report revolving fund report was in your packet and the budget report in your packet any uh questions on any of those documents no okay uh Ms Martel will give the district committee an update on the fiscal year 24 budget so I just wanted to give the committee an update on where we stand in developing the fiscal year 24 budget we're on schedule which is a good thing all of the lead teachers have entered their budgets into Infinite Visions we've had meetings with all of the administrators to review their entries currently working with principal zielinski and the superintendent to review Staffing positions we're doing that now on an ongoing basis I did want to just note that our Chapter 70 numbers will be late this year because of the changeover in the governor's office so usually we have those estimates by now but we'll be getting them beginning of March so [Music] um do you have any questions for me I just wanted to give you a quick update on where we stand any questions or comments Mrs Fitzgerald hi there we go um I I guess I would be asking it's almost two-part to go back to the advisory thing where they're looking at next year's Budget on their recommendations but I feel strongly that if we have the money in this year's budget the safety concerns are the only ones that I would be concerned with doing right now so there were some with safety switches there were some with the taping on the floor a few others that were mentioned I think there were five outstanding ones and if there was any way that we could find the money in this year's budget um and if not I don't know but anyway so I I know it's like a two-part thing but it's going to be included in the budget going forward but if there was any way to look ahead to see if we could do it before the end of this fiscal year thank you yeah I'm sure yeah one second I'm sure we will ask the administration to report at the next meeting of uh we'll he'll pick and choose the items that you were talking about and uh you know what we can do and get done most most of them didn't sound like major you know the important items but not major items you know John so um I'll have a meeting uh this week uh immediately to take a look at those recommendations again and um I'll meet with the facility director as well so we'll deal with it immediately uh I would say as Leo did that there was didn't sound like any real challenges that we can't address immediately so we'll do that okay moving on Miss Martell or would you update the committee uh on the child care revolving account please that's what I have written down here um so that's on the agenda I would like to create a child care revolving account so when we take in the fees for child care we have a place to put them okay and she would accept a on uh but is that your recommend excuse me I'm sorry pardon me is that your recommendation John yes okay Jeremy accept a motion on the recommendation I think I have a motion from from drink okay discussion all those in favor and you want to pose thank you very much okay moving on to Communications uh donations I see none articles I have none listed here public Mrs Fitzgerald I guess yes I noticed in our packet there was a I I think this comes out into communication a nice write-up in Rumbo for several things that were happening and I know for a while that Dahlia was not receiving much communication from us and she has been a massive supporter of our uh of our school for so many years so I was really happy to see that we're back in communication and submitting things to her thank you very good all right okay any public participation CNN student report we had the pleasure of hearing that already superintendent with director of facility introduction please at this time I'd like to introduce the committee to our new director of facilities Lance Hamel the great thing about Lance is well he's very smart I know because I had him as a student and uh we're pretty excited to have him come on board and he started the first week of January and uh it's good to see him every day in the hallways I feel like I'm 40 years younger and anyways Lance want you to tell us a little bit about yourself and so the committee can know a little bit about you so um I graduated in 1991.
so now we'll go through the details of each of the sections of the budget and talk about those and address any questions so if we look at the total budget request broken down by the main budget categories um our 85 million dollar budget 62 percent of that or 52.8 million is for salaries of our staff that's all salaries teachers as well as administrators and our non-certified staff such as secretaries and custodians and our power educators employee benefits are the second largest piece of our budget it's about 16.5 million as a request this year so these two pieces total account for about 80 points seven percent of our budget salaries and benefits and then you can see Support Services which include student transportation that's nine percent of the budget instructional expense which includes some of the special ed costs related to app Place tuition as well as pupil Services Consulting that's about five percent of the budget and then our maintenance and operations including utilities and cleaning out buildings is another five percent of the budget so that's the holistic picture of the budget if we look at how those costs break down in terms of are they contractual mandated or related to overhead are these things that we have to have to educate the students and keep the lights on in the buildings and meet any other obligation we have that's roughly 95 percent of the budget so if we look at it from the perspective of the cumulative percent of the budget salaries are 61 and a half if you add benefits that takes us to 80.7 then if you add the cost of student transportation Fuel and insurance and those providing transportation is mandated that takes us to 85 percent of our total budget um and on top of that special education and Consulting Services that's the tuition special education and then utilities heating energy contract payments and finally facilities cleaning maintenance supplies and repairs that gets us to about 95.2 percent of the budget so these expenditures Accord to just maintaining the district the other 4.8 percent which is the purpose of this slide these are the items that I call variable but they're not really variable costs um they total 4.1 million and you could just look quickly from the slide other Professional Services you know at 880 000 and then down to mailings and Communications 51 000 a year so this portion of the budget the board knows that as we work to manage our budget every year one of the things that we do is we do put a cap on expenditures that we begin the Year this year we started with a cap of 30 of these expenditures that the the schools could use or the Departments could use but we didn't want them to spend any more than 30 percent this is the only buffer we have to make sure that we meet our budget boards obligated to meet its budget every year you can come under but you can't go over so this is the group of accounts that we use to manage our budget and as of as we go as we progress through the budget year we increase the expenditure cap so right now we're at 50 percent which is in line we're at about 50 percent of the budget year completed so these expenditures are taking place up to this fifty percent cap as we go into April and May that cap keeps getting raised so that we make sure that we haven't had any budget surprises that would force us to cut expenditures we manage our budget you know through these line items and they're important line items obviously textbooks and supplies computer Capital Equipment new and replacement equipment staff training all things that we do but we just control our budget through these lines so um I appreciate your bringing that up because it is a question I've had um and I know it's gotten to you um so thanks for because I think the public probably wants to know okay so you can hold back 30 or cap at 30 percent then why not why not keep it at 30 through the year and I get it I I get what you just said but what happens if we um if the budget if we have to keep it at 30 at 30 or 40 or 50 as opposed to the total allocation what what um you know we we hit a budget crisis we just live with what we've got or what do you do you move funds around what do you what we would do is what anyone would do you know managing a budget whether it's a household budget or in this case a school budget we would prioritize what we have to have versus the things we can wait on until the next budget year if things got very severe we've been since I've been here which is 13 years actually on Thursday night we've never had we've certainly had some budget surprises but not that we had a limited expenditures you know to more than a 20 hold back so we've always been able to expend 80 percent of our budget since I've been here if we have a real crisis and we had a hold at 50 right now the people in this room working with the superintendent and myself would make decisions on on what we can push off and what we have to have right now so you know if we had to put off the purchase of certain textbooks we would do that if we had to put off certain staff training we would do that uh we're fortunate this year we have some some grant funding through our besser so we're talking this budget year not next year so this budget year we know we have 449 000 left in our professor at the end of the year so we might be able to use some of the grant funding if we you know to kind of address your question if we don't spend this money there is an impact to the student and it's just a question of how big is the impact so we we think we budget these um line items pretty carefully to have what we need but not have more than we need but there'd be a trade-off decision that would have to be made and it'd be a collective decision as my point does that help thanks okay well good on this section okay so now we're going to dig just a little bit deeper um now instead of looking at the whole budget we're looking at how is the 5.2 million dollar request being allocated and of the 5.2 million 2.67 million is for salaries and so what's in here are not only wage increases for existing staff based on their bargaining unit agreement but also what's being carried here are those staff editions that we spoke about before elementary teachers the special education teacher at Highland 1.4 bcba the school nurse Etc so this increase is 5.33 percent total this year of the 52 million dollar line item or 2.67 million benefits is 31 of the 5.2 million and benefits is a 10.63 increase or 1.587 million maintenance and operations at the 12.82 percent increase being requested and that represents about 10 percent of the 5.2 million and then you could see Support Services that's a 4.61 percent increase and instructional expense is 2.37 we'll we'll go through the detail of each of these line items but that's just a view of how are we allocating the 5.2 million dollars being requested so with that we're going to move into salaries and there's a question proposed both General and special education are any other state or federal funding or is it all just no this is operating this is all operating budget you know if it and you know there if you look at the 1.4 bcba as an example um there we had to move one of the bcbas from the grant into the operating budget believe it or not that had to do with our Medicaid ability to collect Medicaid Revenue which we do have to claim and submit for but net net those positions are being added into the operating budget they are incremental to the budget and it's exclusive of anything in the grant okay so with respect to salaries I'm going to go through just a couple of details first and the the first piece of this if you just focus on 23 24 which is the budget Year we're working on you'll see that there are Union contract wage increases for the para educators uh the teachers and the administrative Personnel you could see 2.7 2.79 2.65 the reason we we have TBD for the secretaries and the facilities group is those contracts expire June 30th of 23.
so next year it won't be there but we've moved the money for Abbott Tech into here because the way it works in the morning they're really not separate buses we may have a separate runs maybe for the for Habitat but or for even for shafog when those buses are done they come back then they might do a Middle School uh then to an elementary school and we're paying one price per day per boss and what what our transportation coordinator Kelly Watson does is she'll you know do whatever is most efficient depending where the bus is and where the next uh kids lived and school start and all that kind of stuff so it's really really all the same and I think it was a a throwback to years before that it was shown separately I think uh Ken if you just scroll down to the fourth page for a second I think I included it is there one more is there one more page now I'll put um I'm sorry I put that in the email uh what I'm going to show you is the line item budget thank you it's actually if you want to write it down it's on page 34.
[Music] sorry battling a stomach bug so um so I graduated in 1991 from greater Lawrence Tech um went on to do carpentry and facility maintenance at the MSPCA in Methuen after that I went on to build Bridges with Kodiak Corporation moved into a supervisor role really quick after that I went to tec engineering company and I was a structural and civil engineer inspector for many jobs working with Artie dimulas salapoli Mass DOT and then went into the City of Lawrence where I was streets and was hired as streets and park supervisor under Dan Rivera and um after that I became DPW director as well as acting engineer and then Capital asset manager so I carried a lot of different hats with the city and this opportunity came up and and wanted to go back I've always loved the Regis and I'm glad to be back okay excuse me John the update on the glts hockey program so I asked our athletic director to attend the meeting tonight so he could tell us a little bit about how the program's going how many students are involved and uh give us an update I think did you play hockey Lance yeah the last year it was here the last time we played hockey with Lance was a member of the team and now because he came back we brought hockey back thank you so thank you for inviting me here this evening to um update the committee on on our hockey program um so right now we're a little past the halfway point of the season and um hopefully I'm not jinxing anything but it's it's going fantastic it's going um no complaints nothing but positive experiences for the kids which I'll talk about um yeah it's going really well it's going really well it's better than I actually anticipated so right now we have four kids who are playing um which may not seem like a lot but in the world of hockey it's very hard to pick up hockey in high school right and some kids who are playing high school out who are playing hockey may be playing for another team right now they might be playing selects or club or whatever um so we have four kids we have um we have uh um a young man by the name of Gabe who's playing from Methuen who's playing on the varsity team Dominic who's um a JV player is not North Andover Keegan um Methuen young man who's playing on um on the JVS and then Scott who's um a swing kid who's playing jv's and bar so you know the Methuen kid so four kids we I went into the season hoping to get five four or five kids we landed on four happy with that spoke to the coach speak to him pretty regularly and loves working with our kids said it's been nothing but a blessing having the kids with us but um spoke to the senior player Gabe the other day brought him into my office he said the same thing he was just so ecstatic that we have hockey back here for a senior year he you know thanked me everybody here for making that happen he just was ecstatic about the season so it was great to hear from the coach and it was great having our kids it was great hearing from the kid from the one of the players saying it was great I went to a game the other day it was a JV game over at the Tsongas Arena that was a great venue for those kids I went to a game a couple weeks ago at Everett against Northeast great environment so it's great to have hockey back um so with that as far as the logistics so the logistics are so the shoba tech is the host School Greater Lowell is the other um yeah Gradle mobile and also the other two schools so three schools equaling uh varsity and JV team um they practice every morning at six a.m in Chelmsford Chelmsford forum and I would just like take this opportunity to thank Donnie olet for those who don't know Donny Don he's a teacher here but he's also a big hockey alumni so Donnie comes here every morning 5 15 takes the van puts the kids in the van takes them to Chelmsford either gets on the ice or he's waiting for the kids to get off the ice brings him back here so they're not late for school so kudos to Danny uh to Donnie if he's watching I appreciate it and I know that everybody does so um right now records five and seven which there's still a lot of hockey left so hopefully they make the tournaments um so it's going well it's a two-year agreement that we have with Neshoba um hopefully it lasts longer but that's where we stand right now um with that I would just like to there were two articles in the newspaper that I have I made copies one in the Methuen life that's out right now and then there was a story in the Eagle Tribune before the season started so I made copies and I can pass those out um but yeah thank you thank you I appreciate it um the um so with this um with that I would just like to publicly thank the shoba tech the athletic directors over in Nashoba Tech and Greater Lowell their upper Administration over at those two schools for making this happen I want to thank Mr Lavoy Ms solinsky all the members of the district committee for making this happen um just know we have four kids who are very happy to be playing hockey and uh I anticipate many more players coming through these hallways shortly so there's any questions I can try to answer something called worse okay I do have a few specifics sadly I was around when hockey ended after years of review watching the declining numbers when the ice time was less available and the costs increased so massively so it was stopped because of lack of numbers and the massive expense the two things just didn't balance out and when I say it was a tough decision um it really was and controversial and everything else but at the time it was pointed out that we were also eliminating some programs within the school because they weren't cost effective and the numbers weren't there and or declining or the need for that particular program was declining and it's pretty much how every superintendent has balanced out their recommendations of what do we get to that point I'm very happy that we have hockey I would like at the end of this year and then again at the end of the second Year a true cost analysis so my question to you right now is are we paying per student are we paying one-third because it's a three team thing obviously the payroll end of it and the expenses are being paid by Nashoba and I'm assuming that they will bill us or whatever so my first specific question would be what is our share for these four students so it's we pay per player so it's a thousand dollars per player okay oh it's a really good answer because it would be tough if we were playing one-third to justify it you know no matter how you do it um and then my second question is something that might end up being less expensive we have these phenomenal Fields some of the best fields in the state of Massachusetts now that we have willingly paid for and at what point could we introduce field hockey for the girls and Lacrosse for both the boys and the girls so um I know this all happened pretty quickly in terms of getting this for four players so I'd like to see the same effort go towards developing those but um oh the other thing is so Mr Willette who is just wonderful to be doing this but um are we paying him to do this so that he this is okay yeah that is yeah I agree I agree um so I I would guess at the end of the season if we you could give us the true cost for the whole thing including his salary the gas money and all the rest of it so that we at the end of two years can make a really informed decision of how to go all right I think that's it but don't forget about field hockey and Lacrosse that's never just it but okay thank you very much thank you oh I'm sorry Frank sometimes it's hard to go up after Maryland because she steals my answer my questions um Mr Nelson thank you very much and I believe we had started working on the lacrosse before we even started with hockey one of the things we'll talk about uh this is probably what three years ago both lacrosse we started talking it was yeah I can I can fill you in on where we where we stand with lacrosse not feel talking about um so I remember having this conversation with the one three years ago with people of us bringing back um lacrosse and trying to bring back hockey um and people thought it was never going to happen especially hockey it happened those same people have reached out to me and said I can't believe you guys brought back hockey um and that's going to play a big role in how we recruit from ensuing probably North Andover and Andover as our freshmen started walking into the school um I want to thank you for all the hard work you've done in both and everything being your staff thank you anything further thank you very much appreciate it uh update uh superintendent on the defibrillator machines oh oh I say did you have something else to say would you like me to update on where lacrosse so last year last year in this in the fall sorry John in the fall we had a um we had a clinic for boys and girls lacrosse um we had the coaches from Merrimack College come down players and coaches come down work with our kids we also had Methuen Youth Lacrosse came down and was volunteering that time they gave us equipment they gave us balls they gave us hours upon hours of instruction um and at that time again this is last fall at that time it was on average 20 25 kids mostly female athletes those same athletes went into the winter season and then played into a track they fell in love with indoor track and they did outdoor track when we had sign ups in the spring season to gain any interest those 20 25 kids were now obsolete they're in other sports and we had very few kids join in after that so we've talked many times soon I miss Lewinsky and I have spoken about having we need that person inside the building to really recruit and try to gain that interest we're going to start offering lacrosse and PE classes and just kind of start it from there we absolutely want to stop boys and girls lacrosse we do have the facilities to happen the league has a JV and varsity league so we could put we can get into the CAC no issues with getting into it field hockey is a little bit different field hockey Miss Fitzgerald is there's not a lot of schools that have it right now in the CAC we're Lawrence unfortunately folded their program about two years ago actually the head coach over there is now on our staff she's she's an amazing PE teacher and coach and what we would love to start that we I reached out to other schools as well about starting up a co-op both Sports so it's in the pipeline just give me a little bit more time thank you anything further okay thank you superintendent uh update on the AED machines so we have purchased five life pack oops sorry we have purchased five life pack uh systems aeds uh all-weather cabinets as well uh they uh they're going in five different places throughout the outside Fields two of them were solar and two of them are direct electric uh plug-ins and they are going in the old concession stand at the Gleason football field which is powered direct the new storage shed between the Gleason field football field in Alumni field the where we built the two-star garage there so that that'll be plugged in direct the softball turf field and we're phase four whale whale uh beyond the softball field uh in between the new phase four and the softball field that'll be a solar uh on a pole that will be a solar system and then the new barn near the grass softball field which is also near the tennis courts and that'll be direct power off the barn and then a new baseball grass field which will be a solar system layout where the varsity grass baseball field is those are the five locations they were in March all be up in powered and running for beginning of March very good John we'll make sure the signage is ample size that even yeah we can everybody can see them yep thank you very much any questions for the superintendent okay John information on that you required that you acquired from uh Whittier Tech on the busing so on the bus thing I have a meeting next week um with the uh Superintendent at Whittier going out to visit their facility to see how they run their operation uh sit down and look at the cost uh what's costing them on a yearly what their budget looks like what the personnel and the facilities as requirement is um and see how they're operating their uh their system so um I've been in contact with the superintendent a couple of times and she suggested that that might be the best way to approach it is to actually go out there and see how the system how the facility operates so I'll be doing that next week okay I'll probably have more questions at that time yeah all right uh superintendent um update on the co-op report should have a copy of the co-op report which the co-op director gave us this evening on the class of 2023 we have 404 students of which 325 are eligible for Co-Op which is about 80 percent of the student of our students right now we have 186 students place which is 46 percent and 57.23 of the eligible students which is the highest we've ever been at this time of the year so he was talking about and still one of the biggest challenge is uh that we could have a lot more students place even at this time but driving licenses are still having a driver's license is still an issue or a problem you'll see in our posting that we are working on addressing this issue with starting our own drivers program so we have a posting we're going to a posting ask you to approve a posting to hire four driver driver ed instructors we're also looking for we're working with the Chevy dealer out in Andover Bill DeLuca is working with Chevy Corporation to try to get two cars donated for our program so we can get the program started but we're in the process of trying to put the program together at this time any questions for the superintendent yeah Vivian uh hi superintendent so um in our last meeting I believe I had requested if we could um if we could obtain a breakdown of total amount of seniors how many are in Co-op and then I would like to add given the report that um it was mentioned the top three shops or programs uh to which we're having positive reviews with students being placed could you uh provide us with like the the bottom three that are struggling to to play students um do you have that report in your packet you should have all that information in your package it doesn't it does not break down by by grade level but I thought we were focusing on seniors only right now there are only seniors on Co-op okay yep so this is just seniors yes so the end of the end of the month we'll be uh starting to put uh 11th graders out on Co-op as well so you'll see those numbers go up pretty quickly yep okay all set okay um principles report uh principal zielinski good evening um I have a brief report this evening um I just wanted to update the committee on our two-year progress report we received from niask niask is the New England Association of schools and colleges it's the accreditation board we just went through our accreditation and we had to submit um kind of a follow-up report on items that they had given recommendations on so we had to submit on that and I also just wanted to update the committee on some of our admissions community outreach events that our director of guidance and Admissions and her team has been doing um so first for our two year progress report on niask I actually did also include a copy of the letter we received uh the neesque organization gave us several commendations and I wanted to include this because this is some of the things that you've been hearing about and all of our work that we're doing uh they um gave us commendations for adding instructional coaches that support both the academic and CTE side of the house they also had recommended that we have some Benchmark testing which we did not have in place and we've adapted the star Renaissance testing we recently allowed just last week had a full staff training on what the star Renaissance literacy and numeracy scores were and how you can use them in planning instruction and interventions they also commended us for instituting and finally implementing our win block which you've heard a lot about and also one of the recommendations that they gave us was to increase our staff in terms of adding adjustment counselors or we call them social workers so all of those things that were in the report two years ago you know we have actually done and they've commended us for we also that we made significant progress on two other areas and one of them the superintendent and I discussed we believe that we you know we are definitely Further Along on it but they want us to continue to expand our Partnerships through external stakeholders in terms of partnering with higher education business and other Partnerships to access to have our students have more access to college and career opportunities we continue to do that we have our dual enrollment we're also looking into some early college so we'll do that also we are in the process of including with our core values some learning expectations that are going to be something that we've at school-wide with the staff and students and they want us to have those in place and mapped by grade level and by program one of the things that they did note in the risk correspondence that they sent to the superintendent's eye we were the first school that ever went through an a full virtual niask visit which is was quite something else and so all of this work that they did and all of the chairs and all the members of the neesque report were very happy with our progress and they have requested to visit our school since they actually never came here for the visit so I welcome that them on behalf of the superintendent at any time and the other just update I have is um our director of guidance and admissions has been working with our new Equitable access liaison Betsy Gomez and they have been working on partnering out in the community they did they attended the Lawrence Public Schools elpac event last week and that's their English learner parent advisory Council and they did a presentation about greater Lawrence and over 125 families were there there also we are hosting a second event January 23rd and that is in person at the Lawrence Public Library they'll be also doing a different presentation reaching out to the community on all kinds of information on admissions they're also including our after dark information for this in person and I did receive an update from the director of admissions late this afternoon that we've already had more than 50 people interested and responded so they're looking forward to a great crowd out there so again one of the great things that they're doing is we know that for eighth grade it's kind of late but right now they're still even trying to work out work on getting information out to families of even seventh graders so this was like the audience is not just eighth graders so I want to commend them for those work and wanted to just inform you and that's my report for this evening thank you um the uh the emissions event Lawrence Harbor library on the 23rd what time is that um it's six o'clock it's right over there I can't give you a brochure yep it's at 6 pm thank you and we have we planning any of those um Mission events in Methuen or any other surrounding communities I can verify I do believe they're doing they had a zoom one um they already had one Zoom one but I can find out if they're also expanding to the Methuen area as well and other communities you're welcome thank you okay we've read a long report for committees all business uh policies need a vote on this on Section B bdfa-e School Improvement plan I need a motion on to accept that please discussion all those in favor that he would opposed I see no business listed under my agenda here uh tabled matters I got three items does anybody wish to take something off the table they're positioned title change uh part-time full-time positions and dental assistant instructor anybody wish to uh could you need a motion to do it but we can do that no we have we still have uh these on hold the position title changes on hold until we resolve the contract issues YouTube so it's good we're not going to remove it but we should make a motion just to discuss it when your table item you should you make a motion take it off the table discuss it if what I don't know if anybody wants to has any information about any of these is what I'm saying do you have any information to share with us on any of these three items John well on the position title changes I'm I'm going to hold on that we're going to hold until we get the contract resolved so we should keep that tabled we're going to keep everything tabled okay anything on the pot Excuse me yes right uh not the part-time but I believe John was going to bring back information on dental assistant instructor do you have information to share this evening on that or not no we'll keep it tabled until uh okay next meeting okay well moving we're going to keep them on the table all right position uh designations I see non-leave of absence of math instructor parental oh oh yeah yeah go ahead go ahead I just wanted to back up maybe under the committee part I did have a question relative to what was spoken of tonight the last advisory report to go was plumbing and they talked about um the need for more work being done in the gas fitting type thing would that mean because he didn't use the word curriculum would that impact the actual curriculum that we teach and if so would we need a new teacher for that or are the people that are already um working in plumbing able to do that so it just seemed that it was a big deal going forward so but I don't remember anything being spoken about of a new teacher and or that this now be a new expanded part of the curriculum so if we could hear about that maybe at the next meeting or so I can give you an update on that yeah right thank you I'm actually following along with that there were a couple of the programs that were asking for additional extra instructors um business Tech was one of them that's looking for four instructors are we gonna is the school going to redevelop that um curriculum all together to add like marketing and other things yep so uh all the all the additional instructors have we've had discussions in our budget when we met with the Department with the lead teachers and with the academy supervisors or the coordinators CTE coordinators we talked about where there was a request for another instructor in most cases they're either in the budget in terms of the changes for curriculum within the business Tech is based on their recommendations and based on the minutes uh I don't recall seeing in the minutes any requests to add marketing and there are marketing standards within that budget and within that curriculum already but expanding those uh competencies has not been talked about in terms of adding any competencies Beyond what's already part of the state Frameworks but that doesn't mean that can't be spoken about if if there's a uh if the instructors in The Advisory believe there's a need to expand the program or include a separate pathway for marketing which would be something we could always talk about as well thank you sir first job posting admissions application scoring support of forty dollars an hour from January to June 2023 this is a replacement position which we typically hire around at this time of the year Jones I'm going to do them separately John because they don't have the driver right on there do they no okay I don't believe they do so move ment discussion all those in favor all right you want to post continue superintendent please so we have one other one that came in uh late um actually I put it in late my fault but I wanted to get it in because we want to get moving on this because it's something that I'm trying to get done sooner than later but we're looking to hire some driver ed driver's ed instructors in order to get them trained to become drivers ed instructors looking for them uh teaches CBA this is a new position within the job description and the posting uh particularly in the posting it says that because it's a brand new program for us and I put out a request to see how many teachers may be interested in doing this particular role and I had about seven staff members who reached out to me so what would look and none of them have drivers that I'm aware of have any drivers had experience so we will be sending them for training so they have to be willing to take a 45 hour training course in order to become an instructor so that's part of the posting but anyways uh it's something so that we can this is necessary in order to have our own driver's ed program we have a motion on that please give a second second Frank John you said 45 here it says 65 hours um yeah okay I stand corrected I looked at it this afternoon okay so it is it's a 65 hour course yeah okay Mr Hayden we will be paying them for these hours that they're taking paying them for the hours to take the course you mean I don't believe we are we haven't really no I will pay for the course but I don't think we're going to pay them to take the course that's not our plan at this time I I think it should be considered that's a lot of I always have somebody come out okay I'll I'll sit down with the principal when would Finance uh what our finance director and take a look at it okay Mr role are they um bring that up and looking at the hours are they doing this during working hours or after Powers we'd be looking for him to do it after hours um anything further all those in favor and anyone opposed okay future agenda items there'll be a need for an executive session for the purpose of collective bargaining negotiations discover motion on that please for the second all those in favor anyone opposed uh would you call the roll when you have a moment please yes Miss disler I'm sorry Mr Hayden yes yes Mr Cirillo miss Mama yes Mr LaMontagne yes we will be coming back here to adjourn s gone yep and that turns it off okay we're back into regular session um this time we need to move on the non-reps or the non-rep positions um I'm going to read down them it's the superintendent the principal Director of Finance uh the Comptroller HR director director of Food Services executive assistant to the superintendent and executive assistant uh to the uh the principal the one with the principal though that's actually going to be um I'm sorry right but who just left um Juliet she's still going to be affected by that but retroactively you know what I'm saying so she's going to be effective to that the one that we just hired or John superintendent just hired an hour ago is not uh not eligible for it I believe correct right right and also the control right okay all right uh this time the chair will accept a motion to uh for the non-reps to do the other Cola which was three percent and then a lot of their agreements have a merit base uh and if their agreement is uh if they're um evaluation warrants the Merit base of one percent correct am I right okay can I have a motion on that please have a second discussion all those in favor and you want to pose no further business the chair will accept a motion to adjourn all those a favor I'm gonna propose that Sue or uh the next meeting date please Valentine's Day thank you guys the next meeting's on Valentine's Day pissed is that too loud no it's the third it's like the third or something no it's the third it's February 31st January 31st January 31st 2014. I don't think we have three this meeting so wait this month maybe you're right I think this is the one that we skipped
and so we don't know what the new contract wage increases will be that we need for the budget so we assumed a three percent in our budget for those those to bargaining unit groups but wages that are built into the budget are based on the bargaining unit agreements and just some other information here the administrator's contract that was negotiated in 2020 that does expire at the end of next year June 30th of 24 teaches contract expires June 30th of 25 as does the para educator agreement which we just negotiated and went into effect July 1 of this year so wages are governed or wage increases are governed by the bargaining unit agreements so we're looking at certified salaries first certified salaries are for these groups teachers administrators we include substitutes as part of this overall budget account Student Activities homebound tutors and adult education the total number of certified employees that are budgeted in this group you'll see in red is about 421.9 that's full-time equivalents and you could see on a relative basis the teacher is no surprise are the largest dollars because they're the largest group followed by the administrators about 8.6 percent and then substitute Student Activities homebound tutors are relatively small so that's how the certified salaries are budgeted certified salaries represent about 48.4 percent of our total budget and then if we look at this from a line by line point of view there's just a couple of things I want to point out on this particular slide um for the teachers in particular that's a 5.1 seven percent increase so the actual wage increase is 2.79 for the teachers group the reason this is 5.17 percent is because of the new positions that are being added and they're listed in purple there um the other thing that I did want to um mention here is substitutes we are looking to increase that by 55 000 that's an eight and a half percent increase but the substitute line we're really careful with how we budget that line because what happens is when we have vacancies in a certified and uncertified groups power Educators our wage costs go down but our substitute costs go up so that's why you'll see like in in 2122 we had one point almost one point um to 1.126 million in substitutes versus a budget that's been around 650 000 that budget is a little too low that's why we're looking to increase it but I just wanted to point out that substitutes are offset by some of the vacancies that we do experience during the school year any questions on this okay so certified salaries kind of um this slide and you'll see this for each budget section as we go through certified salaries as a as a percentage of budget you know have decreased from 53 percent back in 0.405 to about 48.4 percent and that's because a couple of things are happening one is that we have been experiencing quite a bit of retirements which has brought out teacher salary costs down over the last three years and part of it is because other budget categories like medical benefits are taking up a bigger portion of the overall budget okay Thon certified salaries I'll run through this so the largest group of non-certified is our para Educators our non-certified salaries represent about 13 of our total budget the para educators uh secretarial and clerical maintenance employees and support Personnel those are by far the largest four groups of non-certified employees and then you'll see that in the small sections we have school nurses the Board of Ed has its own bus drivers and we have a small Fleet we do that because it is very cost effective it would cost us more if we Outsource um the services that these bus drivers provide is cheaper than if we Outsource the todaco and then managers and supervisors is a small group it's basically the the managers and supervisors that work in School District Operations they're not certified and so we budget them separately if we look at the line item increases for each of these you can see our para Educators that's about a nine percent increase it's a three hundred thousand dollar change from this year's budget most of that is well it's two things that are happening there one the para educator group um they were below the minimum wage and in the last contract which we just negotiated that took effect this year we had to make sure that we got them up to minimum wage as the board knows the minimum wage in Connecticut went from ten dollars it's going to be 15 as of June 1st of this year and that happened over a four year period of time so we had to move those wages up accordingly so that and the other part of what happened is what I said earlier we added para Educators this year that were unbudgeted that were carrying into next year based on student needs so that's what's driving you know that increase which is the largest dollar increase and then Support Services that's 11.7 increase the the two people that are driving most of that are the two the 1.4 bcbas that we added they are not certified they fall in that support line so that explains why those two are as high as they are and then lastly drivers increase 5.08 percent again we have to keep them current with the minimum wage requirements what I show here is just a about a seven year view of what's happened to non-certified salaries you know para Educators you know had the highest growth rate about 8.1 percent it's that same combination I just said a requirement to meet minimum wage plus an increase in the number of paraeducators to service our students and that's followed by um our secretaries which you know that's driven we did have an increase in the staff on on the secretary line and we're our drivers our drivers up incrementally but that's a relatively small percentage of the budget and so that's snapshot of non-certified salaries you could see that it's relatively flat even though we dipped you know back in 1213 you know the certified salaries are around 13 of our budget excuse me non-certified salaries we're good I don't see any questions so I'll keep moving employee benefits I know everybody's really looking forward to this this portion of the presentation so employee benefits has several different account line items Medical Dental which we'll talk about a pension plan which we'll talk about social security workers comp life and disability those categories are not changing much so we won't be spending any significant time on those total benefits are about 19.2 percent of of our budget again most of that being Medical Dental but also pension these are the changes in line item you'll see that the medical benefits requested increase is 1.5 million dollars that's about a 12.7 increase over the current year um there is a little bit of good news in here but we'll wait till we get to that slide um in terms of our medical benefit plans nothing's changed from the last couple of budget year we offer several different plans HSA HMO PPO most of our employees are in the HSA we also offer a Bare Bones plan that meets the requirements called elements choice we do have some employees that participate in that and the dental plan just a couple of things that um I want to touch on on this slide one is that you know a total cost of medical benefits is is not just borne by the Board of Ed our employees through payroll deduction and their co-share they're paying for almost two million dollars of the total cost of medical benefits and that's again governed by the employee bargaining unit agreements but about 12 and a half percent of our total medical benefits cost is paid by our employees through their co-share contributions um we did hit a high of about almost 79 in our HSA we continue to grow the HSA as the plan of choice and then we have been focusing on our Wellness initiatives we did make some changes to one of our bargaining unit agreements this past year which I'll talk about briefly but also Health College health fairs and more you know we we know that health and wellness are an important contributor early detection in particular on the wellness side is something that we are always going after so we've made some significant strides this year I won't spend a lot of time this is in the copy of the presentation but we did have our second annual health and wellness fair this past November as well attended we had 135 employees we had 47 employees who completed their biometric screenings we had quests there the Biometrics screenings included height weight blood pressure sugar and cholesterol testing so again early detection can save significant claim dollars not to mention improve the health you know and the extend the life of our employees which is something that we'd like to see so these are investments that we make however most of what I'm sharing with you on the health and wellness side that paid for through cigna's Wellness dollars they provide about eighty thousand dollars per year for us and the town combined because we are the bigger of the two employers most of those funds do come to us but we do a lot of joint programs with the town so that we take advantage of those dollars we announced earlier this year a road map to Wellness challenge which includes a number of components including meeting with the health coach that Cigna pays for and is here three days a week as well as you know working through and participating in different programs that we have through wellbeads which is an online fitness program and taking advantage of deer Oaks which is our employee assistance provider so this the goal of this was to try and get employees involved in all the different aspects of Health and Wellness that we offer so that they become familiar with it um and then these are the things that are coming in the next few months you know we are doing yoga partnership with the local Studio two times a week free to the employee paid for by Wellness dollars from Cigna this one is important Hartford Healthcare has a take the time mobile mammography bus basically and the person that does our health and wellness Addie Figueroa some of the board members know her she did a presentation on Student Activity funding did a survey to find out how many employees would be interested if we were able to get this mobile mobile mammography unit deployed here in Cheshire and surprisingly she had a lot of interest this can only accommodate 11 people per day and we had a response that's equal to four times that so that was surprising to me because we would think that mammography screenings are you know part of you know what every woman does routinely but we've got a lot of employees that are going to take advantage of this because they haven't done it recently so we're excited about that and hope it goes well and then we're moving to a new virtual Fitness platform in April apparently this is a big deal because it features Jillian Michaels does anybody who know who that is okay so I see some head shaking but I didn't know but now I do know so we'll be rolling that out to our employees again the idea is to do everything that we can to help them stay healthier and get some early detection um this just summarizes each of the employee groups and how they participate but I did want to point out that the new contract with the para Educators they have a wellness incentive that if they complete three of the screenings required they get a one percent reduction in the cost of health benefits their co-shares this year and it goes up to two percent next year so we'd like to incorporate that into all our bargaining unit agreements going forward again try and improve Everybody's Health Wellness early detection um as I said almost 79 of our employees are in an HSA this is the breakdown by unit and this number is always important the number of retirees and our plans continues to decrease the 60.
that's a page in a high school budget and you'll see um last year it was 350 000. uh I think that was too much uh based on the configuration and the network of roots uh but you'll see Zero on that line for next year I call it an offset but it's up in this line right here so that that's what that is uh then going down the non-public I said uh we're predicting the same uh level of service uh next year meaning the same number of buses for them next year is we have this year um and just applying the 3.5 incidentally they also get uh a number of early dismissals uh like we have they may have uh themselves having exams or shortened days so they get they get um you know what we get um but no change in the level of service for next year and then uh finally special ed and special ed has a lot of different things going on uh Ken if you can scroll down um let me just don't go this fish and we'll go back this gives you an example of all the different things that go on um with our kids because the programs are um they're not as typical as you might might be for um regular busing we have type 2 buses we have 32 of those those are yellow uh a 16 passenger buses we have seven uh wheelchair lift fans in place those are those are also yellow but we have a lot of other uh items in there different programs uh that go on uh you can see uh we have Pre-K uh midday runs in there we have monitors on those on the special ed buses we have monitors with the preschool kids when they come back and forth and what we did uh last year was We reset everything meaning we looked at exactly what we were doing and counted everything and asked different questions uh so we're this is from last year's budget but we took the same uh level of service so to speak and there may is there another sheet below that can yeah here's some more of what they do uh the Summers the Wheelchairs and monitors but uh it's those last uh two items that are very uh they've surprised they shouldn't have surprised us but what they are um those are the white bands you see with the sign on top says carrying school children and off they go we use those for out of District placements and what we do every year in April we put them out to bid for competitive bid and we might have six or seven or eight different uh vendors come in and bid anywhere from one run and we'll say okay we need uh we're gonna have one bus that goes up to Hartford every day at American School for the Deaf uh someone might just bid that one run or maybe if we have something that goes down the Giant Steps in Wilton and they'd bid two runs but or some other company might bid a combination but we did find uh as we asked uh these bidders uh we asked them to give us a price per day for 180 days but they have to pay for the fuel so those prices started to inch up a little we think they're gonna inch up a little more next year because the fuel prices are higher than they were uh last time we bid uh so if you want to go could you go back up uh Ken to the one uh go up one Higher um so this the special ed is up and let me just walk you through the math if you take what we spent last year our actual I'm sorry the um the budget that 5318 5 million three eighteen and you were to add uh three and a half percent you'd come to five million 504 994.
most of those are employees that are not Medicare eligible so they have to stay on our plan by state law and then we'll start moving into specifically medical costs this is just a summary from aeon which is a a large company that provides information on a number of different Human Resources fronts including medical cost Trends and this might be a little bit hard to read but um you know the global inflation rate for medical costs is about 9.2 percent fortunately in the United States it's a little bit lower than that it's about 6.6 percent expected for 2023 it's 6.6 percent in 2022. so I use that as a baseline for the next slide which is this is the last 10 years of medical cost Trends in the United States it averages about 6.3 percent and then if you take that six and a half percent if the Cheshire Public Schools had been following that trend we would have needed or we would have been spending about 16.9 million for claims so the good news there is that we've been beating the trend although not for the last four years or so unfortunately but had we've been just meeting the trend we would need a much higher medical benefits budget this is our our gross claims change year over year and you could see that we had some years where they improved which is shown in green and some years where they have worsened which showed up in red and so I'm just going to keep moving on because I think you got the point where we've been beating the overall inflation rate for medical costs except in the last several years if you look at what we've been contributing every month for the last several years going back to 2012.
uh but what we have is we've had to add since last year when we did the budget we've had to add three runs so they're not in the budget for this year and uh Kelly expects three more out of District placements uh next year um so we've added uh six buses over last year's six fans should say over last year I used a price of 320 dollars a day for those 180 days it's about 57 000 um and we put in six of those plus an increment for the increase in fuel uh to bring us up to the the higher number so let me uh before I finish let me just show a couple of the pages that I had sent here if you scroll down this I had put in just to give you a insight um there's a regulated a non-public uh 83 full-size buses there for 180 days summer school we we had 10 buses we have early releases whether it's for parent conferences or just half days uh or snow we have those late buses we have as well in there and then uh the non-public schools you can see we allocate 14 buses to that budget line and they have their early releases as I mentioned yeah so I think that's what I have on Transportation I'm happy to answer any questions on on that or back on the utilities or anything you'd like um anything the committee would like John a quick question about the transportation the bossing um you were and maybe I'm maybe I missed something so forgive me if I'm asking something you answered I just didn't hear it um but you were talking about you know the the busing for the Danbury public schools and then other non-public schools when those routes are set up are they do the buses go to and drop off DHS students and then drop off students at the other schools or vice versa so that the same bus that is being used for students at different schools or these independent routes uh their uh my understanding is they're pretty much independent Roots uh I wanna validate that with Kelly Watson or with the plus company tomorrow um but I'm pretty sure it's the same bus that would do three routes and I I will I do know on the with some of the parochial schools uh we will combine Our Roots like uh if there's two or three of those uh they'll share buses the parochial elementary schools but I'll uh I'll double check that um John going off script a little bit uh when you mentioned summer school yeah I noticed in the book last year we had like 93 000 for teachers for summer school and a 23-24 budget it's a zero line item on the line I assume you moved it in to where um yeah it's funny we're just talking about that uh this afternoon in cabinet there um even though it's January we're already making plans um there were a number of uh grants last year that we uh discovered could help pay for summer school busing I uh I don't want to say uh assuredly that it was the Ida Grant I think it's a different grant that Kelly uh finds she can charge summer school off to and the same with our regular Ed transportation we think the program we offered uh was related is related to the pandemic it's to make up for learning laws to regular AG kids so um we think that that uh Esser Grant can certainly pay to make up learning laws for regular Ed summer school there's a lot going on in in summer school I'm I'm not expert enough at the different components yet um so I'll uh maybe as we get further into the workshops um I can help a little bit John so thank you for dying here yeah my our our eligible schools um for at least the last four or five years um the the heaviest burden in terms of budget that's um Finance summer school has been Title One um and so our parents do not pay for summer school and our K-5 grades uh and then the same is also true of Middle School um and so K5 we have uh primarily use Title 1 funds to support those students in need of not remediation but uh because they didn't they didn't meet the state cut score in reading and so previously we were required to invite in kindergarten through three students that has been extended through from K-5 so the 93 000 number was really just a very small number and a very big issue and budget item for us from Staffing to supplies to Transportation uh the majority of summer school has been budgeted over the years and last year through title one uh what John is saying is true also with Esser funding we we applied some Essa fundings last year as well because the fourth and fifth grade invitations was something it was a new budget item for us and so we had Title 1 and Esser also helping to pay for that expense so but you know when when the answer monies dry up primarily it will be title one that is paying for those uh Title One eligible schools which is pretty much all of our schools K-8 thank you um I see so the these figures for transportation and busing this is what's currently going on and you're going to use that going forward uh well correct so take the um let's just look at them the Six Million 152 and the 1 million 19.
you could see that our average monthly contribution Grew From 554 000 uh to 2122 where it was 961 000 a month so we needed to raise that over the years because of our claims have been increasing these have been the average monthly claims over that same period of time so you could if you just do some simple math if I take those contributions um and I take our claims you could see if it's a negative we had more claims than we had contributions okay so you could see these last four years were pretty expensive part of what's in this monthly contribution and I know this is a refresher but I'm going to go through it anyway some of these contributions were lower than we expected claims to be because we had a healthy Reserve so during this period of time we were not funding to meet our claims we did change that in 2122 right that's the first year that we were really running low on reserves that we fully funded based on expected claims so now if I take on top of if I take these claims and then I factor in well there are there is revenue that we receive against our claims stop loss if there's a medical claim over 175 000 that gets paid in plus we get prescription rebates through Cigna um and then we have other adjustments including interest on some of the funds that we have in the in the reserve so now if I take that you'll see that the picture changes slightly so you know in these one two three four years the net annual increase in our reserves you could see was as high as 1.5 million and over on the far right this shows the ending Reserve balance so here's the good news that I have for you tonight the last the prior three years going into 2122 we continued to deplete our Reserve fund but last year 2122 where we funded properly to meet our claims we actually increased the reserve from 924 000 for 2122 the reserve went up by 410 000 to a million 335.