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yeah did you come to the board no I do for that but I I didn't I'm just trying I'm trying to just understand what the question is though Mr Brown because no question I have no question advertised it no I just I just I that was my it's just unusual that's all just happened why that's all in this day and age yeah trust me it is it's just very unusual I think and I'm not and that's that's okay and I saw you had that they did exceptional exceptional service which I agree I look go past the schools we've we've been there and saw past contractors have not done half of a good job as this contractor here so we added in a scope of work because we was doing double we was doing uh Keith we was having our guys do work in-house plus a contractor did we relinquish everything to the contractor got it okay and putting four applications of fertilizer weed control and all that is a foreign okay yeah send me the specs I would have to look at it sure okay and one question I have on that this last question I have we're talking about giving MEC up for auction or whatever selling that but now we're looking to keep it for another six months was that was that part of the bid has NBC part of the bed ah got it good catch okay okay so we don't absorb that cost they bid it under this gun and they just still getting the money without doing work okay good catch okay that's all I have thank you okay uh any old business thing Mr serma don't turn your mic off please Jade on the laundry for the High School athletic department um I have not I had I I talked to Mr kaneki about that I can I can follow up with him on could you please because I know that the teams are wondering if it's going to happen or it's not because right now the secretary's excuse me secretary's coaches whoever are taking a lot of that laundry home and doing it at their own houses so I would really like to see if we could work that out for them please okay I'm just thinking I thought I had a conversation without I'll follow up with them I thought I had a conversation with him or give me some specs on what was needed and all that yeah I I spoke with him and then I brought this up I think last month and you told me you were going to follow up with him um I believe that he has all that because I think he told me that he also needed to tell you where it would be placed and and how to figure out you know who was going to be able to use the machines and how it was all going to work my understanding from him was that he had all that um but maybe it's not everything you need you were looking for more but if maybe we could be ready for I'll talk to the next season's at least you know next school year or something if we could get that going it would be great thank you sir sure the only one I have is is there a way by next Tuesday we could get do you know if all the punch lists for the summer 2022 projects where we stand on that because we're about two and a half months away from the next set of projects it would be nice to have that wrapped up before we I think I can I think I'm looking at Keith right now I think uh yeah I think we can have something yes just so we know we're at in the each of the five buildings not the addition here but or the high school Yeah we actually have um we've actually put the punchless items into our work order system so we have that separate in there so let me run that and then Keith and I can get together and we'll look through that and everything and just make sure and then are we are we down to the retention left on those five contracts or are we yeah for the most part there's still some retention there's still some a couple uh testing things on for substantial completion like the chiller here and those type of things some testing and balancing that won't happen until we're we are able to turn that thing on you know and all that stuff too yeah let me know if you can if you can let send it to us at least somewhere around on each contract sure I can do that so can we I'll try to yes I'll try like I said if even if it's a last minute on on Monday or Tuesday at least we can see it then we can look at it okay yep I can do that any other old business any new business okay we do have a need for closed session tonight can I get a motion to go into closed session for the appointment employment compensation disciplinary performance or dismissal of specific employees second roll call Brown is an i Mrs Galbraith aye Mr sawales aye Mrs Walters aye Dr Hall aye thank you vice president aye president Albrecht aye okay we're in close at 7 22.

um Mr Moss thank you for joining us I have a presentation uh pleasure to be here I didn't anticipate having to do this but uh the Auditors on the 28th should have presented some kind of financials um so I will do it for you and what I did is basically I put together a little slideshow I took our board policy die that's our annual audit and I just broke it out in a few pieces it's actually longer than this um actually what we're going to focus on tonight is the budget comparison to actuals and you know we do have within the audit itself there's supplementals and and also the opinions of the audit are in there from the Auditors now I did prepare something and and give to you that hopefully you have read showing what you probably should have went through the night that he presented of all the findings which there were none that we were in compliance of state law we have to do this every year it's an annual audit and the district on our behalf we actually prepare all the financials for them and we present them to the Auditors and then they audit those of what we present so everything came out in good shape and uh one thing I do have to say is normally when they come and present the night on the 28th if he would have done a better job that's the night that you automatically accept the audit there is no approving an audit because if you guys were to vote no on the audit we're out of compliance so just kind of giving you a little heads up there um so let's kind of tie into uh the financial statements and so we're going to go through each fund now that fund 18 the at-risk fund risk management fund is actually a part of fun tin the general fund it just rolls up in there we track it separately on our own so that we can kind of track it better as to the spending that goes on in that fund so starting with the general fund as you can see you know we had an original budget of 72 million dollars almost 73.

so moved oh second further discussion okay quick thank you Mr Mauston team I know you had to step in a little more about this around but we will get better every time thank you uh Ramona roll call please Mr Amador aye Estrada aye Ms Lovato aye Ms Molina aye Ms Zubia aye next on our agenda is um board education new business request do we have any um I have one um I had the opportunity to attend a number of PTO meetings at the schools and um sorry Mr Masters is going to involve you again but I would like to move that we find a way to cover the cost of yearbooks for each of our fifth graders 8th graders fifth graders and eighth graders for each Elementary and Middle School this year um I think we have funding as part of our board budget but also other sources but I would like to be able to say we've we've gifted them this for this year and and to let the schools know because I know they're already in in planning stages for that so I made the motion thank you um Ramona roll call please Mr Amador aye Ms Estrada aye Ms Lovato aye Mrs Molina aye Ms Zubia aye awesome any other new business requests all right I I only had the um I had already talked to Dr Lauria but I wanted the rest of the board to know that I would really like to get our volunteer program going of the the moms group or the dad's group and our schools to help you know uh just to help wherever they can and have a good process to help to have a good process for our volunteers sorry to have our volunteers um you know I know there's a process for them to to that they need to go through to be in the buildings so somehow looking at how to expedite that so that more parents that want to volunteer are able to and able to come in and help support wherever they can so I just want to make sure that I shared that with the rest of you thank you thank you Dr Lauria are you seeking um action like do you want us to approve a pro or get an update or a process no I just was sharing um at this point in time so that you guys knew I had requested oh okay I see oh I said this is something that Dr Lydia she's already working on it I just wanted to Great to give you all an update um that that's thank you okay that's helpful does that work how exciting yeah I think that's something we hear a lot in the schools is and it's one of our board goals we want to make this welcoming and get parents and volunteers involved I also hear a lot with our um Community businesses so that would be neat to have that extended in that way as well next on the agenda is a board of education committee reports um is there anything board members would like to share about committees too Dak will be presenting next month right or not next month the month after April right yeah next next month that's right yeah I'm just inviting for more people to the dock is you know than any parents or you know you know students that want to join us it's uh like I mentioned earlier a lot of the things I've learned even the Roberts Rules of Order I got to learn through the deck uh the financial reports all the stuff we got to learn through the deck so it is I do encourage parents and community members to join us and it's getting a lot of fun thank you great work doc I do miss going to the meetings um have to get some guidance on if I could just be a flyer on the wall since both of our primary and our secondary uh DAC Liaisons attend every day meetings so I know it's like that's wonderful I just if you want to go let me know I can stay at home no I think it's wonderful I just watch online [Laughter] all four of us were on the deck at the same time weren't we that one time or another um [Music] I have um so we met yeah um director Estrada and I met with um can you speak into them yes we met with our um we had our first meeting with CTA last so that went well we have another one coming up towards the end of this month so not a whole lot to update yet I also uh want to thank our rotarians or you spoke of rotary so as the rotary representative I want to thank our rotarians from Commerce City our Commerce City rotary club members because they are huge supporters of Adam's 14 students and um yes they they continue to support and continue to help fund some of the scholarships and some of the other programs that um that they're passionate about that we're passionate about as a group so those are the two main ones that I'm on that I can update thank you um along that line I had the opportunity to meet with our certified uh team um such great work I think um one of the things I heard loud and clear is um we have to find a way to start paying our staff more when we have bus drivers that are working hard nutritionists custodians and you can now go to DPS and make more to start than somebody that's been here for years you can go to Walmart they've increased their their minimum wage I just I think we have to find a way to not only be more competitive but to take care of our classified staff so that'll be a budget discussion item that I would love to to engage in um we've also had several Adams 14 Education Foundation meetings um quick plugs Fortuner Fest is April 27th there's still time to register to attend um we're all accepting silent auction donations um if you would like to sponsor a table all of that we would love to have you [Music] um a big thing happening in there is our director Dale mingleton has been with us for a number of years and um he's retiring um and so we're in the middle of a director search um so so you might be hearing about that as well um trying to think what other committees I'm on um I I don't have an update for the urban renewal Authority I apologize last night I still wasn't feeling well finally got over the hump so I missed that meeting last night but they have a lot of great um things happening with the mile the Greyhound Park developments including as part of that if the board will recall you authorized me to reach out to Metro State uh University and I'm haven't met with them yet but I'm very excited um their Chief strategy Officer James Mejia is somebody that I work with closely with at the Hispanic chamber of commerce so he right away reached right back out and was like yes our strategic plans align I would love to have a conversation so he's been traveling but I hope to have an update here in the next week I mean I I was just going to have the initial conversation and then I'll Loop in Dr Woody on her team to dig into that but very exciting um things happening the restructuring did you have an update the web Oh yes most importantly I am on um the reorganization committee as well we had our first real um meeting we had our organizational meeting last year late in the year um and we had our first real meeting this past Friday it was a couple of hours um I think for that it took a very interesting turn um I think I I would just like to um publicly thank our neighboring districts I mean their their support and work is is an expertise and and this is invaluable um we did as a committee decide that um the conversation was just very heartwarming because we all know the three work processes it's not slated out to work um and we had a motion where we're gonna dig in uh very lightly to show why it's not feasible and then the committee did charge me with reaching out to the commissioner of Education to say this is what we found um we we seek your guidance as to move forward but we just do not feel it's it's a good idea to use taxpayers money or the committee members time and resources to dig into a few dialogue a futile attempts at reorganization so um oh Dr Lydia yes yes Madam president um members of the board and members of the community if I may add to the reorganization meeting last week I was present during the meeting I actually observed the meeting I'm not part of the of the committee but these are public meetings and um like you said I'm very proud of neighboring districts and how um how vocal and um allowed neighboring districts are being around this is not going to work reorganization is not going to happen it is not in the best interest of students and it was said by several members over and over so I think there's a very clear message this is unfortunate like I actually shared during the State Board presentation on Thursday when I was asked what are challenges for the work that you're doing because the State Board recognized the great work and the traction that we're having and resulting in students growth in in student higher student achievement because we we brought the data to them and when they when one board member asked about what are the challenges um I responded is the other things that are distracting us from focusing on our students that are preventing us from investing every ounce of our energy and our students which is where we need to be focusing and investing time on so I believe uh it is very clear for everybody we did have conversations with you know um even our clerk here in Adams County and just the cost the the um estimate cost to even bring something like this to our voters and only for us Adams it will be you know almost one million dollars and this this is not including three other districts so I believe it's a clear message I do want to to invite anyone in community to to share what their thinking is and to really push for a um an opportunity for us in Adams 14 to really focus on our students we are collaborating with our neighbors we have plans in in action already since last year before this reorganization even um was brought to the table but I think that the staff the community and even state board members were able to see especially Thursday with the presentate students and changing the way that we have structured ourselves to ensure sustainability in the supports that we bring to our students so very humbled to have been there just listening to our neighbors and I want to publicly thank them for being courageous and honest because the organization will not go through we know that so let's then focus on what really matters the most which is our students and our schools [Music] on a great play and I don't know how how best to move forward with it but I think um our community doesn't know what's going on or or how how they would give feedback um I I would like to publicly thank um our CTA groups they they did lead a lot of work with the Colorado Education Association and they had the arms around Adams 14 committee who put on the the event last week that showcased our amazing students but I just I don't want to feed something um but I don't know how to balance that with um like when we say we want to hear from you like how how are we hearing from folks you know what I mean like I I just I think there's such a voice that our community has and I don't know how best to harness that or honor that yes I think um what what I heard from the discussion with um legal counsel even at the group and folks asking questions those members who are out there really are representing their their um their their districts and the voices of those in the district so I think that is something that the committee can spell out different ways in which each individual um District can get feedback from from the community I think we have heard it loud and clear with these organizations that are you know arms around Adams 14 and uh words of support so um I think that will be a question that is appropriate for the committee for the committee to determine um determine how can they get input even before we have to go to voters that will just be a depletion of money uh over approximately one million dollars that's an estimate just for Adams 14 I can imagine that will be similar for the others I have no idea but it's going to be around four million dollars just to bring it where we can really be investing that in our students because we know um based on the conversation of the comedian other neighboring superintendents neighboring boards who have past resolutions against this reorganization I I think that is money that should be spent in our students not in a process that we know is not going to go anywhere so um appropriate to ask the committee for next steps I just feel like there's an extra weight extra weight on us because it is impacting our district and our community um but um I think we quickly found on Friday like even we're not the experts so we're relying back on the experts and that puts additional work on you and your team and and as well with the neighboring districts and it's just it's a ridiculous waste of time so yeah I think a lot of time and energy and hours of stuff from all the different districts it's uh it's really sad but I think that we as adults and the right people can turn it around yeah yeah so that districts do not have to suffer through this so I'll have more to update on that um We're not scheduled to meet we did have a deadline for some work being done uh mid-april so I think we'll have more information after that yeah yeah no everybody's been sick we're just running into the ground [Music] um the other committee I'm on is area boards and we have not had anything happen with them for a long time okay um city council is my other committee we have tons going on there um I I hope as as a community we're we're keeping up I think a couple of big things um they've implemented a really good uh recap of their their Council sessions which I think is neat they do a video and explain what was passed and what questions um one of the the larger things that's before the community is rezoning of the district so I would encourage folks to look at that yeah um all of our districts in Commerce City they're they're balancing um I believe they have a bylaw where they they want to keep each district um equal as far as population and there's been so much growth up North but at the same time My Equity lens always goes to Red lighting and like okay why are you doing this so it I just encourage everyone to get involved voice your your thoughts and and keep up to date it's a lot of information um foreign I just want to clarify that's not like districts like school districts the words yeah so we have like word one word two thank you yes I apologize not school districts but it's yes wards um thank you thank you yeah I think I think that's all we have for committee reports any any other committee report updates um next we have other communication from the Board of Education um I have a couple so um as you know at the Adams 14 Education Foundation Fortuner Fest is coming up on April 27th um I'd like to ask if if as a board we agree to sponsor the gala at the Mount Princeton level again we do this typically every year I think it's five thousand dollars um so I just want to get thumbs up and um Mr Ramona do you mind working with them to confirm our sponsorship for this year yes ma'am thank you um I think it's a great event if if any of you haven't attended I encourage you to attend I think tickets are not that much um every student gets up and and speaks and accepts their their scholarships and it's just it's so heartwarming um additionally I wanted to throw out their promise quickly approaching the annual prom dress event is going to be held this Saturday from 9 A.M to 3 P.M at um Adams 12 I think at their their main location but I just wanted to give a quick shout out to Jessica Montour she's a 1993 Adam City High School alum I play tennis with her volleyball basketball third anyway um I I just want us to um think about how we can support that that group either to sponsor in future years it's obviously happening Saturday so a little short notice but for future years students can get prom dresses for ten dollars and and I think that would be so great to either have a secondary event or something here where we can just give our students access because prom dresses are expensive they've even ventured into shoes and accessories and I volunteered for a couple of years there and it's just it's it's great yeah yeah but I just want to figure out how to how to support them better so um but also one is for the plug for students to attend the Saturday um and to recognize my my girl Jessica um all right does anybody else have any other communication updates I have no go ahead go ahead so well two things as you all know um I am an environmental justice advocate so I am inviting the board as well anybody tomorrow there is this late really late notice but you probably already know this cultivando's having their press conference regarding the air monitoring uh um tomorrow regarding our um the Sun Core settlement that Maria and I were part of that money shifted over to some of the local organizations so they're going to do a press conference informing the community of the findings and it's really important for us because as an environmentally stricken Community some of these Health impacts impact our education as me right my child my children with their issues so um that's that is uh happening tomorrow actually so it's but on the 30 on the 30th here at uh Eagle Point we are having another one uh called reimagining a healthy and safe future for Commerce City and that is also an environmental and that's inviting the whole community and I asked invite the the board because you know through the group I work with um and cultivando which is also one of the hosts uh Front Range concerned citizens up in the north of Commerce City as well um and the city so we're trying to uh educate the community more of what you know could reimagine our city a healthier and safer uh City so that is copying on now the third I will send the information I did let you know a little bit Dr Lauria so um so we can send it to the community so if you guys want to join lastly I do want to um just I don't know like maybe a moment of silence or for uh the student that was murdered at East High School uh Luis Garcia 16 year old uh a few weeks ago he was shot and there was a walkout a few weeks ago also two weeks ago at the East High School I will be doing a presentation there on Monday uh I'm from a Premiere I made a documentary a movie called a good neighbor and it the students from East High School they're sustainable sustainability Club they chose my movie from 188 movies so I'm gonna be there on Monday uh to support them but I do as a parent I mean this is like really I did cry that day uh and uh just uh gun control and all that talking about security and all this stuff so I do want to just uh throw that out there for for our student 16 year old Luis Garcia from East High School thank you that's it and the only thing I have is to be out in the community if we want to go to conferences next week parent teacher conferences or Monday through for uh Thursday at all the schools the middle schools in the elementary schools starting next Monday secondary I believe is Monday Tuesday and elementaries are they're Wednesday Thursday compare teacher conferences I just think I I think it'd be great to be there because I know Dax gonna have some parents there and I think it'd be great to have us at some of those um so if we want to do that I know I'll be at both my middle schools at least and then pick two elementary schools yeah I agree I um I've gotten great feedback from my schools when we've attended so um yeah Ramona I don't know if you have the information from last year do you mind if we we do a similar thing where we just sign up so we know we have coverage at the schools one day or the other yes so did you have that yes so I um so first of all I wanted to say that we had our first Latina conference not this Sunday but the Sunday before it was very well attended it was all in Spanish so all our linguistically gifted moms that were able to attend from Commerce City it was amazing to see them and we're looking at doubling the days because we ran out of tickets so quickly and people were very inspired by it and because of that I also have uh that day we did a an interview with nine news because we have students from this District that belong to our youth advisory committee that is now called let me see if I remember this correctly which means validated voice and vision is what they came up with and so our youth Advisory Board is really looking at safety in the community so they got a grant through CDOT to be able to do this work about safe walking and drive riding their bikes safely and riding their scooters and so one of the things they had requested that I had totally spaced out until director Amador brought this up is they wanted to know if we could have a table yet again at parent-teacher conferences so that they can provide their survey to the students and the parents about the safety issues around walking and riding their bikes and scooters and they did this at the event on that Friday for the talent show and it was third draft they had come up with it on Monday and then we provided it on Friday but now they actually want to do an electronic version these kids have me going they're my bosses I tell them so they have me going and this is what they want to do so I went to publicly let everybody know that I am giving them a shout out because they are amazing students but they're amazing board members that are I mean we've been meeting for a month and they've come up with so many great ideas already so thank you awesome I did that survey it was great to see them there um is that something that we need to do anything on or I just want to see if that's okay I mean I don't think we need a vote on it okay that's awesome yeah thank you all right anything further nope all right at all that concludes our agenda for this evening um thank you board members staff and audience for your time this evening we don't have a study session in March because of spring break um I hope you all enjoy spring break and we will see you at the next regular meeting of the board on April 11th May I have a motion to adjourn emotion to adjourn second thank you real call please stromador aye Ms Estrada aye aye aye I'm sorry sorry Ms Molina I miss Zubia aye we are adjourned thank you everyone sorry

it's actually the largest source of funding that we have at almost two million dollars just shy in year one and then almost at it in year two so the most majority of the money is going to actually go right back out the door and there are procedural things I want to flag we're working on an assessment that everyone has to get for free so we have a staff person we're looking to hire you know what I need to start with a qualifier this is a proposed budget it has not been adopted so everything I'm saying is only proposed right so please bear that in mind city council adopts the budget so I'm telling you what OSI has put forward okay just I don't want you to go I'm like guess what we have a good thing we don't yet council's going to do their job on it uh so what we proposed is creating this a20 assessment which we already use in Bryant and we would hire someone in the city and then we would pay for other additional capacity like energy assessors to come on board and every person would get this assessment and that puts them in the queue for an A200 rebate or incentive and we learned this from our peers outside of Michigan who have they run programs like this like in Colorado Denver Boulder Aspen they have rebate programs like this and what they realized is uh people go for the big ticket right I can get the majority rebate on this thing but that may not be what they need John may not need a heat pump today because he just got a high efficiency system but he really needs a dryer right but the dryer rebate is less because the dryer costs less than a heat pump so he may be inclined to go for a high rebate but we don't want to do that right we want we want John to have a strategy to decarbonize his home that is different than what PEC strategy looks like because Pax home is different than John's home and my business is different than your business so we first want to create people or work with people who create their own decarbonization roadmap then they're eligible for the incentives but I'm sort of I know I took it in a different direction I'll get to vpa in a second but I want a name that's the largest source of funding for the village is getting people rebates second is infrastructure and that's on-site Renewables that's things like setting up for recycling you can't just recycle or compost we've got to buy the trucks and the equipment right like in in the early years so we have that infrastructure that's in play and then there are policy kind of initiatives and I put like the vppa sort of in there it's it's a contract that we would have if that goes forward then it gives us the opportunity to go to the market and say we want brand new Renewables we want them in Michigan we want them with certain labor standards basically take the energy principles and criteria and we say we want as many of these as you can give us now bid right so it's not a wreck it is not going out and buying like whatever already exists because we have said we want new we want additional and we want it here so we would put out a contract for a firm to bid that now why it is virtual is because those electrons do not go from wherever they are built directly to Ann Arbor they go into the grid right so that's what makes it virtual helpful Missy I have a question if I have any to follow up on that um when the millage uh was conceived I don't know that the IRA was uh necessarily foreseen and so we had a two-year budget and um some of the things that you talked about the assessments and the incentives incentives I think have been talked about for quite a long time but um is are we interpreting in other words some of the line items in the budget fairly broadly which I think is a good idea to enable us to do some of the right things that's what I'm sort of hearing from you yeah yeah like a rebate so we're leaving it intentionally oh because we also need to see what comes out from the state so we can stack those rebates so people go can go further faster and more people can come in to making the kinds of actions that we want you can imagine low-income programs we might be able to take low income households pretty far in doing this work whereas the IRA gets some people in but for others it's still it's just still too high of a bar to hit and so we are going to be flexible and what I like about candidly doing these um we need to come up with a name so if anyone's really creative I call it the a20 decarbonization assessment which is terrible naming but if if we do those right and and you you apply and get this free assessment it helps not only you get your own kind of road map but it tells me where we have the most opportunity in the market right now it tells me that the majority of our money actually needs to go to Range Replacements because we have really terrible indoor air quality right and so it allows us to be really purposeful and where we put those dollars to have the largest impact both in terms of climate and in terms of Public Health Commissioners yeah I have a few things jotted down like I said from emails and um some both from Commissioners and people outside the commission but let's take commissioner questions or comments first so I want to say thank you very much for that explanation it really helped me oh thank you it's a complicated question the energy system is very complex that's why we're here yeah and we don't run it one thing you all run at everything so gets muddled I'm missing maybe one question because you touched on it already while other people think about what they may want to pose uh it was mentioned earlier the landfill solar um could you give um something to confirm or maybe put a different uh light on what was already expressed here through public comment and what other people may have already heard about which can you just landfill solar like where we are in it or yeah I mean you and I've exchange information um but I don't know that it's been shared with the commission as a whole comments and something very briefly um I'm just opening the door up for others to ask questions on about that are you for you to give a little bit more detail sure yeah of course so the lionfield solar project is still on hold we are right now looking at some funding opportunities we're waiting that there's a really strategic opportunity from the state we're waiting for the governor to release uh the request for proposals on it as soon as it goes live we'll evaluate and hopefully apply we have already identified um or started talking to people about the project we have it's a specific funding proposal for redevelopment of landfills and you can't really do a lot on a landfill but you sure as heck can do some solar on a landfill um and that's what's sort of holding it up at this point if that falls through I will terminate the project almost certainly because we can't make Economics work on our own other commissioners go ahead commissioner Smith yes thank you um just curious it occurred to me um you know is do we think that um or I should say have we thought about the opportunity to potentially partner um or kind of Leverage the free home energy Consultation Services that are provided to to DT do we see any uh kind of synergies there that we can capitalize on thank you for the question so what what carbonization assessment that we're talking about is a true decarbonization assessment so it's Energy Efficiency opportunities as well as electrification on-site renewable energy potential and air quality indoor air quality opportunities for improvement most energy assessments do not go that far right they're really looking at efficiency and sometimes a really good one is also looking at air quality we don't um because our goal is so aggressive we are trying to stack right in that moment to figure out how we do these things together and go as far fast as possible which means we're working instead of kind of using someone else's system we're creating our own and then asking folks to come with us in our community to actually Implement that so we'll be providing it for free um but folks are still welcome to use any service that's available um it's just our rebates are more than just efficiency and so we need to understand on-site renewable potential electrification potential in order to make really smart choices with those limited dollars and seven million is a lot of money but it sure is heck not enough for every household so we've got to be a little bit more searchable yeah that's very helpful insights and just curious even if we think about kind of the lead generation process is there opportunity to kind of Leverage that or kind of you know cross-share knowledge of these are the folks that are interested let's get in from you know uh let's layer on top of a home energy consultation because we can go deeper on something like that yeah absolutely we've been talking to our friends at weatherization about a very similar thing right if you're getting in for weatherization you're getting an assessment weatherization also comes with dollars um right now weatherizations wait list is really long um so that's a like we're trying to work through that it's about a two-year wait list here in Washington County that's just that's just too long for people to wait especially low-income older adults uh to wait for programs so we're working with them to try to figure out how do we maybe not jump the queue but how do we work collaboratively in this landscape because the other challenge I see I could cannibalize the contractors yeah very helpful thank you commissioner thank you so much um I was I was wondering if you could say a little bit about how you are um thinking about particularly I'm queuing a little bit on the second presentation but how are you really thinking about engagement and strategic Communications across all the programs I'm looking at slide number 10 for example of other uses public engagement and education program Administration capacity building and things like that and how you're how you're thinking about Communications and engagement on one hand but also with respect to the separate programs and whether that's sort of a separate you know Communications engagement is a sort of separate its own piece or how it's integrated into the specific programs themselves in ways that um provide sort of authentic and impactful engagement across across the program thank you for the really thoughtful question and the answer is yes uh and I get to the point where you said are you thinking about kind of Engagement broadly are you thinking about it in in the individual programs and that's where the answer is yes and yes right that there are um taking a step back structurally the office can't look like the office has looked before as we launch all of these different initiatives and so one of the things that I'm joined with is creating a community engagement unit in the office that's very very focused on customizing like what the experience is like to do community engagement across the board but everyone running a program and initiative has to do community engagement right it's inherently part of the ethos of what we do in OSI so that's not going to stop um what is probably going to look a little well I don't know that it'll look different because it's it's what we're doing now um with one caveat we have historically got a lot of really big tent conversations we're going to keep having some of those like our sustainability forms are a20 a week big Community town halls and some um we are also going to start spending a lot more time in really deep kind of neighborhood work especially with Frontline populations because it takes a really long time to build trust and Rapport and get that work done and that's for example what we've been doing in Bryan we spend a lot of kind of engaging in Bryant and that's why I think that's right I would say based on the values of a20 that is what we should be doing so you're going to see the reason we're trying to scale up our capacity up in that space is so we can have more folks go to peace neighborhood center and spend deep time there with them because we're all working on a resilience Hub with them and Bonnie is a trusted incredible broker in our community and we need to make sure that money can function and what about working with Derek at other sites and what about working with Jen and Aubry at the Housing Commission sites you know we need to go deep in places in certain places and use trusted Brokers to do that so yes and yes is the answer and we do anticipate hiring someone to lead kind of Neighborhood Place based engagement commissioner pack thank you thank you for the question hi Missy I I personally do value virtual ppas and understand their utility um when they can displace renewable energy and I believe they will displace renewable energy as a less expensive source of electricity than the fossil fuel ones and I also believe that we're we're not building renewable energy nearly at the rate as necessary to meet goals such as ours or um you know the Paris agreement or President Biden's basically any of them we're not building renewable energy quick enough so whatever Ann Arbor can do to do that and sort of implicitly will address the additionality issue but I just wouldn't mind hearing you say it in your own words um how that is um so that some of the folks who called in for example can understand uh why this is virtuous for Ann Arbor to invest in these I and I I get a get the feeling a big part of this too is that to get the really low cost renewable energy on the grid that is necessary we just don't have the options in Ann Arbor and that's one of the reasons you're you know we're looking to invest in this way am I getting it right yeah I mean it's it's a really complicated it's it's complicated and it's not so let me take it from it from me to like further elaborate if I missed where you want me to go we are not looking at one thing and and I hope people know that especially let's let's stick with energy on and renewable energy we are talking about incentives so people can put Renewables on their home and on their business in this community right now right we are actually um I don't know if you know this but when the University of Michigan released their RFP for 25 megawatts of solar we worked with them and released a parallel RFP for one megawatt of solar at City facilities we work together on language I mean that that is a big deal that may not feel like it but that's the most I've ever done with the university in that case like that's great so we're looking to deploy more Renewables we're breaking ground on the four four and a half Renewables that we're putting in the community I'm still committed to the landfill solar project which would bring 20 more you know megawatts of Renewables into our system so like we are looking at deployment locally we're studying that seu we are studying the different options available to us so like that is not dead that is still going and yet we have more demand for energy than what we have on the grid today and then what we'll have available in our community by 2030.

like we had to send people to look for it right and and we didn't find it it's not there but it delayed everything because then if it was we had to do different mitigation techniques and so like the time and effort that goes in and you don't some of these assessments are only good for two or three years and then you've got to reassess so you incur a lot of costs and part of this project like it is a it was a labor of pain and love for me is working with the state at every step to say we need to change this you're making it too hard I know the governor wants to see more of these developments we are going to fight through this because we're going to be stubborn but you you got to sit beside us and help us change the code change your regulation change the permitting process and that's perhaps great thanks that adds a lot of expense too John yeah I mean some of that is some cost but obviously some of it is not it's reflected in the execution cost so that's clear commissioner commissioner Levin uh yeah I understand you're still you know working on the solar project but um is there a thought to what where the money would go if that doesn't happen I mean is that possibly where it could be a vppa kind of thing or I know it's early so maybe you don't even know but yeah it's a is the city the city item budget right in that um I'll say John John kind of called me out in on this and the rebates like being intentionally vague so we could see what people need right the same is true for that particular line item if what we discover is that the rebates are wildly effective and we are seeing emissions be like just dropping and this is the right vehicle I can actually make the call that we're not going to fund something else in there and put more money towards the most effective thing so I don't know how to answer your question exactly where the money would go in that sense all I can tell you is that we're we are always looking at multiple things we have way more projects than we have money for um we're always fundraising that money might be directed towards a sustainable energy utility you know and standing up the preliminary costs of it or that money might go uh to finish the Net Zero Energy fire station because we're close but we haven't yet closed the Delta to get that over the hoop or over the loop it might go for match for our next electric refuse truck in the system you know like so I'm holding it for landfill solar but if landfill solar does not materialize we will use that money to affect emissions other comments questions I'm going to Rattle off several and they're really more just for uh people the commissioner or council member Briggs go ahead your last statement um Dr Stoltz just made me raised a question for me in terms of you know thinking about how additional funds might be able to be used and obviously they're going to be used strategically to try to advance are the goals of our plan um in alignment with what the voters um allocated were sort of promised in passing a millage but um is there what's happening behind the scenes I guess to help identify um there's there's always going to be gaps there's always going to be more funding that we need but to identify that um that it is directed towards the projects that are going to end up delivering you know impacting our emissions um lowering our emissions the most I mean as opposed to sort of what's maybe the greatest need at the moment to move a project forward there are a handful of variables uh it is not a secret sauce of one thing to be honest right we have a two zero so we already know where we need to make investments and that is an incredible directive we also have things that this body has talked about that aren't in a20 we don't have an seu right in a20 but that doesn't mean we're not working on that we don't have telework in a20 because we evaluated it and it didn't make the cut but we were wrong right uh the pandemic shows we were wrong so a20 is like the North Star but the the mother metric is greenhouse gas emissions reductions that however is also Guided by Equity so we look for the things that have the highest impact but we also have to hold space for the things that are going to take a lot of time right if we eat all the low-hanging fruit we don't leave if we if we're never working on the harder things we're never building momentum towards them and so we're trying to simultaneously build the movement and the systems to do the really hard systems change work that will be the most transformative that we do while we're all also getting these wins in the system right so the the things that we evaluate are obviously cost per greenhouse gas reduction that we can get public willingness to engage in an initiative because it won't matter if theoretically I get a high Roi on it but no one doesn't right so we've we've got to build in um is the public ready what do we have to do to get them ready right those public engagement dollars may not be much there may be only 50 000 in the budget but they may be the most important 50 000 that we spend right depending on kind of what that individual action and strategy is um and then there's there is certainly opportunism that comes into play I I would be lying if I told you that wasn't true right the department of energy released a geothermal Grant I went for it we have money in the budget for a geothermal study if I win the federal government grant I'm not going to put it towards I'm I freed up dollars over here that I'll reallocate right because I'm able to use federal dollars so there's opportunity that we we also bring it to the equation thanks for the question so as I mentioned because it's uh time is ticking here and we've got Michelle waiting and we've got a couple of other things to deal with I'm just going to Rattle off a couple of things and I think really some of these um you don't need to respond to um so first of all I'm just going to State one thing Missy that you and I have corresponded on but is also posed as a question to me and that was um if there are issues that arise and are seem likely to arise that will require additional legal resources um that was not a specific line item that was called out into your budget but um it's my understanding that there is at least an understanding or a provision that that will be uh money will be spent for that because that advances particular causes it just may not have been tied to legal fees so um that I think everybody on the commission deserves to know that and that that's welcome news um a lot of people myself included are concerned um about um for example well I'll say generally spending money on what seems to be um High hanging fruit as opposed to low hanging fruit particularly from the perspective of dollars per metric ton of CO2 emitted reduced and one of the categories where that is is that I as um in solid waste or um circular economy I think we all recognize the need to reduce scope 3 emissions but at least the calculations that were done at the time indicate that those are among the least effective and we don't even have data that at least the environmental commission has seen yet that shows for example was Organics collection year-round Organics collection affected it all did tonnage go up at all that our diversion rate decrease so before we spend lots and lots of money on those things um that we aren't sure really are going to have a significant impact and in fact may even have offsetting emissions because we have trucks running around that I think it's really important that um staff and Council examine those items and spend the money where we have low hanging fruit where we know if we spend um a dollar for example on Energy Efficiency measures or we incentify those kinds of uh actions that we know we're going to get a really really good payback on that and that may be some of the higher hanging fruits are things that we do later down the road I'm just going to continue um someone wrote me and asked about millage funds um potentially being devoted to either incent developers to build without natural gas or to build more high efficiency or high efficiency new construction that was something that was thrown out there I think that personally that's that's a a two two uh two bladed sword where on the one hand it could do good on the other hand it man sent every single developer to come to the city and say hey please pay for my all-electric uh whatever it is or please pay for my um better envelope so there are people that are asking those kinds of questions um I think that's it and I'm really just asking that uh those those issues be considered and debated when budget is is reviewed I appreciate that and I'm not going to hammer them in detail but I want to say uh you brought up some things I had hoped to say and that they just evaded me one is uh OSI is asking for an attorney in the attorney's office um so you're asking for full-time capacity because we the way we this is a further conversation but the way our attorneys are structured is they sort of are appointed to service areas and we don't have someone so we always get kind of the end of the line and that's that's part of what we're looking at then we have external uh Professional Services dollars if we need more or a different kind of attorney so yes um thank you for having that uh High hanging fruit sure um what I would say is we know that we under calculated the life cycle emissions associated with with waste and the circular economy because there is not a standard methodology but we are all in the team helping create the standard methodology for what it looks like to capture those emissions so I would say maybe maybe that's true maybe that's not true when we really understand the true emissions associated with things uh like Solid Waste also solid waste is sort of a Gateway uh it's very personal when people come into the field from it so it wouldn't totally uh take that off the table in terms of importance but to your other points about justification of impact totally hard and understood yeah efficiency I wish everyone did it they don't uh it's bees and carrots we can't get people to do it so instead what we're doing is feeding it into the things they want to eat like solar they just love solar so then we give them efficiency when they do solar so we're yes and is what I would say to that and then lastly incenting developers interesting idea um I would say our Focus most of the buildings that we're going to have are already here so we're focusing more on incentives and rebates for our existing folks to make sure today's Ann Arbor rates get the benefit good thanks very much um one last uh opportunity for Commissioners to weigh in going going gone Michelle your next my turn your turn okay good evening commissioners thanks for giving me some time this meeting to go over the Equitable engagement initiative let me make sure first you all can see my screen okay great and thanks to Missy again missy you're welcome to stay um but we also understand if you need to go so go ahead Michelle thanks okay my name is Michelle Bennett I'm a community engagement specialist with the city in the systems planning unit so that is um separate from OSI but um there are a few of us with this title that do this work at the city and in full transparency I did not start this project my former colleague Heather seifarth and Missy Stoltz really got this off the ground um but I am here to help wrap it up as Heather's moved on to the Housing Commission so as part of the the project wrap up we are taking it around to different commissions to give an overview of what um this initiative entailed and some of the the highlights and findings so to start the Project's broad aim here was to Define what Equity means we did this with a steering committee and I'll get into the details of how they were selected but this really was kind of a ground up um process where they defined what Equity means and we spent a lot of time discussing not only what the definition would be but how that could be incorporated into the city's policies guidelines and practices so that we could create a more inclusive engagement process so before we started the staff did quite a bit of pre-work um starting in fiscal year 2019 we started collecting demographic data through our surveys and public engagement events um in person and virtually these graphs here only show that the survey respondents and they are compared to the Census Data well the 2021 estimates and I think that this confirmed largely what we already knew in that most of our attendees are um white wealthier empty nesters or retirees that own their own homes and so in comparing that that data to the to the census we can see where we're lacking certain representation right definitely in the renting group definitely in the younger age categories um ethnic diversity is really lacking racial and ethnic diversity and you can see here where the the incomes are sort of concentrated here in the higher brackets um as a part of our pre-work we also looked at promising practices from other communities our own practices and then did a little research on some of the local and by Regional we mean mainly Washington County um conditions kind of documentation reports that are related to to equity so this is kind of our existing conditions research as a part of our current practices we have an engagement toolkit and that is something that is asked of project managers to go through with a community engagement specialist so we can discuss you know what stakeholders do we need at the table what's the what's the best um process and engagement techniques for our desired outcome for for specific projects so that's something that's already in place and actually is right now uh being updated the demographic collection I just shared with you we started doing that to get an idea of who we're reaching through our engagement efforts um we also work with the International Association of public participation they're a non-profit with a global reach that's dedicated to public participation so they um came this was right before the pandemic and signed about 50 staff members um on best practices for for engagement we've also worked with the youth pre-pandemic that we're hoping to start again but that's really explaining to them what the Civic Prof process is how they can get involved and get them to start critically thinking about you know the outcomes of Engagement and how it should be done and then this is outside of systems planning I think this is mainly through um the planning and development but there is an ordinance on file that requires developers with new development to do some public engagement so this was also thrown up right before the pandemic as everything was switching virtually they created a a hub which I'm going to talk a little bit more about later um but we have seen actually through research done by the University of Michigan School of information students that it's not heavily uh visited as you can see here by these visits per month and then it also doesn't direct you to all the engagement opportunities that are available and this is partly because of how things are organized on the city Side um that we all have our own departments and it has not yet been all funneled into one page so you have to find information about engagement by project page that could be scattered across the website so meanwhile uh while we were doing some of this pre-work we were also putting out um these kind of Flyers around the city that were really strategically thought about how we can um reach out to these groups that are not well represented so in that call we got about 80 applicants and 30 members were selected to be on the steering committee and they were tasked with meeting monthly uh for about 18 months and as I mentioned they were defining what Equity means what our core values are and ultimately through these discussions um developing recommendations to take to council so here's their definition of equity um you can see this is a big conversation now as Equity versus equality the idea here is that you can see in the graphic here on the right that giving everyone the same exact resource does not necessarily lead to um equal outcomes or everyone thriving right so if you can see on the bottom there that everyone needs a different style bike in order to ride safely and so that's kind of the direction we're moving in in terms of equity is that if we if our standard processes are getting us the same types of attendees that I shared in the demographics that we need to put more time and effort into engagement and Outreach so that we can get a more representative group to attend so here's some of the topics that were covered over those 18 uh 18 months you can see it's quite a range here and I will say this third to last bullet point came up quite a bit and uh some of our recommendations actually veered a little bit I would say maybe On The Fringe of what we would consider to be engagement but still very important um and so I will get into that in the first recommendation um so we created this little paw um for a five um Toad animal that we're not really sure what it would be but the idea was as we took notes as we listened over these 18 months these were the five topics that kept coming up um and we were happy to discuss them because as we know Equity touches everything and so what we tried to make here at the Paw at the center of all of your discussions is how can Community engagement establish an equitable footing on all of these topics so again just trying to bring everything back to how the process and how to make sure that our processes are equitable so towards the end of that 18 months they the staring committee came up with um recommendations and I'm going to go through those briefly uh or pretty quickly but I'm happy to take questions on those afterwards this is really the Crux of the of me coming here tonight is so that we can hear your feedback or any thoughts or questions you have on these recommendations so the first one and again these are all in the words of the steering committee members um demonstrate the city's committed to advancing Equity um here's where they really want to see uh accountability and where you can see that the city's hiring practices come into play um they were saying before you even get into your engagement series you have to understand that people don't feel comfortable attending these events if the city staff does not reflect you know the demographics of the city um and so we had HR on a lot of our calls to talk about these things um but you can see here that they wanted Pathways created for um mainly bypoc was the main conversation we had about that of how to get them into staff and into leadership positions and you know ideally running these kind of Engagement sessions um to attract and build trust with um the people of these groups they also want to see policies adopted and enforced by city council and they stressed a lot of being authentic and that came across in several ways of being straightforward being to the point being honest not using jargon um using language that you know everyone can understand and where people feel comfortable asking questions um was a big part of how they want to see engagement change okay the second recommendation here provide Ample Ample and targeted invitations to engagement opportunities so this is a recommendations about our Outreach as well there was a lot of emphasis on using non-digital means so really getting out into the community and this touches on what what Missy was saying as well in the direction we want to move in is they really want us to be on the ground meeting people face to face putting flyers in their businesses talking to business owners um not just throwing a link up on the the city's calendar um they want you know materials translated for our non-native English speaking folks um and they do if we are going to stick to some things online which of course we have to they want they wanted an engagement Hub uh an improvement to what we have now so I'm going to talk more about that later the third recommendation here is kind of really saying put your money where your mouth is if you care about Equity then you need to dedicate resources for staff and training so they want to make sure there is money in the budget to um hire more people or have more staff there and make sure that they're constantly keeping up to date on new practices through training so in terms of what we already do that would mean probably working with the International Association of public participation more um and creating metrics and Milestones um for us to to follow and to meet and to come up with those takes a team and hold each other accountable takes a team and then this is the last set of recommendations to make engagement events more accessible and attractive um so this is kind of asking us to maybe Branch out of some of our standard practices so holding hybrid meetings which is possible in this setting but when you want to do exercises with the community having people in person and online we have not nailed that yet we are still working that out in certain locations um they want it to be structured in such a way that we mitigate grandstanding that we have rules that we enforce that keep the environment respectful um and then again going to this being authentic of really communicating what's the decision what's the process who's making the decision and what level of influence do we have so those kinds of questions for number five are in the toolkit that I mentioned we do discuss those at the beginning but they mentioned that there's definitely room for improvement there so I went through quite a bit of material in a short amount of time I know you guys have a busy agenda so um let me just touch on a couple more things um when we researched promising practices the engagement Hub came up over and over again we've done some research on that and have put in a budget request and so I have an example here of what one looks like for the City of Pittsburgh um this has different project cards all centralized across all departments onto One landing page it allows users to select projects based on category type or location so that they can customize this page to their interests or to their neighborhood and then when you click on a project card it would provide all the engagement opportunities available to you along with who the final decision maker is what the timeline is a much more transparent process um than what we currently do have although we do provide them that a lot of that information like I mentioned it's pretty scattered and it would be hard for some people to find so that's uh hopefully something we'll find out if we get the funding for that in the next couple of months and would be one of the bigger projects that we uh plan to pursue so I will end there just letting you all know that um if you go to this link there are more project details there's also the draft report um that explains everything I discussed in Greater detail and if you have any other thoughts or questions after this evening then you can email this email address um Heather and I both have access to that and can respond to you thank you Michelle before I recognize you commissioner McKenna um Joe could you put one thing in the meeting minutes as an assignment for you me and Carlene to look at the recommendations from this and see how we might be able to apply those specifically to the work and meetings of the energy commission um I think that's one thing that we should definitely act on um and while I have the floor I'm just going to say one other thing real quickly um and that is um it's really more a question I guess to commissioner Peck and I'm wondering you know the city is updating its comprehensive plan and the university is updating its master plan and those are going to be hugely consequential for the city um and I'm wondering if the university is equally attuned to some of these inequities in how information is being gathered and who is there to provide it to make sure that um these these really significant planning activities are really going to be reflective of the true needs and desires of the whole diverse community that we live in do you know if the university is attuned to the like what we saw those those bar charts where you know there were certain communities that were just basically left entirely out of the process yeah I mean the the community that we're working with I think you know it's not really super clear yet exactly what we're doing um you know in other words we're sort of planning the process as we go it's like learning to fly a plane while you're starting to fly um I think because we've got it you know the president wants to do it very quickly and I and I applaud them for that you know there are a lot of things like climate action that just can't sit around away for two years to figure it out what we're going to do but um we're really focused on the university community you're talking about our Master planning uh and not as much our visioning uh and I think that effort we're not going to use the term Master by the way yeah which is indicative that we are a little aware of equity uh is um you know that will involve reaching out to adjacent communities and and really understanding how the University of Michigan can operate not just on its own property but in collaboration with those other entities around us in a more effective way and so I would imagine this will be very important and I wish I could tell you the answer um you know there will certainly be a focus on ensuring that what we do is Equitable but will it be successful um you know we still haven't proved our ability to do that and it includes like for example what we're doing in Detroit um you know we have to I'm hoping it will work very hard and I I really enjoyed this presentation because it it made sense you know it's like how how do we engage and maybe these uh if I can send the copy of this which I bet I can because it's a public document uh to some of my colleagues it might help thank you great commissioner McKenna thank you uh hi Michelle thank you so much for sharing this with us um it's lovely to hear that that there's quite a serious engagement process happening and concern for Equity um so as I think about some of the uh agenda items upcoming especially the resolution requesting the city administrator to engage on um on Equity um and uh with them uh sorry the uh Michigan Public Service Commission on our access to Utilities in our city um you know I'm just thinking about uh kind of ongoing engagements with um underrepresented groups and I'm hoping you could talk a little bit about you know maybe spinning off of the work that you shared with us what your intention is or or how you kind of see the city continuing to do this work and specifically you know what what actions are you going to take um you know around maybe keeping a group assembled or you know ensuring that there is um because I know uh the effort that it takes to you know gather um first of all Define equity and then you know gather a group and into a steering committee and then you know through a process of what 18 months or whatever you said um kind of uh you know work with them consistently to kind of get the information that you provided with us but knowing that there will be ongoing issues and we have them you know ongoing currently yeah what is the plan for for keeping that equity yeah that's a good question so most of the community engagement uh I'll say at least in systems planning is Project based right and so you know oftentimes if it's not happening right on your street um it's hard to get people to engage and so one thing that we have been talking about because the the steering committee the Equitable engagements during committee there's several of them that um want to remain active um but this project is wrapping up right because our engagement is is typically Project based so we are thinking of ways to extend that and to continue to work with them one of the thoughts we've had is a community liaison program and that's again getting at really stakeholder building kind of on the ground um of going to communities who may or may uh not trust us or just not know the process and working with liaison Liaisons helping to train them to facilitate and work with those communities and maybe relay information back to us um you know also being more of service to them so not just coming to them this is what a Committee Member told me and it's really stuck with me it's like don't just come to us to ask things of us um like an actual relationship is an exchange so how can we be of service to them as well um you know how can we get involved in the work that they're doing where appropriate um so that you know they are also likely to be more candid with us and participate with us um and really build a partnership so I would say that you know we're trying in a couple different ways to take their take their recommendations of being more on the ground um right now it is just me Heather has moved to another position so as we hire someone else that's one of the first things I want us to work on together is kind of stakeholder planning and being really strategic about what um you know is it neighborhood groups community centers is it religious institutions like what where are we going to go to spend more time to build to build these relationships and how can we include the the steering committee in this effort with us so those are some of the things we're thinking about right now to it extend this effort thank you any other comments or questions uh seeing none or Michelle I should say um thanks for uh spending part of your evening with us and um everybody recall this is posted on legislar and go back and refer to it I think it should continue to inform our work so thanks again very much yeah thank you all have a great evening great okay let's point on their agenda um are uh we have three resolutions um the last is going to be a first reading so I I'm anticipating not a whole lot of discussion and that hopefully most of that will be then in the second reading but um the first is a resolution I'll give a little bit of background and then I'll let council member Briggs and Missy uh chime in if uh appropriate so this is a resolution that was considered uh by Council uh last Monday uh it um council member Briggs brought it to my attention a couple of days ahead of time um and asked if I had any input on it I provided her some insights that I thought potentially could improve uh the uh resolution uh Council decided on Monday that they would defer action on it refer it back to the energy commission for comment um the intent tonight is not to vote on this resolution the intent is not to Wordsmith it um the intent is to gather ideas that um I'm going to ask that um Joe you uh do your best job to make note of them and also I assume that council member Briggs will do the same as will Missy and the intent is is that we get that back to council as soon as possible for their considered operation so that they can act on this on Monday so their next meeting is Monday they want to act while the iron is hot so to speak or strike while the iron is hot and that's our intent tonight and councilmember Riggs please add to that or contradict me where appropriate nope that was perfect I just will add to it a little bit so um yes this was a um the agenda Evan that we're talking about is um one that was a resolution put forward by council member Ghazi Edwin um sponsored as well by council member song and Harrison and it is um basically working to advance our energy equity and um and resilience it was in reaction I think in in part what we in large part to what we saw in our community um following the these winter storms and sort of the performance of DPE in our area and so you'll notice a lot of the whereas Clauses are around that um because of the um desire to get this to the council table and have some public discussion around that um it didn't come you know immediately to energy commission where we might sometimes see it go to energy commission and then to to confluences gone to council and back here to energy commission um but council member um Regina and I had just wanted to make sure that folks had an opportunity to there's a lot of knowledge on this Commission you know take a look and see as in those resolve Clause specifically um are there bullet points that may be missing in terms of things we want to call upon the legislature to do or the Michigan Public Services Commission to do um we also obviously heard a number of Commissioners um talking about the resolve quad or number of members of the public talking about the resolve Clause around DTE you know coming to the commission um so just welcoming some feedback it can be tonight if you haven't had the opportunity to look at it feel free to take a look at it after the meeting tomorrow um we do want to bring it back the council for a final vote next Monday so um you know which is Tuesday I would say maybe if you could get feedback to um back through staff To Us by Thursday that would give the sponsor of this resolution the ability to reflect upon the feedback that the commission has provided so happy to answer questions or listen to feedback great so um I provided some things but I'm going to let everybody else go and anything that you guys don't mention that I'll bring up at the end um commissioner McKenna then harp and then brookwoods yeah hi councilmember Briggs thank you so much for uh providing this for us um a lot to talk about here um but um kind of want to keep it short and maybe I can provide some more comments uh written comments um number one I'd just like to um kind of bring our attention to the the idea of compensating folks for for lost um food and you know whatever costs that may have been incurred due to relocating um I think that's a great start but I would want to encourage emphasis on um Equitable access to those resources I don't know if this you know maybe belongs here but I think a lot of the breakdown in equity in our infrastructure um is you know while there may be attention paid to creating more resources for um for folks that that kind of suffer inequities or that um that may not have had the access that they needed and you know or who are disruportionately affected by these outages um you know their ability to actually access those resources when they're made available actually becomes um quite difficult so I just wanted to add that um I think additionally a point maybe for discussion then I'll then I'll pose um is that I think the language around um resilience and strengthening the wires Network and and some of the undergrounding efforts um maybe isn't as strong as I'd like to see it for instance I see resolves um that the Ann Arbor calls Michigan Public Service uh commission to hold easy accountable by directing underground efforts um I don't I don't understand what that means um you know reading through this and being pretty knowledgeable in the field and I frankly don't think that we're at the directing Point anymore um I want to see language as strong as passing legislation requiring um which I see above um in terms of having the city be compensated for their losses um so I just want to talk about President around language and those kinds of requirements um and just yeah just emphasize that I think undergrounding is the very most important thing that needs to come out of this commissioner thank you I had a just a couple of comments um when I was looking in the section around utility redlining I was looking a little bit more to try to unpack what that means more specifically and and with a greater description and personal my reading that might relate to lower hosting capacity things like lower and uneven grid modernization um outdating an increased age of production and distribution assets um and things of those sorts as well as informational resources that might be available depending on different customers abilities to pay for those resources or or other areas so it's just just a closer look at that and what that might mean Beyond just outdated assets um and in a few areas I was wanting to draw attention just to the informational services that are available as well a number of folks have mentioned not only the maps but also the ability to analyze bills and Energy Efficiency and use practices that they might be um using not only through the website and the bill paying service but also in addition there's an app and an energy Bridge tool it can be um that one can rent effectively to provide an additional layer of information and so there's just a major difference between those informational resources in terms of not only how they're presented but what's presented on them and um that can itself um create certain inequities as well and availability of information so I just wanted to draw attention to that um and the other there was one line Associated I think it was in the second section unresolved of just um asking the Public Service Commission told DT accountable by um it was the second bullet point and proactive on issues of climate change I was wanting to better understand what what proactive around issues on climate change means in this in this context whether that's adaptive in making more adaptive distribution or whether that's improving um Renewables and reducing fossil fuels in the Energy Mix or what that might be and more specifically so do you have any hands that was it nope those were just those are some of the comments I was I was wanting to add to that yeah and if anybody has you know specifics that then would enable that language to be fine-tuned please submit that in writing it right yes commissioner McKenna that applies to anything you said too if there's anything in detail yeah that's great um commissioner Berkowitz thank you everyone I really appreciate the conversation uh topics near and dear to my heart um and uh I just have a few things that I would suggest adding to the resolution to improve and strengthen it um I've got some notes that I prepared right before we hopped onto the zoom so I will email that to Joe and the pertinent folks uh when we're done talking or when when I'm done talking and multitasking but just to speak them into this meeting um uh the line about undergrounding I think would be strengthened by adding something about generalized grid hardening I think that's the intent or at least that's what I was getting at or I think it's trying to get at the first half so maybe grid hardening I think could be a key term to strengthen that bullet and then I have four things on my wish list that I think should be on the city's wish list for the legislature um candidly my comments are geared towards the legislature because I think the commission and the city administrator seem to be doing the most they can with like the limited resources and the enforcement and implication like mechanisms and Authority they have under State Statute so we gotta just improve State Statute potentially to open some of those things up um the first thing is passing legislation to require performance-based rate making for utilities handled by the Public Service Commission or through the Commission in like contested cases or dockets this is just a best practice for holding utility companies accountable and essentially tying their financial compensation to reliability affordability whatever metrics you want you know Equity pollution reduction and you can also create mechanisms for penalizing utility companies when they fail to meet these things which is I think something you know we're all in agreement is quite missing right now another thing to name that I think is kind of like danced around in a couple of the bullets talking about resiliency um I would like to see the word microgrids added in microgrid is just like the technical term for when there was a portion of a grid that cannot operate like an island um and you know one of the two of the bullets talk about like the essential services like hospitals fire police you know School shelters non-profits um having them be able to operate within their own microgrid can be really beneficial it can you know also help out the grid even when there aren't power outages and just when there's Peak Demand on the hottest hours of the year or the coldest hours of the year it can help shave demand for running gas or other fossil fuel powered people plants Elsewhere on the grid and delivering benefits to impacting communities tangentially so microgrids are a great option all around and currently our barred uh by state statute for the most part sorry two more things on the wish list um one is a Statewide establishing a Statewide storage standard um I actually just read um that uh state representative Jen Hill uh from the Upper Peninsula is working to introduce legislation on this right now but essentially it would um require utilities to invest in utility scale uh storage um I think the resolution talks about local small-scale storage um the third bullet point in particular I think we should also push utility scale storage because it just largely helps insulate the entire grid and not only Ann Arbor but all of our brother and sister communities across the state to help us more systematically be insulated from extended outages over large periods of time and also delivers benefits to the grid you know displaces the need for running fossil fuel peaker plants just like microgrids last item on the wish list um and again Joe I'll email this to you sorry I told me to take uh make you take hard notes on all this but um I think we should explicitly expand the authority of the Public Service Commission through legislation um to directly address and enforce utility reliability grid planning affordability uh decarbonization and environmental justice a lot of these things are kind of like peripherally in their purview or they are afraid to kind of stick their necks out because statute maybe isn't strong enough in backing them where there isn't legal precedence so I think directly explicitly expanding their authority over some of these things would go a long way that's my five cents thank you that was at least six thank you uh commissioner zillman yeah thank you I have uh three things I'd like to suggest um I want to apologize to Erica because I popped out of the zoom call for a second so I'm not sure if you already talked about this at all but um the first thing is I personally would like to see the language about the um DTE member coming to the energy Commission meeting every month removed I don't think they need that platform they have more access to the city than most people and I just think it's unnecessary they do do a lot of greenwashing in our community and I don't think we need to provide a greater platform for that secondly on February 28th Pontiac city council unanimously passed a resolution calling on the state legislature to start a committee researching the feasibility of a democratically accountable state-run utility in Michigan I think through this resolution we should at least include a resolved Clause of like support for that to investigate what all of our options are and my last piece is just that I think Washington County also passed a resolution to investigate the feasibility of establishing a county-wide energy utility and we should also State our support for that as well so thank you thank you commissioner McKenna thank you I just wanted to Second um Commissioners littleman's uh request that the um the the clause about having to deal at the energy commission meetings be removed strongly in favor of removal of that I I also oppose um their involvement in this Commission other comments I'm going to Rattle off a couple real quickly some of these are in writing already so I won't go into detail um first is eliminating or lifting the one percent cap on distributed renewable energy generation resources um as a means of increasing reliability um second utilities there is a comment about passing legislation broadly on regulating utilities utilities are unique in that they've been granted a monopoly by the state yet they're still able to use what are ultimately you know it's ultimately revenue from us as rate payers to to Lobby on on their behalf and not necessarily in our interest but in their interests and so um I have indicated that there is an entity called the energy policy the energy and policy Institute and they have a uh a number of recommendations related to essentially better rules about what utilities can and can't do um then better disclosure against those rules and then finally better enforcement or put it this way stronger deterrence when those rules are not adhered to so a lot of the rules that we as commissioner bergenowitz mentioned there's um they're they're not very clear and therefore the mpsc is is not so clear on what they can and can't do and so and then that applies also to the investor own utilities so doing something there to really better Define those rules um which should be obviously in in accordance with the values of the state and then finally then obviously enforcing that through first of all better requiring good disclosure um and then uh like I said um better enforcement or or deterrence um then another thing that I think Michigan should consider and you know depends on how how wide a scope we want to have but um the state of California I know and maybe this is true in other states um they actually have legislation which funds something they call their public Advocates office and so when issues come before their Public Service Commission of course the utilities are there and they are presenting information and evidence um and by the way that requires a lot of technical expertise in many cases um and so what the state of California does is it provides funding for this other entity to go in and essentially Lobby on behalf of rape haters um so it's there's a balance in in in in the equation and then um I know another commissioner here has uh and this essentially what uh commissioner burkowitz said but uh another commissioner has talked to me about um essentially tying um and I don't know if this is possible but bonuses and things like that essentially a compensation up and down the the whole utility utility as a whole but even um something that would incentify um the right behavior on leadership so that means bonuses for example would be tied to the right kinds of behaviors I don't know if that's possible that may be digging in too deep but those are the kinds of things that I think that also should be considered um uh that those were my name points and um commissioner Irving council member Briggs has those um but um Joe we probably want to put these all together in one document and share them with all the other council members um does anybody else have any other ideas in the meantime and if not uh then again uh please submit them to Joe by Thursday um as soon as possible so that he can have something as a deliverable by the end of the day on Thursday um commissioner Smith thanks commissioner mersky uh yeah I would just like to add in response um also in agreement with the removing kind of DTE regular attendance in energy commission but I would just like to kind of ask ourselves the question happy to kind of share some thoughts on how do we Garner the right insights um to ensure that they are making meaningful progress without the green washing um it to better hold them uh accountable you know is that through legislation is that through some of these other resolutions but wanting to be sure that weeks two can hold them accountable um and those insights likely being a a helpful part of that council member breaks yeah I just want to say thank you to everybody for providing this and um preparing um more on writing later uh obviously I'll pass this along and um I know it'll be not everything will get be incorporated I know the resolution sponsor is trying to you know keep to the heart of what she was trying to create here but I think this is really good insight and I know that she'll be pulling pulling from this to strengthen the resolution um also if you're seeing anything in there you just feel like is um you don't need a word Smith but if there's anything you really think you know would be stronger um if it was praised a different way I think um sponsors would probably welcome that as well there may not be um that many of these documents for our especially for our local debt legislative delegation to draw from and so we want it to be a strong guiding document for especially for our um our legislators so thank you so much oh and if there's I'm not hearing support here for the resolve Clause around DTE kind of coming regularly to to hear for some reason there's a silent majority here that really doesn't want to have that happen you know send a note on that but thanks yeah I think we we broadly all agree that um that if they if they appear would be at our requests and with specific uh requested information that they report but not something where they have a platform on a regular basis yep and and I think um you I can speak for the whole commission um and thank um all of the drafters of this that they acted on this um in in and did so with a great sense of urgency and that um you didn't hear any any overall concerns with the the the the spirit of the resolution at all we I think we all really heartily endorse this um like I said we're not going to take a vote but uh it's uh definitely you can say meets our approval our games our approval right okay uh three topics down two to go so um the next is uh the second reading of the uh performance transparency resolution I thought I'd just give some background first rather than allowing that to come out sort of haphazard in the discussion so just as a recap there was a a broader resolution that was passed by the environmental commission um last year we looked at that and in our meeting uh last time we agreed that we would um go ahead and proceed with that with a second reading um but that there were a number of inputs that would be considered and so let me just read off some comments first of all I think we all understand that city council and consultation with the administrator um should this resolution be taken up by Council will potentially change the language of this resolution um it may be something closer to what we do it maybe something um more broad like with the energy or excuse me the environmental commission did but um we I think we should all recognize that we don't have to perfect this because it's most likely going to be changed anyhow and that includes some of the due dates or some of the dates that appear in there um so since the last meeting I shared a version of the resolution um on uh in a Google doc um with uh our two Liaisons uh Council Leon Liaisons and with Joe and Carlene um Joe and Carlene provided input uh via email or it can be in the document and the two uh Council Liaisons provided uh input um via email and um first of all um councilman member Adina stated in his communication that heals that this resolution should be just one element of creating a higher performing organization that delivers better outcomes to City residents and I think we all agree on that and um so you know we're doing this in the spirit of that recognizing we're just looking at one one element it is um uh based on his input um I modified one the first resolve Clause as follows um be it therefore resolved that the energy commission recommends that the city council and the city Administration will review and then this is the change with input from City boards and commissions when appropriate and that is leaving that to their judgment the completeness accuracy and format of all uh above mentioned kpis so that just um makes it a little bit less prescriptive um and it leaves them discretion as to when they come to us for that input um based on input from uh council member Briggs this was mentioned in the meeting but also I think afterwards in our communication we talked on the phone also a couple of times thank you council member Briggs um so I added aware as Clause whereas in the November 2022 city of Ann Arbor whereas in November 2022 city of Ann Arbor voters approved a 20-year one mil climate millage that will generate over 140 million dollars in revenue for spending on climate and a20 carbon neutrality plan related projects and programs where their performance outcomes should be transparent and public facing so it's just sort of a broad statement saying that by having performance transparency we'll have better insights into how that money is being spent and what kind of outcomes they are delivering so just a couple of other points uh I think everybody here knows that the a20 plan has um what I would call leading indicators of success um they're called indicators of success slash goals and timelines and initial actions um many with important intermediate targets that are key to achieving the overall Target of Net Zero by 2030 and is I think it's also important for us to realize that the count the county has passed its resilient uh resilient Washtenaw County climate action plan and they have for virtually every action goals and evaluation metrics for essentially all of their actions and the county is only going to be able to to track those goals and and progress against those metrics if it has performance input from the city of Ann Arbor um so what else did I want to say here I don't know if I have to go through all this um so um there is one other comment from both council member related to the resolution being overly prescriptive um and first of all um council member uh Briggs recommended um the first resolve clause read so um maybe Joe can you put that up so we can start to look at the result classes because that's probably the most important thing yeah I'll do that here yeah in theory once I find the right thing yes the second uh yeah the first one oh I meant on Zoom trying to find words okay always hiding all right if you can go down to the resolve clauses um so the first one um is um that um it's simply read um that uh the energy commission recommends that city council engaged the city administrator to ensure that Key Energy climate and A200 related policy objectives so this um I'll mentioned about all of the above kpis that that basically is just distilled down to key City policy objectives and strategic goals and kpis be published and updated regularly on the city's website um so um just I'm speaking for myself um that kind of language I think is fine whether it's called the city's performance measures web page or some other web page in the future is really sort of irrelevant I think uh what's important maybe in the language or that as a key takeaway that there be a central repository that they're not scattered all over the place on the city's website that doesn't mean that they can't appear in two places but that there's a place where people know that they can go to to get um information so it's uh not on distributed on just you know hundreds of different web pages that people have to search through but that it be somewhere um on the city's website and that'd be a central Repository um and I think I'll leave it at that and open things up for discussion commissioner harp and then commissioner Smith thank you um I had two two questions um one was sort of the question about kpis in general um and the extent to which their outcomes based and holistic in what they're measuring and indicating um and so maybe that's just a question about a clarification of what might be implicit in how kprs are described here and then the second question you know based quite a bit on some of the previous presentations and and discussions earlier in this meeting is um where equity and engagement might exist in among these kpis um as they as they relate directly to the climate energy and HR u0 related policy goals um and whether that needs to be made more explicit in this resolution or or whether that um is is already assumed primarily through the A200 plan um taking the second first I from as far as I'm concerned that's sort of assumed in the a20 plan based on these indicators of success um and and uh the timelines that are in the plan and by the way it's a living plan So the plan is likely to be updated with what frequency I don't think is all that important at this point um the debt the data address at least your second point I think so yes yeah and your first Point again can you clarify that again for me sorry I'm curious about what's assumed about kpis and and what they are what they Encompass um what is it that you are looking for what is it that that are they outcomes based one both in to some extent that's um I think clarified in both specifying leading and lagging indicators um and so I was just trying to get a sense of um how holistic the kprs are that we're aiming for and what they're measuring so um you know I I don't know if that needs to be fully explicit in this or not um and it was just sort of a question for clarification I think well I mean I'll speak for myself um I think that's um in a sense um for um Council and the administrator to decide but I'll give you a couple of examples um so the the plan calls for a 50 reduction in vehicle miles traveled so you know that that's that's really an important indicator um there's also specifics about um the number of um uh whether I think it's a percentage of weatherization there's a number of housing units to be created um It's relatively modest gold but there are there are specific figures in in the in the plan and the question is uh how are we performing against the targets that are that are in the plan um and part of this is so that we're not just looking in the rearview mirror where we get the the the um the index the the that's not the index the but the inventory um for the last year but that we're actually monitoring some of these main contributing factors along the way and by the way again remember this was not written with a specific focus on the a20 plan because we are an energy commission and we're focused on climate and energy this was sort of adapted there's there's other other areas um where the city is performing where those that level of transparency that we're getting from OSI which frankly is is exemplary in many regards compared to other parts of the city but there's still room for improvement I think even um as related to energy climate and a to zero related goals uh commissioner Smith yes thank you um as a follow-on to our conversation around Equity earlier um I guess I don't know if it necessitates an update to the language directly but just ask that we kind of think about um is it within the context of the work plan um that we think about non-digital forms of sharing this information to be transparent recognizing the language kind of focuses in on web page um you know being that uh opportunity for transparency but can we leverage you know Community engagement sessions to also share some of this information as well right um the the last can you scroll down to the last results Clause um I think it's um that there's a statement here about um that there is some kind of um annual review and that would likely happen in the public domain could be attended in in person so that somewhat addresses that but I don't think probably to the degree it deserves to be I I like the general thrust of your of your your point um can I go back to the first um statement where we crossed out current and replaced it with key so now I just remembering what my thought was here so my thought was that anything that is currently tracked in this case now a to zero climate energy related but thinking more broadly anything that is tracked the link to the city's performance webpage by June 30th that's why the date is so soon it's just simply taking information that is on individual sites for example in this case OSI webpage and if someone goes to the city's performance web measures web page there's no mention of the greenhouse gas inventory there so it's just simply creating a link to information that is somewhere else already on the city's web page so that would be applied to solid waste because I know the solid waste or the the solid waste uh Team tracks diversion rate and other kinds of things but that's not on this web page there's other kinds of things so it's just simply asking that current object objectives be linked to this web page um so this is not talking about the long-term uh ideas of of what might go there this is just looking at the short term so my recommendation if it's okay with council member Briggs um that we leave it as current that res that actually um limits the scope of that resolve class to just what is currently being done by by OSI OSI that wouldn't have to do anything except put a link on the performance web page so that if someone goes there they can get information directly without having to search for it on the osi's web page council member breaks thank you and um I want to thank you for continuing to be an advocate for the sort of work in the city we've had a number of conversations over the years about how important it is um you know I think from I find myself on a tricky position in a tricky place on this commission I honestly don't think that council members should be voting members of any commissions or either Advisory Board to council and so I see it with my my job here to be through the liaison to the commissions you know what's going on at Council and then taking it having a better understanding of what's going on the commission than bringing that board to Campo um but um that is not the case uh in many of my commissions I'm also voting member as is the case here so um I view this commission differently I think than is necessary for a number of commission for Commissioners to view it but I will let you know how I'm looking at this so um you know when I look at this resolution the last I can't find my phone now sorry um so the last three whereas Clauses um I think are what's the heart of really what's critically important about this in terms of you know the that we should have complete transparent easily accessible information about government operations and performance that we passed it um you know voters approved a millage and um need to understand you know the performance outcome um that there are other municipalities out there across the country that are have these really outstanding public these dashboards that are providing um stronger information about their progress towards their their Community goals and so there's a lot for us to be learning however for me when I look at the result Clauses um as I've talked to um chair mersky about these are very prescribed exactly how the city administrator should reach those whereas Clauses and so you know I know from my perspective that the city um is working on redoing a website and I don't know to the degree that we can get this these you know things up on the information up on our website or we'd even actually want to take the time right now in the midst of everything to spend the staff time to do that as we're transitioning over um you know sort of the the work plan with the with the timeline and due dates you know however the city administrator um chooses to manage this work is is fine by me as long as we have this outward facing information we're reporting back um in a way that's clear and transparent to the public so for myself this evening I'm going to be voting against this not because I don't um support the general purpose of it because the prescription for me as a council member this is a bit overly prescriptive however as a convention I don't think that Commissioners need to be as concerned about this um unless you are sort of a you know you know there's more that you want in here um councilmember Regina and I will be taking this environmental commission has passed something similar um and trying to work to implement this in some way um this moves you know in our in our city so I just want to explain myself a little bit and explain my thinking and on an happy to answer any questions too uh other Commissioners what is your perspective on this what's your recommendations um we've commissioner Colin Garcia as you mentioned uh John I did have some input into this already and so my question now is I'm really really grateful that you shared with us Cosmo Briggs what your perspective is on this and if you wouldn't mind um elaborating a little bit on how in even though you would be voting against this tonight like like what aspect of it would you be bringing forward um with council member Robina thank you yeah and so for me I mean I have to look at resolved Clauses that's how I read a resolution I look at within the result clause and this is what I mean and I if I'm voting for The if I'm as a council member I want to be able to take something that is in a resolved clause and feel like I'm going to move poor really wholeheartedly move forward each element in a resolved pause um and I I can't commit to doing that um this evening however I think the spirit of this resolution is great I think the general substance of it is is is spot on um the details of how we work it out um is is what we need to work with um Our IT department on our city administrator um I think there's a rule for um yeah working with other council members to hear what they're hearing in other commissions as well but I think the the piece around you know for what I'm looking at is in many ways you know this this public services dashboard piece around how we're improving transparency on our um in progress towards our stated Community goal um that's that's the piece that I'm committed to moving forward thank you very much for explaining that elaborating any other comments so I think from a Robert's Rules of orders perspective we had a motion to consider this we had a second we had discussion about it it was then reviewed and updated it was uh changed and is in front of us uh again my personal uh hope is even actually that this resolution does not go to council as is for approval that this be recrafted reviewed uh in terms of overall priorities of the city um best practices um not only within the city but outside the city and that something in this Spirit as well as in the spirit of the other uh resolution passed by the environmental Christian moves forward um I'm hoping uh is again speaking for myself and I won't take it personally if people vote otherwise but I'm hoping that the energy commission approves this um simply to say we we believe that this is necessary and appropriate not only for a20 and climate and energy but more generally across the city so I'm gonna let others speak again and then I'm gonna ask for a vote does anybody else have any other comments Okay so um all those in favor of passing the resolution please raise your hand and say aye all right all those opposed okay so the motion passes the resolution passes um I didn't count the number but it's uh one all votes four except uh council member Briggs voted against as she indicated that she would and I think we all understand why so thanks very much great so it is 8 26 and I know it's getting late but I would like to at least introduce the last resolution simply um as something for our consideration um so hopefully people have had a chance to at least skim it um obviously we had public comment about it I'm wondering if we can get a motion to consider it and a second and if so then we can take brief comments and then based on some of those brief comments uh get an indication of um are there key elements that need to be reworked and to provide uh maybe a subgroup of this group to look at reworking um the resolution as appropriate um between now and a second reading uh is there interest in this and can I get a motion to consider the resolution moved by commissioner Peck and seconded by commissioner McKenna so I'll open it up for discussion Mr Sharp I just had one one um clarification about the whereas statement with the state Bureau of construction codes not adopting the zero code appendix um my understanding my current understanding was that it hadn't it had neither been explicitly adopted nor drafted so it's just um or left out so it was that was just a clarification yeah that my interest may be that we need to look at that language my understanding is it's not any of the drafts that are currently being considered for approval so the light the the assumption is that it will not be approved but maybe we need to retweak that language to reflect the less certainty there but okay great good point other thoughts councilmember Briggs um and we talked about this earlier today um this is we're gonna read the resolution um again a future meeting I think it would be helpful to change um the last couple of resolve Clauses so Focus very much on directing um city council um just specifically to do certain do work in this area um and to leave out references um necessarily even to the city administrator or City Planning Commission um just being cognizant that maybe it's not appropriate for we generally try to stay away from other missions directing other commissions to do work um but I think you know urging city council to be focused in on on um on specific issues is helpful um I also think it's important to know that we are evaluating our options and reviewing them very carefully and so um sorry sometimes we I have to think very carefully when it comes to sort of Legally related issues and so um I guess I'll just leave it at that I I sometimes I'm careful uh I just don't I want to be very careful in my wording here um this is something that I find to be very important as well um so council's action on this doesn't have anything to do necessarily with um lack of Desire on the private Council to do things other thoughts or questions so I'll leave you with two thoughts um there's really I think two points that are being made by this resolution and the first is that um we're just simply encouraging with the first resolved Clause that the city move as quickly as possible recognizing that it is doing so um in many different ways as uh in some ways uh that are not so visible even to us as Commissioners and certainly um to lay people and the second I think is the second resolve Clause simply saying um that whatever approach we take um and there have been a number of different approaches that have been looked at the possibility exists that the preferred routes may not be something that can go into effect immediately um and therefore it's just simply asking um that the city look at other levers it may have and there's just a few examples that are given here and it's not meant to be prescriptive it's just to be to give some examples that there may be things that the city can do in the interim to really drive the type of Development and Construction that we would like to see here I think that's really the message that we're trying to to deliver if indeed we agree to pass this so I I I prefer not to take a vote I don't see that it's necessary to take a vote we've already discussed this um we have one council member that's participated tonight I know that council member Dean has also looked at this um so um it's there's no real urgency to do this there are some things that I think we can do in terms of tweaking with the language and um then we can vote on this uh a month from now and maybe craft this a little bit more precisely but I think we heard the messages from the public and I think if we speak with one voice that provides another um push to look for Action at these two levels uh commissioner McKenna thanks um I agree with you thank you for your comments there and just offering uh help to revise this if if anyone's interested um I know I'm seeing something right now that I think is technically inaccurate um just from a technical engineering standpoint so um I'd be happy to read it over and provide comments if if anyone wants to read them or do that with me you have another volunteer right here um any other volunteers which doesn't mean that someone can't uh propose language changes uh when we take this up again but if anybody else is has interest um either let me know now or let me know later otherwise I will work with commissioner McKenna and probably in consultation also with staff and with the two council members and then we'll bring this back um in in uh our April meeting unless something dramatic happens in the meantime which would be wonderful okay good so uh we may actually get out of here in a few more minutes the last couple of things on the agenda is a report from the energy office and then we'll open things up to reports from commissioners sure um yeah first thing I'll say you all should be subscribed at this point to the uh OSI newsletter um if you're not feel free to either let me know or go ahead and get yourself subscribed on there um but that there's lots of great news that'll come out of there um there's a couple couple things that have come up just recently and by recently for this one is just today um we've just been awarded two different grants um from semcog for a couple different uh a couple of different things um the first is for uh fiscal year 2024 um it'll be the for the conversion of some street lights to LEDs uh the award is 980 000 plus a local match of 245 000.

um they had a final budget and I don't know where that came from but uh it's probably something that the previous CFO or something did to change the budget at that time and I don't know why they do that but they do and then as you can see total revenues actually came in at 75 almost 76 million dollars so actually we took in seven almost 7.4 million dollars more in revenues than what was budgeted for the school year in expenditures we actually have expenditures and included in this is your actual fund balance so we have your expenditures plus your fund balance and that's at 92 million dollars when they did the uh revised they made it at 95 million dollars and then you take that the total expenditures of 72 million dollars less the revenues so we were actually 3.3 million dollars more in Revenue than expense by the time we do transfers out into capital reserve for our building projects Etc then we show a negative 2.3 million in fund balance so actually we dropped fund balance by by that 2.3 number which 27 million dollars is very healthy for a district our size um and so any questions with the general fund so far questions and I know um I guess just a general comment because you're kind of working with the previous administration the way they did things and then interpreting it I I think for me it's more of a comments um I think it would be very helpful to um like like what I do when I look over these presentations I pull up the original budget that we approved and it's very helpful to have Like Apples to Apples so like these changes that were made um to maybe show like this is what we adopted this is what happened and and this is where we ended up um because it's it's a little hard to which I need to do a better job of reaching out to you and asking questions um but where where the changes occurred like which which um for lack of a better word like a line item that was or an account that was um like like there where we have the blanks is is a great example where we have Community Services food services non-reimbursement those seem to be broken out from a larger account but just to be able to tie those two together like I went down to the bottom line and I'm like okay yeah and you know apples but um to me that would be helpful if we could do that I think you can see kind of over on the far right side there you can see some changes within instruction they actually uh spent 1.4 million dollars more um pupil Services they actually spent 2.2 million less um just things like that you can look and see but I know that the one report that I'm working on now to get to you guys to show what instruction were salaries and all that show benefits supplies all that will have the budget and then we'll have actuals today it's going to be different than what I've been giving you guys but this will be more you'll be able to see by program where all the dollars are being spent that's awesome okay thank you our nutrition service fund this one actually is doing very well um I know probably the last two three years prior before covet hit it was probably running almost in the red so this this year they actually increased by 148 thousand dollars in Revenue which is phenomenal to me um so now they're a half a million dollar fund balance which is very healthy one thing I did notice when I received this was their budget was 3.2 million but they spent 3.7 so I'm trying to figure out somebody didn't change the budget like they had in the general fund so we may get a little slap from CDE saying how come guys overspent your budget we may okay I think um if my memory serves me correctly I think we did a budget adjustment which I'll have to look at the date because I remember that I remember we had to do a big fund balance transfer because of okay I think we're covered I just don't know that it was documented excuse me so Food Services are doing well our grant fund we actually only had we brought in 11 million dollars in in revenue for the year um they only projected 4.8 million which with Esser I would have thought it would have been higher than that but uh um they did expand they had a budget of 25 million dollars in expenses but they only spent 11.6 the same amount as the revenue brought in so it should it equals zero at the end um I will have a report for you guys here probably when we do the next uh study session on the Esser funds and how it's broken out by schools some of the things they're purchasing uh the staff that are being pulled from there you'll understand that more so I'll have that for you here later on as well Student Activity fund I really don't focus on this one much because as a district we we do not own that money it flows through us but each of the schools and their activity funds are our students generate that so I really don't focus on it much but we actually are going up in fund balance so they have 275 thousand dollars in their activity funds throughout the district and so they're actually doing pretty well um one thing I do want to say um with the activity funds I am going to have a transfer done from the general fund not this year it'll be next year when we do our budget so that none of our students are paying fees so athletic fees are going to go away any of the other little fees that are out there so maybe some of this uh fundraising and some of those type things might stop because I know it's uh draining everybody so and it seems like the same people are the ones getting hit up every single time there's a fundraiser so that's coming down the pike and that'll be in next year's budget that's wonderful our fee supported fund that is like our print shop uh also uh preschool funds and some of those things they are actually doing a lot better this year they went up by almost four thousand dollars so that's good I anticipate this next school year with the amount of internal printing that's going on it's really skyrocketed and I'm glad about that because we brought brand new equipment and stuff for the print shop and I would say they're probably running 200 000 in the black so they are doing a phenomenal job I know HR team they use them all the time and the audit that you have here tonight we had that printed internal wow okay the Auditors print it and charging us for that so just it's good to have that kind of service and the preschool funds doing well and that's going to be a big change for next year out of the general fund and then also uh trying to figure out if the state's got enough money to fund the preschool program Bond Redemption fund this is where we pay off all of our bonds it's actually 7.5 million to the good each year you're going to see a big number like that because once we pay everything off in July or June it actually goes way down but then we get all the property taxes and it builds right back up so it's always going to show hopefully in a positive form we did go down two hundred and ten thousand dollars but we only need like six million dollars to pay the bonds so we're pretty healthy one of these days maybe in two or three years if it gets built up high enough we can buy a year and knock it off that much quicker okay or even drop the mill Levy to help the taxpayers our cop fund that is uh when you guys built allsup you had basically loaned some money from the state and so now we're paying that back as well um as you can see um it's not a lot that we're having to pay each year it's almost 500 000 but we generate enough money and debt in principle and and revenues and we do transfer a little bit of money to cover that expense each year our building fund this one is basically has gone away as you can see uh the actual is zeroed out right now so this fund will actually go away next year because that was part of the allsup project as well and so all that's been paid off and done and it's wiped away so that's a good sign um Mr Moss really quickly with that do we um do we establish a fund for each project separately um I'm just thinking like as we move forward with our um facilities plan I'm anticipating expenses are you going to get to that that's the next one okay sorry that's all right so now the capital reserve fund this is where all of our projects within the district buy school by we got I.T in there we have uh security issues we have uh anything at the buildings that need to be done Roofing um them are some of the biggies that we're looking at next year are roofs parking lots um the only thing I got I got to be focused on is how much we transfer because if we keep transferring a large amount of money every year and and wiping it out as you saw in the general fund we went down by 2.3 2.4 million if we keep doing that it's finally going to just we're going to be broke so I I would like to throw it out there and I know we can't do it right away but we we do need to study on looking at getting a bond because the needs in all of our buildings right now are substantial and uh if I wish I had won the lottery and we'd have just fixed them all up but uh but yeah as you can see um our expenditures we budgeted five they actually increased the budget to eight we spent seven last year we only transferred five so we had two million dollars just sitting there to help cover but as you can see well this year it'll be different so that prior year you had an ending budget of 3.375 thousand dollars left to carry over and then we increased that transfer by almost seven million dollars so that's that's something we got to look at and we study it with Matt and his team with Brandon and his team um with Mario and and security I mean we got vestibules that we're looking at putting in uh we're still working on cameras um locks that we've put in all the buildings and all the all the school doors so we're doing a lot of work in once we get into budget time and and doing all that stuff we'll bring all those lists of things and we'll actually prioritize what you guys feel needs to be done as to what the district and the staff need thinks they need to have done and that is all I have for tonight if you have any questions I'd be happy to answer or try to and if not reach out to me directly and and I'll help you out as much as I can would be um imperative just given what you said like my question for you would be how how can we support you like how we we know that we're gonna have to go for a bonds and and we need to not only understand the implications of the forecasts coming to us soon I think you had said but where we're gonna you know look in three years and five years and seven years based on our needs but um I know in previous years as a parent I sat on a finance committee um where we had experts in the Financial Field not only understand it but um be able to bring that parent perspective like this is what I would need to hear because as a commit a community we don't support a lot of education so we're it's going to be an uphill battle to begin with so um how how can we support you as a as a board um in getting you additional resources or or putting forward a committee or something like that um you know at the support you guys give us is incredible I have to be honest there uh my team that I have within in the department are phenomenal from my payroll staff to my AP staff to my accountant to my director so they they do a lot of the work when the audit Auditors are asking for Stuff they're the ones pulling and pulling all the documentation and coming in and saying is this the right stuff to give them and and so the support is phenomenal I mean it's it's more of us getting out in the community especially if we want to go for a bond and we got to go and sell and sell and we got to take pictures and videos and and just of everything that's breaking and I think if people saw everything that is in shambles they would say oh my goodness why now we now we get it and then we build upon that with the community and with stakeholders within the community that's where we got to get out rotaries uh uh uh all of those bigger groups out there that we need to sell it to them because we we can cry wolf all day long but we're not doing ourselves any good so I would say in the next two three years we start working on a plan to start developing that and then maybe we go to the voters but it's going to take a lot of work on everybody's side thank you yeah I'll say um if I can add one Tibet is to include the students I think they were um the group that made the difference in getting our new high school because we tried for many many years and I think that barely passed like 53 I don't know it was it was it was very close call but the students were phenomenal yeah we got to share our story and let the students share it because you know if we did a video when I was at a prior district and that's how we got it done we showed the showed the students in there and they're talking about what's wrong with my building and here I'm in this room and I got water leaking on me how can I learn you know just things like that so we gotta we got to share that story with our community can I just mention that um last uh time we tried to pass upon actually Lucy and I were on that committee and we actually did tours of the buildings to the influencers that you're talking about to anybody who wanted the tours um I think this time around it's more of let's compare how worse they have gotten since those tours how much more we are in Dire Straits now than we were eating back then I I think is more helpful as opposed to yeah check them out this is what's wrong no this is what continued to be wrong and this is what's even you know what got worse since then because we did try a lot of that and we did videos we did photos we did lots of things to try and and make that happen I think that this next time around we need to be a little bit more strategic and say this is I mean we are this is our buildings and this is what they look like but like you said having it come from the perspective of the students is going to be a lot more impact because they're the ones who are impacted they're the ones who are in the building day in and day out they're the ones who are struggling because our buildings structurally are not set up to be conducive to what we want them to be doing you know with all the technology and you know the um Project based and everything we need the space to be able to do all of those and I think that our community needs to really rally and support our students because that's who it's for it's not for the adults it's really for the kids and they deserve it so thank you for bringing that up any further questions any other questions like even for myself like more understanding also like Madam president uh mentioned about learning about the fight I was I think I was in that class too um but to understand like the mill Levy and and the bond because um I mean looking for the future if like I don't know anything about the schools I don't have children perhaps um and that's on my Ballot or something like how we need to educate the community now like director DaVita mentioned uh so they could be prepared for the future as to why we need this because it was and it's hard for us to understand but in a I guess maybe bring it down a notch so the regular folks that the community can understand what a mill Levy is and what a bonds are and how do they impact our community positive or negative because normally we just hear its taxes right it's oh I don't know you said right three dollars so um some of the traumas that we've heard we were walking the we're knocking on doors So yeah thank you so much and um yeah thank you to all your stuff thank you so when I know also at um the casby meeting that we do every year at the Broadmoor there is a company that can help us as well um I talked to the guy and sat down with him um and they will help help educate our community to be able to understand what a bond is and how to pass it and what the mill Levy is I'll reach out to him and talk to him I had I talked to him this last time at casby we had until like two in the morning so yeah so we need to start the conversation we do now yeah we need to start it now because it takes a couple years and he's he's the one that just held 27j passes so yeah yeah but youth also yeah he also had the youth that came through or them through the Rocky Mountain partnership but I think putting everything together including that would help us because our community doesn't want to pay more taxes and that's all they hear so thank you great thank you Mr muss um with that may I have a motion to accept the annual comprehensive financial report for the year ended June 30th 2020.

and we have a goal so we can also invest in brand new Renewables in our grid maybe not in our geographical boundary but real close or somewhere in the system that displace fossil fuels and fundamentally switch the system that we could invest in the migraine power program we could buy racks like those are also Pathways but the vppa is a step up at least the way we've been thinking about it and because we set the energy criteria is in principle it's not Rogue we have links that we have to report in when we bring recommendations forward and that's why I'm not nervous about a vpva that's why I think actually we can use affordable renewable energy and just snowball more renewable energy into the system so I think it's a I think it's a tool in our toolbox I thank you for doing that that DTE or you know they're not an energy developer but they can they can bid on it too if they want us to try and utilize one of their um vehicles for getting that energy on the grid but it's not going to be the cheapest way to do it I mean almost certainly part of the way we make our the energy we invest in um additional is by making it very inexpensive relative to the fossil fuel options others uh commissioner yeah thank you Missy I just wanted to ask a little bit of clarification on the landfill solar so say it doesn't go through with DTE it doesn't work out have we like actually studied the financial feasibility of doing it on our own and like like why would it just automatically be shut down as a project we can't do it with DT there's a few reasons that's a good question and thank you for asking the further clarification number one if we don't do it with DT we're back at the end of the line we have to redo all of the studies because we assumed we were using their infrastructure so we are years back right so so one there's an opportunity cost right a pulling that trigger that means that I have with our limited capacity is that the project like there's a real serious calculus that has to happen are we going to go back into the queue or are we going to use our time and resources another way that's one two while the IRA helps us uh in terms of like lowering getting that that rebate for the cost it is still a very inflation hurt us and the Department of Commerce investigation hurt solar and so the price tag on this while it was never we were not fully locked in at the moment it went up significantly and so the IRA helps buy part of that down but the cost of the asset is still whatever it is so I'm going to try to do this visually if we imagine this is what it cost right and the IRA brings us 30 in that's great you still have to depreciate an asset at this cost you still have a replacement cost at this cost right so the IRA helps you in this part but I still have to financially make sure that I am building my books to cover the full replacement of that asset so it's not actually as cheap as 30 cheaper yeah and then it becomes very seriously becomes a calculus so we've done some behind the like preliminary numbers because we don't have final costing because the market moved really fast when we were for those who weren't with us just so you know we were there right this body took up the resolution to move landfill solar forward the next step was going to council to sign the contract we didn't do anything wrong no one on this call did anything wrong the world moved around us and we're victims of that and so we're trying to navigate that landscape I just want to be transparent this isn't this is nefarious this isn't nothing malicious here it's just bad timing yeah thank you yeah uh perfect did you have another question no you're good yes um oh go ahead yeah um what I'm interested in my other my another question is the world moves around us as Missy you just said is there any I want to move as quickly you know obviously Ann Arbor has an audacious goal we got to move as fast as we can to displace fossil fuel that's what you're doing and we're trying to help you do that um but with uh the change in the political situation in Michigan is there any chance uh good chance that the situation will the world will move around us again that could make other options uh investment options a lot more attractive and those I don't want to wait for that to happen if it's you know low probability but I'm just wondering um you know because DT is obviously not is trying to do whatever they can to slow things down and I'm I know that people in Lansing are thinking about ways to speed things up any Intel or insight there yeah I think people on the line might actually even know more time so separation ID saw Community solar legislation introduced that's a that's a big deal but it is not a given that that is going to pass even in a democratic legislature so it is important that we make our voices heard on that we have listening sessions from the public that's that's in you know thinking Lansing but we've got the public service Commissioners and we don't have that much longer with our three sitting Commissioners and they are very serious about this work and they're going on a listening tour about the recent outages they'll be in Jackson and Dearborn on the 20th and then they're doing a virtual listening session on the 21st we did invite them to Ann Arbor um and we'll see if if they stand up a separate event but this is this is sort of a moment where I think we have attention on the issues but it's I don't think we should take for granted that it's just gonna happen because the Stars aligned I think it's going to take some continued pushing to get folks to pass the legislation hold the accountability accountable accountability principles do the do the work that we all think we want um I'm going to ask a question if I may because related to the landfill solar or make maybe a statement that you can respond to um not having looked ever in detail at a pro forma for the project I think what a lot of people don't understand relative to the financials and I don't as I understand that nothing that's currently proposed at the state level is going to change the financials it may change like you said um Community solar and things like that may give us some options but it's not going to change financials so recognizing that landfill solar is a little bit more difficult because um you're sitting on top of a landfill and you can't make penetrations and things like that but um I think the the question that probably a lot of people have that I still have in my head is if there are record levels of solar being installed Across the Nation and across the world why is it that this project financially isn't working while all these other ones are seemingly being able to go forward and I don't know if recently uh OSI has asked for example commissioner Kerber or former commissioner to look at the financials again and see if there's anything that might have changed so I I think that's probably the people that I talk to that's a lingering question in their head what is so unique about this project that others are going forward that this one isn't but if you if you point out uh some landfill solar projects that are making good money at a large like at the size that we're talking about I would love to see them because we are getting recognition for having one of the largest landfills well for a minute the largest landfill solar project in America landfill is landfills are expensive they're challenging to build on and it's our largest source of land and so we pushed it um and we we knew we would it was going to be a premium project it was going to be a premium it cost more you can't penetrate there are environmental species we have to protect for their seasonality of when we can be in the ground and when we can't be in the ground we better watch for contaminants we got to make sure we can still get in because it's the landfill is settling right methane is still coming out so we have all these um I don't know what the proper term is I do somewhere in my mind uh but they're they're not vents but it effectively right the method can't build up and explode on site so there's mechanisms I'm way out of my league here but they're the system itself we have to be able to monitor the system and get on site so we can't just blanket it right and so there's all of these design features that you have to mitigate for which are good that's good right we don't want anything bad happening at this landfill we don't want to break the cap but that means it's not a green field right like it's not a normal build where you just go in and you put solar as far as the eye can see you have to design around that you have to engineer around that and that just that takes customization and that takes cost customization is cost so that's part of the reason and boy oh boy um the permitting process has been really hard you know there I say this sort of ingests but it wasn't in the moment we had to search for a species that was last seen on site in 1902.

um we'll we'll be replacing over 4 000 low efficiency uh bulbs into high efficiency LED fixtures um the new ones will be one to 1.2 to three times more efficient um meaning we'll be saving money and um this is an action 820 and should save us around uh what 3417 kilograms per day of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions um the second project is will be for fiscal year 2026 and is a build out of the Washington bike Boulevard uh for this project we won 200 000 with a fifty thousand dollar local match uh to build out a 0.8 mile long all ages and abilities bike priority Corridor as a low stress alternative to biking on Huron Avenue uh this will reduce daily carbon dioxide equivalent emissions by 476.75 kilograms Missy anything else to mention on that one in particular this was the first match of the village and so that's how we were able to get these dollars by putting the match already in play so pretty exciting cool um yeah several other things that are kind of happening all over um I can't remember we've talked about this previously but we had the launch of our commercial solarize uh program um they are starting to recruit recruit folks um and kind of get them in for the um for the pilot phase of that that's in collaboration with the 2030 District um concept is very similar to the existing solarized program um this one is just working more um you know with with commercial entities as opposed to single-family homeowners um a couple other things that have come up um like I saw city council released funds for um administering some of the the low income sustainability program um we are currently working with a couple of our partners um just given the timeline it's going to be working with the color of our local Partners in the Housing Commission and Avalon to be getting getting some good work on some of their different facilities to make sure they are able to access a couple different sustainability features that they're um their funding did not previously allow for um as I said there's a few more things kind of in the newsletters here or there so make sure you're checking those out um that is what we have right now great I'd like to open things up to updates from commissioners Mr McKenna did you have your hand up still or not nope okay um other reports from any of us of general interest or maybe even to the public that's listening in commissioner Peck great uh evening last night thanks for sees continuing to hold those uh lectures with great speakers councilmember bricks yeah um a few from updates from Council um as one of the public commenters noted there was an exciting uh QD plan unit development project on the anniversary that was approved by Council that's all electric and has a lot of sustainability components to it so that was a nice new development that was approved last council meeting also The Villages of the Ann Arbor move forward with something that I know this commission took some time to to provide some input on as well um that was sort of a mixed uh it it has more in it than we would see by by right at what was required out of our zoning code um it's all electric for the um the single family homes it is not all electric for the um many um sort of uh multi-family uh units that are on the um on the site so uh I know there was some Community concern around that um but just did want to let folks know that that had moved through Council um and um Brownfield um dollars were also approved uh something that may be of interest to you that's on the next um the council agenda um hold it up because I wanted to give you the number for it it's ca20 um on the next Council agenda resolution directing the city administrator to begin negotiating a new natural gas franchise I suspect you have seen uh information in the news about this um obviously this is something that uh this Council still needs to approve um it is um an exciting stuff that the city is taking um in terms of negotiating um what we want our new franchise agreement to look like and the benefits that we want to have for our community so I know that the this moves forward um there will be some listening sessions out in the community and also um staff will be making presentations here more on that as well and giving more commission input on it um I think there's anything else pressing um I guess just from a staff feedback to staff certainly the power outages that we saw I have heard a lot of feedback from community members around interest and wanting to know more about solar I have seen that I saw that in the last newsletter but I think there's there's a lot of appetite right now to understand how people how homes actually for those that are for folks that have done those Investments um what what those storms look like for them and so I think there's an opportunity to to um to be doing some more presentations on that and talking to Residents about what the experiences look like depending on sort of different improvements that they made in their home any other updates okay next agenda item is committee updates um I'm actually not aware of any active committees or working groups right now Carlene I think the last one was Transportation electrification but it's really not active so if that can is indeed the case then I would say we strike that from the standard agenda and until such time we have either a an ongoing or an ad hoc committee or working group then we could add that back in is that correct that Carlene okay good um next is report from the environmental commission as you guys know I'm in the liaison um so real briefly we had uh presented um the same Equitable engagement presentation that Michelle gave us tonight um there was a discussion about the city's handling of biosolids and concern with pfas levels in biosolids and whether those should continue to be uh essentially uh dispersed as a form of fertilizer on agricultural fields or whether biosolids given pfas uh contamination should be going to landfill and so that's an ongoing discussion that's being reviewed by staff it was presented by staff there's no final decision um but there's likely to be action on that obviously um we're conflicted um with that I think everybody is um but we have a a new significant and emerging problem with bioaccumulative persistent toxins and we don't want to just be spreading those around the environment on the other hand we don't necessarily want to go to to landfill where they then uh turn into methane and potentially cause uh contribute to greenhouse gas and Global and and climate warming or climate change um so and the last thing we did is we had a brief discussion on the solid waste budget there's going to be another discussion and the April meeting but at least I can report to all of you that um the solid wage budget is in good shape the um revenue and expenses were basically balanced the last two fiscal years and the solid waste fund uh uh Reserve fund has about 15 million dollars in it several years ago it was projected to actually go below zero the target is for it to have 25 percent of the annual um uh estimated expenses I mean that would amount to roughly or just a little bit less than 5 million and we have roughly 15 million in there so the reserve fund's in good shape and that will enable us potentially to do some good things um with the build up of funds in that in that Reserve so those are the key report outs from the environmental commission um we are now winding down and somewhere here I have my little script or public input here we go so this is the second opportunity for public input uh with the ability for persons to speak up to three minutes if you're watching on CTN uh or calling in call 888-788-0099-4877-853-5247 and enter the meeting ID nine five six eight seven one eight seven eight seven six this information is also displayed on the meeting agenda and the video feed City staff will select callers that have raised their hand one by one using the last three digits of your phone number two raise your hand electronically to indicate your desire to speak please press star 9 on your phone you will hear an automated message that the host is allowing you to speak when speaking please move to a quiet space and uh state your name and address so that we know where you're calling from and who you are at the beginning of your comments don't currently have any hand raised but give it a few just in case we must have made everybody happy tonight must have yeah don't have don't have any other hands raised so I think we're good to move on very good so um I want to thank all of you for your service I also want to especially thank um Missy for staying on for the duration of the call and appearing to us and to staff and to our Council Liaisons um thanks all of you have a nice rest of your evening um as chair I'm calling this meeting to a close at 8 46 p.m thanks and have a rest like I said a nice rest of your evening hopefully do something more fun than a uh an energy Commission meeting what could be more fun than that John that good if it can be more fun than that take care everyone thanks everybody

like we had to send people to look for it right and and we didn't find it it's not there but it delayed everything because then if it was we had to do different mitigation techniques and so like the time and effort that goes in and you don't some of these assessments are only good for two or three years and then you've got to reassess so you incur a lot of costs and part of this project like it is a it was a labor of pain and love for me is working with the state at every step to say we need to change this you're making it too hard I know the governor wants to see more of these developments we are going to fight through this because we're going to be stubborn but you you got to sit beside us and help us change the code change your regulation change the permitting process and that's perhaps great thanks that adds a lot of expense too John yeah I mean some of that is some cost but obviously some of it is not it's reflected in the execution cost so that's clear commissioner commissioner Levin uh yeah I understand you're still you know working on the solar project but um is there a thought to what where the money would go if that doesn't happen I mean is that possibly where it could be a vppa kind of thing or I know it's early so maybe you don't even know but yeah it's a is the city the city item budget right in that um I'll say John John kind of called me out in on this and the rebates like being intentionally vague so we could see what people need right the same is true for that particular line item if what we discover is that the rebates are wildly effective and we are seeing emissions be like just dropping and this is the right vehicle I can actually make the call that we're not going to fund something else in there and put more money towards the most effective thing so I don't know how to answer your question exactly where the money would go in that sense all I can tell you is that we're we are always looking at multiple things we have way more projects than we have money for um we're always fundraising that money might be directed towards a sustainable energy utility you know and standing up the preliminary costs of it or that money might go uh to finish the Net Zero Energy fire station because we're close but we haven't yet closed the Delta to get that over the hoop or over the loop it might go for match for our next electric refuse truck in the system you know like so I'm holding it for landfill solar but if landfill solar does not materialize we will use that money to affect emissions other comments questions I'm going to Rattle off several and they're really more just for uh people the commissioner or council member Briggs go ahead your last statement um Dr Stoltz just made me raised a question for me in terms of you know thinking about how additional funds might be able to be used and obviously they're going to be used strategically to try to advance are the goals of our plan um in alignment with what the voters um allocated were sort of promised in passing a millage but um is there what's happening behind the scenes I guess to help identify um there's there's always going to be gaps there's always going to be more funding that we need but to identify that um that it is directed towards the projects that are going to end up delivering you know impacting our emissions um lowering our emissions the most I mean as opposed to sort of what's maybe the greatest need at the moment to move a project forward there are a handful of variables uh it is not a secret sauce of one thing to be honest right we have a two zero so we already know where we need to make investments and that is an incredible directive we also have things that this body has talked about that aren't in a20 we don't have an seu right in a20 but that doesn't mean we're not working on that we don't have telework in a20 because we evaluated it and it didn't make the cut but we were wrong right uh the pandemic shows we were wrong so a20 is like the North Star but the the mother metric is greenhouse gas emissions reductions that however is also Guided by Equity so we look for the things that have the highest impact but we also have to hold space for the things that are going to take a lot of time right if we eat all the low-hanging fruit we don't leave if we if we're never working on the harder things we're never building momentum towards them and so we're trying to simultaneously build the movement and the systems to do the really hard systems change work that will be the most transformative that we do while we're all also getting these wins in the system right so the the things that we evaluate are obviously cost per greenhouse gas reduction that we can get public willingness to engage in an initiative because it won't matter if theoretically I get a high Roi on it but no one doesn't right so we've we've got to build in um is the public ready what do we have to do to get them ready right those public engagement dollars may not be much there may be only 50 000 in the budget but they may be the most important 50 000 that we spend right depending on kind of what that individual action and strategy is um and then there's there is certainly opportunism that comes into play I I would be lying if I told you that wasn't true right the department of energy released a geothermal Grant I went for it we have money in the budget for a geothermal study if I win the federal government grant I'm not going to put it towards I'm I freed up dollars over here that I'll reallocate right because I'm able to use federal dollars so there's opportunity that we we also bring it to the equation thanks for the question so as I mentioned because it's uh time is ticking here and we've got Michelle waiting and we've got a couple of other things to deal with I'm just going to Rattle off a couple of things and I think really some of these um you don't need to respond to um so first of all I'm just going to State one thing Missy that you and I have corresponded on but is also posed as a question to me and that was um if there are issues that arise and are seem likely to arise that will require additional legal resources um that was not a specific line item that was called out into your budget but um it's my understanding that there is at least an understanding or a provision that that will be uh money will be spent for that because that advances particular causes it just may not have been tied to legal fees so um that I think everybody on the commission deserves to know that and that that's welcome news um a lot of people myself included are concerned um about um for example well I'll say generally spending money on what seems to be um High hanging fruit as opposed to low hanging fruit particularly from the perspective of dollars per metric ton of CO2 emitted reduced and one of the categories where that is is that I as um in solid waste or um circular economy I think we all recognize the need to reduce scope 3 emissions but at least the calculations that were done at the time indicate that those are among the least effective and we don't even have data that at least the environmental commission has seen yet that shows for example was Organics collection year-round Organics collection affected it all did tonnage go up at all that our diversion rate decrease so before we spend lots and lots of money on those things um that we aren't sure really are going to have a significant impact and in fact may even have offsetting emissions because we have trucks running around that I think it's really important that um staff and Council examine those items and spend the money where we have low hanging fruit where we know if we spend um a dollar for example on Energy Efficiency measures or we incentify those kinds of uh actions that we know we're going to get a really really good payback on that and that may be some of the higher hanging fruits are things that we do later down the road I'm just going to continue um someone wrote me and asked about millage funds um potentially being devoted to either incent developers to build without natural gas or to build more high efficiency or high efficiency new construction that was something that was thrown out there I think that personally that's that's a a two two uh two bladed sword where on the one hand it could do good on the other hand it man sent every single developer to come to the city and say hey please pay for my all-electric uh whatever it is or please pay for my um better envelope so there are people that are asking those kinds of questions um I think that's it and I'm really just asking that uh those those issues be considered and debated when budget is is reviewed I appreciate that and I'm not going to hammer them in detail but I want to say uh you brought up some things I had hoped to say and that they just evaded me one is uh OSI is asking for an attorney in the attorney's office um so you're asking for full-time capacity because we the way we this is a further conversation but the way our attorneys are structured is they sort of are appointed to service areas and we don't have someone so we always get kind of the end of the line and that's that's part of what we're looking at then we have external uh Professional Services dollars if we need more or a different kind of attorney so yes um thank you for having that uh High hanging fruit sure um what I would say is we know that we under calculated the life cycle emissions associated with with waste and the circular economy because there is not a standard methodology but we are all in the team helping create the standard methodology for what it looks like to capture those emissions so I would say maybe maybe that's true maybe that's not true when we really understand the true emissions associated with things uh like Solid Waste also solid waste is sort of a Gateway uh it's very personal when people come into the field from it so it wouldn't totally uh take that off the table in terms of importance but to your other points about justification of impact totally hard and understood yeah efficiency I wish everyone did it they don't uh it's bees and carrots we can't get people to do it so instead what we're doing is feeding it into the things they want to eat like solar they just love solar so then we give them efficiency when they do solar so we're yes and is what I would say to that and then lastly incenting developers interesting idea um I would say our Focus most of the buildings that we're going to have are already here so we're focusing more on incentives and rebates for our existing folks to make sure today's Ann Arbor rates get the benefit good thanks very much um one last uh opportunity for Commissioners to weigh in going going gone Michelle your next my turn your turn okay good evening commissioners thanks for giving me some time this meeting to go over the Equitable engagement initiative let me make sure first you all can see my screen okay great and thanks to Missy again missy you're welcome to stay um but we also understand if you need to go so go ahead Michelle thanks okay my name is Michelle Bennett I'm a community engagement specialist with the city in the systems planning unit so that is um separate from OSI but um there are a few of us with this title that do this work at the city and in full transparency I did not start this project my former colleague Heather seifarth and Missy Stoltz really got this off the ground um but I am here to help wrap it up as Heather's moved on to the Housing Commission so as part of the the project wrap up we are taking it around to different commissions to give an overview of what um this initiative entailed and some of the the highlights and findings so to start the Project's broad aim here was to Define what Equity means we did this with a steering committee and I'll get into the details of how they were selected but this really was kind of a ground up um process where they defined what Equity means and we spent a lot of time discussing not only what the definition would be but how that could be incorporated into the city's policies guidelines and practices so that we could create a more inclusive engagement process so before we started the staff did quite a bit of pre-work um starting in fiscal year 2019 we started collecting demographic data through our surveys and public engagement events um in person and virtually these graphs here only show that the survey respondents and they are compared to the Census Data well the 2021 estimates and I think that this confirmed largely what we already knew in that most of our attendees are um white wealthier empty nesters or retirees that own their own homes and so in comparing that that data to the to the census we can see where we're lacking certain representation right definitely in the renting group definitely in the younger age categories um ethnic diversity is really lacking racial and ethnic diversity and you can see here where the the incomes are sort of concentrated here in the higher brackets um as a part of our pre-work we also looked at promising practices from other communities our own practices and then did a little research on some of the local and by Regional we mean mainly Washington County um conditions kind of documentation reports that are related to to equity so this is kind of our existing conditions research as a part of our current practices we have an engagement toolkit and that is something that is asked of project managers to go through with a community engagement specialist so we can discuss you know what stakeholders do we need at the table what's the what's the best um process and engagement techniques for our desired outcome for for specific projects so that's something that's already in place and actually is right now uh being updated the demographic collection I just shared with you we started doing that to get an idea of who we're reaching through our engagement efforts um we also work with the International Association of public participation they're a non-profit with a global reach that's dedicated to public participation so they um came this was right before the pandemic and signed about 50 staff members um on best practices for for engagement we've also worked with the youth pre-pandemic that we're hoping to start again but that's really explaining to them what the Civic Prof process is how they can get involved and get them to start critically thinking about you know the outcomes of Engagement and how it should be done and then this is outside of systems planning I think this is mainly through um the planning and development but there is an ordinance on file that requires developers with new development to do some public engagement so this was also thrown up right before the pandemic as everything was switching virtually they created a a hub which I'm going to talk a little bit more about later um but we have seen actually through research done by the University of Michigan School of information students that it's not heavily uh visited as you can see here by these visits per month and then it also doesn't direct you to all the engagement opportunities that are available and this is partly because of how things are organized on the city Side um that we all have our own departments and it has not yet been all funneled into one page so you have to find information about engagement by project page that could be scattered across the website so meanwhile uh while we were doing some of this pre-work we were also putting out um these kind of Flyers around the city that were really strategically thought about how we can um reach out to these groups that are not well represented so in that call we got about 80 applicants and 30 members were selected to be on the steering committee and they were tasked with meeting monthly uh for about 18 months and as I mentioned they were defining what Equity means what our core values are and ultimately through these discussions um developing recommendations to take to council so here's their definition of equity um you can see this is a big conversation now as Equity versus equality the idea here is that you can see in the graphic here on the right that giving everyone the same exact resource does not necessarily lead to um equal outcomes or everyone thriving right so if you can see on the bottom there that everyone needs a different style bike in order to ride safely and so that's kind of the direction we're moving in in terms of equity is that if we if our standard processes are getting us the same types of attendees that I shared in the demographics that we need to put more time and effort into engagement and Outreach so that we can get a more representative group to attend so here's some of the topics that were covered over those 18 uh 18 months you can see it's quite a range here and I will say this third to last bullet point came up quite a bit and uh some of our recommendations actually veered a little bit I would say maybe On The Fringe of what we would consider to be engagement but still very important um and so I will get into that in the first recommendation um so we created this little paw um for a five um Toad animal that we're not really sure what it would be but the idea was as we took notes as we listened over these 18 months these were the five topics that kept coming up um and we were happy to discuss them because as we know Equity touches everything and so what we tried to make here at the Paw at the center of all of your discussions is how can Community engagement establish an equitable footing on all of these topics so again just trying to bring everything back to how the process and how to make sure that our processes are equitable so towards the end of that 18 months they the staring committee came up with um recommendations and I'm going to go through those briefly uh or pretty quickly but I'm happy to take questions on those afterwards this is really the Crux of the of me coming here tonight is so that we can hear your feedback or any thoughts or questions you have on these recommendations so the first one and again these are all in the words of the steering committee members um demonstrate the city's committed to advancing Equity um here's where they really want to see uh accountability and where you can see that the city's hiring practices come into play um they were saying before you even get into your engagement series you have to understand that people don't feel comfortable attending these events if the city staff does not reflect you know the demographics of the city um and so we had HR on a lot of our calls to talk about these things um but you can see here that they wanted Pathways created for um mainly bypoc was the main conversation we had about that of how to get them into staff and into leadership positions and you know ideally running these kind of Engagement sessions um to attract and build trust with um the people of these groups they also want to see policies adopted and enforced by city council and they stressed a lot of being authentic and that came across in several ways of being straightforward being to the point being honest not using jargon um using language that you know everyone can understand and where people feel comfortable asking questions um was a big part of how they want to see engagement change okay the second recommendation here provide Ample Ample and targeted invitations to engagement opportunities so this is a recommendations about our Outreach as well there was a lot of emphasis on using non-digital means so really getting out into the community and this touches on what what Missy was saying as well in the direction we want to move in is they really want us to be on the ground meeting people face to face putting flyers in their businesses talking to business owners um not just throwing a link up on the the city's calendar um they want you know materials translated for our non-native English speaking folks um and they do if we are going to stick to some things online which of course we have to they want they wanted an engagement Hub uh an improvement to what we have now so I'm going to talk more about that later the third recommendation here is kind of really saying put your money where your mouth is if you care about Equity then you need to dedicate resources for staff and training so they want to make sure there is money in the budget to um hire more people or have more staff there and make sure that they're constantly keeping up to date on new practices through training so in terms of what we already do that would mean probably working with the International Association of public participation more um and creating metrics and Milestones um for us to to follow and to meet and to come up with those takes a team and hold each other accountable takes a team and then this is the last set of recommendations to make engagement events more accessible and attractive um so this is kind of asking us to maybe Branch out of some of our standard practices so holding hybrid meetings which is possible in this setting but when you want to do exercises with the community having people in person and online we have not nailed that yet we are still working that out in certain locations um they want it to be structured in such a way that we mitigate grandstanding that we have rules that we enforce that keep the environment respectful um and then again going to this being authentic of really communicating what's the decision what's the process who's making the decision and what level of influence do we have so those kinds of questions for number five are in the toolkit that I mentioned we do discuss those at the beginning but they mentioned that there's definitely room for improvement there so I went through quite a bit of material in a short amount of time I know you guys have a busy agenda so um let me just touch on a couple more things um when we researched promising practices the engagement Hub came up over and over again we've done some research on that and have put in a budget request and so I have an example here of what one looks like for the City of Pittsburgh um this has different project cards all centralized across all departments onto One landing page it allows users to select projects based on category type or location so that they can customize this page to their interests or to their neighborhood and then when you click on a project card it would provide all the engagement opportunities available to you along with who the final decision maker is what the timeline is a much more transparent process um than what we currently do have although we do provide them that a lot of that information like I mentioned it's pretty scattered and it would be hard for some people to find so that's uh hopefully something we'll find out if we get the funding for that in the next couple of months and would be one of the bigger projects that we uh plan to pursue so I will end there just letting you all know that um if you go to this link there are more project details there's also the draft report um that explains everything I discussed in Greater detail and if you have any other thoughts or questions after this evening then you can email this email address um Heather and I both have access to that and can respond to you thank you Michelle before I recognize you commissioner McKenna um Joe could you put one thing in the meeting minutes as an assignment for you me and Carlene to look at the recommendations from this and see how we might be able to apply those specifically to the work and meetings of the energy commission um I think that's one thing that we should definitely act on um and while I have the floor I'm just going to say one other thing real quickly um and that is um it's really more a question I guess to commissioner Peck and I'm wondering you know the city is updating its comprehensive plan and the university is updating its master plan and those are going to be hugely consequential for the city um and I'm wondering if the university is equally attuned to some of these inequities in how information is being gathered and who is there to provide it to make sure that um these these really significant planning activities are really going to be reflective of the true needs and desires of the whole diverse community that we live in do you know if the university is attuned to the like what we saw those those bar charts where you know there were certain communities that were just basically left entirely out of the process yeah I mean the the community that we're working with I think you know it's not really super clear yet exactly what we're doing um you know in other words we're sort of planning the process as we go it's like learning to fly a plane while you're starting to fly um I think because we've got it you know the president wants to do it very quickly and I and I applaud them for that you know there are a lot of things like climate action that just can't sit around away for two years to figure it out what we're going to do but um we're really focused on the university community you're talking about our Master planning uh and not as much our visioning uh and I think that effort we're not going to use the term Master by the way yeah which is indicative that we are a little aware of equity uh is um you know that will involve reaching out to adjacent communities and and really understanding how the University of Michigan can operate not just on its own property but in collaboration with those other entities around us in a more effective way and so I would imagine this will be very important and I wish I could tell you the answer um you know there will certainly be a focus on ensuring that what we do is Equitable but will it be successful um you know we still haven't proved our ability to do that and it includes like for example what we're doing in Detroit um you know we have to I'm hoping it will work very hard and I I really enjoyed this presentation because it it made sense you know it's like how how do we engage and maybe these uh if I can send the copy of this which I bet I can because it's a public document uh to some of my colleagues it might help thank you great commissioner McKenna thank you uh hi Michelle thank you so much for sharing this with us um it's lovely to hear that that there's quite a serious engagement process happening and concern for Equity um so as I think about some of the uh agenda items upcoming especially the resolution requesting the city administrator to engage on um on Equity um and uh with them uh sorry the uh Michigan Public Service Commission on our access to Utilities in our city um you know I'm just thinking about uh kind of ongoing engagements with um underrepresented groups and I'm hoping you could talk a little bit about you know maybe spinning off of the work that you shared with us what your intention is or or how you kind of see the city continuing to do this work and specifically you know what what actions are you going to take um you know around maybe keeping a group assembled or you know ensuring that there is um because I know uh the effort that it takes to you know gather um first of all Define equity and then you know gather a group and into a steering committee and then you know through a process of what 18 months or whatever you said um kind of uh you know work with them consistently to kind of get the information that you provided with us but knowing that there will be ongoing issues and we have them you know ongoing currently yeah what is the plan for for keeping that equity yeah that's a good question so most of the community engagement uh I'll say at least in systems planning is Project based right and so you know oftentimes if it's not happening right on your street um it's hard to get people to engage and so one thing that we have been talking about because the the steering committee the Equitable engagements during committee there's several of them that um want to remain active um but this project is wrapping up right because our engagement is is typically Project based so we are thinking of ways to extend that and to continue to work with them one of the thoughts we've had is a community liaison program and that's again getting at really stakeholder building kind of on the ground um of going to communities who may or may uh not trust us or just not know the process and working with liaison Liaisons helping to train them to facilitate and work with those communities and maybe relay information back to us um you know also being more of service to them so not just coming to them this is what a Committee Member told me and it's really stuck with me it's like don't just come to us to ask things of us um like an actual relationship is an exchange so how can we be of service to them as well um you know how can we get involved in the work that they're doing where appropriate um so that you know they are also likely to be more candid with us and participate with us um and really build a partnership so I would say that you know we're trying in a couple different ways to take their take their recommendations of being more on the ground um right now it is just me Heather has moved to another position so as we hire someone else that's one of the first things I want us to work on together is kind of stakeholder planning and being really strategic about what um you know is it neighborhood groups community centers is it religious institutions like what where are we going to go to spend more time to build to build these relationships and how can we include the the steering committee in this effort with us so those are some of the things we're thinking about right now to it extend this effort thank you any other comments or questions uh seeing none or Michelle I should say um thanks for uh spending part of your evening with us and um everybody recall this is posted on legislar and go back and refer to it I think it should continue to inform our work so thanks again very much yeah thank you all have a great evening great okay let's point on their agenda um are uh we have three resolutions um the last is going to be a first reading so I I'm anticipating not a whole lot of discussion and that hopefully most of that will be then in the second reading but um the first is a resolution I'll give a little bit of background and then I'll let council member Briggs and Missy uh chime in if uh appropriate so this is a resolution that was considered uh by Council uh last Monday uh it um council member Briggs brought it to my attention a couple of days ahead of time um and asked if I had any input on it I provided her some insights that I thought potentially could improve uh the uh resolution uh Council decided on Monday that they would defer action on it refer it back to the energy commission for comment um the intent tonight is not to vote on this resolution the intent is not to Wordsmith it um the intent is to gather ideas that um I'm going to ask that um Joe you uh do your best job to make note of them and also I assume that council member Briggs will do the same as will Missy and the intent is is that we get that back to council as soon as possible for their considered operation so that they can act on this on Monday so their next meeting is Monday they want to act while the iron is hot so to speak or strike while the iron is hot and that's our intent tonight and councilmember Riggs please add to that or contradict me where appropriate nope that was perfect I just will add to it a little bit so um yes this was a um the agenda Evan that we're talking about is um one that was a resolution put forward by council member Ghazi Edwin um sponsored as well by council member song and Harrison and it is um basically working to advance our energy equity and um and resilience it was in reaction I think in in part what we in large part to what we saw in our community um following the these winter storms and sort of the performance of DPE in our area and so you'll notice a lot of the whereas Clauses are around that um because of the um desire to get this to the council table and have some public discussion around that um it didn't come you know immediately to energy commission where we might sometimes see it go to energy commission and then to to confluences gone to council and back here to energy commission um but council member um Regina and I had just wanted to make sure that folks had an opportunity to there's a lot of knowledge on this Commission you know take a look and see as in those resolve Clause specifically um are there bullet points that may be missing in terms of things we want to call upon the legislature to do or the Michigan Public Services Commission to do um we also obviously heard a number of Commissioners um talking about the resolve quad or number of members of the public talking about the resolve Clause around DTE you know coming to the commission um so just welcoming some feedback it can be tonight if you haven't had the opportunity to look at it feel free to take a look at it after the meeting tomorrow um we do want to bring it back the council for a final vote next Monday so um you know which is Tuesday I would say maybe if you could get feedback to um back through staff To Us by Thursday that would give the sponsor of this resolution the ability to reflect upon the feedback that the commission has provided so happy to answer questions or listen to feedback great so um I provided some things but I'm going to let everybody else go and anything that you guys don't mention that I'll bring up at the end um commissioner McKenna then harp and then brookwoods yeah hi councilmember Briggs thank you so much for uh providing this for us um a lot to talk about here um but um kind of want to keep it short and maybe I can provide some more comments uh written comments um number one I'd just like to um kind of bring our attention to the the idea of compensating folks for for lost um food and you know whatever costs that may have been incurred due to relocating um I think that's a great start but I would want to encourage emphasis on um Equitable access to those resources I don't know if this you know maybe belongs here but I think a lot of the breakdown in equity in our infrastructure um is you know while there may be attention paid to creating more resources for um for folks that that kind of suffer inequities or that um that may not have had the access that they needed and you know or who are disruportionately affected by these outages um you know their ability to actually access those resources when they're made available actually becomes um quite difficult so I just wanted to add that um I think additionally a point maybe for discussion then I'll then I'll pose um is that I think the language around um resilience and strengthening the wires Network and and some of the undergrounding efforts um maybe isn't as strong as I'd like to see it for instance I see resolves um that the Ann Arbor calls Michigan Public Service uh commission to hold easy accountable by directing underground efforts um I don't I don't understand what that means um you know reading through this and being pretty knowledgeable in the field and I frankly don't think that we're at the directing Point anymore um I want to see language as strong as passing legislation requiring um which I see above um in terms of having the city be compensated for their losses um so I just want to talk about President around language and those kinds of requirements um and just yeah just emphasize that I think undergrounding is the very most important thing that needs to come out of this commissioner thank you I had a just a couple of comments um when I was looking in the section around utility redlining I was looking a little bit more to try to unpack what that means more specifically and and with a greater description and personal my reading that might relate to lower hosting capacity things like lower and uneven grid modernization um outdating an increased age of production and distribution assets um and things of those sorts as well as informational resources that might be available depending on different customers abilities to pay for those resources or or other areas so it's just just a closer look at that and what that might mean Beyond just outdated assets um and in a few areas I was wanting to draw attention just to the informational services that are available as well a number of folks have mentioned not only the maps but also the ability to analyze bills and Energy Efficiency and use practices that they might be um using not only through the website and the bill paying service but also in addition there's an app and an energy Bridge tool it can be um that one can rent effectively to provide an additional layer of information and so there's just a major difference between those informational resources in terms of not only how they're presented but what's presented on them and um that can itself um create certain inequities as well and availability of information so I just wanted to draw attention to that um and the other there was one line Associated I think it was in the second section unresolved of just um asking the Public Service Commission told DT accountable by um it was the second bullet point and proactive on issues of climate change I was wanting to better understand what what proactive around issues on climate change means in this in this context whether that's adaptive in making more adaptive distribution or whether that's improving um Renewables and reducing fossil fuels in the Energy Mix or what that might be and more specifically so do you have any hands that was it nope those were just those are some of the comments I was I was wanting to add to that yeah and if anybody has you know specifics that then would enable that language to be fine-tuned please submit that in writing it right yes commissioner McKenna that applies to anything you said too if there's anything in detail yeah that's great um commissioner Berkowitz thank you everyone I really appreciate the conversation uh topics near and dear to my heart um and uh I just have a few things that I would suggest adding to the resolution to improve and strengthen it um I've got some notes that I prepared right before we hopped onto the zoom so I will email that to Joe and the pertinent folks uh when we're done talking or when when I'm done talking and multitasking but just to speak them into this meeting um uh the line about undergrounding I think would be strengthened by adding something about generalized grid hardening I think that's the intent or at least that's what I was getting at or I think it's trying to get at the first half so maybe grid hardening I think could be a key term to strengthen that bullet and then I have four things on my wish list that I think should be on the city's wish list for the legislature um candidly my comments are geared towards the legislature because I think the commission and the city administrator seem to be doing the most they can with like the limited resources and the enforcement and implication like mechanisms and Authority they have under State Statute so we gotta just improve State Statute potentially to open some of those things up um the first thing is passing legislation to require performance-based rate making for utilities handled by the Public Service Commission or through the Commission in like contested cases or dockets this is just a best practice for holding utility companies accountable and essentially tying their financial compensation to reliability affordability whatever metrics you want you know Equity pollution reduction and you can also create mechanisms for penalizing utility companies when they fail to meet these things which is I think something you know we're all in agreement is quite missing right now another thing to name that I think is kind of like danced around in a couple of the bullets talking about resiliency um I would like to see the word microgrids added in microgrid is just like the technical term for when there was a portion of a grid that cannot operate like an island um and you know one of the two of the bullets talk about like the essential services like hospitals fire police you know School shelters non-profits um having them be able to operate within their own microgrid can be really beneficial it can you know also help out the grid even when there aren't power outages and just when there's Peak Demand on the hottest hours of the year or the coldest hours of the year it can help shave demand for running gas or other fossil fuel powered people plants Elsewhere on the grid and delivering benefits to impacting communities tangentially so microgrids are a great option all around and currently our barred uh by state statute for the most part sorry two more things on the wish list um one is a Statewide establishing a Statewide storage standard um I actually just read um that uh state representative Jen Hill uh from the Upper Peninsula is working to introduce legislation on this right now but essentially it would um require utilities to invest in utility scale uh storage um I think the resolution talks about local small-scale storage um the third bullet point in particular I think we should also push utility scale storage because it just largely helps insulate the entire grid and not only Ann Arbor but all of our brother and sister communities across the state to help us more systematically be insulated from extended outages over large periods of time and also delivers benefits to the grid you know displaces the need for running fossil fuel peaker plants just like microgrids last item on the wish list um and again Joe I'll email this to you sorry I told me to take uh make you take hard notes on all this but um I think we should explicitly expand the authority of the Public Service Commission through legislation um to directly address and enforce utility reliability grid planning affordability uh decarbonization and environmental justice a lot of these things are kind of like peripherally in their purview or they are afraid to kind of stick their necks out because statute maybe isn't strong enough in backing them where there isn't legal precedence so I think directly explicitly expanding their authority over some of these things would go a long way that's my five cents thank you that was at least six thank you uh commissioner zillman yeah thank you I have uh three things I'd like to suggest um I want to apologize to Erica because I popped out of the zoom call for a second so I'm not sure if you already talked about this at all but um the first thing is I personally would like to see the language about the um DTE member coming to the energy Commission meeting every month removed I don't think they need that platform they have more access to the city than most people and I just think it's unnecessary they do do a lot of greenwashing in our community and I don't think we need to provide a greater platform for that secondly on February 28th Pontiac city council unanimously passed a resolution calling on the state legislature to start a committee researching the feasibility of a democratically accountable state-run utility in Michigan I think through this resolution we should at least include a resolved Clause of like support for that to investigate what all of our options are and my last piece is just that I think Washington County also passed a resolution to investigate the feasibility of establishing a county-wide energy utility and we should also State our support for that as well so thank you thank you commissioner McKenna thank you I just wanted to Second um Commissioners littleman's uh request that the um the the clause about having to deal at the energy commission meetings be removed strongly in favor of removal of that I I also oppose um their involvement in this Commission other comments I'm going to Rattle off a couple real quickly some of these are in writing already so I won't go into detail um first is eliminating or lifting the one percent cap on distributed renewable energy generation resources um as a means of increasing reliability um second utilities there is a comment about passing legislation broadly on regulating utilities utilities are unique in that they've been granted a monopoly by the state yet they're still able to use what are ultimately you know it's ultimately revenue from us as rate payers to to Lobby on on their behalf and not necessarily in our interest but in their interests and so um I have indicated that there is an entity called the energy policy the energy and policy Institute and they have a uh a number of recommendations related to essentially better rules about what utilities can and can't do um then better disclosure against those rules and then finally better enforcement or put it this way stronger deterrence when those rules are not adhered to so a lot of the rules that we as commissioner bergenowitz mentioned there's um they're they're not very clear and therefore the mpsc is is not so clear on what they can and can't do and so and then that applies also to the investor own utilities so doing something there to really better Define those rules um which should be obviously in in accordance with the values of the state and then finally then obviously enforcing that through first of all better requiring good disclosure um and then uh like I said um better enforcement or or deterrence um then another thing that I think Michigan should consider and you know depends on how how wide a scope we want to have but um the state of California I know and maybe this is true in other states um they actually have legislation which funds something they call their public Advocates office and so when issues come before their Public Service Commission of course the utilities are there and they are presenting information and evidence um and by the way that requires a lot of technical expertise in many cases um and so what the state of California does is it provides funding for this other entity to go in and essentially Lobby on behalf of rape haters um so it's there's a balance in in in in the equation and then um I know another commissioner here has uh and this essentially what uh commissioner burkowitz said but uh another commissioner has talked to me about um essentially tying um and I don't know if this is possible but bonuses and things like that essentially a compensation up and down the the whole utility utility as a whole but even um something that would incentify um the right behavior on leadership so that means bonuses for example would be tied to the right kinds of behaviors I don't know if that's possible that may be digging in too deep but those are the kinds of things that I think that also should be considered um uh that those were my name points and um commissioner Irving council member Briggs has those um but um Joe we probably want to put these all together in one document and share them with all the other council members um does anybody else have any other ideas in the meantime and if not uh then again uh please submit them to Joe by Thursday um as soon as possible so that he can have something as a deliverable by the end of the day on Thursday um commissioner Smith thanks commissioner mersky uh yeah I would just like to add in response um also in agreement with the removing kind of DTE regular attendance in energy commission but I would just like to kind of ask ourselves the question happy to kind of share some thoughts on how do we Garner the right insights um to ensure that they are making meaningful progress without the green washing um it to better hold them uh accountable you know is that through legislation is that through some of these other resolutions but wanting to be sure that weeks two can hold them accountable um and those insights likely being a a helpful part of that council member breaks yeah I just want to say thank you to everybody for providing this and um preparing um more on writing later uh obviously I'll pass this along and um I know it'll be not everything will get be incorporated I know the resolution sponsor is trying to you know keep to the heart of what she was trying to create here but I think this is really good insight and I know that she'll be pulling pulling from this to strengthen the resolution um also if you're seeing anything in there you just feel like is um you don't need a word Smith but if there's anything you really think you know would be stronger um if it was praised a different way I think um sponsors would probably welcome that as well there may not be um that many of these documents for our especially for our local debt legislative delegation to draw from and so we want it to be a strong guiding document for especially for our um our legislators so thank you so much oh and if there's I'm not hearing support here for the resolve Clause around DTE kind of coming regularly to to hear for some reason there's a silent majority here that really doesn't want to have that happen you know send a note on that but thanks yeah I think we we broadly all agree that um that if they if they appear would be at our requests and with specific uh requested information that they report but not something where they have a platform on a regular basis yep and and I think um you I can speak for the whole commission um and thank um all of the drafters of this that they acted on this um in in and did so with a great sense of urgency and that um you didn't hear any any overall concerns with the the the the spirit of the resolution at all we I think we all really heartily endorse this um like I said we're not going to take a vote but uh it's uh definitely you can say meets our approval our games our approval right okay uh three topics down two to go so um the next is uh the second reading of the uh performance transparency resolution I thought I'd just give some background first rather than allowing that to come out sort of haphazard in the discussion so just as a recap there was a a broader resolution that was passed by the environmental commission um last year we looked at that and in our meeting uh last time we agreed that we would um go ahead and proceed with that with a second reading um but that there were a number of inputs that would be considered and so let me just read off some comments first of all I think we all understand that city council and consultation with the administrator um should this resolution be taken up by Council will potentially change the language of this resolution um it may be something closer to what we do it maybe something um more broad like with the energy or excuse me the environmental commission did but um we I think we should all recognize that we don't have to perfect this because it's most likely going to be changed anyhow and that includes some of the due dates or some of the dates that appear in there um so since the last meeting I shared a version of the resolution um on uh in a Google doc um with uh our two Liaisons uh Council Leon Liaisons and with Joe and Carlene um Joe and Carlene provided input uh via email or it can be in the document and the two uh Council Liaisons provided uh input um via email and um first of all um councilman member Adina stated in his communication that heals that this resolution should be just one element of creating a higher performing organization that delivers better outcomes to City residents and I think we all agree on that and um so you know we're doing this in the spirit of that recognizing we're just looking at one one element it is um uh based on his input um I modified one the first resolve Clause as follows um be it therefore resolved that the energy commission recommends that the city council and the city Administration will review and then this is the change with input from City boards and commissions when appropriate and that is leaving that to their judgment the completeness accuracy and format of all uh above mentioned kpis so that just um makes it a little bit less prescriptive um and it leaves them discretion as to when they come to us for that input um based on input from uh council member Briggs this was mentioned in the meeting but also I think afterwards in our communication we talked on the phone also a couple of times thank you council member Briggs um so I added aware as Clause whereas in the November 2022 city of Ann Arbor whereas in November 2022 city of Ann Arbor voters approved a 20-year one mil climate millage that will generate over 140 million dollars in revenue for spending on climate and a20 carbon neutrality plan related projects and programs where their performance outcomes should be transparent and public facing so it's just sort of a broad statement saying that by having performance transparency we'll have better insights into how that money is being spent and what kind of outcomes they are delivering so just a couple of other points uh I think everybody here knows that the a20 plan has um what I would call leading indicators of success um they're called indicators of success slash goals and timelines and initial actions um many with important intermediate targets that are key to achieving the overall Target of Net Zero by 2030 and is I think it's also important for us to realize that the count the county has passed its resilient uh resilient Washtenaw County climate action plan and they have for virtually every action goals and evaluation metrics for essentially all of their actions and the county is only going to be able to to track those goals and and progress against those metrics if it has performance input from the city of Ann Arbor um so what else did I want to say here I don't know if I have to go through all this um so um there is one other comment from both council member related to the resolution being overly prescriptive um and first of all um council member uh Briggs recommended um the first resolve clause read so um maybe Joe can you put that up so we can start to look at the result classes because that's probably the most important thing yeah I'll do that here yeah in theory once I find the right thing yes the second uh yeah the first one oh I meant on Zoom trying to find words okay always hiding all right if you can go down to the resolve clauses um so the first one um is um that um it's simply read um that uh the energy commission recommends that city council engaged the city administrator to ensure that Key Energy climate and A200 related policy objectives so this um I'll mentioned about all of the above kpis that that basically is just distilled down to key City policy objectives and strategic goals and kpis be published and updated regularly on the city's website um so um just I'm speaking for myself um that kind of language I think is fine whether it's called the city's performance measures web page or some other web page in the future is really sort of irrelevant I think uh what's important maybe in the language or that as a key takeaway that there be a central repository that they're not scattered all over the place on the city's website that doesn't mean that they can't appear in two places but that there's a place where people know that they can go to to get um information so it's uh not on distributed on just you know hundreds of different web pages that people have to search through but that it be somewhere um on the city's website and that'd be a central Repository um and I think I'll leave it at that and open things up for discussion commissioner harp and then commissioner Smith thank you um I had two two questions um one was sort of the question about kpis in general um and the extent to which their outcomes based and holistic in what they're measuring and indicating um and so maybe that's just a question about a clarification of what might be implicit in how kprs are described here and then the second question you know based quite a bit on some of the previous presentations and and discussions earlier in this meeting is um where equity and engagement might exist in among these kpis um as they as they relate directly to the climate energy and HR u0 related policy goals um and whether that needs to be made more explicit in this resolution or or whether that um is is already assumed primarily through the A200 plan um taking the second first I from as far as I'm concerned that's sort of assumed in the a20 plan based on these indicators of success um and and uh the timelines that are in the plan and by the way it's a living plan So the plan is likely to be updated with what frequency I don't think is all that important at this point um the debt the data address at least your second point I think so yes yeah and your first Point again can you clarify that again for me sorry I'm curious about what's assumed about kpis and and what they are what they Encompass um what is it that you are looking for what is it that that are they outcomes based one both in to some extent that's um I think clarified in both specifying leading and lagging indicators um and so I was just trying to get a sense of um how holistic the kprs are that we're aiming for and what they're measuring so um you know I I don't know if that needs to be fully explicit in this or not um and it was just sort of a question for clarification I think well I mean I'll speak for myself um I think that's um in a sense um for um Council and the administrator to decide but I'll give you a couple of examples um so the the plan calls for a 50 reduction in vehicle miles traveled so you know that that's that's really an important indicator um there's also specifics about um the number of um uh whether I think it's a percentage of weatherization there's a number of housing units to be created um It's relatively modest gold but there are there are specific figures in in the in the plan and the question is uh how are we performing against the targets that are that are in the plan um and part of this is so that we're not just looking in the rearview mirror where we get the the the um the index the the that's not the index the but the inventory um for the last year but that we're actually monitoring some of these main contributing factors along the way and by the way again remember this was not written with a specific focus on the a20 plan because we are an energy commission and we're focused on climate and energy this was sort of adapted there's there's other other areas um where the city is performing where those that level of transparency that we're getting from OSI which frankly is is exemplary in many regards compared to other parts of the city but there's still room for improvement I think even um as related to energy climate and a to zero related goals uh commissioner Smith yes thank you um as a follow-on to our conversation around Equity earlier um I guess I don't know if it necessitates an update to the language directly but just ask that we kind of think about um is it within the context of the work plan um that we think about non-digital forms of sharing this information to be transparent recognizing the language kind of focuses in on web page um you know being that uh opportunity for transparency but can we leverage you know Community engagement sessions to also share some of this information as well right um the the last can you scroll down to the last results Clause um I think it's um that there's a statement here about um that there is some kind of um annual review and that would likely happen in the public domain could be attended in in person so that somewhat addresses that but I don't think probably to the degree it deserves to be I I like the general thrust of your of your your point um can I go back to the first um statement where we crossed out current and replaced it with key so now I just remembering what my thought was here so my thought was that anything that is currently tracked in this case now a to zero climate energy related but thinking more broadly anything that is tracked the link to the city's performance webpage by June 30th that's why the date is so soon it's just simply taking information that is on individual sites for example in this case OSI webpage and if someone goes to the city's performance web measures web page there's no mention of the greenhouse gas inventory there so it's just simply creating a link to information that is somewhere else already on the city's web page so that would be applied to solid waste because I know the solid waste or the the solid waste uh Team tracks diversion rate and other kinds of things but that's not on this web page there's other kinds of things so it's just simply asking that current object objectives be linked to this web page um so this is not talking about the long-term uh ideas of of what might go there this is just looking at the short term so my recommendation if it's okay with council member Briggs um that we leave it as current that res that actually um limits the scope of that resolve class to just what is currently being done by by OSI OSI that wouldn't have to do anything except put a link on the performance web page so that if someone goes there they can get information directly without having to search for it on the osi's web page council member breaks thank you and um I want to thank you for continuing to be an advocate for the sort of work in the city we've had a number of conversations over the years about how important it is um you know I think from I find myself on a tricky position in a tricky place on this commission I honestly don't think that council members should be voting members of any commissions or either Advisory Board to council and so I see it with my my job here to be through the liaison to the commissions you know what's going on at Council and then taking it having a better understanding of what's going on the commission than bringing that board to Campo um but um that is not the case uh in many of my commissions I'm also voting member as is the case here so um I view this commission differently I think than is necessary for a number of commission for Commissioners to view it but I will let you know how I'm looking at this so um you know when I look at this resolution the last I can't find my phone now sorry um so the last three whereas Clauses um I think are what's the heart of really what's critically important about this in terms of you know the that we should have complete transparent easily accessible information about government operations and performance that we passed it um you know voters approved a millage and um need to understand you know the performance outcome um that there are other municipalities out there across the country that are have these really outstanding public these dashboards that are providing um stronger information about their progress towards their their Community goals and so there's a lot for us to be learning however for me when I look at the result Clauses um as I've talked to um chair mersky about these are very prescribed exactly how the city administrator should reach those whereas Clauses and so you know I know from my perspective that the city um is working on redoing a website and I don't know to the degree that we can get this these you know things up on the information up on our website or we'd even actually want to take the time right now in the midst of everything to spend the staff time to do that as we're transitioning over um you know sort of the the work plan with the with the timeline and due dates you know however the city administrator um chooses to manage this work is is fine by me as long as we have this outward facing information we're reporting back um in a way that's clear and transparent to the public so for myself this evening I'm going to be voting against this not because I don't um support the general purpose of it because the prescription for me as a council member this is a bit overly prescriptive however as a convention I don't think that Commissioners need to be as concerned about this um unless you are sort of a you know you know there's more that you want in here um councilmember Regina and I will be taking this environmental commission has passed something similar um and trying to work to implement this in some way um this moves you know in our in our city so I just want to explain myself a little bit and explain my thinking and on an happy to answer any questions too uh other Commissioners what is your perspective on this what's your recommendations um we've commissioner Colin Garcia as you mentioned uh John I did have some input into this already and so my question now is I'm really really grateful that you shared with us Cosmo Briggs what your perspective is on this and if you wouldn't mind um elaborating a little bit on how in even though you would be voting against this tonight like like what aspect of it would you be bringing forward um with council member Robina thank you yeah and so for me I mean I have to look at resolved Clauses that's how I read a resolution I look at within the result clause and this is what I mean and I if I'm voting for The if I'm as a council member I want to be able to take something that is in a resolved clause and feel like I'm going to move poor really wholeheartedly move forward each element in a resolved pause um and I I can't commit to doing that um this evening however I think the spirit of this resolution is great I think the general substance of it is is is spot on um the details of how we work it out um is is what we need to work with um Our IT department on our city administrator um I think there's a rule for um yeah working with other council members to hear what they're hearing in other commissions as well but I think the the piece around you know for what I'm looking at is in many ways you know this this public services dashboard piece around how we're improving transparency on our um in progress towards our stated Community goal um that's that's the piece that I'm committed to moving forward thank you very much for explaining that elaborating any other comments so I think from a Robert's Rules of orders perspective we had a motion to consider this we had a second we had discussion about it it was then reviewed and updated it was uh changed and is in front of us uh again my personal uh hope is even actually that this resolution does not go to council as is for approval that this be recrafted reviewed uh in terms of overall priorities of the city um best practices um not only within the city but outside the city and that something in this Spirit as well as in the spirit of the other uh resolution passed by the environmental Christian moves forward um I'm hoping uh is again speaking for myself and I won't take it personally if people vote otherwise but I'm hoping that the energy commission approves this um simply to say we we believe that this is necessary and appropriate not only for a20 and climate and energy but more generally across the city so I'm gonna let others speak again and then I'm gonna ask for a vote does anybody else have any other comments Okay so um all those in favor of passing the resolution please raise your hand and say aye all right all those opposed okay so the motion passes the resolution passes um I didn't count the number but it's uh one all votes four except uh council member Briggs voted against as she indicated that she would and I think we all understand why so thanks very much great so it is 8 26 and I know it's getting late but I would like to at least introduce the last resolution simply um as something for our consideration um so hopefully people have had a chance to at least skim it um obviously we had public comment about it I'm wondering if we can get a motion to consider it and a second and if so then we can take brief comments and then based on some of those brief comments uh get an indication of um are there key elements that need to be reworked and to provide uh maybe a subgroup of this group to look at reworking um the resolution as appropriate um between now and a second reading uh is there interest in this and can I get a motion to consider the resolution moved by commissioner Peck and seconded by commissioner McKenna so I'll open it up for discussion Mr Sharp I just had one one um clarification about the whereas statement with the state Bureau of construction codes not adopting the zero code appendix um my understanding my current understanding was that it hadn't it had neither been explicitly adopted nor drafted so it's just um or left out so it was that was just a clarification yeah that my interest may be that we need to look at that language my understanding is it's not any of the drafts that are currently being considered for approval so the light the the assumption is that it will not be approved but maybe we need to retweak that language to reflect the less certainty there but okay great good point other thoughts councilmember Briggs um and we talked about this earlier today um this is we're gonna read the resolution um again a future meeting I think it would be helpful to change um the last couple of resolve Clauses so Focus very much on directing um city council um just specifically to do certain do work in this area um and to leave out references um necessarily even to the city administrator or City Planning Commission um just being cognizant that maybe it's not appropriate for we generally try to stay away from other missions directing other commissions to do work um but I think you know urging city council to be focused in on on um on specific issues is helpful um I also think it's important to know that we are evaluating our options and reviewing them very carefully and so um sorry sometimes we I have to think very carefully when it comes to sort of Legally related issues and so um I guess I'll just leave it at that I I sometimes I'm careful uh I just don't I want to be very careful in my wording here um this is something that I find to be very important as well um so council's action on this doesn't have anything to do necessarily with um lack of Desire on the private Council to do things other thoughts or questions so I'll leave you with two thoughts um there's really I think two points that are being made by this resolution and the first is that um we're just simply encouraging with the first resolved Clause that the city move as quickly as possible recognizing that it is doing so um in many different ways as uh in some ways uh that are not so visible even to us as Commissioners and certainly um to lay people and the second I think is the second resolve Clause simply saying um that whatever approach we take um and there have been a number of different approaches that have been looked at the possibility exists that the preferred routes may not be something that can go into effect immediately um and therefore it's just simply asking um that the city look at other levers it may have and there's just a few examples that are given here and it's not meant to be prescriptive it's just to be to give some examples that there may be things that the city can do in the interim to really drive the type of Development and Construction that we would like to see here I think that's really the message that we're trying to to deliver if indeed we agree to pass this so I I I prefer not to take a vote I don't see that it's necessary to take a vote we've already discussed this um we have one council member that's participated tonight I know that council member Dean has also looked at this um so um it's there's no real urgency to do this there are some things that I think we can do in terms of tweaking with the language and um then we can vote on this uh a month from now and maybe craft this a little bit more precisely but I think we heard the messages from the public and I think if we speak with one voice that provides another um push to look for Action at these two levels uh commissioner McKenna thanks um I agree with you thank you for your comments there and just offering uh help to revise this if if anyone's interested um I know I'm seeing something right now that I think is technically inaccurate um just from a technical engineering standpoint so um I'd be happy to read it over and provide comments if if anyone wants to read them or do that with me you have another volunteer right here um any other volunteers which doesn't mean that someone can't uh propose language changes uh when we take this up again but if anybody else is has interest um either let me know now or let me know later otherwise I will work with commissioner McKenna and probably in consultation also with staff and with the two council members and then we'll bring this back um in in uh our April meeting unless something dramatic happens in the meantime which would be wonderful okay good so uh we may actually get out of here in a few more minutes the last couple of things on the agenda is a report from the energy office and then we'll open things up to reports from commissioners sure um yeah first thing I'll say you all should be subscribed at this point to the uh OSI newsletter um if you're not feel free to either let me know or go ahead and get yourself subscribed on there um but that there's lots of great news that'll come out of there um there's a couple couple things that have come up just recently and by recently for this one is just today um we've just been awarded two different grants um from semcog for a couple different uh a couple of different things um the first is for uh fiscal year 2024 um it'll be the for the conversion of some street lights to LEDs uh the award is 980 000 plus a local match of 245 000.

For people participating remotely, please remain muted and video disabled until shortly before it is your turn to testify. When I call your name, unmute yourself and your time will begin. After your minute is completed, staff will meet you will mute you so that we can move this hearing along in an orderly and efficient manner. Okay. First item on the agenda is House Bill HD1 relating to school facilities authority. This transfers $200 million of general funds previously appropriated to the school facilities authorities of the Department of Education to the school facilities special fund appropriates an unspecified amount of funds out of the school facilities special fund for the school facilities authority to expand access to eligible children for prek. to testify. Lewis Salia, uh, chair, vice chair, members of the committee, Neil for the department. Uh, the department wants to offer two comments on this. First has to do with depositing all the money into the special fund in fiscal year 23.

and drop period eight and the following day different periods drop out of the schedule so that design is advantageous for a variety of reasons so kids are kids additional instructional time which should support through the achievement and it also gives gives our students and staff members Variety in what their day-to-day experience looks and so by having different courses at different times of the day that may increase their intensiveness and their engagements at the middle school they are also working to design a new schedule so the proposal has Ela and math classes lasting for a double period of units uh science social studies and specialist classes will last 40 minutes teachers are looking at two 40-minute questions per day as well as a duty assignment this model will also have an increase in instructional time in math in LA to support student achievement students will also have phys Ed or health daily as well as other electives and one great thing about both schedules in both buildings is they both offer us opportunities for intervention and enrichment that we can explore as a district to directly support student achievement we also as committee uh did review some of the programming the district is preparing for the summer so there are programs for a variety of students inbound kindergarten kindergarten students elementary students programs in math and literacy programs for English language Learners as well as programs for middle and high school students as well as an extended school year program for students with disabilities so those programs with the exception of the program for inbound kindergarten children generally we'll begin in late June and run through later thank you Mr Dawson any questions on education [Music] okay I just have a few quick items first as you saw in your elab um our board has officially reached all of the criteria to become certified so we will be that will happen in May at the council meeting and we will receive I suppose it's a plaque or something that you can display proudly here after that meeting as far as our upcoming schedule with Glenn we're going to keep our training going and as the president said earlier April 26 you will be here to go over self and superintendent evaluation as many of us have invested with processes before at this point we have approved 17 and a half hours which is actually more than we need we've done things we were getting hours for something we couldn't honestly even realize like our superintendent search uh when we were trained on that and we're going to do set our goals and then we had a retreat on board structure they were all counted towards ours just so that we're aware of kind of keeping up with things at the end of this calendar year two and a half of those hours do drop off so we have to keep over 16 to keep our certification so we just have to be mindful and we would have to do ethics anyway but we'll keep looking at the trainings that are available and we'll pick some for next year that are meaningful to the members as well uh next we very quickly discussed our Five-Year Plan and our progress we're in here for right now coming to the end of year four and we're in right now quite honestly it's quite Broad and very difficult to achieve so we're going to be working to give it a little bit more of a narrower Focus over the next year it is the charge of the governance committee uh under the guidance of Dr Freeman so that's not something that will be starting soon but maybe this summer or going into the fall we'll be starting to look at our next five year plan and let's see oh and we briefly talk about some of our new committees um one that we talked about and this is for you this is extracurriculars coming up to our community and for people who goes along with it talking about maybe going to an every other month schedule once you've kind of met with everybody like me because you've got the ball rolling and that's really going to be up to you that's something you want to do or not but that's something we've brought up only because of schedule as we add in another extracurricularly taught me that they could you know go back and forth so so that's something you want to talk to you about um but we should also those of you who did volunteer for extracurriculars we should start reading pretty soon because as an ad hoc you know we have a few things that we want to accomplish there and at least discuss and lastly uh the negotiations committee has to reconvene uh last time we used the HR committee we'd like to stick with that if everybody on HR is okay with that or if any you know if any other members have any concerns we'll obviously listen to them but that was our thought that's the way it went last time it seemed to work well we did a good job with our negotiations so as long as you guys are okay with that on HR that's the way you'd like to do negotiations again I mean I think that's everything I have together [Music] um [Music] um okay um started advertising that in this school and I just feel jobs.com and then the first three days we have the 400 years so it was determined that there was never really a clear version of rounds throughout the description um they're so far away all right we have a clean step of clean javascripts regarding the medicinal um [Music] protect them yes okay um we'll be working on the toilet they're working on the 2015 for 10 years yeah foreign positions [Music] 1.6 million dollars that was created by efficient Humanity budget is recognize greater revenues requires school districts and restricted unassigned Surplus facts over the Judgment backgrounds [Music] the purpose he said at least purchase the ceilings upgrade ones and that safe costs are also serving budget tax and um we've been discuss Appropriations remind them of communities through this new budget is incredible it's a zero things about again by redirecting resources directly towards classroom programs of instructions that is self other fixed expenses required in those traditional development additional staff the dominant analysts I mean it's increasing application Solutions expanding and expansion textbooks educational programs different amount of programming extensions is a budget translation especially in transportation transportation as well uh facilities are being upgraded at the high school Lafayette Lamont Elementary small swinging more than the points in the South Stream Lafayette a little bit see the bathroom Renovations the field looks absolutely incredible The Heist will feel house is the best boxer will get in the loops the high schools costs and the budget is at hand however the tax consequence of the residents uh we also um talked about a great reconfigurations basically our enrollment is coming up here uh where where the best time for the problem and The Architects of the unit view of community of facilities as a result of the Democrat academic the Amazon graphic study the following reports smaller schools are expected to have third grade which will remove approximately 100 450 students smaller school has the greatest enrollment pressure causes high student influentiality increase look that's more consider these options school hours will also be scheduling also deeply discuss we also discussed definition of human Sports programs and your competencies and with fun excuse me a chance to create children as part of an 88 AC upgrade uhcl overall the committee worked the entire hour and the presentation was I I have to say Beyond anyone's expectation and again a public thank you to our industry uh [Music] to see you know how things started our population is increasing so um you know having problems but again these are possibilities I heard you say um possible changes in school hours um I think that had to do with recognition of how difficult uh [Music] uh that probably issue with an entire year where we have so many different instructions that it's just generally addition to the student uh again that's about keeping our options open and the same opportunity to Improvement and trying to burst people for the potential concerns um [Music] no I think that's uh exactly it these are options that we presented you're currently looking through uh you don't have any conversations as to what would be the best option so they may or not it may not happen but we want to be in the public aware so it's not a surprise excellent any other questions please okay uh so for Community engagement uh um we didn't actually have the opportunity to host any committee members of us should say community members so what we did is we took the opportunity and look at the next three months with an accepted activity to see where we think food or at least become stable ongoing operation and so we identified a few different groups uh basically the kind of food Circle being seen this club in the house uh as the final three groups that we wanted to meet you um [Music] objectives [Music] um I think that's a great impact and I think what we're finding is now that we've reached out to um leaders Within These few years versus medium and monthly monthly group that's like so we'll just continue to stay in touch with all of those great committees out there doing fabulous Minister uh I'll always stay in touch um just through the phone call email foreign [Music] okay um every other month in February [Music] okay at this point now do we want to revert back and address the budget yes Mr chair um the way the agenda is set up is first we will have a presentation on the budget and invite the board members to come down to the first vote and then we'll have a public hearing where any members of the public have an opportunity to express their position on the budget and then we'll have great questions and then very good so at this point uh foreign foreign presentation um are very excited to present the budget community because we were very proud of you have constructed what we think is a near perfect budget when I say perfect budget what I need is a budget that expanded our educational programs to better meet the needs of all students all classifications while still being financially included and making sure we didn't put too much of a burden on the pump so before we start and I'm very big on this thing uh before you do a project that took so many people including so much input to so many people to kind of thank those that were involved we want to start with the Board of Education you all because uh you have given us Direction ideas you've been very active in the process and give us parameters to work with them that make it made it very easy for us to uh come to the budget that we have you want to give special thanks to the operations community all of the back and forth uh Mrs upco Mr Dawson Mr Januzzi this is either all the back and forth the ideas the questions which sometimes you think that we mind because they're giving us a hard time but it's not the case because what happens is when you ask questions you kind of make us sharper in terms of the way we're thinking what's expected what the community was like so we appreciate that very much also we I want to say personally because we started a new process which Mike will talk about a little later we started the process whereby we did zero budget which meant that instead of adding the percentage from the previous year which happened most of the time what we did was we started from a zero baseball you talk about the needs of our teachers our students our parents all of those things we broke the budget from the ground up which is very different to be scared because it takes a long time I know Mike was was sweating having a heart attack about how long it was taken initially but then they embraced it what ended up happening was we had so much input from everybody involved that it allowed us to get exactly what we needed so I want to thank the central office administration Beth Mike of course for working their magic also the school releases they were charged with going back working with the supervisors well the teachers to ask questions to give input which was something that hadn't been done before so the teachers everybody was pretty good luck and initially but once they engaged them they saw that the input was really going to be taken whatever happened was a beautiful thing we got all the input from all the stakeholders and mainly from our teachers who are the ones in the classroom who really know what students do what's going on in the classroom okay so our main goal are for the budget was very simple it was a develop a budget that supports an educational program that first meets the new the needs of all students so a lot of times we uh make a budget or a budget is made in order to address anybody on equal level but of course when we have different classifications we have different levels that need to be addressed such education differently talented bilingual all of those areas we really took a look at all of those areas saw what specifically they needed needed as a whole so that was the first thing and then behind that was the board charged this one was we look at how the community or the local taxpayer was going to be effective and I'm happy to say the impact on the remote Community will be awesome likewise said it was a teaser I won't tell you the dollar amount I let uh Mr Gorski tell you that but I can tell you there was minimal impact to the local taxpayer and we created an education programs totally outstanding what you'll see okay so three things we considered we can say the mission statement the board goes as you can see it kind of summarizes what we're trying to do the Bible Public Schools is supportive Multicultural community that provides an Innovative and academically challenging educational program while offering a variety of extracurricular and social opportunities that encourage lifelong learning so it's not just those things in the classroom these are all the clubs and the different activities that spark kids interests uh build ideas and um spark creativity that which is needed in order for them to figure out what they want to do once they leave our homes is that our district goals as Mrs news head talked about one of the goals was established or for me to establish myself as an education reader which I can say uh humbly that that's been the case and you can talk to teachers administrators to create a safe environment where students and Staff feel comfortable taking this and working collaborative that was a big push you know as we we talked about we don't talk about it often but one of the things we wanted to change was the culture the idea that everybody felt safe expressing themselves giving input taking risks and that has begun to happen I know with the board I say that the weekend reports where I kind of give you a little summary of what happens and I know some of you have are implementation with teachers you can actually see them here to change that is being made to the culture and last the qualitative and quantitative measures to inform in response I've talked about data data data from the beginning the fact that we must use data to measure how students are doing and to figure out what we need to do in order to get them where they used to be so we've spent a tremendous amount of time with that a lot of professional development we're actually at the point now where teachers are using the data in their classroom with something they appeared initially but now they're using it raining as our administrators and supervisors so that's the first step the first sign for us that we're moving in the right index and then of course our board goals pretty simple the Strategic plan which um I think this is the news that Mr Brown talked about uh the the adjustment or planning for the ever increasing enrollment and our facility needs and last but not least the continued professional development for the board which I'm happy to say that they will receive the uh what What's the title of the uh foreign okay when planning our budget we looked at uh some keyboards and considerations and you heard this in uh on this is upco's report we have increased enrollment our enrollment is increasing every day and it's not just the enrollment but it's the types of students that are coming into the coming students come in with limited English with uh interrupted educational uh experience which require more needs uh more support and this budget is going to make sure that we Supply that aging facilities as we all know our brothers are 100 years old that requires us to praise as well as well prepares throughout the years so we have to consider that we're making the budget and this is the New Jersey student learning standards which is you say data because the money standards we wanted to make sure that we started to focus our educational programs our teaching and learning on the actual New Jersey student learning standards which means the curriculum new programs and professional development and that's a student performance data which I just spoke about and of course the student ratios we want to keep our class size down so teachers can actually teach and pay attention to the individual in small groupies of our students rather than just teaching and letting the middle uh succeed and what happens when the fastest thing to do and the last as I said before was the the tax impact on the community which is going to be very excited all right and now I'm going to turn the program over to Mr voice who's going to get into the details of the budget the Bound Brook School budget for the 23-24 school year was developed within specific parameters set forth by the Board of Education to prepare a comprehensive zero-based budget within type Revenue meeting the needs of 37 projected additional students according to our demographic study for next year allocate an increased amount of resources the programs and instructions became that same thing over and over again but the goal established early on to Dr Freeman was to throw out the Playbook and come up with a new design for the budget called zero face which empowers the future principals supervisors and directors to design the budget to be accountable for the budget to have exactly what specifically what they need instead of a percentage put on last year it's got a one-size-fits-all it's a custom tailored budget for every store and every program it has expansion of curriculum programs and Staffing to broadly improve student performance that's our objective to push the needle on student performance budget for capital outlay projects taking advantage of the new New Jersey Rod grant program which reimburses school districts like Bound Brook for 40 percent of eligible project costs and other projects required for health and safety we've been waiting for this in our field for over a decade for the state to open up the rock Grant window again and it is wide open and we have an architect working with us in the applications of being prepared now and they're ready to submit and budget for inflation we are seeing increased costs predominantly in transportation we Outsource a lot of our routes through the ed Service Commission and they put them out to bid those bids are coming in extraordinarily High uh probably because of fuel driver shortages part shortages bus shortages and everything else that that industry is facing and also maintenance and janitorial services and energy are also areas of budget that are growing beyond our cap growth and and budget to cap meeting the needs of all students this budget has been professionally constructed to afford every student an opportunity for an exemplary education by well-trained committed staff in a safe and secure environment opportunity is made available through a comprehensive curriculum which offers diverse course offerings and co-curricular clubs and activities we believe that our proposed budget is efficient and we were recognized in our County budget efficiency review with the increased spending by going to cap this year the district has reduced the under adequacy status and what is the adequacy status adequacy is a state model which calculates what would be the necessary level to achieve and provide a thorough and efficient education to every pupil in the district last year the district was 3.4 million dollars under what the state considers adequate enough to meet tne we've cut that margin by more than half reducing it to 1.5 million under adequacy for the 2324 budget what is the budget creation timeline the budget began in November with the establishment of a budget philosophy and then we studied enrollment patterns specifically at every school we had a new demographer come in and study the enrollment data and do a five-year projection we review staffing needs at every school with all of the principles going through every section and staff need then we ask the principals to begin developing their budgets which they were all submitted timely before we left for when to pray because we're all developed from scratch everybody entered their items into our Genesis software and I'm pleased to say that with very few exceptions nothing has been cut or removed the principles did a very fine job in my opinion are budgeting for exactly what they need um and uh Dr Freeman Mr Fish and I are talking about on performance and then we go through budget defense rounds we met as a team within principal we went through every line item in their budget in their case it we ask for adjustments to be made so that we have parity amongst the schools and create efficiency and the final project product once it was all Consolidated was a Consolidated budget with some fixed editions for energy and things like that which require a percentage estimate based off of last year and then the governor's budget address is is uh usually the second Tuesday in February and then the release of state aid comes out 48 hours later by Statute tonight we're having the adoption of the tentative budget and then it will afford the board an opportunity to think just like when you lease a car and you could make the final adoption at the next meeting in April what is zero-based budgeting we've heard a lot about it so I wanted to get a technical definition here that are related to refer to I'm not going to read it to you but um it's basically a budgeting technique which all expenses must be just period or starting from zero versus starting with the previous budget and adjusting it by a percentage or increasing it where you ran short the year before it's a highly effective tool that helps eliminate waste and also creates buy-in and accountability with our principal supervisors and directors these can be refined along the way we manage the budget throughout the year and we can make adjustments where necessary and this is a comparison of traditional budgeting versus zero based again starting from scratch requires new expenditure justification is decision and goal oriented cost and benefit justification is required lines of business management and propose expenditures there's greater Clarity and responsiveness and it's more thought-provoking by every component that goes into the budget where does the money come from this is a pie chart of our revenues and and Bound Brook is fortunate that 58 of our revenues come sleeping that is a double-edged sword that is good in years like this one where we're getting an increase what's expected to be good again next year as S2 and we'll get to that in a minute is fully implemented it's a challenge where the state tax revenues deteriorate don't meet their budget estimates and uh you'll wind up with potentially a cut in stated um we're actually planning for that already because the economic conditions are changes every night so we're planning strategically for if that day should come and then federal aid is is about five percent of the budget going back to the revolutionary period the federal government has had a hands-off of education and deferred the design of education and the financing of Education to the states fund balance as Dr Kingman mentioned is one area that we can control administratively that's the effect of management of the budget it's recognizing revenues that were greater than what you budgeted and expending money less than what was uh budgeted and those savings roll over to a subsequent Year's budget as another Revenue source and miscellaneous Revenue the district is engaged in a tiered CD program with the bank where we're recognizing between 150 and 200 000 of additional interest Revenue compared to last year because of favorable interest rates the tiering of CDs um and also the management of camps there's a handout which is a comparative Revenue schedule and I'll just mention a couple highlight items we're going to post these slides and the attachments to the website so the community and the can have a look at it but one of the large areas that grew was fun balance because of the 1.6 million dollar creation of excess Surplus and also the state requiring that the uh restricted Surplus which went up to four percent of Appropriations and years past were the same the squirrel more money for cobit um needs is now forced down to two percent in that calculation goes into excess Surplus um taxes it's not the intervention is going to cap but not utilizing any Bank cap we respected the previous board's decision to budget under cap and although you're allowed to roll that money forward two years we are letting some of that expire and not using it out of respect for the taxpayers certainly we could find and Justified ways to present suspended but I think we're satisfied with without it other Revenue we have 2.3 million dollars of tuition Revenue coming from southbound Brook to put in two previous years of budget adjustments that rolled into that number Dan stated as Dr Freeman mentioned is up 5.6 million dollars we were close to having a balanced budget when the state aid was announced and then we utilized most of the money to purchase all of the fixed asset items that we're going to present in a moment instead of least purchasing them over five years and incurring about 160 000 a year in interest costs so it saves cap room for the next four years and saves money and interest and if you notice also the state requires a conservative budgeting with respect to federal grants they require you to budget only 85 percent of the prior year because of conservatism and the general fund tax levy um the 20th it begins with the 22-23 adjusted Levy for an enrollment adjustment which was eligible for because as Dr Freeman mentioned we're growing above average there's an adjustment for health care costs compared to the state health benefit plan which is going up 15 in premiums this year we do not have that we have a private plan and then that calculates the 23-24 tax levy cap compared to last year it's a 588 thousand dollar increase in the general fund Levy again no prior your bank cap has been appropriated you can read this at your leisure but S2 is an adjustment to the school funding Reform Act of 2008 which is the current budget law still it's Antiquated obviously because it was it was enacted as well in 2007 2023-24.

um [Music] um I'll just stop at this category and see if anybody has any questions there's any discussion I'd like someone to move um action action action items like to enter number 10 and the beginning action items under number 10.11 as well and 11.

Every student inducted as a full member into the National Honor Society this evening has met and maintained the following qualifications. Each inductee is classified as either a sophomore or a junior. Each inductee must have and maintain a 3.5 grade point average on a 4.0 scale. Each inductee must have a clean discipline record and maintain an attendance record of 95%. Each inductee must demonstrate leadership by participating in extracurricular activities and outside activities. Each inductee must demonstrate service by participating in community service initiatives. The National Honor Society is an organization dedicated to recognizing and encouraging those students who demonstrate excellence not only in the classroom but as leaders in their schools and communities as well. It instills students the core values of scholarship, leadership, character, and service. In part because members must distinguish themselves in all four of these categories. The National Honor Society is one of the most prestigious honor societies in the nation.

so we all got a graphic organizer and wrote our own bills first we brainstorm things that are issues pet peeves or have bothered us during our through our school day from the bus in the morning from the bus in the afternoon any part of our school day then we came up with our claim the claim became our title for our bill we had to have at least two supporting reasons that bill was needed for examples of our school experiences hello my name is Elijah healing IV after our bill was written our names were removed and a letter and a number was assigned to our bill if it starred in the House of Representatives it was H1 or H6 if it starred in the Senate it was S1 or S6 each of us was were then assigned to be a senator or a representative we met in our committees first the leader was appointed there there were readers and only one speaker at a time you have to be holding the speaking stuff toy to talk we established our rules so we all felt comfortable for example once speaker must be respectful and listening to how to how other people think about the build as being presented and if you did not like the build you would have to say it in a nice way that that you that you did not like it hi my name is Delaney Kelleher after each bill was read and discussed we voted each bill was either passed or tabled if a bill passed in the Senate it was then passed to the House of Representatives and if it started in the House of Representatives and passed then it would go to the Senate only bills that passed in both parts of Congress will be read by the president he can then veto the bill pass the bill by signing it or ignore it but if he ignores it it becomes a law if he leaves it for 10 days in Congress is in session if Congress is not intention for those 10 days it does not become a law if it does not become a law the bill can go back to Congress and they can discuss and vote again if the bill passes it by two-thirds of majority it can still become a law we learned that less than 10 percent of the bills become laws on average so we were pleased that tobel's passed the author of these two bills are ready to present to the president hi my name is Natalie Freeman there should not be teams for each of the hallways the teams or communities should not be separated by assigned hallways one reason is that you cannot see people from other teams if you have friends on the other team you can't go out to recess with them or eat lunch with them or even go on most field trips with them also if you have friends on the other team not being separated by teams will help you keep in touch with them right now I can only see my friends on the other team if I do things with them outside of school so instead of teams there could be different recess groups for different months that way everything can still be organized but you can still see other people if you were good friends with someone who was in your class last year but they are on a different team this year then you can't hang out with them at school I strongly suggest that the teams or communities be given more opportunity to mix it up so let's start with the placement of the classes not being by teams in the hallways hello my name is Natalie carroza at lunch we should be allowed to sit with other fourth grade classes we should be allowed to sit with other fourth grade classes at lunch because you might have a friend in a different class that you want to sit next to you might want to talk to your friends that are in a different class especially if you are feeling lonely we should be allowed to sit with other fourth grade classes at lunch because you couldn't meet new people and make new friends meeting new people can help us become more social we should be allowed to sit with other fourth grade classes at lunch can you imagine finally sitting with different friends that were in your third grade class can you imagine making new friends outside of your homeroom foreign [Music] my own fourth grade experience which my teacher put in uh Schoolhouse Rock hell bill becomes a law and we didn't discuss it again [Music] living Congress these guys they made it real Mrs tally made it real and a favorite question I asked is and I'm going to ask you again with respect to sitting wherever you want in the cafeteria if I were to sign that as a law how many of you think that it would increase my popularity rating or approval rating yeah so that great brought in a great discussion on sometimes the president signs laws for that very reason well so certainly I signed that into law and you want to sit where you want in the cafeteria they went through the entire process they've earned that it is a law you will be doing that with respect to communities in the hallway they were very agreeable in gosh all the teachers are already moving at the end of the year so to move them now just would be mean but our promise was in the new building which certainly lends itself to this we have one great hallway per grade level so we can mix those communities so you guys blew me away and I remember when I went in there I said hey I've got three choices [Music] right away they knew what the three choices were hey you could pocket veto you could veto or you could just pass inside his law and one child said but if you veto it's gonna come back to us and we're going to vote on it so I definitely applaud you upon Mrs Holly thank you so much [Applause] Dave microphone oh phenomenal to work with and they really did just kind of take this into their own hands and really went through the process I wanted to you met the speakers but I also have Riley Evan and Brynn from my class that were willing to come to support those that were speaking and they are acting as Congress they were ready for questions they were ready to answer pocket veto questions if that's okay they were here to support and I just that's what I mean my class this year it's just they're just there for each other and it's just fun to teach and work with them and this is a prime example so thank you for letting us come and brag and share a little bit because they worked hard on this and let's not quite let you off the hook if you guys can come up here okay it's all it's all good guys I'm here in case I promise easy favorite part about being a member of Congress if we should um pass it or redo it okay same question favorite part about being part of Congress probably that the only people that could speak were the people that had the stuffed animal and I felt that we did very good with that my favorite part was discussing and voting on bills nobody said president that's okay that's okay thank you thank you that's fantastic that was just fantastic right parents you ought to be very proud of your uh of your kids we're going to go on with the agenda you are welcome to stay and then watch what we do it's not Congress but it's part of a part of government but if you do need to go home because it is uh 7 15 at night and it's a school night we would understand completely okay we'll give them a second you guys are okay [Music] bye [Music] that was fun so uh all right so uh next up on our agenda and Caitlyn are you ready to follow that all right next up on our agenda is our student representative report uh Caitlin says let's give them a minute okay yeah I figured the noise was abating a little bit all right hello everyone um I just have a few updates for you all today so the Brookfield High School play The Little Shop of Horrors will be performed this week Thursday through Sunday Saturday night there will be a dinner and the play option so please buy your tickets now to support our students SATs for juniors will begin next week most have been practicing through local or online programs so they are ready to do their best one student at BHS Kayla Zimmerman just began a brand new Cub called club called Morgan's message this club will revolve around removing the stigma surrounding the mental health of student athletes in remembrance of Morgan Rogers a Duke lacrosse player who lost her battle with mental illness the information for the 2023 senior prom was recently announced with a theme of red carpet which we are very excited about the junior prom will be held March 31st at the Amber Room uh tickets are on sale now for both the boys locker room project will begin this Monday and the new track construction will begin following graduation all spring Sports will be beginning this Saturday the 18th lastly happy birthday to Dr Burrell and thank you for everything that you do for us that's all thank you thank you Caitlin learning questions for Caleb all right thank you thanks um all right moving on on our agenda next up is written correspondence Aaron scolaro wrote regarding the March first board meeting Ron Jaffe wrote regarding the Strategic plan Nick Schmidt wrote following up on opt-out programs surveys and assessments and cardiac screenings for athletes Denise rice wrote regarding a complaint Mike einzig wrote regarding a Brookfield High School library book Claudio and Sarah Amaral wrote regarding the admission to the Chicago AG stem program Monique Matthews and Marnie mcniff wrote regarding the Sirac focus groups and Andy Korea wrote regarding a board member's comments at the March 1st meeting and a request to edit those meeting minutes okay thank you uh approval aboard minutes I'll move the board proved the minutes from the regular meeting on March 1st it's been moved and seconded um I didn't register on Mr Korea's request to edit the minutes does anybody want to edit the minutes okay hearing none any other comments on the minutes okay all in favor okay all right when we're on to the superintendent's update all right well thank you for the warm reception tonight everyone very much um so I have three items tonight uh the first one is just a brief update on um our director of business and operations search we all know that we have dreaded the day but Mr post retirement is coming up uh in September and so I want to let everybody know that uh Dr Mann is actually going to be running point with her responsibilities and personnel and we're at a point now at the end of March where we'll be interviewing um close to a half a dozen candidates strong candidates and we have some board members involved in that process and we'll be working that through our best hope is that by the end of April or very beginning of may we have a finalist to share with the board and so I wanted to update you on that the next one is on the correct special education program review actually we had some great parent feedback regarding setting up uh evening focus groups and so we have a few of those established they'll be posted on Facebook tonight and then work through with the principles in terms of scheduling so we're excited about that for everyone give more parents an opportunity um outside of work hours if they work during the day so that's really really helpful there the other piece is it's likely that by the end of next week the parent and staff surveys will be disseminated as well for the program review the next thing is that it's important to note for everyone that with the survey or with staff focus groups observations in the classrooms parent focus groups if crack sees that they need more information they'll seek it they'll schedule more time in the buildings or they'll have more consultation opportunities so that was one question that had come up in some interactions I've had and so they want to do a thorough program review for us and so they are going to make sure that they do that so when they need more information they certainly will seek it out the other piece working with um correct is that the board had inquired and asked me to check in and I've done that with what correct can do to look at the Genesis of out of District placements and kind of our process as we go through and what led to some of those decisions over time and so I've actually been in several conversations now with Dana corvo who is the lead for the project and krek can provide us with an out of District study it would be a study that is separate from the current study that's underway it would be a summer study and into early fall and also working with Mr post on that our idea funds could be used in terms of the timing for that as well so that is something in terms of cost would fit within the authorized amount that the board authorized me for a few months back and so I'm going to continue to pursue that if we're comfortable with what that proposal looks like we can enter into an agreement as well to move forward on that but it would not start at all until this project is this first project is completed thorough and a report is delivered so that's a lot on correct but I wanted to make sure I got that out to everybody and then the final thing is yesterday as we all know we had our thankfully only our second snow day with the school closure it's important for everybody to know and we'll get this out we'll get this posted for everybody the original last day of school for students was Monday the 12th with faculty working on Tuesday the 13th of June now since we have had the two snow days the last day of school for students will be Wednesday June 14th and our faculty will work June 15th that's the last day for the faculty and that of course is a very important day because our Pre-K to five folks will be doing a lot of their packing and I have a lot of information on Candlewood Lake but I'll share that when that time comes and that's all I have okay thank you any questions for uh Dr parole thank you let's move on um so we'll go through the subcommittee reports and there's two facilities committees I'll let you do both of them at the same time we reviewed the school did reports and discussed Water Systems control mice and a steam leak some updates on the capital projects HVAC is coming to an end to ABS will develop a list of deficiencies and a planter rehabilitated boys locker room some subcontractors are in many days a week are looking to do most of the work during April break there's track and field equipment in the showers that need to be removed moved out of there and located somewhere else the electrical service at the middle school the parts are coming on May 5th and it's still on first as a summer job seminar seating we're still struggling to find someone to do the work flooring in the Middle School in the cafeteria there's concerns about possible moisture so we need to use six hundred dollars that was already allocated for the project to do a moisture test mitigation to give the contractor some peace of mind and we discussed requesting additional funding needed for this project as well maintenance vehicle we found one but we just may need to ask for additional funding for the utility body and a liftgate security projects many of the security projects recommended in the recent Karma vulnerability assessment are projects that are already being worked on we're installing hardware and wiring for door alarms there are five cameras left to install and we have a bid for the first floor security film ordering repeaters still looking into concrete barriers and we're getting a quote from gordian on the auditorium entrance we also requested new door closers building conditions study Dan and Ken and the custodial staff at a kickoff meeting with Marcus ocubo they discussed the scope of the work and the timeline they're excited to get going April 10th the 12th they'll be in to do a site visit about one and a half days at each school and by May 31st we should have the final report we didn't have any new business and miscellaneous discussion Dan reported on the condition of the Wolves after the lockers were removed to the high school that's part of the voice for change Grant project Dan also met with Harry Shaker and they took a tour of Center School to discuss the possible use of the building for a library in parks and rec the cost of bringing the building up to code is extremely high you just can't come in and use it so there's nothing really to reuse and we inquired about the actual cost of reusing it where the cost of keeping it open and heating it moving forward and maybe at a lower temperature also so a suggestion was made to do a walk through with the library board as well um I'm gonna talk about the guidance sewing roof but that kind of was what our special meeting was about on Thursday March 9th we discussed and motioned and it was approved unanimously to request additional funding for the high school guidance swing roof replacement and the purchase of a maintenance vehicle we requested that the board of selectment and board of Finance we're going to bring it to them to allocate an additional 142 200 to the high school guidance Wing roof replacement project for a total of 467 200.

this week um but I will um leave it there and see what questions or comments you have regarding my recommendation okay um I'm gonna back back up before we hit that and just ask if anybody has any questions on uh anything else that that the superintendent had to say um budget budget issues any of the other items I just kind of I just want to confirm that the meeting tomorrow night for Board of Finance begins at six per the agenda that was filed thank you thank you for that okay yeah so one question uh the hundred and Seventeen registered for kindergarten and where is that in terms of what you expected in terms of number of sections we're planned for yeah so um I believe we plan for 180 students so that's about nine students over uh what the projection is but certainly we will be able to absorb those students into the six sections that we um are planning for yeah that include the six right it does it does okay and and I know it's not unusual for kindergarten and Roman to increase over the summer uh when would we need a seventh section but I will get that information to you okay thanks anything else Joe hello thank you everybody is the number of um kindergartners is that affected does that affect how many open Choice students you're recommending or does that have no bearing on that it doesn't have a bearing normally we offer 10 seats over the past few years we have received um about five or six of the seats have been filled so I thought uh it would be proven to offer six seats um and then see if we could fill all of those we've we learned that students is it a bit more successful kindergarten or first grade the earlier the students begin with the Canton curriculum the more successful they are Kevin you'll you'll keep up to date but if you add those well it depends on how many you know take the seats but you'll keep the class size limit the policy within range if that goes over you would add another section remain policy okay thanks it's just go ahead Joe I'm sorry I'm sorry no no in the event that we had to add another section uh do we have room for it to Kevin that was to you yes yeah so we have one last third grade next year so we would have a classroom however we're planning to use that classroom yeah that's what I that's what I saw put the third grade class size at do you have those numbers yeah I'm sorry I don't have them right in front of me that's come up in the community about class size and I know we have um I think 18 students in third grade we're projecting 18 for next year so there's no change we're going from six sections of second grade to six sections foreign on that 117 and as Joe pointed out there's some likelihood that we'll pick up some students in the summer whether they're kindergarteners are not that's to be determined but if you picked up another five and you went to 122 does that make that the biggest class to come through Canton at this point no no we've had classes with um more students than that yes okay so how does everybody feel about the uh the six I guess Kevin's looking for some guidance on that is that a vote Kevin or what is that just um I just um always like your input um does anybody feel strongly against that or any comment it says you know we've offered more seats than that but I think um knowing that it needs of our students at this point in the numbers of students and all the other ways next year okay well it sounds like everybody's uh okay with that so thank you I appreciate it Erica were you going to say something I was just I just had a thought how does that affect us uh budget wise yeah so it's it is okay thank you for asking that question anybody else hey um I'm just having a little bit of a hard time listening and following because um Kevin you're you are echoing again I didn't know if kyrad could troubleshoot that a little bit it's the voice of God Cindy that you're listening to so I can certainly try it the one thing try is just um check your audio settings right on your mute button click the arrow that looks up and then just make sure your microphone is um using your system or your computer microphone just check that and we'll try that as an option system if it doesn't you should try that yeah is that any better there you go you got it Cindy thank you and I'm very sorry Kara thank you for helping me troubleshoot so Cindy do you need me to repeat anything okay Kira that was amazing nice job kid what a great feature yeah okay I might have missed that are you proposing that we may have 122 in kindergarten next year um well 117 yeah we could yes so the 122 puts you out 20 perk no Kim that was me I was just projecting if he picked up another five students Kevin is proposing 117 of which six come from uh Choice okay yes but I I confuse things because I said we had a hundred families attend and 17 families didn't but the six seats are included in that 117 number so really it's only nine families that didn't but we're getting closer we're getting close to 20 per class is in our policy 16 to 18 per section let me review that because I want to make sure we don't go over our glass sizes so if you'll allow me just to review those numbers with the office staff make sure we've accounted for every uh kindergartner and I will assure you we won't go over the class size policy thank you yeah Kevin if we run into an issue with um class sizes do we then have the ability to reduce the number of choice seats to get down to the number we have to be at or we sort of contractually bound to take however many Choice seats we've we've put ourselves out there for right that's why I'm being very we are bound so that's why I'm being very careful about the number of seats that we offer anyone want to offer seats fill the seats and then tell the families know we don't have room now Kevin what's what's the kindergarten uh class size today this this group yes Mr Bishop do you have those numbers in front of you I do as I I look at um what our our data had been showing with us it's about 16 to 17 right now yeah 16 to 18 for grades K through one did you say we're at 116 for the class and we're at 16 to 18.

this resolution if approved to oppose we would send copies to both of the county committees so they were aware of our position going into it as the study uh continued um can you give some examples of some environmental issues uh I might have to turn to Mr uh Mr Shin green on that one I know one that was brought up I'm not sure if it's a legitimate one but uh Mr screen do you know any environmental ones that might there are no specific issues that I'm aware of exactly but it could fall along the lines of things of traffic impacts uh as a result of revised travel patterns from the development to propose School sites and could also involve a myriad of other sort of similar impacts that may be caused by the change in flow and traffic patterns that would result from such a proposal thank you thank you very much is there any other questions or comments or the attorney or Mr Lair okay thank you um is there any public comments nothing okay do we have any board discussion on this at all Mr Bruno Mrs Anderson do you have any discussion Mrs Anderson Mr Bellin student Representative no chair does not either do I have a motion to approve business item a and please State your motion please State a motion you could just read what business item a says and that could be your motion so you could just read what business item a says and that could be your motion the way it is the trans opposition to transfer petition and further requesting the classroom Sacramento County committees on School District organization deny the petition okay thank you do I have a second on that motion okay very good General consent an advisory vote thank you very much very good second reading board policies regulations and Exhibits are there any further questions regarding business Item B is there any public comment Miss Carol nope I didn't but thank you can we bring it to the floor for a discussion I'll move to bring it to the floor and I appreciate that do I have a second I'll second okay thank you now is there any questions regarding the okay thank you and we do not have any bored comments so do I have a motion to approve business Item B reading policies regulations and Exhibits as a whole I will move to approve them as a point very good thank you do I have a second okay thank you General consent advisory vote very good okay moving on to business item seed first reading policies regulations and Exhibits this is in regards to policy number 4118 4119-14219.14319.2 4218 and advice administrative regulation 4218 do I have a motion to bring it to the floor for a discussion I'll move thank you do I have a second well thank you very much is there any other questions regarding these policies this this Pope if I might jump in just to explain to the board just for public the reason we brought these back it was requested by one of our trustees uh to reference understand the reference to the Bremerton case it was a Supreme Court case I just wanted to point out and I think Mr Grimes for his paragraph behind it explains um the process why when we get our samples from csba anytime there's amendments to our policies they they reference Senate bills assembly bills laws uh Supreme Court cases that might change or alter the um the the language in a policy and so the only reason the Bremerton case was referenced is because it did have impacts as you saw in your backup on um some potential employment thing which employment uh related items that's what these policies are related to Personnel matters so I just wanted to clarify that uh no no change was done to the policies from last meeting thank you for the clarification Mr Lair and sends that clarification I'm going to re-ask is there any public comments nothing okay okay um do I have a motion to approve business item c as a final reading thank you do you have a second all second okay thank you General consent okay advisory vote thank you Mr Mason moving on to First reading policies regulations and exhibit this is in regards to policy 3515 campus security can I bring it to the floor for discussion thank you do I have a second I'll second okay is there any further questions regarding policy 3515 campus security okay is there any public comment I have a point on this item I just suggest we at this point we we pull it because the uh this deals with uh legislation uh that directs I believe that there be certain guidelines and and documentation prepared which is not expected to be completed until July of this year so what do you mean by pull you mean table to read table correct yes please uh just and I Mr ballen I think I'd uh sent an email to you that that will be addressed in a separate policy this uh policy was only addressing um I think it's surveillance and locks as it related to that uh assembly bill so the the outline the the parameters that you're describing uh will come up at a later date and it probably in a different policy um so I just want to make that that uh clarifying point with it okay so no need to table this item okay very good do I have a motion to approve the final reading for business item D policies regulations and Exhibits all moved okay thank you do I have a second all right okay General consent final reading yes yes thank you uh advisory vote okay thank you moving on to one other policy board policy 30 73 10 naming of facilities do I have a motion to bring this to the floor for discussion also move okay do I have a second second okay uh Mr Bruno since you brought this forward would you give a brief introduction um this started with me wanting to expand our options for when we're naming School sites and other facilities to give us more leeway in that um trustee ballen also had some things that he wanted to incorporate into it so he and I have been working together and this is what we have so far okay very good um Mrs Anderson do you have any discussion on this policy through it can you tap on your mic please I'm sorry I kind of was puzzled reading through it because I couldn't figure out we had one page from Center one page from City and we ended up with three pages I don't know how you guys did that it was kind of interesting um it seemed a little wordy um to use Dill's food to be honest um but I like what you put in it uh and it ties everything up really well uh sometimes I worry that we say too much and it really ties us too much to certain things we have to be careful about that but overall I think it's a good policy um Mr Bruno or Mr ballen I'm sorry so uh uh my version um was essentially I I looked at what other districts not only uh in California but but throughout the country uh the language and um I took what I thought was the the best of the best and that's what I uh put in there with uh trustee Bruno amending a few things advisory comment I read it over the weekend um I asked some people about it and they all seem to agree on that word on the wording um myself um I wanted all due respect gentlemen because I was wondering what the heck happened as Mrs Anderson stated it went from a one-page policy to a three over three page policy and I couldn't understand why the actual policy was Rewritten when it was stated that we were going to use our policy and take some Snippets of Sac City Unified um and plus it is very wordy um and I just was kind of confused in why it was Rewritten is is basically it and as Mrs Anderson had stated sometimes when you put specifics into a policy then you are kind of limiting yourself into decisions in the future so um that that's my comment um do you have anything to add to Mr Bruno um um not a whole lot um I think we were making good progress on it we've both had things going on and didn't get to devote as much time to it as we would like um so at this time I'm going to move that we table this item um probably for a couple months I don't I think we're far enough along that for the immediate needs our current policy will suffice and um we just I think need some time to keep going back and forth and working your suggestions into it unfortunately because of the nature of board work only two of us can work on it so choo choo um this is the only way we can get your feedback so can I add a friendly amendment to your motion or to your table to table your motion a couple things is I wouldn't be inclined to change the name of the policy changing the name of the policy does include going through csba it's quite the process there has to be a re-numbering situation and it does take time naming a facilities for 73 10 I think the name the name of that policy itself is sufficient the other caveat would be if we can keep it to a page a page and a half is my thought my opinion okay those will be goals for us but just my opinion okay there's you've got others um so is there a second table all second to table the this motion um and then you know what let's just go ahead and take a vote on the tabling um trustee Bruno hi okay Mrs Anderson thank you trustee balance aye um chair votes eye and advisory vote please thank you very much thank you gentlemen moving on to so I'm sorry Ms oh just for my clarity and Miss hunt sorry I feel like I'm just coming out of nowhere when would you like us to bring this back would you like me to work with uh Mr trustee Bruno and trustee ballen and then we will bring it back once we feel like we've met some of those parameters or just looking for a little little direction thank you mine I think we should just continue to work on it and then when we feel we have a good one we'll schedule it yeah I I agree um I think with uh being a board member sure it may be uh the first of the next uh school year as soon as that doesn't mean it keeps growing yeah we're gonna work on in the other direction okay thank you then I I will go in a weight a waiting pattern then okay thank you okay okay very good thank you um everybody on that we'll continue on to business item F naming of Career Technical education CTE facilities do I have a motion to bring it to the floor for discussion so moved thank you do I have a second oh second thank you Mr Bowen uh Mr ballon you brought this forward did you give a brief introduction to this um so in um the initial stages of the CTE buildings being developed um it just occurred to me that we have a number of buildings in this District as does other districts and other government entities where they name in honor of people who were responsible or greatly contributed to the actual building or to the actual subject or ant or type of work that that building encompasses and in in thinking about this um a a person that I came to know came of Mind who I think was very much responsible at least from a a philosophical perspective of these dcte buildings being built and with that with those thought I thought it was be appropriate for the buildings to be named after or at least at least one of the two buildings to be named after this particular individual who was greatly responsible for trades and vocational training and education in this district for many many many years and so I suggested that we create a a move forward in in creating um the ability to name these buildings by such a person or persons that we deem appropriate thank you very much is there any public comment is there any public comments okay um we're going to go to board discussion I'm confused as to what we're doing he did an introduction to the item ask for public comment now we're going to discussion okay okay Mr Bellin did you want to give further discussion on that you said well I'll expand further so um an individual who is a member of this board for I'm not sure how many years 20 something years by the name of Ray Bender Mr bender and I uh in my activities with the district over the years had many discussions and he and I were very much a liked to think in terms of not every student is going to have the opportunity to go to college and how can we best prepare them for their future um thus vocational and and trade uh training and education was a subject that we we spoke of often and something that we uh felt that should be expanded upon in the district uh if I'm not mistaken and maybe Mr Lair or or board member Anderson could speak to this but at one time we had a Cisco Academy here in the district that I believe Mr Ben uh that the uh this person I'm speaking of is by the name of Ray Bender Who is a member of this board for many years that he was responsible for and so I myself would like to uh basically put his name in the Hat nominate them or whatever terminology we're going to use here to recommend that the buildings and or one of the buildings um because it was brought to my attention that another building maybe asked to be named after another individual which I would have no qualms about either so um I guess that's it I I don't know if you I say I nominate or I never command or I suggest or uh uh you know I I I'm not prepared with um uh his history um in terms of what he contributed but uh if we need to bring this bring this back to uh for further discussion or continuance of any kind or tabling I would be more than willing to uh speak with District staff and and the Bender family on how he greatly contributed to this District well there's nothing to table because it's not an action item it's just in discussion right now so um but thank you thank you for your comments Mrs Anderson um I know you have some words to say I do um and I went back and pulled some information on Mr Bender because I think he is so well deserving of this and as Howard said he had was on the District board for over 20 years he was also um recognized by the Placer County School boards Association and awarded the school board member of the year for them he was very much into vocational Ed and technology and basically forced the district into technology he brought digital High School to the district which brought teachers and students into computers and technology and basically introduced them to it he insisted on the groundwork being laid the fiber optics being laid to bring the computer systems into the high school when the high school was first laid out um he was twice a delegate to the California school boards Association he was instrumental in getting the first Bond pass to 59 million dollar bond which brought us three schools or he was you know here when we built three schools the bond I'm not sure did the bond pay for North Country Scott are you still there I I think it assisted in it yes I don't know if it paid for all of it but it absolutely contributed well I think it was all of them were matched with I believe you're right brought in two Charter Schools well he was here at least helped with those um all of that being matched for State money and the Performing Arts Center the classrooms the high school the computer labs um he was instrumental in bringing open court to the district which was even before the state adopted the program he was a big supporter of that he was into the bringing the health and services to the district it's a mosquito I'm sorry Hill services to the district um and really championed that program at one time we were almost ready to offer a medical assisting program he set it all up so that the union the the head union guy in the state of California at least some of the head Union people were going to set up apprenticeships for our students um all paid for but they had to have 18 year olds and so at the last minute it fell apart it was we didn't have enough 18 year olds but Ray went out and laid all the groundwork for that he was five times toward president he was um vocational training he was big on because he realized all kids weren't a College Bound even though he was very high on making sure kids were ready for college and that they earned college credits in high school he supported that program 100 but he knew that other kids weren't going to college and that they needed to be also prepared for work as well as the kids who were possibly going to need extra help and needed to have extra training and just workability that was a program that he brought to the district and pushed for to where those kids needed training in job applications and interviews and just maybe sweeping floors at McDonald's because they were specially challenged kids that need extra help that was a grant program that was brought to the district he worked the snack bar for over 10 years and that's just not a Friday night job he's there late Friday night when everybody else is out having pizza cleaning the snack bar two days other days a week he's out picking up supplies then stopping the snack bar and all of those extra jobs he truly was dedicated to Center School District and the students of Center School District if there was a uh tournament the kids didn't have the money to attend um a league fee they couldn't pay he found a way that it was paid and half the time they never even knew where it came from or if a kidney to choose and Ray found out about it he'd pay for him and they would turn up somewhere and the kid didn't know where they came from we had a student one time that didn't have a place to live his parents wouldn't let him live at home or he didn't have anywhere to go he was living in a field and the Benders took him in and he lived with them for at least two years well he finished high school I don't know that I have known anyone who was more dedicated to kids and the students of Center than they were I would be in full support and I think it would be well deserved to name at least half of the building or they're the one building after Ray and I know the other building's been mentioned to be named after Vern Bishop who passed away as a teacher in the district and who also did a lot for the district and the students in the district so that would be my thoughts on the idea so I would appreciate it if the board would give that some consideration thank you very much Mrs Anderson Mr Bruno um unfortunately I did not know Mr Bender sorry unfortunately I did not know Mr Bender um but and you guys all are aware of my general reluctance to name things after people but um frankly from what you guys have said it sounds very appropriate especially since he was instrumental in laying the groundwork for what led to the CTE program um I would just ask you know that we look for any reason that might this might be controversial at all but it doesn't sound like there is and as far as Mr Bishop goes um I can't object to that either my only comment in um is that both individuals have already had a ceremony of recognition and a facility or a building or a partial of a building named after them that's my only comment I'm Mr Mason um I wouldn't be opposed to having having Mr Bender be the name of the CTE buildings thank you Mr Mason okay um what do you want to go from here did you want to put it as an agendas item in a couple months once we give it some thought Ponder on it and um but I'm going to go back to uh whatever if it was the last meeting a board meeting or the one previous so there will be from my understanding a some form of a a ceremony dedication ceremony for when the buildings are ribbon cutting whatever you want to call it um so with that said it would be appropriate that if they if that was to take place that the naming of the building is already been decided on and the appropriate placard or whatever it is that we are going to do is um is purchased and um and adhered to the building uh in time for such a ceremony so I don't uh there were different months that superintendent Claire brought up I think everything between May and September so I have no objections to post postponing um further discussion or action item it or whatever course the board would prefer to go I'm fine with that as long as we make the timetable as it relates to the opening and dedication of the building as my understanding is it will be open and ready for business for the next school year hey um Carol how long does it take to have those breast plaques made what Nancy or Miss Anderson what we'll do is probably honestly the sooner if the board wants to consider that next month our plan would be to do the ceremony once the ribbon cutting right at the beginning of school when it resumes so what's at August 3rd this year August 5th so if the board would want to consider that next month that gives us hopefully enough lead time to get whatever we need done um from there I don't know Miss hunt might have a better idea on some of the plaques I know she helped me before okay I was just assuming it would be like the regular Plants standardized it would probably be like a bronze plaque of what for yes and and the one we did for Vernon and I think those took at that time a month okay so we'll bring it back um for future discussion um when we talk about future business items we'll talk about that when we talk about future business items at the closing of the meeting okay okay we're gonna move right along to business item G instruction material adoption grades K ten through five Foss generation science curriculum do I have a motion to bring it to the floor for discussion so moved do I have a second oh thank you Mr ballen Mr Larry do you want to give an overview uh yeah just the basically I think the the background material shows and supports this but really what's completing the cycle for our tk5 uh as the the backup shares we we had it uh ready to go covet hit we got derailed with that and now we've piloted the materials we've had them on display for folks to to take a look at and we've identified the the Foss curriculum would be the one that we would be recommending to meet those standards and then move forward very much is there any public comment Mrs hunt okay very good board discussion um trustee Bruno uh seeing this agenda item I did a little um research online um looking into this and uh It generally receives uh positive uh comments and the links that were provided in the board packet it looked like pretty good material so I concur that was what I found Mrs Anderson I'm good okay advisory that's good and it looks good to me so do we have a motion to approve business item oh shoot business item G instruction material adoption grades K tk5 fuss Next Generation so moved uh do I have a second second okay General consent okay advisory vote awesome very good thank you very much we'll move to business item H English learner newcomer curriculum adoption middle and high school do I have a motion to bring it to the floor for a discussion awesome do I have a second thank you Mrs Anderson Mr Larry would you like to give an overview yeah so as as the material shares there uh we have seen it a significant increase in in newcomer uh status individuals typically those are individuals who who really have uh zero English and so this program is something we've identified and that will help us fill that Gap with our other ELD curriculum I know our ELD teachers English language development teachers have really been striving to to meet the need and they've done a great job but this will help them meet the needs of our our students as they come forward very good is there any public comment okay um is there any board discussion Mr Bruno Mrs Anderson no Mr ballen student representative nope board night or chair neither do I have a motion to approve business item h all motion to approve business item age do I have a second all second thank you General consent it's very good advisory vote very good thank you very much and then business item I 2223 second interim report and do I have a motion to bring this to the floor for discussion so moved thank you Mrs Anderson thank you Mr Bruno and the lovely Mrs Coronado hello hello I've submitted to you the second interim report for approval and that looks at the fiscal activity from July 1 through January 31st it also looks at the budget and the projection through the this current year and then two subsequent years enrollment I'm pleased to say that it is still going up um I've looked I follow Sacramento Area Housing sales and the sales the the amount of time that they're on the market is longer and the salary and the cost has come down a little bit but they're still selling well and our developer fees reflect that we are taking in about five hundred thousand dollars per month consistently which is what we took in last year per month consistent so we're not showing any slowing at all in our own area or the Sacramento area at large so we're really hopeful that those come in and then we heard today from Mr Farrell that Rex Fortune has topped 100 students so I think they're at 101 now sweet congratulations so the suits are continuing to come we're excited about that the daily attendance um we are still working on that we look at the attendance regularly trying to get our students who are chronic absentee students to come to school and so Mr brassy has been leading that charge the Ada goes down because we have that three-year rolling average where we're protected from the declining enrollment which has been up until this year so we'll see our Ada go up in our ears now when I look at the revenue versus expenditures we are deficit spending this year by 4.4 million dollars but the next slide will show why we're doing that we're spending down our one-time funds that we had in our little savings account we'll call it the out years are more important because I only look at Revenue versus ongoing expenditures and we have a surplus of about eight hundred thousand dollars there and then the year following um have a deficit of about 600 000 that's within a margin of error where I'm not too concerned about our spending pretty much even at first interim um it was a little bit different we had um we have five hundred thousand dollars more spending this year because we're spending one-time funds which will be the next line and then next year we have a greater Surplus it's going to be a negative at first dinner on my projected but now it's up to eight hundred thousand and that has become because we received home to school transportation funds and that's about a million dollars also we had a 5.38 polar increase it was projected for first interim and that has been increased to 8.13 Cola now it's second in a row we have to watch that because the legislative analyst office says the state can only afford a 6.4 percent colab so they'll be battling out how much of a cola and that's cost of living increase which doesn't mean cost of our living is the cost of doing business and then the out year in 2425 our demographer changed the projection of our students and so that changed our Revenue significantly so I'll be watching that that's the third year out we have time to see how accurate our demographer is the one-time expenditures that I mentioned was the two million dollars that we negotiated for the salary bonus I mean it differed by the unions but it was about two million dollars total of one time um expenditures and then the two million dollars of one-time expensive Miniatures for the board committed maintenance funds we had 700 000 site discretionary funds and all the sites and departments received 25 to 75 000 just for facility needs so in the business office we are redoing the flooring the carpet and painting so we tried to focus on on needs for the facilities that you just don't get money for regularly and that totaled about seven hundred thousand dollars and then other maintenance and Technology was about another 200 300 000 so that's where we get that negative spending but these are one-time expenditures so it won't be negative in future Lisa in regards to one-time expenditures um the monies don't expire so for instance if if they said for instance you know expires by May 2024 and if you don't use it you lose it is that a is that right or no that's correct this is from general fund money so that does not expire good good thank you so when we look at our ending Sun balance because the board increased our our Reserve from three percent to six percent that brings our unappropriate and Dean fund balance lower than in previous years but we still have a healthy surplus of 2.2 million dollars read that it's too small um but there is a healthy Surplus each year that we can still draw on and then I just included a slide of the board committed funds so that you can see how we're doing on the spending of the funds that you set aside carryover for unspent School site funds so last year they didn't spend all their money that carries over to this year that has all been given to them so the balance on that is zero the supplemental concentration Grant funds we have not used any of those yet the balance Remains What was carried over and now those funds are going to be used for the pandemic relief positions that we added that'll get us through next year the HVAC upgrades fencing general maintenance the two million dollars we have spent about one million dollars at that so there's about one million dollars left when I'm looking at the projection for three years out or this year and two years out I had a great concern of special education it went up about 3.6 million dollars over last year and that is a trend that just can't continue our Revenue only went up 460 000 so I brought this information to Mr Jordan um out of concern because as you saw our Surplus was only eight hundred thousand dollars next year so we can't add on another 3.6 million dollars next year or we won't have the funds to pay for it so Mr Jordan took that seriously immediately and went and met with all the school sites in their special education departments and um the preschool program and brainstormed ways that they could reduce the cost while still meeting the needs of our special education program and so the eights of you pets and I want to talk about that in a minute yes yeah thank you I was going to say that and these are not our employees I know that that was a concern that came up out there in in the district these are contracted employees we have open positions we want people to apply and then we don't need to use these other agencies that cost a lot of money so thank you Mr Jordan for helping fund 20 we still have our um opeb retire other post-employment benefits for retirement that we are putting money into the trust I haven't done that this year yet but I will do that before the year ends we have 445 000 in fund 20 to go in the trust and we have 1.4 million dollars in the trust right now our liability um by the actuary company that was 5.2 million dollars so looking ahead we want to look at the governor's Revision in May um he could revise this current year still he took away some of the art music and and discretionary funding because that art music proposition passed in the state the voters approved it so they're kind of battling that out does he have the right to take back that money now or not so I'm interested to see how that plays out we're watching special education and seeing how the redu the costs come down the ongoing cost of course watching the attendance rate and enrollment and new construction in the homes because that brings in enrollment and just watching the economy in general so I have to say that the district's still in great shape we're hanging in there I appreciate the unions I know they are anticipating I thought they would be here they're anticipating you know and salary increase um all of the the special education increase that 3.6 million dollars equals a 9.47 salary increase so that was lost by increasing the special education cost so if we can bring that down then maybe we can talk about a salary increase also that is 68 of our coveted position costs that's 51 FTE um three quarters of the year that's the cost of what the special education would equal so we want to bring those costs down so we can keep people pay them what they deserve so that's mainly what I'm watching right now so that's just not the contracted individuals that's all of special education it's all of special education but the contracted individuals is what has made that amount go up so much significantly understand is there any public comment before you go yes yes Mr Jordan will you go to this Podium place that's okay Lisa pre-coveted about 72 8 we call it aids isph is the structural assistance we ballooned up over in the last year and a half to over 140.

Aloha. Welcome to the Senate Committee on Education. Today is Wednesday, March 15th, 3:00 p.m. We are in hearing room 229. This meeting, including the audio and video of remote participants, is being streamed live on YouTube. You will find links to viewing options for all Senate meetings on the live and on demand video page of the legislaturator's website. This Zoom meeting and YouTube live stream event will include the 3:00 p.m. agenda for the Committee on Education. In the unlikely event that we must abruptly end this hearing due to major technical difficulties, the committee will reconvene to discuss any outstanding business on Friday, March 17, 2023 at 3:00 p.m. in room 229, and a public notice will be posted on the legislaturator's website. I'd like to take this time to remind our testifiers that due to time restrictions on our hearings, we will be limiting testimony to one minute per testifier per bill.

is going to have a adverse impact on our esser calculation. We would and for that reason we would suggest uh deposited in the money in fiscal year 24 instead July 1st rather than uh before June 30th. The second one is uh we just suggest that the committee may want to consider looking at the definitions in terms of what the special fund can be used for because our understanding is some of the contemplated uh facilities that for development may not fit quite within the definition of allowable uses right can you give an example well uh if they're going to do uh preschool facilities in the civic center area. It's not a school. I'm not following you. They say it's a school and they build it. No, no, but but when when you look at the definitions of the school facility things, you know, the project they're talking about is at school.

a lot more watch board meeting we are honored to have our students and staff with us and actually a board members who are going to be recognized tonight for their outstanding work we will start this evening with the students from Lamont and so we'll have Dr s come on up to make her presentation good evening congratulations to Jesus is currently in preschool teachers Mrs ranzaniak he loves playing with his cars running on the playground with his friends and learning at school his career plan is he's a future in fixing cars from Mrs brazilianak hi Jesus I had the privilege of choosing a student of the life this month I felt really hard that who has made the most progress in her class we have done so long at school I thought he should be the student of the month here are the reasons I've chosen here for student of Vermont you have come out of here shy style you are playing with your friends you are so sweet and playful you want to do your best at school you'll become so independent at school you have learned so much this year I have been honored to be your teacher this year continue to do your best but I always started if it makes you uncomfortable because it will you keep trying it will be easier I promise you that it will congratulations to you about this is are you here come on up [Applause] boys okay congratulations David school subject David's famous school subject in school is math and you will ask Hayden was playing his Pokemon toys Katie wants to become a firefighter when he gets older pharmacist Hayden is incredibly thoughtfully here he has always supported his prize in Sharing others on Creative feels my classroom experience a positive attitude and so much behind us congratulations community College soon hello everyone so on behalf of Miss Clark from Lafayette school I'd like to recognize literally Juarez Caballero Kimberly is a student in this regard for Jackson's class Kimberly are you here where's Kimberly um Kimberly is uh has a brother Derek in second grade and her favorite subjects are reading and art Kimberly's favorite hobbies are painting and coloring and when Kimberly gets older would like to be a veterinarian for her love of animals [Applause] thank you lafayette's next student of the month is Michael Phillips Michael was recognized by Miss Jorge his teacher and Michael doesn't have any siblings but his math I love that all right who's your sibling hi honey well we got you now maybe just didn't want to admit I got it favorite hobbies are video games board games and play football and best of all when he grows up he wants to be a creature congratulations [Music] thank you as Molly would love to recognize Grace Santiago Rodriguez as our third grade student of the month she is in Mrs strange class she two siblings Ashley and Joseph her favorite school subject is Matt her favorite hobbies are painting and making arts and crafts and their career plans is that she also wants to become a teacher when she grows up congratulations Grace thank you our next throughout the month is Justin dominius whoever's please stay in grade four and evenings for wages class he has three siblings Kevin rental and one his favorite subject is also math please favor having our Sports and video games and he let the street for the start of his curriculum to be the best soccer player in the world congratulations [Applause] our next year of the month is David corporate in fifth grade she's in this civil laws class she has two older brothers her favorite subject is language arts she likes to draw a sketch and play on her computer and she wants to be a veterinarian when she grows up congratulations [Applause] thank you and finally we have Andrea Calderon menu bar she's in sixth grade she's in Miss Helman in Mr Church's class she has three sisters her favorite cool stuff that her son she loves to play with her friends and she's still thinking about what she wants to do for her career right now she's focusing on school congratulations Andrea he's got to send a sermon back from Community Ministry [Music] hello again everyone all right our first representative from the Community Middle School is Kevin Rodriguez Kevin was nominated by his teachers Mrs Bennett Mrs Peterson and Mrs pettish Kevin has a sibling Diana at the high school and his favorite subjects are computers in art favorite hobbies are working on the computer and long-term plans would like to become an artist Kevin's teachers wrote polite and respectful young student those shy questions opposed to him and is always prepared Kevin is kind and a good friend to all students he can always be counted on and work well with other students in class Kevin is a talented artist and his drawings are amazing he will go very far with his talent all of these qualities make Kevin our choice for student of the month congratulations thank you good job okay I don't know how much Kevin does another round of applause again [Applause] our next student of the month is Anthony AJ scarpolo AJ was nominated by his teacher Mrs pettish AJ's one brother and four sisters his favorite subject being math hobbies are playing outside and especially playing basketball and when he grows up and this is a first for me I'm so proud wants to be a military pilot [Applause] just a few words from Mrs Pettis I have AJ my social studies class he's a pleasure to have as my student he's such a polite and kind young man he's helpful and friendly to all of his classmates and respectful to his teachers he's an advocate for himself by asking questions when he needs clarification of directions for assignments he works well on collaborative projects with a partner or in a group he gives his best effort to all of his classes so no one deserves this honor more congratulations thank you [Applause] relax relax our high school all right good evening [Music] Crusader citizen of the month award is in recognition of students demonstrating positive Crusader citizenship trades such as responsibility respect kindness Integrity cooperation power and gender perseverance it's my pleasure to announce our recipients first Leah Mendoza [Applause] has one younger sister a favorite subject is history because she likes learning about the past but David Hobb favorite hobbies are faking and listening to music and her future career plans she wants to become a pediatrician thank you our next recipient is the Lewis and Allen check [Applause] all I do is guys sibling Angelina his favorite subject is Art because he likes to draw his favorite hobbies are drawing making videos and photo editing painting sculpture clay making candy and learning to play guitar his career plans he's on tour of what he wants to do this time some people are related he definitely wants to travel the world and we'll do the skateboard [Applause] yeah absolutely all right next we have your friend of mine Mr Jeremiah Valley [Applause] everything for boys and everybody connected with Miss Fazio favorite hobbies are playing games watching YouTube listening to music and talking to friends and he's still undecided what he wants to do for me [Applause] last but certainly not least Denzel Arena the Dell does not have any siblings favorite subjects or that history physics in Spanish they are all classes but talented and make you think critically and grow it's Gabriel Thomas our soccer go to the gym work church and electrical Construction career plans at the further news education at a university in the field of business management congratulations foreign Elementary School she is committed to both the boundary school district and her students Mitch Rodriguez always offers to help translate meetings for parents with teachers child study teams and administration which I am very much thankful for during parent-teacher conferences you can find her running around the whole school going from meeting to meeting Ms Rodriguez knows how important it is to be flexible so you will rearrange her schedule so that she can best meet the needs of the staff and her students Ms Rodriguez loves to collaborate on activities to help build upon our students Knowledge and Skills across the curriculum Smalley Elementary School is honored to have a staff member like Miss Alania Rodriguez this recognition is well deserved congratulations [Applause] thank you with my old school mate [Laughter] [Applause] o with AJ Grady's and Kevin who are all my friends thank you [Applause] next Mr X-Men and even once again it's my pleasure to recognize the support staff member of the month from Belmont High School Jordan [Applause] my hair would not be as gray as it is effectively and as efficiently as it does on top of her duties as the administrative assistant for myself as the principal she also serves as the treasurer of Student Activities as well as the graduations are substitute whisper the item finder and the listening beer for teachers staff Ms Jordan treats every student in Denver at dunbrook high school is another one of her own children demonstrating mutual respect she's constantly checking on students making sure they are healthy but mentally emotionally and physically she's consistently seen speaking with students at the Halls that go out to school while helping to manage student accounts for fights documents and whatever else students need to be successful well this whole rare occasion that you may not always have the answers she knows where to direct them to Best Buy the helper additionally Ms Jordan does a lot for our wild history does a lot for our students she does extraordinary amount for our staff and teachers CSS teachers with helping find coverage on days out whether on a field trip or sick prints their class rosters and helps ensure that all classes have to substitute for covering tutu the story defines new ways every day to help reduce the amount of work for teaching instead because we simplifying reimbursement submissions creative online forms for documentation and submission and bringing in new methods Technologies and styles to best hate others in this school as a whole by streamlining the streamlined processes that's making these different teachers instead to submit requirements if you have a question or need something quickly to destroyed it has you covered for pleasure supplies to meet us for clubs to student accountability make sure it's passion and knowledge is extremely helpful it is for these reasons among so many others that Bellbrook High School recommends and the schedule Jordan has support staff of the month assorted Define our rhythm-less mentality and deserves a recognition for tearing out the mission position of our district it's Jordan you are limited [Applause] thank you foreign [Applause] [Music] ER board members who's in the audience with us tonight that's Mrs himself uh Michelle was with the board of education for 14 years with almost half of that even in a leadership role as president of the Board of Education and so we just wanted to take a moment to highlight some of the achievements of the board under the leadership and then thank her for her time and service so among the the things that the board was able to accomplish under himself Direction it included things we're still operating under today the addition of two buildings and expansion and Renovations with many of the facilities in the district uh the introduction of new and interesting programs for our students such as the CTE program and let's not forget navigating our way through a global pandemic that shut down schools for the first time in community center during that time Michelle was a star war volunteer she had a steadfast and calm approach but was also a properly decisive and really just had a knack for deploying her with humor to help navigate some of the more difficult situations and conversations uh perhaps most notably the board under themselves leadership established a fiscal posture that was allowed that has allowed our district to deploy increasing standards while keeping local taxes essentially flat for an unprecedented number of Youth it's for all these reasons and many many more that I honor the Arthur Michelle our thanks and appreciation and if you'll come up and take your own picture with us we have a nice spot [Applause] at this time we could have all the students come up we're going to take a picture on stage programs and all the students and their parents come up to the stage so we can take a picture all right [Music] yeah we're right here and then they can be in front of us them in front of us come on down oh she's coming up Here Comes Mommy there you go that's good [Music] thank you [Music] Madness before you go congratulations thank you foreign [Music] thank you [Music] oh my God [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] what is it [Music] thank you amazing foreign [Music] and then he turns guys okay all right guys I think we're ready to re-tv so if it's all right um I hope you all enjoyed the shortage format compared to what we did in February uh with no training this evening uh don't get too comfortable though training should resume numbers um probably the biggest thing you'll notice on the agenda for this evening is the budget review I just want to acknowledge that that's in respect the majority of our time and operations is going to be discussing uh at the last meeting um and really really uh looking forward to introducing a lot of new resources into our classroom uh as you've noted in the past beneficiary of a large increase again in our state we either expected students should take a lot of pressure off of trying to monitor anything within the budget taxes uh again far more Focus for the budget strategy remains uh trying to get as much investment in our caution as possible that we've done a lot with facilities uh the requested to approve the submission uh also on your agenda tonight but really the budgeting processary and Dr Kingman was about maximizing those industry uh and then my last note actually has to do with uh some some of my Adventures over the last few weeks with some Youth Sports rounding down I found myself with an official agency through time so I ended up at the njfda finance conference uh who served Rockefeller I was able to take himself um Borough Council Hill Administration so a lot of activities um the last thing I just want to give a quick shout out for some student achievement um I was also able to attend the Sumter County School Board Association meeting where Jordan Stockwell is recognized as the unsung heroes which I thought was really fantastic there's a nice ceremony places um uh I do want to make one quick administrative note there is another one tonight's agenda it's under item 8.6 it's for a potential policy change regarding recognition for student athletes by the board it's not something that actually passed through the governance committee and I just wanted to be transparent about that which is getting the course officer during the new policies but I think this is a positive step forward and really with the service of some of the things that we have to kind of recognize uh members of the community so I hope that we've had a chance to review that maybe get there we can discuss this and uh hopefully uh and that is it for my present comments you can now move on to community reports foreign [Music] the education committee met earlier in the month probably my topic of our conversation centered around uh new master schedules of high school and middle school so there have been teams at both buildings led by Mr Smith and Dr Serna about creating new schedules that might better meet the needs of our staff and our students high school I'm a rotating drop schedule is in the works on a rotating drop students have eight classes but only need six classes on a given day classes are designed to be around 60 Minutes in length and the first period of today has a few extra minutes to facilitate morning arrival one neat thing is the order in which students attend their classes changes in a four-day cycle for example on ak-1 a student would have period one two three but not period four and then in the afternoon after lunch up here is 567.

this talk about a constitutional convention at the state level to come up with a new funding formula we'll wait to see but S2 was their most recent adjustment that basically took away adjustment Aid and to growth limitation uh tasks in the budget to afford under um in any districts like downbrook more money at the expense of overfunded districts who lost millions of dollars um and had to uh you know they transition their money back to the underfunded the goal is that next year when this is fully implemented underfunded districts would be at full funding according to this srfa 2008 funding formula previously the state had a model for funding schools that did not have the resources to fully fund it so school districts got less than the calculation from the formula this S2 is an important adjustment to say no you're going to get your full amount and we're going to do it in a fair manner taking it away from overfunded and giving it to the underfelled two types of state aid Equalization Aid is designed to support a District's adequacy budget that's our largest area of a 27.7 million dollars in categorical Aid which is a type of category the districts are rewarded for efficiencies and spending in certain areas like special education Transportation Security and so on general fund State AIDS 50 of our total revenues to support the budget and here's a comparison of the individual categories Equalization Aid at the top and all of the categorical AIDS in the middle and you can see that's a handsome 28 increase where does the money go over 50 percent goes directly into the classroom and that's that percentage is expected to increase for years coming 42.6 directly and then when you allocate benefit costs predominantly which contains to instructional features it's it's well over 50 Administration 7.9 capital projects 12.9 curriculum development 2.1 grant funding we receive a lot of Grants and there's a lot of administrative effort and time soliciting grants and managing the grants five percent Transportation two percent custodial Services ground security maintenance 8.4 percent and benefit costs is just one it's one of the largest line items in the budget last year the health insurance premiums here in Bound Brook went a 13.5 this year the state health benefit plan which a lot of school districts participate in as a pool is going up 15 down broke because of aggressive negotiating and because of competitive quotes has a number only increasing 3.9 and we're not finished negotiating that yet appropriation detail as a larger handout and it shows all the comparative line items of spending in the budget you will see significant swings and increases in the instructional line items in the budget and and just costing you if you're going to use this from an analytical perspective comparing in the last year because it's a totally different budget model it's a totally different Administration totally different board totally different district and board goals and it's it's in apple and new orange budget spending is driven by enrollment this is our audited Assa student accounts for 1718-223 23 24 was projected by the demographer we don't have those numbers yet we won't until October 15th of 23.

second all right visitors are committed to comment on agenda items only kind of start please say the name and address seeing young correspondence which the word members of each episode tonight Americans District Operations we've we've had two meetings to to review the proposed budget for uh [Music] 23 24-24 and you really don't have any choice you really don't have the choice but to go to the legal maximum maximum individually increase my tax money that's going to be 2.64 I think because we have the probability of what's called thank you that's going to allow us to to Global statutory teams and the requirement and reasons for that because we have a pretty significant increase in an overall special education for us if in fact the increase the increase of this sojournal dramatic that we're leaving about nine hundred thousand dollars um put into this budget um just to be able to make the budget work so it's pretty cool dramatic dramatic change from the other from the from the last last six seven eight years this this is a tendent of budget to be far with a Department of Education and the subject to change and the uh final budget is due sometime at the end of April [Applause] all right that's it for them that's it that's it for the bad news um uh there were no no reports insurance policy another real updates and we are just putting forward came kind of quickly uh but just wanted to update uh attendance search continues first land um we were hoping according to our schedule an update by the end of March administrative report so yes the board recalls that last month I reported the biannual HIV report and um noted that from an era real quick which again so thank you so that the report is in your packet and that error was that you had not reported two as it turned out as well HIV investigations that it took place take place during that time period September one to December 31 and those now are reflected on that report all of the other information Remains the Same thank you absolutely actually actually items the solutions we're going to move the entire um the entire agenda under number 10 and under and under number 11.

I'll second Doug okay you need is if anybody needs anything services separated under 100 category a curriculum program and see if they would have had any discussion next um through everything thank you for the donations very much um the new program that is mentioned is for the preschool area one that's been out of use yes thank you I'd also like to say thank you to uh both uh Mr Clayton for Midfield uh Sam and for the national concert to run for the 5000 Edition very generous is there any discussion foreign [Music] um Mr Becker yes Dr kimbrosia yes three five pounds yes Mrs Walsh yes um visitors are permitted to comment on agenda and any knowledge of the items to say the name of Interest yeah the same saying that we have any old business so you have to have a motion for motion for a government I'm looking into attorney [Music]

Make sure I can't see the picture. Good evening. We're about to get started. Good evening members of the district school committee, administrative team, faculty, staff, family, and friends. My name is Angela Santana and I am the advisor of the National Honor Society along with Diana Casado. I welcome you this evening to the Greater Lawrence Technical School's 2023 induction ceremony of the National Honor Society. I thank you for joining us. In 1921, the National Association of Secondary School Principles passed a resolution to form the National Honor Society. The purpose of the society was to recognize predetermined standards of citizenship in our secondary schools. This new organization was formed to create in our students an enthusiasm for scholarship to promote worthy leadership to encourage the development of character to stimulate a desire to render service. In addition, the society encourages dedication to the pursuit of knowledge that benefits all mankind.

At this time, it is my privilege to introduce our current current members led by the chapter president Maline Padija as well as the young men and women who tonight will join the ranks and become members of the Greater Lawrence Technical School chapter of the National Honor Society. Ladies and gentlemen, please stand and join me in recognizing the outstanding achievements of our National Honor Society inductees. We're waiting for the music to start. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Okay, the music can stop. Thank you. I would like to ask everyone to stand, inductees and members.

[Music] thank you good evening everybody [Music] I'd like to call the uh the March 15th regular meeting of the Brookfield Board of Education to order would you all please join me in Rising for the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all can I have the kids all come up here for a second all the kids Carter you can come too so today this is a little impromptu but you guys can come too if you want yeah come on we're gonna have a little fun [Music] yeah we're not doing a presentation so Dr Pearl saying it's okay it's okay he doesn't know Dr Burrell's birthday so we are gonna all sing Happy Birthday to Dr bro you know right guys ready one two three happy birthday to you happy birthday to you yeah a deck of cards [Music] all right we have uh we have five members of our board here today um uh oh my guess we now have six members of our board you snuck in there on me um and Mrs uh Brooks has uh conflicting Town meetings this evening and had to uh go to the other one because I understand she's presenting so it's kind of hard for her to not miss that other one um uh first on our agenda is public comment but we have nobody who signed up for public comments so we will move on um and I I've always loved this part of the agenda which is our student Spotlight and today it's a student Spotlight for Huckleberry Hill so Dr Brill I'll turn it to you for introductions absolutely and I don't see Dr P here yet but that's okay because we have wonderful Huckleberry students soon to be CLE s students next year that we are so excited to have with us and we have the wonderful Mrs tally with us tonight and she is going to get the presentation started for the mock Congress and they're going to Spotlight tonight Mrs tally would you like to come up Congress people can just kind of stay up here with me okay make a line please okay all right so thank you so much for having us this evening um one of the fourth grade social studies units that we do each year is a government unit and I am not gonna you're not gonna listen to me you're going to listen to them because it really was a student-led activity um it's focused on the legislative branch but I'm going to let them tell you all about it and then if you have questions afterwards that I can answer or that the children can answer more specifically feel free all right and moms and dads and grandparents feel free to take pictures you come a little closer if you need to it's okay hello my name is Drew freeze in social studies we were learning about how government is formed what is a law rules that are needed in and have consequences if broken why do we need laws or rules Keep Us Safe make sure things are fair for all keep order and organization and at hhts we ensure we all learn to the best of our abilities we talked about local state and National levels of government and even visited the Capitol building in Hartford this the capital of our state of Connecticut hi my name is Jack Dunkerton this activity we focused on are National or federal government the government in our country this capital is in Washington DC we learned about the the Constitution which outruns the three branches of our government legislative executive and judicial we mainly focused on the legislative which has Congress the two houses which make up Congress is Senate and House of Representatives each state elects two people for the Senate which is a total of a hundred based on the population each state elects a different number of representatives of for the house Connecticut Lex 5.

and we also approved unanimously to request an additional fifteen thousand three hundred thirteen to the purchase of a maintenance vehicles for a total of 65 313. so for the guy and Swinging roof that's on the agenda for later this evening for approval for the board so that we can move forward to the board of selectment and board of Finance okay any questions for joy okay next up is uh Kate Mike so we met uh March 8th last Wednesday and Mr Andrew Hill led a discussion on the new AP environmental science book he did a really good comprehensive analysis of the current well the book that we're going to vote on and the the book that's currently being used from 2007 really broke it down nice I I if he's listening I thought that was a really good job and I commend him and his committee for breaking down that book so and I see we got a copy of it which was cool so that's that must be fresh off the well this is the one that is not the official copy oh that's just the complimentary don't use the copy yeah so we were told I said the new one's actually not uh okay we got a nice little sneak peek there so uh next uh Dr man LED discussion on the Strategic uh this the Strategic plan and how that affects Kate I'm gonna skip down to the last part of the agenda because we went over the Strategic plan but the exercise that you let I thought was really helpful uh basically she turned our agenda upside down I was like okay how does the environmental for example how's the uh the new AP environmental science fit into the Strategic plan and uh you know Debbie and I wrote down how that affects the you know certain goals and how that uh plays into a collaboration and uh so I was really really that was a good exercise so I commend you for that it's more of an active instead of just sitting there listening stuff so I I had a good time with it so and lastly the we had an update on the desktop assessment uh around 2 400 students took the assessment and we will be sorry teachers screens yes uh 24 100 students were evaluated by the teachers and more the follow-up will be done at the end of the school year and happy birthday thanks Mike this is the most happy birthdays I've received in a long time on a birthday it's quite nice thank you all and I just wanted to add that Mr Hill is hoping to be here at the point in the agenda where we're going to be talking about the AP environmental science textbook but he is actually has a cameo in Little Shop of Horrors and they have their dress rehearsal tonight so he is on stage as we speak I hope to see him before regalia tonight it would be quite nice right it would fit the environmental textbook that's why I'm ready to go Finance all right uh so we met on Thursday March 9th um uh we met very briefly just before um I think all of our board members were at the board of Finance meeting that was scheduled for that same night and the purpose of this special meeting was really just to discuss some potential adjustments to our operating budget for next year that were identified um sort of in the in the face of the 400 a 400 000 reduction that we are potentially looking at so I know that's coming up later in the agenda so um that was really that was it okay I'll move that the board approve the items on the consent agenda which are new hires and transfers second okay it's moved and seconded um any comments yeah um I thank you Mr Belden I just wanted to share we're very excited you might see a familiar name there Kristen lenise Kristen was recently our special education para a few months ago a special education secretary excuse me a few months ago prior to that was one of our valued para Educators and um took a job with the town in the first electman's office and that isn't working out the way everybody anticipated and Kristen is actually applied for an opening we had back at Center School as a paraprofessional and she was just brought on this week and she is thrilled and couldn't be more excited so and she sent me a personal note this morning to tell me so so I wanted to share that with everybody we're just so happy to welcome her back into uh into the building that's great that's great all right all in favor of approving the consent agenda okay to prove to unanimously okay we'll move on to new business uh healthy food options certification right my favorite motions of that pursuant to CGS section 10-215f the Brookfield Board of Education certifies that all food items offered for sale to students in the schools under its jurisdiction and not Exempted from the Connecticut nutrition standards published by the Connecticut State Department of Education will comply with the Connecticut nutrition standards During the period of July 1st 2023 through June 30th 2024.