i apologize for the projected reductions for school reorganization and that's um certificated staffing projection of 2.1 million dollars a classified projected reduction of 874 000 management staffing projection of 968 000 um projected electrical savings for 266 000 water and power i mean water savings of 274 000 and 600 000 i mean 6 000 for gas and utilities for each school site and what's not included in the multi-year projection is any projected or proposed salary increase but the cost of a 1 salary increase is approximately 732 000 any questions on the nyp yes ma'am i thought i heard you say that our revenue would be increasing year over year due to the cola increase what line item am i looking at to see that increase so lcf revenue is increasing but the total revenue it wouldn't reflect here because i guess i should have stated lcff will continue to increase but because we have a decline enrollment that's why you don't realize the total increase of it that makes sense okay so that no the third line or the third second row total revenues are going to decrease but the decrease is offset by the um increased cola yes and the decline enrollment so if if our enrollment stayed the same we would realize the increase at the uh at the rate of the cola but because we have a decline enrollment and right now based off you're always funded on the prior year or the three year average and we do not realize all the dollars and the for 2223 the total revenues that significant bump of 159 is that due to the one-time monies that we are that are for certain or where's the one i heard you say that there are some um one-time monies that are not yet included in the budget correct um so can you talk about the difference between the 159 next year versus the 121 and 20 in the 23-24 school year yes so the 159 um identifies the 6.5 cola so that's a big increase as well as we have the 88 bump because it's going on the three year average so that's a ada bump of 806 adas um as well as um those remain i don't wanna those are the main ones both the cola as well as the 88 average now if we find out the ada average is not materialized and we'll have to do a 45-day budget revision so the revenue that we're not including are the the 1500 discretionary block grant and what was the other source of funds that not yet finalized the elop which is approximately 250 dollars per ada and that potentially will be ongoing as well as the deferred maintenance is not included in the budget and the 806 additional ada is that what's known as the hold harmless no or is that something different it's completely different so the whole harmless was enacted for the last two years where we maintained the same ada funding now it's either going to be our current year ada um which is based off this year's actual attendance or the three year average which is what we utilize for the budget or it will be another funding for the um another calculation that legislation will enact and tell us how we have to calculate it thank you you're welcome any other questions on the nyp and here is just our site that we always shows the component of any fund balance so we're continuing um assigning all of our funds um um i'm proud that we do this if we like we have additional lcf funding um that we're going to receive until we actually have a spending plan for it is assigned um and then once we have those funds like the concentration add-on until we identify what um additional employees we're going to hire we assign those funds instead of just letting it fall to any fund balance we also continue to have our aea reserve we also have a 3 reserve of uncertainty and then we also have an allocation for future rising costs any questions aren't any fun balance all right yeah good um hi um i i really around the the lcap supplemental concentration and doing fund balance um so that's a significant amount of money pluto that i'm looking at you um identify which um amount where the l cap supplemental concentration so we have three um well is what's identified here is three pots so we have our carryover funding that we had from the 2021 fiscal year which i want to congratulate ed services they did everything to spend the funds but unless we know the items are actually going to be received by june 30th we assign those funds because we wouldn't actually cut the check before june 30th so all of the carryover from the 20 20 21 fiscal year has been actually spent but we have 122 no 2021 we carried over almost 5 million from the previous year and we assigned it so we spent all of those funds um for the 21 22 school year we receive additional funds with the which is a concentration add-on which we have not spent and we also have the concentration add-on for this year that for the proposed budget that we do not have a spending plan so that is with the large assignment that you see and so what is our when when are we going to have a plan for that article [Music] so we're working on the supplemental plan and looking at our success coaches which are we have four at the high schools we have one at each middle school and those success coaches are going to be working to support our students to decrease that dnf rate and increase achievement for our students and also looking at our success coaches at each elementary site okay um so is that going to come to the border at some point or how is that what is the power of this what is that what's going to happen with that plant so we are working on the development of that in the ed services team and um we can bring a presentation to the board um and looking at all of the pieces that we're considering and then just remind me is this this is like this is not ongoing dollars or is it or is it like it's one time couple years the concentration add-on is ongoing but it's the calculation is redone every year and as of right now each year you have to um increase staffing in order to spend the money right you have to spend the money on stuff yes we can't spend it on current year staffing it has to be improved new and improved like additional okay um i just want to put something out there um something that i think people know has been bothering me a long time and that's really around all the combo classes that we have at the elementary level right and so if we think that we have doll and just what the effect it has on students um and i know we try um i think we let the ratios drive us a little too much sometimes that's my personal opinion um um and and so you know thinking about like especially in this buffer year right where we know we have many more schools and they're going to be closing next year and so we probably have a lot of these humble classes thinking about maybe this is a good either this or some other other dollar is a good investment so that we can give those kids especially who missed a lot during the pandemic right um a lot of more individualized events and this is coming from a parent who had 31 kinderga first graders in a classroom right so you know that's unmanageable i think um and so i just worried about about that piece i just want to put that out there for us to think about in terms of what we do especially just this one year right before we close others as a not as an educator and not as a trustee but if i'm just a regular parent or regular member of the public i might have trouble understanding why we have five million or eight million dollar of money that we didn't spend this year that we could have how do we how do we explain that to an average member of the public is it because we can't spend it on increasing salaries and we have to add new positions and do we have a challenge in identifying the new positions or recruiting for the new positions or is there i know there's more to it but i'm asking this on behalf of the public yes i mean so i'll take that i'm so um the i'm going to say the i'm not i don't want to use a quick answer but the correct answer is because we received so much one-time funding um and other sources that had other spend by dates so a lot of our kovic funds had to be spent by either this june 30th or upcoming september so we had to um spend those funds first and instead we took a stronger approach to be conservative and say okay we know we're spending funds that normally would have come out of the lcff or the ocap we're just going to sign those funds so it can carry over and i just want to echo um board member cruz gonzalez's um idea around increasing staffing to eliminate combo classes and i know that this will what i'm about to say is probably going to spark a larger conversation but in terms of visioning and being bold and looking at investing now for for future payoffs i would like us to look at expanding our kindergarten to be full day kindergarten thank you oh thank you so with that that concludes the presentation and we are um this again is not up for action but this is um asking the board to accept our proposal and we'll be presenting this back on june 21st for approval any additional questions or comments before yeah i just you know um i just wanted to bring something up um and i i think that those are really valid points around like you know we need we really should have a plan we know we have a lot of especially one-time dollars um right now um and we have an opportunity even even with the ongoing dollars to think about like how do we really invest them right like you know we've been in a system that's been starved for so many years right how do we how do we do it so wisely so that we're really having the most impact i will just say having gone through the great recession in 2008 and the cuts that we had to do like it i have a little bit of comfort knowing that we have this buffer because you know the economy could trade right now the economy could go downturn in a couple years and it seems like it may right latasha and so um i'm not suggesting that we just sit on a big pot of money but i do think like there's value in being prudent so that when those kind of things happen we have buffers um because it's really devastating to like have to make major cuts in a year so i just i just want to put that out there certainly i agree with being fiscally responsible and you know not spending right to the last um but i'm just kind of um excited about where we're going and what we can do and i understand you have to use money that expires sooner um but again not as an educator not as a trustee that has more insight and access to information if i'm a regular parent or community member i might not understand those considerations and that's why i wanted to ask the question here completely understand any other questions or comments okay thank you yeah then we will move to 10.5 approval of resolution 21 22 41 proclaiming june 22 uh 2022 as the zeus unified school district pride month is there a motion to approve make a motion to approve 10.5 a second moved by board member rodriguez pena and seconded by board member beau is there any discussion and let's move to a vote and the motion passes four yes to one absent moving on to area 11.0 and specifically 11.1 which is approval of the consent calendar all matters listed under the consent calendar are considered by the board of education to be routine and will be enacted in one motion there will be no discussion on these items unless requested by the by a board member if a board member requests discussion that item will be removed from the consent calendar and considered separately is there a motion to approve 11.1 which includes all items under the consent code i make a motion to improve 10.1 through 10.13 is that a motion to approve 11.1 yes 11.1 through 1113 yes and so we'll we'll go and take that is there a second a second and we will not have any discussion until we will move to a vote and the motion passes four yes to one absent that brings us to 13.0 business and finance and we will first look to 13.1 approval of resolution 21 2243 of the board of education of the azusa unified school district authorizing the execution and delivery of a ground lease a lease agreement an escrow agreement and a placement agency agent agreement with respect to the assignment of such ground lease and lease agreement and authorizing the execution of necessary documents and certificates and related action is there a motion to approve 13.1 make a motion to improve 13.1 well second moved by board member rodriguez pena and seconded by board member beau here to kind of kick things off in discussion mr jamal would would you uh kind of explain a little bit what's going on here and what's going to go on a little a little bit later yes sir board president and members of our education cabinet and community i would like to introduce andrea greenwald um of oreck andrea will um walk the board through the edge um walk the board of education through the legal structure of the refinancing and why we must hold a subsequent meeting i'm following tonight um also um once andrea finishes um janus from isom will discuss the projected savings that can be achieved by refinancing the district's current cop so at this time i would like to turn over to ms andrea thank you latasha as superintendent members of the board um as just an overview on this on this action item the district previously executed and delivered um certificates of participation in and now there is an opportunity to refinance those certificates of participation through a private placement lease and so what is before you is a lease structure where the district would refinance those prior 2015 cops and would enter into a ground lease agreement with the district's own non-profit corporation as the leasing partner and then that non-profit corporation would lease a property back to the district and that the district would pay rental payments for the use of that property and that repayment stream would get assigned uh to a bank purchaser in this case uh first foundation public finance is the bank that submitted the lowest bid and this would so this uh resolution would be approving that transaction to refinance the 2015 cops and then and janice who's also here can provide more background on uh savings that you would uh sort of realize by doing the transaction thanks andrea um as noted the current lease financing would refund the 2015 cops which had interest rates between 2.25 and 4.25 the lease financing would have an interest rate of 2.84 percent that difference in interest rates is what will cause the savings of roughly six hundred thousand dollars uh present value savings is about 456 000 which as a percentage is 9.6 of refunded bonds and as a side uh industry standard for a minimum threshold savings is usually three percent so this would be more than three times the industry standard andrea could you touch on the need to have the subsequent meeting following our current board meeting sure so the district like i said is entering into a ground lease and a lease agreement with the district's own non-profit corporation and that's the azusa unified school district facilities corporation and so in order to create that lease structure you have to have this leasing partner which is the corporation and so this board obviously acts as the board of the district but you also wear another hat that you might not have had the opportunity yet to put on and that is you are also the board of this non-profit corporation the azusa unified school district facilities corporation and so um you know when you put on that hat as the corporation board member that's a separate board meeting that's a separate action item when you're acting as the members of the corporation board to approve this financing on behalf of the corporation there any other questions hearing nothing no thank you so much for the information thank you so there is a motion and a second now that is on the table and so hearing that there were no other questions i assume no additional discussion either then we will move to a vote and the motion passes four yes to one absent moving on to 13.2 approval of the amended allowable piggyback contracts for the 2022-2023 school year is there a motion to approve make a motion to approve 13.2 i'll second move by board member rodriguez pena seconded by board member bo is there any discussion then we'll move to a vote the motion passes four yes to one absent moving to 13.3 approval of agreements between a zeus unified school district and enterprise is there a motion to approve make a motion to approve 13.3 a second moved by boardman rodriguez pena seconded by board member beau is there any discussion then we'll move to a vote and the motion passes for yes to one absent adrian have a question sure um so in terms of the process so when we when we start when would we start seeing new cars so um as soon as we have board approval we're going to have that discussion with enterprise to see when we could get our first um fleet um going on we have we're going to start with bands first because we need some for our bi program and two other specialized services and then we're going to go right into order as we put in the board update where we identify which fleets we need to have but we will be starting this instantly so moving to 13.4 approval of propos of proposal between a zeus unified school district and a junior's construction incorporated is there a motion on the table make a motion to approve 13.4 a second moved by board member rodriguez pena and seconded by uh board member beau is there any discussion then we'll move to a vote and the motion passes for yes to one absent moving to 14.0 curriculum and instruction and specifically 14.1 approval of azusa unified school district universal pre-kindergarten implementation plan is there a motion to approve make a motion to approve 14.1 a second moved by board member rodriguez pena and seconded by board member beau is there any discussion yeah um well i don't have questions i just i mean i appreciate the plan um i'm just i'm just um so what does this mean once we approve the plan so in terms of the approval of the plan we receive funds we fully implement the required universal pre-k that the state of california is requiring for future dates but we do that now so the biggest shift for us is meeting the ratio for next school year we are going to be hiring we are partnering with human resources and ad services um ten bilingual six hour instructional aids to support each of our tk classrooms in order to meet that ratio and also to support our dual language learners and having access to primary language support another question so this is the universal preschool they're calling it upk universal pre-kinder oh there's i thought there was upk and utk they're utilizing this plan for you universal pre-k is what they're referring to it is that's the template that we have to submit but it's connected to universal tk or is connected to expansion of our preschool program universal tk it can expand into preschool but we're currently utilizing those funds for our tk programs well our extended tk because we do allow four-year-olds so anybody within the birth dates of september 1 through all the way all the way through they um are allowed to come in um and currently the requirement is september 1 to february 1 but we go beyond that date we allow younger children in at this point thank you any other questions or discussion and we'll move to a vote and the motion passes four yes to one absent moving to 14.2 approval of consultant agreement between azusa unified school district and rose mon is there a motion to approve make a motion to approve 14.2 a second moved by board member rodriguez pena second by board member beau is there any discussion then we'll move to a vote and the motion passes four yes the one absent moving to 14.3 approval of the memoranda of understanding between azusa unified school district and affiliates providing internships is there a motion to approve a motion to approve 14.3 a second moved by board member rodriguez pena seconded by board member beau is there any discussion then we'll move to a vote and the motion passes four yes to one absent moving to 14.4 approval of the consultant agreement between azusa unified school district and gallardo speech pathology is there a motion to approve make a motion to approve 14.4 a second moved by board member rodriguez pena seconded by board member bo is there any discussion and we'll move to a vote and the motion passes for yes to one absent this brings us to 14.5 information of college and career access pathways partnership agreement between azusa unified school district and citrus college and this is an info item good evening good leading board president board of education superintendent ortega and members of cabinet as well as the this is the unified community um thank you again for the opportunity to present information regarding the college and career access pathways for ccap partnership agreement with citrus college we will avail ourselves for public comments and ultimately your approval in august so this is simply an informational meeting um in the audience and available to answer questions is dr eric rabatoy dean of natural physical and health sciences also the citrus college lead for due enrollment opportunities so we thank you for being in the audience today as you might already know the purpose of the ccap partnership agreement as per assembly bill 288 is to develop seamless pathways from high school to community college for career technical education or general education transfer improve high school graduation rates or help high school students achieve college and career readiness courses must be part of an academic program defined in acucap partnership agreement and meet criteria for both a high school diploma as well as going towards naa at the community college level we are very proud of not only having the early college program over at glaston high school but also dual enrollment offerings at azusa high school and sometimes even at sierra high school to give you an idea um over at glaston high school we have had um two court cohorts going um averaging around um 20 to 30 students per cohort the graduating class of 2022 sees um 53 students who went through coursework 94 of them will have at least 30 credits transferable to the community college level as well as possibly to other to four-year universities we also have had class offerings at azusa high school this year that had anywhere from 15 to 20 students for each class and these were more kind of like a general elective class just a high school so through the years we've had anywhere between to as much as 110 students at any given time here at azusa unified who are participating in a dual enrollment program so we are very grateful for this opportunity to work with citrus college and the agreement before you is a slight revision to the one approved by this board by the board of education back in june of 2019 um the difference is really a key area in section 2.2 and that is under letters q and u which are on pages 4 and 5.
i talked about the principles really important priorities of county that we want to use to set the priorities for the actions strategies how we're organizing it around these seven categories and then those actions and again really trying to focus on um those things that reduce carbon emissions and as you all know it's going to be really hard for the county to get to carbon neutral by 2035 without dte doing a lot of things um we're also exploring things like carbon offsets a lot of a lot of green washing in that carbon offset space and we've gotten some good feedback that you know we got to be careful about those but there's a lot of good work on land preservation kind of taking sub-optimal ag land using it for pollinators there's a great guy at michigan state that's doing national work for usda and how do you pay people to do that so i think it's one of those things that we're probably not going to solve it by the end of this planning process but um i think a county local carbon offset program would be a really interesting thing for the community to build next slide so i think i'm not going to go through all these words missy can share these slides this is some of the language and we would welcome somebody who says hey i think there's a much better way to phrase this wordsmithing um but these are the phrases we're trying to use to kind of clarify what we're meaning in each of these areas next slide talked about that next slide and again missy's going to share those this is some of the language we're using associated with each of the strategies so again please take a minute and read that um next slide so once we get these actions and we have a couple of events coming up where i forget whether andrew mentioned but for each of the strategies seven areas we invited county staff from cross departments to work together and start talking about what are you doing already what could you do if you could scale it with more money and resources what are some big windows of opportunity are you building a new building that could be you know we heard it from one of the commoners all electric um and one of the county buildings new parks at stabler is all electric um so how are we going to use these um different criteria to set those priorities so next slide we talked about this a little bit board of commissioners ideally will approve this in november what we didn't mention is a separate piece of our work is recommendations on staffing what kind of staffing should the county be looking at because someone needs to own this work into the future funding and financing the program there are some models for ways local governments work together around climate and there's some communities that have been at this collaborative working for 10 years and what are those models that watchdog county might look at how does the county plan fit between the state plan and a20 the ipsy work things like that they talked about coordination with local governments next slide so with that and andrew if you can you've got bandwidth you can fill in what i missed but resilientwashnot.org is our website and i've got one more thing to add climate watchdog.org is a general email but andrew's email is a great place to send things directly i do want to add that you know an opportunity's come up where ann arbor township has decided to go out and explore climate planning they put out an rfp and what ultimately happened is they're going to work with the counties so that their plan aligns with the county framework that the kind of plan that's developed will really be the set of actions and implementation that really fit the township's needs and so that process will be just behind the county process which is good but it also gives us a potential model for how some of the other local units of government in the county might work on their own more granular planning around climate adaptation but do it in a way that aligns with this broader county umbrella so really kudos to ann arbor township for one deciding to work on this but also deciding to work on it in a way that is more likely to align well with the county's project andrew um this is andrew again i hope i'm coming through clearer now uh glad to see the nods thank you matt um i think matt touched on on all of it i think just the points that i'd really like to reiterate um would be trying to align with other plans i think there's a lot of good work that's already happening inside of the county uh the county doesn't want to do recreate new stuff that's already working well right and so to the extent that we can look to other folks and help support things that are going well i think is going to be a key strategy for us and certainly there's a lot to look to and what's happening in the city of ann arbor i'm glad that this presentation is happening before missy's update because it'd be a really hard thing to follow in terms of all the work that the city is reporting on and what's happened over the past year but i say that in terms of you know there's again there's a lot of good work that is happening across the county and not only with ann arbor and and so i think to the extent that the county can um you know help support those things is a really really key part of how we're trying to approach this work thank you gentlemen i'd like to open things up now for questions and discussion if appropriate does anybody have any questions or comments go ahead commissioner mccumber thank you matt and andrew it's nice to see the language about um justice and equity um i'm curious to know as part of this planning process if um community members particularly vulnerable communities of vulnerable communities are being involved in the planning process yes yes they are i think you know we're not done with that but we've been trying to focus our outreach and engagement i think um it's been easy for us to talk to a lot of groups that are already doing this work and you know people have been calling us up and we're certainly happy to talk to them um but i think in terms of the quality of the plan and our ability to meet the goals that we've just discussed uh we we need to talk to those groups um and and so those groups there's a lot of them in the eastern county and perhaps the eastern county comes to mind first but not exclusively a lot of parts of the rural county have different challenges as vulnerable communities those things look different when you think about what those might mean with climate change but but again we're really trying to put a lot of extra additional effort into to reaching out to those vulnerable communities um we've got a good sense of where those folks are the county already has an opportunity index tool that we use in policy development and program considerations um some of our initial uh our initial work uh or initial think um not thinking but the initial versions of our vulnerability assessment show a lot of overlap with that tool um and and so i think we generally know where those communities are maybe not specifically enough to do actual programmatic decisions um but but we know where we need to focus our outreach efforts um so maybe that's a little bit long-winded but i think to your question yes we think it's really important uh yes we've been spending time and effort doing that we we're not perfect with it and we have more to do but we will continue to do that over over the rest of our planning process and then beyond the planning process as well and bridgette i'll add um i think andrew is in the process of there's going to be some handouts going out in the community on the east side um about 3 000 so we're trying to tap into some of these opportunities where the counties already working um to kind of get the word out we've done some work direct outreach to some of the um black pastors on superior township and ipsy and kovid's been a challenge trying to get in front of congregations and things like that but you know some of that effort is getting out there it's just probably not as much or enough as any of us would like yeah and and i i'd ask you know if there's any specific groups that you all know of that we should be talking to please pass those on i think where we've had the the best engagement has been through referrals uh and you know not super large meetings but smaller groups you know of 10 or so and and being able to have a good discussion in terms of you know climate change in washington county um and so those things uh steam not steamroll but they uh they escalate and they kind of lead to additional discussions so i would appreciate any referrals but but we're continuing to do that work that sounds that sounds great i just have a another follow-up question i'm curious if um so reaching out and getting people's input is a great thing um is there an intent to like create a citizens and advisory board um yeah that that's the role that our environmental council is playing right now uh that that group uh was called or convened to help direct the county's work on sustainability and the climate action plan and so we're we're looking to them to do that that's a public group they meet the fourth tuesday of the month uh they're open meetings uh similar to this um and so have appointments there um they're they're more of a steering committee uh they don't do the actual outreach work but that's the main channel we have through that plus a whole bunch of uh direct direct input mechanisms for the public and are there records is that uh is there a good representation from the some of the vulnerable communities on that uh yes i mean i think probably not not i can send you the list and you can make your own determination on that i think we've got a lot bunch of folks from around the county um it's primarily based on uh you know um background experience in terms of why they're seated on that group so it's not a geographic determination but it is made up of people from around the county thanks other questions or comments i have a couple of quick ones and i'll also comment on the email or on your website um i'm aware of the wolf pack convening of a lot of uh entities within the county um city of ann arbor that was done at wcc by the way with emu etc there's a whole bunch of different entities there um missy i know you've had some talks with people since then and i'm wondering between some of the key players if is there now sort of a path forward that that uh will continue to take place and that there will be some kind of formal coordinating role what's can anybody comment on that um so i'll i i can and i wouldn't want to speak for missy um but i think what i'll say is it's been clear to the county that there's uh there's utility and and having a coordinated voice from washington county when we talk about legislative changes in lansing being able to speak to possibly pursue outside funding um i think that's that's been as we've worked through this you know the discussion that matt referenced with ann arbor township you know folks are looking to not want to replicate this work because you know there's a lot of work to be done in replication doesn't make a lot of sense in terms of how we spend our time um so i think in terms of what comes next there's you know from where i'm sitting there's still that need but the decision in terms of how how we best work together hasn't been determined um but i think yeah i hope you've heard through the philosophy that we've expressed through our planning process you know that the county certainly wants to be collaborative uh and and to work with other other groups with this work um i don't think we've used you know i certainly wouldn't describe our approach as being authoritative uh you know and i think there's probably some trade-offs with that given you know the work that we're talking about to be done but um you know i think we're we're trying to think through that and so um i've had you know informal discussions with missy with others and you know from around the county and and we'll continue to think on that but um i i guess i i hope i i see that as being something that will be really useful in terms of helping the county uh pursue our climate goals okay the one other main question or comment i guess question that i had is with regards to financing matt mentioned it briefly um but um financing is so important to a plan i'm wondering if that's going to be a core element of the plan or if the intent is to uh similar to frankly what ann arbor did and to some degree what u of m did is develop a plan with strategies actions recommendations whatever you want to call them and then deal with the financing after that has been digested if you will by residents and by leaders in the county how what's your thinking on that or have you even yeah i think it's going to be both you know our our board set the goals very clearly uh and they said give us a plan that meets these goals um and so i think we've got good benchmarks from inside of the county in terms of what it will take uh regarding money to meet those goals um and we the county does not have uh billions of dollars sitting around right now to dedicate to climate um so i i think we we certainly need to give an idea of the magnitude of the costs involved with this um i think it probably won't be perfect it'll i think we're trying to as we consider the climate actions understand not only the cost but the value of spending money uh on the plans and what we can get with both the emissions reduction and adaptation benefits from various things as we as we think about costs um that's that you know that's how the county tries to think about things just not spending money but what do you get for it so um i say that and that we we need to include money but we will not have all the money day one and that you know the the the way in which we do this plan is going to require investment over time for the life of and beyond the plan um as a practical matter we're also trying to think about or i'm trying to think about the existing spending that already happens inside of the county both both things where the county board of commissioners directly controls the budget but other things again like transportation spending that happens inside of washington county infrastructure spending that might be coming to washington county and thinking about how we can use our participation in those decision making processes to alter the outcomes knowing that you know again getting getting a dedicated pot of money is something that will be very challenging and will take time um so so trying to think about all of the the funding and financing options that we will have uh as as a means of doing this and i think just to touch on that again or maybe take a different approach really the county is trying to approach this in a very comprehensive manner right and we're already spending money on parks and natural areas preservation those things do a lot of climate benefits we haven't necessarily quantified them as a climate uh climate action previously but but we're already spending money and doing that stuff and so i think it's quite feasible for us to to measure those things and to say what's the value we get for that uh and and i think we can then look to those fun [Music] lens and give us a bit of a starting point as we talk about the resources needed to do this great i'm gonna add just real quick um remy long who's now a city employee has been using a tool that i believe was developed by c students um looking at the stored carbon in some of the land that's preserved and it's been great we're going to try and see whether that's something we can just start looking at what's the order of magnitude of stored carbon in the preserved land and that's the forested land ag's going to be a little different and pack if you have any students because what we're hearing is it does the stored carbon but it hasn't it's not looking forward as to the ongoing sequestration potential so that's one of the things we've been talking with the nice thing is we've shared that work with the state of michigan because in the michigan healthy climate plan i think it was a little more back of the envelope and so they're interested in taking that tool and maybe seeing how they can use that as the state thinks about the healthy climate plan the other thing i wanted to add is if you don't know semcog is doing a ghg emission inventory for all seven counties um so there's again an opportunity to kind of is that going to be a regional scale that we might be able to work together across seven counties not just within one that's good news does anybody else want to comment or offer up any questions okay so i would encourage everyone to uh noodle over this so to speak and if you have any thoughts please share those um the the contacts that are on the last page um or some of you probably know matt and andrew personally and have their addresses um and you can contact them directly so thanks very much for the presentation i'm really excited about what you're doing and i also just want to thank both of you um for your long careers in public service and we really appreciate what you're doing and especially now i'm directing this on climate action at the county level that's great so thanks a lot thanks for joining us yeah thank you so much for having us apologies for the technical difficulty but glad to go happens to all of us unfortunately made it work all right so good to see folks and meet the new folks and happy to help as we do this work and um matt and andrew of course you're more than welcome to stay on and listen to the next presentation which is um missy's presentation of eight two zero at two two i know it's crazy i'm gonna see if someone is free like generally should you and he may have you but in our attendee list is the newest member of osi joe uh he's coming over right no joe do you want to say hi really quick to everybody sure um hi everyone my name is joe um i just started yesterday here at osi um coming from a couple places but did undergrad at michigan state grad school at indiana university in public affairs environmental science and i've done a couple various things in climate change and such so really happy to be here and looking forward to working with all of you right to work night to like day two we're doing a night meeting so joe thanks so much for joining us for glad to have you so to jump in you're at least for me you're coming over not as clearly on audio as you were before right now i'm not coming here does anybody else have the same sort of effect yeah it's just um i don't know how to describe it i'm going to try this way is this any better no no not really i mean we can hear the audio but it's just a little muddled i'll say let me call i'll pretend it's me i'm not really all right let me just check out here i i don't i don't seem to think that it's a connectionist issue missy it sounds maybe more like your microphone sounds further away from me that it sounds fine to me so i don't know okay y'all we are problem solvers i mean i'll talk loud on the other one in the office so i'll do that all right here we go a2002 which is bonkers because we're already in year three uh thank you so much for the opportunity to share a little bit about what we have got going on here in osi and how things have been moving forward and i do have to start by saying this isn't all there's just so many people that we would have to thank that have helped make the progress that we've made and of course it's not enough uh but i also think that we spend a lot of time focusing on what we didn't do and not as much time celebrating what we have done and sometimes uh we need that to help keep the momentum going forward for the big fights that are ahead of us so this is a moment to kind of reflect back um i will definitely do some self modulation of all the things we didn't do in the midst of this but i also do want to take a moment and sort of celebrate what the team and the community has accomplished so let's start with a quick look back so starting with year one i am going to go off because it's showing on my other screen so i'm with you i'm just going to go off camera to make this not look awkward in year one of a2 a20 some of the notable highlights we have this report on the website so you can take a gander at it but we have the solaris program right and we have 1.3 megawatts of solar through that initiative we hit soul smart designation we were really focusing a lot on renewable energy we launched the aging place efficiently program and really built the collaboration partnerships to see that that program gave us the momentum we launched the ambassadors a2 0 ambassadors and trained our first 22 individuals we launched the 10 000 trees initiative and got a thousand trees in the ground in year one we were able to create the first resilience hub at northside community center and we started the design with uh zimmerman's and others for the a2 r3 returnable container program so really uh year one for us was a lot of structural setting up the systems the work plans the frameworks and then running at a few of these these programs here year two as we transitioned over became a lot of implementation of uh kind of using that foundation that was built in year one and i want to start by saying of the 44 actions in e20 in this uh in this second year we actively worked on 36 plus uh so a lot of things are in play and the plus is because h zero is living right so one of the things i talk about most commonly is when we wrote h20 we analyzed telework and we didn't think it was possible at the scale necessary and of course we had a pandemic that showed us that telework is possible for some constituents but not all and so it it seemed relevant to start working on supporting telework which is not one of the actions in a20 but it is an action that's helping reduce bmt for some portions so that's the plus things that sort of come up that are really really relevant strategic opportunities or things that honestly we wanted to do we just didn't think would have the success that they're having right now so i'm going to walk through these based on the strategies just as the organizing principle uh recognizing that everyone spends their time thinking about the seven strategies of a20 but i do so we'll start with strategy one which is powering our electrical grid with 100 renewable energy some of the accomplishments from this last year are solarized went from 1.3 megawatts to 3 megawatts and we're over because we put this out weeks ago it's really really exciting to see how that program the behavioral science behind it is spreading uh we also have a map that i just saw today for the first time showing how it actually works in neighborhoods and how solar clusters through the program so we'll be sharing that uh i'll be sharing that kind of as we're going into year three some of the visualizations and reporting that we're hoping to get in place uh we also started conversations for the commercial side of the solaris program today it's been residential focus we know we're missing an opportunity in the commercial sector but we also know commercial roofs look very different washington dairy's roof is different than the ymca's roof which is different than grizzly peak uh it doesn't mean there's not opportunities but we want to really work with those entities to figure out what this can look like so julie is on the commercialized uh the commercial side of this program which janet culbert said with the 2030 district uh successfully we've integrated a lot more education around efficiency and electrification into solarize of course solar uh we sort of talk about it as like the chickpea steak if you will people are really excited about it it's the main course but we need them to also be thinking about electrification and efficiency at that time and so we use that as a gateway uh for folks and it seems to be working in terms of people get solar and then they want to do what's next and they're already teed up what comes in the system and then of course i'm not enough for ann arbor to do this on her own so we worked with the great lakes renewable energy association created a replication guide for solarize and launched the ann arbor solar stories where folks who have gone through the solarize program uh every month have an opportunity to share their story with others which just kind of helps people understand and makes it much more personal what the journey is like if you're capable of investing in solar we also this year designed four megawatts of solar at city facilities i wrote this before i knew uh council approved a contract for just shy of one megawatt on monday night not yesterday but last monday uh that is at nine city parks and also includes some grandma and some rooftop systems five solar carports 26 electric vehicle chargers and two batteries one for the senior center and one for vets so burn senior center will be coming online as our next resilience hub as will bryant community center which i'll talk about in the end we're really excited to see this move we also did a lot of work this year on the 20 megawatt landfill solar project which is now named the wheeler solar uh the wheeler center solar park uh this one went on ice at the very end literally after gosh the energy commission meeting that we had when we brought it forward and you passed the resolution the tariffs had just been announced uh i'm gonna let the cat out of the bag with last week's announcement that the president invoked the defense act uh to invest in solar and put a moratorium on uh these tariffs this is office so we're waiting on updated pricing and i hope to have this move forward by the end of the summer to contracting so that that'll be a success hopefully in year three we'll see this project around um and we continue to intervene in uh rape cases we are interveners in 2836 which is the rape case currently being heard by the public service commission we intervened as you all know and got settlement in 2013 which was the migraine well the voluntary green pricing program which includes the my green power program and that's how we got wheeler center solar park to become a community that's siri uh community solar initiative uh which we're uh delighted to see it would be the first in dt's territory we also know in here to develop the proposal for the sustainable energy chile and we joined a working group with the world resources institute looking and starting to get ahead uh thinking about how we plan for a 24 7 power offering so while our goal in h20 is 100 renewables we've always thought about that as a year kind of store up over the course of the year we used x did we also generate x or purchase x amount of clean energy uh i anticipate that in the not too distant future we're going to want to try to get to real time when i'm using electrons on electron speed underneath and that requires a very different type of planning so we've joined your working group to start getting ahead of that strategy put it into strategy 2 which is beneficial electrification we have posted a number of uh resident-facing educational workshops on this topic and uh have incredible turnout more so than i expected so much so that after last summer a workshop that we hosted with a few hundred attendees we started to panic uh that we would have a bunch of people let loose on the market and not have contractors to support them which is why we worked with michigan saves and got a great grant from the state to create electoral commission training and contractor badging program it is live it was launched at the end of 2021.
is that in any way going to hinder bus routes or anything like that um have we looked at is that going to cause any disruption no i don't think it will i i think uh the bus routes uh that we run you know kind of at mec now we're just kind of i mean like coming to the high school if they're building at the high school or is that going to affect oh no that will not i meant the bus drop off excuse me i'm old you know wrong word yeah no that's not because it'll be down at that end so it will not be affected okay we'll be good yep uh project number seven on the back the electronic signs marquee that is going to be delayed but the only reason that's really going to be delayed is because i've staged this they're not able to do all the signs at once so you're going to see there the order of installation is they're going to do lec talala and moni elementary then the second round is going to be crete balmoral csk and then the last one is finally going to be the building and grounds facility those signs have been ordered it's about six to eight weeks to get those in so they're going to be starting on that and then last is the playground construction at elc that contract was awarded on the 22nd we're beginning construction actually the crane is we want to have some fun the cranes coming tomorrow i believe to uh crane everything over the building into the courtyard um and then completion is set for august 8th so we're on target with that one thanks for letting me know okay did you have a buyer for the existing playground equipment we actually donated that so there was a company that came in and took that out it's a worldwide company i don't know the name of it off the top i can get that to the board one of the things i did talk to them about though was about donating it locally however there are some codes that they are not able to do that because there's new codes where the bolts have to be concealed now on playground equipment and that had exposed bolts on it when it was put together so they couldn't donate it locally so they donated worldwide internationally where they build playgrounds throughout the world and that so i'll get i'll tell that in my fyi i'll get you the name of the company that did that but they came in and took that out the only thing that's really was left in there was the uh the shade the big shade that was installed by the boosters that was kept and that is being kept okay any questions good uh all right update guys i thank you good evening thanks thanks yup thanks for all the hard work this summer and don't mind the heat tomorrow we actually wanted you guys we actually wanted you guys one at a time to come and speak no just kidding just kidding don't even chuck guy's doing a great job thank you and and and again i'm going to reiterate this i i can't say enough about soho and the work that they're doing and uh the cooperation that they've been it is a pretty good team that they have put together and things have gone really well so it has and it's it's gone gone well uh even though with the delays so okay um so let me move on um number two three and i there's a little i had a little misorder in this i apologize for this and eight thank you uh are gonna go together so if you recall board there was one more financing that we needed to do for the addition at the high school and that was for 15 million dollars in bonds and i had a discussion with bob lewis we were supposed to do that sale in february of 23. however with the increase of rates and everything we are recommending that we begin doing that now and get that um um and try and capture as much money as we can i will share with you i don't know if we're going to be able to get the whole 15 million um but let me worry about that and uh but i think we we need to accelerate this and begin this process it is not going to have any additional impact to the taxpayer at all because if we did it in it would go on to that tax bill then and so even if we do it now it'll go on that tax bill anyway so it won't have any impact and again we're not raising the tax rate at all um when it comes to this there are two sale of bonds there's a 15 million dollar working cash bonds and eight million dollars in funding bonds the eight million dollars in funding bonds are just us just refunding some of our bonds so that we can fit it all under the same uh annual debt payment so we're not raising the annual debt payment so those three there's two resolutions there one resolution is the intent to issue eight million dollars the second one is the intent to issue 15 million dollars and then the third one is to his tab establish the public hearing date which is the bina hearing of the board's intent to sell bonds um for july 19th um and then we will begin uh the petition period and all of that stuff and get all that taken care of and everything so those three kind of go together and those three will be on the agenda for next week so candice 23 million dollars we're talking about here the refunding and the working cash right but this is up to 67.4 million this is all part of the 67.4 million right and i i noticed way back that this part that we're looking to approve should have occurred back in february of this year and i guess the question is how is it you said it's no additional cost to the taxpayers but yet we was going to secure the bonds during the february time frame as opposed to coming up and that interest rates have probably drastically increased so it will be additional money to us no let me i may have spoken we were supposed to do this february of 23.
Everyone, please stand for the pledge of allegiance. Yeah. Good. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, individ indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Please remain standing for the the singing of the Star Spangle Banner. [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. [Applause] Heat. [Applause] Please be seated. Band and magicals, please be seated. I would like to introduce our guests on the stage and ask that they stand to be recognized. Mayor Espazito [Applause] Board Chair Chilelesi, present and past members of the board of education, [Applause] Superintendent Walston, add in Judy Kushner, state Connecticut Senator Judy. Um, Connecticut Senator Judy Kushner, Julie, assistant superintendent Dr. Casemiro and Miss Truscious, [Applause] as well as the rest of the members of the cabinet. On behalf of the 2022 graduating class of Danbury High School, I would like to thank you all for being here today.
essentially what this does is it allows that if an ausd teacher is hired by citrus college to teach a c-cap agreement course the school district will pay for the teacher based on contracted agreement pay and citrus college will then reimburse the school district previously as in all previous cases that we have had due enrollment here in our district it has always been a citrus hired employee and we have not had ausd teachers teaching ccap agreement courses during the school year so this allows this this provision these two areas allows us to then use our teachers to teach ccap courses and citrus college will reimburse them so we hope to continue this agreement and relationship and we are very proud of what our students have been able to accomplish through the years and i'm definitely available for any questions as is dr rabbit yeah i have a couple questions um well the first one is um i did notice that there was a reference quite quite a few times to an appendix b um and so i i would like to be able to see that a pen it wasn't attached to yourself like i i mean does it already exist so you could share it or is it something that's still being worked on yeah it is being worked on but um mr dr rabatoy had actually brought an example of an appendix b um dr do you want to share a little bit about what appendix b good evening everybody thank you for having me tonight i work right up um been working with ausd for many years on the early college uh fantastic program very proud to be a part of um i did bring two paper copies um one of appendix day and one of appendix b they did not get in the pdf that was appendix a is a document from the chancellor's office that provides some information about the ccap program and appendix b is actually a list of plastics that goes with the agreement this is um a list of classes that we fill out once we finalize the course offerings for next fall and so i'll frank and i will work together to make sure this is filled out um and then each semester there's a part of appendix b that i fill out into the california community called as the list of courses sometimes changes so our courses are pretty much the same at gladstone they stay the same we have a two-year program there with new year's eve um but at azusa high school it will change from semester semester depending on the need so i'll give this prank you can take a look also here to answer any other questions yeah thank you i appreciate that and you just answered one of them i was going to ask is this the umbrella under which we offered the early college program and gladstone i think you just said that that this is correct yes ma'am this is the umbrella in which we offer the early college also called the ccap uh grill college access pathway programs um at both gladstone which is our most robust program in the district we offer um classes to juniors and seniors they take two classes per term um we also have the same similar types of classes offered at azusa high and um as as frank discussed we've also done some classes primarily counseling at sierra so all three of the high schools are fall under this cap agreement that's wonderful um and so now with this agreement it feels like you're going to be able to maybe have some alignment between some of our eligible instructor teachers in our in our district right to be able to offer some um of these courses so how do you and maybe this is for you or for frank how do you how do you envision trying to identify like what are those courses that we want to offer um um how do we recruiting the teachers you know and so we so that we do have the opportunity to expand dual enrollment i'm a big fan right so i think the more we expand the better right why not give a kid college credit right if we can i want to make sure that these courses and are part of the i guess i guess the past um and we have already started some preliminary background work in regards to one which one of our teachers qualify but essentially for the core content areas they need a master's degree and then for cte is a different qualification so dr rapper toy can talk more about those um qualifications for teachers but we always want to make sure that these courses are aligned um with um these i guess the pathways so a lot of it is going to be english math um sometimes even foreign language the sciences and things like that so if our teachers do in fact qualify then we can ask to see if they're interested in teaching the course so i'll let um dr apatoy talk more about those kind of qualifications i just gave you a general idea of what frank so the california community called the california community college chancellor's office provides a list of what is called minimum qualification even different discipline in the community colleges and uh those disciplines within the academic areas uh basically require a master's degree in the discipline to be poor so for example we offer quite a few english classes at texas high school we offer um other classes that are done at general education and the person who has to teach that class has to have a master's degree in that discipline so in order to teach an english class at your high school i have to hire a person who has a master's degree in english and not in another so i've been working with frank to identify instructors that are already i'm hired by your district to identify where their master's degree is and we've worked on what they could potentially be eligible to be um in the ccap program part of this team so it's a function of matching the discipline specific content of your teacher's master's degree of course that frank has talked about the the teachers that we typically hire are citrus college adjunct teachers that go to the high school but i work with nine different high schools in our district and um we love the opportunity to hire the high school people first because the students already know the teacher that is already on the campus and it works really well it works well in counseling your counselors typically have a master's degree in counseling so they can teach our counseling one study class strategies but sometimes it's a little harder to find individuals within your district that have master's degrees in biology or in economic a lot of times we find teachers that have master's degrees in curriculum and instruction and ed leadership and those don't necessarily fall within a discipline that that fits with the course okay how does this impact the master schedule if we're using our own staff to teach the additional coursework it actually increases the flexibility of our master schedule because historically um the adjunct professors or teachers hired by switches college are on campus maybe twice a week and twice a week there may be on campus for an hour and 30 to an hour 45 minutes and so the scheduling of those classes are usually at the ends of the day in order for the students then to take the other classes required for high school graduation so if we embed the teacher with our teachers into the regular school day they're there five days a week and so they can just take a regular schedule a student can take periods one through six with all um a usd font teacher so it allows for some flexible much more flexibility in how we schedule the class so it doesn't have to be necessarily at the ends of the day it could be during third period because we have now five hours to work with which is if we have to satisfy the citrus college requirements for the minimum hours that's why they put an hour and so we need to satisfy those hours but if they only come twice the week then it busts into a regular schedule of 50 minutes or 50 minutes um period does it also realize a more efficient use of our teachers in terms of their schedule and their course load yeah i mean they're teaching essentially um a tip a high school teacher would teach five classes in their prep so this would be part of that was one of the five classes to teach yeah so i i have a couple other different questions um one goes to go back to the um back our early college program right and so i'm just curious in terms of as we move to azusa high and consolidate right what are are there opportunities for us to consider to make it a fully i'm going to use the same terminology but i mean a full a full early or middle college where the students will have the opportunity to graduate with a a degree um similar to what they have over in west covina and so i'm just curious about you know we have about a year before we move over so wondering you know can those discussions happen um can we have conversations about what the feasibility of doing something like that yes most definitely um some discussions have already happened um i will continue that with um captain and the superintendent um but yes we have begun to explore some of it thankfully we have dr apatoy who has worked with other districts who had actually there's a model for us to follow that's great um and then my final question and the reason i had asked for appendix b is i was actually very particularly interested in that there was a there's a line about um student eligibility requirement right and so um and this is for the citrus theme one of the concerns i had and so just one of the concerns that i had with the original one of the original mlus that we approved when we put in the the early college was that there was a gpa requirement for students to be able to be in the early college program right and i think my understanding and communicating with people who put these programs in um from the community college side that that's not the best practice and so i just wanted to flag that because i'm not even sure if it's still in there and if it is can we have conversations about removing and not having it especially if it isn't best practice and i don't know if you know what i'm talking about leave it it's not there anymore you removed it yeah yeah yeah please please um thank you um we leave the recruitment of the students up to the district okay so the district has 100 control over the students that they recruit into the program and um those metrics have changed over the years as we want to make sure we select students who are going to be successful and um your students in this district are incredibly successful in this program it it's a joy for me to watch them and for me to visit the high school and to look at how well that they do as they work together through two years as learning community when they graduate they're ready for college they've got a year done and they move on and they're very successful so yeah the selection of the students is entirely up to a okay well that's wonderful to hear um because i think when it first came in it was it was you were not around right but that the the citrus side was very adamant that they had to keep that piece in that's what that's the way they developed in party but that was a long time ago um so then my final just um request for consideration is for us to think about um being able to put in place a dual enrollment ethnic studies course right we know that the cal states have a graduate are adding a graduation requirement we're going to have graduation requirements and so i think it would be a great place to think about like how do we give these students college level credit and ethic studies so i just wanted to put that out there for us to think about like you know you know how can we get how can we get to there any other questions thank you thank you gentlemen moving on to 15.0 human resources and specifically 15.1 approval of declaration of need for fully qualified educators is there a motion to approve make a motion to approve 15.1 a second move by board member rodriguez pena second by board member beau is there any discussion then we'll move to a vote and the motion passes four yes to one absent moving to 15.2 acceptance of california school employees association sunshine proposal for the 2022 2023 fiscal year negotiations with the azusa unified school district [Music] yes so 15.2 and 15.3 15.4 and 15.5 are the sunshine for the beginning of negotiations with csda and aea we are bringing the sunshine proposals for viewing and then at our next regular board meeting next week june 21st we will have a hearing and approve the district's sunshine proposals so are there any questions on the information uh that is being received on 15.2 through 15.5 okay then we will move to 16.0 policies and bylaws and similarly as these are each as these are each first readings are there any questions or comments a discussion on 16.1 through 16.5 hearing none we will move to 17.0 and and specifically 17.1 which is adjournment is there a motion motion to adjourn a motion to approve 17.1 a second so moved by board member rodriguez payne yet and seconded by board member beau i will would just remind us all that this is uh the adjournment of this particular meeting however we do have a facilities corporation meeting that will could be brief um and we'll begin immediately following this this adjournment with that said we will move to a vote and the most motion to adjourn passes or yes to one absent and we are adjourned at 9 18 pm and now at 9 18 pm i am calling to order a facilities corporation meeting for the azusa unified school district and i will begin by uh with item 2.1 approval of the agenda is there a motion to approve the agenda make a motion to approve 2.1 a second move i do believe why don't we actually we may need to take a moment uh and hope can you speak in this we need to log out of that meeting and join get the minute but we'll do a hand vote we'll got it okay is it do we need to do a formal roll call here as well okay got it okay so that motion is on the table and there has been there has been a second but is there any discussion on 2.1 then we will do a hand vote uh board member rodriguez pena yes board member bo yes board member roger cruz gonzalez yes and i aborted also a yes which brings us to 3.0 ausd facilities corporation and 3.1 approval of resolution 21 2244 of the board of directors of the azusa unified school district facilities corporation authorizing the execution and delivery of a ground lease a lease agreement and an assignment agreement with respect to the assignment of such ground lease and lease agreement and the authorizing and authorizing the exec execution of necessary documents and certificates and related actions is there a motion to approve motion to approve 3.1 second moved by board member rodriguez pena and seconded by board member bo is there any discussion and we will move to a hand vote uh board member rodriguez pena yes board member beau yes i remember cruz gonzalez yes and i am also a yes and so the motion passes or yes the one absent i do want to move uh move us to 3.2 which is public comment is there any one here in person that would like to make a comment on this item and is there anyone online lika with their hand raised to leave a comment on this item we have no hand hands raised on zoom thank you then we will move to 4.0 adjournment of facilities corporation 4.1 specifically at the adjournment is there a motion to adjourn make a motion to adjourn 1.1 a second adjournment moved by board member rodriguez pena and seconded by board member beau is there any additional discussion hearing none we will once again move to a final hand vote board member rodriguez pena yes board member beau yes board member cruz gonzalez yeah and i am also a yes and so motion to adjourn passes or yes to one absent at 9 21 p.m thank you everybody have a great evening
you can go into the michigan safes website you can search for if you need an hvac contractor and you'll see this orange badge that's demarcated here against any contractor that has gone through the training program and is certified as electrification first so this is a contractor that is knowledgeable about electrification options for things in like cold climate airsource keyboards so instead of being talked out of something you have someone who's capable of really understanding your situation and helping you make the right decision which might not be a cold climate airsourcing pump but it might very well be so you don't want to start from the assumption that you've got to convince your contractor to do something you want to start from the assumptions you're both going to find the best solution to your situation so excited that this is launched and it's the trading partners across the state so it's not just ann over anyone in the state uh can go through this program and get the badge we asked to join the cohort with rmi formerly the rocky mountain institute we're working on other cities to design an electrification campaign kind of similar similar to the solarize campaign but thinking about the nuances in our climate where electrification electricity is more expensive than natural gas so how do you actually design a campaign how do you structure it how you support it how do you make it accessible to lots of different folk so julie sits on that with phone we also worked with ibew and nika on the futures electric uh initiative which helps people understand and you can see this range about here uh understanding opportunities around electrifying and actually helps point them to uh contractors here that pay living wages family sustaining uh wages uh top people make that transition we developed the 820 home assessment which we're piloting in bryant this combines strategy one two and three so i put it here but it's all things it's looking at the renewable energy potential on site an energy audit um and an electrification assessment this is kind of like the full service so you get a roadmap to have how to de-carbonize your home and we've piloted it in about 12 homes in uh bryant right now the goal is to pilot in about a hundred uh so we're actually recruiting more folks into that initiative we've drafted the green royal housing initiative and this is that talked about a number of times to the commission had a lot of public engagement and activity on this uh it is legal for some initial feedback and i've kept people very very busy on something for the last four weeks so i haven't gotten any feedback from them and keeping them focused but um this hopefully will will come loose in the next few weeks so i'll be able to see this move forward in your theme we've been working on many many elements of the energy concierge uh especially more recently the people service portion of this so we've been talking with folks like ecoworks and elevate to actually create um someone someone uh an actual person that can help folks when they have questions navigate what to do help find contractors find uh uh right now to help pilot this on services initiative so this might be in year uh it straddles your team we've successfully uh transitioned 20 of the city's fleet to electric we have our refuse trucks on order they uh were ordered quite a while ago they are back ordered in supply chain issues but we expect the first one to hit the street sometime this fall and shortly they're after the second uh to come in to operation which i'm i'm really excited to see those big trucks coming differently if you don't know on july uh 15th we have an electrification expo that's happening at the farmer's market this is something that we plan based on public input and excitement around the lunch institution so we as of today uh bring equipment show people the benefit of electrification uh kind of let people interact with appliances it's for renters it's for homeowners it's for businesses anyone can come and enjoy some time learning about electrification and actually engaging with folks who can help make that happen we installed uh 40 dual port chargers and dvd garages that's 80 additional chargers uh and not 40 that would be incorrect that's a typo we have four fast chargers uh city hall 40 would be insane i would single-handedly have blown up the miso grid uh so i'm not not gonna do that and you know this is a small one but a really significant one we updated our permitting system across the city and as we were doing that we successfully got uh electrification in to the permitting process which means as people are doing things like installing um induction stove versus arranged or putting in a heat pump when they have to pull a permit we're actually getting that information so we're able to track how many people are transitioning to a lecture which is great because without that data it's sort of hard to know how effective uh some of our outreach initiatives have been strategy threes right energy efficiency here we passed michigan's very first benchmarking ordinance for energy and water which is super great the first deadline was june 1st um we have extended the deadline until august 1st because it's the first time right that people are recording we're learning a lot about the struggles that they're having and everything it's been really successful and i want to once again do a shout out to the 2030 district who's been helping us with this uh overall we're really impressed by what we're seeing people are engaging in the system and it's starting to lead to questions about how folks can reduce their energy consumption which is my goal we have completed 19 homes in the aging place efficiently programmed the program is officially out of money it is grant funded but we are fundraising and you'll see that's a high priority for us for year three because we have a very long wait list of older adults who are in pretty desperate need of some support uh to be able to stay in their homes safely and reduce their energy usage we also uh were asked to join a white house coalition on energy performance and water performance which we did uh i wish i could tell you more about what that looks like yet uh it just formed we're not 100 sure but i believe we go into uh discussions later this week to kind of create much more structure around what this would look like but exciting to have vanguard communities from around the country sit with the white house and be able to really push for some support uh federally on the kinds of initiatives uh we worked with jen hall and the housing commission and together we won two and a half million dollars to support net zero energy affordable housing right now the rfps are on the street for the final work that we need to do to make a number of housing commission sites net zero energy but this is super exciting and so this was an earmark that we won uh largely because of teamwork uh because we keep promoting this and doubling down our communities commitment to affordable housing i think really elevating this project we have also submitted a grant uh two million dollar grant to support the work in bryant fingers crossed um you'll see later we want a number of smaller grants this larger grant from the department of energy would really help us actually make the improvements in the neighborhood continue pushing for the codes uh to be updated at the state level there's a hearing that's happening shortly uh i'll have referred back to the commission and then i just saw yesterday that the residential code is now up for comment so we continue to organize around that we designed the carbon neutral fire station in tandem obviously with the fire department and we are actually fundraising it'll be the first in the state of michigan we think it's the first east of the mississippi uh that all depends on when we break ground uh and then kind of just a little bit of inside work we have successfully integrated uh sustainability into the city's plan review process so as a developer comes forward with a project or an idea we want to be at the table at the very beginning and we haven't historically been so this year we were able to get at that table so right from the beginning we can talk about each of zero the goals that we have the objectives uh and this this just happened recently and that changes a lot of the tone and tenor so by the time we get to planning commission we've already had conversations we've already worked through many issues we've already asked for electrification as opposed to coming in at the end it's really hard to change when a project is fully designed but when you're at the beginning of a process you have a chance and then um we've done energy audits at four varsity facilities and right now we're working on a plan to make them the first four fully departmentized buildings we have listed in terms of strategy for reducing our vmt by 50 so we worked uh are working on a carbon calculator which is helping us uh analyze transportation emissions and include both in planning projects so as people are proposing developments what's the impact of having people closer and further away but also for us to understand how people are moving and have a more effective calculator to be able to engage the kinds of decisions like protective bike lanes what really is the impact that those have on the system versus extending sidewalks versus a bus expansion all are needed but we want to sort of understand where and how those things function we uh are working with planning actively we meet with planning every week right now and trying to find ways to integrate h20 into the unified development group and there's lots of changes that have come from like the removing of working uh minimums was one of the things that we worked on and there's some other work around solar siding we're working to do away with height restrictions when it's solar solar is the thing that breaks the height restriction whether that's on a pole or on a roof so things like that fire and solar you're likely going to see that coming back as something that's valuable and then i'll continue to support protective bike lanes we've seen growing ridership which is really great we've got my discount programs uh and then i already want to show them the particular ones you're doing great almost done strategy five is moving towards the circular economy so we have our reusable container program which is expanding super exciting we run a number of grants for this we've been successful in getting some some grants to actually secure uh funding to do a business plan so far the city has really supported this initiative but we know it's going to take off and we have a lot of people who are interested in being a part of this but we've been reluctant to bring more businesses in until we have a sustainable business plan so uh we have a nonprofit that's ready to run with us they just want a grant to help develop that business plan and hopefully uh in year three you're gonna see this take up the whole community which makes me really happy we did move to around composting hooray uh we're beginning in a few days downtown commercial recycling uh city council directed us and we've been actively working on a sustainable food purchasing policy for city purchases but we've also got a working group that's helping us think about how we do this within the community and what does sustainable food mean is it local is it organic does it have is it plant forward plant-based does it have no packaging all of those things are really important workers rights animal rights so we're trying to figure out how we in the city frame sustainable food and how we score it how do we let people know what is the most sustainable option and it's uh it's a really exciting area of work and it's a work where people have very strong feelings about what sustainable food means so we've been talking the university around this as well uh and a little bit within our public schools to make sure we have some alignment around how we classify food we have successfully run two zero-waste uh week-long challenges uh over a thousand folks that participated in those challenges and in the fall we're gonna run our third with university of michigan students we're gonna continue this it was just wildly successful super super fun hopefully you guys participated in them if not i can't wait for you to do it uh really really accessible um and then we also are working on a circular economy strategy so we have a working group and we've been doing a bunch of outreach to different stakeholders to understand who's already operating within the circular economy space for their map of businesses that are in the circular economy there's way more than i ever knew existed and then also trying to figure out how we tie all these things together into more holistic approach to against this and then uh just as other side we started to really ramp up our work on reducing refrigerants within the system because while there's not a lot they have extremely high global warming uh potential so thank you strategy six relates to oh my enhancing the resilience of our community we have uh we planted twenty five hundred trees for a free tweak and away and our community tree plantings which is just amazing to me so these are trees on private property um we also have all of the support uh we've got a support app for folks we've got education uh for folk that help make sure that we're not just planting trees we're maintaining this reason we're putting on the ground uh staff went through master rain gardener training and we're starting to promote that way more in the community because flooding is getting more intense as we saw winter storms last night and so we want to be able to help residents as they're making choices about installing green infrastructure to maintain um to maintain their site and avoid them we've installed the very first air quality monitors in the city when i'm carrying time and brian there are two more sitting in the office next to me one is going to go on main street and one is going in an arab or public school so we can monitor idling emissions and identify solutions there and then we have a goal for many more coming into the system in the coming years we're working with the hazard mitigation team to integrate climate more holistically into that plan you may be familiar we've done this in the past but we didn't go really really deep and this time it is it is just entrenched in that plan uh the impacts of climate change both directly and indirectly uh and that's it's cascading through all the actions that are falling out public comment um we have one public kind of uh period during the planning process and we've got another cleanup soon and i can't wait to bring maybe we can bring that plan forward to the commission for your comments more question um i'm gonna buzz through the rest of this because you guys are doing great and it's like so we uh have actually funded the second and third resilience house so in the last few weeks we funded bryant community center to move forward and as i mentioned before the senior center we've also been doing resilience assessments with avalon because more mature housing commission sites are taught uh second or third cohorts of ambassadors are through the system that soil carbon calculator matt talked about talked about it we funded it uh sean staffed it so super exciting to see it being used throughout the canada uh the community and then we did some modest support for nobomy but are gearing up to make no mermay a thing that anna robert does in the weekend and then in the other category uh just uh last week we finished the final trench of funding for the sustaining ann arbor together grant program so we will give it a hundred thousand dollars this year to community uh initiatives focusing on community-based sustainability progress uh we are in the beginning of an anti-battling community campaign with another public schools and you already mentioned that air quality monitor that's the best part of it to really understand what we're necessary so we can reduce them uh the collaborators network continues to grow and we just continue to do public engagement never enough as you heard andrew say but a really fun a really fun part of what we do so we had over 100 community meetings presentations events discussions uh over last year so i want to just take a minute and acknowledge some cool things right uh we were recognized as one of only 95 communities around the world to be an a-list community for our work uh in particular on transparency and reporting we are a michigan green community uh gold community which is great i want to call it cindy barr when an eevee champion from cranes which is so wonderful sean won the government award for urban and community forestry here in the state of michigan julian was named george sexton public servant of the earth the best possible award i think you could ever get that title is amazing uh galen was appointed to the board of the great leagues renewable energy association the feu won the project of the year from gmr so they're it's great and i really wanted to put that forward too because sometimes i think the team focuses on all the things that we still have to do as opposed to the fact that we are making some progress so just to close out i want to tell you a little bit about what's coming forward um and i'm gonna i'm gonna riff off this the the thing i'm most excited about we just got permission for we've had a darn hard time getting a dashboard set up we've worked in with it on a platform and that we designed the whole platform we were ready to go live a long time ago and then the platform was not compliant with the city's website we've had all these hurdles and that is really frustrating to me because we have all of this data that we want to be sharing well we just got permission to stand up around a website and and use a different platform to report that so a high priority for us we run an it call this morning is we're going to get that platform up and operational because i want everyone to be able to know transparently what we're doing where we have success and where we don't and where we have to pivot and change so you're not going to see that on this list because i didn't know when i wrote these slides that we'd be able to do that that makes me very excited on uh tuesday night we go to council with a ppa contract for three megawatts of additional solar at city facilities so we'll hit that four megawatts absolutely because of the the listing of the tariffs i think we're going to break ground on the landsat solar project if we get pricing back you know let's change supply chain issues have impacted uh solar installations around the country but if things look good we're going to bring my contract forward and if it's approved we will break ground we are going to head to the megawatts julian has said this out loud but we're going to figure out how to get two megawatts in the next year so we get to five megawatts of solar flu through solarize we're going to have to collaborate more with department we've got to figure out what regional collaboration looks like in a deeply meaningful way so we can sustain this work and really institutionalize it in our region and then draw more federal funding to this region because we are the leaders in this work and that also involves working deeply with the state and the my healthy climate plan uh both to support that plan but also to unlock funding and resources and make sure that funding and resources are built into that plan for local units of government and then policy-wise we are we're going to get the green rental housing and home energy uh reading disclosure over the finish line it's just it's time we've got a lot of engagement that's been going on a lot of design work uh and it's it's they just need to be able to finish one in year three we also want to take the h20 home assessment we're testing and buying and bringing out to the whole market we'll have that circular economy plan and the two top priorities for us in terms of fundraising are aging and place efficiently and brian bryant is my favorite project it is the most meaningful sustainable project i think that we do everything matters but this one um this one just touches really deep to the values that i have and the reason i do this work so we have to find a way to correct market failures and fund the work environment if we're going to equitably departments we're going to stay true to our values so we are deeply committed to fundraising there's some other things on this uh screen that i just want to show those are the primary priorities but overall i think the future looks pretty bright we got a lot of work to do uh you know what but we've got we've got a great team we've got a great community and i'm hopeful that we're going to figure it out so awesome thanks jamers thank you missy okay folks can we just applaud yes you can may any anybody have any comments or questions go ahead carlene uh the quick question just about the an event that you mentioned that's going to be taking place in july at the ann arbor farmers market i think it says it's it starts at 9 00 p.m can you um let us know what time it's actually going to start which i'm sure you didn't mean i probably did not no i think it's 6 to 9 p.m but i'm pulling up the flyer that i just said to ctrl it's it's from four until nine this is one four two nine okay four p.m until nine p.m it didn't show up on my side on my end when i was doing it at least i haven't entered in my calendar that way i have it as five to nine pm at the farmer's market and let me just share with you all why don't you ask the questions here is what this oh is we are the community high school band i believe jazz band is playing so obviously do you need any support from the energy commissioner or are you getting also people who have electrified that are willing to table are you what's this yes that is the largest area of need we have right now we have a few folks who have done electrification in their home who are willing on speaking but we could use more so if you have made the transition either fully or in part and would be willing on spending a little bit of time with us we would love that and should the energy commission want to have a table and talk about the commission and the work 100 percent you could do that we have space okay i mean just send to an email fund is the one organizing it or uh i would send julie or hannah loftus okay okay so another really quick question um about could you embellish a little bit about the soil carbon calculator what it is and then is this something that's going to be posted like on a website that we can interact with yeah i think it already is but let me find it um yes so what is what it was we worked with remy long uh and a bunch of master students to understand the the impact that soil has different kinds of soil in different parts of the city as we're thinking about development so what amount of carbon is actually sequestered in the soil what's uh sequestered in the leafy material the ground cover on top so we can understand as we're making decisions and trade-offs about development you know we can think about density and having people in a certain space but we also wanted to add the impact of that's hormone disrupting it and the emissions that would come from that so we've used it mostly in the green belt when we're making decisions on the quality of product to buy uh or a piece of property so it's another value that we take into consideration but also you would not talk about we're trying to transition it to other languages and other types of soils so more in city we could help have uh kind of more informed decisions about how we developed ourselves are you also does the tool evaluate things like um moving to perennial crops like kernsa or changing to no-till practices and things like that does it do you know if it evaluates those kinds of things i don't i don't think so but i'm happy to have ronnie and the students come and see if they wanted to give a presentation on the tool and as i heard matt talk about there's interest in the state and growing it so maybe we could talk about what it is and what it could be if that's of interest to the commission it seems it might be maybe also possibly to the environmental commission i don't know what would be the appropriate um because i know when we've talked about greenbelt topics in the past some of those have been in the energy commission because we talked about solar on green belts but in other cases we've talked about the green belt and the environmental commission so maybe we put a pin in that and come back to that okay council member thank you folks thanks carlene thanks um so i can obviously direct people to this legistar attachment for folks who might be interested in the greater public but is there an easier space for people to go and digest kind of some of the accomplishments or um anything like that is there a space we should direct folks yeah thank you so you're the first to hear this later this week we'll be doing a press release and putting out the actual report that is uh like a more aesthetically pleasing summary of this and we'll have this as an attachment so it'll be on the city's website very shortly you're just the sneak review um we're still in design work again i'll send that out to you all as soon as we actually post it you see i think there's also a page full page up on heat pumps on this on osi's website right a bunch of resources on that if anybody um should ask so you can direct them to that so who would we contact once once we have access to the full report the backup and if there's any questions that we have um will there be um some place in the report that can guide us to where we can find more information if that's something that we're interested in yeah uh great question i would say the way we drafted it not for each item because as you just saw there's a lot of stuff in in kind of the summary but i am thinking maybe the best thing to do is for each because we organize it by strategy as well maybe for each strategy i can put in a point person so even though it may not be simey because sami's running point he knows anyone else missy i sent an email to you and i copied oh the go ahead commissioner bricks yeah i just watched yeah not a question i just wanted to reiterate um kudos to you and the entire team this is really incredible work in year two it is there's a lot that's happened i'm glad that um you and other members of the team are getting recognition for all the work um but it is exciting to see us moving forward so rapidly and so many actions and all seven strategies uh commissioner smith thank you yes certainly significant accomplishments it's truly a pleasure to see all the great work that's been done over the course of this past year with that with any plan i imagine there's been challenges as well so i guess in the report or i heard you mention a dashboard do you plan to kind of outline some of those challenges and mitigation strategies here as well you know what we have that we're really saying really is more of a kind of really easy to read summary of the things that we've accomplished with a little bit more context so we don't spend a lot of time and all the reasons other things did not happen uh just because that isn't really the really the character of what it is we're putting out what you're noting though is super important something we document a lot in individual project based work i wonder i mean the dashboard was that more to be transparently reporting on progress if we've got a goal of 100 renewable energy power in the community how are we doing i mean how much renewable do we actually have compared to where we need to be so i could imagine that in that dashboard we could include some education about the ways to up that number and the challenges stopping that number but we haven't gotten yet to design because we just sure the right way to explore the challenges more publicly but would welcome thoughts and suggestions absolutely just thinking there may be an opportunity to capture learnings um and how to improve upon um you know uh you know based off of again the kind of the work and the challenges that we're up against yeah we've made a pitch before to funders um and those who want to see local governments collaborate to actually lend some support to do case study interacting uh because we all of the communities that are doing this work are not incentivized to tell their story in that way and we know what we learned but it it often doesn't get pen to paper you move on to what's next right in the to-do list i wonder if we could explore maybe something with me uh with students at seas that you may be able to have some help maybe even an project where folks are really documenting the lessons learned and the struggles of this work so we can stand and be sure i heard him say yes did you have anything else to raise no um again i think all great ideas um and just you know wanted to kind of open the question the dialogue about the opportunity to explore again capturing some of those items uh missy i submitted some questions via email and i was wondering if you'd be willing to address those if you don't have them handy i can summarize them briefly yeah i will be honest that i am under deadline for something else and so i did not prep for those so you i'm happy to take those questions so some of them i think you can probably answer um right off the cuff and it'd be fine actually if you just simply say well that's something i want to consider or think about or respond to later that's that's that's perfectly acceptable um so some of the questions are more straightforward some of them are a little bit more longer-winded i would say and they're offered in the spirit of continuous improvement thinking that we'll also have reports um eight two zero at three eight two zero at four eight two zero at twenty um where we'll hopefully be at zero or um some form of zero um so the first question that i had was um the inventory um as far as i know the last inventory was done for calendar year 2019.
you did say that that's why i was right what you did 23 we were supposed to do in february 23. they want to move it up but we want to move it up now to now so that we can capture as much money as we want as we can maybe when i looked at it i saw february i just you know sherbert and all of that sure so that was february 23. 12 year 23 is what our plan was to do this sale but now we're doing it now we're not we're not bringing in 23 million dollars extra we're bringing only in 15 million the other eight is just refinancing you know uh old bonds and that that's all it is and so that that'll keep us at our annual debt rate and again if you recall i don't know this up time ahead in a couple years that debt rate goes down even you know to 10 million dollars the annual debt payment right so that'll be a tax savings also right okay so we're maintaining that also when on the 8 million that we're refinancing it'd be interesting to see what interest rate we're replacing on the old debt okay the new yeah i can have bob put together the spreadsheet sure i can do that and we're doing this to try to head off what we know is going to happen with the fed right in now i'm hearing they're going to do two more raises probably this year not just one was the latest um that they're looking at a second so i'm assuming that we want to speed this up to try to get the lowest yes exactly interest rate we can exactly right yes okay has it started going up already oh yeah oh yeah it is okay okay and that's why you know what what to understand is that this is actually the intent to sell now what will happen after you have your binder hearing then you'll have a resolution on the actual amount and at that time bob will able to get us a projection of how much of the 15 we can get you know we may only be able to get 14 million out of 15.
Please welcome the mayor of the city of Danbury, Mayor Espacito. Thank you. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. It's an honor for me as your mayor to be here tonight to help celebrate the class of 2022. What an outstanding job. First, I'd like to thank Kevin Walston, our superintendent, our board of ed members, principal Donovan, and most of all the teachers and staff for the such a fine year and all their hard work. And I'd ask for for a round of applause for those that thank you. You know, it seems like yesterday when I sat in one of those seats out there, I think it was right over there. It was 1979. You believe it? I know I look much younger, but back then I was anxious and nervous. And then the day came and we sat in those chairs and long speeches were made and the sun was shining as it is today.
it is actually done for 2020 and it's on our website and you can see it um and we did a report in a video summarizing it well i am when i read your question i talked to thea and realized that we just need to have a stable like we're coming in august because the inventory is done in august with the update so i can share that with the commission um but it is it was done for 2020 and 2020 was anomalous endemic had 20 almost 22 percent reduction and is is there roughly a time table when those updates could be expected um are we thinking like um june or what's what's the typical yep it's summer uh and it the plus or minus depending on the data access that you heard not talk about i think uh if you're open to it we just plan to have kind of a stable like in june or july we come with the update to the commission with the power tracking okay um the um next question i had was in the plan the plan is really nicely structured um hopefully washington county does something like this where every action had what were baseline assumptions what were what are indicators of success what is the timeline at the bottom of four various actions and then also in a summary table there's total costs total greenhouse gas emissions emissions reduce and as an output of that what is the cost per metric ton or kilogram i guess it is i can't know i think it's metric ton of co2 um e reduced and then also co-benefits and um just my thought or my question was would it make sense in future reports to report against those specific um let's say that specific framework um where we can really see um this tied to this and this is what the outcome was or we anticipate seeing the outcome at such and such a point of time yeah i think that it could be in the report or and and or it could be on the like the the dashboard so the way i sort of the dashboard is that we're actually tracking against those i know it's real-time reporting and then maybe the annual report um touches on that but directs to it and highlights you know we moved from here to here yep no i i really like that idea if it's on the dashboard um the next question that i had is um when um at the very beginning of 820 there was a uh prioritization summary that was generated and um my sense is that um we haven't heard much about it and i'm wondering if that is still actually um a a living summary and if it's still being updated and if for example resources via dollars be it staff time are being focused um according to that prioritization summary and for everybody's benefit basically it was um what does it cost what does it deliver in terms of reductions what is um i think there was something about the timing of the impact um let's see i wrote it down i think um all the feasibility and the co-benefits and then points were assigned and then based on that uh priorities were identified and for example some of the things that really rose to the top were some of the things that had big bang for the buck like energy efficiency and things like that where you're getting um a ton of co2 reduced for four dollars and then there's other things that we have in the plan that are in the thousands of dollars and so i'm wondering how how was that guiding um time resources put into there we go yep that's that was the the framework exactly thank you for pulling that up so various feasibility questions what level of control we have etc and then what kind of benefits and you can see on the right hand column there are points that are assigned and then with those being applied to all of the actions that missy showed at the beginning of a report then there was a summary of what those were i don't know does that document have the summary yeah this document is just the actual framework that was used and it's it is on the htc website if anyone wants to see it just wanted to show you right how is that actually guiding the application of resources and what we work on now versus what we work on in 2025 or 2028.
that's all so all right but why is that why is that i mean because of our debt limit okay yeah i i don't want to spill the formula for that because that's why yeah that's why it's our debt limit or whatever ea so yeah okay the petition period will begin with the bina hearing no the petition period actually begins uh the day that the publication goes in the newspaper after you approve the resolutions of the intent so starting the 22nd will begin the petition period of june okay yes yeah the the resolution of intent and publishing the newspapers start the 30-day period then you have to do the binding hearing it can overlap and but then you have to wait i think seven days after you do the body hearing before you actually issue the bonds so what you usually do is you schedule the binary hearing during the 30-day wait period so we could have it at our july committee of the whole see why not no brian was just mentioning me that the annual debt payment drops to 11 million in 2026 and then the next year goes down to 10 million and now right now we're at 12 million so it'll it'll go down a couple million dollars yeah i told them what to say yeah before it is i think i think that brian i think it dropped from 10 11 million to two million dollars right prior to all this borrowing and then that went out to 2034.
And I got to tell you, the first thing I thought was, man, when is this going to be over? But the good part is it's it's it is at the end of your uh educational career here in high school. And I just wanted to congratulate each and every one of you for the the effort that you put in over the last especially three years. You know, we know that word COVID pandemic and you you all know it best by staying home, remote learning. First you're in school, then you're in remote learning, then you wear a mask, then you had to take the mask off if you wanted, and then you had distancing. That wasn't easy for you to go through in the last few years and focusing on your education, but you did it and I can't congratulate you enough. I'm so proud of the class of 2022 for making it here today.
yeah so it's used in two ways one was a filter by which the actions in a200 even fell out right so uh everything went in and the 44 actions that came out were the 44 that ranked the highest in that framework so by default uh we use it in charge of like what we're investing in and then new actions have to run through that so things like telework um we just we didn't think it was feasible but it scored high feasibility now until it came in to the plan free uh the plan framework we've pivoted um away from using that for individual actions like is somebody gonna spend time on x or y the answer is gonna spend time on both and how we prioritize that now is in a project management framework we have a project management system where people have to fill out uh because they're proposing new projects that align with h zero they have to then actually file this whole charter that indicates what the action is what they think like the strategic opportunities how it aligns with the framework how it aligns with the goals and objectives to set by council and so we sort of use the prioritization prioritization framework because like the umbrella and then the specifics fallout through the project management system we use okay okay and then um let's see i think you mentioned so i had a couple of questions specific about looking forward um and i couldn't make quite what you were saying you talked about the landfill project and you talked about the department of commerce action is that project delayed or is it on still on schedule i'm waiting on updated pricing uh we were on ice for the two months when the investigation for those who are unfamiliar department of commerce launched an investigation right before we came to the energy commission i mean that i think it was that week like a few days before into solar panels manufactured in four countries and uh imposed a retroactive tariff up to two hundred percent of the cost of a system if you used any animal credit card for multiple countries but 86 of all solar panels have hearts from those four countries uh that we know of and likely many more did so it was an existential crisis for the industry things just stopped and our project was one and also stopped and uh what happened last week is the president put a ban one more domestic manufacturing of solar panels heat pumps and other equipment so that meant that the project could move forward with no risk of penalty while we're building the domestic ability to manufacture so last week we met on thursday uh with the project team we're getting updating pricing uh unfortunately when that happened some manufacturers shattered their doors uh and so we need to understand the impact but as soon as we get updated but actually in parallel we're moving the contract we were almost done with contract negotiations so we're moving those forward in tandem hoping that pricing comes back so i would say we lost two months but we might um if the pricing comes back great we might actually be able to still save harbor the assets this year which means we lock in the 26 percent so that's what i'm running on so it is still possible that we would be breaking ground next year on the project it would not be likely commercially operational but it's not impossible that it would be commercially operating the next calendar year okay that's good to hear i i read him i wrote in the email i read something like 80 large utility scale projects in the united states have been cancelled just because of all the uncertainty because if for those of you who hadn't heard those tariffs were going to be retroactive so it was really nuts i mean it just it with that kind of a tariff it would have just made all these projects uneconomical and people were not going to go ahead with a project that was going to be uneconomical um there was no mention of the municipal utility feasibility study could you give us a sense of with a timetable for that yeah so in the actual written report we have a line that just says continue the investigations because we are getting the time tables back right now from the bidders so i i just don't have a timetable to tell you definitively it would be done or it would not be done the stance that we have in the office and i think holistically as a city is we want it as fast is we can get really high quality data back so we will be pushing uh the vendors to move rapidly and to give us offerings through that process where they evaluate something and it is just not going to work we get it out quick so we we really minimize which means they can go faster with a smaller scoop of work so that's the only reason you don't see this i just don't have it yet right and what about the the feasibility study that um council approved in in in january the rfp is out right because yep bids are in um um right now and so we are starting to review an interview folk but that's they're combined right that task includes the scu and yeah uh the physical pc so that's that's part of this hangout so when is the decision anticipated on when the vendor is going to be picked probably probably july at the end of july more than you want to know i'm going on vacation so i leave on friday i'm not going to work so it'll be after i come out yeah okay um then yeah so we can maybe talk about some of those other maybe i'll just ask one last question because it came up um in public comment natural gas ban um this has been discussed um between um ken and you and me and in the three of us and others it's been something that ken has been pushing at the planning commission meetings and also here um is is the city's position absolutely definitive that we are going to wait um and determine see what happens with the uh the energy code and if the zero code is adopted as an appendix is that what what we're going to do i can't give you an answer that's going to feel meaningful on this what i can say is that we are looking at this from different angles including non-traditional angles to try to figure out where there's space for us to move and we have some ideas we have some ideas that are not going to fly but we kind of try to push we have some that are ambiguous as to whether or not we're allowed and here's somewhere clearly so we are right now doing some work of staff to figure out where there's space and most likely this will become a council question of how much risk we want to take as a city yeah i mean it's basically legal costs if we do some of this right we while it is true that michigan is a horrible state it is also true that our legislature is very quick to take away things especially when ann arbor does them and so we want to we want to try to present something that has a chance of actually surviving i've never learned [Music] so the answer is i don't know but we are working on it and why we i don't mean just us there's a lot the planning commission is very interested in this topic the planning department is very interested we've heard counseling we've heard the planning commission we've heard the public loud and clear um this is not a case where staff is just kind of back out of sales we are trying really hard to think that's important i think just you know we're here to advise council and i think can you know i he hasn't shared his calculations with me but i believe his calculations and i think what we're seeing you know what his concern is is that we should all be aware that while we're doing all these things that you outline that are really great um we're also doing things that are growing emissions um and you know there's other things for example that potentially are going to negatively impact us that we don't have a lot of control of you know the new university of michigan hospital um that's going to have um it's going to be a huge new building it's going to be ums but also ann arbor's emissions there's going to be 600 new employees just associated with that hospital and there's not 1600 new housing units in ann arbor so that means those people are going to be commuting in and i'm you know that that building is is also going to be a very very energy intense building all these new developments that are going to be heated with natural gas are are going to be offsetting a lot of the great things that you and your team have done so it's it's something that we need to be aware of that you know when these developments come online in 2026 2027 we're gonna see um those offsetting some of the great gains that that unfortunately we've um they will offset the great things that we've done unfortunately so okay that's that was it um and i think does anybody yeah go ahead council member i was also just going to add i mean to the to add to the complexity of kind of the ban on natural gas um there is actually senator zorn that has introduced legislation at the state level that would ban local bans on natural gas and so the current majority is not friendly to these types of things and so i think that also adds to the the challenge that missy was talking about i think we would need to consider really strongly if we were to move forward on something if that would actually give weight to his legislation at the state level to prohibit us from doing it right yeah the we might um we might uh open pandora's box in in a negative kind of way is that that's basically your point right yep it would it would close pandora's box on us doing other kinds of things that we might want to do okay i think um that's it we're down to now uh a few last topics first of all um osi reports and news from energy commissioners i think we just got a rather detailed report from osi but missing that there might be a few other things you want to share with us well i'll just say that on tuesday night uh at council we will be bringing it's the last council of the fiscal year um and we're bringing forward a resolution for a power purchase agreement for 3.1 megawatts of solar at central facilities water trooper flight research you can flat wheeler airport stair farm super exciting stuff uh two batteries large large commercial batteries and one two and five retailer two implement ev chargers uh 26 speed chargers that would go with the extra we just had so and during the fiscal year commissioners comments from commissioners updates from commissioners questions from commissioners so um i have some comments and what i thought i would do is also provide some background so um there's been um an email that was sent from ann arbor for public power to city council on that questions um the appointment of a uh or the recommendation of an appointment to the energy commission and what i first wanted to do was explain um what the process has been in recent years when um we make recommendations for appointments and then what happens then beyond that so i don't know that it's widely known but for the last um at least three years or so uh missy and i um carlene as vice chair and then our two council liaisons um meet and we review all of the applications that have come in in the last several years um so we're not just looking at recent applications we're also looking at ones um that are still on file with the mayor's office so i think everybody knows that there's a website where people can um basically make an application to join a commission or actually several commissions at any point in time and then as openings arise we look at who is applied we each study that um individually um in last couple of rounds i've done a summary and a spreadsheet um to sort of summarize some of the key information from each one of those and then we've had our two hour long hour and a half long meetings where we've um basically come to what we feel are recommendations on appointees that are then provided through missy to the mayor's office ultimately then the mayor uh has the right to make nominations um for the approval of city council and then those go to city council for approval i don't know um that everybody was aware of that process many of you or of us have um been serving and um maybe the i think some of the the process steps um changed a little bit um so recently we met and um one of the people that we recommend for not nomination um is um knox cameron knox is um a um local in ann arbor resident um he lives here in ann arbor he's raising um his um children here he's um an employee of um dte he works in the my green power program and there was um a big um concern that was expressed number of concerns that were expressed by hannover for public power i don't know if this was um sent on behalf of the whole organization or um um which i think it was or or just a couple of individuals or their border however they operate um but what i wanted to do is just share with you um at least my personal viewpoints on this um and i'm going to send these also to city council and i encourage anyone to speak up with their own opinions um obviously each one of us are have a right to our own opinions and obviously a2p2 had some concerns most of those concerns were related to dte and dte's actions with regards to its business and how those in some cases conflicted with the goals of a20 but what i wanted to say is remind everyone first of all that the energy commission has had members from investor owned utilities in the past so all of you know that we had um chuck hook um serving until recently um he as he told us on his last meeting day has been on the commission for many many years um we also had um as commission chair shoshan olensky she served on the commission for seven years including one year um as chair and she has been a long time employee of dte so um past practice at least has been that we have not um disqualified someone just because of who their employer is um in um in no one represents i think in in the commission um their employer they're representing themselves they're representing their own professional opinion and i think we all know we've studied and talked about the bylaws in the commission that the bylaws require that any individual recruits themselves or any other commissioner can raise the concern that someone may have an ethical or professional conflict of interest and if that's true in those cases then the person is to be recruited from voting as well as from any actually even any discussion on that matter um knox brings um diversity to the commission along multiple characteristics um he's younger than certainly i am um and a few other people on the commission um he's an african-american he went to university of michigan so he's got a strong background um knox in in my view should not be judged by what we might call the misdeeds or the the um the policies and strategies of of dte um most of those strategies are set at the executive level um he has a managerial level in the migrate power program but that program um was set up um several years ago before he joined that joined that program in 2019 so i i think it's it's um a stretch to look at knox and say knox is somehow unqualified to serve on the commission because of um because of that and then i would finally then just simply say knox is only one out of 15 votes on the commission so um he has an opportunity to raise his or horse opinions and concerns just like anybody else and um but that doesn't mean that he can uh be out vote voted if we feel differently we still have all of our individual votes and i might also point out that we i think most of us know that there's um one person on the commission who has been active within the a2p2 community i don't know if they have members or whatever they call their um their followers or whatever but um so it's it's not that we have um said well we're going to start to exclude people because of their affiliations so that was something that i wanted to to share um with all of you and um you'll probably catch wind of this um my understanding is it's going to be considered by city council but i wanted to share my thoughts with you and do that first with the commission before i did that with city council because i wanted to be just transparent about my my feelings on this and encourage anybody else to speak up um and to share their thoughts with city council members um between now and when that's voted on so um that was an update for me and i don't know if anybody else wants to comment on it um but um i don't see any hands up so i would just ask one last time if anybody else on the commission wants to speak to any other topics before we move to working group updates and i don't know that there's going to be much there because carlene dropped off she had written me she had some other commitment at um eight and then also we had edie drop out from her sorry my wife is boiling water in the other room um so uh edie is as you heard in in bonn germany and they are six hours ahead of us so it's already 2 a.m there so um i don't know if anybody else has any other updates regarding anything in a working group or from the environmental commission i'm not aware of anything um that's of particular interest from the environmental commission so um that takes us then to uh public input before adjournment and so i will read off the uh spiel here as far as how to call in so again this is an opportunity for people to speak for up to three minutes um if you are watching on ctn please call 888-788-0099 or 877-853-5247 and enter meeting id and this information um is on the video feed in a legistar city staff will um select callers that have raised their hand one by one using the last three digits of um their phone numbers and in order to raise your hand to indicate your desire to speak please press star 9 on your phone and then you're going to hear an automated announcement that the host is allowing you to speak please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments thank you dr stalton chair mursky ken garber again 28 hammer hill court um great presentations and very interesting discussion tonight just a quick question on the annual greenhouse gas inventory this is a beautifully detailed report with essential information for tracking the city's decarbonization progress i think i heard dr salt state tonight that the report covering 2020 is posted on the city's website i just checked and i can still only find the report from 2019.
it then go down to zero it went down to about two million dollars from 2027 i think to 2034. that's if we had not done anything exactly that's if we had not but we've already but we've already approved a lot right you did you did say it was enhanced huh so board the next item i want to talk about is again about residency and residency what i'm going to call residency verification and i i i think you know and when i looked at our registration process um quite honestly i saw some some holes in it i uh you know and that that's part of of looking at that and you know that area reports to me now so you know again as i've always shared with the board i look at processes and not people and our process was clunky our process is long our process is aggravating to our parents and the main part of that is the residency part of it quite honestly just because of having to submit documents and doing all of this also there are some issues when it comes to residency and our current students i think we all know and hear about students that are not residents of our district that are going to our schools and how do we solve that and again i only know one way to talk about things and that's straightforward i do not have the people power to do that to check that we we just don't we don't have that capability nor do we have the expertise and that and so i believe the best way to do this is to bring in a company and a contractor that's an expert in this so i'm going to share some things with you i want to talk about where we're at now in our processes and what my recommendation is as we go forward with residency to make it equitable and equal for everybody and that so the second page is about our board policy and about uh also it has some sightings on the illinois school code but again our policy is that only students that reside in the creep money school district should be going to our schools there are some exceptions i'm not saying there aren't any exceptions but there are you can see them there but my goal is to make a process not for the exception but for really everybody and then the exceptions will fall into line so the third page you're going to look at there's three types of residency verifications that go on one is for new students one is continuing students and there's one where there's a question of residency by someone during the school year then all of a sudden somebody says that person's not a resident what do i do all right so let me talk about what our current process is and that's on i think page four and i apologize for not page number knees i should have but anyway for new students right now the student fills out or the parent or guardian of the student fills out an enrollment application during our through our new student online registration process we confirm the adult's identity and relationship to the child by a birth certificate so during the process we ask for a birth certificate annette and they have to upload that or attempt to upload it sometimes they don't and then we have to confirm the age of the child because even though the parent fills that in on the application there are parents that don't know the age of their children i mean they just are and so we have to confirm that with a birth certificate that they may or may not upload then we have to confirm that the child resides in cm 201u by uploading appropriate and current documents and here's where the hang up is it's getting those documents uploaded by the parents or even getting them dropped off we have had and i will tell you this last year there was a backup of registration i know you heard about it i i know that okay and most of that when i looked at it was documents that were either not uploaded or were sent in and we didn't have the manpower and we didn't have a process in place and that there were literally 3000 emails sitting there of documents that were not looked at so think about that going trying to go through 3000 emails so that's part of it and then finally when that happens then we can enroll the student yeah there's a host of them and here's what the state says and and again john can correct me on this the state says you cannot require a certain document but you can give a list of options so we give a list of options to the parent like we we may ask for a tax bill we may ask for a lease we may ask for a utility bill and so there are different categories that we ask for normally there's about three documents we ask for if it's a lease they upload the lease but here's the thing some people only upload page one they don't do the signature page some upload a fake lease so now we have to figure out if it's right or not and then in the process you're trying to contact the parent so you can see the time this this all takes we have people quite honestly that and we can and our registration office keeps a log of calls and i've looked at this they've started calling in may and by august the parent still hasn't called them back and so and then all of a sudden what happens is come school time why isn't my students in school i've tried yeah you know so it's just a lot of and then you know parents have to have the ability and the knowledge to upload documents and they a lot of them don't i mean that that's just you know that's the way it is so for continuing students as you'll see on this page we have no residency verification right now we don't and then when we question a student's residency during the school year like if mail comes back there is no residency barricade verification i i and and i will tell you this it falls under me i don't have the people power to do it i just don't than that so the next page talks about national investigations and so let me share with you a little bit about them so you understand them they are licensed fully insured investigative agencies specializing in residency investigations they have 10 full-time investigators they have 22 part-time investigators they have three database analysis they have six office administrators based out of shanahan that's their website and you'll see in the table that i put there those are the kind of investigative services that they provide we don't utilize all of that but that's what they provide they're there are a reputable company ken is this we used in the past this is who we used in the past yes we used them a few years ago and then prior to that the district also used them too you will also see all i'm saying and they could be very well good but there was some a lot of dissentance among you know the public took this board among board members many of these board members and in ways that was deemed and seen by many to be inappropriate and things like that i i just don't want to go down that path again i don't have a problem with your recommendation to use a firm like this i just want to have some insurance that once i share maybe next meeting or something i share those things with you what was shared with me that was inappropriate actions carried out by this firm that you would do everything in your power if the board choose to go forward with this firm you would do everything in your power to keep those things from reoccurring yeah and i've had those discussions with them here here's what i i will say mr brown because it divided it divided it invited the community to the neighborhood and the board and all of that but the one thing i will say is that when that occurred last time there were approximately three to 400 students that were designated as non-residents right and they were given letters and not one of them fought that decision right that very well could be so well i know it's a fact i i i know that i'm not and so what i'm saying is that there's always going to be people that are going to complain about that all my references and again if you turn to the next page you will see the districts in our area that use national investigations all of them and that and again their process is pretty solid and i'm going to go through that process because when i say enhanced they are also going to be able to do new student residency verification for us and that so again i've had that discussion with them and i expect them to act appropriately honestly and above character and i only expect the best out of any vendor that i have and i will for sure have those conversations and have had those conversations with them yes okay that i agree with you i appreciate it again i'll have some offline conversations with you i don't want to prolong this well i remember what came up i i was there so i i know you know that so i'll i understand where you're coming from i do and i appreciate it sure so let me share with you if you go to the next page i've got two tables on there the residency and that's after the page after all the other school districts are listed so and here is here is what i'll say about those other school districts if you take a look at those in the in the area if they're not going there where are they going naperville so i don't think so either they're going to lincoln make their way north so anyway on the next slide i've got the residence veer verification process for new students so again you'll see in the red table is our current process beginning july 1 this is the process i would like to use the parent or guardian will fulfill we'll fill out an application on this new student online registration process we will confirm the adults identity relationship with a birth certificate along with the age however on a daily basis we will send national investigations the name and the family name they within 24 or 48 hours will tell us that that person is a resident once we get that back then we can continue the process we will not need a parent to upload any documents except the birth certificate the only other document we will need is a transfer form an isb transfer form if the student is a transfer from another school quick question is this is this um more to make the registration process smoother or is it more to see who's in legal and i think it's both about i think it's both so i think i think it helps our efficiency of our registration process because it doesn't drag out that process and it gets decisions done faster for us and i think it also uh assures us that we have another tool in place that we only allow residents of crete monet in the district so i guess so then my other question is i see the districts that you have on here right and i guess for them it was important i wonder how much it's helped their their bottom line how much it's helped their discipline because a lot of this is about discipline because if the kid didn't do anything we wouldn't have an issue but then i look at schools who don't have it right like i jokingly said lincoln way like lincoln way like the sandberg district like oak park uh i don't see unless they have it and i don't know right but i have friends and i know people who go to those schools who don't live in the area and they don't do an extensive back check like we do and i'm like i'm just trying to figure why is it more important for one area than another area i believe it has a direct effect on discipline and let me give you a perfect example i i received a an email from dr riley kiana riley about a student that had some discipline issues and that and said they're not a resident so i said okay so i sent it over to national investigation within 30 seconds i had a reply from them that said they're not a resident so did that stop the dis did that improve the discipline well i think it doesn't feel existent because that person was a person that had some very serious and i mean very serious offenses that was going to one of our schools that was not a resident so it's going to improve your discipline because the student's not here uh okay [Laughter] well i i think again you know there are individuals and i'm choosing my words carefully here there are individuals and families that are sending their children to schools and they're outside of the district because they're not able to go to their district schools because of discipline issues and they've been expelled well if they've been expelled they shouldn't be because it should be on on the farm now they may they may do it in lieu of exposure right but yeah so that's in lieu of expulsion but if they are regardless if this is about discipline or saving money because we don't have as many kids in the district it's about following our board policy i mean it's clear you either are a resident of crete money school district or you're not so so my i guess my question is then is it are we saving or gaining more money by spending money it's not worth this and to me it doesn't even come with any question if we either follow our board policy or we don't so then that following the board policy and that doesn't come into question so then we shouldn't question if we should have metal detectors because it it keeps uh it's a part of our safety so i shouldn't have questions about it because it's in policy just like nobody else should have questions about it because it's supposed to keep everybody safe i it's the question i have it's like the sec there's like the i don't know i don't think that it's bad for me to ask the question i didn't say i agree or disagree i'm asking you so that you can explain i guess i felt like you were trying to get after the motivation for doing this and the motivation if i had the motivation i would just say it okay okay i'm asking him because i know that people have these questions so i would have just said it if i okay if i thought it i think yeah and i think dr hall i think you know i'm going to go back to one of your previous questions you know my concern is making our processes more efficient and easier not only for our staff but also for our community and i think you know the notion of uploading documents and all of that is a very inefficient system and costs us time and labor from our standpoint along with aggravation on a parent standpoint and it gives them a bad taste in their mouth just before they start and let me say this that's so you can understand i sit in a meeting weekly and say i feel like because my superintendent and uh associate superintendent comes to me questioning well why aren't your numbers up why why can't they upload it why can't so i'm thinking that hey there's some good to this as well so but i'm asking the questions yeah because for me it's from i i'm sitting here thinking i wish they could be at this meeting hearing what you're saying right now about the difficulty that people that you have trying to get in touch with somebody who started the process who won't upload stuff and you're calling and you're going not so that's what i'm thinking so i don't want you to think that i'm no no i don't i i appreciate your questions you know it's just that you know i look at it from a process standpoint and i you know and again i i just think it's difficult for us to be in the residency field in making those decisions especially you know the numbers that we have and you know and again i i'm just going to be honest there are people that are trying to scam the system you know and it's it's hard to figure sometimes those things out and it doesn't mean that here's the other thing if if national investigation says to a new student about a new student that you know you're not a resident they will contact that and say you know we're coming up that you're not a ret not a resident can you give us some documents to show that you are you know so they're just not leaving it that way so they're doing the investigation and contacting the parent and all of that so again i just think it makes our our system a lot more efficient than that hey can when when a parent is contacted by an employee of national investigation how are they identifying themselves to the parent as a representative of national investigations so what they have is they have a letter they will have a letter on our letterhead that actually says that the school district utilizes national investigation to verify residency and it goes through that and they are they contact them and then they share that letter with them that they are a resident or a non-resident is that going to be communicated to the district that this firm is going to be used i will be talking about that okay yep i will do that yes um returning student let me go to let me go on returning students then the verification is during the summer they will get a list of all of our returning students they will run that list in their database to determine if there are any non-residence families and then they will be contacting them so all students will be checked for residency on an annual basis and then during the school year the next slide talks about during the school year if there's a request that we verify the residency status of students we will gather some data on that student we'll pass that along the national investigation to take a look at that and to give us a determination of that also so in the process we've kind of set up three different levels and covering all the various areas that we need to cover from a verification standpoint so then the next slide talks about communication to families and that so what my plan is i've already created a manual on the residency verification process we're going to post that i haven't posted yet because i wanted to talk to the board about this it has all of our policies in there it has all the appeal processes all of that in there it has been looked at by national investigations also we're going to post that to our website my plan is to do a mass mailing to all of our families this week i've got june 15th but i'll be getting to it this week and that will indicate that we are going to be using national investigations to verify residency of all students we are also going to send out electronic email electronic mailing and email to all of our families on the 16th that will say the same thing that's in the letter so we're going to do that by first class mail and by email we're going to post notice in skyward's family access and then also during the application process i have in there what's called a residency affidavit but i also as part of that affidavit that we'll be using national investigations to verify the residency of all students including those that are applying so i think i've covered from a communication standpoint how we're going to get this out to everybody both electronically and by first class mail cost wise i put that in the next step and you'll see that the new student verification i've estimated that as about 400 students at 300 at three dollars not 300 three dollars each so that's about twelve hundred dollars about eighty four hundred dollars for residency of returning students along with uh if they have to do some investigation i budgeted about 15 000 or like the budget about 15 000 so the total cost of this is about 24 600 is what i'm estimating questions or comments that's what i have i saw that number we had a similar number i think we were not to exceed ten thousand dollars something to that effect the last time but i think at the end of the day i think we expended something like seventy thousand dollars yeah i can get you the exact number i don't know that off yeah but i can get you the exact number of what we spent before so i just wanna know what will drive this 24 thousand dollars up in any fashion yeah i think what would drive it up it would be any investigations that need to be done um that's like that's that was you know that was leading me to the next question about can you give us an example of a typical physical investigation that may occur sure going out to the home of a person that allegedly is not do not have a child legally to attend our school what are they boundaries the investigators boundaries sure so normally what what occurs on the investigation so let's take a let's take a case where i get notified or secretary cosman says hey this person we believe is not this student is not a resident of our district so what will happen i will gather some data put that together i'll ship that off the national investigation national investigations will do a couple of things one they'll run it into their through their database and they have a proprietary database that is incredible i will tell you that i when i was at troy i had access to that and the actual federal government came in to interview me in order to give me access to that and it goes through everything so so they have access to that so they will look at that if there is some question about then the student living there then they will go out to the home and they will ask to talk to uh the parent to see if the parent is there they'll look to see what cars are in the driveway are the cars that are registered to the parent there or not so they'll look at those things and that do they go into the home i don't know that mr brown i honestly don't know that i don't believe they have access to go into it but i i don't know that i'd have to ask them what they do and that but for the most part they're interviewing the people that live there to see if those are the people and are the parent of the guardian of the person that lives there okay yeah if you can get that information for sure i think that is imperative that i know that [Music] because you know again just he said she said i want to know facts that these investors get these investigators came out to homes and asked to look into bedrooms and things like that i don't know if that's true i don't i don't know if that's true but i can tell you right now if the databases that ken are talking to are extremely comprehensive it go they're looking at utility bills they're looking at cell phone records they're looking at social security numbers and they're looking for patterns i would say 99 of the stuff is done from a desktop and then they're going to go verify that with with the checks which is going to uh be in line with what our policies are but i think you're looking i think if i'm correct they're not doing a criminal investigation on this this is this is something different and they're going to handle it differently most of this is is supported online by documents they may have to go to the courthouse and pull a marriage file or something like that but this is uh this is almost all uh based online it's all online online documents and like i say pat you know i'm all for it as our president said too you know it's our policy kids students and nobody should not be students to not be in our district if they do not live in the district and once we see some type of sign that that student do not live in a district how do we go about it there's got to be some measures and it has there has to be measures that are fair are equitable and that's going to be my question ken if we if we have a verification during the school year we find somebody who's not a resident what are our options how's that handled um yes so normally what's happening i'll give you an example i know last year i had a residency hearing um last year i don't know what it was but we had a residency hearing so the parent was there and they were not a resident in that i i will tell you that right now they were not a resident there was about two or three months left in the school year and that and the parent had some pretty severe issues and all of that so the option was let them continue for the rest of the year drop them right there you could charge them out of district tuition if you wanted my decision was i let them continue for the rest of the year for the sake of the child and told them they could not register for this year and they did not and that so there are options that are there um you know a lot of them i i i just will share that you know each case is an individual case and so that's the way you really have to look at it with the facts and all that stuff if there are some extenuating circumstances i think the one thing that i want to share from a procedural standpoint is from my understanding there was some something that if a student moved out of the district after junior year or during their junior year in high school they could finish their high school year their senior year here as a non-resident uh where is that coming from well it's not but that was a practice that was taking place i would just i would just say that right out so you know i my recommendation is that practice should not take place that i believe that everyone should be a student and again if you move out of the district during the school year you have a choice of finishing the school year you can you can do that you have to provide your own transportation but you can do that than that however i don't believe it's in the best interest of the district that we allow students to come back just for their senior year and i believe we've had some cases that have gone to the board about that too yes yeah yes so so that was a practice that was taking place yeah yeah i would just this one question last question for me is how do we handle i know this is a very sensitive topic regarding this matter is the mckinney-vento i believe i'm pronouncing sure act you know homeless sure students yes and again that's a sensitive topic and how invasive do we engage ourselves or engage this company to verifying that this person is a homeless person a legitimate homeless person or playing the act sure that that recommendation will come through carmen carthan who is our our homeless liaison our mckinney-vento liaison she works under me and so she works as part of our registration office so she handles all of our homeless when call i'm not going to call homeless i'm going to call mckinney vento students and that so if someone comes in and says they are they want bikini bento what carmen will do will be interview them to make sure they fit under the mckinney-vento act and then you know she will ask for documentation if she feels that they need to be investigated by national investigations she will she has that at her disposal but she does not do that automatically what documentation do you ask for well i i think she asks you know where they are where they're living you know that that type of thing because there are people that you know they they may be living at a motel so where are you living are you living at the motel you know that or they can tell you they they're living on the street how do you validate that uh that that's the tough part of it and again i heard there was a slew of kids getting off the train in university park and attending our school and i think that was one of the things that drove this whole conversation the last time around and so how do you validate those kids and verify that those kids are still in the system or well actually homeless so that's i just you don't have to answer it now but i just throw that at you for mr brown i've had that complaint since i came on the board and at one point a previous superintendent looked into it and they were mckinney-vento kids and my understanding at that point i was told is that the federal government or the state government or some government pays for them because they started at crete money that year and now they're out of crete mountain either homeless somewhere else they're they're living in a shelter or whatever they have the right to continue that entire school year with us they some government pays for them to come there's a bus that picks them up at the train station brings them to the school and then returns them back to the train and that comes up every year because there are people who are riding the train to go to work and they see all these students getting off and when i i brought it up at a meeting at the beginning when i first came on the board and that was the answer i got so i every year assume that that practice continues because it's not changed well that could be that can be true yeah um that they can they can continue the year or you're right well i don't know a year i think if they are following ever they can well i think it depends on if they started at crete money just like i started then i believe i think they can go because i haven't done mckinney-vento in a while so i wanted to say that but i do know that they um i mean we talk homeless homeless can be a number of things i can't be living with my cousin with my eye with my grandmother he's shacking up we're doubling up hey now so it's it's not just right because sometimes we think that it's just living in the hotel or being on the street and then sometimes people look at it like well you're living with so and so so you're not home but you really are home that was the explanation i got them and i recall them saying they could finish that year it could very well be the four years i don't really know but i do remember that was the explanation that i was given i can just tell you that the honor mckinney dental if you qualify for for it then you have a choice you can either attend the last school of attendance so that would continue from your year right or where you're physically located not that you're resident but if you're in if you're doubling up with somebody a friend or a relative or or if you're living in a hotel if you're living on the street if you're physically located there that's one or you can go to the last school of of attendance but if they started where they're physically located then they stay at that school they don't come back to that school they they still have that choice okay but they can't flip flop no i can't i think they can they can't they can't those things you can flip flop those those the two but but i i just want to clarify that some people think that means they can go wherever wherever they want to they cannot they but they can go either to where they're physically staying or where the last school that they were at where they they were properly there okay and then they can continue there as long as they're not they don't have a residence okay and that that can be checked every 18 months so mr brown also on the kenny bento students just so you know the board is aware of this too is that so every year mrs carthage meets with every family on an annual basis to recertify them kind of call it that for mckinney-vento services and that so every year she's meeting with them to see what their living arrangements are and all of that and interviewing them also during the year then she's in contact with them to supply um whatever needs they have you know that we have at our disposal and that too you know whether it's you know maybe providing some gas cards to them to you know transport the student or something like that okay all right and i know you're going to do everything you could can in a in a positive way to make this process work so i just want you to continue down that path and i'm just asking things to be equitable i agree with this whole process and again i think every board member here do not want kids in our district that doesn't belong here i think we all for that but again those that have have been identifying to not belong here that that process is thorough it's equitable non-invasive and we take you know we feel good about that i agree with that 100 yes okay ken what else do you have on your okay the the final ones are just uh payouts that will come before the board next meeting uh for all of the capital projects that are taking place uh there's four payments and those are for the four main projects that are taking place so what about the discussion of moani village and development plan discussion oh yeah john i'll stay here but john you go right ahead all right uh dr karen and ken have informed me that they were contacted by the village of moani that there's a developer interested in a location within the um and i checked i don't think it's currently in the village money so i'm wondering if they're going to it's will county but they must be going to an exit uh because why else would the village money be do we know where it is i'm sorry you know where it is yeah do your mic oh i thought that was ridgeland i thought it was a property behind my house i don't believe it's actually your house they could have it i paid too much taxes well they didn't annex the village of money and makes the property right it's on ridgeland off of road just west of the i-57 east of ridgeland and just yeah do you know where the thornton's gas station is there mr yeah behind there yeah down down the street down that way yeah oh no you said easter ridges and that's originally the thornton is right there thornton is just right on the corner of ridgeland road so it's on the east side of ridgeland it's on the east side of ridge and thornton is on the east side originally the throne is on the floor same side but all the way down behind thorns okay okay let's move on yeah well they're interested in putting up an office warehouse they want uh they were interested in some kind of incentive tax wise to deny okay um so uh you know we we talked to them explained well you know we we can't do anything about their assessments in will county but uh the district has the power to to grant a partial tax abatement uh the limitation is five years it because any commercial industrial property you can do that if you think it's necessary to incentivize somebody to develop within your district okay but there is also a monetary cap on that it can't be more than four million dollars over those 10 years from all of the taxing bodies involved i think we would be the only one they were talking to but we're 75 percent of the tax bill and ice and and we had a discussion this morning um with the village attorney and and and uh uh ken and carol were saying that you know one of the things the district would be looking for is a contribution toward the foundation for the development to assist with the financing and the development of a multi-sports uh complex facility and um you know denied and uh oh there you go see the lights went out we're done no all you are all right so i you know i said you typically with these things you know we we don't just say yes or no we put conditions on them so um and um you know so i i talked to them uh i mentioned well again i uh i it was just uh the village attorney on the phone and uh he didn't think any of those things were gonna be a problem but i would say look uh before we you you ask for a uh economic benefit from us we're looking for things like uh you're gonna pay your taxes on time you're not going to try to detach you're not going to develop this into an unwanted use you're going to not file tax rate objections or that those kind of things that can be an economic detriment to the school district and then at that point if they're willing to accept those then it's it's um uh it's it's just a matter of the dollars and cents um is it you know would they actually develop this without the incentive if they would develop it without the incentive there's no reason for you to give this so john let me make sure i understand this is this is a property that's going to be built in money or monies annex and this well i thought it was already in money because we were talking to the the village attorney but then when i looked at the tax bill today uh it's it's it must be unincorporated so i have a feeling what's happening is that they're going to be annexed into the village yeah they did they did tell me that in our original conversation that they were going to annex that into the village so so right now is it the thorn in that other complex this right there by i-57 is that a tif area apparently they were it's not a tiff i know that and uh that they the village looked at it and tried to see if it could qualify for tiff and they felt that they couldn't which is amazing i've never heard a village say they couldn't tiff something wow uh so wow yeah uh so um this is not a tiff this is not what they're talking about um so the only other way for them to incentivize through the tax process is for a discretionary abatement of their taxes um and we can put whatever strings you want on it you know again any time you're talking about a tax incentive like this it's discretionary with you and the purpose of it is to entice them to develop here because this would be new property which would mean that as it's constructed it would be a revenue boost to the district if you for a temporary period of 10 years you reduce their tax burden it's going to be it'll only be a reduction in the additional amount that you're getting and at the end of the 10 years it's going to be you're going to get the full benefit of that if you don't abate the taxes you're not losing any money but you may not get the development so you have to make a judgment on whether you know 50 of something is better than 100 of nothing uh if you know if but if if we think that they're genuinely going to develop this anyway you know then then there's no there's no reason for it the reason to do this is to try to entice them to actually build in this location and you know so we will get something in 10 years as opposed to a typical tip of 23 years with additional 12 years oh yeah yeah this is so that's right this isn't like a tiff okay you'd get it right away and you know their estimate is is a million they'd be paying a million dollars of taxes a year to the school district okay after the 10th year well yeah if if they develop the based upon the value that they're placing on it the tax burden would at least for the school district would be a million dollars so if you decrease that amount in order to bring them in what whichever poor you know if you if you give them a tax break of 400 000 a year you're getting 600 000 additional dollars for 10 years and then after the 10th year after the 10th year you're getting a million dollars get it okay all right so if that's necessary to bring them in it's win-win okay the real question is um you know you know we're bargaining here what is it that they need from us to make sure they actually really will develop this property i guess the other consideration would be you know are they bringing workers that would live in the district that would bring children you know yeah does it become a burden on the district because they're bringing more families more well i mean without the income it's an office warehouse so first of all it's not residential so right there by itself this development is not going to place burden on on our students on our ability okay will it bring in more workers you know and where will they live who knows but typically these warehouses don't they don't have it's not it's not a factory it's not a retail um you know yeah so i don't know how many actual workers would be okay uh would be in this but th this is to be the type of development that that would be great for a school district because it's relatively yeah it's not it it's not going to be a burden on your services it's just going to be extra tax dollars so who needs to put together a proposal of what we would get in return and how does that get to the board for a vote yeah so i think and again john you can jump in on this um i'd like to talk in close session about some negotiating of this and i think we i do we have that capability john of talking about negotiations about um or not really no because that's negotiating with your employees so um we but we do need guidance from the board so um you know if um i guess how much are are we willing to first of all is the board interested in this is it yeah i don't think so okay does uh one question on does this set any type of precedent in any manner it's not binding president you can judge each case on its own okay yeah how do you determine whether or not this is the the the thing that makes them do it or not i mean how do you know a leap of faith it really is it really is yeah it's difficult yeah i mean obviously the the village is working this they're they're kind of brokering it um they don't have a sense about how serious they are with or without this deal i mean that's that's kind of the questions we need to ask the villagers you know i don't think they would be coming to us if they didn't think this was necessary but we do need to ask those questions so um john i'm going to talk numbers then okay okay thank you all right so i have to consult with my attorney here so how that goes so my thought is uh i think a new stadium football stadium is going to cost us somewhere between 15 and 18 million dollars to build i believe that what we should do is say to them we offer them this incentive but also say to them that you if you want the naming rights on our facility that's gonna cost you five million dollars and you can pay that over um either a 10 or a 20 year period depending on how we have to finance that because we are going to have to finance that um i think because i've used that number as about a third of what the cost is in order to get the naming rates and that i think we leave it at that and i think then we let them say we don't want the laming rights but maybe we'll give you this and then the board can decide what they want to do and that but again i i understand that this is as far as i'm concerned virgin ground of what other districts has ever done i've done this many times on the college level i mean that's how you get your money but you know it doesn't happen very often in the high school level or on uh and that so this is brand new and this is something that is uh you know kind of thinking through this of how you do this because again this is part of how much you ask for you don't want to ask for too much you don't answer too little you don't want to you don't want to do that so in any event we are going to have to finance it i believe the donation would have to go through to the education foundation because they are a 501c uh they couldn't donate it directly to us and then the foundation would have to donate it you know over to us or cut us a check and that i mentioned it on a yearly basis because again if we finance it we would finance it over you know 10 or 20 years whatever we can i will share with the board i think the soonest opportunity i i think it's going to take them a year and a half to two years to develop that property they want to try and fast-track this as quickly as possible they want an answer as quickly as possible because again as interest rates go up it's going to cost them more money so they want to do this as quick as possible so we're looking to get something to them john has already worked on a preliminary agreement he just needs to put the numbers in there um so so again that that's kind of my thought on it and you know my idea doesn't mean it's right honestly but it's just something that you know um i i've been kicking around and that and of course i've got dr hall in my ear so you know ken can i ask a question sure what exactly does naming rights mean so in essence what you would do is you would name the stadium whatever the company is so you know let's say it doesn't mean they could just make up a name no no we wouldn't know whether they're willing to do that or not because it's not it's a development it's not like and john and i had the discussion you know it's not like it's wintrust bank or it's not like it's the united center or anything like that you know and that so it you know it depends but i i again i don't want to start low i don't want to start real high john thinks i'm crazy anyway so well the thing i just want to point out is the maximum we can abate by law over 10 years is 4 million if we ask them to donate more than the four million dollars i i why would they yeah because because you asked if you don't ask you won't get it well i can tell you they are looking and viewing this meeting that's right no i hope we don't try to have strategies it doesn't that's all i'm saying we ask for more again what we can do or not we you know john would do this is he can put an agreement together uh that we could share with the board um and then if that's if you guys are okay with that then then we can go ahead and or you know have any other thoughts or ideas you know then we can uh share that with with their attorney yeah a million dollars to add those additional rooms to the middle school sounds great to me you get my vote take that dr hall so again ken i mean is this something that you could yeah it's on yeah again i mean is this something you could put together as an action item we can vote it up or down or we can table it i mean john yeah i mean i i i got the agreement i could it's just filling in the numbers well we have to share it with them i don't know what their feedback is going to be but i really don't think the agreement's going to be the problem i think it's going to be uh the dollar number so yes we can bring this to you as an up or down and we're going to have to negotiate we were talking to the village we don't we don't know what the developer will what their position is i'm wondering and and again i don't know what the best way to do this is but i'm wondering if we should negotiate first get a final number and then bring that to the board i i don't know yeah i i think so okay well but i think i think we needed guidance first to know right i agree you know because there are some boards that say we're not abating taxes you know if you want to come here fine if you don't you don't yeah well to me that's not what i'm hearing from to me as i kind of understand it's found money i mean it's either it's something we're not getting today no no no no no because because we would theoretically we would get 10 million dollars over those first ten years we we can't by law abate more than four million of that okay awesome okay well you you work on the timing i mean if it makes sense to come back next week if not then it has to be a july item yeah i think it's going to take it's probably going to be a july or august item and something like that so but you know i think john you know we can work on the number and then share with them we can negotiate that and then bring it to the board when that's right very good okay okay all right okay next up teaching and learning discussion consolidated district plan good evening everyone i do not have a presentation this evening i will present our end of the year academic report at the board meeting next week we will also be coming to you with uh on the consent agenda for next week for the approval of the consolidated district plan this is a plan that we ask you to approve every year before we can submit our application for our title funding and our idea funding we must have you approve this plan so you have the plan it was in the fyi and then of course it is attached to the report for this evening any questions i have a question about something else yes did you have some and i i i'll have to look at the fyi i don't see it attached to this though or am i missing it to this yeah i mean do you see it on your computer no it's not um but that's fine i'll look back in the fyi i just had a question because somebody asked me this and i didn't know the answer but there is a specific political ad that is running that states that sex education is taught in public schools in second grade and i'm just asking if that's a blanket statement or that person was making a statement specifically about where he is or what he's run into is i am not familiar with that political ad um we teach what is um it's jesse sullivan i mean it's okay for the tv yeah not familiar with that but um sex education is not part of the second grade curriculum but i i will definitely look that up and see what what is taught that is uh grade level appropriate uh we have sex education begins at the middle school okay thank you i i didn't think we were but you know then they put the doubt in your mind like did i miss something i i will check what we have that may be age appropriate and and my guess is that we do have curriculum that talks about appropriate touch and mandates that we have yes right thank you any other questions okay thank you okay so we got one okay next up is the personnel report can i have a motion to approve the personnel report including the approval of certified staff employment reassignment resignation and educational support staff employment reassignment and resignation moved second keep this train moving here any questions on the personnel report comments okay roll call brown isn't i mrs galbraith aye dr hall aye mrs walters aye mr smallish aye vice president root aye president albright aye motion carries okay before i do old business or new business just board members we do have about five items in closed session tonight so choose wisely with old and new business is there any old business is there any new business looks like my little comment worked okay can i get a motion to go into closed session for the purpose it falls under three exemptions the kind of five items that falls under three exemptions one the appointment employment compensation discipline performance or dismissal of specific employees two collective negotiating matters between the public body and employees or the representatives and three litigation when an action against defecting or on behalf of a particular public body has been filed or is pending before a court or administrative tribunal moved second roll call mrs galbraith aye dr hall aye brownis and i mrs walters aye mr smallish aye ruth vice-presi president albrecht hi okay we are in closed session at 9 20.
It's an honor to be here and I would say just remember one thing, once a hatter, always a hatter. God bless you all. [Applause] [Music] [Applause] I would like to introduce the Danberry High School class of 2022's validictorian, Timothy Chen. [Applause] Okay. Thank you, Mayor Espazito, board of education chairperson chilleski, superintendent Walston, members of the board of education, principal Donovan, our high school faculty, parents, and members of the class of 2022. And a special thank you to all the cameras recording me that might just haunt me for the next few days or years. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Timothy Chen. And well, there's something I have to admit. Since the end of sophomore year, my ability to communicate, which was already far from spectacular, took a hit. So, I went to the internet and did some research about how we use language.
maybe i'm looking in the wrong place but when i spoke at the green fair on friday with thea jagerlander from osi she told me it wasn't posted but offered to send me a copy anyway if it hasn't been posted i hope it soon will be if it's there somewhere now my apologies i will check back with osi in a couple of days if i still can't find it thanks that is also what i attempted to do i also mentioned in my email i searched on legistar for greenhouse gas inventory and inventory and both last year and this year and could not find it in 2000 and um whenever it was 20 when we did the 2019 inventory then it was on let posted on legistar and linked to in the agenda so you might take a look at that any other i'm sorry i was trying to find it yeah that's all right do we have any other columns caller ending in zero one zero we do not hear you yet we're still moving there we go hello yes can you hear me now yes uh good evening this is wayne out with the our former energy commissioner i was on energy commission for 26 years talking to you from my all-electric net zero home in norville township in jackson county first i want to applaud the julie roth and entire osi staff for the several megawatts of installed solar generation it's really a wonderful accomplishment i totally agree with the previous speaker ken garber that the continued use of natural gas and the installation of additional natural gas usage is totally detrimental to accomplishing the a20 plan since co2 remains in the atmosphere for hundreds of years the area under the curve is of utmost importance we simply have to stop combusting now i do however understand that the pushback is already occurring on the state level as there is a michigan bill senate bill 820 that would ban such a ban on natural gas interestingly the fact that this bill is in progress indicates that the current law does not as ken suggested ban a ban on new gas installations i would like to propose a different ordinance proposal which although not an entire ban may go a long way to having the same effect without a ban from the state the ordinance would simply require that all new construction would require that the electric service capacity load breakers and electrical wiring to the locations of all installed natural gas appliances be provided furnaces and boilers and sucks in order to allow for the future conversion from natural gas to electricity this would both reduce the cost of future conversion and increase the cost to the developer such that it becomes cheaper for them to go all electric i think that is something that you should propose to the legal department and see what they think about it because i really do believe it would be difficult for the state to tell you that you couldn't require that thank you very much um i would only observe um that um i've done a fair number amount of research and spoken actually to a company in pennsylvania that designs and builds and develops net zero multi-family um construction um and their construction costs are actually the same or lower and the the state of pennsylvania has done extensive um comparisons on and benchmarks um of traditional construction against um these best practices from a number of different developers and it's it's simply not a cost premium to design highly efficient all-electric buildings so um anything we can do either convincing or with the kinds of ordinances that have been proposed i think is something we really should take a look at again um any other comments before we adjourn seeing none uh it is 8 16 and i thank all of you for attending night and for your public service um i wish you a nice rest of your evening this meeting is adjourned thanks good night have a great trip you
i would think we're going to be at least an hour unfortunately so yeah um i don't think we've decided that yet so the only thing that we're going to do when we come back though is adjourned so um that's uh we we as a board have to talk about that we haven't yet okay okay i need the restrooms um she'll get it done for me [Music] um what do you need help with um so [Music] test test test [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] hey good i got something out here hey i sent you a i think [Music] oh [Music] so [Music] uh no it shouldn't work i [Music] thank you yep [Music] yeah hopefully i gotta go pick up a sick baby you know what yeah we'll pick up a sick baby [Music] yeah so all right [Music] hmm [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] okay i'm here tonight that's for sure yeah i still got a sick baby i gotta pick up on the way home i'm sorry i still got a sick baby i gotta pick up on the way home so yeah it's one of those nights [Music] yeah oh i'm remote tomorrow so it won't be that bad so [Music] um [Music] i here [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Applause] so [Music] so [Music] don't have a choice is the tape rolling uh it's it pointed at the sky and it's muted okay yeah i mean uh i there's still a full session because it was something i don't need to be in there so okay i'm heading out but i'm guessing 20 minutes more um i told cheryl i know i asked if there was a reason we still needed to be doing this letting this tape go just to stay adjourned so i know nelson said you talk about it i don't know if we can yeah no not not right now i'm sure he didn't want to talk about it right now but yeah because you know i think it originally started doing it because i thought something else was going on in the past i think things are different now yeah so have a good night [Music] so [Music] so superintendent just came out and she said probably gonna be maybe so [Music] so [Music] it's rolling dice most nights are pretty good [Music] but once i start approaching over five hours might as well just ask for over time but most are fairly short [Music] so [Music] so foreign [Music] oh [Music] can i get a motion to adjourn some moves
And it turns out that someone back in 1989, described how humans in our culture have cooperative conversations. And I decided to take a look at what Paul Grace, this philosopher of language, had to say about it. He describes four components or maxims of conversation in his cooperative principle. These are quantity, quality, relation, and manner. First is quantity. Enough is enough. Make a contribution without including unnecessary information. During the past few years, that balance was hard to find. Some of us use any excuse to prevent social isolation. setting up designated times for FaceTimes or Zoom calls to have nearly meaningless conversations like what superpower we would want to have or something like that. Others prefer to draw away fading into the background of our digital lives and hiding behind the black tiles on our screens. The second maxim is quality. To be cooperative communicators, we need to be informative but also honest.
This is especially difficult when the internet holds all the answers to our homework, quizzes, and tests. I mean, not that the internet is all that honest with its Pacific Northwest tree octopus and all, but you know, the third maxim is relation. Be relevant. Stay on topic in the conversation. Focus on the task at hand. This wouldn't have been a problem without all the distractions. We know how easy it was not to pay attention when you can join class while driving down the road to Bagel Man or Starbucks. The fourth principle is manner. As the saying goes, it's not just what you say, but how you say it. This is the manner in which we speak. Avoid confusion. Be concise. Get the point across clearly. The cooperative principles, they're guidelines, not requirements. After all, Grace himself stated his principles in a lengthy, unclear manner, as philosophers tend to do.
But there are also ways to intentionally flout his guidelines. We know how it feels when our friends leave us unread. They're breaking the maximum of quantity by saying nothing. But we recognize that not getting a message is a message of its own. I and likely many of you have not been following Grace's principles, but I don't think we are choosing to flout the maxims. We violate them. Not on purpose. We didn't choose to become less cooperative people, but we did. And we faced the shocks when we returned in person to work in groups. We quickly regained a humbling awareness of our shortcomings. But it still took us a while or me at least to regain some ability to communicate cooperatively. But we did it. We managed and we survived the awkward presentations, the inerson meetings with our online teachers and just being in a classroom with other humans.
When the world reminds us of how important cooperation is, we should be aware of when and how we break the principles. We can choose to intentionally flout the maxims to convey a message, but we should be mindful when we do so. Because when we become more mindful communicators, we also become more cooperative ones. Thank you. [Applause] I would like to invite Senator Kushner to the microphone to say a few words. Thank you. And congratulations to all of you who are graduating today. to the staff, to the teachers, to the administration, to the board of ed, um, but especially to you, Timothy, because you have excelled above all others. And so, I do have a citation for you, a special citation from the state of Connecticut General Assembly. Official citation introduced by Senator Julie Kushner, representatives are Kanti, Godfrey, Harding, Alli, Brennan, Callahan, and Gucker. That's the entire Danberry delegation.