are on to item 10 which is other business and on to 10A which is the unified development code downtown premiums discussion to establish assumptions and to prioritize goals so I don't know if we're we're probably getting a presentation from you all yes thank you please hopefully not hearing a whole lot from us but more hearing from Roma um just for background I'm Ben Carlisle from Carlisle warm Associates with me is my associate Megan massimonic also from Carlisle album Associates and it's really nice to be back in front of you again tonight we were last year in February um before I start really our presentation I just want to say I found the discussion earlier really appropriate and kind of teed us up really like really well into this discussion actually I turn to Megan go this is perfect um because and and then Ben used to sit over there once upon a time [Laughter] you know and I I just some of the some of the things I heard was you know not efficient use of the site a greater mix of uses site creativity or lack thereof um discussed by the overall vision of the Gold city and then how do the overall goals in the vision seek get manifested in the development proposals that come from you and I think commissioner white said um you know why are we here um and I think it's a great framework for where we want to go tonight um because we can provide you with many policy options and Zoning amendments and other things like that but if we are not all on the same page with regards to assumptions and goals um we may have some of the same concern and confusion that came in front of you tonight and so that is the focus um Can this move forward or you have to do it perfect can you move forward um that's the focus of what let me move the next one to focus of um what we really want to talk about tonight um is really talk about assumptions agreements goals and policy approaches um but before you get to that part which Megan is going to lead I am going to go over some real boring basic housekeeping items we are in front of you in February and at that time we had kind of given you our initial dive into some of the development data that we received from the city as well as some just kind of high-level analysis of what we perceived based on that review at that time you had gave us really good Insight good feedback at the mean and ask for a few additional data uh requirements as well and so break into the next slide um we've done that and so um the the four items that were really asked for was data on build projects by policy change dates data on build projects by change in the city council comparison of density with case size of other communities and lastly a map of property eligible for premiums I'm only going to focus tonight on the fourth item the map but were there any other data or any questions on the data we gave you the additional data that you had requested okay perfect then we will move on the next one next slide thank you um we found this map to be extremely interesting and applicable to what we're going to talk about tonight this is a map of the D1 in DT D2 zoning districts the parcels outlined in green are Parcels that are eligible for premiums based on the current code those Parcels outlined or colored in in light pink or very shades of pink are properties that are Zone D1 or D2 but they are ineligible for premiums so we actually did some analysis of what that means so approximately um over 50 48 I think it is of parcels that are Zone D1 or D2 are not eligible for premiums and that actually equates to over 50 of the total land area in the downtown and so um we're not creating more land in our downtown so we need to be really thoughtful in terms of how we develop that Parcels that are eligible and do we need to look at eligibility as it's part of the discussion with regards to to the the premiums option so um we just want to tell the story as well as that um this is where we heard a lot from a lot of the stakeholders was a lot of the parcels are already not eligible and so it actually really does show itself in the in these Maps moving forward next slide so tonight again um really again I wanted I think the earlier discussion was so appropriate for what we want to talk about tonight because we want to hit these first two really hard is talk about assumptions and talk about your goals now that will lead us and help us craft policy approaches as we move forward we are tonight we're gonna have those discussions and then we're going to come back to you one more time to kind of frame this a little bit tighter and present some potential policy options that we then take to the stakeholders to get their feedback as well so this is not your only by tonight we will come back one more time before we go to the stakeholders and so again we want to hear from you tonight what the purpose of your assumptions that we're going to talk about uh your policy and goals and then how does that lead to approaches to to address those goals Etc so with that I'm going to turn over to Megan who's going to lead us in that discussion thanks Ben he always leaves the easy part to me so again thank you for having us um and um I want to also thank your staff for working with us to bring all of this information and report to you and the presentation tonight we wanted to start off with assumptions because we've thrown a lot of data at you and fairly thick reports and wanted to make sure that these assumptions that are listed here are the assumptions that we're all working on we all agree on so I'm going to go over them orally and then I'm going to ask you the question are there any here that you don't agree with so one is that there's a balance of land uses in the downtown as it is important and residential is a core use in the downtown two is developing in the downtown is more difficult and more extensive than elsewhere in the city three since the last amendments to the premiums in 2019 the affordable housing millage provides dedicated funding for necessary affordable housing four a significant number of properties in the downtown are ineligible for premiums five current downtown residential prop development is either high-end low-scale residential or student housing the current market does not support building of attainable missing middle housing downtown or six and six the current premiums are not being utilized due to a variety of reasons we want to make sure that these assumptions capture what's going on in that we agree that we're working off of this basis so is there anything in that list that I read out and that's been presented to you that you do not agree with okay um do you want to call or do you want me to oh no you go ahead okay go ahead yes I saw a commissioner swallow these hands first and then I saw two so we're going to work this way oh okay okay um I had a I guess the first one was like the balance of land uses and the term balance and what was intended by that um so the the idea of balance is that there's a variety um and that they work in they work in synchronicity with one another and so you have to have the right balance for the downtown to work well and residential is a core component of that so does that mean like kind of on a metric scale like the there's ratios to the amount of office commercial like as an industry practice that balances out that they work yeah and the office snapshot the downtown snapshot that you'll have the work session on um at your next meeting um that report we get a preview of it that will dig into that and actually if you look into that what they say is that residential and downtown Ann Arbor as compared to several other college cities downtowns the city does not have the same ratio a lower ratio of residential than most of these other towns so um that makes residential that's right we said it's a core use in the downtown and therefore when you look at that data you might also be saying to yourself maybe then this is what we need to concentrate on in terms of making sure that that use is the the balance of the uses is right okay I just want to clarify that I guess there's two concerns I think the balance on the metric to be able to measure is good I think the other assumption at least for me so I'll kind of open to the discussion is if we're trying to make eligible building to kind of right size the one missing piece instead of letting everything kind of grow in Balance together so I want to make sure that like we're not saying like just enough to get it balanced but maybe that we're okay with a little bit more of everything as long as it's consistently working towards like balanced zoning instead of using kind of all the different uses together if that makes sense um okay which kind of leads me to my second one I have concerns about which is the market and missing middle in downtown because missing middle I don't think is the density goal of downtown between D1 D2 and then tc1 I think missing middle is all that space in between it um because missing middle at least to my definition is kind of low density uh multi-family housing where I think what we're talking about is more high density development in the downtown and then kind of mid to high in the tc1 so that that's at least a concern for me so I want to put that on the table for discussion as well as high-end residential and I think this is a word that gets thrown a lot around a lot um I actually don't see much high end except for maybe the condos townhouses near like on Kingsley like the for sale but a lot of that student housing is not high end or luxury apartments so okay um to clarify I think when we said high-end low scale residential that that means the townhouses and okay together okay comma and then the student housing is a different group of housing I didn't want to think that like high-end housing it was a bottle okay so I feel better I feel a lot better about that one because I was really concerned like I think we're actually seeing quite a bit there okay so Ben can sit down [Laughter] I think I'm good with high end in this context I still I want to open a discussion to missing middle um and what we mean by kind of balance to more of everything or more of something to get it balanced or kind of the two points okay so on discussion to balance and then missing middle versus um is that is that the description the right density for downtown D1 D2 correct got it okay um all right all right I will just uh say again I wanted a definition of missing middle because I had the same question in my head what I think of as missing middle is not necessarily what I think of as downtown appropriate so okay welcome to that discussion all right um I believe commissioner clerk you had your hand up same question oh yes yeah okay so um yeah the missing middle thing I would say that I'm interested in market rate rental that's not designed literally architecturally for students in mind that's what I think that we're missing in the downtown is rental that is you know that's exactly what I said on a new reset that um and so uh the other thing is yes we have dedicated I've changed a little bit or I've learned some things that make me nervous about the affordable housing piece and I agree that the affordable housing millage provides dedicated funding for affordable housing but we are being made aware from our Housing Commission that the millage isn't going as far as we thought it would go because of the increase in costs which we don't know if that's a temporary post pandemic thing it's probably not entirely it may be partially it certainly does have something to do with Supply chains but I am fearful that if after the when it comes time to renew this millage if we weren't able to deliver on close to the number of units that we promised people will not be willing to vote for a millage again okay they'll say you didn't spend it right so and so we have a dedicated funding source but I think that that and I had been thinking earlier that maybe we could relax on that a little bit and Orient our premiums otherwise I still think that that those millage funds need supplementing because they aren't going as far as we thought they were and we're talking about assumptions here so does anybody feel like they want to say wait that doesn't make sense to me or um yeah I I yeah on the affordable housing I I guess I would want Clarity I guess on the word provides needed yeah just because the um in the the first year I think of the millage it received 6.5 million and our housing leaders told us that they're able to build permanent affordable housing at about four hundred thousand dollars a unit which would mean we're only creating 16 units of affordable housing annually from that tax revenue just from the millage okay well I understand that they leverage it to to get more but just so so I would just need Clarity on how this assumption is working into what we're trying to accomplish so I assumption is re is is added on to in that since the last amendments to the premiums in 2019 the affordable housing millage provides a dedicated funding source for affordable housing however it can't solely be relied upon as the only funding source for affordable housing in the city Okay so we captured that so we've captured that and is there any other um any anything else yes that you don't agree with not that that's in this it's just Nuance or questions so ineligible does that mean permanently ineligible or is there something we could do to turn some of those pink things green you could turn the pink things green by zoning ordinance Amendment so options could be that premiums are allowed in the historic district option could be premiums would be allowed in the in the floodplain um so however I don't think we're ready to unpack those yet that's the next section and so some of those I just wanted to give that as an example but we want to have these assumptions set and then have goals then that go into it um so just one other nuanced thing on the missing middle thing is I and this may just be a matter of sort of how we're using terms I'm interested in what you're talking about but I'm also interested in small units downtown that like a young professional could live in that doesn't cost four thousand dollars a month or whatever it is you know I mean so that so that um you know somebody who's somebody who works at my firm somebody who's like a teacher or something like that they may live in a tiny little postage stamp but they have the opportunity to live downtown it's not just student housing or huge townhouses so I I kind of I want both yeah I want one so I don't want to just um eligible for far there you go yes further right right that's further down the line but I think also what we could do is on um number five but it's good to be thinking about that because you know as we all think in different ways some of us think big to large some of things large small some of us think in circles so we need to have a good discussion um but I think listening to what you're saying I think if on number five it's current downtown residential is either high-end low-scale residential comma Oxford comma for student housing the current market does not support building uh attainable housing downtown that is suitable for young professionals and non-student households middle class yeah yeah it's like middle and no sense of like middle class right middle class so I think I think we can we can take that and we can rewrite these and we would of course bring them back to you when we come to back to you to the next session so I we talked about the missing middle um and really change that Focus so it's not so much about the building form it's about what type of units are being developed in the buildings downtown and and who they can be purchase rented by and lived in by um and then what I'm seeing in my list that we haven't touched on that commissioner Suave asked was on the balance of land uses and this does something needs to change in these working assumptions which hopefully will be agreements by the time of our our next session that does there need to be something more around that balance description in that first assumption yes I'll just kind of like another way might be to think about it as like a balance of land development in uses because I think what I guess what I'm trying to get at is making it very clear if one of the assumptions is that we want to balance where we're at or set a new bar that everything reaches in balance if that makes sense right like if we up Zone it's not just housing because then we're off kilter with the other mixed uses are we interested in up zoning everything as a proposition which means we're interested in as we Upson making sure we maintain a balance that they work together or are we interested in right now it's unbalanced because we don't have enough residential are we just interested in the assumption that our goal is to get a balanced amount of housing to match the current amount of Office restaurant mixed use other things if that helps anybody I'm in the earlier category right like up Zone and add a bit more of everything um but I I want to put that out for everybody to consider like is everybody like working on the Assumption and goals of upzoning versus but getting the residential into a balanced line more office though yeah yeah right well I think that's where the metrics tell us how it gets balanced and if I can throw out one thing I think that's an excellent question I just want to add one layer to the conversation of that question keep in mind that we're talking about zoning which is a very specific tool it's a bit of a hammer it's hard to have it be very fine-grained um and have it be adaptable to every situation that's really where your master plan your comprehensive plan comes in and looking for those and setting the goals to me and what you Zoning for is to very specifically say what you want and then and then ask development to give that to you um as things are built in your city um so while that balance is great sometimes the zoning may not always be the best tool or know that you need to amend it as you have done with premiums right every five to seven years all right so go back and discuss commissioner suave's question because I saw um I I saw the city councilwoman dish had a comment and then also planning commissioner Mills commissioner dish let me go first so um commissioner sovay thank you for bringing that up I think and and I'll answer by like how I feel about sustainability this is it's going to get to to the answer how I feel about sustainability elements within residential versus non-residential it's quite different honestly because of because we are out of whack with how how much non-residential we have compared to residential and so I know that I also know the part of like the sustainability elements along with overall just more housing units right are part of this discussion so I am much more comfortable particularly if if everything going forward doesn't have to have both of those if I I'm totally cool with the like we know we're out of whack we don't have enough residential so increasing that I'm I am not 100 sure honestly how I feel about like increasing it all if it doesn't also have if if those the non-residential elements don't have all of like the super strong sustainability things that we that we need so I so I I don't think like so I'm much more comfortable with the I think what I heard you say um Miss which was like yeah right now we are out of balance and um rather than to write something that like adjusts over time that maybe we I I'm much more comfortable with like the hammer of like what is it that we're lacking right now um overall in that in that context I guess the other way to think is it are we okay with building more housing that we're out of balance the other way but still allowing more space to kind of rebalance that makes sense yes okay so that's the kind of like balance up to our current max if we still have developable area left to get balanced versus up Zone and you know partially let the markets but in terms of how our zoning is going to allow oh yeah so like more housing than what the ratio would suggest yeah yeah did you see what I'm saying like setting a certain limit versus growing yes and I think when we get to goals yeah we're going to suss itself out yeah it's yeah it's getting a little into the Nuance but yeah like okay that's different than what I thought you were like build a little bit of everything no like like I want to keep it yeah build equals of this ratio so yeah okay okay we're good okay so yes so I just want to put in a word and that is restaurants I think they are also a core thing and I would be sad if we built a bunch of housing and all the restaurants were knocked over and couldn't come back yes yeah absolutely I mean a part of this is you got to make it fun right um people don't want to live downtown if it's not fun that's the whole idea you want close proximity um but one of the challenges of restaurants I hear very frequently is access to labor right the folks that actually work at the restaurants are living in Ypsilanti they're living the peripheries so um by bringing what we talked about balance of different housing uses we can also help the bolster I think restaurant uses the let me I'm going to switch gears just a little bit on the assumptions portion it does say current premiums are not being utilized to a variety of uses seems a little um Broad and I I wonder because you guys have this chart it's on page six all the way on the bottom is that true because I'm looking at a total of constructed Ann Arbor downtown projects by CPC approval date with and without premiums and what I see are one two four four projects using premiums and four projects not using premiums so is that an accurate assumption what is the data telling you I mean I'm just looking at this chart for the first time in a actually Ben and I had a discussion about that today um when we were looking at him and Ben said had the observation that you did is it that it doesn't seem like they're not being utilized they're not being utilized but I what the way I I looked at it is when the change was made in 2019 mm-hmm to really focus on affordable housing and Link that to residential premiums that there's an assumption that that would shift what happened but if you look at the Historical patterns um you didn't get a whole lot more bang for your buck with that policy change and if your goal is to increase affordable housing and you're still just maintaining at this level you go up and down yeah and I think some of those could be argued that you go up and down um through there's economic shocks like the Great Recession and also the pandemic and you can see that but also um to use a sports analogy if anybody watches the Premier League football um you'll know that whenever yeah thank you whenever they get a new manager they win for the first four games and then they go down and it seems like you have that with your policy changes when you make a policy change then all of a sudden somebody figures it out there's like probably two two people they figure it out they go like crazy um and then talking to Alexis she's actually said like what her observation and Alex says you can reel me in if I'm wrong is that go like crazy and then all of a sudden everybody goes whoa we got a lot going on this is too much we need to stop or we need to change it and then we don't ever keep going up so sometimes it might not be a matter of time or and then also there's some things where you've got you also give your developers a lot of choices right even with the stripped down model there's a lot of choices and staff gets emails from developers saying I don't understand it and when developers don't understand things they don't take your bait um and so that's part of I think what's going on so you've got a lot of stuff going on but again we wanted to make sure that so I think that's what goes into that assumption that there's a variety of reasons um and that you're not getting what you want and you've had these spikes and go back and spikes and go back but you haven't ever had something where you felt like wow this was successful all the way through and you can see that ramp up do you feel that that's inaccurate can I just jump in just for a quick thing I think as someone who has been outside of this process coming into it the thing that I observed was that's what I meant by the policy maker change ah okay and what I observed was what you were talking about and then there was a voting shift in the community and those elected change the policy and now we're in another one of those shifts so we just had a whole new slate of candidates who all campaigned on housing but we still have some of the past policy decisions that were restrictive in housing all the way down to how it affects our actual documents so the original a20 plan had in it in its Housing section the missing middle by right that got struck and so it hasn't been put back and now the comp plan is coming and it's sort of so that's what I was getting at like from my observation so I don't know if it's a maybe it is the manager and the manager of the team or the electives and it was hey there's just too much development that's happening in this space so that that was my that's why I asked for the policy uh shifts to be added to your data because I think the electeds who set the policy also influence what we see in these zoning areas okay so back to assumptions so we had two edits that I think everybody agreed to um is there anything that you feel that is missing that has to be a core assumption as this discussion goes forward I don't know how to say this so I'll just quote someone the mayor said that Ann Arbor needs more Ann Arbor rights and I just I I just feel like that has to be some somewhere in how we're thinking about what this looks like because and I don't know you all can check me but I hear a lot from folks who come to this Podium and they'll say things like Ann Arbor is full because they have a vision of the city that says I don't want this kind of development like you're changing the character of the city that I made a decision to move to 30 years ago and it is unrecognizable and I don't like that and I just feel like there has to be somebody who is saying somewhere that we're moving in a specific Direction and that policy follows that vision because otherwise we're doing this tug this back and forth tug all the time and I don't it's exhausting for me but it's like oh well I'm here at the table so I'm going to vote for housing but it's frustrating I think for residents because it's not a clear articulation that the city should grow and one thing to look at is in 1970 when they were having a similar conversation like this they were projecting but one they were excluding black people like myself so that I couldn't live here but they were projecting that the city's growth rate would be nearing two hundred thousand in the early odds and we're nowhere near that no right and that's because those there hasn't been this Clear Vision that this is a direction that we want to move it and why she wait thank you wait um I think when we were talking about um number five that the current market doesn't support building of attainable housing downtown maybe we say that for Ann Arbor rights it in that because I think that captures a lot of things that what you were talking about and we don't have to decide that word right now I think we need just to have the spirit of it let us take it back and bring it and bring something back to you but what I'm hearing from you all is that you're looking for people who that there's housing downtown that people who work here um and who live here can see themselves in and access and be there and see themselves there 10 years from now I'll maybe frame it another way when you first heard that it felt like it was very gatekeeping I guess like I filtered it wrong in my head yeah it sort of like in our brights as we are instead of like who could be so I made a really funny face at you like what um I think in another conversation that happens a lot around this table is that local policy decisions have Regional impact to our sustainability goals is another way and what we talk about with that is uh if we become very restrictive and adjacent municipalities are not developers are going to opt to be there and the commuter traffic becomes the thing uh instead of this is you know in terms of what you can do in a walkable area and I think that may be uh what Fisher white was talking about a little bit like we're gonna lose them you know to the surrounding communities because that's where they can afford to be but they're still trying to connect in and then again to I think commissioner mills's point of like there's a core sustainability uh component that overlaps with housing like there are two goals but most of the time they actually overlap so like if there's anything it's some way to reconcile those two things in an assumption that those those aren't separate goals but they're very much married so let me Regional sustainability impact policy so well your downtown policies influence Regional sustainability yeah um and the what's what's a what's allowed or signifies to be built in downtown is part of is part of that policy so marrying these two together this region is growing and those people are going to live somewhere and which is I think what commissioner watch was saying they're like some people say we're full not here and I think that the the core assumption here that I think we can agree on as a body that we should make explicit to everyone else is that we think this region is growing and that living in Ann Arbor particularly in the areas that are best walkable is more sustainable than elsewhere okay I would add that this region is growing this region has been growing and the population growth in Ann Arbor has lagged far behind the regional population because of our restrictive and we don't want to see that trend line anymore school that has that and all the other things that we've talked about do you all feel as a as a group right now that these this is we can move forward on these assumptions and that we can work from them through the rest of the process excellent okay next thing all right um and this is gonna we're gonna do this this one we're gonna do a little bit I'm gonna ask you to be a little bit quicker and I'm going to ask everybody to say something um so there's this list of goals that are here um and those were in your packets in our report as well housing um General affordable accessible missing middle but maybe that comes out and we say higher density Energy Efficiency and we talked about in the report and some of this was my bringing the conversations I had heard the last time in the round um where we talked not only Energy Efficiency building by building but we talked Energy Efficiency in the downtown overall um and remember a lot of back and forth about different options on those and so if that's part of a goal wanted to have those as possible policy options for us to discuss later down the road the next meeting so keep those in the back your head sustainability again you could use those frame same frames is it building by building or is it the downtown overall and had some questions about what's the difference between Energy Efficiency and sustainability so with Energy Efficiency you're really looking at the measures of the efficiency of the energy used either in the downtown or in the building itself when you get into sustainability you're also talking about location you're also talking about Green infrastructure you're also talking about Transit so a lot of different things can come into sustainability of which Energy Efficiency is a part of but so you could have a goal that's around Energy Efficiency and around sustainability and those could be linked but they're actually pretty different sometimes when you're looking at different measures so those three reflecting on our discussions with you and in talking to staff seemed like those rows to the top that those were three things that we knew were high priorities for you these other things came up either that you incentivize them now their goal now or they were in case studies that we looked at pedestrian amenities and activities that could be the amenities that you that that you incentivize right now or it could be active first floor use which gets to some of the concerns we're talking about restaurants in that mix Transportation right now you incentivize parking and talk about parking and you have lots of things back and forth about parking but also there are many other communities that look to incentivize building around transect and Transit oriented design historic preservation right now that's something that's incentivized and that's on a building by building basis however if you looked at and this might be a third rail issue allowing premiums in the historic district you might want to look at how you know is that a goal and how how do those things play um also access for disadvantaged groups came up Universal Design developer diversity and business types in Michigan some of these things are difficult because of the building code and also because of the way our constitution is structured but if you felt like you wanted to look at those that's also part of the process but based on the conversation we had we felt like those four were things that maybe you would want to take off the table so what I would like is for us to work from here to here and just have give me yes no or maybe as to whether you agree with how we classified those goals yeah how we prioritize them so whether yes I agree maybe I need to discuss it more no I disagree if I can add just one layered to this when we're talking about prioritization I would challenge the commission to think about it in should we prioritize these as things we want to focus and incent or things we don't care as much I think it is easy to say well let's provide all of the potential menu of options and by providing a bigger menu by Nature we are diluting the things that might be most important to us so I when we're talking about prioritization I just want to say that I'm coming from that as not a the things at the top are the most important things are at the bottom I would appreciate the commission's initial thoughts on the things on the bottom be there at all I would start from the prospect that maybe they don't need to be there but so it so for for me as a facilitator we can go through this exercise so I can see where patterns are and how better structure help structure the conversation because we're at 10 15.
or 20 right it um it won't be recorded out of fiscal year 2022 if the equipment comes in afterwards however the money rolls the money rolls okay it'll still be considered a 2023 spend okay or 2024. sorry 2024 I'm sorry 2024 as soon as I said that I realized that I made a mistake it's 23. so it'll go it will roll over to 24.
that's tipping into school choice though [Music] 50 000 from school choice at b e s and an additional 100 000 from circuit breaker an additional 13 800. we can't take 50 000 from school choice from Bes year over year so this would be literally a Band-Aid for this there's not enough funds to even fund that 106 000. I mean this is just right but if you'll take 50 this year we can't take 50 next year and year after right to my point in two years this this runs up it's done 20 it's done next year yeah what do we spend on after next year it's a hundred right so that just extends US based on the trends here in a year or two I mean like the final solution but yeah my problem with dipping into the school choice budget is what happens if so we can't do this here over here so if we don't get funding from the towns in upcoming years for these things and then when we fire the positions yeah or do we have to eliminate something else right I mean kicking the bucket down the road because right like you're solving him for this year but you're not right you know and we just heard the full-on foundation so we want our kids to be competitive right no no not just saying we just heard them say that so we can't fund the schools are we competitive I think the hardest part about the kindergarten piece is that that's like the foundation so everything that happens that year the first three teachers build on the second grade teachers built on and we've talked to I mean if you've seen it they're like feral cats like you're basically trying to get them to sit in the circle keep your hands to yourselves friends you're like while you teach them their letters and it's more than just you know what that need was someone who could monitor those kids and help them it's really tough because we're we're stuck between a rock and harvest and that's really what I don't know if anybody else feels this but yes our job as a school committee it's supposed to be to advocate for what is the best with the needs of our students are but at the same time a residents of a town that's hurting financially and we don't want to take all the money from everybody so it's like God I feel like I'm going to voting who's like oh I don't like this one but I don't like this one um it's like one of those things where it's really really hard to decide what's important and what's not and it's those 80s I just don't I'm worried about do we have any data but we wouldn't have tonight but um what the difference is in the test scores from the kids I suppose too yeah but I mean to the other point too is we don't know how many kids we're going to have next year in kindergarten you know you sometimes you do have a small year I know there's a lot of building and apartments going in so it's probably less likely but you never know what next year is going to run out I think what we're looking at is just I agree it's fiscally irresponsible but at the same time God I think about those 57 kids and what their years can be like and yeah the risk is maybe some of those kids might not be able to learn how to read in first grade because they're not learning their letters I mean I go in when I go into Health in kindergarten I go in for literacy so she can work one-on-one with some kids and I mean so not to get too graphic back in October there was a child that pooped himself and I had to take him to the nurse because the teacher can't leave the class I mean that's what you're dealing with when you have five-year-olds if you have 20 of them in one room with a teacher and there was there's nobody else in there obviously if there's a special that kid they might have a one-on-one but in the in my daughter's class that's not the case it's just really hard because so we have two things the Berlin numbers that are adjusted it sounds like maybe you can get on board Berlin town is in agreement the finance commission agreement there's still a number it was in this one moment it doesn't sound it's up in the air if we make the adjustment that Nancy's proposed here it leaves a difference for 106 000 or we can cut 106 000 of all the traditions of Wilson Elementary or we can cut 270 000 of the positions at lowest information um so Carol I don't know if you guys know this and I know Dawn Marie's not here um how many paraprofessionals do we have in Boylston Elementary and how many are one-to-one specific versus how many are General oh General sorry do you know that I do I just need a moment to pull that yeah yeah I wasn't expecting anyone to answer today but it was kind of in the back of my head lately worse comes to worse can we reallocate some of these cells um professionals are specifically for special education and they're paid for our special education so we don't have any other General Affairs in the building we do new ones I mean how their budget is according to this according to right Special Education Service delivery um depending on how much time a particular student or group of student needs services in a particular classroom so Boylston elementary school has 14 paraprofessionals and they're all dedicated to this service I don't have a breakdown in front of native one to one so that is a mix of either one-to-one paraprofessionals or paraprofessionals that are supporting more than one student at a time I mean it can change day to day it can it um right because then kids have to go out of District in a year and then I notice like I've seen some paraprofessionals subbing but then I'm thinking if a kid if there were one-to-one and their child is out sick then they're free for the day right um right in the event that a one-to-one's um the child that they typically are working with is out then that paraprofessional is when you're allocated for the day either into a classroom or they may substitute for a teacher or they can do General they can help with stuff but yeah deployed right and we redeployed very quickly yeah but that's only if somebody's out sick yep so we have no General and in Berlin how many general fact one and I don't know do other towns usually have paraprofessionals like in for Kinder first and second or how does that work I don't know what other districts and generally have but I mean it depends on the industry yeah right right no I know for a fact she was pretty asparas in their kindergarten General Harris because I have a friend that does that but I don't know if they have other grades because I've even heard of teachers saying I could use a para in first or second grade [Music] that has anything else I mean if you delete the bcba and then also the vice principal that should hypothesis you down to 150 000 which would be 50 000 possible choice and 100 from starting breaker which is not sustainable but here and so there wouldn't be a deficit in my mind but that Berlin so we have the two options right now so if you want to take this from town by town so in Berlin you can choose to do nothing go as it is or we can choose to vote to adjust it to what Nancy's proposed here I want just to use use the funds yes and if we don't do that then if we don't do that 750 000 yeah they won't use their free cash so if we're going to cut 15 teachers at 270 000.
and I can go late but we're here as you want okay we already started we don't have to pass anything particular for starting after 11 o'clock okay all right so um how these are how these are set out yes no maybe all right I'm going to do what you asked but Mr Leonard just added a caveat to it which I do have to address so one my answer is no and I think part of why my answer is no is because having the access for disadvantaged groups here is um it is important that we name how we have designed to intentionally marginalize groups of people and I think um that has to be acknowledged and we're at a juncture where we get to change things and this is an opportunity for us to reimagine so I would have just said no but then Mr Leonard said should they be on here at all and I think the fact that we intentionally marginalize people therefore we exclude them from having access to the benefits of our community absolutely that has to be on here and we do need to redress it whether it's one of the top three goals it does need to be in the mix I see they're also interdependent um and I would agree that access to as dispatch groups Aging in place Universal Design should be a priority um I also I guess I struggle with trying to separate housing from transportation and pedestrian activities just because and again accessibility they all kind of seem intertwined to me um so I guess that's not a very helpful answer but um yeah to me housing is an access issue which encompasses quite a few things on here okay thank you maybe and what motivates me is that access for disadvantaged groups to the Maybe maybe because I by sustainability uh I'm curious about if electrification is falls under that bucket because there's some things in sustainability they think are just given based on location and some things in sustainability that are not covered by Energy Efficiency that I do think should be a priority okay thank you I think Energy Efficiency I'm struggling with that as a category um because I feel like you could have an incredibly energy efficient building and still have it be dependent on fossil fuels and that's part of what we're trying to address here so um uh I get the difference that you're trying to go for in terms of sustainability and pulling that apart um but somehow that's not working for me in terms of the way that that's categorized okay and so it may be something about you know fossil fuel oriented you know something something along those lines um so that is problematic for me um uh and and like some of the others have said some of these things are they're all just so intertwined with each other that they're going to sort of automatically get scooped up and swept in you know with some of these other things so you know as long as sustainability we're thinking about Transit which is you know downtown where how can we not I mean that's the thing it's like this is not for the whole city this is for the downtown we're just by default it's Transit so it's like do we even need to really think about that I mean you know I don't know why that's even on the list in some way if it was the entire city that's different but for the downtown area it feels kind of like well yeah there's access everywhere but maybe you have a different explanation of why that would be in the list in the first place given that it's just in the downtown um so yes and that was some of the problematic things with the green building and the lead is that they're you we automatically get some scores because you're in the downtown um if you're using that lead certification right but if you are looking and again this is getting down the road if we're looking at different measures which maybe it's also fuels maybe it's electrification maybe it's do you have led do you have green infrastructure yeah what maybe it's How much cooling is is part of the building you know these are all measures that you could look at um and so if this was a way to get your priorities so we don't have to have and then we can narrow and bring you policy options to talk about for us to take to stakeholders um so Madam chair I'm going to check you up as a maybe um and then thank you for sharing those the the thoughts maybe okay any thoughts you want them I would say you can bundle sustainability Energy Efficiency if it's muddled at this table I think to the point of developers getting confused to figure out how to reconcile that because Transit hits in three to four lines here um you can definitely Nix pedestrian amenities Transportation historic preservation I'd be very interested to hear um strategies and tactics around access for disadvantaged groups as it comes to policy okay all right I would also say maybe ditto on the Energy Efficiency and sustainability I was struggling with that and some of these I guess to me and maybe it's because I'm tired and maybe it's because I missed the first discussion um like when we say like this doesn't necessarily feel like they're all sort of Apples to Apples like historic preservation like a lot of these it's like remote housing we want Energy Efficiency what is what is the historic preservation component of it um so it was a method to have historic buildings that are outside of the historic district um to be preserved so the example of where the most prominent example of where it was used is the hotel where Zingerman's is and you're the best people um some it was expressed to me when I was helping with this in 2013 um same kind of process many historic preservation Advocates felt that they called it a facadectomy and it was not a kind term um so um that's an example of how it had been used but when you have such strong historic preservation rules in your historic districts I would say that its track record has been spotty also the premium that was offered for it was pretty minimal and so it wasn't very often taken so that's some background on that okay I mean yeah I wouldn't prioritize that okay um Maybe okay context sure um I think it's the most Salient boiled down version is sustainability affordability equity and quality in the built environment the elements that I find somewhat missing here actually is one that's not on this list which is economic development um and the reason I say that is these folks need somewhere to you know generate they need jobs right I mean like we can build all the housing we want but um we also need um and I actually think you know I'm a little torn about The Pedestrian amenities activities because I talked about downtown's need to be fun that's why people want to be there right they want to attract Talent they want the the stochastic interaction and so I think um economic yeah yeah it's like oh the water came out of nowhere um so I think the um the elements of the top two right sustainability affordability um equity in the built environment and economic development is one that I think is just that we also need to make a point of saying we need exciting vibrant attractive storefronts a beauty in the built environment to a certain extent so I don't know how to really sorry I don't mean and complicate things well and some of it is what do you incentivize and what do you require right and so premiums are really incentives so also keep in mind that specific tool as we go on and I remember the last time in 2017 also we got into some of this is what do you require and then what do you incentivize and if there are things that are must require it do it somewhere else in the zoning ordinance or do it somewhere else by ordinance if you can't this is a good policy space for places where you can't require it or where the market needs a nudge or a bump in order to deliver what you need or what you want then pedestrian amenities activities actually to me I mean whether it's in design review board or um there's an element uh yeah I'll stop it there I mean we could kind of go wrong can I add though because so I just was in Vancouver which is just full full of that I mean it's astounding and it was so exciting to be in a place that had high density and all of these ways for people to be able to move through the city through green corridors and it was just like mind-blowing and if we just have a bunch of cheek to jowl really tall buildings it's not going to feel good and so what can we do to be able to and that may be not a parcel by personal thing but what can we do as a city if you're going to live in these zones that you can have access to and and so it's like it I don't think it's working very well on a partial parcel basis like the little corner whatever is not really happening it's not that effective but I I just feel like that visit really changed how I'm thinking in some ways about what our downtown could be um and that we need to do some work and it's not necessarily just like a spot here and a spot there and it may be more like within our right-of-ways that we have to kind of think about these things but or sometimes it there you can use zoning that if it's above a certain amount of dwelling units or if it's above a certain far or height and then at that point in time you have to provide Green Space and then you're some somewhere in there and that's how on a building by building basis they get that but there's also things like if you want 10 foot wide sidewalks you need to require 10 foot wide side box um just and that may be appropriate in certain places like in the D1 but not in the D2 but I'm getting us in the leads yeah um well I think what's been really helpful is for um I think you're actually being a really good kind of like guider because the idea of this being the incentives and not the requirement so this is this is the incentive driver um and I need to continue to scope our discussions or think of it in that respect so if I absolutely had to boil it down the top two yeah sustainability and affordability I think would be the key ones I just don't necessarily want to lose sight of the economic development itself but anyways and what I'm hearing from you is those top three are right and then actually a desire to bring that access and Equity conversation into that as well but pedestrian amenities the parking the transit and historic preservation those could fall off our list at this point in terms of exploring policy options and taking those to stakeholders because those aren't top priorities in terms of goals thought I understood or I wasn't sure but it seemed the reason you said the access for disadvantaged groups was weighed down is because you don't think it's something that we can accomplish through zoning did I no I misunderstood you okay because that was added last oh when we were looking at going through things so there's no reason there are some things in the Michigan Constitution and there are some things that different Municipal attorneys have said you can do and others have said you can't so this would be things where we would need to go in more and Brett's got his hand up um so I when I look at that last category just to share some thoughts I think Universal Design and and the type of units are housing that is easily Incorporated when we're talking about our housing goals so part of that I think is easy when we're talking about access for disadvantaged groups and this is something that we've identified as part of our comprehensive plan that we want to unpack we want to not only do better we want to try and repair Megan said something though really important zoning is one tool and it's a hammer and this is something we talk a lot about may I hope I talk a lot about with the commission is when we're when we're talking about a project there are aspects of a zoning decision that are really challenging there are operational aspects that are hard to manifest and evaluate and enforce through zoning what the long-term ownership is of a property is a really difficult to base a zoning decision on unless you're going to restrict that and that has cost as well what businesses can or can't be in a space ads restriction and it's really difficult for us to make a zoning decision that says hey you get this if you commit to this that means we either have to memorialize that that only that business can go into that space forever or we have to understand that that premium no longer becomes tied to the success of that being realized and so when we're talking particularly about disadvantaged groups developer diversity business types I would just share that those are absolutely great goals I have concerns about using zoning to accomplish them because we have to make a decision at at the zoning table and at on the site at the time that we say we hand over the keys and if we're giving 400 far because of some of something that requires an operational decision that we are going to not have be part of that transaction in the future I would encourage us just to think about well maybe we just allow that 400 far period so so I I so when we're talking about the Constitution and and aspects to equity I think it's a particularly challenging thing for zoning I don't think that we should let it go I appreciate that the Commissioners are elevating that I think that should be part of it but I just want to name with a little bit more specificity than what Megan's talking about it's hard for business ownership development entities to have a bearing on the physical aspect of what gets built or what doesn't get built and that's why zoning is a challenging tool for for that particular goal in some ways but they're what we can do as we research also is that with other cities they have some of the same goals too and have enacted different policy changes and some of those especially dealing with racial equity and changes in the built environment are programs rather than uh rather than a zoning change and so that incentive is not necessarily the floor height the incentive is just like you have in greenfields or just like you have in brownfields to bring them on level with with green fields is that there's a tax incentive or some sort of other subsidy that comes into play and that's a program that you don't put in your zoning ordinance and so and often those things also are wrapped together you almost have to have a cocktail of ways to address these things because they're so deeply ingrained um that it takes a lot of work and a lot of attacking it from a lot of different angles um to repair okay so um I feel like we have enough to go on on goals and I'm seeing nods from you um in terms of where we are one last question um and then I'm done I'll hand it over to Ben to say thank you um or am I doing okay okay all right next slide policy approaches so in on page four of our report to you we had this broken down by pros and cons and giving you some case studies examples um really from tonight what we would like to hear from you again and I'm going to work this way to this way is that do you have a opinion or on which you feel would be best to explore of these policy approaches a large menu and that's essentially what you have now a small menu where it might be two or three interrelated things maybe Energy Efficiency and sustainability together or maybe residential along with affordability together or residential with Equity together or is it better to not have the incentives at all um and to uncap we really didn't have a case study of that but Boulder Colorado um when they were they have had incentive incentives for Energy Efficiency they flat out State they found it to be ineffective and they're going to pursue requirements um and so um that's a different policy approach um and so the equivalent of that in this would be to say we're not going to do premiums anymore we're going to up we're going to increase the far or increase the height of the base and we'll see where we go and that's an option for you too so I'm going to work this way this way and I want to hear from each planning commissioner what your preference is for us is going forward what your direction would be to us to look at whether large menu small menu no incentive so back to you commissioner Lee oh sure um to me it's the Paradox of choice the more choices you give somebody the harder it gets I think simplification can be a benefit um I don't have I'm not going to lean towards one thing um there's plenty that a developer has to really evaluate right they have to gather a general partnership a limited partnership pool they have to bring in equity they also have to lever it right with it with a lot of debt um they have to convince lenders and they will look at the kind of municipalities and how difficult or the risk rating associated with the community and that risk rating kind of gets increased if there's more hurdles and or there's there's more choices or decisions that need to be made so to me simplifying uh frankly that I like the Boulder Colorado just requirements I mean at least you're just very clear about what you need to do um so simplification to me makes sense and that's the way that's my two cents thank you for your two cents I'd agree with that um I if I had to rank these um I think I would go with no incentive and increase density first um but if we do a little more digging and find that that for some reason that wouldn't work than small menu probably large menu no because if that's what we have now that's not working then nope thank you very clear none to small up Zone a little bit and allow a simple way to add a little bit more thank you I'm small too and and again I kind of feel like the sustainable sustainability thing really could be wrapped together more effectively and and housing and sustainability are my too big two big things I agree with commissioner sylvain commissioner gabrandel I agree with small menu I fear the results of going with no incentive because there are too many things in this state that we can't get by requiring them I would agree a small menu on the no incentive after that simplifying is better uh yeah I'll Echo small menu if we get rid of the floor area ratio restrictions um and then no incentive can I just ask Claire you you want to look to height only without SAR restriction well I'm trying to on like when I look at the UDC a lot of it or at least one of the key premium options is the floor area ratio and then affordability sits within there and before we made this change we didn't have or we had something different with the far like the fir gets unlocked based on all these sorry I used to get unlocked based on about a unit like doing residential now a far gets unlocked doing affordable residential but it also gets unlocked for sustainability yes yes so there are you can mix and match to get the far and I did send a note and asked about all the far because my memory is is that it's a new addition to our planning it's not something that has always been there and it feels like what we're trying to do is restrict something using that far whether it's the lot size the height and so I'm I'm just I just wanted to name it and put it out there and now we can talk about it to see how it fits I don't know if Mr Leonard wants to say anything or Mr Leo sorry I will defer to my boss oh thanks a lot um so yeah and I'm sorry I haven't got you a response commissioner white and part of the reason is is that I don't know I don't know what the answer is so I think far has been far has been around for a while um and it's it's been used in the city for a while and it's been used in other communities for a while um I I will say and I I just want to fully name I need to do more research on this in the creation of the D1 and D2 districts my understanding is they were originally created solely with an far and that was and and some communities use floor error ratio as the moderator of area height and placement they don't care as much about setbacks they don't care about height in manifesting particularly our far and the downtown district um I think it was kind of an 11th Hour Amendment to the creation of the D1 District to layer both far and Heights on top of that Alexis is going to correct me and tell me I'm way off shortly here but principally communities have not principally to oversimplify communities of traditionally regulated by area height placement that is you have to be set back you have to meet these height requirements and we don't care what else happens in that box or they are regulated by a density that is a residential units or a square footage based on the size of your lot we don't care how that's manifested or by floor area we generally think we don't care how that building is designed but we're going to use far as a massing throttle at some ratio of the size of that lot and I think I don't think there's nothing wrong with any of those approaches if I had a critique I think that when we try to layer both height and far we're probably diminishing the use of both of those tools Alexis I don't know if you want to add anything to the history of your work with downtowns you've been at it longer than I have well I can confirm that we've always used floor area ratio um throughout the city not the residential districts but throughout the city in our downtown districts and we had prior to a2d2 which was the Ann Arbor discovering downtown that in 2009 is when it was adopted and we Consolidated and simplified the downtown zoning districts and off the top of my head the downtown was primarily c2a which has been repealed it's gone and then it was also c2a R c2b c2b so forth there was no height limit in the down in those districts up until 2009 and Mr Leonard was is correct that the first itera the most iterations of D1 and D2 had also had no height limit um and the way that we we have a unique hybrid kind of form-based zoning but not really form-based Zoning for our D1 and D2 the D1 and D2 base zoning districts established the permitted uses that you can do and so that's fairly uniform because those are fairly Broad Downtown and it establishes the um the floor area ratio of the site um and um and then it's the character areas that kind of do the form of that amount of floor area that you can do and the character areas that's what has the height limit um some of them have a maximum diagonal and um that's the side and rear setbacks and then our front setbacks are based on the street classification so there's three different spots but we have a we regulate far so that's not form-based zoning very much like but we also have character areas that tell you how you mush and shape that development and but the as Mr Leonard mentioned the sort of killer is then we put a height limit on top of that and um that was added very late but it's here so um that I will just jump in one more time yes um when we did our most recent premium amendments um and we particularly for the D D1 where we allowed the you can get up to 900 percent with our affordable with our most affordable housing we also increase the height limit um so that you could actually achieve the 900 percent on a site including the height limit or at least get a whole lot closer than you would have so we have overcome we we have a workaround for we have a work but we have a workaround that we didn't have before um but only one project has utilized that and I would say so you you really want to change how you regulate the size and form of downtown talk about that in your comprehensive plan and lay out what that is and that's a good place to talk about what we want to require what where flaws are where we look to have zoning changes in what we want and then you can after after you have a comprehensive plan you usually have a whole mess of zoning ordinance amendments to implement that plan but what we're in this Twilight period where you haven't started a comprehensive plan but you're thinking about it and things like that and you have an opportunity right now as you've said to make some policy changes dealing with premiums which are a zoning incentive and so I want to thank you all for your work tonight it's you've given us a lot of good feedback and we had a great conversation I think that we're very prepared to come back to you and then on the next steps possible is that we'll go to stakeholders is that we will come back and talk to you about what we should talk to stakeholders about so what we'll do is we'll take these we'll rewrite some things those will be in the report but also at the same time we'll give you some policy options that we will say we think that these dovetail with what we've talked about the last one which one of these are you comfortable with us going to talk to stakeholders to and who should those stakeholders be um so and hopefully next time maybe we'll be first on the agenda and we'll get you fresh all right any any last questions or advice for us our pleasure okay we now get to talk about item 10B which is the 2023 City Planning Commission meeting calendar revisions the original calendar uh accommodated a potential election in May that is not necessary and so we're moving it to our typical convening date from May 3rd to May 2nd I I have something in my calendar that and I can't point to it specifically that shows a Planning Commission meeting on a Friday am I the only one that that had pop up I know I should have looked at that prior to sorry it's possible that we sent out uh an Outlook appointment or something but I'm not aware of anything if I come across it let us know it's um we do our best but we're we're just managing all um Boku to Outlook alrighty so can I have a motion to approve commissioner soave seconded by commissioner dish discussion let's vote on it all in favor say aye aye okay we are on to item number 11 which is public comment this is an uh opportunity for people to speak up to three minutes about any issue that is anywhere anything on the agenda or not um I will address first start with people here and then we'll move remotely and for phone access call 877-853-5247 enter meeting ID 977-6634-1226 to unmute press star six we will just start with you please come up and say your name and address hello my name is Steve Christensen my address is 2771 Elmwood and uh I'm here to bang one drum today and I'll do it very quickly at a respectable volume when I saw you guys were going to be talking about premiums and priorities especially around the particular issue I'd like to talk about which is residential development single-family homes multi-family low-rise mid-rise high-rise you know when I hear premiums I think conditions right you usually have to have you know there's usually conditions to to receive a premium when I when I hear priorities I think road maps where people want road maps to hit those priorities so I hope as you guys continue to think about the premiums and the conditions that you want to put on those premiums and you think about the priorities and the road maps you want to give to the folks that need to meet those priorities I hope you guys here's the here's the drum out here to bang and that is the energy star residential certification programs I hope you guys are going to consider these hope you guys consider incorporating them into your conditions into your requirements I think it's I think they're a great program I'm very happy to see you guys are prioritizing Energy Efficiency I see it as the central pillar of sustainability that's kind of how I view uh it's its role and there's not a better program out there that gives the builders Direction whether it's you know single family home multi-family from low rise to high rise and the great thing about it too is if you're gonna be requiring developers or Builders to do this there's now the 45l tax credit which I hope everyone is aware of and in the in the field I I'm in the field of working with residential developers and it has been a game changer so it's nice to provide an option that not only gives great Direction hits the priorities but you know what it also kind of helps the developer on the back end and it's something that that the city of Ann Arbor doesn't have to fund this is some this these are tax credits are available to everybody so that's the main reason I'm here today I hope to help you guys are I hope the energy star is ringing in your ears as you're done with the meeting and I hope it's something that you continue to consider thank you thank you for sticking around to The Bitter End to tell us that foreign virtually for us we have one hand raised Alex Lowe you have permission to address the commission hi this is Alex Lowe from 3340 Fernwood Avenue I just want to say let's get rid of far limits let's get rid of height limits and let's get rid of mandatory setbacks thanks thank you no more hands raised no more hands raised all right um commission proposed business commissioner Mills thank you could you please add on to our list of priorities a note along with drive-throughs to remind us of our discussion tonight for today's date thank you very much anybody else the same with clubs clubs clubs at the bottom floor of Residential Building downtown a project index of a recording it for I think that's this is a good one for that too okay alrighty we're on to a German motion to adjourn bye Everybody seconded by everybody okay middle than dish how about that we are a devote everybody Yang motion to Adore we made it before 11 o'clock
the money will roll over okay got it thank you thank you all right moving on to operations again this the money that that operation spends in capital is directly related to the schools um very little of it is at the district level so the largest piece of this pie is the HVAC as Miss betz mentioned um Marquees were still moving through the Marquis update and then Renovations flooring portable relocation that you mentioned and fencing playgrounds and the pictures for operations I'm sorry Albert are not quite as exciting as the pictures from the schools but this is a new HVAC unit I believe well the picture may not be exciting but it would be pretty exciting if we didn't have the new chillers to keep people cool very true as it gets warmer here's the canyon Valley Marquee and the large pieces of custodial equipment that Albert and his team are managing and I don't know if you remember and I know that Rhonda and Chad you were not on the board at that time but uh back in 2019 or 20 Mr dutchover came forward and said and made a recommendation that it would be a better idea if if operations could take responsibility for purchasing all of the higher costs larger equipment custodial equipment we would assign it to schools but in that way when we have one school that a machines broken down we'd have an ability to take the machine that's not being necessarily used at school a and transported over to school B and I think that that has worked quite well the schools are still responsible I believe for purchasing their own backpack vacuums those kinds of things but the larger pieces of equipment that would be the the flooring strippers and stuff like that um Albert is is responsible for again they're not sitting in his office they're definitely at schools but it does does take the burden off of our schools again for having to worry about replacing them and then also the the facilitating of moving the equipment around when needed honey and just to refresh my memory when when we did all of the uh upgrades for security where did that come was that last year or is it was any of it this year's budget it was um it was a combination It's a combination yeah and when you say security upgrades you're talking about all of our security cameras and the doorbells at the yeah yep that was um end of last year we did most of those doorbells over the summer Dr McCord right very fast yep well isn't that really an ongoing expense again probably something that is a zero-based budgeting expense because as we go through securities obviously become more important that's a bond spend yeah and then we if you remember we did negotiate though a full five-year service and warranty contract with the provider but to your point we're going to have to go through a refresh cycle with all of those security cameras just as we do with Chromebooks at some point in the future yeah I mean it's just going to be a bigger part of our budget in the future and now now and in the future than it was in the past a couple more pictures from operations there's a playground resurfacing on the left and some work that was completed for ADA compliance you can see they stripped out the curbs there and finally we have curriculum Capital spend so again a shout out to Dr Newman and her team she provided some updated numbers for this particular slide you can see the 1.4 million as reading Ela Mandarin and dual language adoption that amount includes 586 000 of traditional math adoption that will be moved to sr3 then we have testing which is illuminate testing platform and Cog at I think it's testing Library systems history and social studies curriculum and some science curriculum and that is all we have any questions feedback there were some requests to have this presentation done I hope it provided you the information you were looking for but we are certainly open to feedback and suggestions I wanted to make sure that everybody knew that each of the individual schools requests are available we we didn't think it would be a good use of your time to share all of them but if you are interested we can easily print those off or share those Google Docs with you we did it through a Google doc process so I wanted to make sure that you're aware of that as Jackie and I were going through all the data it's difficult to figure out how to present it there's so many Crossing points um but but we took a stab at it but but we're very happy to take feedback if you have any ideas on how we could present it better so that it's more understandable for you and the public we'd very much love to hear that so maybe you could think about that and give us feedback even later at a later date if you if you have any ideas I was going to say I think this is the most transparent we've ever been about how we're spending that money and how we're making requests and and taking care of the needs that our students have so I really I really appreciate it well and if I could say too that we just had the district spending report prior to this and the unrestricted Capital spend is definitely included in those categorizations associated with classroom spending or whatever the case may be so I expect that with the amount of classroom spending in library spending that we have seen this past year that that will reflect favorably on our class on our district spending report for 23 as well [Applause] [Music] [Applause] you're gonna drive for me Ms matinein thank you so for this particular presentation I'd like to actually let Jackie off the hook and request that Dr McCord provide the color commentary as we go through through much of the preliminary budget so we have shared a little bit of information with you on what we're expecting or at this point at least possibly expecting but as we go through you'll see see that we are still sharing the statutory budget as well as the governor's proposal just so that you understand the possibilities in the future but all of the budget balancing conversation is going to be associated with what we know and we believe that we have a really good reasonable expectation that at a minimum the statutory budget for 2024 would be approved so with that if you give me the next slide thank you so as always we share the budget development timeline again one of the things that's been very important since Dr McCord had us working on that strategic operating plan back I think as soon as I walked in the door during fiscal 19 and so it's important that all of our spend aligns with those priorities it's also important to always share the student counts and enrollment information and then of course balancing the 2024 budget what is our year-over-year budget capacity uh projected budgetary savings non-discretionary as well as recommended budgetary increases in that particular area we are making a solid recommendation regarding pay increases for 2024 and then budget balancing strategies and finally as always there are risks but there are also future opportunities so the first slide you've seen this budget development timeline a few times the main area I wanted to focus on right now go ahead and click the next is this April May time frame that's where we are right now in the development of fiscal year 2024. note that the legislative legislative session is supposed to end at the end of May just a reminder that last year the session did not end until June 25th so we are doing the best that we can to anticipate the future but there's still a significant amounts of movement as we go through this development process for next year so here's our strategic plan summary this this budget plan includes cost increases that are fully aligned of course to the Gilbert Public School strategic operating plan as well as the override commitments made in November of 2019.
how many of them can't even imagine school because so I mean does anyone have more specific questions from Nancy yeah I mean if Hayden roads or 35 of the btcba and then also um [Music] what is that 740 000 turn into it I don't know but it should be less right but not a lot but then we're giving up I don't know I I can rerun it because that would have been that level foreign school committee members of student achievement um and the can has been kicked not to use that phrase again for so many years in this District it just has it's nobody's fault it's just is what it is and the school has been very fiscally conservative I think here over here um I have friends that teach kindergarten and they think it's insane there's no AIDS in kindergarten classes in our district um we have one bcda or we're coming off of covid um that's that's just not acceptable for our kids it's just not any town um we were middle in a high school year and even though it's been in the high school forever there's different needs in the school these middle school kids are 6 7 and 8th grade um if we went to other districts they have a middle school that has an administrative there that they have a high school information student believes so he's positioned while they might seem like they're not needed here they're so needing there's so needed so we'll do a responsibility to be to take care of all our Town's people we have a massive responsibility of taking care of our kids so I would advocate for maybe everything else and making it to the town's people putting it on the floor having the discussion with your townspeople is not enough no except burla's offer no I would say with Oklahoma okay yeah it's a hundred thousand right that is less take our chances and Boyleston Julie that almost sounds like yeah because I think that I mean we're all we're all different boards here and everybody different philosophies and I know we've made great progress but through storage um but I think we need to hear from the townspeople investment where do they stand and there can always be a motion on the floor to lower the budget right that's been proposed to then shine back so do you want to start with the Berlin proposal I think yes yeah it's okay yeah um so the first thing I want to say is I think it's really important we you know we keep everything in perspective um first of all I don't envy you know everybody's position here these are very top choices and I certainly applaud everybody and I agree you know we want to create the best educational environment uh our children um it's also important like I said though we keep perspective right because yes these are hard decisions but the other things we have going on on the on the town side as well is for example you know our Town's growing we all know these are these are the things that are putting strains on our schools um but it's putting strange strains on other departments as well we have a police chief who needs new officers wants a new new lieutenant um you know that's been pushed aside temporarily our fire department needs to do fire truck um the town's gonna have to finance a big portion of that because a big chunk of the free cash that would have been used for that um is being is I believe allocated to the school um seniors in town have been asking for stuff for years that's been pushed aside for the time being so I I just think it's and again I'm not saying that to necessarily persuade anybody one way or the other but I think it's you know it's opponent but really holistically um when we make these decisions um the second point I would say is you know the the finance committee has said and boils down at least that they would support a level service um budget uh at the beginning of this meeting everybody's saying you know the last thing we want to do is cut teachers I'm under the impression of the level service budget there wouldn't need to be any Cuts tonight I think that's that's why they support it right and I think I think that's presumably why you know why it's the library of support that as well because again we all we all believe in having a strong educational system um I think you know the other point is if if you go to town meeting floor um there's no there's no saying what happens at that point if you have the town proposing one budget School Community proposing another budget um at that point I mean anything's possible and anybody knows anything about um town meeting knows that you know anything's possible like I said and nothing's predictable and you know the last thing I think anybody wants to see is to have town meeting go totally in the opposite direction and the budget ends up going you know getting past it far below what would be level level service spending um again I know those companies probably won't make anything any easier for anybody but I think it's important to kind of have you know all the all the pieces there you do great little reminder actually about the police officer with the sros because we were gonna imagine that and that yeah that's just one more component to just make it a little bit more complicated for everyone but yeah so as far as sros go I think it is part of the police budget not the school budget because of the way those officers are employed and managed is that correct yes yeah that's my conversation I had with the chief I've been talking with the superintendents in other districts to find out about how that they're paid for another districts but it is currently on this Police Department because they supervise they allocate them for the year then they take them back when we're not will read applications some education holiday vacations they utilize them for additional services and so I don't I wouldn't evaluate them so it's really not under our umbrella to have this because they don't understand that it makes sense to me I have certainly would want to supervisor police officer or what if a job like to supervise a petition I think it was part of the budget the budget yeah yeah sorry I was part of the buddy request the fines committee basically kicked it back because we realize something needs to be talked about between the slight board the police department and the school committee because while it is part of the school the police budget obviously it affects the school in the you know different people in the town might feel differently about having armed officers on the property so the finance we didn't feel like it was our place to say whether or not there should be an SRO assigned um they don't have a problem with the finances it's a finance inside but that's a discussion that we think needs to happen between uh the school the police and the select people and I take part of going forward how we're talking about all three groups both towns like me starting the summer maybe you know whatever the date ends will be talking more year round but I think that'll be maybe prior to the Moana that talk uh but back to this situation so could I make a motion to approve the um God dancing I'm talking to Kristen maybe like two minutes okay I'm just I just sorry okay well does anybody have any questions [Music] I have a question so if it goes to town floor as is both both communities um and in on the town floor there is a conversation being had and it seems like the community in Boyle San Jose for example is um doesn't seem like it's they're in favor um because it hasn't been recommended by this uh fidcon or a sweat board um and through discussion it maybe is too much at that point if there's an amendment or at that point the finance committee stand up and recommend the amendment without those three positions yeah I was wondering if someone from Finance community at that point supported or would at that point it's gone that nobody would do that understood it EMS well if they I don't know that they could answer because it's really one remember um right well she just said no that's what I'm saying so as we got to that point he was making the money so I just so you know anyways we're here I asked Kristen you know they said no changes but if you guys have decided that you wanted to eliminate the position go back to a full level service budget they'll still be lower because they didn't give enough funds for a level service budget but and they would still help us but but it's in their favor because they're taking less from free cash so would they be against that change that's not the students I'm nuts yes but I'm just I'm just right she's looking at financial institutions yeah looking at it financially where I know they said no changes but it's kind of in their favor so she's calling Scott real quick if you guys even want to consider that but it's just going to help more like free cash all right it's not going to help our school choice fund there will it wouldn't help us but it would help them all right that's fine it wouldn't it would have changed I mean we're going to have a huge problem the only thing that would help you do is and then I'll stay out of it is helping the boils inside if you want yeah right that's what I'm saying yeah but there's no guarantee budget he recommends ultimately it's up to the town so we have we have a budget we have approved it's going that question tonight is do we want to make a change based on what we've heard from Burlington so as Megan you're about to make a motion you still want to do that I don't know about how I feel about jumping into school twice but I feel like it's been a long way go ahead Lauren it's breaking down oh yes so just just kind of back me up now how tonight started with the conversation on engaging the community at all and businesses and Foundations and all that you know a kind of a collecting a better term on The Showdown on town meeting floor is not going to advance that like I can guarantee you that um in fact it's probably going to bring it the other way so just I just want to put that up there to keep that in mind that all of us here want a sustainable budget and meaning that we're going to be able to continue to to add what you guys need as we you know as the years go fast but you know going in this this first year when we're saying hey look we're all working together oh man not really no um it's not going to have a good good look you know to the townspeople and we'll address I don't know probably but does that mean next year you're going to be able to do it again in a year after that be able to do it again I'm going to go probably not and you're going to see your businesses when their taxes continue to go up say yeah well I'm probably not going to be given more of the schools when I pay more taxes every year anyways so just another you know another one all right any more questions do we know what's going to happen next year with special ed funding no we don't so this might it might not be in the situation at all next year I cut the green the five positions are there um assistance full-time like with benefits and everything the system existence is there any way to change it so that there are part-time positions for like a busiest time of the day or something like that so there's not much benefits and just producing the just so you know Kristen said if you did eliminate the positions they would still support yep okay all right this is so hard I just I don't know meditate us yeah and the kindergarten does anybody want to fight anyone I don't but I don't want to show down on Town floor I don't know where it has to be yeah why can't people discuss why does it have to be a showdown so let's do that then that's what I think I think if people are is there a motion no don't tell me and I have a motion to approve the Berlin proposal of spending additional funds as presented in Nancy's spreadsheet someone okay just a second okay any discussion on that specifically from I just want to know what we're going to do next year Nancy I don't know you tell me I have no idea so this is literally like a Hail Mary like we're throwing it up there we're going to take this money we're gonna play with Cash There's also there's also potential legislation changes right okay there's letter cameras ongoing right now not just with our districts but with a lot of districts so no we don't know what's going to happen next year going forward we're responsible to the districts and to the students so that's what we have we don't know anything else yeah so I guess this is pretty much the only way that we can in Maryland let's go inside for a minute for Berlin this is where we get what we want what we need the schools and what the schools need and the additions that we feel are 100 necessary and don't and have the support of this income people through Berlin that we hope this then we have to vote through oil system the same number is only a deficit correctly no more before we drop the eighties we can't because once we well right they said you caught them but you got something else so if we cut like the bcba say we cut that well how much that was like a hundred thousand she said twenty three thousand 37.50 from each Elementary School in 47.5 so that's again that's filling up a good chunk of that 100K deficit in Boylston so he takes 600 kcba doing right now is she stressed up yeah I remember she's spread very she's still working does she still work here did she give her notice we cannot discuss it yeah she's stressed out yeah you can't have one person with that case though on here between three different buildings yeah four different schools going between three buildings motion on the floor right now is to accept the proposal for the Berlin Roberto proposal as presented by Nancy is there any more discussion or would you like to go all in favor hi yeah all right as well okay so we'll adjust it for the additional funds from the school choice in the progress presented by Nancy you're still processing yeah the boys the boys their emotion to approve the proposal as Nancy's presented here the additional allocation school choice and circuitry yes Laurie 's discussion Julian okay so a hundred thousand dollars is like fifty dollars in taxes out of 500 000 house is it about [Music] yeah I know it's given to take that number which foreign [Music] is down floor that's what I don't see a lot of people getting up and arguing over 50 on a 500 000 house so for people that's a 500 000 house so I'm talking people that have like three hundred thousand dollar house would be twenty dollars yes twenty dollars could be a lot of money on the end will be um but I just don't see that being a fiery argument versus a thousand dollars or five hundred dollars do you know what I'm saying that the smaller we get that increase I think the less it becomes a fight and the more it becomes an understanding and I don't think it's something that we can ask for every year um and I I don't know how we're gonna again I look at the Boylston school choice fund we are literally going to deplete our fund so is there an emergency we don't have a bcba which we definitely need or we don't have those AIDS in kindergarten like that's the hard part is that you it's really hard yes oh my God I know the vice principal s yeah and that's all the way but well 65 yeah sorry thank God yes yes sorry Gary says right here all the hard work this community does we don't think it likely we certainly don't know the ins and outs of all the numbers but we do all the deal with we thank you for that and so when you say we don't support everything you want we don't do that like um but I think it's really important to listen to Nancy when you say what do we do next year and she says I don't know I mean if you improve the budget or the deficit this year what are you going to do for your budget next year how are you going to pass Europe talking over nine percent increase on your budget this year you passed out with deficit increasing even more and then next year budget goes up to 90 by the nine percent plus your deficit from this year it's not just about fabricating for the kids it's about being the Judiciary responsible and responsible to your community as well and I I have a business school system I want to have the best school system that we can act as well but part of advocating for the school is also negotiating to come up with the compromise for the entire town and I think that's an important thing to understand the other point and to reiterate that those matters matters that said that every year at the time I've been down for 13 years I've been a Spanish committee for four years never in the 14 years have I been found meeting has anybody that even a question or comment about the overall budget which is the last vote could ever be however fifteen thousand dollar trailer for the speed truck to the police department that was like a 45-minute discussion about the finance committee actually had to improve on which I didn't think what the discussion is going to sound like on a school busy growth and be very dangerous to an offer our account and uh that that take that to heart I think that's to make it a point we're already going in with a close to 300 000 deficit this will be having is bringing that down I think is what you're trying to say yeah so I I don't know I need to respond to that because here's the deal yeah that's Boylston but in Berlin we're still keeping away on our reserves or we fire teachers those are our choices we fire teachers or we eat into our reserves because that's what their fidcon is asking us to do that is not a rock and a hard place that's an impossible decision do you know what I mean because I know the reserves are going to get depleted I I used to do corporate budget budgeting for a living so I totally understand that it makes me nervous if we have an emergency what are we going to do um but it's just that it's like an impossible decision to say you know so yes it boils did if we say all right we're just going to do level we're going to let those kindergarten teachers suck it up and maybe they can get a volunteer program going yeah there's definitely ways to but that's not the case in Berlin so we'd have to go completely back to the drawing board with Berlin if we're going to take that approach which I don't disagree with but I just don't think they are willing to play that type of ball like you guys are and that is the other hard piece for anyone listening out there is that it's not just us it's we're working with two tabs and two different populations of people look at 65 of a vice principal positions 81 250 and so that would take away the most of the deaths that we're looking right now is 106 000.
so some of the details competitive salaries we we believe that is directly related to Student Success as well as employee Excellence art teacher FTE increase that you guys have already approved student access and employee Excellence I wanted to just remind you that those 12 FTE that we added for our teachers also impacts all of our FTE staff at all of our elementaries because For the First Time in many many years all of our elementary teachers will then have their full allotted prep periods that have been enjoyed by our secondary schools for a long time Title IX compliance so this is specific to new legislation regarding how we handle complaints sexual harassment sexual harassment yeah good thing currently um it's it's being handled by Joyce Meyer executive director and human resources and when this is Jacobs oh oh yeah Jacobs thank you you're on the ball tonight good for you and um she when this came into effect we didn't know how it would impact us an individual taking care of this and for the past couple years she's been handling it that wasn't the purpose that she was hired for in in otm a big part of her job was to recruit and retain staff this takes up an enormous amount of time for the mere fact that the process for each individual case could take up to 60 days and when I say that there's investigations that have to be carried forth and so it's a lot of a lot of hours put in by an individual and as we don't see changes of this coming forward in the future we need to dedicate an individual just for that who works directly with the schools related to these types of compliances related to Title IX so that's why we're putting this forward this year said Joy Joyce so Dr Jacobs has taken on this role for the past two years yeah what did we do before that for complaints so those complaints the the federal law didn't change until then and so fortunately or unfortunately for her uh when she was hired into otm that switch came about and so we were looking to go where can we handle this and where can we begin this process and um her being the new one in there we we saddled her with it and um now we're looking to unsaddle her with it because it has gotten to a point that it needs its full attention from one individual so who who and maybe maybe you answered this and I just wasn't listening which my wife can attest I do all the time but um so who is handling complaints before Title IX complaints we weren't Title IX complaints weren't to the level in terms of how the federal government made them important so during um the three years ago probably federal law changed and so they hammered they put the hammer down on any kind of sexual harassment and then they put in process a lot of benchmarks within that investigation that have to be met and so for example if somebody is accused of sexual harassment and one individual files a Title IX and wants to go through with it no discipline can occur until the full investigation is done and again then individuals have the right to rebut I mean it's almost like going to court and so the process takes a long time it involves our administration at the schools as well as sometimes we get use different administrators to help independently investigate some of the cases and so a lot of communication back and forth as well as a lot of organization related to keeping every case straight and they don't so if somebody does something they don't necessarily have to call it Title IX in terms of making sure the investigation goes forward that ends up on the parents plate to make that decision and so they get some time to be able to make that decision but if they go forward then the process is in play and um everybody's involved so before that let me just okay see if I can clarify so before this the federal law came into play if we had complaints of this nature the principles in HR and probably sure generally the campus would basically handle it yeah but if that's what you're getting and I'm sorry it's elevated it and change it to a very thorough rigorous timely which it is what it is at this point right so so I guess I'm I'm curious did the changes that happen to Title IX a couple years ago that required all this extra you know all these extra steps can no can those changes still not be handled by the the each each school where the complaint took place they had is there something that says no it has to be handled at a district level yes so you have to have a Title IX compliance officer where the initial complaint goes to and then they help the process in terms of making it go emotion to where who's going to investigate it our timelines met in a timely manner communication between both parties and making sure that everybody has their due process rights within the Title IX process so so we're required to have a Title IX officer can we have the best way to ask this can't we just designate somebody whoever would you know let's say it happened at Highland right just as an example not sure choosing that for any other reason is other than example but um and let's say you know some office front office staff member handled the complaint before can we not designate that person as the compliance officer so we'd have essentially whoever handled these things before at each individual campus can those individuals not be designated as the compliance officer no that's that's where some of the the changes came in has to be one individual okay and that's so everything gets funneled into one and then it might get dispersed differently um but no those are things that we talk about it's kind of like what was happening before but we weren't under such stiff regulations related to that and now we are and and and it's a it's an intricate process in terms of steps need to be followed or as a district we could have office of civil rights complaints filed against us if we don't do it appropriately Shane is it just is it just sexual harassment or any kind of office of civil rights it it it's it primarily focuses on that type of behavior there's some gray areas in there that Joyce deals with and if we have questions on whether or not it's tile nine we'll call our attorneys just to get clarification is this is this a federal was this a federal federal yes so did they provide funding for a school district to welcome to the world of unfunded mandates that we live in and it's not just our district like if you go to colleges and universities they have a huge Title IX offices going on on the University campuses and it's all federally mandated yeah so I do have a question really funded not federally funded federally mandated and at the college level like you could have 20 employees in a Title IX office dealing with everything that's going on on a college campus do we have enough complaints yes full-time employee for Title IX that's why we're here tonight whoa and again it how do I put this um things that probably could be handled on a campus with conversations and now if you don't report them the right way then you could be opening yourself up for a lot more so guess that's the best way to put it so this this is for the fall starting in this would start uh July and has this job posted no we're we need because we're coming through this process first yeah because we haven't yep yeah all right um and then on that on that same line um and I I consider the movement of new teacher program mentor stipends to mnl presently they're being funded out of Title II again uh going back to the art teacher FTE where not only it's about the students and providing more opportunities for students it's also about improving the working environment for our teachers so in the case of the new teacher program mentors they would be obligated they they just receive a stipend um of 600 and they're required to complete a time and effort because they're being paid out of federal funds and it's it's every single I think it's every month they have to report this so it's a it's a little bit it's a it's a fairly significant burden for the little bit of a stipend that they do receive so we we did make a recommendation to move those out of Title II and into mno is is this a one-to-one position for uh One Mentor per individual that's going through the pathways program for us it's not specific to the pathways program but I'd love it if Dr Newman wants to come up unless um unless Dr McCord would like to take care of that generally runs through like the PD type role and new teachers that are new to Gilbert primarily maybe or new to education to begin with um a big part of this is one it's hard to get people to come teach these days two it's hard to keep them in order and through conversations and and just feedback from veteran teachers teachers new to education it is about that support and we have to give them as much support as possible and this is one of those ways to make sure that those new teachers have somebody to go to they have that individual that will carry them through show them the ropes and be there for them more than anything and of course help them out with all the technical stuff related to education but um be that go-to person so at the end of this school year they're not leaving education because um you know nobody helped them or nobody was there for him so just to clarify when you say technical stuff I think you mean trying to learn and follow policy not technology no I'm talking instructional strategies I'm talking everything related to education to make sure those students are learning everything they can from that individual okay exactly yeah because I would say our new teachers coming in they're up on their technology skills it's those classroom management skills and understanding you know they have constraints about what they can do because we have policy and they need to understand the policy and follow that and so there's lots of you know teaching is a very challenging profession and and we definitely need to help and support those new teachers I just was wondering if it was related to the pathways program but um I all new teachers need support whatever wherever they have gained their education from we've had different versions of this over the years as well and so we kind of didn't reinvent the will but reinstated something very similar to what had been done in the past and so sometimes it's good to go back to some of the ways that we used to practice to make sure that people felt valued and we showed them the amount of time and respect that they needed in order to stay in this educational field so just to clarify by moving this stipend into our mno then they don't have that burden of filling out those forms every month and so it makes it a little bit easier it's just more of a exchange and support of that new teacher and can focus on that not the reporting of it that's correct I just want to ask real quick would you so we started this last year again officially in this form would you have anecdotal or just thoughts of how this has been successful could you share sure I think the feedback that I've received Jason Marcy even sean and Barbara as well is that it is nice to be able to have someone assigned formally to somebody new in the past it was like hey would you please help take care of so-and-so and be there for him and um but now that we've tied some money to it as well as some formalities and what some of the expectations are in working with these individuals I think it it gives more validity to what we are asking of new teachers but we're asking of those Mentor teachers too and so anything of course you get out of it what you put into it right and there are probably new teachers out there that maybe don't need as much help as as some others but then there are some that that struggle for a lot of different reasons and so um it's important to have someone there to help them through those times Mentor different from and maybe maybe Jason's the person to answer these questions a couple of these questions but how is a mentor different from an instructional coach so an instructional coach is there to help with all the instructional strategies for every teacher on campus can instructional coach work with a new teacher you bet we actually ask them to help focus on them but kind of going back to what Jill talked about those are the instructional strategies in class if you have a mentor let's say you're a science teacher at the high school and your mentors another science teacher next to you and you're struggling with lesson planning related to content that individual is going to be able to help walk you through that or you're having issues with classroom management or you don't know to where to get a Rhema paper or those types of things this Mentor is there for those types of needs okay and does each new teacher have a different Mentor I believe so for the most part is that yeah for the most part there might be a couple out there that are doubled up for a lot of different reasons just in terms of of availability of other individuals but or based on their specific content area but for the most part it's one-on-one and how are the mentors selected usually they're selected by principals who believe that this is one of my leaders on my campus who understand how to help people who are new to the profession and so they'll recommend them for those new teachers and because there is a financial component tied to this can teachers request to be mentors or is there a program or I don't well I I think they can request I mean it goes both ways we're not going to sit there and say no but if if I have a teacher who let's say I have a teacher on Improvement plan who's been here for six years and they want to be a mentor that's not for them right so we look at it we kind of weigh it out and and if the the need is there and this person's viable for something like that then we'll utilize them okay I I would like to share something um I went to Baccalaureate at Mesquite High School I don't remember I think this was a couple of years ago and they had two teachers speaking and they were very close friends but the first teacher shared how that teacher they were both English teachers but when she came in as a new brand new teacher every year that every week that year that teacher sent her lesson plans and information that was just there to help her as she learned to manage the classroom and provide the curriculum that the students needed and just you know they became very close friends obviously they spoke at Baccalaureate together but I it was just very powerful to how much the new teacher appreciated that and that support from the older teacher and it was frankly a powerful Baccalaureate speech to hear both of them shared their thoughts good to go all right thank you guys yeah that's okay so um so I wanted to share uh we um we pulled all this data off of board docs across all of these school districts most recently just to share the competitive landscape that we're in regarding um regarding competitive salaries for all staff so you can see Chandler had a formal letter of banking increases of 2.5 to 3 percent across the board note the retention stipends for both support staff and for certified staff and administrators so that two thousand dollars and one thousand dollars is just based on available resources all the school districts are in the same same situation as Gilbert we don't really know what's going to happen next year so they're they're making some commitments based upon available resources um and then they did have the benefit increase of three percent up there a note that Higley opted to do a dollar per hour as well as Queen Creek for the hourly staff uh this was important because we are anticipating a significant inflationary increase again and so um last year the inflationary increase was over eight percent the dollar an hour represents about a 7.02 percent increase to the minimum wage so it may not be enough um however um so Higley and Queen Creek have opted to do that and then Scottsdale and Chandler kept it as a straight percentage increase across the board so I just wanted to make sure that all of you had the data that was right off of board docs that that were approved the other uh situation and I believe this to be true and documented but anecdotally I heard from my peer at Chandler that they did send out contracts with the three percent increase not the two percent increase two and a half percent they did send out a three percent increase so that's the um the information on this slide go ahead so now the basis for our budget always starts with our student counts uh so this is our ADM comparison so again ADM is average daily membership that is uh the definition of Arizona's student count uh note the 2019 to the two to the 2024 projection we always um compare what happened in 2019 only to share that in 2020 our final was was a hundred students over a hundred students greater than we anticipated actually over 500 students more than we anticipated because we did assume a 400 student loss going into 2020 as well and then note the 21 and then the 22 the 23 then the 23 revised number one and then the projected 2024 which again still accounts for a 400 student ADM or a 400 student count loss so this is just displaying it in a in a graphical manner 2021 was really reflective of of course we were right in the middle of covet at that point in time so many of our students went online at that point in time so the budget capacity projection for 2024 I wanted to make sure that it's clear this is based upon our student accounts as of December so our student counts again because we're funded on current year in maintenance operations so this is changing monthly as well but as of December as of the governor's budget and the statutory formula this is the dollar amount per student that we are starting with uh note the increase by inflation of two percent again statute statute says that you shall increase the base level amount by whatever is less two percent or the inflation rate so going to two percent and then the governor's budget you can see the increase of 3.04 percent increasing by about fifty dollars more per student and the um the dollar amount per student impact so again uh 400 students were anticipating 300 K8 and 109 12.
the vice president please so the motion right now is to improve the the numbers that's presented by Nancy you could make an amendment we just approved the volunteer Union side we did and that includes the vice president but we can make another motion and within 10 minutes can we um [Music] if there's something you want to discuss but I actually thinks and I know I know and you know on a okay no more discussion and we have to have to be sustainable you know yeah I don't love any I don't like eating into the school choice funds so I mean we're already we're already this is Justice additions it's it's from the deficit no I I totally yeah but it's this you can't sustain taking was it sorry it was 15 000 a year Nancy he has to say 14 increases in the district you can't sustain nine percent of inflation you can't sustain additional unfunded mandates from the state you can't sustain increasing insurance and increasing electricity and you can't sustain it no I don't I think this entire State and Country I think is in world of shape well here we are this is what's important yeah we're like it's got to be crisis mode I don't know that people understand what's going to happen in our schools it's just I'm in those bath I'm cutting one teacher my I don't I don't know that I'm comfortable going against what's in Boylston I don't I I'll put it out there I think I've been to two Town meetings I've lived in town 12 years so I don't have that knowledge of how town meeting runs um I went one year to vote for the schools one of my neighbors said everyone get out and you're going to vote for the schools it was a school budget year and it passed but I believe fincom approved the budget so I'm concerned about not being in lockstep with income on the bulldozen town floor so if we don't approve this that is presented right here then we'll go to town meeting is the deficit of 275 so I think we'd have to make a motion to approve this and then make an amendment yeah all right so let's look yeah so this is the discussion so if you want to do a vote no no what would you what would you amend ment be this budget without this consistent principal um a Circle of Death problem for the next four hours that happened in the spring meeting so there's a motion on right now to accept it as presented is there any other discussion or um yes [Music] all right so move to make an amendment to eliminate the vice principal position foreign I think our Middle School is wandering because of we don't have great teachers because we do um we need leadership there and it can't be the leaderships at the high school which is camping they're managing High School too for those problems at the high school are big these little kids in middle school just need to have middle school and they leadership to community leadership just driver I've been saying this since I came here I mean we lose kids and I know in Berlin we can make the argument well I go to Aspen they're still on kids but they're not we can't make a JV basketball team but you can't get Girls JV basketball team during the drama club we'd all have right now we don't even have a middle school baseball team we don't have enough kids but they're playing JV aren't playing the right one of these so we have these 12 year olds playing with these 16 year olds that said it's safe in the world they do Sports um the same situation with music music trauma Arts yeah we and it's not the teacher's fault it's not the administration's confidence we have to we have to these are needed this is the need this school and I know people that have been here have said we didn't have it why we need it well time is insane in the elementary school yeah six was in the elementary school that's true times have changed so times have changed so the needs are different and they're greater we have to just take a look on the orange so there's an amendment of motion right now to eliminate those two positions we can discuss positions yes that's okay all right so the amendment is there any more discussion no what is the assistant no assistant sorry um and [Music] then you know it's like when Katie's like well you know you know the school needs it all but if we're gonna already drain or well significantly deplete the school choice in the circle record just to me I don't know 106 a thousand deficit is huge and if we can't get the fin come to agree we're not going to get it and like so you know I I'm just not just saying that should be anytime fish ing I love to Hondo I loved Sports in the theater and you know I lived in I want my kids to live too and I want to be a good strong School um but we also have to to you know present a budget that people will feel is fiscally responsible as well as supporting our kids okay I have a question I just have a question one more question I promise right so I'm thinking in my head we had the Fullers come in and they said they didn't say a number but they gave his number in my lap say that number I don't know so let's say we're able to get this committee up and running and we're able to get some donations so we get 75 000 from them there's 75 000 that's already in the capital budgets there's two separate it's contingency worked out in the next so I don't think we should that's free cash yeah the vote right now is to eliminate the assistant principal position the yes vote eliminates the assistant position from the oil stuff inside of it I don't know we'd have to then deal with the problem side a Novo would bring us back to the discussion about the numbers can I just ask a question so if we do get the assistant principle how quickly would all these things happen drama club and you know the baseball team and all of that is that like in years or is it like yeah you know like this will be an ongoing program yeah it's hard it's the most expensive position or the five positions and then is that the whole hundred no it's what no 250.
this is important as those of you that are new especially the K-8 weight is 1.134 and the 912 weight is 1.268 so the state funding formula does provide for greater funding for 912 students note that the online we just have no information on that we just assume that it's going to roll over to be the same the same thing with the add-on weighted student counts reflective of our English language Learners our at-risk students as well as our special education students and that weight is based on what is that weight based on well I know it's a number of things I always thought it was funny that they even waited the elementaries right because you have I couldn't just be a 1.0 and just give us a little bit more instead of giving it a 1.134 it's all based upon the size of the school district as well so if you look at statute there are varying weights for Elementary and high schools depending upon how large you are as a school district the smaller the school district the more the weight is so I I believe based upon my experience that the reason that they wait high school students hire is primarily due to the Athletics just because that is and and plus the the numerous strands and Pathways that are available in our high school at a high school level so but honestly that's a guess it's been in statute though for a very long time so again you can see the base level amount increased to 48.70 so the 4870 is the basis for our projection and our budget balancing not the presumption that that the governor's budget would be passed and then note the teacher experience index we talked about this a little bit earlier so it decreased again to 1.0116 from 1.0167 reflective of the fact that we are in that stage where many of our long-term employees are retiring and so then we're seeing the commensurate decrease in our teacher experience index that small decrease amounts into a loss of over one one million dollars however theoretically our teacher cost should be reflective of a little bit less as well as you know that has not been borne out in the CR in the current year and then the trcl we affectionately call the trickle is the transportation Revenue control limit set equal to 2022 we do have our data in for our 100th day Transportation report already and we have already calculated that so that will probably not change meaning that that's that that will not impact us it will be exactly the same next year as it was this year before we move on can I request we take a bio break you bet okay let's adjourn for five minutes thank you laughs is a historical hysterical it was true I mean we had everything you know vacuum cleaners [Music] it was amazing oh it was and you break [Music] okay all right if we are ready we will continue this wherever we were at Miss Mountain okay so this is just a summary of all of that maintenance and operations data that I just went through individually so go ahead into the next slide um Jackie so this is our preliminary mno budget capacity and it's important to note that this does exclude the budget balance carry forward because of the Advent of the cares act money of all the user monies it has put our budget balance carry carry forward at such a level that it in it does not accurately reflect what's available to us to spend so we have opted over the last two years during this preliminary budget process to exclude the impact of budget balance carry forward as we get through the the um the budget development process so you can see if you'll focus on the fiscal year 2024 projected statutory column so it's the column just to the left of the governor as you can see that we are expecting new money so this would be new money associated with student accounts with the base level amount increasing of 1.34 million that also remember reflects that 400 average daily membership loss as well as the decrease in the teacher experience index so all of that is in that number okay from go back up a second that's not really a lot of money right I mean with the inflation we've had and everything that's that's not a lot that's not a lot um and the other thing I wanted to point out so we did go back to fiscal 2022 revise number four on this grid uh please this is again we're reminding you of that Revenue control limit amount of 20 million dollars out of Maintenance and operations into unrestricted Capital there were actually two reasons uh Jackie shared one the fact that had we left that money into maintenance operations and of course we would receive interest earnings on that we would not be allowed to spend that pursuance of Statute by moving those monies into unrestricted Capital we are able to increase our budget capacity in unrestricted Capital reflective of those interest earnings so that was one reason the other reason is as we've been talking about over and over again on unrestricted Capital it is really a one-time fund for it's a fund that is utilized for what you would expect as one-time expenditure not ongoing expenditure so that was the other reason why we thought it was important to move it into understated Capital but that particular 20 million dollars is going to play a role in our budget balancing for 23.
so we still have a deficit of something 20 years I don't know so the vote is to eliminate the assistant principle yes bill would do that and no vote would bring us back to the original motion all in favor of eliminating the assistant principle all against eliminating the assistant principle um yeah so we're gonna vote no or yes on eliminated and I'll start again all in favor of eliminating the assistant principle oh yes yes one in favor of not limiting or no no right I I feel like I need to abstains this morally difficult for me I have to abstain I don't know okay I will go numb with it so two two one to two states how does that works no pressure at least no pressure it really is hard because I think that we are bleeding students and that's how we're losing money we're not getting money from the state they're all taking off sixth grade seventh grade eighth grade and it's not the fault of the administration it's not the fault of the teachers it's the fault of the it's just a different age group they need to feel a connection successful it's very complicated right I'm serious okay we're gonna start this again because it seems like there's some confusion we have an amendment to the motion which would eliminate the assistant principle the yes vote will eliminate the assistant principle we would then have to go back and have another discussion on the Berlin numbers because the Berlin numbers include the system principle so yes vote for limiting the assistant principle all in favor of eliminating the assistant principle yes okay against no again I'm coming now I'm gonna say no Lisa I'm gonna say now okay the amendment does not pass we're back to the discussion now the original motion to accept the numbers as proposed to financing with the additional school choice of certain response it would be in a deficit of 106 000.
that was my question right so that's why we're just answering it out that's why I'm pointing it out Okay so so again this item the first item premium holiday credited back to mnl I have up there up to two holidays I wanted to share that tomorrow we have a meeting with the employee benefit trust we have also scheduled a meeting at this this is the employee benefit trust committee that we have a meeting with tomorrow and we have also scheduled a trust board the formal trust board meeting is scheduled for the 19th of April to discuss the uh the recommendation to you all of whether we should go to one or two premium holidays going into 2024. so presuming that we make a recommendation for two premium holidays that would be a credit of 1.5 million dollars and then in addition because we are anticipating a 400 average daily membership loss we are anticipating a 20 FTE savings again as has been the the case for the last four years we anticipate that that 20 teacher loss will be easily taken recouped through our normal retirement separation processes at the end of the year so the total budgetary Savings of 3.1 million thank you now these are non non-discretionary budgetary increases so these are those items that we have uh it's outside of our control and we have to account for these increases so medical insurance premium increase you all have already approved that after a recommendation from the employee benefit committee as well as the trust board the hourly increase for minimum wage again I shared that that we are I haven't shared this yet but we are anticipating that we are going to make a we are making a recommendation to you to increase our hourly wage up to that dollar per hour to counteract that minimum wage increase earlier as opposed to later but even with that we are anticipating it could be even higher than that seven percent which represents that dollar per hour increase a general inflationary increases we've all seen that our fuel has gone our diesel fuel in particular has gone from two dollars and 10 cents a gallon up to four dollars and sixty cents a gallon and this is on the state contract so um so those costs are are very very high and not to mention all the supply chain issues that are increasing costs as well um and then special education increases we have historically increased our requests by one to two million dollars again we're putting that one million dollars in there as a placeholder just to be cautionary that we may see those kinds of increases and then finally the increase to Arizona State Retirement of about sixty thousand dollars so a total of three point just under 3.6 million dollars of what we would consider non-discretionary budgetary increases so discretionary budget in budgetary increases the Title IX coordinator the new teacher mentors we are also recommending the Junior High Assistant principals to move to a 12-month short calendar again this is going to provide us opportunities for seamless movements across as we have separations or individuals leave the school district we can easily move them from one from one Secondary School to another in addition since they are a 12-month short they will be able to handle the duties of summer school leadership so all of those things together amount to uh just under three hundred thousand dollars can you just clarify what the current calendar that the assistant principles it's an 11 and a half month calendar and I don't know exactly how many days 11 months okay then there's a set aside for hard to hires and years of experience so I think I shared with this with you all when we requested that you approve revised budget number one so for the first time we um we anticipate an average salary for 2024 2023 when we when we adopted the budget for 2023 and when we actually did the calculations to reflect that on the revised budget number one when we presented that to you in January our average salary actually increased for the prior four years it actually decreased because we would have vacancy savings that would counteract the years of experience and the hard to hires so at this point in time we're adding a two million dollar budget placeholder as a precautionary measure also providing otm with some some safety net knowing that they have available resources to them to make sure that we're filling our classrooms with teachers addition of 12 art teachers again you have already approved that and then the two dollars and fifty cents per student in art supplies because we have an extra day of art they're going to use additional materials and so um that would add another forty thousand dollars to the to the budget so a total of 3.3 million dollars that's sorry that is in the mno not unrestricted capital art supplies or mnl so like clay I know right clay right it's sort of like it's sort of like pencils and crayons versus yeah right I know it's amazing right okay so the usfront the the usfr the uniform system of financial records otherwise known as you suffer clearly says it clearly says that uh clay and all of those art materials are supplies and that's soft capital good question though that was really great a basketball can be used more than once play once he tries it's done it's true it's true it's one time thing so then these are our pay increases that are under consideration so the hourly staff increase wages by a dollar per hour um again knowing the inflationary increases knowing that the minimum wage is definitely going to go up in January and knowing that we've still continue to have a difficult time hiring drivers hiring Community Ed employees hiring paraprofessionals in our classrooms we're recommending a dollar per hour increase which amounts to 3.8 million dollars and then exempt staff everyone else we're making a recommendation to increase by three percent matching the um the contract amount that Chandler provided to their all of their staff so the total pay increase amount is just under 10 10 million dollars 9.8 million dollars so can you just tell me exempt Sports staff name that directors who would be exempts so Jackie is a director right and so that would be an administrator um but Ashley Miranda she's our budget manager Barbie Wells is our purchasing manager they would be exempt support we have analysts that are exempt in both otm as well so if they're in an upper level classified staff position they might be an exempt support person correct okay there's a supervisor because my concern was a dollar an hour for a beginning person on minimum wage or in some of those beginning positions that's a that's a pretty good race for someone who's um more of an upper level person that's your point okay where the minimum wage individual would see a seven percent increase but the dollar per hour actually ensures that we're not uh provi we're not in in um we're not compressing right so because everybody is moving a full dollar per hour um and then we're looking at how we're going to increase the base rates at least at the beginning we're only going to increase the base rates the starting rates by 50 Cents until we're obligated to increase them at minimum wage and then we're expecting if minimum wage does go up higher than that we may have to make a mid-year adjustment okay so to clarify with jail this comment go to teachers their three percent increase is based on what they're currently getting paid that's the case rate that's right what they are being paid yes exactly okay so here's our total budgetary increase need so we're taking the ongoing available budget again the statutory budget we're looking at our projected savings we're subtracting the non-discretionary increases and subtracting the discretionary increases which does include our recommendation for pay increases so the final deficit is about 12.3 million dollars so we have to find the resources to close that 12.3 million dollars I'm sorry we don't find anything we have to make a decision about how we're going to close that gap of 12.3 million dollars we know we have to prioritize right we have to prioritize so the next slide okay how are we going to close that 12.3 million dollar Gap first of all other fund contributions when we do these analysis we we look at every single position and we do not look at funding source and we create what we think we need based upon all funding sources contributing however we know that Community Ed we know that nutrition services we know that jted we know that title one in particular they fund their own increases so we did those analyzes and there's about a 760 thousand dollar contribution from all of those other funds against that pay increase so basically we're removing that Personnel from because they're they're going to be paid by those funds so we remove them and that 76.
if we improve this motion we would submit the budget with these adjusted numbers would show a deficit of one six eight eighty that we do not approve the motion or what it stands with a deficit of 270 thousand seven six steps is there any more discussion yes can I I just don't know if I can see it on here what's left in school choice after if if buying 25 on that with this proposal uh yes at the end of fiscal year 24 Bes will be left with 50 997 to Hunter would be left with 382 929 so we literally can't even do this for two years yeah we're allocating from Toronto next year 983 dollars to give to just kind of fiscal year 22 we allocated 293 700 fiscal year 23 586 500 it's a week it's increasing 22 to 23 it almost doubled so 23 to 24 about 50 not even protests from that for 25 I have it forecasted at 500 000 which would drop us to 223 000.
760 sorry 760 000 and then but we still have to fund the rest because they'll be paid out of Maintenance and operations that's correct okay I appreciate that this is why we have to talk this over not just look at it that's right that's true that's true so the other main contributor is the classroom site fund so as I shared with you in the board brief we did receive our information on the classroom site fund going into 2024 again the state economy is still in very good shape and and it's also a contributing factor to the inflation increase however they they are indicating to us that we will receive fifty dollars more per student and I believe Jackie you calculated that what does that fifty dollars more per student mean in terms of a total dollar amount for for Gilbert [Music] like I thought you said I didn't have to talk I thought you told me it was around two million dollars more in classroom site fund yes okay could have sworn you told me that maybe I dreamed it I'm sorry I'm not gonna hold her account I'll let you know for sure in this week's board brief with a dollar amount would be um so and regardless it's an increase so it was at 708 it's now at 758 dollars per student so we're uh we are recommending that just over five million dollars come from classroom siphon to help us close that Gap and then Medicaid Medicaid is one of our operating funds that we share with you every month and we looked at well what is our ongoing Revenue in Medicaid we have a fund balance that we've been carrying over over the last few years but what what can we expect in revenues annually and so we determined that we can expect about two million dollars annually so we're going to allocate out the Medicaid fund dollars into our budget balancing process that leaves us with a 4.5 million dollar hole that has to be filled by one-time monies and that's where the 20 million dollars in unrestricted Capital would come in so the next slide is going to share that strategy with you so remember we did the one-time District additional assistance Revenue um I'm sorry yes we are recommending a one-time District additional Assistance or unrestricted Capital Revenue allocation in the amount of four dollars and fifty cents so what you would see on the adopted budget presentation to you in June you would see that we we are recommending that we take the revenue control limit that normally would go into I'm sorry opposite that the the district additional assistance that would normally go into unrestricted Capital we would make a recommendation to you that four and a half million dollars of that would come back into the revenue control limit or back into maintenance and operations remember that we still have over here in unrestricted Capital that additional 20 million dollars minus four and a half still leaving us with um what is that 16 and a half million sixteen fifteen sorry fifteen and a half million thank you fifteen and a half million dollars still held in reserve in unrestricted capital I just want you know kindergartners are learning to do that kind of math in their head I know we didn't learn that so we still struggle sorry sorry so again I wanted to remind you based upon the monthly financial report of February 28th the maintenance and operations available balance is 12.2 so we are anticipating we would not draw down that budget balance carry forward that does represent four percent which is our Target and policy um and we'd still be able to meet the needs of our increase uh going into fiscal 2024.
yeah so we can't do that we'd have to do the same thing to keep what we did these are positions so in 26 it's dropping to 400 000 which brings us down to 193. but Nancy if you put that 757 983 and again for fy25 we're below zero right right you can't do it so we can only do this for a year before we open up well after a year I guess we'll know if the is the assistant principle is worth keeping or not I mean [Music] I mean because that would be the argument at the end of the year did we see a change do we not I mean I don't like I don't I don't like the way it happens but so March 18th so marching team the committee approved a budget which leaves a deficit of 270 000. okay that's if we do nothing that's what it goes the deficit from what we discussed yeah this change this uses more Reserves which different opinions on that to the deficit only 1006.
and then uh yes so then then the other conclusion and three which I already stated so um a couple of things yes we're using one-time money for an ongoing cost I just wanted to remind you and we'll go through this at length at the end when we talk about risks and opportunities but remember we're so early and remember that in the current year we we anticipated or projected a 400 student ADM loss and we lost 270. so that 130 student gain from projection amounted to just under a million dollars so there are some very real possibilities that the budget will will improve going into 2024. but again things are changing so fast every day and so we won't really know until we are until we are until the legislature is done so I'm going to go through the next slides pretty quickly these are the unrestricted capital budget capacity these are the same can I just yeah I think that that's really even though we're gonna use one-time money I think that's exactly what we were waiting to use it for we've kept saying when are we going to use this how are we going to use this and I think it again reflects our priorities of um of competitive wages for our all-important staff and teachers everyone who's on our campus who works with our students or gets them to school and provides what they need to every day so I'm even though we're looking for we're looking at using that one-time funds I think that is appropriate to meet that priority which we have we're committed to at least I feel that we are so I'm I'm glad to see that so thank you and I think some of the conversations we've had in the leadership team meetings is really about oh my gosh we have to put teachers in front of our students we absolutely have to have to hire we have to we have to fill our positions in order for us to be successful with our students so I think that's what finally led us to making this recommendation to you as well so these are just the the formula again so with you can see that the PK 8 and the 912 you can see that with the statutory uh projection versus what's in the current year it's exactly the same because the district additional assistance does not see an inflationary increase just so you know the governor's budget did include an inflationary increase for the district additional assistance and then go to the next slide Jackie and so these are you can see the the the budget is a little bit less than it was in the current year by about what is that 20 nearly 20 uh two hundred thousand dollars reflective again I shared with you that the district additional assistance is based upon prior year so in 20 uh 2021 that informed the 2022 budget 2022 student council informed the 23 budget so 23 is lower than 22 so that reflects that small decrease in that dollar amount in the unrestricted capital budget so risks and opportunities preliminary budget risks the aggregate expenditure limit has still not been dealt with forever we have it we did have the legislature approve overriding the limit again in the current year it's still looming for 2024.
okay so we've already approved 270. so we'll have a couple hundred thousand go back down to see what's left if there's like an emergency there's 50 Grand Prix models if we don't do this oh sorry um because we're only taking 50 out of the week we always fill up a school choice foreign [Music] doesn't sound like there's much more discussion so if you're in favor of this motion we will approve the budget as presented here by Nancy with the additional spending from the reserve funds if you are not in favor of the motion we will leave it as is with a deficit of 270 000. all in favor of this motion prevented as it is to leave a deficit of 106.
we could see a greater loss of students than that 400 student projection we generally have been successful by assuming a 400 student loss we are meeting every month and now we're actually meeting every couple of weeks an enrollment student account enrollment committee that's with me and Jason and Joanna Catanzaro and Don antisdennis so that we can see where our holes are and start driving up efforts at our schools to make sure we're getting all these open enrollees in ETC they could have a positive impact also on our student accounts but we could have less than that 400 student loss um and then the legislature could decrease funding level we do not believe that to be probable the we believe that the budget capacity projection is the most conservative just assuming a two percent amount on the base and then use of one-time monies always decreases future budgetary flexibility but and we've all said this more than once in the leadership team the way things have that the way things have gone over the last five years we can make a case that every single year is a single year and we should always be planning on one year of spend because we can't tell at all what's going to happen in the future so and then the opportunities we could receive just as we did in the current year we could receive more than that we projected in terms of the students instead of losing 400 we could lose 200 or 300 instead providing a budgetary gain the legislature could approve greater funding there are bills out there to provide more resources to school districts in Arizona and as an example if the governor's budget of three percent just over three percent was approved we would see an additional two and a half million dollars in our budget capacity which would significantly close that four and a half million dollar Gap okay and then turnover savings again also remember that we did budget a two million dollar pot to handle years of experience and hard to hire additional pays that two million dollars if it didn't have to happen because we had a sufficient turnover savings that would be another two million dollars that could close that four and a half million dollar Gap so I just wanted to make sure that you were all aware of that and I think that's the end and I think if I could Dr McCord I think that we're planning on the special meeting on the 11th to formally present those pay increases to the governing board that is correct as well as possible premium holiday and a retention possibility of retention stipend I had hoped that we would that we would we we may wait on the premium holiday for formal approval until the end of April just to allow the committee and the trust board to to meet I would like to make sure I I can present the information both to the employee benefit committee as well as the um the trust committee um that would give them faith that doing two premium holidays is actually um affordable and um and probably the right thing to do we are projecting a increase in our net position or fund balance in our employee benefit Trust of over three million dollars and that's a very conservative projection so the two premium holidays would draw that down by just about two and a half million dollars so there is room there for that as well uh Mrs Betts I do have one question um when you talked with your counterparts in other districts do you feel like they're also using some of their budget carry forward to address races um I mean in the same place I can't tell you for certain because when I've reviewed when I reviewed their budgets they're not explicitly saying they're using runtime monies some of the language indicates to me that yes they they probably are but they don't have any more information than I do regarding what their funding level is going to be and just one simple example for the first time in a long time Chandler was obligated to revise their budget down because they overestimated their student counts for the current year so they too are in a similar position as Gilbert public schools in that we are seeing schools I mean we're seeing seeing students the the growth rate in Chandler is decreasing yeah so I mean because they have been adding students for a long time and now they are actually um dealing with some of our challenges which are you know more settled right not as many homes being built and and so not as many students coming in and then alternatively Queen Creek is growing by over a thousand students annually and even even based upon the information that we were able to pull off of their board agendas they still were recommending a two percent pay increase and a dollar per hour so they're still being conservative as well thank you can in regards to this four and a half million dollar one-time um amount from the it's it's um yeah from the uh from the reserve that we placed in the industration capital um if we if we do have a 400 student loss if the governor's budget doesn't get approved and it's you know less than we expected can we will there be any money in this uh the school's Capital spend that we could use to close that Gap so for example it says 2023 spend an encumbered year-to-date is 5.4 million dollars um if we were anticipating something similar to that in 2024 could we instead of I mean you know it'd be a shame to take that hundred thousand two hundred thousand three hundred thousand away from the schools but if we needed to could we use that money to close this Gap and the process would be exactly the same because it's still in unrestricted Capital so it doesn't matter really whether we're going to use the reserve or use unrestricted Capital the result is the same okay all right quickly um [Music] maybe before you came here there was some concern about using Medicaid money but I really feel personally that it's why not use it and that is probably something that's not going to decline um because we continue to get probably more and more on needs that do get reimbursed so I really support using the Medicaid money as as not just being one time and and we did we did purposely put it into the operating fund grid because it does have flexibility you have to be careful it is considered Federal money so you have to be careful to make sure that you're not impacting your federal maintenance of effort that you're using it that you're not funding staff that that would be contributing to special education so you wouldn't want to put special education staff in other words into Medicaid but but but Jackie's team is very well versed on the rules and we feel confident that we can do that so I just wanted to ask what was the what was the reasoning which I think is a good idea to have a special meeting next week we just thank you yes great question so we have already issued contracts to all of our certified staff and um they in good faith sign those contracts knowing that when they did that that they had no idea what their any compensation would be for next year and so part of us getting this out as soon as possible we also haven't been able to get anything out to our hourly staff our support staff and so if approved on the 11th on the 12th we will start rolling those contracts out and then otm will be in the process of configuring addendums to those contracts they've already signed to make sure that our certified staff have the figure going into next year and then at that time they'll also be able to choose the number of pays that they'll have for the following year so it's uh it it's to help make sure people are safe and secure and sound in their in their minds and so going forward just I agree with that as soon as as soon as we can we feel like we have enough information now we didn't feel like we had we could really quite say that in February we we know the classroom site fund we know some other things have come in so we have a better idea and feel confident that this is how we can go so I'm excited that we're doing that I wondered are we going to have and do we need to have there's no statutory thing like we have to have a call to the public are we going to have anything like that might just be a special meeting it would just be a special meeting with uh one or two agenda items related to this and maybe a consent in general just because we have the opportunity to continue to improve things going forward we'll do that but other than that that's it it's a real skinny agenda okay just to really to focus on this and make sure that we can get this in our let our employees know as soon as possible correct and I think it will happen you know and I think having this presentation uh and if there's any questions more from you tonight or after you go home think about some things you know gives you time as well as a board to to sift through it and uh having a week to be able to do that for me I I really appreciate that time to think before we vote because it does take time to to sift through all of this and mull it over and and think about what concerns could there could be and ask those questions but I do appreciate not voting on it tonight so we can have that opportunity well if I could just um if I could just add remember I think it was a year ago that we were presenting a similar budget to you and indicating that okay we're going to close the gap with one-time money of about 1.9 million just under 2 million dollars if you remember and I remember clearly Charlie looking at me he says okay so we can do this for a good like four or five years right and yes we can do it for a good four or five years my my only point in presenting that or reminding you of that is that we closed that two million dollar cap already based upon what happened in the current year so um and and I think the other thing is and we've had these conversations over and over again in the leadership team we know that we can't walk into a school year without having a balanced budget we have balanced the budget we are not going to be at risk of having the state take us over and we know that moving into the future that we may have to make some substantive decisions that might be not the most the greatest thing that we would have to do but we are committed to making sure that the balance is the budget is balanced annually so I just want you to all be aware of that too foreign thank you for these presentations tonight well done guys thank you nice we will now adjourn our work study and I will call the brief board business meeting to order and ask for a roll call Mrs Wilson Mr Chad Thompson here Ms Rhonda page here Miss Laurie wood here is Jill Humphries here Miss Sheila eugetti your Madam president all board members are present you have a quorum thank you that will take us to the consent agenda items 5.01 approval of consent agenda items board members is there a motion I move that we approve the consent agenda items as presented thank you Mr Jetty it's been moved as our second second thank you Miss Humphries it's been moved and seconded that we approve the consent agenda items as presented board members I'll ask for the vote all those in favor please vote by saying aye any opposed are we allowed to discuss any of these items uh typically not on the consent but would you like to remove something from the consent no I don't think so so I'm an eye okay let me do the skin then um so it's been moved and approved that we it's been moved and seconded that we approve the consent agenda as presented I guess since I could ask for a discussion typically on consent I don't okay that's fine well since you didn't no I will tonight I will ask is there any discussion because it's the consent agenda if he wants to discuss something then he can just make a motion remove the item that he wants to discuss and then we would vote on the consent agenda and then we would vote on we would make a motion for the item or Chad could make a motion for the item and then we could discuss that item and then vote on it sorry my um it was more wanting some clarification on something not and that's fine if you want that then let's let's why don't you make a substitute motion to um the consent agenda item removing whatever number you want and then make a separate motion on that one then we can discuss it I I don't think it's necessary I think you can always call and ask tomorrow yeah okay that's that's what I'm that's what I'm thinking that's great I appreciate that and again like she said that's typically how we will how we handle it because it is consent but always you're welcome to remove an item and then we hold that item just for discussion and the rest of the consent items we would just approve without okay so thank you for clarifying that going forward as as uh as a board great so I will call again for the vote then it's been moved and seconded that we approve the consent agenda as presented all those in favor please vote by saying aye aye any opposed with nay it passes five zero and that will take us to the adjournment of the brief board business meeting board members is there a motion I moved to adjourn thank you Miss Humphreys it's been moved is our second second thank you Mr Page it's been moved and seconded that we adjourn all those in favor please vote by saying aye aye any opposed with nay okay we are adjourned 5-0 thank you all okay Chad what did you need
Lori um if you vote in favor of this motion you're we're gonna yeah I okay all right so the motion passes so we will accept both proposals from Nancy and that will be our budget excuse me [Music] sorry um that brings us to business items we have first read scholarship Julie do you want to say anything about that the scholarships it's the first read on the business items so it'll be in the drive yeah um we're going to vote on is the approval of a white activity we have transportation and bring the permission slips and then they'll have it we'll have information slip um and okay so basically what we normally do is we get the big yellow bus and it costs available I just want you guys to understand the people Transportation normally when they go on a field trip they get a big yellow bus it's very expensive yeah so the teachers that are doing the Cape Cod trip are asking if they can drive a white van themselves which they would try that they would there would be six actually six kids very small field trip so a couple of teachers was it really needed that would be driving yeah and six kids in each one um they would they would have to provide their driving records and all the other teachers at that to Hondo um and this would save a considerable amount a lot of money and they'd also be able to drive around while they were on Cape because they would have the vehicle safe am I correcting them yes absolutely and they had we had the criteria yes they would have to show their driving lesson on driving driving records and things like that um Washington safety video we will be driving the adults are the teachers already certified or a person here in Tallahassee before so if they're not certified um two of them coach so they have that backup they've got that Journey please particular teachers um so where it also it enables them together it saves a strawberry amount of cost in order to run these trips a couple of years ago this wasn't um larger and more lessons [Music] safe driving history and then we would have that in the permissions list so the parents could decide if they wanted to go up with their children across on the bank but the money savings was still considerable I'm just curious how much would they say for the Vans I'm just curious like approximately how much will they save in the Vans compared to going out to go in town from Boylston Elementary it's also overnight stay plus meals correct yes so they would have a driver right foreign [Music] all right motion to vote to approve the white activity and transportation written permission slips uh for the Cape Cod field trip someone Laurie Jess all favorite yes all right that motion passes uh the next one is uh the background check policy uh is to just update this policy it currently includes a query check but uh to also include story which is uh Sex Offender Registration uh question uh motion to update policy DEA to include sorting backgrounds yes Julie any discussion on favorite um all right that morning passes um Laurie can you tell us what this first reading policy yes so the if this is the non-discrimination policy including harassment or Italian Julia voted that through um and what we were going to review is the suggested agreements policy for acap I'm not sure [Music] was actually sent along with us with the acap um and so we were going to vote on the grievance process but I see that um I think we still have that Society Carol on who is the Title IX coordinators with me two Janelle in the afternoon yeah so those are the so there would be yes there would be two um so this is the grievance process that comes along with the Title IX complaints um which is it explains who you know what the interns are what they would do and it is compliant with policy acav so it matches up it's just basically policy acap which we approved it now puts it into action steps all right so that's our first read okay so we'll be voting on that next time so the reading the agency that listed Janelle three times yeah so we'll have to go back I think that would be a change yeah I just want redundancy so like historically there was someone in charge that was the issue and so it's really important to have redundancy and not reporting trying to remember there's some way to say within the policy it has to be two different reporters yeah I think it's in the policy we'll just update the names uh and then kcd was that separate report of that um Google there's a an email from Dorothy from the Massachusetts Association of school committees we were confused with the update of the policy but the the updated the policy just the language um to fit with hairstyles and different things with that but then we looked at it and thought in accordance with state law all grants and gives the district shall be reviewed and accepted by the school committee before expenditure use so the question was should we be approving every single brand and everything that comes our way Dorothy replied by saying basically we don't have to approve them individually we do it through the budget process so I just wanted everyone to be aware that we were in compliance there we go all right um a motion to approve the program of studies Jess any discussion okay I have a discussion it's on page 30.
uh under face coverings that doesn't fit what our current policy is so we might want to just adjust that to our current policy is that's a handbook on YouTube with the handbook Business program studies shoot sorry yeah excuse me [Music] so yeah yeah [Music] this is just a program that studies yeah has everyone looked at it enough to have a vote on it yeah I mean it's gonna be really foreign [Music] it's just it's 102 get shot here [Music] any more any questions from last time all in favor yes all right that passes and uh motion to accept school choice recommendations yes this this woman in the drive was it yeah it was everything was in the agenda in the agenda I had that same issue yeah thank you I remember looking at it earlier a discussion on the school choice numbers okay so these are recommended so the fourth column is the recommended numbers to add per grade so just a general question about a school choice Nancy and Carol you're giving us the current residence students the current school choice students and then I'm recommending school choice somewhere and then total number per class even after the recommended numbers the numbers per class are sort of all over the place 95 82 71 80. why not just I mean we're in a budget situation why not just fill them up to be equal numbers of classes to 100 per class hey whatever the number is but not I mean you have a difference of 25 24 kids in some of these we could do that I want to purchase Sally and how they came up with those numbers that which comes and those are just average numbers that we've had over the years and that's composed historically what they look like sure you can't do that so what so let's talk about school choice a little bit so school choice is we open up a number of spots for class per graduating class I guess two students from other towns so students from other towns have become made to be educated by us and once they're in there's no suddenly back there are students and we receive how much per year per student five thousand and where so when I brought it if it's at the Hondo was anywhere what is it 18 19 20 000 for students were spending and we're collecting five and so that helps the budget and we just have that long conversation about running those numbers down what does it do to the school to the teachers to taxpayers as you have here residents and students I mean I like money but if we so for example sixth grade you have 95 students and seventh degree you have an 82.
so what if we added 13 students to seventh grade made two classes of 95. get another 85 000 per year what does that do to the seventh grade class of Berlin Wilson students is the best do you have a number I don't even know if you know that if there's a number that works better like in the 80s or in the 90s for the the amount of staff that you have in the united possibly teach I can tell you from hand scheduling all the middle schoolers every year that when we have a smaller sixth grade class that comes in everybody has the elections they want the last assessments are smaller we could use them out better the greater they are then [Music] in the high school I mean in terms of like his ninth grade 71 and 84 and 12th grade I mean is there I guess that's true there's a smaller electives is there less of a risk in high school does that help the classes um you know the high schools classes actually because they convinced the grades right right so it actually that kind of thing impacted the Middle School foreign it would be yeah I guess 11th grade would be one short because it would be 76 instead of 75.