it is okay thank you okay sure i didn't want to give you a pop quiz or anything i don't know that's helpful it's that end of the day a little mental math is good for me um yeah so it would be increasing our percentage of students who are school choice so right now we're at about 35 it would be increasing that to closer to 40 or 45 percent any questions for lee all right i mean that is great news um that's and so i mean you said that anecdotally you're hearing that word of mouth is helping does it seem like other efforts are making a difference are there things we can learn about the efforts this year that we could apply in the future so one thing that was really helpful was our pto promoted on social media both our ad and also they held an open q a session for prospective school choice families um and it and that coincided with the weekend that we ran the ad in the newspaper um the pto kind of elevated that and then the following wednesday or thursday the pto met and had that open session and a handful of families came because they said they saw the ad and then they looked on facebook and they saw the pto group um so the pto has been an amazing partner in helping just elevate the the status of the school so i would really think you know moving forward to try and time things in the spring in the same way we did this year with the ad and with pto q a um it worked really well that's yeah that's really great well yeah i appreciate the pto's efforts and i think especially for that to be for information like that to be shared parent or family to family i think can be really helpful so that's great all right nice job any other questions comments margaret another i guess a little math problem so how many students total would we expect to have in the fall okay so let me let me just i'm sorry i should have had these numbers before for you so it's a little bit um the number's a little bit hard to predict because we have some students from our community who are in private school or home school this year who have told us that they are coming back but they are not officially re-registered so we sort of have our official number and then the number that we um that we have in the back of our minds that we think might happen but we'll probably want to go with the official number okay okay so currently we have 113 students um 14 of those are sixth graders so we would be going down to 99 we have accepted 12 kindergarteners plus we have three polymers so there's 15 15 kindergarteners coming in so that would bring us to 114 plus another 2 3 4 5 6. so that would bring us to 121 and then so we would be about 119 if none of the students who are in private school this year came back um so we would go be going up in our overall enrollment by six students um but we have heard from some families that they are coming back so we do anticipate to be our our soft number is more around 125.
um before we take a in an action i think i would like to do this a little different um this resolution one of the things that um i want to to to do tonight is i would like all our board and our cabinet to go ahead and read this together one of the things that i heard tonight from our community was that they would like the isuzu unified school district including the board and us to take action i know that all of us have shared tonight at board members how differently that we're you know we're taking action on on our own and being able to be part of the solution so therefore at this time right now i would like to go ahead and start reading this and as i call your name if you can read the paragraph that is next um that that would be great if you would like to abstain you can go ahead and do so as well um i'm going to go ahead and start a susan universe president can we have the um excuse me can we share the document on the screen i'm sorry yes um hope can we please share the document on the screen nice and big for where we started me one second i can do it no worries thank you um i just want to express the sentiment on how you know reading this together as as a dice and as cabinet that we are you know committing ourselves to not only are we just voting on this resolution but we together are you know in uh together in a sense partaking in this being able to to read this off together that we're partnering this you know putting our differences aside being able to go ahead and stand as unified as we meet and that we're just not going to you know do this in the boardroom but outside of the boardroom as well let me know when you guys oh it's there can all of you guys see it and if you guys have um you guys can also open it into the pdf and um on your computers okay is there anyone that needs more time okay like i said i'm going to go ahead and start it and as i call your name um for the for the paragraph um we'll start with where you know you'll start with whereas in that paragraph um let me go ahead and start reading this resolution asusa unified school district resolution number 20-21 a resolution on our commitment to the safety and well-being of our asian american and pacific islander students employees families and community members and denouncing xenophobia due to fears of the covet 19 pandemic whereas a souza unified school district believes that we have a special responsibility to understand and intentionally work to eliminate racism in our curricula our classroom cultures and our relationship with our students our parents our guardians and each other because our collective future depends on it and adrian can you please read the next pair whereas azusa unified school district celebrates the rich diversity of its school community and recognizes students families and employees of asian and pacific islander descent who are valued members of the school district and we have a board member rodriguez pena whereas azusa unified school district recognizes the role of current events in teaching of tolerance and understanding and the value and strength of diversity and we have board member uh channeling cruz gonzalez whereas asian american and pacific islander communities are suffering acts of discrimination hate crimes and macro aggressions due to fears of coven 19 and board member bo whereas scientists have confirmed that the covid19 disease does not respect borders and the world health organization has cautioned against using geographic descriptors because they can fuel ethnic discrimination and mr arthur ortega whereas azusa unified school district is especially aware of the trauma and isolation that is accompanying the covenant 19 global pandemic and miss dana mitchell whereas azusa unified school district affirms its commitment to the safety and well-being of our asian american and pacific islander community members and ensures that they are not alone and will be supported in helping to stop the spread of xenophobia and mr jorge ronquillo whereas asusa unified school district stands in solidarity with our asian american and pacific islander communities and miss latasha jamal whereas azusa unified school district stands against discrimination among all persons regardless of national origin race greed gender sexual orientation and abilities now therefore be it resolved that the associated fight school district board of education continue to support our asian community and pacific islander community members and announces any and all xenophobia related to cobit 19 and beyond be it further result that the asusa unified school district board of education calls on all residents and leaders to join in condemning racism attacks against asian americans and pacific islanders in all forms and be it further result that the asusa unified school district recognizes the tremendous contributions made by our asian american pacific islander communities and affirms its commitment to support to the social emotional and physical needs to all of our students today we will adopt today on the 13th 13th day of april 2021 by the board of education as we vote we will be able to go ahead and carry this forth um i'm going to go ahead and ask for a motion to to approve 9.5 hello we have by board member sabrina beau we have a second by board member uh cruz gonzalez i'm sorry no riolando rodriguez pena one thing um as we're getting ready to vote um i thank you guys all for coming together and standing as one that we will not tolerate this not in our schools not in with our employee you know not towards our employees and not in our boardroom therefore at this point right now we can all please cast our votes [Music] and it passes 5-0 thank you so much as we are moving on we are going to move on to consent calendar and at this point if we can get a motion to please no no yes thank you for that we have a 9.5 discussion of board self evaluation we can go ahead and have artudo start this with for us absolutely thank you uh item 9.5 was which is a discussion of board self-evaluation it was a request uh from uh from the from one of our board members to have this conversation i went ahead and took the initiative to attach our board bylaw that talks about just just to have as a reference as you begin this conversation around self-evaluation great and so um i would like to go ahead and start with this any of the board members would like to go ahead and start uh president arianes if i may um just offer an opening comment so mr ortega um when i initially reached out to you on this in your research did you do i have it correct that um when you looked into the files that the last time the board did a self-evaluation was in october 2016 is that accurate that is the last time that i could find a a board agenda item for a more self-evaluation yes sure um and then i'm looking to our two you know veteran board members for kind of some perspective on you know that process and what you've seen in other boards and kind of where we might start in getting back onto a cycle of board self-evaluation uh board member chris gonzalez and board member pena um yeah i mean there's there's many way i mean there's many ways to do it i think it's been a while since we used to do it annually but it was a long long time ago um but i mean there's so like for example we csba has a tool that we can use um and we've done we've done a process i've done been through a process one time when it was just us right we just looked at our um our bylaws and our and our what's in our manual and use that to evaluate ourselves um i think it's really just up to what we feel most comfortable i think generally it's always in an open session regular session meeting it's not um it doesn't happen in us in a like a governance retreat um i don't know um i i find it better if we have a tool right i find it good if we have a tool um that we start with like an individual just reflection and then use that to sort of do a group evaluation that's i think that's what i've seen that's i feel like it's been most effective when we do it that way but i i mean i'm i'm open to whatever process i think it's a good thing to do annually yeah and so i've been bored they've have never did a self evaluation so i am not familiar with that other than you know going to see sba conferences that speak about it but i do think it's it is important since we hold everyone accountable in this district student staff administration i think we should do the same it's a good idea can i can i share something so one of the things that um you know the this uh board bylaw it's a the vision setting the curriculum personnel finance policy development even though we haven't had um one in the last two years that i i'm aware of i know that we've come together as a district um with cabinet with um directors parents to and we had a workshop i don't know if you guys remember um board members that we came and we created a uh we created a vision a new one and we had like little hubs do you guys remember we we were here i think it was in the circ i'm not sure but it was in the um at the district and we created a vision we you know we spoke about community relations there was different groups and it kind of reminds me of kind of what um uh mr arturo ortega put together that he actually was sharing with the board you know what is this committee doing so there was different committees that were made um you know one of them being you know uh the relationship with the community what what can we do to improve that um the advocacy our curriculum our personnel and so forth the finance and there was a a committee for each one do you remember any of this yes that was facilitated by a consultant like president arianes is saying we had uh different uh stakeholders in the room students parents staff and in addition to creating a vision statement we also created some action statements and then we had to report to the board i believe monthly on what we were what the progress was in those in those specific areas moving forward so i i do want to suggest um and i mean i but i'd love to hear from everybody what what to do but i do want to suggest i think um it's really helpful um to look at the csba governance standards right and i think that it's really helpful for us to we do a lot of um i mean it's important for us to evaluate outcomes based on what we do with our tutors the superintendent evaluation with our annual goals with the lcap um but i think for it to be really effective for us as the board right we should be thinking about like what are our roles what are our governance roles and setting those goals for ourselves so that then we can evaluate like after a year how we met those goals in terms of thinking about our collaboration in terms of affecting the effectiveness of meetings in terms of um some of the things that that gabriella mentioned i think i think it's helpful for us to focus on when we think about what we're supposed to be doing you want to talk about being a policy maker right what what are those things that we're doing and are we let's measure ourselves against those things that we that we should be doing as board members yeah i would agree with that um in reference to the the meeting that we had um board president i think that that was a good work that we did um but i i would suggest that that's though i haven't been a part of a uh board self-evaluation i i imagine that that's separate and apart from a self evaluation and and um i think it'd be great to look at any tools that csba has in place and how can we use that as a model to evaluate ourselves collectively as a as a board i just want to um just clarify i didn't want to say that to do that again instead of i just want to clarify that i just i just wanted to share because sabrina is new to the board and um i did want to share that that's something that we did if that's something that she would like to take a look at um she's more than welcome to request um you know th that and so just want to provide that information for her but no i i i agree i'm sorry i cannot hear who's speaking i'm sorry i said the csba survey is a very long survey um so um just thinking about like i feel like it's if it's more focused right and we identify areas that we want to focus on i think it's more effective and i don't know i don't know sabrina if you have just in your experience professional experience like um seen other tools that you could use i mean we could or our doodle right there could be tools that we use um to really build what fits us um i think in my work with schools and non-profit boards it's that focus of board self-evaluation has been also about board member composition which is different than what we're doing here that's been more about like what skills do we want and who else do we need to recruit to the board so that's not our work here um i think looking at the csba tools is a great place to start its criteria that has been recognized and adopted and when you say that it's a long tool um are you suggesting that we would it be a tool that we um complete offline and that we bring it back and that's what we discussed when we decide we're going to discuss items you know sections one and two in our first you know phase one of our about our self-evaluation is it would be something like that i'm sorry board member cruz gonzalez i'm sorry i keep on turning off my mic sorry um um we we we completed the survey and then we never got to the point where we came together and and went through it um so i think i mean my suggestion is maybe if there's a subcommittee of the board like two people that are interested in in sort of working with arthur to develop a process i think that would be really helpful because it could move it forward that's that would be my suggestion and if we can have two like if people people will be willing to volunteer to take a lead on this i think it'd be that would be very helpful i would be interested in in participating in that kind of subcommittee i i would be interested as well anybody else that's good okay so we have two great so we have and so is that technically is that an advisory group not subject to the brown act because we have two or how does that work it's more than three two two of us can be can can be and we can talk about them because it's ad hoc so you guys aren't you're just gonna meet like for a short time okay and there's no official action ad hoc committee i will move forward then and uh organize and uh collaborate with board member beau and board president arianes and uh we'll come back to the board as a whole with our with our insights and our possible recommendations great thank you arthur do we have any more questions comments concerns for 9.5 great let's go ahead and move on with our agenda to consent calendar do i have a motion can i please get a motion to move 10.0 and all in the consent calendar can i get a motion to move consent calendar make a motion to approve 10.2 through 10.13 in the consent calendar wait we have a first motion by board member rodriguez pena can i please get a second motion i second we have a second by board member beau if we can go do we have any comments questions scenes that seem that there's none let's go ahead and vote okay and it passes 5-0 moving on with your our agenda for tonight we move on to business and finance move on to 12.1 approval of u.s again contract with foothill middle school can i please get a motion to move 12.1 we have a first by board member adrian greer can i please get a second second we have a second by board member rodriguez pena do we have any questions comments discussions 12.2 i think it's a great idea yes so this will put a bin in front of the school where um guys could donate and then as long as there's clothing that can be reutilized repurposed the school will receive proceeds from the agency and how long do they leave the bin there we're going to do it for a year to try it out just to make sure it's not also taken away from our curb appeal and seeing how everything works out so what are you doing to to did someone doesn't jump in there or you know for safety issues i mean just it may happen that that is a possibility right so we're going to try this out to see um but it is it has a lid on it to prevent that um but someone could jump in there yeah and it would just be one of those that we would have to provide resources to assist to manage okay thank you i have a question about that um this being in front of foothill middle school um would there be like hours of operation where people can come and drop off things no this just stays it just stays open there's no hours of operation okay great thank you and we'll we'll be um letting our our community know that um we will have this recycling um in front of foothill middle school is that correct yes ma'am okay great thank you any more comments questions concerns seeing that there's none if we could please place our vote and it passes 5-0 moving on to 12.2 the ratification approval of consultant graciala gardner resolution number 20-21-28 if i can please get a motion to move 12.2 [Music] second okay we have a first by board member greer and we have a second by cruz gonzalez does anyone have any comments or questions or concerns seeing that there's none let's go ahead and cast our vote okay and it passes 5-0 we move on to 12.3 approval approval of current solutions contract can at least get a motion to approve 12.3 i make a motion to approve and that was by board member cruz gonzalez thank you and a second by board member rodriguez pena any questions seeing that there's none let's go ahead and cast our vote [Music] great and it passes 5-0 moving on to 12.4 approval of change order number 001 asusa unified school district gladstone high school heating ventilation and air conditioning upgrades can at least get a motion to move 12.4 motion to approve 12.4 i'll second okay we have a first by board member rodriguez pena second by board member cruz gonzalez any any discussion seeing that there's none let's please cast our vote and it passes 5-0 moving on to 12.5 approval of change order number 001 asusa unified school district relocation of portable buildings at glaston street elementary school can i please get a motion to move 12.5 we have a first board member greer we have a second by board member cruz gonzalez any discussion seeing that there's none if we could please cast our our votes moving on to 13.0 curriculum and instruction we start with 13.1 approval of the agreement between asus unified school district and disciplina posativa if we could please get a motion to move 13.1 make a motion to approve 13.1 again we have a first by board member rodriguez pena a second by board member greer do we have any discussion i actually have a question mr arthur ortega could you please ex share with us what disciplina positiva is i'm going to go ahead and defer that to dr mitchell thank you we actually have i believe principal antonio flores from paramount who is here who could answer a question about that uh lika would you mind moving him over yes he's just moved over okay thanks people floors are you online hi sorry good evening everyone i was having some technical uh issues uh good evening board president ariana thank you for the question uh so this uh disappearable diva is actually a program it's a parent workshop um that focuses on uh supporting our parents uh through during the summer pandemic uh helping them giving them strategies uh to assist their children uh to have them be successful academically uh mentally and emotionally emotionally during this pandemic um mr and mrs uh orozco actually came to our school in november uh before we closed and they did a sort of preview of their workshop and our parent group was very very excited uh to to have them uh presented our school so uh our goal was to continue with uh partnership with them but then the pandemic hit but we closed and so they've been working with us um to uh you know uh get to get this workshop going with uh with our families and helping to assess them too to uh you know have success with their students as they're dealing with you know mental stresses uh academic stresses uh during this time of the pandemic great and is this just for for one one um one of the schools or is this for the district this is for paramount for paramount great thank you um thank you so much for sharing that with us um any more discussion or questions no thank you mr antonio flores thank you okay as a board we can go ahead and cast our vote and it passes five zero moving on to 13.2 approval of the contract between gladstone high school and right question institute can i please get a motion to move 13.2 i make a motion to approve 13.2 at first by board member rodriguez pena second and we have a second by board member career any questions discussion seeing that there's none we can go ahead and cast our vote and it passes 5-0 moving on to 13.3 approval of the contract between asusa high school and leadership inspirations can at least get a motion to move 13.3 i make a motion to approve board member cruz gonzalez can i please get a second second board member rodriguez pena any discussion scenes seen that there's none if we can please cast our vote and it passes 5-0 we have a 13.4 approval of the contract between asusa unified school district and thriving u university can i please get a for a motion to approve 13.4 we have a first by board member greer i'll second we have a second by board member cruz gonzalez do we have any discussion seeing that there's none let's go ahead and cast our votes and it passes 5-0 and that actually concludes our agenda we are going to be moving to closed session but at this point right now i i would like to go ahead and and dedicate this this meeting and this moment of silence to our dear friend teacher um mr dave lewis and we can go ahead and just bow our heads and just have a few sec a minute or so a moment of silence thank you thank you guys for for uh joining us in this moment of silence for mr dave lewis and at this moment right now um our our our board and um cabinet will be moving back into closed session thank you all for attending our meeting tonight you're more than welcome to come back for for for us to close and adjourn but if not you may all have may all of you guys have a great great night thank you good night [Music] here i i have um is it okay we take um like a five minute break are you guys okay with it okay we can come back at nine nine eleven all right thank you [Music] are you fine you
hey yeah i'll be brief um my name is daniel smolkin i live in ward 4 at ann arbor and yeah i just wanted to add my voice in support of having municipal energy instead of relying on dt thanks for calling in daniel anyone else to see uh no no okay very good we'll have an opportunity at the end at the end again so uh energy report lots of very exciting things happening over in osi uh you know a lot but not enough i guess that's sort of the moral we did get received bids back for uh solar on 13 municipal facilities we're working our way through those at the moment pretty exciting stuff we're also working on our parallel rfp for all all of the affordable housing sites or housing commission sites to have rooftop solar as well uh tying that with battery storage where we can and where that makes sense pretty exciting stuff um it's also been a world i don't know covet time what it looks like for you but i have no idea what day it is ever uh sometime between when we last met and today we have been working pretty hard on a lot of federal asks for the infrastructure bill there's been a number of opportunities across different sectors so really excited that we in sustainability partnered with a number of units to put in some asks in that bill including the possibility of our first net zero energy fire station which i'm really excited to see move forward and then we also put in some of the projects uh rooftop solar storage systems throughout the community so fingers crossed those move forward we're also actively working on some transportation elements including some uh i think the phrase is solar assisted ev charging infrastructure uh looking to kind of build more of that and leverage as much solar potential as we can but also acknowledging we may have charging when when we don't have the sun so how are we comparing those so we're working on all kinds of efforts there also excited to share that some of you may have gotten this email we have had a lot of interest in heat pumps emerge kind of more broadly in the community and conversations and so members of our team have been working with heat pump manufacturers and some of the installers and we're hosting a special heat pump workshop for the community to come and learn more we've also been actively negotiating discounts on heat pumps so that if people move forward kind of like solarize they would be able to access those discounts it will be a different phasing because it won't be this neighborhood it'll be perhaps like a year-long opportunity where you mention a20 and you get a discount on a heat pump system because it is a lot more customized to your home than a solar system might be we're really excited to see that take off uh we put a call out to solarize participants and we had 100 over 130 people respond that they wanted to learn more and possibly move forward this is really exciting for us to kind of just jump right in uh we also continued to work in the bryant neighborhood unfortunately we were going to kick off our our work in the bryant neighborhood this is the neighborhood decarbonization assessment on thursday with a face-to-face walk by and a virtual town hall uh that face-to-face has been delayed due to spiking members of copen in the community but we are still going to kick off the virtual portion of that work and continue conversations with rmi rewiring america and others to try to unlock some pretty significant seed capital to help actually move through those homes and decarbonization really strategic kind of comfort decarbonization there are a number of other things but i'll just kind of stop there with the last exception being please mark your calendars a20 week is coming it'll be june 1st through june 6th it's a combination of uh decentralized and yeah like disaggregated events around town and some cross-cutting things excited to announce we have green fare f-a-r-e with local restaurants where they're promoting sustainable food locally produced food and plant-based food we're really going to bring home our local businesses highlight them that week we're working on a demonstration of we'll just show you for funding reusable takeout containers that the businesses can keep using so we're piloting this with a handful of businesses we also are looking at possibly having reusable bags for to-go containers that people might be able to participate if we don't really want to promote a lot of eating in restaurants right now so we afford to getting takeaway how do we reduce uh waste consumption associated with that that's one event and then we're doing other fun things like uh launching a product with the ann arbor distillery which will be an a20 sponsored beverage and the proceeds will all go to low-income solar programs in the community there's a there's a bunch of stuff that's coming out that week including an opportunity to meet our first cohort of a20 ambassadors which will be in your neighborhood in one of your neighborhood parks details coming shortly and an opportunity for the community to really tie into someone that they see every day or every week when they're out walking their dog who lives next to this is deeply connected a lot happening uh fun stuff but i'll stop there does anyone have any questions for dr schultz yes bridget um yeah hey missy going back to the heat pump item um just to clarify for anybody tuning in as i understand it heat pumps don't save you any money i mean the advantage of of them is that you're heating your house with electricity that could potentially have some renewable energy in the power mix but um unlike solar there isn't a payback on terms unless you're an electric resistance heating household uh which we believe 20 of our market is in ann arbor and so in those cases they might actually see savings from it but yes for the kind of more updated households it's probably oh uh i will confess i haven't heard that term what does it mean oh i see chuck i feel like i am going to say it wrong if i attempt to go into the technical engineering details of what electric resistance heating is chuck can i totally put you on the spot chuck you're muted i i can say what it is um it's basically um something like baseboard heating um except it's done with electric resistance and it's done with um you know like an element that you would see in your toaster oven or in your oven uh and it's it's electric and it's very inefficient and very expensive and therefore for those households that are using that and i know of one in an arbor at least it used to be that way um switching to a heat pump would probably be a savings but for houses that are eating with natural gas did you want to add anything to that just when whenever you think about this always think life cycle so i always convince people or talk to people that that a heat pump combined with maybe some minimal resistance heating on a really cold day ann arbor probably needs that still that the air source heat pump that you see is pretty efficient these days but if you look at it and value carbon and start thinking about life cycle costs now this gets really attractive really quick so as the cost go down and fro in first cost because everybody's worried about the first cost and planning around replacing your furnace for the first cost if you can manage that and get it to a point where it's practical the life cycle benefits are pretty dramatic and i think that's what i wanted to add if i can say one more thing before i recognize jay um there is a social cost to carbon there is some discussion about what that cost is and if that's ever monetized then we have to pay it individually then that will certainly make a difference but i think we should all recognize that if we are burning carbon um we are making society the rest of society for pay for the health and other negative impacts of burning that carbon so when we are asking people to look at switching to an electric type of heating mode that would hopefully be then powered by renewable energy that would then dramatically reduce those social costs so let's let's also keep that in mind commissioner zucker yep and i just had a quick question on the heat pump if are we focusing primarily now on on air-to-air source heat pumps or is it still kind of geothermal in or yeah in the mix as well yeah so the workshop is going to cover both but it is uh most of the systems actually both uh installers have offered the possibility of discounts so both are going to be discussed very customized though the perfect example of why it's just not as easy to offer as it is solar anyone else john maybe maybe to point this out you know this too john but and i put in geothermal in in ypsilanti the deciding factor j is that you need property to put in the well system so if you live in a dense community you probably can't unless you communitize the ground the the geothermal yeah and there are some opportunities potentially at reducing the well costs um hopefully that'll be covered in the workshop missy my understanding i heard from fung is that it's going to be on may 12th is there a time that people can reserve do you know what time of day it's going to be i do somewhere in my inbox can i come right back let me just have her yeah you can come back any time during the meeting and let us know and anybody else that's watching because i think that might be of a broad interest um i did that one question does anybody else have any questions for dr spokes so so missy i have one question if i can bother you for a second um and that is uh we have as i understood two separate requests for proposals one for housing commission properties and one for municipal buildings um is the structure of those such that if those were to be awarded uh to the same vendor that there might be some volume discount by selecting the same vendor for both sets of properties we i don't have the rfp out yet for the housing commission sites right so it's possible although i will say having looked at the rfes most of them don't have that kind of capacity to probably do them at the same time i think they would have to sequence just based on our respondents which is great um it's a really good question also fong is on it it is may 12th at 7 pm and more details are available on the city's website you go to our events page you can see and actually directly register for the heat workshop okay so i encourage commissioners to keep that time free that's may the 12th at 7 p.m as well as anybody else that's listening in uh i'm sorry it might be worthwhile i just thought of this for us to mention next month's meeting because it does look like it will be a joint for that first portion yeah go ahead if you want to finish that but sure yeah absolutely so next month uh for our meeting we'll be starting jointly with the planning commission and we have uh rmi formerly the rocky mountain institute coming in to do a kind of overview of the electrification market broadly this is coming up more and more as planning is seeing developments that are pushing towards all electric there's questions about technologies and what's viable and what's not viable and uh chair mursky and vice chair cleveland garcia and i thought that sounded like something that was interesting based on the voting to this commission so we decided to merge the meetings so it should be fun great great so um what i'd like to do now is open it up to all commissioners if they have any points of interest or announcements that they would like to make now is the time come on we're not that boring of a group well we won't twist any arms so we will now move to the body of the agenda and first we're going to have a presentation on the green belt and um i seen remy uh here uh on uh the zoom call from the very beginning remy you want to take it away and introduce yourself and we're looking forward to hearing about the green belt and how we can better leverage it absolutely hey everyone um bear with me while i share my screen can everyone see my screen and hear me yes all right so thanks for the opportunity to discuss the green help with you all my name is remy long i work for the conservation fund um which is a national land conservation non-profit and a leader in complex conservation real estate transactions conservation financing and strategy so since 2005 the conservation fund has been on contract with the city of ann arbor to build out and implement this screen belt program as well as assist with parkland acquisitions within the city limits so uh to just to start i'd like to briefly discuss the context in which the greenbelt program or this millage emerged then look at the function it serves in the community and region and then finally cover some of the impacts to date so we are all here right now or all but one of us physically but let's start from a landscape level context here we are michigan the great lake state population 10 million the second most diverse agricultural economy in the united states second only to california and the heart of the great lakes which represents 21 of the earth's fresh water zooming into southeast michigan we see the expansive metropolitan detroit region which contains nearly 50 percent of the state's population on just six percent of the land base uh here sits ann arbor positioned within this sort of emerald arc of state and local conservation lands buffering metro detroit which serve uh as an agricultural and recreational base for supporting the densely populated region um in the early 2000s noting the landscape level changes occurring and their impacts to the local environment the ann arbor community began to have a discussion about what they could do to um protect land for the thriving local food economy that serves ann arbor and the greater southeast michigan region protect upstream green infrastructure to help ensure the city's source water protection and to create recreational opportunities for community so in time that conversation and idea became a campaign that drove the passage of a 2003 ballot initiative that received 67 percent of voter support who approved a 30-year millage to protect park land within the city and regional farmland and open space surrounding the city the passage of this millage and the subsequent work it would cause prompted the city to issue an initial rfp and since 2005 the conservation fund has been contract minister um the city's open space and parkland preservation program often uh summarized as the greenbelt millage so we support on the real estate transactions securing federal and local matching funds developing local partnerships and implementing the greenbelt strategic plan so let's take a look uh at the millage's impact over the last 18 years within the city limits the millage has funded 32 acquisitions um parkland acquisitions worth over 13 million dollars adding 168 acres to the city's park system these acquisitions constitute both natural areas and neighborhood parks with improvements and facilities on them moving outside the city in a truly visionary step the city chose to support a greenbelt district where it is this millage has funded 70 acquisitions totaling nearly 6300 acres of land the majority of which is protected through development rights restrictions uh which i'll get into in a little bit more detail in a moment um in all the greenbelt's protected 57 farms 20 28 miles of river stream and waterway frontage and protected over 16 percent of the available farmland surrounding the city within the greenbelt district so far so that 6300 acres represents over 72 million dollars worth of real estate protected with the city taxpayers only contributing 24.7 million toward that protection uh in part due to our success uh leveraging federal and local matching funds as well as the strategic use of conservation easements which is restriction of development so talking about development rights and conservation easements um owning a piece of property is said to be like owning a bundle of sticks and each stick represents a right you have to that problem uh the right to sell to access to develop etc restricting the development rights through a permanent perpetual legal agreement a legal contract called a conservation easement removes some of the sticks from the bundle of ownership that threaten the conservation values associated with that property but allow a private landowner to continue to retain select rights that do not threaten uh the conservation value of that property whether that be active farmland wetlands green infrastructure forest land biodiversity all of those conservation values are then protected by removal of select rights conservation easements are used across the united states this is not unique to us or our area they've protected over 32 million acres of land in the us of an area larger than the state of new york um we use them locally to guarantee the presence of agricultural lands in the future to safeguard green infrastructure and to protect regional biodiversity so that's a lot of talking uh not a lot of maps and i love maps so let's do a couple of those um what does this look like on the landscape all of this work here is a map of the green belt district circa 2000 um the green belt being the green outline surrounding the city and here is a map of the greenbelt district today in 2021 that 6300 acres added map so in all the city and its local partners um have added nearly 6 300 acres to the map uh while these may appear random or buckshot on a map it should be noted that all of these acquisitions have been driven by landscape level analyses that inform the program's acquisition strategy and uh focus on creating critical masses of protected land um in a highly fragmented environment which we live so with 12 years to go uh in this 30-year millage what's next for the green belt in 2019 the greenbelt advisory commission uh initiated an update to the program's strategic plan the results from both partner and public feedback were clear and re-emphasized many of the program's goals that existed which was support the local agricultural economy create new land access opportunities for new and beginning farmers and prioritize opportunities that meet at the nexus of farmland and source water protection but there was also a clear desire and new and emerging priority to have the greenbelt advisory commission's outcomes or the greenbelt programs outcomes more closely align with osi reporting and have our contributions more widely understood as part of the sustain the city's sustainability platform okay so that was a lot uh and i apologize has taken me this long to get to a slide geared toward um your efforts but i felt context was necessary before discussing the green belt in any greater detail so from time to time uh in speaking about renewables on greenbelt properties uh in the greenbelt district um i do field calls from district interested in knowing what general conservation eastern restrictions are and what they entail but also more specifically what they need for renewable energy on the property whether it be for personal use or for commercial and the restrictions can be summed up as this it's limited to on-farm energy needs uh and residential needs of the property or the farm itself there are restrictions uh on the types of commercial and industrial uses of any protected property that's protected with an easement all protected properties are subject to a two percent impervious surface limitation meaning no more than two percent of the total protected acreage can have structures that prevent infiltration of rain water and all of those impervious surfaces need to be cited within a small and specified area on the protected property so that is to say for example a 100 acre farm is allowed two percent impervious surface that would be two acres it needs to be sited in a small areas usually typically within the three to four acre range in a specified location on the property um so not widespread uh infrastructure sprawling across um the protected area uh so this is all to say large-scale renewable energy on green belt protected properties is not possible [Music] i um to share that the green belt advisory commission has a map of priority parcels within the greenville district that they do consider high priorities for protection and the green belt advisory commission has no desire for our work to run in conflict uh with the mission of expanding renewable energy infrastructure in the region um but this map is missing a critical piece of uh information and overlay uh to say simply that would help inform our work what parcels in the greenbelt district could be considered high priority for new renewable energy sites um from my position i could make you know easy large assumptions of i'd imagine those sites would be near substations or established energy transfer corridors but if greenbelt advisory commission were to be given a meaningful overlay of prospective renewable sites we would gladly incorporate that uh data into our own landscape level prioritization to ensure that our efforts don't pose any conflicts in the future um and with that i've talked enough and uh i'll be happy to take questions if there are thank you very much looks like we've got a couple of people lined up with questions commissioner zucker yep thanks um i have two questions one is related to the the two percent uh impervious surface i'm wondering if um like solar panels and a raised you know raised solar panels um that could be used in kind of a combined agri-solar usage that don't actually you know there's still infiltration under the solar panels i don't know if there would be some potential of those not counting towards the two percent um impervious surface if they don't actually make the ground beneath them impervious and then um i got my other question out there and you asked them both and then my second question was uh related i don't know if there's any way that we are relating the open farmland um there's a lot of uh info out there now about kind of the bios of christmas secretion of the kind of regenerative farming versus kind of traditional industrial farming and if there's any way we could kind of tie tie the usage of the land for farming moving forward to be in greener and greener methods to kind of actually capture carbon as a reward or somehow monetize that um so let me try question one um i said the any new um infrastructure with house barn uh solar panels uh wind turbines they are uh it needs to be contained within a specified limited area so that it just doesn't uh sprawl across the property so um the nuance the of a solar panel not really being a detriment to rain water infiltration that certainly hits on one of those gray areas in the language around a conservation easement but i think the general parameters of limiting the scope of any infrastructure on a property to a small corner um or up along the road um limits the use in a wide scale or sprawling manner so i'm not saying it's uh black and white um there is some gray area there but uh some of the other restrictions um seem to preclude it from being functional a functional option um so part two um conservation easements are pretty expansive documents i mean they're they're they're not like a power line easement document or pipeline easement document those can be pretty short two three pages um these are 25 30 page agreements that detail the do's and don'ts on a property but even at that level of detail these agreements are restrictive and not necessarily prescriptive so um we do require the landowners we work with obtain a farm conservation plan that is approved by the natural resource conservation service a subset of usda uh which ensures that they're using some of the best practices usda is putting forth there are certainly issues with that that's not the cutting edge by any means but it does help us create a baseline for enforcement if something is going terrible with erosion or mismanagement or misapplication of certain things so we do not have leverage in these agreements to mandate certain farming practices nrcs themselves has a whole suite of other pay for performance programs that farmers can tap into um the function of the greenbelt and similar land conservation programs is to as i think of it protect the most fundamental piece of the farming equation which is the land itself and then the market and other programs and paper for performance incentives will drive other changes on that protected land base if that makes sense yeah commissioner question was um when you say it is restricted to only uh renewable generation that can be utilized on site uh restricted uh by whom i mean is that is that a green belt piece or is that something more global i'm just trying to figure out where the restriction uh comes from sure yeah uh that is a federal um standard for the matching funds that we receive um so nrcs uh is the one that has what they call minimum conservation easement deed terms that they require incorporation into each agreement if we are accepting their funds the city has a strong track record of securing nrcs funds for these projects um hence you know that much real estate protected for what we've only had to put in um so uh the the mandate on that comes from nrcs and then if nrcs is not in the picture in terms of the funding structure for the transaction um it's a local requirement that we also have written into our own templates so there are layers of restrictions coming from layers of uh federal state or local agencies um that get baked into these agreements um uh that some can be adjusted but depending on who's at the table with the funding um we are required to put some in in just a quick follow-up quite getting uh what the rationale for it is right because i mean nrcs policy could change under under a different president or under the current president but what's the like i'm finding so if you were under the two percent restrictions or if you've got the already developed land generate enough solar for example to utilize more off-site what is there a rationale for why you would restrict that um i think the i think the rationale is generally um so certainly want to help the farmer keep a viable farming operation and reduce costs by investing in renewable that's going to serve them they're not restricted from selling back to the grid um but the purpose of the infrastructure has to be to serve them and their farm uh we're not gonna there's no penalty for selling back to the grid for whatever additional access you do have in generation um but it's to keep it uh marketable and the incentive to keep it transferring i believe among farming generations um and not looked at as a prospective spot for commercial enterprise beyond agriculture and i know that that can get fuzzy and how do we define agriculture and agricultural production but for instance uh the 6300 acres protected within the greenbelt district there are 85 000 acres worth of land in the greenbelt district so we there's plenty of other land base for um these other uh initiatives to take place on um and this is an incentive to keep this as the agricultural land base and that's primary function and purpose that's it thank you commissioner yes my question is this are bio digesters that process animal waste and crop waste into methane consider renewable or not um i'd have to take a look at the easement language to see if they even specify biodigesters um it's not something we've come across locally that i'm aware of yeah i'm not sure that one i'll hand to attorneys um that would be worth clarifying i think [Music] thanks for the question commissioner cleavy um commissioner um levin did i hear see that you would wanted to pose a question yeah you need to unmute yourself uh yes um where's the two percent restriction from from is that another federal restriction it is federal it's also rather ubiquitous across all um land conservation programs in the u.s if you go to a non-profit land conservancy in california or one in maine you're often gonna find a consistent use of two percent um i couldn't cite the study that is the basis of that but somewhere at some point someone said once you go past two percent on a certain area things start to degrade like maybe there's like a court case that said over two percent now like we have to you know you're violating you're no longer in the right categories so we're gonna have to like tax you at a higher level does that have something to do with it like because the whole point is to alleviate their their taxes well that's one of the one of the benefits to the farmers yeah one of them um yeah i'm not aware of any court case around the impervious surface limitation just that uh the in michigan there's a state association of land trusts or land conservation uh groups um that puts forth a model conservation easement um that is intended to be a resource for all the non-profit land trusts to utilize as well as the government agencies should they wish to pull from those best practices or that language and all of the michigan land trusts utilize two percent as well um has there ever been any one that's looked into like a different like kind of alternate conservation agreement that is a little bit more favorable to putting solar or other types of renewable energy on the property it wouldn't of course maybe they would get taxed at a slightly higher level um but i'm just wondering if that's ever been explored something like that that you're aware of that would help us to maybe you know do two purposes one can serve the land and also to generate more green power yeah i would imagine as how diverse the field is across the us and the different uh landscapes that are being worked in i mean a single conservation easement in colorado covers five to ten thousand acres whereas a single conservation easement around here over 30 to 300 acres it's a it's a very different landscape um so i'm sure people are working uh on some creative restrictions where we come from or or where we're coming from as a program is uh city council in many prior years and the greenbelt commission has placed great emphasis on leveraging the city's greenbelt dollars as far as they can go so we do seek that federal state local matching funds for every transaction we do if we were able to put 100 percent of the funding ourselves on the table we would have complete control over the negotiation of the terms associated with the conservation easement but ultimately two things there i think given that there is a landscape of uh unrestricted land available um it makes sense for energy developers um or communities to look to unrestricted properties because you just do not have you worry about any of the headache associated with restrictions embedded in the contribution um and maybe there's good opportunities for synergy and adjacency um or surrounding uh there's there's opportunity uh certainly overlap in positive outcomes but maybe not on the same prior or on the same parcel itself okay one more question sorry say that one more time of the green belt uh so the total millage account uh the greenbelt account i believe has about 5.8 million and the parks portion of the account has i think 6.1 um but in our pipeline we've fully committed or not fully committed we've committed council has approved a few million three and a half maybe 3.7 million dollars worth of projects right now to that 5.8 million dollar account balance that we're working through but we generate that 1.2 million in revenue annually so it's given that these transactions take often one to three years to complete um we're always kind of doing a pipeline projection of what we have in the account book the actual tangible account balance right now it's 5.8 million liquid council member briggs so i appreciate appreciate all your work on this and all the background information that's really wonderful um and actually i'm glad to to know that those kind of what the source of those restrictions are i think there's a real temptation to to have this land serve multiple purposes and i i think the the goal of preserving agricultural land for agricultural land is a good enough purpose all on its own but to to get to the concept of the um the map overlay and um that would sort of then layer on um what might be um unrestricted land that we we would want to use for for green energy production he have there been discussions yet about how um when there when there would be a conflict about you know what we see is value really valuable land to preserve um for agricultural purposes versus really valuable land to for for energy green energy production um how how we might help to to guide those decisions that have have you started having those discussions or have thoughts on that i i haven't um i the program is a beast to manage in and of itself these kind of far-reaching things also the parameters of the millage um don't really allow me to enter this territory um if this is really your your guys's territory um that i would look to help inform and draw from but to be the leader on uh or prompt uh conversations um this is the extent uh is showing up here for for my part i've certainly thought about it and i've wished for a while that i've had that overlay i think if the overlay was done if there was an analysis and it was fairly transparent uh i can imagine that it may only be 30 or 40 parcels which is a drop in the bucket in the entirety of the greenbelt district but i don't know for sure what they are and i wouldn't assume to know or have expertise in figuring that out so i would look to you guys and the private sector partners to help inform that analysis and gladly take that on um i i can tell you that solar commercial solar prospecting um specifically some private entities sending letters to greenbelt landowners saying we're interested in establishing a solar commercial solar lease on your property have changed some of the dynamics around um the negotiations that i do you know if development rights are appraised at let's say 6 000 an acre and it's a one-time lump sum on a 100-acre farm for 600 000.
so then the total add-on weighted counts so these are what we know today regarding our special education our english language learners how many k3 students we have all of those counts are based upon the revised number three which is what we are working right now to present to you the first meeting in may that's our final revision for the current year base level amount increased from 43 59 55 to 44 45 99 or 446 dollars the teacher experience index did decrease from just over 1.02 down to 1.0196 to clarify based upon a question i had from mr carr the the data that determined our teacher experience index was pulled in october of 2020 so it's always the year prior that determines the teacher experience index and then the transportation revenue control limit that's the trcl is set equal to fiscal year 2021. so based upon all that information here is our comparison of the mno budget capacity so again always bringing us back to adopted you can see that we adopted 250 almost well 258 and a half million dollars revised number three pending is just over 260 million dollars so an increase of about 1.8 million and then our projected for fiscal year 2022 we're projecting just over 252 million resulting in a budget decrease of about 8.2 million again these are all based upon calculations that were incorporated into all of this um into the the budget uh format that we are provided by the state of arizona i would like to point out a couple of details here so um how am i going to find that here it is i don't know if you can see it so i wanted to point out the budget balance carry forward so if you look at 21 adopted the budget balance carry forward was 11 million and then for the revised number three pending you can see that it's over 31 million we'll go into some of those details but that's largely due to the enrollment stabilization grant as well as the efforts that we made last spring to move expenses into other funds to increase the budget balance carry forward and then note two that going into the fiscal year 2022 projected we're still projecting 17 million dollars of budget balance carry forward which is largely due to the advent of esser one the elementary and secondary school emergency relief funds and that has allowed us to move expense into those funds which again results in our being able to bring what was normally about six to 11 million dollars up to 17 million dollars going into 2022.
okay or 120. so that's sort of the number that we're working with when we're projecting for class sizes okay that was that was impressive math on the fly that was i mean if someone had asked me that question i just would have closed my video so good job all right anything else on school choice brenda just a quick question i'm just curious say you you give out all these wonderful school choice slots because we have all these fabulous families wanting to join and then we have you know a pelham resident who decides to come back to pelham i guess does that mean you know there might be some variation in class size because we have to educate the pelham residents so is that is that factored into your decision making it is and i actually heard from two folks who just bought houses in pelham this week which is great and they have school-aged children which is exactly what we think of we always think there could be someone who buys a house in august who has triplets and they want to move in right so the guidance that mike gave me was we fill to 20 and then we stop because we don't we one of the things that's attractive about our school and that we love is that we have small class sizes and so we wouldn't want to compromise that um to be taking on more school choice students than we would really be able to really be able to and still maintain the level of teaching and learning that we do um so none of our classes next year are projected to be larger than 20 students but we do have some grade levels with really low you know smaller enrollment our current first grade has 13 students and so for the viability of the school that's that's one grade level our rising second grade that we're really hoping to add a few students to to balance things out a bit and make make it a little more consistent across the grades yep and i think i was just going to add that this is always the conundrum of uncertainty enrollment and this year is obviously a much larger challenge with it and we know students could to to the point just made could move in so we try to balance the kind of financial sustainability we need with also maintaining trying to maintain small class size and that's 20 is about what we think there's at least enough wiggle if students move in that we have some room there um and some space for students without getting to where uh we'd feel uncomfortable with class and this is not a covet conversation this is a general long-term conversation there's always a balancing act i mean could we take if we took every there's been years and this year maybe one of them in certain grade levels where if we took every school choice student we'd have class size that that that you all and we all would be very uncomfortable with in this particular community in other parts of the state people are really comfortable at 25.
um the the solar developer offering 40 000 or 20 000 an acre each year for 40-year contracts uh in these letters that aren't guarantees they're just prospecting they certainly call into question the farmer's willingness to work with the greenbelt program um so i'm not saying that's a bad thing farmers should do what's best for them uh but it would help me to have a more informed approach in these conversations with the farmers i work with to say there is a map of priority parcels for solar energy um you may have received this letter but uh i can tell you that you're a priority on my map but not a priority on that map so your best chance may be working with my program if you need to realize some capital in the near term from your farm if that makes sense yeah no it does make sense it helps to see how it could help benefit the work that you're doing um so that's great i guess is in terms of helping to to guide um some of that is there any additional data that you feel like would um i guess we don't certainly don't have a program that's about acquiring land for green energy production yet in terms of maybe that'd be something we'd be thinking about in the future but um you do exactly um but do you have a sense of uh is there more data that you need in terms of um helping to protect potentially inform the benefits of of of what how the land could be used and and you know yeah it doesn't have to be limited to solar um you know i i i would say run an analysis that looks at multiple types of renewable energies and their suitability and proximity to the city limits um it it also can be as general as just a buffer i imagine that many of these sites it would be beneficial if they were closer to the city rather than further away and the extent of the greenbelt district stretches out um five miles from the city so if it's that everything within a quarter mile of the city limits should just be kind of on a pause until it's thoroughly vetted on an individual basis instead of a a comprehensive overlay in a gis analysis or or private public uh partnership to just discern what those parcels are it can be a soft pause not a freeze on doing work within that area um but there's many solutions to kind of uh giving notice to the greenbelt advisory commission hey we're looking in this general area maybe it's not the entirety of the city limits maybe it's just the south east corner uh of the greenbelt district or maybe it's um yeah it could be chunks to put it crudely okay thank you commissioner george and i think uh dr school did you have your hand up and put it back down did you want to ask a question no okay go ahead commissioner george thank you mr chairman um so my question it kind of goes along the lines of council member briggs's questions um just moving forward as the green belt is looking at acquiring new properties and so forth and as the city continues to develop the a20 plan and looking at um you know possible uh solar developments whether the public or private uh wind or other renewable energy sources i guess um and this is a question what what type of considerations would the green belt advisory uh board either do they already do or you know what would some possible solutions be to considering um you know maybe not purchasing this type of land because it could be used for renewable energy production later on in the near future now i think that's a it's a great question and right now so the 2019 strategic plan update occurred for the greenbelt program we had some nice outcomes from that some updated priorities that we wanted to then uh make use of by incorporating them into the scoring system that we have for applications um uh so for instance is it a smaller farm in which case by restricting the development rights lowering the cost of the property we're making a land access opportunity for a new and beginning farmer whose number one barrier is finding affordable land in the region um so if we take that uh priority and put it in our scoring system it's whereas a 300 acre parcel is going to score way better typically um how can we make the opportunity for create fostering new and beginning farmer land ex access opportunities a higher scoring criteria um i think similarly they the scoring committee of the greenbelt as they work through integrating the priorities um could certainly have a line item saying is this parcel aligned with the suite of city initiatives um uh that are being explored um and could it run in conflict to it as sort of flagging it and giving it points associated with it's not near energy transfer corridors it's four miles out from the city so good proximity but not suitable for energy and um therefore it scores you know medium high in that regard under the context of the full spectrum of 820 initiatives um i could see that being incorporated into the scoring uh for sure um i would uh hesitate to make any hard and fast rules but more put it in something that we use like the scoring system help prompt conversations as we evaluate if that yeah no that that makes sense it kind of goes along with that overlay that you mentioned earlier um i it seems like one of the biggest things is just a good communication between people doing different things to make sure that everybody's on the same page thank you we we are trying to get close more closely online there's a um university of michigan c's master's team currently doing a carbon sequestration analysis of the entire portfolio of greenbelt properties to see what the equivalent carbon storage is that we've done to date uh and how does that convert into social cost of carbon um so that when we do go to council on a project by project basis in our memo we're able to say this is the cost of the conservation easement and the permanent protection of this green infrastructure but also here's this relative return by permanent sequestration of this carbon in in this project so those are data points we've used dollars and acres as our measurement for success for too long and we need to become more uh holistic and understanding and um tied into the system of wider osi reporting and a 2-0 reporting by having those kind of metrics okay we need to try to pull this to a close because we got another agenda point that's pretty important um commissioner zucker did you have a short one and commissioner yeah just super quick i was just wondering um when someone does uh gets into the greenbelt program are they committed to do 100 of their parcel or could they is there's you know or do they often do just like 75 percent of their partial and then we could piggyback on you know some other yeah another parcel the conservation the legal conservation easement boundary does not need to match the tax id boundary um it can be custom created we could do a squiggly line uh and carve out i don't want to that's miserable to try and enforce but um it is possible i do carve outs um typically with a hundred acre farm and a five acre farmstead complex that's already in existence i'll just carve out five acres around it so that we don't have to worry about enforcement around that area at all and we've protected 95 acres so yes they can have exclusions um it's fairly common commissioner i just wanted to remind the commissioners that you know before we have to start making these hard choices of you know turning our green spaces into environmental renewable energy sacrifice zones that in 2019 chairman mursky and i uh brought a report on solar feasibility to the commission which has become the basis of the 78 megawatt target that uh a20 is now and the we did maps of the whole city and identified over 200 megawatts worth of solar potential only 78 megawatts of which we need within ann arbor that didn't include the university of michigan so i think you know there is more than enough places with solar energy if we do it on a distributed basis we're going to put megawatts where the solar ons on green spaces that's going to be sold to the utility companies um through a centralized utility program and as chuck hook and commissioner hook them said a couple weeks ago in this presentation their ability to uptake that power is restricted on their um on their ability to to deal with its intermittency intermittency that doesn't create the same problems on a decentralized basis so i think we should keep in mind that before we even begin to go down the track of wow we need that land for solar concentrates industrial solar we might want to look at our own buildings because when we put solar on buildings in ann arbor we raise the real estate value of that property when we sacrifice a green space for an industrial renewable energy facility we get nothing for it so um i'd be happy to share that report with you uh rennie if you'd like to look at it we got maps uh all over the place we did lidar studies showed sites as i said there's multi 200 megawatts with the solar potential here and we're only using 78 megawatts of that if we meet our ann arbor you know our 820 plan so go send me an email i'll be glad to share that report with you thank you thanks commissioner cleavy um i i have two quick questions if i may hopefully quick um one is if i were a greenbelt farmer and i said i would like to put in ground mount solar and graze small livestock sheep or goats and have artisanal cheese production on my farm is that something that is conceivable within the specified area where you can have additional infrastructure so only within the two percent yeah which would be limited to a yeah a specified corner area yep and then the other question um i'm just going to leave as an open question i don't know that it has to be um answered because not really directly related to energy production and that is really maybe the sense directed to the council members and that is if i understood correctly the millage has allowed the city to purchase 168 acres of parkland um and is that all in the city or is that also outside the city that is the vast majority of that is within the city limits um and just for context there's about there's about 2200 acres of park land in the city of city limits or the city's yeah park system has about 2200 acres so um we've added yeah whatever percent that is a 8 since um right yeah 2 000.
and just a clarification yes the enrollment stabilization grant and yes are one-time monies they are they are yep can you tell me how much sorry can you tell me how much we received from prop one two three oh man um it's just over two million dollars i don't have the exact amount however prop 123 is part of this other budget items but some of it is negated due to the fact that we move some capacity into the energy savings fund so that's why it's not the full over 2 million the other thing i wanted to point out was the 15 override note that the 15 override has stayed the same for fiscal year 2021 but note the decrease in the fiscal year projected the reason is because the override is calculated based upon prior year count so for fiscal year 2022 the prior year is fiscal year 2021 so we are using the current count to calculate the m override value i wanted to make sure that that detail was clear as well and you can see that just due to the override and the drop of counts we've lost a little bit less than two million dollars in override monies any questions on this this is a very complicated slide so but you can see where on the top the unweighted adm or average daily membership is 30 000.
that's not emerson pelham and so it's striking that balance that we're trying to do okay all right next up fall 2021 discussion yeah so uh there's really two parts of this conversation one is some updated guidances were shared with you from the department of education about virtual option for next year and then there's also just the more general conversation about the fall so the virtual option to make a very very uh long memo into the headlines that i think are relevant for pelham uh there's kind of two pieces one is that it has to be district specific in other words it couldn't be a combined virtual school experience like we're doing this year between amherst and pelham it would have to be pelham school specific the second part of that is it would have to be its own virtual school so applying for it wouldn't be like oh pelham schools virtual program it would need a distinct deci code it needed an application we'd have to have a staffing model we'd have to have number of students uh we'd have to have a principal it couldn't be the principal whiting jones it would have to be a separate and school choice students would not be eligible so in other words students who were from pelham who attending penn school who do not reside in pelham which as we just talked about is a pretty decent percentage of students would not be eligible based on state regulations so in short it's not something we can really pursue you know there's not a critical mass of students there's not the financial flexibility to add staffing uh to end the school choice piece i think just adds inequities um particularly in pelham that are we can't really you know look at so really that leaves us with the option for next year in pelham to to really only offer an in-person option uh we can't do any partnerships and um and i talked about this in another district that i work for and um you know even though it's a larger district it was the same conversation just not sustainable um if it was a district if we had districts that were you know together and 50 of kids wanted remote yeah then maybe you can make it work but but not at the degree to which you know our families have chosen in person learning um so i want to pause there and then see if there's questions about you know the desi memo uh it was emailed to you it was probably two weeks ago it was a little while ago um and see if there's any questions that you had questions on the virtual piece okay and so that brings us to the second part which is that you know we plan to be fully in person next year and some classes maybe larger you know this year we held to the six foot distancing you know i think that's you know i can't guarantee that for next year um you all already voted a resolution about you know going back uh fully in person next year so it's there's no news to this one um but i think in terms of some of the other aspects um you know i think as as we're filling the class and making the school sustainable you know it's going to push on some distancing luckily pelham has pretty good size classrooms i don't believe we'll have to be down to three feet of distancing you know we're not getting that much bigger uh in our sections um but you know maintaining six feet is not necessarily going to be uh what we can likely guarantee in every classroom uh in pelham school next year so we won't know exact distancing until we you know know exactly how many students are coming and this year worked out really neatly we've got one class where we are maxed out one student comes we're gonna have to have a different conversation uh at the school committee level which you know we had at the regional level we're not able to maintain six feet at the regional level so we can have that conversation uh but it would be different than the commitments made this year so i think as we get more concrete information for the fall we'll we'll come back and and maybe in our august meeting be able to share what degree are we able to maintain distancing next year certainly hopefully the world's in a better place it may not be in a fully better place but better than it is right now uh i think that's a reasonable expectation as vaccinations go up uh locally and nationally um but you know we are planning for an all-in-person um start and uh next fall we don't believe we'll be able to have a remote option and in terms of distancing some of the other pieces uh we'll be back in touch about exactly what that looks like you know late this spring or certainly you know before our august meeting before the school year starts so quick update but that's that's sort of the the key points for the fall actually i'm sorry i wanted to take one back one other thing that lee and i are talking about is we'll have to figure out what to do with furniture um so we have a lot of really nice furniture that we purchased from some of the cares act funds that did come into the earlier conversation we now have some nice furniture that we're not using that we'd want to hold on to and frankly we have some furniture that we'd be happy to get rid of but easier said than done given procurement law in massachusetts so that back classroom which was used for preschool the last couple years with the art classroom prior we are hoping to see what we're able to do to clear out as much as possible to be able to use for an overflow or you know different uses that we could imagine even if it's not a full class because we don't think we'll need that but it'd be nice i saw when i was there there's even like little nook that someone's using as a breakout corner uh so i think you know people are looking for it's like anything else right if you if you have a little bit of space people will find it and make good use of it because you know our teachers are industrious and they they want to find solutions so i think if we can seemingly open up that space as a multi-use space that'll be really beneficial for fall so that'll take some coordination and some work with facilities and and some procurement pieces that we'll need to uh work on but i just i did want to mention that because i know it came up in private conversation with one of you just about what are we going to do with that space next year and i think uh given that the so other breakout rooms are sort of awkwardly situated as it relates to ventilation and some other pieces uh it'd be really great to have that as a multi-use space next year so it's a summer project it's certainly not a going to happen anytime super soon but even seeing this little nook used that just opened the door you know it opened my eyes to how beneficial it would be to have a couple more multi-use spaces in the school all i had to share lee i don't know if there's anything else you wanted to add any questions on fall 2021.
i'm just wondering if council has ever thought you know this were what roughly 13 years in there's a little bit of money in the pot um we're going to generate more money for another roughly 17 16 years all that money then is also land that's taken off the tax rolls and i'm wondering if the council has ever thought about what the implications of that are um and i just leave that as an open question um you know it's another roughly maybe maybe the the price of parkland is going to be going up and up so it's not going to be another you can't extrapolate directly but maybe it's another 150 acres that come off the tax rules and i know that's already a big problem when you look at the university and parklands and all these other things i'm wondering if anybody's ever looked into those indications so um it doesn't have to be answered now because it's really not maybe not the point the time and place to do so um there's a couple of hands still up i assume we've answered those questions so if that is true if somebody else doesn't raise their hand um i'm just gonna respond to your question really quick and it's not totally taking the property off the tax rules and it might not actually be reducing it that much because i'm not sure exactly what level it's being taxed at already it is going to reduce um the taxes but it's not zeroing out the tax on that property okay very good okay um so we're gonna move on um and we've had um another presenter join us um um jan culbertson and i'll let jan introduce herself if she even needs to be introduced but i'll let her do that and i think the intended order was um so this is on a building code update and changes that are uh potentially going to happen at the state level and i think the agreement was that uh commissioner hook um you were going to start and i think um january going to take it off from there and that was going to be sort of interactive with the whole commission after that is that correct i think so okay i'm going to speak very quickly so i'm not going to steal jan thunder i promise so i was very happy that she could join us and speak to us so i'll just share my screen and walk through a few quick ones great is that viewable can you see that yes yes yeah okay very quickly so thank you for having me um you heard ken garber earlier today talk to us a little bit about 68 in ann arbor of our greenhouse gas emissions anthropogenic are caused by buildings um nationally it's probably over 40 and as we press forward in the utility space and in transportation to reduce the greenhouse gases buildings become a bigger part of the portfolio and another important fact our buildings tend to be 60 to 100 years in length of service which is significant because they'll continue their their pathway of producing greenhouse gases for quite a while um we also know i think as a commission now that energy efficiency is much easier to build in upfront than it is to retrofit i have lots of examples of this if anybody's interested in how much it really does cost later to change things but it's really pretty significant lastly i think folks know where greenhouse gases come from there are some direct emissions which come from our combustion of fossil fuels that are used in heating cooking and other places there's indirect from energy consumption industrial uses cooling off gases of our insulation and all kinds of other sources that are not really large typically in terms of focal point but the electricity piece being indirect is a pretty important commodity and that's why we talk a little bit about um electrification potentially as being a potential offs offshore of some of this indirect and if we can think about the direct greenhouse gases and focus on those i think that's a really good process to move us along in our grease greenhouse gas eight to zero goals a busy slide i apologize for that some key takeaways that um all buildings that we have in the in the city are designed for um the michigan codes and standards in the stilly the rossignol hale single state construction code act in in 1972 pretty much limited the cities from doing anything that they wanted to do and forced most new construction to be following the state codes um the state codes that we currently use were adopted in 2016 2019 you can see them listed i won't go through them residential is obviously for small smaller structures building code for the balance uniquely the the energy code was based on 2014 data it used the 2015 international energy conservation code in ashrae 90.1 2013.
the total weighted count is 42.6 so you can see that the weights have decreased from adopted by three million dollars over three million dollars as well the number of weighted students if you have less students in high school or elementary then of course you've got less weighted count on that multiplier for the weights any questions before i move on okay great so budgetary increases we know generally that we will always receive an arizona state retirement increase we've already spoken about the medical insurance premium increase at one percent minimum wage increase we are anticipating that in january of 2022. special education increases we did receive our preliminary allocation of idea and last time we presented to you that amount was a one million dollar increase but the allocation shows that we will have an additional 1.3 million dollar decrease in idea which puts more pressure on the maintenance operations fund so we have increased that to a 2.3 million dollar potential increase during fiscal year 2022 and then finally the recommended pa pay increase consideration at two percent so a total increase need projected of 7.65 million dollars so these just to be clear these include all employee positions that we would consider regular employee positions you can see the the exceptions there and then it does include all of the payroll benefits uh the cost is calculated based upon inclusion of all the payroll benefits to reflect arizona state retirement medicare social security etc okay so budgetary savings we talked about this a couple of meetings ago as well the premium holiday credit back to mno decrease in district office personnel and decrease of personnel due to less students total budgetary savings we anticipate about six and a half million so then the fiscal year 2022 complete budget deficit a budget decrease of 8.24 district cost increases of 7.65 and then district budgetary savings of 6.5 leaves us with a final projected budget deficit of nine point just under 9.4 million so the next step is okay well how do we balance that that budget moving forward so strategies opportunities to balance the budget fortunately we have received our classroom site fund allocation to go back to mrs eugetti your question that you asked about the 32.82 cents so because of that movement out of the sales tax revenue for purposes of classroom site fund we were concerned at the last meeting that our classroom site fund dollar amount per student would actually decline however the jlbc has sent us information and it has increased from 425 up to 793 dollars per student a substantial increase we have been cautioned however indicating that over 50 percent of that amount of that amount of the increases they're considering one time in nature and the rest is ongoing so again providing school districts additional information don't count on that extra one-time money to be ongoing in the future and then act accordingly that will go directly to the teachers correct it will go yes it has to it has to go to the teachers but that does provide another piece of information so with the statutory change regarding classroom site fund it is now eligible for support personnel those that support the learning of students psychologists social workers speech pathologists etc so those are are now eligible to be paid under classroom site fund as well so based upon all of that first of all sr3 again we don't know the exact amount i will share in the next slide what we anticipate we will receive there but the reduction of one elementary campus that was approved at the last board meeting that will have ongoing savings of a million dollars use of one-time monies there are it could be extra budget balance carry forward it could be additional ester monies it could be numerous one-time monies uh potentially that that would be available to the school district i did want to make it clear that we are not recommending that we move unrestricted capital from unrestricted capital into emino at this time and we don't intend to propose that it's still an option for us though and so um if it's needed we will bring that back to you for the first revision but right now we are not planning on proposing that you can see the teacher salaries to career and technical education fund and then finally the increase in classroom site fund contribution of four and a half million dollars and then one time of 1.5 million and then you can see the totals so the budget is arguably balanced we're about thirty thousand dollars short which we should be easily able to to move expense into other funds to be able to achieve a fully balanced budget so this represents our recommendation at this time so specifically the one-time federal funds seems important as we are using one-time monies for various things in the board meeting today so i wanted to remind you about the enrollment stabilization grant so different than the sr monies the enrollment enrollment stabilization grant came through the governor's office and had to be totally spent by december of 2020 so at that point in time due to that we opted to use that money for the offset of expenses in 2020 to increase budget balance carry forward which i showed you earlier remember that the enrollment stabilization grant we expected 30 million and received less than half so that's an important point given that there are expectations about receiving certain dollar amounts that you can't you can't count on until you actually receive it uh note that 12 million dollars was spent in 2020 the remaining to be spent in the current year all of these to offset um increases in teaching staff additional staff custodials additional custodial staff substitutes etc esser one which was the first round of relief funds received was 2.3 million dollars we determined that we would spend all of that in the current fiscal year fiscal year 2021 to offset those direct expenses due to the pandemic so expansion of the florida virtual to elementary we talked about the hand sprayers to facilitate the desanitation the the sanitization of classrooms and actually our buses we've added additional cleaning equipment for each of our schools as well as hand sanitizer equipment and stands etc all of those things will be funded through sr1 and then sr2 these are these uh we again plan to use and have already accounted for that in our monthly budget reports as being spent fully by june 30 and those monies are being used to offset the expense of of personnel throughout the school district where we had that loss of budget capacity if you remember in december our budget capacity went from 258 million down to 232 million which is why we requested the 30 million of enrollment stabilization grant so fortunately esser 2 came into play at the end of december giving us an opportunity to avoid having to do furlough days or decrease staff salaries throughout the school district so we have believe we've judiciously used those monies as intended sr3 we are projecting up to 20 million again there's some reluctance to share a dollar amount we feel very confident however that it will at least be the same amount as s or 2 so at least 9.7 million and then and then we again will bring back when we receive the final amount we'll bring that back to you with our recommendations on how that will be spent that money is available to us through the end of 2024 giving us some flexibility for the next three years um i have a question is there any thought about why we received less for the enrollment stabilization grant than we anticipated i mean at first there was a promise that there would be that much but um what is the thought that that we didn't receive as much as we had hoped um i i think that it may have had something to do with not expecting the enrollment loss statewide to be as significant as it was okay so although i do understand that the state has quite a bit of funds at their disposal at the current time it just depends on how they choose to use it so all right thank you could you talk a little more about the answer to uh in terms of what what could have happened if we had not had that 9.7 million dollars in terms of what could have happened this year because i i know you've got it here but maybe explaining it a little bit more that we could have had to reduce some salaries or had furlough days could you just talk a little more so that the community understands um what we use that money for because i've had a lot of questions about that sure so i think by the time we were revising our budget in december it was a precipitous decrease in students enrollment and funding at that point in time and again we were anticipating that we were going to receive the full 30 million dollars but did not so at that point in time the plan in the finance office was to present to the leadership team what are our options on balancing the budget for the rest of fiscal year 2021 fortunately before the end of the christmas holiday the second esser relief package was a pr excuse me was approved by the federal legislature and we knew pretty quickly what our dollar amount would be so that 9.7 million dollars we designated totally to offset the um the salaries that that we would otherwise have had to reduce to get us through and make all of our employees whole through the remainder of fiscal year 2021.
i guess can i just ask i mean i in terms of doing the the planning for that and all of the scheduling and everything we would still do that process with the other two districts right um it's an open question i think um you know i think we could i mean some of the things will be the same like health and safety protocols and contract tracing right those are all district-wide because our nurses work as a collaborative team our facilities department works as a collaborative team in terms of sanitizer but a lot of those things are sort of in place and i don't imagine uh you know contract tracing is an interesting one because who's a close contact i know some states have shifted that to be three feet um a number of states have shifted that given updated guidance um from the cdc that hasn't happened in massachusetts yet so but those types of things i think would be coordinated with the districts but i i think um it's i don't anticipate famous last words but i don't anticipate as much kind of reopening plan i think we have a reopening plan and we're implementing it and i think the only shifts uh that i foresee are really uh you know compared to last year just around the edges um not full sweeping all of a sudden we're back at tables and we're promoting students to be next to each other i mean students at the elementary level won't unlikely to be vaccinated uh by the beginning of the year at the region that's going to be at the secondary level everywhere that that's a different conversation um so i think a lot of the same i think we're going to see a lot of similar things we're still going to want to be outside and that's been i think had huge positive benefits not just academically but just i think i think it's a good thing for for our school we've talked about that for years those who've been on the committee uh this was a conversation when i first became superintendent about you know could we promote more outdoor learning um so this isn't sort of a new thing and you know pandemic forces you into maybe some decisions that we would have liked to have encountered you know throughout so uh it certainly could be done but i'm not imagining the same lift as we had last uh spring and summer and fall any other questions okay future agenda planning so we need to i should have done more homework on this we need to start talking about the evaluation timeline yeah i should have looked into that okay we typically when when do you usually have artifacts and yeah talk to me about that so yeah and the amherst group i think kerry spitzer is the head of that so whoever maybe wants to take the lead from pelham might want to connect with kerry because that is something that is when it can be coordinated between the districts i think it's worked well especially this year where the goals were very aligned so the short story is i think that's on an upcoming amherst school or emerson regional school committee sometime in the next couple weeks so my recommendation would just be putting it on the agenda for the next one in pelham and having one person reach out to terry and try to align that work okay margaret um i so i think i'm supposed to participate in that um at the region so if you want me to do sort of loop pelham in also i could do that okay yeah that would be great okay okay um all right what else would be for may don't yeah any other oh yeah it might go ahead i think you'll need to reorganize because there's an election before that i was thinking that we maybe the group would meet later in may so it gives time for the election and all that stuff to play out so i was tentatively thinking of may 26th perhaps um but uh after an election typically uh even if this the incumbents prevail and i know it's funny talking about this in pelham like it's i'm not saying there won't be multiple people running but it's not like this major election the same way it is for like you know being in blood will be shed this is it's gonna get ugly on that note yeah so so we definitely want to reorganize then um um but uh you know i think we can put superintendent evaluation um and then reorganize and we can definitely meet earlier you know i mean i'd be totally fine meeting like you know a week earlier if you people wanted to meet the 19th if they feel like it's getting late on the superintendent evaluation timeline because that might be the more i think about it that might be a little late and the election this year in pelham are on the 11th okay so if we met the 19th i would give enough time for the many many ballots to be said what are you expecting happens in a fellow election it's going to be like florida in 2000.
the distinction there being in which is now amazingly seven years ago the cost of led light bulbs and the cost of retrofitting lighting controls and putting renewable energy on buildings was not so inexpensive in a code situation pretty much recognized that and didn't enforce significant prescriptive requirements um and started to focus more on performance-based ideas which are really crucial as we move forward because prescriptive tend to reduce put rules in place that don't fit all buildings very easily so just think about the codes we have in place now are somewhat dated since the 2015 window there's been a ton of code updates from bashrae we've had at least two revisions of ashrae 90.1 all focused again on performance and reducing greenhouse gas improving energy efficiency what's happening in the state of michigan for various reasons are the codes are lagging a bit the energy code is not on the docket right now it's it was supposed to be 2021 perhaps now i'm thinking it's probably not going to do much until 2022 so it continues to slide so we yet have another year of using an older code situation and like i said many codes right now are focused on energy efficiency greenhouse gas reduction which are all feasible plausible i was involved in 2015 when the codes and standards were adopted the energy code was pretty much a war of various factions standing up to one another and fighting for what they what they could do and what they couldn't do so it got pretty brutal and it really slowed things down even further um so what are our options if we can't focus on a state code that is going to well here's our options really we have four options right in front of us to try to resolve some of these imbalances with respect to codes and standards on buildings we could wait for this next round 20 22 we're not sure what that's going to look like um so that's one option um we can try to use our our leverage that we have which is pretty minimal but go to the state and say that there needs to be a revision of that de rossi act so that we can do our own thing that's going to take a lot of political pressure to make happen um i put an x by that um the two real drivers here things we can do in my mind are to use an optional energy stretch code as a means of reinforcing and enhancing our our infrastructure and that can affect both existing and new um we could we could design or adopt an optional netcode zero type approach i think jan's gonna talk to us about that i'm not going to launch into that much um the the real issue here is we need to do something and the the one case example i'll bring to your attention is i think this is now 10 years ago i designed a building in massachusetts it was 100 by 300 not a big bit not a big building not a lot to it the initial building was designed with conventional fluorescent lights and it had natural gas forced air heating we submitted the plans for the billing to the building department and they said nice try um that doesn't meet our performance standards and i didn't know what their performance standards were i just felt that was the normal so we went back to the drawing table redid all our hvac system and electrical and modified it all we actually went to um electric heat thinking that was easy we're an electric utility we know how to do that it's easy all the hardware is easy to buy it reduces the duct work submitted the plans lo and behold the city came back and said you're not doing that either think a little bit differently so we thought outside the box went back to the drawing table again this is my designers were going nuts um we basically came up with an air source heat pump design with electric heat supplement because massachusetts did get cold and we didn't want our residents to be unhappy so back to the code officials and they actually liked it so the third time was the charm um what this was was this energy stretch code they had adopted this they basically made it an enforceable standard in their city which they could do in massachusetts and it was really effective to get us as designers to think outside the box ten years ago so i i really like that concept and i'll throw that out there um the fundamental conclusion here is that optional codes we need to do something soon my thinking is we need to do something as a city with the limited options we have in front of us i'm personally ready to stretch and and do something about it i would be more than happy to lend my my experience base to do this and i'm going to turn it over to jan because um i think she's got a lot more to share with these other options and talk a little bit about the code in more detail so thank you for indulging me and we'll go from go from after jan's slides thanks chuck and i'm jan culbertson i'm an architect i'm also a leadership chair of the ann arbor 2030 district um as a part of my involvement in the aia i also um and co-chair of the government advocacy committee um at the state level which also um engages with uh engineers uh and so what i wanted to do i in the packet i linked to like some full presentations that have been done on the energy code update which missy was involved in with eagle um and also a full presentation that vince martinez did on the xero code um and i can give you a link to actually his video um webinar if you want to hear him get the full presentation i didn't want to do the whole thing tonight we'll just do some summaries so with that i'll go ahead and share my screen i want to make sure you can see that okay yes we can okay great so um my involvement with um architecture 2030 which developed the xero code goes back about i want to say about almost 12 years now where we actually brought um the it was called aia plus 2030 and was basically a continuing education uh series for architects on on how to design more efficient high-performance buildings and with that i've stayed in touch with them and continued to kind of follow um some of their leadership around um carbon neutrality and the so the zero code is something that makes a lot of sense to me um the rationale behind the zero code um has to do with one new buildings place an additional load on the grid um and what xerocode does is it really accelerates um progress toward a clean grid by requiring new buildings that are coming online they come with their own additional renewable energy that exceeds what utilities are already required to do and the renewable energy requirements are fixed for a prescriptive path so there's an option you can and this helps with like very small buildings where you're not going to do energy modeling et cetera there is a prescriptive path and then there's a performance path it encourages the performance approach because um it's it's much more it's easier to reduce the amount of renewable energy that you have to procure if you use the performance method the way it works is relatively simple you design an energy efficient building it has to be in compliance with the 2021 iecc which chuck mentioned or better and then you establish the building's renewable energy requirement from either that energy model that simulation or from a default renewable energy table which has to do with building types and your climate zones then you can meet that requirement by either integrating on-site renewable when that's feasible or uh procurement and um really uh this has been updated now and really now that they've published the ashrae 90.1 um 2019 that's really the basis of it um with you know 2021 and we'll talk a little bit about the different code steps when we get to how the code updates are done in michigan so there's the the energy code standard and then there's um what was adapted which is the renewable energy code appendix and right now there is a zero code network um i'm a part of that um uh the aia in grand rapids and detroit are and i believe zach um smith from the city is also a part of that uh network and they are working um there are stakeholder groups that are looking at implementing the zero code oregon has adopted the xero code um in many are on the coasts so it's nice to be able to talk with the different municipalities um many um not there are about 50 percent maybe of this of the states adopt the code as a statewide code um and so there's support here for moving forward with adoption of this of this code so it's it's really um the zero net carbon comes from the renewable energy on-site or off-site or combination needs to be greater than the energy that the building uses and again it can be done through the energy modeling or the default so it gives you because energy modeling even though it's become um more prevalent in uh design it isn't always used by everyone and especially for simple buildings um so go on this i'm going backwards sorry there we go um what's interesting about the code is there's a whole guide uh kind of a technical guidance around um the procurement of the renewables and this is where it can get very flexible and that you can actually tailor it to what works for your area it has to be a legally binding contract not less than 15 years [Music] the wrecks have to be assigned to the building product it has to be additional in other words um it can't be used for what's already been promised by the utilities um it is restricted right now um to photovoltaic systems solar thermal plants geothermal power plants or wind turbines there's some flexibility if people want to add other types of renewable and some of the folks that have hydro are looking at that and it has to be located in the same area sort of your utility zone um so that you're not you know buying a wind farm in texas um and then there needs to be a transparent accounting um so that's attributed to that specific building um and um you know there's direct either options are you know direct ownership community renewables virtual power agreements renewable energy investment funds are kind of really are very interesting um that's where um let's say ann arbor you know um through you probably couldn't do directly but through you know incentives through the zoning ordinance um could then uh require you know give um certain incentives for uh developers to um it to comply with the zero code and then if let's say a lot of downtown sites are really difficult um to um install solar um then they could contribute to this renewable energy investment fund which then could be used to fund community solar et cetera um and kind of an interesting uh concept so then there are you know the um other um options for procurement and what they do with these options is um you go through sort of your value how much value do each one of these classes and assign classes to them so you know community renewables the reefs the power purchase agreements the direct ownership you know that that's that's um that's valuable renewable energy and um so that's one class class two and then finally down to rex which would be class three and what happens is then when you um the code requires you to um when you procure it it's the kilowatt hours that you purchase are marked down okay so onsite solar has a value of one the class ones point seven five point five five point two for what rex so if you do unbundled rex which are kind of um you have to procure five times the value of your renewables so it really does um direct people to do the more um valuable durable um additional um renewables so and and you could bundle a bunch of different ones together if you wanted to procure a variety of different types of of um renewable energy off-site um so uh what's in what's important about the um uh renewable energy appendix is um it's the way it's positioned in the iecc it's optional for jurisdictions to adopt and compliance is is required with the 2021 iecc it sets that minimum renewable energy requirement and it provides an incentive for buildings to be designed more efficiently than the code requires encourages on-site renewable when it's feasible and it supports valuable off-site renewable energy and then uh the efficiency requirements can't be traded off with renewable energy you have that that baseline of energy efficiency that you have to meet um it's also uh it's not only a consistent framework that local governments can kind of modify for their specific needs and conditions and conditions it's also within the code framework that is easily enforceable by building officials and i think that's really key because if you enact something that isn't enforceable or requires a lot more um education to enforce you get into some some issues so um there are some good uh technical procurement um documents uh that you can get on the xero code uh website um and it does allow some a flexible um approach you know for the jurist for different jurisdictions so um this is um i i'll send this to missy into john um so you can see the link vince does a great a much better job than i do um in presenting the xero code but it might be helpful for um if people have more interest in it okay so the michigan energy code adoption process god it's um so it's it's rules that um govern um it's a rules that it's administrative rules process so it isn't a legislative process per se um and you know it's kind of funny it's sort of like the minimum energy efficiency requirements okay the worst home that can legally be built right and um it does adopt uh the national codes so uh it it makes sense for us to advocate for um adoption of the 2021 with the renewable energy appendix it is a part of the typical code adoption cycle okay and i think that's key when you're advocating for something like that um and in our case the the the um in michigan um the state adopts that code and the municipality or the state depending on jurisdiction um enforce the code there are as chuck mentioned there's the residential code um which is a separate um document and it goes through the same sort of process they don't they don't open the residential code and the commercial energy codes together typically the residential code gets a lot of pushback from the home builders associations and it doesn't look like they're really going to open the energy portion of the residential code um it sounded like they were moving on um the commercial code they have said that they're going to open it after they finish the building i think they have the building in the mechanical to finish um they're about six months behind in what their original um schedule was um but uh it i think late this year or or the beginning of next year they'll open it um and then what's interesting is the codes apply to new construction but also with the existing building code when you do a major addition or renovation then you have to comply with the energy code as well the process is is convoluted in my mind but um it's it basically goes through there's a request for rulemaking there's draft language um there's a impact statement and then and there's a public hearing um only this is really what that whole process looks like and in red are the points where there's public input and i think that's where it's important if we're going to advocate for adopting um one the 2021 iecc rather than the 2018 um [Music] yeah the 2018 iecc um which would be the three it's a three-year code cycle and we're already so far behind it would make sense to go ahead and adopt the 2021 rather than the 2018.
if if if we had not received that money there's a chance that we could have had a reduction in salaries to all of our staff or um the furlough days or whatever it would have been an option that we in finance would have had to present to the um to the uh leadership team yes missy jetty that that would have been some of the options we would have had to explore just because um we wouldn't be able to make our bills i guess is the best way to put it and i think having conversations in late spring early summer maybe even early fall we talked about that possibility of happening due to loss of enrollment and um we made the conscious choice and and luckily uh esther two came through to be able to uh continue to support the employees in that fashion so that was for this school year correct to get us through june 30 of 2021 if if some of this money didn't come through and there wasn't any idea of this money coming through throughout the the school year we would have had to make some very difficult decisions on on on on employees and and thankfully we didn't have to do that uh right smack dab in the middle of the pandemic if if i may what i'm taking away for this conversation and i think it goes to some of the questions that we've received from teachers and the public as well without this s or money and the use of it to to maintain teachers we would have faced a crisis mid-year because of the decreased enrollment and remember the adm increased in adm to use the correct term the adm drives our funding with that decreased adm we would have faced an issue of how to reduce our budget and knowing that that the ratio of teachers to to students is the main driver of our expenses we would have faced that this year we used the esser money to delay that now i know there's some in the public saying why aren't you waiting for sr3 and delaying it again but that's simply pushing it's pushing the problem down the road and it and it's it's a hard decision because we know that we're affecting people's lives and we you know nobody wants to be the person who's only looking at the numbers but that is our responsibility one of our main responsibilities is to to maintain a workable budget um and so yeah i guess we could but the problem if we do that and push it down the road further is it simply exacerbates the problem and makes a larger problem in the future so it impacts more people in the future and if it hits us mid-year next year then we're talking about furloughs or rifts mid-year and not providing people an opportunity to go find employment elsewhere so it it impacts their lives to even greater deal and it's i i know the many the decisions that we made a couple of weeks ago seems heartless in reality it it is intended to be made at this timing in order to optimize the opportunities for those affected and i recognize that they're not receiving it that way but that that is at least how i feel and i believe that's how the rest of the board feels and and it's not a decision that's made easily but we are using the esr funds to try to to minimize the impact to our community and particularly our teachers well i think for me back in november we in finance received an over-expenditure report from the department of education at that point in times telling us that you shall revise your budget down by 25 million dollars that's a frightening amount of money knowing that we only received just under 15 million from the esg grant so fortunately if you remember we revised the budget you approved that i can't remember the date in december and then the sr2 was then released i think prior to coming back from christmas break which closed that gap of the just under 15 million dollars to the 26 million dollars that we desperately needed to close the gap of our budget so anyway so um based upon all of that now sr3 projected up to 20 million um conservative estimate uh we've been told over and over again be careful what you commit to in terms of what you think it's going to be it's always a little bit difficult to estimate a dollar amount until you actually have the application we have not heard what our allocation is and we have not seen the application at this point in time we do feel confident though that it will be at least the value of esther 2 which is at least 9.7 million dollars and we do believe that it will be up to 20 million dollars but we are expected to have the final number by the end of this month and we will know then what our allocation will be the other point i'd like to make about that too is i wanted to compare us a little bit to mesa public schools so their um esther allocation was significantly higher so as an example the number so to our 20 30 33 million dollars so of esther funds mesa public schools is expected my understanding is expected to get maybe 250 million so something like eight times the dollar amount that gilbert public schools is expected to get for all three esser funds and again that's no no fault of of mesas it's based upon the title one allocation and mesa's tile one calculation or allocations largely much greater than ours but it is really hard to fully understand that a school district that has maybe 50 percent more students than gilbert would receive up to eight times more of the esther funding than gilbert would be so trying to put it in context to the fact that gilbert is individual in the state of arizona and everyone's situation budgetarily is very different so to move forward then i wanted to share the budget limit comparison and you can see where revised number one we are just over 250 million dollars that is after having accounted for the enrollment stabilization grant if we had not had that 12 million dollars that's where we would be down to 230.
um i think yeah i think the 19th gives us enough time um yeah so i think um yeah by then we'll know the election and people will be able to be sworn in if there are new members and all those things [Music] all right um committee members anyone have other agenda items you'd like to throw out there um if we want i mean i can do it during superintendent update or we can also uh you know if there's an update on the grant whether that's zero hundred ninety six hundred thousand or whatever in between um i think it is a relevant conversation because this one would impact some of the fall reopening plans in terms of how we pay for things that are not budgeted like right now we have you know cna and ppe and you know all these things so i wonder if we could put that on the grant as well um i mean the grant you know the stimulus funds on there just to update the committee in the community because it's it'll have an impact okay um yeah i think that's a good idea to just have it as an agenda item on its own unless something changes that it's really obvious and we don't need to but okay all right anything else on agenda okay i have a few warrants um okay i authorized by my signature to payables in the amount of ten thousand three hundred and eighty dollars and sixteen cents for the warrant dated march 24 and that included general fund expenses of those all general fund expenses um i authorized by my signature to payroll in the amount of fifty nine thousand thirty nine dollars and twelve cents that was for the warrant dated march 24th 2021 i signed that on march 25th um and i authorized by my signature uh i authorized payroll by my signature in the amount of 59 244 dollars and 65 cents that was for a warrant dated april 7th 2021 and i signed it on april 6th that is all i have for warrants no gifts that i know okay um all right i will take a motion to adjourn let's grab a grandpa from anyone a movie adjourned moved by kenny seconded by hall um all right roll call vote ron round i margaret stance or i sarah best kenny i brenda barlow hi we are adjourned thank you everyone hi everybody have a good night
and in fact um lara is going through a um an audit process and we already know that the auditors have um kind of flagged the lag in the code adoption so i think the later it goes the more uh leverage there is to actually jump and adopt the 2021 that's my hope anyway chuck is smiling so anyway these three points are really important for advocacy um and to make our voices heard both building officials architects engineers municipalities because those are the those are the public input points um and within the rule promulgation process what they are doing is if there's a justification for a change these are all the things that they're looking for so in our letters um we really want to um you know talk about what we're trying to accomplish with a20 um and and climate and so forth and and so this is really what they're looking for their committee as they're looking at rules changes now one of the good things about um the adoption process is we're really not asking for a rule change we're asking them to jump the three-year cycle and adopt the renewable energy appendix the renewable energy appendix will be a little tough the backup position could be um to make it optional for um it as a stretch code for authorities having jurisdiction so anyway that's um and this is sort of uh once they open up the rules um you can subscribe to those rule sets and get automatic updates from the state so that's the way to kind of stay with it so anyway i'll stop sharing there that's sort of the background of the xero code and the potential of it um and open to some questions thank you jan commissioner cleavy you're on mute mark are you recommending that the city of ann arbor um engage in advocacy to push this new thing and get on board and be supportive of adopting this code absolutely uh i think it's it's what we can do with in the sort of existing um administrative process um and and so i think that makes a lot of sense and i'm actually making my rounds to all the aia chapters um in the state uh to talk about this and kind of try and make it a priority for them and then also reaching out for the engineers out to the engineers to do that as well commissioner um john i'll go last i'll uh i'll just want to add a few words to the end okay council member regina thanks um yeah i also just wanted to point out that both uh commissioner councilmember briggs and i serve on the policy committee and we are finalizing actually at our next meeting on the 20th um our list of priorities for the year to pass along to council as well and so certainly there were there was an opportunity at some point i think a relatively brief period for all of the commissions to add input but if this is something that the body wanted us to take to the policy committee as well i think that that's something that we could add to the agenda for discussion hope so [Music] thank you i wanted to chime in on two points one is i think it is in the list of things for the policy committee to consider council member dean i think staff put that that one in there but if not absolutely and then i just let you know that stuff are actively involved in this and working on the advocacy zack is on the line right now i don't know if he wants to chime in oh there he is uh zach do you want to talk at all about what you've got going on just to kind of pretty quickly what staff are organizing around the codes um yeah sure a couple things to touch on um are that currently the iecc is opening up development committees uh so that they can get feedback from uh municipalities and other interested parties who are would like to serve on such committees for how codes are developed and adopted at the icc level that's not at the state or jurisdictional level but it does allow for us to advocate for certain codes that is something that is the applications are currently open for and for which i will be applying and am working with the usdn the urban sustainable directors network to coordinate with other uh jurisdictions and municipalities across the country to ensure that we that the sustainability voice is heard during these discussions um so that's that's what's coming up right now the just quick background that that it will be key to be on these development committees because as of march 3rd the international code council has removed governmental members from the voting process um even though the codes that they write are explicitly to serve uh um governmental officials as they don't have a vested financial interest in the code um and they are ultimately the ones who enforce it so um we are pursuing the means that are available to us and those right now are development committees so that's that's one avenue through which we're we're pursuing just one other thing i wanted to elevate too is that zach has been working with other municipalities across the state to try to organize and understand needs so that we can be a loud voice at those points of intervention so jan highlighted those red circles uh to make sure that we're we're there making noise uh representing the people at the other end of this thanks zach thanks for joining us tonight i have a quick question if i may just um certainly for my identification and maybe for others um and i guess maybe this is addressed to jan or or chuck or possibly zach when we're talking about the they that are adopting these um new changes who is they and who are we targeting our lobbying at so others go jump in there is lara lara controls the building codes the building codes are written as zach points out for the code officials which are the city of ann arbor's building department to enforce right so and then those of us that are architects and engineers have practice the design of buildings and those that build the buildings have to comply with those codes so it's actually a life cycle if you will of adoption that has to be addressed and is laura then is that a state agency is that under the governor basically or what was it a branch somehow of the legislature or how is our what's the organizational structure for law it's the licensing bureau of the state of michigan so they licensed like myself as a professional engineer i get licensed through lara right okay okay um just real quick like the the api that rule making process that's for any agency so these are all like agencies that sit under the executive branch and ultimately they do report to the governor um it's a similar thing on the federal level too we have administrative agencies the epa for example they have to follow a similar process and take public comment at certain points and i would also add that anyone as an individual can submit public comments at the stages that these happen or if you represent a non-profit or anything like that so it would actually probably be good to get other groups involved to submit comments too thanks noah i i think uh council member briggs and then helps commissioner george after that yeah thanks for those presentations um in terms of the xero code obviously since this is optional um i understand that the the benefit of it is it's a strong framework and it's enforceable but the key piece is is incentivizing this um so do you have recommendations or um about smart ways to to go about incentivizing this for for a variety of different types of buildings in our community so incentivizing would be if it's not the code if it's adopted at the state level it's an enforceable code incentivizing gets into and i'd be interested uh because i know in sioux township we're looking at i'm chair of the planning commission in scio and um you know we're trying to look at um how at what point do uh you know density increased density factors and so forth really start um making a difference for developments and um like i'm thinking you know uh with the uh to increase like at the residential level could you could you incentivize the energy rating index for housing and say hey you could have it you know increase your density by whatever the number of stories by whatever if your housing complies with say you know code is like i think an eri of 55 um and if you did a 45 you know if you met that um and you could do the same thing with commercial buildings you know meeting um certain uh guidelines and performance standards um but i guess what what's tricky is to try and understand the economics of the development and where those tipping points are and that sort of leads to my next question which is around affordability one of the pieces that were obvious we struggle with a lot in ann arbor is just the encouraging green green building versus affordable um both in housing and i think we should be thinking about it more in terms of commercial and retail as well in terms of promoting local business but um particularly in terms of housing this may be a little tangential but i would certainly welcome any information that you might have around how how this does or doesn't increase the cost of of um of building yeah and they um the the groups are trying to pull that together arm i just came out with a a pretty interesting study on how residential housing and the real savings is is actually in making them all electric because that is a whole section of infrastructure that you don't need and so you can invest then what you don't um have to pay for in in gas and duct work and some of that other those other elements and invest that in the energy efficiency uh uh and the and the tightness uh if you will the weatherization of a building um i know uh there are a couple of um folks that are also looking at the way we build um and doing more things from in a in in more of a factory um setting and um and being able to do that for for less uh funding we're going to be looking at i think tara is one of those um companies that's that's doing it all the way from design all the way through the manufacturing and so forth and that may be a way that um will bend the market toward more of affordability i'm trying to get um a speaker in from philadelphia who does market rate this isn't affordable but market rate um quasi passive multi-family um and he's been successful and he's been doing some renovation in it in as well so um you know it's uh they're they're doing it out there the the what's interesting is in new york city what they've been doing because they have the caps of and and they're reducing um the caps for your greenhouse gas emissions based on buildings they're finding that it's um encouraging a lot of passive um kind of house quality uh construction because people can actually then start selling that additional um greenhouse gas um that that they have and so it they can use then that to help finance the um better construction kind of interesting like a cap and trade kind of a thing almost or yeah almost yeah yeah i have a real quick question um before you move on and i know there's several so as far as i know the rocky mountain institute study that you talked about i think they studied like seven municipal areas or 12 or something and i think the costs were actually lower in every single one of those cases for an all-electric building were they not that's correct yep okay so um i think it was commissioner george and commissioner zucker chuck at the very end commissioner george go ahead councilmember briggs asked my question i'm good to go okay mr zucker and this is probably a good segue going right into chuck but just wanted to kind of understand you know what our options are for for setting optional stretch targets you know can we just you know what are the legal frameworks that we have can we at least put this net zero code out as an option and then do we have anything to bend people to move that way yeah i'm wondering is it legal and missy i don't know if you've discussed this to require that that um new buildings provide their own renewable energy i mean can you is that even possible you know it's really really tricky to require anything with the code in michigan so incenting for sure uh when they're asking through the zoning if they're asking for a change in zoning then we have more space to ask for more things so um actually speaking of rmi it looks like on monday night uh there will be a resolution before council to increase our contract with valerie brader our city attorney because rmi is actually helping fund her looking at a lot of questions around how far we can push the building code for all municipalities in michigan but it's going to come through us because we're ready to push the code so we'll have more answers soon but we're in dicey i think that's the word she used for with me like moments ago when i text her she's like we're in dicey territory here so uh specifics matter in the questions we're asking yeah yeah uh commissioner kerber yes so one of the things that i've observed in just in my neighborhood on nixon road there's condos that are being expanded very expensive condos and if you look at those condos they just defy putting solar energy on their roof all of the south facing roof surfaces are filled with um you know things that just i i assume are just done for just appearance and all the north facing roofs are basically empty i mean it's just i guess the word would be as9 and why did this get approved and and i just i'm looking to say all they have to do is say why don't you just turn 180 degrees and get rid of all those dormers on the south side where solar panels should be because those everybody in that condo anybody who wants to do solar won't be able to do it because all they have free is a north facing roof silly absolutely crazy anyway so i assume something like that doesn't go through the planning commission it may very well but i mean this gets to kind of when we have control when the city has control and when it doesn't um sometimes there's the ability to incentivize or at least make recommendations around the planning commission table but that's kind of where they often the conversation ends is discussions but i think that what we're sometimes lacking in the city is even providing really good guidance to folks up front so that maybe they might be able to think through some of those questions i think um ready for me john well i don't know did mark did you raise your hand again just a quick thing you know as we move to this electric it's probably remember that we buy our electricity from dte energy and they make their electricity with coal and uh fracked gas has large amounts of fugitive methane so um somewhere in there we got to balance these efficient buildings that we're going to be putting up and all the solar and stuff but you might we could go a long way by moving into clean gas um that would solve a number of these problems in that very quickly it thanks mark and um thanks jan for joining us and spending your evening with us appreciate your presentation um zach thank you for inputs um i served on icc on a committee if i can help you get on it great they're difficult to get on good luck i'll i'll send you a recommendation letter or something whatever it takes but they're very valuable to your point to get in on the grassroots side um lara is the body we have to work our way through they're administrative but they're difficult i've been through that process as well what i'm proposing to the commission i wasn't ready to to present a resolution but what i'd like to do is i wanted to capture everybody's thoughts and they're all kind of leading i think in a direction that's positive um i think we have to take a multi-pronged approach here to help keep the city out of trouble and miss you out of jail i'm just teasing missy you won't go to jail but um it's kind of two-pronged i think we have to press for what we can do and not look back we have to force our way in and be a part of the equation that adopts 2021 iecc there's a likelihood because of past history that the people we're up against the folks that don't want to do that will have a pretty big value of knowledge that's going to be going to fight that so there's a possibility that the next round we get from the state is the 2018 iecc it's a step in a good direction but couldn't it doesn't get us to net zero it doesn't get us to where we couldn't be i think it's a mistake the fallback then becomes the stretch code and to commissioner briggs point what kind of incentives are necessary to make it affordable and adaptable because if you don't put in something that's that we'll know we know what the alternate is it's not a good situation so i look to my son's community he lives in arvada colorado it's a suburb of boulder in denver they adopted something similar to a stretch code they basically incentivized the entities building subdivisions to put solar on all the roofs and for nominal money from you put up four panels didn't cost the homeowner a nickel through exotic solar designs on rooftops that were a little more expensive to their down payment for their house it was adopted you wouldn't believe the solar in arvada it's got a lot more solar insulation than we do but it was readily adopted by all the builders it was in innocuous cost and it was part of the equation of their zoning process and their planning approval so there's not much we can offer we can't offer tax rebates it's very difficult to do that i think maybe impossible um so we have to be creative in finding solutions as to why it might be adopted my advocate my ask to the commission is would you be willing to support a resolution i guess in advance just talk out loud about it i'm not sure that's all credible either whether i can present a resolution at the next meeting that we pursue a multi-pronged approach both the pursuance the spouse plus pursue if a fallback a stretch type code chuck just for clarification for my benefit at least is this your green star approach that you showed on your second slide i think it was yeah okay okay yeah i'm certainly in favor of that and what what i'd like to have is a little bit of discussion about exactly what we can do and i'd like to also throw out there potentially to commissioner schreiberg um who's uh heading uh you know a region a regional portion of a very significant e-ngo and that is what can we do to work with engos and with let's say mark organizations like glrea and others that share our ends and our objectives and values to be able to collectively lobby laura and play a significant role in this process as opposed to just us talking about it in this meeting and then walking away or proving a resolution at the next meeting i really think it's important that maybe jan and chuck um and maybe we have an off line meeting with uh staff um i'd be happy to participate so that we really talk about what is it that we can specifically do who do we contact who do we engage maybe who's an umbrella organization that can uh pull this together uh those types of activities i i'd like to open it up for a few thoughts along those lines before we close this topic anybody want to speak to that john i'm glad to i'm i'm happy to kind of check in with our allies in the environmental ngo community they're working on state energy policy and with my i've got a couple staff that that are that are working on that so i'll bring that back to the next meeting don't have comments on specifically today though right i mean i i think we know all the the organizations that um would potentially do this i mean lead conservation voters i mean there's a whole host for groups that we could potentially like um i was saying before with mark and glrea uh you know this is this is all in our interest uh and i think we should mobilize collectively will be a lot more powerful because there's going to be powerful interests as was pointed out earlier that we're going to be going up against did somebody else want to comment on that jam go ahead i just wanted to say one thing and that was iecc has said even if a jurisdiction adopts the um 2018 iecc you can still adopt the renewable appendix with that it just doesn't give you that efficiency base that however the renewable energy appendix would certainly um incentivize making your building much more efficient chan correct me if i'm wrong um recent steps in um the ashrae uh when you're talking about the efficiency standards the latest one typically they're about in the last couple of years there are improvements of steps of about seven percent does that sound about right yeah and it affects different building types differently um but the in looking at the percentages for the 18 it's kind of minimal compared to um going to the yeah the 2021 you really want to go there and i i'm hoping this audit of laura will um i mean administratively they may just make the decision that they have to do 2021 because of that audit is is the does the governor have any influence over this too given this is under the executive branch like uh commissioner levin was talking about earlier so like the laws i just passed a bunch of laws for professional engineer licensing and it goes all the way up to the governor to sign off it goes through all the layers above lara as was pointed out earlier and the governor of the governor appoints the director of lara also all right okay clearly they're not going to do lara is not going to do something without the governor's desire to do it it would be an interesting question to find out what her stand is on this topic specifically and maybe the aia or jan your group should determine that question because it will it's a lot easier strategy for us to jump on board with likes than to go against you know lara knowing she's she's behind them saying don't do this right okay um yeah i think we had a couple more um commissioner levin you had a comment you're you just muted yourself no i went the wrong way um yeah i was just gonna uh add to that that yeah i mean the governor ultimately it's like the one that at all the buck stops with but they don't tend to get like too directly involved i mean if they're if it's a big political issue they might um get a little more involved ultimately though the standard is that the agency has to meet is like a rational standard which they have to make a rational decision which um it does sound kind of irrational to wait three years but at the same time it's kind of it's not as uh it's a pretty easy standard for them to meet in court which is ultimately the the way a lot of these regulations tend to get overturned is because they didn't follow the process properly uh like all those steps along the way if they didn't do that quite right that's where they ultimately get get stuff overturned more often than not but yeah so if you just have to have a rational reason for the regulation basically thank you add one piece which with you know obama administration's infrastructure money is going to be coming down we're just going to relate to this and come and direct and indirect ways so i'm sure that's that's part of the equation here to figure out how to how to maximize um it would be awful for us to be ineligible to get some of that money because we adopted the wrong damn code did you did you want to wrap things up for us chuck was there anything that you wanted to say into wrap we talked about a resolution um and maybe the resolution can talk about also um some specific next steps that either we or council or the city would take does that make sense makes sense i'll be reaching out to jan and others that talked a lot tonight about this and we'll see what we can put together and it won't be it won't be a chuck hook them special it'll be something with me to it and hopefully we'll get something to the commission next time excellent any any closing comments on this uh i'd like to thank jan for joining us this evening dan you're welcome to uh sit through the end of the meeting um i think we're now um up to updates on the working groups but before we do that um missy you indicated that there was a topic that you wanted to provide an additional update on you yeah i forgot to share an exciting piece because it's moving so fast so on monday night um this will be hitting legistar tonight or tomorrow morning council will be hearing or voting on a resolution of settlement in our vgp case our voluntary green pricing case late on friday afternoon the parties have reached a general terms for settlement you can read far more than you probably want to in terms of what the settlement looks like but i do want to share some high level takeaways one of them is an agreement to pilot the first community solar program with an anchor tenant in dt's territory uh here in ann arbor and the other is looking at actual carbon reduction programs that we would work in collaboration to develop with utility to demonstrably shut down plants and and reduce greenhouse gas emissions on the system that we're talking about especially as we're talking about electrification making it by criticism as possible the more details will be available in the legislature file uh but surprise council members uh it's really last minute you're going to see it on monday and i just want to say a special thanks to uh val brader and the team of tufang woo and others who've been working to make this happen great thank you uh so um i think we want to run through the various working groups um they're not outlined but maybe people can raise their hand i'll start maybe uh with uh carlene and transportation electrification i want to give a brief update there uh very quickly um we're exploring uh dif different uh activities that are happening in the area uh most recently we had a presentation by a company called may mobility that is an um it's a public transit company uh specializing in driverless uh vehicles and we're learning about what they're up to some of the projects that they've done uh different parts of the state in detroit grand rapids and what they're working on uh coming moving forward there's going to be some cool updates that are going to be announced uh in the next month or so and that's another day for now um other working groups want to give an update uh then i'll give a very brief update on the environmental commission um the last meeting was devoted to solid waste issues um and we had an update in particular from the county and what's going on with warma and right now the city is in the process of joining former city council voted to join and there's a few process steps uh that has that warm uh administration has to go through to um accept the city um and so hopefully the city will be joining that right now it's focused primarily on education and outreach but it could expand into other different kinds of things um including you know different things like um landfill issues and recycling and using um common immersion things like that that those would be future steps but um at least we're in the process of doing that we got an update from staff um so if anybody's interested in any of the specifics on that you could go to legislar i think i'll leave it to that because most of that doesn't really relate to specifically to what we're talking about here is there anything else before we move to the close of the meeting and our second public comment anybody else want to share anything okay so this is um our second opportunity for public input and uh again as before that's limited to three minutes per person uh give the call-in numbers again call two four 888-788-0099-487-853-5247 and enter the id nine one three five seven eight three four five zero two and again that's also on the meeting agenda and it's on the video feed on ctn dr stoltz will select callers who have raised their hand by calling on them with the last three digits of your phone number and to raise your hand uh please press star nine after you've dialed in and you're going to hear an automated announcement that the host is allowing you to speak and we ask that again you limit your comments to three minutes that uh you move to a quiet area and that you state your name and your residence right caller ending in six five at zero there we go hello we hear you uh this is wayne ample yard calling a great meeting i had a couple of things that i wanted to talk to you to convey with you um that gives you an idea as to how tough it is to do what we're trying to do um and there's two things first of all i have succeeded in making my house net zero but i do that with the benefit of the grid uh it turns out that about 70 percent of what i produce with my solar array actually goes out under the grid and then comes back and the real important part of all that is the difference between what we get in the winter and what we get in the summer and i get over five times as much solar uh in the moon the summer months as i do in the winter months and in the winter is when i use most of my electricity because i have an air source heat pump so um in order for us as a bigger community to go to 100 renewables we're going to have to somehow get uh involved with other things other than just solar including quite a bit of wind that can produce in the wintertime the other thing that i want to mention is what happens when you start to look at buildings in the city and there are two buildings that i remember that came up before planning commission where everyone said it was really wonderful that they were putting solar on the roof and they were like three-story buildings one on packard and one off of hoover and although they were trying to put as much solar on the roof they were getting they were estimating they were going to get six percent of their energy needs from the solar on the roof and that shows me first of all that they're not doing anywhere near enough energy conservation and also it means that 94 of that uh solar array has to go someplace else um and some place out in the greenbelt um might be where it has to be but the big thing is that we are going to continue to have to rely on the grid and although people can put in storage it's short-term storage you're not going to store from the winter to december so it's a big problem we need to work on it and hopefully we can get working with dte on it although that's probably being a little naive that's it thank you former chair apple yard um i'd like to point out that um it there's it's an expense issue but there's lots of parking areas and space for solar carports and at some point in time hopefully that's going to become more and more necessary and more and more attractive also from the cost point of view um dr schultz did we have everybody else yes uh 661 color ending in 661.
so we ended up at 252 million because we were able to increase our budget balance carry forward to bring us back up to 252 million then you can see that due to accounting for the sr2 in revised number two the budget capacity went up to 260 million dollars that's in the current year and you can see it's a little bit more than that on revised number three pending but you can see the fiscal year 2022 projection which accounts for that 400 students adm loss and again to the right you can see the budget balance carry forward so this is shared to show what our our budget balance carry forward has been so prior to 2020 it was in the neighborhood of four to six million uh you can see that it was a little bit higher in 2021 initially but due again to the advent of the federal funds and the one-time monies you can see the budget balance carry forward rising to over 30 million and then you can see our projection for fiscal year 2022 going down to 17 million again it's that that situation associated with one-time money so year-over-year just due to the budget balance carry forward there was a loss from 30 million dollars to 17 million so there's a 13 million dollar loss right there as well any questions on that that's regarding the budget balance carry forward um i know when you came you made a very uh passionate plea to increase our budget very budget balance carry forward it was far too low in the past we have made efforts to slowly increase that uh let's throw out the the revisions because it's that one-time money but even without those two those three revisions i guess two bar graphs but three revisions we're seeing that upward trend what what's the target where where are we where are we right uh where do we get that number right that we should try and maintain it so and i i think um we still have a um a reserving policy for mno that that we need to address in in policy so it's it's that balance between meeting the needs of your students in the current year versus having some flexibility to have additional carryover in subsequent years which also includes balancing how much fund balance you have left which impacts your credit rating which impacts the cost to the taxpayer for gilbert public schools so generally speaking i would say targeting between four and six percent would be a reasonable budget balance carry forward it would also depend upon whether we adopt a policy allowing our schools to carry over their general fund discretionary budgets so all those things are still subject to conversation but i would say between four and six percent and i think you made a very valid point just reiterate you know it's a balance if we we don't want to take it all at once because that adversely affects the students this year um at the same time if we don't carry the right amount you mentioned that it affects our credit rating which affects our bonds and takes money away from students it also may require us to take more tax advance notice notes which costs us more interest annually which takes money away from students so getting that right over a time period and then maintaining it right is important in order to maximize dollars in the classroom and protect the taxpayer correct ms betts um just reiterating kind of what's been said i think it is it can be difficult if we look and see there's actually more money in fiscal year 2022 projection than there was in fiscal year 2020 revised and the amount of carryford we have it can make it difficult to see why have we made the decisions we made especially with the um teachers and different things can you address that again just one more time that it looks like there's plenty of cash so um so just a reminder of the budget increase from fiscal year 2020 to fiscal year 2021 that was directly due to the passage going from a 10 override to a 15 override which infused an additional 11 million dollars into gilbert public schools at the same time we made commitments to salary compensation the 20 by 20 that the governor proposed was also in play for 2021 the final year of that five percent increase in addition to the other commitments that the override made to add social emotional supports at all of our schools to allocate a certain dollar amount to reduce class sizes we were very successful at reducing class sizes in the current year due to the the movement of students and lots of students so just a reminder that there were a lot of commitments associated with that so and again it's it was an enrollment loss that led to the reduction in force than a lack of budget so it's a process by which we wanted to make sure that we were meeting the needs of this of students and so sort of i don't know like right sizing i guess the school district different than in 2010 where the reductions was due solely to a lack of resources the state was in a dire situation and our dot we had all the students but the dollar amount per student dropped precipitously so different situation um trying to navigate the needs of students so we're not changing class size allocations none of that it's just making a decision to have the right number of teachers for the students that we're expecting to be enrolled in 2022 thank you so the unrestricted capital budget i shared that the governor's budget did include fully funding the district additional assistance so the revised number three pending shows 16.7 million dollars if you remember there was an increase in funding in district additional assistance between 20 and 21 again a reminder that district additional assistance is based on prior year student counts so so where we were reduced by about 17 from formula in the current year and having a zero percent reduction for projected for 2022 it only resulted in a 380 000 increase again just due to the loss of students any questions on that can you speak to how how we spent that i know you do every month you tell us that so um in the current year uh we made sizable allocations to athletics to make sure that we're catching up with all of the athletic venues that are maintenance in nature such as the pole ball pits the long jump pits just even adding sand sometimes we made allocations to the weight rooms we completed that in 202 one making modifications to all of our high schools and then some modifications down to our junior highs we did make a sizable investment in cafeteria tables due to the need to add cafeteria tables for social distancing purposes um added allocations to performing arts associated with not having any allocation to performing arts for many many years in addition there was an allocation for uh additional textbook adoptions um those those sorts of things thank you um i have a question about that do you remember when i i'm trying to remember when the district additional assistance was cut because i think this is probably the first time it's been fully allocated in about at least nine years ten years or something yeah i don't know the exact time frame i thought it was 2012 or 13.
hi good evening my name is gus teschke i live at 313 montgomery in the fifth ward um i'm calling tonight in support of uh municipal solar um solar electric utility i urge you all to make some progress on that and do a feasibility study as soon as possible so we can judge what's going on thank you very much bye-bye thanks for calling in anyone else missing that's all risky okay good so now we're at the point where we'll talk about agenda items for the next meeting um i just like to remind everyone that we had a session of our last meeting devoted to that topic where we elevated a number of different topics i don't have those off the top of my head i don't know that it's necessary to uh read the law specifically but we have those votes and we will continue to work down that list i'd like to open it up though for others to add to that list or or potentially emphasize a topic that you think is something that we should be taking up here um either in the next meeting or in a subsequent meeting commissioner zuckerberg sorry um and i don't know if this necessarily needs to be in a full meeting but i just kind of want to reiterate um you know kind of our next steps of looking at the funding funding options i know we had an initial meeting and you know a lot of the stuff we were talking about tonight since we don't have um legal authority to mandate or to ban or things like that maybe our the only leverage we may have is to incentivize and that incentivize usually goes back towards cash so um yup just wanted to check i don't know that we're ready for a full meeting agenda but just wanted to check in to see what kind of maybe our next steps are on that or when we might be able to bring something forward dr scholz let's see you want to talk about that yeah i just wanted to thank you for raising it and also publicly apologize that it's been slow with the federal administration asking for a lot of stuff this last month we've been really trying to get our hand in the air for that so uh do not forget you at all just trying to get some infrastructure or dollars hard fast in the city before you put yourself on mute missy my recollection is that we've tentatively lined up uh presentation by mary rosenthal for the 13th of may i think it's the 13th of may yeah we have rmi first doing the electrification right yeah and then murray for solar created a solar faithful um kind of ppa model right so rmi on electrification in general and then ppa models and specifically than the solar faithful which can be used um actually for any non-profit it could be even used for school system um government buildings whatever so it has fairly wide applicable ability um i'd like to also remind everybody i think we've talked about this before that a week before this meeting missy and josh carlene and i have a meeting where we prepare the final agenda for this so keep that in mind if you have something that you feel is particularly important that has changed since we did our voting uh that you want us to take into consideration reach out to any of the four of us um and you know we can even have one of you join us as a guest if that's appropriate because that's typically when we sort of finalize the the agenda for our our next meeting is anybody else that has any other comments about agendas for the next meeting i have a comment about um one of the uh having um murray here i think that's outstanding but one of the things that is in that i've been reading about that's in the biden agenda is to change the investment tax credit to a direct payment and my understanding of changing it to a direct payment would literally mean that instead of having it as an offset of your taxes it's more like having cash in your pocket and this immediately solves the non-profit problem because now if you're even if you're a non-profit you're just reducing the cost of your solar system directly and i would really like to see if there's something that we could do to voice our support for that even though it's at the national level you know we do have representation here in this state that could make that happen and that would be very valuable for the solar industry this is a priority amongst the office and other sustainability offices is to change everything that's based almost everything that's an incentive a tax incentive to a direct rebate because you're excluding people who don't have tax appetites nonprofits houses of worship low-income folks who need the money up front and it's more money in people's pockets directly so i i think that's fabulous i just wanted to share that's that's a high priority for us right right here anyone with anything else before we adjourn for tonight okay well before we do that i want to recognize uh i failed to do this earlier um remy long for joining us uh that was a really informative presentation um and i'm gonna share it with the environmental commission i think it'll be of interest to them and i encourage the rest of you to share it with potential people who would like to know more about the green belt and also of course jan culbertson and as always i want to thank all of you for joining and for serving um and with that um i'll join the meeting and wish you a nice rest of your evening good night everybody you
then right around there 2012 i'm thinking they didn't cut it um right at the 2010 but they did cut it a couple of years later and they cut it in the middle of the year yes it was very frustrating okay so risks and opportunities as i mentioned earlier we're still not done normally by this point in time i'm talking to our student count analyst and she's saying bonnie we're pretty set our 100th adm is completed we are still fluctuating up and down primarily due just to the quantification of the number of students that are online whereas most of them were in bricks and mortar in the past so i just wanted to prepare you all that the budget capacity will continue moving in the current year the legislature is not completed there's still lots of outstanding bills that have not been decided upon and of course the major budget reconciliation bill has not even been heard yet so again there's lots of still lots of moving parts for fiscal 2022 so so we could have a greater loss of students in the current year than realized as an example we did lose 80 adm month over month we could see an average daily membership loss of more than 400 students from the current year at this point in time due to the pandemic all of our trend analyses are just not valid anymore it's really difficult to determine what's going to happen going into august of 2022 and then as i mentioned with the budget balance careful conversation and all of the esser funds and the enrollment stabilization grant funds we are we have and continue to use a lot of one-time monies that will decrease our future flexibility so the miss bets yes if i may interrupt sorry dr santa cruz actually dr mccord can i ask again we we've heard questions of you know to sit here and just say well our adm loss could be greater than 400 students and to say we're going to have a loss of students we're losing students are we just standing by and just you know just saying well that's all that we can do about it or what's our plan to and i know you've mentioned some advertising and some communication but to speak more clearly too are we following up on students who are in we have each campus when we came back full time picked the phone and called all those families that had left to let them know that we're back open full-time and they're more than welcome to come back and we received some students from that but what we've seen throughout and and i check you know enrollment on a daily basis and you see fluctuations of students uh of 20 to 25 students swing a day it goes up one day it goes back down you know it may go up 80 students you know one day and then it drops another 60.
it depends on the status of students coming and going from global going back to bricks and mortar but we have seen that and back to the comment that you made just a few minutes ago it's really difficult to project what that's going to look like year over year and so um we have to be as fiscally responsible when it comes to our budget for next year because as we you know we saw this year we requested 30 million and only got half of that and so we can't put our district in a position to be able to not be able to make its bills i guess over time and so looking at next year do i think students will come back yeah i do but am i willing to stake the the financial stability of our district on it no not right now i can't do that as was noted earlier we've increased uh one year probably over the last 10 in terms of enrollment and so the demographer has stated over time that our um our enrollment is you know projected to go down year over year and so i think when we increased enrollment a couple years ago we we really shot above and beyond that and and he even called and made a comment saying wow i didn't i didn't know you guys were going to be able to do that and then the pandemic hit and here we are today so let me let don talk a little bit about more about our marketing efforts moving forward sure yes so um a number of the initiatives and campaigns that we had in place the year that we saw the increase we've continued them last year and this year as a kind of solid foundation so that would include leaflet drops and within our binary areas facebook advertising social media advertising um in general also print materials kind of all the usual things you would leverage um every year to with the goal of driving enrollment up and also sustaining that enrollment and so all of those have continued for this year and the other thing that we're implementing for this year is a much more targeted approach so many of the factors that have influenced enrollment this year are new factors that didn't exist prior to the pandemic or weren't something that or weren't factors that were influencing our enrollment so we've really tried to target in on what those are and address them at school level the other thing that we've noticed is the enrollment factors have been really on a school basis rather than um you know we could do generic advertising that applies the whole district but what is and what has been more effective is really targeting in on the specific marketing needs of each school because the factors implement influencing enrollment have been different and so some of those things might be looking at um the withdrawal information of everyone who's withdrawn from sixth grade for example and then working with our junior highs to reach out to those families to you know say and it's really great customer service as much as anything else to say you know we um we know that you were formally prior to the pandemic a gps student and we see that you withdrew during sixth grade we'd like to work with you and answer any questions that you might have to support you in making your decision for junior high and to make you feel as welcome as possible so really targeting in on all of those students and families that have withdrawn and reaching out to them um and that's to get back the students that we have lost during the pandemic and of course constantly keeping an eye on not trying to lose sight on what was our original goal which is to continue to grow each year so then really we're doing school specific leaflet drops to zip codes and particularly targeting the west side of the district right now and where working i'm trying to think when she says leaflet drop please don't think that we got helicopters running around just going to ask that question so are we making our teachers go out and drop leaflets are we hiring a company how are we doing we work with uh so we work with community impact newspaper we also work with company companies and the most efficient way to target it by zip code and residential areas is actually to work with the post office they have an every door direct mail system and that allows us to create leaflets that are specific to the schools that are in that area we're also really focusing on um some of our key programs the traditional programs performing arts um as well as the quality of our neighborhood schools um the dual language and then we're drilling down into like where do you you know where are you seeing um where are you seeing these losses so obviously there was a kindergarten loss so we're working on creating content around why kindergarten is important to support families who are maybe considering should my child go into first grade or into kinder um and then some of the elementaries we've seen a loss we saw quite a lot of a loss at fourth grade now going to fifth so we're trying to address that by making increasing awareness of all of the valuable um academics and extracurriculars that are offered at that i can't remember what it's called but the fourth fifth sixth not the early childhood the other intermediate intermediate that's it yeah at that area and to really you know shine a light of course we live in a competitive arizona is a competitive landscape for education and i would say arguably this year has increased that competition tenfold and we have home school options that didn't exist prior so we're keeping an eye on all of that and really pulling out all the stocks and i can say that working directly with the principals they are phenomenal they work really hard on this and we're creating videos we're they're they're taking on a lot which might not feel comfortable and familiar but they're working really hard with our team to do everything we can and i probably forgot some stuff too that was great thank you i think i appreciate you being proactive and all the work that's gone into trying to do what we can to invite students back and let people know that they're we want them back in our schools and the reasons why we want to back in our schools oh yes absolutely the other thing i forgot to mention is we are anticipating when i liaise with my colleagues in other districts we're definitely seeing with regard to enrollment there's a bit of a lag and people are behind and planning for next year so we're doing everything we can over this summer to be as accessible as possible so um jason martin works on creating a summer registration committee group uh i think it's going to be at highland park and that'll be for four weeks and as part of that we're gonna um each school is gonna be create at the elementary and junior high level is gonna be creating kind of like a suite of information a letter from the principal so when people reach out over the summer and they're sent that information they're sent videos um all the schools have created virtual tours for people who don't feel comfortable we're really doing and there's always more and we will continue to do more but we're taking it really seriously i i have a question if if someone perhaps had a kindergarten student in this year yeah if someone had a kindergarten student this year and decided to just keep that student home what would be the process would we put them in first grade kindergarten or what would be the process of someone bringing a student back that maybe they just kept them home for this year it depends on what on what happened at home if a parent came in and requested they wanted their child in kindergarten to start there that'd be great if they requested first grade we'd probably go through some assessments just to see where they're at as well and and so we could help with that placement and recommendation to that parent okay thank you yeah in addition to that um mr ryan and mr costellano have put together a data user group and that data user group is it kind of encompasses a lot of different areas in education here and we're talking about test scores we're talking about ap classes we're talking about a number of clubs organizations those types of things but one of the aspects related to this group is to develop something related to enrollment and so it's going to be designed for schools to be able to set targets in a lot of different areas and as much marketing as as don can do we also know that the neighborhood school and the reputation of that school is what drives enrollment in those communities and so along with her assistance those schools will be targeting those as we move and they have been but we're making it more direct more succinct and putting actual numbers and targets in place for them to try to hit moving forward so once we get that completely developed we'll we'll bring that here and run through it with you but it'll it'll take a little while thank you so there are future budget opportunities as well it's it is possible the legislature will approve greater funding again we constantly are looking at our budget balance carry forward to see what opportunities there could be in increasing that the distance learning remember that the current year budget included a distance learning adjustment of over 6 million dollars we do expect that to be decreased and so that will increase budget balance carry forward as as a consequence also we haven't talked at all about potential of moving expenses into other funds and then finally esther three how much could it be two times s or two um so and then of course with sr3 we do know that once we know the allocation twenty percent of it has to be set aside to address learning loss so we are in the process of planning up to if it's 20 million up to four million dollars to address learning loss we're hoping that that would have a a positive impact on enrollment as well going into the 2022 school year so with that that's all i have on this budget report today thank you miss bets any other questions board members were we supposed to hold our questions to the end sorry okay thank you miss pets that was the only presentation for this evening we'll have some action items as we get to the brief board business meeting uh we'll move to item four which is adjournment of this work study session 4.01 is adjournment anything else before we call the adjournment no sir thank you dr mccord then we'll declare that this work study session is adjourned and we will move to the brief board business meeting item five and we'll call 5.01 call a meeting to order and mrs wilson would you please call the roll miss laurie miss larrywood here mr reed carr here miss sheila eugetti here miss jill humphreys here dr charles santa cruz here mr president all of our members are present you have a quorum thank you miss wilson we're at item 5.03 is approval of this evening's agenda is there a motion so moved thank you miss humphreys is there a second i'll second thank you mr carr any discussion if not we will move to vote on approving this evening's agenda all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye those opposed the same motion carries five zero we move to item six which is the consent agenda and we are open for a motion sentence i move to approve the consent agenda thank you mr carr thank you thank you for the second any discussion seeing none we will take a vote before we do that i just want to notice mr houston that we will have an opportunity to congratulate and offer time for him to speak to us after the vote those in favor please signify by saying aye aye those opposed same motion carries 5-0 dr mccord i'll turn it over to you thank you dr santa cruz governing board members tonight on the consent agenda for certified personnel you just approved rod houston as the new principal of mesquite high school mr houston has been an ad there for a year and then became the interim principal for this school year he's done an exceptional job in an especially difficult time and we just want to congratulate him and his family on this accomplishment mr houston if you'd like to say a couple words please feel free i'd just like to thank the the governing board induction court and the superintendency for their confidence in me when they came to me to ask me to be the interim principal um and i look forward to continuing on the path that mesquite is on and taking us to greater heights and keep rolling so thank you all for your confidence and support thank you mr houston congratulations we'll move to we'll move to item seven action item seven seven point zero one is buyback of accrued time for employees that were included in the student-centered reduction in force dr mccord anything by way of introduction yes dr santa cruz governing board members it was suggested at the last board meeting that we take a look at this and we're asking you to approve those that were part of the reduction in force that didn't qualify based on the 2020-2021 memorandum of understanding the qualifications to be eligible for medical leave buyback those qualifications where have five years consecutive service for the most recent date of hire in the district have accumulated at least 25 days of unused medical leave and complete the current contractual year in gps and then it talks about basically the number of days in the buyback related to that for this purpose if those that didn't have at least 25 days they would be paid at the amount of 26.50 per day for those that didn't meet those certain criteria and so again unusual circumstances call for some things to change a little bit for the benefit of the employee that were part of this and so we bring this to you to allow this to happen for those that are involved and mr mcintosh is here from otm uh to answer any questions related to that before we move to mr mcintosh we're at item 7.01 is there a motion i believe that we approve the buyback of accrued time for employees that were included in the student-centered reduction in force thank you mr eugetti is there a second all second thank you mr carr now we are open for discussion any questions for mr mcintosh what would be the process that these teachers go through to to begin this so good evening dr santa cruz and governing board and dr mccord the process would be the the names that were impacted by the reduction in force we would check each one of those and if they qualify at the end of their contract whatever remaining days we would buy do they have to submit anything to you no they do not we'll take care of it no tim i appreciate that any additional questions seeing none then we will vote on item 7.01 those in favor please signify by saying aye aye those pose the same motion carries five zero we're items seven point zero two suspension of performance evaluation for 2020 and 2021 dr mccord anything for introductory purposes yes dr santa cruz governing board member we're asking you to uh to suspend uh the performance evaluations for the 2021 school year most recently the governor has signed into law the ability to suspend this for this current school year again after your motion mr mcintosh is here to answer any questions thank you sir item 7.02 is on the table is there a motion so moved thank you mrs humphries is there a second second thank you mr eugetti discussion any questions for mr mcintosh i just have one and i think um i know the answer to this but just this this happened already last year correct so so it's two years in a row that this has been suspended at the formal evaluation at the end of last year it was due to an executive order right this year the governor signed it into law on march 18th so retroactively so there's no no formal evaluations for last school year and this school year correct there are formal evaluations last school year but in towards the end of the year they some of them were not we're not going away okay okay thank you additional questions ms wood thank you so i think i think as we've talked before about changes in the evaluations and partly that it's an opportunity to help teachers and schools learn and grow teachers and and principals i i i can understand why we're suspending it because it's been such an interesting year but i also see value in that feedback positive as well as constructive is there something that we can do to make sure that we're still having that happen on campuses i think that's important absolutely i think the principals still plan to meet with their employees towards the end of the year and get some coaching on what they've observed over the course of the year this year and to help them it just won't be a formal evaluation where it's science summitted i did have a question um is there any impact i mean so we didn't have some evaluations last year we're not going to have evaluations this year is there an impact in the future that maybe for someone who wants to be highly effective because they have not had these two prior evaluations how are we going to mitigate mitigate that impact or what are some of the potential outcomes i guess is what i'm asking i think that principals are still having those conversations with their employees each year like i answered with mrs woods the coaching opportunities i don't know what the impact will be it goes until december of next year it is not our plan to continue this into the next year we would like to see the evaluation process go through i think those conversations are really helpful to employees with their administrator on what the expectations are and some coaching opportunities of both strengths and weaknesses among our certified staff there okay thank you this is a an interesting turn because it was a discussion that we certainly incorporated in some of our meetings as we had the opportunity to have that conversation and probably in all fairness i think the gesture is should be appreciated not believing the fact that evaluations can and are helpful to the growth of any employee and we endorse that i believe as a board and as a school district but with the challenges that have faced all teachers and all administrators in the last year to two it just uh begs the question where were those evaluations of any value during this time for those employees to address the issue of growth and support and i would fall on the side of saying it would have been probably minimal at best but evaluations are still an important part of the profession my biggest concern about i i guess first the question you mentioned that the governor passed that there was a law passed this year is that saying we should not do evaluations or is it just giving us the option to not do evaluations it's given us the option governing board would have to approve that you know my my biggest concern about not doing the performance evaluation perhaps you can tell me the impact in a in a or at least a formal performance evaluation is we're getting feedback at least by some that they they were surprised at recent evaluations that were conducted and they were surprised at their outcome on their rubric um i guess my question be had we done formal evaluations a year ago had we done evaluations this year would they have had the feedback they needed to not be surprised i think i think that's a difficult question the answer to be real honestly remember remembering that evaluation is the observation is a moment in time so it's that one lesson now they go in and they do walk throughs and and they take other feedback but the evaluation process is an observation and then with the addition of the walk-through forms the observation forms a pre and a post reflection and then a summary form at the end of the year i do think it's hard to answer that because some would have been scored last year some would not have this year with with the pandemic we had different modalities some people moved to to global some people stayed or went back and forth so it was just a difficult year as a whole for our certified staff you know i i'll admit as an employee you know the evaluation time is always stressful because you're worried are they going to say something they're going to identify something that that i didn't do that i wasn't aware of that i didn't think of you know i mean even when you have confidence in your own work it's still a stressful time um i guess my question would be how many of the teachers would want an evaluation i haven't surveyed them so i can't answer how many want it i know by statute prior to this law we were required to do them i do think the majority of our certified teachers appreciate feedback in general and knowing what they need like i said like what they need to work better on and what they're good at and getting that feedback to take into the the following year i i i just worry two years in a row i mean i i think if i turned the tables and said to the teachers oh you don't have to evaluate your students for two years i think we kind of saw the second half of last year when we quit grading and said you can only increase your grade kind of what happened to education we learned from that and didn't repeat that mistake this time as we moved into this current school year i just worry evaluation is a useful is a useful element to all of us the feedback we use we receive is used for improvement i i just am worried about suspending it for for an indefinite time period now two years that that puts just as it put our students at a disadvantage does it put our teachers at a disadvantage of some sort and i don't know the answer to that i'm generally asking i do think that you know to my point earlier it doesn't have to be this formal legal process which was suspended or signed into law i do i know that our principals will want to meet with teachers and give them feedback and coaching opportunities on what they've observed in the entirety of the year with a teacher's weaknesses and strengths so i'm hoping that as we go through the next month and a half that each principal takes that opportunity to meet with their teachers one-on-one and provide that feedback whether it's feedback off this observation and the walkthroughs or whether it's feedback based on the rubric i think even those that weren't impacted by the student center reduction in force want some of the feedback that their the site leadership has seen this year and observed in a very difficult time and just to be clear so that my comment is not misconstrued i am not anti-evaluation i'm simply saying that given the stress of the time and all of the pressure that our professionals have been under during this stressful time it just seemed like another element on the plate that would not have served them well in getting objective and necessary feedback by no way in no way am i suggesting that we abandoned the concept of evaluation uh in perpetuity just a matter of taking a look at our circumstances and adjusting according to those circumstances just as you use the example of students and and the grading to say that teachers didn't adjust the grading in whatever manner during this time for those students would be probably an error as well so there is there is no desire to abridge the idea of evaluations it's simply a statement of giving teachers a a respite in a time that is particularly challenging in my view any other discussion with that then we will vote on item 7.02 all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye those opposed same motion carries 5-0 we'll now move to item 7.03 and as we move to this i was a little premature but dr mccord if you would can you kind of re-iterate and update the board on the cost of this particular proposal as we work through it and it relates to a two percent ongoing compensation and a three percent stipend for members of our employee group all concerned and then i'll have some follow-up questions along with a motion you bet thank you dr santa cruz uh we are asking for a two percent ongoing compensation increase in a three percent stipend for the 22 school year in order to maintain the base salary competitiveness of the various district positions it's recommended to increase individual salaries for all positions by 2 percent except for minimum wage earners minimum wage earners shall receive an inflationary increase for their hourly wages uh they they received that in january of 20 or will receive that in january of 2022.
in addition to the anticipated or three grant monies it is also recommended approving an additional three percent to all employees including minimum wage earners to be paid on the first pay date in december 2021 and the first pay date of june 2022 based on their continued employment the estimated cost uh for the ongoing the two percent is 4.4 million dollars and in our onboard docks it is misprinted the three percent is a 6.7 million uh dollar stipend for the sr-3 monies thank you dr mccord with that is the introduction to 7.03 is their emotion so i moved that we approved two percent ongoing compensation increase and three percent stipend for fiscal year 2022.