001Okay, good evening everyone and thank you for coming out. >> Okay, real quick. My my role here this evening is just to um get the meeting started. After that, solicitor and our administration will take it from there. Um, for several years now, we've been discussing and um, discussing and studying the high school project and that's what's brought us here this evening. Um, with that, this evening will be an update for where we're at in the process and how it'll be funded. And now I would like to introduce the individuals who will be uh, providing this information. We have Mr. Jonathan Huerta who is our escar from Kingspry, Miss Tracy Piaza who is our superintendent at Eastston School District, Mr. Randy Gallato from Alloy 5, Mr. Reef Bazil from CHA Consulting and Mr. Ken Phillips from
002Raymond James and oh Mr. Shane Sniper from Snyder Hoffman. All right, thank you. I'm done. Thank you, President Hes. Good evening, everyone. Thank you for attending this hearing, which is required by section 701.1 of the public school code, uh, commonly referred to as an act 34 hearing. Uh, before school district proceeds with a construction project to build a new addition or renovate a school, it is required by law to hold this hearing. Uh, the purpose of the hearing is to allow the public to comment and be informed precisely about what the school district is planning and the associated costs. Tonight you will hear from several individuals who will be able to provide this information. In addition, the purpose of this hearing is to establish the need for the project by reviewing events leading up to
003the board's consideration, to review the various options considered by the board before this decision, and to describe the construction elements proposed to meet the educational program that serves as the basis for the project under consideration. To present the estimated construction costs, total project costs, indirect costs, and the total millage impact. And lastly, to provide residents the opportunity to offer comments about the project. You will notice on the agenda that we have reserved a portion uh for public comments. If you wish to make a comment, you will need to fill out the sign-in sheet and then when called upon, please approach the microphone, state your name and address, and each speaker will be limited to three minutes. I would also like to inform everyone that this hearing is being transcribed. So, anything that anyone says tonight
004will be published in the record of tonight's hearing. During the presentation, the presenters will be will review the information outlined in the act 34 booklet. Uh at this point, I have already marked a copy of the exhibit of the booklet as exhibit A1 so that it can be included as part of the record. The booklet contains the resolution adopted by the school board on November 18th, 2025, setting the hearing for tonight, authorizing the maximum building construction costs and the m maximum project cost and directing the administration to make available for inspection a description of the project at the administration building. The booklet also contains proof of publication of this hearing which was given in accordance with act 34. Notice was spec notice was speci specifically published in the morning call on December 15, 2025. A
005project description was also made available here at the administration building. The public has had the opportunity to submit written comments and questions to the school district leading up to this hearing. And after this hearing, any additional questions or concerns may be submitted to Mr. Josh Ziadic. At this point, I'm going to turn the hearing over to Miss Tracy Piaza to go over the events and history of the district. >> Good evening. My name is Tracy Piaz. I'm the superintendent of schools. As was mentioned previously, we are at this point after several years of discussion and conversation about our existing high school. Our existing high school is identified as one of our capital improvement projects um as we did our five-year plan. And at the time that we investigated the value of that school vers um
006for um renovation versus um rebuild, it came in at approximately $52 million worth of infrastructure um needs for a renovation to make that a viable school uh through the infrastructure only. The current floor plan, however, um would be above and beyond that $52 million, knowing that that is not um currently a floor plan that is conducive to the 21st uh century learning that we want for our students as our classroom sizes and the um equipment within the classrooms are not conducive to collaborative learning and collaborative teaching. Our hallways do not allow for for safe passage with the number of students that are in the facility. Um, and a number of other areas that uh have limited our decision to uh to re remodel as opposed to rebuild. The high excuse me, the high school district
007conducted the capital improvement plan, a facility study to determine the options uh viable for the future of our high school. The three options considered were capital improvements, that $52 million plus that we discussed in doing infrastructure and internal construction, renovation, which would be an add-on addition to the existing facility, also not chosen, or new construction that was chosen. And the lot that was chosen was a lower lot located um just below where the current building stands. For those of you familiar with the facility, it is uh down on our current baseball varsity baseball field. And uh moving forward, I'm not sure if we're going to show the slides forward. If so, you can jump to the page that has right there. So, as you look at this graphic, this graphic outlines the areas that were
008considered for both capital improvements, renovations, or new construction. The the items coded with a green check mark were items that were possible um considerations for capital improvement and the reds indicated other other work that would be beyond capacity of doing that choice. Same thing for B, renovation and C. And as you can see just merely by the marks that are there, C was the more preferable choice for the district. At the end of the day, our schools, our high school um building as it stands right now has limitations on how we can teach our students um in spaces that are viable educational learning opportunities and requires quite a bit of both infrastructure and um construction work to make those improvements necessary. And while that is a choice, even through construction, the cost was prohibitive and
009we would still not have the school we were looking to have for our students. We would not be able to alter the hallways, which is a big deal. We would not be able to alter classroom size and the capacity um that we need. Um and many of the other infrastructures within that building would just need to be removed and part of an addition. So as a district we talked about these um options quite extensively with our board um certainly with the community as well and internally and decided the money the value for the money that we are getting their best option is construction. So that is why we're here today to move you know move through that process uh with this hearing and so at that point I'm going to turn it over to Randy
010Gallato and his team for further explanation. >> Thank you Miss PZA. My name is Randy Gallato. I'm a licensed architect in the state of Pennsylvania. Uh I serve as the architect of record for the East's new high school project. I have been serving in this capacity for the last four years for this specific project. Uh for purposes of um ease of reference as to where we're talking about uh on the site, if you're familiar with the Conungle Track, uh we are looking at developing phase one uh relocating the baseball field to the Kungl track along with um some other improvements and building a new high school on the existing varsity baseball field. Uh the new building will be three stories. uh will have grades 9 through 12 um separated throughout those uh buildings and uh
011the building in three areas education, athletics, and performing arts. The building has been designed to meet the educational program based on input from district stakeholders uh which was conducted over a period of several months uh and developed into a very thorough educational specification for this building. We go to the next slide. If you look to the west, uh the green highlighted area is the Conquot track. Uh this will be phase one of the project. Uh the program for this phase is to build a new varsity baseball field on the existing junior high field. We'll also be building a new varsity softball field adjacent to that and building the practice varsity uh baseball field where the existing varsity baseball field sits today. There are three future projects uh potentially uh related to this site um in
012this concept. The first one is a pre-engineered fieldhouse that's labeled number one on the site plan. a new entrance plaza that's labeled number two and number three is a central plaza that would be shared between both fields for uh spectators to uh enjoy games. I should also mention that we would relocate the existing tennis courts to um that area just to the east edge of the green by the track. We go to the next slide. This slide depicts phase two. Uh phase two is the large phase. This is the development of the new building and demolition of the existing building. The site plan is broken out into two areas. Bus drop off to the left and parent drop off to the right. The site was designed by a licensed professional engineer and was um performed
013with an actual traffic uh engineer both interior traffic uh circulation and exterior circulation. We go to the next slide. This is a bird's eye view from the north of the new building. Uh it's again three stories about 460,000 square feet. To the bottom right is the athletics wing that I mentioned earlier. In the center is the academic wing and to the top left is the performing arts area. If you go to the next slide, we're looking at it from the south. So, route 22 is uh to the north. You can see gym and nuditorium to the left, uh educational spaces in the middle, and again that performing arts area to the lower right. The floor plan um was designed for efficiency and safety. Uh to the plan west all the way left is the athletic
014swing. You'll see the gymnasium. I'll show you an image of that a few slides from now. All the way to the left is the natiatorum and clustered in the center is the educational spaces. uh double loaded corridors uh to move students through safely and to the right is the performing arts uh wing. This is the first floor. This is not the floor of the main entrance. The floor of the main entrance is the next slide where you'll enter and have the option to go down to level one, stay on level two, or go up to level three. All of the uh main common areas for cafeteria, performing arts, and athletics are on that first floor. Media center is on that floor as well. And just general educational and science classrooms on the middle floor. If
015we go to the third floor, you'll see is the smallest from a floor plate area. Um again, general classrooms and science classrooms. move to the front entrance of the building. And I'll say that you'll see transparency for safety. Uh a cluster of doors to move kids through uh quickly and safely. Uh and what you will see upon arrival of this building. If you go to the next slide, this is walking through that front door. You can see a safety vestibule to the left. You get a sense of uh the third floor, the upper floor straight ahead. And you have the option of either going straight to the classroom wing, left to the athletics wing, or right to the performing arts center. Uh plenty of options for kids to spread out safely and move through the
016building uh efficiently. Go to the next slide. You'll see that same image to the left. You'll see more of the administration area and that transparency into the security vestibule uh and that third floor area again. So this is an interior view of u an open SGI uh small groupoup instruction. Uh this is at the front entrance. You'll see these areas throughout the building. Uh a way to activate the hallways, add programmatic and function to the hallways um and allow kids to to learn in a more open and collaborative environment. If you go to the next slide, this is the the auditorium lobby. You'll see that it's being used double use, not just a big space for a lot of people to collect as they find their way in and out of a performance, but also
017to be activated during the school day for students to to learn and collaborate. Next slide. This is inside of the auditorium itself. It is large enough to hold um one grade level plus um again on the first floor. Um, so you'll enter and and circulate down into this space. Um, and it is uh just just a simple modern uh environment for for theater. U closeup of the exterior aesthetic. We're designing a masonry building of bricks and and glass. This is the corner of 25th Street that you'll see uh sitting basically in center field of the existing high school baseball field. Along 22, you'll see a a relatively long facade of brick and glass with transparency into stair towers and science classrooms. This is an interior open SGI in the main hallway in the main academic
018wing uh where there is a um a private learning space that opens up to a common space. Uh this is what you'll be um introduced to at the intersections of the hallways. You can see the stair tower in the the far right in the background. Uh plenty of open space and open learning uh environments. And this is the an additional uh in the main hallway. Um looking the opposite way is a typical classroom. Um, nice bright learning environment. Um, simple, easy furniture. Um, I would call this a standard throughout the district. And this is just looking in the opposite way, the teaching wall. This is the athletics entrance here. Uh, this is um where the students will enter if they're getting dropped off every day by uh from the bus. uh and where everyone will
019circulate through if they're going to the cafeteria or to an athletic event. This is the entrance uh athletic lobby. You can see the trophy cases to the left. And if you go to the next slide, you'll be able to see into the gymnasium. You are entering that second floor. So, you're looking down into the gym onto the gym floor from the main level. If you go to the next slide, you'll see that walking track on the second floor. And then next slide, you'll see what it looks like from the gym floor itself. The idea was to keep the spectators as much as possible on the first floor and uh away from the game level uh surface. Well, that's all I have. I'm going to pass it to Shane Kniper who's going to talk about building
020systems and efficiencies as they relate to the new building. >> Hello everyone. Uh my name is Shane Kniper. I'm a professional engineer. Um my firm Snider Off Associates is a consulting engineer on the project. Um so this slide we're just going to touch on a few uh mechanical electrical systems. Um specifically ones dealing with uh with energy. Um the the new high school will have a uh building automation system um that will be used for remote monitoring and control and alarming of all major uh mechanical electrical systems. Uh the mechanical systems will utilize condensing boilers for building heating and uh domestic hot water. Um so those condensing boilers have thermal efficiencies um that are or greater than 95%. Uh air handling equipment will utilize energy recovery um to capture energy that would normally be lost
021from building or from air leaving the building. Uh lighting throughout the building will utilize low wattage um LED fixtures um controls will include occupancy and daylight sensors u which both will help to uh conserve energy when uh when the lighting is not needed. And then lastly, the design team is investigating utilizing uh vertical uh bfacial solar panels um that will be installed on the roof um both for renewable energy and also to um conceal some rooftop equipment. That's all I have. >> All right, it's my turn. We get to talk some numbers now. So you got a chance to peek into the building and see the quality, the durability, the energy efficiency, and the focus on of course the program for the community and the students in particular. That's really been the focus of the
022project uh from day one is maintainability, durability, and quality. And you've got a peak into that with the architect as well as the engineer. Um I'm a licensed professional engineer also and our role is to manage the project both in the design phase and all the way uh through construction and turnover. So we're going to talk about the project costs. start off by saying um although plancon is in moratorum, the district has taken um a diligent step to essentially follow the plan con process as it was in place uh prior to going in moratorum and the focus has been to make sure we're in full compliance with act 34 and I'll show you that in a minute. In addition to that, we're complying with all of the required land development approvals which are in process
023for the project. And then very importantly, this project has gone through a very uh diligent value engineering process to reestablish and verify the value. That process was opened to the public as well as to the experts that worked on the project as well as to the administration and staff of of the school district to make sure that we uncovered all uh opportunities to provide the best value for the dollars being spent. The project schedule is the the high school construction itself is slated to begin in May 2027 and uh complete uh three years later. Subsequently, there'll be the demolition and final site work to uh make the full uh project complete. Uh that is scheduled for July of 2031. So, it's a very long process. I can assure you that when we've looked at the
024costs, these costs that we're going to be showing you and that Ken will then carry forward are total project costs and that's important to remember. They've included everything from the prime contractors which is listed on this sheet. So what you're looking at here is a plan con page D 02 and this is also in the act 34 book but essentially it breaks down the costs to allow you to measure against act 34 which measures against whether or not the project is in compliance and this project is in compliance by many millions of dollars. It's in compliance with that. So you can see from this sheet all of the project costs for the various contractors including then architect fees and movable fixtures and equipment which is all the pertinances that are necessary to fit out the
025building. So all of those costs are included in that. Of course site costs are included. If you go to the next slide you then start to break the project down into additional costs such as total demolition. So when you're going through plancon, you uh are able to pull out total demolition and then you can see a very large number for contingency as well. So the project has contingency. And then after you go through that, the line below line G9, you can see all of the financing costs which Ken um will talk about um in a minute. And basically there's going to be four different bond series. The first three are shown there. And then if you flip the page over, you see the um the last series of bond issues that are going to be
026um you know used to fund the project. So that's how the project is uh going to be funded and Ken will talk to you about that. The last slide I want to cover real quick is again Ken is going to reinforce this, but the act 34 maximum building construction cost after going through the various calculations is $25,825,400 and I think Ken will repeat that in a minute as well, but we want to make sure that's um recorded and that was part of the resolution as well. And then as I said, it's a full project cost and the total project cost that is being funded and Ken will talk about in subsequent slides is $32,314,000. And with that, I'll turn it over to Ken. >> Good evening. My name is Ken Phillips. I'm a managing director
027with Raymond James. We serve as the district's underwriter for the last four plus decades. It's been an honor and working with his team and trying to get the high school project going forward. So, tonight's a a a very big step in that direction. I'm going to have you go back two three slides if you don't mind. Right there. Perfect. So, the the the U two numbers that are important under Act 34 is what's called the maximum project cost. And you can see the maximum project cost in this case is 302 302,314,000 and that is shown about twothirds of the way down on line I you know with respect to that that is the total estimated you know allin- cost as we just heard from uh construction on the on the previous page through contingencies and
028project supervision and you know financing costs based on the estimated use of several bond financings to go ahead and complete this project. The next slide then um that's just a supplement. Just go to the next slide after that. And then the maximum building construction cost is 205205,825,400. Why that is important is that if the bids come in 8% over that then there has to be another hearing. Okay? And that's just established by uh the plank on process. So then let's go to how we go ahead and finance this. If you continue one more, the state requires that you take a look at all viable options which we will continue to do up through the completion of the financing of the issue. Um in the past sometimes we use um bond issues, sometimes we use bank
029loans, sometimes we use uh types of bond pools that may be out there. It's anticipated now that these all will be general obligation bond issues. What that means is that it's backed by the full faith and credit of the school district in their in their taxing ability. And we on this slide we show the comparison as required by law of the uh general obligation issue, local authority issue and one to the state public school building authority. And again, it's anticipated that the least expensive would be that as a general obligation and probably 95 out of a 100 financings are completed in that fashion. Next slide. Um that this uh is just again it's it it is a reiteration of the fact that we have to look at these alternatives but I think the big thing
030at the bottom is the state reimbursement. You can see that there's no anticipated reimbursement unfortunately for this issue because of the state moratorum. The state took uh probably 12 years now took all the money out of their budget about $300 million which was being used to reimburse schools for building projects. Easton still has some projects that you're receiving reimbursement on but once those are paid off then there'll be no longer any reimbursement. Next slide. So, how does a district go about funding um a financing? Uh we talked about general obligation. We're going to take into consideration the the district's existing indebtedness. Um and when that falls off, we're then going to be structuring this new debt around that. It's anticipated that we'll have four financings 2026 27 28 29 and that the uh table 2A
031you can see that the average annual debt service is about 23 million which equates to 12.23 mills but in reality the true cost is going to be under 8 mills 7.86. Well, how's that done? It's because we are structuring the new issues around the uh old issues of the district and when those go away then we utilize those funds that are currently in place about $15.8 million and use those toward helping fund the uh remaining 20 uh 23 million differential there. The district anticipates doing that over a period of time probably about six years where they'll be going up about one mil a year. Okay, they already put a little more than a mill in place this past this current year, current year that we're in in anticipation of the high school project. And for
032ne and for the next six years, it'll be about 1 mil of additional increase each year. So that is the direct cost portion of the requirement for act 34. There's also an indirect cost and an indirect cost takes into consideration all those ancillary things that may come about from um a new building um such as you know personnel and district is probably going to hire several more additional uh full-time custodians. And so uh you know the cost of that is is is is put in terms of dollars and cents. It's about $300,000. And then there's utilities and fuel, materials, supplies, equipment, building operation, maintenance, pupil transportation, insurance premium. Most of those are going to be flat to zero or offsetting here. One, it's a new building, so there's going to be efficiencies within that building.
033So while insurance costs may be a little higher, it's going to be offset by, you know, the uh uh the systems that that Shane just reviewed and, you know, some of the things that are being used. uh transportation, we're going, you know, to pretty much the same site. So there's really not much of a cost differential. The cost differential is about 0.16 mills. So in the middle of that slide, you see table 2A, your 7.86 mills for direct cost and then uh you add on the 0.16, you're at 8.02 mills. That's pretty much the uh hearing material at this point. Uh if you go to the next slide. Okay, I'm going to turn it back to Mr. Heretta to uh talk about uh the remaining portion of the hearing questions and statements. >> Thank you
034and thank you to the entire team and everybody assisting in this project. Um so at this point, this is the period of the agenda where members of the public can come up and make a comment or a statement if they so desire. Um so I will remind everyone if and when they come up if they can please sign in if they can first state their name and address into the microphone and then keep uh one statement per person to allow everybody the opportunity to speak and to uh the speaker will be allowed three minutes to comment. So at this point is there anybody from the public that wishes to make a comment or a statement? Okay. Uh with that, seeing no comments or or statements from the public, uh there I will at this point
035uh unless there's other questions or concerns from the members up here, uh call this Act 34 hearing to a close at 6:37 and this hearing is adjourned. >> Thank you. Thank you everyone.