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relationship between time and importance of agenda items thank you so much arturo for returning okay we're not going too fast so that was number 15 right for number 30 i'm sorry 30. thank you all right adrian what do you have and i also have number 15 board members treat each other with 15 okay so fabulous all right sabrina i chose 48 and 49 the board monitors student progress against established benchmarks and or monitors progress toward district goals based on established success indicators okay so 48 and 49 right so student progress the monitoring of student progress right and orlando what do you have um i was also um on number 30 30 okay yes okay all right so this is what we are going to work on for the rest of our time together first of all it's important to understand and celebrate your um the strength of your team right the high point and so board tweeting superintendent with respect that's one that you came up with board members follow agreements for speaking and um timely and adequate information that's really important for all of you to receive to be able to make the choices you need to make and respecting confidentiality with two of you so those are the high points for your team let's take a look for the um areas that we need to really focus on this evening for the rest of the time that we have together based on the items that you selected and we're going to open it up and you're going to have a discussion based on that by the end of our time together i'm hoping that you will come up you as a team with three goals that you would like to work on moving forward based on your discussion okay hopefully having a better understanding of each other's perspectives or what you need to work on you're going to establish goals we may or may not get to that because these these discussions are really critical and important and our time together is limited so let's just open up conversation and discussion remember your norms of your meeting norms as we begin and remember all of you focused on and really talked about the importance of active listening so with that what i like to do is i'm going to we're going to start with the first one that's on the list which has to do with rules and responsibilities i think did you bring that up your land or who brought that one up that's number seven sabrina yolan that's what i thought okay so let's let's have a discussion about that um yolanda you can feel free to talk about that specific item and then you're going to open it up and hear from the rest of you how you feel about understanding roles and responsibilities as you know the roles and responsibilities of the board and the superintendent are very clear and i saw in your handbook that at the end of the handbook you had a number of bylaws board bylaws and board policies included in there you had the 9 000 and 21 10.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
and the reason again we're going back to where this whole process process started and where ignoring the av growth where tax bills have kind of settled in for multiple years we go to the next slide there are a couple things the next two slides will lay out some of the maximums that you will be asked as a board to consider tonight and the first one is you would be setting a maximum lease payment the maximum lease payment would be based on this project on its own has nothing to do with existing debt it would be the maximum payment that could be generated and we're showing that at 10 million four hundred thousand dollars per year and that it if you do decide to proceed that can never be exceeded it can always be reduced but it can't be exceeded and then based on that the tax impact um now my eyes are going crazy it's 83 cents um there it is now i can see um yeah is 83 cents per hundred dollars of assessed value so if we take the assessed values and put that maximum lease payment in there we get an estimate of an 83 total increase for the project but a difference from your current tax bill of about the 54 cents next item are some items that are required uh from the legislature to be in all resolutions for projects of this size first is your current debt service levy uh that's at 1 million 947 000 and that is your 2022 so that's on the books in your existing budget uh the debt service tax rate is at 25.6 cents per hundred dollars of assessed value we would also be sending a maximum term of your lease that would be 22 years however in indiana you can only borrow up to 20 years on school financings so the extra two years are built in to allow flexibility if there were a delay um any of those things so we don't have to start the process over so that's part of the legal councils always lets us go out to about 22 years as a maximum realizing that we can only sell for 20 years so your debt will never be over 20 years but that lease payment has to fit within that uh we do have to estimate our total interest um that's 71 million again very conservative like i said we're up to get to an even number so it's a pretty conservative number there and then finally there are two ratios that are required and these are ratios that some legislator wanted to see and wanted everybody to show but they actually do have some reference in that bond buyers will look at these ratios as they evaluate what interest rate they think they should be getting if they buy your bonds first one is debt service to net assessed value that is really your total debt service including the projection for the new bonds divided by your current assessed value so that's about 1.3 that puts you in the low range uh not quite to the moderate but low range not extremely low but still very comfortable that uh to a bond buyer it is a non-event they would not tickle their fancy at all or concern them about what kind of rate bump they might need and then finally the last ratio is considering your debt all overlapping and underlying debt so we look at how much debt is outstanding currently and then we look at the county debt the township that the school corporations or the um city debts etc and we allocate a share of those debts to this number so in the case of a township that townships that would be 100 out allocable to you because that whole township is part of your taxing district for the city of wabash we would look at what portion of yours is the city so that would be a smaller portion of that that's allocable so in that case we come up with about three point three eight percent uh per uh the net assessed value and that fits into the moderate range the low end of the moderate range again the market of indiana bonds that would not be a concern to anyone and the rating agencies but i just want to share those numbers because they will be in your resolution your resolution also will have a table showing the estimated tax rates and levels for the next 10 years again the graph represents that but that will that will be in your resolution as part of the table now what does that incremental tax rate increase mean to you as taxpayers again you'll see across the top the nine taxing districts they vary from townships to cities and towns et cetera and you'll notice that this first slide i'm taking the median home value in each of those districts now oh yeah you can zoom that up a little bit might help others as well as me if i could see that one better there we go it went again it's real light the figures are right but i'll highlight a couple here so if we go to the grow township over there the top number it shows the median home value in the grow that's 149 what we do then is take that home and take away that would be the gross assessment we then take away your homestead exemption your supplemental exemption if you have a mortgage exemption i don't take anything into account for veterans or 65 over 65 exemptions but if you have those that would impact that so then uh the estimate of that incremental tax increase would be approximately 351 dollars per year or about 29 per month if you go to legrow just in the town you'll see that a very different number in that the average or the median home value is 45 400 with about 48 dollars per year or four dollars per month that whole table goes and just takes that meaning now all of us if any of us hit this table exactly right you're done and you know your number but um it's not going to be the case so i also then on the next slide add a hundred thousand dollar home and what's interesting here and when you go through a referendum all taxpayers no matter what circuit breaker caps are in place if you go through a referendum a referendum bond is outside or exempt from circuit break so if you have 65 or veterans credits those are all credits that come out before you get to the av calculations so those are maintained but once you go through a referendum all taxpayers pay share equally per assessed value and so that's what this example shows that if we assume a hundred thousand dollar home you'll see that every taxing district if you have a hundred thousand dollar home there you'll be paying roughly 177 dollars per year more or about 15 per month there will be a tax calculator if you do decide to go through the referendum process and proceed there will be an online tax calculator set up at the state as well as we can have something set up on your web page where you can then go in and put your specific information and look just at your property and then finally the last uh the next slide we looked at farmland now any of you that are farmers know that farmland is not an easy calculation for the state boy that every acre has different production values even within the same acre you utilize a base assessed value from the state and also farm a lot of farms also have homesteads on them other out buildings etc but for this slide i'm looking at a hundred thousand dollar of 100 tillable land all at the base production factor of one so in effect i don't know that that property is in your county either as i've described it but again it shows that that hundred thousand dollar farmland roughly 542 dollars per year or 45 dollars per month the tax calculator is the only way u.s farmers are going to bail to get a really consolidated estimate of what your tax impact will be uh there is one more slide that if you happen to have your tax bill in hand you can take the net assessed value divided by 100 and multiply it times the 54.17 cents per uh estimated incremental increase and that would give you that's the calculation i've used in all of those numbers but the problem is give me that net excess value um you know it's it's easy to have the cash bill or you can go online in the county and look up your asses that assess value and use that to do that so at that point um that's all i have uh i have a couple of questions just maybe so jim can clarify for us so you mentioned for this project the estimate cost is 115 million that's what we're proposing however we we will not borrow any type of monies until we've actually gone through a bidding process and so if that bidding process comes back and it's only a hundred million dollars then we wouldn't be borrowing 115.
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good evening the james m quinn elementary school parents group scholarship is awarded annually to deserving senior who attended quinn elementary school this year recipient is alex madirus the jean wilbur wilson memorial scholarship is awarded annually to a female student pursuing a four-year nursing degree this year's recipient of the gene wilson memorial scholarship is molly rio [Applause] the joseph de melo school pto scholarship is awarded annually to deserving seniors who attended de mello elementary school for at least three years this year recipients are aileen boyle caitlyn silva in cohen sylvia the jesse fernandez memorial scholarship is awarded annually to deserving member of the graduating class who attended demel de mello elementary school for at least three years this year recipient is sophia montez the christopher r versaloni athletic scholarship is awarded annually to a deserving student athlete who will continue their education in the fall this year's christopher r versalone's athletic scholarship is awarded to ava ashton [Applause] and brian edwards the peter j martin scholarship is awarded to a deserving member of the senior class who plans to pursue a career in the health care field this year's recipient of the peter j martin scholarship is mackenzie bellow ross tebow dartmouth high school principal will present the following scholarships to the class of 2022 [Applause] the stanley m goldstein memorial scholarship is awarded annually to a deserving member of the senior class who plans to continue their education in the fall this year's stanley m goldstein memorial scholarship is awarded to genevieve shadeed [Applause] the sylvan scholarship is awarded annually by the van sloan foundation which is a non-profit family foundation based in dartmouth massachusetts started in 1991 by neil and sue van sloan mr vinslone is the owner and ceo of sylvan nursery located in the town of westport based on neil and sue's hard work and endeavors the van sloan foundation's mission is to support the study development and promotion of horticulture the veterinary and medical sciences land conservation education and related fields the foundation supports various scholarships both in massachusetts and in minnesota when neil van sloan was born the trustees are honored to award the sylvan scholarship to lily wheaton and are excited about her plans to attend the university of connecticut and major in animal science the van sloan family wishes you the very best during college and your future endeavors [Applause] the tyler joseph leonard memorial scholarship is awarded annually in memory of tyler who is a dartmouth high alumnus who graduated in 2007.
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so those are the roles and responsibilities and the limit of the board as well as the superintendent right so you have it in your handbook i know that you have seen it let's have a discussion about it yolanda how do you feel why did you pick that well i select that one for the reason is um i have heard that board members will speak to either a teacher or speak to a principal and um we are directed to actually speak to the superintendent you know and he he usually if there's a situation going even with a parent we direct it to him and he will stick to the principle or he will stick here but i know there's some board members that will speak to the administration onto the um staff and not bring the superintendent so i think we need to um improve in that that that is the protocol and i don't feel it's being followed sometimes not always but sometimes how does everyone else feel about it so i'm going to go around i'll start with um i don't think i've started with you for any of them so how do you feel about that and also is this i believe this is one of your norms or one of your protocol on communication am i right is that one of your protocols and that yes so and you also have what you have is your protocols on the seven different areas handling concerns is one board member role in public being prepared for meetings maintaining confidentiality communications meetings and as well as frequently asked questions so you have that packet as well what is your protocol when it comes to communicating with um staff with the public what is the protocol first of all we listen you know we will we should listen to them we should not just not speak to anyone but this that once we listen and we get the information well myself i can speak for myself i all address the superintendent and he will you know speak to whomever and he'll come back oh you london the reason was then he was in the pad every time we ask questions we could you know we all know what we asked him and he'll say and i spoke to whomever and this is why it happened that way you know to clarify but i don't personally talk to the principal um directly or we shouldn't we should bring you know do this do you bring the information to your superintendent when you hear of something that a question a concern a comment all the word know what question was asked you know it doesn't say what board member asked but then we know what the answer is okay which that is that is a clear um distinction between the role of the board and superintendent right when it comes to listening to the comments and all that did you want to continue on no i thought you were asking me so that's why but oh no i agree with yolanda i i will just say that i have no knowledge of anybody on our board doing that so that's why like it didn't but i'm you know so well i can give an example you need me to have not but i don't have to yeah and i may be wrong the story okay when you came to the story about the restrooms that were needed at fairmont school right so i know i don't know who who told you i don't really don't know and i think we asked if you speak to the superintendent about and i don't know if you spoke to arturo what the staff member told you about the bathrooms that they needed another bathroom i don't see i don't know that's what i'm saying so i don't know if you spoke to arturo that because i would assume that if you heard it from a staff or whoever it is you take a character he would take it to um the principal i guess well you know about this bathroom because i know a teacher did approach me about the bathrooms and he said it was there was not a bathroom by her classroom but then a week or so after that oh guess what i found the bathroom by my she's new to that who came from another school before she went there and then she said oh i found the bathroom by my costume and then i was hearing that reena was asking if we were going to build another bathroom so that that's that's where i was playing i'm talking yesterday i don't know i didn't know what happened so that's why i said that sure yes so i am i understand your um question around where did that come from yeah so as as all of us receive questions or concerns from people from parents or teachers and they say you know i have this concern and some most the time 99 of the time it's uh a concern on email and then i'll respond thank you so and so i'm forwarding this to the superintendent and i'll physically cc arturo and then he'll take it from there and we'll get feedback in our board packet or whatever it is saying okay this is this is the colored protocol or whatever it is um in my my um approach in bringing or kind of highlighting the stakeholder concern again i didn't know if it was an a real thing or not but i had heard it from a few stakeholders at that school my purpose in bringing it to the just talking about in a board meeting was to highlight it and kind of to say not highlighted as this is a problem but this is something that we're hearing and as a representative i wanted to bring that forward if that is something that was already addressed with um latasha with facilities plan and i brought it up at the time because we were talking about facilities and about modernizing campuses and so i felt like it was the i felt in the moment that it was the right time to say if we're talking about spending millions of dollars and making plans are we you know the same conversation about are we going to add portable right as we modernize wings and classroom and and campuses so that that's why i wasn't trying to um go off on my own mission to improve a single facility or advocate for a particular campus um but but just the question am i did you speak to the superintendent or latasha so because they didn't seem to know you know so they would have known the conversation i hadn't yeah that's just what i mean for the clarification yeah absolutely yes can i add this so so this so i know i said i didn't have any examples but i do think um and i don't know i've talked about this i do think um i feel like and i'm not sure how we handle this as a board and maybe thinking about how we do it together i do feel it's not maybe not i'm thinking more about staff right there's a i feel like there's a sense and i just get it based on the emails that we get that if someone sends something to the board right that's the issue is going to get taken care of right so we we have been over the over the last couple years i've noticed we've got an increasing number of just random complaints from staff about a certain thing that probably should be going through the channel of their their their channel of communication um but instead they think oh i'm going to email the board and it's going to get taken care of and i think to me that's an issue and it's connected to your thing because i feel like it happens been happening more and more and more question i would have that's because similar to what you said shilling i i don't me person that that example didn't strike me as or or this situation didn't expect me necessarily as an example it seemed like it came up in real time so i i personally can't say that i have any um there are any specific examples of this that come in my but maybe i am someone so so call out a new blind spot i guess i i would love to know from from you mr or take it for for doing first names from the from the standpoint of not i'm not sure that it's helpful to say yes and then and share out a tally of of who and and give giving concrete examples um but is it your sense as the superintendent who then would be the person in the in the midst of that where there are things coming you know the the those that are under your direction is it your sense from your seat that you see this happening um chronically within the district i do not see this as an issue that happens chronically yeah wonderful gabriel do you have something anything to ask on that on number seven before we move on that's on roles and responsibilities you'll have to unmute yes um yeah i i would i would have to say that that the role and responsibilities of the board i think sometimes um you know it is blurred um for example you know what what we agree on what we agreed us on a board is that the fact that if we would be speaking to you know um the press or to um other electives to be making decisions you know within the city or or our school district that we should um have the designees take care of that and i think that this is something we do need to um improve on because there's a lack of understanding within the board um there's a board member that's been here for for quite a long time and perhaps i mean she she knows um you know what that protocol is and how to handle that but i think as we you know i've been here for three and a half years and as we're learning this right like for example sabrina coming in and and um as i heard the example um it's it's not that or myself you know i have probably done things um it's not that i think it's important that we do address them and that we don't take them personally because you know we're learning and if we are you know we can't understand our role or our responsibility as a board member i think it is important that hey you know that we are addressed um and that um we're made aware of so that way we learn it's a learning opportunity absolutely okay thank you and may i refer all of you to board bylaw 9000 which is role and responsibilities of the board it is in your handbook as well and uh board bylaw 9200 which is the limit and so when you look at the 9200 you'll see that there's there are limits to your authority and individually you have absolutely no authority to make any promises to fix anything your power is when you are together the five of you working with your superintendent okay so understanding your roles and responsibilities that's really one of the pillars of governance and effective governance so that's something that i would um i would definitely highlight as something to look at further and really understand it on that deeper level okay but having protocols of course is really critical so you're all operating from the same set of norms especially for newer trustees because sometimes when you have been here for a while you understand the protocols and all the norms and all that and how you um how you do business for someone who's coming into your team new you're not going to have that knowledge okay and can i just interject yeah three just a real quick thing so something that i'm also mindful of is so for you dr bob i'm not sure but we talk about these protocols and we talk about the the adoption of these protocols but how many of these protocols did you inherit when you joined the board versus um did you have the opportunity to um speak into or or or call for uh adjustments or clarification that that and which is maybe just a piece that we can look at as when when new board members come on but as we talk about how we've all agreed upon them i'm not you may be least you you might have that might be less uh true for you in that you you you just inherited these unless it's your sense and if you feel over the course of this past year and a half that you've had ample opportunity to speak into uh and adopt and have full ownership of our protocols so i wasn't part of the board that created the board handbook um i'm happy that there is a handbook and i think that it's worth um maybe an annual review to say you know is this working for us as the way we in the way we intended it right because on paper it's one thing but in practice it may have a different outcome um i think there are a couple of items that i don't necessarily agree with but i'm you know i'm i'm still very much in learning mode to see how it plays out um so i'm you know i'm committed to upholding the policies and certainly following the bylaws and you know one one part of it is is this board self-evaluation has been written into our bylaws and so i'm glad that we're doing it again that's the written policy versus implementation um so i i if you're asking me hey you know you're new do you feel like you have um input or are you are you invested in in what we've written i am and um i'd like you know i'd like the opportunity to continue participating and again coming together maybe annually evaluate pieces of it as we go along i think would be an important part of the board's growing process that was a great point adrian and most of the time for most teams they have not been all part of creation of such documents your handbook is a living document it needs to be revisited especially when you have a new board member and there should be an annual review right so that's part of the um the maintenance of effectiveness of the board um i did make a note of that and that's going to be in my recommendations and next steps is to make sure that you do review your handbook okay all right now tell me move on to number four which is also on your list of items that you wanted to discuss board works well together and that's number four so let's take a look at that and uh who brought that up who would like to okay gabriella would you like to talk about that yes um i think that um there's not a clear understanding for example that we are able to go ahead and be you know we we can talk to each other like hey you know not about an agenda item but necessarily and i felt like well when i was president um when i would call people i wouldn't get i there there was times that i mean there was one particular board would never call me back email never called me back so when i was trying to get you know input from the board on a particular item i you know we just it was like okay we need to take our personal you know our person whatever it is that you have you know that we have we need to take it to the side and we need to focus on our common goal and i think that's one thing that we are lacking in this board and that's why at times we don't work well together you know or you said something at this meeting so now i can't talk to you no you know we i we need to be able to communicate and not be you know stepping on eggshells when we see each other and um you know like i've approached board members like hey you know can i please have a sit down with you can i have a conversation with you and i've been rejected no no you said something at the board meeting and i'm not okay with that well okay now i'm gonna be punished so we have the passive aggressiveness happening within the board and i feel that that's something that we we need to work on you know we're gonna work well together in every relationship in every aspect of our lives we are going to have disagreements we're not going to like what other people you know what our husband says you know what our sister says our mother says our friend says but i think it's really important that we are able to have that open you know clear concise communication that you know what yes we may be at the board meeting at times you may be a little heated but at the same time all in all that we're able to be amicable and be able to have you know a sit down and conversation and not reject each other and be passive aggressive towards each other and i think that is um you know a key and uh that we need to completely work on this for it is for us to be able to work together you know what you said earlier the unity you know we're working for a common goal we we need to be united in a common goal yes are we going to have disagreements absolutely are we going to not get you know like what someone says absolutely but the common respect and you know being able to you know what move past that and be mature and be have emotional and challenge to be able to go ahead and address issues or things that we may not like or you know it's something that um can benefit our board and i see the potential of this board to go in that direction thank you for sharing that the working together for anything is not something that happens overnight right trust needs to be established and strengthened and nurtured and so you can have real conversation right so if that trust has not been established you're not going to have transparent open and honest conversation because then then some individuals may be afraid of hurting someone else's feeling or not being completely honest so that trust is really important and i'm not sure what you have done as a team to work on that because again that doesn't happen overnight it takes time no t no we have no team building activities it we don't okay um i'd like to open this up new discussion for all of you how you feel about this particular item and again going back to think about the issue of trust or lack of it and how it can and can impact your behaviors and your conversations on the board who would like to take it next uh i can go first um because both those examples are related directly to myself i'm assuming i've had at least two separate interactions that that have those same things so i will just say and i can i will just own that maybe i could better communicate i could communicate this i did not respond to the call from gabriella when she was trying to uh ask if we wanted to have a meeting canceled that we agreed to at a board meeting because i felt that was a serial meeting right to pull all for all four other board members about giving the superintendent direction about something between board members between board meetings to me is a violation of the brown app and so i i just didn't feel comfortable responding to that now now i say can i but i maybe have communicated that piece i think so i think i communicated that with arthur so he knew that um so i will on that piece but i will say you know when it comes to the brown act and the rules that we follow i i very much um feel strongly that we should follow that's the example number two the second example um gabriella and i thought i think that i would explained it very clearly in the text when you asked when you texted me about meeting one on one um getting to the point about trust i i think i was very clear in in my text message is that i did not after you attacked me verbally on the diocese in december last december and said that i that i bully you right i i mean it's on the video we can go back and look at it i really did not feel comfortable having a one-on-one meeting and i think i communicated that in my text message because you know what you you have to build trust and i feel like if we're going to have a meeting one-on-one and you're making assertions that i don't think are valid right i would be concerned about having an individual meeting and then what would come out of that and what would you say that i said right and there's nobody there to validate either what i say or you say and so i was not comfortable meeting and in that case i did communicate that very clearly why i did not want to meet so and i just wanted to put that out there because i think that those are the bo those are the two examples i think that you were alluding to but i mean if i'm wrong please correct gabriela did you want to respond to that yes it was it was just not one time i guess and you know in the communication part and i appreciate you know you being able to process this and and responding to this um i think you know i agree a response you know is a response no response means no response right disregarding and so as as president i i you know i i i didn't feel supported by somebody who's been on the board for 20 something years and when you know and if you told arthur i i was not aware that you were told arthur i think that clear and concise communication is is what i'm referring to and yes um i think i agree you know the fact that we're able to go ahead and not break the brown act and all that i was trying to do not trying to talk about the situation with with you because i did not want to break the brown act but at the same time be able to go ahead and have your opinion about that meeting and so you know to give you that respect and i think it's so important you know uh when we have conversations out in a public like this right um we we are able to go ahead we put on um you know we say things i did not personally attack you i did not say your name specifically i did not say chandelien cruz gonzalez this isn't that it was a general statement that i made and you know i wasn't going to address that right there and then it was other things that i needed guidance in because i walked into the hispanic uh what is it um it was a vote that was happening and i wanted to kind of understand what was going on and you since you know everybody i wanted to get that perspective from you and i felt that you know you've been on the board for 20 something years um for the new board members you know i have not learned or haven't been empowered by somebody who's been uh you know on the board and not only on this board but many boards and state you know the state where i was looking forward to your guidance ship i was looking forward to your mentorship but that's okay you know um you're very reserved and i get that but at the same time you're very closed off i think because of the fact that when i do ask very short um and that's where i'm coming from it's like look we're all on here to you know for the same common goal to have a conversation to have a sit down in a conversation of over coffee could you know re remediate a lot of the things that are happening on the board to have a personal conversation right since we can't have it here um in public and so that's where i was coming from okay so what i like to do what i invite all of you to do because i want to make sure we get to all the points that you selected i ask that everyone please keep your comments concise and short as short as possible um [Music] i think it goes back to both of you what you shared goes back to the lack of understanding of communication effective communication and the fact that if there is no trust if you don't have a foundation of trust you're not able to have those conversations that you need to have connecting on a personal level is very important for all of you but then you also have to be very mindful of the brown act and serial meetings and making sure that you are connecting to understand perspectives the historical perspectives of why things are the way that you're in your district and really get to know each other on that personal level that can be and should be the the uh point of getting together or meeting to to you know one one on one but not to talk business of course does that make sense so going back to really understanding your communication style your working style and how you can work well together get the information you need adrian did you have something to add as i look as i look at this list um just so we are on we run the second item which is number four board works well together i know that we're eager to get through the list but honestly as i look at number four number 13 the next three in the current one we're on and the subsequent two um i think that there may be can there may be some connection in there i think that there's a there's a theme among those three um that would probably warrant um some space and some dialogue uh around around this area and so i appreciate that that it has that it has already begun but the but we're currently on board works well together the the next one after this is managing internal conflict productively and then the next one is treating each other with respect so again there i think that there's just a a common theme among those three so my mind kind of goes to grouping those those somewhat together um with that being said i don't um i i have been disappointed at times at the way that we we as a board have not displayed tremendous levels of respect for each other from the diet um so so during and during board meetings when we're here to do to do business there have there have been times where it does um venture into personal personal things that that that take place that i think distract from from the focus of what we um are really here to do um the the difficulty with with this and with how to proceed is uh is this a situation where we are is this is this a space to speak on specific examples um which then would identify specific people um i'm not i'm not sure that it is the most helpful to speak broadly um to where in in the situation um sheila nina's you just felt maybe a moment ago where something is said maybe you sense that it could be directed at you but you're not sure if it's directed at you and so there there ends up being some back and forth and there's a lack of lack of clarity um it may it may be valuable and worthwhile to actually be a bit more specific and and call out and identify uh some specific examples and and themes that kind of happen uh repeated i think it's important that i mean it just like you know sabrina and i you know i mean i just asked her a question and she just answered what what maybe i didn't understand and we just clarified but we know that you know i was talking about her i'd rather just tell her and let her know what i felt and then she just told me the same thing so i don't see any harm in it because if you say he she them when and and then you wonder who you're talking about you know i just think it just clears the air um a little better and this is your opportunity to be open and honest now granted when we do these type of workshops we have more time you do need to have time because it's not something you can rush right so you need to have these conversations and be able to um say what's on your mind and allow the other person to respond and explain and share their perspective it's really important each of these items each of them is critical and that's why you pick them right and i do agree that number 4 13 and 15 are very um they're related right so to me the what's missing when i look at those items and the fact that you brought them up is is that foundation of respect and foundation of trust if that's missing then you're not going to have healthy conflict you're not going to have the questions or ask the questions you need to ask without feeling unsafe right but that's something you can work on and again that doesn't happen overnight that begins with each of you really being committed to connect on a personal level and that will take some time okay so my suggestion is let's move on to number 30.
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the way the process is set up that the the ultimate bids and you're borrowing dictates the lease payment so i told you the maximum lease payment to the extent you only borrow 100 million under that example we would pay and we would also know our real market interest rates so the combination of the market interest rates and the lower borrowing we would then reduce those lease payments across the board and the way the lease is written is we are required to reduce the lease down to the actual debt service on the bonds plus a slight rounding so yes we would that would be an opportunity to prepare everything back down and reduce the total cost and tax it back so at that point those changes will be updated would be the changes would be reflected in the online calculator well if you if yeah yes we could definitely do that if you've already if you have that before the referendum we compare that back if you if you've already done the referendum we would keep the calculator we could readjust it and your community could always have that access to the extent you were to pair this project back uh before you know sometimes i get what you mean if we go to referendum before we know those exact numbers we can't then it's not going to change right or if at any point if the board decides well we've got new information and 112 is our is the magic number we can then modify at that point but we are setting a maximum but we can always pair back and we can always go back until the moment we sell bonds right once we sell bonds then you're locking into a fixed repayment that we would keep can you go to slide nine from the first step okay so i just want to make sure that i'm clear on this and everybody else is clear on this uh just talking to a couple patrons and they saw something on facebook and so it's hard to believe that something on facebook is not 100 accurate um that it looks like just because it looks like our debt since it raises to 83 cents and it was only 29 cents from a historical perspective that our taxes are automatically going to multiply by three times so if i'm paying 700 then i'm automatically going to be paying 2100 can you explain that a little bit and i will share that chris asked me this question so i did prepare a slide to help me get there in case he chose to do that tonight but the idea is let's stay on that slide for a second you remember i mentioned that in the school fund or the school's tax rate you have the operations fund and the debt service tax rate this is only the net service tax rate so that part of the question is that we're only looking at part of your school tax rate so when we add two then that will change the numbers but if we can go to the very back of my presentation uh the first slide past that and that you're going to have to zoom out yes and you can actually go to the top half if you weren't able to zoom even more to that net of excess value so this is a tax bill from so the portion of the school district in the city we started with their median home about median home value of 142 300.
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tyler's passion was music this scholarship is dedicated to his memory and to bring light to mental health and suicide awareness this year's recipient of the tyler joseph leonard memorial scholarship is lauren novo the westport art group awards and i'm sorry i almost skipped a couple here the victor ledetto memorial scholarship is awarded annually to a member of the senior class who will be majoring in education this year's recipient of the victor ledetto memorial scholarship is riley fernandez the westport river watershed alliance is awarded annually to a deserving member of the senior class who will be continuing their education in the fall this year's recipient of the westport river watershed alliance is evan garcia the westport art group awards annual scholarships to deserving seniors who plan to pursue a degree in the visual or applied arts this year the westport art group scholarship is presented to jordan peckham and cohen sylvia [Applause] the principal scholarship is awarded annually to students who have demonstrated academic excellence as well as made significant leadership contributions to dartmouth high school this year i'm i am pleased to award the principal scholarship to two very deserving seniors evan garcia and joshua moniz the final scholarship of this evening happens to be one of my favorite two award each year each year we recognize a student who has demonstrated significant growth and improvement throughout their four years here at dartmouth high school student has demonstrated perseverance and tremendous growth this year the most improved scholarship is presented to yashini patel we have actually three additional scholarships we also award scholarships for academic excellence to our top three students of the class each year so at this time it's my pleasure to award the first scholarship to faiza atulova [Applause] the next scholarship is presented to a salutatorian sophia waite [Applause] and the final scholarship is awarded to our class valedictorian catherine quinn [Applause] so at this time we're gonna um it's my pleasure to transition from our scholarship portion of the evening to the departmental awards portion of our ceremony we're excited to have our lead teachers uh here with us this evening who will present the scholarships for their for each of their departments and at this time to present the first departmental awards it's my pleasure to introduce the lead teacher for the business computer science and mathematics department lead teacher mr gary lauer thanks hi everybody uh it's great seeing so many of you present uh let's get down to business so uh we've got a lot of awards here the outstanding business student award is given to a student who has demonstrated an interest in the study of business marketing and or finance by completing several business courses and who intends to pursue further study at the college level please join me in congratulating charlie fairfax [Applause] and riley fernandez [Applause] deca's mission is to prepare emerging leaders and entrepreneurs for careers in marketing finance hospitality and management this year there are two outstanding seniors both members of deca since their freshman year the first student has demonstrated her ability as a leader as serving as co-president and managing the team at competitions making sure everyone was ready and on time for the events also a driving force in the dhs deca receiving a national award congratulations alexa pereira [Applause] [Music] the second outstanding senior competed at this district and state levels every year and three years at the international level demonstrating an ability to solve real-world business problems knowledgeably and professionally culminating in a fourth place finish at the international competition this year a first for a dhs student congratulations colin zoo computer science requires students to think algorithmically to be able to translate their plans from english into a programming language creating code that can solve real-world problems please join me in congratulating two outstanding coders jack kercher [Applause] and josh moniz [Applause] our first math award recognizes one of the most valuable human traits perseverance now i'm willing to bet that i'm not the only one here who has struggled with math but what do you do about it you can learn from your mistakes and keep working until it starts to click please join me in congratulating two students whose effort and perseverance led to higher achievement every year jesse mauricio [Applause] and jackie thibodeau [Applause] our next math award is for outstanding student in mathematics an award that recognizes great achievement in the most rigorous math courses at dartmouth high school not just for one year but consistently over four years please join me in congratulating two students for their truly outstanding achievement both also members of our outstanding dhs math team amy chang [Applause] and abby chao [Applause] our final award is the math leadership award we all know i'm sure that students are often more interested in listening to their classmates than their teachers but not always a bad thing not when their classmate is explaining a math concept and getting it right please join me in congratulating two high-achieving students who stood out for their willingness to help their classmates also achieve more jack kercher [Applause] and abby shah [Applause] thank you mr lauer at this time it's my privilege to introduce our english language arts lead teacher mr will higgins as well as our special education lead teacher mr john bro who will present the english department awards hello everybody the outstanding and english award is traditionally given to a student who excels in both of the english department's flagship ap classes ap lang and ap lit we have two winners this year our first recipient impressed her teachers continually throughout her four years as someone whose brilliance and acuity in analyzing literature shown through her otherwise shy demeanor this student so impressed her classmates in her ap lit course this year that every time she spoke an otherwise boisterous class would hush each other to silence in order to listen to and think about what she had to add to the discussion please join me in congratulating this year's first english award winner thea hayes [Applause] this year the english department has chosen to honor a second student for an excellence in english award due to the unanimous praise of each of our english teachers this student claims to have once hated english yet was nominated by several of her teachers as being among the best and brightest they've ever taught often thought of for her athletic accolades this well-rounded student stood out as a leader and a top writer in both her ap lang and ap lit classes always eager to improve and never settling despite already being admitted to a top school please join me in congratulating our second english award winner sorel lawton the marty mcdonald award in english marty mcdonald was a beloved dhs english teacher and colleague who passed away on june 20th 2008 and in his legacy the english department offers this award each year in his name marty believed in the well-rounded student who like him loved to read and write but also was passionate about other activities as well this award goes to a student who honors those same values our winner is one of the most well-rounded members of the senior class had a hand in seemingly every corner of this school thrived in her english and history courses and is unanimously praised by every adult and peer alike in this building the most essential example of the very traits that marty values so strongly we as educators are fortunate that she plans to use her many talents to join our ranks someday and become the kind of teacher that marty emulated dedicated passionate and involved please join me in congratulating this year's recipient of the marty mcdonald award aileen boyle [Music] the excellence in journalism award is given every year to a student who develops and displays a passion for newswriting this year's recipient is especially remarkable because she began working for the school newspaper when she was a freshman became an editor in her sophomore year and editor-in-chief her junior year all while displaying poise maturity and leadership well beyond her years please join me in congratulating molly rio as this year's recipient of the excellence in journalism award the debate award it's a pleasure to present this award to not one but two very deserving seniors dhs debate and forensics competes in the massachusetts forensic league we travel to boston area schools for our saturday state competitions they're a small but scrappy contingent focusing on their niche area of competition groups discussion in which the conversations encompass national international and societal trends and developments this year's debate war goes to two seniors who served as our tireless club president and vice president who have both earned this award for their overall acumen and impressively broad knowledge base and to exhibit outstanding oratorical and persuasive speaking skills these skills have enabled them to habitually represent dhs at the wards podium these two young men have both made it to the final five out of 60 plus competitors at quite a few competitions the 2022 dhs debate award so well deserved goes to evan garcia and colin zoo [Music] right this one's not really in the program but we also have a scholastic art and writing award to give out as well this is at the national level and it's a silver medal the scholastic art and writing awards is the most prestigious competition of his type in the united states it's difficult to get recognized at the state level but this year dhs had a student with a silver medal at the national level for an entire portfolio of her writing this is an honor for the student and the school please help me congratulate sophia waite [Music] now i'll turn it over to john bro thank you i have the honor of handing out two awards tonight and it's a privilege that we award the most improved in english annually to a member of the graduating class who has shown great gains in english coursework throughout their four years here at dhs this year's first recipient the most improved in english award is juan torres despite the challenges presented to juan as he transferred into dhs juan has shown tremendous growth and achievements within his english classes his teachers highlighted his work ethic and academic turnaround which contributed to his many achievements the english department wishes juan all the best with his future endeavors [Applause] our final recipient of the most improved in english is presented again annually to someone that showed great gains in their english coursework throughout their years at dhs the final recipient this year is autumn adearus despite challenges presented to her in english autumn has shown immense growth with her performance in both english 11 and 12 these past two years her teachers highlighted improvements throughout her four years as a whole strong work ethic ethic and determination to tackle the rigors of the english curriculum the english department wishes autumn the best with her future endeavors [Applause] thank you mr higgins and mr bro at this time please welcome to the podium our lead science technology and engineering teacher dr peter banks [Applause] good evening the science technology and engineering department is privileged to provide four awards tonight the first one here is the excellence in the life sciences award the excess of life sciences award goes to a young man who has excelled in every life sciences course that he has participated in from freshman biology and advanced placement biology to biotechnology and anatomy and physiology this student has demonstrated excellence leadership and a strong willingness to help others as co-president of the medical careers club he was instrumental in organizing securing volunteers for and helping to manage this year's very successful blood drive he will be continuing his education at northeastern university and we are honored to recognize mr josh patel as the recipient our next award is the excellence in the physical sciences this year's recipient of the excellence in the physical science award goes to a student described by her physics and chemistry teachers as quiet in words but loud in thoughts mastering the ap chemistry and ap physics curricula and performing at the top of both of these classes the student was also very generous with her knowledge and skills and willingly assisted other students who sought her input her brilliance as a student her eagerness to assist others and her leadership are the reasons that she has been selected for the class of 2022 excellence in the physical sciences award she will be attending the university of massachusetts at amherst this fall miss amy chang [Applause] our next award is excellence in engineering our award for excellence in engineering recognizes a young man with a bright future he has been successful in every computer assisted drafting and engineering class that we offer he has been the captain of the robotics team and demonstrated remarkable growth as a leader and a scholar consistently conscientious in everything that he does he will be attending the worcester polytechnic institute next year we are delighted to present the 2022 excellence in engineering award to mr lucas dion our final award is an excellence in video production the excellence in video production award goes to a young man who has been active in our video program through all four years of high school from working on camera to cram to camera operator to editing and directing the student has done it all during covid the student worked from home on difficult senior productions for the class of 2020 and has become a student leader to our younger video students as a senior intern he engaged in directing creating live stream graphics and also helped to plan major renovations to our control rooms and our studio he hopes to continue his education at the university of dartmouth i'm sorry university of massachusetts at dartmouth we are proud to award the excellence in video production to mr andrew reed [Music] thank you dr bangs at this time it's my pleasure to introduce lead social studies teacher mr jeff reed to present the awards on behalf of the social studies department in deciding the recipient of the excellence in social studies award the members of my department were completely torn between two students so we decided to recognize both of them the first recipient is a young woman who completed all five social studies ap courses within a average she always was a major contributor in class helping spark interest in conversations when she decided to major in history she talked excitedly from multiple peace periods about her decision and explored all the potential paths that could lead her down we in the social science department are thrilled that caitlyn silva will be attending washington lee university as a history major this fall we assure all the best the second recipient also took five social studies ap courses and also averaged an a and all of them he's extremely knowledgeable of world news and politics and is always eager to learn more in order to develop well-informed and nuanced opinions this fall he will be attending holy cross majoring in political science and history the social studies department is proud to recognize evan garcia for his excellence in social studies thank you mr reed here with us this evening is mrs christine mcphee who is one of our unified arts teacher and will be taking over as lead art teacher next year mrs uh judy cronin is feeling a little into the weather and couldn't join us tonight but we are pleased to have mrs christine mcphee thank you all right do i go in order i only have two it's not a big order i'm going to do the excellent in visual arts first the excellent visual arts award recipient is a student who has taken advantage of a wide range of courses we offer at the department from fashion design to ap studio art and design 2d i think she took a total of at least eight courses the past four years during that time she has impressed us with her ability to synthesize her ideas processes and materials in order to convey her authentic voice in her artwork the unified arts department is looking forward to seeing her growth in the arts as she continues on her educational journey at savannah college of art and design where she will be studying film and technology fill in television i'm sorry um congratulations to jordan peckham okay the excellence in early childhood education award is going to a student who has demonstrated exemplary student teacher characteristics she clearly demonstrated a passion for working with young children repeatedly showed enthusiasm and was a role model for others in her class in and out of the kindergarten classroom she had an amazing attitude showed respect at a high level and built appropriate relationships with the children and her cooperating teachers it gives me great pleasure to announce kathleen lemothe as the 2022 excellence early childhood education scheme thank you mrs mcphee to present the world language awards as well as the seal of bi-literacy awards please welcome mrs hillary souza to the podium thank you congratulations class of 2022.
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we'll see what what comes up with that and then the last one and my suggestion at the end i'll share with you my next steps for you and what i suggest you can do to begin to establish that layer of for that foundation does that sound good actually that that doesn't sound good to me okay um from from the perspective of again as i look at this and see that there are three items i think that we we've merely brushed by it um and like i said as i've seen how things have flared up at board meetings i think they've they've flared up at board meetings and we have said as as the sitting in this chair i've said this is not the appropriate time for that the appropriate time for that is at a governance meeting and so now that we are at a at a governance meeting um i i can't help but but return to the idea that this is the this then becomes the appropriate time for or or maybe there is never a pleasant time but this becomes the most the most appropriate time for it and as i look at some of these other pieces uh number 30 and the others in particular i see those as things that could potentially take place and have and there could be rooms to have those conversations at proper at board meeting proper i don't see where and when we address uh 4 13 and 15 outside of this competition and i need to agree with him on that because you know we set an example and i do know that students from high schools watch us especially we're going to the organization and we're still continuing but they watch it for the history class so we need to know how to respect each other because if they what do we what our job what are we teaching them this is how you act when you don't agree or this is how you happen you don't like the person we should not do this so i think those items are very important right so could could we could i ask for some sentence starters or for some help in expressing how we feel or what we've experienced because i i think this is a this is a really hot topic and i agree that we've we've said this this is not in a regular meeting but this is a space um but i also like it i'd like some help to be structured in how to give my feedback and also to receive feedback and you'll and i do appreciate you asking me the question live because i'm going to answer you live without any varnish but i really feel like i need some help in how to share my experience yeah and i think that um i know i mentioned this to you in the evaluation you know we did um you know just put numbers one two or three or four but there was no space for the state why do we feel that way or why are we answering it why is it so low we didn't have that opportunity to do that with this evaluation and this is this is your opportunity right right yes to question that and to have discussions about it that's a great point sabrina so when you are talking about something that's um that's emotionally charged and something such as having a conflict an internal conflict is a crucial conversation your ability as an individual to say what's on your mind ask the questions you have the concerns that you have beat out attacking anyone and then just giving that other person the um the opportunity to respond is really important so starting by saying this is how i feel i feel um this is happening or whatever the concern might be and allow others to find mean and share how they see it from their perspective everyone has a perspective and of course you all are going to have different perspectives because from where you s from where you look at issues you're going to see things differently and feel about them differently but your ability to ask your question and ask for clarification is really important i'm perfectly fine with spending the rest of our time on those on those three items and really helping you have open honest dialogue on what's really bothering you and what you need to do to move forward okay does that sound good okay so um let's go back to working well together and and one thing i wanted to give you clarification on is when you meet when you come together your meetings are your meetings in public right they're not public meetings i want to make sure so staying to the agenda staying clear and concise is really really critical on the agenda items that you have okay but working well together let's open that up from your perspective what are the challenges of working together working well together okay maybe i give you a moment think about it reflect on it so as you share each of you please remember your sentence order and if you're listening then listen to understand ask for clarifying questions if you need to to really understand and then you can respond okay so i'm going to start with adrian this time so go ahead and share your perspective on the challenges it's this is a very difficult question to answer be uh i know we've had conversations in the past about not having these meetings broadcasted not having these being public uh sorry they're always in public but not having these meetings broadcasted in real real real time and reported um and i think that's that's part partly due to potentially uncomfortable nature in which things are um and and so i don't as i'm trying to answer this question honestly i don't know how to do it in a way that isn't uncomfortable and so i think as as big boys and big girls we maybe we will just need to go there um and so as i as i from my perspective as i think about what is um uh challenges to us working well together uh one of the things that comes to mind is um the ways in which uh that this idea or concept of assuming the best uh in each other and the ways that that doesn't uh i think it doesn't happen across the board um and to to be to be tremendously specific um gabriella i'm it's it's it's very difficult um sitting on the dice at times when there are really in in public meetings things that are said that are really loaded and have tremendous i mean what what becomes what what is said then is a is almost i mean it's a tremendous accusation um towards another board member um and then why i think sometimes things get heated is because that's not the most appropriate time for the board member who's being accused of something indirectly or i i think a firm that was used earlier was passive aggressively uh and it's not the appropriate time for the board member to respond to it yet that particular board member feels as though to say nothing about it also feels empty and so and so there's this it creates this this this ten this unnecessary tension point um that i think is rooted in not assuming the best and really becomes making it uh what i would call um at the time that the times that come to mind are really unwarranted accusations um and so uh that's that's the that's the for i do have a second part but i'll i'll pause there that but that's that's the first part of a tremendous concern okay what i like to do is open it up and hear your thoughts and perspectives on what was just shared and also give gabriella an opportunity to respond but i'd like to hear from all of you on that if you would like to share sure thank you caprile you'll have to unmute i i think that's uh one of the things that i'm bringing to the board as you know today is is the fact that we're either going to have the conversation in private or we're going to have the conversation in public you know i it's important that we have dialogue it's important that we communicate as a board i you know this whole passive aggressiveness when it comes it's just not me it's i i felt and i'm and i've i've been feeling you know i i hear you adrian but when i said what i said it wasn't just one board member i i said in general i included superintendent a cabinet right it was something that i wanted to say but not towards one board member i included myself in it right if you wanted clarification on that right that was an opportunity like hey you know what give me a call what did you mean by this right because sometimes when we say things for example i i may have said something right what you what you shared and precisely it was not meant towards the way that it was taken and like i said i think it's so important that you know when it comes to we're talking about trust we're talking about being able to talk to each other how do we address things when there's things that have been done right personally say to me and i in that individual have not had a conversation and hashed it out to come to the dias to to work on what we need to work on so you're right that's one thing that we need to work i i i've i've been open i've reached out but i felt rejected i've been rejected by board members right i don't want to talk to you but okay so now we're just going to sit here and be passive aggressive to each other you don't want to resolve this you don't want to talk about this like mature adults and okay then guess what you're right adrian it's going to keep coming back why because it's a it's a vicious cycle unless we address it unless we talk about it unless we're able to go ahead and have you know conversation about it i'm willing to have a conversation so am i uh you know does it sometimes yeah it sometimes does because of the fact that guess what maybe there's feelings on both sides from me or the other board member or another board member that we need to hash things out we need to talk about things but not on the diet you're right not on the diets but since i'm not given the opportunity it may come out of the tires at the time i i don't mean to i really don't mean to am i direct absolutely i am direct but i i agree adrian it's important that we have you know communication but when not giving the opportunity it's kind of you know uh we have not given the opportunity to be able to go ahead and speak on what we need to speak on it's going to come out on the diet and i think that's one thing that we need to work on on this board so gabriella before i go to adrian to respond what is important to [Music] be mindful of is a time and a place and if you haven't had as a theme the time to have these conversations these workshops are the right place safe place to have those conversations the dice is not when you have your regular board meetings that is not the right place so but i want to make sure that we um we hear from adrian as well yeah and uh that actually what what you just shared gabriella goes to the second part of what i i wanted to hold off and see if there was a response to the first part but that really goes directly to the second part um that i that i had um which is which is couched in what i believe is um dare i say um a what what i perceive what i perceive as a a lack of self-awareness in in regards to these matters and these issues because i think when there are um again accusations lobbed of of a a passive passive aggression um as well as in an unwillingness to engage or communicate with um those are the things that i i have i have seen um most significantly modeled uh on on your behalf and so when when those are shared here as though it is as though it takes place equally across the the board i don't think that it's a helpful um that it it is a helpful and or healthy perspective um and so i i know that there was reference you you referenced a time when you were wanting to to reach out and meet with people i know you're speaking broadly wanting to reach out and meet with people and that there are people who would not uh meet with you i think that you would certainly agree that i was not one of those individuals that you would say did not meet with you and discuss um different things and also point out some directly to you things that i thought were problematic and i thought that that could lead to conflict um on on the dice and ways to navigate that in a healthy way and uh earlier this year earlier this year um as as we were having one of those conversations uh you communicated to me directly to no longer uh speak to you about those those matters i mean that you were no longer uh willing or open to sitting down and having some of these these converse conversations um uh because of and so because of that um i i have i have experience from you the the the very thing that you're that you're sharing out and saying that you've experienced on behalf of the other other board members but but almost verbatim the things that you're saying or problematic that were said are the exact same things that that you said directly to me and so with that i'm i'm i i think there's a yeah there is an inability then to engage about these and talk about these things on a one-to-one basis when when that communication is directly cut off which then means that this becomes if if not then in a one-on-one setting then this becomes a necessary place and so um i i am i am i still remain tremendously concerned about some of the actions uh some of your actions on on the diocese um some of you some of the words that you say um some some of the the ways that you say the things uh that you say are i i think um just just tremendously concerning for me um as a member of the sport can i respond to that gabriella go ahead yeah i you know i i am very concerned as well you know as you being president one of the things that i shared with you was this um why i said you know i'm i was very upset and the conversation that i had with you was that um i said you agent are coming after me i said i'm not the only one that's seen this people in the public as they're seeing our our meetings you know you are constantly directing things to me not once when and i'm sorry uh chandeline i'm i i'm gonna say your name when chinaleen is talking over me or she interjects or she interjects when the lawyer's speaking or she speaks over the superintendent or you know you know because she wants to say um hey no it's done this way right and so then i said well the lawyer's here i think it's important like not once do you when she talks over another board member you know board member um sabrina or yolanda right you only direct it to me and that is why i said you know i'm really upset that you only directed to me i said i feel attacked i said and i'm not comfortable with that and that is where i came from and i'm very concerned about that as well because of the fact that you you've undermined me in public meetings um you know so i'm i feel like okay you know what i constantly have to be defending myself and it's not just from you excuse me it's from others as well it's like okay so everybody gets to say whatever they get to say but whenever i say something instead of asking for a clarification right or maybe i said things wrong again i'm an english language learner not and i'm not saying that as an excuse i think in spanish and i have to translate so the way that things come out sometimes may not be appropriately correctly the way that like you just said adrian me you know what and i've asked you in private adrian i've asked you i said listen when i say things you know if i say them incorrectly please correct me i gave you that before because i want to be able to learn and improve right as an english language learner as i i hear you guys speaking i have to process i have to process things in english okay now i have to respond i'm thinking in spanish there's a lot of processing that i have to do and i've addressed this with the board as well so please give me some time to process and and at times adrian you don't give me time to process right as president i can can at least have some time and you have when we did the reconfiguration meeting right but like i said the things that you address with me you don't address with others on the board and i did call you out on that day i said that really is concerning to me because you're not fair across the board i do not feel that you are fair across the board and please remember everyone when you're sharing you're sharing how you feel right you're not accusing um i really want all of you to be mindful of that i like to if you like to respond adrian and then i want to hear everyone else's perspective on that you're also at those meetings right so you're watching you're listening think about your perspective i want to come back adrian so i'll be very brief in response i i i there's there's much that i could say if we had more time that i would say but i'll be very brief in saying that i think that what even what's shared there i think is a is a discrepancy around around what i perceive is a discrepancy around self-awareness and so that's where i think me being lean and and um please uh i i'll look to my colleague if as as you as you see things if it is if it's your perception as well um some some of the some of the areas that um that gabrielle is sharing if that's your perception as well i i invite you and i welcome you to share that with me directly so that i can grow in in my role as a as a board member and in my role in this seat um but uh so so i'll i'll leave it there i'd be eager to hear um if there are any thoughts or or comments from from my colleague all right so anyone has anything to add they're your perspectives your thoughts your feelings sabrina go ahead since i was the one that asked for a sentence starter i think i need to go ahead and use it so um i feel that a challenge to working well together as a board is um when [Music] we level accusations without presentation of evidence and i'll give a very specific example so gabriella some meetings ago you had shared that you felt that closed session items were being shared confidentiality was being broken by some board members or a board member and you said that in an open session meeting and that took me by surprise and i don't know if it took anyone else by surprise um and it it seemed to me that if that was a concern that would be a pretty serious concern obviously to break confidentiality with all the important things we talk about in closed session um and i don't know i didn't see anything in a board packet about you know an issue or someone being um you know count a board member being counseled like hey remember that's closed session we can't talk about it so i felt like it was an accusation level generally to the four of us and because we didn't have an opportunity or no one said well hey what do you mean again during that open session meeting um i just felt like it just sat on us and i didn't know if it was going to be resolved i didn't know if it was a real issue um so it felt it felt like an accusation again without presentation of evidence and i'm not sure if you still have that concern about confidentiality being broken or if you think it was resolved or if that's something that you discussed with the superintendent one-on-one that's that's what i feel is a one challenge to working well together is accusations without common presentation of of evidence so sabrina as i look at the list of what you all selected as strength for this board respecting confidentiality is on that that's something that two of you at least identified as something that you're proud of something that you do well on that item right okay i personally have never heard any breaking of confidentiality with a amongst the board to anyone i i've never heard it what's [Music] it's three three board members collected that out okay thank you so that's significant that's majority of you right um gabriella i want to make sure i give you the opportunity to respond to that particular item yes in general i i can i can think of one particular uh meeting we were having a a close session meeting and um and sabrina you uh you were at a park a public park and you were talking to other individuals and you were with your kids and we were talking about pretty um you know pretty substantial um things that needed to be in closed session and to me close session means you're in a closed off area where no one can hear you because we're talking about closed session items and so therefore when you were at the park with your kids and having this meeting in an open area where people could hear you speak or i don't know if they were hearing that's the break of confidentiality and that's what i was referring to and that's the only one that i can remember right now um there's been other instances but but that's the the major one where you know um you know what is the brown act when it comes to um confidentiality in a board meeting that it's supposed to be closed session are we okay to be out and about and you know at a park with our kids and have friends around us you know and and that's where where i'm coming from i i didn't know okay so closed session means closed session that means everything that's discussed stays there and you leave it there right you don't talk about it after you leave closed session but i want to make sure i give you enough time sabrina to respond to that particular situation certainly i honor the confidentiality of our closed session meetings and i don't recollect certainly i go to parks with my kid many times but i don't recollect having any conversation with anyone even a board member about closed session items outside of the closed session so all i can say is i have no recollection of it and it's certainly not my practice i think the question is is not that she broke the confidentiality it's the location she was at i think that's what gabriel let's talk about the location she was at the time of the close testing matter not necessarily that you broke it but i think we should maybe just talk about that you were at the park during a closed session can you clarify gabriella yes i uh yes uh yolanda's right i what i'm saying is she was one of the things that i'm that i'm sharing is that when i think of closed session right and the confidentiality is when we're speaking about matters and agenda items from closed session we are in a closed room right others are not hearing us speak we are not you know they're not hearing what we are discussing because it's closed session and i felt you know that particular time when um and by all means you know i that it was not shared with us as well either that she was going to be at a park with the kids and so i'm thinking okay we're discussing things do i say this do i not say this um she's at a park and people hear us you know can people hear speak what is the protocol do we have a protocol when it comes you know is there a csba um bylaw where it says closed session has to be closed session do we as a board can't you know do we work on you know can do we have a protocol all these questions came to mind right and yes yolanda you are correct um close session to me means closed session you're in between four walls with not another person that is not a board member or cabinet near you while you're discussing the agenda items thank you for clarifying sabrina you so now i think i know what we're talking about um we were in closed session and i was i was at a public place um i wasn't able to join in and i don't remember if we were all calling i think this may have been a meeting where we were all calling in um and i was on my earphone or my earbuds i was not on speakerphone and even though my earbud can pick up sounds there was no one within your shot of me to be able to hear the comments that i was giving and so i now that that jogged my memory i know what we were talking about all right and i don't know what you have as far as protocols or board bylaws on that i will have to look and see if you have one uh and if you don't to create one and i can certainly share language csv language but that's important and these are the topics that you all need to talk about just like this in a safe environment to be able to say how you see a situation your perception and allow the other person to respond in a calm and respectful manner and i'm seeing that here and i want to let you know that i so appreciated that you're able to do this you're having some tough conversation so thank you and thank you for allowing each other to respond and really listening okay i do want to be mindful of time i'm fine going beyond i know on the agenda you let me know what you like to do what is your profit i i thought just saying i i thought we were going in at seven and i i did have a dinner i'm sorry to say that my daughter's birthday and tom i'd be there at seven because i read here that it's at seven right so here we are at 7 42 i just i saw some numbers at 7 40.
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that is the gross assessed value as you know the hope of the legislature was that that would match your market value none of them are exactly at market value but that's in a set in in essence what we're looking at is we're trying to look at 142 000 home i'm going to kind of just work through the tax bill these are the components of a tax bill and i think it will help answer your question so first we take away the deductions that are available first is a homestead standard deduction everybody gets to 45 000. the supplemental deduction is 35 of the remaining remainder of that balance in this case that's 34 000. we're assuming this homeowner has a mortgage so they get a 3 000 deduction if they were 65 and over a disabled veteran or a partially disabled veteran there would be additional credits that would show up there and those are tied to in effect uh the property tax caps but it's not in the cap it's the credit is the way those are issued i'm assuming none of those because they are only making it harder for me to explain so uh if we go to the net assessed value that forty two thousand three hundred dollar home has a net assessed value of sixty thousand two hundred forty five dollars that is the net assessed value that we're going to put toward that calculation i showed you on my last on that last screen where we take the 54 cents times the net assessed value divided by 100.
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each year the world language department awards three awards in excellence in mandarin chinese portuguese and spanish this award is given to students who demonstrate the highest level of the proficiency in the target language students have reached the highest level courses offered here at dartmouth high school for each language they are recognized for their extraordinary work ethic motivation dedication and overall their desire to see themselves grow and progress with the language our first award is excellence in mandarin chinese this year's recipient is colin zoo colin has taken successfully all four years and you'll be attending ucla in the fall best of luck [Applause] our second award is excellence in portuguese this year's recipient was in my class portuguese for honors and she excelled in her portuguese studies and completed all four years of portuguese it is my pleasure to announce caitlin the silva as this year's winner a third award goes to s excellence in spanish this year's recipient goes to someone that excelled in her spanish coursework throughout her four years at dhs including honors courses and taking ap spanish this year in addition the student is also proficient in another language and she will also earn ursula by literacy in portuguese so this year's recipient in spanish is bianca mata the world language department will ask also like to recognize students who have met the qualifying standards for the seal of bioliteracy uh isn't awarded students who demonstrate literacy in two or more languages the target language as well as in english this is a program set by desi and we're very proud at dartmouth high school to have implemented this program um to measure uh students have to measure a profession in english by earning a qualifying score in their elam cast and also qualifying score in the language target which consists of a very rigorous exam where they have to be listening speaking reading and writing in the target language so a very difficult exam so we're very proud this year to award the following recipients here for the seal by literacy with distinction we have josh moniz [Applause] we have bianca mata with the syllabi literacy we have lauren novo [Applause] we have juliana souza [Applause] okay and we have gia wow in mandarin chinese thank you mrs souza at this time is my distinct pleasure to welcome associate principal and advanced placement coordinator ms rachel chavier to present the ap scholar awards [Applause] we are very proud to present our ap capstone scholars students who receive a three or higher in ap seminar and research and on four additional ap exams of their choosing are potentially eligible for the ap capstone diploma students who receive a three or higher in both ap seminar and ap research will be eligible to receive the ap seminar and research certificate the following students and we have quite a few have taken ap seminar and ap research in addition to four or more ap courses throughout their time here at dhs these students are potentially eligible for the ap capstone diploma or ap seminar and research certificate amelia ablett robert august congratulations eva cafaso maeve carrig deanna bella korea caitlin da silva emma fernandez evan garcia [Applause] shantae gonzalez john kercher aiden lemire ethan lima elizabeth mckinley [Applause] [Music] lauren novo julina pantho [Applause] ashton perry catherine quinn [Music] gabriella riordan [Applause] carly richard molly rio [Applause] abby rogers justin silva caitlyn silva abigail simmons catherine smith hannah sullivan emmeline tavares emma tatro sofia waite colin zoo [Applause] zoe ziegler congratulations [Applause] thank you miss chavier now to present the wellness and athletic department awards please welcome dartmouth public schools director of wealth of i think he wishes he was the director of wealth director of wellness and athletics mr andrew chrysopholi thank you thank you mr tebow i have the privilege of presenting three awards this evening the first one will be excellence in wellness this award is selected by our wellness department teachers in recognition of two outstanding students in health and physical education who exhibit sportsmanship empathy and leadership first recipient is mia cotter and our second recipient is charles fairfax okay next is our athlete for all seasons a student athlete who receives this award participated and completed completed in good standing three sports seasons all four years of high school these recipients are great examples of long-term commitment work ethic pride and grit we have 24 total recipients i believe that mr martin and mr shea will help with the distribution of these [Applause] aileen boyle luke kaniff [Applause] nicholas carvalho [Applause] catherine charrier william ciao [Applause] leah chuba patrick crane [Applause] baron dutra charles fairfax [Applause] keegan hummerson sorel lawton ethan marks shay mcgee timothy tj pickering molly rio kalyn rockowski caitlyn silva catherine smith juliana souza hannah sullivan nicole sylvain meredith sylvia emma tatro and lily wheaton thank you okay last is our outstanding student athlete award this prestigious award will be presented to two student athletes who were nominated and voted by our varsity athletic coaching staff as the 2022 most outstanding student athletes both recipients are all state athletes on the field and accomplished students in the classroom our first recipient played football indoor track and baseball ethan marks [Applause] our second award goes to a student athlete who participated in volleyball indoor track and girls lacrosse sorel lawton thank you [Music] thank you mr christopholi now finally to close out the evening with the final award it's my pleasure to introduce superintendent of schools dr bonnie gifford to present the superintendent's excellence award [Applause] thank you each year the superintendent's award is given to students who have excelled in academics and and are all around um whole child as we say and we ask our high school administrative staff to announce and let us know who that would be these students were their bios were read at the school committee meeting last week and we wanted to just present them tonight so our first award winner is evan garcia [Applause] and our second award winner is josh moniz [Applause] thank you dr gifford once again congratulations to the members of the class of 2022 um we are so very proud of you and all that you've accomplished and uh we are even prouder of what uh is yet to come for you so um congratulations again before i close this evening i do want to thank a few people that i um haven't mentioned yet and that would be mr peratti and our dartmouth high school tv media production program who were here to film tonight and also i'd like to thank uh peter chase and the staff of dc tv um for their partnership and making sure that we're able to celebrate all of the achievements and accomplishments of our young people as well so thank you to peter chase and to dctv as well that being said congratulations and again thank you for coming out tonight and have a great evening ross
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is it your regardless i want to honor your time because i i was given seven and then i stopped the next step um workshop or journaling 6 50 to 7 p.m okay i'm looking at this so knowing that what i like to do is i like to suggest that you continue these conversations this is not something that you just we just barely stress the surface and these are important conversations you all need to have so i am open to your ideas your suggestions on um continuing this another time when you can allow you can have autistics hours that you can work on this and at that time your governance handbook can also be revis review so that's one option you could continue on without the orlando i don't know if that i think it's really not that i think i know it's important to have all of you here and i prefer that you're all here basically for a future meeting so again you let me know how you want to proceed and i apologize orlando on over yeah no that's okay okay so what's the preference of the board president uh gabriella uh yes i i would agree i think we all need to be present and um i appreciate this raw conversation right being able to go ahead and speak about things um that hey what about this and and coming from a place like hey addressing it and the other person not feeling like that the you know the person sharing is being attacked right trying to attack the person but actually really asking an honest and raw question and so i would like to continue at another time to have another governance meeting like this because i think it's very productive and i would like to continue with yolanda i think we should we should end and uh have a part two hopefully soon yeah it is i mean other that's that that's i'd say more than enough to move in that direction i can't imagine um i'd have anyone else say anything other than that um we could how do we how to best proceed we could look to uh putting something on i i i don't know how urgent this is or is not i know we have uh graduations in one next week but this could be something that we look at on the other side in the new board calendar or this is something that we could uh try to address more uh um quickly than that is there a sensor or preference from the board i would i would look at either the end of june or just have like one meeting in july we kind of do that like just put i mean no one's going on vacation you know um one meeting in july you know spend like five hours you know in the morning just i don't know but that's just my my idea you could select a saturday that's an option also that's true when you're off we've had them on a saturday before yes starting at nine and five hours or eight years whatever works for you i apologize but i'm not available on saturdays until after 2 30.
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so that's what's happening in the background then we look and the tax rates this is really where i think we start to get to chris's question of the total 3.60 tax rate that that's taxpayers paid 41 cents of it it's coming from the county 1.7 from the township two dollars and eleven cents from the school or from the county or the city point eight seven from the school and one point eight from the library that makes up that three dollars and sixty cents of that you'll see that the school makes up on the far right about six uh oh no less i'm not confused let's stay on the left column so we calculated gross tax the way we calculated gross taxes we take that tax rate times that six the net assessed value that says the gross tax is 2173 however we have tax caps the circuit breaker tax caps are one percent of the gross assessed battle and if you remember that was that 142 000 number that that gives us a tax cap for this taxpayer of 1423.
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are there any uh weekdays that you are that you could be available um earlier i guess that's the question uh yes mondays mondays i could do as early as 11 o'clock june is really tough for me um with all of the educational responsibilities and ceremonies and july will be tough for me i i i'd suggest that we um we we can look at this for the uh for the august counterpart when we start back in in the new year are there any objections then well i was hoping that we could do it sooner because i i didn't have a chance to speak to any of this but i mean if that's yeah if it has to be august then i mean i think that's kind of far away august uh you know this conversation it is important uh to make this effective and i think that um we're going the right right way about it by you know addressing each other and respecting each other for whichever maybe there's things that we're not aware of right or so i i think sooner than august would be i'm wondering how we reconcile that because i know you're not um you wouldn't be able to continue later today right better today i can to continue on later today no and then uh sabrina you're saying that june is is not um i could do the last week of june like i was i was gonna suggest if you can give us some dates probably mr ortega and you know not now but then are some dates and times and maybe we could just look at them and [Music] agree so adrian can could you like work with arturo to do some dates the last week the week of the 27th and we can respond with yes or no and find the date that works best for all of us yes and i'll say for me it would have to it would have to be um make the monday work or it'd have to be the tuesday or the wednesday are you camping all of july well there's a there's a lot of i have a lot of work travel that i've saved for july i'm sure you do okay i can do monday i can do the monday the 27th i can make that work would that be like a 12 o'clock like a 12 to 5 or 12 to 4 thing if you're looking to have it um facilitated i am not available till five o'clock on that day what was the other day 27 i could make i could make the tuesday work pick your head i could make the the wednesday work uh if it was earlier i won't be able to do that okay i apologize you're talking about june right that last week in june yeah that's all but you cannot do tuesday no no and i cannot do the rest of the week i can do monday tuesday but i cannot do the rest of the week i might be able to do tuesday but i don't know until tomorrow but i don't know gabriella said i don't know but are we intending to have this facilitated because that'd be that you just said you can't do it i won't be able to yes oh yeah but you could do monday at i could do monday and so you could pull a late night uh that would be like monday five tonight five to ten or five to nine nights four hours right is there dinner included gabriella would that work with is that feasible for you if you look if we look at the 27th um starting at five for four or five hours yes i could do monday i was looking at my schedule i could do monday um five uh we're gonna be there for i think it's important that we are there like you guys said for five hours and dinner included i'm there i have my own board meeting at 6 30 on that monday i guess i'm okay with august [Music] so then i will uh coordinate with arturo and we will look at uh some some dates in august to figure that out okay you know we'll just continue we should just continue i'll just no it's all right yolanda i think we already important you know that's very important i'm sorry uh team i i also have another meeting that i had to attend at 7 30 which i'm late to because it did say seven o'clock that we were gonna end so i actually have to get going as well okay okay then i will i will move us on from here on to adjournment and and like i said arthur and i will talk about uh a next the next meeting okay then we will move to item 5.0 and specifically 5.1 which is determined is there a motion to adjourn second moved by board member rodriguez pena and second by board member bo any discussion hearing none will do a hand vote uh yolanda's yes yes yeah yes yes and i'm also yes so that's five to zero uh for adjournment at 7 51 pm all right thank you have a good night
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the tax bill can't be higher than that in the current situation unless you have exact debt and under this scenario there is no other exempt debt for this taxpayer that means there's a savings of about 750 dollars due to the tax cap and if we move down you'll see that the non-exempt tax rate tax bill is 1 423 and that's due to tax caps the actual bill that is out there is but tax caps cap that taxpayer at the 1400 level the next column over and you can stay right there we don't need to go above because the assumptions above um next tax bill is what if we add the incremental increase from the referendum that's that 54 cents that you see on the school rate i assume all the other tax rates stay right where they are we add the 54 cents taking the school rate up to a dollar 41.94 that's about a 61 increase so right off the bat we don't have the tripling because we're sharing among two rates but then as we compare it with the total rate that's about a 15 increase in rate for that entire tax bill so you see as that incremental increase as we share with the broader tax base causes our percentage increase to not be as dramatic we come down to the bottom and you'll see that because of tax caps the tax bill actually increases about 22 percent um that's that 326 dollars that showed on the prior slides but that's a that's purely a function of the tax cap has has taken a percentage of that out and changes the does that help a little bit with the one idea i've also done the same thing for a smaller the smallest tax bill which throws those percentages slightly different but it does do the same thing if you'd like me to go through that or if that helped answer your question that it is that would help answer my question i just wanted to make it clear that even though that debt rate looks like it's tripling it's not tripling the tax bill exactly and that's the component of euro that's only one little one component of your entire tax bill other questions all right we'll now open the public hearing remember if you would like to speak please have signed in on the sheet that was out front we'll get that here in a second start going through those if your name did not get on that list we'll give you a second here to get you or if you've changed your mind if you said no and you would like to say something um while he's getting that i would like to just say that as i mentioned earlier we ask that you state your name and address and limit your comments to the proposed project and financing being considered and keep your comments about three minutes or so so we can avoid being competitive so the first person i have signed in and somebody would like to speak is gary johnson hi [Music] um my name is gary johnson and i live at 4503 east hanging rock road in the grove um i guess i just wanted to take a minute tonight and thank all of you gentlemen that are sitting in front of us um first of all for your transparency and the way this process has gone i loved the way mr key favor laid that out and all the communications and the opportunities that we've had up until this point to hear the thought processes and to understand the whys behind what's going on um from the time mr keyfavor started having meetings with us at the schools i'm a teacher at southwood i've made sure to stay in contact with the administrators and i've watched the work sessions online and i feel like i've um had a good opportunity to understand really how we've gotten here and what's going on so i really appreciate that um the other thing that i've really appreciated is your willingness to not just settle for the status quo with education in wabash as a teacher and a parent of three kids i am incredibly proud of what we do at southwood high school i'm incredibly proud of my kids have actually been on both sides i've had kids at metro north and at sharp creek and i've chosen to bring them to southwood um for a variety of reasons but mostly to get them closer to me um and i've had incredible experiences with all of the schools and so i'm super proud of what we do there but i also as a senior class sponsor i'm getting ready to prepare for graduation on saturday with 44 seniors at southwood i've watched it happen over the years and you know i'm one of those dual credit instructors and i'm one of the electives teachers that my class numbers just keep dwindling and it's it's a beautiful thing to have small classes but it's a challenging thing when i'm trying to teach high level education um academic subjects to one or two kids at a time there's things that i could do with bigger classes and so um i just appreciate that you're not looking at the cheapest way to provide a good education but you're willing to look at what we could do to provide the best education for the kids of wabash county because if i'm doing my math right two of my three kids could graduate from this new high school and i am extremely excited about the opportunities that this would allow them to have that they might not have otherwise so um thank you for all of those things and i guess the only thing else that i would say is if there's people in this community that don't understand the whys or don't understand the numbers or don't understand what's going on um i encourage you to reach out to any of these people because i have done so many times and they've been very forthcoming with information i know it gets a little overwhelming sometimes but i'll be one of the first to get on there and use that tax calculator to see because it's going to affect our tax bill significantly too um and so then you've got to just decide whether it's worth it or not whether that educational opportunity is worth it for the kids in the community i i think that it is and i think that it's good for me as a teacher it's good for my kids that their education and it's good for our community as a whole but i respect that everybody may not follow on that side of it but i hope that people if this makes it to a referendum can show up in november and have an educated opinion about what they're voting on i would hate for people to just take what they see on facebook and just take the um opinions of a few and use that to make up their minds so thank you again for everything that you've done to get us to this point because i know it's been a lot of work uh next person who indicated that they would like to speak is carol cohen [Music] well actually i wanted clarification on the tax thing which he did um and the fact that there's one 44 seniors at southwood is incredible to me um [Laughter] all right the next person who said they wouldn't like to speak is dana hornett so i actually had a few pages but i think some of the things have been answered and you are daniel cornett from uh southwood high school i graduated there in 2020.
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first off i appreciate like carrie johnson said the transparency there's been i really appreciate the student aspect of it i'm very student first if you don't already know i'm going into education looking at this district to teach in so this high school could potentially be my new workplace uh as somebody who's looking at it from the future my concern are the current teachers that are in the buildings primarily you've got like my key favor said duplicates of everything and the my question is and i don't know if it can be answered right now is how do you determine who to cut who to keep in this new building if at all if you're looking to keep the teachers and increase the number of classes of a certain subject or if you're looking to decrease the number of classes and cut down i think i have like five science teachers for southwood cut down to like two science teachers that focus on the different subjects uh my concern is how do you decide between the ones that have been there for 15 20 years versus the new hires that are coming in that self would particularly i've noticed i've posted like on facebook several job openings where that comes in how will they be able to vibe for a position at this new high school if it comes to that and the concern is as a as somebody who will be coming in pretty much a few years before this high school opens how can somebody who's looking at this job be willing to go yeah i'm willing to put my hat in the ring when there's teachers like lindsay me currently at southwood who will be doing it at that point for approximately five years by the time this high school opens i'm just looking at the incoming teachers those people that you're looking to hire i really hope that this new high school provides the opportunity for them to work there and it's not just based off of well this person's been with the district for 25 years at the same time i don't want those teachers who have been there built the relationships with the students to just go you're gone you've been here long enough and i don't know if that's been very clear it might have been i haven't attended all the meetings i don't know everything per se about this but if there could be some clarification i'd be willing to hear it that's just my concerns for the teachers that will be going to this new high school and how that divides out so thank you guys very much and i want to say daniel um it was very fun and exciting to have you as on the superintendent advisor team for four years and i appreciate all you're doing at manchester uh university and what you're doing uh with the song that you created um that's just fantastic so thank you for that and i will say at this time we are continuing to work on a frequently asked question document and that document actually addresses that too but overall you know we're looking at providing more opportunities as part of this and so providing more opportunities without actually um make it so we keep those educational staff and there would not be hardly any changes at all if any and you kind of said that earlier too you said if any and i think that's really how that would work out because the situation that we're in that when we talk about efficiencies that efficiencies with our education fund is a lot different than what the operations is and how that works and how you saw where dr had all of the utility costs and things like that from a 5 billion degree building so we feel like there's a lot more opportunities for our staff or present staff and even for young teachers coming in too but we'll put more things on there but yeah so all right thank you next we'll hear from nancy cronin instagram 4644 north 300 webs last week i came to just get information and i did and i got more tonight which has answered a lot of my questions i'm probably the oldest one in this room and mr key favorite i was the last graduating class from noble township in 1962.
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so i knew most of those gentlemen and i lived through all of that the forming of the msd and everything at 60 years it is time that we do something and i will admit that and being the oldest one here i would probably say the thing that scares me is the 115 and i know young people probably don't think a thing about that this just goes but i think what it's going to do to my taxes i'm a senior citizen my salary is not going to increase i am stuck there and you know i get this reassessment paper in the mail why my house is worth so much more than it was 50 years ago when i moved in but that didn't put any change in my pocket you know i just get to pay more taxes and the farmland and so being an old senior citizen that's what concerns me i mean i think we should give the best possible education to our kids that we can afford i have two grandchildren that are teachers i'm going to be paying for this for the rest of my life if it goes through i mean let's face it i mean i'll be lucky if i'm here in 20 years so i paid for it the rest of my life my grandkids i've got to say oh you're going to be paying for this to your 40 or 45 years old that's what pulls me back a little bit so and i appreciate what you guys have done you are in a no-win situation here because not everybody's going to be happy we know that but anyway thank you uh next we will hear from andrea benzo hi i'm andrea benbow 2775 east 1100 south fountain and uh my dad is a teacher at marriott i was going to ask math math teacher social studies social schooler oh let's talk about so going on both sides i graduated from southwood i didn't realize my class was huge apparently but i heard the other side from the big school because they graduated 800 one year anyway um i guess being a parent of two elementary kids that are in the south part of the county and who would be at the age that when they're in high school this would be the high school they're going to i have a lot of reservations about a school this far up my kids coming this far when they're in indiana now a lot of options you don't have to send a kid to school in your district anymore you want to retain students well for me and i know other people in the south part of the county that's a big question mark for a lot of us how far away that high school's going to be compared to other places we could have our kids go and um i also was really interested in your points about the facilities how many schools we have the capacity that we're not using right now and how much each building is costing and i saw that you did i mean as a board look at a few different options and one option i didn't see up there that maybe you considered it early on it wasn't feasible but whether there was any consideration to closing the elementary schools adding on where you need to to the high schools and making them kindergarten through 12.
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southwood and northfield there are schools in indiana that operate that way they have one campus they have kindergarten through twelve they're not that big but they function and you don't have huge drives huge commutes huge bussing here and there where kids are crossing it's a mess you keep in your own area because you know just that's feasible transportation gas getting bus drivers to drive those long routes i mean that could be a consideration to whether people want to keep doing that so um that was just i came to the meeting last week and just looking at everything that was just something that occurred to me and i didn't know if that was anything that's ever been so i just thought i'd bring up that thank you for your time next we will hear from mike whitney yeah mike brigny from the fountain um he answered a couple of my questions i believe you know what if the referendum fails and plan b would be to go back to this like the uh reconfiguration from a few years back is that corrected my assumption on that idea or or retain all schools we put that on the boat right okay but that one didn't check any of the boxes the other one at least a few um also uh another question here is you want to attract more students and i think maybe in the beginning you may lose a few but then in the long run i i still see you just stealing from the county again from school corporation food corporation same thing that's been happening in the last 10 years one family goes here we don't like you we'll move back here it's just back and forth and with adding a higher tax rate i believe that's going to cause more families to say no we're not going to move here and we'll still end up having the same issues over and over again another question goes what if for some reason the enrollment does go up in our school and i don't how big how many students do you want this building that how many is it going to hold you know right now we got 509 he said in northfield and southwood how much are you going to build just hold 500 600 600 what if enrollment goes up to 700 and we need to add on where's that money that comes from you can do another referendum and raise taxes again in our quarter you know that's essentially what you're you're hoping you retain and attract more students that's that's a good possibility you know you gotta look that that direction um and at what point do you gain so many students stealing from the county does the state come in and say you need to do the dreaded sea word then what i don't know how that will all work out would the msd people be stuck in the building the entire bill when everybody else comes in or or how's that gonna work and the other concern that i have is a few years back the thing that was brought up with the dreaded c word was oh your taxes are going to go up your taxes are going to go up that was the big fear that you all put in everybody's heads taxes are going to go up well here we go again taxes are going way up this time so apparently taxes wasn't the real reason you didn't want to see a consolidation last time because these taxes are going to go way up beyond what that would have been mr ribby i appreciate your concern but again i'm going to ask you to keep your topic your questions and comments well you had mr drake uh sitting in walmart city schools with a little presentation he got so i don't see why i can't put in something here you used it i don't see why i can't what is good for thee is you know not good for you okay uh mr downey did you have you have a question mark well kind of yes no i uh for those who didn't even care i was a 1963 graduate from south this year and yes you are one year older than that and i've admired you for many years [Music] appreciate the hard work of being on a position like this because it doesn't come and you cross a lot of bridges with a lot of people my respect was to read these comments and i do have to be concerned about going before you go forward going backwards when my wife said this with me and if you add together what we counted numbers of graduates in metro but you also need to look at wabash and how we can exhausted all possibilities of one central high school because as part of what he mentioned about what could come down the road and really having underplanted it could help but the big thing is you only get one shot at this and i know that weighs heavily on all of i've been in these positions different times over the years farmland should be mentioned a little more than it is on how we're going to be affected but all of us farm people here we we know what's coming our way and it's hard to visualize you own a house and base all these decisions to what these school boards are going to do and how much it's going to raise up for you but it's another thing when your livelihoods based off of nothing but solely agriculture and i don't know how you answer that we do need to take care of the kids they're the most precious thing that any of us will ever have they're one of god's gifts and that's a fact but you do have to have a responsibility in these decisions but when when you stood up and talked um [Music] i thought that kind of plagues me when when we built ourselves into this scenario i just lived too many years and 115 million dollars and i'm quite aware what's going on in this world that we're living in financially and anybody who wants to turn their their head and stick it in sand like the ostrich we're in a very turbulent time financially we don't know where that's going to end and i think if you're not up to speed we should really start reading and finding out where we are as a country financially so my question kind of is like this and i don't know how to ask you to get the right answer but i'm just presenting it so you you can all think once again about what you're about to say yesterday if we were to take a scenario of a 35 to 65 reduction in the in the stock markets and it's happened before and there's a lot of people who thinks it's about ready to happen again and i know that's here saying they say type thing but if you don't if you don't acknowledge it i want to know what's going to happen to this whole decision when we're in for 115 million dollars and all of a sudden things are only worth a little bit of what they were when we went into it and that needs to have some serious thought do do we need to make a change absolutely schools when when we went into the schools and my senior year i knew most of those people personally and i was i was a young person and the scuttlebutt was just horrendous between the city schools and the country schools and i'm sure you've all heard the war stories as young people they were true the city and country when it came to this was almost tapered towards each other wabash came back to us not too long ago and wanted to do something for us to go together and for our own reasons we chose a different path but here we are again today getting ready to make the decision and uh i think we need to fully understand where we're about ready to put our tax dollars payment uh into everybody's pocket what we're going to have to talk about and i don't know whether making sense to you or not but i see i sense things on the horizon that we're going to have to adjust our lives significantly probably sometime this next decade and uh where would we be if all of a sudden everything retracted what would you be telling us at that point are we locked into it uh the payment's gonna be forgiven because the world changed for the next few years and and that's really what i wanted to ask i'm not trying to put a kink in this because i really believe in what you're doing but uh that does concern me so that's kind of what i wanted to say and thank you thank you mr john nice to hear from you sterling okay i don't know i don't want to stand up because somebody's going to have to look at my backside honestly um i had a lot of strong feelings that kind of made the announcement of this building project make me step back a minute and i i i have had some of the same feelings that michael had initially why is it okay now to put this tax burden out there when it wasn't okay before but here i i have asked a lot of questions when mr key favor presented at our school i'm a second grade teacher at metro north my address is 3215 west division red sorry i forgot that um when he presented at the school i have some questions and being close to retirement gives a person some freedom to speak that's what's the worst that can happen i can only have two questions just let you know so anyway i asked some of my questions um some of my questions were answered i still have some questions about this whole thing and what it will look like and i don't know the answers to all the questions these are the things i do know though when i graduated in 1981 i graduated with a graduating class of around 120-125 when my daughter graduated 30 years later from northfield in 2011 she had a graduating class of around 120.
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same ballpark my nephew was graduating this year from northfield and has half them half that size of class and that is not i don't know i've had people say when we went through this whole talk of consolidation a few years ago i'm not getting off topic i promise don't you want your kids to go through this go through go to the same kind of school you went to don't you want your grandkids to go the same kind of school you went to and i said yes i do that is the point because northfield and southward aren't the schools that they were when mr key favor and i graduated from them i was in a strong band program i was in a strong choir program we had a big drama department those were my things and it breaks my heart that those programs are dying at our schools not because we don't have kids interested we don't have enough kids to fill them and with you know with more sports offerings which we have now there are more opportunities for kids in sports than there were when i was in high school but because we have less kids those sports are pulling from every other program and we have kids really having a heart ident hard time having an identity in high school because they don't have anything and having an identity in high school is and there aren't there's not enough diversity in our schools right now because they're so small for some of our kids to ever find an identity there and that's a very lonely place to be without that another thing that i know is we are not all going to agree on what is the best course of action but we can't keep waiting around until we all agree and we can't keep waiting around till we get our way and i know there are a lot of sides to this argument i don't know exactly what side i'm on but i know that i'm not on the side of doing nothing anymore we have to do something sorry anyway um i'm not i'm not i'm not okay with just sitting and doing nothing and i know it is a big financial commitment on the part of the school board on the part of the constituents of the county but here's the thing we've talked about back in the 60s well here's the thing back in the 60s our fathers and grandfathers stepped up and said we're going to support this because it's the best thing to do and it's what we need to do to secure the educational future of our kids and now it's our turn to step up and say this is going to hurt a little bit and this is going to be scary but it's time for us to step up and make some hard decisions that will secure the educational future of our kids and we can't sit back and just worry about what's comfortable for me anymore we have to look forward and i know that you might think i have a different perspective just because i'm a teacher and that does make a difference because i see those babies go through i saw a little girl this year in my class that has very limited academic potential she's an amazing artist if somebody gets a hold of her and channels her and makes her believe that she can be somebody because of that art skill even though reading is not her thing even though math is not her thing that's going to change her life if we miss that and let her fall through the cracks that's not a burden that i want to live with i'm also a grandma now that has changed my perspective because my baby's going through these schools and i want the best for her friends and so i feel like we've got to do something and here's the thing i've had some trust issues in the past with school board decisions even with some past administrators i will just say this out loud i told them when they were at school regardless of how i feel about anybody else i trust these three men because they have stood by us they've made good decisions i have seen their passion for kids live out in the decisions they make and i am ready to step up and say let's do it i come from a farming family i i'm i'm i was born in the kill if i know it's going to hurt but it's time we need to finally we need to do our part and step up for this next generation like our grandfathers and fathers did for us that's all we have [Music] miss sterling and also mr regna and i've heard a couple other people say again i want to just reiterate but why now mr keyfavor answered that earlier and by adding some additional slides for a an additional slide to a slide deck from last week but i think we just kind of skimmed over there first of all again even though there's a little volatility in the last week or so mr eliza we are at historically low interest rates and we do know that because of that volatility that the building costs are only going to go up it is time that we step up and do something this is a you know this is something the board could just kick down the road again and let some other board figure out what to do to become more efficient with our building use but it's time that we look for the next 60 years and so if we're going to look at that next 60 years do it before those costs just keep going up and we're in a lot better situation now than we were the last time we considered anything my gosh when i came on this board we had some problems with our finances when i ran for school board the first time we were half a million dollars in debt we now have roughly 9 million dollars in our education fund and four almost five in our operation fund is that right mr we didn't have that kind of money then and so there was no way that we would consider taking on additional debt in that situation but the most important thing is that the retired debt at the end of why now instead of a couple years ago at the end of 2023 pretty much all of our debt if we did nothing if we just sat on our hands and said let it all just go let the schools go at the end of 23 2023 we're out of debt so the amount of interest that we're going to add back on there even though it seems astronomical to some people is not going to put us in a position where it's so much out of our yeah more than we can do based on what would have been a few years ago we would have tried this so i think just because of the the interest rates building's gonna cost her because it's going to keep going up and the fact that we're pretty much out of debt now this is the why now this is the time to strike and we as payne said we have to put something on our hands we've got to do something for the children the students because it's not just financial network that we're it's not just a financial problem that we're fixing by doing this it's much more than that it's the educational opportunities that we're not able to give our kids right now so that's my answer sir so we'll move on the next person who requested to speak was tiffany hawker i'm tiffany 151 state road 13 south savannah i'm a mom of northfield kids i'm a taxpayer i'm a financial advisor um when this first came out i was you know big numbers don't scare me they don't like i can keep it in perspective but i know that for a lot of people uh they're struggling in this county the elderly um you know where we have 40 50 60 percent of the kids in our schools are on pre-reduced lunches how is that going to impact their property taxes um it's going to impact them more than it's going to impact me if i told my kids i don't mind the tax increase i can afford it but there are a lot of people out there that can't we're asking an awful lot of them um i don't like that you guys all use the the number 115 million 115 million plus 70 million in interest that's 185 million that's what it's going to cost us to build that school 185 million write that down that's what it's going to cost us over the next 20 years not just us i looked at my senior daughter that's going to graduate this saturday or this sunday and i said you're going to be paying these property taxes to build this new school and it is part of our responsibility as citizens in this community to provide a great education for our kids but a great education doesn't come from one building a great education can come in a lot of different ways and um the other thing i want to talk about financial wise i assume you guys are assuming a three percent interest rate on the bond issue approximately what what we're at five percent you're five percent yeah so for every half a percent what's it going to add to our interest 15 million it's not going to have anything coming down you can never go above the number no i'm saying if you don't get the bond issued at five percent you have to go five and a half or six percent i do want me to answer the bonds can't be sold for that amount you'll have to do less or you can't do it and that doesn't and that means they might not be marketable it won't affect the marketability uh due to the fact that uh they're they're even with that amount of money their ratios are going to be fine the market will be there but the problem is the limit will be set we cannot exceed that five percent and at that point they would have to pay back their borrowing we could not go back up we cannot go higher so you're back there borrowing reduce the size of the school well they have to you have to you have to borrow less so you're gonna you're gonna force them to build a smaller school to accommodate i mean we're kind of on the cusp there they're saying we can take 600 kids but we have 500.
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and they're trying to they're trying to attract different kids and i have no comment on what they do but besides let's think through it reset the maximums and that the maximum payments cannot be exceeded so right whatever that will advertise is ultimately what what those limits would be said yeah um a reminder that that that actually is a 10 contingency and also several seven percent escalation which is a huge number also because of what you're saying but like he said at the beginning it's pretty volatile right now things can change in an instant right um mike you said last week something about um somebody asked about the job loss and you said well you know we'll have people retiring um and so it's not going to be an issue overwhelming with us enough staff that's what you said last week you go back and replay it what you're saying tonight is well we'll have more offerings and we can keep all the staff i think that they're going to be four or five years in there where people retire we don't rehire because we know this is coming down the pipeline and who gets to suffer are teachers that are left and the students so those are things you guys have to consider all of those things and it's not just financial i think we can do better for our kids with a different option and i think you guys all owe it to us as your as your voters and as your parents and as the people that you guys go to church and bank with to go out and find us better options we're not a kid that you're forced feeding broccoli to you better offer us for your news thank you for your comments jeremy wait yeah jeremy wade two or three extensions and i didn't bring the serial sneezer with me this number one at uh at what time will we get a breakdown uh the facilities that you're going to build add on or upgrade in the new building to so we we know where the costs are going i know there's going to be costs of land i know there's going to be you know the building itself are we upgrading uh sport facilities are we putting down um astro turf or we i mean is that built into all the cost i mean we're at what point in time do we see specifics of this of this new venture um and also i've heard a lot about utilities okay so if we build where you're saying we're gonna build what we have existing utilities now which covers probably gas and electric but doesn't cover so much i mean yeah you have you have wells and you have sewer you have a septic or a plant but when you get that close to town i'm pretty sure you guys aren't going to drill wells and you're not going to have a sewer plant you're probably going to pay to have that piped out to you have you figured out the cost of that water and sewer that you're going to be paying every month and i guarantee it's going to be well more than a dollar a kid every month so i mean was that was that put in the plans as well not sure if you know but we actually already do that on the north schools all that goes to the world and we're already doing that okay right but the sewer right not the water right okay but over here you're gonna have to re-pipe anyways and you're gonna have to are you gonna drill well i mean what what's when are we going to find out the specifics of of the building yeah yeah part of that will come later once we i mean we don't have drawings we don't have that we have um you know we have the financial part with the square feet and all those different things with all the are the are those things that are going to come out prior to a vote yeah that would be before november or the only i mean my concern is is you know like and i understand you have a certain protocol that you gotta do like putting it out in the and uh in the plane dealer well i'm telling you that the two people that read that don't pass it around and there's guys like me that actually had a bunch of kids opportunities but i do get a call when i'm down to 25 cents on their lunch account so i waited something to blast out so um my thing is i i would love to go through all of the information before i even dare place a vote on a new school and not to mention you're talking about attraction if you're building this uh school out here and i'm i'm i'm a grad of uh south wind so is my wife my parents i mean you know we my uh my grandmother went to somerset and graduated from somerset so you know my family's been on the south end of town and is it feasible for me to bring my kids all the way across town or when it's closer for me to go to oak hill you know you're going to lose people that way just by logistics alone and we're not even talking about the programs that they offer that we may not offer because god forbid we work within the community to to use facilities that we have grand facilities in town that we can use and we don't use them i don't understand that so that all aside we're talking about retaining people and with account you know with a county that we we are 93 percent higher in lloyd taxes than 61 counties in the state of indiana that's and we're we're the third highest the third highest that's amazing to me that we get to keep people in this county because i can move two counties to the to the west and get a dollar dollar fifty an hour increase in my pay just don't taxes and that's not including what we're gonna have to pay here now i'm not against paying taxes i pay them all the time but at some point there's going to be elderlies there that are going to have a problem well thank you for coming just know that obviously between now and november 8th a lot of these questions have to be answered i would expect it well right we have a lot more to do between now and november 8th and that includes a lot more community public meetings like this so that we can try to bring more of that information to maybe guide you to a better informed yes or no you know if you're gonna vote no you're gonna have better reasons on november 8th that you have today i appreciate you vote yes you're going to have better reasons than you do today right i appreciate that you guys got is when i left this this meeting last week i was super frustrated that i didn't feel like the transparency was there that needed to be but i was also not aware that you were going to take your time and put it answer all the questions one time and i appreciate that i really do but you guys have got to do a better job of getting this out in the community so people understand and they you want people to come in and and uh give their input because that that makes people feel a lot better and it's not as hard to swap swallow that's for sure and i'm not going to direct this at you to anybody including anybody that might be watching on facebook if you've not had an opportunity to go back and watch any of the public meetings that we've been doing since before covet please do because a lot of the questions that have been asked previous to tonight and even tonight have been answered at some of those meetings so we just recommend that you go back and and a lot more will be answered i don't disagree with that right but what i want to well i didn't disagree with is the fact that look there's so many people that work different shifts different and they don't have you know they may not i mean i hate to say it but they may not have access to the internet but but we've got to get that a little bit i mean we're talking about people thinking their taxes are going to triple all total that to me means someone didn't do their due diligence and getting information out okay jeremy i want to say something first of all though i didn't know my wife's here but my wife and i get to playing the other side i guess we're the only ones that get to play because i don't know anybody else 1980 graduate of northfield 1981 graduate southwood so that kind of works out too for you there you go yeah we'll talk yeah um here are some things too uh number one on our website and i know that's not a call that you would give but on our website the tax calculator will be on there if um the resolutions are passed tonight also the slideshows that mr elizondo put up we'll put that on there our sliding show will be on there also the uh frequently asked questions and so it won't be in the plane dealer but it will be on the website too and i know not everyone gets that but but if they want those things we can print that out for those if they don't have the internet so we've blasted that out i mean i get a call for some of some other things and i don't know if you can do that or not yeah but it's a good idea i mean people get it we all get the paper right but we can't that's not part of the legal part of it that we have they don't have legals like we do so but i understand what you're saying does anybody don't get to follow so that's what it is all right all right well okay we're gonna go ahead and uh that was it on the people who requested this week can i still sign in on it nope i'm just saying because kevin can answer this one how much is it per acre because i know kevin's down the number i don't care about a house i don't care about a house i want to know the number tell me the number i honestly don't know man i'm scared to know you have an idea is it 10 bucks is it 15 bucks because everybody's glossing over i want to know what it is okay the other thing i'm going to ask and i probably should have asked before i thought i don't know why did you we're going to ask you to direct your comments to the board in general not just yes sorry board would like to answer it i'm just curious we'll find it out later okay i'm just curious because i think there's a lot of different situations is it a good place my second question is and it was already asked but nobody answered it if this referendum passes can you vote on another one if you pass this is it a 20-year fix to where you hit a snag like huntington can you go back in and get more money or is this all you can get for 20 years can somebody answer that because that's being glossed over i don't know if i did so did someone ask me what i don't know okay he asked that question if we hit a snag after we go can we vote on another referendum or is this 20 year fixed is that all we can do not everything has to be done as a referendum if something if we've decided that we needed to add another classroom sure there are maximums that we can borrow take out bond issues and we've done it in the past even when i've got on this board we can do that so this is not going to be a fixed tax rate for the next 20 years this can still keep going up we can take this hit in 10 years we could take another hit it could go down yes we've done general obligation bonds in the last seven years that i've been on this board at the end of next year we're still debt free so it's not a permanent right we have to go and and do another geo bond for a million dollars to add on yes a million one i'm just curious in 10 years we had a snag like huntington and they went from 5a to what 3a after they built that who's going to pick up that tab when we have to raise more money that's my question okay yeah you get three of them i think you said three did they go to three no i said i mean you had three questions you want to ask oh my my last one was just i agree with what tiffany said if you're going to talk about a number make it 180 make it the real number i think that's a disservice to say 150.
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you're insulting the intelligence of your community yeah it's in the resolution so that's the problem the legislation but we're going to talk a number let's talk about them all right we're going to move on because we have other business to deal with so i'd like to thank all of you who participated in the in the hearing we do appreciate your interest in you know wanting to be here and appreciate your comments but at this point i am waiting for the script yes i am so i want to let you know that the board is going to do everything that we can to be you know conservative with our tax dollars but at this time i'm going to ask mr keifer to summarize the project resolution so the project resolution is required when schools plan to spend more than a million dollars for a given facility it contains the estimated hard and salt construction cost and the cost of the issuance and establishes the total project cost it also contains the estimated tax impact under unfinished business then so we've had a second preliminary determination at this point we have a recommendation to adopt a project resolution and i have a motion and second to adopt any project resolution i'll make that to the discussion if not all in favor say aye oppose the aye time mr key favor could you summarize the preliminary determined resolution preliminary determination resolution yes preliminary determination resolution is required when a school is planning to finance more than certain thresholds on a construction project it contains the total project cost maximum annual payment and lease term and other financial terms such as the estimated principal amount and tax impact is there a motion to put on the recommendation to adopt the preliminary determination resolution so motion and second to adopt the preliminary determination resolution all in favor say aye aye opposed samsung and finally the recommendation to adopt the reimbursement resolution is your key favorite that you summarize that for us yes the next resolution is a reimbursement resolution relating to the financing of the construction project this resolution permits the school corporation to reimburse itself from bond proceeds for any cash which it might spend on the project prior to the closing on the balance is required by federal tax law in order to preserve the school corporation's ability to reimburse itself is there a motion to adopt the reimbursement resolution as recommended i need to approve that reimbursement resolution second motion and second to adopt the reimbursement resolution all in favor say aye aye same sign okay that finishes the unfinished business for this evening we have no board policy we did do public comment there just now so any items from board members i do know the agriculture community uh is about 40 45 of the property tax debt load up and you see most of us up here sitting i have to be faced with that same decision um yeah i think perhaps scott one thing that should be brought up is what happens is michael's saying this doesn't happen we have gone through uh pretty good studies of what the buildings will need in the next 10 15 year window and that number's rather tall too so not the building the school puts the ending the kind of repairs you know we've all had things that immediately require repair it's part of the consideration okay there aren't any other items board members we are adjourned
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public art commission meeting to order on june 1st at 7 02 pm and there is jamal coming i thought i saw jamal jamal's here i'm here i don't i don't see he's not yeah you're not listed as a panelist you're just an attendee right now you might need you to get upgraded promote you sorry to interrupt you sarah oh no problem no problem all right well and i think maybe sophie two am i on the wrong one again are you promoted as a panelist i just click the link i got but maybe okay well we have a lot on the agenda so i'm just going to go ahead and start with roll call and then vanita if you want to take a look and see if maybe we need to do some additional promotions um now we see you jamal there we go um so i will start with allison buck hi i'm present in ann arbor thank you jamal bufford hey i'm president superior township uh sarah fuller myself present in ann arbor uh sophie griez i'm present in ann arbor you're called john catarsky president in ann arbor fantastic penny peggy leonard i muted myself present in ann arbor perfect marionetta porter present in new york fun and linson present magna island wonderful thank you all um so we're gonna go ahead and uh set the agenda so um i invite a motion to accru approve the agenda as presented do i have a motion so moved thank you john and a second thank you peggy um so uh oh and i'm sorry i totally forgot a big welcome to mary fifos i am so sorry our newest commissioner um coming back and we are so happy to have you mary thank you for joining us tonight and congratulations for joining the commission so happy to have you thank you and uh so now that we've approved the agenda let's move right into our special presentation which is of course about our arpa funding um so i am going to give the floor over to heather who will give us a presentation on the funding if you'll bear with me in a moment i'm going to share my screen so um oh it looks like you need to enable my screen sharing veneta if you don't mind and i'll get my presentation up and running i'm still not able to share my screen no yeah i'm not able to share my screen or my video now okay hold on a minute if you make me co-host i made you a co-host i made you an actual host it actually made john kotarski the host is what popped up something so maybe just went up in the wrong person by accident oh yeah sometimes that moves around but congratulations john for your promotion you can call me heather great i'll sit back so does that not allow me to remove him as a host either maybe i don't know yeah maybe john maybe you need to make heather the host now i don't know how to do that uh i'm gonna do it i think if you um look at the list of participants and then there's dots over to the right uh it won't let me change here okay let me uh go to heather and look out there on the right hand side if you scroll over there should be a more button i'll make her okay so yep she's the host now yeah good work teamwork it was already this meeting is riveting okay all right you should be able to see the presentation now is that correct yeah correct all right i'm saying head nods okay so we're here to talk about arpa funding and the good news is is that there's money to be spent so we're gonna get into that it's just a matter of the how-to um before we get into that um actually i'm gonna skip this because there is no q a feature um but if you want to raise your hand digitally there is that raise your hand feature at the bottom if you want to share a thought or star 9 if you're calling in you can virtually raise your hand that way through the phone and then we do have medium norms this is considered a public meeting where we're getting into a discussion um and we do ask that people remember the dignity of others as we get into this discussion um so with that we ask that you commit to learning and avoid speculation we also ask that if you're speaking over the phone that you move to a quiet place so we can hear you we do really want to hear what you have to say so that always helps and i know that's not always easy but if you can now make sure you can you try to get a quiet place and then once again just remember the importance and rights and dignity of others so please remember to critique ideas not people and that you are thoughtful about your language we want this to be an inclusive um forum for everybody so please consider the language that you use and try to avoid any offensive language okay with that getting back to our main point is that we have money to spend so we have 500 000 that's been allocated to the arts so now what and that's what we're here to figure out with you tonight so we want to get into a discussion about um so i'm going to do a quick review and many of you have probably already seen this presentation and and much of this information but i think it would be good to do a quick review before we get into the discussion i'm going to get to that so uh as many of you might recall that there is no real free lunch with this you know this is federal money so there are some strings attached um and those strings in this case have to do with timing so um the cost must be obligated by december 31st 2024 and then we must fully expend the funds by december 31st 2026 so that gives us two years to spend this um there is eligibility requirements um in this case we're going with the eligibility requirement that we are wanting to serve the hardest hit community um some of the hardest hit community um here in ann arbor which is the arts community these funds can't be reoccurring um because they are just kind of a long time shot this was meant to sort of boost things you know and help us recover from the effects of covid so we need to be careful about how we spend it in the sense that we can't put it to a program that we hope continues in perpetuity um there are significant reporting requirements so federal funds if any of you have ever dealt with this before as they require a lot of paperwork um so with any money that we give out we do need to report back how we're using that and we need to report that back in fairly great detail so this is uh what was recommended to council um with a full set of recommendations on how to spend the arbor funding um so during that process as many of you probably know and participated in um the arts funding wasn't initially on the list of funding options for our funding but the arts community came out and wanted funding to go to this community so that was put forward in a recommendation and that's what this recommendation stated was that we have heard loud and clear from the arts community that we would like to have a portion of these funds dedicated to artists who have been the most adversely affected pandemic so we propose that city create a grant program award up for 10 000 to artists to pursue an artistic endeavor that would be displayed or performed in the city of ann arbor so that's what went forward and what we heard back is that that's not really a perfect idea that we're kind of headed in the right direction in the sense that um we're funding the arts but this is not exactly the ideal way to do that um so what happened after that was an improved amendment from city council um which uh read um these whereases i won't read through every word with this but it you know it acknowledges that the art community was really hard hit and it resolved that city council approved up to 200 000 for arts based trauma programs from the 500 000 allocation of arpa funds for funding the art so that's where this leaves us is really trying to figure out how to divvy up that money this is a budget example um and kind of where our minds are right now but we really want to hear from everybody here tonight about how we should adjust this but this is kind of what we're thinking of how the money should be divvied up so we can come back to this slide again this is just just putting it out there is one way to do it but we can slice and dice this in many different ways so what i wanted to do tonight was get into a set of four questions i did actually have an interactive um method for us to get into which is called jamboard but unfortunately um technology has forwarded us once again and we don't actually have a good mechanism to get the link out to you um there's some restrictions that are i rit puts on our zoom accounts um and in this case we don't have the q a feature which i thought we had which i thought we'd be able to get you the link so instead i think we're just going to have a discussion here tonight going through each of these questions and i am actually going to take this down because i do want to see people it's hard for me to be hands raised when i have the presentation up but i can always put this back up to um so people can come back and look at questions but we'll start on the first question which is given the timeline and constraints what's the best way to equitably distribute these funds to support the arts community in ann arbor so with that i'm gonna stop the share and look for virtual hands raised and we can call on you and let you speak and just hear your thoughts i have four additional folks who need to come in if you could let them in as well oh okay i'm the sole host yeah okay all right you need um four people to come in as a panelist is that what you mean attendees yes just as attendees okay i'm not seeing people waiting are you in attendees no okay so i have curtis hannah jenny jeremy and nick who all d2 um okay they're they seem to be there as attendees did you want me to promote them to the panelists no here how about this i will make you co-host and [Music] and that should enable you to be able to do that yes thank you yeah no problem so in the meantime we have two hands raised i see that jeff crockett has your hand raised and so we'll go to jeff and then uh tawana and deb so jeff um yes i appreciate i'm a little unclear though whether this is part of the public participation session where people can express ideas for how public art can be funded is this is this the right time for that or this yeah if this was the right time for that this is a public interaction there's a lot of background noise i don't know effect and if you can limit that job that's not in my it's not coming from me oh okay i'm not sure who is that coming from well all right better okay um yes it is it's within the parameters though of the arpa funding that we have yeah so we're not generally discussing our funding should be refined no that's fine uh so my name is jeff crockett and i've lived in ann arbor for 40 years downtown and i help recording in progress a green team which is basically a group of over 20 volunteers who have helped to activate a number of gardens on the the council of the con or the city commons the center of the city commons and i don't know if you notice but last year we activated two gardens um but the long-term goal is to activate a number of other gardens and create sort of educational sites we have engaged project grow with joe at ryoma and we have also engaged uh wild ones uh which is a group which uh advocates for the planting of native plants and they've joined their effort this year and in the process of that we've also been involved in trying to activate the commons and we're pleased that mary was involved um last year in a couple events uh one was uh chalk drawing which was very well received on the main part of the parking lot but the other thing we reached out for mary for was to put up a mural on a wall that's just next to the primary garden it's a seven foot by 16 foot long section of concrete and we were envisioning um a mural of flowers to support what was being done in a number of different sites there is also um a three foot high by 43 foot long knee wall that's goes right by there and then for those of you are familiar the elevator just to the east side there's also a fairly large wall and we think that those three spots would make excellent candidates for for public art we are involved in sort of re rebranding that site and creating a civic space and there have been a number of events that have been held so far so i wanted to speak in favor of having a conversation to understand the process for how we can apply um because we're very interested and and active in this and the other thing i want to point out is that bicentennial is coming up in a couple years and we're looking at this site as sort of a potentially a dynamic site for doing a whole bunch of different events and what better way to uh you know have people come to that event by seeing wonderful art so uh this is sort of an initial idea and a proposal and i would be most appreciative to know where we take it from here but my question is are you looking for like just general ideas of where to put art or in the application for that are you requiring specific concepts and you know and ideas or is this something that the art commission would determine um in terms of what actually would go on these sites uh some clarification on that would be most appreciated yeah and basically we're kind of at ground level of forming this program um so we don't have actually a method for people to apply yet so that is all to come today we're just trying to get a sense of really how to equitably distribute these funds so well we welcome you know ideas about um different projects um really it's about the method the means of how these funds should be distributed within the parameters of arts funding so hopefully that helps and maybe i i should turn it over to sky um i actually am not seeing you we have many people here if you had anything to add to that i just wanted to give you a chance to detail that out a little bit more yes so i guess you did a great job explaining that i think what's happening here is that we're building a new grant program that has never existed before new programs using new dollars and some of that money um has been identified as sort of like here are ways that we could do this it came both through the the memo from the city administrator saying individual grants to individual artists um and then there was an additional amendment that was approved by council that said a portion of these dollars could also go to support um trauma-informed arts based programs and so um before we go build these programs we're looking for a little bit more input and that's what we're seeking here today both from the community and from the the public arts commission to provide some a little bit more detail about what's how to prioritize those dollars across the different options right it's a limited amount of dollars and so one day we'll have those the answers to those questions which is like how do you apply um but this is more like how do we what's the what's the most impactful way we can set this up so that we feel good about how these dollars are ultimately distributed thank you your and your project may or may not fall under the scope of the arpa funding that we're speaking about right now that we're discussing but all of our public art commission meetings are they are public and you are welcome to join um any of our meetings to discuss this idea further and we can get some contact information perhaps exchanged it looks like you've worked with mary um thiefels before so we might be able to discuss that uh mural project um in a continued manner outside of um this particular uh topic tonight as well great thank you so next up is tiana and please let me know if i mispronounced your name um and you should be able to talk please go ahead oh hello everybody i'm tiana clemons i'm a local artist from ann arbor um i think that it would be great if we could actually use some of the funding to rent a space for a year to do um an art art exhibits for students teaching them how to curate um also teaching them how to run a show by also utilizing professional artists who are struggling or disenfranchised or by giving them a stipend for helping the students be able to put on those showcase and we'll also be able to promote that as well as actual exhibits um i also think it would be an amazing thing because we as you stated the funds can't can only be used once so if that was to be a success we'd probably be able to get funding to keep that going for years to come but also in regards to covet and the trauma that it has impacted on a lot of the youth i think it would be great to have a space for them to do art specifically and be able to showcase what they what what their experiences are or feelings in a creative way that's all thank you okay deb pollock you're up next hi thank you oops i think we did we lose you doug we might we might have also it looks like there's a couple people that aren't actually permitted if i'm not mistaken um it's nice azaro in here nick has his hand up and deb is on like attendee list but i don't and she has her hand back up i'm not sure she um has the access to talking there isn't a little parenthesis next to her that says talking permitted yeah that's yeah that's what i notice about nick yeah nick doesn't isn't permitted to talk either hello now yes we can oh great thanks that was fun um i don't envy you all having to do these public meetings with these machines and technology my name is jeff i am the director i think most of you know of creative washroom and have been engaged with that organization for a couple of decades now it seems um and we work with artists and creatives all over washington county and hundreds of them right here in ann arbor um and i have a couple questions before i i ask or make my point um can can you heather or or sarah how much time do we have this evening we this segment was going to go until about 8 30 at least that's what i was anticipating so we do have a fair amount of time to have a discussion okay great thank you i just wanted that parameter and then you had stated from your slide that the recommendation at this time or am i understanding that this is for consideration the recommendation at this time is that ten thousand dollars would go to artists and then the balance of that fifty five hundred thousand dollars would be eligible for arts organizations that do buy pocket trauma programs is that correct or is that what we're working within or are we looking at opening that up further yeah sky if you don't mind me putting you on the spot to detail that out a little bit more yeah those were the two those were the two parameters that came from leadership so the first which was the um the language around 10 up to ten thousand dollars to individual artists to create or perform art was was in that original memo from the city city administrator to council and so that language sort of was approved with the additional amendment to um provided by council around the trauma-informed arts based programming and so those are the two parameters that have been sort of publicly discussed and so that's not to say that if if that thinking was wrong or if there if this group or we hear a lot of feedback that we need to broaden our thinking or adjust that that is what the city administrator and the staff are looking for before we like go out and try to actually build this program um what about what about the conversations that happened after the initial proposal from um the administrator there's been there's been weeks and weeks and many conversations about ten thousand dollars per artist the intent that these funds are for art that they could be and there's been a lot of public engagement in regards to artists and creative businesses and organizations because they've all been adversely impacted by arpa are you saying at this point that that's off the table i don't think we are seeing this off the table i think we're trying to get more um feedback around scoping this because unlike the other projects they didn't receive that same level of public scoping and we're actually going back to the before the original plans were done to get the public engaged in more of a direct way like you did right your other individual initiatives okay thank you right but we do have sort of the guiding posts of what has been talked about both what was put forward in that memo from the city administrator and both and the the language that it was approved by council around the amendment but there's a lot there's a lot of vagueness in there in between right so up to 200 000 can you know can be used for um for this very specific thing but the rest of it is is a little more vague and so that's why we want to make sure we are hearing the public incorporating those recommendations both from the public and from the public art commission um before we sort of define those those specific parameters okay so considering what the purpose of arpa funding is for which is for for for us assistance to those adversely impacted by the covid pandemic which continues to impact our industry greatly our industry being the arts and creative industries greatly not only artists individual artists but also the organizations that help make washtenaw county and ann arbor in particular a destination location add to our quality of life add to our economic impact and as it makes this community a great place to live work and play um the interest in helping and assisting both artists creative workers and organizations and businesses is a great um interest to both the creative washington but mostly importantly the people that we serve and the people that we interact with on a regular daily basis um you know we we initiated a creative watchdog aid fund just to help people get through a minor cr that might not a lot of money but some money to get into the hands of these artists and creatives and there's hundreds of them that have requested it and so my point here is if somebody asked me today if this conversation went in a particular way what would make you happiest and i said that it's not making me happy it's making the community members that we work with and creative washington's inten interest here that we've been hearing constantly for two and a half years two and a half years from artisan creatives and businesses throughout this community and that is to open these funds up for artists and creative workers and businesses and non-profits and for-profits within within ann arbor so that they can restore their that will pay back bills that they have you know the debts that they've been incurred during this period of time so that they can recalibrate so that they can go forward to continue to in fact be that creative industry that makes this community what it is and not one time projects certainly absolutely positively not one time projects and to give the monies to the artists that know and the creatives and businesses that know how to use it best you know a lot of them have gone into debt a lot of them have um are unable to buy supplies a lot of them are just in very difficult circumstances and that's these arpa funds could be so greatly greatly valued by these individuals and businesses and organizations deb can you provide a couple of examples of businesses um that are just maybe off the top of your head right now that and you're talking about paying bills not not creating artwork i sent alice in a list today of more than 90 or people in organizations who have sought funds from creative washroom aid over the last two and a half years and there are people there are groups like ann arbor civic theater there all of the um all of the art fairs have requested support because they have difficulty making paying their bills even those organizations that took out idols those loans if you will they have to pay those back and then there's the individual artists and creatives who don't have gallery spaces to show their works anymore or they don't have the gigs the musical gigs that they had previously because we're still in that circumstance where the public is not attending events if you look across the board and i do nationally and internationally we're still at about 40 percent of audiences people can't get hired they can and they're desperate you know they can't pay their bills they can't pay their rent it's still happening this is not over for this community oh i agree i mean then the county commission meeting is happening right now where um our rapid rehousing agencies haven't received our upper money at all so there's zero dollars going to rapid hebrew housing like avalon and can and ozone and alpha house there are people who are really suffering in our community and we're looking at federal dollars that won't be going to pandemic relief we'll be seeing homeless encampments soon so there's a lot of advocacy going around right now for for folks who are facing um who won't get supportive services for housing and we just published a report saying that our residents beat the odds and eviction when they have supportive services so there's a lot of conversations when it comes to federal money and where it's where it can be the best use so it's it's good to hear a variety of concerns as for timing the wheels of bureaucracy are slow and i'm glad city staff are here to start this public engagement because they can't really start public engagement until after council voted for this approval and this is it right so even though past conversations have started to get it on the table it's been voted and approved so i think what heather and skye are saying is that under the arts commission it's a new process of public engagement when we're actually talking about what the but the recommendations coming out of this committee would be to shape the actual application process the grant process versus the need before and the political will to get it before so uh you're you're actually kind of ahead of the service agencies in town who are fighting for uh money to house people you know at least you have a process now uh and an actual allocation where right now the city and the city is voting on um you know the final budget for our human services partnerships next week and the county commission is voting for it right now um so i'm i'm glad we're a little bit ahead of game at least in this area yeah this is somewhat of a good problem to have that we have money to figure out what to do with so we do have three other hands that are raised right now so i'm going to move on to curtis and then nick and then express your yes okay curtis please go ahead hi everybody can you hear me i can't yeah cool i am curtis wallace uh owner operator artist uh be creative studio and uh i just kind of wanna i love everything i've been hearing um and i just wanted to first say that everything starts all of this this starts with creativity how we're doing this is a part of the art process itself the creative process itself um that all said i have been recently been working with a lot of these programs and i figured out a way to you know allocate the you know some of the funds and get the community involved at the same time so i've come up with and i just recently finished the mural um at the can um creekside community center for can um and um you know what we're discovering through um this funding is is uh it's outstanding it's too much to go really to uh go over but i can tell you one of the biggest things is really putting into and i know i can put this in a better way better terms but really the artists that have been out here putting in the work and the sweat i hear you guys talking about allocating majority of the funds to organizations but i'll tell you right now um and some of it to the artists but if you if you allocate it to the organizations and just make sure you you reach out to to have the organization start funding these artists what it's doing for me it's not only giving me the opportunity to be able to be monetized it's also given me the opportunity to teach other artists how to be valued in the community and how to monetize their art so that it they can we can really uh preserve it and we can start getting us paid and but but we're not just getting us paid here it's how can we integrate um this value for art and creativity as well as get the community involved and and again it's too much to talk about but i can tell you guys if we can get that list of a hundred artists and we can get you guys support us and our vision and let us sort of uh this this space where we can bounce ideas and help each other out um i think the organizations can then turn to us to come into these spaces and to sort of just piggy off what tiana was saying uh you know my me and my studio we are currently um undergoing um a kickstarter so that we can have a space to not only continue on the education of art and creativity um through the be creative studio but to you know create this certification to really let no students and and creatives out here have put in the work and then show them how to do this art or really help support the art that they're already in that whatever that creative space and then we curate art shows and have them truly have some stake in the community not just have this art up on buildings but to curate you know art exhibits so that you know they can really not just create this again this this um financial um freedom or to just give us equity but to really give us stake you know to have this art in people's homes and i've been visiting our communities all over the us and and last recently has been in denver and how they've curated their art culture and community i have been taking several pages and bringing them here and if anyone um out there who can reach out to me beyond this zoom call i can really um i think i figured out a way we can do this where artists organizations and our community can have some real diversity equity and inclusion that's that's stuff we keep talking about not the one time not to check off the boxes but to really give us some real steak and the continuum of it all is real easy we just got to really value these artists for real because we've been putting it in there and and i'm and and i apologize sienna for to continue to bring it up but i've been working side by side you know with tiana on a lot of this stuff um you know i feel like i've just kind of gotten um you know just a foot a foot up because i've talked to the right people but her and i are in the same sort of circuit trying to find a path for other artists to learn create and be valued if any investor yes thank you yeah and um uh i think it would be great if you have information to share so i'm not sure who the best person that is to go to whether might be vanita collects that information or jamal i see that you just raised your hand yeah i was gonna say i have direct uh uh connection and i talk to jamal often about okay you know what we're trying to do and you know he has a gist of it that's why he made sure i got on this call okay great good good good good okay uh we have some more hands raised so how about nick we go to you all right good evening everyone how's everyone good thank you for allowing us to speak my question is simple and i'm i apologize tremendously if i miss this uh is this uh will this funding be open to all of washington or is it just ann arbor it is just ann arbor yeah so this is funding that ann arbor received okay all right as promised i was going to keep it simple thank you uh okay let's go to express your yes hi everyone good evening uh my name is petal sandcastle um i actually was a it was a group of us who uh when this arpa money first came out um i remember being on campus and seeing this in this meeting and it was like in three hours it was about to happen and i didn't know i was really reading i was like i can't be actually reading this there's a meeting about 24 million dollars happening in three hours and i i contact deb from creative watch and i contact everyone and i alert everyone i'm like this thing's about to happen there's a lot of money we obviously know that arts and creativity and spirituality and wellness and like a perpetual empowerment of community is important we need to be on this call um and i just i just want to take a moment for anyone who did put in effort to make this happen um it is a lot of work goes into being an artist and i'm just proud of everyone who did do this who talked to the media who got signatures we got over 350 signatures both digitally and um written that we never even had to submit because this thing just got approved it was kind of epic um and i just i just want to take a moment to congratulate not only the powers that be for recognizing the importance of this but also all of the people who made it important and put a spotlight on it so the powers that be could see it and couldn't walk over it and so with that in mind i don't want to take up too much time but i and i don't want to talk about specific programming because we all have a million ideas on what we think could happen with this money but i do want to say that even though you can't do programs like you can't do things in perpetuity i do think we all know that the system is designed to at best stifle everyone and and are at worst i feel everyone at best kind of throw a few dollars now and then like that's the 600 money was a great way to calm everyone for a year during the pandemic and i'm just afraid um i think that we all know how important it is to create perpetual empowerment and so however we go about doing this i do think we need to create a flywheel that empowers not only creatives and artists but people who just people who just are funky chickens and who are who are speaking a different squawk and people listen to them and they hear them and just by being an existing they're they're walking performance art they're walking activists and i think if we had let's say for example we empowered 12 to 15 cultural ambassadors or town jesters or facilitators or social lubrication or community leaders whatever you want to call them but a dozen or 15 people who are vetted and together they're like a superpower team and it could do ann arbor so proud and they don't have bosses they don't say have time schedules but they're just like you know what we believe in you here's a stipend maybe even some healthcare who the who knows i didn't even drop the f bomb but man take your time i hear you yeah you can carry on did he get it cut off he's muted oh i don't know how that happened sorry i got muted you were you're telling us about chickens that was not an intentional censorship please go on i think it's good because i tend to get i tend to get riled up but i think i think that um the point is is that ann arbor and i think what everyone loves so much about ann arbor is the ann arbor of the 90s that throwback to when it was on it was pioneer it was visionary is avant-garde it was at the cusp the cutting edge of what is possible and ai and augmented reality and all this stuff is coming i think we have this unique opportunity to let's call it like a ubi to live your why right and so you just do this pilot program that could be so provocative and you don't you don't constrict because all these forms and boxes and it's very constrictive for an artist an artist an artist is ultimately tapping the future and so when you ask an artist to preliminarily fill out these forms for the specific money versus just being like i see you i believe in you you are epic at what you do let me release you for a year into ann arbor and let's see what you can do and they create their own social media they create their own sort of paper trail doing this and we have we do our tallies and our benchmarks and all of our things in a different way and i think it could be it could be an epic pilot program um that could could revolution there could be yoga you'd just be like you know and you just it just could happen so quickly and they could be on the fly and they're like i want to paint nails now in the diag for the next two hours or i want to do like community garden for the next three saturdays but their job is to focus on what could make this community flourish all members of this community and outside of because i think this money needs to reach outside of ann arbor just saying and thank you that's all bless you all man please tab on knuckle prank i hate you you hear me to my balls for real curtis i was finger snapping the whole time just saying we're rough like we don't always get a ton of time in front of people to actually just present these ideas and so it doesn't always curtis i felt every ounce of what you're saying and there is a program there's a program in perpetuity that can create something that's systemic and beautiful and flowering and can combat the fascist corporate thing because you know it's not going anywhere okay so we got more hands raised i think people are getting into this now um uh so i do want to remind everybody you know like this is kind of the ground floor of how to get this thing started so we are you know initially trying to look at how to equitably distribute it so i do i'm going to just take a moment to go back to our questions um not that we can't deviate from it because i do want to keep this like energy flowing and kind of the minds going and hearts going and all of that kind of stuff but um but eventually we need to come up with something practical like a program that we can administer so i do want to remind people uh help us think through that um so the questions are given the timeline and constraints what's the best way to equitably distribute these funds to support the arts community in ann arbor the second question is how should the city prioritize the creation of new public art and arts based trauma programs the third question is how should the city prioritize between individual artists and arts organizations so what is the balance i mean really it's a balance question with both of those last few questions um and then the fourth one is is how should the city prioritize between visual artists and performing artists and that's also a balance question so those are some of the questions that came to our mind um if there's questions that other questions that we should be asking ourselves please bring those forward um otherwise let's continue on with the thoughts so we'll go on to boyd choir a2 hi um sorry i couldn't change my screen name my name is laura and i'm with the boy choir of ann arbor um i wanted a couple three quick comments i'm going to start with question number three about individual artists versus arts organizations i think um it's important to remember that many artists are group artists ensembles you know orchestras bands choirs you know three people that play in a string quartet or quartet um and i think that when you say just individual artists you're leaving out a huge amount of artists um and so i'd just like you to be thoughtful about how we define artists um for example if you look at the michiganhumanities.org which has a giant list of um humanities performers in the state of michigan of all kinds um you know there's there's storytellers and there's banjo players and there's choirs and there's just all kinds of artists um and i think it's when it says not nonprofits and not organizations there's a difference between um a nonprofit organization that sponsors something versus the actual artist is a group artist that is an organization so just be thoughtful about the definitions there is my comment um question number two about new public art versus art space trauma programs i it's my understanding that the division of money for art space trauma has already been determined by council so i'd like to talk about the new public art and i'm not i think we should be broad about what new and public are in other words you know any performance is new in some sense i don't think we have to build new sculptures or new paintings we could but we don't have to like just having a new performance also counts as new um so i think we should be broad about um what counts as art in that context and likewise i'd like to be brought about what counts as art based trauma programs i know that i don't know but i believe that came from council being informed of that existence of some specific programs and maybe in other communities and i think we could be really broad about what that means in our organization we lost half our kids in over half of our performances and the first year the pandemic all of our performances were canceled um and the kids are really traumatized in a way from zoom school as we all know and when we got back in person singing it's like you the relief on their face and the joy that that brings but we're missing some kids the hardest hit ones of course um and so i'm thought i'm wondering if there's maybe some way coming to the first question about equitable distribution is there some way maybe it could be a scholarship program where hard hit individuals could use that money to get art class or join a choir join an orchestra be in a theater group or whatever i'm wondering if there's some sort of scholarship program might be a way some of that money could be equitably be distributed to um folks that are that were you know highly impacted um because that would be a win-win right the the kid who who lost the ability to do the art could get the scholarship and the organization could get the the student so it would be sort of a win-win um and then finally back to question number one equitable distribution i don't know the answer to that but i would encourage you to make it as easy as possible um nonprofits artists all of us are you know up the wazoo with trying to fill out forms and grants and get all our ducks in a row to do paperwork i understand federal funding is limited but i would encourage you to to try and make it as simple as possible and as broad as possible so the people that it's hard to apply for can succeed thank you so much for requesting our input i really appreciate your time thank you well thank you all right darius let's go to you um can you guys hear me yeah yeah [Music] uh not anymore i guess i think we lost you hold on one second wait wait wait okay can you guys hear me now yep we're good um i'm kind of here representing a group of artists that is uh kind of close to home to a specific um event or issue that's kind of passed by as of recent um i'm not sure if anyone in this meeting has kind of seen um the tags that have been popping up um like referencing uh a suitor or like a long-lived suit or anything like that um i know so yeah um a few of us were pretty close to um his friends and family and they were actually kind of talking to us a group of artists about um maybe getting like a real mural done to kind of you know more solidly memorialize if anything rather than you know just kind of tagging which obviously eventually is probably going to have to come down and whatnot um i think representing a memorial with a mural would be a lot more long lasting could receive a lot more input from people and in terms of motifs and what goes into it and whatnot so um i guess the greater question here would just be um if there's anything relative to just funding for getting the materials for some of these ideas and some of these people's visions to kind of manifest in a mural would be our biggest question if there was like a pool of funding or you know just uh kind of of materials for paint and anything that we might need to clear a wall or prepare for a mural or anything like that um yeah that's kind of where i'm at i'm glad you brought that up because i was looking at those tags and thinking that very same thing so i'm sure we can make it happen somehow cool cool yeah and i would say stay tuned to how this program develops um to see if there's opportunities to access funds for that effort all right thank you so much i appreciate it okay other comments questions i don't see any other hands up oh jerry please go ahead jerry you can go ahead i've been talking for like a paragraph already oh no what did we miss so much anyways i'm jerry rosenberg and um i am affiliated with wonderful productions which does festivals full moon and ipsy glow um i just want to i i just want to acknowledge how difficult this is first of all for you because of the expansive need and this unfortunately it's great to have the money but it is a piddle of the breath of what is needed um i watching all of you i just wanted to just sort of echo petals and curtis about where that core joy and necessariness about how the artist giving their voice um and i think that petals had such an amazing idea coming from um being ambi artists ambassadors and what's the core value what what makes when you started this i think um deb pollock said this what made ann arbor so special are the arts and i think you've gotten very corporate and very polished and i think what brings joy to people and the community is people making art and people doing art and discovering and the mystery of just coming upon something and it's right there um those are all very intangibles yet we know it when we see it and also i can only say experiencing myself with the first you know coming back in person with full moon and having workshops i was almost crying of joy with the families coming in and being part of something bigger than themselves so i hope that um encouraging something that might have a community build i'm hearing a variety of needs that are being met community build giving artists a voice curtis is like saying education i experienced curtis um working with children and their first experience of how important that is to seeing their things on a wall that's permanent um so just maybe starting with these values and looking back about where you know where can we make our most i think we do their most bang for our buck and a couple things came up i'm just sort of rifling through is like a memorial something permanent something community builds artist driven education and inclusion i'm done thank you that was great okay and we have done debbie you've got your hand up again so many great comments and people that have real um passion for what they do and how they can do it i'm reminded of how many of the funds the rescue funds throughout the pandemic have been expended and if you think about the cares act funds the other arpa funds some that have come down through places like michigan economic development corporation and spark and others that were invested in our businesses and our community um there was less uh specificity as to exactly how those funds could be spent as there was letting the people that were using those funds determine how best to use them for themselves in the community i would like to echo what everybody and so many of you have said here artists and creatives and businesses know how to best serve their community and their artists and the groups that they work with and rather than dictating how exactly they have to be spent i would echo again so many people's ideas here put it into the hands of people that know what they're doing let them activate these dollars for our community for our quality of life our quality of place and for their souls and ours less less specificity is going to be i think better and i think i am seeing some heads and ads here not here in the groups and and we know what we do best and how we can do it best and how we can can make things happen for our community so um lots of great ideas out there and people that are passionate know what they're doing and i would i would echo make it simple get it in the hands of people that can do it and the businesses and the organizations and please know when i say that i mean seriously artists creatives and those organizations similar to what laura was talking about and the fact that sometimes organizations engage a ton of artists that can't necessarily do it all their on their own because that everybody has that entrepreneurial social entrepreneurial streak to move things forward like pedals will for example but others can so um it is very difficult to expend dollars and to determine how best those are um distributed but i think we've got a community here that can make that happen make it simple and keep it engaging and battering our community as we go forward and and perhaps ultimately and more importantly start this process that has been absent from this community for decades we have not had public funding for the arts and the creative industries and when i say industries i mean non-profits and for-profits we have not had that that means that who funds these programs it's the elite they determine where the money goes and whether you want to know it or not or accept it or not they also determine what gets produced and so when we put it in they make it a public aspect get the public engaged it does make it more diverse equitable inclusive the public is important in this process thank you thank you go ahead hello did you call on someone because i think you cut out oh did i i'm sorry i called on petals you're up next uh hi sorry um i know i went on a long ramble earlier i just think this is such a precious opportunity and i would be remiss um after i spoke heather i don't maybe i misunderstood you but i just wanted to make clear that there was a very specific program that was the nucleus of that like flowering language and that is ultimately um they say roughly one out of like every 10 000 residents needs kind of like a steward like an earth steward um and so there's 120 000 people so let's say this was 12 the idea would be to hire 12 of these cultural ambassadors community leaders whatever you want to call them flitters of the town and you give them all a stipend i think it has to be below what is taxable so ten thousand eight hundred dollars because i don't think ultimately you can have this be a taxable thing because that feels so corrupt on a different level um so i think that you can supplement that in other ways like if you give someone i know 10 600 doesn't sound very much to a lot of people but to an artist ten thousand six hundred dollars you can't give it all at once i think there's a monthly allotment and i think you can include stuff with it maybe you can include a house or what maybe that's too much but you could include a stipend you could include like a thousand dollars a month stipend to buy supplies to create a moment for your community so it's a thousand dollars war chest so whether whatever you want to do about hosted block party whatever it is you just want to buy vegan donuts for your community and have a little town hall about gun violence but i think having i really think just if i could say one last thing just like thinking about a nucleus of a dozen or so whatever you want to call them i got a lot of names and they're really fun but that their job they're perpetually empowered without a boss or a time clock without any forms or demands just with a promise to make a social media trail they'll promise to make a public trail that's like that's the main yeah okay i think i made my point and thank you all again for doing this um i would love to continue the conversation and we're also having a monthly mixer at our space tomorrow if anyone does want to come and see what we're up to we do have a brick and mortar now studios downtown ann arbor at five o'clock um thank you expressvs.org thank you and i do appreciate you clarifying that i did i think i did get a little bit lost in your energy and the poetry um and missed the specific link that you were making so i appreciate you going back now all right marionetta yes i just had a had a question um i i think nick cazario asked if the funds were strictly for ann arbor but my question is if an artist say from ipsy partnered had an idea to partner with another artist in ann arbor to uh do a project um would that count uh that proposal count or do all of the artists have to be or businesses have to be directly in ann arbor is there no opportunity to partner with um with others my guess is that there is some flexibility with that but once again i'm going to put skye in the spot and i apologize i was hoping to let you sit back and relax but i keep turning it over you to answer some questions but what is your understanding of that is there some more flexibility then i think there is some flexibility but i think it needs to be clearly defined as whatever we is decided so that people understand what the parameters are and so um yeah if it's to benefit the greater antarctic community or organization it's working in partnership with an organization in ann arbor i think those things those could be worked out um but you know the city did receive these funds the county received a different set of funds the state received a different set of funds and so i do think it's important that we primarily focus on the berlins um but i but i do think that we can if that is a recommendation coming out of this that we need to think more broadly about our broader community i think that's something that the city can take under advisement as we sort of build what the parameters are thank you i just think that we i know that it's limited funds um but the idea that we can build bridges um i think is really important and so if if there there is some way to um to build build those bridges um i'd like to see that happen makes sense thank you all right jeff you're up jeff you can go ahead sorry didn't i meet myself um i must say that i sort of misunderstood uh the parameters of this grant when i first signed on or when i first you know came on board it's very helpful to hear this conversation but i have two questions and and one of them is does the decision to spend the arbor funds rest solely with this commission in other words it's sort of a majority vote of this commission that determines how the expense how the funds are to be allocated that's the first question but maybe you could comment on that first sir um and vanita correct me if i'm wrong but this group is an advisory group so how this will work um is that this group will develop a recommendation about how the program should be shaped about the spending of the funds so the funds are there it's just a matter of how we distribute them yes and so we're looking at this so tonight is really to help the arts commission develop that recommendation to then give the city council and staff and staff will be helping shape it based on what the recommendation is that comes out of this group so as i understand this this commission will make a set of recommendations to be approved by city council is that correct correct yeah so let me pause just for a second going back to sky would it go back to city council or is it something that staff would would then kind of move forward with based on a recommendation from this group yeah this is a little confusing so council has authorized the funds and has directed staff to build a program but if it very if it sort of deviates significantly what from sort of the parameters that council has sort of set out we we would have a conversation internally about taking that back to council just if we feel like it's it's too if it's deviated too much otherwise we would just be developing the program based on both the input from this group and also the guidance from leadership today uh thank you so the next question is i misunders this seems to be a much longer uh grant process i guess the funds have to be expended through 2026.
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