001Good evening everyone. It is 7 p.m. on December 17th, 2025. I would like to call to order the meeting of the finance committee for Lyall Community School District 202. Do we have any uh public comment today? >> We do not. >> No blue cards, nothing online. >> All right, then. Well, moving on. The third item on the agenda are the minutes from the November 24th, 2025 meeting. Does anyone have any questions, changes uh to those minutes? No. So, we are all in agreement that they accurately reflect the octo the November uh committee meeting. >> Yes. >> Excellent. All right. Rocketing along. Item four is the 2025 real estate tax levy. Information on this topic can be found under item four of the finance committee packet and under 5B in the regular board meeting packet. Mr.
002Wilkinson. Uh good evening everyone. I apologize in advance for my voice. It sounds worse than it is. I actually feel completely fine. So I don't know why I have no voice, but uh please bear with me as we go through our agenda items this evening. And so, as uh Greg mentioned, included in your board packet tonight um is the resolution to adopt the 2025 levy. Uh also included with that is the recommended levy amounts and the fund distribution which are detailed uh both in the action sheet and the uh levy resolution itself. Um as a reminder, the full tax levy report and uh a detailed presentation, we went through those both at last month's meeting. Uh, so I'm not going to revisit all of those slides that some of which didn't show up for whatever
003reason last time, but we're assured that in the future they will render and show up. So I apologize for that little technical difficulty last last month. Um, instead I'm just going to briefly recap kind of the key points uh and then leave it open for any additional discussion or questions at the end of the night. Um at a high level uh the levy reflects a ptail cap levy. Uh and so we would um expect the growth to be driven primarily by CPI of 2.9%. And then also there will be a minimum amount of new construction uh captured in the levy. Uh the total extension for the district is expected to increase by uh just over $1 million. And kind of as we touched on in November, it's really designed so that we can uh continue
004to operate with a balanced budget and help us cover some of the increases not only in salaries and benefits, but also uh those costs that we've seen increasing in both transportation and special ed as well. Uh the distribution across all of the funds remains the same. There's been no changes uh in the levy that's um in for approval this evening. uh it all mirrors exactly what was approved with the tenative levy uh last month in November. And so with that, I'll open up for any uh comments, questions, or discussion regarding the uh levy before it's um brought for approval at the board meeting this evening. >> Dave, I just want to um thank you for all that you've done to cover all the material for that. We've actually been looking at this since May really
005cuz we were talking about the Ogden TIFF in May. Um June we had the FY 2026 tenative budget. July we had the route 53 tiff. In August we had the preliminary financial results for fiscal year 2025. In September we had the fiscal year 26 final budget and fund balance review. in October, the facility plan presentation and the financial projection update. And then you mentioned what we also talked about in November. So, it's not like we're just jumping into this. There's a lot of >> No, it's definitely a process. I think all these items in our board planning calendar all uh culminate in various things, whether that's the budget, the levy, um the annual audit, things like that. And so, um, I think we've put together a really good board planning calendar and I think we're
006constantly discussing these items as we go throughout the year so that it's not, um, each thing isn't done in isolation. So, thank you, Pam. It's >> really more of a comment than a question, but I know I shared this last year, too, that by the time most of us are done with our four-year terms, average people in Lyall will pay $750 to $1,000 more a year in taxes. And I know these are small amounts every time, but they add up and that can be quite a bit of money for a while homeowner. So, it's just something that what I've heard from people in the community. I I can't support a continued raise. >> Okay. Thanks. >> Any further questions or comments? >> All right. Excellent. Thank you for the update, Dave. Let's move on to
007our last discussion item which is item five, the architect proposal for the 10-year health uh life safety survey. Uh the information for this can be found under 5A6 of the regular board meeting packet. So this particular agenda item is not one that we see on an annual basis, that's for sure. It comes around every 10 years. So, um, there's probably a few of you on this board who was who were a part of it 10 years ago when we looked at this, but, um, the Illinois school code actually requires this. Uh, every, uh, 10 years a school must go through this health and life safety survey. As I mentioned before, our last one was completed back in 2015. So, uh, we are due for our, uh, cycle uh, basically kind of this year into next
008year. uh it must be conducted by a licensed architect and then it's submitted through the Iowa system to both the Illinois State Board of Education as well as the DuPage Regional Office of Education. And so tonight we're recommending approval of a proposal from Perkins and Will. They are our current architect of record um and they're the ones that are um able to perform this work for us. It covers uh all of our buildings. Uh Lyall Junior High School is covered. Lyel High School is covered by it. We actually are including a portion of Shisure because um the portion that's leased out to Sassid is a uh a public entity. So it is also falling under this requirement. So it's not the entire building, but it is the portion that we are currently leasing to SASD
009that will be included. And then lastly, there's Lyall Elementary School. Uh with Lyall Elementary, I think I noted this in the write up. Uh we're recommending to go ahead and get that done as well so that we can get all of our buildings on that 10-year cycle. Otherwise, we'd have to kind of do the junior high, the high school, and and sheer this year and then come back in 5 years and kind of go through this process again uh in terms of getting a proposal from with from the architect, getting it approved, and it's just simpler to do it all at once. Um, as far as the elementary school is concerned, obviously with its age, it's only, I think, six, seven years old at this point. So, we really don't anticipate any findings there, any
010significant things that wouldn't be in compliance uh because it's such a new building. And so, that is uh reflected in the proposal that the architects gave us where it's we got a discounted rate for the work that's going to be done at the elementary school because we anticipate it will not be that sign significant. Um their scope also includes again the life safety review all the safety reference plans which kind of show the the floor plans of the buildings and where the particular items um that they found are located and then um they'll also complete the full I was documentation and submit it to ISBY on our behalf. One thing I did want to um I guess a couple things I wanted to note. One uh this is just for the survey itself. This is
011not for any corrective work, any plans put together for that work. This is just getting the survey done itself. And so, uh, that fee that's being proposed by Perkins and Will is just over $56,000. Um, the breakdown by building, I think, in square footage is included in the in the write up that's in your board packet. Uh before we we move forward with this proposal, we did do a survey of neighboring school districts to find out what other schools are are paying for this service. Obviously, they're not all doing it this year. So, it's kind of a span of some that responded had done it back in 2017, some all the way to 2025. And so, we kind of got obviously 2017 is before COVID, before a lot of the increases in labor rates. And
012so we kind of got a broad range of as low as 4 cents a square foot all the way up to 20 cents a square foot. And so kind of the average when I kind of projected it out into today's dollars was right around 12 cents a square foot for this kind of work. And so the blended rate that that Perkins and Will has on our proposal is at 15 cents. So it's a little bit above that average. Um, but I think overall it's still, you know, within the range of of reasonableness relative to what we were seeing for the others. But I I did point this out. I mentioned it in the write up if anybody happened to read it, uh, that Illinois law doesn't allow school districts to just go and solicit multiple
013proposals from architects. We can't say, "Hey, we need a life safety survey." and then ask five to 10 different architecture firms, hey, can you submit us a proposal to get this work done? Unfortunately, there's something called the local government professional services selection act, which essentially means you have to go through the request for qualifications process. You have to interview the architects. You know, you can bring them all in. Then once you then you have to make the selection and only after you select the architect can you actually have a conversation about price. And so, uh, for us, Perkins and Will is the only one that has gone through that process. That process happened a significant amount of time ago. And so, really, we're in a position where we have to negotiate and work with them.
014And so, I think the initial kind of proposal was around $80,000 and after some back and forth, we got it down to this 56,000 that's uh being proposed this evening. As far as uh the budget is concerned, I did budget $50,000 in our operations and maintenance fund for that in FY26 because we knew this was something we were going to have to do. So, this price is just slightly over that $50,000 budget, but we'll be able to um get those funds from other areas within the onm fund. So, there's no need to amend the budget or make any changes because it's not that significant significant of a difference. And so, um, terms of timing, Perkins will will complete the fieldwork primarily probably during spring break. They might do some of it after school hours, uh,
015if if it aligns in their schedules, but we would anticipate that, um, you know, it'd be done kind of in the late spring and then we'd bring it back to the board sometime in May uh, for approval by the board of education so that they can then submit it to the state and then obviously we'll see what's on the the report and go from there. So, I didn't receive any questions uh over the weekend. If there's any other questions based on the presentation, I'll be happy to uh try and answer those. Otherwise, um it's included in your board packet for approval this evening. Any questions? No. Good summary again. Thanks much. We appreciate it. [gasps] [sighs] And we look forward to those results to see uh how things are going. All right. So with that
016um are there any topics we wish to um put on the agenda for future meetings? No. All right. Good. All right. So with no other agenda items, I will entertain a motion to adjurnn. >> So moved. >> Second. >> So that's Mr. Almond, Miss Almond, and Mr. Helderly. So the finance committee meeting is adjourned at 712. Thank you very much everybody.