hello my name is lisa last name is patrel i'm speaking tonight as a citizen and resident of ward 5. i'm asking the commissioners to approve the money for the de r piece that builds up feasibility study that ann arbor public power is recommending der distributed energy resources is becoming the industry term for um municipal systems micro nano systems um i recommend also that you read gretchen bakke's book b-a-k-k-e-s the grid it's the points and summations bachi makes at a national level are already being mirrored at the state governance level one fact is that ders are the foundation for the grid in the future as a member of washington 350 i'm i have joined the governor's council on climate solutions i'm in the energy production transmission distribution and storage work group we have concluded phase one where various utilities private public co-op and municipals have presented since march of this year and ders the takeaway is that nearly all parties agree even our big public utilities when challenged during q and a agree that ders are the future and it will be the system that knits together all the micro nanos campus neighborhood municipal and larger systems across the state the work that ann arbor public power is doing to research establishing again a der in ann arbor should be embraced by the city and all departments without interference which could curtail findings or slow progress in fact the city should create synergy by funding the feasibility study that has been discussed in past meetings and that needs to move forward a set of bipartisan bills introduced into the michigan legislature 4715 and 4716 will ensure that ders can move forward at a state level there is energy at a state level to move forward with ders there was local citizen effort to move forward with ders there is a common understanding nationwide the ders are the way forward there is no benefit for ann arbor to act to the contrary in the spirit of measure twice cut one spend the money for the study or be redesigning in 20 seconds all the wasted staff man hours down the drain thank you thank you we have anyone else in the queue we don't chamersky um i wanted to mention and i just looked for it but couldn't find it we received an email from someone who is unable to call in and ask that it the comments be read into the record um i don't know i can't couldn't find the email i don't know i don't recall who else was copied i'm sorry um but what i will do is i will forward the email to all commissioners i think we already did we did okay i believe we did and um for utility we're working with the clerk's office to get e-comment as well set up for the commission so folks who can't join can submit comments it just wasn't possible to get it on for today's meeting so in the future we'll have it okay okay great great good has anybody else [Music] uh gotten the queue then missy or are we ready to move on to the rest of the agenda no one else in the queue you're ready okay so um the next point on the agenda is uh energy commission bylaws and um missy um why don't i let you introduce the subject um because it actually stems from correspondence between you and the attorney's office um it seems that the minutes that we've discussed or the bylaws i should say haven't been approved or there's no record of approval so i'll let missy take it from there yeah yeah so we were doing some cleanup on the bylaws trying to find the most updated version to post on the website and what we uncovered is that the body as a whole hasn't actually adopted the revised bylaws we made a lot of recommendations on the revisions and we worked through that process but then we never bought it brought it back for a formal vote um and have moved forward on the youth commissioner aspects but for cleanup purposes we do have to as a body formally adopt our bylaws and then they'll go to council for formal approval and at that point we'll have our revised bylaws that we had discussed i think before i kind of sat in on the commission so it's a while ago this discussion has happened so we're doing a little cleanup here [Music] uh missy is the intent then that we go through the bylaws and the changes there's a link in the agenda um you don't leave that to the will of the body cherimerski i know nothing has changed since when the group discussed it but it may not feel fresh so i'm not sure the will of the body whatever feels right so too for everybody's information uh you all recall that we did make um and discuss several a couple of changes to the bylaws one of which was the addition of youth commissioners indeed we've actually added those um but apparently uh as was indicated those bylaws were not officially approved so we were doing the cleanup that missy talked about i see chuck has his hand raised go ahead chuck you're recognized thanks uh missy if you look at item three in that um right up you'll see that it references our climate change um plan as well as the sustainability framework um are those two documents still existing or are they sunsetted now replaced by a20 and work moving forward i guess i just didn't want to reference something that's already out of date and maybe we could make a simple change yeah that's a great that's a great point so the sustainability framework definitely still exists but the climate action plan has been replaced with a20 but i i don't think it's false to say it's a climate action plan we just call it a20 so we could we could either name it or leave it as is in case a next generation comes around and it's not called h zero it's a two zero two point or well it's good thank you for the observation yep thank you i'm not looking at it right now is it in capital letters or is it in small case if it's in capitals then it's sort of a proper noun if it's in small case then we can just say that it's whatever the current iteration is capital is capital so maybe we should change it to a20 or maybe we should just refer to it as the current climate action plan what what's your recommendation was that direction i mean yeah sorry yeah um let me really quickly if we just say review and advise on the city's most up-to-date climate action plan perfect all right i'll take that down as a comment does anybody else have any comments if not uh can we get a motion to approve the bylaws as previously discussed and as posted we have a motion from commissioner cleavy give a second from someone and second from commissioner mccomber thank you any discussion other than what we just discussed it looks that we don't have any so um can we take a vote all in favor of adopting the bylaws please raise your hand or and or say yes anyone opposed no one opposed we did clean up very good thank you everybody so next on the agenda is uh proposed anti-republic power in our word for public power i should say resolution on municipalization um we're going to do a first reading of that as well as um have a presentation before that of some powerpoint slides giving us some additional background information we already discussed the topic once before but there's some new insights and missy i believe we're going to turn uh exactly um presenting privileges to um roshan and chris i can't remember in which order yeah and roshan you i know you guys are just popping in here roshan should i make you the presenter uh sure yeah that'd be great okay all right should be good so did you i know that we sent you the slides did you just want me to do it myself or it's up to you if you'd like i did merge them so i'm happy to do that it would that be better for you and me one second i can pull them up yeah it might actually be better for me um just because i have them as two separate documents yeah you got it and i'm confident that i messed up the last slide so don't don't hate me no worries thank you you just find it really quick okay all right you all are gonna know my like secret that i don't know how to use pdfs for presentation one let's see if i do either to be honest no it's here i just saw it oh it's just not loading because city computers are delightful all right hold on bear with me for one second i'm going to stop sharing and i'm going to reload it and see if that helps a little bit thank you all for your patience rashawn or chris do you want to use this time for any comments or remember um about the resolution or do we just wait for missing all right let's try again okay the slides are a good introduction okay there we go can you see it this is the kick here all right is that visible for folk yes perfect great all right all right rashaan just tell me when cool yeah thank you so much um yeah i want to start by thanking chairmaski and the energy commission uh for allowing us the time to speak today and for the continued dialogue we've had over over these past few months uh next slide uh just to give a little bit of context for those who might be watching the stream and don't know about our group my name is roshan krishnan i'm a member of a community organization called annabel for public power next slide we are a coalition of local residents and organizations um we have representation from uh sunrise the democratic socialists of america indivisible uh um's climate action movement washington 350 ann arbor beyond bernie and others and so our goal is a green and publicly owned energy feature we're committed to what we call the 4ds of energy democracy that is we seek to democratize decommodify decarbonize and decolonize our energy systems next slide please and so the problem we're facing is of course the dce isn't transitioning off of fossil fuels or onto renewables fast enough i'm not going to belabor this because we've covered it a lot before but just suffice to say that their current energy mix is very coal and fossil fuel heavy uh they're still actively investing in fossil fuel infrastructure and their net zero deadlines are late enough that they might as well not even be there um so um if we move to the next slide uh we know that there are a number of different approaches that we can take to try to speed up a transition to renewables and to pursue energy justice um there are a lot of groups working on community choice aggregation at the state level uh we've had some conversations about a sustainable energy utility to help with distributed energy pooler proliferation and efficiency and of course we believe that a municipal electric utility could be a powerful tool for equitable decarbonization and what's clear is we need to do this fast so we should be open to any approach possible i think i speak for all of us with acp2 when i say i'd love to see cca happen i certainly wouldn't be opposed to a sustainable energy utility but i think our goal here as community members together is to make sure that a municipal utility that public power gets a fair shake that we seriously investigate what it could do for just decarbonization in ann arbor next slide please so with that we have some clear benefits and also some open questions about how a municipal electric utility would work for ann arbor next slide please uh the benefits again are you know things we've talked about with you all previously so i'm not going to spend a ton of time on them but you know we think that a municipal utility could be transformative for reliability uh for affordability uh for energy democracy and public accountability all while pumping revenue into the community and separating a rapid community controlled transition to clean energy next slightly so what we do need to know in order to ensure a municipal utility makes sense for ann arbor mostly has to do with cost we need to know how much it would cost to establish a municipal utility how much revenue it would generate how that would compare to our other options things of that nature so on our next slide here those questions are obviously crucial ones and that's why we think a feasibility study is up the path forward slide please uh the so just in short what a feasibility study is is a rigorous realistic forward-looking and professional assessment of the net benefits of establishing a municipal electric utility typically you'll find these are conducted by professional engineering firms slide a feasibility study would look into a number of different things it would project ann arbor's future residential and commercial commercial electricity usage it would project dte's future revenues if we were to keep them as our energy provider it would estimate various different costs like the cost of acquiring dte's infrastructure project costs for power supply operations and maintenance and it would also identify financing sources for startup costs so basically in gathering all that information together it would allow us to make a direct comparison to the investor-owned utility model aka dte what we have now and determine feasibility so in other words feasibility would be you know what is the ability of the municipal utility after costs and debt service to supply reliable power at lower rates than dce while also providing a revenue stream for the city uh next slide please now in terms of cost our best estimate would be around 120 000 dollars this is based on cost for other feasibility studies conducted across the country we have examples from small towns like decorah iowa some mid-sized towns like pueblo colorado all the way up to huge cities like chicago and really we think this is a small price to pay in order to take a serious look at an option that could be of significant benefit to ann arbor's energy future next slide please uh so i'm going to close by emphasizing that we're not asking the energy commission to commit to supporting a municipal utility we are asking you to help us gather information to make the best decision for ann arbor currently we don't see a clear path to implementing a20 strategy one of powering our grade with 100 renewables and as we've seen over the past month or so from the flooding in detroit to the heat waves across the american west uh climate change is here we have to take an honest look at all of our options and make sure that we don't leave any stone unturned in terms of things that can get us off of fossil fuels as fast as possible while protecting and improving the quality of life of our most vulnerable communities and strengthening public accountability and participation so we believe that our resolution to recommend um that the city council fund the feasibility study is consistent with this approach in ensuring that we seriously consider a municipal utility uh you know ultimately we know that a municipal utility is a legal option it's one that we can pursue immediately it brings power into the hands of the people fuel pardon the pun and it's an option that could help us get to the 100 clean energy that we all know we need while reducing energy burden on residents and generating revenue for a city so we think it's worth really taking a serious look at that through a feasibility study next slide please so with that i thank you for your time and i'll turn it over to chris bisdock of olsen bizduck and howard who will provide more of the legal context around what this would look like chris leads the energy and climate practice group at olsen bizdok and howard he also served as an elected city commissioner and the mayor of traverse city and on the board of that city's municipal electric utility traverse city light and power so take it away chris thanks roshan and thanks to the energy commission for having me as a guest and as a good guest i will try not to overstay my welcome i have just a couple of slides to share with you we shared a a fairly extensive report that hopefully you've received which is uh partly a legal road map for the steps that would be involved in municipalization and also some comments on the the legality of doing so either becoming the sole provider of electric service in ann arbor through an eminent domain uh situation or uh as a parallel utility providing service in ann arbor um in competition with dt electric missy would you mind uh moving to the next slide which was merely introductory so we'll move on to the next one after that our conclusions which we can talk about in any level of detail that the commission wishes is that cities are authorized by both the michigan constitution and the home rule cities act to establish their own municipal electric companies there are some votes and some steps which are outlined in our report to do that cities have two primary options as i mentioned one is to acquire the incumbent investor-owned utility by eminent domain or to form their own utility to operate alongside the iou dte has a permanent franchise in the city of ann arbor as you all know under the foot act the old statute that precedes uh a couple iterations ago of the michigan constitution and so they have a contractual right to continue that franchise but it's not an exclusive franchise uh it's a it's a it's the city within the city limits could operate its own electric company um and could also acquire that franchise through eminent domain could i have the next slide we provided in the report a road map which begins with the feasibility study that roshan mentioned evaluation looking at the various options uh whether it's purchase or condemnation or whether it is um operating in parallel could i go to the next slide uh the financing alternatives for that project as well as the obtaining of a franchise from the city for that activity all of the details of this uh process and these steps are in our report our assessment of your city charter is that your city charter is also is already a fair way along uh in terms of its compatibility with establishing a muni you would still need to have the votes that are outlined in the report but there is a lot that's in your charter already that's compatible with engaging in this activity the next slide if i could in addition to the legal opinion the group asked me to comment a little bit on just my perspective on the economics of this situation part of my job is representing environmental organizations in cases at the michigan public service commission which concern the rates and charges of utilities i've been doing that since 2008 i've represented these organizations in at least 60 cases involving the rates and charges of dte electric alone so i spent a lot of time with their books essentially and so this is not a legal opinion this is just the observation of someone who's been doing this for a while and also someone who was responsible for the budget of a small midwestern city myself and a small midwestern municipal utility myself as an elected official generally speaking there are three reasons in my opinion that in addition to being more green a municipal electric utility is more economically and financially beneficial to a city than being the customer of an iou the first is taxes uh ious pass their taxes onto their customers that includes federal income tax it includes property taxes on assets those are all all flowed through to the customers via various formulas in the rates and charges and munis don't do that i don't need to do that return on equity is another one in the formula that's used to make rates for uh investor owned utilities they are entitled to an approved uh return on equity or profit on their entire rate base uh dt's rate base at the as of the last case i think is 17 billion dollars uh and they they uh earn a a 50 weighted rate of return on that which is 9.9 percent so it's a lot of money that goes towards uh shareholder profits executive salaries and executive bonuses municipalities don't do that they don't need to do that they borrow at municipal bond rates they have a very uh affordable cost of capital and they don't earn an roe many municipalities make payments to the cities that own them and we give a couple examples of that in the appendix to the report traverse city light in power pays five percent of its gross revenues to the city of traverse city just as a contribution to the general fund it adds up to a lot of money because it includes all of uh the gross revenues of that utility the holland board of public works does it on a net basis they grant 50 percent of the net income of their uh board of public works back to the city of holland and a variety of other uh municipal electric utilities do that in a variety of ways so in addition to lower cost there's also a revenue benefit to um to the city uh of doing so i knew an old um salty uh lawyer who died recently at the age of i think 97 years old and he once said to me you know we give away meaning we the government we give away all the profitable enterprises and we only keep the stuff that doesn't make money and municipal electric utilities if you keep them or if you re-establishment of them are an exception uh to that rule the other place that i wanted to highlight was the embedded costs of legacy generation the old plant that is in the utilities rate base old power plants retired power plants uh investments in pollution control technology on old uh fossil generated power plants all are in the rate base they stay in the rate base or they get securitized long after those assets are retired so if you're the customer of a you so for example uh ann arbor participated recently in a voluntary green pricing case that was a successful settlement and ann arbor played a key role missy had excellent testimony in that case uh the the the advocacy by your lawyer valerie brader was excellent in that case i was in that case on behalf of nrdc and the michigan environmental council and there was a good settlement in that case and it lowered it cut among other things the premium that's paid for green energy by customers who choose to opt in but customers who choose to opt in and pay that pr premium are still paying for all the old fossil generation because it's embedded in the costs uh it's inescapable with the investor owned utility and that's not true of i mean it's a pull utility especially a new one they don't need to take on those legacy costs um and they they they can move solely with new uh sources of generation and renewable sources and other mechanisms that i heard about from some of the public commenters tonight if i could go to the last slide this is illustrative and i don't offer it in place of roshan's 14 percent number this is kind of like my bottle cap collection we sort of went around and found a few interesting things from the published rage of municipal utilities put them in a drawer to examine further later so this is not a scientific or systematic study it's simply an illustration that um of the reality that because of the reasons i mentioned the economics of a municipal electric utility are more favorable uh than the economics of being the customer of an investor owned utility or an iou so that's my last slide um and i'm happy to discuss anything further if you like but that's those are all my comments that i prepared thank you chris and roshan um yeah happy to take that one i i have a proposal if i may and that is uh we have a resolution um and it's proposed to be introduced and what i recommend that we do is do that um see if we get a first and a second uh motion to consider the resolution and then open things up for discussion including of the resolution and the slides and presented by roshan and chris and then have a good lively discussion on that basis is that agreeable to everyone so what i would ask you to do missy is to open the resolution and ember i believe you are going to introduce the resolution exactly um in a minute we need to coordinate with ctn because i think it's cut out so i need to be able to use if you could give me just a minute to introduce okay if anyone else hears that ctn's still down please let me know via email and i'll try to pick that one all right let me bring this up here is that correct you just want to bring up the resolution yes john what do you what do i need to do in order to introduce it do you just want me to describe where we're coming from with introducing this um i would suggest that maybe it went stuff on the screen it's not too terribly long so i thought maybe you could read through it and everybody can digest it i don't know that everybody's done that and you know this pretty important and significant decision so i think it's worthwhile um reading through it and then we'll open it up if we like i said we'll ask for emotion to consider it and then we can dive into both this as well as the content of the two presentations does that sound good to everybody okay amber go ahead and and read it to us okay um okay so this is the uh the title says draft energy commission resolution to recommend that city council authorizes a feasibility study for a municipal utility so whereas fossil fuel combustion procurement and transportation produce significant greenhouse gas emissions that raise global temperatures which are already at harmful levels leading to extreme weather events droughts massive flooding and resultant death and displacement of thousands of people worldwide whereas city council on november 4th approved a resolution declaring a climate emergency and set a target date of 2030 to achieve city-wide carbon neutrality whereas city council as its june at june 1st 2020 meeting approved the living a20 ann arbor carbon neutrality plan incorporating the 2030 target whereas the generation of electricity accounts for roughly 40 percent of ann arbor's 1.8 million metric tons of annual greenhouse gas emissions whereas the vast majority of this electricity is purchased from gte energy whose monopoly service area includes ann arbor whereas in 2020 dte generated 80 of its electricity by burning fossil fuels mainly coal whereas dte is currently building a 1.1 billion 1 100 megawatt gas fired power plant in saint clair county with an estimated useful life of at least 40 years whereas dte's continued long-term reliance on fossil fuel combustion to generate electricity is incompatible with ann arbor's fossil fuel carbon neutrality goals whereas michigan law authorizes municipal electric utilities and at least 41 michigan jurisdictions currently operate municipal communities including the city of lansing holland wyandot traverse city and chelsea whereas the ann arbor city charter section 15.1 states that the city shall have all the powers granted by law to acquire construct own operate improve enlarge extend repair and maintain publicly fill these including electric light and power whereas municipal electric utilities can freely can freely obtain electricity including clean energy on the open market and can generate and distribute their own clean energy whereas cities typically authorize and fund feasibility studies by a qualified consultant to determine the short and long term benefits and costs of establishing a municipal electric utility whereas recent feasibility studies by the city of chicago illinois and pueblo colorado colorado cost these cities approximately 120 000 each resolved that the ann arbor energy commission recommends that the ann arbor city council authorize and fund a study to determine the feasibility of establishing a municipal electric utility and resolve that the study be conducted by a qualified consulting firm using industry best practices thank you very much do we have a motion to consider this resolution and a second motion from commissioner mccomber and a second from council member briggs so um we um have uh both the presentation and the resolution itself in front of us for consideration and i'd like to open it up for discussion and comments and bridgette uh you want to start thanks um so i have um a friendly suggestion on the resolution which is perhaps in the very last line provide a timeline uh for by which we want to see this happen um i'm in favor of it overall but i'm curious um if these feasibility studies uh include the legal costs that are often entailed in cities pursuing this route does anybody know if that's the case with these feasibility studies or if they're simply about logistics and technical matters does anybody want to address that question directly what i would offer is is that one thing we would want to do with something like this is obviously there would be an rfp that would go out and the rfp would have to define the scope of the study and the scope of the study could specifically address your concern so john that's right on point and historically i've been i've worked on a number of municipal studies the cost that was quoted would not include any kind of a legal fee because at this juncture we're not taking any legal action we're simply looking at the technical economic legalistic boundary conditions i guess i'll say that a consulting engineer would typically look at it an engineering firm is not a legal authority but that would be the next step you know if the economic technical side of a feasibility study suggests that it did go to the next level um and it sounds like the the legal firm that was just talking on this matter have done a fair amount of work i've i've seen their work before and it sounds like they've investigated it and didn't find any what i'll say smoking guns or dead ends or showstoppers so you know at this juncture the technical economic component would be the most important to lead the effort and then look at the legalistic issues secondarily thanks chuck um by the way i i understand the concern and i think that was a big element of costs um in the case of municipalization in boulder um but um that would be something that would hopefully be identified in the visibility study um and you know as i said we could uh i identify that in the scope larry i think you were second um and then um amber um and chuck if you're if you still want to talk leave your hand up if not take it down go ahead larry well i i think it's fair to say that the the legal aspects could be very very very costly clearly and very hard to predict that i suspect that dt will go to the mat with this one for sure this is in many ways the loss of the grip that they have on power here in the state of michigan but that's not the reason i wanted to talk there's another approach to this which i didn't see actually outlined and that is what is referred to as structural separation so when you talk when chuck did the excellent presentation talking about transmission distribution and supplies those are three legs to the power supply of of utility energy transmission and distribution are natural monopolies you don't really need two sets of wires going to a house two sets of wires going across the state you really want to have certain monopolies supply has no such requirement supply as a monopoly is even worse so a lot of the bad behaviors that we see and attribute to dte i think are the result of that monopoly control of both distribution and supply it doesn't have to be that way it takes legislation to break it it's called structural separation so that the supply and delivery is separate in fact in history of michigan transmission used to be all controlled by the same utilities and that was basically broken out and it's now a monopoly run by mostly by another company called itc most people don't even know about them but they're out there so a lot of this i think is something that could also have been considered in fact there was someone by the name of gary glenn who is promoting something called energy choice which was basically allowing people the choice of their energy supply so that we no longer have a monopoly in the state of michigan right now that monopoly allows 90 control of all the electricity in dte's area and it leads to very bad behavior in my opinion it doesn't lead to lower costs it doesn't lead to better reliability it has a lot more to do with the power of a monopoly and the problem with a monopoly isn't just that it's bureaucratic and not responsive to the market but it is also in some ways corrupting and so this is why i i really think that that's also a part of what could have been considered in addition to municipalization um because of the nature of dte and the size of dt it's not just a monopoly it's a for-profit monopoly and it is conflicted because it's been in the entire supply chain of fossil fuels it isn't just that they burn it but they trade it and they transport it it's they are a classic conflict of interest and it's allowed to go on for all this time and i just don't understand why so i would wonder and my question would be to um to chris have you given any consideration to the idea of structural separation as it relates to community aggregation and also to the sustainable energy utilities because once you have the ability to make your own choice then you suddenly put the monopoly on their heels and um you know potentially we can end the monopoly completely which is what we really need we need a monopoly for transmission we got one we need a monopoly for distribution we got one we don't need one for supply that's my position so chris what can you comment on this certainly commissioner kerber i agree with many of your observations uh relative to the history of transmission in michigan and relative to the importance of energy choice and generation choice there are states where um the distribution the investor owned utilities operate as distribution monopolies and sometimes transmission monopolies but the generation is all done by choice ohio runs like that um they have a whole set of mischief of their own in terms of affiliate relationships and um bags of money apparently at the legislature so i mean that that so i'm being a little bit of a smart aleck there in in in that that wasn't a side that was not your main to the point but the so i agree with you that generation choice as a general matter is a good thing uh and i agree with you that that a system in michigan that had generation choice that was unlimited right now there's a very small fraction and it's not for residential customers it's only for uh commercial and primary customers and primarily being the the ones who take service off the transmission and there's a 10 cap on that and that cap is always fully subscribed those customers are driven by cost considerations more so than renewable but the same way it would work the same way with renewables so that is a system that has greater opportunities it has other potential downsides as ohio shows you end up bailing out the generation uh in other ways um but the you know the generally the fact is that that would require a sea change at the legislature and a sea change that would be directly adverse to uh the investor owned utilities in michigan and you know i'm not a lobbyist and i'm not a a politician at least not anymore but you know that that that's not something you know if you want to do something in ann arbor and you want to do something that is practical and direct and has a series of steps that you can undertake under existing law municipalization is the thing if you want to look at programmatic change across the state then i would agree with all of your observations you know our our our requested task was to look at could this be road mapped uh to to to some kind of a conclusion under existing law and the answer is that you could you could go you could create the public power company in ann arbor the only other point i would notice that you know i i agree with you that there are some natural monopolies i would also note that you know distribution is not necessarily a natural monopoly and there are cities in michigan that have both you know a muni operating and also um also have an iou operating in my alley uh at my house i have you know on the one side of the alley are the tclp uh poles and on the other side of the alley are the consumers polls headed up to the hospital providing service there so it's not the end of the world to have um you know more than one set of distribution lines either so that's just more of an editorial comment than a legal response but i agree with all your premises i agree with you about um you know programmatic change at the state level our job was to you know i just work here so to speak and our job was to provide a specific roadmap under existing law which municipalization definitely is thank you thank you um can i interrupt for a second missy wants to jump in and make a public service announcement about yes public service announcement power is down at ctn so if you know of anyone that's trying to watch right now they're not going to be able to get the live stream but they can watch on youtube the youtube channel i don't know the magic of why that's possible but direct people towards ctn ann arbor youtube channel and that's where folks can join so sorry for the inconvenience they can also just uh call in and listen and write yeah i mean they won't be able to see any presentations or anything like that but um larry did you have anything to follow up on or can we move on to the next person um no i just wonder if it's something that could be considered or at least as part of this whole discussion i'm concerned that you know leaving it out is something that um again i mean there i think there's gonna be politics no matter what you do i you know um i i understand that municipalization might have a clear path maybe i'm not sure let's um circle back and and have a discussion on on scope and alternatives and things like that and you know we're probably not going to vote we're not planning on voting this tonight um but we could vote on it as early as next month or you know whatever we we decide in terms of other perspectives that we want to gain and we we do have some speakers lined up from other cities that have tried municipalization so we'll discuss that as the evening goes on i think ember you were next and then chuck again and then robert sure um i just have a couple things one quick thing is i think chris has mentioned a couple times this road map report that he produced for ann arbor for public power so i don't think we shared that um ahead of time as one of the one of the things that were included so if people are interested in reading that um we can also share it with the commission or go up to on legislature just as a housekeeping note the other the other quick thing that i was going to say is just that the holland michigan board of public works recently announced this summer that they're actually lowering um their rates um and i just thought that was interesting to learn um i i have a little quote pulled from an article that just was it said as a community non-profi not-for-profit entity holland bpw turns each dollars our customers spend into the services provided for them when we are able to experience lower costs we pass that on through reduction we pass on the reduction through in the reform of rate decreases um so i just think that that's like especially as we talk finances like for me a big interest that i have in um municipalizing our electric utility is thinking about things um like that where we have a model that is meant to serve um you know our residents instead of being an investor in utility that's model you know by definition is to benefit um shareholders and so i think that's really i don't know i just thought it was cool to see when when do you hear about a utility lowering rates right and so just a cool example from michigan um another briefing i just wanted to add is that i think like we can continually discuss now like whether or not we think municipalization is the best option or we could discuss like when it hasn't or has worked in circumstances in different states across the country but i think for this resolution it was intentionally just to like focus on supporting a feasibility study because we're really not going to know um you know what what is best for ann arbor until we get the numbers kind of as truck alluded to earlier like the first debate is really like an economic technical one that you know by doing a feasibility study we can see the costs at hand for ann arbor and then that's a future discussion about whether we want to pursue that board when we have the numbers on the table of what specifically it would cost as an estimate for the city of ann arbor and so i think that's just what i want to focus on too is that we're really just asking for a support of a feasibility study not for support unanimously of a that you support municipalization so it's very possible that you could still be skeptical of whether or not you support municipal utility but you might still be interested in knowing exactly what the numbers would be you know it's theoretically possible that the numbers come back and even ann arbor for public power is like yeah this this is not going to work here um i just wanted to throw that out there commissioner i will be brief because i could speak on this topic for a long time um the things i wanted to point out one comparison was comparing dte or consumer's energy to a municipality it's important to understand when you hold up your hand that like dt covers a big chunk of the thumb it covers this little city called detroit a lot of the suburbs and you're comparing dt's service territory to a city like lansing or a city like traverse a city like holland different scale different structure different issues pop up and the requirement that the utilities supply electricity to all those customers across in the case of et or consumers a large geographical area relatively speaking is difficult it's not simple so it's really difficult when you're looking at comparing um structurally how these entities serve the util serve the people that they are the customers the ratepayers a little bit different story and i i could draw that up a little bit later um i gave everybody on this call at least our our team on the commission a slide that shows how lansing is served and in the power requirements to serve that city relative to the renewable peace that it currently has and how difficult it is to move from the structure they've got now and in lansing board of water and light has a strong renewable energy goal but they recognize how difficult it is to move that way quickly without burdening their customers so there's a fine balance between reliability cost and how to make this happen um and we all know that boulder pretty much gave up and and chose not to go down the municipality route a lot of lessons to be learned there how they were able to move excel to to deliver what they really desired might be a candidate to look at and compare to so i'll just i'll just say that the other piece of it is if we do move toward a study i would really like for this commission and osi to work together to make that happen in terms of what's the scope schedule cost what's considered what's not i think there's a lot of of important information that could be gleaned from the members that i'm talking about to make that happen and i just want to ensure that that is something going forward if we take this on so thank you thank you chuck um by the way people are allowed to speak twice so if any anyone that has spoken desires to speak again i see mary's raise his hand again um that you're certainly encouraged to do that so uh commissioner george then commissioner regina then commissioner kerber uh two quick questions um amber i was just curious and i guess about any of the other public power folks on here um you know chuck alluded to you know the scope and you know you know overall cost and what exactly this feasibility study would be looking like uh you know i read a little bit about the feasibility study in chicago and the feasibility study they did in pueblo um i was just curious is there going to be a need for another follow-up feasibility study is it going to be you know a two-step approach here i mean have you thought that far out or is it going to be one big feasibility study um just as an idea of like what we're dealing with here as we're discussing what is immediately in front of us so i can actually speak to that um basically yeah there would need to be more stuff if the first one goes well so you know if we have the first study and we say oh wow you know this ends up looking like it could be a really good idea it could really work for ann arbor then yes naturally you will need to sort of look more into the more of the details the operational things and potentially contract out more to um figure that out but that's kind of it's down the road all depending on what the results of the the initial study are i think to chuck's point too that like the more coordinated the first one is like the more information we're likely to glean from it like if if we're really careful about the process and what the request for proposals is and you know it's something that's a collaborative effort to make sure we have the ass we want to have in the first one that could limit what is needed in the second one um i also know like for example we've talked to decora iowa which has had a feasibility study and i know that they had two but it was because the first one um was funded um and created by like through um fundraising campaign from residents but um when then the city wanted to do their own even though they ended up commissioning the same company and it ended up having similar results and so that was also a strategy here is try to like first have it in the cities control just the first o round so there wouldn't need to be unnecessary spending um and time spent by having it you know have two very similar studies conducted [Music] real quickly and that is at one time i know that a2p2 had a timetable in mind and we've been talking about possible iterative approach um is how how important is is timing in all of this or is that something for consideration and discussion later i think some of the consideration of timetable is knowing that like the feasibilities take a significant amount of time to conduct um and so we need to like consider the fact that it could be three to six months if not longer before we get back the results of a feasibility study especially if it is one that is um thorough and ultimately um at some point in the line of creating municipal utility the public needs to vote on the measure so if it's also worth considering the timing of a um of like when the public can vote on things okay um my second question there and that same kind of timeline uh that you mentioned uh cherymerski um i was just curious um you know what uh the conversations i i presume there have been if there haven't been you know that'd be good to know too uh with a with an arbor for public power or ember or anybody uh with that with you know with mayor taylor and you know council leadership i'm sure uh the two council members might be able to get into this a little bit but where you know this would fit both in within the current city budget you know where they're going to pull out 120 000 as well as additionally where this fits in with the political goals that the council has in the short run i was just curious if any of those conversations had happened yet uh does the either the council members care to comment or missing any comments from your side or have those have those discussions even taking place you can give us a hint my my questions were along similar lines um so i think that's something that that still needs to be discussed um you are next in line anyhow so why don't you uh and you know commissioner george do you have anything else to say or again oh that that was just my uh my my thoughts on it i i just know that as someone that's been involved with a lot of big labor campaigns and so forth that you know when you're trying to do something that's transformational you know that earliest buy-in from local elected officials can be very it can get you very far in getting it uh accomplished so uh you know that is just a a small piece of advice i would uh hope that you guys might be able to pick up on thanks um if you take your hand down and put it back up if you have another question that'd be great uh councilmember rodina go ahead with comments or questions yeah thanks jim mursky and my my questions i guess follow up pretty your comments maybe even um follow up pretty closely to commissioner george's um and and i don't want to put missy on the spot either i don't know that she would have an answer to the questions but some of it i think would result in council members making a decision but knowing that um that this wasn't budgeted for this year and we do have a structural deficit we're contending with one of the things that i'm already thinking about in my head is how to pay for even i would say if it's 120 000 i think that's probably on the more modest end of what this might end up costing if i'm kind of looking at some of the other places and additional studies and if we want it to be more comprehensive so that there aren't multiple that need to go one right after another it might be on the higher end somebody already mentioned kind of a legal um feasibility study also which i i looked at pueblo and i think that they had an additional 250 000 wrapped up in to that if i'm not mistaken and so i guess i'm thinking missy historically this is where i'm still going to play the newness card my newness to council um uh doesn't necessarily lend itself to it when we do these things generally throughout the year i i wouldn't want this necessarily to pull resources out of your existing budget and and cut from the work that you're already doing and so i guess i'm wondering to the extent that that that's something that you would anticipate happening or is that truly just a decision of counsel to figure out where this money would come from uh yeah thank you for the question so we because of the structural deficit in the way that we did our budget we tapped into reserve funding so something like this might traditionally be a contention like to go to the reserves but as you know we're dipping into that right now so i that could be something council were to consider but it is not something that i have modeled in terms of like what we would not do if it came from osi's budget and if we if we do pass this i anticipate we're going to be asked to look at that as long as as well as some other folks so i think that would likely be a council decision it would be a mid-year budget adjustment um so i it you know it's not a simple straight vote um i think it's an eight vote item thank you um councilmember dean i assume that's you're done right yes thank you okay um larry yes um thanks john um so one of the things that i was wondering about when you talk about stranded assets uh the older assets that are both utility both consumers and and dt have plenty plenty of and of course as we walk away from those costs someone else has more of those costs and we are part of a community of not only cities but other rural areas and so forth so doing this i mean one of the reasons why this probably would be a very scary thing for the utilities is because it could precipitate a lot of people moving away from these costs in addition to just the city of ann arbor so i'm happy if we could have taken the 1.1 billion dollar plant that they're building in sinclair and stuck that on the dte shareholders and not on their ratepayers unfortunately that's not what happens in the state of michigan so i think it's an important question and i really direct this to chris and any of the other advocates what do we do when everybody else says how come ann arbor has just done this and stiffed us and left us with all the old equipment chris so i guess i have a couple answers those uh questions commissioner kerber one is that um in setting the formulas for utility rates a loss of customers and a loss of load without any corresponding reduction in embedded costs is going to drive higher rates for the customers who remain it's also going to eliminate the it's going to reduce the demonstrated capacity need for certain expensive assets as well right dt has one two three coal plants one one retired uh last month a month and a half ago uh uh two are scheduled to retire a couple years from now and then and then another one is uh slated for 2030 2031 time frame and then monroe for 2040.
that's how i come up with the property taxes and estimating what the property taxes are now i will tell you there are some calculations behind the scenes that i have to do and some other spreadsheets but i wanted to give you a flavor of how that works and so as i project out also in future years when i start developing a three-year budget i also have to look at eavs i have to look at cpis and estimate a lot of that stuff and so that's how those numbers are all developed so it gives you a flavor of how the budget is developed on the revenue side and the same thing happens also when we have when i have those other categories each category has its own breakdown like this and that's where it gets to be 180 pages because in local sources i have a breakdown for that in our state sources which is our grants i have a breakdown for that and for all of that so we get a lot of detail okay so then let's go on the expense side so if you turn to page nine then this is a summary page of all the various areas that i budget in based on really the afr the annual financial report which is some program areas and there are four basic areas one is schools one is program areas one is the benefits and one is grants so there's really four different areas that i kind of separate the budget into and then sub categorize it school things when you see the schools up there those are really expenses that are instructionally based that don't fit into the program areas that down at the bottom so like the first program area you'll see is called special ed so under special ed that's where we have all that's where i uh account for all of our special ed teachers all of our special ed tas all of our special ed supplies so that's all there but regular ed teachers are up in the upper area because they don't fit down there so you're going to see a number of different areas down there whether it is summer school whether it's social workers guidance health services and all of those have in their salaries supplies purchase services all of those things and again if you look at paige and i know i'm going to be jumping around but on page 12 is a detail sheet of early childhood program now i've blackened out the names on salaries there but you'll see what i do and it's unique what i do no businessman i would just tell you this no business manager in the state does what i do on a budget i literally input everybody's salary into into the spreadsheet and then i calculate out raises in the future to get as close to a budget and actual as possible for the board and for the community as i project out so you will see a lot of detail here when it comes to salaries those are actual salaries what their actual salaries are going to be for 21.22 a lot of business managers will just add a percentage it's called percentage budget you know or you just add a percentage i don't do that i actually go through that and then you know when it comes to supplies and that will i meet with some department heads and ask them what their needs are based on their needs and then i put those in so you're going to see that in early childhood there the question is is that all we spend in early childhood no you'll see again back to page nine under early childhood program area there's an expense of 1.4 million dollars 1 million thirty thousand dollars for 74.
so when you take that when you take down the load and the demand that the utility has because it has uh taken on a loss of load through a loss of customers the utility is going to have a harder time justifying continued uh maintenance of some of those assets in the rate base and is going to have to retire some more uh is committed to securitizing a couple of those plants which will be a lower cost of debt moving forward so i guess i guess that's a that's maybe getting down in the details in the weeds but the the point i think is that um you're going to have an amount of fixed costs which are going to be spread over a large a smaller number of customers but you're also going to have an obligation by the utility to take some of these assets out of rate base to account for the fact that the load is lower staying in a bad uh relationship because it might cost somebody else more money is uh you know that's a policy decision that um each community would have to make for itself um you know i i can't tell you there wouldn't be a financial impact on the residual customer base but i also would say there would be an affirmative obligation on the utility and the regulators would be looking at and the interveners would be looking at they really need to retire more of those assets and the first ones that could come off would be the dirtiest ones so in some ways by taking load off the system you're going to force some additional fossil retirements so you'll have a you'll have something of a clean benefit on the rest for the rest of the customer base as well theoretically all other things being equal and all those other qualifiers that you have to make thank you larry any follow-up no that's great thank you appreciate it um by the way um i think this is somewhat relevant to the discussion and someone correct me if i'm wrong but i think there was just a ruling from the california public service commission um cpc actually have these in any case i'm related to ccas and they have agreed to apply something like a surcharge for two communities that are using ccas specifically to address the question that you raised larry actually the mention of it included a mention of paul fenn who presented to us about ccas and that he was disappointed obviously with the ruling um but it was based somewhat on the same concerns that you're raising larry about what is the impact on the remaining customer base and equity issues and things like that um i mean i don't know if that would be relevant at some point here but in any case since it's we've also discussed ccas i thought i'd bring it up commissioner briggs yeah thank you uh this is a exciting topic and it hasn't fascinating presentation and discussion um i did want to ask a couple of questions um and then also and we've got two other resolutions that we're considering tonight so this is first reading so i just wanted to point to that time issue um but um so my questions um i guess one is for um missy in terms of her understanding of kind of what might come after obviously it entirely depends on what would be included in an rfp like this but in terms of sort of the previous presentations we received if i recall correctly there's there certainly is um usually a a follow-up and much more expensive study that occurs following a feasibility study and that the costs associated with implementing um this type of program would be more a part of that second phase is that is that correct and could you talk a little bit more about that from how you understand it yeah yeah and i also want to thank chris for the presentation because i think it very much i don't know about you but it mirrors almost identically what valerie brader told us in her presentation about the process um and so understanding all of that is the question about legality is pretty much resolved the question about cost is not and so the technical study seems like it would give us direction um a direction on cost and then we would have to do the much much much more detailed analysis if we decide to go that we'll really get into are we standing up parallel infrastructure or are we going to do imminent domain and take the infrastructure and that it's true it's sort of like a gateway process that we'd have to go through like a 120 000 investment doesn't get it on the ballot right like we have other things we have to do due diligence for sure um which is what we would want to do you know obviously understand that infrastructure and make an informed decision and you didn't ask this but just wanted to this up to in october boulder is coming and we're trying to have winter park florida come as well to talk about those other elements so not necessarily the first phase but like what is the process actually like from their experience like from stuff to the nuts right um thinking through that so that that's on october unfortunately was the first time that holder was free to join us no actually that was going to be kind of part of my next set of comments so um since we have some presentations in the fall um one of the pieces that's you know certainly in my mind and in terms of moving this sort of study forward as one if we were to bring this to council um before the next next budget cycle it would require eight votes um as a budgetary amendment um we are dealing with really challenging budgets right now so um as it should be there's a lot of scrutiny around those um and so i would think that there would be desire from folks to really see that we've done as much work as we can on this on this piece i think another question that council might have um prior to november we'll see what happens but i know that there's a desire to to um and i i guess um figuring out um you know if voters are interested in supporting um funding for climate action in ann arbor and so understanding kind of what the resources are that we're working with in our community i think is also a is a question that many would have so just a couple of thoughts on on maybe when we might want to consider how that that relates to us considering this kind of a second reading thank you other commissioners um i have a few thoughts that i would like to share if i may i'll try to keep it brief as mentioned we've got some other topics to cover um first of all um i would encourage commissioners to take this issue seriously and study it we obviously plan on doing that in commission meetings but if we were to do something like this um it's not just 120 000 that we're talking about it's the direction that we would recommend to city council that the city might take and so this is an important decision and i think all of you probably have a good sense of all the different other issues that city council considers and so the position that we take will carry obviously some weight because the rest of the council is not going to have the time to invest into this so this is an important decision for us um just a couple of thoughts that i wanted to share with you um it just so happens that my son lives in decorah iowa and indeed i put and spoke twice with the person that headed up the initiative there and put the a2p2 people in touch with with him and it's instructive to um study cases like that there was that actually went to a vote they lost they're pursuing it again they think their chances are actually very good at least that was this about two or three months ago um but one of the things that i think we need to consider and contend with is when this happened the first time the consultant for this group in decorah estimated that purchasing the grid assets from the local utility um alliance would cost seven million dollars alliant um engaged their own consultants and they estimated that the value of the uh grid assets was 50 million dollars and there was an estimate from the one group that it would be a 30 reduction and the the other people said it was going to be a 30 increase so one of the things that we have to think about this is uh conflicting information um also in the case of decorah the utility spent five times as much money as the group that was leading the initiative um so there's a whole lot of different uh things that we need to take into consideration and one that's on top of the things that we've been talking about 120 000 there's an opportunity cost if we were to do that somewhere else in the city budget or taking on you know going into the reserve so we have a lot of things to to consider and we'll have an opportunity to talk um um in missile maybe i ask you to talk more a little bit more about that and we talked maybe for a few minutes about timeline and if there's any commissioners have any concerns about that um so um one of the things that i would hope that we would do is if we do proceed with a study that part of the scope include what are alternatives to municipalization the number of people have brought those up including commissioner kerber and what are the risks and opportunities associated with those in those various pathways so that's what i wanted to mention and i'll turn it over to commissioner mccoy when he has some last words for us other than maybe just talking about the timeline going forward yeah i just quickly because boulder was mentioned a few times i know that we had asked um chris bisdock to like look into a little bit of like the legal challenges of boulder and how they may or not maybe similar may not be similar to ann arbor so i was wondering if since we have him here today if he could briefly talk about that if he's still on so i'm still here and we did cover that in an appendix to our report i did not um i'm not as familiar with that because somebody else did that and so i would just suggest that we release that at least that appendix uh and provide that so we we did look into that we do think there are substantial differences um but i would be less comfortable because i did not do that original research there is some good online material that describes the whole history of the boulder municipalization effort and it was marred or burdened if you will maybe um by a lot of legal questions um so it was not just something where it's more clear-cut like like ann arbor but as missy said um you know that we think that there probably are lessons learned um you know to be applied to ann arbor and you know obviously we would like to learn those before we um we proceed missy anything else to add for your side and when we might have a sense of when we might be able to get additional presentations and um if anybody that's on participating in the discussion including roshan and chris and ember whether that timetable is um is suitable or is appropriate um including also obviously all the other commissioners go ahead yeah on the presentation we had reached out to a handful of places that have successfully municipalized and not to try to kind of see process and unfortunately the first available we got was october so we offer we even offered this meeting to try to get on calendars as soon as possible and so october 12th we've got boulder and q and even during this meeting i slightly multitasked and re-sent the invitation to winter park florida to try to get them on so if folks have other recommendations on folks you'd like to bring in to hear from please let me know because we do have a little bit of a window to try to get in but october 12th we're planning to have it be a focused conversation on the topic uh any thoughts or comments now and you're not limited to making them now i mean we're all available to discuss this afterwards or you can reach us via email there was some emails completing this meeting where we had originally talked about considering this later but there was some strong pushback from um anti-republic power and we moved this forward and you know we could potentially uh juggle juggle things going forward again should we close the subject and move on does anybody have any additional final comments okay so thank you very much um both to roshan chris and as well as the ember um thanks for all your work on this uh i will make sure that um everybody um does have uh access to the report missy is this report something that we could potentially put on legistar even if that's okay with amber i don't have it i don't think yeah i can send it after the meeting okay it would be great because we referred to it several times that'd be great great thanks again and roshan you're welcome to stay on um um you might find the other topics interesting but we know that you're juggling other priorities as well including family and dinner probably thank you so much okay so um the next point on our agenda is um the benchmarking resolution um so um i think missy someone from osi is going to present on this correct i think thea is with us if she wants to jump in and i can pull up the screen um while she's popping in here just the friendly room hi thea we had talked about this at the last meeting um theo is here to answer any questions on the benchmarking ordinance itself and then uh the draft resolution is just a resolution of support as this moves uh forward hopefully uh very near term for final legal review and then council consideration sophia do you want to share anything um i'm happy to share the resolution there's been a few minor adjustments of the resolution that was shared before so i'm not sure if we got put in the recent agenda or not but it's things like just revising like the purpose of the um of the ordinance it hasn't been like um actual structural change but just just flagging that yeah and building on that for folks just want to share the the purpose really is tight in that it's about consumer protection pretty explicitly and making sure that people have the information to make informed decisions when they go to rent whether they're a small business whether they are a individual that's renting an apartment et cetera and again this may be extraneous information that someone does not care about but it is a consumer protection you have the right to know how efficient a place is or is not if that's an important factor in your decision making so that's the language she's talking about but the process of what the ordinance does has not changed so i think we had a pretty robust presentation and discussion on this um and i think we've all had a chance to look at it missy i don't know if you want to pull it up just in case um but i'm wondering while you're doing that if we can at least get a motion in a second to consider it and we can discuss it and if there's no discussion then we can vote on it so so moved by mark levy and a second from commissioner george thank you so um this is a relatively short uh resolution um you can see it all right here and as has already been stated this is really um you know to raise awareness and to protect consumer rights here so um any discussion from anyone any questions of thea yes councilmember briggs yeah thanks um and i'm sorry this i don't have my notes from our previous meeting in front of me where we discussed this so um i could just be forgetting this is there a stakeholder group um that's the the city's consulting with in terms of how this might um be implemented practically with with different um sort of landlords around the community and what that means um yeah we met with a stakeholder task force of building owners energy service providers um dte affordable housing representatives um we had i think six meetings with them so we they developed um or we co-created the ordinance recommendations um we took that back internally and refined it based on what was feasible brought it back one last time to the stakeholder task force and got like a final uh wrap up there so yes there has been stakeholder engagement engagement process that's great um and the only reason i bring this up is you know i think i fully support this i think it's great to be moving forward consumer protections um this is you know great progress forward for the community i think um we've been um we're in the process of of of of doing some some um ordinance revisions around early um our leasing ordinance and we've done some other um changes that have impacted that that sort of community and i think they're on edge a little bit more and a little bit more organized um as as each sort of ordinance moves forward and so um i guess i would just the more more engagement we do with them while this is kind of in legal getting reviewed i think um the better so that there's not just a lashing out against it would be helpful thea correct me if i'm wrong but there was a fairly diverse group of people that were involved in the drafting of the ordinance as well it wasn't just the focus groups including i recall correctly um jam corporation i think was involved within the 2030 district and the 2030 district represents a pretty broad group of property owners in the multi-family and commercial areas so there really was a good engagement process that osi employed is that correct yeah that's correct i also had a pretty diverse group of property managers and building owners um and just kind of aside we got a lot of recommendations on the ordinance itself that's included in there but we also heard a lot of kind of more software recommendations of what people wanted to see implementation-wise to really reduce the burden um and so that was like one of the more important information that we pulled from that was how do we make this as easy as possible so there's both the ordinance itself legally what it looks like and then also how do we make this you know a benefit and not another thing to do just two other points on that to share we also put the ordinance the draft language out for full public comment and advertise that to try to get more stakeholders not just the task force for sure to share input and then to this point we are we anticipate some serious handholding at the beginning to try to make this really easy for folk i mean that's part of what we're budgeting uh as we as we roll this out it's not just drop this and expect people to perform we anticipate having some some interns who are helping pull data and getting it into the system and trying to build an api and figuring out how to do this so i just want to applaud you and back for their work on this trying to figure out how to not just build an ordinance but really build a program that's wildly successful and i'd like to remind everybody that we have a second ordinance in the works that addresses the other sectors that are not impacted by this ordinance so if the combination of the two in effect equally uh address on all sectors we have um this energy uh audit disclosure ordinance um that's been in the works and we would have considered that tonight but we had a relatively full agenda so missy i think we bumped that to our next meeting correct yeah so um any further discussion can we uh before we take a vote any any other comments or questions for thea or for each other so um all those in favor of approving the resolution as was just presented uh please raise your hand or say i i all those opposed passes unanimously work well done thea thank you very much take that back to the rest of the team and tell them you got uh maybe not quite standing ovation on zoom but uh close close as you can get to that on zoom thank you all thank you good so um the next point we have on our agenda is another resolution that we considered in our last meeting and that is the resolution on low carbon materials in construction or embodied carbon resolution as we refer to it in the agenda and missy i believe we have um alex reese waiting in the uh the peanut gallery he's joining us as we speak yeah waiting to present a couple of slides to update us on a couple of things related to the resolution before we consider it welcome alex well and meet you here in a second there we are hello hi so i i wanted to also pass on uh regrets from jan culbertson um and she would have liked to have been here tonight but she had a conflict and alex is representing um both himself he was on the meeting last time as well as um luca um henry and so take it away alex we have a slides a short slide dick that we're going to present missy if you can pull that up that would be yeah alex do you want a present or do you want me to present um i don't have it up right now so if you do that would be great thank you go ahead alex awesome uh okay so um this is a similar presentation to what you all saw last week but pretty much we just tried to trim it down a little bit for a reminder so um yeah this is uh the low embody carbon material construction resolution um my name is alexander reese and luca and jan are also a part of this um so the goals of this resolution um there's three of them and i'll go through them one at a time so first we want to highlight the importance of embodied emissions if you want to go to the next slide there are two different kind of sectors of emissions in the building sector in general one of which is embodied carbon and one of which is operational carbon embodied carbon represents kind of manufacturing transporting and installing buildings and construction materials whereas operational carbon is the carbon associated with the running of the building so the lights the heating the cooling stuff like that next slide this is a breakdown of the emissions from various sectors in the economy you can see the building and operation emissions there are in yellow and about a third of the emissions in this sector come from the actual embodied emissions and the embodied emissions represent about 11 percent of overall emissions and in the next slide you'll see that transitioning to 2050 embodied carbon will be about half of all new emissions from a life cycle perspective in the building sector next slide thank you uh and so the the second point here is now we know embodied emissions are a problem so we want to develop local expertise uh in a way to try to create low embodied carbon materials um and so the next couple slides will go over kind of how we started that um so the ann arbor 2030 district which uh gen represents and the low embodied carbon concrete task force uh worked together to create um these uh these three kind of specifications for what we wanted to do the first of which was to develop recommendations for concrete that will lower embodied carbon in concrete and can be implemented in southeastern michigan and then we wanted to come up with um some recommendations based on feedback from professionals and industry members on how we could potentially implement that and then finally discuss policies and find ways to promote these sorts of materials so there's a link to the task force presentation if any of you are interested there which goes into a bit more detail on this um here's kind of just a list of everybody who participated in this um and yeah so on the next slide this is kind of what we found the breakdown to be for ghd emissions in concrete you can see cement is about 13 of concrete by mass but it accounts for about 80 percent of overall emissions so cement is a large focus in trying to reduce the overall emissions embodied in concrete um so on the next slide you'll see that um so we'll go over a couple of different ways in which reducing emissions is possible the first of which is probably the most broadly used around industry which is plc or portland limestone cement pretty much that's just taking a clinker which is a product which becomes cement and we replace some of it with limestone which pretty much decreases the ghd emissions from cement in general and so these are this is one method that is very effective at lowering the ghd emissions from concrete another method on the next slide is well-graded aggregate this is a method in which you can use kind of a scale of aggregates to more thoroughly fill in the holes inside of concrete and um this then reduces the cement content you can see on the bottom there these gray squares kind of show how much cement is being used in each of these concrete mixes and so the more we fill in with this well-graded aggregate the the the less cement we use per kind of cubic meter of concrete and thereby can dramatically lower the emissions associated with it another method we can do on the next slide is supplementary supplementary cementitious materials which i can never say right in the first time and and these are just ways of replacing concrete with some other material which can actually end up improving the performance and uh creates a nice synergy with some as we trans transition out of fossil fuels there there's lots of uh waste and byproducts from these processes and these are great options for use in concrete which then lower the overall ghg emissions of concrete by using less cement while also creating a way in which we can take care of a product which otherwise would have just been landfilled so one of these is fly ash from coal combustion another is slag from steel production and on the next slide you can see pozollons are also an option here specifically ground ground glass pozolon is one that uh we've been testing and all of these can make large strides in reducing the overall and body divisions of concrete um so on the next slide you'll see uh here is kind of a breakdown of the various mixes that the task force ended up trying so on the left there you can see is this just a standard mix normal everything one to the right is a 40 slag replacement so that's taking 40 percent of the cement content and replacing it with slag and then there's ground glass paslon 40 uh over one more is plc which is that limestone cement mentioned earlier which is replacing some of the cement with a limestone which lowers the ghd and then the plc with 40 slag in the plc with 40 ggp um so to summarize pretty much the task force found that by using these various methods we can reduce the overall emissions of concrete by about which in the future hopefully with increased improvements we can get that up to 50 which is a massive reduction given that a globally concrete is responsible for about seven percent of overall emissions so um this is really an exciting opportunity um here is an example of a port we actually just did on friday so uh this is over in the tri-delta sorority their driveway needed a re-upping of their concrete so we decided to use one of these mixes and port it and the construction workers said they really enjoyed using it and uh everything went really well so it seems very promising that this will be a great option for ann arbor in the future uh just to kind of give a scale for how how much emissions can be you know reduced through using these various types of concrete if we were to create a 10 story building um and use a 40 uh or i guess 37 um ghd reduction concrete on it that would be equivalent to powering a midsize city so roughly ann arbor for about 11 hours which is i don't know it seems like a lot to me and next slide so finally we want to communicate methods uh additionally we communicate methods to reduce the embodied emissions so we know it's an issue and we've come up with some different ways in which we can help mitigate that issue and so now we want to create a method in which people can take advantage of those ways we came up with so this is where a lot of the work i've done on the project comes in and also luca who couldn't make it today but we've been working on creating a resource guide which there's a little detail on the next slide and that goes into [Music] various ways where we can calculate embodied emissions so whether that's kind of collecting various uh life life cycle analysis also called epds which are environmental product declarations um it's kind of like a nutrition label for a product uh but instead of you know calorie count it gives you the global warming potential and so there's ways in which you can collect those and compare them or create them for new mixes and new materials so we've given some options there in the resource guide we've also gone through several different techniques for how we can reduce the global warming global warming potential of concrete cement and this is by no means an exhaustive list either on here or on the resource guide but it does provide a lot of good good resources for people to reach out to and and take advantage of and then finally we want to highlight the local projects like that poor that just happened on friday as well as research and various contexts in the area to help people take advantage of all of this and then we also go over a couple of other local policies at the city and state levels across the country and how they're implementing similar techniques and how we can kind of base what we do off of that as well so that was just kind of a brief rundown of everything um i'm happy to take any questions or i can see the floor to john and we can talk about the resolution and the changes that were made would you mind going back to the presentation quickly and going to the task force slide and while you're doing that just a few comments first of all i want to say i appreciate comments offered in the last meeting um in particular from council member briggs as well as um outside the meeting um by uh two commissioners commissioner cleavy and commissioner hook um who both provided recommendations um and i wanna also apologize maybe's uh appropriate word for um the way this was developed this came relatively late to the commission in the overall process admittedly this went back in march two osi staff goes shared with others at the city and it wasn't something that i mentioned unfortunately in meetings but i do want to demonstrate here through this list of participants that it was a broad-based group of people that worked on this um and um you can see there's you know people from all different kinds of interests including from the michigan concrete association as you can see in the lower left dan degraff was actually present at the poor that alex mentioned at the tridel association we there was also a poor the day before on thursday on south industrial highway where there's some being repairs being made um they're using also a low embodied concrete uh energy concrete so um i i first of all just in terms of process um a commitment to try to do this better in terms of informing commissioners of an opportunity to contribute to this but i hope that the final product um is indeed a good one and as i said we did get a lot of good comments so um missy what i'd like you to do is bring up the resolution it's a rather long one and what i thought i would do is have it on the screen but summarize uh the the major changes um and um missy i'm going to get with you there's a few minor um spelling or grammar kinds of mistakes like um capitalization like changing um a word some words in the jurass statement um so if we just if we slowly scroll down so people can um see it again in the fifth whereas statement starting with the city of ann arbor um for example that should be a capital city i think with a c and then later um as it says the a2 um zero or the a2 plan we'll change that to the a20 carbon neutrality plan that's the formal name of the plan if you keep on scrolling down so people can see it i just needed a second to cap to capture the notes for the changes yeah i i i can send you these obviously okay so that's whatever i made a few minor changes um so other than capitalizations um you can scroll down there's two places um where commissioner key cleavy made comments that we incorporated about innovation and the office of sustainability in innovation has a responsibility to encourage enable and unleash the power of innovation and that's what we're trying to do with this this uh resolution and so we address that um and then i think the other substantive change um uh commissioner chris um hook em suggested a bunch of um what i'll say is relatively minor changes they're all in in the text here which is opposed to the legistar um but the one thing that i wanted to discuss was the second or the third let's see the third resolved um and go to the next page yes so this was a concern that commissioner excuse me councilmember briggs raised and so we hope that this language addresses your concern um so we say here at the bottom of the page and then the top of the next one um so we're asking council and the city to engage in working with the city planning commission or department in commission to urge owners developers and property users to reuse or repurpose existing buildings of meaningful size as a means of minifi minimizing total net carbon footprint of construction while not obstructing new development with significant social or total life cycle environmental benefits so what we're trying to do here is say we recognize that it's important to um utilize embodied carbon where we have it and where it can justifiably be reused and by the way i think i mentioned where there's work being done on what's called a construction and demolition ordinance that would hopefully divert more of those materials from landfill but what we're talking here is in in some cases it may make sense to re use a repurposed um part of an existing building a basement or a foundation or whatever the case may be but we do not want to obstruct new development where if we look at the total social benefits or the total life cycle benefits considering things like the reduction in vehicle miles traveled and things like that that this is not being used the statement is not being or the old statement and this resolution is not being used to obstruct um them where maybe a single-family home is being replaced by um you know 50 units of housing that has a lot of other benefits so this is the way that we've addressed that and what i ask then at this point is if we can get motions to consider the resolution open up the discussion and then take a vote we have a motion from commissioner cleavy do we have a second from commissioner briggs i'd like to open the floor then for discussion anybody have any comments or questions yes commissioner councilmember briggs and then commissioner i only comment with just um thanks for for making those changes that definitely um those revisions were very much in line with my thinking thanks very much and thanks for raising the concern commissioner um good afternoon or evening or night i don't know what it is it's getting dark in my neck of the woods but i'll be brief and that is thank you for the efforts here i think it's great that we're looking at embodied carbon um unfortunately because of the building code we can't enforce much here you know we're going to recommend that we adopt things like this in our in our practice of permitting buildings but reality is we can't enforce anyone to do this work um i would hope that we would take the measure to start moving in that direction some of our codes are moving in that direction as you know john and team that wrote this um the architecture 230 movement all those are pushing for a change to the michigan building code those kinds of things need to be in there not just the hvac changes and other areas of energy but actually embody carbon i don't know how to make that happen but i just wanted to raise that is this is a nice start but we are nowhere near being closed to the end of getting this adopted thank you and thank you and i see some nodding mounting heads there um real briefly we had planned actually a presentation for tonight on proposed changes to the state energy code there was a conflict or family emergency that prevented that from happening so indeed we will cover that as soon as we can hopefully next month and what we hope to do is get behind the proposed changes um i i think uh potentially we'll have a number of speakers addressing that um and we as chuck as you point out that that's really important and what's important to realize for everybody and this will be definitely address um when we present it is that um we're we'll have an opportunity with the new with the new code in the appendices to essentially um as a municipality uh be able to implement the zero code um here in ann arbor so um we can talk more about that missy i don't know if you want to say more yeah i i do it's really time sensitive and i'm sorry that charlotte jameson couldn't join us you really did want to join us but this is actually super time sensitive because comments are due for laura the state um licensure office by the 16th which is friday uh on the code and so there are two codes that are open for consideration it's the energy code and the residential code right now so we are as an office working with other municipalities to try to get in comment and then there's a public meeting on the 20th of in lansing where we can share feedback what's exciting um there's many exciting things that are going on but one is that they're starting from the 2021 code which is great because we're on the 2015 code right now and there is a 2018 code so we're kind of starting from the right place and the goal is to keep us there not to move us backwards and so there's the code and then there's the zero code appendix that john just mentioned and so we want the code we want the zero code appendix and to chuck's point we want it to go slightly further and be considering embodying carbon as well so there is a lot that is happening right now at this moment it is furious but if you are interested please let myself or zach west smith know and we can loop you into what we're doing chuck i see you and you are in um yeah we're we're running we're running at this one yeah this is a huge opportunity um we're currently based on ashrae standard and by revision upward revision of the code there's pretty substantial energy savings opportunities so hopefully in the next meeting we will address exactly chuck's points and parallel obviously to what is going on at the state level any other comments or questions so what i would ask is then we'll take a vote on on approving the resolution uh all those in favor of approval raise your hand or say aye aye anyone opposed passes unanimously very good we're making good progress so um we now are up to reports and updates um in the final round of public input uh missy you want to kick us off with um an update from the energy office and then we'll open up to commissioners and then committee updates yeah thank you so much chairmerski i'm coming off vacations the cobwebs still exist a little bit so i'm going to shake them out to give kind of a quick update on a few things uh one is we have a few new commissioners that might be joining us at our next meeting so i just wanted to share the logo before council on the 20th so we have three folks that were recommending and i just wanted to let you all know you might have noticed i'm not sure if i've communicated this and apologies if i haven't josh mcdonald is no longer with the city he's moved on uh to new opportunities so that is a loss for us but also an opportunity to really recalibrate and think about where we have you know strategic opportunities because staffing is one of the most important things that we have available to us so uh for the time being forgive me for slowness and response but please let me know if you need anything administratively i'm going to try to step into those shoes but i do apologize in advance for perhaps the responses i just wanted to share that update and then uh kind of fun things happening as i try to find where this is my notes the uh projects we've talked about previously just quick updates the landfill solar project is an environmental assessment they'll be out tomorrow doing some of the first wetland delineation and sampling that we need to do to clarify and move that project forward we're working on the rfp language which hopefully um it will go live uh as soon as the environmental assessment is cleared um barring anything really tragic happening uh there the rfps uh for our rooftop solar we've selected two vendors and we're working through contracting with them at the moment uh where we'll do final site design final final site design because um we had some beautiful friendly internal competition where people started saying oh you're gonna do carports i want to do carport and so we sort of expanded more solar than what we started with which i'm personally very excited about after you are too so we'll get to final design and then we'll go to build which is great met with the housing commission today on their rfp for solar projects and similar initiative we're adding three more sites in so it's just growing which is really really exciting to see that momentum take place we have four ev chargers that are sitting in ann arbor in a parking spot in our garage they're fast chargers super excited to get them in the ground we're just waiting on our electrician to have a little break in their schedule to come out and we'll do the trenching and then those will be up which is great we have placed our order for our first electric refuse truck and we are working on the second round of funding with the state looking at other vehicles uh we are in discussions with madison wisconsin which is the first electric fire truck and we're understanding how that's operating and thinking about that as one of the things we'll be applying for next for funding to cover the delta for um chief kennedy is excited i'm slightly nervous but very very fun stuff happening there um and i'm sure i'm forgetting billions of things but you heard about benchmarking time of marketing or the head the home energy disclosure ordinance is coming shortly the green rental task force we've had initial hearing kind of uh discussion with some tenants doing the same thing with some landlords and then we'll bring them together to talk about what we can do in the rental landscape um very exciting stuff so um and um if and when the commission might be able to um possibly take a a a stand or a position on support of the millage and so on and so forth what what can you inform us about that it was obviously the article in them live it was covered briefly in in the last council meeting um anything you or either council members can update us on in that regard sure and that just shows how distracted we are with work that i completely and totally forgot to mention the millage so thank you very much uh yes so a proposal has been brought forward to look at a military fund climate action and that is uh something the mayor is working through the youth resolution my understanding is it'll be presented both uh if it's decided to move forward it'll be presented both as the proposed ballot language and then an intention of use resolution that outlines specifically what the resources would be allocated towards i highly anticipate it will be a20 initiatives very focused on things like getting towards the circular economy and really investing in our zero waste initiatives which includes local job creation because we don't really have all the local markets that we need in that landscape um very much centering kind of equity and local trades in this work and i mean both of those things are both of those ways thinking about how we correct where we don't have services and programs and where we enhance things that are working like our aging place efficiently program and scaling that um so we're sort of waiting on the final use resolution that'll be the direction for for where where we head and as soon as we get that we will share and then i imagine we would come back to the commission for consideration of support or non-support of that effort any questions of missy before we open it up to other commissioners i just have a quick question did you say that um the three new appointments are on this monday's agenda or for the pencil i had a hard time finding them but i was told by the clerk's office that they were on for first read the last meeting and they're up for second read this meeting that that is correct they are separated out because one of them requires a higher vote threshold thank you carlene did i see your hand yes um i'd like a little bit more information about this the the solar um installations you said there's there's a couple that are being added for the city or this is at the beginning of your update you're telling me yeah i actually know which one you're talking about um so there's two sort of additions that are happening one we put an rfp out for 13 facilities we are now at 16 facilities that are just city of ann arbor and we put it out mostly thinking it would be rooftop solar but it's expanded to also being ground mount and carports at a number of sites not all sites ev charging is a part of many of them as well as we're working through kind of uh thinking about this and we're not in final design yet that's kind of where we're heading once we get the contract signed which is really great um it's an opportunity to i'll use the example of the farmers market where we have modest demand but we have more roof space so we can't over generate but if we put ev chargers in which we know we want now we can maximize so how do we you know that's the kind of customization we're trying to do missy versions we we have a um so that's something we'll be working with the different installers each site's a little bit different in terms of what we're looking for we are asking for each site to be solar i'm sorry storage ready so all the electrical is done um i do anticipate at some point we will do storage in all the sites you could imagine uh something like the water treatment plant storage is key because we're peak shaving right like that's really what we're going to be doing there to make that a viable um initiative versus something like argo cascades where the demand profile is like all summary and so storage is perhaps later add-on so we're trying to really customize i can't even do that on the spot um i i know for sure the senior center is one and then we looked at a number of the different uh park sites but we'll get i'm happy to have an update as soon as we have it on the final designs where we have preliminary designs we have to now do the work to get to the final design phase thank you updates from other commissioners and from city council as well seeing none i think the next thing on the agenda is committee updates uh any committee updates carlene can you admit just very briefly what's going on i think we have a meeting from transportation electrification we had a little bit of a pause and i think we have a meeting scheduled for the 20th but that's really probably just about it right that's it yup um and maybe i can comment real quickly last night a group of us um met on consiere services and we shared our feedback garnered through interviews with a number of other entities municipal entities that have similar programs vancouver uh boulder bay area they have nine counties that have all joined together um i'm blanking on a couple others roughly half a dozen we raised another number of questions we've put together an outline of some issues to be resolved um we sort of have a target of having a clear sort of action plan and timetable in the september or so time frame um so we're starting to make some movement there it took a couple of or several weeks to get all those interviews in but i think we're looking forward to getting that off the ground and being able to engage with uh residents and actually say you know you're interested in a20 now we can help you realize your project and give you good advice so that's moving forward any other reports from any other uh subgroups or anyone else anything come to mind if not then i think we go to public comment so i think i need to read my spiel again there's my spiel just a second sorry here we are so this is an opportunity for a person to speak up to three minutes if you are watching on ctn if or if you're just listening in please call nine 888-788-0099 or eight seven seven eight five three five two four seven that's eight eight eight seven eight eight zero zero nine nine four eight seven seven eight five three two and enter the meeting id 913-5783-4502 this information is also displayed in the meeting agenda and the video feed city staff will select callers that have raised their hand one by one at using the last three digits of your phone number in order to electronically raise your hand to indicate your desire to speak plus please press star 9 on your phone and you will hear an automatic announcement that the host is allowing you to speak when speaking please move to a quiet area mute any television or background noise so that we may hear you clearly and then finally please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments speaker ending in two to eight hello can you hear me yes awesome my name is greg woodring i am a member of ann arbor for public power and i'm calling in to express my uh gratitude for hearing out this presentation and for considering this idea though i am concerned about the speed with which it is being discussed to vote on this resolution um as roshan i believe did an excellent job laying out ahmed ember also repeated uh this resolution is not asking anybody to commit to the idea of municipalizing right away it's simply asking that we do our due diligence in investigating whether this is the right option as chuck hook um commissioner hook um pointed out uh you know it seems that we've got a pretty clear answer on whether it's legal it is uh it's absolutely a legal path forward and well certainly dp would put up a fight against it they would not have solid grounds to fight on um it's something that we could win and it's something that uh would be a major benefit to the rest of the state in terms of providing a pathway forward on how to get out from under the grip of dte we've uh you know had plenty of time to see the benefits of municipalization it's a major cash cow for the city it um reduces people's rates it's far more reliable an issue that you know we saw just tonight with ctn going on to ctn going out due to a power outage uh you know these things are only going to get more severe we just saw some of the worst flooding that i've seen probably ever in my lifetime and these natural disasters are just ramping up climate change is here we can't afford to wait any longer we need to start taking action and so i really hope that the council will move forward with speed on considering these questions because you know this is just one step along the way we can't get bogged down debating the entire question before we get the data in front of us i certainly do encourage the commission to uh talk to these other cities that have tried it uh winter park boulder um playable colorado fort collins colorado also have excellent munis there's plenty of great munis in the state uh holland lansing traverse city you just heard from chris bisdock former mayor nick there's plenty of good information to go around but all of that information is not going to be directly applicable to ann arbor a feasibility study will so if we're really going to make an informed decision on what would be the right path forward we're going to need those numbers and i think that uh it would be the wrong perspective to take to think that by recommending that the city council go forward with this feasibility study that you are advocating for a path forward nobody is saying that you should advocate for a path forward before you have the data in front of you but i really hope that you'll move forward uh to investigate this and get that data in front of you so that we can all as a city make the best decision for all of us thank you thank you for your comments we have anyone else missing yeah color ending in 920.
that does not include the grant we get in so that's under grants and then so it's confusing and it takes time to kind of understand the system but again i wanted to give you a flare of how the budget is detail is developed to understand the detail that goes into it awesome okay so a real quick question ken yes yes why did you redact the salaries when that's public information it is public information and the public can get it i just didn't want to if i were representing the entire budget in all of my details and everybody's salary i would put their names in there but because i was just doing one area as a sample i just decided to redact it that's all that makes sense you know and yeah but i agree with you it is public information and that and be happy to share it it just said you know when i was just picking one i didn't want to do that okay great thank you sure so let me turn you now to page 15.
hello can you hear me yes hi there my name is sam limerick i am a resident of ward 3 i am also a member of the climate action movement at um which is a member of ann arbor for public power um i a lot of what i have to say echoes uh what greg just said but i'll go i'll go forward um i i do recognize that council has raised a lot of questions about how this application would look like both you know how we do it and how it operates and however both today as well as in all the past meetings we've been having this discourse and yeah there are certainly many unknowns and a lot of outstanding questions uh as we've seen in our presentations however there there is only one clear passport to really understanding what um what the path forward looks like and again we aren't this this resolution is not about um directing the city's path it's ensuring that we can see the past that we have that we have before us and this is too big of an issue and too you know concerning of a crisis to not completely consider all these paths um i mean like a couple of the callers both at the beginning and just there with craig i'm alarmed at some of the recent climate extremes we've seen including what we seem to be increasingly common and widespread reports of emergency ass by utilities to the customers to significantly significantly curtail their energy use in order to preserve just the basic integrity of the grid and as we rise to confront this you know generational and dare i say existential challenge and look to grow in our resilience to the crisis of the future we really just can't leave any options on the table um i'd like to see the energy efficient adopted bias for action as it relates to voting on this proposed resolution like greg i think that we're moving a little bit too slow october may be too late we can talk all we want about um what may have gone wrong in boulder uh or any other place but yeah like greg said these are completely distinct legal landscapes and it's it's clear now that um here in ann arbor we won't necessarily face those same barriers although yes of course ut will fight us um and yes my final point really is just uh just to reiterate the point that acp has asked this commission is is really quite narrow we are certainly not asking this commission to support initialization uh this is yeah this is a big issue uh but we are asking the commission to take the first logical step in evaluating the most realistic option to achieve the first e20 goal that is an electrical grid powered by 100 renewable sources we know that that isn't going to happen with uh with dt and their timelines um 120k that cut the estimated cost of me kind of uh quoted um in the presentation is less than a dollar per resident of ann arbor um it seems like a no-brainer to make that investment to find out all the details we need to know to do that due diligence and um after the legal portion of today's presentation can we afford not to further investigate this route and potentially secure new tremendous revenue streams for the city uh thanks so much for your time thank you for your comments color ending in nine nine hold on sorry color ending in 661.
okay before we go to yes i'm sorry so on on page 11 the grants so this is the money that we're spending under those grant programs yes okay because i think of grants i think of money coming in right but this is what you're spending under those right and so and that's a great great question uh president albrecht so on the revenue side there's there's the same uh revenue that matches the expense so it's evened out and it may if it's a and i'll just tell you this on the coding side so when you look at the grant code anything with that starts in the 3000 series is a state grant anything at 4 000 is a federal grant so that corresponds to the numbers that we have over on the revenue side in state sources and federal sources okay so let me again take you back to the summary page so so you can get an idea right now and again please don't panic when you see this number all right too late i know i i know i'm sorry but let me let me explain so give me some time here so again revenues 92 million dollars right now expenditures 98 million dollars it gives us a deficit of 6.3 million dollars included in there though is 3.6 million dollars in construction projects that we will pay for out of this year because we got the money last year and so i have to book it this year but i don't have an offsetting revenue which gives us really an adjusted surplus adjusted deficit of 2.7 million dollars now i have not gone into the budget and tweaked it yet and and i use that term that that's a ken serma term that's not an official accounting term and brian gets crazy when i use that term but i haven't tweaked it yet and let me give you an example i do know that in the budget there are some salaries that i have double entered such as and i'm going to give examples such as special ed because we take some salaries out of grants i've got it in the grant expense and i also have it in the regular special ed side the reason i do that is i i top heavy the budget i put everything into the budget and then i start going in and then i start maneuvering things because that's what you do in accounting so there are going to be this number is going to come way down the other thing i will tell you is when i mentioned that 1.5 million dollars in revenue that we have not gotten yet that will probably go against this 2.7 million dollars so now i've already knocked that down okay so i'm going to give you another budget in august that's going to be completely different than this number but again this is just a preliminary number right now that i just wanted to get together and this is my starting point and now i start tweaking it does that mean i start cutting things no it doesn't mean i start cutting things right now it just means i need to start manipulating the budget you know and that to make sure that the expenses are appropriate expenses and it's mostly on the expense side is reducing expenses it's really not on the revenue side i'm not one of those that over budgets on the revenue side i do not like doing that i would rather over budget on the expense side than that okay so i'm going to stop there in questions right now so is tweaking and sharpening your pencil kind of the same thing yes it is yes it is yes and please know there there are expenditures in there that are going to come out i i know that already i'm not going to show this right now how do you see the i know we you know we've talked in our meetings about the the timing difference in transportation and that given the fact that we spent less in transportation last year we'll get less in transportation next year but we'll be back well we'll hear later that we're going to be back and everybody's going to be coming to school and sure that you know so our expense on transportation will be a little higher this coming year do we know kind of what the net you know if you just isolated the deficit on that i i don't know that yet and and i'm not avoiding the question i honestly don't because our claim for transportation isn't due until august 15th so we're beginning to work on that to make sure we got all the invoices i will have a better i will have an actual idea of that come august okay i'll know that when i when i present to you the next version of the budget because i guess i guess in my mind what i'm looking for is if if you kind of set that that deficit aside that we know as a timing issue uh we had reserve excess we had a surplus this past year to kind of cushion that you know if we look at kind of a net zero budget after that that to me is kind of from a philosophical standpoint what i kind of and i agree with that and that's that's my goal is to look at it that way also i think the other part of that if there is a deficit to number one let you know where that deficit is coming from and what is needed i think nelson you have always said this before what do we need to do to balance it then what would have to happen so that that's my goal coming in august okay and then that would be my goal okay all right so let me then take you to the last page which is page 16 and i want to go through a little bit of some comments and recommendations um again i think the top part i've kind of talked about already i do plan on submitting to you another tentative budget or draft budget that it will not be at the community the whole meeting will probably be because i believe you have some board training at that time so it'll probably be at the regular meeting the following week but i will tell you that both lyle and i dr cara and gentel are going to begin going through a process of evaluating staff to get more efficient with our staff you know i'm going to leave it in high terms like that but just looking at efficiencies as we start moving forward so that's going to be part of our process i still believe that we need to evaluate staff i i believe that you know there there are and i'm going to use the word efficient i think we can get more efficient i'm going to use my department as an example i think that we have gotten a lot more efficient in our department and we've lessened an fte we're down one fte from when i started and i think you know it doesn't mean that i'm just we're just going to go out and get rid of people but again i think we need to look at efficiencies in what we do and then that translates into personnel so whether that is through attrition or whatever it is i think looking at the systems that we have so that's going to be part of our goal and part of our process over the next couple years the second part of that i wanted to share with you the the 3.625 million dollars in construction projects um the life safety and asbestos abatement which was about approximately 3.2 million dollars right now i will let you know that that is on schedule um it is probably going to be a little bit over budget uh because of some more asbestos that they found however i think i can pay for that out of esser funds and it won't cost us anything so but i'll have a better uh handle on that by the next meeting in that um i i will say this publicly that i have been very pleased with soul whole construction as the general contractor uh i have uh in overseeing it keith has done a great job in working with them and keeping them on track in that so it has gone really well they know that the key is getting the kids back in school on time substantial completion is set for august 6th which is a friday so that we can get back into the buildings on the 9th so that's what the goal is right now just for everybody out there that's watching when you say over budget i know we talked about it you're not over budget a million you're you said about 150 000 i think about 150 000 just so everybody understands the dollar value that's what it is thanks uh so it's just extra asbestos that they found there are some other change orders that we did i'll just give you an idea one of the things that we did do when when the plumbing inspector came out and keith correct me if i'm wrong when the plumbing inspector came out we should have floor drains in the bathrooms those are code now we really didn't have to have them but we figured since it's torn up let's do it right so we put floor drains in it's going to help again when i talk about efficiencies it's going to help then the custodians from a cleaning standpoint and all that because you now have floor drains in there so there's those type of things they did find some things when they knocked on the wall i will tell you that we found at palala i laughed about it but it was we knocked down the wall and we found a drain pipe coming from the ceiling into a sewer pipe and the connection was duct taped behind the wall yeah so those are kind of things we found um you know again but again uh i will say i have been very happy with the with the construction uh the general contractor and the work that they've done uh we meet every week um you know here at the high school and go over things and then we toured the facilities i did take my drone into the buildings i will let you know that so i do have some pictures just so we can see what it was like because nobody will believe what it was like it's kind of a war zone so ken are they working um like nights and weekends and stuff because there's a lot of cars over there when i came to the meeting there were a lot of cars in the parking lot at central office yeah they're working double ships so the answer to the public is seeing all those cars there is the people who are working in the building on the pipes and all that kind of stuff because i have had people say why are all those cars there and i keep telling them it's either for the the electrical whatever all the stuff because you've got so much going on there yeah but i was surprised at how many cars were there tonight there had to be 12 or 15 cars there yeah and i credit solo for that i you know that's great they have they have scheduled it the right way and they know you know they're under the gun on this yeah oh i think it's great and so it's it's working very well sure um the gym floor refinishing uh project that was approved by the board uh i believe keith they started the sanding today uh so that was yeah it started yesterday so so that is on schedule and and that is being worked on the football field light replacement uh we've gotten word from the contractor that that will be done by august 9th and our football first football game is until the end of august so we'll be good there the cooling tower maintenance the 75 000 contract that has been completed already so that is done um the other thing i will let you know that we have done is we have switched out all the lights in the gymnasium here uh to led lighting and that so that now is all switched out too and uh so that that was also good um recommendations and these are things i'd like the board to just kind of think about because i like to think about what we're going to be doing summer of 22 and that because we have to start planning and doing some things so my recommendation to the board is starting to look at life safety projects at csk which total about a little over a million dollars and life-saving projects at mec for 492 000 we do have that money in the bank right now that's part of the bond sale that we have so that that's kind of my recommendation and then um i was also thinking about uh going to next step and putting air conditioning in hva system hv hvac systems in both elc and talala and those are the total about 2.5 million dollars each i got preliminary uh numbers from our architect on that proposals i can get details for you it also includes some electrical upgrades in those upgrades in those buildings that we would need to do too if we did that we would have to sell bonds for that i would recommend selling bonds for that but that that's just a couple things i want to just kind of put out on the plate the reason i say that is because the hvac hvac systems there's there's a lot of uh prep work that has to be done by the architect for the bid documents and the sooner we get on that the better off we are i will also tell you that there is a possibility and i'm talking to the architect about this there is a possibility that we could do hvac and the water the life safety projects at csk at the same time it is a possibility so i'll have that better answer next month well i i would prefer i mean as far as priority is concerned that we are quickly and fastly approaching our next life safety survey and i did not hear you mention crete i i haven't mentioned them yet and i think that's discussion we want to have about what we're going to be doing with those buildings i think that's just something uh you know we've talked about that a little bit at our operations committee and so it's something that we need to talk about and i need the board to make the connection i'm not sure what you mean as far as what what are we going going to be doing with those buildings we said that the referendum didn't move forward we were going to address the life safety issues we i mean unless i missed something here that's what we had borrowed the money for and mr brown we're also going to mention that healy bender is going to have our facility audit ready for september and i think that will give us a little bit more information for priorities okay but i'm a little taken by not capturing all those big guns a life safety issue as soon as possible i i can do that and i can i can i can make that recommendation next month but some problem again i'm just i don't know if it's just me out here like that uh i thought that's what we borrowed the 17.5 million or whatever and 10 million was for the life safety issues and the referendum didn't pass we was going to move forward with the life safety issues okay that's maybe i'm missing something here i don't know we are i like i said i think we were looking to see which order to put them in that was all well again when you mention putting in air conditioning and things of that nature which is not considered a life safety issue and potentially borrowing more money to pay for those expenditures of air conditioning and all of that i think the importance of expanding money right at this point is to address our life safety issues and then we can address the other issues i do i i have no issue with that if that's the board's pleasure my recommendation though is i i think we have found that there are some issues with our hvac system hvac systems in our buildings i think the pandemic has shown that the air quality is the most important thing not touching the surfaces and so and i think also the learning environment would be better if we put air conditioning in buildings i think we need to do that i think that needs to be a priority uh of the board of the school district that that that's all i'm saying and i think you know so let me let me make sure i understand you're saying the air conditions which hvac systems which have not been identified in the past has life safety issues correct no no no i'm not saying but i'm just saying that i'm just saying i'm throwing a comment out there and slash a question right right and you're saying now there's a maybe a sense of urgency to address some locations with hvac issues that could cause problems in the learning environment now that's what you're basically saying is it's a hvac system out there in a building or whatever that could cause problems with the learning of our kids what i'm saying is that it will be a better learning environment if you had air conditioning in all your buildings that's what i i don't think anybody disagree with that right but again we have life safety issues which dominates right these issues right now again we're going to be coming back up in another year or so and perform this life safety survey by law real soon and i'm not saying and we're going to capture we're going to have these same components which we already identify as life safety issues repeat itself again but i'm not saying do not do the life safety issues what i'm saying is do a two or three year approach on each of our buildings as we start moving forward the first step is to do life safety that's step one we've done that in talala and elc that's correct now the second step in those two buildings i believe is we should put air conditioning in those buildings it's ready for it we've done the piping now for it and everything at the same time you can address life safety in other buildings too so what i'm saying is that all next summer you can do life safety at csk you can do live state then you see you can live safety agree with your lifestyle belmoro and do air conditioning at the other two buildings that have already had their life safety done yeah i'm just saying take care life safety issues we already have the money for it and you're saying that we would have to sell bonds to address the hvac systems and things like that i think i'm all for plan to do that but not in that order you know i think we should move full steam ahead and address the life safety issues that's right mr brown what we can do i think for the next board meeting or the committee of the whole i think we need to put together this list that we're saying so that we can have clear understanding of how we would sequence it and then you can have your input maybe with the priorities maybe that will help address this okay all right thank you all right yeah i don't want to be late all this any longer okay okay any other questions or comments just a clarification so the target date is august 9th for to move back in but prior to that who inspects who has to come and inspect there are there are a couple entities one is uh the uh the plumbing inspector and all of that the state does that but then the big one is the roi and so just explain why the roe comes in here to do that they want to make sure that the building is safe for the children to come back okay so and to be occupied not only by adults but by children and because there's specific standards that because we're school and there's children there we have to follow yes so i want that to be clear because when we were having discussions about the dome that people were telling me that and telling me i was wrong but the harley's going to come in here and inspect that yes to make sure that we're following state mandated guidelines and codes yes because a year ago or a year and a half ago i was told i was wrong on that but that is true okay every property yes yes i have a quick question when you're talking about hvac is is there any way to use any esser funds for stuff like that you were talking about air quality there is there there is a way to use that um you know you're um if you do some of the funds that i'm utilizing in order to pay for some operating things then becomes a wider or makes a bigger deficit out of your regular budget i'm a believer that in a lot of capital projects that we should uh take out debt for them and then i don't i don't know if using esser funds would be because the question comes up is you won't have enough to do all your buildings which ones do you pick disaster but you could i mean you can use some of them if you want you know i know the ticket the ticket price is like 2.5 million right now you know that so well what a so what are you using the answer funds for already budgeted items there are some as as we mentioned on the staffing there's some money that we're using for staffing about 1.5 million dollars a year it escalates a little bit 1.5 1.6 1.7 million um and then we're using uh some for technology we're able to use technology um so a lot of our chromebooks that we get for the kids and all that on an annual basis we're able to use ester funds that's about 800 000 a year uh and then there's some other odds and ends i know from uh curriculum we're using it also for uh increased teachers to assist with the kids and all of that for worrying loss and all that all right so you're saying it's helping us with our operating budget helping us with our operating budget you also have to remember that with the s3 funds 20 of it has to go towards learning loss so you need to take 20 of it off off the top right off the top so so that lessens your amount right there too okay thanks so can i have a question um you lift list life safety projects at elc and talala and but we don't say anything about the other schools and we know that there are things that still need to be done at other schools so this is you're recommending this for summer of 22 summer 22.
sorry yes we hear you okay great hi my name is gasteski i live at 313 montgomery in ann arbor i'm part of ann arbor indivisible we had a chance to look at this resolution recently and we voted to endorse it we're not really sure about unions at this point but we definitely want a feasibility study the what we know about them is very good it looked like an excellent alternative and we urged the uh the energy commission to approve this resolution move this along and get the information um let's see it uh we were impressed by not only you know the zero carbon and the control of that energy but it's cheaper and more reliable and separate from dte and most of all there's a clear path listening to the lawyer i thought was very instructive and i gotta believe that the city will like a revenue stream these are these are all very powerful reasons to do this the alternatives don't seem as compelling to us all right um so we hope you will approve the resolution thank you very much bye-bye thanks for calling anyone else busy yeah call our ending in 998 hi can you hear me terrific um hello everybody um uh my name is zachariah farham and i'm the student body vice president for the college of lsa at the university of michigan ann arbor and i'm calling tonight to speak in favor of this resolution to speak in favor of a feasibility study um you know i was trying to log on earlier today so to see the entirety of this meeting unfortunately i was having problems uh because i i had a power outage at my home and i lost the internet and i noticed that uh once i walked across campus to try to uh to watch the meeting it looks like the ctn network completely failed because of a dte power outage i think that really stresses the importance of uh of exploring this option in its entirety now in lsa student government we we discussed the possibility of um of of municipalization and we discussed a resolution which we passed overwhelmingly in support of municipalization in support of replacing dte's corporate-backed dirty electricity with public power and uh so we passed that as i said overwhelmingly and we urge the energy commissioners and the city council to explore this option completely and and answer the questions that we all have about um public power and the way that we do that is to fund a feasibility study so i really hope that you will take steps forward concrete steps to fund this feasibility study like was said many times we are running on a very short time table here young people like me really live in a constant state of crisis with a constant feeling of dread because we know that the smartest people in our society are telling us we need to have ambitious bold action to defeat climate change to ensure that we as young people have a future not necessarily just a better future but a future period so i i very much urge you and the strongest words i can use to please fund this feasibility study to explore this option in its entirety because while the 8-0 plan was a bright glimmer of hope for young people like me a young and arborite like me i was extremely concerned that we have one plan to uh to eliminate a large percentage of our emissions and no backup plan that is cca now cca sounds terrific but if we don't have a backup plan and cca doesn't pass young people like me are really screwed excuse my language but we don't have anything to do you know the 8-0 plan will fail and i and nobody wants that least of all a young student like like myself and the last thing i'd like to say is as a student here in ann arbor um reliability is extremely important and like i said i've had multiple power outages uh not only just today but throughout the past two semesters and as a student i really need to have reliable internet and unfortunately at extremely important times throughout my education um i've had power outages which have impacted my my education i wasn't able to log on to class and um at times actually one point that lasted for three days during a school week so i had i couldn't have any access to my classes that i'm paying tens of thousands of dollars for now thank you for your comments your time is up um thank you very much okay thank you thanks for sharing your thoughts in your past missy anyone else we don't care i just wanted to take this opportunity just to kind of name that the statement that we don't have a backup to cca is false and so i look forward to hopefully having follow-up conversations about that because we've heard that a few times which is not a true narrative great okay so uh the last point on the agenda uh is agenda items for our next meeting um first of all missy maybe um if i don't have it in front of me but i know we have you don't have it either in front of you what's up it's likely to be the home energy audit disclosure resolution or ordinance and a consideration of a resolution on that correct um i think we're going to try to get um charlotte back to do a presentation on the energy um the state state um energy code um carlene or missy do you remember what else is up for our next meeting i might have it here just a second let's see is there any news john whether we'll meet in person or not is that a possibility and the year missy i understood correct yeah we're staying remote for the for the future um and then i i think we're waiting to hear what makes sense for folks the one thing that is absolutely certain is we can't do a split um we don't have the tech i mean we're going to do it for council but we won't be able to do some in person some not so we'll have to decide i think it's a body at some point how we want to proceed i think obviously the delta variant and students coming back to town and everything probably will weigh in on how we go forward but obviously that'll be something that that council probably um decides um go ahead robert i'm sorry john just before you move on on that um i was just curious is that directive going to come from us or is that something this body makes as a decision as as a whole or is this going to come from counsel just to be clear good good question and our counselors and i'm not sure if council is going to do this i think it might be an administrative decision or unless council wants to weigh in on it um i i did not see necessarily the the directive from the city one of my one of my commissions did have a debate on whether or not they wanted to return to in person at this point which made me think that there may have been some indication from staff that they could um they chose not to um we are following the county's emergency order which will allow us to continue immediate meeting remotely through the end of the calendar year the indication i have had from county colleagues is that they do not intend to rescind that so that folks have that flexibility it is likely that council may return before commissions even um i know that there's also been some discussion of allowing for increased flexibility for commissions in perpetuity because um there's been some evidence suggesting that we've had higher participation rates and and more uh presence of quorum and things like that as folks have been able to join from wherever they are so i know that those are all factors in the decision at this point thank you uh any suggestions for our next meeting uh you're not tied to what you say tonight you're certainly welcome to make proposals and we had a number of comments tonight about uh this issue about municipalization and timing of a second reading and vote on that so we'll talk about that as well anything else that anybody wants to offer up at this time i just wanted to clarify our next meeting is august and we are having an august meeting i think at the last meeting we said we were going to discuss that at this meeting we i think you're right um and i do remember we had uh meeting carlene and i and missy about all the potential topics and we had certainly enough material i know a few commissioners have indicated potentially or a likelihood that they won't be able to participate actually there's a chance i may not either so i don't know how do people feel about meeting in august do you want to leave it up to us or does people have strong feelings one way or another it's it's this it's currently listed in legislation i would state that i have a little bit of a challenge i will do my best to to be there because your mccoy yes yeah i know i'm not going to be there as well so i think just depending on how many people we know are going to be there and what especially whether or not if the new uh commissioners are not going to be on board it'd be good to know in advance it sounds like we might not even have quorum if three people might have challenges being there make sure you are uh you know uh ember uh commissioner mccoy just raised a very good point um i would be that i didn't even think about until just now i would be very much in favor of post or cancelling the august meeting and just doing it in september considering the you know attentively the second reading of the resolution would be coming up and that would be a lot for new people to take on without a proper onboarding process and i know that uh you know just from my experience with commissions and so forth i don't know what experience these people will have coming into the commission but you know to really make sure that there is time for sit down if like in person if possible or you know virtual for sure but uh discussion about all the different things you know what's currently on the agenda what to expect i think that would be that should take precedence because considering there's three of them that's a huge uh addition to the commission that is that's true um and we we do do onboarding uh we did started doing that a year ago i think it was a year ago yeah a year ago and we would plan on doing that obviously or most likely that would take place um using um some type of virtual meeting but yeah we definitely plan on doing that once those new commissioners are on board and you're right there are some important things um what do people feel about um sending out something like a poll whether it's a doodle poll or whatever and and just having everybody check their schedules and indicating whether or not they're likely to be there we can i can do that you know the next day or two and if we get people to respond we'll get even get a sense of whether we're going to have a forum john john it doesn't sound like we're voting on anything how about turning it into a workshop that's kind of voluntary and i did find the proposed agenda and we don't have anything pressing um minus the first like potential read of the head ordinance but we could circulate that for commissioners to review in advance for sure sounds like people deserve a summer break how about um missy maybe you karlene and i have a discussion not we typically do that a week before the meeting how about if we do it in the next couple of days and make a decision and we'll either send out a notice one way or where we will send out a notice one way or another that would either be no we're not going to do this or we would like to have a poll to be able to make a final decision but we will get something out soon does that sound sit well with everybody good okay good yes there was one last logistics thing but thank you carlene for naming this via email um we will need to do an election for chair and vice chair for our officers so um when we do convene the next time be prepared to self nominate nominate someone else but be ready that will be on our agenda right so chair vice chair and liaison to the environmental commission those are the three positions okay great any anything else anybody going once going twice meeting is adjourned 8 37 pm enjoy the rest of your evening you
the one thing for talala and elc are being done this summer right so that's why you're suggesting heac for them because they'll be done with life safety okay so we still have crete and balmoral that need a lot of help so are you saying then that your your suggestion would then be that their address 22 to 23 the summer of 23. they can be yes i mean because i guess i i understand what mr brown is saying where is the life safety for other schools getting done when and what is the cost and that type of thing right i guess i'm lost like he is because we're saying we'll put together a plan so everyone can see it i think he's showing bits and pieces and it's not showing the big picture i think that's what you're saying we have to remember about our facilities now let me just share this and i'm gonna i'm gonna push a little bit on this okay when you get the facility assessment you're gonna find and i don't i i haven't talked to haley bender about this but i'm just gonna tell you you're gonna find that there are things in our building that you need to get done because they've been neglected for years a roof those things are going to need to get done your hvac hvac systems are going to need to be done right you know because they are not good right they need to be upgraded in that you know um so i think you're gonna find that when you when you get this facility assessment so it's gonna cost you more to say i think we're just going to do live safety we're past that point now with some of our buildings as you well know with korean balmoral i mean right and that's why i was wondering because we i know there's a lot of life safety that still needs to be addressed and it's not on here so i i wasn't following what was going on i'm like where is that piece yeah i i i wrestle with crete and bill morrow i'm just i'm just telling you that i i have a balmoral only has a hundred and sixty three thousand dollars in life safety issues you have nbc only have four hundred thousand in life safety issues so we're attacking cs we're looking to attack csk we are attacking talala and elc those those have some big guns there as far as money value okay so and the only really outstanding one is creed elementary now which is the big the big gun to say the least so you know we need to chop away i do not want to downplay life safety issues no matter say we pass that we're not past that we're not past that this board agreed to borrow money which we did to address those life safety issues if the referendum did not pass so i understand dr coghlanis is going to come back and bring to the board unless so i'm all for that but i don't want to downplay life safety issues and i don't think that's your intent but it sounds like that's how it's coming across to me right thanks thank you ken thank you okay next up is the discussion on the student handbook revisions testing testing all righty good evening to the board can you hear me yes okay good evening to the board to my colleagues and to the community um today i wanted to go over director riley i might ask you to come to the podium so everyone can see you as well as our viewers at home yeah come to the hot seat sure thank you [Applause] good evening again okay so today i wanted to take the time to go over the revisions to the student handbook for the upcoming school year 21 22.
many of most of the revisions are things that we already have in practice for instance in the student dress code i just wanted to update to make sure that we include items that students currently are not to wear in schools such as hoods we mentioned head coverings but we didn't actually explicitly say hoods so just adding little pieces like that or when it talks about rips to include slits because you know with the current fashion that we have right now we have some slits in some places that you know are not necessarily school appropriate so just spelling things out that we already already currently do not allow in regards to uh the range of interventions and consequences there's a section that introduces pbis and restorative practices and talk about how we are district who that have adopted both practices so there's just some changes in regards to the ordering of how those paragraphs are to make sure that it flows correctly for instance pbis is introduced before restorative practices is so we want to make sure that it flows in the reading as such also there's a section in there that explicitly talks about in the past how each year we had certain goals well due for instance to this recent pandemic we weren't able to actually meet some of those goals so what we wanted to do which was also a discussion this year we had with the district discipline review committee is to just take out the annual goal because we have schools in different we have schools i'm sorry that are different levels of implementing restorative practices although we are all as a district implementing them some are at different levels than others in terms of where they are um with actually practicing them in the building so we wanted to take away the the actual just saying the verbiage of this year we're going to focus on this because it's a constant uh practice that we're doing so instead of holding everybody to the same exact focus we have to actually trigger it we have to scaffold it as needed in each building also for that section we want to clearly explain to to students and parents and the community who reads the student code of conduct what our actual discipline approach is and how we're moving forward with more being more of a progressive district that actually is implementing restorative practices we're following um senate bill 100 and the steps that were taken to that so we just wanted to add a little extra verbiage in there to fully explain our goals in terms of making sure that we're left less on zero tolerance and more on restorative we have a new intervention that we're introducing which is the therapy dogs intervention which is for more seo support there was no mentioning of that in the student code of conduct so i had to ensure that that was actually added so we added a paragraph a little section in there to explain also you have to also have parent consent so added to the student code of conduct would be a consent page where parents will have to let us know whether or not if it's okay for their uh child to interact with that particular intervention because they may not kids may be allergic we don't know so we got to make sure we have that on foul also there are some practices that we did have in place for instance like a signed bus seating but it actually wasn't in the student hand book so we had to make sure that we included it because those are practices that a lot of our buildings actually do use so we just wanted to make sure we had it listed see what else a section to ensure that alcohol influenced possession and marijuana actually closely matches to what senate bill 100 says we just wanted to make sure our verbiage was more in link in sync with that and technology based on our experiences this past year we want to just add a little extra base of what we saw our kiddos do this year to ensure that we have something in place for instances like what we actually experienced this year any questions i do i think it would have been a lot easier i didn't i didn't quite see it but i think it would have been a lot easier if we would have shown the revisions did we actually show the revisited to the agenda oh in the board okay i missed it but anyway going back to the hood yes now what about for athletes who have warm-up uniforms with hoods on and things like that well when they're at the building um because it says in the building right in the building uh yeah hoods mostly came from uh with the due to like during the time period with columbine shootings and things of that sort so that's a policy that most schools boards don't allow we don't allow the hoods we want them we want to be able to physically see their face and hoods kind of sort of uh takes away from being able to see who the student is okay is is a hood the same as a hoodie the and that's my point i actually have a creep only sweat that was given to me and it has a hood on it and i know i understand i cannot wear that in the building even though i'm not a student we just don't want you to have your hair covered that's again athletes usually you know wrestlers and things like that they they have a hoodie on or the hood on for being warm so you see that all the time track indoor track things like that so i don't think we have any indoor track going on but practicing so i just want to caution you on that if that ever comes across that athletes wear their hoods with their sweats with their warm-up uniforms and that's to keep them warm so i just want to throw that out so everybody kind of sort of needs to abide by that um and then when if you do that distinction then that's going to cause a will you allow this student to do it that's what i'm saying did we did we talk to the athletic athletic director on this issue well he has access to this uh handbook but when i was reviewing the handbook i did ask him if to look through it and if there was any revisions that he would have liked to add he didn't have that opportunity okay could you if just for my sake before we vote on it next week or next week just to get clarification from an athletic point of view and i'm good with that okay and the next thing i had i believe it was under csk about maybe it was applicable to all of the students here about backpacks only approved backpacks can be brought to school what are what's considered approved um so approved backpacks should be clear backpacks where you can see through them or mesh is that documented somewhere it should be in the student listen there okay okay i didn't see it okay long as it's documented and clarified i just did a speed reading there and saw that only approved backpacks could be brought to school okay and the last question i had it was on hair hair can be you know no hairstyle could be worn in school if it poses a safety hazard that's kind of vague so i don't know i think we may have some issues or have we had any issues with that you know i've seen you know all right different schools on the news and all of that wearing different hairstyles that was considered inappropriate and then there was some friction among parents and of their child not being able to wear certain hairstyles so i think it just says no hairstyle could be worn that is deemed inappropriate or unsafe so i don't know i don't know i just think we maybe want to revisit that look at it and put more clarity on what type of styles or something i don't know that's just my opinion that's all thank you you're welcome thank you okay thank you thank you ms riley mr neal did you have any comments regarding the employee handbook very slight revisions if any turn off the mute part it works better that way so the employee handbook for a number of reasons hasn't been brought to the board for approval for several years and just feeling much better about the idea that the board is aware of what's in the handbook and approves it we wanted to bring that back annually starting this year uh on page four of the document that's in board book uh there is a brief list of changes that were made from this year from past year mainly the changes are updating for example just some language and some of the regulations to match up with the law for example the uh 403 b's the tax sheltered annuities there are new limit limits on those so we just updated the limits we had to update the pandemic operational considerations to match what's in place right now as opposed to what was in place beginning of last year update our complaint managers and a couple of brief updates to expense reimbursement and fmla just to match the process that's being followed right now other than a few other typos and things that were discovered there weren't any other significant changes made over the past year so what we would like to do is bring this next week just to have the board give their approval to the handbook and verify the practices we're following and that would establish that that process again on an annual basis so if there are any questions i can take those otherwise you can move on to the next item you just you posted the draft but do you have a red line that just shows highlights the changes i can i can give you one for the next meeting i thought i had sent it i must not have so i will just make sure that's in for the regular meeting that'd be great yes thank you mr neil thank you okay and then next up is teaching and learning ms perkins she will be sharing with the board as well as the community our return to in-person learning and continuity of services we will be scheduled to have a public hearing on this topic for next tuesday in the meantime she's going to give an update of our anticipated reopening guidelines we'll see how it works good evening to the board to our public and to our staff we wanted to give an update on the return to in-person learning before we are allowed to spend any of our s or three funds we must have a public hearing and like dr kara said we will have that next week as we are aware there we go the superintendent of schools has mandated that we open a return to in-person full-person learning five days a week and knowing that we are going to have a gap in our work and that there's work ahead to be done hence the sr3 funds to help support and close gaps that we would have seen because of the pandemic and we are still waiting on any other further directions from cdc idph and isbe and as those directions and guidance and recommendations come up we will keep all of our documents updated i will tell you that this is already out of date based on what cdc came out with last friday this thursday i will be attending a meeting with the u.s department of ed and cdc and so we will see if there are any other further updates and changes there but this is a draft and then the board will get an updated copy once we have new information we do have a couple of timelines here tonight committee of the whole then we have a public hearing next week the 9th and 10th we will bring new staff back for orientation the 11th and 12th we're bringing staff for cmea for our certified staff for professional development institute days opening day is on the 16th and then the first day to have students back is on the 18th again dr ayala these changes will take effect for the 21 22 school year the isb board unanimously voted to have the resolution to bring school back in person five days a week at the beginning of the year she will have a declaration that she will sign and that will be based on local health department any updates that they have that we will be able to reopen as well as the governor with his temporary close of schools and we will get that declaration up once it is um once the superintendent gives that to us so one of the biggest pieces that the state has said they're calling it they went from mitigation measures to prevention strategies is what they're calling it and they're asking us to think about all of the areas where we can as we bring in students especially students who have not been able to be vaccinated meaning 12 and under that we are putting in layers and we continue to put in some of the layers as we brought students back in hybrid and so this chart shows i will tell you there has been an update in terms of social distancing on buses when we were coming back last year we were able to bring back students about 50 percent capacity they realized that is a challenge for us this year and so they have said social distancing doesn't have to be the same on the buses however students will be required to wear masks on buses so again we will update this chart with the check marks and x's as that information becomes available to us so this is one that will have to be updated based on cdc's guidance from friday and so that you are aware idph did take on all of the recommendations that cdc offered we know that mask and face coverings would create barriers and challenges that we are going to have to work through but they did give their recommendations and guidance again cafeteria social distancing the recommendation is as much as possible and that changes at different grade levels because obviously at the elementary those students have not been able to be vaccinated but at the high school we have had the opportunity to be vaccinated and crete money is not saying or the state is not saying that students need to be vaccinated but it is a recommendation school buses again social distancing that has changed to if possible one of the other challenges that we're still working through is the contact tracing quarantining and then is idph has put in some guidance for free coping 19 testing and i'm going to have nurse kate come up and talk about the recommendations of testing a quick question about the mask and face covering so what what are the recommendations i know what the cdc's recommendations were what are we going to do uh that we will be talking with dr kara to talk about what what our recommendation is going to be again all students age 12 and under the recommendation is that they wear masks all right thank you and gentile can i just ask i've been contacted i've been seeing on the internet in different stories that many school districts are taking votes on what they want to do like are they going to allow the parents to make the decision is the school going to make it how are they following through so are we looking at at those options also like whatever we decide how do we enforce that i guess is the term well and i will say that the state has said that the district needs to do what is in the best interest for the students in terms of preventing and being able to be in person five days a week the recommendation is that we do whatever needs the academics come first and that everything else um not that everything else is not important but the most important part that we know is that uh we've had some learning laws um and that students need to be in and that that's the priority so we need to do whatever we need to do to make sure that kids can come to school five days a week and to keep them safe and our staff safe so i guess the question is people are asking me are the parents or the community going to have any input on this or is this going to be a specific um decision by dr cara are you in dr cara yeah it's a decision by by dr cara okay so there will be no import from parents or anything like that and the reason why is we have to figure out how to administer it and it's very and it is very difficult because uh with the guidelines that they've suggested they are recommending triple coverage if we're going to relax the three foot of social distancing especially in our cafeterias where we're having the most problem they're recommending mask wearing um so it it becomes very difficult and so we've got to figure out how we would administrate this in a large cafeteria all the time it becomes very difficult so it is an administrative decision um at least i'm looking at it that way certainly people can give it some input but as far as board but we have to figure how we're going to administer it well there's that hearing next week is that when parents can give input if they correct right so we should let parents know that they should come right and so you could have different guidelines i mean maybe in the classroom you're not requiring masks at certain ages but in the cafeteria you are i mean there could be different circumstances it may not be that they have to wear a mask from the minute they walk in the door to the minute they walk out of the door is that correct there could be different situations and again we have to figure out who's vaccinated and who's not back vaccinated who is not and who's in the hallways and who is it becomes a heavy monitoring system right and then what is the dis what is the um the accountability for that monitoring and i think the parents are already nervous and they're when will we know when will we know when will we know you know and so i just think that there have been districts already that have had meetings and taken votes and stuff so they're seeing that and they're wondering what we're doing right and we will have that ready for it on tuesday we were just finishing our discussions literally this week okay unfortunately oh go ahead i'm just maybe i don't know for people to know that there's a public hearing they the only reason the only way they would know is if they went on our website is there a suggestion out there maybe that i could make to make a robocall or something if there's a concern or or some way to let them know that they have a voice because there are parents who are already concerned about different things absolutely um i think not everybody reaches out i mean you know some people they will reach out but there are lots of people in our community that don't know how to reach out or won't do it so i'm just wondering how we're going to get this information out and get input and hopefully you're correct and we'll be following up with uh ms nash as far as you know the best way to push out that information because we do want people to attend public hearing that's the purpose of the public or at least be able to send a comment yes and do a public comment and if they don't know that's happening then they've missed their opportunity correct so that's what i'm concerned about is that we need to have our community know this is going on good point we will make sure that we have some communication thank you and i will let the board know what we're doing awesome thank you very much and mr skalbroth i will say that we followed all protocol for public hearings so it did go in our our newspaper and get published any other way that we would publicize a public hearing and of course the public is allowed to send in their comments to terry tobin as they always have right and i don't i mean we do normal public hearings for budgets and things like that but this is out of the ordinary and i don't think they'd know to look for that is is all i'm saying is that i know to look because i'm on the board now and i've learned a lot but if i was just out in the public there are many things that i never knew were going on in the school so i think there's so much concern about how we're handling it when they will know that if we can somehow push that information out and let them know this is taking place i think it would be great okay thank you nurse kate thank you ms galbraith not nearly as tall as perkins to pull that off uh so of um how we're calling the preventative strategies and having as dr kara said like that triple layer of um strategies so by that it's you know how many so you have masking social distancing vaccine those are you know that's one triple layer another triple a you know so part of it is um the kova testing in school so there are currently two um tests that are available i have them up there shield versus bionx now the shield testing that is kind of like your gold standard that's your you know your pcr test it's the saliva base it's the one that u of i developed and released and so all the u of i students were doing it it's a very good test you know the kids we would get for any testing we would do we need uh parental consent before we do it on-site with the shield test we send the samples out to a lab to get run and then we get the results and they report it to the health department you know positive and negative so no further testing is required the bionx now that's one of the nasal swabs you see them at the walgreens all the time now on the cvs and the tools um that's the nasal swab not the one that goes up to your brain swab just like a regular flu swab one but that's the antigen test so that's just detecting probable current infection so it's just testing for the antigen itself the results are done on site it you know it's kind of well yeah so you get it within the 15 minutes the problem drawback not a problem drawback is that it's not considered diagnostic so it's just a way to kind of flag so if you know there's there's situations where further testing such as this shield testing would be required to get an actual result to determine whether or not somebody is probable for having coveted needs to follow any type of quarantine or isolation um so that's just the difference between the two you could do the next one do you have the clicker oh okay um so the states both the health department and isb is really working hard to try and bring these programs into the schools to be educated uh executed through um the school there are three cur options that idh idph offer weekly testing with a third party collection team now that is really only with the shield people um right now they say that they can bring in a third party to do it every week for all the students whose parents sign consent um you could do weekly testing with our staff collection i don't have staff uh the and then the one that isb is saying that we really idph is saying all schools must consider and regardless of your interest of doing an actual testing program is option three which is emergency outbreak testing um so this again parental consent required anybody in the event that we have an outbreak so it's where it gets tricky and we don't have the idph guidelines i was really hoping it was coming today it might not come till next tuesday or friday good lord willing this friday um to get clarification but right now if we are not a testing program an outbreak is going to be classified as the you know five cases that can be linked together whether on a bus in a classroom you know same thing as it was before over the course of 14 days and no other outside influences so in that event then idph would say that we would have to do four weeks of two times a week two times a week screening kids with consent to prevent them from having to quarantine or to limit any type of classroom or you know sectional closings pods you know cohorts however the case may be um that's just kind of where they're at right now again it's very preliminary i really wanted to have more information for you but i can't make it up so i mean i could like to but there's not a whole lot i can offer these are just our choices like you said my personal preference would just be the option three in the event that we have an outbreak we can reach out to shields they say that they should be able to deploy somebody to come out run you know run the testing in all the buildings get the samples to where they need to go uh being that we are a tier one school then it's at no cost to us there's a little bit of caveat in there that says that we need to be doing this um and they could get us started is you know their most recent little blurb red update on their last one was you always be like oh if you need outbreak testing won't come out don't worry about it now it's like well we could come out maybe for the first week and get you started so again i'm not sure staffing wise number wise the only thing i could really say is we didn't have any outbreaks you know like actual true outbreaks and that is defined and identified through the health department that's not yeah yeah thank you perkins um you know that's we've you know kind of unofficially you know made decisions just based on but the health department never came to us and said this is an outbreak situation so i'm willing to roll the dice on that personally so any questions thoughts concerns thank you okay all right so here we go so here is where we talk about again before we um the application for sr3 just opened up in the last couple of weeks so before we can submit that application and spend any funding we have to have the public hearing to talk about how what is our plan for spending those funds and again 20 must be accounted for with learning loss and taking into focus um our students academic health and social emotional needs as well as any marginalized subgroups that we have this chart displays the percentages of how we are spending how we've spent um sr1 funds which was the cares grant as her2 and then our projections for esther 3 and the funds will go through 2024 at the bottom it talks about how we are kind of blending our funds with title funds and idea funds to make sure that we are able to support the initiatives that we have as we return back to school one of the big things that we know that we need some human capacity we need individuals to help support us and so we have a partnership with governor state where we are hiring on a temporary basis we're calling them transition to teaching teacher interns and so they will be we're trying to get at least two in each building that would serve as interventionist to help support the initiatives that the building principals would like the support for with the academics of students we need to make sure that we have a continuity of services because of the pandemic we cannot go backwards on what we were offering to our students and our families and so as we develop the guide each assistant superintendent with dr cara is working on the reference guide as we return to in-person learning and we will address all of the issues related here for the academic and social emotional piece we are putting in place continuing our academics at each of our sites and that's from what we're offering in the curriculum to the way that we plan and collaboration with our teams and teachers to the practices that we have in place including having a strong core curriculum and any interventions that our students need as well as the return of assessments and making sure that we are doing that on a continuous basis and we are monitoring that work again taking a strong look at what our students needs are as they return and what those social and emotional needs are and each building principle will be working with their teams on their individual site plans as they return and so again it's for the elementary school planning the middle school nbc and the high school uh one of the things that we do have to offer is that any student who is under 12 and not vaccinated there are two parts to this they have to be quarantined and under the age of 12 and under if they meet those qualifications and they are unable to attend school again under quarantine and under the age of 12 then those students we have to have a remote option we are currently working with cmea to determine what our remote options would look like one of the options is that even though it was taxing our teachers did a wonderful job of simultaneously teaching and so we would offer that if a student is out we would have district-wide teachers and those two students i'm sorry would google into those classroom and get their lesson for the day again under quarantine and under age 12.
another option is to have students remote in to [Music] kind of like permanent guest teachers and again we are working with cmea to see what that would look like you know it could be zero students on one day and then it could be 50 students on another day so we will continue to work with our membership on that the other option is that for our students who are medically fragile and would follow under homebound those students could receive up to five hours of instruction a week questions so again as we get updates from thursday through the weekend we will make sure this is updated before the public hearing next week doctor there we i think we all received an um update from house of rizzo this afternoon is that with isb adopts cdc guidance for covert nineteen prevention in katy through twelve schools so is that the most recent update or i don't know if you've had a chance to look at it i haven't yet i've been on my email today i believe i can speak to that yeah i was not the person that our firm that wrote that but i believe that was based on guidance that came out on the eighth yeah so okay yeah so is that more recent guidance and what this presentation was saying okay okay um do we have any old business yet can i just try and before we get off this topic go ahead so just want to backtrack a little bit to uh the business side of like ken um just so we're on the same page we miss roop and i had fortunately we had a meeting earlier and i know on the last page you guys are a little off on the life safety and and i just want to clarify i think a discussion that we had earlier is it let's just backtrack a little bit we did the life safety in elc and talala we started that back in december because we were basing our our our future forward with the other stuff the other buildings on the referendum so and that's why all that work's getting done now that all that works getting done and seeing the amount of construction that is being done in those buildings i think ken was just we talked earlier we were just you know uh the five of us were talking but i think the premise there is it's not that he's trying to forget the life safety on the other buildings i think what he's trying to do is once he gets the assessment can is there anything else that's what is important along with the life safety to couple it together the construction going on in those buildings is pretty invasive so if we're going to do an invasive it's it's csk or crete elementary or balmoral if there is something else that's going to be that evasive to try to couple together we did approve the money for the life safety and i'm all for that that now that we're today in the referendum pass i would assume the bids would go out in december like they did this past year and we could get all the life safety done in all the buildings next year but at least now from now until we get our assessment just correct me if i'm wrong then if there's anything major on there we might as well i think what he's trying to do is if we if we have the opportunity it might be a good time to do them both together instead of let's just say we we do a lot of demo with csk i'm going to use that as an example or crete elementary and then a and then a year later we're going to go back in there put air conditioning or roof or whatever we're going to do and we're going to do a whole bunch more construction i think that was the premise he wasn't trying again i'm not speaking for mr cerma but just more or less that our time frame changed when the referendum didn't pass so i that's it because we did we are going to spend the money on the life safety and all the buildings i would assume between the seven of us we've agreed to that but i think he's just i think in another month or so we're going to get that assessment we have until december to get the bid documents out correct which gives us a little window to figure out if we're going to borrow more money or if we're just going to stick straight with life safety which is okay but i think that i'm just i just want to clarify that because i just don't think the premise was to eliminate life safety altogether okay are we still an old business yes okay i don't think we ever started oh that wasn't so that was just an end okay can we start old business sure okay um i i've had people question me because they know that i've been touting this about the therapy dog program is it possible that we could get somebody to do like a two or three minute explanation of exactly what the therapy dog program is in a school i don't think they understand um and you know we're talking about it but they're like well what do you mean you're going to have dogs what's going to happen so is is there a way that at some point we can have a little presentation and this is galbraith you are you are you're my spoiler here oh geez i i probably should have said that when uh ms riley was uh discussing it actually we are inviting our dogs in our program to uh highlight the program elevate it uh we wanted to present it in the handbook first we're going to spend some time at a regular board meeting next week we're going to have our dogs here we're going to have an explanation of the program and we're going to spend some more time talking about the dogs are talking next week they are okay good so yes okay and they're getting their picture taken and they they have a bio that's going to be coming on our website because there's a little bit of an extra to that therapy dog story correct you know yes there is yes there is okay can i just pounce on that as well [Laughter] okay a service is a therapy dog the same as a service dog pet therapy dog is the same as a service dog i think they're a little bit different but because i guess the question i have is that do we have other service animals of any type do we have other service animals of any type within our district being utilized in our district we do not no that does not mean therapy dogs are covered under law covered under there's a lot of regulations for that which is totally different than therapy dogs we currently do not have any students that is addressed in some of the documents i created but if a student did show up with them that we we would be required by ada to allow them in yes okay could in some manner a service or therapy dog if it was to be utilized can that be disruptive to another service animal um i guess there's always a possibility can we just take it case by case yes but both dogs would be trained the therapy dogs have a lot more training we've already introduced the dogs to a lot of the staff members we're continuing to train with the dogs over the summer the dogs received months and months of training and a large portion of that training was involved involving different scenarios everything from water features to escalators and elevators just to see how the dogs react differently so they're very familiar in the class i was just down in another class 70 dogs all in the same room another class there was 50 dogs in the same room my dog was with four other dogs today so they are very that doesn't mean the other dogs may be but they're very very comfortable being around the other dogs i do believe that moving down it's kind of difficult and i believe this would be uh some questions for our attorney and ada because we don't want to violate that but i do believe that we could probably implement some policies and procedures for service dogs that come in here and that would maybe be length the length of the leash and for us i've identified where the dog goes in the bathroom locations they can't go science labs food food areas things like that i believe that we could probably do that for a service dog but uh those are gonna be questions for the attorney uh with the therapy dog it's easier because we can just decide that that's what we want we present it to the administration and the board and then you guys approve it okay there is a policy for service dogs but i don't remember how in depth it goes because rochelle and i had to write very limited yeah that we have a student that was going to a board policy yes because we had a student at one point we thought was going to need to have a service dog so we were quick notified to write it and it's i think it's pretty spectrum but it then it didn't work out because that i don't think the student came or something like that but it was like a on the spot thing we had to do so it was very broad it's still in the book it is correct yeah and it aligns with ada you know we need to be tribulations uh take a look at that there are some school districts where uh they had a girl showed up with a therapy horse and they had to allow the horse in the school district so we'll be implementing that next month surprise you know that's my case in point yeah so but you know those are those are service dogs and therapy dogs are that's why they have different titles so yeah those are those those restrictions and how you apply those are going to be that's going to have to be for the for the attorneys thank you thank you sir appreciate it any other old business items i have two the first one is we wanted to come firs full circle i believe at the last meeting uh we were asking um to get some appraisals for mec in the dome and the board had asked how much that was going to be so we do have those numbers so for mec the appraisal was going to cost five thousand dollars and for the dome it was going to be 6500 so we would just need to find out from the board if you would like us to have some consensus to move forward on on that or not i mean mec there's interest of someone buying it correct sort of there's been talk right that money would would like mec so would there be interest of getting an appraisal i would say yes to put a dollar value to it okay i would as far as the dome i think in my opinion uh which is only one of seven that i you know i thought it was part of the sixth grade center being demo and i i personally would not want to approve spending any more money and get an appraisal i agree with bill i also agree i also agree i mean on the same premise you said someone was interested in mec to purchase nbc which justify getting a an appraisal so i believe it was last week someone uh was it last week last last regular board meeting someone was interested in in a dome as well so i would i would say again to do it yeah i mean i think the consensus was that we were not interested in selling the dome if we're not interested in selling the dome i don't see the purpose of getting an appraisal until that would change but i agree i think with him he sees a little different situation so i agree nelson we decided we were interested in selling so why pay for an appraisal when we're not interested in selling i agree and what was the inter who was the interested party again for mec i'm sorry it was uh the village omoni the village of money yes and i reported that in my newsletter okay so my understanding then with the direction we'll go ahead and move forward and pursue an appraisal of mec and then my other short item was just to alert remind the board in the community that in august we should be going back to our regular meeting spot over at the district office for committee of the whole as well as our regular board meetings so unless anything changes we'll plan to meet back over there and that was correct okay are you done with old business okay i do have one more question on old business was i had asked that we seek out the contractor that was doing the big scope of work on mec not nbc but elc and talala to see just what they're hiring of minority contractors and minority-owned businesses and local businesses and i think you sent that document to us and i believe it was just one person that was considered a woman business enterprise business business and out of like three million dollars that was that we approved that person that construction company contract i believe the one business was expending 40 000 galaxy enterprise memory serves me right so that was just a small token i think is galaxy enterprise that deals with lighting some some sort of lighting so i just say moving forward i think we need a better handle and better set the narrative on what we expect the contractor maybe right in the bid spec or whatever if we want one percent to go to local vendors or what i don't know exact verbiage to put in there but i think this board said we wanted to try to get vendors of a local nature involved with these big projects so so that was i was a little disappointing when they shared a whole chart and it had all these no's nose nose nose and just one yes and that resulted in forty thousand dollars which is less than one percent of the contract we don't have to have no quota but i think the intent again is we are expanding taxpayers money and i think qualified vendors and minorities should have an opportunity to get a piece of the pie and i agree 100 with that we do have in all of our bid documents uh verbiage uh for minority owned and uh women-owned businesses so that verbiage is in there um it is some legal um i can refer to eric on this but um you know it has been uh verified by the attorneys of the type of language that is in there i will have to say i i do have to i will have to consult with the attorneys on what we can or can't do or what we can demand or not demanded bid documents so i'll work with the attorneys on that mr brown and and you know to see if we can get more definite on our language in there if we can consider a percentage or not i'm not sure that and i'll just have to rely on our attorneys for that yeah all within the law sure no i i always can allow i'll be happy to do that so the next go around with these big ticket items and these proposed contracts that we can do a little bit better on that yeah and be assured there was verbiage in the original documents it was in there that is in all of our contracts uh or all of our uh rfps or rfqs that's all in there but again i'll work with our attorneys to see what how we can make that language better excellent i appreciate it dr cognitives for supplying aboard that information too thank you thanks ken do we have any other old business any new business okay we do have a need for closed session tonight can i get a motion to go into closed session for and we have two purposes one for the appointment employment compensation discipline performance or dismissal of specific employee of the public body and two litigation when an action against affecting or on behalf of a particular body has been filed and is pending before a court or administrative tribunal moved second roll call please brown is an eye mrs galbraith aye mr smallish aye mrs walters aye president roo aye president albrecht aye so we are in closed session at 806.
i have hard copies can can i get a motion to adjourn second all all in favor say aye aye all opposed galbraith moved smaller second galbraith galbraith
it um just um okay we're staying away [Music] okay at least i sent a text and i don't have your cell phone in my number oh my phone you need to do that so you can send it to me yeah i am so sorry i'm just like i only have wyman i don't know after that you better hurry up hey you made it with 48 seconds to scan because that clock is a little hey that clock is a little slow yeah yeah you know i wonder are we supposed to go by that clock even though it's wrong because it's a good question because i go by myself we should bring it up to him yeah like after the meeting or something because all right you guys mike's gonna be hot shelley that clock no that one is accurate yeah i may be coming we started the meeting without you before okay we are going to start this meeting at six o'clock six o'clock baby um call to order at six uh i need a motion to adopt the agenda i move to adopt the agenda second all in favor aye aye aye aye motion carries four to zero mr mr um ray will not be with us today his um he's has some family things come up so i'll go ahead and do the pledge i pledge allegiance indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay we have approval of the meeting minutes we have um for the june 9th meeting the board retreat for june 22nd and then the proposed budget meeting for i mean june 21st and the proposed uh for the budget meeting for june 21st i moved to approve the minutes for the regular board meeting on june the 9th i second hold on do we have to do each of them individually i would probably do each of them because they're listed individually i would do three motions okay um so we have bob and then lisa um all in favor aye aye aye motion carries four to zero so the retreat i move to approve the board retreat meeting minutes from june the 21st a second all in favor all right aye motion carries four to zero uh the budget hearing i moved to uh to approve the minutes for the proposed budget hearing on june the 21st a second all in favor aye aye aye motion carries 4-0 lisa i'm so proud of you okay um baby steps baby i know baby steps we got that second in there though okay um superintendent report thank you madam president a couple different things uh right out of the gate just to note that attached to the agenda is the asba event calendar i know we had a conversation i think at one of the board evaluations about making sure that everybody's aware of those events that are taking place throughout the year with asba so this calendar is reflective of july 1 to june 30 and just has a variety of different events that you can attend and it's linked into the board meeting so if there's anything that you see that you want to attend for example we know that that is the county meetings i believe it's being held in october uh not sure that they have selected where but pinal county will be in october they go through the entire state going to the different counties you can at least start to put stuff on your calendar if that's something that you want to attend sorry does it say in there where the um pineal county one is no they haven't this they have not decided we put in for it i let them know we'd be willing to host it because i think two years ago when they had it we had suggested that we'd be the next year oh yeah that'd be great if they came here yeah so then we're gonna have to travel i know but i don't know if uh they'll make their decision to let us know here in a little bit okay uh one of the first events they have just so you know is the law conference uh and so that registration is open so please let mr costa know if if it's something you want to go go to the pre-conference is wednesday the 8th of september and then the conference is actually thursday and friday the 9th and 10th can you email us those like okay thank you and uh it's it's at the jw merritt camelback inn mr ray will be attending the 11th i believe because he's our delegate assembly and that's on saturday the 11th uh i'll just be attending the 9th and the 10th i won't be going to the pre-conference but if it's something you want to go to just let us know do you want to thank kayla fulmer and the marketing department we've got several things that have come out in just the last little bit um we have our annual report first annual report that's been out we'll have some hard copies that should be here by the start of school we have virtual school tours that were just released today that should be going up on our website and and there for the for people to see what the schools are all about and we also did a video about combs and we want to show that one some people have seen that some people haven't but we want to go ahead and give it a show we're going to show it quite a bit to a lot of different places we think it reflects the district uh very well um and so we want to go ahead and show that so we'll show it now and then we'll move on with our report every child deserves the very best education every day and when you work with that is your focus and your center you can't go wrong [Music] every day combs is putting kids at the center of learning by giving them that voice and that choice we're doing things like flexible seating we're using data to drive our instructions and students are behind the wheel of the decision making with things like learning walls and helping break down standards with their teachers what we're trying to do is create student-centered classrooms that really personalize the the learning environment for our kids when you personalize learning environments and give them options and choice then we think we're getting them prepared for the next phase of their educational career really that's about making sure that they have characteristics that are going to be needed by kids to be successful in school the most rewarding part of my job is when students get excited about their learning i love those lightbulb moments that go off when they've achieved their goals i can see it on their whole face their big bright smile makes me happy i think homes is a premier district because we're always putting our students needs first we're looking at their strengths and their weaknesses you know helping them to master the content that we're teaching what makes me so proud is that i'm a product of this community i live in this community i work in this community and i have two combs high school graduates what makes combs the best place for kids is the experiences that they will get while they're with us we have award-winning music programs championship sports teams and the other thing is that we're all family here there's no such thing as a stranger in the comb school district we just have some of the greatest teachers and admin that really want kids to succeed you know whether it is going to college or maybe it's you know you're dealt with high school and you want to go straight to the workforce i think at homes 2 we also not only teach academics but we teach social and emotional growth and i think that's very important with the development of children and i think that we work in a district that puts students first if you choose combs you'll get to be part of a family a family of dedicated people that care about you and care about your kids and your family if you choose combs you'll get a vibrant community that's growing that has solid values that cares about the educational process of their kids if you choose combs you're going to go ahead and get dedicated highly qualified teachers that want to work with your children every single day if you choose combs you will in fact get a nationally recognized school district that's on the cutting edge of what it takes to prepare our kids for the next generation you'll get all that in a caring loving environment that focuses on your child and make sure that your child is the center of everything you do very good [Applause] and i think it's critical when we take a look at not only that but if you take a look at the those tours and the annual report that um it's been said by lots of people lots of times you you move through your successes way too quick you dwell on negativity but you move through positivity very very quickly um and i think that our ability to celebrate who we are and what we what we do is is absolutely critical in a very very competitive arena that we are in in public education and this whole marketing plan through kate kayla's leadership has been about making sure that we do market the successes that we have and it allows for us to to make sure that when people see us they recognize that we are a nationally recognized district and maybe their perceptions of who we are and what we are is different this is critical in lots of different arenas but but in one little one uh we do have a the board approved the stipend that would be given in the spring for increased student enrollment we believe these three uh forms that we're pushing out will help in that arena to help our staff uh so that more people want to come and we are seeing positive returns so again thank you to kayla and her team and and everybody that participated uh i will tell you that the messaging is is very unique in all of these but especially that one we just saw nobody knew what anybody was going to say those all those interviews were done independently of each other and questions were just asked and people just spoke from the heart and so it's nice to see that you get a consistent message even though it was not planned that way and so turned out to be outstanding so we appreciate that very nice miss boomer yes very good you you didn't even really look that old or anything in there i know you looked good caleb made you look good usually that the the camera takes years off your life so you know that one's and adds weight so thank you i want to have you guys i know i'm getting beat up up here i do want dr duplicious to come up uh present this award that we received we talked about it last month but the district has received the platinum award from healthy arizona wellness program i'll give it to you right here and this is just an award that recognizes businesses making efforts to positively affect the health and well-being of their employees their families in the community through evidence-based work site health initiatives and promising programs a lot you heard a little bit on on that last video that talks about social emotional learning about mental health mental awareness uh that applies for staff as well as it is for for students and the well the wellness committee has worked fairly hard over the last i think it's four years to continue to get this award and the platinum is the highest award we can get we've kind of moved up from from silver gold platinum type thing over the last three years so congratulations dr plississon we appreciate the wellness committee let's see um i'd like to just move on into staff recognition we got a couple different staff recognitions we'd like to do okay the first one uh we we're starting coming out of last year we're starting the uh combs blue apple recognition awards uh what we did for those of you that are new is as we chose the apple obviously that's uh signifies public education and and when people do something special in public education or a way to thank them kids bring teachers an apple and so we decided to go ahead and and use that as a way to recognize staff uh the difference is we're gonna color blue that represents our district so it's just our way to recognize those individuals uh throughout the year uh from the different schools and different departments because it is the um uh the summer we will go ahead and start with the district office so we'd like to recognize two individuals in the district office one would represent the support staff and the other certified staff so for the support staff if i could have liz chavez come up please liz is in her second year with combs and she's kind of the face of what's taking place uh with synergy questions uh and with everything going on with our online registration so she's constantly out there working with the front office as well as our community to help move through a myriad of issues and and schedule changes she's gotten to the point where she's done such a great job and knows what takes place and what needs to take place that they actually call her the goat of the team for those who don't know goat that means the greatest of all time so she's being recognized as as doing an outstanding job in the district and we thank you very much liz for everything you've done for the second one um not sure if she knows that she's coming up that was purposeful but we would like dorsey mid out to please come up um dorsey we've had a whole bunch of training that's taking place and i know it's a team effort with the instructional coaches and the content coaches but dorsey has just done an amazing job demonstrating leadership to um get this training underway uh we just had a little tidbit of it with the new teachers on new teacher orientation uh today but what she's gonna do on on monday and tuesday and what our team's going to do on monday and tuesday of next week is is as i've said on several occasions second to none in any district i've ever been in in most districts and it is through her leadership her kindness or caring about what we do her true desire to make sure that we make a difference in your lives as teachers that she's able to do this and so we just wanted to take a moment to say thank you dorsey great job we appreciate [Applause] it now we also have a group of people in the audience that are brand new to our district who are trying to figure out what's the best way to do it wasn't sure how many people are going to show up but because of the groups that are there we're going to ask you to please come over here to the side and line up yes you get to be a star and what we'd ask you to do is is come up to the podium there we'll get it going and just introduce yourself and what you're going to do in the district your job that way the board can get a face with with the name as we move through with some activity so please come on over and we will have you introduce yourself single file line up no touching no pushing you can do it you can do it though okay i'm madison browning i'm at ranch elementary and i'm teaching fourth grade all right welcome welcome thank you [Applause] hi i'm colton christensen i'll be teaching fourth grade at ranch elementary ranchers i am tiffany guerra and i will be teaching kindergarten at ranch oh wow welcome [Applause] i'm hannah pugh i'll be teaching second grade at ranch elementary welcome thank you hi i'm ashley lynn and i'll be teaching ninth and 10th grade english [Music] [Applause] hi my name is krista moak i will be teaching sixth grade at ranch nice hello i'm maylie claire and i'll be technology at simonton and harvard nice yes good job hello i'm rebecca bendel and i'll be teaching sixth grade at simmington elementary welcome hi i'm monica sperry and i'm also teaching sixth grade at simonton what a team there hello i'm jennifer lewis and i'm teaching visual arts at combs high school nice good welcome hello i'm dominique bono and i'll be teaching eighth grade english at combs middle good school hi i'm cassie newman i'll be seventh grade language arts at combs middle school nice hi i'm tracy weaver and i'll be the instructional coach at the high school hello i'm demi frazier and i'll be teaching 10th and 11th grade english at the high school nice welcome hello i'm noah noelle parker i'm at combs high school doing inclusion english wonderful thank you hello i'm jessica dodie and i'm going to be the social worker at the high school oh hi i'm rachel riebold i'm the school counselor at the high school hi i'm jessica maloney and i'll be the new instructional coach at cta i'm michelle sheldon i'll be one of two new counselors at cta hey michelle hi i'm emma stephanie and i'll be in charge of student activities welcome hi my name is karen finn and i am the buyer for the district office for them great wonderful michelle sheldon i guess this is the only way we get mr sheldon to our meeting that's right nice i like that and we just want to take the moment we've we've done it a couple times and we'll do it again is just to welcome you to our family uh this is representative there are others i think it's approximately 60 maybe 65 total um just a way to welcome us welcome them to our district uh we are part of family so getting to know faces and names together becomes important these members of the board up here do a lot of positive things for you as employees and so we want to make sure they have a chance to to see who you are and hopefully you'll have a chance to combine whether it's to get an award or give a presentation for something you're doing in in your school or in your programs that's what it's all about so again thank you so very much for joining our family we're truly blessed to have you with us and we can't wait for uh an amazing year that's going to come up so thank you very much i apologize i usually come to your guys's like welcome to the new teacher i just got back from colorado last night so i do apologize for not being there so but i want to congratulate everyone for being here on a night when the suns are playing correct right i know although you guys are going to get to leave if you want the rest of them have to stay i was saying they're selling what i'm saying would you please be quiet so we can move to 6 30.
i mean i can find it i just don't know anymore have technical difficulties from time to time okay so uh you were saying on the uh uh financial summary dr karen i was just finishing up the end of the month balances and just my explanation of just some of the things considering as we move forward the last thing there was the just wanted to show you the education operation fund transfers again that's another requirement that we cannot transfer more than 15 of our education fund revenues into um our operations fund but we have to transfer dollars to to help with the costs that had moved from the old general fund to the operation fund but anyway right now we're transferring 12.3.9 which in comparison last year was overall the whole year was 12.4 percent but just so that you understand that 12.4 percent does mean we're not fully funding um some of those costs in the operation fund because there's an 89 000 deficit for us to actually cover every cost that we would normally cover if you go to the next slide that would be more along the lines of 13 and a half percent to do that we're still in good shape with all that we are going to increase our balance transfer we were doing 155 000 a month we are going to increase the time sixty thousand dollars a month um which is all out in that resolution that we passed back in january as far as our transfers are concerned i'm going to review this chris correct me but some of the coverage and operations is coming out cpm just a little bit just a little bit some of that they used to allow us to cover some of our utility costs out of there and so there's a certain percentage that they allowed us to do that with so i carry that over as part of that that amount which i think was like 23 000 28 000 our operational fund is pretty strong i mean we're in pretty good shape i'm not too worried about the 12 right now obviously that's gonna that can vary from year to year just by you know the the increases in costs plus whatever happens to our revenue so like we could be spending the same amount of dollars but if our revenue declined in our education fund it's going to be a higher percentage anyway so it's just balancing that out i just wanted to show you that we're well within our 15 transfer requirement there it is i just have to stick it there's a hint of state control drifting down here and they say 15 here 40 yep on the whatever exactly basically too when when this was all changed from the two accounts with education and operation you know require there's going to be no cut offs like you know you can just do it you can just transfer money as you need it and then and then start changing again and of course the new updates as far as that you're exactly right so that's my summary then as far as financials current financials are concerned and then i think that just do we just move on yeah just jump on the budget the budget review so you can read that we'll we'll start um then i'm starting to work on our budget for 2022 and so when you're working on your next year's budget you're really working on an 18 month budget not a 12 month budget so the budget really entails the last six months here of 2021 and then use that information to go into the next 12 months for 2022 and so i just kind of like to break it out in chunks so that we don't you know don't throw it all at you at once and then i just usually start with the simple stuff um mike you can keep going this is this has to do with all the transfer stuff so um budget estimates so we we report these figures to the dlgf and then once we approve all of these and accept all of these we submit it and then the dlg determines whether or not our revenues are going to be enough to fund our budget and then they make the adjustments to our appropriations and then we have to go back and adjust what we anticipated or advertised in our budget so this first one here i believe is our debt service budget so it reflects all of our bonds uh lease bonds and geo bonds that we currently have um so we always anticipated uh the possibility of a tax anticipation uh warrant which is just borrowing money if we felt like we had cash flow issues we haven't had to do that in a long time but we are always allowed to you know put a little bit of a dollar amount in there to help cover the cost of the interest but that is no longer allowed you have to pass the tax anticipated war beforehand before you can apply or apply that to your debt service so that's why there's a zero there but we don't like i said we haven't had to worry about that in a while um and then the current debt that we have out is the 2016 the 2011 and the 2016 and then we just have the new bond that we established in june uh the 2021 geo bond the 2016 bond expires at the end of this year so that's why there's a zero payment in there we won't need to have any debt service for that next year because that will be paid off at the end of this year the geo bond the new bond um there is no payments there i should say there are payments next year but they're only capitalized interest payments that will actually come directly out of the bond uh so we don't have to ask for any debt uh help with that for 2021 but in 2022 then we'll have to ask for the principal amount uh to cover that bond and then the 2019 and 2011 shows there then what's remaining um that will be the final amount then for those two bonds because those will finish up at the end of 2022 and so those are broken down by principal and interest for those uh three bonds and then textbook rental that's the amount of money that we did not receive back in back from the state and so we are allowed to include that into our debt service to recover the money that we did not get back from the state on our free uh students of free textbooks question yes why quite a short fall so the state only appropriates so much so when we put our when we request our amount of money and all the other schools request their amount of money if it goes over that appropriation then they then they divide them up amongst the state and so um i i don't remember what the exact percentage was i think we only got 82 back of what we requested and so that tends to happen every year just they don't have enough money appropriated to pay everybody back what they what they're asking for so um that shortfall then is what we're allowed to take out of that service debt free december well no because we have the new geo bond which goes out to 20.3 did you say 2023 yes 22 yeah yes for that last bond which isn't that large no and we didn't really talk so much about the the new bond we got but we we had one percent interest on it so we're we're paying about 20 000 in interest so pretty good return then rainy day uh we don't do a lot with rainy day obviously we just kind of keep it for a rainy day but you know one of our goals was to to decrease that self-insurance fund to zero and get a balance of a million dollars which we have accomplished that and so we still have to set a budget for it so typically in our budget we allocate um stipends in there we allocate health insurance in case we were ever to do like a retirement bridge or anything like that we put in some consulting services uh some marketing communications because that's where we used to kind of pay that out of before we we did that into uh laura's budget and then if we wanted to do any type of transfers we left a little bit of room for that as well so just kind of recommending about a budget from nine hundred thousand dollars typically we don't i mean typically we don't spend it because it's just there but we need to have some allocations for that in case we needed to use it um so that we don't have to go through the process again so those were the two funds there we'll get into operations and education fund in the next couple board meetings and then that will lead us into then our budget hearing and then our budget adoption which will be separate board meetings as well i like to try to get all that done in september ish because we do have deadlines that we have to meet from the dlgf to get those things submitted in certain time frames so just for information purposes at this time yep okay we're going to move on to personnel and warn you that as this tradition in the summer months this list gets lengthy tonight there's no exception so here we go under resignation we have uh monica carey cook at southwood high school kaylin's sorrel speech language pathologist at wmap jt biggs counselor whites kenneth working summer custodian for all the schools shelby grump paraprofessional shark creek elementary uh sam key favorite english teacher at northfield high school and courtney mcclure third grade teacher at sharp creek elementary underemployment christina cephanatis dean of students at southwood elementary to be paid out of esser chloe kleiler social worker at metro north elementary also to be paid out of esr tabitha klein sixth grade teacher at southwood elementary mary norman sixth grade teacher at southwood elementary kelly bear second grade teacher at southwood elementary tom law guidance counselor wabash excuse me white's high school got a lot of myself there um no we still don't do anything for wabash for their guy they're hiring uh trisha ekman paraprofessional at southwood elementary matthew johnston choral director at northfield at sharp creek catherine davis paraprofessional at southwood elementary teresa co paraprofessional southwood excuse me sharp creek elementary tammy sloan paraprofessional shark creek elementary being paid out of esser sarah aderman paraprofessional sharp creek elementary elizabeth clock math teacher at southwood high school amy long secretary slash nurse at southwood high school christian peterson social worker at white's high school to be paid out of esser and timothy callaway ag teacher at southwood high school under retirement we have rick brewer social studies teacher and northfield high school coach for leave we have number 125 and you see the dates there for that leave under transfers michaela meyer transferring from southwood high school teacher to northfield high school teacher effective at the beginning of the school year lindsay knee transferring from northfield high school choral teacher to southwood high school banded choral teacher stephanie height transferring from special education paraprofessional to title one paraprofessional at southwood elementary chrissy cunningham transferring from special education paraprofessional to title one paraprofessional at southern elementary abbey cider's transferring from southwood high school cook to southwest elementary professional three-year-old preschool and christian mccourt kristen mccourt transferring from southwood high school three-hour cook to northfield high school four-hour cook actually we we just got an email today that she was not going to be transferring kristin yes okay so disregard that does that leave us with with uh an opening then at northfield so we'll still need to be fellaini and just to give you some if i can talk on a few of these resignations some of our teachers our counselors jt biggs living in fort wayne got a position huntington closer to home i wish him well he's done a great job at whites um and then sam keyfavor is moving to um i believe washington d.c um so it'd be a long commute to come back there courtney mcclure is going to go in with her husband her husband is the new principal at oak high school and so she'll be teaching at oak hill i'm in elementary there so wish her well they want to be together being this first time ever in the same corporation together um employment and then rick brewer wish him well in his retirement and of course you saw the transfers interesting uh actually lindsay came to us to talk about the possibility um she originally was banned but she did the choir at northfield at shark creek um and she was interested in to doing both and she's the one that came to us when we had that opening with both um chris hickman and also uh susie our susan kiefer as far as halftime people that that retired so that's kind of an interesting thing that she's taking on um would be neat that she can do both and i don't know guys if there's anything else i need to mention there but i don't think so no so we're happy to have the new people and wish the other ones well [Music] motion and second to approve hr is read heartland career center report we just had a short meeting a couple weeks ago just paid the bills mostly so anything of importance uh we get to direct their status book contract you know keep them on until we figure out what we're gonna address the teachers and so on so that was basically it it's a short meeting superintendent's report mr keith yeah just have a few things first of all this is the data that we're given through becky bradley with the meals served so far in five weeks there's been 13 140 and you can see the breakdown there as far as the breakfast at lunch at both norfolk and southwood so they continue to do a lot of work there and that runs through july so we appreciate those people working in the summertime also just want to mention jeanette moore and tanya boone are actually working together with the summer school which is concluded in june but jeanette doing the summer for elementary and and tanya for the secondary so some statistics is kind of interesting 220 students uh this is elementary 564 780 minutes of enrichment and instruction over 18 days and some of them are included in the minds in action 47 students participate in spark which allowed this instruction to occur in their home school and then offered enrichment during the afternoon with the ymca and of course a big thing with those third grade students that had to retake the ire test 14 out of 17 students um i received a passing score so that's fantastic i don't know mr boone since you're here if you want to mention anything else about that but i know your students did well yeah as far as it goes we were from i think 89 in march up to 94 uh with the three or four more students passing and didn't have to talk about retentions uh so uh super proud of all those kiddos and i always you know have told people in the past it's kind of lonely in the building in uh june uh pretty quiet but so it was uh good to have you know uh 60 or so extra bodies uh most of that time so good uh thankful for the opportunity that we had to do that and i think it was good for our students and speaking of i know mr drake not this meeting we'll talk more about some other testing but even with i read though our scores are down just slightly but being a code year and all those different things the percentages are really really good so not really any big change at all pretty much in line with other years um it actually might have been was it higher in some of the years maybe a couple of this one's higher yeah so really i guess i could say it's pretty close to all those other years so i don't have a right front of me but um that's that's excellent especially for this year too um and mrs moore also just mentioned that mine's an action team has already started planning for the 2022 uh summer they outlined a k-12 our k-2 program for a three-day event and then for the three through six a seven day program and that's i know uh dr when he started talking about this and then basically handed a lot of that over but started that started the conversation we'd start um pretty small and then just increase it as we go so probably every year will be a little bit different i i am just going to mention this we will be talking about the re-entry plan at the last agenda item but i just put this in for our information as far as how our county this is wabash county positivity rate um i wish like i said this before i would have started this more in october and november as far as tracking all that because you can't really go back in time i talked to the state if i could do that i would have but they said there's not any way to do the same exact figures which i don't know why we can't do that but maybe there's a way that person i talk to maybe the wrong person but anyway you can see where we started in december and then it's been very very good all the way we've been blue we started in blue in march uh hit a little hick up there in march or the end of march in the first of april but then been blue for a lot of weeks and still anticipate the same so that would be part of the reason why we continue the discussion that we have for our re-entry plan coming up in a little bit so that's all i have for now though okay curriculum and instruction before yeah um i can share those irene scores our district pass rate unofficial you know more efficiently from the state was 92.6 um last year we were at 93.7 percent and the year before 91.5 so right in line with what you expect and so for us and the and the hard work our staff here especially with their great teachers but really everybody um i think we can be proud of where we were in that so it's always interesting to see how we compare to others um they haven't released irene they did it across the state and so i right now but i feel like that's pretty good uh we have staff members going through trainings we've sent some last uh last month to indianapolis we've got some doing some online training now and we are working on our july professional development towards the other month and so um i know people have the conception that teachers take all summer off but most of our students are doing some kind of training one another so that's probably the most important thing going on in the curriculum all right move on to new business recommendation to keep the 2021 2022 meal prices the same as the 20 2020 2021 except for the adjustment of two uh adult meal prices which you're going to speak today um so we don't anticipate any meal price changes from the student side at this point in time we are going to continue to offer free meals for next school year at one point that was the only option that schools had but then just recently they are allowing schools to go back to starting to charge families for their meals we'll going to try it out for another year see how it goes there were probably the reimbursement is good but we probably took some hits when it came to things like a la carte uh because not so many that they're eating the free lunches they're not buying alec heartline so um that did have a little bit of an impact on our food service or our food balances but our food balances right now are still in pretty good shape so we felt like it's a good opportunity to continue to offer that again for another year with the with the free regular meal uh meals any extra stuff that they buy or purchase they have to purchase they can't get everything free it's just the regular meals uh breakfast and lunch would be free and then adults have always had to pay and then just some with some of the changes in some of the costs and some of the food prices the state recommended that we increase some of some of our adult meal prices so that is our recommendation and as far as the prices are concerned come to the recommendation sorry motion and second to approve the recommendation to keep the meal prices the same for upcoming school year as they were last all in favor say recommendation to salvage activity bus a3 and sell to heartland career center yeah we can kind of talk about both number two and number three here together we've just completed our bus inspections uh and we passed with flying callers our bus drivers and kyle do an excellent job of keeping our buses well maintained uh so that they are in good shape and they can last us for as long as possible i don't know if many of you know this but we average just roughly 1800 miles a day on the road uh when we're in school and so um that's a lot of miles that we're putting on uh our our fleet and so they just do i just can't say they do an excellent job of taking care of their buses and kyle does an excellent job of making sure that that gets done and repairing things when they need fixed with that being said though at every year we usually end up taking some off of our fleet and so those uh buses would include a3 which is an activity bus and then bus two and 19 which are our regular yellow buses and typically we salvage those buses so that we can get rid of them at an auction well heartland had came to us because they were in need of an activity bus uh and they had been out looking for some activity buses they took a look at bus a3 had it inspected felt like they could get work done on it so that it would be able to continue and they were willing to do that work on that and pay for our bus which would probably be cheaper for them in the long run uh for looking for a different bus so we're recommending that we would sell that bus to heartland career center the activity bus and then the other two buses we would do what we normally do and take those to auction okay i will take a motion uh for both number two and number three motion and second to salvage the activity bus a3 and yellow buses 2 and 19.
[Music] [Applause] [Music] no [Music] hello [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] three two one july 15th board of trustees meeting will come to order at 3 33. the following members are present anne-marie randall trejo brian o'neill catherine smith and myself anna piercy staff has requested the following amendments to the agenda pregnant is that right for the workshop they do that for agenda okay okay uh replace page 5 of the agenda to add updated language for item 11.3 replace exhibit c to include to include the updated requirements of ab130 and signed by the governor on july 9th of 2021 page 28 of the agenda poll item 12.35 28. 12.35 and then exhibit triple a replace page two to correct courtney white's step placement from three to one okay do i have a motion to adopt the amended agenda so i moved and the second all right all in favor aye aye opposed okay now we will move to the study session dr nian perfect thank you so much president piercy members of the board superintendent mizuta and guest this afternoon we'll be presenting the section 115 trust solutions for our district and i do have here um gail beal from kenan which will also be co-presenting as well as carrie ellison from morgan stanley as well so um section 115 of the irs rules allows public agencies to invest public funds to assist with the following two liabilities so the first one is the other post employment benefits which we also call it opeb the second one is the employer pension contributions and that's regarding the increases in stores and pers so currently we have our money deposited with the county treasury and as you know so those are the investment options that we we do and the money sitting in there as you know as we presented to the board with our adopt the budget the current estimate for the interest is about 0.9 and so um and care can talk a little bit about that some of them he was saying that the interest rates are looking to be going down even further obviously as you know the um in terms of the mortgage risk things are going down so we're looking at even something going down to a point two percent kerry yeah these these are these are pools of money i used to work for the state treasurer's office with late so i'm kind of a geek with this stuff sorry but so late is is a big pool that has a duration or sort of average maturity of about six months the county is typically you know one and a half to two and a half years so as those longer the higher paying coupon bonds mature they're being replaced by bombs that are you know foreign super low rates right now so nancy told me that the county is paying about 90 basis points and and lake i believe is in the upper 20s or low 30 basis points but it's it's going down as the older bonds are maturing and being replaced by the newer bonds so it's possible that you know the what we're looking at looking at is only going to be even lower down the row and so then um so that's compared that and that's why we're looking at the section 115 to look at two possible options for investment and so the two products we're looking at right now uh the first one is the um op solutions that's for obviously for the retiree medical portions of it and the second one is the pension solutions so that's called the pension stabilization trust and the way that how is done and so legally that you have to do it this way so you have the um the the kenan team which is the they provide the overall program coordinator administrator that's what um gail's here and you have um a trustee is um that's contracted through benefit trust and um the person is actually scott from kansas so that's the secondary piece of it and then the last piece is um um carrie from morgan stanley which they are the registered investment advisor so you do need to have these pieces as part of the uh trust plans when we were to invest these type of vehicles and now gail will be talking about on the two different products here thank you so much we appreciate the opportunity to be here this afternoon so basically looking at the two different pieces we're going to look at your opeb liability and then your pension liability so your opeb liability right now as of 2020 june 30th 2020 is a little over 114 million dollars um so when you look at that how does that really affect you in terms of going out for bonds or your credit rating so your current pay as you go is almost two million dollars and the discount rate is four percent so they're really two ways to reduce that large number that liability the first one is increasing that discount rate and the way you do that is investing money number one or two if you put it into a section 115 trust where the rate of return is higher your actuary is going to give you credit for that so your liability will go down so there are two ways to measure that so looking at the product itself futurist is a section 115 trust it is in compliance with gatsby 74 and and it helps public agencies school districts cities counties community colleges manage their opeb obligation so again your actuarial study is very important that's something that most actuaries will work in conjunction with your business office to come up with based on accounting what that discount rate should be and then looking at cost reduction strategy strategy certainly isn't is an important piece of it as well uh when you establish an irrevocable trust your actuary will actually give you credit for that that amount of money that goes into an irrevocable trust whereas money at the county does not count they won't give you credit monetary credit for that so setting up an irrevocable trust is very important with futurist you have a discretionary feature through trust services which really takes a lot of the liability off you as a board and the district in particular in terms of choosing investments and investment return so in this particular case the discretionary trustee chooses the actual investments within the portfolios with the assistance of kerry and he can talk a little bit more about that and it's a customized solution so that you as a district have your own trust the money's not commingled with any other and again as i mentioned it really does help your your bond rating and in the case of community college's accreditation and many times there's a joint labor and management program involved where obviously unions are very involved and they understand the program we want to make sure that all the constituencies understand so once you know what that actuarial evaluation is going to be and that's typically done every couple years you establish the irrevocable trust so that means the money can only be used to pay retiree medical benefits the great advantages however and we have several clients who have contributed and earned enough money where they're actually reimbursing themselves for past contributions so it's it's not just strictly current contributions you can use that money for past contributions as well once you develop a funding strategy certainly identify what is available in terms of funding and then develop that investment strategy which is done primarily through meetings we would have with representatives from the district and obviously the discretionary advisory services which we talked about and then making sure that you're in compliance with gasby 74 and 75 so in this particular case this is a single employer trust very important investments and administrative economies of scale are available to you so when you look at this you want to make sure you're controlling your own trust there's no risk sharing in the very first meeting of the board of authority kerry takes that board through a pretty extensive compliance risk tolerance questionnaire i kind of refer to it as a bad psych test because it asks the same question in many different ways and what that's doing is really trying to understand how each member of that board feels about investing not just their funds obviously but public funds the other thing we provide you and keenan does this is the comprehensive compliance plan that includes the substantive plan so that's all your historical data not only with the trust but with your retiree medical so 30 years from now someone could walk in and say oh this is how we got where we are today so very important the futurist board of authority typically this is a group that will represent the district it's your own board you as a board of trustees would designate the members of the board by title they certainly have an oversight of the program even though the district would decide primarily on the amount of contributions and when and then typically this group is three to five members it can be more we have retirement boards where a member of the board of trustees is on the board sometimes labor is represented but that's something that you as a board can decide as far as fees because this is a little bit different in terms of the services you you get and it's a single employer trust the total basis points at 10 million dollars invested is almost 50 basis points so i think what's important to remember here is not just what the fees are but what your net rate of return is and that's always important and something that we report out with every meeting of that retirement board and typically they meet quarterly to start out with it can go less frequently as as individuals understand how the plan works and start to feel comfortable the pension program is called the pension stabilization trust um and i'm sure you all know that pension costs are going up uh for the employer dramatically so if you're looking at 25.99 million dollar spend with stirs almost 12 and a half with with purrs in 2021 you can see that bottom box which i think is is very telling you can see how much per year those contributions are going to go up generally speaking so in 2022 you're looking at a total of almost five and a half million dollars increase so how do you how how can we help with that how do you offset that so the trust is really a way to pre-fund those pension costs it reduces your your liability for gatsby 68 and it's important too that you can kind of manage that long-term pension liability and how it occurs again you leverage the discretionary advisory feature of the discretionary trustee as well as cary and it's designed specifically for california public agencies it's designed again to offset those increases it's designed to allow you to earn a better interest rate than you would otherwise and certainly the money is liquid so in this particular case the district again would invest in an irrevocable trust tyra typically this is something that you could use your reserves on or one-time funding secondly once your fund your funding you're again going to identify that risk tolerance or investment risk and again you're allowing the discretionary trustee to manage those individual investments and taking that liability off you as a district money can be withdrawn at any time to pay for these liabilities can actually you can do that without any fees so there's there's not any type of withdrawal fee for for either of these programs whoops did i do something there we go so this is a little bit different than the opeb trust this is a multiple employer trust however there's no risk sharing you as a district would still have your own account within the multiple employer trust there would be six choices of portfolio options and instead of having your own board here there is already established a pension stabilization trust board of authority where it's made up of all member agencies in the program and typically there's one member per agency you don't have to have any one representative representing but every district or agency that we have certainly has elected to do that and then you elect an alternate as well and so a little bit different again this is multiple employer trust versus the single employer trust because it is a multiple employer trust don't meet as often meet only annually and they're not all the services that go along with it such as your substantive plan comprehensive compliance plan so in this case the total cost is 30 basis points it's a little bit less expensive than the single employer trust but again because of the differences in what you're trying to accomplish single employer trust is better for opeb multiple employer trust is better for for the pst i'm going to turn it over to kerry to continue thank you gail and thank you all for giving me an opportunity to wear a tie for the first time in about 18 months i wasn't sure if i could actually tie it but uh turned out to be second nature i guess so i i work in the uh the governmental institutional side of morgan stanley we're the registered investment advisor to the trustee which is benefit trust company out of kansas we make recommendations to their trust committee only after their trust committee approves them do they enter the portfolios so the portfolios have effectively been vetted by both morgan stanley and benefit trust company which goes to the fiduciary liability minimization that gail was speaking about the portfolios that are available are d6 right here the top or all bonds are fixed income progressively more stocks as you move throughout to the most aggressive one which is about three quarters in stocks one quarter in bonds if you're in one of them let's say for instance you're in the moderate growth portfolio that has 45 percent in stocks and 55 percent in bonds and you log on to your account one day you're not going to notice suddenly that it has 60 in stocks for 30 percent it's going to stay right around that 45 and it may vary a few percentage points here and there depending on market moves but these are meant to give you a these are our target asset allocations for these portfolios turning to the next page this is not meant for you to look at every single line or number but these are the components of the portfolio what morgan stanley does what benefit trust asks of us are basically two things come up with the mixes of the portfolios the percentage of stocks versus bonds and then secondly answer the question who are some of the best money managers in the world we don't use morgan stanley products we don't use benefit trust products we just say who are some of the best managers in the world and we do the due diligence on that side of doing that analysis a lot of numbers over there but for example on the fixed income side down below we work with some of your neighbors around here western asset management is in pasadena great bond shop guggenheim's in santa monica blackrock p gym out of newark so those are some of the companies that we use third-party companies and morgan stanley does all the due diligence and all of those occasionally we make changes to this list depending on market conditions and in other factors the next page this is as of june 30th these are some these are the returns for the composite portfolios over the last quarter year three years five years and 10 years and and if you maybe just take some time to ponder those obviously the more stocks you have the higher your rate of returns longer term wasn't always the case when if you would have started in 08 or 07 that wouldn't have necessarily been the case but over longer periods of time that tends to be the trend there if you look to the next page though which i think is a page we like to spend a fair amount of time ah sorry about that we like to spend a fair amount of time on we've got the portfolio track records back to and let me back up the combination morgan stanley and keenan and benefit trust have been working together in these programs for what 13 15 years somewhere around there basically back to the inception what we've done is we've tracked all of the portfolios back to the beginning of o8 and and we've looked at um well of all these different portfolios what was the worst one year period the portfolio ever had as an example or what's the best one-year period they ever had and what's the average one-year return so for example on the moderate growth portfolio the worst one-year period back to the beginning of 08 was minus 21.83 the best was 36.6 but on average they've done 7.21 per year over all the different one-year periods and but then you say okay well what about a three year period or a five year period and this is this is where i think it's interesting because the risk of owning stocks kind of goes down a little bit over time risk of owning bonds tends to go up a little bit so if you look down at for example the moderate growth and the five-year rolling period you know the worst five-year return was 301 the best was 1663 and on average is 7.69 obviously conditions going forward are going to be a little different because we're in a very low interest rate environment but this statistical section helps our clients to get a sense of risk a variability you know if you hold it for a year or two or three or five you what types of ranges of returns have happened in the past again no guarantee for the future but you you you get a sense of of um of volatility in portfolios let's see and so we look at all those different factors um you know a lot of our the districts in our surrounding area they are starting to do some of these type of investments so obviously um you know orange unified was one of the ones that really did it really early on um and then also also right right here you know right here next to us is the nlc rop they just also started doing these kind of um products recently and so um so how we kind of determine how much money do we think you know we want to at least start considering to to look at right and so in terms of opacity how the way that we came up with number was uh we need about two million dollars a year to pay for our retiree benefits and um so based on a return of about 6.5 return that was the number that we said okay think given where the current condition in the market right so about 6.5 return well how much would it need to kind of get us to the 2 million dollars and then the number was about 30 million dollars and so for the opec that would be kind of if we were to kind of get the two million dollars a year so um for the return so basically once we have the money there you will basically pay for all the entire benefits moving forward so that would be something at least it's kind of start a starting point to think about with regard to pension um you know the increase is actually quite more significant five million dollars a year right um so then even with the same kind of rate of return on 6.5 percent it would take about 80 million dollars to return that five uh million dollar return for the pension and obviously 80 million dollars is a lot of money and so it's like well so what would be a a number just at least thinking about what you know what we could possibly um you know do possibly and so um so i think you know if we just look at let's say we just look at you know we like to maybe at least have the third of the the two million dollar return a year that's you know i think something that um that could be considered would be let's say we would have put the one option is to have a 15 million dollars in the um op solutions and another um you know um 50 so it's about 15 a million dollars into the pension and so with that return of 6.5 percent we could possibly looking at about 2 million return um for the entire program so that's if we were to do it that way um and so this is a sample just to when i'm not saying to do this um right away but if we were to look at you can make a different deposit you can deposit let's say you know one month and then the following time and you can do like a four time deposit what a lot of districts do is okay once we know what the dollar value you can say i'm going to start doing it this year and then make sure i will put some deposit so there's different ways but this is just a sample of what it could look like option number two is um to kind of maximize the pension investment since pension investment the uh cost is a lot lower it's the point three percent uh the 0.3 uh the 30 versus point versus the 0.49 with the other one so we would just say during investment of 10 million dollars into the op and then the rest of 20 million dollars in the uh pension so the net return is the same is that the fee structure is a little bit different but one of the things that we thought about is our our district is very collaborative with different um players and we thought so um you know some so so the idea is with the opab then there is a internal there's a trust um within so there's a group and that may be helpful for for kind of having that conversations but put a little bit less money into that that pool uh 10 million versus the 15.
how much longer i'm just choosing so you want to go ahead yep you're going to tell them they can go you can oh okay you know what we have a yeah you guys if if you guys wanna you you're more than welcome to stay because it's highly entertaining yes however if you want to go um please go but it's only because the suns are playing right because nope that did not include you we have to be here you're staying that's all [Laughter] no i don't think so no they're fine i'm not going to make a move um okay public comments no all right no none moving on consent agenda any questions on the consent agenda if no questions i'll take a motion i move to accept the consent agenda as presented i second woo all in favor motion carries four to zero so we have an action item our first action item discussion consideration of approval adoption of the um fiscal year 21 22 district expenditure budget and you're going to be with us for a couple of these right a couple agenda items okay madam president members of the board dr wyman the remaining members of the audience we are here to talk about the adoption of the 2122 district expenditure budget i believe we have a powerpoint that they're going to pull up for me i promise it's short they've given me the power oh that's nice well that's what they said i did turn it on do they have the power oh no that's okay we'll get our technology guys to just move the screen for me maybe okay tonight as we talked about we do need to adopt the annual expenditure budget arizona revised statute 15 905 detects that we must adopt this by july 15th so we're in one day early the proposed budget hearing which we are required to hold um was done i apologize the slide says july 21st it was june 21st so we did made our hearing um once the adoption is approved we will go ahead and get this posted on the ade website okay this is just a reminder as miss slovicky indicated on june 21st the proposed budget was not fully updated because the legislative was still in session we did do the base level and we did do the support level in the proposed budget that gave us an mno budget of roughly 27 million eight hundred and eighty thousand seventy two and capital of two million six hundred and eleven thousand eight hundred and eighty four thousand dollars now what we do know at this point is the group b the additional factors have been approved and that is the group b weighting that will increase from point zero zero three to point zero nine three our m d s c a s c and s i d s c will also increase from five point eight three three to five point nine eight eight they have also added a new group weight which is for our gifted students of 0.007 taking a really quick look these revisions cannot be made at this time because we have to adopt the budget as it was proposed these will be presented to you with these new updates on the september 15th meeting or prior to that meeting but just a little quick fyi just taking in the factor of the first two items we're looking at an increase in our budget of a roughly 192 thousand dollars almost 193 thousand dollars with just those increases that we did receive perfect okay all right bob you got questions i do not scroll it back to the second slide scroll back to the second slide i don't have my microphone on sorry um i'm sorry the one after to the base support level right there transportation so i was on a webinar with asba um this morning and they had talked about the base level increasing above the numbers that are shown there did you get any information on that i think it was 44 42 something that's probably included including the treat your compensation this 43 930 uh yeah 93 43.90 does not include that teacher compensation all right thank you any questions he's our numbers dude he's i already know and that's quite all right the number with the cheaper teacher compensation was four thousand four hundred forty five dollars and fifty three cents that was it okay look at you all right all right so no there's no other questions we'll take a motion okay i move to approve the adoption of the fiscal year 2021 2022 district expenditure budget as presented second all in favor aye aye aye motion carries four to zero discussion and consideration to authorize expenditures of money in excess of mno fund uh subsection for fy if fiscal year 21 as probably supposed to be 22 right yes ma'am yeah twenty one two twenty one twenty one all right so what we got here this is an item that is brought to the board each year it basically says that we cannot uh that you will allow us to exceed any subsection as proposed or as indicated in the adopted budget however we will not exceed the maximum of the general budget limit that was proposed in the budget you're going to adopt tonight that's under asr um 15.905 g okay any questions no questions it's a good idea okay and i appreciate it not need a motion i move that the governing board authorized the expenditure of monies budgeted within the mno section of the budget for any subsection within the section in excess of amounts specified in the budget for fiscal year 2021-22 as presented nice segment all in favor aye hi all right i'm sure will i scare you there for a minute um motion carries four to zero all right discussion and consideration of approval of qualified evaluators for the j.o combs unified school district for 2122.
what's in that second for a little while in favor say on all right okay recommendation to approve the msd and wmap employee salary schedule and benefit handbook changes so we review those every year um i'm not going to go through each of those booklets but i did give you a little snapshot of what those recommendation updates are going to be we added the three-year-old cda position into that handbook as part of the classroom instructor salary benefit schedule and then looking at our health insurance our contribution to our full-time classified positions is at 5 200. to meet federal poverty level affordability guidelines we need to increase our contribution and so our recommendation is to increase that from 5200 to 5800 we probably only have about 10 to 12 full-time classified positions that take that insurance so it's not going to be very much money to increase that but we do need to do that so that it can meet those guidelines and then from the area program standpoint they kind of have their own board but we kind of pass things through us since we are the lea but their board had recommended uh increasing annuity contributions to their director and assistant director 500 more per year and then with the resignation of uh standard harness they would like to change her position into more of a data financial specialist position which really just increases the number of days from 210 to 249.
and so this will be the um the kind of the you know different type of investment so the the the kind of ship will be a little different so but the contribution schedule is once we determine how much we like to put it in there and then we can determine what the schedule could look like obviously working with carrie and with the team and so okay what happened to the so that's um the presentation and we are here to answer um any questions that you may have i'm sure there's this is something um you know very um different and so we're here to answer any questions you may have i have questions oh perfect okay anne marie the light bulb just came on for me i i didn't understand at the beginning that we're trying to offset off the cost of both our medical benefits and our pension there's there's two options we can possibly do yes okay so we're trying to be really aggressive in stabilizing you could do one yes so i think at nlc rlp are they doing just the pension correct because yeah so they don't they don't um they don't have as many staff as well so their liability for the opec is not as big as ours ours is pretty significant what does opeb stand for other post employment benefits so that's the retiree benefits medical benefits okay that's what i that was what was throwing me off because i understood i understand the pension stabilization yes that's the one that you have on the an ocrop yes because i was trying to figure out why would you have to give employees a questionnaire so that that's what was throwing me off so um i understand um and um i don't have any questions now thank you is there a maximum that a school district or entity municipality can withhold from utilizing on a daily basis and invest could we put uh 500 million dollars into this or are or are are we guided where we can only invest so much because it's not our money it is the it's the public's money yes definitely so it's a great question so i think you look at how much your liability is and then kind of you know to see and that's why we kind of came up with those numbers so our total liability is 114 million now some districts for example they have fully uh vested they basically have deposited quite i mean you know maybe here you can talk about that too but some of them they do have put quite a bit of money in there already um but i would say you look at your cash flow how much cash flow you we have and then that's that will determine that we wouldn't be able to put 500 million dollars in our district because we don't have that kind of cash flow and that's and that was another question how is our taking money our cash and investing it affect our district's daily cash flow not knowing what's going to happen tomorrow uh in this it's a great question so one of the things i really love about this product is if you were to do the pension since we have so much liability our liability each year is you know going to be 40 plus million dollars a year so i wouldn't recommend us to have more than that because the idea is if you need the cash back we can submit the invoice right away and the cash is within a couple days i believe so we have enough of a liability to submit for the invoices and with this product you can always go back you don't only do for current year we can even go back three years so for example if we do very well um let's say on the opeb site you know instead of you know some of the returns this last year that we have seen um some of them were over 30 so they actually some districts are like well i can actually submit three years of invoices now to have that so you can actually go back there's no um timeline just you can't even go back let's say to 1980 if you have the you know data so that was one of the things that to me is very important to be very liquid with these products because of the cash flow from the state and so once we um you know this will be anything that above what we need for our operations it was something that we needed we shouldn't do it but obviously we monitor a cash flow then we would know oh you know what if i need this and some people you can take a look at this as a kind of investment vehicle if i need the cash i can submit the submit the invoice for it and then once um the state replenish our cash then we can go back and go ahead and submit back so there's different ways we can do that there's no cost for doing that no you can submit any time i mean you have to pay for the you know the uh the fees that stay but there's no cost in terms of getting the money back okay these target rates are six and a half percent is that before or after our basis is taken out so kerry d that's if we're to be in charge of 3.3 basis points uh for twenty million that's six six hundred thousand dollars a year so is that six hundred thousand uh after or before the investment return oh i was gonna i was to go to the rate of return slide or just put us somewhere in the presentational perfect i can take it from there thank you these are the rates of return for the portfolios for the last ask you what page are you on oh yes that is page it's it's about 28 pages from the back captain 21 was there a page number one oh so it is yeah 21.
yeah state statute requires the board approves uh qualified evaluators every year that would then go in to do the evaluations of the certified staff and so this is just that agenda item so i'd recommend approval as presented no question okay nobody has any questions on that no you have a question oh there he is i was like i didn't see somebody there okay i don't have any questions then i moved that uh that the board approved the 2122 joe comes unified school district qualified evaluators as presented all second all in favor aye aye aye motion carries four to zero all right um discussion and consideration for approval to waive the liquidated damage second for certified teacher contracts and administrative contracts yeah i'll go ahead and um uh present the information but i know this was the request from mr mcleod so you may want to add some additional information just for background information we do have a liquidated damage clause in contracts for certified staff it's a thousand dollars for administrative staff it's as policy or regulation currently reads the dollar mount is used to help fill the position uh and it is up to the board to actually do any waving it's not at the purview of the of the superintendent uh right now you have liquidated damage clauses and about probably 50 percent of the school districts around the state you may see you may see that number increase as we have a more severe teacher shortage and the impact it has in terms of people leaving contracts and placing districts in difficult positions so the question that comes up is when would we ever uh make a recommendation to the board to wave at this point in time the only time that i'm aware of that the district's ever made and i can speak to two in in my time is if there is a very very unique situation we had a legal situation in one case and we had an unfortunate uh situation with a spouse passing and it's those kind of unique situations that we would bring it but otherwise we will hold steady to this uh i know that the the question was can there be more flexibility and when we bring that forward and i think that's really the point that's up for discussion tonight it shows as a motion to approve but that's only because of the context within which mr mcleod asked in this particular situation there would have to be a motion and a second and then a vote to make that change if there is no motion or there and no second then effectively this agenda item would die for lack of a of emotion so that's kind of the structure that we'd have to go uh with and and uh i will say this much the one issue that we do have is um with liquidated damages we had a teacher walk on thursday of last week and we had a teacher walk last night and that's a day and a half before their their reporting and so in some ways the discussion may be is the liquidated damages high enough and do we do do we need to make modifications that speak to uh maybe a lower amount up through the end of june the middle of june in a higher amount after a specific date because obviously we're we're now in a situation in the case of the one individual it's a high school teacher we have 180 kids 170 kids that we're now scrambling to find a teacher um but i think mr mcleod was more about the flexibility for employees that have been loyal and get to us and and and how do we move forward with that so i'll leave it to you to explain and then we can have a discussion okay so i think i mean the reason i want to bring it up is it just uh just in my experience through the years as well just it seems like i and and and i know the way the wording is here uh just so you guys know i mean i'm not i'm not opposed to the liquidated damages as part of the contract and i think it's in place in my years as a principal as well it was necessary tool it's helpful it can be persuasive it can be it can discourage somebody from maybe leaving you in a lurch which is really the purpose of it and yet even with that in place like dr wyman said even even with this in place it doesn't necessarily prevent people from from making that choice right because we're basically giving employees an opportunity to say you know i i recognize that if i leave and break my contract there is a penalty involved and and i and and so they they have to weigh that into their considerations um i just believe that that it would be nice if there could be a little more flexibility in the execution of that for example in situations where a teacher or an administrator a principal for example if they were are to leave but it's not necessarily in a situation that's going to leave us in a lurch that's not necessarily uh you know that's we still have plenty of time to find a replacement or things like that uh they've been a great employee they've been fantastic we've appreciated their service to still execute that clause when somebody has been faithful and loyal to the district especially um i think that that's unnecessary and it's one way of kind of hey thanks for your service but kicking the pants on the way out even though you were a great employee you still have to pay us because you because you're leaving um i just kind of think that it'd be nice if there was some discretion there i've just worked in other places where there was a little more discretion they had you know we had this in place but there was a little more uh flexibility and and i think dr wyman actually explained it pretty well there that but that's kind of what i've been thinking is is there a way that we can make that so there's more a little more discretion so it doesn't have to be an automatic it's just always applied across the board no matter what unless those really really unique situations where you know husband passed away or something really crazy i i think it could be i think it can be waved a little more often than that for even just for the sake of grace and compassion so here's the it's always in our um consent agenda that so-and-so is leaving and this is liquidated damages i guess if you felt uh reading through the consent agenda if you felt that we needed to discuss that then you would have to bring that up that would be something we have to do every time you realize i mean that's something that you would have to go through and say oh well i want to bring this up or whatever but that's in our consent agenda it's gonna be i feel like it's kind of a dicey situation um i feel like if one we we did it for one the next time it comes up if we didn't do it i think that we would be probably have a good lawsuit on our hands well see that and it never came up in in other places where i've worked in part because these are individual situations it's private and you know interaction between that person and the district or you know the organization and um it's nobody's business really whether it's applied or not it's not usually broadcasted or displayed but if it if it's put in if the language is put in properly there's no there's no room for litigation if if it's up to the discretion if the application of it is up to the discretion of administration or the board or whatever it would have to be up to us right right now right you know right now i can bring the recommendation forward but you have to make the decision because it is part of the termination of the employee um it's it will be a public record i mean it may be in the consent agenda under personnel but it would be and and the two situations that we had it was in there and and there was a recommendation within the consent agenda for that um the one thing i would ask if you go down that path is is we're gonna it may not happen tonight but we're gonna need to have a little bit more conversation about about what you really what the board would like as to say tell me that which you believe is valid for a recommendation versus that which you believe is not valid because because i do have the concern that that ms hargis expressed that it'll be every single meeting because it's going to get very very subjective i know it could occur right now because we did those two unique situations but given what they were i don't have a problem defending that if we don't have that kind of unique situation then i do think it becomes extremely difficult but again so what i think will happen is you will end up hearing these on a regular basis for perspective if if it's a thousand dollars and i know in some cases a little bit more but but you're talking about somewhere in a neighborhood of 32 33 individuals in the last year that we this is applied to and so therefore you will be dealing with this on a regular basis because it will apply to 32 or 33 people which which is a significant number so we just you'll just have to be very very careful if you decide to go down this path and try and define that so i know why i'm what's the rationale for me to bring person a versus person b right now i think i have a pretty good handle on it because of the severity of the nature of it but consistently in my career um uh we have we have said no um in other districts i've been in anywhere there's been liquidated damages the general rule is no unless it's very severe so that's just my perspective bob do you have anything uh yeah i'd like to take a little different point of view the employee who leaves is breaking a contract they've signed it in goodwill and good faith we've offered it that way they are breaking the contract and the penalties for breaking the contract are stated very clearly so it's not like it's not known up front but the further point is that it leaves our poor hr department in a lurch when you think of all the people that we greeted and welcomed to the district and the ones that couldn't make it and all the hard work that they had to do to advertise publicize interview probably by phone get letters of recommendation interview in person maybe see how they perform in mock situations all that time and effort is then wasted for the person who leaves and they have to do all that again to hire a new person but generally no no i'd like to finish and what i'm saying is that it is not fair to put them in that situation when they are doing a tough job finding qualified teachers and administrators in the tight situation that we're in and if we eliminate that policy or weaken the policy we are telling people it's okay to break a contract if you get 5 000 more in queen creek it's okay to break a contract if you if your husband or wife gets a promotion and one spouse wants to stay home and raise the kids i don't think we should go there and i am totally against changing the policy okay all right lisa i tend to go towards the the perspective of if we were to change it it becomes much more subjective and i don't know who made this comment but when we when we decided to not follow through with the liquidated damages with the two other individuals this year which was very rare um even at that time it did cross my mind of is this really equitable how is this equitable and so i am definitely in i agree with much of what you've said and i also think that the more subjective we become the more challenging it's going to be to make those decisions and it does open us up to a variety of challenges that i don't know if that's really the path we want to go down so i would have to say that i would definitely agree that we need to leave it the way it is i think it's much more equitable it's fair and truthfully when you look across the valley on and you look at our liquidated damages i think they're very reasonable you got something else yeah yeah um so uh no i appreciate what you guys say and i well you guys know how much i respect you guys and i and i understand i i think those are legitimate concerns and um i appreciate that and i can see where you're coming from and and um just i'll just make a couple points and then we can go ahead and move forward because i can see that you know it's not going to change but um the one was just a couple of things just one is i i do know that in a situation i i realize that it's going to be a little more subjective and in this particular circumstance um for me i i actually think it's a reasonable place in which to have some subjectivity and so i'm more comfortable with the subjectivity and that that would be created which is why that doesn't bother me as much and then the other thing is you know when we talk about some of those situations um you know you bring up a good point especially if we're left in a lurch but really being left in a lurch is usually kind of a it's not as common it's not as like what we talked about here there was a couple of things you know being left like this week or in the you know couple weeks before school that's being left in a lurch but you know as an administrator for years you know hiring people every year was a common thing anyway i mean you're always hiring people and you're and that that whole process is is part of the process and so um and so i recognize you know there's always going to be the hiring i don't know if the liquidated damages as part of the contract has any direct relation to the fact that there's so many people you know needing to be hired or not hired each year like the number of people who are hired this year and then the only other thing was my other question is just you know even with our liquidated damages in place and even though i've told you before i mean i do recognize and i think it's not a bad thing to have but but even with those in place i you know i wonder has has it really prevented very many people from leaving you know we talk about you know the number of people who've left and knowing like you say bob they know they know what the damages are but they've left anyways um and that's why i think what leads dr wyman to say well maybe we don't even have it high enough you know maybe it's not a big enough threat i don't think it's to to prevent them like hey you it might prevent them but it also that money goes towards rehiring so i mean there's a lot that goes into that and an administrator signs their contract and so if they if they decided if they were like oh i'm gonna try to look for another job okay cool so then it would have opened up a long time ago we had it would have had big a bigger pool so i feel like like they the the longer you wait timing makes a difference yeah right so i think that i don't think that that was a bad thing yeah you so i just think that well in the one situation yeah i know but i'm just i'm just saying that when you do it early that's why we have your contracts out the teachers administrators district employees whatever that gives us time to the people that are starting to make those moves right yeah no but i think the other thing to keep in mind that that the the the difficulty of the situation i mean we're talking right now the start of the school year uh if we want to use an administrator if they're if they were to go ahead and get another opportunity and leave at christmas time it does create a heck of a problem if we get a teacher that leaves at the quarter if we get a teacher that leaves in february and so it's it's not just this time we've we had several i mean we had 30 plus people last year and many of them left in the middle of the year and all of a sudden we're now scrambling and that's where we got into the substitute issues and all that so it creates a hardship not just at this point we have a couple examples for this point but i will tell you last year you probably would mark 25 of the 30 people were probably people that left us after the school year started and we were in a position where we had to figure out how to fill it and that that creates the issue and and i i agree that that that's being left in alerts that's exactly why perhaps you'd want to have something that in place but yet even with it in place we had 25 people leave us after the school year started last year so either all right that wasn't a dissuasive enough um situation so anyways that was i i just was you know you know i know it's worded here that you know to whether to actually have it or not um i've never actually been of the opinion that we should not have it at all um you just wanted to be more subjective i just was wondering if there was a way that we could if we needed to reword policy or we would contract in such a way that we would feel comfortable so that we could be a little more subjective in this area that was right and and as an agenda item i had to write it in a way that there was a motion but the board has the option to modify whatever's up here whatever motion so we can still modify to keep and make the adjustment for uh to be more subjective but as a title i think you have to be careful we want to we want to go ahead and change the liquidated damage and make it more subjective it's probably not a great title so you can still make that adjustment we kind of sit up here and we have to make these decisions yes we do know some of our employees on a personal basis or we know some of them better than others so you you almost like have your heart in the ones that you know and you and you can feel for them but what about the ones we have no we we really don't have a a connection with so i think that opens us up to even more subject well yeah and but and if and if we had and if we were to create some sort of criteria like dr wyman suggested um it would it would help guide that a little bit and it could be a little more subjective and even somebody who who you know if they if they were gave us enough notice and if it wasn't going to throw us into alert you know what whatever the parameters were that we chose to do so my suggestion was really just whether or not we there was a possibility to look into that i see what you're saying i agree with i mean i i i understand and respect your guy's point of view on that um i just think that this is one i mean my perspective is i think we could be a little more subjective on that um but if that's not what the board you know majority of the board is going to want i understand that so um you know the other the only other thing i'll put out there is you know dr wyman also point out that you know half of the school districts in the state have something like this in place but that means half of the district doesn't i mean half the districts in the state don't even have anything like this they there's districts that don't have like data damages no because it depends on depends on where you're at and what your situation is and and why you chose to to move forward with that so there's any number of unique situations where a district may not feel it's in their best interest uh to have the liquidated damages and so yeah it's not a it's not an across-the-board automatic in some cases it might even make the district look good to not have that because it should demonstrate some trust and faith in the employees that we're not we're not worried about trying to make you afraid to leave i would not be surprised if the number increases just because as the shortage of teachers increases then the ability to lose somebody and replace them at the uh at any time during the year makes it harder so wouldn't be surprised if it increases but as of right now it's it's still about a 50 50 proposition and and quite frankly it could be related to whether it's the philosophy of the administration of the philosophy of the board lots of different boards have different philosophies about things and you may have a a group of individuals that have the same philosophy as chad does which is fine and so therefore they've said no thank you we don't want to put that in you may have others that say no we think we need to and so again you're talking about independent boards within communities that make their own decisions based on on what their community is all about chad i just want to say i appreciate you bringing this up because i think it's worthy of discussion but um i want to go back to something dr wyman said and something kind of alluded to i am more in favor of instead of having flat liquidated damages having a tiered the more you leave us in a lurch the more you got to pay for leaving us in a lurch so um i'm wondering i think that's a reasonable idea i'm wondering what kind of a um of a study group or what kind of a process do we need to engage in if we want to explore that that would probably be something that we would throw into maybe ccc this year and that we would have it uh prior to the release of uh contracts and that's in favor of that way people know what it is they're signing for that's a good idea all right so yeah we can put that on a later agenda right if ccc came up with a recommendation we'd move it forward as part of that either part of the contract the change to the contract or that so with this agenda item you probably need to call for a motion and if there's a motion then it does can i say one more thing for your call for emotion oh you need to hurry up i am i am no i'm just going to say so just serve as knows as the motion lays as to whether or not the choice is whether to still have liquidated damages or not i do think we still need to have it i would just like further discussion about some way that potentially we could find a way to revise that a little bit in the way we approach it so as it states here of course i will be in favor so go ahead and pretty much all right so do you want to make the motion then you're just taunting me now okay well bob can make it now you're just being mean i don't want to make a motion oh okay i want to leave things the way they are no no you have to tell them to make the motions on what's there okay so i move to not approve waiving liquidated damages clause in certain certified contracts as presented i second so you're not taunted i'm in favor hi motion carries four to zero right now i didn't hear did you vote he did i'm sorry yeah four to zero um so we will put that on uh after you're going to take it to cccc we'll take it to ccc and then we'll we'll see whether it actually comes on i mean it how it how it's moved forward we'll see because you don't necessarily approve all the changes to every single contract right so we'll i'm not quite sure what it'll play out with but i'll i'll promise you that it'll go to ccc for a discussion item i would love that i think that would be it all right wonderful thank you that sounds good thank you for listening to me discussion and consideration for approval of the covford 19 mitigation plan for the 2021 21-22 school year and i would ask that you guys open up the one the first one the 19 the kova 19 21-22 planning document this is this is the district's uh plan that will go up on the website there's uh the american rescue plan requires that we put something on on the district website in a manner that is understandable by i'll just say the general public there's a second uh attachment that is is what ad requires the two are relatively speaking linked what i would just say with with this particular um plan is that it demonstrates what's occurring at this point in time uh if we get over to the the high transmission the red we've just kind of summarized at the bottom what that means when we're going to say that we're going to put it into i'll read it real quickly strict implementation of mitigation strategies per adhs school guidelines i will let you know that the american rescue plan does require that we bring this forward if there's any changes i think it's every six weeks if i remember correctly 12 weeks six weeks or if there's any changes i will just say that i believe that there may be some political changes here in the very short period of time so don't be surprised if something may come back to you in august but that's the way the plan is supposed to work so even though we have a plan up here just note there are still moving parts to this plan it is still political in nature what we've tried to do with this plan is provide you and the district with as much flexibility as we possibly can within all these moving parts it does change a little bit now that we have a not to get too political but we have a republican governor and a democratic president and so therefore you may not have the two groups on the same page relative to what you do or don't do and it now potentially has impacts on do you get esther's funds do you not get us refunds what the cdc do what does adhs do we've tried to follow adhs so that we're consistent which what's currently out there but there there are some political uh uh things that are moving uh i'm not saying more because they're just popping at five o'clock this afternoon and i haven't had a chance to figure out what's going on uh one we look at it again for the most part in the blue yellow and orange we would react as we currently are reacting in our schools while we get up into red the gist of it is out there as if that we're implementing or admitted if we're open and implementing our mitigation plan for like a better term with fidelity then that means we would continue with the same plan therefore and what that plan would be is to go back to basically what we did last year relative to any number of different uh issues that are out there the one that it's real simple we currently would allow volunteers to come into our schools if it gets too above red then we would not allow volunteers to come into our school and so there's those kind of mitigation plans because that's what we did last year we said hey we're now in a red situation we do not want uh people in our system that may be uh providing uh or bringing in the uh the pandemic more so i can answer any specific questions at the bottom we tell you what what the criteria is again that's off of adhs the second criteria is a new one so i'm not totally sure to be honest i haven't researched it how they determine it even trying to look on adh's adhs website they do have a chart but they really don't explain what it is but it will tell you what what where where the county is on those two it's not at the zip code level and so we then have the issue at the county level not the zip code level i do have a question um i'm looking at the high transmission rate category for masks in the asba website this morning they said as part of the budget that was approving all the associated bills schools may not require face masks right and they said they said that very strongly so um how does that jive with what we may feel would be a safety concern for people to wear safe face masks at this point in time and that's the reason why may is up there at this point in time it is state statute and state statute says you cannot require it right so therefore we would not require it um again this is some of the modification again there could be changes um even as we speak and and maybe if we just do the delta variant as they talk to administrative team leadership team uh there's concerns in some states because the the vaccination rate is at 35 percent and therefore there's a concern that the delta variant may spike just for your own knowledge level right now in pinal county our vaccination rates at 35 and so therefore you may have a situation if you were to explode this thing that six months from now irrespective of the law that's there there may be a move to change the law so that's why we put may that gives us the most flexibility obviously we have to comply with the law and if the law says no then we won't make that requirement all right that makes sense any other questions all right i'll take a motion i moved to approve the update to the district's 2000 2021 2022 coven 19 mitigation plan as presented a second all in favor aye aye aye motion carries supported zero discussion and information regarding 21 22 school year governing board self-evaluation uh the last couple years you guys have used the asba online board evaluation instrument and as of the last evaluation you were not satisfied with that instrument so i'm just making a recommendation that everybody very clearly states that we want to go back to the instrument that's in the policy manual not the instrument that that was being used in the past and so that's all this is for you guys to clarify that so we're aware of what's going on so we can participate in the pilot is that what we're talking about no this is the this is the board evaluation so this is the one that everybody concerned that there was 37 right and so this is just for that the superintendency my evaluation is still we're going to look at that instrument and go from there wait wait so what does this do for us then so this means that we don't have to do the evaluation we did last time remember 75 like ridiculous questions yeah we don't want to do that yeah that we're going back to what we had before right and it's what you have is you have what's in the policy manual i misunderstood this one okay we're all on board now we all understand the thing okay so um any questions okay i'll take a motion and chad why don't you go ahead and i would like to thank you i moved to approve the use of the governing board's evaluation instrument in the district policy manual for the 2021 year as presented i second all in favor aye aye motion carries four to zero so now we have some discussion items um discussion and information on the district el a supplement novels uh this one just very very quickly this was uh coming out of some concerns raised by parents uh at the beginning of or sometime last year i can't remember the end of the semester beginning the semester uh what happened is uh both at the middle school and high school staff met uh took a look and said okay what where are the different uh novels where should they be you will see that in some cases if it's highlighted yellow those are ones that are for whole class that everybody does it all the others are choice and so there is no one novel that if a parent objects their child would have to do other than the ones that are in yellow and those are pretty standard and i'm going to guess i'll say generally speaking don't have necessarily a lot of a lot of concerns on the choice ones the teachers met especially at the high school and specifically change some language within notification to parents of the content of some of this material to make sure that if there is a particular novel that may have some controversial content in it that they have changed up the the language to the parents to make sure that they are fully aware that they may want to look at the syllabus they may want to take a review of the book to see if the language or the content is something that they don't want their child to be exposed to then they could they can move it out the actual color purple has been moved to an ap level class at junior and senior level it is still a choice novel so therefore even at the ap level for the junior and senior level if a parent does not want their child to read that then they do not have to read that there are other options i think there's two or three options at each choice level excuse me three or four options at each choice level and so they would go ahead and get that so this just kind of gives you a summary of the books and where they're at these have all been approved at least on two different occasions by the board uh all we're doing is is in the case of the color purple modifying it to older kids uh and again uh it's still up to parents as to whether they think it's appropriate so will there be some sort of like um permission slip or something like that yeah the the the i don't know that there's a permission slip chris may know but i do know that there's a there is an email that goes out that they have put out in more detail to make sure that the parents are aware of the of the content um and so i don't know if they sign off on that or they have to sign off i mean chris if you show us a movie that's more like pg-13 oh not you know that's not pg turn we do have to sign as the parents we have to say right and i believe they had the sign last time if i'm correct i think the issue was did the information that was presented provide enough information for a parent to understand the nature of the of the content and so they've gone back to write it to to make sure that they understand that there may be content that they find offensive so i don't think it was the signature it was whether people believed that there was enough information there number one or number two quite frankly that at the age group that the the book was being presented was that appropriate ninth tenth grade versus eleventh twelfth grade um and so both of those have been have been corrected in this in this response to parental concerns i think i think the work's been i think it works fantastic i think it was appropriately done and i want to thank the the people who put that together the la teachers and as an old ela teacher myself i know this is a lot of work and uh but looking at it things are well placed it's this is a great this is a fantastic list and i think our new approach is fantastic as well could i ask excuse me for some clarification i've been looking at the two lists going back and forth and i'm trying to figure out what's the difference between the two i know just from the well the size of the file there's four lists i know they're at the bottom right and they're real the the real issue out there was really one novel that was modified so there's not a whole lot of other adjustment within the novels there was a novel color purple that was the issue other than that there was a belief that they would be the same so there's not a lot of adjustment in there the second portion of it is just the communication that the teacher will send to the parents i understand all that that's not my question i have two attached lists they're both called approved literature list for combs high school oh did i and there's one that's 165 kilometers there's one that's 175.
they're still working out a little bit of a salary adjustment to that don't know that number yet but once they let us know we can put that in there but they're just looking ahead to the future as far as some retirements and some consolidating of some positions when those retirements happen and getting people trained and so they felt like that was a good time to make that adjustment with with her leaving and so they're recommending they change that position title and days and pay so those are the only updates to the employee handbook at this time yes motion on second to approve the msd and wmap employee salary benefit handbook changes all in favor say aye recommendation to approve the teacher evaluation plan for 2021 as mentioned the plan was changed significantly from last year because the state actually changed as far as how um you include like a school grade so school grades are no longer part of that evaluation process and so for this year the only change is um one number and that's the one instead of a july 2020 it's july 2021 i did share this again with the teachers association they agreed with it and so by indiana code we also have to give this to the doe and the board has to approve the plan so it is no different than last year other than the date if you have any questions but it's all in here as far as what we do as far as the highly effective effective and how many evaluations that we have when they're done um in situations like that do you think well in this actual um who knows um i don't think so but you know they'll have different people come in a new governor a new department that can change because obviously now it's a pointed position instead of an elected position for the sec what's the secretary of education now instead of the superintendent of public instruction so approved the uh teacher and style evaluation plan is a motion and a second all in favor say all right recommendation to approve the re-entry plan for 2021-2022 all right well if you recall last year um this plan that looked really pretty there were a lot of pages to it last year and on and i'll just go some history here in june of 23rd he suspended some of the school board policies as per uh the whole code situation he had an athletic reentry plan that was approved on 6 23 on 7 14 you had to read the first re-entry plan it was revised the second meeting 728 august 11th it was revised again and then the event management plan was also approved on 8-11 additional leave resolution was adopted on january the 12th and then that was rescinded changed a little bit on 126.
and we we've actually got some returns back to about 13 and a half years which gives you a little bit more data and um the reason for the six and a half percent number in the presentation obviously you can make that number kind of whatever you want to make it in theory but there i think nancy was trying to give you a sense of how the math works effectively she was really targeting the moderate growth portfolio which was 45 roughly our 50 50 portfolio 45.55 and the 10-year return on that portfolio 7.15 okay now that's before so the pst money the pension you'd have to deduct 30 basis points for that right and then the open you'd have to deduct the 49.7 from that okay and and i do want to make one clarification the reason we can invest and i know you probably all know this but just to make sure this is covered the reason we can invest and earn more money than the county or lake is because technically these are retirement systems in a retirement system you can invest well when it's idle cash like life and the county treasury you've got the california government code 53601 restrictions you know what you can invest in five-year maximum government bonds 30 a-rated corporate bonds well those yields are super low right now but they have to invest in that in a retirement system those rules go away instead they're replaced by a prudent man rule where you want to make sure you're investing appropriately for your time frame but there are no restrictions on maturity or credit ratings like that that's why your bond managers are allowed to do more things you can get higher returns like that you go going back to you know asb page with my glasses it's page 10 and talking about the board of authority and you said there'd be an oversight board that is not uh it is a a five or seven member that that we choose and what kind of responsibility or what kind of life ability do they have to do what are they what are they there for yeah great question so basically this board of authority that is put into place as an oversight board of the trust so what that would entail is let's just say quarterly meetings carrie scott keenan come in and we there's performance reports that are given to to the group to discuss this group typically will decide on bylaws of the board of authority those meetings are brown act meetings so they're open obviously to the public but it's generally an oversight board and it's it's really important we feel because we want to make sure that you're being represented and that there's a clear understanding also typically the chair of that board along with our team will come in at least annually and present to you as a board an annual report so you can see and understand what has happened during the past year and we want to make sure that there's an abundance of transparency not only within that group but within the district and and your board here so the oversight board is not a decision-making board they're simply receiving information from you your group and and presenting it or giving us as a board what is going on and making sure that what is going on is as being reported to us so they they there are some decisions they would make such as once that risk tolerance questionnaire is gone through and kerry guides the group through that it's determining a portfolio if you will for the investment so let's just assume it's moderate growth and then with that there's an investment policy statement that they would vote upon to put into place so they would make those decisions however as far as the amount of money that goes into either trust that is a district decision i'd like to ask you who and how comprises that oversight board good question so that is something that you as a as a board would discuss and approve that's done by board resolution typically it's by position so as an example we have districts where it's it's all district staff might be the superintendent cbo hr or risk management person we have districts where actually there's a member of the board of trustees that is on that board and then we have some where there are our bargaining unit individuals on that as well that is your decision and we do it by position in the event that perhaps someone leaves and goes to another district doesn't have to come back to the board because it was a name retires yeah we don't put specific names it's just identified by title i find it very distressing that the information that we're inputting and that you're giving is very difficult for me to take in with these masks on it makes it beyond difficult and i feel so such a responsibility to be able to understand and take this and i just don't understand why we can't make some adjustment if you stand apart why can't they not speak from the diocese with separation i i just find this the timing of having to wear this and take this information is very very upsetting question also was liquid i'm all fogged up too so my glasses so i have to agree a little bit it's unacceptable just please make sure you speak into the microphone and slowly thank you i clearly do not get your words clearly okay just the worst my other concern is the same as mr o'brien or o'neill i've done that forever everybody's used to it about liquidity and who determines that the liquidity so that would be determined by your district staff so let's say that your costs for the pension trust or your pension costs for that year are let's just say two million dollars what then staff would do would be to send in a request for reimbursement and that goes into benefit trust company and then they wire the the funds directly to the district and there's no cost to do that would the oversight board be bonded um we have some board members who have taken out a liability policy which is really inexpensive to do and we can certainly help them with that if that's something they would like to do carrie had something i believe yeah regarding the withdrawals for the trust it's it's really simple scott rankin who's the trust attorney for benefit trust if he were here what he would effectively say is they're not that these trusts can you can withdraw money to reimburse yourself for expenses current your expenses are past expenses whether they be pension expenses from the pst or or health care retiree health care expenses from the opec trust benefit trust is not going to audit that you've really made those re made those payments they're jus you're just going to fill out a form that says hey i want to withdraw 5 million to reimburse ourselves for as an example for either pension or opeb expenses that we've already paid for in the prior year so because you can go back multiple years there's a tremendous amount of liquidity in these say you put 20 million in the pension stabilization trust nancy i think you said your yearly uh pension costs are 40 million so effectively you could pull all the money out if you wanted to because you're reimbursing yourself for expenses the reason i think um these one of the major reasons and i think effectively the main reason for these trusts is to be able to earn more interest than the county treasury or life because if you could get four or five six seven percent return over time then they'll start to become interesting numbers that help with all the budgetary issues that nancy was speaking about and i think so that was primarily my question is you know the timing of us being able to withdraw and i believe you had mentioned that it's 24 hours to 48 hours turn around yeah it's very very quick and um for example we wouldn't do anything obviously you know what what um you know i did this um you know um investment from my prior district and actually every month i you know update the board so that you know the we have to update the board where we're at how much it is what was our initial investment what is our return it's cause they give us a data you know i can actually i look at almost on a daily basis you know where everything is at and obviously we will kind of um before we do anything we'll be coming to the board and say okay well this is how much how much investment returned and then looking over our budget how much do we actually need for that year or we can say just we don't need the cash we just leave it there to let it kind of invest longer and then when we actually need it then we can withdraw so you don't really need we don't need to immediately withdraw unless we need it and so the idea is the board will be updated monthly i mean or any given time but it's the idea is you know we would i'll be making sure monitoring um these type of investments to me it's very important that we know what whatever where everything is at right in any given day and uh market has done extremely well for a lot of districts but it's obviously we're looking at it long term and so i think um it's a it's a good investment i mean the there's two options right so really is the pension one is a little cheaper there's no you know more authority and that's the one that nocrp has done because it's a little cheaper there's less you know um things involved a little bit and so that would be something that's you know cheaper and we have a lot of liabilities so that's one option i was going to ask that question regarding what rop did versus what we are proposing here so the rop was the pension stabilization uh program and there was no trust involved it's also a trust but it's it's a trust but maybe because of the size of the district that they don't have their own trust is that so the pension one does not have like a board yes so no so that one is it's still considered a trust but there's no board only only the opab has the board and most districts if um because ours our district is big enough we could look into that but one option the for example on my last district we did the same thing we just did the pension because the fees were slower and it's you know we're part of this group and that's what we did and so um you know we could even start with one thing you don't have to do both we can just even do one now is there a reason or i guess i'll ask the question is i know with the makeup of the board does it prohibit us from appointing a member of the public or is it necessary or why was not a member of public considered and only district employees um to date we don't have anyone that's a member of the public it's someone that typically the boards were set up to represent if you will the district so you would want someone that maybe had hands-on type of responsibility um and as far as just adding to what nancy said about the trusts the only difference between a multiple and a single employer trust is is structure so single employer trust this is your trust at anaheim union high multiple employer trust is made up of several different agencies school districts so still a trust still a section 115 trust it's just that it's multiple employers rather than a single employer and then moving back to the rate of return what do we earn right now [Music] and i'll project it is about six and a half percent right well yeah based on and that's on the yes what what would be the most conservative that we could so the most conservative one is um two point something right yeah three point which still beat the county treasury so we'll still beat it yes it will still beat it and so but uh most districts for example um yeah okay i'm gonna talk about that so yeah so the fixed income uh for example the um 10 year return is about 4.3 percent and um and so a lot of districts are the ones i know of they're doing either moderate or moderate growth and a lot of um districts are now moving to the moderate growth of the 7.15 return and obviously last year was a really good year so a lot of districts earn much more than the the 7 obviously so some of them was up to about 30 so on the last quarter so the idea is just really kind of the the difference right yeah yeah i know it's not like uh something but what i'm trying to make the point is that we'll be earning more than what we have right now in terms of you know where we're setting our money with the county and i think that's the key i know initially i had a lot of questions when rop was doing it by doing some research with uh you know obviously from your district previous district and there are a couple other districts which are doing it i know that it's it's been good for those districts in terms of maintaining the cost right sometimes we may not exceed it but at least it's actually getting us closer to the goal post of making sure that we're not we're not uh burdened with all that uh cost so i i'm i'm supportive of it but you know obviously we have other board members so leave it at that and if i could add some numbers to your comment if you look on page 22 this was the statistical section for example look at the moderate growth column look down below and again this this looks at the performance of the portfolio back to the beginning of 08 okay so it includes some pretty tough years and some good years well looking at the moderate growth and the rolling five-year periods meaning lots of different five-year periods the worst five-year period was up 3.01 percent per year the best was up 16.6 and on average at 7.69 right obviously bond yields are lower now so projected returns on bonds are probably lower but should we beat the county treasury over time we better that's kind of what we're supposed to do but yes okay any other comments questions okay just uh just one thing uh when rop first started we we put in a very conservative amount and then uh we got great returns and we put more in this year right okay well now this is a presentation so we're not really doing any action but it is information and my only comment it's sort of like the difference between a bank and a credit union as far as interest you know you you take the one that gives the better interest um okay now is there well thank you for coming here we appreciate you giving us some more information yep that's very good so if so if we can get an investment that equals 0.9 plus our basis points that we're paying we're at least even steven anything above that we're gravy gravy or with mashed potatoes yeah okay okay thank you both very much thank you nice meeting you okay okay now um so we will public comments for a quote session okay okay let me go to that here so that was our study session and now we will go to public comments closed session items this is the opportunity for community members to address the board of trustees on a closed session item only do we have any requests to speak okay having none we will then move to closed session at 4 25.