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get started I'd like to call to order the April 10th 2019 meeting of the Design Review Board would you please do roll-call Alexis thank you well welcome I am Tamara burns chairperson of the Design Review Board I would like to take a minute to relay the board's purpose and procedures the design review board is a seven person volunteer citizen board appointed by the mayor and confirmed by the City Council the purpose of the design review board is to foster excellence in the design of Ann Arbor's built environment and to advise petitioners on how a project can meet the spirit and intent of the downtown design guidelines we are mandatory review voluntary compliance meaning that projects have to come before us but there's no requirement to follow our suggestions one review is required although we have been encouraging and been quite successful in having petitioners come two or more times as the project evolves the procedure of the meeting is as follows first the applicant will present their proposed project to the design review board then the applicant and Design Review Board will hold the discussion on the design of the project following the presentation and discussion members of the public are permitted to comment for up to three minutes this is not a questions and answer or discussion period all speakers are asked to sign in and state their name and address for the record today we have no petitioners so we are having a discussion about bylaws and also about improving the process so the first thing it's may I have a motion to prove the agenda so move it is now open for discussion do we have any changes to the agenda okay all those in favor as is okay agenda is approved we do have minutes to approve from the March 13th meeting may have a motion to approve the minutes I have a second second all right it's now open for discussion does anyone want to take a just a few minutes to read the minutes I'll review them any discussion all those in favor of the minutes minutes are approved we also have a recommendation letter for 545 South Main may I have a motion to approve the recommendation letter so now open for discussion any changes to the letter and any Corrections okay all those in favor okay recommendation letter is approved moving right along we have a second recommendation letter for 1,100 South University Avenue may I have a motion to prove that recommendation letter that is now open for discussion any changes to that recommendation letter okay all those in favor that recommendation letter is approved now we're moving forward into the Design Review Board bylaws draft Alexis do you want to walk us through that essentially the same as yes our records have the lead last reviewed and approved that bylaws two years ago so attached are the same carried forward our attorneys office is also doing our their annual look over in general the attorney's office has been on an effort to make sure that all of boards and commissions across the city have very similar bylaws and similar provisions our design review board bylaws are fairly new since we are a fairly new board but nevertheless the attorney's office is giving it a once-over right now and if we have if you have any changes we will incorporate both into them when we issue or issue the 2019 bylaws the bylaws go through the the membership of the board as established by City Council ethics and conflict of interest officers meetings one item that you may want to discuss but also no discussion is perfectly fine you know bylaws don't really need to be overhauled all the time but in the meetings section I'm not certain if we have any thing in the bylaws about the presentations of applicants I know that a previously I don't think that we really needed them the sort of opening monologues were kept it pretty brief but we've had one meeting where the opening monologue was quite lengthy I can certainly do and I had already intended on for from my end better coaching on some applicants about the expectations and the norms keeping that monologue to 5 to 10 minutes speak there is a can be a lengthy discussion period but we're accustomed to having a pretty brief monologue for lack a better term right and so we can put something in the bylaws or we can just more go keep on going with our norms up to you but other than that the bylaws are basically we're just looking for a once-over and if there is nothing to add or amend that's perfectly fine that we want a little more and we put a suggestion for five minutes you can say keep it brief but it suggested limit without saying you only got this much time and it would keep a timer on it seems like it's about what 10 to 15 minutes it seems reasonable well then while we go for that next year we'll work on just better coaching and then we can end next year we can wait but you need to revisit I understand I did a little well researched I wouldn't say but I did a little asking around the Planning Commission has very strict time standards and then a little bit awkward the his dart District Commission has something in their bylaws about which they rarely enforce but they like apparently they like having them in there something to point to if things get out of hand but they rarely enforce them because they don't feel they need to yeah it would be a little concerned if we enacted them didn't monitor it very much and then all of us hadn't raised a flag on someone when we hadn't raised leg several times before so it doesn't seem broken enough to fix at this point that some guidance and yeah I might not solve the issue and I I've started doing this little monologue in the beginning since we were being taped and I could just add to that as a reminder like you can talk to them beforehand and then I can just say that they'll present the proposed project and this should kept to ten to fifteen minutes you know or something like that and leave it kind of loose that way yeah yeah that sounds like a plan then we can revisit next year as well okay I had one another coming Tamra I'm the first page two paragraph talks about duties and I'm not sure we're doing this but it sounds like something that would be a good thing to do to report annually to City Council regarding the effectiveness of the design review process and make recommendations for any changes to the downtown design guidelines we yeah but yeah we've done that a few times but not definitely not annually I don't know if you made a presentation to the council I made a presentation but we have forwarded memos so that is to report annually doesn't necessarily mean be there but I know I think we've probably done it two or three times yeah but would be good to do it more regularly I guess but I think it has yeah I think through Alexis it has gone yeah annually the second part of it to make any changes to the guidelines they don't really want us tampering with the guidelines I it's the message I think we're getting right that is the message that I've been getting but I do have a little update about that well you do that's sort of that is the message that we had been getting okay well should we leave that in then and just aspire to it maybe not always do it I would leave it in and aspire to it also it's in code that it's in code I think that yeah that that's one of the one of your charges yeah okay okay yeah and I think we've been trying to make some recommendations and that's why yes update on that because it gets seems to get blocked or not blocked but just doesn't seem to move forward too much I think like to be a little more effective in that okay thanks thank you so we can vote on these now or we okay yeah all right because I need a motion to approve the bylaws as they are so moved okay it's open for discussion is there any further discussion on the on the bylaws so all those in favor of the bylaws as they stand hi okay bylaws are approved I'm the subject of membership though we were supposed to be a seven member board and right now we're only six yeah I don't have an update about that I am under the impression that there are some candidates that are being considered but they've not been shared with me but as you might know the way it works is you can apply to be on a board turn your application into the mayor's office and then the mayor nominates candidates and the City Council approves so I'm under the impression that there are some candidates on file and I would just have to assume that the mayor's office and the administrator's office are keeping that process moving but I will try to get an update and on a separate topic the bylaws say that the members have to be electors in the city of Ann Arbor and I am not right right it's not that I didn't want to be on the board but I just want to be upfront that neither my house nor my office are any longer in the city there is an exception that yeah yeah so maybe that just needs to be updated or s4 I got I don't know if you all got it but I did a was it a memo email memo from Brett Leinart about renewing your remember your membership on the condition if your I assume it was if your use the microphone if your Commission was coming to an end make sure you reapply and tell them if you want to extend it I got that I assume everybody we're all it's staggered your so a couple of us I can't remember who who's on which year but yeah I don't know when my turns out could you look up our terms Alexis and just email them to us when you have a very good chance because I think that's how we ended up losing Paul was his term expired and he didn't ask to stay on and I think you want to do there was a link to I think the mayor's office or whatever and I filed through and said that I would want to be reappointed but that was quite a while ago I'm not even sure I'm up for reappointment I don't know either yeah they just did as I understand an audit on all the Commission's and that's why it came up with Paul that he was not actually determine expired and then and you can only per the rules you think you was it ninety days once your term is expired to reapply forget RIA when I recall I believe that that same thing happened to me and I did respond and I do believe I received something in the mail confirming this is on the ledge estar but this is on the website and you can work your way through it and get to the design review board there's a board details tab and a member roster so mine is gonna expire it scanned down if you would on there sorry can you go back up yeah okay Gary so you're the only one and the missing role that we have is a contractor is that correct no now we have to landscape architect we don't have outhit laner Alexis my recollection is that we've in the past we've been asked we've had some discussion about suggestions if there are people that are applying if if people on the board here have some suggestions am I to turn them into you yeah I can be a conduit to that but the first step if you have a suggestion the first thing would be getting that person to apply sure but yeah and I think it's um like here under the board details this one it does say that there's currently a one vacancy and there's a button to click to apply okay I think it also links to these when you submit your qualifications and so forth to the mayor's office they keep it on file and so when you go to reapply I think there's an option to reference your previous applications that maybe I thought you know where we allow three three-year terms I didn't see any term limits okay you're stuck we have term limits on officer positions which we'll get to in a minute but I my quick scan is theirs although it's said that there are three year terms and they don't seem to be a maximum number of terms okay you said there's term limits for the opposite officers but it goes on forever you know yeah I'm just looking if there's actually yeah yeah no member shall serve more than three consecutive full terms full terms that's nine years no right we know three three years to be like the chair you could because it in that sort batcher it's a one-year term just to be an officer to one-year term to be an officer three consecutive I think you can be maybe ultimately you could serve four or five six and more than three times as a chair or the other position will be by steer however you can't do it more than three consecutive I think I've been cheerful so you might think about that for this ounds like it's your first year June 30th so you might think about a new chair and vice chair you've been I've been same well you can move up to chair you want to motion we do you think we probably to follow this we probably should and June 30th we should before June 30th we should sounds like we need a new new officers well it's on the agenda to vote for new officers today oh and yellow the blank yellow sticky notes would be for your vote to voting if we want to move on to which is the election of officers and if you just want to put on that sticky note through your nomination is for a chair and vice chair I believe that you have done it I don't know you might have to confirm but on your honor if you would have been chair more than three times I don't know about Milken Lee I've been vice-chair as long as you've been chair from the beginning I think we should I think we should be summarily thrown off cheering vice cheers yeah and then I can tell you what it's supposed to be I think I wrote on my sticky I'm sorry sound chair and vice chair chair and vice chair anyone want to express its short interest in doing so we have to do [Music] cheering booster council put somebody on and say okay does the does the mayor have a obligation for a certain period of time to appoint somebody or suggest somebody I don't know we would we we we really need a planner on this board that we've missed the last you know a couple meetings and Paul hasn't been here we've missed him yeah missed his role yeah why encouraging him to reapply but so he may be one of the applicants they're looking at yeah I would miss him to check with a business card I did yeah to see whatever he's a fine I encouraged him to apply and they never I will reach out he wants to continue I would be done in just a minute but while I'm tallying up the votes I have a few of them but just make sure that your contact information is correct on the roster and as you know these are professionals or something mainstream and their own tracks to come through there okay that's so does your statement paper in your place in front of you if you want to fill that one out do you think of just one suggestion cuz you switch the order of the fax number and office number because some people may have a tendency to look at the first number well that's why I'm wondering whether she didn't take the fax long I mean I don't have one anymore I think we have one that goes into a computer or something I'd be perfectly happy if you took the fax number totally offline yeah you can take my 20th century technology baby there's one state agency there's a federal federal agency that you have to use a fax I can see where we definitely need a seventh member this might have a tie a two-way tie for a chair and a three-way tie for vice chair so in light of that I'm saying just vote again oh let's switch out okay yeah bill received builders bill Kenley three votes for being chair and dick Mitchell receive time I'm withdrawing my driveway Laurie I should be more formal board members singleton bore member burns and board member Perkins I'll receive two votes for being vice Jim well I'm withdrawing bylaws do not address tiebreakers I'm company very comfortable having voted for the old yeah I think the current chair should make it make a decision I make it I can make a decision I think so it's not a bylaw Satine chair dick Mitchell let's go with Jeff Perkins for Vice Chair unless I get kicked off because I don't live here okay in that case I'll be Laurie yeah well it actually it's great to have a vice chair because there's alright ok we're at the next III on regular bike business message from planning manager about master plan scope that's that's the one thing on the agenda from the email that I could not get that - I couldn't yes okay so I would direct your attention in front to the monitor in front of you the in a roundabout way to a an update about the status of our design guide language views and so forth the we went to the city went out with an RFP for a mess a new master plan and that went out in early February and it was due back March 7th and I we got on the order of 15 to 20 proposals come in that proposal said that the objective objective was we were seeking services for a citywide community visioning and master plan development process and the provider was to lead an extensive inclusive and innovative community engagement process to develop a new master plan that identifies community values milestones and prioritizes implementation steps to achieve a viable sustainable and accessible City and it had some required components in them including one talking about design guidelines and then this is a snapshot of the RFP and I put a red box around what we said about design guidelines the master plan is supposed to include a review of the current architectural and design guidelines and incorporate a review into the scope of services and consider extending the guidelines or portions to other areas of the city or revised for the city so that's that's sort of where we stand at the moment that's like a holding pattern on our downtown design guidelines but we hope to address them through the master planning effort and there's an item going to council in May on funding the this master plan work we've got proposals in and so we're looking to get the funding locked down in May so is this the proposals from like planning consultants yes yeah we got some I think I understand there was a smattering some national firms some regional firms it seems like it would be beneficial if we would once that team is selected and the processes in place if they would come to one of these meetings and we could provide feedback based on how we've been able to communicate and interpret your department's work in evaluating projects and so I don't generally speaking I feel like we've supported what's in the guidelines and then push to carry that forward but it might be helpful for the team to see how this piece of the process works in embedded and what they're doing I would assume that that would be a fundamental component of their work you know and not only reaching out to design report how is this parse that's working for you but for example the historic district commission reaching out to the Zoning Board of Appeals the transportation commission that you know I would feel that that's a minimum step yeah yeah if nothing else this is a stakeholder you you are representative of stakeholders and you maybe even considered a focus group why they reference the AARP communities initiative I don't and I know that it was um the you know it's a one of the components that said the master plan or your scope of services must address the city values Community Engagement master plan consolidation etc it had to address Aging in Place had to address design guideline so because the National Association of Homebuilders has an entire program devoted to Aging in Place specifically and you can get certified in it by taking the courses and we do a lot of it in our company because there's just so much of it that goes on in Ann Arbor so I don't know who looks at those kind of things but if you could just maybe bring it to Brett's attention I will I think that um well I know that Brett did put together the RFP so I'll make sure to mention it to him yeah I have a question and moved your next page where they had the red outline the analysis will include consideration of extending the guidelines or portions of them to other areas of the city what would that imply would there be some kind of we had a few zoning items that we but if they were extended they did more elaborate guidelines and other forces would there be review of compliance or kind of functional we provide for the downtown would that be expected to move into other areas of the city as well I think they obviously need to be fleshed out I read this as and knowing that I know a criticism about developments that we get is but it's just so ugly and we get that downtown and we get that everywhere or this is not the right character for this established neighborhood so that's my guess is driving toward there is no mention in here a form-based code but maybe inserting elements of form and character in an architecture you know we don't currently have any regulation that say you have to have a pitch drew from your residential I don't know what the outcome would be but I but that's my interpretation of what that would is driving toward and if the process moved toward something like form based code the code zoning review process through the site plan approval would be what catches or doesn't yes chat those issues because as the ordinance that got passed I think it was last year like one of them was something about the knee wall and amount of glass and there was something about Florida floor Heights on your first floor that's a ordinance yeah where yeah more than just downtown so yeah correct yeah I'll get to that okay but that might also be I know this says extending guidelines but maybe no I'd like to continue trying to push to create ordinances out of the guidelines that are you know that could enhance design where we find that it's something that we do want a little more teeth in and that's where you get into the form based code which is not the model in the curtain that would be a big shift yeah we have tiny elements of it currently but we don't have a form based code but we have a thing here and there which tries to shape the development downtown only I think just to be honest to expand that very far would be very dangerous in Ann Arbor where the kind of eclectic mix of things is part of what lends it richness and when you see form base coat applied in places you tend to see a lot of uniformity come out of that and I don't think that's probably appropriate here but it would be tricky yeah to make it successful okay then I say the next item on the agenda was a is a little overview or review maybe a catch up of the unified development code and the site plan review process so I'm going to switch over for a second and just sort of give a little intro to this we'd asked Alexis to put this together because sometimes we've got applicants coming to us that maybe have places they're building a certain way on the site or stepped it in a certain way and we are asking them to do something different and then it turns out it's because of the the zoning downtown some of us were down here and maybe more have more understanding of it I don't do a lot of work in downtown Ann Arbor so I thought it'd be helpful for a little review so we could understand what the applicant is dealing with in terms of form and zoning code so this is a condensed version of some presentations that were done around this time last year when we were working towards adopting the unified development code and what we did was we repealed nine entire chapters and then parts of the tenth chapter and we adopted a new chapter 55 unified development code some of the new features were it's a single chapter format most developers had an architect's and just designers have assembled their own book as planners did of a binder with all ten chapters in it that's what we had but you would but you that was no there was no one-stop shopping you had to do that yourself and that if you happen to be looking for zoning you would find zoning you would find area in placement and land uses but you would not find parking and site plan and natural features and landscaping and buffering so we lumped it together it was an effort not to rewrite it in the sand you know change nines to tens but a consolidation and a reorganization into a unified development code we added a use table we had previously had just lists we there's an index a navigation bar in the circle this little example clear sections and subsections terms are terms that are defined are capitalized and that's laying the foundation for having a links and clickable and you can hover you can't do that now but you can hover and get the definition in the in a enriched digital document we've added some graphics I wish there were more but some is better than what we had it was none this is the table of contents for it and there are the eight articles ghost from starts with general provisions down to definitions and then of these eight articles pretty much three perform the meat of them glossing over the first two the general provisions that's the legalese stuff that most just you don't know one but a lawyer probably needs to read that article to or the zoning districts which give the intent of which layout these are the districts that we have these are the intent of each one but there's not much regulatory material there article three are the use regulations over on the side is an example of the youth table you can the uses are listed down the left hand side the districts are across the top and this article three tells you answers what can I do with my property what are the permitted uses and are there any youth specific standards that you need to abide by for the uses article four are the development standards answering what do I need to do what can it look like what what how can I build this what does it have to look like that this is the article we give the area placement parking landscaping and buffering streets and access meaning how many driveways stormwater management natural features signs lighting fences and then Article five are the administrative bodies and procedures how can I do it and who would approve it we list out who are the bodies Design Review Board is listed what are the general procedures things that everyone needs to do specific procedures depending on exactly which type of permit that you need how to get that approval and then any amendments or modifications at the beginning there's a summary table which we didn't have so like sort of an at-a-glance kind of thing oh and that's that so so that's the document that people are that have to use people who have been around this is sort of an aside anecdotal people have been around for 30 or 40 years still complain that it's different and they can't find anything about any relatively new user says that has no complaints whatsoever I can't imagine it any other way so chalking it up to a success back to yeah so in the in the UDC and I believe you have sort of bad news it's not in the packet do you have a section of code yeah yes you do I do not but no matter I will pop forward but yep it has a lot of blue on it blue tables no it was fine okay I know what it says but there this is these are the four pages that really are are unique to downtown and starting with section five seventeen point six that's the downtown character overlay zoning districts we don't have character overlays in any other spot of downtown but and that's what gives the the building massing standards and that's where we have a little element of form the base zone ngey 1 or D 2 provides the abuses that you can do in the two districts and the total mass the 400% in the d1 if they are or 200% if they are in the d2 and different section offers the premiums but that's where how big can your building be in terms of sheer mass and what uses can you put in it and that's in the base district but the character districts that starts to shape to shape the form and in it it talks about what is the street wall minimum and maximum Street wall and it is slightly different for most in the various character districts what is the total height that your building can be in one district we have a maximum diagonal because we want we are prioritizing the slender buildings there and then and so we we are introducing elements of form about what how you shape that mass that you're given the next table there and section five seventeen six bead are the building front setback standards and that doesn't it doesn't go by base and it doesn't go by character districts there's a separate map which I did not include but I can pull it up but there's a separate map that designate each Street and is a street a primary secondary or front-yard Street and so you're required setback is based on your Street designation and then see is what we just approved lat last year 18 months ago or so building design requirements on primary and secondary streets and there's a section a talks about or I'm sorry I think one it talks about the applicable to all I think it's the building materials and what everyone has to do on the building materials and then the next section is the talking about the minimum maximum well I can look it up for sure but talks about the knee wall height the transparency and so forth so these are the and this is in code these are the these are the minimum or maximum requirements that the designer has to hit when they're proposing buildings downtown does this unified code contain all of the approvals that a person would need to get our board planning historic district when I was on the board of the Contractors Association we were asking for something like this for years and just couldn't ever seem to get it off the ground so this does that that I'm really happy to see yes it does not and we had a very good reason for leaving it out but no it does not do HDC yeah because I think that HDC doesn't regulate use and they are a separate they are they are entirely separate people are subject to zoning and HDC there any requirements that may have some questions not related to downtown that might have gotten changed when it when it was unified we did it um I have always described this it was about 98 percent reorganization but there were there was about 2% of substantive change and we made great efforts to call out every bit of substantive change that we were doing we changed the definition in terms but however but in terms of procedures no no procedures changed there is different wording in for example some of the permit like zoning permit you used to be called the zoning compliance permit we made it more intuitive to zoning permit we also reworded it but we have the same triggers but we wanted it to be much clearer about what the what you need what work needs is only compliance permit zoning permit but procedures didn't change things that changed were the big one was for the definition of floor area and floor area ratio and we were much more specific about what counts and what doesn't count that's the question I have and if it's it's a question that's not related to downtown should I ask you after the meeting because it is it may be sure yeah we but we did about that and we can get into a more that's fine we felt that we had to they'll make a substantive change to that we previously had a definition of non residential floor area and residential floor area which were fine in the 60s when the entire zoning ordinance was driving you to absolutely separate your uses downtown was not a mixed use district downtown was business and office but modern building we have a lot of mixed use and it was completely unclear how do you classify a mixed-use building so we that was we didn't just arbitrarily decide well we just need to redefine floor area because we feel like it there was a real need to redefine floor area so that we could actually enforce it and and work with it it's specifically about our 1e therefore it doesn't really yeah and that's what we did we took pains to also break it up and be more specific and chunk it out we there's a definition of floor and then there's a definition of floor area and then there's a definition of floor area ratio so for a building in an r1 II I can tell you what is what is floor area and what would can tribute to the floor area ratio but but there is no floor area there's no minimum or maximum FA are in our 1e so I can tell you how to calculate it but it doesn't matter what the percentage is because there's no minimum or maximum you're probably talking about 2,000 square feet and whether there's a basement or not yes because that is cause that our money as long as we can talk about something else our money was intended to be 2,000 square foot or less houses and that was fine fact I think maybe Polti is building some that maybe before this unified there's another parcel I'm involved in that suddenly the basement counts so you start talking about configurations of houses to get a 2000 square-foot house and include the basement as part of the square footage it doesn't make a grain of sense it makes a real problematic house I think it it's partially defeats the purpose of the r1e but does it make a distinction between a basement that is for utility purposes and a basement that is finished and made level nope nope unfinished basement counts as part of the 2,000 square feet that's not right that's absolutely yeah that's it I wanted to talk a little bit about the this table I guess understand that it looks like one of the things that I know we had talked about as a definition for Street wall I have the full go here so I'll look up the okay um definition I think it is defined if it's capitalized in the code it is it's all caps it's a bigger camp than the other camps yes there's the length of a premesis abutting one or more oh no sorry that's street frontage street wall the height of the street wall portion of a building as measured in stories above the street grade and there's a figure I'll pull it up on the screen because I guess I would like to see that definition expanded because we've been running into things where it seems like the street well the second story of the street wall is really just a screen and there's actually no building behind it and it really has a different character than if you had windows and a solid building it just seems like that would be something we could improve on because I think we're getting some some buildings coming out of that that are not really in the in the spirit of the street wall yeah you're it is the is the goal to just have a mass at a certain height at the street or is it to have an activated facade at a certain height at the street and that's kind of what you're getting at right yeah exactly have some been built no have come before us like I forget that they address William and Main Street was the marking and the first two floors of parking is a challenge for something like that yeah the definition it's unfortunate it's cut up on two pages but the definition of street wall is the exterior face of a building that fronts a street between the street grade and the street wall and then the definition of this there's a street while height definition and then here is the graphic that goes with it and I'm seeing right now that the figure the references and the actual label don't match I was going to say that one on the right is so it looks like all herders of downtown street wall Heights are two stories minimum and there's some that you can go up another story yeah Main Street town and East you're on three and four I believe are the choices always a two-story minimum some districts are three some are four and then there's this offset that is at the top of the street wall is required as an average of five feet so that again that means you could have half your building at ten feet and half it right at the property line is that yeah so that could be interpreted sorry there's a in the O's woman Oh pqrs I mean I mean I think part of our role is to challenge the applicant just in making sure that they're thinking of all the opportunities and I feel like sometimes they'll come in front of us and say well we can't do this because we're meeting it you know we're up to our ffar or where we can't push that facade back because of zoning or we can't pull it forward because of zoning and just think the more we understand that with a more we could maybe help them be more creative in their understanding of it yeah some of it is set the the minimum maximum street wall height you have to have an offset but it is an average offset and you can see you know you can see here you can have a portion of the building with zero offset it can go straight up for say 12 stories and you could have to deeper because the offset you know the averages count really based on area it if you the length of your building with a 5 foot if I feet deep if you're supposed to have them just say 100 square feet of that that's what and the code sort of explains that 100 square feet is how much offset you have so if you can have a built a portion at zero the other portion would need to be at 10 feet so at 10 feet so like you know half of it need to be 10 feet and that would work so that is a place where the design would be work can come into play in terms of FA are the code does not have a minimum FA are so when folks say I can't do that because it would impact my FA are that's not a zoning argument that's a profit margin argument and I my personal opinion is that it's something else that a design review board there you can you are in the position to advise the Planning Commission and the council as designers you know it is important for the community to maybe a Qi to take some FA are off which may impact profit but you know you're you're not and your honor then I can like advisers you are design advisors so I would my advice to you would be to when they say well if minimum fer is not our purview design is our purview [Applause] and then we have the maximum building module length horizontal dimension and that looks like that's only on South you and several of them carry tone first Street and Liberty yeah I like to see if we have a graphic here we do there there's a nice graphic in one or two of our master plans and I know that I know what the intention of this was I feel like this is the one that is least well internalized and comprehended and well maybe even the Design Review Board can provide the most benefit to that one but if you think about Main Street and we are a very traditional platted Midwestern town and the rods and the chains so most most Lots on Main Street were 66 feet wide and so that we have the historic part of Main Street the the buildings have are generally 66 feet wide and if they have three Bay's than each Bay is 22 feet wide and it looks and you can very clearly see the individual components and if it's not three 22s it might be 230 threes and you can even see that when you when they combine two Lots but there was a real rhythm of and you can sort of see the underlying lot planted Lots just by looking at the facades of the buildings and this was an attempt to say even if your building is no matter what size of your building you should have modules so you can it is a more pedestrian sense of scale you can read the land read something about the land just by looking at the building and I know well I think you can find examples all over the map but that's what the code intention is is to get something physical about the building and I in explaining to people I say look at Main Street you can you can just guess how wide a building is just like seeing how many Bay's it is if you know that 66 feet is the standard a lot but if you look at the Ann Arbor news building at non-division and a non division it Huron you probably have no idea how long that building is because it's a solid granite mass and so that's what we don't want and we are getting buildings I would say that and so everyone is putting forth a number saying oh my my repeat is 40 feet or 100 feet so I think people are putting forward numbers and they're having articulation on their buildings I don't know if it's replicating a lot with but but nobody is having that solid monolith and I think this came up on a recent project and you brought it to their attention I think that was the the Washington why I was thinking of the Washington one with it where really the whole first floor was unarticulated I think there might have been a step you couldn't bear leave and see where the entrance lobby was for the residential and so that's a that's great today something to point to that says but they're specifically got guidance around creating a modularity that feels like the historic rhythm of the downtown and Williams very long on the Main Street side yeah I'm curious how it got to be 40 feet that if it's historic markers are just the number I don't know yeah they're they're earned are there any areas that would be within downtown I think there's such a dense pattern of existing buildings that it would be harder to apply but where we're actually would be setting a setback larger than what's required here to enable outdoor cafe space and circulation and a better module I know Grand Rapids for example has a very specific all new setbacks should a quote could accomplish 18 feet between the curb in the building face because that's what we know is a good dimension to get walkability Street trees and kambei space and most of our sidewalks here in Ann Arbor not big enough to support that feel that we have a very vibrant street life but we actually don't have as many Street cafes as you would have if we our sidewalks could support them again it would be difficult to add but there have been some districts that have had a lot of new changes and didn't have the benefit of something like that to guide it yeah we do have if you look in your excerpt the front pack the front setback standards table its tables 17-7 so it's on page 65 so under the primary Street so we we can accommodate that but we don't require it and you know maybe this will come up in future discussions but we can accommodate it by saying the the additional requirements and exceptions for primary streets number 2 the maximum setback may be exceeded to provide 16 feet between back of curb and the street wall and it says allow for pedestrian circulation but that was pedestrian circulation while you have outdoor seating or those outdoor that's outdoor furniture and that says up so it doesn't say shall but it says EPS it up to so we have an exception where you can exceed that one foot maximum setback yeah and I think and as planets have we've been pushing it well we've been pushing it all so it's like you know learn from learn from mistakes we there's also an exception you can have a 20% plot of your frontage can be plaza you can push your building back a portion of it for a front things I think that the consensus in the planning office is the foundry is not not a bad designed building but it it probably is too close to the road and it would have been better if it was pushed back so that there are 16 feet it was there's another example not this is just downtown character district you can push it back I was thinking about the project it was it must be in the whatever that industrial corridor is that the south the buildings on south mean like one we had they had whatever that the building is called now they wondered they wanted the yard they wanted more setback and I think they did add the green project about a planned project which was not a good solution for that they wanted more and they we were flawed oh you got to keep it closed which was wasn't good to keep it so close even what they did they wanted more but yeah so that should be extending could be extended out in my point two more districts than just the downtown yeah so the so we can accommodate those but it doesn't say show but that's not the downtown district it is yet well the yard was we reviewed it sure but when you own out when downtown I'm thinking about the character districts isn't there the character that's part of the that's it's the first Street first Street character district but frontage is based on your Street designation I'll pull up the map to its truth okay and I was just reading the title in this downtown territory so I was assuming that was just the downtown district if that's all the districts that you can have that leeway then why did they have to go through the plan project thing because of a you know they might have been at six they might have been at 16 feet or something no something like that yeah I think they wanted ten this is the frontage map the red our primary streets so that's the you must toe the line you need to be new you may need to be at zero setback for the red streets the yellow are secondary streets you can be anywhere between zero and ten feet so you have to be close to the line and the green our front yard streets mean you have to be 15 feet back now that's yellow yeah so turn so you had to have it right up against the curb they could have been ten feet back where they were probably were ten feet I think they were and they may be do they want 15 or 10 or on a row I'd have to look back at the numbers so when we had that building that we reviewed at on Washington behind the Michigan Theater yeah they came back three times or came back twice and we and you had encouraged them to go to that 16 feet and I think they they didn't they did it was great yeah but that was the planning staff encouraging that so it when when the yard was done were you not you weren't able to it sounded like they ran into planning issues with that yeah with the the Washington Street one it came right on the heels and there's sort of morphs into the discussion about the process but what we get at Design Review Board its architecture heavy and we often get some sort of site layout but it's often not a site plan and your boundaries and everything sometimes it's not to context it seems weird and I don't think any one of us so I can't blame anybody but I don't think any one of us realized just how close the standard that's what they call the 420 they're the 405 South Main Street the former DTE property main between William and Packard and they they came they had priests and middle meetings they present it to the Design Review Board and their architectural drawings look good it looked like a decent streetscape that seemed fine based on the based on what we had and then when they came in for a site plan and provided their Alta survey their building is eight feet from the William Street curb because there is only eight feet of sidewalk between the William Street curb and the property line and it's not an enormous deal when that current building is set back 200 feet it's you want it to and feet and so now they are they are not pleased with the city for when we are saying you need to provide us with 16 feet and different planners working on that I don't know the the today's status of it but that that shook out just as the Washington Street project was submitted to the Design Review and so that's when I said I'm going to ask you because I didn't realize I needed to ask but I'm going to ask you how many feet between the curb and you're building face so like learning learning from but that's where it and because I know like I think we all made the plan they've looked that that other project is like their streetscape on William and main that they're renderings looked nice but we didn't no one knew that actual dimension so I learned to ask the dimension it is a good point that we often don't get detailed site plans we get a first floor plan that may have a tiny bit of context information yeah and and to your point it doesn't say our code currently I wonder this one think would there be changes in the future that result out of this it doesn't currently say you shall provide 16 feet it says you may provide 16 feet right so I can I'm happy to answer any more questions loop back to what to whatever the last thing that I was going to mention is our site plan review process you have this printed in your in your packet as well but as you can see we provide a lot of information to applicants and we go through the process it starts with the design review board as you know and we move through the all the meat-grinder citizen notification or or resident notification larger projects we folks have to have a meeting before they submit lesser projects it is the applicants responsibility to notify that they've submitted a project the city still does our public hearing notices at the end when it's coming up for approval but this our citizen notification requirements are for front-end to let people know there is a project coming or there has been a project submitted and then we move through the review process what the staff we advise people you you submit your project and then we just go around and around until we get it right the Planning Commission does not want to see every iteration or every draft they would like to see an approvable project never real and practically speaking never does the first submittals go to Planning Commission sometimes the second submittal goes to Planning Commission most often it's the third revision that goes to Planning Commission so I tell people you got a plan on to revisions that third submit all don't don't plan on one and done and then most projects I'd say I'd say maybe 5 or 10% of projects can be approved by staff and another 5 or 10% can be approved just by the Planning Commission but that does leave 80 or 90 percent of projects must move on to City Council and that is not a state requirement that's just that is our preferred policy and which is in code and moving on to council does add about six weeks to that to the review process but I feel like we do give I'm not sure if developers believe us when we say that these are our required steps I think a lot of times they're very developers are very optimistic folks but either way there's we have a lot of information on the web or out there to help them through the process and what I have been telling folks about the design review board and the two meetings I say if you your first meeting satisfies the requirement for going to the design review board once and it's in code that it must occur before you submit your project to go to the design review board I tell them then for that second meeting it is your choice if you want to do a second meeting before you submit that's okay but if you also you'd like to submit your project and you'd like to do a second meeting while we're doing that first or second review or we're still working in house that would be acceptable to that you're not required to complete that second meeting before you submit and the way the timing works out and the deadlines it gets closed it's within a week or two the second meeting that someone has for a design review board might be just one or week before or one week behind when they submitted their site plan in this there's no significant to do this there's there's no suggestion in the design review board piece here that applicants are offered and encouraged to come back more than once now that was probably inappropriate to throw that in here but someplace in the process it would be good rather than us summarizing and when they come in and go really I'd like to come back another time yeah the next time there is that we've done this periodically but should we do it again the next time we have a light agenda or no designs do we want to go over our application materials and the field okay can you explain why it takes six weeks to go from planning it's the it's the it's the approval cycle that council established the language I typically use with an applicant after they when Planning Commission is given their recommendation is I have prepared all my paperwork I've made I've written up the resolution I have gathered all the minutes and the staff reports and put my package together and I have submitted my request for you to be on a certain agenda and but it takes a couple weeks for it to go from my desk to the planning manager to the area administrator to the City Attorney's Office to the administrator's office and then the city clerk if they wanted to set it up so we could I mean in most communities it's a month before you've gotten your it's so that your approval from Planning Commission is a contingency of being able to get to that next meeting yeah it is um it is it is strictly administrative policy it is not there's nothing in code or state statute that has that that amount of time that it is it is how it done when I years ago earlier it wasn't six weeks it was more like two to three because it does take a little bit of time to set the agenda and the packets go out the the week before a meeting so you know we can't you have a little build up time it has not always been this way but this is the current policy there's also some communities don't send 90% of their site plans to their City Council's they only send the legislative decisions such as a rezoning to council and the planning their Planning Commission approves by right type lands but it is our councils policy not to do that I believe it even came out in a recommendation from some outside consultants and like the redevelopment ready program said it was it's been suggested before to change our approval procedures but city council has elected not to you have to be allowed to be called the relative redevelopment ready community yeah as part of that City Council review time period doodoo notifications or advertisement of the meeting thank you some of it is public noticing but the public noticing is more in the order of 14 or 21 days it's not six weeks and I don't see Historic District Commission on this is it because it's strictly site plan or I mean historic district Commission project site plan approval right yeah yeah they do need to do but the there is no I don't believe I don't have to verify but I don't believe there are code requirements about timing of HDC versus the site plan process meaning I think you can you can you need to obtain both approvals but there's nothing in code that says which one comes first and which ones come second it is in code that the design review board meeting must occur before you can submit a site plan I remember that project no I'm not even remember the street it's I think it was the Old Fourth Ward and there was a project I was on a historic district Commission quite a while ago ten 15 years ago and proposing a very big development you know the road that T's into power center Glenny and they had to get permission to build in the district and they also wanted to tear down two small houses that were there traversing and somehow they were allowed to go through everything they went through Planning Commission and they went through City Council and got all their legal documents and all their you know financial documents and then they came to the HDC and the agency was not happy with it and people who voted against it were no longer you know the membership on the Commission was no longer renewed it was a big deal and then they turned around and sued the city for the procedures and and also won in court and on top of it they were allowed to tear down the buildings without commitment to build the project and the project never went forward and the buildings are gone there's still working on it they believe they submitted for another amendment to it to tweak it but how they were allowed to go through that whole process and then kind of come back I think they I think they did it on purpose in order to put pressure on the Planning Commission to or the Historic District Commission to approve it because they knew that was going to be the hard part and so I thought they would I think they thought that they could put a lot of pressure on Historic District Commission by getting all the other approvals and then saying see now you're the only one holding us up I wanted to bring up something that we had talked about at one time and I don't think we've followed up on once is that one of us following a project through and an attending the Planning Commission and attending the City Council and you know if that would be beneficial it puts probably I would guess a little bit of pressure I so depends on the petitioner you know it we could be an advocate for them in front of Planning Commission if it's a project we think is really well designed or if it's one that we're not as happy with to just make sure to reiterate what we've said in our recommendation or or not a not recommendation letter and then there's some that are sort of we're hoping that they'll do make some improvements and that could also be reiterated and I'm not sure why that's sort of fallen by the wayside and if it's I think you know I know it's difficult for you probably because you don't know when they're going to Planning Commission always and like who's assigned it's hard to sort of hard for us to keep track if we're not around but when they go to Planning Commission they have to submit the building drawings similar to what they show us I'm curious if there have been any examples where people just didn't take our advice weapons the same or they made drastic changes to the building before it got to planning do you have any sense of that um in terms of drastic changes I can't I just don't recall many doing that a few more I think just didn't take the advice just thank you but we're sticking with what we've got because I'm not looking for a way to create for myself another couple of evening meeting yes but maybe since Planning sees this stuff before it goes to Planning Commission if you thought or somebody in your office thought that either they they disregarded our advice or they made drastic changes to the project before it went to planning then you could just tip us off let me give you know figure out somebody to attend that meeting I will brain I'm already thinking like what I've even preparing for today's meeting I remembered that and in the you know staff staff updates we had the sort of a MANET manager's update about the master plan scope terms have I'm like probably should do update about projects that have gone that might have gone I couldn't think of any that have gone in the past two to three months but how can we be better about that notification and some things that come to mind if you if we if I just rather than wait till a design review board meeting if we just send all board member email saying these items are on the upcoming agenda also we we CC some people on every staff report depending on whom we can meet for downtown projects making sure that the you copy of the staff report that the DRB is cc'd on staff reports I will keep mulling I'm open to suggestions as well I think it would be good to I know we had a meeting once with members of the Planning Commission I don't remember how many people were there but certainly a number maybe we could do that again does have a have another meeting with them and just talk about it because me I don't know if it wouldn't be beneficial or not you know I don't know if they discuss our recommendations that much in the Planning Commission or if they just get it in their packet and we've talked on and off over the years about having some kind of joint Planning Commission meeting design review board and we never did it we did yeah I think it was being driven by Planning Commission's thoughts about bringing some items into the ordinance about following the meetings because the the minutes are pretty good and in our comment letter is pretty good and then the petitioner has a chance to respond in the comment letter and and so I think a planning Commissioner can read the history and and see if it's if it's been found or not it is available yeah it isn't a part of the packet that gets to planning you know so they they read it I'm sure I'm sure so what what do you think Alexis would be benefit enough showing up at Planning Commission meetings um I I I go back and forth I'm not I'm not certain I'm not certain how I feel I think there's some pros and cons on the one hand there's a thing to think about be the perception that you are advocating for a project and at least as the planning staff I am I'm a reviewer I don't advocate for or against either one it just it's more of a black and white does it meet the code and the master plan parameters so but that it's just a perception but also other other disciplines don't but don't follow a project know their their stuff is in the packet there but there are some times that the planning commissioners to have some questions and it doesn't come out you know that our final results come out in the the minutes and the recommendation letters but the discussions and the discarded ideas don't come out and you know that may be beneficial I don't know it it's sort of a you know it you can probably predict the projects that would benefit you know when you see it but it's hard to quantify it so when the agenda goes out for the Planning Commission I presume it gets posted on the city's website are there links in there then so let's say yeah the project was going to Planning Commission one of us could go in there and open it up and see what the project looks like that's going to planning yeah exactly the agendas for the Planning Commission look exactly like the agendas for design any of you board and that file number is live yes there might be good thing for us to just decide our own keep track of it and if we see something so then can we talk about it amongst ourselves or is that something we should not be doing um Edda meet you and talk at a meeting at a meeting okay all right okay if you it's a service on the web but if you sign up for specifically for planning up there's a lot of updates that you can try that for about an email specifically the planning update one it's actually me I send out juice I send out two emails a month and only two with for the two agendas a month and about what projects are on what sounds like a good yeah all right it is hard to I'm not sure I've got a good recollection of which projects you know that we didn't like I mean for instance the one down first tree so that we got to they're remodeling that well they are gonna move siding new windows just the existing house he gave up on changing and yeah west Dan yeah I mean Ashley at first and it's it's almost done that was where they were gonna tear two houses down until that horrid to set of townhouses then there was that Victor's Hiroki building and Madison main and I got changed quite a bit due to a legal issue about you know getting their affordable housing that's hate increase and yeah so we got redesigned I think through the process but then it it stalled apparently it never did Phoenix was very involved it was the developer had challenged with numbers mm-hmm it was not a big site and yeah a lot of complications in terms of parking and levels height it's too bad it was a nice feeling it wasn't it was yeah and it it's kind of a nice were sitting there something right all right moving on I don't think we have any do we have any Planning Commission or any other communication we do not have any public here you
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April sure council member here councilmember you here Commissioner lung skiing here commissioner mirskiy your Commissioner Cleve II yeah your Appleyard here commissioner 11 here Commissioner Colvin Garcia aye approval of the minutes from the March meeting I moved to approve the minutes Oh second thank you I need discussion on the minutes all in favor aye post public input we have some public do we have any input if you'd like to say anything about related to energy in the community and we will move on to energy report we have a lot of exciting things going on with energy office I guess we'll get started here fire station number 6 crowd funding is now live so we have a crowdfunding campaign that we put together to try to raise some of the money for the solar panels on fire station number six so if you haven't checked it out please go ahead and take a look we also have a volunteer solar component of as well so if anyone from the audience or anyone at home would like to go ahead and join us and putting solar up on fire station six please contact us and we'll point you in the right direction you are for that sure do you that's the volunteer site or not I'm yeah so there's two different that one is a crowdfunding campaign and then the second one is it's kind of more of a volunteer side of it so yeah this is on the same URL you know I don't have the URL with but I didn't see the volunteer no yes yeah okay we also have solar power hours so we already had one of the power hours that happened at the Senior Center in burns Park it went really well kind of just informing the public about opportunities on energy efficiency side as well as some opportunities with solar installations so if anyone's interested in installing solar we had some solar installers they're really helpful to have the community kind of talk to the solar installers and look at the potential for their own homes 47 total attendees 47 200 attendees it was a good turnout we have two more one coming up April 11 so that's this Thursday that's Lawson middle school at 6 p.m.
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good morning the color today is evil and 2019 is a 138 days school this is WB 18 years I am Charlie and I'm Felicia today for lunch that would be cheese pizza green dudes cherry tomato apple sauce and milk tomorrow for breakfast there will be pair of ate bananas orange juice and milk we have some French celebrating birthdays moving on our Richard G in neva I'm sorry if I pronounced your name and now a junior in Asia j0l please come to go to the office and pick out your birthday book yesterday as part of that question was what I mentioned were the Wright brothers famous for the answer is the airplane malaria's carter from team prosper come to the office and pick out your price today for today's fun fact question is why wasn't evil what was the name of the van that scooby-doo and his french traveling remember to rate your answer to the comedian include your name in class we have a special announcement good got to third grade classes who are testing today you are awesome you have you got this take your time do your best please please respect of the testing of all traveling through the halls babies up there please stand Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance which is stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all every day everywhere thanks for watching bye
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and then the last ones at cobblestone farm at 6 p.m. April 29th all right there's also a sustainability Forum coming up April 18th it focuses on race and class equity and it's it's occurring at the downtown library at 7 p.m. let's say finally we have Earth Day so Ann Arbor's Earth Day at Leslie science and nature center April 28th from 12 p.m. to 4 p.m. it's a very family-oriented event it's a lot of fun so anyone who can come out and join us greet marriage green fair yeah marriage breeding fair so that's a little bit further it but I guess it's good just to have on the radar June 14th will be Mayer's green fair our annual green fair usually there's tables relating to sustainability we usually close down Main Street I kind of have walked through traffic there so if the public wants to join in that it's a really fun event additionally the big news today is that U of M has decided to buy two hundred thousand megawatt hours of clean green renewable energy beginning in 2021 from D T's my green Power Program so with that they claim that they will be meeting their 25% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2025 which is great news our friends it to you my understanding according to what schlissel said this afternoon is that they'll actually meet the twenty five percent target by 2025 with the signing of the contract he may have misspoken but that's what he said less than an hour ago any other energy news people we should thank our friends at DTE also one other thing that may be of interest I just came from his town hall type event and there was a question regarding well there are lots of questions but the one I think is most relevant to us was a question was would the university consider being responsible and accountable for greenhouse gas emissions to U of M related travel so the scope three travels related to commutes related to U of M paid travel like flights visits to hospitals and things like that the question was framed would they be is it the responsibility of the individual the city of Ann Arbor or U of M or potentially all three and why doesn't U of M include it right now and he indicated that from his expected the U of M should be responsible and accountable for that to some degree and in a shared kind of thing so that really I think is important in that it opens up the door for U of M being response or having shared responsibility for that and I think that opens up the door for lots of other things in terms of traffic and parking and all the other kinds of things that drive behaviors that lead to transportation related greenhouse gas emissions so I think that's a positive opening of the door carriage gas so I think what you're getting at is could dte off for a program similar to my green power on the gas side which would be to say an option to be buying something that you knew to be certified or monitored or some other way to be cleaner I mean the vast majority of the impact in the natural gas value chain is in that at the wellhead stage that's an interesting question I don't I don't personally know whether that's been explored as I was telling Commissioner cleaver before the before the meeting GT does have a sustainability program we're working on for natural gas looking at the the supply chain and what we can do with our you know the suppliers that were purchasing gas from to encourage the you know best available controls at the wellhead and so forth to reduce emissions so that that question did come up also and whistle indicated that that would be something that he would look for for guidance from the the carbon neutrality Commission but he felt that that was something that the university would consider doing and he said the idea is that with his commitment that is not just focus on the university but also the region is that if you of M procurement practices drove better practices in industry in terms of fugitive methane then he would see that as a good thing so I'm guessing that the University will pursue some type of didn't that came in conjunction with the central power plant which is going to be driven by natural gas so there was a lot of questioning related to that at the student forum the other question basically maybe one last thing is he was questioned several times on divestment and made it pretty clear that the university is not going to divest yeah we have a pretty active program I own some wells myself so we're in the process that they're not valuable else they're being permanently capped that's a means of assuring we don't have methane yes you also have to understand when we find natural gas there's a tremendous amount of co2 that's captured too at the same time so it's a it's a pretty dynamic problem to avoid all greenhouse gas but isn't it true with regards to gas most of the emissions related problems are well capturing other energy news if not we will move on to a resolution that we have before us there's one thing sure yeah in on April 17th in Lansing there's an electric vehicle ride and drive is it's a pretty big one the Greater Lansing area Clean Cities coalition is hosting it along with some other organizations and a particular interest maybe not everyone will be interested there'll be an electric school bus there one of the models one of the kinds that are being purchased through the statewide consortium of schools that are paying it's being paid for through the VW settlement funds and then also there's going to be a Tesla motor home prototype there for folks who would be curious enough to see what that is it's on April 17th from 9 a.m.
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to 1 p.m. at the Michigan Agency for energy office I wonder I guess we've discussed this before I would move that the resolution be considered and look for a second and then discussion I frankly don't have anything else to add discussion don't need a second to have discussion okay sure I guess I won't I will join in the discussion here or launch the discussion so I missed the last couple of meetings so I was not here for those discussions I quite frankly wasn't planning to engage that deeply on this resolution my general perspective about where we can have the most impact as a commission is to work on things that are really at the municipal level and within the control of the city of Ann Arbor you know to make the best use of our time and here I see our sort of humble little Energy Commission advising City Council to advise the state to do something that I'm no lawyer but my gut feel is might be constitutionally questionable in a post citizens united world so I guess my you know my reaction to this is it seems like quite a symbolic resolution not to say that there's anything necessarily wrong with that I've voted for plenty of other symbolic resolutions here and I know that you know those can be powerful when coupled with many voices together but but I guess my reaction knowing or at least feeling personally that this is largely symbolic is that our choice of words really matters when when that's what we're going for and that's where I struggled the most with this resolution it really read to me as less about transparency and about the positive what we were asking for and some of the adjectives in here I just felt like this was really a resolution that was trying to make a point about vilifying an industry and you know I guess I'll just say that that is particularly concerning to me given that we're sitting here having a lot of conversations about how we need to partner effectively with the utility industry and and so I just brought I act up for consideration not expecting it to be a change in the approach or what's voted on tonight but as something may be food for thought to reflect on the language that we use in these things an alternative version to this resolution I'll read that now so where as contributions by state utilities to political issue advocacy or so-called dark money 501 C 4 or 527 organizations have recently come to light following a settlement between the Michigan Public Service Commission and one of the state's largest utilities whereas these contributions allow utilities and other companies to advocate about issues of significance to their customers and communities with limited or no transparency where as utilities products are fundamental to the health safety and welfare of communities and are among the largest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions with electricity generation contributing 28 percent of all u.s.
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GHG emissions whereas the unique nature and impacts of the utility industry are already recognized by national and state law as reflected in the fact that the industry is regulated requiring greater transparency and disclosure of financials and other activities than most industries whereas transparency about the advocacy positions of companies in this unique unique position is key to the ability of the state to effectively regulate and the citizens to themselves advocate for policies and their best interests resolve the Ann Arbor Energy Commission so forthright you could have the same the same resolution so as I say two results I'm not proposing this as an alternative I'm really putting this out there for food for thought right it's a different set of whereas that I hope I mean I we didn't read for the public audience what the what the prior one was but but for those who have the language in front of them I I just put it out there for you to consider and understand like just how different sounding those are in the tone and and what I think what kind of symbolism or message it sends while essentially accomplishing the same result so I just leave that there as food for thought in the discussion proposed an alternative resolution it essentially takes shown as resolution and adds the last resolved resolved the owner Commission requested a council to support enactment of legislation all of us take a strong stance supported full transparency requiring full disclosure and political Lobby opera contributions and leave it at that and replace this with shown as as I do believe that the dark money thing is worth doing it the context of the recent case gives us a reason to weigh in to this and we're asking the legislature to do essentially what they're asking here which is do something I have a question for clarification are you requesting that the first resolved clause be I'm saying the cancel all everything in this be eliminated except the last resolved and all be replaced with what Commissioner Lenski just read so just if we're commenting back and forth I don't have a problem from at least having listened to your Restatement of it I do feel though that the first resolved makes sense in the context of a whole bunch of whereas statements that only address yo use and what we're doing is putting that with the second resolved in a broader context saying that we are for transparency and disclosure broadly so I think if we're going to have a bunch of raised clauses related to yo use that it makes sense that we have the first resolve class I have no problem then the two resolves would go in the rest of it would be eliminated and replaced with Commissioner olinsky's language so councilmember hater also man behavior and I are also on the policy agenda committee and it's the council's committee that drafts our legislative agenda and perhaps whichever of these to you you adopt the revolt resolve Clause should address that committee to add it to there we have a laundry list of things that and this informs our lobbyists and our legislators as to what is important to us in Lansing and so if if we resolve to ask that committee to add this concern to the their list of policy agenda items so as the last resolve the Energy Commission requests that what City Council policy is it an and statement or an striking City Council and replacing it right I would replace replace okay because we're currently working on our list of things and if that committee adds it the whole list goes to council and council approves the whole list and they're typically isn't in quibbling at that point okay I just think that functionally this will be the more efficient way to do it and I don't have a preference as to which way you word it no I would be more cautious if we were taking it to Council the harshness that she observed might not play well there but if we're just taking it over to the policy agenda committee I don't have a preference there but you know might be good practice for us to be well mannered so is that the only change the Energy Commission of course the policy agenda committee to support the enactment of legislation or consider the enactment support I would say support okay does that eliminate the first resolve and again I don't have a preference there but again they would direct it towards the agenda policy committee in net the city culture well ultimately we need the City Council to do that so and that the way we're getting to the first resolve is the last result right so maybe we should say supports resolve the Energy Commission supports a formal it's just I think City Council's replaced in both clauses by the policy agenda okay I think that's a so my I have a general comment and that is my preference would be not to vote on something that we've only heard but that we have a chance to read and postpone any action on the proposed alternative language until our next meeting I'm perfectly comfortable with the alternative so then I'll warn you that if we don't pass this before the next policy agenda meeting I'll still bring it forward I can do that but you know no I just mean yeah in the interim it might just happen without without formal action but we're not required to wait for another month because we're dealing with this resolution which is already modifying so we could based on what we've heard yeah okay so you feel comfortable not having read it comments questions I I having when I having read this one and then listen to that one I I must say this I think that the this this second version but I would like to read it in front of me of course it just sounded more like something that city council would be able to it yes I understand the concerns about the language it's the first thing I felt when I read this one and because it well just just for the reasons that that you said it just um just seems I don't know it's it's it's the right thing it's it's the right emotion around the issue but it's the it just be calm yeah possibly yeah something that was just something about it but I think it's I mean it's absolutely something that we should consider in these 527s are policy at all levels and on all different matters it's really is it a danger to the to our democracy so I definitely support that and I think I'll it's a will too but I'd love to see what you brought in writing because it sounded better somehow I have a motion on the floor no second right procedurally here it's John's motion and I've offered us a friendly amendment okay that includes two additional amendments so the I think the point of order that was in front of us was whether or not we should have it in front of us before we vote on it we could have Jared for three minutes and good take them to a copy machine mr.
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chair I have access to a printer if you want one right down the hall right if you want to email me a copy of excess toward a printer but not a cop here so then we move on I would move that we table this until yes right I come in second second favor aye it's table for the moment I'm moving on to updates so as we talked about a little bit last meeting we've gone ahead and included solar access ordinance which takes the place of the hundred percent cleaner renewable subcommittee 100 percent clean renewable some committee is still ongoing but it's now working groups mm-hmm and I can do a quick update on the working groups if you guys think that'd be helpful sure we are currently I'm working with Chuck to look at hydroelectric dams Larry Kerber as far as peak shaving and some of the the solar things and so we're moving forward to those things we're also currently looking at some larger projects as far as the potential for solar on a whole bunch of our different buildings municipal buildings Larry is helping me vet some of that and then looking for some efficiencies just basically using systems that we already have using them on-site like for example our landfill gas system so all of those things are currently it works I have a quick question sure are those all meeting on an ad hoc basis is that good yeah per work sessions basically it's kind of you know the Commissioner is interested in being involved on a certain project we work on it on an individual basis based off the timing that we feel is appropriate my only request in that regard is that those working groups to find some kind of time bound targets of saying we would like to have I'm just gonna make up one one as an example we'd like to have an evaluation of all city properties or these City properties evaluated for solar on whatever basis by date X not that you know we implemented by a certain date but at least the evaluations and a internal proposal looking at the technical and financial feasibility would be complete by some date and we just don't say well we're meeting and we're meeting on an ad-hoc basis and you know 20 30 or 20 whatever we don't know when we're gonna be done sure yeah a lot of the the things that we'll be working on with these working sessions will come back to the Energy Commission in one way or another so yeah I mean the end product will always be it's more to allow some flexibility just as projects come out and to that timeline we should know that we're currently trying to schedule adding photovoltaics to fire station number six yes before the end of May yes we do have an check a lot to talk a little bit afterwards but things move in as far as permitting and making sure that we have the right inspections so what about the RFP for the third-party Thunder so we have explored different parties who'd be interested in doing a PPA model and had some preliminary conversations with a few local as well as national groups I guess it would be able to provide that component of it we did talk a little bit more in depth with chart house as far as what they didn't have Salema and who their providers were and how they go through that so that it is currently in the so he's going to do an off here is this we're gonna try to do a PPA as part of the know but you're gonna have do naki first and then do the is that yeah I mean there's the process Majid's you're gonna yeah yeah yeah basically there'll be a fair process sure that yeah yep to make sure and is there time to get that done before yeah last week as far as solar access ordinance check do you want to talk a little bit towards that we had a timeline wherein we are attempting to have a solar access solution all those call that whether it's an ordinance or whether it's something else of some recommendation going back to Planning Commission back to council at some point probably in the November timeline this year we set out some interim milestones to accommodate John SMART goal concept which is we wanted to have a committee formed sometime this month I don't think we have formally reached out to the Commission so I'm always looking for volunteers to support this obviously I've got a lot of momentum behind this and there's a fair amount of research that's been done I have a lot of community members who have actually contacted me and said smart idea let's do it it was in the newspaper if he read the n over news a few weeks ago so any Commission member that wants to participate in this I think it'll be kind of fun it'll be proactive it won't take a lot of time I think by stretching it over a year we'll have good enough time to pull it all together we are gonna fit in as many of the offices within the city which we can sustainability the legal department etc so good plan in place I think to get to the finish line I'm not sure we'll have an easy solution at the end of the day but it's difficult to put it together something that's not a barrier to growth not a barrier to vertical construction and yet protects what is built and that's our main focus it's not so much you know becoming a turf war where we actually carve out portions of the city you can't build it because we have the solar access requirements so it'll be a friendly type approach but it will also protect investment any volunteers I'd love to take names now mark and Wayne okay sounds great we have met once already we talked about how to publish documents up to the website so we already have some things up there and I will send instead of update to the Commission so everybody's on the same page communicating all these goals and what we're trying to accomplish I've been in meetings all day yesterday and today so I haven't kept up with all of my email but the intention was to provide a final draft of the lighting ordinance to planning to Brett Leno yep Leonard by yesterday so over the weekend there was an email that that would that was the intent and I presume that that actually happened so there is a final draft and it was planning and was going to be provided also to the design review board that saw an earlier draft as well as the historic Commission that also was presented an early draft and the hope is that that would clear planning and then could potentially come back here through both Commission's to go to Council in the next let's say 1 to 2 months question yes it's new and major renovations and there's a clause in there that has to be discussed with planning and whether it's even possible that after a certain period of time existing lighting has to be brought up to the new ordinance level so I think it was within ten years but there was some question from planning whether that even could be included in the UDC where there's an amortization I think they called it clause so I don't know that that's gonna be determined in the end by planning so apparently someone from the dark sky group got to somebody at the county level and so they're considering an ordinance and come to find out that the lights in front of their building the lights in front of a building are owned by the city yeah so my question is how would that baby in the clause that says sometime in the next ten years we'll fix that what if they wanted fixed so the lighting ordinance I think I mentioned here before does not deal with the public right away so street lighting and pedestrian crossing lighting and things like that that's in the public right away that's governed by the so-called orange book and the intent is once the lighting ordinance related to private property wouldn't apply by the way to U of M either U of M has not unfallen der city ordinances that once that was let's say well received and went through then we would proceed to look at the orange book and modifying it relates to street lighting so we didn't want to bite off both if there was not an appetite an agreement that we would be regulating these kinds of things and if there was an council accepted that then we would go and look at orange book together with the city and what how that lighting should be addressed okay I think that answers your question right okay John I walked in as you were speaking yeah that's right tell me that timeline again how long before it might be an ordinance well it's it's in final draft sent to planning and as I mentioned it's also going to the Design Review Board for comment as well as the historic Commission so that would be funneled back through planning and I just surmised that potentially within one to two months something might be able to go in front of Council I don't know if that's unrealistic or not but the Planning Commission has already seen I had a presentation on the general concept of a lighting ordinance we met with both planning as well as with Bret they saw an earlier version of the draft roughly a month ago maybe five or six weeks ago there was a lot of detailed comments that were then revised in the latest draft that they received on Monday and the reason I ask is that I would like to see the city move forward quicker than you need our own purchases then in our regulation of other people's purchases and a month ago we signed a contract this year's street lighting right and it doesn't include any of these considerations so if they're if in this ordinance that you're building there's a set of criteria or guidelines or whatever it might be that we could start putting into RFPs as we purchased lighting for whatever purpose I wouldn't mind sending a resolution out of this commission to City Council in hopes that they would adopt some standards for staff to use in our purchases I can take that back to the working group because essentially our work is done with other than just some minor iterations presumably that we might have with planning and since we're done with this and there seems to be an appetite for having rules related to lighting not only on public but also better practices for our own City lighting and in the public right away that we maybe then could immediately start to take up the regulations in the orange book I think that's what yeah yes in fact council is is always considering improved lighting yes as an aspect of pedestrian and other for safety right and if we're gonna spend all of this money in the short term then then we really should be addressing yeah and we met with Kathy specifically maybe two and a half months ago and of course her primary interest is in the public right away in crossings although glare and light trespass on public property also affects pedestrian crossings and things like that so if someone has a bright light on a porch or something on a light post that's very close to pedestrian crossing that that glare or that light trespass could also affect the public right away in any kind of crossings or traffic that's on those streets so we did talk about that with her but yeah I agree and probably the biggest impact in terms of safety and things like that is in the pub the lighting in the public right away so council member Griswold when I attended a Sierra Club presentation in dark skies yeah we're Sally oh he presented yes yes yeah and she's on the working group by the way yeah and councilmember Griswold is a strong supporter of all of those concepts yes no hmm and she she expressed that when she met with us so I'll definitely take that back and I'll address her and the other two people that are on the working group both of whom serve on the Planning Commission so I think hopefully that'll paved the way through the planning but that we then start looking at that right away yes yeah is just a real quick one John can this commission receive a copy of this in advance well it's still not a copy was supposed to be sent to you have you received it yet yeah you could that's the current draft yep formal resolution for this to make it to our administration and when they consider it when they're considering very near-term purchasing can't we just we've been passing on to Howard and say it the problem is is that the the lighting specifications in this are very different than it would be for in the public right away because the lighting is generally different I mean some basic concepts will apply like fully shielded and things like that but especially things like pedestrian crossings and lighting near pedestrian crossings that might be affected I think it's gonna be very different I'm I'm I was on the committee but frankly I'm a layperson so that's my my sense I did take the hint from councilman Eaton two meetings ago about the $500,000 and purchases roughly and I mentioned that to the city administrator when I met with him when I meet with him every every other week and alerted him to the concern that was that we all shared that were proceeding to replace city lighting with potentially substandard lighting and that doesn't really make sense and so he he acknowledged that and I had the sense that he was going to address it but I don't know if that actually happened so if I have the criteria that we want to apply I can walk in and ask city administrator Lazarus if he needs a resolution from Council I would assume that comes down to lumens so as long as the that you have to have a certain amount of lighting for safety and crosswalk and stuff like that dark sky you're just talking about not wasting that movements by going up so the shielding and things like that you know to you know a good adhere to the principles of the dark sky and about a fire accordingly probably have to put a light bright light in maybe or a reflector so in the half million dollar purchase that we just made all of the equipment you know and so absolutely it would go all the way back to so I have a question if I may then why didn't count Souls simply vote it down and say let's take this up I mean it was there an urgency for this lighting could it have been delayed I'm just gonna make up something until August where maybe we would have had something that maybe was 99 percent of the way there or 90 percent of the way there I'm just wondering if that was even discussed I'm sorry I just I wonder if they wanted to slip by us on the consent agenda I believe that I asked the questions as the contractor delay the construction I mean we're weighing two separate set of values we guess we want those extra lighting for safety but we don't want to light up the sky and those are two separate things yeah and I actually don't recall whether I asked that question at the meeting or elsewhere but um it seemed to me that someone indicated to me that a delay would just put it off for those so it was it was tied to some other street construction or something like that well it was that it wouldn't happen this construction season if we went back and rebuilt the contract with the specifications that would meet the dark skies criteria so jack is it I'm sure that the contract has a modification Clause built into it it might be worth exploring if some of this could be done with dark sky they I mean they were respond to a bit you didn't ask them for dark sky stuff but they may be perfect I just started to recall the conversation because I remember looking through the drawings now and a lot of it was the work on the ringpost the Bates they know the post work but well it changed I'm right exactly I remember there's no sensation it's was there and they were saying well we'll come back and get the right heads if we have to so it's entirely possible that that maybe even worth it just to shuffle that order as it were is here right I mean they got a contract now so how we're talking about a modification and they're they're adding price to it it was wonderful of course they're gonna add a price now take it as an action item to see whether we can take this up right away and whether or not there's any ability to influence the current contract yes great thanks for the reminder change things if you can on Curtis expenditure on to the energy audit disclosure ordinance yeah so council member keener Commissioner mercy and I met [Music] and we talked a little bit of a disclosure we also had a I had a conversation with Portland concerning their ordinance we had a few questions as far as enforcement there's a few things as far as condominiums as well so we got a lot of those questions answered we went over those right as well so yeah that was a very successful meeting Jay I believe and we talked about kind of it was more of a holistic evu work plan maybe we talked about kind of separating out the specific kind of EB ordinance stuff that we were trying to work on on the infrastructure side and from the maybe more more aggressive kind of implementation side I guess so we're going to go back and kind of separate those out and then what else we talked about this week yeah they said kind of separating out those two different timelines trying to get our timeline on the infrastructure ordinance within this year what's gonna target within about 12 months just like to make a remark about the situation I've had several constituents asked me to ask me DDA to install more electric vehicle parking in our parking structures especially on Forest apparently there's a total absence of easy infrastructure on at the forest street structure that is sorely needed people are parking at Manor Thompson and walking you know across the die essentially to their offices and things so they can take advantage of the Evy parking here and so it seems like there's the that need has already been there what we've given has already been is fully being used and we could use more as what I'm hearing from constituents so I'm not sure how we move that forward but I'm all for it if if we're starting to see people's behavior and they they like parking clothes whatever the deal is they want it and they need it so that's I think that's positive news but I'm not sure what we if we need to do anything here on energy to encourage deviator to get with that but I just some talk of it I don't know if you were going all exactly but I'm not sure where they sit as far as how maxed out their services because I know that was the big limiting factor or how much how much power they had to the facility how big their transparent performers were I think that they were getting pretty close we could potentially bring Dave Conklin and I'm sure he knows he was we couldn't put things like storage in because the feeders are just tapped and matter so so as soon as you reach that situation you start adding time to chargers now you're looking at rhe conduct during the whole facility and now you're talking about a pretty big expense so DDA would have to look at budgeting for a conversion with adding any more than two or three spots would be probably pretty tough from experience mm-hmm so if you've not done it from day one I heard the retrofit so it's there probably is but the conductor's feeding all that restriction I'm not sure what's being done you know they're adding source to the hand parking garage NIDA and I don't know whether they're doing anything with Dave's got the record set up so we could certainly ask him to another suggestion I think we had early on was to maybe bring someone from the DDA to the subcommittee just to be able because you know it seems like the DDA is such a large part of evey charging especially when it comes to commercial downtown area so that's something I could definitely talk to Emily about saying if we can find someone to to join the subcommittee as well so we've been urging the DDA for some time to install solar panels and it is a consideration in the expansion of the and street parking structure mm-hmm but that's a couple years down the road I think but certainly if they start installing solar than then you have that capacity to charge vehicles during the day just off from your solar panels that would hope yeah it's a little difficult because you never know when the sun's gonna shine or not well intermittency are they doing batteries though well I explained net doing anything at all yet so yeah they did install a small installation as a test you know on a surface lot and that was I think two years or more ago and they haven't moved forward on any other solar installation but they have a promise that the expansion to the Ann Street parking structure will have the structural capacity to install solar panels I mean they'll design it in rather than retrofitting it after they do it so that's a positive mm-hmm but it's not the same as including solar panels in the reconstruction so it occurs to me that the county is leasing a large portion of that structure currently which is one of the reasons that we need an expansion and perhaps the county would be interested in moving their electric vehicle Parker's up to the top good yeah of course we would want to make sure that I think if you had three floors to that particular structure it's gonna be taller than most anything they've built in that neighborhood but I could type in bro Wow why not main is probably still taller and I guess it probably isn't an asset they could do something to the east that's why we're rating gun commissioner how come the solar access solution I feel the pressure get like it moving right along outreach to schools [Music] I'll just read you the statement so the Ann Arbor Public Schools recognizes that climate change is real increasing and caused by human activity and the Ann Arbor community is committed to practices that support a healthy environment for present and future generations and the district has a responsibility to help prepare current and future generations to respond to climate change through the reduction of harmful human activities the promotion of human activities that restore the environment and the development of strategies to adapt to climate change so the district will support the prioritization of environmental sustainability education that prepares the present and future generations to become thoughtful stewards of the environment and developing student leaders prepared to succeed in an assertive Climate Change future and maintaining and operating district buildings and grounds that reduce the environmental impact of human activities promote restoration of the environment and adapt to climate change and building and enhancing partnerships that support the Ann Arbor community's environmental principles superintendent and or designee x' will report annually to the board of education on activities related to this policy so the in May of 2018 the district formed the environment and sustainability Advisory Committee of which I was a member and in March we wrapped up the comprehensive sustainability action actions so these recommendations are broken into like short-term medium-term long-term priorities and are based on the four different categories that the district prioritize and its commitment which are environmental sustainability education student leaders district buildings and grounds and partnerships so the recommendations that we created over the last year will be presented to the anti Republic School Board of Education in an upcoming meeting and so that's really great news on another topic could be update on the solar power project at the Ann Arbor steam at Northside school the an iris team project is a ten thousand dollar mark in its donations and and grants and in order to meet the June 30th deadline for spending some of the grant funds the school district will put up bids for a ten thousand dollar expandable array to be built on the gym roof I'm leading this week with Jason being at the at the site to go over the exact location on the roof where that's gonna be so students will be able to access data on the performance of the system and then on the gym roof there'll be plenty of room for more generation capacity as additional funds become available that's my update okay wonderful news school system is wonderful I have a question too has the school system allocated any resources towards the ends of that are defined in this new language I forget what you called it whether it's a clause or a paragraph or would you call it again 8000 its board policy policy yeah so it's setting these policies but apparently there's no specific metrics or targets or resources to find is that correct yet not yet okay and the intention is to do all of the above yes okay great question so I guess it's more of a statement is it it would be would it be helpful if this Commission were to acknowledge and commend the fourth with this board policy hundred thousand we can do that ourselves and we could also add suggest the City Commission might want to do the same thing it's it's it's laudable and the fact that you do have a system in place to add SMART goals and smart things to it I think it's just excellent you know if you were to put forth that have a resolution second okay I've never written the resolution before so I'll have a lot of fun doing and I'm very excited okay okay I think it's just you know this commission recognizes it and gouges and commends the you know the school board for their board policy 8,000 and the subsequent work and and we can do that and we can do a second one to the City Commission saying that we we think they should commanded okay okay City Commission that I'm sorry you know City Council oh so you can't say okay yeah so your doubt the right you did the resolution we adapt it and then we will do a second one say we should pass about the jacket okay great report from the environmental Commission so I do have a little bit of housekeeping before we go on so we do have to vote John back in as the liaison so they'll still want to be that's up to you I'm willing to serve as the liaison yes okay motion yes I motion that John first give me a point is that representative to the environmental Commission discussion do I need to leave the room [Laughter] as the renewed lays on so that the the primary work of the environmental Commission has been to I think I mentioned the last time we're breaking up into three I think they're working groups I think they're not subcommittees one natural features one water issues both watershed as well as clean water and the other is on solid waste each one of those so that was two meetings back each one of those groups came back and defined specific goals for the coming year in terms of what they wanted to accomplish in some cases it's basically defining certain types of policies or recommendations and things like that establishing metrics where there are no metrics for example natural features really doesn't have metrics other than tree cover which is really not necessarily the best metric and so those goals were all presented to the environmental Commission and accepted to be honest with you I don't have them me and I can't recite them by memory and if I recall correctly those I think went to council in the last meeting in consent agenda and I think were were approved if I'm not mistaken so that was the first first meeting if it was in the consent agenda yes but it was there was nothing controversy we didn't slip anything yet no it wasn't okay maybe I'm mistaken or maybe maybe it's on the next meeting because I did look at to it to city agendas council meeting recently and I can't to be honest with you now recall whether it was on the upcoming one or the one that yeah it so it must be the one that's I thought we had the bylaws on April 1st didn't that come before us was that pact okay in any case they need to go in front of council and if it wasn't if I'm mistaken then though it'd probably be the next meeting cuz those are now have been approved by by the environmental Commission and if anybody's interested then let me know when I can get them to you and just maybe one other thing related to environmental Commission the next solid waste advisory committee meeting is on April 23rd I believe and we're supposed to get recommendations from the city and optim in advance of that meeting what they're going to recommend in the solid waste resource management plan update so the intent is that those on the advisory committee can review those and we can have a lot of dialogue in that meeting before final action is taken in the last Advisory Committee meeting in May and then all the recommendations are supposed to be finalized and presented I think in the June or beginning of July right so I I can't tell you what those are yet because I haven't seen them but well we will get them and I can report out on some of those them in the next meeting and in the beginning of May okay well let's go back to just fun to be clear because we've been talking about different terms that dark money is bad dark sky money is good do you want me to read this into the record she'd already confusion we have is the resolutions yeah well except with the change that City Council is now replaced by the policy agenda in both results today I asked just a question about generally what it says in the first where has causes Michigan Public Service Commission and one of the state's largest utilities what what settlement said referring to specifically well I'm sorry what settlement is that referring to oh that was a settlement between the MPSC and consumers energy where consumers energy agreed for one year to 18 months 18 months to I'm looking is limited it was limited just to consumers energy okay thank you I guess I do have you know a question on the resolved clause I didn't I wasn't trying to adjust that but I just noticed now I mean it says like AI OU's and their parent company is right which refers to electric investor-owned utilities that's what that stands for not sure if there was a rationale behind kind of specific specifically talking about a io u--'s or I mean because there's other utilities that are not so anyways I don't know what the what the thinking was in this space well maybe I'll just say prohibiting consider monopoly is prohibiting regulated utilities can we ask someone to speak from the public because the original draft came from one of the people in the public and maybe we can get at least if we just if we just invested utilities yes yes we also worried about MPP a problem I have with this is I think it was raised once it is focused on two companies where the reality of this dark money is massive it's 527s on steroids yeah so should we be focused on 527s on steroids in our resolution and distance where do we want to focus this on the electric industry or the gas industry or well I guess another sight of why we're doing but what's wrong with saying you know investor-owned or well regulated utilities know that fixing the muties and but but the MPA it's related to the NPS deals with yeah then we got a problem since we have our elected officials in this first we saw the MPs he's not elected they're appointed at least the commissioners are and the staffs just hired so they're not really well but this this is directed at legislation that would be passed by elected officials that would then guide but yeah it's it's more complicated yeah if we struck the first result and just kept a second wouldn't it encompass everything that's already in the first well that's what I thought of initially I think the second clause is too yeah it's not just the full disclosure it's the it's don't do it legislation all those takes in support full transparency and you could expand the second clause then to say prohibiting right yeah right and you know and or requiring full disclosure but you get rid of some of the complication first one prohibiting and/or full disclosure of transparency requiring support for inhibiting Pro yeah really no bro evening I I recommend that we not do this on the fly I mean with there's no no urgency to this and rather than people blurting out ideas and one person writing it down and then reading it aloud and so on and so forth I think it makes sense that for example Shawn and I look at this and come up with one piece of paper that addresses the overall the overall topic and we bring it back I mean that would be my the essence of my statement that it would be withdrawn difference to know you can go ahead and postpone it to the next meeting and if we have a policy agenda meeting in the interim I will bring this up I mean directionally you know between the two actually the sooner you send me a draft of this that's - the more informed that would be so moved any would like to speak or should close not for items for the next also update to greenhouse gas inventory looking forward to for some time now do we get our our DTE data where did we did good after after a nasty Graham I hundred so we'll be presenting on that and then the energy efficiency residential energy efficiency programs anything else I just wanted to float something out there briefly if I may I had I had a couple of constituents pitch an idea to me that I wanted to share with the Energy Commission and it stopped me if I've said this to some of you before but they if you may recall the bookmobile that used to go around and bring books to people well this idea was a bald mobile that goes around and it replaces people's energy hogging balls with balls with high efficient LEDs the ball mobile and he could schedule him to come over and for a small fee they would send someone over who knew how to do it safely and had the tools to do it and could also drop off some other information to the homeowner and I just want to throw that out there because it sounded like a pretty good idea to me and I was at a thing earlier where Missy dr.
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Stoltz was giving away a grant so there was some sustainability grants that the city is doing and I wanted to you know I wouldn't be for me to do it but it seemed like the kind of thing that might be perfectly appropriate for one of those sustainability grants and might really go a long way towards public education efforts and also really you know reducing energy use here in the city so I told him I say the words bald mobile and I kind of like it I don't know how to move it forward but it just seemed like an interesting idea to me and I wanted to share it and see if anybody had any input on something like that well DTE does do I recall the East to have the kit and it would have the showerhead and the pipe tape and it's time it might be a good item for the agenda for next time after we hear what Dee T's programs are we've had conversations in the past here about how do we think about the city's programs building on but not replicating what's already offered by DTE so that you know but in the interim you can also inform them that they can call DTE and sign up for a home energy consultation and the bulb mobile will come by along with other other things like insulation for hot water pipes I mean a certain number of feet if they don't have a programmable thermostat I believe they still will replace that for free so they offer a number as well as showerheads so a lot of what they're asking for is already in the program and then we can talk after the presentation about how we might ought meant that and build on that okay yeah that's that's interesting I remember that I didn't know how active its to us so I think that's a good time to speak speaking this again they're required to have a certain percentage of energy reduction every year the only disadvantage is that as was report at least at that time was that DTE has as well we're talking about DT primarily at least for Ann Arbor is they have a certain amount of money that comes from their race and I believe they said that they typically run out of that money in the fall so if people wait and call in September or October then they may get an answer well we're not conducting any more but if they were to act in the near term they should be able to get in line and have the bulb mobile come by in the next several weeks all right but you're absolutely right that we need to do more outreach education well that was part of our conversation around the funding of sustainability that the city is only responsible you know we can only do so much for our own selves their own buildings in our own and our own homes but and we know that and so yeah I think that was sort of something that was sitting on the nexus of outreach and also you know you know practicality and the idea that it would have somebody's graphics on the side of this truck just kind of appealed to me somehow so Commissioner Murphy brought up the environmental Commission work plan and it is on our next agenda but it's not an action item oh it's not many things are sent to council and end up at the end of the agenda just as Communications have been received we're not gonna do anything with it you're you're communicating to us what your intention is yeah it takes no no real approval or action on the part of the council to let you go do that Thanks okay right well if there's nothing else call this meeting adjourned at 26 minutes after 7:00 you
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money they call good morning they call us today is April 2019 it is 139 days school there's a WPA penis I am sorry and I am really today for lunch that would be smiley face nuggets potatoes smiles carrot sticks murders chocolate pudding and now tomorrow breakfast will be mini pancakes orange juice another we have some celebrating birthdays so feel see Jasmine the Asscher elk people celebrating birthdays on the weekend Lee jung-jae Nicole Kate please go to the officer about your birthday yes when one fat question was what is the name of the van that scooby-doo and his friends Joplin the answer is the mystery the winner is Riley from team lovers come to the office and pick up your price today's fun fact question is what letters between E and G on the keyboard remember in class we have some the other special announcement glass testing of last day of testing good luck there great and now we will observe a period of silence to reflect on my just phase ever day we stand for the Pledge of Allegiance I region through the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all hello fine Friday and remember penny sharps every day everywhere thanks for watching bye
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forget you're batting over 400 don't change good evening everyone today is Wednesday April 10th 2019 I call this regular meeting of the Board of Finance to order if everyone could join me for the pledge okay as per usual on our regular meetings we have public comment do we have any members of the public that would like to give comment yes ma'am name and address for the record please and rank was there anyone else besides betsy McIlvain one to seven Long Meadow Hill Road I'm also chairman of the library board which is why I'm here tonight to reinforce something I said it your public hearing on the budget or which I'm sorry there were not a lot more people from town to come to hear it the library budget proposed this year had some significant additions very logical additions to what is in our budget the Social Security for our employees and moving of a $10,000 or small capital item out of your capital budget where it belongs into our operating budget that increased our budget by fifty six thousand dollars in order to I think make the optics of that rise in our budget look not quite so bad you eliminated the Board of Selectmen in the Board of Finance both eliminated $41,000 out of the portion of our budget which is not salaries even though you know that you can't specifically target one area but that's where it was I'd like to ask you again to put all if not most of that $41,000 back into our budget it's it's money we would use to heaven forbid get the building cleaned one more day a week we have public restrooms that are not cleaned every day and we need better and more cleaning services we need a delivery service to to speed books back and forth between our library and others we simply need a little more money because everybody's cost has gone up so I hope that you can look at least at that part of our budget and return that $41,000 to the budget thank you thank you see no one else will have on a communication of course Honda's receive receive communication from Ron Jaffe enriches Eluga the next item is the approval of the minutes from the previous minute meetings I'd like to make a motion that we approve special meeting minutes from the March 12th 14th 18th 19th and 20th heating's and the regular Board of Finance meeting on march 13th well second discussion on the minutes as they've been presented okay hearing none all those in favor of the motion and you gave us a night sir how are you guys okay so first the update Greg Dombrowski gave us an update at the Board of Selectmen meeting on the streetscapes phase one came in under budget and we just applied for the refund from the state from the grant that's moving afford very handily our phase two we're doing this summer and that will go from the funeral home down to the art that also we have the funding for that 75% is a grant we do have an issue with phase two no I'm sorry an issue with phase three which you know we also have a grant for we're gonna use lots of money the state is changing their standards on lots of so in the first phase you know we did granite Kirby we did the brick we did the nice light poles some some upgrades and I'm not going crazy to some upgrades to make it look really nice they're saying now they will not pay for allow any of that to be paid for with the grant because quote it's not in your downtown area and my argument is going to be it connects directly to every other phase phase one two and three and it is in our commercial downtown which ares airport with the dry cleaners and the physical therapy place across the street so we're gonna make that argument in talking to West cog it's become evident that a number of towns are having the exact same problem not specifically not allowing granite curbs but similar problems where they are trying to cut back on the scope it is imperative that we have one design for our downtown you have to have that homogeneous look otherwise it's gonna look like hell now we're not talking you know millions of dollars here this is a one point 1.3 million dollar project so we're going to fight them if I have to we'll go to the state I talked to uh Susan bison what's this morning on this and if we can't get satisfaction working with Westcott and the lots of people then will escalate it we prefer not to cuz we got to work with these guys all the time and they're usually very good but they have some new management in place and so we need that for both antes war two we don't want to lose our entire design so we'll work through that on the school project I was just talking to Colette before the meeting I met with the chairman of the municipal building committee Paul check Oh last week we're in 100% agreement they are going to have to go out to RFP for an architect to meet the state grant requirements and that's okay they can do that and well we are going to be the plan calls for the budget calls for an owners agent which Paul agrees should be hired and we both agree that we're going to have great them bow ski do be the town's clerk of the works just making sure we have all the documentation we need in order to ensure that we can get the reimbursement from the state and avoid the problem we had with the high school where 10 years later they're asking for 7 million dollars are we will be burdening Greg with FEMA and with streetscape and with you know FEMA is pretty much our side of FEMA is pretty much winding down we have a meeting tomorrow yeah meeting every two weeks with them um well Greg would tell me Steve I can't think I can't do this and also the school projects is gonna ramp up slowly will be well finished with FEMA before he really gets into doing that so I'm comfortable you know he's got the skill sets and doesn't reach out and it's very detail-oriented and you know he goes through many reads all 400 pages of a grant which is not easy to do so we'll do that on FEMA we're again progressing slowly FEMA moves at the speed of FEMA the one difference now and I think I may have mentioned this to you guys before is you know we had 72 different fire companies come and respond to help broke feel that they originally told us we could not apply for any reimbursement for any of those because we didn't have a mutual aid agreement with each of those 72 towns okay they've changed their mind and we can apply for the use of the trucks and the personnel that could be upwards of $300,000 but the problem is we have to get each of those companies to give us all the details who came when they came which equipment came now most of them know it they know the equipment and the people but they may be a little soft on what times like that so the fire companies that are going out and talking to them to see if we can get that information from them and anything we can get is gravy for us doesn't go to them know what my suggestion would be no it comes to the town of Brookfield believe it or not is to make a donation to each of those fire companies in the amount that we receive I think that's that's what mutual aid is supposed to be this is going to be money from this from the federal government and I think the fair thing to do is to send that money through those guys they spent a lot of money some of them came 100 miles 72 different towns responded there's only two different companies probably 65 times so I think that's the thing to do so there were three divided by 72 I'm sorry no it would do it based on how many hours they were there so someone with us for two days some will leave us for 12 hours some did very so but we'll know that once they send that to us as you know the teachers pension is out officially yeah pretty much no they come until the legislature closes down it's never completely official but we think we're 99% sure they're not going to put in it I mean they will not I think it'll come back up I wouldn't be surprised if we see her in the next few years and I think it's inevitable so we should plan for that and just on the town side at the behest of Brookfield cares and Robin Montgomery we're going to put in place the process of putting in an ordinance to outlaw of vaping sales of vaping equipment on years of age these 18 year olds are - the use of vaping honey Ridgefield just had to put in vaping detectors in their high school it's rampant and it's growing and from what I've read vaping is much more addictive much more quickly than smoking so our I know the state is looking at this but in case the state does nothing I don't want this stuff sold allow the sale of this stuff and book deal to people under 21 you get that break you know not many seventeen year olds know a 21 year old who's gonna buy them vaping equipment so we think it might be a small stake in the ground to help address this problem because it's Collette it's like 40% of kids in high school of tried vaping something like that it's a huge number where and it's yeah it's even the 12 the middle schools and I was at a drug symposium this morning with Robyn Montgomery over at what's gone and they had a great speaker the first speaker and he got up and he said if you start smoking right or using marijuana in middle school you have three times the chance of becoming addicted to other drugs in your adult oh then someone who was 21 and started smoking or smoking marijuana so catching him early and stopping it early it makes a huge difference because their minds are not fully developed and it creates a dependency so there's lots of interesting stuff on that and that's it for me questions comments concerns repressed like first any update on the destruction of the building in four corners some yes the Board of Selectmen did agree to extend by six months they start date for Brookfield village to start right we did not make any other changes to the agreement our thinking was that if you know book millage into town entered into agreement about five years ago four and a half five years ago that was agreed upon after a couple years of negotiation and they called for them to build two buildings three storeys with commercial on the first floor now they want to change that they wanted to go to one building and we said no they wanted to take put Apartments on the ground floor and that doesn't even meet our zoning and I don't think zoning would pass on it but my opinion and I think the whole board's opinion is while we understand that Brookfield Village has constraints and problems and issues you entered into an agreement fully aware of everything that was going on bro feel nothing new has happened on Brookfield side that would that we would say okay you can't do it so we're gonna ask Brookfield Village to hold to their agreement with the exception of giving him an additional six months and we also that's conditioned upon then taking those two buildings sounds subway in the mother earth so if hope he was gonna be done last November right right they asked me well we'll do it when we start construction on the new buildings I said that's not acceptable I want those building sounds if they don't I'm gonna take him before the blight panel I want those buildings now we all want those buildings and they just look like hell in my opinion on the dry cleaners and Station Road is there any further no we're gonna think we have them before the blight Committee the lawyer for the lawyer for the owner has requested a hearing and we have no problem if he comes in but he was they were supposed to by ordinance requested here within 30 days of them being cited they came to us like 65 days later so our goal is we'll work with you if you'll work with us but they don't seem to be doing anything so we're continuing the process on the blight and the ordinance and the fines we also have a question into the state Mirman we have the grant to do the remediation studying on 20 station and we said to them there's money left over we'd like to knock these buildings down they said no we prefer that you test surrounding wells which we did for everyone who was interested in doing that and there is still money left in the original grant so I'm going to the state and ask them can we use that towards knocking these builders down the problem with these buildings we believe there's asbestos and there's also dangerous chemicals so knocking these buildings down it's not a 5,000 dollar job where you get a backhoe in and just knock the building down you have to remediate you have so it's gonna be expensive to do a proper what's the final conclusion of a blight citation where the owner absolutely does not cooperate can you seize the building eventually whoa no what we can do is we put a lien on their property and when the property is sold then we can collect our lien we did that with one property about four months ago that had liens going full I mean white pines going back for eighteen months and we got a check from the mortgage company for $35,000 when they sold the property the blight panel is working really well we have at least six or seven properties that are getting cleaned up one is on whiskey near Road if you drive down with skinny road you can see the difference this gentleman's you bought the property he's cleaning it up we're not finding him if you do what we ask you and clean up your progress our goal is not to make money our goal is to get these properties clean up so it's it's a it's a process of John and it takes months and I understand people get upset when they you know send in a letter saying this is blighted but you have to give people an opportunity to respond to remediate the situation and if they're working with us we'll work with them and give them some time up that with the subway mother property that they'd at least agreed to maintain the land yeah good enough okay moving on to the report of our finance director all right that just going through the get that on the screen but going through the revenue and that the expenditures the on the revenue who we are still cleaning that up we haven't had time to and to work on that but this is where we stand on the government grants a friend from the state there have been no changes since September 19th estimate of the final numbers that were on target with receiving everything that we should except for we didn't get the second payment of town aid Road that was due in January they just had a meeting last week that a review with the new governor the bonding for that was delayed so they the state had a meeting last week it was approved we should see in the next few weeks that the other money that we're expecting education cost-sharing the last 50% that comes in April on April 30th is when they send it the a low sip we've applied for the reimbursement for the low sip we have a hundred and twenty three thousand in our budget we had some extra money from a prior year were expecting to get a hundred and ninety four thousand dollars on that that and then the grants for municipal projects they did clarify that that comes in June and it's estimated June 30th so that is on target with respect to the expenses that right now we think that we're going to be right on target there's no revenues that are supposed to be significantly over or significantly under that we can at this time we've collected 98.4% of our revenues the expenditures we've got a more detailed projection that you received from Ginny or Virginia Center to Sean and Sean sent it to the others that so we're expecting to come in where we budgeted that we've had one additional appropriation for in July for metal poles for for the lights we've got budget concerns that were currently addressing we've mentioned conversion costs that as we've gone through that we've had a lot of attorney fees and we're actually meeting separately on that this week to talk about what the costs are how we're going to contain them going forward do we need them all just to make sure that we all understand what the costs are on the conversion that some of the things and Steve might be able to talk more to this yeah when we did the conversion you know we thought that we would have our attorney review them the MassMutual documentation right and then we move the assets over but it turns out with each union there are different things in each of their contracts that area from the other unions and we're trying to get to one pension plan for everybody so our attorneys had to look at every single one of those agreements and then make adjustments within the agreements we have in place with mass mutual it's been a long arduous you can imagine how thick these things are process but I think it's important too since we're making this transition to do it right from the beginning to get everything clean and properly so it's costing us a little more money interestingly enough I read this morning our previous custodian and investment advisors at Wells Fargo just got out of the business they sold their business to principal in Des Moines so let me jump in here this has been a crime this is why when we had that meeting I said do we have all the answers are we doing something ahead of time do we have all the costs we got torreón payback sixty-three thousand dollars and now we're sitting there saying it's costing us more money all this shows me as we didn't understand the scope of the work before we jumped we didn't understand what we had to do what the costs were to make a statement for us to approve money we approved money to pay for this we approved X amount of dollars and when you come to us with a project that you say is gonna be X amount of dollars we should have the full scope and we talked about this having full scopes not to come back and say extra money cuz we didn't understand what was going on to me makes no sense to me because we should understand when we make this type of change and we said we're gonna make a change here's the benefits it's gonna cost us X amount of dollars we should be sitting here six months later saying oh we didn't understand any of tourney's fees we didn't understand the scope of the work we didn't understand the full project of this cuz that's what happened we had it we disagreed on this point I I see your point the sixty three thousand is a separate subject but the only way we know that we have problems is when the lawyers actually start looking at it we didn't actually realize that these were all different we just didn't I'm sorry I'm not an expert on pension contracts right so as soon as we found out now we're telling you we have an issue here thankfully this is a one-time thing Eagle fees legal fees because we have to have all these contracts reviewed agree with you Glen probably we should have we should have if we don't we didn't think this was going to be super expensive go on to our attorney and said hey here's what we're doing what do you estimate the cost will they my guess is so they would have given us an estimate this is less and what we're actually paying because there is significantly more work being done and was originally anticipated so I I agree with what is the true cost then of this the jus cost we have a meeting later this week that where we're going to talk about it where we're going to talk about what did we think going into it we've got our back chairmen and the HR director there but it's a lot of money but originally we spoke sixty three thousand dollars that's a number we talked about sixty three thousand dollars that was a fee and not told there would be a pay back within six months because we would that's to make the points in blah blah blah and now we're looking at it's double the cost than what it sounds like more than happen you're mixing up a fee from oil versus leasing of a projects the project the six thousand was simply for a fee from voice though they had nothing to do with legal I agree you know we thought we can fit it within our budget but we can't we're gonna be over on that one the original what was it going to the attorneys and asking them to estimate the number of hours involved or was this somehow the possible so that's what we're gonna find out at our meeting that because we're get we have two different parties saying two different things so we're all going to be in the same room to find that out yes yes we're just trying to catch up correct that yep there's no what the estimate is and where it's gonna come from correct so that is our biggest concern in the in the budget that we have parks over time that we're working on trying to narrow that down that when we ask them for estimates we were still in snow season March and then the FEMA and karma there's some things that we thought we would have to be paid by FEMA but they can be reimbursed from the insurance so the total is good there's the allocation between the FEMA and the kurma line we've got update where things are posted we've given you a detailed projection of where we think we're going to to land at June 30th you had it in the email receiver so just going through this worksheet that on the left hand side is the budget on the right hand side is the actual that what we've got on the actual is we start with the amount expended to date purchase orders that are outstanding that those are our commitments that that we know about and we've met with every department to try and go through the the adjustments we had I thought there might be more but there was one thing that needed to be reclassified to a different account of payable payroll what we found out was our payroll isn't set up appropriately that the way we budget for payroll and the way we have been posting actual in all the years don't match that so that one department might for example there's there's people that are just posted to wrong departments so we've gone through each of the departments that happened in two cases overtime sometimes is being posted to the regular salaries will also make the regular salaries out of line that sometimes that someone if they're an interim which were now in the next year's budget we're calling sporadic we would think we would post them next year to sporadic but this year they're posting them to non-union so we're trying to clean all that up so that the actual categories match the budget so that's what the payroll reclassification czar that the projected is what they think they're going to spend to the end of the year and just a little bit of an idea of how we got to that number that whether it was a detailed estimate or whether we just are using that they think they're going to spend at all that which gives us our projected annual if you look at the left-hand side we've got the original appropriation the second column is items that have already been approved to be transferred the column with it says number one on the top of it were within the department that where they're moving an overage maybe in mileage and taking it from office supplies that can be approved and was approved by the selectmen the column in number two we did a big payroll analysis that Glenn had initiated the questions for where we saw that some of the numbers in the and the budget didn't tie out to the what they should have at that in hindsight so there's interim department transfers to clean that up so that the budget is what it should be the that is pretty much taking its care of itself with overages and underages except that we took the 5500 if you approve it the 5500 from payroll contingencies I think that was for the contingency for the CSEA Union that we didn't post the retro to that line we posted it up to the actual so we want to move that up to the actual and then it doesn't balance by $1200 so that 1273 and we did put that to health insurance because we think it is an error that in the beginning balance so that is transferred number two transfers number three are also between departments and these are just in the normal course of doing the budget that some departments needed more money and we tried to find it from other departments that didn't need enough money we didn't take any money from health insurance we this is what you would have expected from from us as the number three and then transfer number four that there were some errors in the beginning budget the health insurance was one but they went both directions that and so transfer number two number four is trying to adjust for those that one thing that I'll point out in transfer number four if it's approved by you the town would be funding a hundred percent of the social security for the library just to make sure that we have the full story that you funded them fifty-five thousand for an earlier error in 2016 you're funding them forty two thousand if you approve this for Social Security so you have added ninety seven thousand to them you didn't subtract forty one you moved it twenty five to spend out of the special revenue fund contingent on their revenue so you did only cut sixteen so I just want to make sure that all that is grouped together here that this does include you spending you funding a hundred percent of that Social Security any questions on the transfers any concerns any questions on let's say start with the the ones within the payroll that you've seen that one before you've seen the those adjustments before the numbers in green for column that says number three at the top those are things hmm those are things that we've talked about before that and I've tried to make little notes that the line item for my salary is over but that wasn't a vacation payout as I was thinking how could that be over that it was a vacation payout for the prior controller that the land use between buildings and and land-use planning are just they kind of share a budget and make it right for here the see other ones that we haven't talked about it you took a vacation payout liability what liabilities do we have out there now currently I mean you carry over so much vacation right so there's employees that how many employees have over the amount they can take that we're liable for if they were to leave employees can only carry over vacations into the following quarter following year-end if they don't use it they lose it mine week so this was only a one week payout for the old controller it wasn't like yeah she had earned the vacation but we just we paid her she's there's no liabilities out there I'm everyone else there are some liabilities out there yes that there's a week that you can carry over last year there was more because some of the people couldn't take their vacations because of this right so we extended it an extra three months because we asked people to stay in and work after the storm and so people couldn't take vacation that they were entitled to so we extended the time that they could take but if they were to leave they can't take that with them not unless they earn it alright there's a limited amount of favor if they've got it that there is some in the financial statements we talked about compensated absences we don't have it divided between Board of Ed in town but it is that's the enterprise for us to say it's $4,000 no that's WPC n that the education sounds much higher than $4,000 yeah yes time they can carry vacation time I believe there's eight hundred and four thousand in total between town and Board of Ed includes vacation and sick but I can get you an allocation of that you did because some people can carry hundred sick days I think I'm not sure what the board of its policy is on you had asked me about that before on the different policies and so I've got from the Board of Ed Terry their HR director gave me an a spreadsheet that and I just have to add the Board of Ed so the townsite just go through the contracts and add the townsite for what all the different benefits are cuz we never include that any budget process these liabilities they can pop up any time they could they're usually not significant that and there's to be honest in the government there's not a lot of people then that leave the government that defined benefit pension plan there's not a lot of people to leave yes and then the last column are just the things that the ups and downs that we talked about the sewer assessment at the town there's still a little bit of money left in there that we want to sweep out it would cover we're sweet money out of there short-term financing was under was had more money than it needed and health insurance had more money than it needed the ones that had less money the sewer use for the town that we pay to bills a year for sewer use and this is part of the the confusion with the town has a budget for sewer use and Parks and Rec have the budget for utilities and the Parks and Rec sewer use didn't seem to fit in either one of those budgets postage we've talked about library social security we've talked about throwing up all the the bond interest and banned interest and then the town's Social Security is under budgeted and I believe the reason for that is that we have about two hundred and ten thousand dollars a year that gets paid through the recreation self-sustaining fund and that's two hundred and ten thousand dollars of salaries they've never been allocated any money for their salaries well we didn't have it in the general fund budget either so that's my guess on part of what what the issue there so those are ones that we want you to consider because I'm sort of confused how could we pay people would not pay people we pay them with their Social Security if you were to add up the budget and add up and again I don't I'm just guessing what happened if you were to add up all the salaries last year in the general fund and multiply that set by seven point six five percent you would get a number but in the general fund Social Security expense there's also Social Security expense for Parks and Recreation that self self-sustaining fund not exactly self-sustaining if we pay their Social Security but that's what we've always done that so that's what part of the issue is so a social security and then we have additional addition because we match if the employee pays seven point six five percent to be budgeted and we pay seven point six five fifteen point three should be yeah budgeted Marsha is saying on the Parks and Rec salary through there they are out their fund right it didn't include a budget for the seven point six five the town has to pay about 14 pounds correct and and it's always it's never been paid out of that fund it's been paid out of the general fund these oversight so blow me away we have a salary this should be basic Maxim yeah I get so lost at work pay in a paycheck and a paycheck is coming out of the pound why can't we get that math right cuz that's basic math to me that is basic basic math we pay in a paycheck it should be seven point six five we should be talking about overages entourages or anything like that it should be a set number I was like blowing me away we're sitting here saying we got this liability because we didn't pay Social Security we got the library we didn't pay Social Security it's like this isn't something we know this isn't no this isn't something that just comes up this is something it goes with a picture correct oh it's an errand these are basic numbers Shawn it's basic math if you have a movie that's a salary of six whatever the numbers there why are we missing these ladies 1920 okay I gotta help something yeah you know yes Kimberly was here for about a year and a half and these were missed yeah yes they were made in the past and we're getting better I agree but every meeting we talk about something new that was missed it shows where were we where were we let's think about it this way where are we now compared to three years ago and we are in 1,000 and Replace yes it were mistakes me yes but we are not hiding them we're coming to you we're showing them to you we're saying what we're doing to address them and we will not have those mistakes in the future you know as we go through this Marsha goes through this I'm not going to not tell you guys about these problems and these issues in our job Marsha nice job is to make sure that the town stays within budget and we will do that but we are going to tell you about these problems and issues and how we're addressing them and and the I'm just surmising what the what there was that and there the other half is firefighters that that's not if someone let's say she took the budget and she pulled the coding for salaries which starts with a 5100 well we've got the firefighters a hundred and fifty thousand dollars not in a 5100 and that's why a part of this thing is cleaning up the trial balance cleaning up the the uniform chart of accounts so that we can use the computer to give us these numbers as opposed to so much that we're doing we annually are we have been doing manually in the past can I just ask back to the Parks and Rec pit we don't have a revenue line item for Parks and Rec I mean you've mentioned that their salary is kind of self-sustaining because the revenue from the program so why don't we have them separate it out like I don't that they're separated out if you look in the financial statement they're a different fund they're not in the general fund that they're a different column kind of like they're on page 94 of your financial statements that let's see what like education grants they're not they don't go through the general fund or the cafeteria doesn't go through the general fund so they're a separate column so we wouldn't see them in you wouldn't see them in the budget correct that it's just that Social Security on those wages has to be someplace budget that either we have it on our books I'd like to change that going forward next to that the twenty one budget because if we think that the Parks and Rec fund let's say it earns two hundred thousand right in fees and then they pay two hundred thousand well if you don't have that Social Security in there that we have to pay then that fund is underwater by fourteen thousand something so they should either increase their fees or make sure that the program's pay for themselves because you can't have it eating away fourteen thousand dollars a year and it's just a different future it's a different treatment between the the like the police outside services they have to pay their own social security but the the library pays their own social Social Security that that but if this is really self-sustaining should they pay their own Social Security that so that is the budget things that you've received oh you're gonna go in the next combat sorry I was going to move on to the senior center stuff so it's so before you do that I'm sorry on the the last column the budget transfers between departments - I know you've talked about health insurance before but I I need refreshers on every single time the source of the two hundred forty seven thousand dollars that's available to be transferred out of that line on all these other things what is Wayne again what um so them and again I'm just taking the documents that I have trying to figure out what might have happened that it looks like the employee copay wasn't subtracted that and and I can honestly see how that happened we used to be self-insured the copay used to be posted against the self insurance fund when they trued up the numbers they said oh that there it is moved it and it might have been after the the budget was done but but it says it's the copay so that's co-pays that were I'm so so you withhold from people's checks that a portion and the budget appears to be the gross pay that the consultant gave us a number and but that's a total of the premiums and you would have co-pays that surprise reduce that but one night of a curtain saw for sure tuned at the employees paid co-payments in the self-insured program as well so would that have been something that everybody contributes 18% basically except for the police say contribute 19% of their salary against health insurance it's not co-pays when they go to the doctor no no that's what I talked about they paid a premium they paid a portion of the premium ploys every year they pay it and they're self-insured so would you have a better a revenue that would have brought in there yes regardless of the moving self insure it insured there still should have been a number yes that should have been moved in regardless if you were self insured or not self insure so it's not a product of going from self insurance no no it's a product that we didn't move the money period it's a product of what nice that expect that revenue was there from right boys right to offset with the health insurance but you were saying how it's to self-insure to this it's Italy a product though we didn't recognize the revenue not a matter we changed the insurances it's am i right we didn't recognize the co-pays from the payroll check correct that the co-pays from the payroll check were programmed to go into this fund so that when you're looking at the general ledger in the general fund my guess is that they just didn't weren't recognized when they probably when the audit was done they said hey this self insurance this risk assessment fund has got a bunch of revenue in it from co-pays that belongs over here and again these are just my guesses of what might have might have happened and then this is kind of related that the senior center we've talked about this before and I gave you a budget adjustment form and then it got lost in the budget adjustment mess that that the Senior Center does programs and they have a budget for programs that is they have a budget for programs of $19,000 as a net expense that so what has been happening is that they post the budget they post the expenses to the expense let's say it's a yoga class or at the cooking class whatever seniors do they post the expenses for the instructors and then the revenue that comes in they net with that amount so it's a 19,000 costs to the town for those expenses that I would like to see that gross so we can see this is how much revenue came in this is how much expenses come in and for all the categories modeled the modified accrual basis of accounting is supposed to show the flow of cash coming in and going out you start netting things together and you're losing information and we're doing that the Board of Ed is starting to show theirs and would like to do it on our side too so we had a salsa on the police grant right we put the full revenue from the being a little expense from the grant it's just and and the reason it came up besides that it has to be done but the reason one of the things that for the accounting system we're requiring everyone to do purchase orders now they can't do a purchase order if they haven't earned the revenue and they can't earn the revenue is again to a purchase order for more than nine line items so we were having problems with that so the we would like to show it gross which would be increased revenue by twenty three thousand increase expenses by twenty three thousand and so we talked about that back in January that and then like Glen we're finding out stuff as we move along that there's so with a trip account that trip but not an account that the seniors do trips in addition to programs the trips are all done by the town by the town personnel but the money doesn't come through the town they have every department has like a Friends group that but this is really ours and we should have and it makes a profit that and we should have that in our books so that's about $50,000 a year revenue and expenses that so we find out about this and so for the rest of the year it might be thirty thousand we were looking to increase them by thirty thousand of revenue and thirty thousand of expenses in talking with the town attorney we can only add forty thousand to that line item so we don't want you to approve the thirty thousand addition that for trips we want to put it into our books net it until June 30th so we still have control of it and then gross-up next year's budget for the trips that but whatever we do we want to take it in-house that so they would have we could really see the extent of the Senior Center that they're pulling in twenty three thousand revenue for programs and having forty one thousand of expenses for programs fifty thousand dollars of revenue for trips fifty thousand dollars of expenses for trips and we're just trying to match it with our budget requirements the [Music] so we want to approve the 23,000 for programs that we've had on the table we don't want to approve the 30000 for trips until we'll do something about that next year does that make sense the and if you say oh I just don't want to deal with any of this we could always not deal with it until next year we already have the the programs grossed up in next year's budget we don't have the trips grossed up in next year's budget if you want to just wait we can keep it gross on our internal management reporting and then the budget to actual and the audit we net it together until we add it into the if you don't want to play with the budget we can we can adapt what would you like to do do that yeah well we need to net we need to net the trips for the rest of this year because we can only do an additional appropriation to their budget for forty forty thousand no more than forty thousand a year so that's why we're talking about netting the trips for the rest of this year but having control over the cash and then addressing it in the next year so leaving it as is for now and then July first start to gross it up so if gross revenue gross expense so the trips we thought for the rest of this year was thirty thousand for a whole year it's fifty thousand so no because we're doing the twenty three and the twenty three and the 30 would be fifty three and we can only go to forty so for that document we want to cross out the thirty let me find my page on budget adjustments number two number one that number one we feel the court is like meant for that so you don't have to it changes so I have the board aside you're not putting this transfers number one for those transfers number one are all with within departments that Oh number sorry that that's on this one it says number two on the handwritten all right so it's columns yes excuse me it says there's yes because the number one is only needs approval from the Board of Selectmen though the details are here we're asking you to look at two three and four so number three I'm also lost on the numbers here this one that is in that has number three at the top of the page we don't want to ask for the the one it's in red it says 30,000 of revenue or two senior trip expense we cut costs here so all right so three quarters of the way down the page that thirty thousand that's offset by revenue we don't want to ask for we're gonna talk about it next year when we add it that makes this whole thing equal correct we're just trying to pull all these things together we would like to address at some point a policy of what these friends groups that there's probably in some places too close of a relationship between the friends and the the town that not every department knows who is liable for which bill and and we need to separate our employees and and our stuff it's great to have the friends or to make sure that they're an arm's length transaction and there's probably three or four departments that have friends we've got money the only money that's left is in the health insurance and we've got to see where we stand on on those other two items the are the recreation or it's not record its rounds parks over time which I don't think is going to be significant and the legal fees which I do think are gonna be significant even more confusing what was the sewage number final positive net in our budget and what was the final health insurance net in our budget because we're talking six hundred thousand dollars at one point and now we're talking 243 on the health side and we're only talking 300 what was the number what what did we not account for on the water so she Asian side that was a positive in our favor and what did we not account for on the employee contributions on the insurance in our favor starting over because these numbers now we're talking there's you talk six hundred thousand dollars a few months ago now we're talking we don't have any money left then are the surplus in this current budget so what are the numbers yes that in the health insurance is on page six of the schedule that we would have 250 as about 450 was would be the amount that is was an excess well about 1200 would be used up if you approve that the payroll Corrections 450,000 within 400 what was the water number and the water number was a hundred and let me just find that so if you look at page six that you have we're asking to use we have a hundred about two hundred thousand in the last column that would still be available we're asking to use 250 to cover errors in the other direction and then the 1000 what do we do with the first 200 the first 200 we are looking to correct make corrections to interest in debt that it's it's on the summary is on the one that says number four at the top so basically if we didn't have this 450 in this one thirty-six hundred thousand dollars we missed the boat pipe at least four five hundred thousand on this past budget but know that that there is the other direction to that there that sewer use was under budget postage was under budget social security for the library was under budget thank you miss another question if we didn't have this six hundred thousand dollars and we made errors on where would we be right now we'd be a four hundred thousand to the bat to the budget well that's why we tried to divide that's why we tried to divide the errors into a separate column that going both ways to offset each other you had asked us to do that at the way I didn't ask us to offset each other you'd asked us not to use them for write our every day transfers we had talked about was to keep this 450 in a separate category and not touch it basically what we talked about as it should have been to the taxpayers back to the taxpayers basically except they spend the money that we shouldn't have had we shouldn't have had the code of employees coinsurance money that should have been brought in is money that the town should have never had in their coffers to spend it should have never been there it was an error made by all of us including the Board of Finance and yet now we're spending this money but we're spending it we're not giving it back but we're reclassifying it to cover errors go in the other direction but we're spending it it wasn't approved really in our budget process because we told the town we for every dollar in a budget process we didn't bring in a big chunk of revenue $450,000 it's not a small number and in this process so it's not a small number in a nineteen million dollar budget $450,000 and now we're spending it right now we're spending when that really we didn't have that money to spend it really wasn't powers to spend if we had the properly accounted for something that we should have known we should have known we had a payroll you know deduction from health insurance that's a known this is money that should have been accounted for and yet we're spending it now the taxpayers dollars when it should be their money we should've been in the budget well if we let's say we that wasn't that 450 was not that mistake was not made yes we now be asking you for more money because there were errors in under budgeting other lines that needed to be budgeted for and we just we go after iteration after iteration and get better and better and better at getting these budgets right and so there would have been if we didn't have that money we would have been coming to the board and saying listen this is the expenses that we have they were miscalculated in the last budget we have to pay them please give us X amount 250 275 thousand so in a normal process of at least in my career you have a budget and you have your over in some and your under and others and then you make the corrections you need I agree with you we want it perfect from the get-go we want it as close and perfection as possible but I don't think you're ever gonna find a year that that happens because there's too many variables this this isn't this is a big variable Steve this isn't like we miss our whole dress we've corrected it but we didn't really address it Steve what we did is we spent it we didn't address it as far as if I go to the bank an ATM and I asked for a hundred bucks and they give me a thousand bucks I don't get to keep the nine hundred I got to give back the nine hundred and basically we did that to the taxpayers we absolutely did not a fair analogy so we over budgeted here and the under budgeted yeah absolutely now we could have told the town we're giving everybody you know a thousand bucks because we're over budget here but then we're gonna be coming to you tomorrow but then how do we live with a budget what is a budget guideline then how do we live within budget the Board of Ed couldn't do this the Board of Ed if we gave money they couldn't come back they got to get it right well how they could they could they could say we within their budget we were wrong here we were wrong there I don't and it's more than I thought it was gonna be so I'm taking it from someplace else but we should have this is something I said I don't think it's right I spending this money I really don't believe it's it's right in my well so it's gonna be spent either can you spend out of that line there's gonna be spent out another one it's gonna be spent that that amount of money is going to be spent it's just a matter of what a whole line it's it's gonna be spent yeah now what we did do what we did do we made sure that it wasn't the basis for the increases that we were looking at in the next year's budget we made sure of that that we we use the correct starting point going forward but either paid paid out of this lineup a doubt it but eyeliner take out a journalist goddess men our basic goal here is we have total budget about 19 million we have to stay under budget but we didn't we didn't control the budget that's what I'm trying to say we didn't I try a secret you can't disagree we have an extra six hundred thousand and revenue Steve we had six hundred thousand dollars action we have expenses in the other line guys okay all right I don't think this is gonna know that that I think we've let you know everything we know so the and we had said we would come to you come to you quarterly and of course we're gonna meet with the departments that we're working very hard to make sure they all use purchase orders aren't buying things and doing the purchase orders later because we need to come in on budget at the end of the year that so the departments and aren't using purchase orders but just as getting escalated to to meetings with them to shutting them off and other things that whatever we can do you had asked about the capital project status that we had the Board of Selectmen approve an additional fund a new fund for the elementary school that thank you that a new fund for the elementary school so all the revenue and expenditures would be segregated for it by itself that there's two projects in the project accounting and we were told we had the free project accounting that didn't do as much come to find out the Board of Ed has a full module and is sharing it with us so we are going to set up a meeting to figure out how we're going to account for this project I've done this in the past that I'd like to take the budget and use the AIA forms that the American Institute of Architects forms so that if there's a private purchase order we can change order we can see it clearly on our own accounting system Kevin is that munis training now and as excited about all that he has learned about the full module that our goal on these projects is our goal for all of this is first to pull the general fund up that we're pretty tight as far as time so we've done next year we've done last year and we've had a pull forward the general fund to give make sure we've got at all the balance sheets and things proper and then we want to have everything by 5:31 balanced and all the other funds have the schedule of expenditures just like you saw in the audits that are divided by projects have that to 5:31 so it's just a small task to bring it to 6:30 because again we're trying to get done by August 31st that any questions on any of that so both sides of the house are ready to put all their projects current spend spend to go original budget yes we have it in the other module and the town does all the capital projects so even the school things it's the town that's accounting for them and so right now we have them there just as a one line that's the case why did we go to Ken to see what projects so in the module is the actual that what Ken had is what his plans were what he's made commitments for as far as that that they had earmarked this they're going to spend it on a B or C in that some of those old years we don't have the detail of it just said whisking year and so we don't know what it was Kinnear that and we wouldn't and they have a whole process of going through their Facilities Committee so we wouldn't say it would be able to say you know what we were going to take your windows away from you that we would know how much they spent on the windows but we so that's where the changes so this will just be used by Kevin and you and our yeah and to get reports and in it will be used by them that they have Dan Caldwell and we have asked that he have permission to go in and review the projects and be able to do purchase orders because I guess in the past that we didn't let them touch our side but we're happy to share as much information as we can so the one version of the capital project truth correct so that was the status of the module itself but is is there anything we need to know about the current projects the current projects that know that we think we're in good shape we don't that they all have budgets so they're not allowed to do purchase orders that we're trying to drill in that don't do it don't send us a request without a purchase order that they are being stopped by by putting purchase orders and so the controls are working that so we're not concerned about any of them we have an old project for still River Greenway that has a lot of litigation and we're hoping to maybe get some more money out of that one that but we have to get we don't know if we'll be able to do that or not from the old from the original Stillwater Greenway project we're working with the attorney and and the state and the original still River Greenway project the contractor and one of their subs got into a fight and dragged the town into it and so we've had to expend some legal expense on getting this cleared up so that we get our full reimbursement from the state we filed for the state it is now agreed upon who's gonna pay you and what amounts so that'll stop but we it's done but it's not agreed upon that the state that we've got money coming from the state and that's what we're working on as to to try to do that good now for the first time this is like a pilot if you will we have a set of financials from the Board of Education we thought this would be a good way to go through this end which we have to do before on a monthly basis in any sea one that empty their budgets and we're addressing I didn't want to here on this one and most of these are idly than falling for white sheet they're not just brand new this time you're seeing them off for the first time they just wipe it all off here I would say that [Music] does any of this have an impact on how you see your next year's budget does everyone see value and getting these financials month after month is it just our paper we want to take some time to absorb this I think it's valuable like for last year when the special ed costs came in you know the sooner the board's know about that the better we can be educated and understand it so that we can address it so I think it's a very good idea what's on the front page here is this all ratified by the full Board of Ed or this is strictly just an accounting exercise Finance Committee asked Ken to start preparing especially if you are releasing them and perhaps we won't be here on occasion and it's more clarifying so if someone from the board of it can't make it then we did have some interest was that interest pursued or that was just well I addressed it to use alright Bob brought up against having someone from the finance I win all the meetings I think was 5:30 on a Monday and you will meet the first Wednesday and may May first is Wednesday so you are technically before we do so you will get two months worth but we will still be me that first one okay hopefully it's not kind of trash with a committee to revise starting times okay I wanted to ask you on this summary what is the net result of these numbers does this net to zero okay it will institute the spending freeze as long as we have to to make sure that it gets to zero or as close I mean either under or right okay all right I appreciate the fact that we'll have a chance to do this I'm wondering if monthly is but I almost feel like it's on the first Monday of everything and then they are approved the consent agenda at our Board of that meetings okay so technically they're public knowledge we just gotta keep s economy and we're packin amphitheaters it's not anything it's terrific explanation um romantic question the salary retirements leaves because these five hundred fifty mm I don't remember the number of beat I know I get that part of that spend increased but I don't recall that that line item was that high like the number of her retirements and whatnot was just it was it wasn't good there were more retirements this year than we anticipate next year we usually do analyze three maybe four depending on what level it is this this fiscal year now you know Stevie's came in much higher than that next year we're not seeing that trend where we'll hope to get that this also includes a maintenance mechanic position that need to ended up in the other way this year because for the word took that and that is going forth to next year because we're just speeding up keeping it open enough going extra slow you don't once twice three times thank you okay I think that wraps up everything that was under the finance director universalize Marshall is there anything else um no just if you want I don't know if you - make a motion to approve or disapprove okay our reporting committee is not with us tonight the audit has wrapped up as we seen all right of the old business to note the first item of new business was presented in our packet the police department is looking to utilize their outside service fund stable is there anything yeah the rough they do go in to be refurbished the maintenance facility I mentioned a number of things that they thought should be done the windows need to be replaced some other equipment there's some repairs they have to do I thought the J about this at some length and it does not seem to make sense to either of us to do 60% of the job do it right so it'll last for 10 years and it is coming from the police outside services myself the Board of Selectmen unanimous and said you know what new way to do this is to do it the right way any questions I move that the Board of Finance approved the recommendation of the Board of Selectmen that the town appropriate an additional amount of $13,000 from the outside Police Department outside Services fund director Oh fit paint and equip the 2007 model f-350 ambulance to serve the operational needs of the police department scuba team further discussion seeing none all those in favor of table gave us a high high motion carries Philo now Nestle changes her mind we can circle back to budget transfer requests related to the 2018-19 so we went through all of those transfers we identified one specifically that's not necessary anymore I don't have dare I ask any additional questions comments concerns my way through this boy I love that the Board of Finance approved the proposed FY 2018 2019 timer for budget adjustments with the exception of the $30,000 related to senior center trip expense and $30,000 trip revenue all those in favor of the motion on the table em to keep my 10 hi hi opposed nay all right now we did have a public hearing last week yeah the budget that we proposed to the town petkins was lacking I'll say it to be nice there were some familiar faces there thank you very much from being there I think we had less than a dozen folks there that weren't members of various boards or committees or commissions and talents oh okay was there anything that anyone wanted to discuss on that before we move this budget forward to Town Meeting there is one thing I before we discussed the teacher salary we right now it looks like the teacher salary is not going to be part there is much attention teachers pension sorry it's Italy but I talked to the town attorney today and I communicated this to Shawn late this afternoon the Board of Finance if they make final determination that the teacher pension is not going to be charged to us you have until we publish the final budget in the newspaper to make adjustments 27 yes and that's about $132,000 that we have in the bunny 626 that you might want to consider taking yeah can we see Masha can we just see what it would look like if we took on integer 232 until well Marcia's team that up I think I'm of the opinion that until we get a firm no from the legislature that that's not there I think they conservative thing to do with you to leave it in there and happen already advertised as what it is the legislature do we know what their schedule is I'll double-check tomorrow and send you guys enough unless we get a firm no on that I don't want to you know yeah I don't want to come up with something that we took out with before it's embarrassing if it's poor practice this is a lot less than a couple of years ago with that $450,000 three years ago I just thought we'd show you what it would do they don't bring quickly when the air drop what can you tell us is what were worried 29 104 and what would the percentage increase three 2.63 - point 8 7 vs.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
- ok sir okay so let's say that does happen does anyone have the appetite to make any other changes to the budget I'll start I don't I think where we are is sound I'll agree I mean I appreciate everybody who spoke with you the four people who spoke last week and that's even spoke today I think that everything that was brought up I feel I feel that we discussed in simpler detail as a board there was nothing new no new information and you know people were arguing for their for their desires which was good both adding or subtracting and I think that we took all that into consideration we deliberated in enlarge so comfortable yep no I think I agree with Dan 100% I think both of the ports didn't yes did a really good job going through the detail particularly on the downside still painful at times but it's what needs to be done so I agree with that all right then I'll read this long over there I move that the Board of Finance finalized for Town Meeting the 2019 2020 town of Brookfield budget by accepting total expenditures in the amount of seventy thousand fifty seventy million fifty-seven thousand thirty one dollars to include Board of Education budget in the amount of forty four million six thousand six hundred ninety two dollars allocation of teachers retirement you know 130 thousand two hundred twenty two dollars town operating budget in the amount of eighteen million eight hundred forty three thousand nine hundred nineteen dollars capital projects and other related in the amount of 1 million eight hundred sixty three thousand nine hundred twenty-five dollars and debt service in the amount of five million two hundred twelve thousand two hundred seventy three dollars which represents a change a proposed change in the mill rate of zero point eight one or two point eight seven percent from two twenty eight point thirty three two 29.1 for as reference in the reattached 2019 2020 time of Brookfield budget summary further discussion all those in favor indicate by state aye aye motion carries 5-0 I thought you were saying those from memory not nearly as impressed is another right there did that yesterday just for this I suppose does anyone have anything else they would like to bring before the board at this time [Music] I say we have a new member of the public with us would anyone like to make public comment at this time all right did I make a motion that we adjourn I'll second [Music]
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
good morning big holler today's April 13th 2019 it is a wonderful day at school this is w bh e news I'm Felicia and I'm Carlin today for lunch there'll be a mini corndogs sweet potato fries fresh broccoli pears and milk for breakfast zero bleep cement bun string cheese fresh grapes apple juice and milk we have sometimes land in her face tangey Jenaya ass miss Morley celebrating professor summer so BG Elena s and Donnie a yesterday's fun hot question was what letter is between E and T on a keyboard the answer is our and today's fun fact question is you can't finish a cold in your breath what do you open your hair and kisses remember to write your answer really include your names in class we have a special announcement we will be drying them especially sitting at lunch one week sitting with a friend at the picnic table remember if you don't get a last name or class we can't use your name I think it's repelled from 3G okay manual for 3k and I mean you open three babies and Connor for Connor W from UK from second grade Annabelle and st Delaney from 2l yeah from 2sm Cassidy from cool Annie Annie from 4w Elijah from Forrester Denali will observe a brief set silence to reflect on the anticipated activities of the day I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all I have Mary Monday remember it kind of comes everyday everywhere thanks for watching
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
good morning Mahalo today's April 16 2009 ship it is the 3rd 140 first day of school this is WPA key news Ottomans and I'm Sofia today for lunch there will be popcorn chicken baked fries bean salad peaches and then tomorrow for breakfast there will be mini donuts graham crackers fresh apple smoothie and milk we have some friends elaborating Britain's James through celebrating birthdays this summer jaqen L in the heart Gill Claire s and Olivia s yesterday's one that question was you catch a fish a cold and your breath what do you do to a double your hair and kisses the answer is blow them the winner is from Louisiana team Pfister come to the office about your prize today's fun fact question is who would write an autobiography about you remember to write your answer neatly and include your name in class and now we will observe a brief freedom size to reflect on the anticipated activities of the day please stand for the pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all happy Trustee Tuesday I remember kind of counts every day everywhere thanks for watching peace out
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
good morning bait hallo today's April 17 2019 it is a 147th day of school this is WV AG news I'm Sofia and I Isabella today for lunch there will be Piggy's sausage patty cucumbers potatoes oranges and tomorrow breakfast there will be Cheerios graham crackers orange has apple juice and milk we have some celebrating birthdays Carter and so many for these this as our Kayden G and Christina V please go to the office to pick out your birthday but yesterday's fun that question was who would write on autobiography values Banderas you the winner is Sean team Lucas come to the office to pick up your prize Jenny slugs that question is what food is used as the base for guacamole remember to write your answer Neal and include your name in class we have a special announcement congratulations to the winners of the ease of coloring contest Julianne done simply to a amaya to be Evan Evan and Lily too deep and anon Maya - L million to our Karla Carly and Lila - Smith Laura Bella 3h Carson and Braden 3k and Miley three and now we will observe a brief period of silence to reflect on their anticipate activities of the day please sample pledge I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all have a wonderful Wednesday and kindest comes every day everywhere thanks for watching cops
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then one evening hello today is April 18 it's 2019 it's the 143rd day of school this is w be a genius I am Evan and I am Kayla today for lunch there will be Domino's Pizza spinach cherry tomatoes fresh apples and milk tomorrow for breakfast there will be put babe and head out orange juice and milk we have we've some friends celebrating birthdays Jayden Robert Josh PE Caleb C with Ricardo Toledo it's already Daisy this weekend Chloe ek please go to the office to pick out your birthday book yesterday's from that question was what food is used as the base for guacamole the answer is avocado the winner is Mike team Davichi come to the office to pick up your prize today's for that question is in the periodic table one guest as h e stand for and it's used to inflate balloons I don't remember chance when let me do what your Antony can include your name in class and now we are observable you have silence to reflect on her anticipated activities for the day please give for the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all how about grilling Thursday and remember kindness counts every day every thing thanks for watching peace out
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thank you so much for being here what I know is a beautiful evening and there are tons of activities going on in our community I want to let you know that the oriole advocates are here to lend a voice to the students teachers and staff of the Inland Community School Corporation we're truly a grassroots organization that does advocacy at every turn for working with our town council members to our school district leaders to our teachers to our state representatives so thank you for being part of our event this evening one of the things that I want to start with is the big things are the teachers and the educators in the crowd so what I'd like you to do if you work in the field of education is raise your hand high and proud [Applause] time for you to follow that up this evening with a tweet to a Facebook post to an Instagram to an about one of your favorite teachers let's rally our entire community to thank those people who serve our community and serve our children because without them we would not have a productive Society thank you in teachers I'd also like to thank many part of it is that when new who have just been our bedrock in terms in terms of keeping the advocates going so I know your man Ian Scott and watch doing the crowd but thank you so much you are the essence of great leadership and we we would not be an advocacy group without those public officials who come out and tirelessly work for our schools I'd like for you to also raise your hand so that we can see you here [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] I'm alive and I apologize my book the baby how much all of you just a little bit of logistics for this evening dr.
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I call this meeting to order at 7:02 open session thank you thank you all of you for your presence we just convene from we've just reconvene from closed session no action was taken during closed session so move to our open session item 4 for a and we'll start with the flight fluke it everyone will please rise the flag is back there began I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all alright thank you I'm next to lift a roll call my pin we have Adrienne Grier Yolanda Rodriguez Pena president Gabrielle Ariana's president Jerry Bibles logo here and I'm here so everyone's here so who wanted item C approve of the agenda 4.1 make a motion to approve there's a motion by Yolanda Rodriguez Pena a second and by Adrienne career any discussion okay seeing none please place your vote it's not letting me I think if the well don't like I just I just logged in again did you hit join meter well just sit yes and then during the presentation we can you guys what's the second handle Adrian hit yes Yolanda yes yes motion passes 5-0 we'll move on to item 5.1 spotlight on the adult education and Sierra high school [Applause] good evening here we go welcome to the Adult Education Center and Sierra high school also formerly known as Sierra high school together we are the alternative education center here in Azusa and I'm going to start with a pretty short presentation about the programs that we offer at the Adult Education Center if my students joining me tonight are four of our students from our various programs and so they're here to share with you a little bit about themselves and the program that they're involved in and what their goals are in adult education we basically have three program areas one is academics and in the academics area we have Adult Basic Education for those folks that want to improve their reading and math and writing skills we have our high school diploma program for those who wish to finish their high school diploma and we have a hiset preparation course where we offer preparation activities for the high school equivalency exam so at this time I would like to introduce Joshua and Joshua is a part of our academic program he's going to share a little bit about himself [Applause] hello my name is Joshua and I'm taking classes here at Azusa Adult School to get my high school diploma because the personal things had happened in my past I was in able to graduate in high school learning for me has not been easy landing here at Azusa adult I have found so many different ways to learn I have found that I can now do classes from home on the computer another thing is the way that the staff and teachers here motivate the students to learn and help and the help they give is just awesome I tried to go to an Adult School in Covina and that school was just not for me when I got here I felt at home and I found that I could learn being able to study at home and coming to night school has helped me in a big way because I am able to study at my own pace and being able to check out books for the weekend has helped a lot with all the help I have been getting from Azusa adult I'm confident I will be walking away with my high school diploma Thank You Josh the other program area for us is career technical education and in that program area we offer courses in two specific areas one is business and computer technology and at this point and in those classes we offer a basic computer literacy class for those people who don't know anything about computers an office technician class as well as Word and Excel courses and I would like to introduce Esperanza right now for her to share a little bit about the program she's in good evening I started my education I'm currently taking technology classes some computers Excel I'm also taking classes on Wendy's Google application Google Drive Google formats they're opening many classes for computers which are you know very helpful and I thank you very much you know I would like to you know after finishing this classes to improve my mice improving my skills to be able to get a better opportunity for a job Thank You Esperanza in the career technical education field we also offer various pathway programs in medical in the medical field including certified nurse's assistant medical coding and billing EKG technician hospital ward clerk at the pharmacy technician so next I'd like to introduce Nicholas who's part of our pharmacy tech program hi my name is a technician program I decided to take this class to fast-track my education from this for just to get into a pharmacy program this as you said a dog has helped me so much it's fast-tracked my entire pharmacy technician curious I can start at the age of 22 instead of starting at an age of like 24 to 23 after I finish this pharmacy technician course I plan on losing and getting into like a university or and even at grad school eventually so I can pursue a PharmD and without Azusa I couldn't have gone this far this is definitely a huge stepping stone in my career Thank You Nick and then the last program area for us for us is English as a second language and we offer six levels of English as a second language we also offer conversational English courses in the afternoon for those who want to improve their conversational skills and I'd like to introduce the [Applause] [Music] pronunciation but I'm getting better every day with thanks to my teachers in my career is the medical term classes it will improve my knowledge by practicing in English what I already have what I have already learned in my modern language in our English classes we also learn about civics and that had helped me a lot with my resume now include small professional and and the way I express myself in an interview it has given me more confidence because in the past I wasn't able to even ask for shampoo at the store and now I'm able to establish casual conversation a professional one in the case of honey table well that is in a nutshell what we do here at the Adult Education Center I hope this helped you sort of understand a little bit and about our students stories and we are just excited to be here to help our students fulfill their dreams mr.
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McCormick have the presentations prepared for you and a slideshow backdrop you can follow her on Twitter there's her Twitter feed in and educate Indiana and you can do that this evening as you leave or take pictures or whatsoever make sure to push those out she has a wonderful presentation prepared for us and then she has generously offered to take audience questions so at the conclusion her presentation two of our applicants will be kind of staffing the microphones here we ask you to come up and give your name and and pose your question we will be concluding by 8 p.m. the applicants always try to start on time and finish on time my students some of my students are here to thank you for being here and their teachers so shout out to them but they know that I like to start with time and in no time maybe not relate that to let's get to the topic of the evening dr.
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Hernandez you're up next Madam President Madam vice-president clerk Board dr. Kaminsky and cabinet and distinguished guests I'm very happy and pleased to present students from CR high school we are not a typical alternative better continuation school what I love about our students is not only how dynamic they are but just how demanding they are and they want the very best and they want the same so things that we do different here we have not one not two not three we have for AP classes some of which the students will talk about a little bit tonight we have a dual enrollment college class we offer the same exact English math science history classes that are taught at the comprehensive schools and nothing short the students are flat-out amazing and I wouldn't trade a single one of them so I am going to introduce at this time mr.
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Jennifer McCormick is our 44 Superintendent of Public Instruction she did not nationally recognized educator and innovator innovative she has served at every level of the k-12 education system she's been a secondary special education and language arts teacher an elementary principal and assistant superintendent and served as superintendent for seven and a half years as Indiana's education system leader dr. McCormick energetic and tireless advocate for children dedicated to improving educational outcomes she's a sought-after speaker so we feel very privileged that she is willing to spend an evening with us here this evening and serves as a devoted ambassador for ensuring all stakeholders are working together for student success in Indiana she had served on a number of community boards and make some home in Indianapolis work with her husband Trent who's also a teacher they have one son Caleb who attends West Point Military Academy so let's give a warm welcome [Music] [Applause] [Music] look at eating I swear I'm gonna take that introduction and it's only going to say at this point rebel rouser because that's pretty much what it is at the Statehouse right now so we can really shorten that down but I do appreciate being here this evening it is extremely important you asked questions we are going to give you some information but a big part of this is making sure you are informed so a lot of it is just providing you with the data that is necessary to make some decisions and make sure you are communicating to that advocate group I cannot thank you enough it is so impressive to have a parent group it gives out with with your students and your staff gets out ahead of things that really tries to educate a community so thank you for the invite tonight and everything they're doing for the students here in your community for all of you who are extremely busy educators which means everybody right now in the screen.if thank you for being here I know probably credibly busy the spring is so I'm cognizant of your time so thank you for that to the retirees setback life's good we'll get you through so but I do appreciate being here some of this for our superintendent going to say a browser that I apologize you have seen this several times parts of it but we're going to start out by just presenting some information around who we are why do I present this and by the way tell people we need to continue to present this if we take our eyes off who we are we take our eyes off good policy good efficiency of our resources and the list goes on that this is an update right now of who Indiana is you get outside of Marion County in this county Hancock County Anthony the donut be able to get outside that area people are sometimes amazed by these numbers especially the ones to talk about the languages spoken we have 291 across the state of Indiana with that comes space which happens opportunity and I you argue and I had this conversation with our lawmakers that is an area that we are not celebrating enough and we're not funny enough and there's a interesting balance of that the other one that care that always gets people's attention that I know some of your districts some of you are in here would say I would love to have every reduced rate of 48 percent that is not who we are we are in the 70s or in the 80s so I understand that greater reduce number for some that's the state average that number continues to creep up and this is no surprise to the educators in here why is that happening at a time where there's extreme unemployment it's because of the working poor we know we have families that are making $10 an hour they're working multiple jobs we now have the highest number of students living with grandparents who are being raised the highest number of foster children and the highest number of homeless students let that sit in because that is a conversation that were not happy so right now as far as k12 if you ask our educators many of them will tell you that's not a surprise that is not a surprise others depending on where you are in the state are so much shocked by ADA's numbers the demographics across the state obviously look very different from school to school but yet it's really good about making policies of one-size-fits-all so keeping our eye on is extremely important to do the other area is the English language learners those are students who speak English as a somewhat second language I will tell you that is a budgetary that everybody's watching we're still getting employees in their area we were promised or not we didn't promise but it was promised through legislation that you wouldn't in a specific at a target that you would get a big bump in your per student pay that hasn't really come to where it needs to be we were looking at potentially a thousand dollars per student we are running about two hundred and eighty two dollars per student so what we did in our budget asked is said you have to double act even come close you have to double it so we went from 17 million to nrx the 34 million which would still not get us to where we need to be but we doubled that amount unfortunately as you can see the governor too came out and went fifteen million so we're kind of slide back a bit which we were a little bit disappointed to see the house came out with a little bit more and then the city came out of the tad bit more so at least we're going in the right direction but we're still having because many of you all are wanting resources you need licensed people you need the finances to follow it so that he L number we are watching closely that is something that we're just nowhere near where we need to be with funding I will give a shout out to Senator Mishler who is obviously in charge of appropriations he is one that is watching this and trying to get some movement we've had a lot of discussion yes for a lot of numbers which you have to appreciate they all know it's underfunded they are very some of them are very concerned that you have to you can't have a few takes more than that to get that budget going but but that is just something that we are watching because that is an area that I foresee over this biennium to still will still be struggling but those numbers continue to creep up this is us so 35 percent of our teachers are leaving between years one and five now I don't know about you but if you've ever had a business you've ever been in a school system there are a lot of superintendents a CFO is here to know me you know how difficult it is if you're losing thirty five percent of your teaching staff here's one through five now there are some districts that are like that's not us there are other districts that will tell you when that's the way we are or way under depending on where you are when we survey pays the number one reason the second reason is working conditions so we are having that conversation today was a big rally in the Statehouse I'm not a big brown we're to be honest with you I participated today because of some of the things that are happening in the state level but interesting to watch some of those numbers of some of the conversations that are happening we're going to talk about the budget and we have 78 thousands of teachers thankfully we have the biggest increase in 2010 in teachers being license the issue is we also have the biggest number of temporary license still being issued so is there a problem yes when I talk to people they still will say well that's your stem area that's your science technology engineering and math yes it is it's also special education it's also else our school counselors it's also finding good administrators we need to list those on now i sat as a superintendent for seven a half years between Anderson University and while State University and back in the day I would have stacks of applicants stacks so it was like getting on you knew you were going to get good people by the time I left before I lost my mind but by the time I left that stack that I really really really really been really event and I was sitting between two universities there are districts that still have stacks but there are many more that are either thin stacks so if we're not going to react to that really we're already in trouble that that urgency has passes we're already beyond that it is almost in crisis mode we have got to have good educators if we're going to see results it's not a secret as many if you had your own kids in classrooms or you're in the classroom stove or you have great consider sitting in classrooms you know the power of great educators if we can't figure this out we're in big big trouble but this is also who we are to help share that information the option I put up here is something that many of you a familiar it's being discussed in order to help state districts some money on the end of your payment to turn percentage which is a little bit needy but it didn't say I found it to be a good solution for from the governor's office we were pleased to see that and met with this our team could get behind that it's hard to turn down that money back score to a 13 check decision came out for some of our retirees and so if you're a retiree don't shoot the messenger but there are a lot of moving parts with the Turk right now so trying to find solutions but also some other things that are coming out that are a bit problematic with turf budget ax you know people if you're watching Twitter right now it's interesting to say people will say me or started up and I'm like I'm just sharing facts and if the facts tarik stir it up there's something wrong with the policies creating facts so here they are we have obviously inflation the general fund k-12 tuition and economic development time those are my numbers those are Indiana's workers those are just actual numbers that's what you need to keep watching your districts are well aware of those numbers but those are just the facts we also look at the governor who are the k-12 budget quick facts when we rolled out our budget in October when I able to date about our budget I was like look I have a lot happened that day but when we rolled it out I said you know I'm a little bit worried I'm going to come in love like our budget asks and you might need to get crazy but I wasn't really come in love which would be a great thing to happen but I also know that we were wanting to support all of our educators interestingly we're still a hiatus because given a time when we're hearing a lot of messaging about we want to get more money into the classroom or still see numbers that aren't going to equate to money into the classroom for probably about 25 or 30% of our districts so watching those numbers is extremely important right now again this is where we are landing they are dissecting those numbers the senate number getting out a little bit better per se but when you look at the holistic piece the House budget would benefit more districts so there's a lot of wheat hearts don't get hung up on just the percentage increase because there's so many there are so many other pieces of the complexity to it that it doesn't tell the whole story so some of our districts are like oh we're getting there like you know a little bit of a race yeah but have you looked up a very poor waiver have you looked at what's happening with some of these other pieces do you have to look at the whole picture which is what we're trying to keep an eye on but that's where we are right now with bunch of quick facts this is us as a state so this is not a surprise to many of you however I think the joys a good reminder so although we serve 1.2 million students and that universe pretty much flat rainy it little bit up a little bit down but pretty much flatlining since 2012 you can see what's happening in two schools so where we have traditional districts going down just a bit traditional schools going down just a bit we have a nine pubs the Baptist referring to this story which we get a lot of our applications for non-public schools now and I will be honest I'm a big person about quality matters so we're going to have school choice we need to have it it's a quality not behind a taco stand and open for the best it needs to be quality matters so that where we're watching and the Turner school number is super fluid right now I honestly it is hard for our team to keep up as faxes I'm open there are just as many shutting down but we have an increase of about 52 percent so regardless of their philosophy on choice their whole picture here talks about the philosophy that it should talk to the quality choice our students are very very transient very transient so that one pocket of schools is it getting it done and we're all going to feel at one in one way or another so this is us as far as schools again numbers to watch I mean it really does tell a story we're also working with some universities to talk about capacity because I don't think as a state we're talking about capacity enough when is that time come we have hit a threshold where and that was enough how much choice do we need like the tacos thing at school and that's legit so when does that color enough is enough and we've hit that capacity threshold people will talk about the teacher shortage but I also remind them the more schools we are servicing the more chemistry teachers we need the more physics teachers we need because it doesn't work so much that just because of a Yorktown may lose fifty kids I'm not cutting a cow teacher a physics teacher I still need all those and so it doesn't quite work the way people are making it sounds work well if you don't need those teachers anymore and that school needs them aren't we just kind of switching from one location to another no no it just doesn't necessarily work that way so the capacity conversation here again what is our threshold when does that need to come into play because we're all raised your teachers and we're just making the conversation horse interesting as well when we talk about access and opportunity for students this plays into that so if you can't find a physics teacher that plays into this if you can't find a Spanish teacher or a Russian teacher or a couch teacher this plays into that so all these conversations about capacity need to take place that I tell you it is not popular it is not a popular conversation but we're watching that as a department we're also watching this so that graduation rate I know there are some schools that are represented tonight that your grad rate is high high high which is a good thing that doesn't happen by accident but I can tell you demographics and many of our districts are very very different so I walked into some schools that are not great on the grade graduation rate and I would send my son there to New York minute because of what's happening in that school I've also walked into some schools and on my camp and in a for 15 years and I would not deserve the opportunities difference so it just depends on what is happening in that school without getting hung up too much on letter grades but the graduation rate does tell the story interesting this year legislation we have a court Civil War that was introduced and we came out and said ah now there were some people who loved it I use as a state superintendent at Smith a little superintendent the thought of not including graduation rate and anything accountability for high school did not set well with me so people were like what in the Aaron Scott Woods it wasn't if you looked at the language it was not in there now since then they put it in they put it in however it was absent to begin with and many of our schools do a fairly good job with the Graduate now I do believe I was told earlier that it didn't get pulled up so we'll see what happens to 1404 but an accountability piece with the grad rate is just interesting to watch something we're paying attention to are the gaps so we have to accountability systems in Indiana once state once federal the federal the departments and controller on the federal side we are watching the subgroups how we break that down because when you lump everybody together it does so that when you start looking at individual subgroups we should be a little bit concerned especially if you look over at the AP column we should that should give us some pause when you throw everything together it becomes a very different story now the state whether we like it or not looking have that debate but the state throws it all together we need to keep it separate on the federal side which I know I was a principal during a time where we did this and it is hard it's hard to move subgroups you know who those subgroups are going to be that are going to be huh you're going to be hung up on our biggest charges I wish there was a way to do it without it so cute ative but until that time comes from the federalism from the state and that's where we are but this helps us drive our resources so we have been committed to say what are the areas who are the target subgroups that we need to beef up our resources special education is one PLL is another some of our subgroups by ethnicity would be others so we have really been better to target or support interestingly the department is targeting supports and when we do that it's very very purposeful so it really would make no sense I don't want to use your town as an example because I can meet up my backpack school and it's not really meet up in reality I wouldn't need it as much support as a Gary Indiana so our charges get resources to Gary give nor town a little bit of what they need but give resources to where they need to go our plan was made up that way so schools that were comprehensive in need of support like a big big big trouble we have a mechanism comprehensive support plan the state doesn't necessarily like that so some of our lawmakers the power city said so where I had a bunch of fnd schools that I was trying to get money to I was pretty much forced to give it to some C schools that is hard hard harder to defend so in those that schools call and say what in the world why are we not getting any money because they know darn good well that the ski school just got a bunch of money it is a hard it's hard to explain so we are watching these number for a lot of reasons but you just have to know conflict in the state which is not good but it's there it's real it's but as a state superintendent we will continue to try to get our resources to our most oppressed it's no different than what you do at the local level that's usually how you control graduation rates if we can pay attention to the third one down traditional public school rate for the first time in a long time here over 91 percent and that is something to be celebrated that is not by accident that is a lot of hard work I thought the high school principals and they're really wasting of their power to get kids across the stage I talked to counselors talk to administrators I talk to teachers like we have actually come in we are committed to this classic closely you do whatever you can do because you understand what is disadvantaged the students are at the routine in them across that state that great again should be celebrating we're not probably having as much conversation we should about a year or not that is some really great work Caleta if you look up on some of the items there are some areas that we know about concern I will tell you when you look at virtual schools in virtual charter schools I have argue those are some of our most at-risk students those are either medically fragile they have needs and are great for depositional setting we have students who are Olympic athletes and they're just not around we have kids it's like this is their last stop until Allah Street we have students who are a little bit older they come back to examine him interact a little or a little bit why is how many of this attracts knowing those are going to be a little bit down understanding which stuff however if you look at a virtual Charter and traditional of the virtual charter schools that day that kind of sent red flags up to state board and to our legislators and I understand that we probably need to look at we have some anxiety about saying shut down but have eyes on the problem McCain is at loved one of the charter schools in with virtual education so if you think about where we are virtual education or credit recovery your credit acceleration your students you have IES or by for whatever reason you have hybrid of learning modality there are a lot of different reasons why students maybe participate in virtual education now carving out the remedial part of it leaving the rest of it in if you hit a certain which many of our districts are gonna hit maybe but many of our districts in theory would hit if you hit a certain threshold those students who have so much percent of their day in virtual education are going to get eighty percent of the funding now the reporting of that I could see people looking at me now like are you crazy lady those are the people who have done the reporting the recording of that would be crazy almost almost impossible to follow because that is fluid you can have a child hit that threshold for the first six weeks and pop right back out of it and go back in it because of their circumstance that happens a lot especially with mobility however that's where we are with some of our bills who knows how how to end up in the end but we have had a lot of conversation trying to talk through you have got to leave virtual schools separate commercial education because all of you who are in the technology know we have some tech folks in here you know that makes us go backwards that does not help us go forward Indiana's one of the neck and national leaders of technology whether you love technology or not tech integration with instruction we got out ahead of it we've done really good work in that area are we perfect no but we really have done some really solid work if you start saying you can do it but we'll take your money watch what happens you have one person you have a student that's the only person in the middle but less so here are some items that we are watching but just pay attention to some of the conversations about virtual because it's getting quite interesting from both the House and the Senate I've had a lot of people call about this and say are all schools getting $500 extra no so what happened was it was a charter innovation area they came out really other house-senate that I have no idea where exactly cuz today it may be completely modern it could be back who knows but right now that would be $500 extra per child is a 77 million dollar expense our charge was we have 77 million dollars you put it in basis tuition support where everyone that was our touch now I'm not sure going to get that done but again I'm not today I don't know where that means that right now mr.
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