Tolland Board of Education - March 19, 2025

001Go. All right. Go ahead and get this meeting of the board of education started at 7:06. You will all rise for the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God. Indivisible with liberty justice for all. All right. Thank you all. Dr. Willlet, acknowledgements. Right. So, we we do have um some artwork this this uh this month that was provided by the students for um high school. and I'm just going to acknowledge their um their contributions. I also think I have some copies of the artwork here. As you know, the Palm Public Library now does um does the evening for the parents to come in and check out the kids artwork. It features uh different kids every

002month. And so for this month we have Sky Peromo, Avery Wank, McKenzie Snow, Cristallia Constanine, Whitney Singer, Lacy Booten, and Piper Bootin as the kids who contributed the artwork. And this is their artwork um that was displayed at the library. I'm trying to get it. Wow. Pretty cool stuff. Um pretty amazing. And then there's So, um, thank you to them for that. Obviously, they're very talented, much more talented than myself. I can't get this thing to stop jumping around. Sorry, making everyone nauseous. Um, you see, they're amazing. capabilities and some wonderful thank you to them for helping adore in the library. Um, and thank you for helping make everything a little bit more beautiful. That's that's our acknowledgement for today. Next week we have um style Victorian the gymnastics team attracting expertise. All right, appreciate

003it. Do we have any additions to the agenda? Yes. I'd like to add uh um I'd like to add a uh budget. I know we're going to have a deeper dive next week. I'd just like to see if maybe we can spend uh just a few minutes just discussing the budget as a whole and materials that might be supplied and what uh just have a maybe open discussion for a short period of time if possible. So we're not trying to jam everything into next week without having to I'm one main folk contract. Want to discuss the bus contract? Yeah. Is that possible? Be prepared to talk about the best contract. Well, it depends on what aspect and I can talk about it, John. Okay. So, the deep dive would need to know specifically what we're

004looking for. And to your point, Brian, I think and I think you said the intention next week go pretty much the entire meeting next week is dedicated to that the conversation on the budget necessary reduction. It's uh I think Dr. Willlet you have presentation with the council on the 24th 24th there it is and then the 26th I could come back with and set anything result. Uh but as far as adding just a a high level yes uh budget discussion specifically less contract type things that this one do we have a second sure second okay discussion just to clarify what is this what does this conversation look like if we're going to be discussing the whole thing next week what are we what are we accomplishing this week I just wanted to touch base and

005I did I want to touch base on a u an idea I had regarding the bus contract and routes and uh what's possibly feasible if on a top level um of the middle school and high school routes. You want to wait till next week, you can wait till next week. Try not to have an eight hour meeting next week. Well, respectfully, that's, you know, I'm I'm more so curious. You know, typically when items are added to the agenda, I'm more so looking for, you know, the specific of what is being discussed. That's more so what it was. I'm not that's not I'm not saying let's not discuss it. I'm more it was a curiosity question. Thank you for answering. Yeah. Okay. So, one, two, seven. Uh so additions to the but additions to the agenda

006require 235. Okay. So we've got seven of us here. Any further discussion? Hi. Bill. Hi. Burn. Hi. Katie. No. Jayen. Hi. Dana. No, she's not on. Okay. For a second. You're right. Thank you. Uh and then I'm in I so Dr. Willlet let us add uh high level discussion specifically bus contract ideas as item. Thank you, sir. Any other additions to the pair to the agenda? All right. Approval of the minutes. Entertain a motion to approve the February 26, 2025 minutes. So move. Do I have a second? Second. Any discussion? Right. Hearing none. Reinie. Hi. Bill. Hi. Hi. Brian. Hi. Katie. Hi. Jaden. Hi. [Music] The eyes have it. Public participation. Members of the Talon Board of Education welcome the members of the public to share their thoughts and ideas at this time. When appropriate

007to do so, members of the board and the administration may respond to comments during points of information. However, in consideration for those in attendance and in an effort to proceed in a timely manner, follow-up discussions may need to have take place outside of the meeting. Uh if you would like to speak online, raise your Zoom hand. In the room, raise your hand and be recognized. As always, please start with your name and address for the minutes. Rebecca Rzley. Hi, good evening everyone. Rebecca Rzley, 103 Mountain Spring Road. Um, if you can hear music in the background, u my apologies. My son is practicing guitar. So, you may hear a little background noise and I didn't have time to put my uh my own earbuds in. So, hopefully it's not too loud or distracting. Um, first

008of all, thank you for all of your hard work. I know that this um budget has been challenging as it always is. Um, and I just wanted to acknowledge that, um, you know, that that I I certainly appreciate everything that you're all doing. um the the countless hours that you put in um and the ability to work together um as well as to publicly support the budget that you um approved and and voted for to put forward. Um that said, um I want to get off of the budget conversation and I just I want to acknowledge um the the high school play that happened last weekend. Um if you didn't have a chance to see it, it was just mindblowing. Um we have some unbelievably talented kids um in town as well as just the

009the staff and the the parent volunteers and other volunteers and the crew um and the lights and the sound and it was just um you know I think I've been going to productions for over over 10 years now. Um and and every year, you know, you think it can't get better and and it does and it's just amazing. And the fact that they do it all um on only fundraising and and donations, it is just um really unbelievable to me and I just wanted to uh acknowledge uh the all of the hard work that they put in and the wonderful performance. So, thank you very much for letting me say that and um I hope that many of you were able to attend because it was it was really wonderful. Thanks. Have a great night.

010Thank you. Um any others that would like to speak? Again, if you are online, raise your Zoom hand in the room. Raise your hand and be recognized. Seeing none, we close public participation. Uh correspondents, we had four emails come in in the last couple weeks. Three of them were on the uh the lockdown with some concerns with that and one of them just today was on the um or yesterday was on the budget specifically to the SRO positions for the four Why does it say there's 13? Was that last on the agenda? It says there's 13 budget related. You're on the wrong You're on the wrong agenda. Okay, then that would be it. Oh, yeah. March 19th. All right. What's information? I think there was a sorry I think there was an updated one because

011last meeting was was cancelled maybe and then they s the special meeting they've called this but we've got it on the screen okay points of information would anybody from the board like to speak yes I would I um we had an FFC meeting before this and I did ask um talk to Dr. will about um the timing of information that we would get around the budget and if and asked that we could potentially get it a little earlier than maybe 24 hours in advance. So I just want to throw that out there that that was a request that I made. Not to say that the whole board, you know, didn't ask them to do that. So, it's just hard to go through everything and be prepared with, you know, thoughts around it and digest it

012all 24 hours. I mean, let's just say I'm sleeping for 12 or, you know, not available. So, um I just I I would personally like to have it before that. So, I did ask Dr. Willlet. I understand it might be under the board purview to say you know what the timing is but I asked for that. Anybody else would like to speak? Yeah, I would agree with what Rainy was saying. I actually attended the FFC as well. And um uh yeah, I think if we can have a couple days or even the Friday before like we've been going through since uh the last whatever six months of um meeting agendas and documentation, the more time we can have thoughts, ideas, and you know, questions might arise. We just have a get a better thought process

013and game plan considering such a large budget or not. for trying to have to adjust. Okay. Thank you. Well, my assumption, Dr. Willlet, if I'm speaking incorrectly, please let me know. Uh, is that while you'll be absolutely making adjustments and looking for things up until the last minute, anything that you can get out previously and put on the the dashboard be certainly appreciated. Yeah, the the the more direction I have, the more I I could tailor it to what's desired. Um, I can get information out Monday able to get anything. I can't get stuff out by Friday without knowing. Well, I if I have no idea exactly what you're looking for, it's difficult. Um, one of the things we've done in the past is created a document that allowed you to say from this percentage

014to this percentage here, you know, we want to do these three things and this, you know, take these items and put them in and these programs or this stat, put them in and then it adjusts accordingly kind of on the fly. If you want me to create scenarios, I can or options. Um, but I just need to kind of know. And I and so you know what I assumed we were doing is I assumed we were going to take and create sort of the board's voice since we weren't just necessarily doing scenarios and I was going to have a series of things that um had values and then we would ask the board what their priorities were and then build it around what the board's priorities were on the fly to take the 734 down

015to the 2.99. So, there wasn't going to be a preset, you know, thing unless you want me to create presets. And if you do, I can, but I won't have them by Friday. I don't think we can talk more about that if we get to to L3. I was just going to add to that. If if you're going to have like a a smorgus board of items that we can an alle cart that we can pick and choose based on what we feel is important. Um, can that alakart come to us sooner than later? Is that a possibility? That alakart come to us with numbers of deck. It's just a long time. It's a long list. I can do I can do just about anything you want, but Monday would be the day. I can't

016I can't Let's right now we're Wednesday and you know I think Monday is better than Tuesday or Wednesday. Let's discuss training. And I'm just being realistic. It's about what I don't want to say. Okay. Anybody else for points of information? Committee and liaison reports curriculum. We haven't met this one. Okay. Communication. Yeah, we met uh last month. Uh Jim, Jen and Dana, myself, we uh well came up with an idea regarding the budget in general that um a lot of times we seem to or some members of the community seem to state facts online that aren't necessarily true. not going to have a debate back and forth online or Walt or any one of us regarding data points and arguing back and forth. So um and discuss with Walt um we Walt and the committee

017decided that we can have about a 30 minute window have uh you know uh residents come if they like to ask Walt or the board where we want the data isn't an opinion we're going to save that for public participation but if they have a data based question you have about 30 seconds to ask the question and about another two and a half to three minutes for Walt to discuss. If it's a higher level, needs more data, we'll write it down. We'll get back to you and try to do that for 20 to 30 minutes depending on how much participation people would like. I'm just hoping that that would uh bring people who have questions or whatnot to the open forum of a discussion. But I don't want it to be it's not a uh

018opinion based whatsoever. That's for public participation. This is for only data question, budget questions. So perfect. Understood. I believe set that for next week's agenda. Yep. That's exactly what I was going to say. It is on next week's agenda. I think it's a a fabulous idea and I applaud the committee for taking on the conversation about how do we get accurate information to the people that really want to know. So, thank you. Good job. Okay. Uh policy. Hey Tony, it's Dana. I'm trying to switch devices. Can I cut I'm cutting it in and out. I think I can hear you. Okay. Um, I'll have an update on policy next week. We did have an agenda planning um with Dr. Willlet this morning. Okay. And then FFC, uh, Dan's not here. One of you at the

019meeting could give us an update. I don't see that. I was just a public participant. Yeah, we reviewed the financials and um you know talked about some a couple of other things, but um I don't have the number right in front of me, but we're 1.221 right now, I think it was. Um with a few things that may come back into the fold um just, you know, that are encumbered but might might not need to be spent. So, still looking pretty good towards the end of the year. Great. All right. And then negotiations. Okay. Thank you all. Chairperson's report. Nothing with the exception of I want to just kind of chime in on on what Rebecca was saying earlier in that I did have the opportunity to to go to the high school play and

020was absolutely blown away. Such an amazing job by by our kids, by the staff, by the volunteers. It was my daughter's first theater experience, first musical, first play. I was worried as to how, you know, an 8-year-old would be able to to sit still. And about 20 minutes in, I look and she's on the edge of her chair with her mouth just open and just the entire time and asked me when the next one they were going to do was. the you know the our our students, our staff, you know, the entire team that put that together did such a wonderful job of creating the magic that that is standard. So I offer my my appreciation and my thanks to everyone involved and look forward to the next one that we put on in the

021district. All right, the short sweet moving on. Dr. Willlet, superintendent report item K1 monthly financial report. Okay. All right. So, um, you know, again, I'll try to just do a a fly over of the fairly big stuff. We did do this in FFC, so try to as concise as I can. Um, the report for this is one page, so it's a little bit different. Um, code 130 is over by about 40,000. This is custodial subs. We talked about um that it was just a tough year. custodians are very sick. We we need a lot of subs. Um we're going to be merging the lines 131 139 for this report in the future. Um so just just as a heads up for that. So um stipens uh over by about 50 and we talked about this

022in the past. Uh we have two special education. Sorry. I was showing what you're sharing. You're not showing that. Oh right. I'm sorry. in my notes here back up here. Just prepping for one of the questions today. Um, all right. So, right. So uh going back to you know these types of special education um there were things that uh covered there um those are also the transportation five transportation clubs that we talked about. So this is the same things as you've seen before uh health life disability over by 61. Um this is going to continue to change as vacancies, retirements, things like that. Hit professional ed services 320 in this uh document. Um 275 this month, 161 last. It's going to continue to change as special ed needs change. Contracted services also in this line

023it rolls up and it covers psychology vacancy which we talked about in FFC. FC is a much longer report. So the this is a one pager that condenses on these things. So it has special ed in it and the psych psychologist position. So um we're paying an outside service for that for BGP because we are not yet able to find a position a person for the position although we do have some hope there is a 0.5 coming and then they may go up to appointment 1.0 which would be really great. So we're trying to get that covered but it's not happening in a right way and so we're using this attractive service. special ed um I'm sorry, student transportation is over by 13. A special ed transport and athletic transport um has gone up. So

024that's what's happening there. And um maybe I'll kind of stop there and see if anybody has any questions. Those are some of the bigger ones. I apologize. What was the last one that you mentioned? Transport services. Oh 510. Yeah. Okay. It's 13 over. It's it's basically special ed and athletic transport in FFC. We talked about how we had under under the athletics transport. So that's that goes yeah I remember and these these partic this particular report is a one pager so it rolls a lot of the things together that we talk about and that some lines are combined. So I guess I'll stop there. Yeah probably covered covered this in more detail. Any comments, questions? Thank you, Dr. Willlet. New business item L1, solar considerations. All right. Um, we have Adam Teap with us. Uh,

025Mr. Stava also joinus, but his daughter is actually in the athletics awards. So, um, I think he, you know, he'll be he'll be in and out. Um, but Mr. Tap is here. Uh, and as you might have already heard, Mr. did a presentation for us um for the FFC and so we were very thankful for that. His FFC moved him up to the board of education uh to do a presentation for the board of education tonight. So um so Adam, can you hear me? I can. Uh Adam, I'm gonna throw up this presentation here and then uh I can move it if you want or I can share the screen to you, whichever you'd be more comfortable with. If I'm sharing screen, I'm assuming you have the presentation at home. Yeah, I mean, if you

026want to enable um screen sharing for me and then I can just toggle through it. That way uh we can kind of move seamlessly through it. You should have it and um jumped out. So, we should do Okay. Yep, I got it. Okay. Can everybody see my screen? Yes, we can. Okay, great. Um, well, thank you, Dr. Willer, for inviting me in tonight. And, um, sorry I couldn't make it in person. My son had a parent teacher conference after school hours tonight. So, kind of gum things up a bit, but um I'm not sure who may have been on the board a couple years ago when we first presented these projects, but I'll just give everybody a little bit of backstory on who I am and um you know, the process that's uh unfolded over

027a few years now. So, um I'm Adam Te. manage Titan Gen. Uh we're the CCM, so the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities partner for renewable energy projects. Basically, my job in layman's terms is to help towns and schools run RFPs for solar projects and manage the process, you know, from start to finish. So, we originally engaged with Taland back in 2022, ran an RFP, um, selected a vendor, worked our way through agreements with the vendor, and were ultimately hamstrung by the incentive program, the availability of the incentives for the projects at the time. Um, the program in question is called the nonresidential renewable energy solutions or the NRES program. You'll hear me refer to it as over time. Uh basically the way that that program worked up until this year is that uh you know there

028was a limited pool of funding was made available twice a year and projects had to bid into the program to basically like compete against each other for incentives. And what ended up happening is that the pro programs so popular that the values and the incentives because of that bid process got driven down and down and down and down until the projects really just didn't make any economic sense at that point. Um you know really the main reason that folks embrace these projects sustainability aside of course because that's obviously an important part of it but um the name of the game is really cost reduction. So the fact that we were having difficult time competing for the incentives at a level that made the projects financially attractive, we hit the pause button. And what changed is

029that for 2025, the program now has a specific pool of funding specifically for public schools. So it's helped grow the program, make it more accessible. They've made the incentive first come, first serve, so we don't have to bid against other everybody else in Connecticut that wants the same funding. Um, and they set a standardized incentive amount at the maximum allowable under the program. So, those dynamics definitely changed the game and brought the projects back around to where they were originally. And um the numbers that were originally proposed are just far more attainable now than they were before. So when I reached out to Dr. Willlet um about 6 months ago, you know, I suggested that we update the proposal from the vendor um and take a fresh look now that we have a more clear

030path to get into the incentive program. So, we refresh the numbers um and I can walk everybody through the basics of how the proposals um per school would would function. Um you know, I'm not sure to what extent folks on the board have discussed the conversations that we had with the facilities committee, but there seemed to be a consensus from that um process that some of the projects were more advantageous than others. So, we can certainly talk about that and, you know, walk through. But, um, before I proceed further, does anybody have any questions about anything that I've covered so far? Nope. Looks good, Ev. Okay. All right. Thanks. So, this slide here, this is a the pricing overview. And before I get into the particulars of what all of this means and how it's

031interpreted, the schools that we had looked at were the middle school, intermediate, Birch Grove, and the high school. Um, the high school is a different setup than the other schools, and I'll walk through the the two reasons why that why that's the case. Um, but just starting with the three here first. These were proposed on a power purchase agreement basis. Um also another acronym PPA. The premise behind the PPA is that the developer owns operates maintains the solar asset and the school district agrees to buy the power. Obviously be the host, you know, to the to the project for a 20-year period, but then also agrees to buy the power at a fixed price per kilowatt hour over that 20-year term. So what I did here just to try to streamline what these projects mean

032in terms of of numbers, the first column here is a system size. So that's its maximum um rated output in kilowatts DC. The number of kilowatt hours that would be produced by that system in the first year. the Eversource cost, you know, so that's the cost that we're addressing directly on your Eversource bill and then the solar cost per kilowatt hour, what you would pay the solar developer if you went this direction with power purchase agreements. And then you have an annual savings, which is just the price difference between these two. So your higher cost ever source kilowatt hour minus your your lower cost solar kilowatt hour multiplied by how many kilowatt hours you produce in a year. And then from a lifetime savings perspective, what I do for those calculations is assume, you know,

033a very moderate escalation factor with Eversource, 1.5% per year, which again historically is is been very conservative. And then, you know, you lose half a percent of that energy production per year from the system. So you have a little bit of a of a tapering over time on the kilowatt hours that you get, but the lifetime savings is basically a 20-year look from, you know, year 1 to year 20. So we did this for the three schools, the middle school, intermediate, and Birch Grove. Um, and we can talk about the layouts and and some of the particulars of each, but um, Birch Grove had the most advantageous PPA rate, so the cost per kilowatt hour. And that's really just a function of the fact that the building is brand new and is effectively solar ready.

034You know, it was clearly built um, to be able to accept, you know, a solar project on a lowcost basis. The other two schools have very very old electric infrastructure and would require more significant upgrades in order to be able to accept the power from the solar array. So those those costs the the cost per kilowatt hour on both of those sites is is higher. Um and then the savings on a on a net basis is highest with the middle school, but um relative to the size of the project, it's it's pretty big. And I know that we'd had some discussions in the facility committee about um you know, there just being a lot of panels on the roof and then some potential projects at that school down the road that might require moving some

035panels and things like that. So, um, the the resolution that I got from that committee meeting was Birch Grove of those three seemed to be the most appealing. Um, you know, roughly $20,000 a year in savings and a little bit north of 600,000 over over time. The, as I mentioned at the top of the slide, the major, you know, outlier here relative to the other three is the high school. So the the thinking behind the high school is different for two reasons. One, this would be a parking canopy system. So not mounted on the roof of the school. Reason for that is that the age of the roof just doesn't really square with, you know, the the 20 years that we would need for a system like this. Um, you know, when the roof is

036either too old or too new, it just it doesn't really make for a a good, you know, long-term play with a solar project. So, parking canopy here. And also, this would be designed more as just a a system that's connected to the power grid and would be selling energy to Eversource for a period of 20 years rather than a system that creates energy to offset your consumption. The reason for that being this high school already has an agreement, a virtual net metering agreement with an array that's located in town that creates credits that are then applied to the high school's bill. So, we don't want to mess with that. That's a good thing. It's working. It's doing what it's supposed to. It's it's saving the district money. um adding more benefit to that meter would

037not actually create a benefit for the school at this point. You're already maximizing, you know, the value of solar credits from an off-site array. So, um the power would go back to Eversource under the program. How that works is the developer would enter into a 20-year agreement with the utility to sell power at a fixed cost. And effectively what they do is for lack of a better way to put it pay rent. So that's a fixed annual payment irrespective of the energy production. So you don't have any production risk. It's really just you know payment and consideration for allowing them to build own and operate that that asset um in the designated location. So it's interesting if you take this all together and again you know however the district would um you know which projects

038it would deem the most advantageous obviously you know not up to me but um what I really like actually about a mix of what's called behind the meter so that's like the three schools where you're producing power it's being utilized on site combined also with a front of the meter project as part of the same portfolio is that you basically have like a built-in hedge mechanism within what you're doing because if for some reason energy prices went down, right? Right. I mean, it's it's not impossible, unlikely, I think, over 20 years based on what's happened over the last few years. But even if it were to come down a bit, um that payment that you receive for allowing the developer to to own the asset at the high school stays fixed no matter what. If

039energy prices increase, then that power purchase agreement that you have for the project on the roof or roofs becomes that much more valuable too over time. So it kind of has like a self balancing um you know mechanism within you know the portfolio having behind the meter and front of the meter as a mix. If you add all of the savings and the revenue together from the four projects, it's just uh a little bit north of 120,000 per year. Um again, from the FCC meeting, the the facility committee meeting, Birch Grove and the high school seemed to be the most interesting and and I think I don't want to put words in Pete Zava's mouth, um but I think those were the two that appealed to him the most. I I heard him express that

040on more than one occasion. I'm not sure if he's on the call to vouch for that or not, but Adam, we've got a question here if you don't mind us jumping in right there. Yeah, good evening. Yeah, thanks for coming. Um, I had a question. This will just it looks like the intermediate middle school Birch Grove, the Ever Source kilowatt per hour is85. Like I know in like my home bill I can you know go out and shop around and I can get it for 8 n 10 12 whatever it might be at that given time over you know whether it's a 6 month 12 36 months whatever you kind of lock that in. How is this ever source kilowatt rate um determined on your chart here? Yeah. So we actually um Talland uses the

041Connecticut Conference of Municipalities energy program to purchase its energy supply and that which is also run through Titan. So while we have expertise on the renewable side, we also um are very wellversed in electricity supply contracts and that sort of thing. So what's interesting about your Eversource cost per kilowatt hour is your supply is just a piece of it. It's not the whole thing. So it's the single biggest charge that we can address. But when you then factor in the charges on the the non-supply part of your bill that we can address, that's where we get 18.5 cents. It's a fine. Excuse me. It's a combined break. Combine. Okay. All right. All right. Thank you. At this time. Yep. You got a question for me. Um, with the high school plan, if I'm correct, they're

042they're talking about putting canopies on the parking lot, right? is are we going to find a savings with snow removal or or anything like that or is it just not that significant? Well, snow removal that would occur where the canopies are located is done by the town. Okay. So, they'll use the loader that you see parked typically by the two bay gar. So, they essentially every year give Dr. Will it or the business manager can accounting of inind services let's say that are essentially free but that they have to assign a rate to. Um so they would have a little less work in the back. It would not affect my custodial stat. Um you would have um you know obviously the the vast majority of your students would be parking underneath it. So there's some

043pros and cons to that. you know, with uh cars not getting as wet, not having to remove snow after you walk out from class. Um slips and falls in that area. Um um you know, it's not being weathered as much, sunlight, cars not heating up, you know, in that way. Um so there there are pros and cons to that. We have to watch certain things like we have um think about our football games. the Lions Club might have to look uh strategically how they set up their tent. It would be smart to cook underneath that per se. I mean, so um so there are some pro pros and cons to that. Um over time, if the parking lot asphalt was replaced and restriped, uh it would last longer. It's not being beaten down by UV

044light. Um, so it actually would extend the lifespan of the parking lot underneath it uh to to some extent. Um, and it also doesn't really affect other structural parts of the school. And what Adam's referring to is we have a sizable roof project sitting in a future capital plan for two to three years from now that um doesn't make sense for us to throw solar on the roof. that haven't solar to new roof membrane up there. So, the timing is just not great for exploring rooftop solar. And you do have 185,000 square ft of roof space up there. So, it's it's an attractive an attractive scenario here, but I would say it would be post roof install or or you time the project at the same time that you're going to do I hope that

045answered your question. It does. And now that you it it prompted another question. Um, you know, I like just the initial idea of it here at the high school, it seems like a win-win for us. Um, but I also think two to three years from now when we get the roof redone, does it make sense to put more panels up? Yeah. I'm not sure. Yeah, I'm not sure if this is helpful or not, but because we're not going behind the meter and you know, like I said, because you already have that virtual net metering arrangement where the utility bill that's associated with the high school receives credits, doesn't receive energy, it receives the dollar amount equivalent of that energy production from an array elsewhere. What you could then do is just build a a phase

046two. So you could utilize the roof to do exactly what we're doing with the parking lot but just expanded with that, you know, on the roof instead. That's essentially what I was going to say that that guy said. Um at some point we'll have to look to what the town arrangement is with um the South River in town and when that could expire, but I I think there's a lifespan on that as well. I'm not sure what it is. Uh I was not involved in that. Um but that can dictate some of the future decisions that we make once the roof is going to be done here as well. Do we worry about us looking like a solar farm? That was the age-old question, too. I mean, uh, when we first were thinking about this,

047uh, and Adam's been laughing a little bit, but we we had some ground solar on the side of the middle school, you know, where you have a big chunk of grass where the water meter is close to the old capable road there because you have a ton of grass there and uh, but you would look like a solar farm. you know, obviously your your school would look like it's um and the other issue that we have is that we still have to make sure that our grid can support all the energy we're producing, you know. So, um, and there are, you know, I'm going to say it's not certainty that, you know, we throw enough solar out there that the grid could handle it without ever source being forced to do an upgrade to the

048grid within this area, which they they choose not to do, you know. So, there may be limits to how much you can actually produce, you know. So, just one one point to that, Pete. Eversource does maintain active hosting uh capacity maps that you know we're referencing when we basically you know we put a project like this together and also we would have to complete an interconnection application with Eversource and you know to go through that in a you know a formal way. Um but as of now there is there is hosting capacity locally on the three-phase lines to be able to support projects like this without significant upgrades. I guess the question was added to is that it supports the upgrades we're proposing now, but if we're adding another hundred and some thousand square feet

049of panels on the high school roof, do we know exactly at this point in time if it could support that and I don't know I I can't answer that from my Well, I mean grid planning I mean that the map the hosting capacity map is constantly changing and the reality is that anybody with a project could jump in front of you and take whatever hosting capacity is there now. So, you know, it's it's a dynamic process where upgrades are occurring, projects are coming into the queue, taking that space and or funding additional upgrades. So, I think trying to plan three years out what the local grid hosting capacity is going to be is basically impossible. um who maintains them if something happens to them? The the vendor. So complete funding, maintenance, insurance, all the costs

050associated with that equipment are all borne by the vendor. No cost to the schools. Correct. Um one last question. Um, I look at these annual savings based on the the the the production of kilowatt hours that we can produce. Um, it wasn't that long ago where we got um a large thermal thermal system sold to us with big promises of of savings that that never materialized. Um, how how confident are we in these numbers that these are the savings that we're obviously not not dollar for dollar going to see, but you know, I see a savings at the middle school of $25,000. You know, if that year one comes in and we've only saved $5,000, you know, we we might have, you know, some some issues with that. Sure. There is. Yeah. So this is

051a good a good instance of you know the classic like well what can you control and what can you not control question right um what we can control the the cost per kilowatt hour which is set that's fixed for 20 years so that's that's that's an easy thing um in terms of the actual production from the system there are performance guarantees in the agreement so That's kind of the other variable like the actual like through the maintenance and operations of the system like being able to guarantee that it'll produce a minimum number of kilowatt hours and if it doesn't that there's a true up mechanism in there for the for the school. The thing that we cannot control um which can work in your favor or potentially work against you for the power purchase agreement

052scenarios not the not the front of the meter high school but the instance where you're actually buying power is the Eversource column. So if prices were to come way down, that would generally be a good thing because obviously the majority of your power is still going to be bought the oldfashioned way. So I don't think you would necessarily, you know, uh be worse off if if electricity rates fell. Um but anything that could close the gap here between Eversource cost and solar cost is you know is a risk for solar project. Um I think also when I look at these PPA numbers the ones with with the biggest spread would be Birch Grove fewest number of panels biggest spread between Eversource cost and solar. While the savings might be, you know, nominally less than the

053middle school, just as a for instance, you can get there a lot more safely, if you will, with more room for error. Um with the high school project there's zero production risk for the school district for Taland in that case even if the array you know obviously using an an extreme example you know if it never produced a single kilowatt hour that's not the school's problem green the vendor is still obligated to pay that fixed amount for 20 years so it kind of comes back to that comment I made before about how there's like some built-in hedges here um where you do have protections against you know things that might happen that that could potentially compromise you know what your anticipated savings are and you know the I've I've been a part of a number

054of conversations that have to do with geothermal systems if that's what you're referring to and you know geothermal and solar um generally speaking very very different. Geothermal is incredibly complex and there are a number of things that can swing a project kind of into the gutter out of the gutter with a geothermal project. Um for solar which I think is generally a good thing is it's a very very simple technology. The operations and maintenance is very straightforward. The major variance that you get any, you know, in any given year is just going to be, hey, we had a particularly sunny, warm, you know, uh, you know, clear sky summer or, you know, like we had a summer a few years ago where it just rained, you know, for like six weeks straight. So, weather is

055the other variable that you just can't control. But that's, you know, why I like the front of the meter setup so much. Pete, I think you had some. Yeah, I I just want want to say Adam hit the nail nail on the head. I mean, the the geothermal project, I'm going to say I inherited that project. I was not part of that in the the development stage. Um, but the truth be told, you were generating somewhere between 84 and 86% of your guaranteed savings on. Um, that's still a good project because guess what? You're saving about a million kilowatt hours a year just by going geothermal. Okay. So, you consume about 3.3 3.4 million kilowatt hours a year. Uh you were you were consuming somewhere between 4.2 and 4.5 before you went geo. Okay? So,

056you're still just imagine how much your power bills would be now if you had not gone geo. So even though you weren't getting your guaranteed savings and there's a variety of reasons why and by the way we eventually achieved our savings under that total project by when I did the additional retrofits of the LED lighting in all the because we were saving about 20% on electrical which actually made up the difference but it was outside of Honeywell scope and that's one of the reasons why we decided to buy out the contract because they were of no value to us. they weren't willing to invest their own money. Um, so but with that said, Adam's correct. This is a lot more straightforward. There's a lot less moving parts with this. Um, you know, things that affect

057our performance contract with Honeywell had to do with CO, you know, building use, how much fresh air we were bringing in. Um, you know, what's the standards? You know, can we keep our AC at 76, which they wanted? It's a little warm. I'm just being honest, okay? Um I don't know where you guys keep your own house at in summertime, but so we did things that were, you know, outside of that um that, you know, would increase the variability of your guaranteed savings. This is a lot more straightforward with really just weather being the biggest quantum. The lowhanging fruit here are the the high school or the mechanically verse and the and group because of the age of the right. It's the best return. If we did those alone, we'd have at least a little

058bit like 62 or something like that. I think you're at about 95,000 a year with those. 8590, right, Adam? I I can't see your screen from here where I'm sitting 80,000 between the two. Yeah, 82 83 which is worth I mean it's a good chunk worth doing really good meaning you hit your head it I think Bill covered them but I just wanted clarify one two things one is so a student you know comes in hot it hits the pole that the thing is on and it falls down we don't pay anything but I would assume there would be some potential loss of you know solar generation for some period of So these are steel beams with concrete footing. Um there's you know never say never with a young driver I suppose but um be

059driving probably that Stafford has these if you go to I just wanted to really big really big I also just wanted to really be sure so in this grid it says you know Eversource is at this number and our cost would be you know set at the 14.6 6 blah blah blah. If Eversource literally came down to like 10 cents, let's just say there is never in 20 years going to be any opportunity to change what we would receive if we s if we sign this contract. 10 years from now, it's really wicked less expensive with Eversource because they've done something. I don't know what that would be, but I'm just Would there ever be an an opportunity to revisit those numbers if there was a significant change in the cost of energy? Um, so

060the the answer to the answer to that would be no. Um, but again, I mean that that could cut the other way too. Like if Eversource costs went up significantly, you wouldn't want the solar developer to be able to knock on your door and tell you that you got to pay more now either, right? I mean, it's there's there's definitely a little bit of of of um you know, risk management here again, which is why with the front of the meter carport, that's set in stone. Energy prices could go north,southeast, east, west, doesn't matter. the array could produce 100% of its predicted output or 0%. Doesn't matter. School gets paid either way. The other thing I would just, you know, because like I try to come at these things from like my job as an

061energy consultant generally is like, okay, how do I help you guys make sense of the pieces of the puzzle that you've put together here which ultimately create your bottom line cost? And there's a few different things that go into that, right? There's the energy supply contracts that you enter into every couple years. Again, we've worked with with the school district to manage those through the CCM program. That's all of your kilowatt hours. You know, you you peg a price to all of those kilowatt hours every couple years. We try to, you know, make sure that the market's low and we make our recommendation, but it's a way to help control costs. The other thing that you guys have done wonderfully is, you know, on an efficiency basis, and everything I've ever seen of what Pete's

062done has been incredibly thorough to reduce your overall consumption because the best kilowatt hour is the kilowatt hour that you don't need. And then you start to factor in projects like this where you're creating some of your own power. Certainly not all. It's not a not an all-in venture. Just like for some context, the amount of kilowatt hour production from Birch Grove, just using that, let's say the one behind the meter project, if you guys decide to do it, that that number of kilowatt hours is um relative to all of your buildings, that is, I believe, 15% or so of everything. So even if Eversource costs tanked like significantly, you guys would be way better off in that scenario, like regardless of whatever was going on with solar and your exposure to that with your

063PPA rate would be, you know, relative to your whole portfolio pretty small. So again, these are just pieces that you want to put together to manage your energy spend wisely. None of them taken separately are going to make or break you. But when when they're together and they're holistic and they're functioning, you know, like as a wellthoughtout energy management plan, that that's really why you do them. Go on, Brian. Yeah, just in regards to it's maybe a Walt question, but in regards to this high school project with having a carport out there, considering that the town more or less owns the buildings and the land and whatnot, this production of this electricity, would these payments be made to the town or are we going to be receiving any of these funds? Well, this would benefit.

064Are we how sure are we on that? I mean I I'm 99% 95% sure something get pulled. It would have to be something that got pulled on us that Joe Chenjo but it did some it would be on our domain. It would apply to our accounts. People could fight over it but likelihood they would I doubt that they would fight us on that. It's just stuff I think we need to that could do the same thing on the library part any what's that yeah it I don't think it would benefit the town as much as it would benefit us obviously because we consume 95% of all the power so you're not going to want to take a $62,000 payment and apply it for the dog I mean it's it's they'll they'll likely not give us

065trouble they They could say, "We'll reduce your budget accordingly." Yeah, that's what there's all kinds of things that could happen from this, but but they they typically have played well in the sandbox with us on stuff like this. Yeah. Because that's going to help us both see we have combined overall budget. it. I almost somehow wish that it wouldn't be a payment to us at the high school because that looks like revenue coming. Absolutely. That the town could capture as opposed to our utility bills being less. Well, the other thing I could look into for you guys, just double check and see if there was a way that we could distribute that payment directly to the Eversource bill if that's your preference. doing it that way. Yeah. Um, you know, I I I can I

066can just double check and make sure. I'd have to just go through again really quickly just um a look through the Eversource bills and seeing, you know, net of what's being covered by your virtual net metering agreement if we could distribute these credits across those. But I can I can relatively easily do that. I just have to go through your source bills. Yeah, let's look into that and let Dr. Willie, what's your thought on that with a payment coming into us that the town wouldn't say, "Hey, we're going to capture that as opposed to credits." My impression having talked to the town about this is that either way, they would they would let it they would work with us and I don't think 62 is enough to for them to move on. Yeah. All right,

067Adam, we kind of jumped in the middle of your presentation. You want to keep going? Oh, sure. I mean this is like really the meat and potatoes of the slide of the whole deck. I mean the other stuff we have here are just layouts and you know again this is some of what we talked about before at the facility committee meeting where a lot of panels on the roof at the middle school. There's you know some potential to be doing work with uh air handling equipment on the roofs and things like that. So, you know, again, I completely understand where if uh the bang for the buck relative to how many panels here is is not, you know, thrilling to folks, I I I would understand. But this is a layout of the middle school

068roof. Just a quick question and Pete, if I remember the last time when we had this discussion, it's been a number of years and there was angst uh about using that that grass field. So this current plan or proposal here leaves the grass to its current state. That is correct. I mean this is a proposed behind the meter project. We consume a lot of the power that is there. Um the uh you can see a lot of our roofs are covered. There's two issues that I foresee. One is potential rooftop units at your calf and gym which are a future project for improving indoor air quality in those two spaces that don't have cooling. Um and the other problem is I think in fiscal year 2029 would be the roof project. It would be above

069your auditorium because that roof will be at 21 years at that point in time. Last time that was done was 2008 through the state of Connecticut. Uh and that's a portion of that percentage too. So um you know you've got some variables with that and this school has very was the least attractive return as far as their kilowatt hours they believe so as far as their P our PVA number so it's a lot of panels for minimal payback you know so all right Adam sure and then um the intermediate school Um, again, fairly simple layout here. Everything's on the roof. All the same age at at that school. It was done in 2017. Uh, that was the nice part about that project is the roof was all the same age. So, I was able to

070do that entire roof. While because the middle school had the 1983 edition that didn't match any of the other roofs, believe it or not, that roofing project that I did actually combined four different ages of roofs. my predecessor was doing little pieces which you don't get an economy of scale and other things with that. So now at least we're we're down to a school with two different agents of roofs now instead of like six um there at the middle school. Um but TIS the only variable there would be rooftop units above the gym to um you know give to give that space. That's the cafe. Uh that's the gym actually. the the cap is geo so the APR which is the cap on the second floor is is a geothermal space okay y and then

071birch grove clearly I mean you can see you know from a from a square footage perspective the building is super efficient um you've got ample real estate on that roof Um, it's the newest building. It's the newest roof of the bunch. The electric room was designed, you know, with solar in mind, so it's basically plug-andplay. Hence why the PPA rates the lowest. It's nice and flat. Everything's uniform. Um, definitely the ideal candidate for a rooftop project of the three schools. Okay. And then the parking canopy for the high school. And you gota give me forgive me here a little bit. I mean, for whatever reason, the satellite imagery for this location sort of warps this to make it look like it's like a mountain face or something. I don't know. I don't know why. Um,

072so, you know, this image here is a a little bit warped. Um, but the idea would be, you know, on the side side of the building in between, you know, the high school itself and and the football field. How tall are these uh solar panels or posts up off of the ground? Yeah, so the minimum height clearance on these is 14 feet. All right. I just I saw that close to the football field, you know, things happen. So, it's just but they could be installed higher. So, if uh there's certain features with them, if we're going to fit that loader under there, if uh they're going to get a fire truck underneath there, we would have to just let the developer know what kind of requirements that we have with that. Um might help to

073have an articulating list. [Laughter] Um, sure. And then just these are this is a generalized next step. This is not anything set in stone. You know, we've just been kind of um, you know, I think from my perspective, I put something down so you can kind of see like a general start to finish. But the long story short with the timeline is the idea is that these would be a 2026 summer 2026 project. Um, you know, the steps that we would have to take first really to kind of get the process moving in earnest is finalizing the agreements with the with the solar company Greens Skies and then that allows them to then enter into the NRES program to secure the incentives for the projects. Once they do that, then they can start taking all

074the necessary steps, spending, you know, serious development dollars. um on engineering, procurement, construction, etc. Getting those activities teed up for when the kids are out of school summer 2026. So, you know, not trying to shoehorn this project into the summer at this point. It's that would be effectively impossible. And we know that, you know, most school districts are not wild about these sorts of construction projects happening during the year. So, it's uh the expectation was set right out of right out of the gate that these would be um you know 16 months or so from now for actual construction. Okay, Dr. Willlet. So, what does what does the commitment schedule look like? That's why I'm looking at this. The board would have to say that they were interested in what by welcome. Yeah. So, there's

075no Sorry, I don't want to go ahead. either way. Yeah. So, the incentive program is really, you know, that's that's the main like gating issue to have a live project like getting through that step. And in order to do that, we need um you know finalized agreements with the solar developer. It's part of the requirements when you apply into the program. there has to be an an actual agreement in place between solar solar company and the site owner. So um whatever process you know that the board wants to take or feels comfortable with um to get that done. So if it's the power purchase agreement um you know working with legal which we did a couple years ago obviously we you know it's not completely not like we can just take all of the work

076we did a couple years ago and apply it today. There would have to be some tinkering of course but we made a lot of progress with those documents um a few years ago. So revitalizing those, bringing them up to, you know, sort of current um details with the projects and then having those executed then frees up the rest of this process to really happen. The commitment point for the district would be so signing those those definitive agreements with Green Skies is what sets you on the track to like a firm commitment on the project. The caveat to that being so for the carports this has to go in front of planning and zoning. the town's planning and zoning if for some reason they kill the project which I've never had a project especially a municipal

077project but any projects die in planning and zoning but let's say for instance worst case scenario planning and zoning denies the project then basically the contract just dissolves and you know we all kind of go our separate ways um but barring anything like that I mean signing that agreement puts you on the path to the these projects getting built. Um, so I would say by the time you sign those documents, the power purchase agreement, just that's when you'd want to feel comfortable that yes, you're moving forward unless something unforeseen happens. Adam, I just want to confirm there's no cost associated to the school. We we we don't have to pay anything for this. Absolutely. So, Green Skies covers all of the costs. It's simply you're either buying the power if it's a rooftop project or

078you're receiving the, you know, the the rent payment for the front of the meter or like I said, I'm going to look into seeing if we can convert it to a utility bill credit structure instead. The only cost that the district would have it just, you know, if you want to hire outside legal counsel as the district did before, presuming you're still working with the same attorney who I've worked with on other engagements like this, you know, you'd have some billable hours there. Um, but that's that's it. Jaden, if you're you're on, I've got a question for you. As as the young guy of the group that's involved in the football program and knowing that our our state winning soccer team plays here, do you see any downside uh for having these panels at the

079high school? Not no not if it's intr if it doesn't intrude on people's ability to attend the games and and you know participate in any public event at the school. Um, no, I don't I don't see a down a downside there. Um, that's as that's that's as much as of an opinion as I've got to be honest with you. I don't you know, pretty straightforward answer. No. Okay. I just said one last thing. The the green skies that you're referencing, how long have you been working with them? and what's the reliability or reputation or what's your thoughts on them? Yeah. Yeah, sure. So, I've been in this business now for uh almost 15 years um with Titan doing work like this and um running RFPs really for municipalities and Green Skies. I think over time

080I feel comfortable saying they probably won about 30% of those RFPs. Maybe a little more, a little less. Kind of, you know, hard to keep track, but they have just as good a chance as anybody um you know, of of winning an RFP, if not better. They're located in North Haven, so they're a Connecticut based company. They've been in business since 2008. They're on top of, you know, I'm not even I I kind of lost count of how many school districts they've worked with um here in Connecticut over time. I know how many they've worked with. For me, maybe that extrapolates out to, you know, uh other folks that they've worked with as well, too. But, um I hold them in very high regard. They do good work. Connecticut based company and um from a

081pricing perspective they're always you know kind of right at the top so I think you know you'd be well served working with them. Excellent. Thank you so much. Sure. So let me help me understand the the schedule that you have here. I mean because you know basically and this is a loose schedule too. I it's it's it's not um you know um it's just sort of there as like okay just sort of get helping give a frame of reference. Okay. So, the the the no later than is not actually I know. Yeah, it's probably it's Yeah, I could I could word that better. Okay. Because that's where, you know, even assuming that the the the board knew all about this and was just overly enthusiastic there there's no way an April one uh date would

082happen for for No, no, I know. Yeah. I mean, the the the power purchase agreement and getting through that is, you know, that could take a couple weeks easily. So, um I think I put this together for Walt maybe uh back in January or so. You know, these are all like kind of moving targets, but um just, you know, had maybe had we started this, you know, process a little bit earlier in the year, probably, you know, would have been more realistic. But I would say, you know, um, take taking a couple weeks with, you know, your your legal counsel, getting through the documents and just buttoning those up to a place where, you know, they're um, customer friendly and and, you know, in a place that uh, you feel comfortable with. And you know

083whenever that happens that's when we can then apply into the program and start doing you know all the work necessary to get these things built eventually. FFC looked at this first, so these are probably what they saw, but um we've been through some of this paperwork before. So, you know, we wouldn't, as Adam said, these are not hard timelines, but um we have some familiarity with what would have to happen here. So, you know, we'll be able to move it along. Um, the board would probably want to look at, you know, if you you're chewing on this, probably wanted to come back for the second consideration, something like April 9th, I'd imagine. And so that's Adam, that's probably the next stop on the train here. Sure. Perculating on this, kind of considering it, and then

084bringing it back to the table on April 9th to discuss a second time or Yeah. No, no need to get hung up on on this. I mean the important part really like the the the point to drive home is that it would be summer 26 for construction. Completely understand you the program manager at least sees dates and starts sweating. Yeah. 100%. Yeah. All that. Yeah. We don't Let's get that slide out of there. Brandon, did you have something to say? No. No. I was just saying like if we didn't make a decision till July 1st that we can still do this 20 se you know summer of 2026 is still a possibility right so the only the only thing that I again you know coming back to this idea of what can I control what

085I can't control so um you know submitting into the NRES program the program the way it's structured now is it opens up once a year it actually it opened up in February and they allow 20 megawatts of projects in per year until they close it down. So these projects, just for reference, about one and a half megawws of that. So, um, that's really the thing where if the program fills up for the year, then we just have to wait for the next cycle in February. It's not to say that we can't, you know, take steps in the meantime to be able to, you know, get this to a 2026 build, but getting that incentive locked in sooner rather than later is just it it's a good thing. It takes some of the uncertainty out of

086the project. So I always say that the the timeline is completely up to you guys. I just want to give you some of the some of the benchmarks and stuff that we you know think about in terms of like incentives and construction and stuff like that and how we work with you to achieve like a mutual goal. Thank you. That's my last question. All right, Adam, anything else you'd like to present? Um that's that's it for me and I just want to ask a question just to piggy back on the waiting game. So if the allocation is used up for this year and we have to look at the NRES program for entering next year in 2026 u the PPA numbers would not be exactly the same. Correct. They're going to they're going to change.

087Correct. Well, there is so the NRES program does reserve the ability to adjust the incentive rates per year based on the prevailing value of energy for that year. So, and it's a calculation that Eversource has which you know can either work in your favor or work against you. So, it would probably not be a dramatic swing. Yeah. But just if we're talking about stuff that like keeps me up at night or sort of feels a little unpredictable is just um you know, a lot of the steel from this project is probably going to come from Canada, right? And we're kind of living in um a little bit of a different environment now. Uh you know, tariffs and stuff like that. So, um, being able to lock in your project costs sooner rather than later is

088probably a good thing, but I don't have a crystal ball that, you know, so I can't say exactly what's, you know, the next year has in store, but um, based on, you know, current project costs, known incentive values, um, that's what's reflected here. If we do have to repric the project a year from today, I you know, I don't want to necessarily put myself on a, you know, um on the hook here to promise that it'll be exactly the same. I just I don't know. But obviously, we try to we try to hold the line, right? I mean, that's the committee to know that those numbers are not necessarily going to be the same. You know, we don't get it. All right, Dana. Hi, can you hear me? Yeah, you can. Good evening. Um, and

089man, Pete, I apologize. I said the next Pete Saba meeting I was going to be in person. I I do I do apologize. I was in Western Mass today. Um, I have a question for the team and um, uh, Tony actually Tony and Dr. What is this I we've seen this solar presentation multiple occasions um with multiple um variations of the board with this current board. This came to the FFC and now to this meeting. Is that correct? Okay. All right. because I'm just trying to think about um so can we put this forth as discussion and possible move to action on our next meeting or do we feel that uh another review of this is important? I think obviously in light of what Adam kind of just reviewed with some some different qu answers

090to our questions I think it might behoove us to take the steps to get this in motion if that's what we in fact choose to do. So I just want to make sure again I've seen it on multiple occasions but I don't know how much time how many times this board as a whole group has. So I don't want to push it without people feeling comfortable. Um, but I don't there obviously I mean there are members of this board that that haven't necessarily seen this presentation before just as there are some that have have seen it um a couple of times with some iterations some changes there. Uh what I'm thinking and I'm obviously open to comment or advice. Uh what I'm thinking is that we'll put this on the agenda not for the next

091meeting but possibly the meeting after that. uh and we could put it in for discussion and approval may be the wrong word, but recommendation to move forward at that point, but we can we we can certainly on that agenda be able to to make some sort of movement. So, you're not prepared to put it into action tonight. Perfect. Tony, thank you. That's what I was asking. Again, I wanted to make sure that everybody had enough chance to see it, review it, and be able to speak intelligently when we do go to action. And again, as as I said, you and I l have been the lucky ones and a few others to to see this presentation and I think it's fantastic. I think it's a great opportunity for Talon Public Schools. Um, so I just

092want to make sure that we're taking that we're taking action at the appropriate time that that supports the board. So, thank you. And Bill, just to kind of add into what why I said no. Um, you know, based on the last time we looked at this and here, you know, there is risk. I'm not saying it's significant or insignificant, but there is a risk in, you know, prices and the returns and the savings that I just want to make sure that the board members have a chance to think about and then accept that. I don't want it to be this is the first time you've seen this, you have to make a decision move forward based on that. But I want to give it time and do that second read coming from and this would

093be a question for Dana, Jaden, anyone who's seen these presentations before. What are the things that have prevented you from moving forward in the past when you've gotten these? So the and I'll start out the last time the last time I recall when we went through this uh it got hung up and it you know Adam kind of you know kind of tapped on a couple of those you know and Pete there were some concerns with the grass uh one of the iterations of this took that middle school field and essentially made it you know the the solar farm and there was real push back against that. There was conversation about I think meeting you asked the question earlier just a little bit ago um about if the energy crisis did some mysterious downward spike

094you know the renegotiation uh there was still a bit of heartache on you know what had happened with the geothermal and a reluctance to enter into a 20-year uh conversation and a couple others that I'm not recalling at the time and I want to just get out and say that I'm not saying here that I think those apply here or that I think that that should sway the decision. Um, but because there were those concerns, I want to make sure that each person has a chance to look at this to think and then to come back with with additional questions for either Pete or Adam and make sure that you're comfortable. Yeah. I'm not saying anything about pushing this two weeks. I'm just wondering what were some of the things that you guys didn't what

095were some of the reasons why you didn't jump into contract or you know see the savings and mine was mine was that uh that 20-year commitment you know we've we've lived through the the geothermal here in my previous life you know we did a similar type deal with Honeywell and those kind of things and while there are certainly gains and opportunities I've seen the other side of it and you know just a little bit hesitant. The numbers look great. The numbers look enticing and I think it's certainly something that needs to be considered. So just there was a conflation a little bit with the ESCO project of Honeywell which is a totally different animal than this. It's this is not Esco and you know so it it had there was a tainting from the Honeywell

096project towards that as well as you know being on the grass and the fear of the 20 years and how the rates could change. But when we were looking at this, you know, the canal lever at the high school and the Birch Grove, they're pretty safe bets. So, it'll take an off, you know, we should take the weeks to look at it and you guys should carefully look at it. But those two schools doing that is it's only, you know, only 82 to 84, but it's 82 to 84 and I think it could help us over a period of that time. That's quite a bit of money. other thing I'd like to just say too is because I was involved in a lot of those discussions through the AMFC and so on and the other

097thing that people don't realize that a lot of the decisions we made internally when COVID first hit we went out we we reneotiated all of our contracts with CO first hit and I was one of the first guys to call up Titan I got to go out the bin on everything like right now. And I called Lisa from the town. I said, "You got to jump on me on this." And we got a minuscule supply rate for the longest term that we could. We got a very low oil rate for a year. That's longest that they were willing to go out for us because you have to buy oil ahead of time and your supplier actually has to store it. You know what I mean? So, it's not there's roadblocks to that. So, but we

098renegotiated everything and so we were insulated from the market for a while until now, right? And um Eversource just had the biggest rate increase they've ever had in a single year. Okay. and I had to go up in electrical I think somewhere 160,000 or something like that just on electrical while most of my other accounts were stable and we're coming to a point where we can't insulate ourselves anymore with that besides doing stuff like this you know what I mean so um and I think that was what some people saw is that we were still paying less than our competitors for a while we're talking about solar You know what I mean? So, but now it's becoming more of a necessity to almost provide insurance on our energy costs, right? You know, Dana, did that

099we get your answers? Me? Yeah. I thought I thought we cut you off. Yeah, it was an open question. No. Yeah. And everybody pretty much answered. I think there was some more questions about the canal levers at the high school. The TMS grass was a big area of conversation um in the roof um different things like that. So, and then obviously you know what Tony and Dr. Will and then what Pete just described were um obviously areas of conversation through the process. Um I've been I've been for moving this moving this through. I think it's a win for our Talon public schools in the long run. Um, but there was some things that that kind of hung us up. Um, but I think that where we are with the research that's been done and the

100amount of time and but that's been put into this to thoroughly go through it, um, I definitely think that this might be our opportunity to um, take steps forward as as needed. Yeah. My only my only closing thought and I'll get out of everybody's hair because I know you probably got a lot more to go through on the agenda. um in taking a fresh look at this knowing like kind of where we've been before and you know bring something else something kind of new if you will to the table now is taking this again just as Birch Grove and the high school if you just you know focus on those two only and intermediate and middle school we kind of strip out you know 75% of the value in these projects here now comes in

101the form of guaranteed income so I I think we've derisked the project significantly from that perspective And then the other uh 25% comes from you know a behind the meter system at Birch Grove which represents only about 15% of your global kind of energy consumption anyway. So we're just taking a piece you know trying to make it a meaningful piece but this isn't an allin bet on solar. It's not an all-in you know locked in for 20 years. you still have plenty of opportunity to ride the market with your thirdparty supply contracts. Hopefully, as technology increases, you'll be able to become even more efficient. So, again, this is just a piece trying to help you help you guys put a well-rounded energy management plan into action and this being a part of it, not, you

102know, um, an end in and of itself necessarily. So, that's kind of my closing closing thought on the subject. Um, if anybody else has any more questions, happy to answer them. Any other questions? Question, but Adam, thank you for or Mr. T, thank you for uh thank you for your presentation. Sure. Absolutely. Appreciate uh everybody taking the time to listen and hopefully we'll be in touch soon. Thank you, Adam. You have a great evening. Okay. Thanks. You guys, too. All right, Dr. Willlet. Adam L2, healthy food certification. Tell me I can't sell candy bars. It's uh same thing that you get every single year on this. Um so the healthy fruit serve basically the very very short version is we don't pass it. We don't get the break from the federal government on the food.

103I'm sorry. What does that I couldn't hear you. Um so every year we uh we do the healthy food certification and basically we commit um to uh what they want us to commit to with respect to you can't sell food. Yeah, thank you. You can't sell you know food during the school day etc. It has to follow certain standard of health and nutrition. If we follow in that and we commit to that and the board has to commit to it through its motion um and the acceptance and passage of the healthy foods initiative, then we get a break um on the lunches. We get um money back for uh each lunch. So we get reimbured money if we say we're going to do this. So every year we do this. That's the short version. The

104the motion itself is a mouthful. if you recall. Um, so generally do sometimes you'll do two reads, sometimes you just go with it. I put the motions here. It looks like there's two considerations, correct? Yeah. But um the motion is to allow the superintendent to support and authorize the 2526 health foods and issues and allow for the exemption of food um and beverage items as well as other provisions as indicated in consideration one and consideration. So this is there are two there brackets. The first one moves it down to action. Then once we get into action the second motion and basically you have to do all of this. The district has to commit to all of this which is generally what it happens and then we get 10 cents back for lunch and that adds

105up. You know put the figure in here. We were reimbursed almost 20,000. Um, you know, and it's always for the prior year. That's all on 10 cents per lunch reimbursement. It's amazing how quickly that adds up. Discussion. Any questions? Apologize. I hear this. Uh, yeah. Sorry. Sorry, Brian. Oh, no. Go ahead. I'm just kind of mumbling myself. I apologize. I didn't really review these considerations prior to just this moment, so I apologize. Go ahead, Jaden. Go ahead, Jaden. here. No, no problem. I just had a quick comment. You know, the the 20,000 this is like Dr. Doc Dr. Will mentioned, this is, you know, a yearly, you know, this is brought up frequently and uh the first thought that comes to my head is I don't think we're going to sell $20,000 worth of concessions

106in the school store or, you know, anything like that. And so, um, you know, this is something that seems routine at this point, makes sense for the district. We get money back, goes toward the district. So that's all that's that's my input. All right. So uh I'll entertain a motion to move this to board action. So moved. Second. Second. Discussion. All right. Reinie. Hi. Bill. Hi. Hi. Brian. Hi. Katie. Hi. Jaden. Hi Dana. Hi. All right, Dr. Willlet, let us move that into item N1. All right, moving on. Item L3, which is a discussion on the budget, specifically Brian, you had some ideas for the bus contract. Yeah, so I just I had emailed in to leadership uh many weeks ago. um that those will go to be reviewed or whatnot. Um so I had

107a um an idea I know we're getting pretty tough with the uh the town manager really given an increase of 2.99 and we had a potentially find some savings around $2 million. So, I had an idea regarding some uh big ticket savings and one of them was to join the uh middle school and high school bus routes similar to the the bus routes of Birch Grove and excuse me, Birch Grove and the intermediate school to um hopefully provide a you know some sort of substantial savings with the uh busing for the school con. So, I just wanted to kind of bring that forward. Um that's why if you go to the dashboard, Walt had emailed out the bus contract uh sometime this afternoon. Um to every so and I know there was I just wanted

108to see if that could be just make sure that's one of the lists of items that we have like a number um with that idea for next week's uh more in-depth budget meeting. But I personally like that uh kind of number based and gone through and presented um as one of the items on the list. Well, completely completely understand and and in fact get Jen I'll get to you in just a second. Um so yes and in fact uh when we were looking at next week's agenda again from the very high level trying to figure out okay we're going to have this agenda based entirely around the budget and possible reductions necessary to get to the 2 million. Um there are I know you had the the bus idea there was an idea about possible

109facility uh usages that we could use. Dr. Will it is digging into hopefully other ideas that we can do to try to reach that number with minimal long-term effects in students. So my hope and then I'll turn to Dr. Will and let you speak on it is that as we talked at the beginning what he'll bring next week get to us earlier Monday and then then be able to really get into meat and potatoes next week are items just like that that we could get into. Is this possible? Yes or not? If it's not, what is possible within those realms? Why isn't it possible? What kind of savings would that bring to us to be able to put together that portfolio of what's going to be be necessary? But the bus ideas you brought in

110would certainly is there is there a I guess I'm not too sure. I don't have the timeline in so I I know next week we're going to have a big bud budget discussion but I I don't know if I'm sure myself along with other people other board members have ideas running through their heads to where they like to alter this change that up to fee on this ask a question about can we raise the lunches or whatever the case to generate more revenue or clubs or you know what what is the timeline for if I have I have five other ideas, when am I presenting them to hopefully move that forward into our budget cuts or raise revenue or how does that operation work moving forward? So, there's a couple things to that I want

111to point out in in response to that question. In fact, uh Jen called me earlier today and she's like, "Wait, we're talking about the budget next week." Okay, that's right. uh when the c or the council by by the point we start talking about it next week the council won't have made their decision as to what that number is. So the 2.99 that that's currently a part of the pound manager proposal is not necessarily what's going to end up getting flowed out to referendum or get flow back to us. We recognize that. Uh what we're trying to do here is get in front of the the ball there and say okay what's it going to take to get to the 2.99 where we can start figuring out we can start asking questions there's no commitment

112at that point because there's no number. So if after next week you know you go to venue you have an epiphany the next morning hey if we do this we would save us more money that's still not only welcome but that's that's encourage because what we're going to see as you know Dr. Dr. Willlet has his meeting with the council. The council starts doing their deliberations. We're going to have further discussions as a board. When the council then votes and approves a number that'll come back to us even before referendum, we're going to have a discussion on the as a board to say how do we get from our 2.99 up or down to whatever that number is. And then when the referendum passes, we're going to have to have another conversation and really submit

113things down. So, this is just trying to get some of the heavy lifting and figure out how we start to get there now so that we can then kind of ride the wave and figure things out. I I I just want to make sure I think everyone here and I'm sure everyone who maybe hasn't spoken h has some some great ideas in stuff and I just don't want anybody's idea to be either pushed to the side or say hey we've only got 10 days to figure this out and we don't have the data and Walt's trying to look hunt down 18 different ideas that people have. I don't want that that to happen because I I feel that that that kind of we were in a little bit of a jam last time, last budget

114and I think some things got kind of pushed through at the end and that's why we're starting uh it's also a I think it's value added for the council, for the town, for all the decision makers that are involved in the process to hear our discussions on what what this means so that they can then feel or not feel but they can then include the effects into their conversations. So this is just part of the process. It is in no way and just to be clear to make sure we all understand next week's meeting is in no way cementing anything down. It's just trying to get that understanding and that conversation going. All right. Thank you. Anybody else? Who was somebody? Was it Jamie? Was your I thought I saw somebody's hand up. Yeah, I

115did. But it's okay. Um there's a lot there. It's it's yeah, I guess it's more so suited for next week's discussion. So, I won't I just I won't touch on it too much tonight. Um but, you know, happy to consider all options on the table. And I would uh just stress, you know, while while Dr. Dr. Willlet is certainly going to be doing, you know, everything he can to brainstorm and gather information and provide the conversation uh for for next week. If you have ideas, don't wait till next Wednesday. Get them to him now. Sun tomorrow. Yeah. So that he can include them on his list. He can start digging through. He can start doing the the due diligence instead of, you know, he may not put words in your mouth, but you may not

116have all of the answers on Monday or Wednesday, but certainly you can then prioritize and start going lowhanging fruit. the big numbers we can start doing the things to try to identify, you know, biggest gain with least impact to the students. So, yeah, don't wait. Get them to them. Email, call, text, letter, whatever it takes. Well, this is more of a direct communication, not putting it on the budget Q&A thing or something like that. This is just like send in direct. Yeah. If you have ideas on this 7, it doesn't have to be on CC Jeno CC Jen, she'll help gather them. But yeah, yeah, you don't we don't need to put him on the Q&A for this. We'll get him to him. Uh Dr. Willlet when he starts gathering the information and pulling it

117together in whatever document form, we'll post that for the board to see and bit that out. But at this point, I don't see the need to funnel up to the Q&A. Okay. The sooner the better on that because if everybody's hitting me with like five or something, you know. How do you Sorry. I thought I'd text you. Yeah. Uh other comments with Skeleton. Hey guys, sorry to join late. I uh I did the TC meeting before ours. Um I just wanted to clarify. So any emails with ideas should go to Tony and myself and Walt. Correct, Tony? Yeah. CC me if you don't mind. But yeah, me and Jen, but send them to Walt and CC the two of us. So it's going to Walt and Jen Palumbo and Tony and Jen Gry. Just make

118sure it's got Jen Palumbo in there. board, everybody. We can't apply all to those. Good point, J. Yeah, thanks. Okay, you good? Yeah. Just uh um so BQ62 talks a little bit about this and then Is that the best? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Let's let's hold that for sure. I just want to make sure we've got something that there that you can take a look if that we're going to talk but if you want to add something. Okay, thanks. All right, moving on to item N1 then. And Dr. Wood, if you would be so kind as to pull up uh the motion, anybody that is properly harded and just would entertain the motion. Motion to allow the superintendent to support and authorize the 2025 2026 healthy food certification and to allow for the exemption of food

119and beverage items as well as other provisions as indicated in considerations one and two. I hear a second thought make me read second. Yeah. discussion. Okay. Rey, I Bill. Hi, Raymond. I Brian. Hi, Katie. Hi, Jaden. I Dana, I Jen, I. All right, motion passes. Down with the candy bars recommended. [Music] All right. Public participation, two minutes, comments, limited to items on the agenda. As always, if you'd like to speak, please raise your hand and be recognized. If you're in the room, raise your hand and we will call upon you. Ask again if you would like to speak raise your Zoom hand. Right. Public participation close. Points of information. Anybody from the board like to speak? Right. Dr. Willlet. Uh as far as the future, I believe we have an instructional round. Yep. That's tomorrow.

120Um actually this is it's 8:45 to 11:15. So slightly different than it was here but you have tomorrow at town it was unified arts intervention in beautiful if you are able I highly recommend look forward to the conversation. All right I'll entertain a motion to adjurnn second second sorry discussion. Okay. Reie. Oh, I Yes. Bill. Hi. Hi, Brian. Hi, Katie. Hi, Jaden. Hi, Dana. Hi, Jen. Hi. Thank you all. Have a wonderful evening. Be safe.