001Okay. May I have a call for a motion to exit executive session for the purpose of discussing matters leading to the discipline of a particular student, current litigation, and the employment of particular persons? Second. Second. All in favor? I. Motion carries. Okay. I call for a motion to enter open session. Second. Motion carries. All right, let's please stand for the pledge to the flag. 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 and justice for all. Okay, this Okay. Our next one will go to uh privilege of the floor. This portion of the agenda provides an opportunity for residents of the Niagara Wheatfield School District to be heard. Any person who wishes to address the board is
002invited to do so at this time. Please state your name, address, complaints or criticism about individual school personnel are not appropriate in this form and will not be allowed. The board may not respond to questions. They should be referred to the superintendent of schools at any time. Please limit your comments to three minutes. Uh the first we do have one uh Amber. Hi. I've never done this before, so um so who's as a board? You're all um in charge of making the rules for discipline. How does that happen? Who makes the the code? Here's what I'll do. Just if you if you um heard what I'll do is I'm going to write down all of your questions, okay? And then we'll be able to respond either tonight or afterwards. So, why don't you ask your
003questions on the record and then we'll respond that way. Okay. Okay. Where is it written that when a student is disciplined that they are suspended for two months or two weeks or a week? Who makes that decision? And when did it go into place that what happens outside of school the child is disciplined inside school? Another question is, who monitors the children that drive to school with no license? Give me one sec. I'm sorry. The the the last one. Hold on. It was about How are you monitoring the children that drive to school without a license? Got it. Thank you. trouble with this. Oh, here it is. Okay. Okay. Next, we have a consensus agenda items. I will now call for a motion to approve the following consensus agenda items. 1 through five as submitted.
004Second. Any discussion? All in favor? I. Okay. Uh motion carries. Uh personnel items. I will now call for a motion to approve the personnel report 1 through 12. Uh you did. Okay. May I have a motion? Second. Any discussion? All in favor? Opposed? Abstained. Motion carries. Um standing committees. Um capital projects. Dan, you want to talk? Yeah, ju just two things regarding the capital project. Um the we do have a concern um related to um the timelines for some of the equipment that's coming in. So that particular it's coming from outside the United States. Obviously everybody's you know aware of the the trade wars that are going on. That's an impacting timelines certainly impacting cost to a degree. So that that's something we are concerned about. remember h our um build time especially in areas
005where we want students to be in September our build time is very very short right we're talking the very end of June through August so we do have some concerns about that some good news on the capital project front is that the approvals from New York state from guys have really um uh quickened so where they were 18 to 20 weeks. They're now much much shorter. And one of the reasons for that is they've um allowed for third-party reviewers. Again, when they were doing that before, the review times were a lot less. Review times are really important for school districts because of that short timeline that we have for a lot of the building that we do. Um and if you figure something gets pushed back almost a half a year, the costs of that
006escalation go up. So being able to get these things done in a much shorter period of time much better for the district district budget and the monies that we have put aside for the capital project work. So that's what I have on the capital policy committee. Um yeah so we have okay so we had a meeting prior to this meeting this evening uh discuss a few policies and it will be on the agenda next time for the first reading. All right. Okay, next. Uh, what's justformational? Just information. Do I read it? Okay. The exofficial student member report. [Music] I also stop. That's another thing. I can't remember last week. Um, present. I I have nothing at this time. Superintendent's response. Great. Thank you. Um let let me start with an event that um happened at
007Eric Road. Um the parent group there and the staff arranged to make teacher night and it was um at the Meadow Drive McDonald's. The place was packed. It was awesome. the the the the staff that were there um did an incredible job. I've never been in a McDonald's when it's been that busy. Um there were people kind of waiting in a line to get in. The parents there to see their, you know, the the kids teachers and then staff members and um it it was really incredible. I know the group raised a considerable amount of money, but it was a really really neat event. They called it MC MC teacher night. Uh there were these green shirts that all of the the teachers who were involved were wearing, but it was a really neat uh
008experience for um the the Eric W community. I I also want to touch base on um what you got a little glimpse of at our last board meeting when we had the table set up over there, the invention convention. Our students that had placed um actually now have now did incredibly well at the state level and they're moving on. So there's actually going to be an article um that's going going out uh in the shouldat um on the winners both at CV and uh West Street. So congratulations to all those kids families. Obviously we saw the work that they did for those projects. It was pretty incredible. Congratulations to teachers who organizing those events in both those schools. We only saw the some of the present a representative group from CV but both CV and
009West did incredibly well. So, we're really good. Just mark your calendars for April 26th. I know I I mentioned at the last meeting, the eco campus project is from 8 to 11:00 a.m. that day. Uh here it's a Saturday. Um then from 11 to 1:00, we have the wellness walk and the wellness fair. So, it's a it should be a really great day for the school community. They think about coming. Did you did you have anything else on that side? No. Okay. No, it's on district Facebook. On the district Facebook. I think the last I saw there were like 30 vendors or something like that. I think somewhere around um the federal education department. You're probably reading a lot about the federal education department and um the possibility of the federal education department going away.
010Obviously, one of the main concerns a school district would have is the funding streams that are connected to that department. Um, for our district, the two main funding streams are idea funds and title funds. Um, what they've said to this point is that those funds are going to be transferred to another department and that department will now be overseating those funds. We're going to expect that that was going to happen. That's what they've said it's going to happen. If not, we'll certainly have to adjust. Um, but if you're if you're hearing things, um, that's my take on it. Okay. And then, um, last, I just want to recognize, um, Dr. Allison Davis. Um, she will be, um, retiring and, um, she received or is one of the recipients of the Western New York Education Service
011Council Award of Excellence. um those who are at the board at the board table know um but but Alison's been in the district for about 12 years. If you if you put somebody's um life on a graph, their work life on a graph and you said what'd you do the last, you know, 10 11 years and you look at the fact that about 10 years ago we were the most fiscally stressed district in New York State at 88.3%. The higher the percent, the worse you are. We were the worst there was in New York State. Okay, now we're at 0%. Um, and there's the board of education obviously has a ton of work to do with that and they're responsible for that and our business office and the business office has been led by Allison.
012So um the the award is very very welld deserved and um you're going to hear a little bit more about our long range plan tonight but I just want to say congratulations, great job and uh you've done great things for our district and we appreciate it. All righty. Um, reports to the board of finances. Rick Tims. So, I am happy to welcome back uh I think every year that I've been here, Dr. Rick Tibs has been here. Um, he is going to present be presenting on our long range plan. I don't know anyone in New York State who knows more about school finance and long range planning uh than Dr. Kins and I know that he's meant a lot to what I just said about Allison. So, thanks for being here tonight. Thanks for working
013with us as a consultant. We appreciate it. Glad to be here. Glad to be here. Well, I think you all got a little handout. So, if you follow along, we've got a great report for you. And I'd like to echo what uh your superintendent said about working with Allison. Uh she's been terrific to work with and I think she's just fantastic. Well, here we go. It'll be on the screen. How's that? I'll use a little red button. We will we will we will send you paper copies. There should have been paper copies. All right. So, here we go. So, what we're going to do is we're going to go through a whole bunch of things that we usually look at. So, if you take a look at your screen up here, we always look back
014five years to find out how the district's been doing in the last five years. And we use what we call the ST3. It's the documents, the official document for the state education department. It talks all about your revenues, expenditures, all different funds that you have and so on. So we can track the progress of the district. And of course, your district's progress over the last five years has been phenomenal. State education department website calculations. Allison and the business office constantly submit additional data to the state education department about students say numbers of students with special needs general ed kids CT kids attendance your demographics and so on and these are always updated by the state education department and of course what I'm going to be showing you tonight is some of your state aid calculations
015and they bear a large a large part of that school district external auditor report and recommendations it's always good to see what the external auditor says and your your reports have in excellent uh documents of capital expenses and debt. To the superintendent's point, you're in the middle of a capital project. So, we're always watching capital projects. We're always watching your debt and and your building aid and things like this, transportation, trying to track all that for you. And that goes along with all your debt instruments like bonds and bands, things like this. We also take a look at the district's use of capital reserves because it's one of the most important reserves a district can have. And we're going to talk about your reserves in a little more detail in a minute. Debt service schedules.
016We take a look at those to make sure because those are part of your tax cap calculation. We take a look at all your state aid, including foundation aid. I'm show you a list of it tonight and where we think it's going. Expense driven aid is pretty important to a district, but what happens is districts have to understand that the the aid usually comes in after you've made the expense. So, you always have to front the money. We take a look at any tax implications of things going on in the district. for instance, the tax cap, the debt service pilots, things like this, the use of the debt service fund or any reserves, how you use those funds and reserves. I read uh I'm probably the only person in the state reads every report by
017the controller on school districts. I read every single one of them. And that's because what I'm supposed to do is make sure you try and stay out of as much trouble as possible because we don't want to cross swords with the controller. But at the same time, uh we al we also want to make sure the district is in good financial condition going forward. controller has a habit of looking current and past. So just a nice mixture there. Use of funds appropriated fund balances which is a fancy name for the difference between what you're calculating as your for sure probably revenues and pretty close to your for sure expenses and also the unappropriated fund balances the money you have on hand for cash for cash flow. We take a look at projected TRS rates teachers
018retirement system and employee retirement system rates. Now we look at this because it's a big number in all school district budgets. So when these numbers move by any percentage it tends to have a big financial impact. Now TRS for instance is not moving very much. That rate is not moving very much into the next year. But ERS is moving in double digits. But keep in mind the people who are in the employee retirement system are usually non-certified staff. So it could be it could be like a cleaner custodian, secretaries, the school nurse perhaps things like this whereby in the teachers retirement system you have teachers you know with your guidance counselor principles things like this and so what happens is the rates are different the important thing is is even if the rates did not
019change your cost would probably accelerate and the reason is because whatever the rate is it's multiplied times salaries. So when salaries move that number moves so we've got to keep an eye on. The next thing we talk about is the implication of the loss of the federal grants the Chrisa and ARPA grants in other words the Corona virus relief act and also the American Rescue Plan because your district had access to all these federal uh monies and it they did use it very very wisely helped you with fund balance and helped you with a lot of costs. So, we think there's good kudos for the district there. Determination of future expense calculations, including salaries and benefits. You've got to remember that probably between 65 and 75% of your budget is tied up in salaries and
020benefits. So, that's a real big number. It's your delivery system and your infrastructure. So, we've got to keep an eye on that. And then, of course, I torture Allison every year with millions of questions, million forms. I need this document, that document, send me this, send me that. I lost that. Send me that one again. You probably didn't send it to me, but I'm making this up. But anyway, so I really I gotta really say she's really been a good soldier about the whole thing because I do drive her nuts. I know. But she's been very patient with me. But she's really good. She's been really good. So here we go. Let's take a look at your reserves. So I'm just going to go through piece by piece with you to make it easy. You've
021got a workers compensation reserve and unemployment insurance reserve. Now these two reserves are really for obvious. They're obvious reasons. a workers compensation uh uh cons uh group that you've got to pay for your insurance for workers compensation and helps you pay that uh for that that those costs and unemployment in case people leave district service and you have to pay unemployment. Now the interesting thing about these two things is is that workers compensation by itself generally doesn't move that much but should you have a large number of claims in a short period of time it can move pretty significantly. So, it's good to make sure that you have like a rainy day fund for it. And if you notice it's moved up and down. If you notice that move number has moved up down, you
022built into it, but you're also using it. And I think this is important. In other words, you're not just stockpiling it. You're using them for their purpose. And your unemployment insurance reserve moves around a little bit, too. The interesting thing about these two reserves, though, is should the district have an emergency where it needed cash immediately, it only takes a board resolution to move money in and out of those reserves. So you don't have to go through voter approvals and things like this. So it's a nice ready day fund. We always want to use a reserve for its intended purpose, but every now and then something comes out of the blue. You do have reserves for ERS and TRS and they are properly funded and even your your audits point out that there's no issues
023with those as well. So those are also important. Now if we do have spikes in these in these things uh from time to time to be honest with you. Now, here's why the pensions are another important factor we got to look at. People are actually staying in their jobs longer. They're retiring when they're older. They're making more money than they have in the history. Does that make sense to you? Well, when I started teaching, this is when the earth was cooling. Uh, what happened was I made $5,000 a year. So, you could just imagine, right? I mean, what was I going to do with all the money? Maybe the earth wasn't cooling, but I know the dinosaurs were gone. Okay. But anyway, so people make more money now. They live longer. So therefore, there's more
024pressure on the pension system to pay more money, right? It costs more. So we got to keep an eye on there. Now, you've got there's a there's a reserve for property loss, liability, and insurance. You have no money in it, nor do you need any. Right now, you're you've got adequate insurance coverage for these types of things, and there doesn't seem to be any threats or liabilities on the horizon. You do have a taxi reserve. So, this is where perhaps a person owns property says I've been overassessed and I'm going to claim that I paid too much in taxes and they enjoin with a legal proceeding. We'll say a town, a village or a school district saying I want some of my money back because I feel that I was overassessed and therefore I paid
025too much in taxes. Now, that doesn't mean they're going to get all their money back. It's usually goes through a judicial process. But if they win any money back, usually what happens is the district is usually served with some paperwork that says you owe this person or this entity x amount of dollars and you have sometimes they say 30, 45, 60 or 90 days to pay it. You got to write them a check. So you don't want that interfering with the flow of your budget. So what the district has done is when these tax rate claims come out, they've set aside money so it doesn't affect your budget should their claim be successful. If the claims are adjudicated and if you notice the money changes every year. Every year you're supposed to reassess, shall we
026say, how much you should really have in that reserve and therefore update the amount of money you have in it. So this is a good practice. So far we've just got a pile of good practices here. Now we also have oops we also have reserve for employee benefits and acred liability. Now this is a very restrictive reserve and you can see it's been up then it's been down and it's been back up a little bit. Now, this reserve is usually uh it's a general municipal law reserve and it's used for when people leave the district. You can pay them instead of out of the budget. You can take some of this money and pay their own unused sick personal and vacation days, overtime pay, things like this that would not be a normal part of
027a budget. Now, some budgets do have money set aside for that, but sometimes they have a huge number of retirements at once and therefore they need to tap the reserve. And that's a good idea. I think when you see reserves moving, you can tell the district is using them properly. Then we've got capital reserves. And if you'll notice, I've got a whole bunch of them in blue. And you'll see what's what's happening here is there's one in the middle that's a 25 capital improvement reserve. And it's it's in blue, but there's no there's no amount in there. And that's because what has to happen here is the F means they've been fully funded. So capital reserves, especially for capital improvements. Your district has been probably a regional leader in improvements for capital reserves for capital
028improvements, transportation and technology. And you can see it here because what happens here is this is one of the perfect reserves. You notice they all start in different years. So what has happened is the district has actually planned out its capital projects in advance. It has planned out its transportation costs in advance and its technology. And what happens is every one of those reserves have to be voted on and approved by the voters. So to me, it's perfect transparency with the voters. In other words, we're saying, look, we're displaying here's what we want to do with our finances. Would you let us do it because we have a plan? We know that certain things are going to cost more over time. Let us save, acrue interest to these accounts, and therefore not have a tax
029impact when we need to spend the money. So this is a gift that keeps on giving particularly because technology you can use that technology reserve buy technology through boseis you save the money but you can get aid on the cost of the technology same thing with transportation and the same thing with capital improvements so technically speaking you can offset a taxpayer impact and simultaneously get aid on your own money so this is spectacular plane I wish all my clients had millions like this I've got a couple that have them like this, but I wish they all did. This is this is a master class in how to do it. And if you see the numbers going up and down as you put money in, replenish money, use money for different projects. And some of them
030are actually getting toward the end of their life. You can see the one from 2017, we got $127,000 in it. Now, if you start a new capital reserve, we'll say for a voter proposition in 2025, as an example, you can include in the resolution the transfer of that $127 plus acred interest to help seed the new reserve. So, you've got a lot available here at your disposal. Just an excellent plan. Reserve for repairs. You don't have anything in there, but you have constantly kept up with your capital improvements because you have a master plan. and this is wonderful. What you can't get done in this project, you will do in the next project. You're thinking about it all the time. And you really don't need much of a plan for repairs because the idea is
031you're way ahead of the game. The other problem with the reserve for repairs is is that usually a repair is not aid eligible. There's no state support for repairs. For instance, if you had a roof leak, the state doesn't want you to repair the roof. I know it sounds weird. They want you to replace it because there's going to be more leaks if you've got one. There ultimately will be more. They'd rather have you invest in the infrastructure and get it done. So in other words, the repair reserve for you not really important. Reserve for debt. You're not eligible for a reserve for debt per se because a reserve for debt is when you had say a building that was student occupied space and you decided to sell the building and consolidate the district inside.
032In other words, move kids out of one building and empty it. then you could sell the building. If you owed money on the building, you have to take whatever you sold it for, put it in that account, and then help pay off the debt over time. And then other restricted fund balances, and I've got some districts that have that, but you know what else they have? They have a nuclear power plant in their district or they have a giant coal fired uh plant, you know, for electric. And what's going to happen is they're going to close. So they're stockpiling tens of millions of dollars in that reserve because as soon as they close all the tax money from that those plants goes away. It becomes an empty lot. The assessment changes to practically zero and
033most of the land is contaminated. So what happens is the district has a chance to lose revenue. So what they do is they try and stockpile money in there and try and help fund their own district because they've saved the head from those from those planes. Rick, if I could just really quick, um, for those, you know, who haven't heard the discussions on our budget where we've talked about the capital improvement reserve and the capital, um, reserve for transportation. As far as the capital improvement reserve is concerned, we've seen um 20 to 30% escalation in costs for the work that we're doing. When you look at the number of those reserves and I think many of you already know the cost of you know the the move to electric buses those buses have gone up
034the the price of those buses would potentially be about three times what the current so when you look at those numbers just keep that in mind that's a good point because what happens is what you're doing is you're hoping for the best but planning for the worst and I think that's exactly what you've got in this plan. So you see overall over time you've actually built the reserves and used them appropriately. Now, if you'll notice, the height of the reserves were probably in the June of 22 year when you're up to about 27.9. But don't forget, remember I mentioned in my first document, we take a look at federal funds. You guys have been able to use those federal funds, the property build fund balance, and save the rainy day. Uh I wish I wish
035a lot of districts did that. It was very well thought out when you So, as we look forward here, I've got I got things on automatic pilot here, but if you'll notice, I took that 2017 and 18 transportation and C and the uh capital reserves. And what I'm going to do is I want to we want to buy some buses and stuff. We want to buy some things. So, you'll see along the line there in technology, you'll see the number go down a little bit. Everybody see the the uh the 2021 technology reserve moving. So, we do have plans to keep using these reserves. Now, to keep keep in mind on that purple line at the bottom, you're going to start depleting those reserves over time, but for their useful intended purpose to benefit the
036not only the district, the district's infrastructure, the district's need to deliver their system and also to help taxpayers. So, you're not taxing for the full cost of these items. So for instance, right now Alice and I were toying around with the idea we'll say how about buses going longterm and you see the cost goes up and of course technology based on your technology plan and vehicle purchases based on your vehicle needs and of course vehicles are starting to become very expensive. For instance, I think it was like I maybe seven eight years ago I bought a pickup truck for a school district for $30,000. I bought two in the last two months for 75 and 85,000 because they have to be able to plow snow and everything else, right? Put the the solder on the
037back and all that. So things are getting expensive and and to the superintendent's point, we're trying to plan for that. You can see, but we're we're not using the same amount every year. It's moving because we can actually move our schedule around. So there's some real thought involved here. So the district uses them effectively, efficiently, and properly, and supports great financial planning. Um, most districts simply come up with a school district budget annually and don't think of anything after that. But you're way ahead of the game. And I think that's why your your financial score has gone right right through the roof into from a high to a low, which is really good. Let's take a look at your state aid. Let's focus in on uh foundation aid first. Let's start off at the at
038the first two years. 22 23 23 24. You got an increase of 1.9 million, an 8.4% increase, as you can see on the bottom, but the foundation 8% down there so it didn't mix up with the numbers. Now, that was great. Here's the only problem with that. You had waited 17 years to get that money. You had waited 17 years to get that money. Guess what? That's not all the money they owed you. You know what they did? What they did is they didn't pay you for 16 years. And then in the 17th year, they say, "What would we owe you for just this year if we paid you up?" And that's where you got the money. So all the previous years you never got any of the money but you you've done well besides
039that. Now if we go to the 2425 year you'll see the increase is about $169,000. You see that? Now the interesting there thing there is is that it was hardly any increase at all. The legislature really didn't want to pass a huge foundation aid increase. But you know what it was what I would call an old formula. I think many of you know I've been lobbying for probably now since 2006 achieves the foundation aid formula and I think we got some traction because if you'll notice in the year 2526 you're getting 2.243 243 million. See that? The that is what's we're calling the governor's run. All right, that's the governor's run. Now, there are other school there are other runs. There's a November run. There's a February one. There's going to be another one in
040April when the budget's passed. There'll be another one in May. There'll be another one in June. There'll be another one next October. So, it's a moving number. But the truth of it is what the governor did is she asked the uh Rockefeller Institute, if you remember, how to change the formula. So, I testified and actually I had a number of meetings privately with the with that committee and I I actually submitted like 20 pages of formula changes that they could make. Well, she picked up three of them which was great. And what they did is they were all designed and they helped your district because they changed the census for community poverty and they they for the community and then they also changed how to measure poverty for students instead of just frile free and
041reduced price lunch. And because many school districts went to the homeless breakfast lunch programs, people weren't handing in triple. People looked wealthier. So what she did is she embraced what we called economically disadvantaged. In my report, she picked it up. So now she's looking at SNAP, Medicaid, HEAP programs, and a whole myriad of others, which made you look poorer, which made you get more aid. So I'm really happy for you. I really That's great. Now, the big thing is is once you hit a plateau though and they change the formula, does does it mean that you're going to have that level of growth every year? And the answer would probably be well, probably not. Now, you also have a growing special needs population. And I'm hopeful that the legislature picks up more parts of the
042formula and changes it. And that would also help you in the future. But I only put in a 2.5% increase because I don't think as a financial analyst I'm supposed to come here and create an artificially rosy picture. I want one that's probably a little more realistic and more in the downside than the upside if that makes any sense. So we don't get a little too over excited here. So I think you're in good shape for that. But you do notice that 2.2 million turns into 681,000 pretty fast, right? So it's kind of like again long range planning will help you. It's kind of like when you get that bonus, the last thing you want to do is spend it all at once. Think about it. And I think you're doing that. The next set
043of aid categories is summer school transportation aid, which is very scam for most districts. It's just usually a couple bucks. Transportation without summer school, building a Boseies. Then the two two high cost aids known as public excess cost high cost aid and private excess cost aid. Now, let's go through them. Transportation. Now, if you notice your transportation aid is going up a little bit and down a little bit, but mostly up. Now, what's going to happen here is we can't really tell where it's going to start going as we get into the 27 year in particular. And the reason is, and your superintendent pointed that out, if you have to buy zero emission buses, all of a sudden the calculus changes, not only the buses three times the cost of a regular bus, but they
044will be advertised eight years, not five years. So, even though they cost more, it'll take longer for the aid to arrive. Does that make sense? So, I've kind of said, well, let's just keep it until we really know what's going on and stabilize that. Now, your building aid, you'll notice it's gone up a little bit and down a little bit. Whenever you see a red in the building aid, what that means is old debt is falling off. When you see black, that means more building aid's coming out because of capital projects. And you can see the big bump, you're going to have 2627. Then you've got in 2728, you've got some red there. And what's happening there is old old capital projects are falling off. In other words, your debt is going away. Now, you
045have a couple choices there. You could do another capital project to keep that from falling off or you can simply let it fall off and in and any of those years try and recoup it with a new capital project. It depends upon your cash flow. So far so good. Bosey's aid depends upon what you buy in Bosei services. Now, one of the things that people always get confused is, well, we spend a lot we send a lot of special needs kids to Boseis, so we get a lot of Bosey's aid. Well, that's not true at all. the the special needs kids that go to Boseies, the aid for them would be either in foundation aid or in public excess cost aid because they're a special category. CTE kids, career and technical education kids are the
046ones in the Boseis a but it's also other Bose services that you get. For instance, you might get some services and staff development. Uh you could you're buying technology perhaps through there. Now if you know some years you you it goes up and some years down because you have a schedule to buy some of these things or the student population changes. So you don't have to buy the same amount of tech every year. But keep in mind that when you buy something through both these you pay the money one year and the aid comes in the year afterwards. So the key thing is always remember the district and all these aids is fronting the money. So cash flow will be extremely important here. When it comes to public excess cost aid, you'll notice, let's use
047the 2526 year. Currently estimated about $668,000. You're probably spending over $750,000 at least. I got to be me more than at 800 maybe to get that money. So what happens is is that there's a threshold. You pay like the first, I don't know, 50, 60, 70,000 of the child's education. Then they give you a percentage after that. When those numbers bob up and down, it's usually because of student populations increasing or decreasing during that period of time. The other thing to keep in mind though is this the um state laws just changed regulations by the commissioners the education children till age 22, but the aid only covers the age 21. Okay. So, uh we've asked the legislature to update that to help you out. I'm not so sure that'll pass this year because it'll cost
048more money for the legislature. uh private access cost a would be like schools for the blind, schools for the deaf, those types of things. Remember, it's by the luck of the draw who moves in who lives in your district that would be in these programs. And federal law and state statute, commissioners, regulations are very restrict on providing these services. So these are constantly uh usually escalating costs. They do take a toll's budget, but these are the most needy kids probably in the entire school district need and deserve. Probably all our help we give them and their families. Software, aid, library, textbook, and hardware, as you can see, goes up and down. I would probably guess those red numbers we're seeing right after 2024 25 will turn black by the end of the year. And that's
049because during the year, you submit records on how you have used those purchases to secure the aid. So, it's a little too early to count those out, but I think it's going to keep moving along. Your district does make use of all those aids as much as possible. Then the oops uh the universal pre kindergarten aid. Now, universal pre kindergarten aid, the number in orange is in orange for a couple reasons. One is that money does not go into your general fund. Other words, it doesn't go into your regular budget. It goes into what's called special aid fund. and and it's it is special aid because it's for special purpose and can only be used for purposes like this that belong in that fund. But you'll notice that sometimes the difference between the two numbers
050is down, sometimes it's a zero, sometimes it's up, sometimes it's all over the place. There are a ton of rules for universal pre kindergarten. How many slots you fill? There's different tiers of the money that can be used. uh you got to keep in mind that if you take your own staff where you use an outside agency depends upon the cost of the program. In some cases the aid is enough to cover the program. In other cases it is not. So it's different in every single school district. But that in that revenue that does not go into your general fund. It goes into the special aid fund. So what you'll see is down here at the bottom. I've actually subtracted it out because we're going to focus tonight on your general fund. In other words,
051your budgeted fund. So, actually, you've got a pretty good pretty good thing going on here. I think you've done really well. Um, now a lot of this is determined by how good the reporting is by the school district. And as you see, I think it's keeping up to snuff. So, that's great. So, now let's just take a look at a scenario. Now, what I'm going to do is this is obviously a scenario. We don't know the exact number that your tax cap is going to move. So, what I'm going to do is I'm going to say to myself, okay, let's just say your tax cap is going to be 2%. Now some of the things you have to consider here is where are the rest of your revenues going and where are they coming from.
052So I would think in your future if all things being equal 2% are about there looks like it would be okay but we're only looking at the money coming in side of the equation but you're going to have a pilot and I think when the pilot comes in it's going to wreak a little havoc on your tax cap. I know you've studied it but it's going to be problematic. I mean in a big way. So, I'm just going to say as a financial adviser, although you or the board have to make the decision, uh my suggestion is you try and whatever the cap is, go to it because you're going to be returning money as a result of that pilot because you can't you won't have two bites of this app. But let's just pretend
053for the sake of this this uh experiment here that what we do is we say we're going to go to 1.64 this year and you can decide what you need to do and then we'll say 2% for the rest of the year. I guess what I'm doing is giving you a research project to say if we use those numbers in blue, how's the district going to fair all things being equal? So if you can see technically speaking, real property taxes, I'm going to go with the 25 year would be 37.266 million. Everybody see where I'm at? And the 2930 year would be about 41. So it' be increase about 3.7 million or 10%. But it's over a fiveyear period, right? Then what we've got is pilots based on your current agreements before the new pilot
054takes effect. And if you'll see it does move around a little bit. There's some of these have easy formulas and some of them not so hot to be honest with you. I mean they're all over the place. But that's the best estimate we've got so far. Your estate aid uh that I'm using here is really from that previous page. There's your state aid. And you can see the building aid's going up because the building projects. You can see I've got that foundation aid in there and the other a is going up as well by 5.8 million. So the state aid picture looks pretty good. Medicaid reimbursement here. What we're trying to do is it was a million dollars this year. We're moving it to 975 to make it a little more realistic. Does that make
055sense to you? We want to we don't want to overestimate it. And then we've got these inter fund transfers. The greenway funds from the V fund. We're going to be using those in here as a revenue source for three years only. So that looks like it kind of puts a crimp in your revenue, but you'll still get the money, but we're not going to count as revenue against your budget, and we don't actually need to. So that'll be actually good. I think this might give you a little more rainy day uh funds. The next one is other revenue. Now, the other revenues, you'll notice for the 25 year 4.3 million. So, uh, what Allison's been able to do is take just about every nickel that is nailed down in this school district and put it
056in a high interestbearing account and she's used the competitive nature of doing it. So, she's got one of the highest interest bearing accounts you got. And so, she's been able to make some interest on the money. So, you got to make interest while the while the timing is good, right? Because you may not get another bite at the apple. Now, the only thing I would say is if we look at that bottom line on the other revenues, you'll see it goes from 4.3 to 3.2. too. Well, don't forget we're going to be buying things out of the reserves. She she will have less cash than to invest right now. We are taking a little gamble here in the sense that we don't know what the Federal Reserve is going to do or what the economy
057is going to do. I think the superintendent pointed out about the capital project and equipment coming in from outside the country and you know the cost of escalations and things. We don't know. But let's just say if she can maintain a pretty adequate fund balance and she can keep a high interest rate, we're going to use for this little example maintaining this depressed amount of revenues. All right. So then what we've got down here is the total amount of revenues and they would be going up about 11.3 million or 13.8%. Now if you look at the orange number there, you'll see it vasculates from year to year based on like the the year it goes only into 291. That's the year you losing some building aid and the year prior is when you were gaining
058building aid, right? So, they do tend to go up and down as I showed you. Most of this is state aid that moves it around. You've got a little of the pilots moving it around, too. If you look at the pilots between 26 and 27, you'll see about a $500,000 change. So, these things do happen. So, there's our revenue picture. Now, let's take a look at our expenses. So to make it easy on you so you don't have to memorize the uh the revenues for the test at the end of my talk, what I've done is I put on the top here the revenue total. So it would make it easy on you, right? So here we go. Here's your expenses generally in a budget. We are not counting paper clips or how many pages
059you print or how many leases you have for copier. We're looking at the big numbers, the things that affect the budget the most. So we start looking at the major categories and the first is general support. So, who's in the general support salary category? Well, that would be obviously superintendent, superintendent's office, but it's also the business office for example, but it's also maintenance, buildings, and grounds, right? So, it's all the cleaners, custodians, groundskeepers, whatever you've got, head uh custodian or whatever. So, all those people are up there. So what we try to do is take a look at what we think is right now, we believe right now and know right now are your contractual obligations based on your collective bargaining agreements and then in the out years where we see this trajectory going. Now
060here's something that's worth noting to you. A lot of times boards will say, "Well, we've got to we've got to really we don't want to pay these people this much so we could slow that line down." I understand the logic of that because it's going from about 3.8 8 million in 25 to about 4.5 in 2930 about 690,000 up. But the thing is you've got to find a cleaner custodian in the maintenance mechanic. What happens sometimes is districts do a self-inflicted injury whereby they lower the wrong thing. Okay? So it's kind of like, well, we don't want to give our teachers that much of a raise. Well, what if we can't hire anybody anymore? We need these people. So you got to be careful. You don't want a self-inflicted injury. The district has not done
061that. But I always caution districts to be careful. But that is actually a pretty gentle slope considering what's going on in the salary area. People are having a hard time finding good custodians, good cleaners, and maintenance mechanics to work on your buildings. Construction, excuse me. Other in general support would be your heat, light, electricity, utilities. It could be both cost for instance for technology, but it's also the wax in the floor, the toilet paper, the B, the plastic bags for the waste baskets, right? I mean, it's a whole pile of things. It could also be equipment you're buying. could be a lawnmower in there. So, the idea is this. This is a pretty good ticket item as well. And you'll notice that that's going from about 5.3 million25 to about 6,757,000. Okay. Now, I put
062percentages on the right hand side. If you notice, and I really am always reluctant to put percentages because board members look at percentages, but real finance people, they ignore the percentages and they look at the dollar amounts in the column next to it where it says difference because you can't spend a percent. Let me give an example. Uh your uh the other category went up 757,000. It's 14%. But your revenue is going up 13%. 1% less, but it's $10.9 million. You see how the percentages don't work that well, but I put them in there because people like to look at it. But here we go. How about instruction? This is the mission of the school district. Starts off, we'll say with principles, for instance. It's got teachers, guidance counselors, the school nurses in there, your
063coaches are in there, advisors, elementary teachers, your high school teachers, your middle school teachers, special ed teachers, behavioral specialists, your reading teachers, your coaches are in there, your PE teachers, everybody that works for the kid anytime during the day, day in day out, is in salaries. Please note it's the biggest number on the page and it's supposed to be because that's the purpose of the school district. The top general support is for infrastructure to make sure it runs. But the instruction part is the delivery system. So delivery systems going from about 31 million25 to about 35.8 based on what we see for your contractual obligations and this is maintaining current staff levels. So you can decide what you want to do there but that's what's moving. So is 14.3 over five years 4.4% for 4.4
064million up. Other what is other? A huge part of other would be all the kits you send to Boseis special ed or not or general ed CTE. Uh it could be a whole bunch of things that you buy from Boseies and services that you do. There's a bunch of things but it's also the books. It's also the textbooks, the library books. It's it's uh it's also the chemicals for the chemistry lab, the balances for the physics lab, right? It's the basketballs for PE, if you get my drift. It's everything that runs this district for the educational program. And of course, it's it's a big number because you've got a nice good good school district and you're adequately supplied supplied going from about 15.9 million, 18.8, about 2.8 up. Okay. Transportation salaries. Transportation salaries here about
0652.2 million going to about 2.4. Not much of a movement there. seem to be doing real well in the transportation area. But I must tell you, I'm working with a ton of school districts can't find drivers and they just simply steal from each other in the surrounding districts. So, it's actually starting to become like a wage war in certain parts of the state. It is simply amazing. Your other also in transportation, not just drivers, it could be your head mechanic, it could be other mechanics, it could be your bus monitors, it could be all those types of people that work in the transportation system. Other of course is what? Could be your fuel, could be the oil, could be the grease, it could be the mufflers, right? It could be the brakes and all the
066rest of it. Everything that's in a bus garage that you need for inventory to fix the buses, work on the buses, and everything related to that bus garage is in the other category. Then we look at employee benefits. We got retirement, social security, works comp, health, and then other, which is kind of a miscellaneous category for things that may may come up from time to time. Retirement is obviously a function of salaries. Like I said, it's moving around a little bit right now. Keep in mind though, even though the ERS rate is going up higher than the TRS rate, people in the ERS system make a lot less money than the people in the TRS. So, there seems to be a balancing effect here. Health is the one we all worry about across the entire
067state of New York. Yours is actually doing pretty good, I must say. Matter of fact, I was pleasantly surprised to see these numbers. We moved about 11 million to about 14, about 2.8 up. I've got districts right now I'm doing their long range plans and they told me next year their health insurance is going up 12.9% year after that 15% year after that 15% year after that 10% and year after that 10%. In other words, the consorcia that they belong to is hitting the skids terribly. And sometimes it's a self-inflicted injury, but it doesn't seem to be your case. What they do is they don't keep up with the rates. They burn off their own reserves and then they have to have these big increases. This looks this by comparison to other districts, this looks
068pretty good. Uh you've got your debt service in there for your capital projects and things like this and that's all in there and you see that moves around. It's actually going up as you come into this new piece of this capital project into the 27 and 28. But don't forget, so remember I showed you the punk in your building name. So what's happening there is it's not exactly equal and that's because no building project, no purchase of a bus, no purchase of most services is 100% or both. So there's a little minor difference. And then what I like about this is I always show the rand number and it's all zeros and that's exactly what it's supposed to be. In other words, the board ought to know that your district is so well well-run in
069terms of cash flow and finances. You do not need to borrow money for cash flow to make payroll and things like this. You are doing just great. I've got a bunch of new clients where there's numbers in there and I'm really worried about them. Uh when I came here, there were numbers in there, right? We got rid of those numbers fast if you remember, right? For those of you who are around and we had to make some big choices, but we got rid of them. But the truth of it is well-run districts all have zeros in there and you should be proud. Interfund transfers of course are like for summer school special ed transfers to school lunch and things like this. Now here's what we see here though. If you add up the the numbers
070here, we see that your expenses are going to exceed over time your revenues. Everybody see what's going on here? So what has to happen here is like all school districts, we we've got to strive and I say this every year I meet with you. We got to strive for greater efficiency, effectiveness, cost effectiveness. We got to find out our needs from our wants. When you start not having as much money as you thought you were going to have, certain things that you like to always do become luxuries and you necessarily can't do them. So, I think what's going to happen is over the years, including this year, you'll notice we did rightsize some of the numbers in this year's budget. We've got to continue to do that future years. So again, to make it easier
071on the open book test you'll get at the end. What I've done is I've actually put the revenues and expenditures over top of each other. So let's just kind of do a little quick exercise. Let's go to 25 year. And let's look at the orange numbers. Money in 4.7 million. Money out 2.6. See how good that is? 26 money in three, money out four. You see how it starts to turn? Because what we're seeing is been super tense mentioned a number of times. We're starting to see this compounding escalation of costs, right? And you can't compound your revenues. Does that make sense to you? You just can't say, "Okay, we need more pilot. We need more state aid. You just got to give us more." So that's that's where we're starting to see imbalance. Now,
072in 27, it looks not so bad. But 28, you can see that we got the 27 building aid coming in. Then we got some building a kind of going out in 28. But we still have expenses. Notice how the revenues start falling away because, you know, we don't know what kind of buses you're going to buy. We don't know what kind of age you're going to get. So, we got to keep that factored in here. So, it's not a disaster. The revenue could be higher, but we do know where the expenses are going. Make sense? Now, also keep in mind, we have adjustments here. So, in other words, a budget is People always say to me, Rick, I thought we had a $10 million budget. How come we didn't spend 10 million? Well, if you
073have a $10 million budget, you're not supposed to spend 10 million. And the reason is because you have to have a budget big enough so that no matter what happens, you can pay for it. So, uh, I was an assistant superintendent of the school district and I had a family of four move in that had four kids who were, uh, unbelievably multiply and severely disabled and each kid's program cost me $200,000. So, one day I was going, "Wow, we're in great shape." The next day, you know, I was like wondering what my career would be looking like in the future. So, the thing is these things do happen. So you have to have this carryover money. The other thing is is that you you were heavily dependent on Native American aid. The last couple years
074has come in pretty good, but if you remember a couple years ago, we were millions and millions behind in payments from the state. So if that happens, we can't afford to have that happen again. So we've got to be prepared. But if you'll notice between the 24 and 25 year, the numbers decreased rapidly. And this because what Alison is trying to do is trying to rightsize the budget. And if you see it, it just then we flatten that out at 7 million because we need cash flow. So remember how a school district works financially here. July 1, who's here? Central office buildings and grounds, right? You know, those people are working, okay? And maybe have a little staff development here. You got some couple administrators working, but that's it. But you're also paying everybody's pension
075then. Matter of fact, you have to pay in a lump sum early. It's actually intercepted from your state aid. So this big payment you have to make, you don't even make it. They take it out of your check. Then what happens is you have to keep paying everybody's health insurance. They're not even here, right? You got to keep all the stuff going. Then July, July, that's July 1. Then all of a sudden, first week in September, maybe the last week in August, everybody shows up. The full transportation system is working, right? Everything's going. You have to pay everybody. All the payrolls, all the benefits, social security, you got to pay for everything now. And over the summer, you had to order everything you needed for the school year. So, you need cash to operate the
076district. You don't even get tax money until November. And guess when your biggest state ache is the month of March. So, you have to front the whole district, right? So, think of it. You got a $87 million budget, $90 million budget. You're trying to front the whole district with your cash flow. Now that that carryover adjustment certainly helps you and of course at the same time in some of these years we're going to be burning out some reserves for with the purpose of actually saving some money because we can buy we'll say buses, vehicles and things of technology cash. We don't have to borrow for the money and pay interest. So it's a great plan, but you also have what's called the 4% limit. In other words, what you've tried to do is stay close
077to this limit. It's real property tax law 1318. you're allowed to hold in cash to help you with your cash flow 4% of the next year's budget. And that's what those numbers represent. As the next year's budget gets bigger, the amount you need for cash flow to operate that budget gets bigger. So, you add the adjustment money to the 4% money and you've got cash flow. Now, you can float the district till the tax money comes in and you can float the district until the uh state aid comes in. So, that's important. So, those all those are real. So where's the rest of the money? Well, what happens here is is we basically have a little phenomenon going on here. We're trying to find the revenue to expenditure difference. Remember, there's always a difference between
078your planned revenues and your planned expenditures. Your revenues are pretty much set in stone. Remember, you got taxes, you got state aid, right? You can't move around those much, but your budget has to be big enough so that anything happens, you can pay for it. So the distance between we'll say the 25 yellow number on the top for revenues is 82 million and the next yellow line down in expenses is 87 the gap is about 4.9 million. That's called the fancy name is appropriated fund balance. What that means is is that if the revenues come in as anticipated and that budget gets spent out because all of a sudden you have unexpected expenses you have no control over, you will run to your reserves and take out four $4.9 million. Does everybody see what happens?
079That's why it's important to have carryover money left so you don't use it. Now, if you really notice what's going on here, I've also tapped your reserves. I've got your reserve amounts in here. Remember, I've got that little line up there where the minus numbers are where I have adjustments for reserves. You're going to be taking money out of the reserves. But at the same time, if you'll notice, we've got a little more money in the appropriate fund balance or the unappropriate fund balance. So, I'm going to move that over into reserves. If you get my drift, you can build your reserves more for the next two years. That's great. You're in great shape. The problem starts to become is all of a sudden when we start looking at the fund balance going up, it
080looks great. Then all of a sudden, we see this 7.4 $4 million come up. The $7.4 million is the difference between your revenues and expenditures in the 28 year. Instead of being short 5 million, if everything goes off the rails, you'd be short 7 7.4. So, in other words, you're short 400,000 and at the same time, we've just taken out $2.26 million of reserves. You see the reserve negatives up there? So what's going to happen is it's going to have an effect on changing your revenue your reserves down which is naturally what would happen but as we keep moving around we've got to keep that 7 million sank every year the budget gets more out of balance because you don't have a lot of control over revenue that's why I'm mentioning to you in in
081in from Rick the tax cap is going to be important okay so the thing is you want to stay afloat but if you need nine million to balance your budget you're only carrying over seven million and you're taking another 1.2 out of the reserves, you could hypothetically be more short. Now, keep in mind here that that number that's in the assigned appropriate fund balance, let's go to the last column over 10.5 million. That may be sitting in your reserves with the $1 million. But the thing is, you're not allowed to spend it in case you spend out your budget. So, it kind of hamstrings you. Now, you'll still have, if you look across here, you still have $15.8 8 million right next to my RGT there. 15.795 million in cash, right, to run the district.
082So, you're still healthy. But you can see what happens when costs start escalating extremely rapidly. So, what happens here is in some cases you may have to start looking at some ways to trim the escalation of your expenses. Okay? And there you go. So, keep in mind I did not put anything in this budget to buy those zero mission buses for your bus garage renovations for. Okay. So, what happens here is that's still not to be done. I would implore every single board member tomorrow morning to call their legislator and senator and tell them to push this thing back five to seven years because nobody can afford it. It's it might be a great thing to have and do, but we don't have any money to do it. Matter of fact, I don't even think
083they have enough buses to give us. So what are my recommendations? First of all, this year's budget is not over. So in other words, much we could we could end up with two high needs kids moving in district tomorrow or what could happen is two could move out, right? So the thing is we just got to keep an eye on that. Make sure we can carry over as much as possible. The budget process is always difficult because we're making assumptions. Do I really know? Absolutely. You said, Rick, do you really know how much health insurance is going to be in 2930 school year? I'd say no. But I know how much it costs now and if you keep everybody you got or commensurate to it and it's rate going at the rate of escalation your
084consortium is telling me that's where it's going to end up or close to it. So we're trying to extrapolate here as best we can as reliable as we can. You always every school district should have a mission internally to become more efficient, more effective uh and get as much economy as scale as you can. But keep in mind I got school in quotes. school inflation costs, escalations of supplies, materials, and equipment is a concern because it doesn't follow the CPI. The consumer head price index is about, you know, it's probably going to go off the rail soon because it's also about cars and washers and dryers. And so what happens is it doesn't have anything to do with what you do, but it's in all the formulas, unfortunately. So your cost for textbooks and equipment,
085supplies, materials, chemicals for the chem lab, it may go up higher than inflation. So you got to keep that in mind. re reevaluate purchases and staff need. So to me, if you ever notice, we're always adding things to school districts. Add add. We never take anything away. So sometimes we have to do is take a deep breath and find out what programs are working better than others, ones aren't working, and make some changes to make it a little more efficient. But also, you have to think of attrition and breakage, and they're two different things. So if Rick's working for you, and then Rick leaves, every district would normally say, who we going to get to replace Rick? What you got to start thinking now is do we need to replace Rick? If we don't don't
086because what happens is then you can save that money. That cost does not go out the door. Does that make sense? All right. Same thing. Now, also could be that Rick's working for you, but you just discovered we really don't need Rick. That's like pushing attrition, shall we say? Now, the other way is breakage. Rick leaves and we do need a Rick, but we got to hire a a Rick for less than we paid the old Rick. You can save more money through attrition than you ever can through breakage. Just keep that in mind, okay? But so you have to look it over, but you got to be aware of the labor scarcity issues. In some parts of the state, it's hard to find bus drivers. In other parts, you can't find a physics teacher.
087You can't find a good building administrator. You can't find a a good this or a good that. So, what you don't want to do is shoot yourself in the foot. Monitor your long-term expenditures through the financial plan and limitations on revenues. If there's anything you learn from here is that your revenues you have little or no control over some of them. You have control over but you can ask for taxes if you get my address. You can ask the voters have to approve it. But the thing is I wouldn't be shy there because that's the only thing you can move but your but your expenditures are moving much more rapidly and I think salaries and benefits can easily if we're not careful overwhelm a district's residents against any potential revenue claims. So it could be
088a real problem. Also, the controller has announced in the last couple of months that he's worried about the state budget, not only right now, but in the next couple years where it's getting increasingly out of balance. So, don't that's why I put down that 2.5 instead of keeping that that foundation a going because I'm not so sure the calvary is going to arrive to help. Make sense? And of course, we got the national problems with as you pointed out, the superintendent pointed out, it could be tariffs, could be God only knows what. So, who knows? So I think we just got to be careful. Use of the capital reserve. The creation of successor capital reserves must be continued as a successful strategy to ensure the fiscal health of the district and it stabilizes the district's
089tax levy plan. You have done an excellent job at that. Although the district has received Native American tuition aid on a timely basis for the last couple of years, prior to that, the receipt of that aid has been less than timely and has had substantial impact on your cash flow. So that's why I'm saying the more you can get for carryover, the better off you will be. The erratic nature and uncertainty of the arrival of that aid to the district requires the district to enhance cash balances for cash. The long range financial and capital plans to help stabilize the district are a useful strategy. You've been using them. You're doing great. Recent projects have helped with some infrastructure obviously and of course I see the new auditorium piece going up, but more will always need
090to be done. There's always something that needs to be fixed, right? You've got it's a lot of square footage. Recent right sizing has successfully assisted the district financially. You also has tightened things up where she can, but the key thing is we're going to have to really start looking things over. We'll say over the next couple years. The district must continue to write based on diminished enrollments or trend data. So it might be you have less general ed kids, more especially because you have more kids in poverty, you have more kids that have this learning problem or that learning problem. You've got to adjust the system according. It's critical. Uh this is critical to the district's continued fiscal success. State aid foundation aid currently slated for 9% increase. It looks like a lot, but but
091against the $90 million budget, it's not a lot. Think about it for a second. So that's for 2526. Subsequently, status increases are unknown. We don't know. Expense a continues under a current law. It's hoped that maybe foundation aid something will be coming as they pick out some more things that I've suggested and others to help your district out. Seven, the costs associated with zero emission bus man mandate. They are expensive. Develop a plan not to do it but to lobby. To be absolutely honest with you, you got to push back. Uh monitor the tax cap. Note the growing use of your appropriated fund balance. The only way to offset that is two ways. You got to decrease your rate of expenses or you have to find a way to increase your revenues. and simultaneously probably
092you don't want to get into a supermajority situation and you want to avoid that okay because it kind of kind of ruins things politically and that's what I would say a well-run school district proud to be here just excellent so thank you any questions you got the test you take the test I I mean you've talked about it a lot and Dan is the biggest thing that worries us uh is the buses 2027. Are you hearing any out east Albany that they may back off a little or? Well, here's the thing. It's funny because I meet with legislators all the time about this and they're like sick of hearing me talk about it. But here's the thing. What they say privately to me is this, you know, sound like a good idea at the time.
093I mean, who didn't want clean energy? Who didn't want the kids not breathing in the diesel fumes and the the drivers getting sick? Who didn't want any of this? I mean, we got to get to the 21st century for heaven's sakes. He says, "Now that we really figure out how this is going to work, we're trying to figure out how to gracefully back up politically back up without abandoning it." So the governor came out with a comment about a month ago. She said she's taking a lot of heat on this too and she said this, "Well, you got to keep in mind this was aspirational." In other words, this was like a goal in mind. But to me then after that came out I met with more legislators said yeah maybe aspirational is her heads
094but it it's a law it's required now. So they said okay maybe what we could do I so what's happening some of the state groups are saying maybe we can get more waiverss or you know exemptions or something over a period of time. Well to me those do not work at all. Uh for instance, so let's just say you Niger Wefield calls up the state and says, "Hey, look, we don't want to be able to we don't want to have to buy these the first couple of years because we don't have nothing." And then they said, "Okay, we'll let you off for the first two years." That means you have less time now to turn over your whole fleet. So it's actually going to cost you more money. Then I got other districts who call
095me up and say, "You know what we're going to do? We're going to buy an extra five or six diesel buses. Therefore, we won't have to buy one of those electric buses until like 2032 or something. And I go, "Don't do that." I go, "Why not? We'll get ahead of the game." I said, 'You'll be behind the game because in 2032, you have to replace those five or six buses with buses three times the cost. You'll be behind the game. Of course, they go, "Well, never thought about that. It was a good idea." Some thinking, "Oh my god, I'm glad they called me." But the thing is is that some of them were saying, "Well, maybe what we'll do is one one legislator said to me, I think we should go to hydrogen fuel cell
096buses instead of these or instead of the uh electric." So I said, "This is a big meeting and I hated to do this, but I couldn't take it. You know, I don't suffer fools well. It's been a problem my whole life." So what happens is I said, "You you're saying you want hydrogen fuel buses?" Yeah. He said, "I think it's the way to go." I said, 'Well, where's the closest hydrogen fuel factory from here? We were in Syracuse. He says, 'Well, it's in Buffalo.' I said, ' Okay.' So, all they'd have to do is like bring them over and put them in the buses. He goes, "Yeah." So, so they they have to ship about, you know, say 20,000 buses worth of hydrogen fuel cells in a whole long five mile line in 18 diesel
097tractor trailer trucks. goes, I I never thought of that. So, well, they're not going to fly over by themselves. I don't know if you know this, but it's also required the trucking companies start selling they could they have to sell one electric bus for every 10 diesel buses this year. So now like um a lot of these big trucking companies are rebelling and then some of the municipalities they got a waiver but they in the law it says if you have a garbage truck a trash truck you have to buy the next one has to be a zero emission and it's just like totally crazy. So I think I think the legislator as far as I know them talking to me they all know it's nuts but they don't know how to solve it and
098they want to kick it down the road for another year. My answer to that was, you've got to solve it this year or we're all in trouble. Here's why. Because if you don't vote, we'll say this December to retrofit your bus garage, you will not have the chargers installed in time to accept an electric bus. The whole infrastructure has to change the whole thing. So, meanwhile, I've got districts calling me up saying, "Well, I talked to National Grid and they can get us the juice to our barn." So, then I called the district next door and I said, "Did you call National Grid? see if you get the juice to your barn. They said no. So then they call and they call up and said, "No, they can't cuz they're getting it to the other
099guy's barn." So the problem is even the infrastructure is not there. So I actually wrote an article and sent it to my legislators and I called it the emperor has no clothes because what actually happens is we can't get the buses, we can't get the infrastructure, there's no juice, nobody has any money, right? And the only school districts that actually are using these are a couple. There's only a hundred of them on the road. For the last three years, we could buy them. There's only a hundred of them on the road. We only now have to replace them 49,900 more. So, we're close, right? So, I So, I'm saying to myself, really, guys, please, you're embarrassing yourself. Right? So, I just hope they move on it. Something tells me though, politics is like it moves
100at glacial speed and it takes a lot. In other words, unless it's right in their face, they don't seem to get it. But, you know, there's there's a lot going on in all. So, I don't know where this is going. I mean, you know, it bothers me a lot because we're not ready and we can't have it. We just can't have it. So, if it's a great thing to do, then move it back so we have a chance to get the bus so we have a chance to build the infrastructure. But, I mean, if the grid can't even get it to you, I could go to Verizon, buy a new iPhone, and they give it to me and I go home to my log cabin. I got no place to plug it in. That's what
101we're doing. We're just just can't do it. It's ridiculous. I I I got to point it out. So, I really pounded them. But that's what you know what they you know what they respond to is people calling them, sending them emails, sending them letters. That's respond to is they look at me as if you know I'm hired gun to go tell them what to do. But I mean really the people talk, they listen. You understand what I mean? And I think the thing is when you're at public meetings like this, bringing this up is a great idea. So that people who are listening to us or watching this say, "Yeah, I am going to call because I don't want my taxes going for that or I don't think we can afford that or I don't
102want to demolish programs for kids to do this thing. We're not ready." So I think really if you could all call tomorrow, not that I know what your calendars are like, but seriously think about it. You've got to put pressure on these folks. That's how things get done. Thank God. Does that answer your question as best they can? Mr. Tim, thank you and I thank you for the presentation. Oh, you're very w as always. Thanks, Rick. You're welcome. Thanks everybody. Have a great night. Stay journeying home. Take care. Yeah, me too. Okay. Items for board discussion. Do you have any items for board discussion? Any old business? Uh new new business. We do have one um appeal of the superintendent decision uh resolved that the board of education had considered the appeal date March 24th
103and received on March 28th, 2025 of the March 2025 written decision of the superintendent of schools hereby sustains that the decision and denies the appeal. Okay. comments. Do we have any other comments? Public comments. Any board member comments? I would just like to say uh uh Allison, congratulations if you you've done this district well and that was well earned uh award that you have received. I mean, just what he's explained to here on the board tonight shows what the work that you've done has really helped us immensely. Anybody else? Thank you. Well, you'll be here for a while. Oh, yeah. Yeah. But the board member comments any [Music] uh German. Okay. Call for a motion to adjourn meeting. So move. Second. Second.