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public employee discipline dismissal release reassignment transfer leave tited certificated and classified employees item 4 public employee appointment resignation retirement reduction title certificated and classified employees item five conference labor negotiator agency negotiator dustin conrad b employee organization apple valley unified teachers association hello employee organization unrepresented eight conference with real property negotiator government code 549 56.8 a negotiation parties matthew schulenburg apoval unified school with that we need a motion to go into closed session motion vendor all in favor any opposed order okay so we'll go into closed session we'll be back at 6 00 pm thank you so okay i just don't like it oh okay test test okay we're good all right welcome we're gonna open this um apoval unified school district board meeting we'll call to order at 6 00 p.m we appreciate uh everybody coming out tonight so we'll call to order and we're live so we're going to start off with reports uh student representatives the first one will be high desert premier academy and that's daniel angelica and david thank you i'll just mention that um the student reports were submitted digitally okay i'm going to present them we do have the sound set up so that the sound will be streamed uh the video will stream but i don't have a way to present up to both the audience members and to the board so that if the board will be attention here audience members listen for the student reports thank you so far 2022 has been a great year for high budget premier captain here are some of the highlights so far our most recent field trip was a virtual tour of los angeles museums of tolerance and mr hokey's world history class on the tour students examined racism and prejudice with an industrial cost our student armando's attractive reporters armando was owner of grand skate shop off highway 18 and recently made it into high desert daily news because of his donation of 183 pairs of shoes to av usc our graduation rates are higher than they've ever been they have raised 55 percent in the last two years here's a quick congrats to all of our current grads high-density premier is also ramping up an e-sports program and students are excited i'm looking forward to playing rocket league rocket league i'm looking forward to play rocket league matter looking forward to playing madden mario kart super smash bros i'm looking forward to playing super smash bros at the moment we are currently setting everything up we should be on track to start competing next year lastly to celebrate our students academic and behavioral achievements administration showed their appreciation with some in and out we are looking forward to our final quarter of the 2021 and 2022 school year and we are thankful for the continued support from the apple valley unified school district [Applause] yes okay thanks okay moving right along granite hills high ella houseman well she'll be good evening board members superintendent nelson and attendees my name is ella houseman your 2021-2022 gc president it's coming your academic quarter end as days pass by quickly and we see more seniors getting sick with senioritis although our juniors couldn't be any more thrilled to be planning for their senior year our prom is coming up soon and we announce our prom theme at a pep rally the theme is to the moon and back with that being said we have already started planning our mr cougar show last week 8th graders came to our campus and avid and asb came together to give them a pep rally to get them excited about this school and tours so they can have knowledge of the campus before coming our wasc results came back and we are approved for six more years of accreditation our bml club has been performing in our pack all month with reading black poets poetry and planning african-american songs also 25 of our students in skillsusa are going to states the girls and boys soccer team ended their season in the second round of cif our swim team is getting together with tryouts track and field have their first track meet this saturday our softball and baseball team are coming out strong with great attendance at practices overall our school is looking forward to the future and the continuation of leaving a legacy here on campus maroon and gray leads the way thank you good evening superintendent nelson and attendees [Laughter] okay apple valley high daniel mariana good evening steam board members it is my pleasure to bring you news from abba valley high school the month of february could be described with a single word success our sun levels are in great achievements in academics arts and sports as usual i will start with our school sports our baseball team won their games against the quits summit and kaiser and our sub softball team won their games against adelanto israeli christian western christian sangogornia and jokawali it is my pleasure to announce that appleby high school was chosen as best high school and best overall high school sports program in the 2021 best of the desert awards we are beyond part of this achievement we received the results for the skills usa regional competition and we won big apple valley high school has the order to announce that 195 students will be moving on to the state competitions with 139 of them meddling our hosa program was especially successful with 123 students moving on to state out of the 125 students participated this year we had a total of 46 bronze medals 33 silver and 60 gold we are so proud of our students and teachers for their hard work and we wish them the best of luck during state competitions in april but the good news don't stop there as we also have great success in the san bernardino county young artists gallery the work of 10 students was chosen among thousands of entries from all over the county to be part of the gallery students showcase their talent in different art forms such as painting ceramics photography and graphic design take a look at their amazing work [Music] so i hope that you enjoyed the incredible talent of our students we will continue to work to make apple valley high school a remarkable school i look forward to updating you with more achievements in the future and remember sun devil pride is contagious okay moving right along reports uh union representatives california school employees association csea are you here thank you yes we're bringing you a mic good evening to you can you hear me yes yes good evening to you i'd like to thank you for uh taking time to receive our successor contract initial proposal this evening i have to tell you that um i've had many years of service in this chapter and this will be the last successor proposal i bring to you i'll be moving on to my next phase in leadership i look forward to watching you all and being a part of helping all of you take the the scary and heavy steps that you have to leave before you thank you and have a good evening thank you thank you apple valley unified schools association of buddha is there anyone here okay okay we'll move right along okay so we'll move on to closed session reports so let's see here the discipline item waits until that discussion action session right right the discipline items dennis you have any reportable actions in closed session the board of trustees took action and supported the following recommendation from the superintendent public employee discipline dismissal release on a motion by wilson seconded by maria the board of trustees approved the following approved the non-reelection of the following certificated probationary employee number 4220 identified by number only effective june 30 2022 and direct that the superintendent or her designee give written notice therefore as required by law to pass on a vote of 5-0 in conference with labor negotiator organized california school employees on a motion by maria seconded by wilson approve the memorandum of understanding dated february 14 2022 between a b usd and csea 28 regarding the amended job description for student services specialists the mou also reclassifies the following employee into the student service specialist position effective 10-1-21 7495-0228 on a vote of 5-0 that's it okay thank you dennis okay item five adoption of the agenda the board may approve the agenda as is or add or pull items from consent agenda for discussion and or action and i'm going to make a motion we're going to move to amend the agenda for the meeting to move item i9 enforcement of mass requirements from 3 4 22 to 311 2022 to the beginning of our discussion action items prior to the current agenda item can i get a second on that to move that item a second okay so we have a motion by raleigh second was that chris nunes all in favor aye okay so that'll be the order okay item d recognition presentation we have none of this meeting discussion information presentation on second interim 2020 thank you mr raleigh uh as the sound board adjusts my adjust my mic hopefully everybody can hear to the audience i apologize i don't have a screen to show this on but there are qr codes if you want to follow along with this presentation you can scan those and access the document the board has a copy at their uh at their station if you could follow along thank you very much uh second interim report on page one the second slide you'll see this report certifies the financial condition of our district for the current year and two subsequent years through june of 2024 this is one of our two required interim reportings and i just do want to let the board know the multi-year projection contained in this interim report does in fact include include several budget adjustments posted since first interim which was our financials as of october 31st and updated assumptions based on current information available on page two the top slide you'll see there are three certifications possible i always kind of talk about these positive qualified and negative and we will be filing a positive certification which essentially states in our current budget and our current assumptions we will meet our financial obligations through june of 2024.

but number two is we're talking about someone who is local and who really understands ann arbor he understands on amber so much that he adopted the theme past present future which by the way was the theme of the sesquicentennial in ann arbor in 1974. his report is 16 pages when you look at mksk they have a much longer overall presentation but most of it is 54 pages is just basically pictures of what they've already done and it's only eight pages about what applies to the ann arbor project i would also like to draw attention you may or may not have gotten an email that i sent not long ago to um to heather that i was hoping she could uh forward to you and it includes a link to a website that i would like to talk about robert black has submitted a response to the council of commons rfi where he shows an example of a rooftop garden in oakland california and there's been a lot of conversation about how cement services are not in particular the library parking lot are not suitable for a garden well i would like to add to this conversation an article i found not long ago about creating gardens over cement services which provides an imperative for doing so the article is titled planting living roofs for native pollinators and the first part is about sedums other parts will include about native grasses i would urge you to look at the title of the journal which is called living architect monitor a green roof for healthy cities publication this is totally consistent with our goal for this year in the green team to identify the community gardens as monarch way stations and think of this the city city is spending thousands of dollars to create healthy streets creating a garden on portions of the library lot turns concrete into a much healthier place for the monarch butterflies and bees and let's face it surface parking in the library no longer makes sense we are encouraging people to walk and ride bikes not drive their cars downtown maintaining service parking in this site totally undercuts a20 so i'm hoping you'll look at this article in fact if you do a bit of research you're finding that all over the country people are converting cement spaces into gardens both on surface over service parking lots and in large development complexes i also want to point out that i'm very excited about the development of the green team this year because we're talking about expanding the sites but this year thanks to reed and mitchell applying for a monarch butterfly way station now what's really important about this is we're going to be turning the gardens into an educational site and chris and i are starting with our own property we're going to be dedicating a portion of our gardens basically to pollinator plants to attract monarch butterflies this can really take off and by having a demonstrate demonstration site on the commons this opens up to us to educate the public which is education and engagement is really what the commons is all about so i thank you for listening and i'm hoping that you'll approve uh robert black's uh rfi proposal thank you very much all right thank you and then odile as her hand up they say odile is trying to get on and they have her blocked she's on she should be able to talk you just need to unmute yourself oh deal doesn't she have to do star nine okay can you hear me now okay i can hear you also i don't need my phone okay good because he was asking me for a meeting id and when i did the one i was given it said that it didn't exist okay i just wanted to say hello welcome it's nice everyone again the spring is hopefully coming soon because it's still very much freezing and i imagine that a lot of people will want to get out and enjoy the comments and enjoy places so it's very important i think to be prepared and to allow people even maybe we still mask if we that's what the demand but to be able to be on the common and in our town enjoying themselves and to come back to lives once again so we are preparing to do a gardening i am the coordinator this year and i am recruiting people that want to come and do some gardening we will start the seedling next month so i just wanted to let you know i hope you are well and keep well thank you thank you all right we have one more caller with their hand up okay so go ahead caller with a phone number that ends in a22 hello hello can you hear me yeah hello thank you heather and um uh thanks everyone on the council for the opportunity to uh address you tonight um my name is david olson uh i live in the neighborhood now known as waterhill and i was born and raised in ann arbor and then left for many years and now i'm back so that's just a little i've been back for about 10 years so now that's just a little background it's really exciting to hear about how this is all moving forward great to hear that al trudeau is is uh on the scene and excited about expanding into the into the new public space the butterfly uh way station sounds great the gardening of course so all very exciting um what i wanted to um bring up tonight is has to do with uh funding i know that the um that the council of the commons is going to be making recommendations to the city soon and funding is always an issue um and i have something to sort of bring to your attention as you all know in 2003 the the citizen voter taxpayers of ann arbor passed the greenbelt millage resolution that had to do with the acquisition and management and protection of land and park park and open space and early on in the development of this or the organizing for the um for the library lot common space i talked to several council members as well as others at city hall about the appropriateness of using some of those funds generated by the greenbelt millage for the common space and i was have always been directed to we're told that the there's a resolution in place that restricts um that has to do with the um uh guidelines for uh for use of the greenbelt funds uh which stipulates that uh two-thirds go for out for land outside of the city for acquisition in management and that one-third of the funds can be used for inside the city but that was for acquisition only as i've been digging around more though i find that that is actually not the language on the millage that is not what the people of ann arbor voted for the language on the millage doesn't make any differentiation or talk of allocation and says that all the funds can be used for the for now i'm reading from the millage language itself can be used for the acquisition and management of land and land rights both within and outside the city of ann arbor that resolution that it serves as the guidelines for how the money can be used uh is was a resolution that was passed by council and of course can be nullified um by another resolution that resolution was passed 20 years ago and i think our priorities have changed the situation has changed uh and it's time to revisit that and so i would propose that the council of the commons recommend that the city uh uh nullified that those procedural guidelines again 20 20 years later and that we would start to use that those funds now for the management of land in the city and i just wanted to finish with a real quick quote john ruskin who's a well-known thinker writer and social critic once wrote the measure of any great civilization is its cities in a measure of a city's greatness is to be found in the quality of its public spaces its parks and squares and when i look around when i as i travel around the country and around the world and even just around michigan it's one of the things you see in every town in every city is some sort of a a public space a town square of commons and i just can't believe that in ann arbor we we can't uh probably lose enough uh funding uh to make a public space that we can all be uh really proud of um and i think in fact that we have that the people have voted not only to set this land aside for the for the commons um in this public space but we've actually voted to um through 2034 to pay out of our taxes this millage and i hope that we can redirect some of those funds asap to this center of the city project thank you thank you very much anybody else heather sorry i'm muted uh that is it okay perfect all right with that we'll close uh public comment and move into member news and updates any uh anything that folks would like to share before we go into working groups helen oh yes excuse me uh i'd like to let you all know that earth day is coming up and we have plans on the commons for thursday april 21 friday earth day 22 and on the weekend saturday and sunday and uh much excitement and anybody who wants to help out and that please be in touch you know the perimeter is in you know matt is cooperating and that is not going to be a big concert like sonic lunch but it will be music and talk and opportunity for people to be at home in the center of the city and i wanted to follow what i'm sure i raised at previous meetings that always when we do events there is a land acknowledgement that this land not only of the center of the city but the entirety of our area is historically the land of the potawatomi nation of the anishinabe three fires council and they were basically put out of here around the time our bicentennial takes its beginning and more into the from the 1820s 1830s and i've been participant in the uh powwow discussions and other with native americans who participated in our programs and it seems appropriate that we begin to think of the question of land return as well as land acknowledgement and how do we make from the city of ann arbor an invitation to the pottawatomie nation for a community of potawatomi to resettle in ann arbor and to share with us their culture particularly beneficial in terms of the their historic relation to commoning and their capacity of a resilience and adaptation to the climate and such changes i've been pursuing that and there are several people there's a person on the faculty kyle white who is the pottawatomie and it does beautiful teaching on the values and of the pottawatomie culture and the sense of earth restoration most important in the difficult times we approach so i wanted to let you know and anyone interested in that element of the development uh and i further raised the sense in terms of the center of the city that the program of juneteenth uh the 19th of june uh the black community usually celebrates by keeping at the edge from fuller park a march along the river to wheeler park and the proposal is out that they should seek to center a program of celebration of their presence in ann arbor on the commons before they take their march to wheeler park for always an incredible good potluck and so on so those are some things i've been pursuing along the way with others and so for your information anyone interested in this and the earth day program is coming along thank you thank you that one i else you had your hand up too yes um just some short reactions to the comments that were made um go backwards i think it was david olson had two nice points of view one very high level about partly about the nature of a healthy city and its lovely spaces i think the quote was from someone from another century but it still stands well um i think i think it's good to think to to realize what we're about here in that respect that this is an integral part of our city um the other part if i can recall um i think i'll just skip to the another comment about um the rfi uh rfis that we've received the two that we received and there's i think we should be cautious about how we talk about those they're not really proposals as i understand it there and yet um i think that's an impression that many people might have that we're deciding on something that requires a budget request and all that stuff not quite there yet i think but if i'm incorrect about that i still would like first to be clear about what we'll be talking about tonight and what we're looking for we're looking at as we engage with those two proposals who sorry rfis response their responses rather than proposals yeah i agree with you alice i think it is uh important that there is a clarity and certainly not a rush to take action tonight uh based on uh based on the next steps but good discussion i i also uh now i see my key word is the ordinance um it was good for us also to review the green belt legislation and the ordinance that resulted um because there there is a long-held belief along people who started out looking at the greenway even um which is now called the tree line that there was some money that was intended to somehow enhance our green spaces and natural areas within the city um parks it's included and so we've never seen that realized and i don't believe that personally i don't believe that that was excluded per se but it sure has been um late it sure has been used as as something that's only outside the city we have never seen the money that was sort of implied or maybe even promised for the city itself so it's worth looking back at it again i believe too so i support the idea excellent any other members before we go into the working group updates okay well with that um why don't we move into the next agenda item which is uh the updates on any of the working groups we don't have to go in the order that are listed um i don't know rita i know you had worked on some things for the com comparable communities do you want to kick us off sure first off i want to say i'm sorry to my fellow working group numbers that i got our notes out to you rather late so that there was an opportunity for you to comment and maybe enhance them but i will report briefly that we had a zoom discussion with paul simpak who is the city manager of plymouth who manages the kellogg park there and he is very enthusiastic about their space it has grown in use and improved over time significantly and i'll just say that one of the things they do is assess the public reaction to the park and the most recent survey that was done by eastern michigan university of of um residents of plymouth was that 61 said it's a very important thing for them to host entertainment in the downtown and they do a lot of it um from you know you we've probably all heard about the ice sculptures but there's also all kinds of music and celebrations um and they are constantly i think thinking about what's going on in that space in their town uh it is very much engaged or sorry the members of the community representing various groups are very much engaged with the parks they have involvement from their dda from their local lions club a local foundation that donated money for a fountain that i have not seen it's been recently installed um they even have bathrooms that are funded in their case privately um and monitored so that they are safe so um it is a really good model i think for us to see something that's so close to home and that i think engenders a sense of pride by members of the community so um i did not submit these minutes to the group because i really felt like it was good to have the work group commented first so i can do that once once we all agree but that's that's where i am thanks frank did you want to add something um not a lot thank you thank you rita that was a good summary uh uh the community really uh in all aspects seems to rally around the concept of this park as a kind of a centerpiece of community activity which on occasion spills out into the downtown generally they claim it i don't doubt that they have the second largest art fair in michigan which started off 40 years ago with 20 artists in the in recent years up to 400 artists they have weekly music events that draw three to five thousand people i'm sure that i think the park itself was only a couple acres um i was surprised how small the acreage was because it seems to have such a presence in the downtown uh that it seems bigger but it it's not and uh the city is very much engaged in uh making uh this success the the management of the space and events is rather the city manager's office and uh there's a whole there's a whole structure to it in terms of uh determining what the fees will be for the organizations that want to sponsor events and it all seems to work and uh um there was a number of questions uh uh i think what we've reportedly read and i've reported is pretty much what paul sincock uh shared at the front end of this meeting back in mid-january but there are three or four other pages of uh particular questions so i think rather than going to all of that tonight if we can circulate that to the entire um council that that would be a good way to keep this in front of us and uh so uh we're looking forward to engaging other communities i just saw something over my electronic airwaves about a commons a park in royal oak michigan i believe which looked very interesting and it's just being dedicated now by uh around their centennial they're only 100 years old we've got them beat by 98 years i guess but uh anyhow so that's all i would like to add to that thanks frank i i would just like to add one other point too that i you know um having gone to the plymouth for dinner several times and driven through a number of times as well the the space is not very large but one of the things that strikes me and that's very unique about it too is just the proximity to the downtown uh restaurant scene and the establishment they really have surrounded the uh town square we asked uh mr sincock about uh the impact of events especially events that had food and that sort of thing and how they engaged with the community and he reported it was actually very positive that uh that the engagement between the private uh business establishment surrounded the square in particular and uh any of the activities even the ones that that had you know effectively uh similar services you know were uh had a really positive engagement they were working things through and so i think you know we heard that same same response from um a gentleman from the downtown detroit partnership right and so uh you know i think i think there's a uh you know not enough totally to draw a direct correlation but there's a way to make these things work is uh is i think what we're hearing and uh as long as we're doing it intentionally then you know it does so that's the only other point i'd like to add thanks for adding that adam that it's true uh very much the case both in detroit and plymouth and i'm sure that they had to work through uh issues over time but uh uh it's been done in a spirit of cooperation and and listening to um points of view and so on and it's it seems to turn that turn out to be a very positive feature of these down both these downtown areas any any other points in the comparable communities all right are there other is there an intent to look at other communities there is yes we're we're we're uh slowly making our way through a number of other ones we've had uh discussion around um looking at cincinnati um as a future one and uh we're looking elsewhere as well i know you have sent a number of ideas as well ellen i don't think anything's crossed off the list yet it's good to look at cincinnati because that's when milton where milton de honey has done work so we didn't know that in fact take note of that fact you'll get a a good docent for the tour um are there other updates at all you know these are standing items on the agenda so if there are none uh that is fine as well but if there are other updates from uh the block part yeah frank please yeah are any of the any of the uh standard reports uh i had just a comment about on the fundraising front um you can go ahead and make that comment that's fine um i don't know how widely it's known that uh the library green conservancy has has made a commitment of up to twenty thousand dollars to uh join with the city and providing funding for the what will eventually become the the rfp and uh i think we also have a cooperative clear understanding that we're we're going to work together uh to to seek other sources of funding uh for the the rfp and and for other uh activities uh the other area that library green is particularly interested in is the near-term activation and uh um i'm not in a position to announce at the moment but they're uh we're uh close to having a i think an important commitment from a community business uh in ann arbor that uh we'll be announcing that in the near future so thank you excellent thanks frank are there any other updates from either the other two um standing committees you know yeah sir i don't have a real update and i'm explaining why i don't have an update and i'm also going to say publicly that i'm going to get the block partners group back together i've had a very bad year so far um with covid and then changing jobs so i'm gonna i'll reach out to you guys to try to get something scheduled because we're pretty i mean i think we have a pretty decent survey to send out i think it's just a matter of figuring out the process for that and then talking through next steps so i will reconvene that working group this month and actually in that vein too i'll i'll give a little bit of an update as well we've had several conversations um you know with uh externally to this and in fact there's a working group that is more focused on liberty plaza but being at liberty plaza is part of the space in question that we're that we're charged with there's a working group that has been formed i just got a uh confirmation on the first meeting that is uh coming up here um in a few weeks and i've been invited to join that meeting uh courtesy of uh erica's uh advocacy and so i'm gonna participate in that i'll report back afterwards um an additional additionally to that um we had a discussion um with uh some of the staff from the parks department around that that we coordinated and heather uh set up and i think it was a very productive discussion uh it was around the idea of uh how um uh how the plan the pros plan uh review public review process of the prose plan that would impact liberty plaza how that would fit into place with the work that we were doing i think there was a strong acknowledgement in fact there is a a plan or a recommendation from the parks advisory committee that is a few years old now that talks about the coordinated activation and we can share that around it as a public document already but the bottom line is i think that there was a strong interest in having a cooperative focus working together and uh looking for uh you know a solution that took into account um you know both spaces and and that that would be done together not in isolation and i could feel like that's very much in the spirit of work that's been done here and has been talked about so uh you know i think that was a real positive discussion as well there's a request that we come before the parks advisory committee uh at some point in uh the relatively near future uh to make a presentation about uh where we are at and where we're thinking we're heading um and i think that would be a very good idea um and i uh uh stated stated that to the park staff that we'd probably be interested in doing that and so um those are just a couple of additional updates in that block partner space sarah i haven't even had a chance to talk to you about them so i apologize um but um but um you know a couple of couple of uh additional things that's wonderful news adam thank you for doing that engaging it's so may i please it's uh it is wonderful news and i just would like to have a little bit more of it um when you said you and erica were part of some meeting i didn't know it was a meeting of except that you said it was about liberty plaza are these council members are these parks advisory members or who who is this yeah so it hasn't occurred yet actually it was uh there's a there was a discussion mr tahoni coordinated uh in response to some of the issues that arose at liberty plaza um and there was an agreement in that discussion i was not part of this but it was an agreement to set up a working group around this and uh eric eric informed me the working group and i requested to be part of it and it hasn't hasn't met yet um so it's a working group of what body i believe it's city staff i'll take a look to be honest with you i just got the confirmation of the email today okay i think i i said i was looking forward to mr dahony um sort of making this happen because he seemed enthusiastic about dealing with the liberty plaza um opportunity um and to to make things better to realize the advantages of it rather than have to constantly suffer the swings and arrows um but i i still i hope you'll keep this update updated as to what how you know from what direction this is coming whether it's multi-organizational like city council pack and several others or like we are you know or whether it's just to some movers and shakers that are getting together and they'll report to somebody i don't know who yeah erica you you one off me there do you wanna yeah i thought maybe i could just provide a little more context so the the intern the um the working group is kind of continuation of a discussion um so initially there was um a mr dahony had pulled together sort of immediate stakeholders um spark and everybody who's in the building is you know next to liberty to plaza essentially um who had raised some concerns about um increased uh lack of safety in the area and brought together as well into that group um all of the service providers that are already operating out of that space um from annenberg police department to path to parks to you know a lot of the i'm sure i'm missing um some group and then also uh council member maui and i were there um and i'm sure there were a number of other staff members kind of internally in the city that were there and so there's kind of a series of three meetings one to kind of establish what the issues were to start um kind of providing some feedback and and making some kind of initial kind of recommendations about what might be some immediate steps that we could take and then a final conversation to report back a little bit to that to that group but following that meeting there was um vision to kind of shift how this this work group would work kind of operate moving forward and so um it won't be a group that for example councilmember romelli and i would continue to go to it's more of an internal stakeholder group that would be participating in monitoring and making sure that we're moving forward to address um some of the ongoing issues um in that space so that's sort of the context for that working group and stakeholder group and it makes a lot of sense though to have adam there and having some continuity in terms of how this how we're thinking about this space comprehensively as well thank you erica i i still not quite quite clear i see a lot of information going into a group of people but i don't know how it will be offered to others and that's what what i was trying to figure out yeah in other words what what you you know who we have to report to city council but who does this group report to it's really about i think making operations work better right now internally so there's you know i mean cities this is a city park and it's there are some there are some things that are not working in that space right now in terms of um issues of safety but also making sure that people who are using that that space are actually getting the services that they need and you know just trying to make sure that operations are improving in that space so this could be also part of uh police reform if you want to call it that absolutely absolutely and i just looked and alice i do have uh the first meeting is the eighth of this month uh so it's coming up next week i'll be happy to send an email out to folks here um you know following up after that meeting to give an update and you know we can put that into the into the record and um folks know what's going on thank you yeah um unless there are any other items oh rita go ahead sorry i can't see anybody's hands raised um you're muted rita um of the people meeting is there anyone representing the people who are using the space about whom there's concern um there's not direct um users sort of certainly folks like path that are they're um working with users on a regular basis in terms of kind of the most vulnerable population certainly um they are there and talking about um kind of how they're interacting with folks but it's not yeah it's not intended to necessarily be a community stakeholder meeting that's not really the design you know right could you um explain path i don't know the group sure so it's um it used to be called port it's path it's um it's basically an outreach a street outreach team um that works to um connect community members with resources that that they might need and um they you know there was kind of an assessment of that they work all across the community all across the county um actually so um there there's a discussion of kind of when they're in the space and might be helpful if they were in the space at different times of the day to be interacting with you know people who are using the space at different times so that was kind of the yeah it's funded through the county okay thank you ellen yes as well sort of on the similar question of the the critical stakeholders in that place are are the actual users and the long conversation has been there has to be a way to give recognition to the people who are using it as part of the governance and maintenance of the space as creative participants rather than his problems and that's the view of people there with whom i have spoken and with the people from the shelter who have a relation with a lot of the people who you know hang out there and i just eager that that point of view and representation and those who are trying to program in this space are part of this conversation that is going on and it seems like in terms of dealing with the immediate violence issue that came up a month ago or so that is a particular question in terms of getting an ongoing discussion as to how this place develops it seems to me that it needs to be broader it should be including those who are programming there the initiating committee and those who are uh using it including the representation of those the folks that are actually you know playing chess and so on so i feel a little bit that this is creating a separate structure to have some purpose but not really integrating its discussion with the discussion of how as a whole the liberty plaza gets to be improved because that is what our agenda is at all so i hope that there is expansion of that group and also that there is a regular communication report of what the conversations are because those conversations are not simply among the staff it is how how a planning for a public space not a staff managed space is really to be carried out so i i just want to express that concern and hope that it is represented in the composition and in the process of this uh meeting ellen i took some notes i'll ask some of those questions um at that at the meeting when we have it any uh additional questions at all all right if it's okay with folks uh the the next agenda item is actually at uh uh a timeline for developing the recommendations report tonight i almost feel like maybe we should talk about the rfi first and rfis rather first and uh then we can talk about a timeline even if we don't get to that point tonight i do want to have us think through start to think through what our timing would look like so we can march to a goal here and try and achieve that goal but i think that the rfis are probably the first step in that process heather would it be possible for you to share the rfis and we can walk through them given that uh you are more of the expert on this sure i can share the rfis and what would be because we have at least an outline of what the timeline is expected of when we when our annual report is due advice is due to the city council we got the note that we all expire in a year so are we do with this report before the 31st of may or in may after our main meeting after our april meeting when is that without exactly what it is i think that advice to the city council will probably include how we respond responding to the response to the request for information so i'm happy to concentrate on the request for information for what really are just time-wise our timelines yeah and as i understand it there's not a specific date that your report is due um it you know i think the intention was that it would be it would happen annually i think that's the language and the resolution so but there wasn't a date that was set um so ideally you'll put together a report annually to give recommendations to city council um obviously we're still kind of in the in a fledgling stage with all of this i'm still trying to gather information to be able to write informed recommendations so um you know really take the time that you need is my advice so that you can put forward sound recommendations to city council to consider um and there might be things that we can push forward a little bit earlier as things go on you know for example the rfi is one example or doing an rfp as an example uh council member briggs pushed that forward a little bit earlier you know saying okay we need to we need to get to thinking about how we're going to physically transform the space so that's that's already in motion and there might be other things that come up like that but in the meantime i do i do think it is worthwhile to take time to fully research um before you put together a set of recommendations yeah and as far as your appointments goes it really played out in such an odd way i don't know how common it is for everybody's um term to end at the same same date um so and um so there was behind the scenes there was a lot of you know oh wow you know this is what's happening okay um anyway it should be all set now all of you have your applications in so you should be good going forward i believe excellent verifies just a moment i can pull those up and what will be what would be helpful to me is really just to get your your thoughts on what you liked about that about each rfi ultimately we do want to put it out in rfp so um the the goal of this exercise was really just to get a sense of what professionals might think what you know they think would be a good process there might be a good process to do an engagement effort with citizens to figure out how these spaces would be physically transformed um so we do have two rfis that provide some information and i love your thoughts on what what were the the greatest hits from each of the rfi is in your mind so bear with me as i pull that out um but in the meantime please go ahead and share thoughts adam it looks like erica has her hand up yeah erica please i would say i am i'm not a host tonight so okay got it yeah i want to interrupt heather did you um do you want me to chime in right now or did you want to be sharing more i wasn't sure yeah feel free feel free i thought it was i'm really happy that we did the rfis i think it helps us understand better kind of these different approaches that we might be able to take um kind of what those anticipated costs might be um in terms of associated with different processes um you know i think we saw a couple of different kind of proposals presented to us one recording in progress um one that was you know focused in on sort of a community design process and how that might play out and then another process of kind of looking at a more traditional planning process that we've kind of seen play out in different ways across the city um i um personally um while i appreciated the sort of the community design kind of being able to think through that i i think there's a lot of merit to moving forward with a more of a traditional planning process on this and making sure that we kind of move it through a timely process and get through that engagement conceptual design and kind of get to that final design piece which is um or actually have some cost estimates i thought it was so i don't know if you wanted to talk heather at all about any internal conversations that you might have had with city staff around how community design process might be considered from kind of a if that's played out in the city before in terms of our planning efforts or you know any thoughts you might have on that sure so the sentiment among city staff is that it needs to have a lot of community engagement you know this is a really um important project for the city so it has to have an intense and iterative engagement process so um going out to the public getting input coming back working on design going back out to the public checking in um coming back doing some more design so building it with the community as we go along so that at minimum we know um and that brings up the question about uh doing a design contest i think it's unlikely that the city would want to do a design contest because it doesn't lend itself necessarily to enter to process with the community um so we would we would probably not go forward with something like that we would want more of a an engagement process we also feel very strongly that we want some technical professionals on this um we wanted a design at the end of the day that we can technically implement that we'll there's still going to be a lot of questions about the funding you know how how how much this is going to cost and maintain but you know because this is on top of a parking structure versus just a green space there are a lot of things that we need to consider um in addition to liberty plaza being already designed you know it has again it's not just a flat surface there's a lot of design that's already happened there and if that's going to be reconfigured we do need some real technical expertise on how we would do that um so that that would be our preference going forward and i do have both documents pulled up on my computer um my feeling is that i'll i'll just leave it off screen for the moment but if you want me to if you want to refer to anything then i can pull it out but i think it's easier to talk to each other when we can see each other yeah allison and frank um i when erica when you mentioned um a more traditional planning process i have no idea what that means and i'm i'm going to run design graduate i don't know what a more traditional planning process is unless it's something like heather compared the contest versus the [Music] series of engagements uh engagements with the community members and in that regard too um i'll have to say i carry some baggage from the days when we were doing many community meetings and workshops and everything or there were two things one was you know what what uh getting how to get 10 000 more residents downtown and the other was the greenway when we were trying to figure out how that that path would be created and of what elements so and those you know i would say that all of those many hours of professionals and community members the greenway was not very satisfying to those who were looking for that greenway to happen it finally changed on a total into a totally different animal which i hope continues to produce good results but [Music] i don't think that would work for this one site at least not that we want to be balanced in how we approach this uh i think the inclusion of a technical as experts is essential because we have a built space already and we need to know what is alterable and what is not or what the results are or what the costs are you're choosing one direction or not they're just some some thoughts that were sparked by what erica and other have said i don't know whether it's a cautionary tale to look at those two examples but i think there are good things that happened and things that just didn't happen so [Music] i think we'll need some guidance in creating whatever it is that we decide to use and i have to admit i i mean i already know i have not had a chance to look at the rfis at all in detail i did see that we got two and i saw that there was one from robert black and one from a group that i don't know they may have come from here i don't know but yeah enough they look pretty much like the standard rfi and that's why i don't have much to say about it yeah and keep in mind that they are rfis you know we didn't really ask to go into a full detailed process what they were proposed so you know it is limited in that way um but alice or and anybody else if you've had experience with the city or other cities anywhere else you know with a with a an engagement process a design process a planning process um you know i i'd like to take the what what's called the appreciative inquiry approach to this and and pull out the things that you really liked out of those processes so not even necessarily from the rfis but if there's things that you've experienced that you really appreciated um you know we can talk about those and then of course if there are items in the rfi that really stood out in either of them that really stood out to you that you really like and you know caught your attention and want us to think about then please bring those forward i see that you have your hand up yeah thanks um i do want to say that i also participated in the greenway um process and it came out not in a way that i expected either and i attended a lot of meetings so i hope that when we talk about an iterative process it becomes one that um whatever whichever group we may go with or a process we may go with that it does have a seriously confirming um component to it that those who participate and the community have a chance to really weigh in uh significantly on it and so it doesn't become a surprise or something that we really don't want at the end because we want what we're going for um so with that in mind though i would say that i found um some of the examples i mean it's just it's really nice to see physical examples of or photos of examples of of what could be um and it does make me feel excited to see some of them some of the different art in particular was inspiring to me the interactive kinds of things um i liked that um it also stood out to me that a lot of people like water um and so having a fountain of some sort with a playful aspect i think is really good um and uh there was a lot of uh examples of performance space i would say that um that i liked as well so without going into those real specifics on them those those are just like the basics um and again it's just yeah back to the let's make sure that engagement is true engagement that reflects um what participants have expressed thanks okay so far i have inclusion of technical experts as essential um the community has to have a meaningful say we don't want any surprises at the end um and uh you're liking the examples of what could be so that visioning what could be their art water performance space frank yeah uh i i want to start out by saying i'm obviously not an expert on these processes uh but i do have a a strong feeling that uh two feelings one is uh we've we have one chance to sort of get this right uh and the the second observation is and you know every project has its unique features but this has its history and the complexity of the site etc um i'm feeling a strong need for this process to to really understand uh the data we have what was generated by the task force to really uh i know there's hundreds if not thousands of pages of material um and not that one would do this and the other wouldn't but it just felt it was strongly articulated in the robert black group that we we really need to engage with the dda understand that structural uh do's and don'ts of that site um we also have to really uh engage with the dda to understand what they see as their role in this uh it it hasn't come before in our first year of deliberations where the dda is going to come out are they going to be a strong advocate are they going to sit on the sidelines etc it just seems that we need to do really good work at the front end so that we understand uh what we're dealing with structurally etc but also also some of the of the political issues around this and um it just seems that the more emphasis we can put at at the sort of the front-end stages of good research and good understanding uh and i i think it doesn't bother me that one one approach might take longer than the other i think we we need a lot of coalition building a lot of you know recognition of what this can be from the block partners and the surrounding businesses so i'm not particularly troubled by taking a little bit longer timeline uh i think the longest time that does bring us up to some important milestones uh occurring by you know mid 2024 which is the bicentennial and again i think an emphasis on the bicentennial and that this project be you know viewed as an important gift to ourselves for our third century uh and to tie it into the bicentennial i think is important i think that um you know we we have the resources in place right now uh to do many of the things that uh are are outlined in uh by the robert black group uh again i don't know what is the the perfect cadence and and milestones of this but instinctively i'm feeling that the more we do at the front end of this project to understand uh you know what the community wants and i think a lot of that has already been documented in the task force etc and i i'm intrigued by the contest idea of the competition i think that was brought forward because many great parks uh in the country and i think the one that was cited with central park in new york was the inspiration for that design uh came from from a competition and i think that builds community interest if we have that kind of activity both among the school children but also you know more mature capable entities that might present design solutions and it doesn't commit us to anything but it certainly will get us further along the imagination uh imagining this and i think there would be clear material and and guidelines for that competition it's just not here's a here's a clean sheet of paper give us what you think i think that we'd have to provide some real guidance in terms of the elements we want reflected in the design and etc and getting a clear understanding of the uh structural limitations and possibilities of especially the surface of the parking area maybe those need to be articulated in the design description that would go out and you know i always have a fundraising cap on i just think that doing a a really good job at the front end which includes obviously engaging the various constituencies will will build stronger buy-in as this process goes along and we're already seeing this in the near term activation where we're talking to community groups and they're saying oh hey uh you know maybe we can have yoga classes on the surface of the parking area and other kinds of activities so we're seeing groups in the community beginning to say oh thanks you know thanks for bringing that to our attention i think we see some possibilities here there's a lot more discussion to go on and etc in terms of actually scheduling events and activities but we're beginning to see this this process of engagement and uh and you know building of excitement around the possibilities of this site so i'll stop there but i um those are kind of my my initial thoughts on this oh thank you frank um what i've written down is um making sure that we engage with the dda to understand their structure and how they see their role um and also for this process to serve as a coalition building process in addition to you know generating ideas and a design at the end um incorporate the bicentennial in some way and then clarify if we were to do some type of competition clarify the limitations beforehand um but most importantly what you really emphasized is that we're not starting from scratch and i completely agree with you there's just been so much work that has gone into that i mean really for decades and then with the task force of course did a lot of work and actually did reach out to the community quite a bit um have all of that information gathered and acknowledged and read through and used as part of this process thank you heather alice i see you have your hand up yeah i i just want to reinforce what a couple of others have said about community engagement i think i think there is a real danger in repeating one mistake and that is not when people are asked to fill out surveys when people are asked to put sticky notes on on big pieces of paper when they're asked to rate or you know what you know out of these five options what do you like best that kind of thing and then they see no correlation in the end result it feels like it's all fake um and so when we say we're going to do that we really do need to have you know maybe let go of the um you call it the aggregate ego and say oh well yeah i had an idea but nobody else liked it so we have to go with the flow you know it's something that can build on the success of those who have who have an investment that in it in that they see that their contribution is revealed in the in the end result and that's that's pretty abstract and pretty hard to do but i think when you have the right kind of engagement and you end up with a pretty clear thing and i think the task force did a lot of things right on the nose and we we really do not want to put that on the in the archive you know we should have that closer to the front of what we're doing but a lot of this has already been done and quite quite reasonably well and by a by group of people who really worked hard on it so um i don't want that to be a wasted resource at all i think we can elaborate on it i like some things other than other than other than other some other rather than other things but we really don't want to lose sight of what's already been just a quick comment to follow up to alice i think bringing that that task force information into the into the current discussion and engagement with block partners the wider business community community groups in general to bring that forward in a way that uh can can share with the community again what what has been already uh developed uh i think that would be a real value in that not necessarily creating new information but there you know that may trigger some new ideas uh and coalescing around some of what's already been developed by the task force so maybe starting from a reorientation a place of review going over what's been done with with the community all of us kind of sharing in that i don't want to be too repetitive because i haven't done this before kind of thing no maybe we can just pick some things and move forward with them right and that is the intention yeah to take pick up where we left off basically from the task force because we didn't get as far as actually getting to the detail of specifically how how are we going to physically alter the space we have a lot of ideas about it but to really put it the pen on paper of this is what's going to happen put some cost estimates to it you know so it can get that much closer to realization yeah i would just uh add i agree with many of the things that have been said here um you know i do think that the whatever the process is uh that uh that the end products are a reflection of the community engagement is gonna be really important i also do feel pretty probably probably most strongly about the fact that we have a really robust um creative visioning process i i i respect and agree with the fact that the task force visioning serve as a catalyst but i also want to be conscious of the fact that because of the politics around this space we really have got to inspire the community i think and i think you do that through a really robust visioning process with a lot of ideas to show them what could become uh rather than what has been discussed necessarily uh or at least discussed in in a lot of uh context so i think that's going to be really important as well um and i too believe that uh you know we need a very professional driven process i don't think uh respectfully to everyone here we are professionally equipped to uh to do that i think we we will have a role and it will be important guide guiding role but we need to hire uh people who are who are well equipped to handle the technical aspects and also the creative aspects and i think the other thing that we want to be conscious of too is you know one of the things that we have seen in these comparable communities are governance models going forward and sustainable revenue streams going forward what's necessary and i think we need to be thinking about that as part of as part of this process you know not only construction costs those are important but what are we going to do going forward and what are we going to recommend um and and where those resources come from and so i know that's been on my mind a lot uh and i i think that's going to be an important part of the planning process for this so yes you're right uh adam i have noticed that in in our comparable communities explorations we have seen a lot of cooperation in other places that we are not seeing at this point here and it's going to be important to build or rebuild the kinds of relationships that that will enable us to have an imaginative very um reflective result of our community and i appreciate your you're bringing that to the front of our company thank you adam that these are maybe elements that need to come forward uh you know just the we're talking about design and development of physical development but there's this home management piece uh maybe we need to call that out in uh an rfp um and uh i i don't know is it proper for an rfp to deal with you know contentious issues and how to how to bring people you know people with a group so it's conflicting feelings about this how to how to bring that piece together these all these elements need to move from where they are now to a much better place and you know i had obviously thought about the management piece because we've talked about it but just the you know the politics of this and how do we sort of move this forward i i don't know if that is even appropriately part of an rfp uh but it's something that needs to be addressed as we go as we move along here yeah i i'll just offer one thought to that frank and i know sarah's got her hand up here too um you know it's really the job of this group to try and um you know look look out for the the aspects of uh you know the overall direction and ensure that the the process is what what we want it to be and that it sufficiently checks all the boxes we feel is important um you know i i too am not familiar with what would go into an rfp on this but uh in terms of in terms of the uh you know long-term financing and and other other items i would lean on heather's expertise to help comment on that but i think that the more options that we have put on the table you know i mean reality is is that even though even though different financing schemes are going to have different political angles to them the document itself or a response to that a preparation of presentation of all those options is politically ambivalent and that's what we need to rely on those professionals to be able to tell us what all the options are so that we can we can look at them and put them on the table and discuss what the politics are and i feel like that's actually part of our role here too um and to help bring community along and so i would look at the professionals to lay out those things for us what what the options are and you know we can certainly offer suggestions and and you know be creative but i'd much rather have um have have a pretty good idea of the landscape um and then and then um you know we can help make the recommendation ultimately to city council in concert with the uh design recommendations so that's anything thanks hi yeah sarah you have your hand on ew kind of freak what i was going to say but that's okay um i think it's a very good point to keep in mind that we don't really have like a long-term plan for this i guess i things are just popping into my head that are making me take pause so maybe i'll just say those things um you know i would hate to sort of have this really robust community engagement process that i also agree is is more or less needed but then we put you know you put people through all of this and then we end up with nothing in the end so i think there just really needs to be that balance of like how do we want to design this process in a realistic way to you know i think it's important that the rfp or the proposals come back to us with sort of like just kind of like a timeline like what are some of these like low-hanging fruit type of things that could go into this like if we really don't have very much money like what are the sort of things that we could do um another thing that keeps popping into my head and i should have a better answer for this but i don't and i don't think there is an answer as we're talking about robust community engagement is that we are going to be doing i'm pretty sure restarting the comprehensive planning process soon which is also going to require robust community engagement and people get engagement fatigue and so i don't know about the timing of this versus the timing of that i just think it's something that we should keep in mind as we're sort of like progressing forward with us erica you might remember better than me maybe it's next year um but you know i we want to make sure there's good engagement we just i think have to be really careful about how we do it especially keeping in mind what others just already mentioned that we have a good basis to start with we're not really starting from nothing we have the task force right the task force's recommendations as a starting point i think alan and then erica yeah the last comment that uh you made sarah on planning you're from the planning commission is that right you got it on your mind well part of this endeavor is to integrate with the master plan so in some way our community engagement and planning should be interdigitating with the master planning process as to how the center of the city actually you know becomes the center of the city and so that's something definitely to keep in our mind what i most want to say is that there are elements of this problems that are not that are beyond our control and that we have not sufficiently explored that uh what happens with the martin company is critical as to how we have we basically have a a commons that is a sort of a barbell we've got liberty plaza on the northeast and we got library uh surface lot on the southwest and how do we make that connection between them and that is really dependent on what kind of relation we develop with the martin company uh as to whether we bridge them go through them uh or walk around them and until that somehow has a conversation going on we're a little bit stuck and similarly we have an indeterminate relationship with the library and much of the sense of indoor four season gallery and such like activities uh gathering place and such is seen as a live possibly in the library when the library put forth their bond issue in 2013 or whatever it was they had that view of themselves we need in this some sense of cafe uh various functions and how we relate to the library in sharing those functions or in having them independent of the library in a separate building really requires a discussion that hasn't even opened the door and it seems and similarly how we bridge over and whether we consider bridging over the space between uh over the uh the parking ramps or whether we abandon the parking ramps to cars rather than reclaiming that elevated area for people is a question that a design group can certainly address but we're not giving any direction in that way i certainly as you all know have my view on that that we should minimize subordinate the automobile and maximize people's space by bridging over library lane to some significant part to connect up with the library but those basic questions that we want a design group to consider yet we have not specified and as on the docket we just put out very general questions and i think we need to be somewhat more specific as to the questions that deal with with this alternative or that alternative or how do you see it the main thing i want to emphasize is that if this is the center of our city everyone in ann arbor has to see it as the center of their city that the communities have to see themselves reflected somehow in the aesthetics in elements that they can see it is part of who we are whether we are part of the old germans or whether we are part of the uh the black community or whether we are part of the arab community or part of whatever that ever that is not a a mishmash of a unity with no character it has to be a very multiplicitous character and so i think they that we need a kind of community engagement that really goes to all the communities and draws out from them uh in multiple ways how they see themselves best reflected that they would feel when they come to the center of the city aha this looks like me and like my home i'm at home here in the center of the city not something that a a group however professional provides as a service to being a neutral public space that anybody can do anything in that is not my view of what is the commons the common is a place that everyone shapes together in some way and is not a blank slate there's a slate that is very rich in the contributions of all the communities of ann arbor that's why i particularly feel that what robert and his associates all of whom are very familiar with ann arbor who worked in ann arbor who know this town have a great uh advantage in designing a kind of community engagement that can draw out from our community not a not filling out a survey and i was not very pleased in the sense of the data that we got in the task force and it was not did not go deep but we need something people who are there who really have a sense of ann arbor and want to see how to draw that out so that that is a criterion i look for in what we are putting out in the request for proposals how you really help us see the voice of all the communities of ann arbor how a collective aesthetic could somehow be represented in the center of the city as well as dealing with these difficult questions of how we bridge and interact with the martin company and how we interact and connect with the library and how the indoor functions of a civic center are are met and where and i think another aspect of this is how we see the expansion of the commons beyond what is initially given particularly the opportunity to include the noble house which would provide a service center place uh beneficial to the uh liberty plaza community if i may say so and so part of how we see the opportunities of the uh credit union to redesign or infill in their their space so we have partners that are not just static but all of whom are in motion and the element that we want to bring forward has to sort of interconnect with that uh with those emotions and we may find so so that is part of the request for proposals or the next step if it is request for proposals is the next step the next step seems to me in a way getting a clearer clearer sense of how the library sees its next phase how the martin company sees its next phase how the credit union sees its next phase and as we in in the community block outreach that we're sort of touching on in this survey you know what new information we are getting as to how our neighbors are uh agitating themselves toward the future so i just dropped those pebbles in the pond which however you wrote those down i think there's a lot of problems that we know of that we have to identify more more directly yeah and i'll just reflect those back to you real quickly um one of the things that you said loud and clear was we need a space that provides a sense of belonging to everybody yeah that everybody is welcome there um and that we need to think about the potential expansion of the city of center of the city as land use changes around the existing public spaces so just kind of do some future imagining with this process make sure that there's connection with adjacent uses and activities so what's happening at the library will impact these spaces for example um as well as first martin and to make sure that there is connection between um liberty plaza and the um library service lot and how we might address that um and then going back to what sarah said earlier making sure that we get a timeline with with phases um what are the low hanging fruit for example what are the things that we can start initiating right away so it feels like there's constant momentum with this rather than now we have a design and then we sit on it for 10 years until we can gather the funds to make it happen all right so going on to riggs thanks heather by the way your ability to summarize is incredible um a few pieces i think one one piece that is going to be important for us in terms of the rfp um that sort of was articulated in the mk kate um a proposal um was sort of this element of the they have it as in their final plan you know the plan would include a plan of action funding opportunities project phasing implementation matrix meaning of cost and a maintenance plan roles and responsibility which i think are really key things that i've heard articulated but to kind of points that both adam and sarah brought up we've done a fair amount because of the research that this group has done there's been a fair amount of focus on you know that the importance of that governance model and i um i do think that we might be able to use a little bit of that to help we might want to contemplate whether or not we want to have that inform the design process up front um and by that i mean you know we could go into this process of course any planning firm wants to be visionary and inspirational and that's good if you want to get that you want to get people excited about something but we also you know i've also heard folks talking about wanting to be pragmatic and have this implementable and that we the reality is part of the reason this was politically charged was this concept around funding um and acknowledging our funding shortfalls up front um might help us get to a more implement a plan that is that we can better implement down the road i think that one of the concerns that we've heard from from park staff is wanting to be careful about going out to the community and doing a robust community engagement plan especially around liberty plaza and then not being able to implement that plan um and so you know park staff has has shared that in this engagement process we need to be very clear with the community up front around what are the fact that this there isn't funding for this and so and help helping that help uh inform the planning process up front might be helpful i think it's a little difficult i don't know how that how we go about or if that's advisable to you know help that inform how we write an rfp um but i think it is particularly important in terms of thinking about it as a phased project that we might be thinking about this also that we want designs that can stand alone and can be broken apart so that we obviously want it to be connected but we also want liberty plaza for example to be if first martin is redeveloping and really wants to help invest in that space that that might be something that for example could be um help really inform that planning process for example or the redevelopment of you know around the block as others have spoken to might help to inform these different phases so um i guess i would advocate for a a pragmatic more um phased approach to this yeah absolutely and that is yeah i do want to re-emphasize that that is something that we heard from um park staff and and i completely agree with that we need to be really sincere and honest with the public that there is no fun being in hand right now to implement any anything that might come out of this we are trying to figure this out as a community but the transformation of the space would be to make it a public space um but the funding piece is yet to come that's something that we still need to work on so rita frank and then alan well i thought that we were going to talk about how to work together with the funding process so um i hope that that's part of what we're going to be discussing coming up so to just say there's no funding that's not exactly correct there is some funding at least for this start point and we do have to figure it out for the future of course and and the sustainable parts of it for the future um but i i feel pretty depressed when i hear it's just like no funding sounds like the closed the door so i hope that we can if we're going to say no funding that we're going to find a way to open the door to the community to contribute and in various ways not just individuals but organizations and businesses and the dda so i hope that that's part of where we're going yeah i guess i should clarify there is no identified source of funding for capital improvements and ongoing costs at this point so that is something that we just need to you know as it comes along as we figure it out we need to communicate that with the public but the starting point right now is that that hasn't been identified i don't even know what we're trying to identify for that this is right this is right i'm right with rita we don't want to make blank blanket statements that actually imply that what are we sitting here for now if we can't do it we can't do it but we can do it and so you know it's i think that was a pretty big trigger for me as well to hear there's no funding there's no identified funding there's no you know no no no no no we're here to figure out the yeses yeah i would just i would just emphasize that i think that um you know the reality is that there there is uh we're not doing anything unless we can find a funding a way to fund this you know i mean there's no there is no construction costs uh funding pool yet uh you know we're gonna have uh there are a lot of things uh that we're gonna have to identify and i i i will emphasize that i agree with uh sort of uh you know rita's attitude you can um what's what's the old saying that um if you uh if you think you can uh or if you think you can't you're right and uh and uh so i i am going to try and approach this very much the former uh because i do think that we can um and i think that the examples from other communities emphasize that so i certainly always want to emphasize realism and honesty and transparency matter um but i i do you think it's going to be very important that we look for an opportunistic eye to this right and and it's not just a matter of going out and asking for money it's it's a matter of leveraging what we do have doing a fun time so that we can so that it becomes integrated with the future of our city and so no problem no like looking at the green belt ordinance and seeing if that's there's a way to shift the application of those funds looking at um the um sustainability program to see if there's a way that this can really advance this to the a20 program or whatever part is related to that this is where we have to open those doors we have to make those connections so that we can go through those doors and and that means our city will go through those doors that open it to you know a less anxious period of time we are i don't know about anybody else but there's a lot there's a lot of anxiety out here especially from the last two years and what came before that and what's coming up right now we need something to give our feet solid ground to go forward on and i think that that overall when i think of a place that that all of us are trying to articulate but that's actually the solid ground it's not this one place but it's what it means to the city to have this place so that's my little philosophical rant i i i think that's a great that's a great statement alice i just i i know we got a couple hands up and i want to emphasize that we are 852.

okay any questions of uh mr paris yes mr watson smith um just to piggyback off you mr paris um i applaud you for uh taking on residency and security something i was you know very happy to have done um with the number that you said the 419 000 i also wanted to give you a general number um so far from year to date totaling with uh my reign and urane the district has saved nearly 1 million 55 384 dollars that's just something i wanted to mention to the public uh with mr paris that's 419 000 and change and when i was on it was 636 000 and change so i'm glad to say we're saving clifton a million dollars plus more and i wish you the best with the rest of the year thank you for us yeah that my number was just from this year so right thank you for sharing last year's amount it's substantial what would that million dollars be for the for the school year of 21 22 or is that calendar year of 21 going into 22.

excuse me 2020 the budget fiscal year 2022 collected revenue of 9.7 million was one point million or 19 percent lower compared to budget fiscal year 2021 of 11.5 million this was due to a delay in receiving the voucher and fee for services revenue the total obligated expenditures were 28.4 million for budget fiscal year 2022 a reduction of 2.5 million when compared to budget fiscal year 2021 total obligated expenditures of 30.9 million during budget fiscal year 2022 we had a reduction of payroll food other operating expenses equipment and capital expenditures of 3.6 million offset by increase in professional services travel and transfers out of 1.1 million page six of the report shows the budget to actual expenditures as well as remaining budget balances by object class by fund and by program the reports on page 7 and 8 show the actual expenditures by object class and by fun page seven has the expenditures by program and page eight has the expenditures by operational area the instructional and student support account for 63 percent of the total expenditures and agency administration accounts for 12 percent the remaining expenditures are for residential facilities transportation food and statewide services page 15 begins the financial summary for january 31 2022 and 2021.

extend it to the 18th because i'm just saying that way they kind of have a deadline to get them in i mean obviously if they submit them later if we are able to look them over we're not going to say no but if we can have the bulk of it those questions then we can kind of sift through and right you know if if 12 people asked how much did the land cost well that's more frequently you know so if we can kind of get some of those things ahead of time yes so then it's not what we're doing here each night where exactly we get questions but we don't have the answers because we're not there so we don't know what the rent's going to be but that's a big question yes it is because that's what people want to know and how are we going to choose between you know 100 applicants and we have 25 housing units exactly how is that going to go and we don't know those answers yet but we do need to start making plans on how to approach those absolutely if we keep continuing through and everything goes through the way it is absolutely and in the meantime i can also reach out to some of the other districts in arizona who have teacherage that would be great and say how did how did you how did you determine these things criteria and and what do you you know what do you have going on so at least you guys have some information to start from yeah that was just what i was going to reiterate to remind people that this isn't new there are other school districts who are doing this successfully okay so because other school districts are doing successfully they have a lot of these answers already ready for us so a lot of people who are wondering like how are school districts doing this or whatever like that because like again what i said earlier is i feel like a lot of people are thinking that this is brand new it's never happened before that we're setting a new president or something like that or not this has been around for a while so one follow-up with that too is are we going to have a chance between and i know we got spring break coming up but to to do some sort of survey with our staff since it's been requested multiple times like is there a is there a quick google sheet we can get out there and ward would like us to do that can we give our directive to do something like that um just a few short questions i don't need them to have a long one but just a few short questions so then we can gather some information and i know that we're asking a lot because it's coming up on spring break and they're probably already on vacation if they haven't left yet um but just to check their email we have that time after break yeah we've got that whole week so yeah if we could gather something about that you know asking them about you know would this be a benefit to you would you be interested in it how does it you know would you you know is this something that if it's an option for you because i know we keep talking about like if we have an employee who's with the district and this is employees we keep saying teachers teachers teachers but this is for staff members and and we keep talking about you know but and it's you know retainer recruit but it's both it's and it is and two of the people on your list tonight of resignations left because they do not have housing yes and just to add in i know there's a lot of concern about you know we have all this staff but only limited housing i'm of a strong mindset just because we can't help everybody doesn't mean we don't help anybody we have an excellent opportunity here and no it's not going to be able to help everybody it's not but that doesn't mean we don't help what we can help well i know we emphasized it before we we have some single teachers we've got some young teachers we've got some older teachers some veteran teachers but they're willing to room with people or they come in in a group of that's been recruited together or they've retained together but they've just lost the apartment but now there's a house so even though it's a three bedroom two bath or a four bedroom two bath or whatever they could do things so even if it's two bedrooms or three bedrooms or whatever it happens to turn out to be it's optional there's teachers that have shared the entire time i've worked in this this community um they all get together and they rent a house together they even converted a garage to an apartment you know so it's not just one family or one teacher with their husband children wives or you know wives and children or what vice versa it could be two or three in one home if they choose if that's open an option so it's not just 25 individuals it could be 50.

so we'll uh we'll yeah we'll reconvene at 7 30. it's already 7 30. uh all right see you out see you all at uh 7 49 close uh president do you need to um yes uh can you let us know when we're going to be back uh we're looking at like an hour and take public comment too right oh yes thank you for that reminder um so is there any public comment with you with regard to the items that are going to be discussed in closed session if so please indicate by raising your hand uh no public uh comment at this time or no request there be no public comment there will recess to closed session and return at approximately 8 30 correct yes all right you need to add 10 minutes i apologize 40. all right i'll see you all uh approximately yes we do all right uh we'll go ahead and reconvene at 8 37 um and uh from under republic there's nothing report uh no action reporting closed session correct dr barr nothing to report didn't report all right at this point um and i closed off the hearing earlier correct and we we took action so yes just want to make sure we did everything right all right i'll go ahead and join this meeting at 8 37 have a good night everyone

thank you miss o'neill okay all right and this is a roll call boat we have a motion and a second on the floor does anybody have any uh comments see not i'll just let you know that uh this is great that we're doing this i was there yesterday with uh our team and grant's team uh at sycamore uh i know i didn't sit through the meeting but i know that you guys are doing some amazing work and i'm looking forward to opening up the community schools at sycamore and anaheim but most of all i'm more than happy to see that our community is involved in it so thank you for the opportunity we're glad to partner and get this done so having said that let's go for a vote um miss trustee piercy aye trustee randall trejo i vote aye trustee smith aye mr o'neil aye trustee o'neill and then uh al jabar votes i motion passes thank you very much right and 8.1 which was the measure eight citizens oversight committee annual report it we're gonna move it to the april meeting um because we did get a communication that maybe the speakers were not available so we'll go ahead and move that item to the april meeting and i'll move on to 8.2 financial audit for fiscal year 20 20 21.

the bottom slide you'll see it just lists the items that we use to produce our interim report it's the most recent state adopted budget as june of 21 the current board approved budget the governor's january 2022 budget proposal for the subsequent years in january two months ago the governor newsom proposed the budget for this upcoming fiscal year which does affect our year two and our year three assumptions and of course school services uh local control funding formula funding formula simulator and the lcff calculator on the top of page 3 that top slide i want to talk a little bit about our average daily attendance assumptions at budget adoption for this year we budgeted our ada at 12 610 and that was due to the ada hold harmless we've had based on the governor's emergency executive orders related to the pandemic next year however that hold harmless go goes away and at budget adoption we were originally projecting a slight increase in our ada because our enrollment trend is still one of growth however we are going to revise that and i'll go through that in a second first interim we revised them a little bit up because we were actually our enrollment was increasing um but as we took a better look at our average daily attendance kids actually coming to school if you look at that bottom slide we have now adjusted at second interim we've adjusted our ada projections down to reflect our lower ada uh in the current year we're still 12 610 due to the hold harmless in 2223 our our ada projection has dropped from 12 646 to 12 and that is utilizing what governor newsom has proposed as a three-year ada average if the board recalls in year over year ada we're guaranteed the current year ada or the prior year ada whichever is higher in the current situation in our current year we are projecting an ada in the current year of about 11 500 significantly lower than our historical ada even though our enrollment is higher so if you look at that bottom slide you'll see where the average comes into play for the for the next year calculation where we're projecting about 12 258 ada that's the average of the 1920 hold harmless the 2021 hold harmless and our actual p1 ada which we're using as our projected p2 ada in the current year and you'll see it's down over a thousand from that 12 610 number and you'll see the average calculation for 2324 results in a projected ada in that year of 11 920.

um and so if we can just make sure everybody gets to say what they want to say and then transition to going forward i think this is a good exercise to talk through tonight given that we've got a response so alan and then frank and then let's let's see if there's any other points and we'll try and wrap wrap up well i think frank had his hand up first but you called on me so i i just want to say that i think that the point that david olson raised is absolutely relevant there's a bond issue that provides funds for acquisition and management of parkland in the city and out of the city the only reason that is not being operated is because the city council long ago said in the city only for acquisition and there's a city council a city council election there are two people on this body that should be put in for for the resolution to avoid to redraw that old resolution and allow the park green belt funds for use in the city to be used that would be appropriate for this project that's one there is money right there and the only thing that is preventing it is a city old city council resolution that could easily with six votes be disappeared and i hope those votes would be there and they should be an issue in the next election and that should be part of our recommendation our advice to the city council is they should just do it and also if we create something out of a process that does indeed engage people from the little people up to the big and old people that would turn out something beautiful ann arbor is just about the richest town around there's a lot of money in this town if we can do something beautiful private financing for a hundred million dollars is no big deal because there is that kind of money if it is beautiful i know frank frank has he and he and his buddies have raised it over at the university too so without putting any number on it i don't think that the absence of money is a problem the absence of a beautiful envision that is drawn out and filled that the pros the product the possession of people in the city that can be funded but actually there is money that has been voted for by the people for exactly this purpose and it should be freed for use and that is a question that is up to the people people on this council and people on the city council to address and i'm glad that that david olson brought it up he brought it up during the library uh green conservancy meeting you brought it up during the uh task force meeting we should listen to it it is a true fact there is money just sitting there except for an old restriction by the city council that is not binding on the future allen frank okay i'm looking at the clock um yeah i i think we do need a an overall vision to point towards but it may have been eric or maybe alice or both you know maybe this process does need some some intermediate steps that can be can be defined and achieved as we move towards the bigger longer term vision and that includes uh you know defining what those steps are and and building support for for that if there's financial components to that i just think this process needs uh real engagement with uh selected block partners uh the broader business community that you know the philanthropic community to bring key components of those audiences along as this process develops and and maybe you know i don't want i don't want to break out one piece at to the detriment of the larger picture but perhaps liberty plaza is that peace because the interest is has been regenerated uh by this task force and unfortunately by events maybe that can be a piece that uh we can develop uh some intermediate steps and build block partner and broader community support if there's some financial components to that and i i think we need a snowball and it's you know most all snowballs start small but they can get very big and you know maybe there's some discrete things related to the live the uh the surface area um you know we've had i've had talk with with donors about perhaps building a fund uh cooperatively between the uh the park and commons in the library programmatic funding that somehow links uh the library and their uh commoning uh mission uh with what is happening outside physically on the on the on the uh surface area so maybe maybe there could be discrete pieces that will help us build momentum as as this process unfolds so thank you frank so i i think i'm going to make a suggestion here uh heather i did a very nice job summarizing uh folks thoughts why don't we take take that offline a little bit and see if we can translate that into some actionable next steps and get that back to folks here for consideration uh you know in between this meeting and the next and i think also uh you know sarah will uh will get us started on that block partner engagement you know clearly that is important to these next steps um and uh and then you know we can we can bring that back so i'm gonna make that suggestion uh and if if folks you know want to be involved in in in that you know i want to reach out to heather and we'll you know we can get a little uh little group of folks together if if that's a desire feels like that's you know we we need a need to build a little plan of action um and and maybe uh maybe the this these meetings are a good opportunity for reflection upon that plan but but we do the heavy lifting offline that sound okay yeah are those no heather those notes can you circulate them to everyone yep i can do that i don't know what offline means it means not in the current situation yeah i understand that but is that i think it means that we're not going to try and wordsmith something on zoom i've seen that happen before tough to do so um let me know where the offline is we will definitely all right any uh any other points at all before we wrap up and uh and um you know move into uh public comment well i do i i want to say that i can appreciate giving an emphasis to liberty positive but the problem with activating the library lot is that the cars are still there get the cars off and the people will come there'll be more programming there'll be stuff going on there it is not it is very unfriendly to the whole process that the cars are still there after 39 meetings at the city that the vda has not yet put it on their agenda that should be our number one recommendation to the city council one more time city council should say get the cars off so the people can begin to have a program there without without having to go through a special permit and can be able to leave stuff there and actually begin to make it a people space taking the time it's nine o'clock okay it's the truth heather do we have any members of the public who'd like to make a comment yes robert black good evening again it's fascinating to listen to you guys i just applaud your courage to wade through this stuff you know these are not mutually competitive responses to the rfi they are mutually inclusive ideas that overlap and as heather's first question is what are your hit greatest hits from these things look at that carefully and see what's there both have strong practical structural people one of them has a group that's right above afternoon delight that knows a whole lot about structures that's a stone's throw away and they see that a lot every day and there are other land planners and professional architects on both sides who are extremely important to this process the other part though is having strong professional facilitation to guide you through these next steps and i'd encourage you to follow this process you know rita said open the door which means you know we all carry mental models of our ideas of the past and we don't necessarily want to shape the future from them but we want to consider them right all about practicality all about being grounded there are outside shaping forces to this project this is a teeny project compared to other big urban projects like central park or something it's teeny so the the shaping forces here are small and definable your process to articulate those defined pieces is a no-brainer for a good facilitator we're going to talk about funding now we're going to talk about structures now we're going to talk about water management that kind of stuff is easy to handle if it's directed by somebody who knows how to direct it and not let it sidetrack so you end up with what greenways was or something else good facilitator will get you through the process and get to goals as i heard many times also as alice said we don't know yet what we're trying to identify for and then i also heard if you think you can if you think you can't you're right so let's think we can right that's a recommendation and then alice also said give our feet solid ground to go forward on this is extremely practical and foundational to this so the inner shaping forces that drive this thing need to be defined more clearly in my opinion the task force needs to be sorted and prioritized and listed specifically what do you want there you don't want to pay money to the pie in the sky design that's not grounded in reality what do you really need to do here and you have that information before you you just haven't defined it yet and as frank said you need an overall vision to point towards clearly but it has intermediate steps that shape that vision and so part of this process i think that you're struggling with is to define these pieces take the work that heather suggested and put these pieces together in an overlapping set of visions and then quantify those steps that you need you will be surprised that as you move forward with this process the help you need will show up just like the funders i've had many conversations with frank and even other people in the ann arbor community about how funding will appear the non-profits i've worked with and others miracles literally happen when you're clear about your future and what you need so i think it's important that you need to assemble this criteria as a foundation to move forward so you're doing great it's just wonderful to stay open sort this process pick the best of everything together and you've got some wonderful things to document and move forward toward an rfp so kudos to your conversations tonight and i really applaud you for staying with this thing you're you're gonna do it thank you thanks robert and then we have the person with the phone number ending in three two six hello uh this is jeff crockett again or y'all can you all hear me yes ken okay great i i just want to tell you that i am really pumped up about the garden this year there's really a lot of exciting things going on particularly with rita's help and we have already outreached to the dda by the way we've talked to my wife and i talked to jeff watson and we briefed him on our plans we're talking about expanding from two plots to four plots we're talking about adding with rita's help uh pollinator plants to attract monarch butterflies and i want you to imagine for a minute right now we're talking about expanding to four there are 14 plots around the uh around the center of the city parking lot now just imagine if all those 14 plots had pollinators now imagine families walking in the middle of the summer and watching the butterflies and beets it becomes a destination and guess what there's no cost involved to the city this is something you can do with no cost except for volunteers and that is what tells us what the commons is really all about so when you talk about the activation of the commons consider what has already been done really important the other thing um i want to invite you all to come to one of our meetings we've been meeting on a bi-weekly basis typically on saturdays by zoom and we started this in mid-january if any of you want to come contact rita she'll give you the zoom link we'd be happy to have you come and i guarantee you're going to learn something uh joette ryoma who is our consultant is really into mulching and in fact is embarked on a project to help people reduce the amount of compost they put in their bins because this results in a cost to the city so imagine if you can process this locally without putting in your comp com compost bin so we're learning how to do that we're also involved in a seed exchange so the seeds that came from the sunflowers and other plants last year we have harvested and we have dried them and we're going to put them into envelopes and during earth day we're going to hand them out so that we can spread these seeds and have other people sort of enjoy it that's sort of the beauty of uh what we're doing with citizen engagement and getting other people involved uh and then of course there are the pollinators uh so uh but the other thing i would encourage you to think about is it coming up for your annual report you have a key opportunity here and to remove the parking this involves no cost if any of you are happen to be around in the parking lot underneath the parking lot it is by no means filled so if you remove the street parking there's going to be no hit to the dda there was some mention before about the dda was going to lose parking but there was no consideration to the fact that hey this is covad and there are a lot fewer people parking downtown during the day so i would encourage you to get some data and find out out of all the parking spots there are in these in in the structure how many are actually filled during the day i would think you would find not that much and could easily accommodate removing the parking so there's no cost and there's a lot of space downstairs so it wouldn't take much to create a storage facility close by in one of the the parking spots that are no longer be used in fact i bet alan would be happy to build the darn thing but basically what you need is to create a facility to make it easy to store stuff and the last thing i want to say it wouldn't take much to provide seating my guess is if you look around the parks there are a lot of benches that are not being used a lot of seats that are not being used my guess so move them you know move into the comments to create some place for people to sit it's going to cost little money but it is an intermediate thing that you can set you can do to activate the commons so i would encourage you long term to think big but short term to think practical and getting the commons going thank you very much all right and we have the caller that's ending in three four zero should be able to talk hi greetings uh my name is luis vasquez uh resident of the first ward living at 909 barton drive in ann arbor michigan um i feel like i i'm watching the movie groundhog's day because every time i watch one of these meetings the same issues keep on getting rehashed and discussed and here we are nearly four years after prop a was voted in by a bare majority and you know we have still have not very much to show and um you know i'm kind of getting upset uh especially since with this uh notion that's been being put forward about looting uh the greenbelt millage money uh that's not what you know i voted for the greenbelt millage uh i held a fundraiser at my house to get that passed um and you know i really don't want to see that uh rated for this purpose uh if you uh yeah and and i mean the the the pitiful amount of money that's been raised so far uh you know is it's a drop in the bucket and now you guys are have your hands out trying to uh ask uh the city taxpayers for money to fund this which you really don't i mean so far you don't really have a vision and here it is four years later um come on guys uh you know give us a break um and and you know get something done it shouldn't have taken four years nearly four years to realize that uh liberty commons is the is the first thing that needs to be addressed on that whole block and if you can't uh find you know do something about liberty plaza to improve it uh what makes you think what makes me think what makes anybody in another think that um you know millions of dollars should be put towards uh the library lot i mean you know i'm really incensed about this and i'm frankly kind of tired of it but uh thank you for your time and for listening to me and my concerns all right and we have one more person on the line um the person whose phone number ends in hello um my name is abdul i'm calling in um because i want to point out that there's a great opportunity to activate the commons for the goals of the city um thankfully the the parking garage is a designed to be a substructure for a building and if you don't know about high-rise construction one of the most expensive parts of highest construction is the substructure because it costs a lot of money to dig um and you're always going to be if you want to build anything um if you see right now on southeastern you're building the this new high rise building and they're spending eight months digging to build the substructure eight months until they even start thinking about going vertical um and thankfully this library parking garage is a wonderful substructure um also it's a really convenient spot to put um something that will can activate the space for people who walk past i walk past there regularly i'm going to downtown way to go get a grab id with my friends um i'm always walking back and forth there um it's a very big empty space um in the middle of the city it's kind of like a hole you might say a whole thing i don't think will be filled by some dirt thrown on top of a parking garage um but yeah so so because of this substructure part if you're building you know say any kind of building um i want to say like 10 to 20 percent of construction costs are going to come from that building and um fifteen to twenty percent of your construction co of your total cost to build anything are gonna be landing the question cost so saying like if you're saving about 35 percent of your total cost to build anything um that basically what that what you do is build affordable housing um build income restricted housing um to help people to give a place for people who want to live in ann arbor who can't afford to live here we have a housing waitlist that's 3 200 people long so i suggest putting this back to the voters and doing what we're doing with all of our other parking lots in the city um trying to use them to get the city's goals done because this has been going on for four years and i think that there's been like twenty thousand dollars raised and that's not that's not gonna do anything um it's not even a higher consultant i say you know take this back to the drawing board you know this is a great opportunity to put affordable housing i'm almost confident you can build 100 affordable um building you can put a park on top of the building on the side of the building in the middle of the building there's so many different options where you can put a park but you're going to save so much money with this substructure 30 and placed in and zero line acquisition cost and it's that by saving 35 of construction costs you can offer 100 affordable units i almost guarantee it i haven't looked into the finances like don't know the calculations and whatnot but i'm pretty sure that it can make sense and it can qualify for housing knowledge money you could even try getting litec money from the federal government that would eliminate the eligibility for our money but you can get low income housing tax credit money there are so many different ways that you can fund this project and it would be a much greater activation of the space than throwing some dirt on top of a concrete slab thank you any other members of the public other um somebody with their hand up i think they already went i just want to double check um the person with the phone number three four zero i think your hand was just continuing to be out but let me double check with you okay uh that's it okay all right uh could we have a motion for adjournment then all right motion and seconded and uh it looks like somebody else just raised their hand heather one person with the phone number three four five yeah why don't we give them just one opportunity hello can you hear me okay i'm sorry i tried to unmute myself earlier and i um pressed two sixes instead of one and so try to do it again my name is kitty khan and i wasn't going to call in but a few things that were said tonight got me a little agitated and so i decided i would first of all erica try to be a little positive your your comment about there is no funding we might as well admit it there's no funding tell people in the rfp there's no funding no that's not right that's not right and i really resent the fact that you said that it's like you're trying to sabotage the effort please don't and another thing is that guy that just called saying we should put affordable housing on the lot excuse me the y lot right across the street is going to have a ton of affordable housing those residents of those towers are going to love to have open space across the street because they don't have a yard they're in these towers so enough with the affordable housing argument we need open space if only the mayor and his majority would get behind this effort like plymouth did like other cities do instead of trying to sabotage it he's so mad that he couldn't sell this to his core spaces and it's sour grapes all over the way all the time and i'm so sick of it i'm so sick of reading on next door people saying oh this is going to fail what have they done just like lewis he's one of them there are so many naysayers and i'm sick of it if only people would join together this can happen and i still think it can happen but i am so sick of the powers that be and the mayor supporters in this town trying to sabotage this effort so i i really give credit to the people who can remain positive in spite of the naysayers and i believe this can happen i really do and it's hard when you have to push through a wall of people that wanted to fail and that's that's all you can tell how angry i am and i'm sorry i can't be as positive and upbeat as so many are and i but i know this can happen and i know it will be wonderful and i just wish our local government would get behind it i really wish that could happen and i agree with david olson look in to that green green belt millage funding there is the city has money that isn't being spent that is supposed to be spent inside our city there is money there is money if only our local government will get behind this project it wouldn't be this hard okay that's all good night thank you we have a motion on the floor uh technically still so uh if we could have an approval uh to adjourn all in favor say aye any opposed all right a wonderful evening thanks good night you

i i know the 419 was just since january this year so the first two months technically okay and yours was basically from september up until january okay so it's so that's just a million dollars 122.

the collected revenues are 16.1 million which is 2.1 million or 15.1 percent higher than this time 2021. the increase is primarily in the prop 301 funds medicaid and the land endowment the obligated expenditures are 33.8 million or 55.6 of the budget fiscal year 2022 revised budget of 61.2 this is a decrease of 1.4 million when compared to budget fiscal year by 2021 obligated expenditures of 35.2 million the decrease is primarily due to one less payroll a decrease in equipment purchases of 1.2 million because of the purchases of the vehicles in budget fiscal year 2021. and this is offset by an increase in professional and outside services of 1.2 million for the contracted transportation and food services page 17 has a budget to actual expenditures as well as the remaining budget balance by object class fund and program on page 18 the program expenditures are distributed by object class and fund and page 19 has the expenditures by object class and by fund the instructional and student services account for 63 percent and the agency administration accounts for 11 as of january 31 22 compared to 68 for instructional and student services and 12 for agency administration as of january 31st 2021 page 22 has the budget fiscal year 2022 budget status report for all sources as of january 31 2022 and 2021 the budget fiscal year 2022 actual revenues were 29 million compared to 27.7 million in budget fiscal year 2021.

that we can yeah definitely yeah find on those lists see where we are absolutely set that up um so that those days work for everybody 20 seconds and to answer i'm sorry but to answer uh uh amanda's other part then the business part of that meeting would be about the insurance so those would really be the only two things at this time that would be on that agenda and that's just for us to divvy up our sections and then the towel hall will come after later yes okay yes at least we have some one question and one suggestion the question is what deadline do you want me to publicize for the 18th to have their questions submitted by okay that's for the public yes the second is a suggestion in the past with superintendent searches and other things like that we have emailed out a link to a serving month so that one person or a couple of people are not being bombarded with hundreds that's whatever's easiest that's great going to do yeah employees give them a survey monkey link and then it's just all tabulated yeah whatever is easiest yes that's what i was thinking post that survey monkey and and and then i i mean it's not the same i get it it's not a vote but it it gets it out there to the community that they even though we just canceled for 70 000 dollars because we wanted to save that there's an opportunity there to have a voice and it may be two different sets of questions but or it could be one set of questions you guys work that out whatever you see is best i agree with that work it out work it out but great suggestion thank you having a thousand emails coming in great kim likes emails yeah kim loves emails what is her email address again what's up [Laughter] yeah thank you lance that was a good suggestion all right anything else on that okay at this time i'd like to make a motion that we adjourn i'll second that motion amanda amen all in favor aye corey burgess i'm amanda eamon hi charlene diaz hi anna boyd we are adjourned thank you thank you you

it's the end dr nian yes thank you so much we have our um partner here um from e bailey i'm bobby patel to give us a report to the board thank you good evening board members members of the cabinet sorry thank you can you hear me okay so as nancy mentioned i'm a partner with hyde bailey one of the auditors for the school district i'll be going over both of the bond report and the district report starting with the district report um what i'm going to cover it's uh basically the audited financial statements financial statement opinion which includes the internal control and compliance areas federal award opinions which includes internal control and compliance areas and also the state award opinion which is just compliance and before i get started i generally like to describe what an audit is basically it's a process designed to provide reasonable assurance whether the financial statements are free of material misstatements with the ultimate goal of providing an auditor's opinion the highest level the entity could earn is called a unmodified opinion and the way we get there is through the risk assessment approach of the district's internal control understanding and reviewing those controls and ultimately performing it test the transaction using a sampling approach now i'd like to draw your attention to the summary of auditor's results page it's page 100 in the printed copy basically this is one area in the audit report which summarizes the three opinions that i'll cover the financial statement opinion the district earned the unmodified opinion like i mentioned that's the highest level insurance that we provide with no material weaknesses or significant deficiencies noted in the testing the next award opinion that's on that page is the federal awards opinion again the district earned the unmodified opinion on the federal compliance with no significant deficiencies or material weaknesses noted and we tested three major federal programs the next award on the opinion on that page is for the state compliance again the district earned the unmodified opinion and in the petition i'd like to add we didn't have any audit adjustments so what that means is what the board was presented back in september the unknotted actuals we took those numbers audited them and came up with no material misstatements no to those numbers the next page i want to draw your attention to is the schedule of financial trends that's page 86 and for people that are like me the number of gigs this is like the favorite page in the audit report though if you were to pick one um basically what this tells us is the trend of the general fund for the past three years and where it's going in the following fiscal year so what this is telling us is in the last three years the general fund had a surplus however in 2122 a deficit is projected and that's mainly due to all the one-time monies related to covet that came in that's going to be spent according to the requirements this page also tells us that ada has slightly decreased and that's very common for our southern california degrees districts we're noticing that pretty much everywhere ada is declining and lastly general uh long-term obligations have increased and that's mainly due to geo bond and pensions and opebs with that'll conclude my presentation on the district report and i'm open to any questions you may have thank you very much i'll open it for questions board members i have no questions just thank you for your for your audit and i recommend the business department for what you have done to present this well well i'll do that that's great thank you for the audit and also a great work nancy and your team so thank you very much i would like to thank you and i think dr nian is going to sleep well tonight all right our next item is to 8.3 bond audit report for fiscal year 2021 uh 2020 2021.

and a little bit about that if you turn the page and look on the turn to page 4 and look i'm sorry uh that's on a little little later slide but i'll talk about that in a second so the cola assumptions we're dealing with here are our base grant cola at budget adoption and our base grant coal at first interim we have updated our base grant colas to reflect the governor's january proposal the current year did not change we're still at 5.07 percent cola in the 2223 school year what we're looking at right now according to the governor's proposal is a 5.33 percent cola remember that cola is the cost of living adjustment that is the percent increase to our lcf base grant which then flows through that formula and 3.61 in the 23-24 school year there is talk that the governor has kind of come back to us at the may revision and have a cola that's even higher for next year there has been talk of slightly over six percent for next year for the cola so as i move to the assumptions in the current year we didn't change any of those assumptions at our second interim so if you could move to page five the top slide again 21 22 assumptions on the expenditure side the one note i want to make is that some of our covid relief funding that we have received from the federal government in the state of california they come to us with expiration dates and we're spending the money that expires the soonest we do have some that expires in september of 22 and our assumption in the current year is that all that money will be expended by june of 22 so we don't run into that deadline the bottom of page five you'll see our 2223 assumptions our projected revenue we're using that funded ada at 12 258 with that 5.3 percent cola currently and you'll see that actually does increase our lcff revenue by 4.1 million so we'll see an increase in revenue because of that cola even though our ada is declining even though our enrollment is growing so we got a lot of different puzzles going on right now in that particular projection on our federal revenue side we have all of our esser relief funding that comes to us that is one-time money with expiration dates but we budgeted that previously and in the current year if we're not going to be spending that esser funding in the current year you'll see this more done on it at actuals but we then remove that revenue from our budget as we remove the budgeted expenditures because in restricted programs they have to balance but then the revenue moves into the next year but we are spending that so we're going to see an actual reduction in our federal and state revenue as we move into 2223 on on the books if you turn to page six at the top of the page that's on our expenditure assumptions for 2223.

so that's just a million dollars of the 21 22 uh school year right so then we've saved more than that calendar year and and investigations are continuing there's more good there's more coming in we still have a couple of months left of school so the numbers are only going to increase in a positive matter so thank you as well mr paris and as well as our two folks uh vinnie constantino and tom fieldhouse doing such a great job yeah and and those the residents need to know that those are not numbers on in books those are not numbers that are equated those are real dollars those are real dollars of students that no longer are clifton paying for because they live in another town now and um mr gengaro started this whole process and mr doctor has now come in and perfected it even more so i commend both of you this town of clifton has always been strong on residency and i don't think there's another town out there it is as strong i know in the past they've called us to piggyback on our program and how we run it and how we do things and so i know uh uh we're doing a great job so i i commend uh all those in involved in that for bringing right now over a million dollars uh back to clifton so uh thank you mr paris that was your your first uh official uh uh committee meeting and uh you did a wonderful job so uh thank you okay uh again i don't i don't have anything on my screens or is there any other committee reports that are available no okay okay um where did board member comments go oh there um unfinished business um i have um to appoint our school board representatives for the state and for the county so our state representative uh will be miss basford and mr paris will be the alternate and um on the county level mr paris is going to uh take the chair and mr awad said he would take the alternate okay okay now we're at uh board member comments miss uh beltron you are the lead tonight you okay to start yes okay um i don't have any comments for tonight to keep it short um i also have the sentiment of the majority of the board that uh the project graduation being moved to um the american dream is going to be great i'm actually super looking forward to going i've been to the last two that we had um and i just think that the the kids lost two years of high school and if you think back to your high school experience and you lost two whole years of it um i don't think there's a value really for that so i think 100 150 160 to me at least it's um it's worthwhile to spend to give the kids um a great send-off and you know we only have i think two more years of kids that will have hopefully only two more years of kids that will have weird high school experiences and then we'll be back to kids having normal high school experiences god willing um so i think like you know the next two years we do have to be a little cognizant of what these kids did lose you know the freshmen didn't have eighth grade graduations you know some kids didn't have fifth grade they weren't kindergarten move up so you know those next ten years is really going to be kids that have lost things so you have to be a little cognizant of that including the learning loss that someone spoke about at the podium tonight um you know that's a big issue i see it just in my own employees that are high school age um you know you see the difference from the kids that you know had full schooling for the last four years and kids who now don't uh you can definitely pick up the you know most of my employees are english second language and you can see that they didn't really get the chance that other employees of mine from the past had to you know pick up the more the interest i can't even speak english myself intricacies of uh the english language and i i really hope that you know we do some i know we've had a lot of programs maybe this summer since we'll have a little bit more of a normal learning environment we can offer some more some more programs for the kids to um to be able to try and catch up so that it isn't a lifelong delay because that's what they're talking about in the news that some of these kids are going to be delayed for life like life altered because of the pandemic which is kind of crazy to think about i mean a lot of lives are altered because the pandemic but for children especially to start just restarting your life and have your life altered is uh really sad to me and i think that's all i have thank you uh thank you miss bassford um thank you good evening everyone uh so yesterday started the very holy period of um 40 days of lent uh for roman catholics and all catholics out there in the world uh we were um we tried to give up something in our house and uh i tried to exhibit it here tonight so i'm going to watch my words for the next 40 days and after my my lengthen period i'm going to let loose in an epic way 40 days easter sunday easter sunday trust me easter sunday i have a question for mr smith but i'll ask that in a minute read across america happens to be one of my favorite things about uh the perks of the job uh i was invited to three schools i was only able to get to school five virtually i took off last year the whole day to just read to different schools i couldn't do that this year i'm training in a different different level and i really had to concentrate on my job you know comes first so i did get to five and um when dr orbitazzy talked about the books and the tongue tie tying and all i could think of was sitting in school five waiting for the next class to come and peter salzano bursting into the office those double doors just flying open and like smoke comes out here comes peter and he's talking about this book that he was reading and his tongue was getting tied all day all yesterday when i was reading that book i was choking up because all i could think of was peter dressed up as a cat and a hat and doing what he does for the students and in true peter fashion he made fun of himself he made himself the joke and it makes me laugh because that's a memory that i'll never forget and god rest his soul and um he was truly truly missed in my life and i i can't get over the fact is that he's gone but when he said about the the tongue tying it was it was like an hour just a belly laughing i mean belly laughing with peter and it's uh it's nice that we can give back to those students and do that i wasn't able to get to 16 and i wasn't able to get to eight i sent my apologies i copied dr robitazia on the email um but i will get there next year god willing if you invite me i did send up um i emailed you today dr robitazia sent up two books so the teacher can use them for her library uh the ones that i read and the students were just so so nice it's very hard to read on zoom and you're trying to say all the dr seussisms and you're trying to show pictures and you got your head this way and all of a sudden the dogs burst in it was just comical and all i could think of was peter peter bursting into the room and giving me that blessing so uh it was good black balloon day um uh these are my personal views and opinions i do not speak for the board i do i am a member of clifton against substance abuse and uh mr brunsiak i do not have permission to speak about the subject nor will i uh you can reach out to robin gallino or tom whittles about your questions and they will answer them but black balloon day is going to be a virtual event on um march 6th it's being hosted by dorothy online and casa and uh there is a link on the city website and we are all going to participate uh and they're gonna they have people participating and telling stories and different doing different things and it's supposed to be a really really good event so i hope you can participate and pop on you don't have to speak you can just do whatever you want thank you to all the speakers for coming out tonight and uh enjoy the quiet for 40 days thank you okay next uh we have mr canova good evening i want to congratulate everyone on all the awards that they were won tonight and then all the achievements that were on uh most notably the one that dr robert tosie brought up at the thousand points and also a gpa of 98.6 i think you said it was i mean that's amazing uh we have some really really great students here um and it just shows that's what i love to see that's the best part of this job uh thank you to everyone that put in the hard work to make this border bed room renovation possible uh now we have enough room to as as our president said to uh award larger groups of recipients for things and have to wait in the hall um i think it's a more professional environment and i love the way it came out so thank you all for that um the pbsis or pb is i don't know which one it is i heard both acronyms um so i love how they're gamifying the experience so kids nowadays they love playing games and when you make something a game they're always going to gravitate towards it so when you make it a game and say you have to wear your your mustang shirt today or you have to wear your uh your id card on you every day and then you get points they're always going to do it and that's always better than a negative response it's always better than punishing somebody for something to not not have done um and i'd love to see that that's being implemented in this district i know we started with columbus and we saw a big uptick in and positive behavior there i know mr gengar back there i'm sure he said uh you know he was a big part of that initially uh and i love seeing that done throughout the district i really think that's very positive and a positive wave throughout the district is going to happen so thank you everyone for being a part of that uh the other thing was uh at school three i know i saw it and i know i saw pictures across the district with uh this week everyone was getting in character dressing up as dr seuss and the guy in the hat i think that's another thing at least in k25 that bring kids kids in and it makes school fun now that we're getting more back to normal i love seeing that things are more fun in the classroom and you know the kids come home excited they they go to school excited they want to go to school they want to be a part of things so i love seeing that happen um and and i just hope more of that is to come project graduation i agree with the comments said i think it's going to be a great year for them i think that that's gonna be a fun event uh look forward to that and uh just happy saint patty's day coming up and thank you everyone good night uh dr danny um so i will um keep my comments kind of short um one thing that i want to say was congratulations to all of the students of the month i also wanted to say that there was a bill passed that would um that now all boards of education need to have a student representative to the board so it's nice that we actually have that um there's also a bill for hiring retired teachers so if there are any retired teachers due to teacher shortage that you know do want to come back into the profession it won't affect your pension um you know you can again once that actually gets i guess ironed out and everything you could inquire about that two topics this month just want to say that it's women's history month and you know we have three commissioners women on the board so [Laughter] yes i know i know okay it was all right okay all right um march um 21st in history that was the sharpville massacre in south africa which um which was during the time of apartheid and as a result march 21st became human rights day so um i just want to you know put that out there especially in light of you know things that are going on um and i just just prayers for peace prayers that people that around the world that need to find how would you say um that we can that we can come to peace agreements and um you know prayers for those in ukraine i know that there are people i have friends and family who are in the ukraine and they just say that you know at night um it's just really when you go to bed you just don't know what'll happen when you wake up because of the the um the bombing in that i know that the ukrainian church on broad street is collecting donations for ukraine i know there are other places so you know if it is something that you're looking um to do to contribute i mean i have a grandson and one of the things that they were talking about was just like formula and diapers for babies and you know children little children like that i mean they're so innocent so you know just to give a you know donation even if it's for for baby products for for children i mean they're like really innocent in that so um thank you very much and thank you to the speakers thank you mr paris thank you mr smith uh just again congratulations to our student of the month uh winners and especially the academic decathlon team i think it's just uh proof at the high levels of academic achievement along with such a varied curriculum and opportunities for our students in all sorts of areas you can get a first class education here in clifton and congratulations to that team who will represent us nationally i also had the privilege this week of participating in read across america day i was at mr kolonkowski's third grade class at school five and miss wollen's class grade one at school 16.

the major differences were 362 000 increase in federal grant revenue 960 000 increase in prop 301 funds resulting from three months of revenue received in budget fiscal year 2022 compared to one month during budget fiscal year 2021. the budget fiscal year 2022 actual expenditures and encumbrances were 33.8 million compared to 31.1 million in budget fiscal year 2021.

okay so this report it's really a two part um it's a financial audit and also the performance audit of measure h um basically what this means it's um it's the performance side it's uh we audit that to see if it aligns with the article 13a of the state constitution and also if all the expenditures that are sampled agree with what your voters elected for the bond to be used on so on the financial statement side the district earned unmodified opinion on the bond proceeds as well with no material weaknesses or significant deficiencies noted on the performance side we selected a sample of 87 percent of the total expenditures from the fiscal year and of those sampled expenditures we noted that all of them aligned with article 13a of the state constitution and also what your voters approved the projects to be spent on and with that i'm open to questions on the bond report all right i'll open it up for questions for board members i'm just curious how you got to 87 why 87 um so the way that works is there's a materiality threshold that we calculate based on the total expenditures and then with that threshold we'll select every single transaction that's above that dollar amount so it's not necessarily that we have to look at 87 percent it just came out to 87 this year yeah well thank you all right thank you very much for the report appreciate it thank you and next we're going to the 8.4 2021-2022 second interim budget report dr yen well before i get started i do want to um i do want to acknowledge um our executive director of physical services karen oreg i know you work tirelessly with your team and your staff to make sure that we have this incredible audit so um thank you so much um you know that was all the work that you have done at the controller position um and then tonight as well thank you for all the work you've done on this i'm putting together a second intro you've done a great job and really appreciate all your support thank you so tonight um we'll be uh presenting the second intro report so these are all the differences between what i uh presented back in first the difference of the first interim to what we currently are projecting for now i want to give a little background on what's happening at the um in january and what the governor proposed at that time and what's happening in the in the state economy as well as the overall so the governor's um proposed budget is balanced um and we're hoping that you know california as a whole will find a good equilibrium at this point you know hopefully things are getting a little better um with all the different indicators we're looking at um the government did propose a 286 billion dollar budget um that will be basically um helping with um the um 22-23 fiscal year the there is a state surplus of about 45.7 billion dollars for the 20-23 fiscal year and so they are projecting a significant increase to the personal income tax as well as the um sales and use tax so that's all the different um taxes that we we pay for that portions of it there is a significant increase in the reserve account to the um budget stabilization account also known as the reigning day fund the public school systems stabilization account as well as the general fund reserve okay and while we know there are many positive indicators at this point there is still a lot of economic uncertainties uh you know we're covered and hopefully this thing will be behind us soon right that's our goal at this point um as well as there are some international issues happening right now um so those are the things that we are making sure that we are monitoring those as well because that could impact what happens in california as well overall um in the u.s uh currently the um as we look at look at some of the numbers the gdp um um for 2021 was about 5.6 percent um it is projected to go down a little bit to about 4.2 percent and two point seven percent in twenty two twenty three uh on the employment side we are looking at um over the economy in the us the economy will add about two hundred to four hundred thousand uh jobs each month unemployment rate would um reach about 3.4 by the end of 2022.

we do account for step and column increases with all of our employee units as they move across our salary schedules and our collective bargaining agreements stirs and pers employer contribution rates those are the retirement programs for our certificated and classified employees those contribution rates are projected to increase we are using a 1.5 cost inflator and that's something that we're going to have to watch very carefully in light of the high inflation the country is experiencing right now that may have to be adjusted up that's for items like fuel for our buses paper goods for our schools those types of things that we have to purchase to operate our school district and we are assuming in next year that all of our one-time covered funding will be expensed and the reason we're assuming that is because in our third year we want to provide as clean a picture as we can of what our ongoing financial situation is without the impact of the one-time funding and i'll show you that when i get to some charts that have some numbers on them 23 24 assumptions you'll see on the bottom of page six that's our ada of 11 920 that i talked about earlier based on that three year average in our current ada trend now that still nets us a 1 million dollar increase in our lcff funding because of that 3.61 cola so we're getting more money per ada but we're having fewer ada so our funding is essentially what i would consider flat in terms of a 150 million dollar funding mechanism on the top of page 7 23 24 assumptions in terms of expenditures our step and column increases are there and then the stirs and pers rates again our stirs is projected to be level compared to 22 23 but pers will be going up slightly so some numbers on the bottom of page seven and this is the slide i want to bring to your attention the general fund unrestricted that is the unrestricted the this part of our budget that has the most flexibility in spending if you'll look at 2122 you'll see our ending fund balance is going to be approximately 28 million dollars on the unrestricted side of our budget 2223 we're projecting approximately a three million dollar deficit spend so a 24.8 million dollar ending fund balance and i'm on the bottom slide on page seven second interim multi-year projection so if you look at 2324 earlier i mentioned that in 2324 we've backed out all of the one-time covet relief funding from the federal government in the state we're assuming it's all been spent so if you look at 2324 on the unrestricted side of the budget this gives us a picture of what we're faced with in our normal i use that term loosely in our normal year-to-year day-to-day operations we're looking at a projected 155 million dollars in revenue over 131 million dollars in expenditures but a 30 million dollar transfer out to support restricted programs primarily special education and routine restricted maintenance that nets to just under seven million dollar deficit spend so that's what we're going to have to watch very closely because on the unrestricted side of our budget we currently have an ongoing structural deficit when all those one-time funds are removed from our budget if you look at the slide on the top of page eight second interim multi-year projections general fund restricted this is the restricted side of our budget this is the money that comes to us with strings attached that says we shall spend it on this whether it's a program whether it's a student whether it's it comes with strings and you'll see the revenue in the current year is projected at 92 million dollars that's because a lot of that is that one time federal and state coveted relief you'll see that's reduced in 2223 to about 59.7 million and then in 2324 you'll see our revenues at 22.4 that is more of a normal typical restricted side of our budget so again we're moving back toward the norm across this multi-year projection you'll see 22 million in revenue in the last year 55 million in expenditures but you'll see there's that transfer in of about 30 million to support those restricted programs but again we're still we're spending 3.3 more 3.3 million more than we're getting in revenue on that side of the budget and we're assuming our restricted side of our budget ending fund balance is spent down to zero now most likely that's not going to happen because in our routine restricted maintenance program over the last several years we have always had some carryover in that one account so the bottom on page eight there just shows those combined it takes the unrestricted numbers and they're restricted and combines them into an overall picture and you'll see our ending fund balance in june of 24 is projected to be just shy of 18 million dollars hence the positive budget certification stating at this point based on these assumptions apple valley unified will meet its financial obligations uh top of page nine components of the ending fund balance that just breaks down that that money where it's held with whether it's in stores to account for what's in our warehouse we have a revolving cash account we have to keep and we have to keep fund balance to offset assigned unassigned and what is required as a reserve that bottom slide on page nine you'll see that's the highlights and concerns for future and i talked a little bit about ada earlier historically our ada our average daily attendance rate historically has been around 95 percent sometimes it's 94.8 sometimes it's 95.2 historically around 95 percent this year 85 percent hence enrollments going up but ada is going down significantly affects our revenue even utilizing the governor's three-year average that he has proposed and i just want to point out in the month of january you're all familiar with how january was for our school district it was a very difficult month not only for our students and our teachers our staff and our community in terms of the latest search our ada was approximately 77 for the month of january that is a huge drop and that's what i have this evening are there any questions from the board i can address any questions for matt i've got one chris um in regard on page six in regards to the operating cost inflator what index are we using to make sure that we're monitoring and updating that as we come along because obviously thank you mr nunes we we don't use an index we're using some historical trends in terms of energy costs overall product costs and again that's where i'm asking my director of fiscal services to take another look at that in light of the rate of inflation that we're experiencing at this point thank you i have a question yes maria yes can you hear me my question is the funding from formula the state uses to gauge us because we are a unified school district but we are surrounded by a single school district like elementary district or high school district what formula are they using to gauge us are we engaged as a unified school district in a rural area or we engage as a unified school district in an suburban and urban district because i'm more interested in how did they come up with how they fund us well the local control funding formula is constructed to provide equal base grants to school districts across the state regardless of whether they're an urban school district or a rural school district the base grant is by grade span for instance transitional kindergarten through third grade is assigned a base grant dollar amount by the state of california then there's an add-on for class size reduction to facilitate class sizes of 24 to 1.

and um what really left an impression on me was just how excited and engaged students are and you just do something as simple as read to them so just for parents that are out there and big brothers big sisters and big cousins grab a book and and read to your children because it's not only rewarding personally for you to do but just the level of joy that it brings them and engagement is uh is really personally so satisf satisfying that's all i have thank you mr smith thank you mr paris uh vice president uh daily thank you mr president oh sorry i'm sorry it because it it switches back again i'm sorry go ahead it's mr uh abby travels yeah call me whatever you want okay um the second meeting in a row i'm gonna start off with the um best thing first happy women's history month um celebrate you are celebrate yourself be proud and i mean that in a sense of you know we all have nieces daughters young girls and our families who we want to teach them to be independent um lean on themselves learn where women's rights came from learn where women's suffrage came from uh and understand that the glass ceiling is well sorta is but should be shattered um on many levels and purposes and while there's still a long way to go unfortunately um as um you know she's trying to teach my my son her younger brother how to read i'm still trying to teach her her mother and i um about the stars are you know her capacity meaning she can do whatever she wants so that's what that means um to develop family kyle congratulations thousand uh points i think i've only seen two students do that one unfortunately in pv with brac healy and the other one was uh here i'm glad that black balloon day was mentioned for casa on march 6th girls football team uh there are two fundraisers that i'm aware of mr uh mark and joe tell you differently if there's more than that the girls football team i bought my jersey um to support them please go on and maybe if we can send that link out if we haven't yet to the district to make sure we purchase our apparel to support the girls football team i'm not calling a flag football it's a girls football team congrats to our you know people say academic decathlon and events or programs like for example robotics are not real athletic opportunities or they're not challenging or there's no real exertion there and i think honestly i think i believe otherwise um so congratulations mr stewart um you know which goes into pbsis mr goza you're doing a phenomenal job to the high school you know i wrote down while you're talking right mind right acts positive citizens in society and that's what that really trend you know translates to for me um we still have some outdated recognitions mr uh president daley we haven't still haven't recognized the football team we have other sports who have not recognized and i think this is more of a reason that we see like dewback and heredia and all these other folks doing phenomenal work to do a a city-wide event something that we can celebrate academics on the in in um in the classroom and on the field um to close up really quick um i know miss bastard's birthday was last thursday happy birthday to you as you mentioned this last week to freeholder duffy um i'm sorry on the loss of your son terry may he rest in peace another fundraiser school 13 swag fundraiser i already bought my stuff and last and i'll end off here mr president so ukraine we've all touched upon but to me it's a special thing because as a palestinian-american understanding what aggression and occupation is for the for the folks of ukraine our citizens here whatever is needed i'm sure many communities and i'll put myself out there will help the father alex over at the church on broad is phenomenal they're doing a lot of great work please go down there and help close out boxes get boxes ready they're loading up their trucks over there they're i'm sure they can use volunteers so please i ask everybody if you can't at least donate at least go down and volunteer and help um help directly that way thank you thank you now vice president daley huh no i got him thank god i missed that too i got a nice haircut for you and i have and i have a chance to i see it it's because it keeps jumping around never mind i'm sorry i'm not lost eventually you're gonna get to go sorry sorry mr daley one more second you know what no apologies necessarily no i think we're just gonna run the dais instead of i tried to do it alphabetically i think we're just gonna go first every single time no you're not gonna go first every time but it's just gonna i'm not gonna i usually go back to miss bassford because no i'm not blaming you no no no i'm playing i'm not blaming you i'm just i'm trying to give some rationalization to my i'm not blaming you i didn't blame you what one love i'm sorry bob marley go ahead thank you oh that was interesting um first and foremost like ms bashford said for the next 40 days i'm gonna also be quiet and be very nice uh pray for me uh first and foremost i want to congratulate all the athletes all the students on their awards uh for this month um you know today i was gladly brought my daughter to school 6 here she got to meet you know many wonderful individuals some of the commissioners administration and staff uh you know it's woman you know what's happening you know worldwide especially in ukraine and you know many parts of the world you know some parts of asia in the middle east south america what we're realizing is we're going more downhill than we are going uphill you know you're seeing country after country nation after nation you know suffering and you know bloodshed is becoming so common i pray for the people of ukraine uh my next door neighbor stanley he's actually half polish half ukrainian he's a phenomenal neighbor i learned so much about their culture and you know you realize the more you branch out and you meet uh individuals from different ethnicities and backgrounds you realize the common uh theme that's in many cultures european cultures also is family and the pride that they have for their nation and seeing how brave the men and women and the children in ukraine you know fighting back to aggression and they're not the only nation that's doing that around the world so i just pray for you know uh for human for mankind specifically uh to not forget these issues because we tend to live in a society that has a short-term memory where you know a certain topic is happening and everybody's passionate about it and it slowly phases out and they forget um this is becoming a domino effect you know we went from the pandemic thinking that we're done with the pandemic now we're entering into this phase where we're seeing a beautiful nation with beautiful people uh going on a downworld spiral we pray for them we pray for the peace and these are discussions you know i had with you know some family members that have students in the district with social media and everything you know students are seeing a lot of things you know firsthand and you know these are tough conversations that we have to have with our children with our community and we can't sweep things under the rug because the truth is out there kids are curious kids are accurate we have to teach them you know you know a lot of students are taking history classes and history tends to repeat itself we gotta assure you know hopefully the next generation steps up and we head into you know a bright future in a direction and i just really pray for everybody at this moment thank you amen all right who wants to go now mr daley no thank you mr president um again just a few comments again uh the student recognition and mrs gouza's presentation on pbis is is really good it really demonstrates how we feel about our students and about our instructors and teachers here in the district and even though we do it every every uh board meeting it's uh it's it's a good thing to do and i'm glad we do that and continue to practice that on project graduation i was never to the american dream mall and i was always curious what's in there is it a ghost town tumbleweeds whatever and i had an occasion with my wife too i said let's go just make a visit and see what it's like it just blew me away so uh not that it had anything to do but it reinforced uh for me that this was a great place to have this event um it's the place is outstanding uh and i encourage anybody to go visit uh it's it's really amazing and and dr robert tosi uh adequately described the water parks and the uh events there it just it just blew me away and you know citizens i think most people i've talked to many people said yeah i've never been there but make a visit take an afternoon or free time and it's it's really an amazing trip and and then you can really see why we've chosen that venue to do project graduation um again our hearts go out to those in the ukraine um it's a very very very important world event that we're living in it's an unfortunate event a very unfortunate event but it's something that we really need to take note of and appreciate what we have here in this country so and our stability and our uh our views about personal freedom and self-determination it's very important lastly about the mask earlier in the meeting dr robertosi mentioned about no nobody's being bullied unfortunately not in this district but a governor of one of our states had students up and berated the students in public and paraded a couple of the students to take their mask off like it wasn't necessary that is total nonsense everybody needs to be respected for how they feel about that if you want to wear the mask don't want a man wear a mask get vaccinated not vaccinated that's personal choice and that's what we treasure here in this country so nobody should be looked upon or berated for any reason how they choose to conduct their their lives and how they approach different crises with that that concludes my remarks and uh let's see everybody at the next meeting thank you uh mr daley it becomes very difficult to each day as this war in the ukraine continues but it really touched home when i i checked that um the clifton board of education employs um a large amount of uh people from ukraine ukraine right so that hits home it really hits close to home these people trying to live their lives did nothing to deserve not only invading their country but the nastiness the barrage of bombs and killings of innocent children in hospitals a kindergarten apartment complexes universities there is no nothing that can give credit to that disgustingness that is happening by this demented individual i firmly stand with our employees with our friends with the residents who have family members back there i spoke to one of our custodians who had knee surgery and i wanted to see how she was doing with knee surgery and she could barely talk to me because she was in tears that her husband's family is in the ukraine they haven't heard from them in five days they have a six month year old child and they believe that they're all dead that that really struck home but watching it on tv and watching this disgustingness that is happening in the world i am just so thankful that so many countries have come together to realize that this is totally unacceptable and while i wish we would do more i hope and pray that all of us could do whatever we can to help those people they didn't ask for this they don't deserve it and i'm not blaming per se the russian people it's not they didn't make the decision they've interviewed many of those people and and they don't want to be there but it's this one demented leader and we know in history what demented leaders have done to this world so i hope i pray for all those employees affected in the clifton school district that may have family or friends in ukraine that our thoughts and prayers are with you and your families and hope that this will end and end immediately i also um echo all of the comments about uh project graduation um it's just such a wonderful wonderful venue and how great is it that we can come together to do something great for our kids don't our kids deserve that aren't they entitled to that i don't know what anyone that would want to not support such a wonderful safe environment for graduates that will now be alumni of the clifton school system and i think as i spoke to some board members you know the public elects us to make decisions for the residents of the town and we try and do our very best to make the best decisions but i know this board member when i make my decisions i think of kids first and yes maybe it's a little bit more extra money this year but these kids didn't have the last two years of anything that resembled normal don't they deserve to go out on something high and yes we may get sponsors we may get donations they will go out and fundraise but we need to support these kids and support this town on such a great thing one clifton is what we we our new logo that we brought in one clifton we can't go back on things i i can't i you know i'm sorry that some other graduating classes didn't have certain opportunities we can't go back in and erase that we could only move forward and try and do the right thing going forward and i know the majority of people in this town they know what's right they know that we're supposed to be here for kids our kids deserve it they've been through two years of not fun things so i support project graduation tremendously and um i know the town will come through and if you can help help sponsor a child or donate money or whatever it might be um this town will come through you they always do and we're going to have a great project graduation for these kids in a new safe environment and i think one of the things that dr roberto may have not said in this venue um they like to bring you know like four classes four schools a night for project graduation and when we heard that we were kind of like we don't want to do that they wouldn't necessarily be intermingled they would be at different venues but we still didn't want to do that our clifton kids are important enough special enough they should have that place to themselves that night and through the great work of the administration and the school principal and the the vice principals they got that clifton will be the only school there on graduation night so congratulations clifton graduates of 2022 you're gonna have a wonderful wonderful venue of something brand new that anybody who goes and sees as mr daley said you know just go and look at it the water park alone you're just amazed so i'm glad that we're able to offer that to them i i said it before out in the hallway but uh for those that were not here um we thank um we thank the public for uh giving us the opportunity to realize that our board room that was here before was inadequate it was old it was dingy it was not what clifton should be representing having to do presentations and half the people were out in the hallway we gained in this room about how many feet did we gain 25 feet additional space that's not small 25 feet we gained and utilized all the space so now when we honor people like tonight we they can all be in the same room and hear it and enjoy it clifton deserves that so i thank again administration my fellow colleagues on the board for supporting this and making it happen it's a beautiful room with beautiful technology and most importantly administration did a great job of keeping keeping the expenses low they didn't go out and just make it all elaborate and we we wanted to have something nice but we also knew we only had so much money to work with so i think administration did a phenomenal job in that this room this facility is something we can be proud of the employees just the hallway outside they're so happy that it's bright and and not dingy and you put some nice flooring down and they're they're just amazed the little things so administration board you did a great job on this and i know i set it out to get it out in the hallway but um mr uc uh and through you and to uh um mr shiatta who put a tremendous amount of time and dedication into making this happen for all of you he didn't have to do that he could have just did his job as normal but he knew it was something special for clifton and i thank him for the for the amount of time and effort that he put into this above and beyond his normal job i couldn't believe when he texted me on a saturday night and he was just leaving and you know the contractor had just left and just amazing dedication that's what clifton's all about so again uh i thank you all for uh joining us here tonight for our first meeting um and all of our meetings from now on we'll we'll be here and that's all i have so there is nothing for executive session is there anything for new business yes ms basser um the student representative made a really good point about the students in clifton high getting to know the board members i know that we're not supposed to go to schools to visit and do things like that but maybe we can come up with like maybe when if somebody's available and volunteer our time we could meet a board member set them up in a little table maybe somebody from the staff can sit with them and they can come down in the cafeteria and meet a board member you know i mean like make it an outreach program like that so you know i'm not retired but if i have i have mondays and tuesdays i go and wait late for work i would donate my time and go in and sit there and maybe two of us are at a time we go meet a board member and then this way they could ask us about the process how things work so that maybe that may be a way of bridging this gap that he was talking about with the um getting to know the kids and the kids getting to know us and seeing our faces so that was my suggestion yes thank you yeah that's part part of what we're going to be doing with the student liaison committee but this will give an opportunity my my thought of that committee as i've discussed with dr robertosi is um that we would rotate and we'd have all the board members the opportunity to meet with the kids um so this way they can get to know everybody so it's kind of on the same thing it's just we haven't been able to get it quite off the ground yet dr dobitosi just had his first um what do you call that ambassador superintendent ambassadors um so we didn't want to like crowd it back to back and uh the administration was trying to see if they wanted to have different students involved so uh we'll get this moving and i think it's a great idea that um and that i think it's just great that they want to meet board members i i don't i don't know a lot of kids that want to meet board members um so the the the fact that they even want to do that i'm i'm really uh they may regret it afterwards but um you know i i i um i think it's a step in the right direction i uh i commend andrew tremendously for uh for bringing that to us so we'll we'll get that going and uh just so the public knows we can't um we can't have more than four board members meet with students at a time because it contin constitutes a meeting so that's why we have to rotate it um but we'll give every board member the opportunity to meet with the kids um i think it's a great idea all right anything else for new business yeah president president if i could um say something i already brought this to um dr robert tozie um we we need to rec we need to recommend to the board that we change our next board meeting the march 6th the march 16th board meeting which was a weird wednesday meeting because of the budget calendar from the governor since then he's pushed back his typical budget address from the end of february till this tuesday coming up so they pushed back the the budget um being due march um 21st to the 28th so we're recommending moving the 16th to that the next thursday march 24th if that's okay with everybody and this is not our fault this is the sorry the governor's fault we would we would just want to move that meeting one week to the thursday yeah only because of the governor it's not our doing it's on our doing and the 24th would be the typical day we would have had a meeting yes yes actually it would have been the typical day the original 16th meeting was set because of the budget schedule which has now changed which allows us to have our regular meetings as long as it's 24th on the 23rd into the next one i'm not getting troll for you guys by my wife it's my anniversary right it really was this the 17th would have been our next meeting but because of st patrick's day we didn't want to we had agreed not to meet on that so that's how this kind of all so is everyone okay with uh changes we don't need motion do we we don't i'm just going to need i just need that yep okay no one has any objection to that okay so the public will let the uh that we'll get that advertisement out but that our next board meeting will be on the twenty fourth fourth um at seven pm was the cat the calendar was changed by res was by resolution don't we have to vote to change the resolution i i think you ruled that but we don't have to do that last time i don't think that you need to have you have you have a account you you changed board meetings all the time yeah you can have a resolution to change it fine let's do a resolution everybody seems to be in favor of it so just do it okay uh motion uh to motion next regularly scheduled board meeting to uh march 24th at 7 00 pm moved by mr abu drabo second by mr awad um all the way around the arabs around okay [Music] mr awad motion second by mr abedrabo 7 pm is there any yes 7 p.m is there any discussion yeah i love you too roll call i'll do it mr abba driver pass [Music] mr awan yes he's not even here daley's not even here yes steroid miss bassford yes miss beltran yes mr canova yes dr danny yes mr paris yes vice president he stepped away president smith yes motion closure motion to close by mr abedrabo there you go seconded by mr awad oh mr paris wanted to do it sorry can you never get one with you guys well mr paris haslet any objection meaning adjourned thank you everyone good job first one down there oh my god one day on the uh monopoly oh you're welcome when was the first board meeting hang on let me call joanna

you will also note that the current deficit of 1.5 million in budget fiscal year 2022 compared to 3.3 million in 2021 which means we are spending less of our cash balance in summary based on a review of the financial data there are no immediate material concerns based on what is known of the remainder of the budget fiscal year if no if there are no questions this concludes my report uh thank you are there any any questions thank you okay thank you seeing none uh we'll move on uh and our next item is uh 6.07 intent to offer fiscal year 2023 employment contract to jay johnson director of return services pursuant to ars 384310381 the board may vote to go into executive session for the purpose of discussion and consideration of employment matters um i do have to say when we can swim in this exception um the individual that will be discussed has the ability to opt to have what is typically a private discussion because we're going to bring up potentially sensitive uh information in public and i believe that mr johnson has asked that we not go into executive session and we do this in the open i have a list let's see so i i have that as open is that correct leticia okay uh so uh we will not be able to go into executive session to discuss what are typically considered sensitive uh discussions of employee job performance and behavior and conduct okay is there anyone like to make any opening any statements my concern comes from a number of phone calls emails that i've received from staff i think just to get at a basic issue and not just with jay but there's so many of our administrators who have no deaf education background no background in audiology interpreters blind low vision deaf and blind and there's decisions being made directives being given that aren't in alignment with what you how you teach deaf hard of hearing children there's concerns about ideology how they can't use the boost anymore everything has to be taken to the campuses we're not getting good evaluations there have been a lot of concerns and i just wanted an open discussion we've gotten the comments from the public i hear them and it was just more to make sure that we're focusing on providing best practices that we're doing what's best for our kids and i don't want to lose staff so that's my comment thank you are there others no um well you know i've taken a look at this um you know mr johnson was hired in april uh and i think there's a few things the board needs to know uh in 20 october of i received personally an anonymous letter voicing leadership concerns regarding the itinerant asdb leadership it noted that audiological testing was only indicated every three years instead of annually and there was a concern that would lead that would allow for the hearing loss to escape detection uh the letter referred to author author authoritarian leadership and indicated that the letter was anonymous for fear of reprisals i forwarded the letter to the superintendent for follow-up uh i did not receive any follow-up also in october 2020 the superintendent received a different anonymous letter regarding concerns by mr johnson dr rex attempted to verify the issues raising the letter but doing so is difficult with an anonymous letter that letter included a statement that mr johnson is a and i'm quoting from the letter a bully who is not showing respect for the audiologists interpreters hi teachers vi teachers and oh no specialists he is tasked with supervising last month as i understand it mr johnson received a written complaint from a subordinate who complained that she was verbally reprimanded and allegedly berated in front of other asd employees also last month we received a notice of an eeoc complaint filed by a former employee who reported to mr johnson we do not have the perfected charge so we do not know the substance of the complaint i know that the superintendent has not hired a new on buds person so the agency has been operated without one for quite some time we are therefore without any knowledge of other issues that may have been brought to the umbuds person that staff may be afraid of bringing through other channels we further had the issue of interpreters raised in january we heard from mr johnson at our last meeting we heard the details of his revised policy but i did not hear that he investigated whether new policy was compliant with federal law fortunately based on our current understanding of the law and the facts as we now know them no compliance issues have been identified however this appears to have been by luck and not by design so the board should be aware of these facts by asking the board to offer mr johnson contract the superintendent is affirming affirming this again alleged behavior and conduct and then it may be that the board agrees but it is important that the board consider all points of information before offering contract for the leadership position hiring is ultimately the board's decision it is not the superintendent's position excuse me this is commissioner james can i have a point of clarification please the statements that you were just making was this your opinion or where is this information coming from um let's which piece of information i guess all of it what you just read out i would like to clarify um was all of that from the anonymous letter or was some of that your own perspective as well uh no i didn't that was not um my perspective i'd received a letter and as i described what was in that first letter is what was in that first letter the agency received a second anonymous letter happened to be the same month and what was what i described as being in that second letter is in that second letter so so these are incidents that occurred two in october 2020 and two that occurred uh uh last month or we were aware of them last month thank you this is superintendent reichman i would just like to say that our policy does not permit me to use the feedback that comes from anonymous um sources yeah superintendent rightman i i understand and that's that's uh you know that's why we have the ombudsperson right so we don't have um you know the issues of investigating allegations from an anonymous letter it's really hard to do that this is commissioner chance i would like to mention um that the board had a conversation previously and chose not to fill the ombudsperson position with the understanding that the state had an ombudsperson available and that we would utilize that resource um so i'm wondering president negro if you would recommend that the complainants or those with concerns take those to the state ombuds person um we had discussions previously about hiring going through the hiring process which uh the state procurement process which we did that ultimate person um decided not to to take that job and uh there haven't been any efforts to fill the mbudsperson role this is commissioner james um i'm still wondering though we do to my understanding have a state ombuds person and there is a process there that any state employee regardless of agency if they work at asdb or the attendant program can access that state ombudsperson so did you um did you recommend that resource to the people who sent you these letters i don't know who sent me these letters that is the problem i would like to mention that the ombuds person um is to report to the board so if you as the board want asdb to have an ombudsperson then the board can make that vote and direct me to figure out how to do that and i would do that of course uh superintendent right this is uh david nigro um i mean we do have the policy that we will have one again that the purpose of this discussion is not the abuts person so i don't want to get too much into that i just wanted to note that at no time during this you know in the last year and a half did we have a functioning on one's person president nigro yes as direct supervisor for jay johnson i have completed his evaluation any areas that i have asked him to improve upon he has improved upon any written complaints or discussions that the person wanted to actually work through the process i have taken care of improvement areas have been met and he is in good standing to receive a contract okay i mean that's good to hear uh dr x i uh you know i want we we as a you know board we don't usually hear you know this this level of of issues and and again there are a lot of uh uh entry points or data points that we look at when giving a contract right so i mean there's there's a variety of things um but these are items that you know again they just they need to be shared with the board in addition to whatever else you may be able to tell us if it would help i could share all the fantastic things in my report rather than other things if if this is an ongoing this is an ongoing process that i work with each of my members weekly on any concerns that are brought to me good commissioner jans i would like some a point of clarification please um it's my understanding that we have not had an agency ombudsman as you mentioned president nigro for a year and a half several years ago or excuse me several meetings ago the board decided not to attempt to fill that position because there was a statewide resource available for a state ombuds person who could work with any state employee and our state employees could use that resource so superintendent reichman assistant superintendent rex have either of you received any complaints or contact from the state ombuds person regarding issues at asdb no this is commissioner dance again i would like to ask maria murphy for her input thank you board member chance um i just wanted to offer a little bit of clarification because when the discussion regarding the state ombudsman person was happening several board meetings ago superintendent reichman actually asked me to look into whether we could contract with the state ombudsman's office and the state ombudsman's office is meant to serve as a liaison between the public and the state of arizona specifically for things like open meeting law and public records specifically administrative acts of the state of arizona so the state ombudsman's office does not really it's not necessarily within within their purview to um sort of adjudicate or mediate internal employee disputes for state agencies and and i hope that's helpful to you that's why we did not proceed in that direction thank you uh miss murphy i appreciate that clarification um and again i would like to say that in this situation i believe it was avoidable had we had um an ombudsperson um we did not fill that position and i do understand that we want to discuss these potential concerns from current employees um and change is difficult there's always room for improvement there's always room for um positive change um there's always room for negative change to happen as well the superintendent reichman and superintendent rex have stated their support and i do think that we also need to to consider the negative feedback that we have gotten in addition to that um superintendent reichman and superintendent rex have information based on their supervision of mr johnson and their professional opinion that should be considered i think dean dean this is dean i'm my question is outside of the ombudsman is there a formal process for folks to complain about this particular person and the follow-up question is has that occurred through america this is superintendent reichman we do have a complaint policy and we also have a grievance policy the complaint that you receive did not go through our formal policy the the the anonymous was provided directly to a board member anonymously and it was it was done over our heads without following our policy i'm sorry what the complaint which complaint because there's several that we're dealing with and i think maybe that's the issue which which complainer are you referring to actually all of them um we have had no formal complaints that have been filed in adherence with our internal policy um no one has filed a complaint or a grievance so we have gotten no formal um feedback um that i as the superintendent am aware of or that i'm able to use um the information that i have is is what you have so there but there is an eoc complaint i mean we received notice of that last month yes um i do not know what is in that eeoc complaint so i don't have any formal information to work with um from that complaint right and i don't either no one no one does um one of these anonymous letters you received directly and sent to me that is not a formal written complaint i understand um but that that's how that was a rose that's how i was made aware of it right and this is superintendent uh reichman again the point is for me without a formal complaint and information through that policy i am not able to take any action uh this is dean again i have a follow-up question uh superintendent reichman are all employees aware of that policy and do they sign off on that policy yes they do this is part of our annual staff training we have several schools several courses in safe schools and the complaint procedure is one of them it is a safe schools course that everyone myself included have to take every single year and that has information about the grievance and the complaint policies and our eeoc requires that we provide documentation that we are in fact providing that type of training to our employees on an annual basis this is dean again i have another follow-up and i apologize i'm not trying to commandeer the conversation but in that same policy is there a structure to utilize the embossment at some point if we had one i i don't understand the question let me see if i can kind of clarify a little bit because i'm a little confused too at what point does an ombudsman get involved in an issue like what we're dealing with now per policy okay this is superintendent regman per our policy any employee is allowed to contact the ombuds person at any time if we have if we have an ombuds person that's okay and i think i think you know just feedback that i've gotten the new um and i'm trying to find the name of the procedure now as far as if a staff member has an issue of any kind they go to their immediate supervisor and and i can't remember the name of it but and then the immediate supervisor takes it on but if it doesn't go any farther than that then it will never get to enough and that will never know about these because they are directed to just go to their immediate supervisor and we don't know if those concerns go any further than that or if they're even recognized by any of the higher up the latter administration and i think that's where it gets bogged down this is superintendent reichman i would like to ask anita pyatt to provide some clarification on the complaint policy and the grievance policy as well but i will say that if someone were to file a grievance that does go up the chain all the way to me and to the board anita is anita available to provide some additional clarification she's not here i uh i mean german dennis reichman i mean i i did i i didn't write the help write the person policy a while ago um when we simplified we had seven or eight different policies and we simplified it down to four we have complaints we have grievances for acb employees um grievances involved certain certain actions and complaints are more generalized um the um butts person exists kind of separately from that um and the person's role is to hear the issue um and potentially mediate a resolution but also to redirect that employee to the appropriate uh step whether it's a grievance or a complaint because you know we had as you know we we had complaints being emailed to the board we had grievances being emailed and then they thought that was somehow a grievance but there's a process for all of that so we wanted the ombudsperson to help uh want to be a sounding board for the board but then two to help people be redirected to their appropriate uh you know formal channel of either grievance or complaint for asdb employees the invest person also interacts with members of the public and with students so i have a couple of thoughts on this and and this is from my experience in state employment um it and i'm not in any way shape or form trying to trivialize this however there's a lot of change going on in asdb especially in the co-ops with the redesign and with change you get a lot of people who are resistant to change i do want to say that in looking at the post for jay's position there is nothing requiring him to have asl skills there's nothing requiring him to have a certificate in hi or vi and to judge whether or not we give him a contract based on that we can't do that we can't do that i am not saying that there are not concerns that are valid but i'm also hearing from dr rex that those concerns have been addressed at a supervisory level and and handled and to the point of her satisfaction um so again i i'm not saying we should not be aware of this but i also don't think what we have in front of us is enough to hold a contract back from an employee who is performing okay thank you are there any other comments no um okay so we can uh close this task um and then take a break um if there is i mean if there is anyone that wants to make a motion they can i i would move that we offered um jay johnson a contract are there any seconds this is dnl second all right um so for this one if we can raise our hands for the eyes so anyone that votes yes raise your hand please one two three four is there mike are you raising your hand i guess i can't see you i mean my hand is up your hand is up okay great thank you um so one two three four five six okay any nose and pb uh any nose just just me just me then uh any abstentions uh lynn all right then we can we'll take a break and then we'll come back uh ten minute break yes yeah we'll have to get that back you been so gay it's been crazy i feel like it's the full moon the full moon yeah it's not but it feels funny yeah this time yeah work has been a little crazy been a little crazy all right let me get the contract kill me in the open um hello i think we should restart when we can are we about ready we think uh yeah i'm gonna unmute the microphones hold on okay media are we ready okay okay we'll go five four three two one uh okay we are we are back uh can you guys hear me no uh check there we go excellent um i'm gonna try to speak more loudly for the interpreters to get some feedback uh during the break so i'll do my best i'm not yelling i'm just trying to respond to feedback next up is 6.11 intent to offer fiscal year 2023 employment contract to kelly creasy principal of asb and asd tucson campus pursuant to ars 38 431 03 a1 the board may vote to go into executive session for the purposes of discussion and consideration of employment matters again uh the employees themselves have the ability to uh take what are normally uh you know sensitive discussions of employment uh into the open uh my records reflect that kelly creasy is elected to have the discussion in the open leticia is that correct yes i'm she's shaking her head yes yes um so if there are is anyone that would like to to speak on kelly creasy and we're not on zoom anymore so you can you know you can just speak the reason i pulled it was just because of the the responses that we had gotten the public responses so i felt it was it could be discussed separately okay um is there any any board member that would like to have discussion on this matter no okay um this is board member james oh yes um i intentionally waited to try to give other people the opportunity to speak i do want to make a comment from the deaf perspective the deaf community and i understand a lot of the comments and the frustrations and the disappointment with her from the deaf community perspective i would like to offer the perspective of a school administration board that we rely on her to keep our tucson campus operational i understand that there have been efforts to provide additional staff to work in tandem with her it is my understanding that recent situations did not work out and there is currently a search for additional staff to support her in order to satisfy the needs of the deaf community and to have that deaf culture recognized we do need to identify that it is a need it is a need that needs to be filled but i believe the intention is to fill that position and to fill that need however in my professional opinion since principal creasy has kept the institution running i don't think that it is wise to eliminate her during a critical time in the agency during a critical time with the addressing of the current shortages that we have and the current pandemic that we're in my statement isn't necessarily in support or opposition of her but understanding the position that we need to keep our school running in the best interests of students and we need to look at not only one aspect of that but rather the larger picture so given that superintendent reichman and assistant superintendent rex believe that principal creasy is able to fulfill her job duties of running the school if they can also provide the recommended recommendation of extending her contract i think we need to take that into consideration i would just ask the superintendent and assistant superintendent to please take heed of these concerns that have been raised to us and make sure that we provide support to principal creasy as necessary including potentially filling that other principal role or an assistant principal role as soon as possible this additional position could fulfill the need of the deaf community from that perspective okay thank you um is there there's no other discussion that then i move that we offer kelly creasy contract for fiscal year 23 as the principal of asd and asb business uk i second that uh all in favor let's let's raise our hands this time i have three so everyone here is raising their hand mike uh are you raising your hand i'll take your word for it you could tell me you're raising your hand if you're not really actually both hands i'll count that twice um any opposed no and any abstentions no okay uh the next item i believe is 6.13 which it is um 6.13 consent agenda item intent to offer um school year 2022 2023 teacher employment contracts pursuant to ars 38 431 03 a1 the board may vote to go into executive session for the purposes of discussion consideration of employment matters this one was pulled from the consent agenda would anyone like to speak on this point yeah you can go ahead if no one else um i moved to accept the intent to offer teacher contracts as listed in 6.13 i a second uh all in favor let's raise our hands again uh one two three four five six and then uh mike are you raising your hand yes i am great so that's seven um any any no votes and any abstentions uh pv is uh abstaining okay next up 7.01 information discussion item hb 2065 and hb 2066 uh maria murphy ms murphy good afternoon board president nigro members of the board members of the administration for the record maria murphy director of policy and government relations i'm here to offer you an update on house bills 2565 and 2566 which are the two bills related to asdb at the arizona state legislature during this session so um a house bill 2565 is the asdb revision bill which essentially takes the um makes the revisions that were in the session law last year and makes them permanent in title 15. i am pleased to let you know that it was referred to the house education committee it passed out of house education unanimously last month and it passed out of the house not unanimously unfortunately 55 to 4.