so that was probably this you know single biggest contributor to that decrease again the projects aren't proposed to change they're just not going to be ready to move to construction um and that was very significant the second thing is parking facilities of course we've now been through 2020 and 21 in which a lot of us are still telecommuting so revenues for parking facilities downtown have been down so if your money's down your expenditures need to go down also so the capital maintenance on the parking facilities this was not nearly as big a change as the housing commission but it did result in roughly a 2.5 million dollar decrease across all the facilities now bear in mind they're also not taking as much wear and tear because there aren't as many people in them so that will catch back up but that's one of the contributors to the decrease a third thing that i highlighted was the train station project when last seen was thinking it would start into final design 23 but it can't proceed without federal approval on the previous step which they refer to as nepa pe that has not yet been forthcoming so the 4.4 million we would have been spending on design and 23 has moved outward um i also mentioned in both the housing commission and the train station and the final one i'm going to talk about in a minute the funds that are moving out of 23 are not local funds in the first place so they are federal funds that aren't going to be spent so the actual effect locally is uh the project is affected but not direct things approved by council in the capital budget and the final one i wanted to mention was the airport runway extension those of you been here a while know that's been in the cip for some time again it cannot proceed to that step without certain faa clearances which have not yet occurred so that was roughly 4.2 million that would have been spent in 23 that will not be happening so those were some significant minuses offset by some pluses led to that net 12 percent decrease and then the final thing i just briefly wanted to mention are some statistics so we had 60 projects with funding adjustments so that's a lot um and i think that's a reflection of the pricing changes that are driven by the national supply chain issues and contractor shortages they tend to bid higher there are 28 projects with schedule adjustments 12 that had both funding and schedule adjustments and then 19 projects that were added so that's my high level overview and of course then i will be here to answer your questions and also if you need any assistance in answering anything raised during the public portion and with that i will turn it back over all right very good um we will now open the public hearing for the cip this is an opportunity for persons to speak for up to three minutes about the proposed capital improvements plan update if you wish to address planning commission on this item please press star 9 if you've dialed in by phone or use the raised hand feature if you're viewing through the web link if you need the call-in number for the meeting it's 877-853-5247 mr leonard will select those who have raised their hand calling on you by the last three digits of your telephone number or by your name if you joined through the web link please move to a quiet area mute any background sounds so that we can hear you clearly and please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments color with the phone number ending with three two six you can unmute your phone using star six address the planning commission for up to three minutes yeah hello this is jeff crockett can you all hear me we can great uh so i noticed in a mission in the capitol budget and that is a consideration uh for the center of the city in the library lot and in 2018 proposition a was passed that call for that part or the library lot to be a commons and since that time there have been numerous groups um the uh the one i think it would be prudent y'all to consult with is the center of the city uh task force because then in the midst of putting together some beginning planning that is probably going to be sort of a long-term vision and it would seem to make sense to consult with them to figure in some kind of budget for this i have long wanted and this goes back like 25 years a fountain in ann arbor i don't know if any of you have been to plymouth but plymouth has a beautiful fountain it's a place for people to congregate weddings all kinds of different events we really have nothing like it in ann arbor and so i would encourage you all to consult with the center of the city council of the commons to fit in to the capital budget some consideration for a commons thank you very much thank you caller with the phone number ending with one three four caller with the phone number ending with one three four in three minutes to address the planning commission thank you mr leonard and chair mills this is ken garber again i appreciate the opportunity to comment on the cip i'll basically repeat my comments from last year i suggested then that geothermal loops could be incorporated into some of these street and sewer projects the 820 building electrification goals call for large scale retrofits with heat pumps and geothermal systems are one way to do this as you know they take advantage of the relatively constant ground temperature to heat or cool a refrigerant that circulates to the individual heat pump more efficient than air source but geothermal is also more expensive to install because excavation or drilling is involved however the city can lower the cost in its denser districts mainly downtown by laying down geothermal loops in which refrigerant that's warmed by the earth circulates continuously each building along the loop would need to install a heat pump system but these homes and businesses will avoid the high upfront cost of the loop which is converted into a monthly service fee to the city for example boise idaho now heats 6 million square feet of downtown buildings during the winter this way almost half of its entire downtown boise uses water from a geothermally heated underground river rather than a chemical refrigerant but the principle is the same each time we rip up the streets we could take advantage of the excavation to drill the holes and install the pipes that comprise the geothermal loop thus lowering the overall cost without added disruption last year staff properly questioned whether state law allowed municipal geothermal the answer is yes valerie brader the city's contract energy attorney told energy commission that a parallel city utility that competes with dte is completely legal chris bisdock the lawyer for the public power citizen group confirmed this in october the office of sustainability and innovations issued a detailed report on a proposed city-owned sustainable energy utility geothermal not just downtown but also neighborhood level is a big part of it so we should take advantage of major road and sewer projects commissioner gib randle mentioned tonight several pending downtown street redesigns in this cip i count four road reconstruction projects nine sanitary sewer extensions and 43 water main projects not all of them will be suitable for geothermal installation but let's look at them the u of m is already doing this its plan calls for the eventual conversion of all campus buildings to geothermal heating and cooling with 30 more thousand with 20 000 boreholes drilled across all the campuses we should be equally aggressive not in this cip than next year's i don't know if this is best done on a case-by-case basis or with a high level study but each time we dig out and then fill in a hole a trench or a road bed without laying geothermal pipe we may be losing a valuable opportunity thank you if anyone else uh wishes to participate in the public hearing you can press star 9 on your phone or use the raised hand button at the bottom center of your screen uh mr haber you have three minutes to address the planning commission oh thank you very much yeah so i want to echo in some way what jeff crockett said at the beginning and the last speaker who emphasized the importance of geothermal i i speak on the ann arbor center of the city commons i was an initiate i live in the fifth ward allen haber and i was an initiator of this effort back in 2009 to have the center of the city be a place devoted to fostering a culture of peace and non-violence as a community commons and the commons is a form of organization that pools resources and has them managed by the people who are actually using them it is different from the city governing or a private corporation owning it is the people who use it and we're trying to develop a number of working groups after the uh res after the proposal a was passed the city council set up an a uh a center of the city task force that put forward a number of recommendations after about seven months of work i was part of that task force also and i encourage you all to read those recommendations uh it is as as jeff crockett noted uh the planning commission and indeed nowhere in the city has this popular vote actually been recognized and included into the master plan which the task force said this is part of the master plan so thinking forward in your longer term toward 2028 uh see how this center of the city becomes part of the master plan and in the shorter run see how the kinds of amenities that the center of the city task force identified as a short-term beginnings of making this a functional place of welcoming to everyone in town through wi-fi through public toilets through a drinking fountain through facilities that encourage artistic expression uh a playground is very when we passed the petition around so many people said if i had a place i could come downtown with my kids and then make another place to play well the main point is the center of the city is part of the master plan is identified by the task force and by the voters and you should see it that way in our planning we look toward 2024 the bicentennial of the city to see some high point in this development and so wherever it fits in your immediate capital plans and toward wi-fi and toilets and things like that are very short-term but in the longer term see this is part of the opportunity to develop a unique social innovation in the center of the city so thank you thank you very much would anyone else like to provide public comment yes the phone number ending with um i don't know if i accidentally removed your indication if you were interested in addressing please press star 9 on your phone to indicate that you'd like to address operator error potentially on my part and i'll use this opportunity to say if anyone else wishes to provide a public comment if you've dialed in it's star 9 if you're watching us through the web link click the raised hand button at the bottom of your screen see no other indication all right i will read the motion whereas section 1 colon 185 of the ann arbor city code requires that the city planning commission annually prepare a capital improvements program for the ensuing six fiscal years whereas the fiscal year 2022 to 2027 capital improvements plan cip was approved by the ann arbor city planning commission on january 5th 2021 whereas the fiscal year 2022-2027 cip was approved with minor adjustments by the ann arbor city council on may 17 2021 as the basis for the fiscal year 2022 capital budget whereas the second year of the fiscal year 2022 to 2027 cip has been adjusted based on current conditions as related to the adjusted fiscal year 2023 capital budget to be considered by the city council and whereas a duly noticed public hearing was held by the city planning commission on december 7 2021 resolved that the city planning commission hereby approves the fiscal year 2023 to 2028 capital improvements plan moved by commissioner sovay seconded by commissioner dish any discussion of the cip or who wants to kick off our discussion i should say and mr leonard your hand is up you want to kick off our conversation um well no i'm going to have ms gosselin kick it off um there were a couple comments about the center of the city and so um one of those colleagues actually worked very closely with the center of the city task force i know we have representatives of that task force here if they want to add anything to it but i wanted to start with ms gosling to just um cover a conversation that she has had in regards to that question as it has come up previously okay just a couple of brief comments yes uh mr crockett and mr havers comments about there will undoubtedly be capital improvements that come out of the council of the commons i'm just getting used to the new name that will end up in the capital improvement plan at this point however there has been no specific adoption by a body of this is what we're gonna do maybe it's a fountain like someone had mentioned but once we know what specific improvements that are capital in nature and total more than a hundred thousand so i anticipate by fall uh at your next adjustment that you will be seeing council of the commons related capital improvements but we can't put them in at the particular stage we're at because the specifics have not been resolved yet there's lots of great ideas coming through that but not here's where we're going definitively and therefore we need x number of dollars so coming but not in this program that is why it's not there currently commissioner hammerschmidt i'll just tag onto that as the planning commission liaison to the council of the commons that's exactly correct what i was going to mention as well there's no real plan or ask yet um specifically for the the the lot on top the service parking lot on top of um the parking garage liberty plaza is under parks um and so we're treating that sort of separately um but yeah so there's there's no ask we're going to be we have a little bit of money that coaster briggs was able to get put into the budget for a design process and so um staff is going to be putting out a request for information early in the new year to try to get um some some firms to to let us know how much it might actually cost for a whole like design process where we would hopefully get some of those ideas solidified um that might then make it into a capital improvement plan so yeah i think we're not nearly ready to start putting money into this plan for that particular um piece of land other comments or questions i will note that i was extremely heartened to see within the projects that are added um a number of things that are specifically related to a20 or to the bikeway um and so i um i know i've ever since a20 came out have been the squeaky wheel asking like when are some of those things going to make their way and as those um as those plans take shape it's good to see them added even in this year where we tend to add minimal projects so i think that that's great um relatedly though um there has been lots of discussion about geothermal at least you know on and off at this table has that um how has that been part of the discussion because i know part of the cip is actually programming in particular where our systems our transportation system water sewer intersect and so as there's discussion of kind of the energy space as well has that has that started happening in city hall i mean to take that i assume um this is kind of a twist on the council of the commons in that we're not in a position yet to talk about adding things to the capital improvement plan as mr garber said it is you know i'm i've never specifically researched it but if municipal government could have a geothermal utility we don't have one yet so any code related things like that would have to happen first we have a water sewer and storm each of them are set up as a utility we do not have a geothermal utility so it may be something certainly that the sustainability group may be discussing that i have not been in on but until that groundwork is laid from a code standpoint we could not be planning for spending money on a utility that doesn't exist because we just are not in that position at this point understood also again kind of the scheduling of these two of these systems together i think that's one of the benefits of having a cip that kind of thinks out and includes the involvement and so i have confidence but also like encourage regular reminders that as we are doing as we are taking up some of these roads thinking about future proofing them for all of the systems that may be required i think i appreciate i appreciate the the reminders on that i'm just curious in looking at the projects that were added there was something called a pump track within the parks what is that i was hoping no one was gonna ask me oh sorry never mind it's not a typo i was like you know but if you give me just a second i'm gonna like uh yeah i think it's like uh crossfit like i could be way out on a limb here but i'm going back to my young bmx bike days i think it is like uh sort of a recreational trail for like uh mountain bikes slash bmx bikes where it might involve obstacles and the like yeah i was trying to see if uh when colin smith had me added and technically i made a note that that is not in 2223 but he said for it to happen he'd have to go after grants and there's a lot of lead time so he needed it to be in there and have a presence but let me see if he described it in any way other than no he just literally had me put in create pump tracks so i apologize that well to the bmx community it's in the cip like this is uh and i i appreciated that note about going after seeking additional funding so commissioner yes if you want to go with google it is a looped sequence of rollers and berms swoopy bank terms for bike riders designed to maximize your momentum so you can ride with minimal pedaling oh i like the swoopy bank turns like cool um commissioner dish so i want to register my total excitement and thrilledness about the b2b vandermer barton connection money that's in here i am so excited and thrilled and i'm so thankful to the city for entering into that project and i want to just uh make sure that i completely understood ms gosselin that given that we do not yet have a geo thermal utility established there wouldn't really be any point in asking staff to assess the projects that are scheduled scoped out in the cip to see which ones [Music] since we're ripping up the street anyway which ones we might want to install geothermal because we just that would be really putting the cart before the horse correct okay hammerschmidt and then commissioner weich um i'm not even sure if i'm how to ask this question or if this is even like a real question so i was also surprised that the total funding need was like 13 million dollars lower and then you know it like makes sense so some projects went up these four were really big and they got pushed out you mentioned i think that though a lot of the or the score projects have a lot of federal dollars so i'm just sort of wondering you know the projects that went up if they're more local dollars like how does that how much are we actually asking for more locally in fy23 than we were and how does that how does that work because i know yeah that's a good question and it's a hard one to simply answer but you can see from the number in that are in the category of projects with funding adjustment that there were some that went down but there were a number that went up and some of those still are outside asks but a lot of them are local inside so i would say that if you took the outside funds out there i would believe there would be a net increase of local dollars and they uh most of those are driven by pricing changes like in sanitary sewer lining projects for example it's like wow yeah price of those is is going up so it's a good question and yes i would say the net is probably positive from local dollars this is probably my own ignorance of budgets but but like what are these things come at the expense of like do other things have to be reduced somewhere else to make the capital improvement plan work yes and they again if you look at 2223 were focusing on 23 but 22 affects it and some of them you're just seeing an increase in 23 because it moved from 22 to 23.
so that's the district's option but it has value okay so what we're looking at now is as we approach july 1 2022 potentially exercising that option and the reason that we have these minimum savings thresholds is to make sure that the district is most bang for the buck for for that option so you know you haven't had the ability to do it previously now we're coming up to that date and then anytime after this date those same bonds are callable but as we approach july 1 2022 these minimum dollar amounts and minimum savings percentages are important to have in that resolution so that if and when you do adopt that resolution you know that there are certain parameters that had a minimum you're going to achieve before any refunding costs are sold so that kind of protects you as a board and it also ensures that the district's going to get sufficient value for exercising this option and trying to achieve those interest cost savings yeah just a question on that and we kind of addressed this when we got together a few weeks ago um when you say that the recommendation is about a three percent savings that would just be a minimum so that's the best practice i would say right and i'm assuming that's in excess of the cost of refund yes that's correct um why as a district would we not want to do two percent if it's just ultimate savings to the taxpayer no that's a really good question i mean i think and maybe there you know there could very well be circumstances where you'd want to do that and we've clearly worked with issuers that have done that um there's a couple levels i think you know to sell bonds whether it's new money bonds or refunding bonds you have to hire professionals and and you're going to pay fees to bring those professionals in to work for you so we're going to make money and sometimes at two percent you know maybe we make more money than the district saves why do we want to do that right so so it kind of is a on a certain level you know you want to look at like you know it might save the taxpayers money but who's benefiting the most and we try to make sure that the district received the most benefit um when you get to a call to another situation where you might want to consider that is that if all of our bonds you know we're looking at 7122 if all of our bonds when returning in 23-24 you'd say well if we don't exercise this option today every month that goes by we're losing the opportunity to save any interest expense and pretty soon these bonds are going to return to glasgow so maybe there's a situation where two percent makes a lot of sense you know here our bonds go out quite a ways and so if you don't exercise i mean if the market blows up on us you know we'll be back to you saying we may want to consider waiting and just hoping that the market comes back um you know but because you still have time maybe to exercise that option and still achieve some savings and i mean another parameter since we're talking about property taxes if the two percent threshold didn't really move the needle on the tax rate maybe that's not a reason i mean that you know that should be playing into it as well so on the next page page seven so our firm is looking at two options so the district previously has had negotiated sales um we are looking at two options and which option is going to be determined to be used it's going to be based on which one has the estimated lowest borrowing cost and so you know that the markets move so your stock right your portfolios like they're every every day are changing so so i mean we're in those same markets with bond issues and in the private placement it's working with one buyer and most of the time that's a bank or if it's a shorter deal if it's five years or less it might be a county treasurer so those would be the two options that we've seen before um looking at rates i mean it's pretty close between a negotiated sale and a private placement and so we're going to continue to monitor that between now and looking into the new year um we we do have someone that works specifically on private placements and so we had conversations with them after we had met with the district initially and he had given me some ranges um and we talked to a few more banks originally i've worked reached out to one specific bank in arizona um and so the indication is that the private placement there's a little a slight advantage on um on the on the borrowing rate right now so but we are going to continue to monitor that we're going to be able to maneuver and shift to whichever type of sale that is best for the district some of the advantage of just working with one investor is right now the district's submitting information on a portal it's called emma and that has to be shared by february 1st every year when you're working with one specific buyer or investor or purchaser they they probably just their requirements are um i would say are condensed because instead of having thousands of investors to appease with information it's one and most of the time it's um looking they want the tax rate the av um the delinquency rate and um and then the capper or the audit or whichever whatever however the issuer issues um there also are less requirements for it so normally with a negotiated sale the district worked on like a 150 plus page offering document and that was giving the investor information to make a decision do you want to buy these bonds do you not want to buy these bonds this is your source document to make that decision for this one for the banks it might be a small package of just some because they're a little more sophisticated they're um we're not looking out to every single person that maybe has a child schwab account who may want to have these bonds in their portfolio um so there's also so there's no offering document provided and there's also no rating so most of the time in a negotiated sale you would go to one of the three major rating agencies and that's an additional expense um and they and they would rate the bonds um and so that would be that would be included in the offering document so that that adds a little bit more time in this case you know we can't close this bond issue before april 1st um because we have a 90-day window from that from that july 1st payment um but but those are just there's i would say less requirements and maybe less time invested on the district administration working using a private placement versus a negotiated sale um like our firm what we're gonna make is the is doesn't change so i mean we're we're gonna provide the information and the data and it's going to be based on having the lowest barring cost like that's our goal so now we'll go into section two um and so you've got your three outstanding bond issues and the bonds you can see um phillip references this call date these bonds are callable any interest payment date so they're available right now these bonds from 2012 had a 7 122 call date so these are going to be probable the next year and so we're looking at these bonds and then these bonds that are all callable now this maturity we're going to continue to monitor if there are not savings in that 2023 maturity we're not going to include it so we're only going to include maturities that have savings um so when i we get done numbers run a month or two ago this one it was just slightly negative in the savings so we didn't include that but right now we're seeing statements so we're including it um and then these last bonds that were issued in january 2013 you can see they have this 2023 call date those bonds based on federal regulation we they would be have to be issued on a taxable basis so the rates are higher and um i mean most of the almost all all the time i'm gonna say waiting for the call date um you're gonna see more benefit unless the market drastically changes so we know that the fed may end up start doing maybe one or two rate hikes mid to the end of 2022 but um we would it would right now the savings it should be something that the district thinks about when the actual bonds are called and as bill suggested it's an option so you could you could look at that option in spring of 2023 or you could look at that option at a later date this the option is still going to be there and really it's going to be a function as it is today i think the column under the coupon is what you really want to look at because that's what the interest rate the district's paying today on these outstanding bonds so whether you know we're looking at these the 2010 and the 2012 series today to refinance that series 13 is those that coupon interest rate if interest rates are lower than that it may make sense to refinance if they're not if there will be no benefit to calling those bonds the numbers on the next page really measure the interest cost savings between these two coupon columns on these callable maturities to highlight maturities versus where we think the bonds we sold today and that's what really kicks out yeah and um so this is this is a based on private placement so this is based on um estimated rates from from banks um currently uh so as we get closer we'll be sending out a package to the to a number of things and we'll have a due date for them to provide us a proposal uh so i mean these numbers are going to continue to change between between now and mid-february when we end up having actually receiving those bids in uh but based on this information you can see um if rates change you can see what would happen to the savings so if we end up getting right now we're saying the all in true interest cost so that's all costs included estimated costs included everything in there would be 1.6 um and then if you look at the average cash flow savings that would be each year what what the savings would be and that ends up being around three cents a year on the bond tax rate um and then looking at the net present value savings that's around 1.14 million and that ends up being 14.4 percent so that's more than twice the amount that we have in the resolution currently and you can kind of just do the simple math you know 10 of the outstanding principal amount would be in the 790 000 range you know if you divide that by five to get to our two percent you can see it's kind of like professionals probably make more than your district does at that point this doesn't make a whole lot of sense and with these numbers too and i think even one of the points that eric made earlier the estimated annual cash flow savings at 137 000.
yes so this is this is a ranking oh for the grants yeah and they've already awarded two years ago i think they awarded about 37 districts so we we're actually like 70th or 80th on the list which is mind-boggling to me but you know that's what the calculations are but again uh and you'll see one of the agenda items that's coming up that we're going to talk about tonight is submitting the application and all that stuff and so uh i i think it's worth submitting the application it's not a very long one it's it's real easy you know and all that stuff but i think it's important that we do this and you know again if we get something that'll be great and that and so what that would mean to kind of give you an idea so if we got this 4.1 million dollars we are required to abate taxes for two years and so what that means is that the property when you when you look at that tax extension it would be four million dollars less and we would actually pay that with the grant money so it's almost like we get the money it just kind of goes into our fund balances and then when we pay our bills we kind of use that okay so so with that being said so you do not go after the taxpayers for another four million dollars for two years or whatever that is right and we levy the third year and it's not being compound so do we not lose out no because what you do mr brown is you you abate your bonded interest fund okay so that's that's where you're going to obey that that's what you're going to bait at okay that's where you're going to abate so what happens with that money uh is this then becomes part of our evidence-based funding so we will continue to get this money forever however the requirement is you have to abate for two years after the second year it's up to the board whether they want to continue to abate now i i my recommendation i'll just say this because you know i'm going to say this i think you should continue to obey if that's what the money is for because we don't lose that long as long as you go to the debt part right that we are collecting on right you don't lose out on the compounding of the levy portion and i believe this amount would probably save the taxpayers somewhere between i think 200 and 220 dollars in taxes that is correct i think we when we abated about 750 000 several years ago that was about 73 dollars that has saved the taxpayers on average so i you know again i don't i don't know i'm not real sure that we're going to get it this year but i think again it's going to set us up for the following year and which is really important especially if cpi is up higher you know it'll allow us then to to obey which would be which would be great oh that that should be something that i know we can't talk about solve it here but that should be it should be a priority well it will be i you know i'm pretty sure we're going to get it the following year you know again because we'll move up to number one or two and so we'll be fine you know and all that so the following year but again it just i just think it's important that at least the public knows that we're doing everything within our power to try and lower the taxes and that and you know this is a simple application so ken that would be that amount every year forever yeah yes yeah so that that's why it's real important you know again you know from board to board knowing that or from business manager the business manager knowing that so that you continue i think it's important so you continue to abate you know and again i think that's what the purpose of this grant is and i know i do know of school districts that only have abated for two years and that's it yeah i i just don't think that's the way to go so i think yes so so ken that when they ranked the districts but the ones that got the money in the past they fall off because they're getting it yes so then it's a re-rank every year and so yeah we should move up into the zone next year yes exactly right that's what i'm saying so they they've all fallen off because again this money becomes part of your evidence-based funding automatically so like this year we get 17 million if we had that now we'll start getting 21 million you know and then that that keeps on forever got it yeah that's one of the purposes of evidence-based funding is you know one of the goals of this is to wean school districts off of using property taxes to fund school and try and get more of its state now it's a little bit but every little bit helps as far as i'm concerned you know okay so our next steps again i'll just i'll just go through this is the password resolution authorizing the submission of the application for the property tax relief can i have this all ready to go it'll be on the docket we're going to talk about it tonight but again i'm talking about it here um the determination is made in january so they'll send us whether we know or whether we're on the list or not that we're going to get money and then if approved we would abate the property taxes in march that's through board action i'll take care of all of that with legal and all of that stuff so and just kind of let you know that i vote yes all right so any other questions you know thanks ken that was uh you're welcome thank you very much uh terry is there any public comment on the property tax levy only no sure okay therefore can i get a motion to close the truth in taxation law hearing moved second brown is an eye dr hall aye mrs gilbert aye mr smallish hi mrs walters aye vice president rupert aye president albert aye motion carries okay we have uh three public comments tonight one in person so we'll start with that mr young and the topic is transparency and community part two uh thank you president albert members of the board dr congolese staff and to the public you know sometimes when people question the status quo or the power structure they are often viewed with suspicion they are often viewed as being a troublemaker i want you to know that's not the case here we want you to understand that the reason there is the circulation of the petition to challenge the 45.5 million dollar bond issuance is to hold you as public officials more accountable okay i believe that we got more in common than we want to recognize okay so with that being said how much time do i have president albert uh four more minutes four more minutes okay cool we know since the last time i was here a couple of weeks ago that someone in the district allowed the local fire department to come into the dome and we believe it was to conduct training but in the process the roof of the dome was destroyed now we know that the board voted six to one and yes i've been told that president albert signed a contract the following day to destroy the dome but if you allow the local police to local fire department to come in there and conduct and train that's one of the reasons why we want to preserve the dome our resources and our community being utilized for our benefit train it it will make sense it's that dome is one of a kind well the damage was done you do realize that you can rebuild it also as you tear it down you can rebuild it because we've been told you got a six million dollar savings account sounds like a down payment on rebuilding the dome okay now a lot has been said about air conditioning this movement is going to stop air conditioning that's not true we've been knowing that air conditioning was needed in these buildings as far back as dr robert berry when she was our superintendent as early as when dr nathaniel cunningham was our superintendent so let's stop using that as an excuse okay we've been knowing for a long time the fact of the matter is that you guys got caught holding the bag that's all it was so you might as well just face it you got busted and the pandemic aggravated the situation that's all it was in addition to the 2013 life safety study you only got 10 years to satisfy unless you get an extension the third point is that i've been told it was not printed on the petition 45.5 million dollars all it said is that claims paid against the school district okay but later i've been told that the 45.5 million dollars is going to be used to upgrade facilities it makes absolutely no sense that you take that kind of money and put into these old buildings when our students our teachers and our support staff deserve better and we can do better we need to build new facilities and give them the best that our money can afford it's plain and simple as that air conditioning is the preferred method but it's not the only way of keeping these classrooms cool and creating an environment that's conducive to learning this is a school district we don't teach people how to accept defeat we don't we teach them how to succeed we identify the problem and teach them how to overcome the problem we need to give them the best that our money can afford only this time everybody needs to be on board to support it it would make sense we got a new battle statement in the community that you need to be made aware of and that battle statement is that whenever you hear the word warriors you're responsible we deserve more warriors we deserve more warriors we deserve more warriors we deserve more thank you doctor president albert those are my comments thank you okay the next stop are a series of two public comments both from tim peepenbrink regarding the dome i will read them in succession here the first is from an email sent on friday november 26th and mr piepenbring goes on to say an interesting discussion occurred at the crete monique football game on november 20th as our save the dome group was gathering signatures for our petition a group of people came by and asked if we were registered voters residing the same school district it turned out they were still students and not quite old enough to vote here was an opportunity for a civics lesson so it was explained that we as americans have the right to challenge the actions and policies of any governing bodies and to present our concerns they were shown the petitions being circulated and we explained that due process will be followed in coming to a final decision we heard many comments from the folks we talked with many were in favor of not tearing down the dome and had no idea that was in the works a few were concerned that a successful petition would hold up needed repairs to schools in the district when we spoke at the school board meeting and to those questions at the football game we made it abundantly clear that our intentions were not to stall or delay the badly needed repairs and renovations at our schools we've always said that we wanted to save the dome for use for use in the district and for other community groups activities and events no more no less the district's plans are for repairs and upgrades and also include building demolition we specifically asked them to take the dome out of the equation and let it be in this situation a petition has to be drawn up by the district they know full well what our intentions are but the petitions only dealt with the challenging the bond sales those are their written petitions and that's what we had to work with as a group we discussed what the petition stated and that we would go with what they gave us at the school board meeting several board members asked if a successful petition drive would stop the repairs that would be paid for with the funds from the bond sales the administration confirmed that it would indeed hold things up the petitions were also said that borrowing the 53 million dollars would have to wait to go on a possible referendum no earlier than june of 22.
um the next we identified the 1.8 million which was the amount that we projected to redo or reimagine the one high school campus now in that included remodeling and so of the 1.8 million dollars that was new branding was 235 000 the gym floor and these are all options the jump floor was 347 000 new turf overlay was 110 000 athletic equipment was projected at 500 000 modernized in the kitchen increasing it by 500 square feet was two hundred thousand dollars and upgrading the locker room was five hundred thousand now these are all options these are not all things we have to do to rebrand we can pick and choose we can always understand but we also do have to understand cost inflation but these are the current recommended prices at this time for these items but there's other things that we could think of but these are just the key things that we considered at the time but but even then we can again just to be super clear we can tease out some of those things have nothing to do with rebranding right redoing the kitchen we feel like hey we're gonna we're gonna have a brand new high school we need to redo the kitchen but that has nothing to do with branding but there's a price tag that adds to the one point what was it 1.8 million 1.8 right so so the kitchen is not really part of rebranding right so you start taking those things out you're really looking anywhere between 850 000 to you know 1.1 million you know somewhere around that that range that would go into quote unquote just rebranding purposes i just think this though and we should really i mean concentrate on the branding because that's that's what the main big thing is about of the name change is the branding you're not the kitchen and not the floor or what have you but it really has to do with writing the name of the school the um um you know this is kind of what we're talking about um on top of of course all the other things but um i think for us to make the right decision we need we should have a um right cost or how else we can bid i mean who knows someone may want to give us the deal i mean we don't we we have not looked into that i don't know but um if we have not maybe we could you know i'm sorry you had said that there's grants out there mr ball i did not use the word grant um i just said there's always options that's funny we should i just said maybe we should look around or something that would help us you know yeah i don't know and so um um board member um yolanda pena um if the desire is for me to provide you exact amount or current projected numbers i would at least like to know exactly what we would like to rebrand and then i can dive into those so is it just thank you if you give me that i have no problem with getting that information for you but there are some things that that you would have to do to rebrand and there's just no way around it right you cannot change the name of a school and leave your marquee to still say azuza high school right so you'd have to you'd have to rebrand the marquee you'd have to rebrand the football field you'd have to rebrand all of the painting that currently has so we're talking about inside the gymnasium on some some outer places of the campus and then probably so those are you know some big costs and then your other big costs are going to be your extracurricular activities like sports marching band right cheer like those kinds of things those would be big costs because we're talking about uniforms for those uh particular things that's that's another another big cost you mean they would get brand new uniforms correct yeah they can have them with the same name and then some again some further ones again that just off the top of here that we know for sure right um and these are now lesser but still nonetheless right anything that includes the logo currently business cards letterhead right you know those kinds of things but again those become lesser but your big ones are the kind of the ones that that that i that i uh spoke about and and those big ones right now without going out and saying can you give me a quote for this or whatever um we are projecting somewhere between eight to one million dollars eight hundred thousand to one million dollars for for those things great thank you i see that we have board member career raising his hand me and mew yes so i have actually a couple a couple areas with with uh questions so one we were talking about elementary schools and some of the different models that were presented to us one and then the other one is the high school so in regards to the uh elementary schools looking at the model that that shows schools in different quadrants i think for the most part from my perspective makes the most sense there is however one piece that i want to point out that from my perspective does seem to be somewhat missing uh yeah board member which model did you say the quadrants the north the northwest northeast just along the four quadrants uh yeah um is this the correct one this is the this is the northwest northeast southwest southeast and and if i can point out the only difference between this one and proximity which is the third model is the addition of magnolia that's the only difference between this model that we're looking at right now on the screen and the proximity model that board member rodriguez pena spoke about the only difference between these two is is magnolia i'm mistaking that i was looking at the proximity model yes okay so the same one board member rodriguez pena talked about yeah so so this one this one does make sense to me there does seem to be a that that chunk there in the you know in the north eastern side that that does seem to be you know kind of kind of glaringly missing a school there and as i um i'd say northeast so in that area yeah and so it makes a lot of sense looking at lee and the conversation with what it has not been modernized i get that that makes that makes sense i are there are there other options to look at within this space one of the things that was brought up uh last time around was foothill middle school being used as uh kind of overflow or somehow in connection with um azusa high school so i'd love to hear someone speak into the viability of foothill middle school being able to receive some of those uh surrounding campuses to to allow for there to be a campus in that area in in that space where it does seem leave where where it's located geographically makes sense but due to the the cost i get that uh associated with uh modernization so i'd just love to hear some some conversation on the the viability of foothill middle school as a as a space and then the other i'll i'll i'll stop there i have questions with the high school and junior high models but i'll stop there for them sure i'll i'll begin that that conversation uh so yes board member greer to your point uh even during the school reorganization team process uh there was the consideration that foothill would become like a mega elementary that and that would shut down dalton lee and powell and that all three of those schools would go there so dalton would be shut down lee would be shut down and powell would be shut down that was one of the ideas that that was uh that was brought up um as we stated previously we really again this can go either way but we really do like the idea of foothill middle school becoming part of the azusa high school campus for several reasons number one the azusa high school campus unlike the gladstone high school campus does not have a proper theater the theater that exists at azusa high school is not up to code it's not in compliance and it is it is extremely extremely small so if we were to invest in that particular theater even if we were to invest in it the space is very very small and very limited so it wouldn't be a proper theater if foothill middle school was the middle school uh i'm sorry it was part of this is a high school foothill middle school has a cafetorium that cafetorium has a stage and has lighting already in it and so maybe we could imagine that that that space uh becoming a proper theater um that cafetorium also has a kitchen and so when we think about like backstage dressing rooms prop area um it just seems like a like a like a nice fit but let's abandon that idea for a quick second again we do like the idea of of having that part of azusa high school for for various reasons that was just one but if it was to become a in elementary school with which it can we also have to consider the investment that needs to go into foothill middle school uh to make it uh an elementary school um foothill middle school uh we'd have to invest in kindergarten um so we'd have to make sure and ensure uh that we have uh spaces uh restrooms uh would have to be redone if we are looking at a preschool that would also have to be reimagined we'd have to actually build out restrooms into classrooms the way that we have been able to build out preschools at our elementary schools um i'm not saying with zero investment but with with minimal investment is because we do have classrooms already that already include restrooms in the classrooms um and so there would have to be um some investment again not impossible uh some investment though into foothill um as we consider making it an elementary school there would be there would be some some investment uh in in in that respect um i do not know if that investment would equal uh or be less or were surpassed like the investment that would have to go into lee just to to bring lee up um i i don't know up the top ahead but just initially those are some considerations uh for foothill and turning into an elementary another another another one is playground there is currently not a playground at foothill middle school and so you know we'd probably want to invest in a playground to make it equitable to the other uh elementary schools as well natasha i don't know if i'm missing anything just obvious um no those are key the only other item i would identify is that the capacity at foothill is so large um and so that would increase our current capacity goal because that capacity for foothill is whereas most of our elementaries our largest is barely a little bit over 700 so it's almost two elementary campuses in one and again the iterations that we have heard was that that the the three schools would go into that one school uh dalton lee and powell or that would service that area if you will um but again i mean right these are conversations um and adding a couple dots so one i that i hear that it would upset our our capacity numbers with foothill but we could say the same thing with our high school numbers if we if that were to be an add-on to azusa high school and if we were to factor that into capacity it it would it would send that you know under uh you know a preferred number as well i i imagine um would it be possible to to to get some cost analysis if we were to look at those three schools as options if we were to look at dalton if we were to look at lee and if we were to look at foothill would you be able to provide a cost analysis on what would be needed to make that school any on each of those three schools the school for that quadrant um that that might be helpful as for us to know um as we're considering which which school makes the most the most sense space and as well as uh additional investment that's that's needed okay can i just clarify um remember so we already have dalton listed so are we um is the ass that i look into the cost of either modernizing lee or modernizing foothill yeah so here here's what here's what i would be helpful for me uh and please speak to how feasible this is if we were to look at that quadrant and say that it it makes sense for there to be one school within that quadrant that one school could be uh dalton that one's you know campus that one campus could be lee or that one campus could be foothill what if it were to be dalton what needs to go into dalton to to allow it to absorb and what are the costs associated with that if it were lee what are the things that need to go into lead and to bring these things up to my and be modernized what are the costs that need to go into to leave and same with foothill i understand that you can't get exact costs but but having even some type of ballparks for these three campuses would be helpful to determine which which makes the most sense within that quadrant remember greer just for uber clarification uh what we would be doing for dalton as we would be saying here's where it is right now in its modernization these are the things that that we were pegged to modernize it and this is the cost this is where lee is at in modernization to bring it up to where we thought we were going to peg it this is the cost but unlike foothill for for dalton and lee these are just not just i don't want to use that word these are these are modernization project foothill it's modernization plus re redoing it to actually become an elementary school so that'll be just i mean just for clarification that would be an additional like cost where there is not that cost at lea and dalton correct and so but what i'm what i'm but i'm seeking to have a handle on is what is what is the ballpark out the door for for adult if we have dalton with its current capacity and that's going to be the school for that quadrant are there additional class classrooms that need to be added to that campus or restrooms are are there other things needed within dalton or is dalton turnkey ready to go to to receive um and so what are those costs are are there modernization uh projects not yet completed at dalton that are still on the list what are those to the best of our ability ballpark exhaustive costs for dalton those same costs if it were lee those same costs if it were for you once we have those three we can actually look at and look at those numbers and know what the what the real investment to make each of those uh uh campuses or what would what the investment would be needed to make any one of those campuses the identified campus for that particular quadrant got it and what president can ask my second question about high school yes please feel free okay so um in regards to to the high school and to branding i'm i'm with i'll say i'm with everybody in that or i'm with those who have spoke who have spoken so far which is in an ideal world and an ideal scenario we would we would have some rebranding to be able to start fresh and to start new um when we asked questions on some of those numbers last time around i'll say that those num the numbers that were shared last when we discussed it at the last meeting that is it's not the idea that turns me off it's the numbers it's it's the the openness to to spend that you know that percentage of bond dollars that we have available on the purposes of rebranding and so yeah knowing knowing exactly what we're looking at what are the what are the minimums and but then what are those those preferred things that we'd want to do for the purposes of rebranding when we look at a kitchen expansion that seems like a kitchen expansion is something that may need to happen either way uh but but branding whether we rebrand or not but those that's that's what we're that's what we're looking at and considering so it would be helpful to know and it sounded like uh mr ortega you said 800 to 1 million um and i i it's my assumption that that's for just one campus if we were to if we were to look at doing that at just the high school which that also makes sense if that cuts it in half if the middle school were to remain as let's say gladstone middle school and if the high school were rebranded to some some new uh high school name that would also cut those costs in half i imagine and could someone speak to that um the yeah so that that to me is what it comes down to one last question based off the the way that you have the model rolling out this would only technically technically i mean i'm an alumni also so i i understand how it will affect gladstone high school alumni i am one but i'm not not speaking about alumni for here for a moment just looking at this the students that would actually be affected if i'm not mistaken they're mistaken it would only affect the current sophomores at gladstone high school if so so just for for context and understanding that's by my calculations so if someone sees it differently please please let me know um no i think it affects two classes the current i believe is the current freshman and the current sophomores um that it would quote unquote effect that would be moving to a different school the current seniors obviously they're graduating now the current juniors they'd be able to graduate it's the it's the current freshmen and sophomores got it that's right so can i ask my colleagues in what is what is your thoughts if we were to continue to explore those costs if we were to look at just rebranding the high school and not rebranding the uh the middle school campus it would it would need to be rebranded because it's middle instead of high school but but we may not need to change the name and may not need to change their mascot at gladstone out of gladstone middle school you know one of the things that um that i'm hearing and correct me if i'm wrong is you know we're looking overall i think the understanding that we as a board need to be realistic is that as you know as i hear you uh board member career asking for the cost of you know uh being able to upgrade everything at dalton lee or having a an elementary at foothill middle schools and i hear uh both uh miss latasha jamal and arthur say there's going to be some cost so i think regardless of how we are trying to save in reality up front there are going to be some but we have to look i think as as a board is that um yes uh you shared that you were an alumni but at the same time we have the ninth graders and tenth graders that are really concerned that we want to keep in our district and right now we as a board can invest for the future we're looking to close at least five six schools right the savings that will come from that we're making a sacrifice at this point right now and regardless of how you know like you shared you know i think that that's a great idea to look into but help you know even to look into a cape i mean i'm gonna throw this out there k through eight at foothill you know that that could also be a possibility and i threw that out before you know to on the dyes to to consider if we're going to go into elementary there's 13 if foothill can host 1300 students right i don't know i'm i'm i know that we have spoken about that it will take some of the eighth grade and i'm speaking more um you know those eighth graders that need that nurturing our sdc rsp um we have a visually impaired um give them that smaller school you know that that's about possibility as well but i think bottom line as we move forward with this conversation we need to take in consideration that this is an investment for the future of our of our school and when we look at it that way you know um i mean we spent five million dollars in in our which they look great are our football fields you know we as a board did pass um that and we spent five million dollars close to 5 million knowing that we were going to go into the reconfiguration and we made that sacrifice at for that time being and we had great graduations and people that graduated came up to us and said thank you thank you for this football field and this the current alumni that we have right now and they're concerned one of the things that i heard was um that board member rodriguez penguin said um the awkwardness right we're going to lose these students they're not going to want to go if it's not rebranded and why not give the uplift all around in our district that way we could all start from spratt again regardless of you know if we look at this elementary or we're looking at making foothill um the elementary like like you shared um board member career we we have to take consideration that we are going to be investing for the future if we look at it that we're going to be you know spending we can't spend this we can't spend that i i'm sure that um there are there are funds and uh that can be allocated to go ahead and move this forward and the things that we need to um do um and the possibilities that may come from this um are going to be very rewarding i believe for our district board member rodriguez pena yes so what i want to add to that is that um i still like the idea that foothill um would be part of this uh um campus when we put the students there because we did talk about overcrowding and i know uh superintendent ortega mentioned about the um the little theater was it is a regular theater um and those students if you those three schools ultimately and um paul will stay you know put them there it it's gonna take away from the other schools the whole idea is that we're going to build capacity we're going to have better programs because there'll be more students there but you're taking them away so the next year or two we're going to close more schools because you're taking those students away and putting them in a k2a foothill that's your idea um and then you're taking kids the seventh and eighth graders from the gladstone campus at middle school the armega middle school and maybe they can have great programs and then it's not the same because it's it's ella um gateway is elementary curriculum those students are not going to have the same as the students in the mega middle school at the grassland high school camp so i i'm i'm not really um too down on that i i really still like the way we spoke about it before where it was going to be part of this account and that's the beauty of it because it is so they're so close together we can do a lot with those uh board member career dude i i don't know if you put your hand up again or if it was from before i did put my hand back up but i don't think um has gotten us to speak yet so did you have something chilling you wanted to say i i just oh i thought he was talking about me may i speak i'm sorry yes board member cruz gonzalez yeah i just want to say i agree with what you want to just said about um it makes sense to use the the foothill as an annex for just a high school so i still want us to focus on keeping that that way um although i so i i think it's fine to investigate the cost i do think it makes sense to see how much it costs to to um to to modernize dalton uh you know i we're looking at this in terms of the quadrants but i think often people think about um that area between foothill and the freeway really as a as a community well i'll say community of interest because we're generating but but that really has a community identity and so i'm wondering about so i i would be in favor of investigating what it would you know just understanding what it would what it would mean to keep to keep lee school open um but then the other seminars says i think i agree with i think i heard adrian saying that he didn't he didn't want to rebrand and i just want to say i agree with that's it okay so i'm saying a couple things i i didn't exactly say that i i don't want to rebrand i'll say based off of the information that we received the last time so if we have if there's if we have new information um i that could change but but the here here's uh board president one of the things we talked about is investment but let's but once they i also want to be mindful of the fact that we have monies we have some upwards of 40 million dollars 100 of those 40 million dollars that we have allocated is going to be an investment in our in our students in our community in our schools 100 of that 40 million it's the question that we have to ask ourselves is what is the best use of that 40 million dollars of that 40 million investment we we as a board we can choose and we can say it you know we could say it makes sense to spend 5 million dollars on rebranding we we could make that decision or if it's 800 000 to 1 million what whatever those costs are we can we as a board can can uh uh we can vote and allocate those those those funds and that in that that direction but i want to be careful not to think about this as a do we invest or do we not invest because it is all an investment um with that being said when we have this conversation of of rebranding i don't i want to be careful to not separate the conversation of reap of should we rebrand with the feasibility of monies that that we have so to just have a kind of a you know some kind of a soapbox kind of conversation or talk on why why we should do it with we need to recognize that if we can but if we spend those moneys on that then it means that we're not spending moneys on something else and so we can choose to do that and i'm open to having that conversation so one of the questions that i have is are we open as a board are we open to looking at just rebranding the the high school and not the middle school because that would cut those costs then in half um and i don't and i didn't hear anything so so where we landed last time it did not seem to be a responsible decision just to allocate those monies toward toward rebranding um so so i'm still wanting to to know what those actual cost costs are so the numbers still remain the same the numbers that we presented before um to re brand including everything that we presented for to redo our high school was the 1.8 million but of that our items like um superintendent ortega stated that it would be items like modernizing the kitchen that's something we already have to do but if we're looking at this key items the numbers that we provided was for athletic um it was for the gym floor which again we would have to do but you do have to do the overlay it was for the football field um so the question remains is that i can provide another question but the statement i can provide any numbers and projections but it'll be helpful if i can understand exactly what we will want to rebrand and then i can provide those numbers and we could be talking factual number and i think i based on the conversation i think i have a pretty good grasp of the the rebranding piece again the overlay the marquee excuse me the uniforms uh the paint those are the big big ones right uh the four big ones there are minor ones that we have to do we cannot not do and um and we can we can parcel that out that we can say this right here is strictly only rebranding but this right here as we are re-imagining the high school which does not equal rebranding right we're looking at the kitchen we're looking at these other pieces that we think hey you know this is going to be our one or one high school we should be investing in these particular things as well can only because i'm not looking at those numbers right now i i know that they were stated can if if we were not looking at looks like the things that we needed to do to reimagine the campus those things need to happen anyway if we're already giving direction to to move to one um campus so we will need to reimagine some of those some of those pieces but in regards to the rebranding i mean the things that i feel like i heard so correct me if i'm leaving something off if we say the the field the gymnasium uh marquees painting around the campus different murals around campus and i guess unifor extracurricular uniforms and went up so if we were to look at those things those seem to me to be the athletic equipment those seem to be the things that that would be primary and what would those costs be so that we can we can have a conversation not detached from the actual dollars yeah so here on the on the screen um i put in uh what we brought to our september meeting and so this kind of hopefully this will kind of help us so so here when i look at when we look at 1.9 million dollars i'm going to use a different word this 1.9 million dollars is to re-imagine the high school not rebrand the high school reimagine the high school right because this includes modernizing the kitchen and upgrading the locker room those two things have nothing to do with quote unquote uh rebranding also if you see here we can debate it should jim floor be rebranding or not rebranding we think regardless of azusa high school or a different name this is a brand new let's reimagine the high school they need a new gym floor right so then when we think about it it really leaves this first line item which is the new branding it leaves the turf overlay that has to be done we cannot have that right and it leaves the the athletic equipment we can parcel this out more uh based on the big four and just some of the the smaller things we can parcel out parcel it out more and bring an updated but but but technically and again we we can argue about the gym floor if we wanted to but we we think regardless of name we we we would like to see the gym floor uh redone uh as well so when we reimagined the high school and that reimagination includes rebranding then we're looking at about 1.9 million dollars so the gym was already going to be done we we would say yes one thousand percent and then since and if if the name stays the same then it has an aztec if the name doesn't stay the same then it has something else another um just the thorough curve ball though we just recently did the bleachers so that would be a cost that we're because they're color-coded so if we're looking at the colors then if we want to redo the bleachers and that would be another class but he's added so it's just little things that can grow the number but the key i agree with mr ortega it's just four items but beyond that it can continue to grow as you're looking at every portion of the campus but if we identify the key four things we can write those numbers and get those numbers so um what what money from um that we have from the different funding that we get um can any of the lcap money be used not at this time we would have to re-um write the lcap to include that into a goal but it can be doable my professional recommendation will be no but um that's just latasha right because we're investing in our community and that they all got money is to reach out and invest in our community correct but for my um in my professional opinion your lcap is primarily your supplemental concentration dollars and it's the meat to improve the needs of the student and i for me personally i would not say that that's improving the needs of the student so where would the funding come to be able to go ahead and um for example you know the consideration of of making it was just you know conversation of having foothill be in elementary having to change all the all of the toilets uh you know doing all that so uh or we rebrand where would from what pocket would this be coming from our bond everything would be coming from our bond is there any of the coveted money that we received that we could use um we would have to be strategic but clover funds could be used for things such as ventilation so um it will be our hvac um so for most of the expenditures that would qualify we have already allocated funds through our esther which would be for our windows our doors our ventilation our heating but cold funds would not be appropriate to rebrand great thank you so where where does the um maintenance one come in that's not but we do have that one yes mr landa oh yes thank you we could use fun 14.
but we already have the money budgeted for it so yeah and if we have bids come in high during the course of the year we have to adjust and sometimes we decide something just has to slide out um but the finance people are like gold and helping us navigate our way through those when they arise but um often it's plus because it was a delay so it's it's so complicated trying to say this is exactly what the nature of the change was i appreciate that question it's our heart um i appreciate how you've made this as easy to understand as possible so thank you very much commissioner so this is my first uh cip so uh forgive any rookie uh question so one i was just wondering around um the ability to talk specifically and this may this is just a process not necessarily for this one because i think this process has already moved along but for specific line items so for instance the east medical bridge expansion that funding allocation is changing because of action that council took to agree with the with the university to expand that bridge it already needed to be repaired and so now that it's in the capital budget does planning commission have any ability to make any funding adjustments at a disapproval state or is that funding allocation already achieved by a council action that particular one um just for an example i could pick something else but yeah that that's a difficult one but a lot of these things in 23 are technically not approved for funding until council acts in may of 23 or may of 22 for the 23 budget these are the asks for them now things that were in 22 are already budgeted and if they go up or down you know those changes get highlighted but you know unless they're a new 22 ask which could end up triggering like eight votes account so i don't think we have any of those but the east medical center bridge in particular is one that has to be subject to what's called a memo of understanding with the university and the university a lot of money and there's university money so both parties and then council does uh is the body that approves memos of understanding with the university or it could be with the county like on vandermeer to barton i assume there'll be one so that's the most complicated one but otherwise you know what we have in here is how many dollars we need to accomplish it and you know questions you have about projects or not you know wondering why they're in here at all whatever that everything is fair game in that sense but the dollars are what it's going to take to bring it forward and will be up to council to fund the 23 projects so if we wanted to make an adjustment again just fielding a question that would be an amendment to the proposal with that particular line item highlighted and then that would be subject to our approval since it has to be approved by planning commission yes that could um happen in theory it generally um doesn't but it can and there i'm thinking in the time i've been here what i've seen more often happen is something that's not in here at all that maybe commission would ask to add um and again the the dollars that it takes to accomplish a project you could say okay let's knock this down to x but then i would be asked the question is that reasonable to do and the answer is probably going to be no because the budget is what staff and you know wherever the dollar came from have felt that it takes so i'm sorry that's not a super clear no no it it you're helping me because the the nature of the concern is the connection of the bike paths um as they uh come around that section so the conversation was around adding another lane of traffic and so i was just trying to understand the ability for planning commission to prioritize a different mode of transportation over car and could we do that through this capital plan by prioritizing a connection from the university back into the border to border trail um as it crosses fuller and so then that would take funds away for the bridge and move it to the bike trail so that that was the nature of the question but um yeah i'm happy to talk some more offline with you about it for a future thing yeah that would be great and i'll tell you there are besides the bridge project itself there are also in active transportation other um bike connection projects allied with that bridge project but you write the most recent requests to actually add language on the bridge which means redoing the bridge is why the price went up then i know there are currently design discussions about do we want the bikes on the bridge and an extra bike lane or is it safer using the money we have elsewhere so i think that's a fine design question that we aren't going to be able to adjust for at this table but i believe in perhaps council member dish i think there have been some discussions already at council on that that she might actually be better equipped to update you on where that stands in this case than i am yeah it was less on an update but just trying to understand the mechanism that we have at this table because if there is a mechanism for this body to reprioritize something understanding what that process is to achieve our goal as opposed to just um a continuation of something that we may not want to prioritize but thank you i appreciate uh the conversation mr leonard yeah um commissioner white great questions and i'm just i i'm gonna i hope i'm not gonna make anything worse um i'm happy to help with that conversation um but so i'm gonna the planning commission approves the capital improvement plan that's by state legislation and i will tell you one of the benefits that we have here at the city that not every community that's subject to that same planning enabling act across the state of michigan has is we have frankly resources and expertise and the ability to do the partnerships and the scoring and the prioritization that deb uh talked about in the working session you know the sort of communities of interest if you will my terminology that that are assembled around these different categories to identify projects to help priority prioritize projects to determine how to score and evaluate those projects against one another to reach those priorities and we are i would say we are well positioned uh because of all those resources perhaps to a different extent than some other communities in the state of michigan where the planning commission weighing in on the capital improvements plan is just really critical to bring any land use dialogue maybe to how those resources are prioritized but the short of it is is you can absolutely have influence over it by the decisions that are made with the capital improvement plan um that has happened in the past uh sure mills was talking about sustainability that has been i don't see it as maybe like one project but that has been a trend that has come up repeatedly and we're starting to see more evidence of that in the capital improvement plan over time ultimately city council uses this as a plan they ultimately decide what to fund through their budget so regardless of the decisions that are in the capital improvements plan it is critical to help plan it's critical to help size what is feasible with the resources available on a time basis but at the end of the day the plan is adopted by both bodies but the budget actions of the city council are truly what get projects done so just a little bit more broader lens on the interaction in this specific case i'm actually now now this has me curious in terms of the scheduling um because this is this is border to border that runs through there there are two other projects i think on the in active transportation um the schedule which i think i mean if they're not this specific project are certainly adjacent fuller maiden lane and then the connection under fuller road the scheduling for them is significantly farther out though and again makes me question like prioritization of that and whether they're actually being scheduled like together so it's again it's not this it's more do you have any sense of i know that we try to schedule things together so why is there such uh you know it looks like 2027 for which is almost off the charts right um for some of those projects in the exit transportation yeah that's an excellent question this one was very awkward in that we're focusing on 22 23 there was already some activity on the bridge in here which was just design money then all of a sudden this you know accelerated um process was brought up and if it shakes out then i anticipate next fall we will pull those associated projects in uh to the second year of the build for the bridge so that they'll go together but they the bridge itself would have to be replaced for all those things to physically come and match it so i didn't try to pull them forward like i usually would to match this schedule because we haven't had the ability yet to let go for tap grants and so on but i do believe they will end up being pulled back into alignment if in fact this project with the bridge goes forward as it is in here if the university and the city you know totally come to terms on this and the movement forward as it stands in here then in the fall we would pull those back to match it but i felt it was premature because of when this got in but it was a big dollar decision um if we're gonna move it forward that it could affect you know three million dollars in 23 part which is university so yes i usually would have pulled them with but i was a little hesitant but council already has on the books a directive that when the intersection goes and now that's also meaning replacing the bridge that those need to go with it so they will end up having to come in and match but um this is like 2324 project and i would envision the act of transportation being the second part of the construction project anyway so um in this fall next fall i should say i think you will see them being expedited into 24 which would be the second year of the bridge project but we wouldn't be pulling them all the way back because there's no way they're going to start in 23.
that's an estimated direct reduction in the property tax level so the property tax rate would be adjusted down by about three percent per year or three cents per year because you just don't have to pay that interest anymore i just want to give this straight yet um we you know on on page nine uh we've got 911.185 million dollars uh in in total bonds outstanding and that our car amounts for refunding are significantly less than that why is that different so when you look at if i understand the question if you look at these bonds here on the far i know that those are not included but but this says we've got 11.185 in the funds that we're planning to refund we're refunding 7.92 million right unless i'm not reading this right i'm seeing 2 million on these bonds and so if you add up the two you know if you have the numbers at the bottom there you can see what's outstanding not all of which there's a 520 that's non-column and then this 2023 maturity they may not include because there's gonna save so what we presented um on the on the next two pages on 11 and 12 are two um scenarios the first one this one you can see we're taking the savings close to equal every year so you can see your this is the district's current outstanding debt service you can see it's increasing a little bit um so next year will be 1.184 million or 85 million and then but in 2032 by the last year it's closer to 1.7 so that's the current structure of the district side i know that you you all probably have a minute to take a look at this there's a lot of numbers on this page so i might just take a second to kind of summarize what we're trying to show here um it's what we typically call a tax rate analysis page you know it's where we're going to look at a district's outstanding debt and then try to determine the impact that that has on your property tax rate how affordable it is so what we do here under column two is you know we look at this historical assessed values because again that's the base from which your property tax rate is set and then we make some projections on that and you can see here we made 2.4 a 2.4 growth assumption all of these numbers down here are preliminary but we think it's fairly reasonable and and again as the math works out over here's the tax rate these numbers are important you know if they vote if they go faster the tax rate is going to come down more if they don't go up as fast the tax rates can be higher we look at your current outstanding debt then you know the impact that the refunding has used to be what erica was just saying you know basically a single map you take out the old bonds plug in the new bonds and this is the differential and the point that eric is making too is that when you look at your current debt you know it's been at just over a million dollars last several years it's growing up to be north of 1.1 and if nothing changes you know by 2032 it would be just under 1.7 so kind of just file that away because when everything gets to the next page you know it should show you another option but to keep that same pattern again just whatever we can generate this refund gives you the opportunity to restructure if you will and you can keep the same kind of growing annual debt service and get this level annual segment or yeah yeah so this is the and most of the time i would say a majority of the issuers end up looking at annual savings um but in this case i mean knowing that the district it's been over a decade since the district's looking looked at looking for a bond election and there may be capital needs in the future and so um any new debt that you have would be layered into this and so i mean it's it it's least worth a discussion to see on the next page we kind of leveled that out so that the savings you can see change every year so that the end goal ends up being that service is around 1.26 5 million now i mean the there's still that long bond issue that this goes out one more year and so these this isn't going to change i mean this can be changed when it's refunded um but in this case it would be 1.2 265 and then it would go to 1.7 um yes and i think when we're advising clients on the refund you know you kind of look at what eric has mentioned earlier you want to maximize your savings you want to achieve the lowest possible interest rate but at the same time you want to think about well what's the future look like in three or five years are we going to go back to the voters and maybe sell new bonds or need new capital facilities and that's where this you know you can kind of we don't know we haven't really no idea what might occur three or five years from now but you know you have plans and so as eric mentioned if you sell new bonds into this structure your existing debt structure that that service is just going to be added to that so that that's just a given that's going to happen no matter what um but you can see the impact of the tax rate you know there's about a four cent differential based on these estimates if you add bonds into that that differential is going to increase if in this refinance you decide no let's let's restructure and go to a more level structure well that gives you the opportunity to feather that new debt in here without having as big of an increase or 29 30 cents today and you might be able to incorporate some of that debt new debt without having as much of an impact entry on the tax rate as it would have if you don't throw structure so you know i mean the good thing is you've got this option there's savings under both scenarios this may give you some flexibility for the future and that's structured in the offering as far as the impact on the tax rate as to whether we would go equal year by year or this increasing this is basically your the district's decision so we would we would sell the bonds with either structure or combination thereof to the investor or investor so we would structure the principle to accomplish one or the other or something in between and i mean we would have we should have the 20 next year's assessed value by the time we're actually putting the package in front of banks and so we will have one we'll be able instead of adjusting 2.4 whatever it ends up being or is expected to be we can adjust that number so between now and i would say for the first week or two of february we would just need to fine-tune what what the end product is is preferred am i reading this right that 2032 you'll see a quite substantial jump a one-year jump in order to accomplish that while leveling out or yes that's correct and if you go back in the section to the first um the first page page and i you can see on page nine in the far right hand column under that series 2013 you see that final maturity of 2032 that's what's causing that now as erika mentioned you know when we get into the spring 2023 you might have the ability to refinance that or you know say let's just say three years from now you go back to the voters and you're going to be selling some new money bonds and you want to restructure that single maturity you haven't refinanced it yet because rates are high but at that point maybe you want to restructure so that you can layer those yeah and i'll just share um if we assume a four percent interest rate for a 10 million dollar level issued debt that's going to add worse to the tax rate um just for the interest so i mean you know depending on what happens in the district needs um i mean there i mean the tax rate is going to go up with the bond election uh but i you know i think you know talking about the needs and what that value is um i mean if and when that time comes we can work with the district to to make sure that we're trying to structure the sales with the needs and the timing of the projects um to have those aligned the best with the least amount of impact but there will be some impact i mean the last the last section is just we've got a draft calendar together uh so we've got the fourth study session today if the district wants to move forward um we would be back here or i would be back here on next tuesday for the board meeting with the resolution and other documents and then you can see on this timetable um that you know around the second week of february is when we would receive the responses back from the bank and then we would send those term sheets out at the end of third week of january so that would really third week of january i mean we can do some tweaking um once the bank's chosen uh if we need to we have that ability um but an ideal world we would be comfortable with the structure um by that time third week in january just a couple couple points i think with regards to the timing federal law basically as eric has mentioned does not allow us to refinance these bonds federal tax law does not allow us to refinance these bonds until 90 a 90-day window prior to that july 1 2022 call so we're looking at april 5th or april 6th and so that's what this kind of schedule is designed to to get to and try to lock that rate as early as we can have a closing in early april and then call bonds on attack exam basis so correct me if i'm wrong though we can refinance it earlier but we lose our tax exempt status on the bond that's right and to do it earlier so you have to sell them taxable which means the interest rate's higher which means your savings goes way down which is really why we weren't here six months ago or 12 months ago because it just didn't make sense or as much sense you know you kind of have to look at the market too one last real quick point and we can address your question i just wanted to point out that the savings that you're seeing the estimated savings they're estimated number one based on current interest rates but their net of all fees so so what you're seeing incorporates our fees bond council fees all of the costs of issuing bonds have been incorporated in their net savings just going back to the proposed refunding exhibits um erica both of the ones presented here are based on private placement and some previous ones you had negotiated sale is that because you you believe that the private placement right now is the most advantageous okay i mean whatever structure we come up with like what you're seeing in um 9 and 11 aren't gonna change just i mean the principal structure may change a little bit depending on the couponing um yeah and so there's a lot of detail between and eric has touched on it very well i think between say a private placement and a negotiated sale as eric mentioned your previous three bond issues have been sold via negotiated sale which is by and large the you know the process the method from which most bonds are sold um one of the reasons that the private placement works stable is two um the the dollar amount and the final term to maturity 2031 so we're kind of within a 10-year window makes sense to commercial banks who happen which is number two to kind of be in the market for high quality tax incent paper but most banks aren't willing to buy beyond seven or ten years so that's kind of why it makes sense today whereas you know if you're selling new money bonds with a 20-year maturity we'd be talking negotiated sales so on a different topic i want to make sure i have this right in my head as long as our assessed valuation goes up higher than the 2.4 that you're projecting my savings also increase with that or am i wrong the assessed value is directly tied to the tax rate but doesn't really impact the savings it just it impacts the savings on like taxpayers time saving exactly okay so we've assumed three basically this 2.4 which is about your five-year average that ends up being no matter how much if it increases 2.4 that's three cents rounded for two decimal points the whole time if your assessed value grows double that the whole time then maybe in 2030 and 2031 it would be two cents instead of three cents you know the assessed value sometimes can be um cumbersome or hard to understand too it's like so there's there's really two parts of that assessed value growth one is property appreciation and so you know there's no development there's no new houses or no new commercial development if the assessed value goes up means that everybody's property or most everybody's property just increased in value right now maybe my property value went up but if everybody's dead on the same kind of percentage my tax bill would be exactly the same because again our target is that debt service levy right i mean it's you've got the county you've got cities you've got special districts you've got mmo you've got secondary tax rate and all that stuff but if there's no growth our tax bill doesn't change because the levy in theory is the same the other piece of it though is growth and that basically just adds additional pieces to the pie and so if if the growth outpaces appreciation if the levy doesn't change you know our collective tax bills might go down just because you've got other people stepping in with new property they're taking a slice of that pie to pay that same level seven and they're making sense so and i'm just thinking so five six years down the road when we do go out for bonding what does that look like for our taxpayers well so there's and again you use if you go back to that page one of those property tax rate analysis we can make some assumptions and try to get pretty close to what that number is going to look like the way we do it is we we try to assume reasonable assessed value assumptions here absolutely yeah i mean that's where the statute limits so they want to look at your 10 year average um so i mean that's the maximum you can project right so it's really kind of a function of what happens here and then ultimately this annual debt service is the other piece of that equation and so if you add in um say as erica's example you know you assume four percent on 10 million interest alone is a year right and that's approximately three or four percent yeah based on some of these earlier assessed values now if that assessed value grows it's gonna be less in terms of tax rate it's still going to be that 40 000 that's still part of the levee but it has you know if you have a bigger base a bigger foundation so to speak then it's not four cents for three so that's kind of how the math works so you know we just but you know when you if you think about 2010 you know this board this report went to the voters the voters said yes and they they granted the authorization and then it was really over the course of three years right that the board made decisions to sell bonds and so in theory that same thing could happen you know if you have an election in 24 maybe the bonds are sold over a two or three or four year period you have up to 10 years to sell a voter authorization so depending on the capital needs if you can kind of visualize you know your question if you if you got if you asked voters for 10 and you needed all 10 right away well you sell it all right away because that's what your capital needs were but if you ask the voters of 25 but you only needed five or ten you know you'd sell it in the pieces when you need it to meet your capital needs yeah i think i think um one of the concerns we've all had at least in part is that we've had so much we've had tremendous growth recently who knows whether that'll continue i'm sure it will at what rate who knows but we just don't want to get into a situation where what we do today potentially affects our ability to grow in the future and it looks like it will be fine but that's that's certainly something at least when i walk in here i just want to make sure that we're not you know shooting ourselves in the foot so to speak because if we have to it's fairly realistic that in the next six to ten years we would have to do something right um and it may be substantial so i mean you can see your debt and in the next basically decade is going to be paid off so i mean depending on you know where you want the tax rate to end up being or the maximum debt service that you're targeting but i mean there's a lot of flexibility and i mean most of the time in a voter information pamphlet it's drafted so that you have that flexibility because it the authorization is good for a decade so so so the potential good news is five or six years down the road if we did have to move into some new debt we're four or five years out from retiring this portion that's right so that's the good that's how i see is that correct yeah no i mean you know it has you know from a 30 000 foot level you're in a really good position flexibility-wise you know um it's not a big district you don't have a huge assessed value you know the tax rate's not that high though it's really not but to your point when you're selling new bonds say four or five years from now you can look out to 2033 2035 you're still really short on the yield curve you know and again our advice is always try to shorten the principal amortization as much as you can because irrespective of where interest rates are that's going to reduce your interest cost all right it's those dollars that don't go to bricks and mortar they don't know the kids it's just interesting steps right you know we all pay it on mortgages and you know the only downside of doing a refunding right now that i can see is that you're gonna exercise that option so we're gonna you know you've got this option coming up on 712.
so with the petition drive just a week old we were given 30 days to complete a petition drive somehow there was permission given to the crete fire department to hold their training drill at the dome on the evening of november 23. they had they have had training sessions there before nothing was ever damaged damage was done to the roof this time the fire department said they were not aware of the discussion petition debate about the dome curiously the next day beecher's fire department showed up and they were chopping another hole in the roof we would welcome an explanation as to how this came about we would like an answer from the school board or through a foia inquiry the cm school district is sending out the wrong message to the residents in the cm 201u district this is not the way to bolster support for the community from the community from which their amazing number of dome supporters the district says they want to be transparent but allowing us to happen in the middle of a petition drive really brings into question their credibility who is responsible for this the school board members will have to take the heat for this and they need to look within and at who is administering their decisions the dome supporters all support the dis school district's efforts and responsibilities to do their duties we've appreciated we've approached this dome situation in a respectful formal and legal way the american way we have gotten the same we have not gotten the same in return most sincerely the cm dome supporters okay the second public comment that mr piepenbring submitted is a series of emails going back and forth between he and i and i will read those the first is oh he introduces this to the cm201u school board committee of the whole meeting thank you for reading these communications regarding the dome this would be for the public to hear and understand the status of our discussions so on saturday december 4th at 8 18 a.m mr peepin brink uh wrote the board um or he wrote it to me excuse me hi mr albrecht thanks again for the conversations we've had in the past few days we wanted to make a reasonable request that you would ask the demo company to hold off on doing any further work on the dome the building has not passed point of no return if it would come to a successful petition to save the dome we never expected that any work would have commenced with the petition drive just getting started and many residents are flabbergasted to see what has occurred again the building is still intact enough that damages done can be repaired the option is also out there for you to halt the demo keep the dome in exchange for us dropping the petition our group does not want to cause any grief or delay in district building repairs we totally support that work most sincerely citizens in support of saving the dome here was my response to mr peep and brent which was sent again on december 4th at 12 50 p.m as i explained yesterday the board approved the contract for the demolition the sixth grade center in the dome at our october regular meeting i signed the binding contract the following day as you observe the demolition work has begun and so there is no misunderstanding it will continue through completion per the contract anytime a school district seeks to issue non-referendum bonds the process is subject to a 30-day petition period where i think there may still be some confusion is the notion that the district should have circulated a petition separately on the disposition of the dome no petition of this nature is required that is why the petition available from the district only addresses the bond issuance the board's preference is to pay for the demolition work with a small portion of the bond proceeds but the district has sufficient funds to pay for the demolition work and the unfortunate circumstance we would find ourselves if your petition drive is successful when i saw you last evening at the crete crete country christmas event i noticed you are still gathering signatures please be clear to those signing your petition that it will not save the dome it will only disadvantage the students and staff in those buildings in need of urgent upgrade to hvac and other repairs work you say you support our conversation yesterday was very cordial which i appreciated if you find this email to be more blunt it is only for maximum clarity and that was coming from me and then since then mr piepenbrink has replied thank you for trying to explain the petition question the district fully knew our intentions by way of comments at board meetings in an and in our letter requesting such petition to sit for saving the dome when writing the petitions that did not directly include the dome the discrepancy should have been addressed at that time anyone we saved the dome was because it was stated at the board meeting several times the demolition would be stopped by way of successful petition drive we have stated that publicly as well therefore we are using petitions that were issued to us because the dome was tied into the bond sale as it has been explained and he references the video that school board meeting who whomever wrote out the petition should have known of our intentions and also how the entire scenario had been explained it is unfortunate that this has turned into a struggle of semantics and hopefully the result will be something everyone is pleased with again citizens in support of saving the dome so that's it terry is there any more public comment okay the time uh board updates that was just if any of the board members uh had anything to share at this time we sometimes will use the old business or new business so i put that in there if they had any um information to share i had a question yes mr sherman can you do me a favor and just clear something up if you could and our bond council is here or i mean our council is here right so we we made a resolution in november and in the resolution it states exactly what we're doing with the money correct so that does not include building a brand new elementary school in crete correct it does not and so there are two separate bond issues that we're talking about one is 45.5 million dollars and the other one is 7.5 million the 45.5 million dollars are funding bonds to pay off the debt certificates that is the purpose of those bonds it is not to repair things that was the debt certificates okay now you can make a correlation with equal signs on all of that if you want however the legal purpose of those bonds is to pay off the debt and that debt is the debt certificate the 7.5 million dollars and that's what it states in the resolution which is a legal document which is a legal document the 7.5 is to increase the working cash fund to pay for some of the repairs and we listed those in the resolution so so that is there too and the 7.5 is a legal document as well 7.5 is a legal document now let me let me address the petitions those are and and i can refer to our council here too but those are statutory requirements that are created by a legal entity to meet the statutory requirements of selling the bonds we are required by state statute to have those available with that wording so we cannot put into a petition save the dome we can't and then there is nothing in any of those documents that says we are going to build a new school or two schools or three schools nothing today all of those resolutions whether they are the debt certificates or the 7.5 million have listed those projects that we plan to do and that's all based on the short-term facility plan they all go together it's all there so it's the short-term facility plan never at one time included a new building because they're gonna have to go to a referendum to do that which we did in april right unfortunately it did not pass exactly exactly right well i i i just want to clarify that uh again playing with words here i think i mentioned a new building has been attached it's still a building still a new building that's attached it talks about an addition to the high school which is a new building attachment it's not considered illegal okay well i think i think the clarity is that we're accused of they're going to put a crete elementary bill right in the district which is not the same as putting an addition on the high school right but people have heard it that's too i've i've talked to a couple people out there and i told them i said yeah you can see there's a new build it's not a stand-alone building this is an attachment some people may be seeing that as being a new school stand-alone school so again you know you can say it's not a building or whatever but that's just a misunderstanding absolutely it's a new building and attached is different than a stand-alone building so i think that um and that too um it was clear from the presentations what what the expectation was and what this new building was supposed to be if people read or paid attention to the presentation it was clear that it was going to be an addition to the high school for the purposes of moving cme and creating the uh what is the program called nbc and the uh manufacturing program i don't think that it was a misunderstanding it was people saying that it was a conspiracy theorist concept because it was clear it wasn't we're going to build a new building it wasn't any of that it was clear we're going to put the attachment so we could say yeah play with words and say all of this stuff for me yes everybody knows what i what i desire for our athletes they go out there bust their butts nobody most people wouldn't even know what crete money was if it wasn't for our for our athletes but they go out there bust their butts we have one of the best football teams in the state and we're fighting over whether or not they might put a elementary school in crete or university park university parks not even fighting you don't see any of their are people coming here to say our village manager or anything saying hey we need a new school do would i love to see a new school of course if we could but i would like to see those young men and women who are probably playing on some of the worst fields in the state but being one of the top teams in the state have facilities for them for themselves because as we know schools drive could help drive tax bases but if you have if you have good facilities you have good programs people are going to say you have a good school many people because most people don't really look at all the other stuff did we get a new elementary school in university park or crete or no that's not going to drive anything it's not even going to really help university park but having a good high school in a district uh some place that people look up to yes that'll drive our tax base do i think do i think that it's important for everybody to be held accountable yes is it important for people to pay attention to make sure that the money is spent correctly yes i agree with that um wholeheartedly um do i know what's going to happen will we get the athletic facilities i don't know i don't know what's going to come all i am willing to do is fight for our young men and women from that standpoint and then move to the next fight i'm not willing to i mean i'm still not willing to i don't i don't really care about any of the other small stuff i'm not here as a politician i'm not here to get re-elected i have my goal is to help our young men and women first get the athletic facilities um continue to continue to when we talk about facilities number one is education point plank we have to get our men our young men and women educated we have to get our young men and women the best teachers possible in front of them we have to use equity and diversification i believe but when we start talking about facilities i definitely believe that our athletic facilities have to have to change i always live by the motto only the best tradition as a winning tradition if we talk about keeping traditions i don't have a lot of history with the dong other than what i told some of you all um that you might know the story but other than that i'm not saying that the dome is a bad thing i wish we could have it in our plans i wish we could do like hf and create like an indoor facility for our athletes to what whether it's football or softball or whatever not in the plans um fight to save if it's saved to save if it's not let's move forward that's my take on it okay very well dr hollies want to thank you for those comments and i agree 100 and i find it very unfortunate sad whatever it might be that this district we will never move forward with the mentality of a tit-for-tat and any addition added to the high school will benefit all of our kids in this district and we have to go forward with that it doesn't matter if it's a mile this way a mile that way it happens to fall in crete but it's an addition that's going to service all of our kids it's not like it's so the problem is this tit-for-tat mentality everyone keeps losing all the kids keep losing and we never move forward and we stay on the same hamster reel so thank you for your comment yeah and we'll be 10 years from now with that dome still sitting there with nothing done with the same buildings and no air conditioning that and that's why i told the board a long time ago we have to move forward everybody people get be mad at us yes but then once it's done and it looks beautiful and all the kids benefit from it oh yeah look i live in crete this is great look so and that's not to go against anybody any group it's just what i believe is best for our um students and student athletes it's the same thing with the life safety they're from 2013.
i'm sorry i didn't hear the question can you please the question was um on the maintenance fund they do have if we can use some of their own money yeah so we currently transfer a million dollars this year we only transfer 600 000 because we use 400 000 to upgrade our vehicles um but yes but we are currently using those funds but every year a million dollars is allocated and so we could say the million dollars for the next year's budget could be set aside for school reorganization okay so so you're saying for this year for the school year 2021 2022 that they have already been used no i'm saying we transferred a million dollars in and 400 000 of that has been used but we are currently using fun 14 to modernize some of our campus so we've been painting our campuses we're currently upgrading some of our light fixtures and vice versa and could could those uh 1 million dollars be reallocated yes ma'am at any time okay thank you you're welcome we have a board member beau i see your hand thank you um mr ortega you alluded to some deficiencies at the azusa high school theater you said something about not being up to code not being compliant can you give a little background on that um i really can't give background uh but i could tell you that um you you have background natasha i do not have background update okay i guess what do you mean when you say that so the background i have is i went many um theater shows and and they always have to be limited how many people go in there because it's it's very small i don't know maybe twenty five seats it seems really small what what i what i could add to that yes it's very very small but there are things in that theater uh that include electricity lighting lighting um that is not to code and so if if we were to say well that's what we want to be the theater again that's fine but we would have to go in there and make sure that that it is completely up to code uh right now it is it is not up to code and so right now we are currently uh not using that room because it is out of compliance and um in in the reimagining of the azusa high school campus um have you thought about either a total renovation and or an expansion of that theater or are you only contemplating using the foothill middle school cafetorium as the theater space that theater um is actually part of a cl a wing of classrooms uh so that yeah so that was never you know meant to to be a theater it was just a classrooms that were converted to that um so in in order to use that space and to say we're gonna invest and make this a theater which again we can but we're talking about a three two three row uh theater very very very very small unless you're gonna swallow up uh more more classrooms or of course you can build from the ground up but now obviously that's a that's a big investment obviously we have a large property but that would be a ginormous investment to build from the ground up and so that's why only that's the only reason why i said we already have a a building a large building that already has some kind of fundamental um build outs and so it really would just be renovating that and and converting that uh but but all you know again all of this possibility but that's why that's why the mind went to to the foothill to the foothill campus thank you um i know we're talking a lot about investment and we're talking about costs to upgrade or modernize or change spaces in our overall conversation around school and district reorganization and now as we're refining possible models mr ortega and mr mall can you speak to the categories of cost savings that you have identified yeah so some of the costs cost savings some of the the more uh obvious ones um is going to be in personnel and staff that would run across um all of the uh different uh bargaining units and associations uh starting with management and moving to certificated uh and classified uh so that that would be a bulk a bulk saving savings then you have things like your utilities so those would be cost savings as well we have recently [Music] parceled out our utilities uh previous uh in the short short pass those were not parceled out and so we had one giant bill to pay our utilities and so it's a little bit harder to decipher uh usage and so we we have been doing that so that becomes your your next uh set of savings and then there's other set of savings that um that can come across the the world of a program uh subscriptions um by site licenses uh things of that nature um there's quite a bit of contracts that we have that we would that we pay by by sight that obviously would would render some savings as well go ahead natasha i'm not sure if there's anything else after tomorrow uh mr octagon and ms jeremiah and mr as well um for the benefits it might be an easy question to say well if we have if we're reorganizing our physical spaces but we're serving the same number of students um what does the reduction what's the rationale for reduction in staff can you talk to that i'll let mr rokio pick up some of the pieces so i'll start off with um though for instance um there are some compositions some key positions that every school site has right every well let's start with elementary just right there right so every elementary school has a principle so if we went from nine schools to five schools uh then that means four principles that would be a reduction of four principles right because even though the students are moving to another school right unless we were considering having co principles then then that's a reduction right every school site uh has a head custodian every school site has a secretary uh every school site has these these positions that are our one librarian would be another one community liaison would be another one and so those types of positions that are the the the positions that a school has one of um those are the ones that would be would be the ones that that for sure would be a reduction but i think your question more may be around like teachers or aids or new needs or stuff like that so i'll let jorge uh answer uh that piece yes thank you mr ortega and thank you dr bill for the for the question uh the as you start um transitioning to campuses that are um have greater capacity you in effect can become more efficient with your staffing so you start seeing um less of a reduction or more of a reduction in a number of combo classes and you start maximizing the number of students that can be in a classroom for uh specific grade bands and that's most true at the at the elementary level and you start moving into the secondary levels uh you start being able to maximize the number of students in uh the different content area classes um so you'll start seeing classes that may be currently sitting at a um at a class size of about 14 15 students to closer to 30 students 35 students uh and in some cases 36 students which is a contractual maximum and i know when we were talking about models and it as elementaries reach a certain student enrollment enrollment threshold and middle schools and high schools as the same there would be an additional either an fte or a 0.5 ft of counselor or assistant principal can you just refresh our memory on some of those some of the thinking behind that as school sites serve an increased number of students on any one campus i just want to make sure i understand the question so if the the question is uh we have presented at the uh i don't know when we were looking at different models and the different configurations and i had shown that once we get to certain um enrollment band or capacity we would transition to um like three assistant principals at the at the high schools and i don't i could look up the number that we we identified but it was i think in the neighborhood of 1200 students was when we would transition to a three assistant principal um high school uh and then i could look up the other the other um uh positions some of them on the top of my head were definitely an increase in custodial staff as we again start to invest in our facilities in the main and several facilities i think that was an increase i think there was also some some some bands increase on community liaison and so i don't remember everything all the time ahead but yes there were some increases in investment in in staffing to support the site yeah board member rodriguez can you mr o'hare it would be helpful if you can uh put that in the pocket or put it um because i know i do have that and you did give us that information and i don't know where it's at now but yeah just to remind us on on what breakdown you did have okay yeah absolutely absolutely this is really self-explanatory when you see the breakdown on that it was it was really good thank you thank you i i will i'll um put this in this next uh this week's uh board update and then board president if i may i have a final question and final comment for this round uh yes board member beau thank you um mr ortega can you uh re remind me um at which campuses do we currently offer preschool programming i know it's longfellow and what are the other elementary campuses i'm an answer in the reverse manner board member beau uh the only two campuses where we do not have preschool are hodge and ellington so all the other elementary schools except hodge and ellington offer preschool that is correct okay um so then my final comment this goes back to um the beginning part of the meeting and looking at the the three models here um at this time i i do not support the closure of longfellow i think that um it is it's a unique space where they're doing very specialized work and if anything i think they have room to grow and expand their programs especially to continue pursuing i know ms lee was in the process of pursuing a cd grant to fund an all-day all-year program and i think that would be a major win for the families of our district to be able to bring a program like that there and to be able to do it in a specialized preschool campus i think provides a very safe and comforting option to parents of the district thank you um i have a question can and the grants that have been written for um preschool can they be distributed to the other goal um i believe so but there is a process uh that that you have to go through it's not just like we can't just do that unilaterally uh it's a it's in partnership in conjunction with the um with the state uh to make sure that that that that they they grant us that that ability to take a a current state preschool let's say from from dalton and say well we're going to move it to over here again that is possible but it has to be with us in conjunction and partnership with the state department of education okay so as i see that it is 8 30 there's no more hands raised no more comments from the board we have a is it one one meeting december 21st right so one of the things that i would like to go ahead and ask since we asked for um more things to uh you know to get some cost and so forth um what does the timeline look like for us we have been um we have been doing pretty good and turning this around relatively quickly uh most of the requests you have gotten the same week and so we're going to continue to really push to be able to do that in this thursday packet and those that we can't then the following great thank you for that as seeing that there's no more comments or questions from the board we're going to continue with your agenda and move to the next item in our agenda which is 5.1 can i please get a motion to adjourn this meeting tonight make a motion to adjourn 5.1 i'll go ahead and second and let's go ahead and show by a hand vote or a voice vote we have board member cruz gonzalez yes board member greer i'm sorry i remember did you we didn't hear you yes i heard you then okay we have board member bo yes yes board member and i myself yes it is 5-0 and it is 8 35 this meeting has been adjourned thank you everyone at home for watching and again if you guys have comments or questions make sure that you guys get here at the beginning of our meeting you guys have three minutes to address the board with comments concerns or questions that you may have on items on our agenda have a great night and we'll see you guys at our next meeting good night
the design will still be finishing up in the early part 23 any construction would be in the latter part it's simply not going to need to happen in 23 to physically keep them together so the design for them does not need to be brought forward or that's the design for that component is included as part of the bridge design i think the transitions will end up being part of this current design project like we're you know making sure if there's any physical connections and it's not just the bridge it's the whole where the roads come together because there's the one um connection that they're envisioning coming out of the parking lot as we call it where the train station might go someday going under the railroad abutment coming up and ultimately going over the water maybe not on the bridge and that comes to commissioner weisha is talking about well maybe they'll decide they want to bring the bikes across the bridge so that question is going to come into play in the design for the bridge i think there'll probably be a lot of healthy discussion as part of the design process really where is the best place for the border to border style is it where we envisioned on a bridge of its own or is it moving it onto this bridge and once they decide then we know what to do with the monies so it's it's an awkward spot with regard to 23 i felt comfortable that we could address it in the next get it and still have it come together all right mr leonard yeah thank you uh so i think this discussion is really great i think it's um it's elevating to me that sort of what i said about you know the way that the city is approaching it i think that what i'm hearing is a little bit more desire for the planning commission to maybe see some of that um processing and and the like and so um i just as a reminder because this is an update this is sort of a relatively modest uh modification to the plan but i think what it tells me is that we should start this conversation on the the next update soon after our action on this um like early in 2022 and um bring deb back and i think let's dedicate some time to making sure that she is getting those direct policy directives that you would like to transmit in the next cip whether it's specific projects whether it's concepts because then she can take that as those communities of interest meet as a filter to those discussions and dialogue to make sure that when it comes back to you at the end of that that process it's if not including those it is um acknowledging them and at least coming to you with why the decisions were made as presented so um so um great discussion and i think we should continue that momentum um um i'm just thinking about the conversation about the center of the city sustainability the any progress that's made on utilities um of course non-motorized so i think it seems seems to me that the time is right um to maybe um kick that dialogue off sooner than later for the next year which is is sort of um for lack of a better term a blank slate that's really uh opening it up broadly to identify new projects and priorities i think that that's great i think that makes a lot of sense and i agree pulling that together other questions or comments all right mr leonard we are ready for a roll call vote i think commissioner dish yes commissioner lee yes commissioner clark yes commissioner wage yes commissioner mills yes commissioner gibb randall yes commissioner sobe yes commissioner abrams yes commissioner hammerschmidt yes curry's unanimously very good appreciate it uh deb um once again i would just like to thank it is remarkable the expertise that you bring to budgets sustainability transportation utilities remarkable yeah having all the projects in your head and how they interact is uh is this is a superhuman skill you threw me on the pump track though oh well thank you so much yeah all right um can we take a seven minute break to fill our water bottles before i think we're at about the halfway point hopefully more than halfway point so um we'll come we'll uh reconvene at um 8 55.
for your outstanding this first one is callable right now the series 2012. it comes up on 7122 and then you've got another option we sell bonds today it's possible that the banks could give us some repayment provisions another potential benefit of a private placement because we never get that in the capital markets or you would pay for it be expensive is that you may lose that payment option on these bonds that would sell to refinance but again you know because typically the call protection is 10 years as your previous sponsor had so we've got a final maturity targeted in 2031 we won't change that so it's not like you've been giving up anything except you are going to exercise that option and that's why we think it's important to make sure you get as much as you can in terms of safety it's hard for me to imagine that long-term interest rates are going to go on a lot lower yeah i agree with you so we'll never probably get here at what point do you like this rate once you find the applicable investor we think we're going yeah so normally with the banks um 45 days is about the length of time they're comfortable to give us the give us the rate and and then have a closing date 45 days so we're targeting the end of february so that's a little over between 30 and 45 days so that's we would get the proposals and from the banks if we need to do some negotiating with them or maybe some of them are giving us different prepayment options and we want to discuss that with um with the district um and then we would come back to them um and then we would finalize numbers and the and all of that information and then my other question is and i believe i know this answer so we're really doing this to benefit the taxpayer the net result really does not affect the school because all the savings goes back to the tax base yeah and a good thing to know we can help write some um factual information to share in a press release or um yeah so we'll make sure that that you've got that information so that you can share that with the community so greg that all nets out in our books that we're just not taking in an additional 130 000 a year so you're not having to spend that out in interest so that's right okay yeah it's just it's just a net savings to the taxpayer because we're going to pay work okay we don't want teachers to think we have an extra 137 000 let's just hope even though there's no direct benefit to the district with this i mean we also have to think about over it i mean we would go out six seven years on an override the fact that we have saved the taxpayer here will make selling the override a heck of a lot easier even if we're not top and bottom right then we've saved them 600 000.
it's 2021 gonna be 2022 and we've addressed some of them in our last summer and we're going to address the rest of them this summer and clean that up i've been here two years two and a half years i mean there isn't much more we can do and the next round is coming so we clean these up and you're right you move on to the next whatever it is whatever is needed for our students and our staff to be successful and grow is what's next okay i have a couple of things um i want to say thank you to all of you you took the words out of my mouth you said much better we're here to educate our children number one we have to put our children our staff and our are going forward number one we've sat here i'm on this board six and a half years now we're still talking about the dome we were talking about it for 10 years before that we do have to move forward so i agree with your comments i do want to give a highlight of my weekend creek country christmas took place i guess we never thought about walking in it as a board of education so i was able to walk with our nj rotc group is anybody from the high school here besides mr hillary okay i was thrilled to walk with this group and i have to tell you that we walk about a mile i think it is would you say it's a mile from the church town about a mile they probably got the most applause of anybody in the parade those young people people were screaming to them how happy they were to see them they put uh all we did was march and i tried to keep left right left right but you know i have to stop and talk to people so i don't know my left my right um i was so so proud of our group and how many people came to me afterward and talked about how proud they are of that program and how far it's come and when i sat back i thank peel reed and i believe is the other young man p.o smith smith okay um they work so well with those students and the students just they're they're attracted to them there's a special relationship there and i thought if only we could work our four communities could work like that mrs mrs walters and i were able to go to their award ceremony two months ago three months ago and saw their drill teams saw all of their precision and how hard they work and they do it as a team if one fails they all fail and they have that mentality of we have to go we have to do the right thing we're all in this together so i sat back on saturday night and i thought i would love to be a member of rotc because they're all working as a unit for the same goal and i hope that that's what we continue to do on this board is we work together for everybody in all four of our communities and it's not easy but we have to do what we think is right for the majority of our teachers our students our community whatever we think is the right thing and right now i think we're doing the right thing so kudos to njrotc to their leadership to those young people who also came friday night or i'm sorry thursday night and friday after school helped set up all of the booths where they sell food and things like that they did a bunch of community service for us also they're always always there peel readers always signing them up for something so please get that back to the high school that the community was just enamored with our students again thank you janine if i could thank all the board members they made comments and i again the buck stopped here at the board and you know i'm trying to be in consensus with the board the best i could and if you notice i haven't been as argumentative as i was in the past you know i want to be inconsistent the best i could but i think if you don't agree but i think we ought to agree that something just didn't go right with this dome as far as the citizens and the taxpayers and even with the plan or whatever is a petition drive out there we can always do better as a board and i think we had an opportunity to regardless on how we was going to vote as a board i don't think our ears was listening enough and gave the opportunity to hear the taxpayers just have a listening ear sometimes that's all they want regardless on we made up our mind to demolish the board to sell these bonds and sell these bonds at the end of the day i think taxpayers and the consensus out there they just want to be heard and listened to and i think when we embark upon such a big project and selling such numerous amounts of bonds that it lends itself to have some type of form to listen to the community and listen to them with a listening ear that's all he asks i think and i don't know if we did our best here not knocking the board because i'm part of the board but i think it just lends itself for another opportunity when it presents itself again to have a listening ear not just a couple people coming and making public comments but we initiate the process and say we are about to embark on this we are about to embark on something regardless on how long it's been talked about like the demolition of the dome now it's come to the forefront we're looking to take action on it let's have let's have us some dialogue or let's listen to you out there that's all i think they want to hear us to tell them that that we will listen to you so i would suggest highly if this ever comes across something like this come across the board table again that we assemble ourselves in a manner where we're going to give the public a good opportunity enough some type of format a form of some nature like that to listen to them have some coffee cookies and things like that spill your beans what do you what how do you feel about it you know going back to that young man tim who obtained a thousand petitions signatures regardless if they were no longer in the district but they had some type of sentiment sentiment value to the dome that means something still means something and we cannot just totally disregard that so again we still that was not going to take away from how we voted probably we still say hey you know we heard you we listen to you but nonetheless we feel that this is the best thing to do for the district and i think we would not have a lot of this noise that's out there right now that's my opinion okay any other board updates okay if not let's move on to administrative updates and i'll turn it over to the superintendent um i just wanted to uh update the board as you know the board will be putting out a letter to the community um we have finished working with our editor and making sure that it's ready to go out to the post office um so that should be hitting the community uh this week and again this is a letter from the from the board to the community that basically tries to give all the information about the bond and what it's going to be used for to make sure that we're very clear that we've not reached out to just our our school community but we're reaching out to all the residents by mail to make sure that they're aware of this this is english and spanish yes you do know it's out right it's already been twisted on facebook people have read facebook already look at that people are posting it on facebook so great so it's out we've got there the post office got it delivered oh well i'm glad to hear it and you said it's in english and spanish i believe so i think so i'm not sure i don't know i think on the website i'm not sure yeah thank you and that's all my updates okay um so next up mr cerma on business i'm sure uh i'll just go through a few things here uh one is at the next meeting you'll get the final copy of the audit the audit is done it is complete it has been filed with the online state board of education the auditors have done that um everything that uh if you remember susan jones was here that she talked about that has remained the same our financial score is a 3.70 it is a recognition i did go back in history to kind of look at that that's not the top we had that before i i you didn't let me finish my stick okay just in case you tried to say something new there was one time in 2012 where there was a 3.7 that's right so it was the same score so um so so that is there uh you'll come i will have the actual audit as already is on the website uh i put it on the website uh and everything along with the annual financial report so if you want if you need a hard copy just let me know and i can get you a hard copy of that but that will come for approval at the next meeting the second thing that i have on there is a resolution concerning the adoption of the teachers retirement system at state of illinois supplemental savings plan a resolution to enter an agreement with them so trs that's commonly known as the teachers retirement system has come up with a supplemental 457 plan that they are mandating that schools um sign up for there is no cost to the district what it is is actually an additional plan that employees can make contributions to there's no matching by the district or anything like that um if there ever was that would have to be negotiated with unions and all of that stuff so it is just an opportunity for trs members if they want to contribute to what they can so it is going into an agreement the one thing i will tell you is i do have to talk to legal counsel about it i sent over to mr gleason this because i i have heard that some districts are not entering into this for a variety of reasons and i believe there are legal reasons i don't even know if eric knows about it probably not but i know bill does so i've sent it over so it may not be on the docket based on legal counsel and what their opinion is okay so i just want to let you know that but uh in everything that i have seen uh we're required to do this by state mandate and that is because it's part of trs so uh that will come before you at the next meeting and then uh the last one i have on there is the resolution authorizing the submission of the property tax relief pool fund application i talked about that during the tax levy so that will come before you next meeting also and again if that is approved along with the levy then i'll submit that application asu okay okay thanks ken you're welcome thank you any questions for ken on any of those items okay next up personnel and culture um we have a report on recruitment and retention of professional staff yes mr neil will be coming up and mr holyfield hollyfield will be coming up as you recall the board had asked us to do a presentation to kind of recap uh some of our our processes in particular looking at increasing our minority hiring but we also wanted to take this opportunity to just share with you our hiring process in general and certainly where we're moving forward and you'll see that we have some students from our high school here which we're very pleased to see by the way and we'll have mr hollyfield share why they're here all right mr neil okay okay just making sure i put together some information for us and the first part is my usual doom and gloom that you always get when you ask me to come in here to talk but uh as we go forward from there we have some exciting things coming and i think uh if we kind of keep that in mind as we go through uh we'll get through the doom and gloom a little better so just to get started we're going to talk about our current current status where we are this has been a couple of difficult years for recruitment and hiring uh very difficult years for some understandable reasons and uh they're kind of the culmination of a long standing nationwide even worldwide problem that has been growing and i think covid finally just brought it through fruition and then we're going to get into some of the solutions that we have that we're already doing and then some of the pipelines for the future so when we uh as we move forward we can kind of pull ourselves out of this and i'll get to that here in just a few minutes i wanted to start out with some of these structural pieces we already have in place in the district and part of this gets into our board policy on recruiting and hiring in particular on how we uh on our non-discrimination statement and then also more of our affirmative action piece so this is a very detailed statement i'm not going to read it all to you right now but this lists a whole wide variety of groups that we have to keep in mind as we're going through our hiring process and make sure that these are not reasons we're denying people employment okay and race is one of them but it is not it is obviously not all of it okay our focus here is largely going to be on race as far as talking about diversity and minority recruitment but there's all of these other pieces that go into this that we can't even describe you know we can i don't discriminate against you can't uh take into account with people uh unless there's certain specific things for example uh the newest one and probably the most fun one to talk about is the medical cannabis piece which didn't use that being a non-discrimination statement so that's uh it just adds a little something going forward we talk about the affirmative action piece we're really trying to recruit and hire minority employees that doesn't mean we don't hire exclude any group it means we're focused on hiring people who relate to and look like our students and try to increase those numbers and the policy goes on to suggest some activities i think what we do is going beyond this but these these are just what was listed in the policy so i wanted to make sure that that was pointed out here the other structures that we put in place were through our strategic plan and this was actually building some of the building blocks to make sure we're doing this first of all putting together a research-based recruiting and hiring system this uses some profile builders from humanx along with strategies that help to ensure that we are reaching out as far and wide as we can to get candidates and then we also have an applicant screening process that has uh put a more deliberate effort on the part of those who are responsible for the hiring on paying attention to some of the things that we haven't paid attention to as much in the past i had a predecessor in this position who did not want to provide demographic information to hiring administrators they wanted us solely to focus on skills abilities experience education all of those things should be a part of it but we can't focus on in increasing hiring of certain groups if we don't know who those groups are so we have to make some changes in how we go about that we've done over the last couple years i did not put 20 20 in here because that was such a an unusual year there were a lot of positions we did not fill and many of the positions we did fill we only had one candidate for there just wasn't a lot of data to go by so i went back to 2018-19 which like my last presentation was the last pre-covered full year with no issues like covet involved in it and then of course this year and what you can see is that there has been some movement in those two years toward increasing uh minority hiring and moving in that direction as we we've been trying to do so i wanted to kind of talk to you about this season and how this season went together we wanted just to look at certified hiring which is our teachers our certified administrators and our related services providers social workers counselors those groups we had 74 positions posted this year 30 of them have gone unfilled they've either gone unfilled because we had no applicants or they've gone unfilled because the applicants we did have ultimately declined the position or were not qualified for it we are still working to fill some of them some of them we've decided to leave unfilled and review later 44 of the 74 positions had five or fewer applicants 31 had two or fewer applicants 11 had none that's uh pretty shocking and i'll talk about that a little bit more in a few minutes one of the things that i'll point out is some of these numbers are even misleading because many of our applicants applied for multiple positions and i put up a couple examples of our elementary positions early in the hiring season we had three positions available we had 17 applicants apply for those three positions they all applied for all three so that wasn't 50 some applicants that was 17 applicants we hired we went on later in the season we had three more and those three had 11 applicants apply eight of those 11 were from the previous okay so we didn't have a tremendous number of applicants i think i shared this with you before my last year as a principal in the district i had two elementary teaching positions open i had 180 applicants that was in 1314.
um we're on item 8c um this is the ann arbor chinese christian church site plan for city council approval and special exception use which is for planning commission approval this is at 1750 duvarn road expanding to provide a social gathering area and classrooms um i see that we've had development team or petitioner folks move on um to into the kind of speaking section um so you folks will have up to 10 minutes to provide a presentation before we hear from mr kowalski and then the public hearing and have you made arrangements with you need to share screen uh yes my name is sue dickinson i'm with midwestern consulting we did the uh site work and the in the site plan for this project and i would um yep i will be sharing my screen here super is that you can see it excellent um so this project is located at 1750 duvarn road the there's an existing ann arbor chinese christian church and this site plan is for an expansion of that church so um tonight on the meeting here we do have all of the building expansion committee from the church um and our and the pastor for the design team i'm here and but tina fix our landscape architect could not be here so um hopefully uh there aren't too many specific landscaping questions for me um and we also have uh zion church builders um the architect dan white um and um jim heinz as well to help answer questions so it was very interesting listening to the presentation for the village of ann arbor since um they'll be our neighbors um so the the church is located in northeast ann arbor um you can see here in blue is the uh total acreage 8.51 acres it is east of pontiac trail and west of leslie park circle between olson park and leslie park it's zoned r4a and the existing use church is a special exception use um so you can easily see that residential and parkland is what surrounds the property also interesting to note the uh the landfill that was discussed with the village of ann arbor presentation does extend onto the southern portion of the church property so as far as the existing conditions go um the existing church was constructed in 1999 um the special exception use has a capacity of 160 people there's an existing parking agreement with uh food grabbers food gatherers across the street and there's a crosswalk that is provided and we'd like to part of our application is to increase our capacity to 240 people there was a failed site plan attempt back in about 2006 um and i was involved in that as well so um i'm very happy to be here tonight and bringing forward a scaled down um request from what was asked before but during that a previous uh submittal we did find that there is a native forest fragment to the west and south of the church so when we were planning um for this expansion we made sure that we stayed in the areas that were not trees so that we could protect and preserve those beautiful trees so the existing building is here and it's about 8 200 square feet and the existing parking lot is going to be maintained um there's a few changes that um needing to be needing to happen to it as uh the dumpster location is going to be relocated from this area over to this corner so that there's uh it's easier for it to be able to be emptied and these four parking spaces um unfortunately were constructed within the front setback and so the parking lots being revised a little bit in order to get those out of the front setback the stormwater management basin is currently a wet basin and it's located up in this corner and that is being improved it's being enlarged because of the increase of impervious area with the new building but it's also being improved by not being it's not going to be deeper than its outlet so we can talk more about that and there will be a variance uh requested due to that existing parking agreement um not being permanent it's uh it's a lease agreement right now so our project that we're here to discuss is um the first floor has about 6 400 square feet and it has three classrooms and a social hall that will seat about 128 people and then it has a second story that has five classrooms um about 2800 square feet so the social hall is a two-story two-story room so as i mentioned the combined proposed capacity is 240.
sure any other questions or information we can provide uh you you touched on a little bit you you don't know or you're estimating that there probably won't be any movement from the fed on interest rates between now and february i mean there's so many factors and the interesting interesting thing with the banks is they have their own cost of capital funds that they determine um and so i mean you know sometimes they can be very aggressive in submitting bids because they just want bonds in their portfolio uh so i mean that's what we're hoping um hoping for that we get some some really low bids from the banks and and if for some reason we don't then uh then we will pivot to the capital markets and do a negotiated sale what kind of booths are you getting now i mean so we've been quoted just looking talking with our our our desk who does private placements all the time he had quoted me 1.35 to 1.5 and so in this proposal we had assumed 1.45 but i mean like i said before the banks have their own cost of funds they're gonna be in a new year um just like i mean it's going to be an oven flow but currently that's the range that we're that we're hearing from it's going to be interesting to watch margaret you know the volatility's been oh yeah yeah yeah and you know in some ways that can help us because if if you if we see that volatility especially you know kind of the market correction kind of direction um there's oftentimes complex quality and that brings interest rates down you know people jumping into the treasury market are high grade unis and i don't know you know it's hard to say fed seems to be you know i don't know i'll just say keep your finger yes well when you have inflation doing what it's doing it's hard to no no yeah that's the magic word can you hold your breath it's too long well the good news is we're only like two months you know this is right well yeah drew you know yep good point so on this timetable based on what you have put here you'll submit a bond resolution and supporting documents to lust by in two days yes and we've been working on that okay draft but those will include your recommendation on minimum savings yes so as suggested before we have in there right now six percent or 550 000 so that's what what's with what's in the draft right now um and that can be changed up until when we're in the board meeting on tuesday if if there's a preference to make it different but that's what we've just suggested so the resolution is what we call kind of a parameters resolution and it's going to describe as erika just mentioned you know the minimum savings in terms of both the percentage of par and and again it's just for draft purposes of putting a floor of six percent or like 550 000 which is about half of what we're seeing right now but it's up to you all i mean the danger of going like well let's just say 10 and 750 000 or something the dangers if the market moves away before we can execute we've got to come back to the board and ask for a change in that parameter if we're you know for instead of 10 we're at 9 you see that so if you try to set those parameters we're going to go out there and try to nail this 14 you know and try to achieve the most savings we can um we can also set it up and say look if we keep the 14 percent and or the six percent of the 550 000 but if we get close to that we you know come back and have a conversation too so and we did receive the resolution today and it is 37 pages of invigorating i guess i just maybe i'm looking at this thing too simplistically it just seems to me that we set a minimum savings six percent and for some reason it fell below that um then we got to start all over again uh as opposed to offering the taxpayers at three percent benefit yeah how many times can we refinance this this you get this one bite of these i mean as bill suggested some of these banks have shorter prepayment provisions and if they're if there is and then let's say in five or six years rates end up being lower than they are right now um but uh i mean there would be that option i mean i think i mean if you want us to share what if it was three percent savings what that would look like because if it's not even attended each year on i mean i think you just want to think about that um and i think we've seen five percent before so i think six percent is not i mean we're cutting more than half of what we're seeing now so i mean i think it yeah um let's see maybe a place to look at this if you go to page section two paper's hand in that bottom left-hand corner you know this is kind of what we call a sensitivity analysis we're going to say that what happens if rates go up to what happens we can see that you know we lose what is that 100 000 for every 20 basis points which is you know point two or twenty percent of one percent um so you know theoretically if i'm doing my math right multiply that times five and you know if you use one percent and use five hundred thousand i mean it's possible you know but if we lose 500 000 from from today's estimates then we believe in that you know five or six percent rain you know so i don't know maybe we want to go down to five percent or something like that you know that gives us a little bit of flexibility but you know the other thing that we would probably want to do is have a conversation i mean it's the market fault and you know we could have some explosion between now and february or later march but sometimes you know the market calms down then too so you know even though we want to try to get this accomplished by early april there's nothing that says we can't do this in june you know if we have some big market event so just say let's just go back and let's work you know because we hate to be pricey there's a you know a little bit kind of terrible environment [Music] we hate to play the market but you know i mean if we have a 911 for example we're going to have to do this you know everybody just kind of have to wait for about three months you know something you know you just never know but even the initial covet outbreak right you know it was maybe a four to six week period that was touching so yeah but i mean i mean we're still saving a million dollars even if it goes up 20 basis points but i mean since you did this thing back in october to this december it's gone upset on your estimates yeah it's gone from 1.53 to 1.60 so keep it up and he will continue to monitor and keep the district informed on what we're seeing okay i mean i i i fingers crossed i don't want to be here six percent first lucky okay my name is great presentation you managed to keep my attention for an hour straight so that was an accomplishment alone i mean we're grateful to be here in front of you and um i mean this this is our this is where we get our you know our excitement every day is working on this stuff so yes so you're giving me a christmas present well thank you very much i i'm learning something as we go and uh any further questions here okay good um it hasn't been brought up or touched all right i think i already know the answer um we're not refinancing any of the series c bonds which have a call date of 23 correct are we better off waiting another year and refinancing the whole kit and caboodle or looking at refinancing over the upcoming year no that's a good question um it you know by not doing anything now you have a lot of interest rate risk on the table on your side of the table because if interest rates go up over the course of the next year the savings are going to go down and because you've got the option on you know these the 2010 bonds are callable right now and so every month that goes by you know you're losing the potential to save on interest cost but when 7122 hits then every month it goes by you're losing the potential to save money on those bonds on the series 2012 bonds so you know if we knew where interest rates were going to be a year from now you know maybe we can make the analysis and say yes it's better to wait but because we don't know i would say no it's better to just act now you're going to come back there's some just marginal costs of island savings so like let's just say that we're here a year from now talking about refinancing the 2020 the 2013 bonds there's a marginal cost of issuance savings but the interest rate risk is much greater in my opinion the potential for losing you know savings is much greater than that cost efficiency it's a great question though yeah yeah i would agree i would agree with that um and and that 2013 bond issue would probably be in the same situation where i mean it might even lend itself more to have to be a private placement because they'll be around 3.5 million outstanding um and i mean you know depending on the districts what their look you know we can look at structuring and then um i mean but i think it as we suggested before not having an official statement not having a rating there's less uh issuance expenses and i mean we could easily do what we're doing now monitoring which market makes sense but knowing that that bond issue is um you know half the size of the current one the other thing to kind of keep an eye on too is that if you look at that coupon column for the 2013 bonds you can see that those excuse me coupon interest rates are much lower you know the last what five maturities have that three percent coupon so you know even with our all ntic estimate of 1.6 you know that differential which is where we get our savings right is much smaller even you know to four percent or you know three and a half so the potential to generate a whole lot of savings in your terminal on that series 2013 smallers because those could buy interest rates which you should be you know pleased about right because it's not costing a whole lot of interest today okay thank you very much appreciate it i will see you next tuesday i've got another school board meeting otherwise i'd come down here but thank you thank you thank you very much like
we've got this this is 10 of that so just so you kind of understand where this has been going over time and this just kind of this this recent situation brought us to this this is not a crete monet phenomenon and this is a nationwide issue i don't know of a single district that has was able to fill all their positions this year at least that i have had any interaction with so just to kind of give a little graphic representation we had you know 11 positions no applicants 19 others that went unfilled we get into talking about minority recruitment in 17 of the positions we only had one race from which to select and in the remaining 27 we had more than one race okay out of those 27 you can see what we had hired we had seven black candidates hired we had two hispanic candidates one who was an individual who did not respond to the question and the remaining candidates selected were the white candidates and it doesn't look like we're improving minority hiring that way however part of the problem with a very small applicant pool is that we also have a very small number of minority candidates to choose from and when you're applying for more than one position once you hire that minority candidate they're not available for the other positions because they're already hired we had a number of positions with two candidates where that was the case we also had a number where the minority candidate was offered the job and declined it generally speaking due to a higher paying offer elsewhere so i'm just kind of laying out a picture here some of these pieces that we built these big recruiting systems and applicant screening procedures don't do you much good when you only have two or three candidates when you have 20 or 30 then you could do a lot more with it so our summary of our problems essentially it comes down to our pool is too small we just don't have enough people who are applying for our teaching positions obviously that also translates into insufficient diversity we have multiple districts competing for the same applicant pool which is especially true at the secondary level and one of the bigger ones that's really alarming is we have fewer graduates coming out of the university every year at one of our partner universities we get a file of student profiles and these are for the people who are getting ready to graduate so that we can start recruiting with them that university contacted us this year said they're not sending out the profiles because every one of their student teachers was offered a position in their district where the student taught so we don't even have that to go with on the other hand we had a couple of student teachers in our district we offered positions to and we lost them to higher paying districts so even that pipeline has been problematic for us so you can kind of see some of the other pieces i don't need to dwell on them but basically what we're seeing is more positions going unfilled okay so this kind of gets through the goom and gloom and i tried to rush through it and i apologize if that made it a little unpleasant but i wanted to get to the better part this is where we're actually going to be able to try to resolve some of this and we're really in particular excited about a couple of these things so our current focus right now we have several internal things we are doing involving job fairs in our recruitment committee we also for a future pipeline we have a lot of grow our own pieces going on here including partnerships with the universities and and a really cool program at our high school that mr holyfield's going to talk about here in a little bit so first of all the recruitment committee this was originally started i believe in and it brought about quite a few pieces that helped us recruit well that year one of the big things was a job and career fair that we put together it was specifically for crete money we also had a lot more organized recruiting effort at the college and university campuses and some of that nationwide and we've had a specific focus on increasing diversity of applicants and certainly updating our materials and recruitment pieces the one of the big things we did that year was we surveyed our employees for some ideas on what would help us attract new people coming into the district and what would help keep some of the ones who might consider staying even if another industry offered him more money and some of those things were hard to implement but they gave us a lot of insight into where people were thinking and we need to we've kind of begun to realize that that's even changed in that last few years we need to update that so this whole process was interrupted and uh we're getting back to it here this uh this spring so we'll look forward to some good information and some good ideas there we last had our career fair for cm201u this was just our specific job fair in 2018.
the parking we are adding four electrical vehicle parking spaces two chargers and a variance will be requested for that as well because that's a much reduced number from what your ordinance states our the features are that we are preserving the native forest fragment and the existing detention basin is being improved to minimize the open standing water so the utility services for the new building um it is going to be fire suppressed so the blue line is the fire service lead that needs to go out to the public water main in the street it couldn't connect to to this water main the orange line is the sanitary sewer lead that also had to go out to the public um sewer which unfortunately is all the way across to dubarron uh the green outline is the uh increased area it's it's the where the 100 year storm elevation will be we'll store and we'll be using the same outlet for the uh for the pond um for the detention area in order to go out to the duvo barn uh storm sewer here is the landscape plan um so you'll notice that we're adding four trees and 42 shrubs for the right way screening along with eight street trees we're we're adding five interior island trees and the conflicting land use buffer um over towards the leslie park side on the east side of our site we're adding 16 well we've got 16 trees that are remaining and we're adding 58 shrubs and then part of our citizen participation meeting um it was noted that when dte came through and did some maintenance on the utility line that they removed some trees in this area so we added plantings to replace those so this is the proposed building this is the existing building here and so this is the end elevation but you can see the two stories in the doorway and so here's the back elevation and the front elevation of the building and this is the uh floor plan so this is the first floor with the sidewalks shown um the connection to the existing church and um you can see the three classrooms and the restrooms on the first floor and the social hall and then upstairs we have five classrooms so that's my presentation i'm here to answer any questions and as was stated you have a lot of the other team members here as well thank you very much mr kowalski good evening everybody um okay so i just i'll touch on a couple of the highlights here um petitioner did a good job of really summarizing the main um features of the proposal uh a couple of things i do want to add to that is um as far as the natural features as you guys can tell the majority of them obviously are being saved on the site there's a very high quality natural woodland in that area that would be preserved there is one landmark tree that would be removed for the expansion they are mitigating for that as as you know as required of course um a couple of key things so this is of course a special exception use so with and i just want to remind the planning commission as well that that special exception use is although the site plan will proceed to city council for final approval the special exception use uh will be approved or denied by the planning commission so um again and obviously without that if it were to be denied then the site plan would not be able to proceed further so um the special exception used we did add so there is a separate motion for that special exception use uh within that special exception use we do put the limitation of what they have offered as far as the capacity of the facility uh the church facility of 240 uh people within there um in addition to that there are um there is a revised motion that we had i we had just emailed out i apologize i had left that off of the original planet commission motion that is to include the two landscape modifications that they are requesting both of those landscape modifications were reviewed and approved by our landscape staff member those the first modification or one of the modifications is for the um the code requires 15 spaces in a row you have to have a landscape island um in that case she did accept them not putting in the landscape island a couple places they have a couple more than the 15 spaces giving their parking concern and i guess not not significant parking lot modifications she did accept that as well as um a modification for the bioretention islands um that is also again a requirement but without the their justification without this significant modification of that parking lot um which again it's more than just putting in um the body retention you have to have everything drained there properly so it does it does require some significant reconstruction of that parking lot um one item i did in particular i also wanted to touch on is you can notice that they are the plan would be if it was to be uh passed tonight here at planet commission uh they will need to go to the zoning board of appeals as tishner mentioned before there's they're requesting two variances um really the the first variance is a little bit more of an unusual one which is one you don't see too often that is just going to be uh it's a variance of from the parking requirement really so they um they they need the um but i'm down a blank on the space i believe it's 80.
we out of that hired quite a few teachers staff members i believe we got some custodians we've got some substitute teachers and we were able to fill some very hard to fill positions science special education mathematics and so forth things that we have trouble recruiting for and they just walked in our door and applied and we're excited to come here so just that outreach alone so we plan to try to do this again however what we are hearing is that job fairs again because the limited candidates aren't as successful as they have been in the past so we're gonna we're gonna be cautiously optimistic about this one and we're gonna move forward and try to plan it just so you have some idea what type of other recruiting efforts direct recruiting we've had going to the college university level this is not an exhaustive list i was trying to go back and find a good representative sample of some of the places we've gone we have tried marketing nationwide the problem is we get too much out of our area and it gets harder to find candidates that want to relocate here they kind of want to stay close to home or where they went to school so again the job fairs a lot of them are being cancelled at this point so i think i just saw one yesterday for eastern illinois that's probably the first one i've seen that's really seems to be flying right now so moving forward uh getting into our partnership universities i don't want to spend a lot of time going over this but essentially what we're doing is we are if we can't wait for the candidates to come to us we have to grow our own we have to find our own people and turn them into good teachers and good strong people who want to come back and give back to the school district so what we have done is we've worked with governor state one of our partner universities and the one just down the street from us and we put together a teacher assistant to teacher initiative and this is targeting our teacher assistants in the district to move into to go ahead and complete their degrees and become teachers and come back and work with us this focuses on hard to fill areas and it also focuses on allowing them to do it while maintaining their job they're paying their benefits and doing their field experience work on site so they can complete their degree with a little bit more ease and a little less traditionally as to student teach you have to stop working for a few months and that's become very hard for people to do this doesn't make them do that and and there's also some additional financial aid for those candidates so this is one effort we've had going this has been building we have we are doing this along with i think about eight other districts in our area who are working with gsu on this and i can't remember how many of our tas are moving into this uh the last count i believe was about eight so we are getting some people involved this next one i think dr carol wanted to talk a little bit about with lewis university i wasn't as directly involved in that so i'll let her take that well i'll just talk briefly about that and mr hollyfield as well as ms perkins were involved with this this is brand new i think i was just sharing with you in my last update and so forth the louis partnership they're looking to come out this way to the burbs and we are right there we met with them we are working with some of our parapro's we had at least eight or nine of our pair pros some have degrees in other areas but with the grant that's available they can get their endorsement for education in one year for free and i repeat for free 100 grant funded so this is a fabulous opportunity and they were so excited about this for some of our parapros that want to finish you know going from maybe a couple of classes to maybe a two-year degree to a four-year degree there is money available to help move them again grant money that doesn't have to be repaid so they were very very excited about these opportunities and so we have started to to work on that there's a cohort that's starting as early as january and for at least three of the members that were at our our meeting three of them will then are interested in participating that they will have their full teaching degree within the one year it's going to fast track them and the beauty behind that they do not have to quit their jobs to finish this it is at night it is online so it was they were just beaming when they left so we were really excited about that but more importantly is what we're doing at the high school and i don't want to steal mr hollyfield's thunder because that's coming um of how we're going to grow at our high school um so you know we'll talk a little bit about that later but just tons of great opportunities and yes mr brown there is aviation out there louis university is has a fabulous program over there and as soon as we get our grow your own for the teachers next is coming some of the other programs and these are the things that we would be adding on to the high school edition this is these are some of the great programs that we can extend to offer more career local career possibilities for our students because we want them to stay in our communities we want them to buy houses in our community and shop in our communities we are all in this together so and by you know helping to support this you know we are making a much more stable economy for all of us that live in the area so anyway super excited about this and it's up and up and going so we will be giving you updates as we move forward so i'll turn that back to you yeah one of the one of the best uh teachers one of the best special education teachers i ever had uh had started out as a ta in the classroom where she ended up as a teacher and she got so excited about it she went back to school while she was a teacher assistant when the teacher retired she basically just took over and she did a phenomenal job so i just this these are excellent opportunities to tap the people we already have and help them move forward so this next one is the one we're really excited about this gets into our high school and tapping our our ex incredible talent at the high school so i'm going to turn this over to mr hollow thank you mr neal and thank you to the board superintendent and all of the other staff members who are here i'm mr hollyfield i serve a dual role i'm the regional cte director for four high school districts and also division leader for mathematics and cte at the high school i specifically want to talk about cte and what we're doing to get our students who are in high school on track and enthused about becoming educators so upon entering the district in 2018 this has been a dream number one i at junk i teach future teachers at uic and i'm also on the board of the advisory board at roosevelt university for the college of ed so that will also be a channel because i'm trying to tell people if you want to do great things come to crete so we're working on that so that's fast track but with our high school students upon entering the district it was said well no one's interested in teaching and i'm saying to myself really i'm excited about what i do and i'm sure there are other people that's excited about what they do and i had this idea i said why don't we try to get a career tech organization educated horizon to see what the interest would be we identified an advisor who was interested very enthusiastic teacher who is the reason you have these students and this parent out tonight as well as 31 people that sign up when we pitched it to four class periods imagine now that we're rolling it out to the high school we hope to have people knocking the door down to get into this organization to uh get on track to become future teachers just to give you a little bit and i will be succinct because i want you to hear from the students number one educated rising one of the goals is to attract students to embrace the calling of teaching i believe teaching is not a career it's a calling you get into it not because you're going to become a millionaire but because you have the ability to be a change agent and change the trajectory for individuals who are coming behind in addition they will learn the techniques and get clinical experience as accomplished teachers even before college as well as get recognized as student leaders and advocates for education what this entails they will be involved in national competitions not just in the illinois area they will be involved in national competitions they will be able to earn five micro credentials and we are thoughtful in that crete will be the first school district whose work with educator rising and married educator rising to practera which will afford our students the ability to engage in virtual work based learning before they submit their projects we've enlisted various deans at colleges of eds who will give them feedback and they will go back and forth we will be able to track the work that they're doing to ensure that all of our students will get these five micro credentials in addition there's an honor society attached to it where graduation they'll have their courts and be ready for the high school component what we're most excited about lewis university upon hearing our plans because educated horizon was brought in to gauge the interest starting next year 10th and 11th graders will be able as well as seniors will be able to enroll in a college level course called foundations of teaching and receive not only a high school credit but dual credit with lewis university so that's great they signed on right away isbe closed out the educator pathway grant but when i spoke at one of the isb board meetings the next day i got an email we want to open it up and if you can get crete and another school district to sign on together i'm regional got homewood flossmoor to sign on we will get a sepi grant to help infuse some money so that this initiative be will stay alive we have to do what we have to do because what we have to realize students don't know what they don't know i told them first field trip we need to come to the district office a lot of people think miss trish is the highest you can go in education there's finance positions like ken cerma how many of our students know him we have to take field trips to help them understand that teaching is an entry way but the levels that you can accomplish in education are magnificent i'm going to leave this caveat with you tell me one occupation where you didn't need a teacher any occupation a plumber has to have a teacher we have legal counsel he had to have a teacher teaching is one of the greatest careers and i'm so proud that these students they not only want to teach but at least 80 percent of them said i want to teach at crete because i know what kids at crete needs so let me look in i think i've covered all of it i want to be succinct because i've learned when you're short you might get invited back another time so i want to open it up in case you have questions for these young people i i have something for you for me okay sir first i'm asking next time before you go to hf can you come to me about a opportunity like they they have all kinds of stuff over there at hf so can you come to me first and then i can see i'm at thornton township oh yeah i work with your efc she's going to be reaching out to you so she's learning from me okay and then the other thing is just an idea and i mean it may have to go through the board but i was at a presentation where a school district what they give their students when they go out is they give them like a coin or certificate which guarantees them an opportunity for at least the interview doesn't guarantee them a job now if they received the job they because they were former students and they came back they receive a five thousand dollar bond signing bonus that's already you're speaking our language okay okay so that was it okay so there we go i don't have any questions but i want to say you're extremely inspiring i i mean really you almost made me want to be a teacher well yes i love the profession i love crete i'm finishing a ph.d and i'm telling dr cochlear so i'm not leaving i want to see these young people become all that they're intended to be because we are diamond in the rough it looks like the high school is doing nothing we are grooming future educators future business people so i guess for the students what is it that drew you all to this program thank you miss thompson my teacher she's very enthusiastic this she's why i joined the program um she made me want to join the program she was talking about it in class and i was like you know what i might come back and be educated at my school you know the program helps us you know young teenagers and you know my generation on the path to become a teacher what grade are you in i'm a sophomore thank you hi um i'm a junior what's your name um i'm lauren powell i'm a junior at crete i joined the educator because i felt as though most of i can say that majority of my teachers they are great teachers but you know there's always a teacher that you cling on to more or that shows you more and you know is there under your wing or you're under their wing better yet and when i speak of i wasn't going to join any programs at crete just being honest but the way that miss thompson is very yeah she's very convincing and you know she's like just try it if you don't like it you can always you know step down but teaching is not something that i thought i would be interested in but it's growing on me and i feel like educators horizon is definitely something that should be implicated into the schools or just nationwide in general because it's something that makes you want to say okay this is something that i might want to do this is something that i can see myself doing because now you see yourself sitting in a seat and you see that you want to help more instead of taking a step back like oh this isn't me or this isn't something i see myself doing when really this is something that you can see yourself doing so that is my thing thank you thank you okay hi i am a layla i was also introduced to educators rising club by miss thompson she's a very like you know it's that one teacher who makes you want to keep going and you know go to her class and talk to her ask her how her weekend was and what she did and how her break was and what she's going to do the next day and she's like always there you know you know sometimes you can't always like trust other teachers you know feel like they're going to go talk about it with other people but she's like someone you can trust and in my family teachers run all the way down the bloodline and teachers run down the front line and when ms thompson talked about this program i already wanted to be a teacher i want to be a biology teacher and she teaches ap seminar and just the way that she teaches it's not about just the subject it's the way that she incorporates everything into it and makes you you know even if you don't like the subject she makes sure you understand it and horribly but okay back to the program but when she's the type of teacher you want to be and you want all of your classmates to experience and my other teachers i want them to be like that like to be enthusiastic and make the class want to learn the subject and not even just just teaching the subject but actually getting to know the students and putting it into their life that's what ms thompson does and to know that she will be helping raise other teachers like her so that other generations can have teachers like that is a really good thing and i'd like to be a part of her group i am a sophomore thank you thank you my last comment is that we have males in the program teaching is non-traditional so i know my cte and we are intentionally putting up posters in the high school with men in front of classes to let the males know you are welcome and we have quite a few males that are part of it and it's a diverse group you see african americans but we have hispanics we have caucasians we we want to encompass everyone because it takes a village to raise our children thank you for your time thank you and i look forward to talking to you all at another time thank you [Applause] so if any of you would like to sign on to the program you talked to mr paul thank you very much that's our presentation thank you thank you thank you lyle i just yeah just one comment and just what i observed tonight i mean to me i think the key and why getting diversity in our teaching our staff is so important is because students that we've heard likely for tonight all students see teachers as role models and they see that you know people like them have succeeded entering and uh i think that's so important so keep up the efforts and uh you know we'll look back for hopefully it won't be as much doom and gloom next year yeah we will do our best for no more doom and gloom yeah and i want to thank you dr coglinnis for following up on this this is this was fantastic and and lyle all of the work that you did to put this presentation together and i know i'm going to get it wrong i heard holyfield i [Laughter] but great job and great job with our our students homegrown here that have the propensity and the mindset to want to be something such as a teacher all right at this point that is dynamic that is extra extraordinary that is great because we're gonna have a ribbon cutting when we roll out the dual credits excellent awesome yeah keep us posted give us updates we'd love to see where our staff is going where our students are going this is very good good job good job good job i really please stick with it if i can help in any way i'm seriously serious support it talk to students let me know and i just want to say thank you to our students for coming tonight i know it was a last-minute invite but thank you so much we really want to hear from you and listen to your voices yeah we want to see you back here in four years yeah now go home and do your homework thanks for coming everybody feel free to go ahead and go thank you you got school tomorrow thank you okay um next up is um old business and i think we did have a follow-up item eric's here to talk about we well i'll turn it over to yes as you recall at our last meeting uh mr brown posed the question uh just some clarification on this term backdoor referendum um there's some terms that were been thrown around and i think it was left that we had asked council to give give a legal update a legal opinion on this as you know attorney gleason did provide the board members with a legal update but for our community i wanted to make sure that um we provided that you know in our open session as well so i'm going to turn this over to our attorney to just give a quick update on what that is thank you so just to clarify and i think it's i i could pick up on where we left off the conversation earlier part of the meeting mr sturm was giving an excellent explanation to cersei wallace on the different concepts with respect to referendums issuances of bonds to cover debts and then of course the vector referendum colloquial term that's used here so if i if i could just to isolate all these concepts um and then and continuing the discussion of backdoor referendum so so first as mr uh surma explained that there's a section uh under the school code that permits the building of new school buildings right and that's only pursuant to referendum and mr sperma explained it to mr swales that's what we attempted back in april pursuant to referendum to to build a new school building that failed okay um and so the school district has transitioned to a um a issuance of bonds right to cover debt and that's for the purposes of rehabilitation of buildings purchases of property and that's pursuant to section 27 20-7 of the school code and also and also in compliance with the local government debt reform act okay and as mr albrecht explained in response to the public commenter that pursuant to that section section 20-7 a um the public is permitted to file a petition okay uh and there are as you as you explain there is nothing in there about a dome uh it doesn't say that the specific purposes of the uh of the purposes of issuing the debt needs to be clarified in that petition are four specific things that need to be laid out in the petition it doesn't have to necessarily say you know this is for a dome or anything like that um and mr albrecht explained that if 10 of the voting public um successfully pursues a petition then then then that needs to go to referendum okay and that is essentially what a backdoor referendum means is that after you have 10 of the voting population petition the school district then we need to hold off and then those whether we can go forward with the the bonds needs to be postponed until after the referendum this decision is uh put out to the voting public that is what is truly a backdoor referendum okay um and that oftentimes gets confused with another process that's permitted in the in the school code which is essentially the process whereby debt is incurred under and a building is purchased through installment contracts okay and the debt is paid off in installments okay it's essentially uh leasing the building through the purchaser releasing the building through those leasing the building and then paying off the lease and then you would own you would own the building after all those and so after that installment contract is paid off okay that is colloquially colloquially known as a backdoor referendum but is not truly a backdoor referendum the backdoor referendum process exists pursuant to section section 20-7 which is the petition that follows the issuance of debt as the school district has done here okay i hope that mr sterma is shaking his head and he's in agreement with what i have to say um and this aligns with what mr albeck's explanation was to to our our public commenter any questions and that petition period and the amount the 10 there is another but again it's not relevant to what uh uh what we're talking about here but yeah there's another backdoor referendum when it comes to alternate bonds or revenue bonds where you only need 7.5 percent and that's a backdoor referendum as well when you are dealing with those type of bonds so i don't want people to think hey it's 10 percent some board members may come across that it's always 10 percent but it's 7.5 percent and it used to be ten percent because i don't know i i just i just took a liking to bonds years ago okay and that's all i did instead of watching a movie with the wife at night i just read on bonds okay so but yeah you spawned never always [Laughter] essentially putting to referendum the question of whether we can continue to uh pay off the debt certificates with bots okay so to understand if if we get the 10 then that i'm just trying to understand that stops everything no not necessarily because the district has as mr albrecht alluded to in the public temperature there are other revenue streams under which the working could continue so it doesn't necessarily need to stop the work what it does is it stops you from issuing the bonds to pay off the debt certificates until a referendum decision until a referendum vote is taken okay so then and essentially we could still do that work but when it said that that possibly the air conditioning was stopped would that we don't have the money for that okay that's what i'm trying so we might still have the money to tear down the dome but not money for air conditioning that's right okay that's correct but we also have the opportunity to appeal that petition if we feel there there's an issue a problem with signatures or whatever we still have a certain period of time to i don't know if that's the right term appeal or whatever it doesn't mean that it's it's set in stone just because that amount of signatures was gathered correct correct just like with any other election so can you explain that so so say enough signatures were gathered what does the district what can the district do from that point on everything that's a section of the school court i have to look further okay because there is something right i mean it's not that's not the end of things i mean i believe you're correct yes my understanding was that there was some discussion that there's an appeal process the district could go through so can we get that checked out and just know everything so it's everybody has the same information absolutely thank you and and one thing i would like to add uh attorney is that we embark the board embark on borrowing working cash quite often and the process of again correct me if i'm wrong the process of the back door referendum could come into play as well any time we borrow working cash so i think the board should look at it i'm almost certain on that okay on a working cash i don't know if i don't think there's a specific amount but a working cash too i believe that's correct so we borrow that all the time so it usually is not challenged but it's it's good for the board to be aware of that well if you remember mr brown too because we're borrowing working cash here right here we got a petition period two we got two petitions all right right well when we borrowed the money back in and last year of 20 yes there was also at the bottom we had another but nobody nobody challenged right there and that was working i think to say that we do it all the time though is incorrect i mean i've been on the board now five years we've done we've had one issuance of working cap working capital ponds okay well so i'm just saying that's the way i've seen at least uh well i've been on the board even when i don't want to mislead the public well well we borrow we borrowed that's a that's the way we typically borrowed to you know gain funds i'm just saying typically you know that's a process when i got on the board the previous board had passed a resolution to borrow or to sell 30 million dollars of bonds and they sold 14 15 million and then they put the other 15 that there's a time frame that you can sell the other so they didn't sell all of the bonds at the one time but that's a that was a petitionary period then it was 30 million dollars but the public did not petition during that time so i just want to let the board know anytime we sell working cash to my knowledge there's that backdoor referenda process that could come into play i believe it's anytime you sell any type of bonds that are not approved per referendum there is a petition period that has to take place through a binary hearing now that picks up the debt system as life safety bonds and the debt that certificates are completely different that's right but they're still general obligation bots right those are those are not uh a bond those are investigations so you don't need a binder here right yeah but in life safety like like ibp right so but again i think what you're alluding to is the fact that if we do sell bonds whenever it is yes if they're not referendum for the most part you have to have a final hearing and there's a death period yes that's correct yes that is correct to my knowledge okay so i just thought that was good for the board to know and and and president elbert you're correct i mean yeah we're not selling working cash every day but typically i've seen when we're working cash we need money to hear the furries working cash we're going down in our working cash funds okay we need to we need to beef it up and typically what boards do they go out there and sell bonds working cash bonds i just want the board to be aware that there's a period if the public come out you know don't be surprised you know so we have to be transparent out there and go through the process that you have the hearing so just don't be surprised anywhere down the future that that occurred okay any other old business just one note exactly what dr hall brought up this i just wanted to make it you know that miss roop brought that up at the last meeting at the end of the business meeting that you know what was the result if the uh petition area was successful so okay uh any new business oh i'm gonna fix new business doctor cogniz looked like she gave us some rights for our fob to get in a couple doors i i don't know if you could explain what's what how did our privilege get taken away to have accessibility to the school well we're concerned about your safety mr brown okay all right so um when uh we hired on patrick and we were looking at the security of our buildings we wanted to make sure that all of our buildings we had people coming in the same doors we had we knew who was coming in the doors as well as the time stamps that we only had people coming in certain doors so when we we brought him on we put together a process to standardize the doors the times the hours for everybody in the district all including myself and so forth and so when we had it for here we and certainly with covet we were having everybody come in the front door and the reason why is we want to be able to have our security guards see who's coming in and who's coming out as you know our security guards are excellent when the board leaves at the end of the night they walk us all out and so i wanted to make sure that we weren't having the back doors access because i'm concerned about my safety of my board members i don't you know as you're going to the back i don't want anything to happen to you so our security guards watch you know the board members in and out and making sure that everything looks safe out in the parking lot i've opened up the side door because certainly the winter coming in and certainly at the ease of the board i know you need to come in from the parking lot instead of coming in the front door so we went ahead and opened that side door i extended the hours because certainly on days like this when we might be meeting later if you've had something in your car you need to come back and get we've extended that hours so that was uh the the idea behind this um and just you know fine-tuning our own procedures here okay um i just want to relinquish my five if that's it i'll just come through the standard way i'm okay with that so it's no sense for me to have the liability of having that product filed that there could be a security breach so i'll be giving mines back up okay yeah i know a lot of board members don't use their phones no to the parking lot to the parking lot down the first hallway yeah okay i'm trying to understand how does that protect our safety like if we go somewhere we're adult enough to know well i'm thinking in particular on board nights i think that's what i'm thinking about instead of having you go out the elc door down there or going out the back door where the garbage cans are and it's dark there's no lights out there for your security we have our security guards try to walk everybody out every night they scan the parking lot making sure that there's people there nobody there that we don't know and just for their own security if i've got people going out through the doors my security guards so really is that for us because as adults we understand clearly what dangers could possibly lie out if we choose to go out a back door side door whatever door and i think most i'm assuming most people go out the front door it may be a board member or two that does that but i'm still not understanding how that is for our sake now if you tell me you just want to streamline the process then i i believe that when you tell me that you're doing this for our safety and security it's for both it's for you know honestly i'm doing this for everybody all our employees have the same rules and guidelines and it is about streamlining a process and creating consistency and honestly it is about your safety i i worry about my board members you know making sure everyone's safe whether you're a man or a woman or if you've been here a long time i we just want to make sure people get in back to the car safely that was all i think she's saying like this back door i think some people were coming in and out of this back door and it's dark out there at night so if you fell how would anybody know until they found you the next day i i mean i think i don't know i'm just trying to interpret what she was saying there it's very dark out there i've gone out that back door with pam panza when i've worked events and it's dark you can't unless you turn your flashlight on on your phone you can't see out back unless they've changed the lighting so to me that's a very unsafe way to exit the building in the dark no i i i get that okay i'm saying if todd hall decides that he wants to go out that back door going out that back door is it locked like where you can't get out because going out there going out going out doesn't it coming in no you don't use a cart or a reader or a bag to go out i i i get coming in but if it's about my safety then going out coming in i just think that there's another aspect though that sounds harsh i think liability for liability purposes they don't care if todd hall made the decision they're going to say what are your protocols and what's your policy i go through this even at a community center that makes more sense to me than to say i'm worried about your safety if you say it's about the protocols that's but i know running in an organization i get people mad at me and it's like but if it happens i'm the one to blame and i understand you're an adult but i'm going to be the one not that i don't care about the people but you you when you're at a certain level you have to think about the liability too but see we all interpreted that differently thank you mr simpson do you have anything to add to that since uh the security officers we're talking about adult we're talking about um students which is far more difficult when we talk about how many students we have there both times they were able to be identified one just last week they didn't even get past they were caught in the foyer because the security guards watch the same people come in there every day and they're familiar with faces clothing all that even with masks on so i think that's a very important component of this when we talk about entrance ways for a lot of reasons but when we have uh specifically the high school we have a large amount of people entering there you know the security guards may appear that they're not doing nothing but clearly they are they're really they're really looking at a lot of different things and when we restrict that that entrance it to specific points and we have the same security guards there all the time getting to know those people that's really going to assist us in identifying problems and resolving them i don't know again i when we had our meetings at the high school i quite often drove around the back parking lot and came in through the back i thought that was very conducive it was it was safe that i thought and just to cut the privileges i i get it if there's truly a safety component involved with this i get it but i think it was more of a unsafe for me to park in the front than it was for me to park in a bag so i would continue to park in the back i parked in the back back there and i walked around so that's on me that's on me but i just you know i don't understand that if a board member comes through a door everybody knows that that board member came through the door those who have access to the system if they need to figure out who went through that door and for me to have someone tailgate behind me then those privileges should be taken because i'm not responsible to have a file and not using the right that i allow another person to come in so if it's only me coming through the door and i get it about light and all of that i mean we can the whole parking lot is dark out there so no matter which door you go out the whole parking lot there's a risk of falling and slipping and getting stuck up out there you know by a by a perpetrator so i'm not going to argue i just thought it was a little uh micromanaging when they came to that you know at the high school though i mean we used to park in the back also and a security guard always walked us out back and made sure we got in the car and the car pulled away just like they do out front i mean we had two security guards at the high school so one would always i mean there were many times when mrs gas barrel parked back there and they never let us go out that door alone they walked us to the car just about and once we pulled away then they had it back in the building well you had some special privilege it didn't not once walked me back there okay and uh also i just want to know what is the protocol for board members going to schools i know we sign in there's a couple times i'm not often in these schools i you know i very rarely going to go to the school but a couple times i noticed when i went to the schools i knew i had to sign in but i waited i waited quite a while for the principal to come is that the is that the protocol well generally even even in our front office here i know i've had board members that have come to see me and they wait in the lobby until somebody comes to get them we we have formalized things things were maybe very informal before and we have formalized things uh over the years and especially lately i've been told that if you're going to a school you let them know ahead of time so they're prepared for you if you show up now if they're busy you're gonna you know wait obviously until they get time to so what if what if we don't want to see the principle or whatever do we not have as board members to have you know again i understand letting the i know we signed in we're there and maybe we want to just walk the school down what what happened to those i think if you have a specific concern talk to dr carroll yeah because you know i usually will just make sure that even even myself when i go to my buildings i'm not a concern what if i just want to walk i mean what what happened here i'm lost i'm we can't just go and check and and just do a non-schedule walk down out of school not that i'm doing it but that's not something i would do that's then that's what i said that's that's that's it yeah please let mr trish know i'm in the school i'll be heading to a wing or whatever i'm just saying hi to some teachers absolutely i think that that's that's all i've done before especially we did it all the time and it is a board member's prerogative i don't think there's there's uh i mean we are board members and we just want to come in and walk and see how things are going for whatever reason not to be destructive there loves to see you so you are definitely welcome absolutely i guess i couldn't imagine in my district telling the board member no you can't go you have to wait until the principal see i i couldn't i couldn't imagine it and then i also underst this could be rumor and i wasn't going to bring it up but since we're talking about that i guess at the high school there's a code for when i come in a building according to security to let them know that i'm in a building a case and this is supposed to have something to do with athletics and i've heard this from several people but i wasn't going to even say anything about it but i don't know i think that i'm not aware i don't think i don't i mean i don't know if that's true it's a i i i mean is that true you may not know but it may be just amongst the high school leaders oh yeah they're not telling them no they wouldn't they probably wouldn't tell you that there's i i mean i get uh because i understand how these systems work if there is i've been at schools where they've had codes for certain people who come in they're not going to be like go tell them whatever is here but they might no they really like rahm emanuel they used to like if he was going somewhere i do know that the security had code for him not his name so people wouldn't know and and but that's different than if he comes in the building let us know use this code so that this person can and i'm not saying any names about who they're trying to protect them protect me or protect them who they're trying to protect from me but i just heard that it was and i mean i guess it would be something to look into bottom line our board members are very welcome in our buildings every time that i've been out with board members i know ms galbraith i've gone out several times with you people love to see our board members and i i encourage you to do that you know and that's why i said if you want to go you can you can go to the buildings anytime that's just the process it's just yeah absolutely yeah and i get going to the door to the front desk to let them know i get that that's what i heard from from from the board the previous board how the board was to follow a certain protocol in a process and i that was the last i heard but again when i went i expected to sign in hello maurice i'm just going to just um just walk up and down the hall whatever okay so sit down on the principal huh okay oh man the last two times i've went it has happened and i'm like oh man i'm on the clock it's been 15 minutes i have to run well you should have let me know i didn't even know you were out there so i don't know if we get a standard we can have an internal talk about this with the board and have a standard because i don't want to go against the grain but i do want to not have my my hands tied you know can i make a suggestion though i want you in on this i probably won't i don't know if maurice still has his but they used to give us oh shoot sorry terry thank you they used to give us ids just like you guys have ids so nobody we always had to wear our id when we were in a building i still wear my id i think you have one but i think it ended with me because i don't think any of the rest of the board members got ids so you know i don't know if that also makes the staff because the staff doesn't know who i am i mean there's 200 people in a building they don't all know who i am so i always i got in my bag here i always wore it when i went to a building so maybe that's a thought that we have i i don't know i'm just saying and we also got passes for football games we had to wear a different idea at a football game and i have that still in my in my tote bag oh mr brown you're very wonderful okay let's move on that's it we do have a need for closed session tonight can i get a motion to go into closed session for the purpose of student disciplinary cases rocco roll call please franz and i mrs gilbert aye aye mr swanless mrs walters aye miss uh dr hall aye vice president rule aye president albert aye motion carries we are in closed session at 8 45.
um uh yes and they have a 63 car parking so it'd be 17 spaces so they've had in place for a number of years the petitioner may be able to highlight as many but really as far as i could look back in that record from this original special exception use approval which i think i had written down in 90 2006 um i'm trying to blank on that but it's been in place for quite a while with the food gatherers location across the street um so they have this signed lease agreement and um they have an excess it's only for the use of kind of the warehouse the office spaces if you guys are familiar with that there's the residential section as well as the warehousing and office space um so they have about 50 spaces there for the warehouse and office space um those spaces and obviously these peak times run really perfectly because obviously the the church functions typically are you know evening hours on the weekend which is where the warehouse and office uses are not used and actually even knowing that they're from the day when they are used they have a surplus of spaces as well during the day um so but however the code does require that um they it has to be a permanent un uh recorded access easement and sorry not access a parking easement and those those spaces cannot be counted for they can't count for required parking for two locations so so basically although even though it's a shared kind of agreement and it works with off-peak hours technically it does not meet the requirements of the code so um that is what they need to go to the for the variance well it i mean staff personally i feel it meets the intent however uh that would need to go the zoning board of appeals for approval as well as um they are requesting a variance from the ev parking spaces to be installed um and that would be able uh that their request they're going to be installing four spaces and um really kind of oh so i did look the original special exception used for this was approved in 1996 and that was for the 160 which is still in place today again so what is really triggering that the renewal that special exceptions is obviously this expansion and the use of that new facility one other concern we did have you know perhaps or not even a concern that we an issue that we had brought up with the petitioners you know would this facility be used for like um weddings and like major uh social gatherings things like that and they indicated no they have no plans for that um you know it's really meant for church functions but they're they're very willing and i think in the past i've had some neighborhood meetings within there so things like that but it's not going to be a banquet facility there's no uh formal kitchen located within there um and uh again with that i think that does summarize up my my uh presentation at this time and i staff is recommending approval of both the special exception use as well as the site plan uh contingent upon of course the variances being granted by the zoning board of appeals thank you thank you all right um i will open up the public hearing this is an opportunity for persons to speak for up to three minutes about the proposed ann arbor chinese christian church site plan and special exception use permit if you wish to address the planning commission on this item and you're joining by phone you can press star 9 to raise your hand if you joined us through the web link you can press the raised hand button if you're watching us and would like to call in now the dial-in number is 877-853-5247 and our meeting id is 977-6634-1226 mr leonard we'll select those who have raised their hand again you can do that digitally on a phone by pressing star 9 or by pressing the raised hand button if you've joined us through zoom when it's your turn to speak you'll hear an automated message um to that you're able to unmute yourself um please move to a quiet area and mute any television or background sound so that we can hear you and please also state your name and address at the beginning of your comments and banister you can unmute yourself using the button you just did you have three minutes to address the commission great thank you i don't need uh three minutes uh ann bannister former ward one council person from north main street and i just wanted to applaud and congratulate the church for uh making a design that preserved the landmark forest there i think that'll serve the property well and a lot and continue to be wildlife habitat and support the ecosystem so i hope more property owners will go with designs like that that are sensible and preserve those landmark trees and so thank you so much good night thank you if anyone else wishes to address a planning commission during the public hearing you can use the raised hand button on your computer or press star 9 on your phone all right seeing none i will start to read the motions and we have three um first about the site plan the ann arbor city planning commission hereby recommends that the mayor and city council approve the ann arbor chinese christian church 1750 davarin road site plan second is the landscape modification so the planning commission approves the following landscape modifications one allow existing landscape islands to remain without bio retention capacity and two allow parking lot to continue with greater than 15 spaces without a landscape island and then the third is for the special exception use so the ann arbor planning commission after hearing all interested persons and reviewing all relevant information find the petition substantially meets the standards in chapter 55 ann arbor unified development code section 5.29.5 which is special exception use and therefore approves the ann arbor chinese christian church at 1750 duvarn road special exception use for church uses this approval is based on the following findings one the proposed uses will be consistent with the objectives of the comprehensive plan permitting churches and schools by serving residents in their districts in their district two the proposed use will not adversely impact traffic pedestrians bicyclists like circulation or road intersections based on the location and existing uses three a site plan documenting the existing and proposed conditions of the site has been submitted as part of this application this special exception use approval is based on the following conditions one the church use maintains a maximum capacity seating or let me stay at that again the church use maintains a maximum seating capacity of 240 persons that is the end of those three motions would anyone like to move them moved by commissioner weich seconded by commissioner sovay we are in discussion anyone want to kick us off and i'm assuming that we can take these all together unless anybody objects otherwise commissioner white go for it uh this is for staff um just why is the 240 seating capacity related to parking um because i was just surprised to see a specific cap on the seating capacity of the facility and i was trying to relate that to the um church on maple and whether they had the same restriction and i was trying to see if it was related to parking or traffic yeah so um okay yes so the 240 is um sorry i cut you off um yes the 240 is is um the the capacity is yes directly related to the the parking count that's correct and if you remember the church on maple we did not they did not have a special exception use approval because they were still under within theirs so that's kind of why that that cap they already had one in place but we didn't revisit it on that one so that's why this is a little bit different on that one but you are correct it's it's directly related to that parking account and then this can be answered offline what are the what are the concerns for the petitioner let's say they just have a fantastic weekend and 300 people show up but they're not exceeding the parking and they're not creating more traffic is there there's no violation otherwise will we be into a building code violation like i'm i'm just stuck on the 240 because i'm just trying to figure out like once you hit 241 sorry i can't let you in because we're stuck and as a pastor we would never turn away anybody who was coming uh to church on a sunday so just trying to figure out what the what the thing is and you can answer me offline uh because i don't i don't think it it's uh we have to take up the time tonight to talk through it but i'm just stopped we can certainly get back to you okay thanks other questions or comments go ahead commissioner gibrandall yeah a couple of things um i'm fine with not doing the depressed island i know it's been sort of a tricky thing but there's been a lot of projects that have had to do this and i know it's kind of a tricky thing in our code i do have a grading question and that is as i'm looking at the grading plan it looks weirdly steep in the parking lot as you get close to the new building in terms of the cross slopes and things like that where some of those parking spots are and i'm assuming that you're fighting the finish floor elevation of the proposed building how it connects to the existing building and how to be able to get ada access into that but if i'm looking at this based on sort of the typical dimension of a parking spot because i don't have a scale on my screen it looks like those grades are pretty steep like one on 12 or one on 15 or something like that which seems um pretty tricky to uh park in for those spaces where this parking lot suddenly kind of uh comes up to be able to meet the new addition um so i'm presuming that engineering looked at all this but it's just a little it's a little funky in terms of how a parking lot would normally be graded um so it's something that i'm i'm just wondering about um and it looks like you're trying to kind of figure out where i'm talking about um yeah i know but you can kind of guesstimate basically i don't expect you to say it's exactly you know one on 11.2 or something like that but if you just look at the scale of the parking spot you look at the distance between those contours between the 922 923 and 924 it just seems like the parking lot like rises very suddenly in front of that that addition and i'm just wondering like what is that going to be like for people walking from the rest of the parking lot up to this area especially given that there isn't a sidewalk along that um southeastern edge of the parking lot and kind of how you see that all functioning for just the reality of people getting there on a icy morning or um or whatever so that's i guess my my first question i'd be glad to help answer that um if uh um the reason that it's very flat at the very um southern corner of the parking lot is because of those uh barrier-free spaces um and and then um we set the building floor elevation to match the existing church um because eventually when they can afford to fire suppress the existing church we may connect the two um that's you know way in the future um so the whole the whole reason why the parking lot is is as steep in that area is just like you were saying is just to try to match what the existing grade was while we were able to make the ada compliant spaces so those had to be less than two percent and so in order to um tie in the had to be the rest of that portion of the parking lot had to be steeper um it's it's not it's about about one in you know the if i've got the scale and everything right um i mean you're right it's about one and 12 so it'll probably it would be about um eight percent through there um which you know it's a matter of balancing um the budget with the church and trying not to reconstruct the whole parking lot right it's it just seems to me that it's like and again i know you've come this far and this really i'm assuming should be kind of thought about at the engineering review level not necessarily at this level but i guess i just questioned like it seems like some more spaces should have been demoed in order to smooth that grade out so that it's not so i just i just hope that the client understands what it's going to feel like there to park in some of those spaces which is essentially like an ada ramp and you're parked sideways on it i mean it's going to those those spots are going to be really um out just outside of those ada spots it's going to be really steep um so it's like just you know again like this is probably not the time to take this sort of thing up but i it's it's just worth making sure that everybody understands what they're doing yeah because it just i think that's really hard for people to get you know what i mean just in terms of looking at plans and that you know it may make sense to make some of those into a parking lot island or something that can take up the grade more easily than somebody parked and your door just like swings open really wildly you know on one side and is really hard to push open on the other side you know so um i guess this is something to think about in terms of the design and how it feels um i think that i really like actually the the whole sharing of the parking with the facility across the street i think that i wish more um we had more agreements like that i think it's a really creative way to deal with um parking overflows so that you know especially facilities that are just used really heavily on certain days uh come you know um and working that with other facilities that have different kind of uses um and when their peak demand is so i'm really glad to see that i do not want to see just like a ginormous parking lot here when there's and you have a walkway and all those kinds of things i think that's great uh so i'm very supportive of that variance going through and and working that out um uh even though it doesn't quite comply i'm i'm completely supportive of that obviously that's going to be up to the zba how to figure that one out um so uh generally speaking i think this makes sense um i'm i and this is not really our jurisdiction i'm a little surprised there's so few windows at the ground level for the side that faces the parking lot on the street feels pretty harsh it's like these little tiny windows up at the top and it seems like a big gathering area like that you'd want to have some openness to it but you know again that's to each his own in terms of how you would want to design that space um unless you're kind of using it as a uh you know basketball court space in the future for recreation or something like that where you really don't want to have windows but it seems just a little a little harsh from the pedestrian side even though i know there's not a lot of pedestrian you know view of this it just feels a little brutal to just have these little tiny high windows along the side that is the kind of welcoming to the parking lot uh facade of it um but again that's not that's not really our um our place to you know govern any of that it just seems a little seems a little harsh to me um so generally speaking i'm in support of this uh one thing i am not in support of is only doing the four ev spots i feel like it would be really straightforward for you all to be able to add the required spots by simply extending the electric line along that southeast edge of the parking lot there's no sidewalk you have to tear up there's no nothing it just doesn't seem to me that there's anything obvious in the way of being able to supply that there and i think it's just the way that we want to go it's part of the regulation that we have and i've i feel strongly that that um i think you all should comply with that standard that we have because it really doesn't look to me like a heavy lift in terms of how you would deal with um reconstructing the parking lot because it's not like you have to um change things up there's again there's not a lot of infrastructure you'd have to rip up in order to be able to put that in so i think that that's the one part of the petition that i do not support in the way that it is otherwise i'm supportive of it i appreciate your comments shannon and we will look at that grading i know more of the parking lot ended up um being disturbed because of the utilities so we could it wouldn't take much more to to push that grading out that's why i was thinking that storm line is also you know getting cut out there and by just extending it a couple more spaces you might be able to make it work a little bit more gently for users mr leonard you raised your hand earlier i wanted did you want to jump in here yeah um i just wanted to touch on that last conversation between the petitioner and commissioner randall um i wanted to i don't want to i don't think it makes sense for us to redesign that portion here at the table but um it sounds uh it sounds like there might be generally support about improving that and i was just gonna say that as because we've got a little bit of time because of the variances that they will be seeking um we matt and the petitioner could work to see if they want to reconsider that and i would we'd be of course happy as the site plan progress progresses to city council just to acknowledge that there was some modifications from the version that the planning commission saw in response to a concern raised about the grade for those particular spots so um timing you know there's a lot of steps for this one but that would provide an opportunity for conversation between the petitioner and the city to just perhaps make some modifications at worst nothing happens but we can highlight that if there's an evolution before it goes to city council other questions or comments i will chime in that i too am uh very happy and heartened to see the lease with the neighboring property and not expanding the parking on this particular site um i think that's that makes wise use of existing infrastructure and appreciate that uh your congregants are walking across the street um it's not that far of a walk and also that there's there's the pedestrian infrastructure to allow for that so um i think that that's um i i'd love to see more of that um again this highlights among the things that we've been talking in orc about looking at our parking standards so like this is just another example of um both kind of howard folks who are i think doing the you know parking lot sharing things that we want to see um have to go through extra hoops right now to get that approved and so i think that's helpful and also um i uh on the ev parking i'm interested to see kind of what the um the zba has to say about that i think that this is one where spaces that are clearly disturbed i think um uh it makes sense to rebuild it with this i'm not sure how much of it is actually not so i believe that that's not our jurisdiction anyway that's going to be in zba's hands um but i i think that that's another one where um kind of looking at what our standard is for ev parking and when it's required um i think is uh is one of the things that's on our work plan too um mr leonard yes yeah uh regarding the ev parking there's been a couple comments on that and i would i just wanted to point out that it is an application that would ultimately decide be decided by the zoning board of appeals but you have some um your decision can be relative to that as well so right now this plan would require as presented to require that variance being granted alternatively you could add a condition to your site plan approval that recommends that the plan be modified to fully meet the ev ordinance again i wouldn't design it here but that would be a condition that would direct the petitioners and staff to work on adding those to be fully compliant to to the ordinance so um in either circumstance the zba that i want to be clear if the zba grants a variance you adding that condition to this likelihood doesn't eliminate the possibility of them seeking a variance or the variance being granted and a subsequent plan then being compliant but it is a way of in a way of messaging i think from the planning commission's perspective is if if that is of interest i guess i mean this is this has come up with churches like i mean many of the times where we've seen this it's been associated with church uses um i'm curious uh maybe it's that i don't quite understand it and um what part of the parking lot is being rebuilt more or less i mean clearly there's there's spots that commissioner gibb randall picked up in the grading plan those are currently not at that slope so um can you do you have some if go ahead ms dickinson i'd be glad to share my screen again if that would be helpful that would be helpful okay so oops how does it say we saw it and then it's yeah okay you saw it now you can't right all right share stream i've got the right um okay yep we got it okay excellent so um the darker shaded areas right in here are the portions of the parking lot that are being repaved so this is concrete down here but this is all um asphalt here and this is mainly because the existing barrier-free spots were over um two percent so they were not compliant um and so we um made that you know leveled that out and um and then some of these are because of the utilities coming across so um the steep grades are right in these this area that that shannon spoke of so what i was thinking is that maybe we can bring it down to this far a couple more spots um parking spaces and um i'm not seeing a cursor i'm not either thank you i'm sorry there we go yep now we see it all right so she talks about her steep spots where um right here okay so this is not the grading point that that was not part of the presentation i can no that's totally fine but reading that would be hard yeah okay yes so um what i was thinking is that if we since now we have this utility coming through and and these utilities is why this part of the pavement is now coming out so if we brought this down further we could make this pavement be less steep so in the end maybe we'll be reconstructing the parking lot out to this edge so all along here but i i would like to be able to take this moment to say that required per the ordinance based on the 240 seating capacity we'd be required to install eight ev parking spaces have ready eight more and then have capable 12 more of that so a total of 28 spaces so that would be you know more than just this line of parking it would be that whole line of parking and these over here probably just wanted to mention that and from my perspective again while you're i think thank you very much for sharing that um i um defer to kind of commissioner gibrandal whether uh you were feeling strongly i i am comfortable with saying the part that's disturbed like um not requiring tearing up any more than what is already under kind of under construction but there's quite a few there's more than four spaces that are going to be affected by this and so installing more than you know including ev infrastructure and more than four seems to me to make sense and is in the spirit of kind of where we were you know not requiring tearing up things unnecessarily but if things are already being torn up to install that infrastructure there but i um i welcome other commissioners thoughts on that and ms dickinson did you have more to add in terms of yeah i just wanted to say that also what shannon was saying is that that whole length of parking spaces on that south edge there's no um sidewalk underneath it so that's what she meant is that we could add more chargers without having to tear up pavement or sidewalk thank you yeah and it's also putting the conduit in to be eevee capable evie ready is super that should not be onerous there um it's my understanding too other commissioners have thoughts on this or other i don't feel super strong i mean ultimately i feel like the zba has in their analysis in the past in these situations has done this sort of analysis and so to some extent i um trust kind of the balancing that they um think through on this um but i um would welcome others thoughts on this issue or others go ahead commissioner abrams uh just a question about procedures so the the if if we were to vote to approve the site plan this evening that approval is contingent on the variances being approved but if the zba wanted to kind of counter offer which is what i think you're indicating you know chairmills that like there's a there might be a kind of negotiation uh or are we offering a kind of middle ground negotiation i guess what i'm wondering is like if it's not if they deny it then the site plan is denied and then the petitioner comes back here again with something that they think they can get through zba i i would say that if the if the variance was denied i don't think it would be a substantive change to the layout it would be that would mean that the plan would likely be modified before it progressed to city council and it couldn't be approved by city council at that point as meeting the standards unless all of that eb parking was provided um so does the zba have the authority to uh negotiate a compromise variance no they don't they they don't but but one of the standards that is utilized in considering a variance is is this the minimum variance necessary in order to um it to be granted for um matt you probably have the rest of that language more than i do but so oftentimes it's it's it's not a negotiation but oftentimes they're they respond to something and they might sort of go back to the petitioner and say this doesn't feel like the minimum variance that's necessary and it it might appear a bit as a back and forth but it really is sort of bearing out that particular variant standard about what is a reasonable uh variance and what is the minimum exception from the code that would be warranted based on the conditions that's a long way of saying it can be modified from the ask but it it's it's not quite as simple back and forth the only thing i would just add to that is they will have we will provide them a copy of these plans including like that grading plan that shows the disturbance um limits within that parking lot so that's kind of part part of that report and part of the information that the zba will be able to um take in as well as part of their discus uh decision making okay i'm not sure how to do this in a clean way because there's a little there's a there's a lot of kind of like if then scenarios here i think and kind of interdependencies but if there was some way for us to communicate that we would like there to to be as much easy parking accommodated as reasonably possible given parking lot disturbances or something like that i would support that my instinct in that circumstance is actually to let the variance process play out um i i i think sort of like i mean it's possible that you could add a condition that says conditioned upon a variance not to exceed something but i think again that decision is the zoning board of appeals i guess my advice to the planning commission would be either to acknowledge that they are presenting a plan that is shy of the standards and recognizing that they will have to be successful to the zoning board of appeals in order to be able to build this plan or a version of it alternatively i would say that your direction to them would be no this is appropriate given the scale of the parking lot impact and the like it should fully comply with our ordinance that's the intention um i guess the risk there is that the they that this variant is approved and this we feel that this falls far short of what could be reasonably accommodated but but again with all due respect to the planning commission's perspective at that at that point the zoning board of fields has rendered a decision and a plan that doesn't that shows compliance with that decision would be fully compliant with city ordinances at that point right hmm okay it feels like a little bit of a conundrum but i'm gonna let others weigh in i appreciate you working through the conundrum commissioner abrams because that's what was that was clearly my inarticulateness was showing that that was a similar conundrum in my head commissioner dish i think i want to just register some discomfort um around what's happening with the eevee parking ordinance and i think we need to be consistent and um it appears we've we've got an ordinance with a problem and so it goes to the cba and there's an impression of negotiation and give and take and that's not that doesn't seem quite the way that's supposed to work so um i i don't i'm i don't know if i feel as strongly as commissioner gabrandal to say you should just comply given the conditions of this site it is compact there's a considerable amount being dug up there's not obstacles to the eevee ready um provision really because you don't have to dig anything up to do that so in you know from a sustainability perspective it makes sense there isn't a whole lot of concrete being disturbed et cetera but i don't well yeah so um yeah i'm concerned just that we're seeing too many of these there's there's too much wiggling um obviously i don't want to call for a moratorium on new development until we work out the ev ordinance but i'm a little concerned and so i don't know if that if the best way to deal with my concern is to say no please comply we don't think it's unreasonable or if it's just to let the variance process and us not try to influence it just let the variance process play itself out i'm not sure which is the better way to make this clean and principled um as opposed to fuzzy and conditional mr leonard yeah i appreciate this and so i just want to add you know from staff's perspective we've presented you a recommendation that we would we would advise letting the zoning board of appeal process play out um but i fully acknowledge i totally agree with commissioner dish your comments and i can [Music] during reports uh commissioner mills commented that we were looking at some aspects of the parking ordinance trying to write right size write apply find the right triggers for ev parking is part of that proposed so i i just want to confirm that i hear your concerns i think i think others on the commission have shared those concerns so i do think we have some work to do as it relates to those standards um given that i think that approaching it in this way is it perhaps imperfect but it is consistent with the way that we have addressed it with some of the other recent petitions commissioner lee thank you um i i just want a second commissioner dish's commenter um that your consistency seems to be pretty key here especially since we've had churches with a very similar request for our feedback and just certification for the petitioner what drove that decision just to try and seek a variance um i just want to flat out ask what's the feedback and what what was it cost i'm just trying to get an understanding of what drove it so that's a question for the petitioner i think we have to answer it first and then maybe the building expansion committee may want to add to what i have to say but i know that we looked at the amount of time that people spend at the church and we looked at how many full-time employees are there and we took that into account as to um you know who would actually drive a car and plug in long enough to uh to charge um so i think a church is a kind of a different animal than um uh the residence or an office sure yeah um you know so a shopping mall even um you know shopping mall restaurant church you you normally go when you're there for an hour um two at the max maybe if there's a social gathering as well um so that's that's what we were looking at and and of course cost comes into it um they're expensive and then they need to be maintained as well so um those were the two uh large reasons why we felt that a variance should be requested yeah if i may just to add a little bit i think uh mr dickerson sum up our logic pretty well because on average for our people to attend church they go to church twice a week maybe one on fellowship night one during sunday morning they go there probably spend no more than two hours and for the ev parking that city require us for the class 2 it will take four to six hours to charge a car and so we just don't i mean we we we recognize city of bangkok's intention to be carbon neutron and i really think that's a great idea but for a church facility to put all those infrastructure for that kind of utilization um we just don't think that's a that's a very proper and then you have a long-term call maintenance and all that you might we might end up spending more energy to maintain those parkings charging station then utilize them so i think that's the fundamental reason that we are seeking for the cba zba gotcha um well thank you for that feedback um as i said before i think consistency and then not trying to be uh spurious about our decisions um is probably critical here so um i'll be in favor of this essentially kind of in a um as is fashion uh but i do want to say we as a board should remain consistent in our decision making so um but thank you for the feedback that's very helpful and i think we probably need to take a more careful look at the ev ordnance as a whole based on uses and making sure that it's not a one size fits all so thank you other comments or questions about the petition commissioner weich sorry i'm still stuck i've been reading uh udc and so forth trying to get my head around this thank you brad i know you you're excited by that um so the two questions there are questions question number one if the church needs to expand their seating capacity without changing the footprint of the building that would be a building code but it would be a violation of the special exemption use and so then how does that get resolved they would need a modification to the special exception and that would come back to the planning commission to approve which would require a new site plan but you know one i guess one question for the petitioner and the team is i don't i guess i don't know what that 240 size is if that anticipates any future growth or if that is the maximum capacity now um i i um so so that's one question but then i would if if if the planning commission is coming at it from a perspective of you want to provide more flexibility to them in the future without that step i would say i would say given the conversation here about the parking variants in a way it's pretty flexible to alter that number here at the table then the corresponding variance has to change it might increase the ask of variance which i would say could have an impact on his own board of appeals you know that minimum required set same standard but i i would just say that i don't i don't know that there's a downside at this point if you wanted to increase it if they didn't have any sort of growth projection within that um because the variance could follow um but it they would have to be connected because right now unless parking and minimums are eliminated at some future date we do have that nexus at this point because really the seating capacity is related to the parking it's not actually related to the site they could put 500 people inside that footprint but because we expect those 500 people to come in 500 cars that is the restriction and just honestly it doesn't make any sense i mean just for all intents and purposes and i wish we could approve this without the maximum of the seating because if they exceed the seating capacity then it incurs additional charges or fees for them to come into compliance that's that that is my agenda is to just say if there's some way for us to get rid of that part while they stay in compliance with the udc so that they don't have to come back to this table when they get to 300 and say you know because people could arrive by foot they can arrive by car they could come via a lift like i don't even want to get into the ev conversation because i feel like that constrains us to using a car as the infrastructure and i think that's bad i i would say let's not put that permanent infrastructure in place let's find a way for people to be able to treat this neighborhood net good which is how they get this special exception use as a neighborhood net good there are thousands of residents who could walk here and now we're saying because we only expect you to drive you've got to tick all these boxes and i know we're in the midst of all this change right now but they're at the table and i don't want them to come back to the table at a cost of ten thousand dollars a time that they have to come to the table and i know that's not the actual costs so don't get stuck there [Laughter] thank you commissioner uh mills or chairman i guess to if maybe the petitioner could address where did that number come from do you have a growth factor in that from sort of your current occupancy plans yes uh the 240 is expecting future growth uh right now our capacity capacity is 138 if i i'm not mistaken and that's within a 160 su and for the foreseeable future we are not planning to increase or expand our sanctuary uh but as we are building this um uh this second building we do ex foresee that maybe in the future we could grow a little bit so that's why we and also uh i appreciate a commissioner which uh think us through that we that's actually there's also a city planner recommendation for us to foresee the future growth and increase seo at this moment so the 240 is already already factory in the future groups uh um just if if parking minimums are re removed as our transportation plan supports then you will see less of those limitations in the future um because that nexus has been sort of broken or that not nexus the connection between parking and occupancy has been broken so you will see less of that just following in on that if we were to strike right now any limitation on capacity so it's unlimited capacity which means they would be required to provide a multiple of unlimited parking i mean is that the is that the reason that we have to provide a cap is to is is providing the cab just to calculate the parking it's because yeah because that's a code requirement that we have to measure and evaluate this plan against so that's why we've picked that number so we can measure it against a standard it's not meeting it that gives us a variance standard that they could potentially seek to apply for or provide it through a permanent easement elsewhere or develop that additional propaganda site so the short answer is yes because without that standard establishing the requirement we can't conclude that the cyclone meets our udc requirements further indication of why the stuff that we're doing at orc and dealing with this both the ev side and the like parking minimums is super urgent important commissioner clark then commissioner good randall yeah i just i commissioner had some really interesting points that i just would like to explore in the long term and um you know innovative things that they potentially be doing like running shuttles to where maybe their communities might have a majority of residents there's all sorts of things and i just wanted to back up that i thought that uh a question or why she made some really outstanding kind of bigger picture and um questions and that was really helpful this discussion commissioner gabriel correct me if i'm wrong and this is something that commissioner survey probably knows more about than me but i mean there are other limitations on the buildings we can't just put a thousand people in i mean there's fire code there's all kinds of it's not as wide open as it's not only parking people there's numbers of bathrooms there's all kinds of things so don't quite make such a direct connection with that it's not only that there are all kinds of other things that have an impact on that too um so clearly that's the main thing that we govern in in terms of what we can control but there's all kinds of other things that would come into play to limit that we can't just have a thousand people in there without there being serious fire hazard you know going on and things like that i would imagine um i think the uh i don't know and i don't have the the ordinance in my head enough to understand the kind of assembly use that is here and how that relates to what our to what our kind of triggers are for numbers i think it's a compelling argument about a church and just the amount of time that people spend there and the likelihood of them charging and i think that's a really good point um i don't know enough i just don't remember enough about how the ordinance is structured clearly i think there needs to be some fine-tuning with some of that because i think that's a compelling argument but i also feel like you know a lot of people do drive and we can't just like throw out this whole thing that we've got and i feel like some of this like i think that again it's pretty low-hanging fruit to run some pvc pipe along that southeast side and make it for the future able to be able to let that happen you know and and again we can have you know the ones that are like av ready compared to ev capable to you know all those kinds of things i mean clearly the ones you're building out the whole infrastructure for that's a really expensive part and that's a maintenance part but i feel like we should just be careful about saying oh no big deal let's just put in four spots and this is our chance people they're not gonna go back you know i mean and this is it like we're really trying to there's there's so if anything there's so few areas that we actually have any control of the planning commission and this is one of them and i just feel like we shouldn't just completely toss it out with this i feel like it needs to be fine-tuned i i also completely understand the argument of you know let's be consistent and things like that and and i would hope that the zba can right size this and understand it i don't know that again whether it's negotiation or not but from the kind of constructability side of it i would love to see some spots that are dedicated and a whole bunch of spots that would be able to be converted um for for the future while they're ripping the place up and putting down conduit and sticking underneath that whole line of sidewalk that they've got and and making it capable of that for the future so that's kind of my sense is that it gets right sized for the actual staff that are there the people that are really spending time there and thinking about it that way but making the kind of easy um really cheap frankly like putting in the putting in the conduit so that it can happen for the future um so that's kind of where i am right now again it sounds like we don't have a ton of if there's any again we don't have any dual appointment right now between planning commission and zba which is part of where these things like we would want that to be translated i don't know how you know i don't know if they read our reports or not in terms of in terms of that stuff um but uh i guess that that's kind of where i'm landing right now is is right sizing it for the the use that's there in terms of the permanent spots that are actively available and then doing the kind of while the places ripped up the easy conduit that makes it possible for the future that's where i am right now with me um and really pretty much just along that southeast side and i think that that would make me feel comfortable within the jurisdiction that we have mr leonard and then commissioner clark yeah i am just absent a duly appointed member i just want to be clear mr kowalski will be following this petition to the zoning board appeals so he will be able to bring the dialogue that happens here even with without that um and um and i would you know and i i would say um we can um we can also sort of uh sort of calling the shot a little bit uh me and mr kowalski can follow up with the petitioners in advance of that zoning board of appeals application and explore some of these ideas with them as well and and and you know i think the petitioners hearing this conversation from the planning commission we certainly are as well we can explore with them how we can potentially push that their current plan maybe it is you know really focusing more on the infrastructure so it's future proofing that so we can work with them to try to you know um can work with them in advance of it appearing to the zoning board of appeals to rights right sizes it to the best way we can from an agreeable nature between the petitioner and also staff and i um based on the comments i've heard it seems like they'd be really open to sort of that dialogue so mr kowalski you wanted to jump in here too yeah sorry that jump ahead of commissioner clark sorry about that um i just want to add on to that what mr lawrence said regarding we do you know i do construct a new staff report that does go to the zba for petitions like this that are site plan related i will be the one writing that report just like i did for the grace bible um petition so you can i mean if if you want to see some of what you know we can go back and look at that one as well so we do relay these concerns just like we did uh for grace bible you can see a lot of the planet commissioner we had the the notations in there and you know these concerns were were mentioned here so um i just wanted to add to that that it there is that separate report but in addition we do also um you know include the planning staff report but but more importantly the concerns that we hear here tonight are summarized within that report commissioner clark this will be really brief i just want to say i just want to make sure that like you know i feel like the um church probably knows their constituents better than anybody else and they probably will know their means of transit to and from and i want to be sure that we're not imposing our kind of views about what we think the future is going to be like with the electrical vehicles and um that does kind of seem like the church's business to handle the future and i'm i i guess it's like one meeting so i might not be expressing myself perfectly clearly here but um i just want to make sure that we're kind of considering these things on a more holistic level um maybe taking these conversations onto like you know like we've mentioned a few times revisiting these policies and maybe even looking at things like electric bike charging and stuff like that which in an area like this where there's a lot of dense housing i could see the electric bikes being a much more um reasonable expectation and again that's a bigger picture policy issue but i feel like this when it comes down to the site they know their constituents they're going to be the ones bearing the cost of the future if they decide that they do want to install these electric vehicle parkings and i don't think it's really us up to us to like be prescriptive on that um when it's you know they know their constituents they know their population there's a good chance that people aren't driving just one person per car there's all sorts of considerations a lot of people in their church might not even have cars so um i just i want to make sure that we're really considering these things and the special exception um to me seems fairly reasonable at this stage but um that's just my view any other comments mr leonard i think we're ready for a roll call vote and we can take all three site plan landscape modification special exception together that is the clarification i was hoping for commissioner dish yes commissioner lee yes commissioner clark yes commissioner weich yes commissioner mills yes commissioner gabrandal yes commissioner solvay yes commissioner abrams yes commissioner hammerschmidt yes motion's currently unanimously very good all right good luck at zba and with city council thank you very much all right um item 9a in our other business is the approval of the notice of intent to plan for an update to the city of ann arbor parks and recreation open space plan we call that the pros plan um before i guess we don't have a public hearing on this so i just effectively introduced it and i think we move it and then we will have just mr leonard there's no person like you're not giving a presentation no no um you you covered it uh this is the first step in an update to the city's comprehensive plan the pros plan sort of is dual purpose it is typically adapted as a component of our comprehensive plan it also provides a more focused obviously attention to our park system and it also meets some requirements for potential eligibility for different state funding opportunities uh and the like so it is a routine process i think it's every five years four or five years five years um now that i think it happened about the same time with the city and uh this um while frankly the parks and recreation department will be leading most of that work because it is adopted as a comprehensive plan we take the first step and we notify adjacent jurisdictions that hey we are intending to update our parks and recreation open space plan if you're interested in it let us know we will keep you apprised of progress and status and opportunities for engagement and then you may recall as recently done with the transportation plan at the tail end of that process we share the plan with those same jurisdictions saying this is what we came up with if you have any comments please share them before it is ultimately adopted all right if there are questions about that once we've moved it we can have that discussion but i appreciate that that introduction um can can we move would uh commissioner please move this move by commissioner dish second by commissioner white so now if you have questions or want to discuss the notice of intent to plan this is the time i just have a small correction which is that the second paragraph is a repeat sentence of the second sentence of the first paragraph sorry i see the second sentence i noticed that actually while i was reading through this before during the meeting and since i write and since i i wrote that letter i have to have to make sure thank you make sure you don't have any typos commissioner abrams secretary abrams my reputation sorry your secretarial staff let you down secretary any other discussion all right um i think we can do just do a voice vote all those in favor of the motion please say yes or raise a hand those are all of the hands uh the motion carries so next is revisions to uh uh this is 9b revisions to the planning commissioner planning commission meeting calendar mr leonard you want to walk us through the revisions yeah the this is a update to our schedule there are three changes unless you don't get through this you have gotten through all your business we have no public hearing scheduled for the december 21st meeting so this schedule would have the impact of canceling that meeting it also makes two adjustments to meetings in 2022 uh the first adjusts uh the meeting from uh 118 to 121 because meetings that week are being moved back for the martin luther king holiday and then there is a may special election on may 4th so we are moving to may 5th to not overlap any election are you sure it's that's a friday uh i was just looking up the very same thing i kind of think it's 20.
i'm sorry sorry hold on it says 20 in the schedule that we were given yes i'm sorry i just put 21 in my notes it should be the 20th and then i'm sorry the other the other one i was so stuck on the friday that uh they're is being moved for the standard may election in the event that there is a special election in may um then that would be off offset i don't um honestly know if there is one but we're accommodating for it okay the council meeting has been moved for it so you're also moving okay so the first is a move to a thursday the second is a move to a wednesday that's correct yeah all right and the third is a cancellation great um thank you for introducing that can we move it and then we can ask if there are any other questions um moved by commissioner hammerschmidt seconded by commissioner lee any other discussion of this or clarifications all right all those in favor of the amended meeting calendar please raise your hand that's everybody um i'm sorry who moved in second did that i miss hammer schmidt and lee thank you that's right okay thank you um next is item 10 audience participation this is an opportunity for persons to speak for up to three minutes about any item of interest if you wish to address the planning commission at this time please press star 9 if you're listening by phone or use the raised hand feature if you're viewing through the web link for phone access our number is 877-853-5247 and our meeting id is 977 6634 1226.
mr leonard will call on those who have raised their hand calling on you by the last three digits of your telephone number or by the name that is available if you are joining through the web link and i'm going to stretch this out since there's no one joining us right now but we do have the tv delay um also to say that when we are in person i'm i will let my mind forget this phone number because it's the same blessedly it's the same one all the time uh you um hopefully not because we um are one of two bodies along with city council who are going to be piloting the ability for the public to still participate remotely even though all of you will be in person that is right so we will continue to invite people to the podium and also to invite people to call in great that was thank you for reminding me nobody's calling in no speakers no speakers okay so um we'll move on to item 11 which is commission proposed business is there any commissioner uh just a quick question about our uh eventual move into the council chamber given that i never started in the council chamber um uh where do we ask the questions is there how does parking happen if i'm not biking um what's the ventilation situation going to be like and are we still under a mask mandate and then i also wanted to apologize to you chair mills for using the wrong honorific when i was cutting myself off so i apologize uh for that uh improper use of your honorific um i'm super you can be very informal i appreciate that um that's okay honor honorifics matter you you all have spent a lot of time achieving the things you have achieved and i want to use the right ones and i apologize that i did not i can take a stab at that if you do not ride your bike or take the bus thank you for your contributions to our parking system um if uh um so that means we're paying for our own parking yeah okay but it's it's free if you can find it it's the finding the street parking yeah um i'm not gonna tell you where i ate so far as as far as um as far as ventilation um i i'll have to follow up with you i am not aware of specific changes to city hall's ventilation but they have um recently actually cleaned out the ventilation of the duct system which my understanding had not been done for some time so um that work is either completed or scheduled to be completed shortly i i'm happy to follow up with any more details if i can learn about that anybody in city hall must be masked whether you are staff public boards commissions and the like um i think at this point most of you may have received a communication from boards and commissions that in-person boards and conventions also have to demonstrate their vaccine status or seek an exemption from the city so if you haven't followed up on that process please make sure you do that before our january meetings as well [Music] so i guess out of all that i don't have the best answer to the ventilation system but i'll see what i can provide as a follower if you could just ask about um air filters if that is a possibility as well so that we can just bring that in especially because we'll have the public addressing the commission and even though people will be wearing mass i don't know if there's enforcement for masking because some people wear their masks as a chin guard and not over their nose and mouth so i don't know how that that's going to be managed sure and i would also i would also say because you haven't had in-person meetings there's there's a fair amount of physical separation as well between the public and the commission um at meetings but um it is airborne it's like smoke so once it's in a space it's in a space so it's not about droplets or uh distance it's really about what's in the air so those are those are my questions so yep know i'll find out on that um i see you commissioner clark but while i'm thinking of it if if this is part of my duties um of mask enforcement uh some pointers on how that works i am in front of a classroom i've never had to enforce a mask requirement because everybody has been in compliance but i welcome thoughts on how that is proceeding um commissioner clarke um that's the question i don't know we'll have like an answer immediately but i'm just curious if there's any accommodations or hearing um i sometimes rely on um watching people's like bringing whatever to get a full you know um understanding what they're saying and i was just hoping that there might be i don't know how like captioning could work or like so like later on i can go to reviews you know see but i'm just worried about um my ability to like uh follow along so i don't know it's a tricky question and so i'm not expecting like a miracle answer or whatever um it's just some things are on the radar yeah captioning is done for city meetings um you're finding the best way for you to access that while you are at the dyess i don't know that answer let me explore that and figure out the best way but um the the service is there i don't like i said though i don't know the best way to get that to you at worst it might be um you uh utilizing a personal laptop and just sort of keeping the live feed up on your laptop and with that caption service but there is a delay there as commissioner mills is often referred to so that could be challenging as well but let me let me explore that as well the best way to get that service to you and even like a microphone inside the mast or something it could even help a bit but just just get out of your sd i know that's a tricky one so yeah and microphones are used in the council chambers so yeah so um at a minimum um sometimes we all um commissioners and myself have to be reminded to actually make sure that they're speaking close to them uh but um um so that might help but i'll i'll see also how i can explore maybe the best way to get that closed captioning service uh to your spot on the dice thank you commissioner lee just really quick i just want to say i can't wait to actually meet you guys in person so like master on that so i'm really looking forward to it i won't be there on the fourth i noticed um i'll be out of state i think i sent you guys an email but i just can't wait to actually meet you one person so sorry silly commissioner business up and that's about it we'll see how tall everybody is like this is the thing that is yeah uh any other well anything else about meeting in person because the next time well next week we will gather together in a um for our working session but after that the next time that we will all be together will be in person yeah and um you know the uh we will be we will be advertising the meeting much like we traditionally did we will be providing the virtual comment option at this point just for our public participation at this point i we are not extending that to staff or petitioners yet we could explore that in the future but that's where we're starting just with public participation um i will say that we are there i think there will be a learning curve um i think it um at the city has done a great job in sort of preparing us for this we will probably be noticing that if you want to make sure that you have access to provide public comment providing comments in writing or attending the meeting is probably the most sure-fire way because there could be technical difficulties but um so i i just want to acknowledge that we will be trying to qualify that but our we are fully intending to get this successful as quickly and operational as possible so it's just to say i'm sure there will be some adjustments as we learn sort of back and forth to in person and going to a virtual comment and um at this point i think it's going to show up in audio in the room and you're only going to see it on the televisions in the back of the room um so um bear with us as we um fine-tune this and and you as the planning commission and the city council are the other um you are going to be the sort of guinea pigs to see what application this might have for others commissioner hammerschmidt um are we are are we intending for working sessions in orc to also be in person like the basement conference room yeah and i think um so i've i've just actually recently had this conversation with the attorney's office and they recommend that the planning commission and all of its impertinent committees should be in person because those actions could be leading to i think when we're talking about the working session and the orc in the basement conference room i think it is going to be a little bit different dynamic um i i think that is going to be probably some starting probably with some adjustment just to how we set up physically for the commission um um i i i don't know exactly how i'm going to do it but i think we'll probably start sort of more separate but in that is such a smaller room seeing what the comfort level how how what comfort we have or concerns we have about that um that i think is frankly going to be a little bit more challenging from of a physical distance but that's also the reason we meet there is because the nature of those meetings or see in the working session lend themselves to a little bit more collaborative and frankly intimate kind of dialogue so um they will be in person um um and will i think it's going to be sort of on us to sort of figure out our comfort level with that arrangement i wasn't even thinking about that but thank you i was actually more thinking like like you know we have public comment at those as well are people are we going to try to figure out how to are people going to have to like physically come and then that would probably make me slightly uncomfortable because that is for people you're cramming into that room yeah that will probably require people to physically come because the way we're going to be able to be accommodate virtual comments is through some work of ctn and sort of bringing that feed into the room at this point i don't know that we'll have the ability to do that in the conference rooms just through the computer versus the ctn feed so that i think that will be a challenge we're gonna have to be really cognizant of separation masking in those circumstances yeah this will be an interesting test yeah and it i i would say ultimately if we decide that we're not uncomfortable that what we might have to do is explore alternative meeting times where um you know as as it is we were sort of balancing um for example igpak and orc meet at the same time and both were sort of interested in using the basement room we work with them to sort of move them to the council chambers where because it's more of a public-facing meeting it's televised and alike but at some point we're going to have to find our comfort with the orc for example and being in that smaller room and if we're not for some reason we might have to explore alternative locations to accommodate them commissioner weich just a real quick one um can we bring our personal laptops to use at the dios or okay yeah most people do yeah yeah perfect thank you yeah the only uh the screens at the dios are actually sort of a public speed and they're distorted for some reason so like all the site plans end up stretched oddly so most people just use their laptop other commission proposed business i just want to note that i'm hoping mr leonard that in the next time orc meets or talks about parking that we are reminded of the things that came up tonight um less important about kind of the minimum i think that that is not at all in conflict with the kind of this the things that we had been discussing but i think um ideas about uh edits to the eevee ordinance specifically just for everybody's benefit one of the things that the last just or see was discussing whether we should not have three categories whether whether installed and kind of capable like kind of get rid of the ready category might go away um so kind of simplification but also what i heard was what are the multipliers according to kind of how long people expect to be there um so if we can just carry those along and just for everybody's benefit too like to remind people right now like this is going to become less relevant if council actually passes the thing that what past that first reading last i think that you said it was last night council member dish because um right now they only comply with the ev ordinance if the site plan goes to city council for approval and there's very few things that will go on to city council for approval in the new situation other than rezonings is that fair so um there's well that's another reason why we've got a we've got to do something because it lost its trigger like the stormwater lost its trigger so exactly exactly somebody jumped in along the way commissioner abrams no okay it's not important okay anything else all right item 12 is adjournment all moved by commissioner abrams seconded by commissioner sovay all in favor please say i'll raise a hand that's everybody's hands good thank night