001Cooper is going to central, so he's a little bit late. >> Um, so before we get started, here's a question that I have the board which includes our Um most of the time so we uh read the land acknowledgement and just lately we've been share it but we do we have thoughts on Okay. All right. Um, so I will convene the February 9th, 2026 uh study session um at 1 o'clock. Um, before we get started, I don't know. Before we get started, we'll have our acknowledgement. start over. >> Um, we are gathered on the land of the Dakota and Ojiway peoples. I ask you to join me in acknowledging the Dakota and Ojiway community, their elders, both past and present, as well as future generations. St. Louisis Park Public Schools also acknowledges that it was
002founded upon exclusions and erasers of many indigenous peoples, including those on whose land this school district is located. This acknowledgement demonstrates a commitment to dismantling the ongoing legacies of colonial power and the district's desire to support the ongoing work of local indigenous communities to thrive in our schools. >> Awesome. Thank you. And uh today we have our first board meeting with our student board representatives and we are so excited that you are here. Welcome. Um and so maybe if we could if you could just share your name and your grade that would be great. Um just so for the microphone you hit the little black button at the bottom and then it'll Yep. Perfect. And so you just sort of have to either Yeah. Pass it would be great. Um, my name is Ged Abdul
003Hab and I am a senior at St. Louis Park High School. >> My name is Liam Novak and I'm a junior. >> My name is Asan Muhammad and I'm a freshman. >> My name is Lopsong Dokar and I'm also a freshman. >> My name is Emma Granasa and I'm also Oh, I'm a junior. Awesome. Well, um we this has been a labor of love to bring students to the board table. So, welcome and I'm so excited to have you here. Um today the main agenda item is a discussion item to get a budget update and discuss the potential tech levy. Um and so we had some questions from the last board meeting and I think uh director Magnuson is our presenter. I don't know if there's a remote or Oh, thank you. So, yeah. Um,
004good afternoon, Director. Um, Chair Mancini and Superintendent Hines and board members and student board members and cabinet members. Um, we are in the form of a budget update. Um, just want to talk you through some next steps um that you might consider to take action. Um, and it's really around an August 2026 election date. And we have two recommendations. And the I want to just point out before I go any further that the August date is important for two reasons. One is that it's um it would be on the primary election date. So there's already an election being run. It would be run by the city. The school district wouldn't undergo the cost of our capital projects levy with a higher our capital projects levy with a higher authority. So, we want to give it
005a fresh 10 years to avoid having to come back again, even sooner if we if we handled it some other way. And then to authorize a $50 million deferred maintenance bond issue. And we'll talk a little bit more about the details of those. I have Jim Langean here who's our director of facilities and safety and Tom Marble who's our director of um information services that can help with some details around these items. Most of this is sort of fiscal so you might just hear a lot from me um today. So the first thing I want to um remind us about is the capital projects levy. That's the official name for the technology levy and most school districts that have one in place these days use them for use them for technology. So this is a
006little bit of history. You the board has seen this already. Um pre203 where our tax rate was at there was an election in 2013 and lastly in 2022 where we added $500,000. And this um slide shows some comparisons between St. Louis Park in some of the of our neighboring districts. The first, let's see, one, two, three. The fifth um column of numbers, the per student technology allocation is um what you're going to see some modeling on. You can see with St. Louis Park at 891, we're $223 below the average amount per student. So, we modeled that out along with what it would take to get to the highest neighboring district, which is Hopkins, to get to that amount per student, not their total levy amount, but the amount per student. The far right column just
007shows the operating referendum. And I think it's an important comparison because what I want to underscore for the board is that without a technology levy in place, the only place to pay for technology is really the general fund. So we'd have to dip into other places and our operating referendum is already at the cap and we're very comparable to our neighboring districts. Um, so we can't generate more revenue without this technology levy. Um, to help us address the increasing cost of technology, we will have to dip into the general fund. And here's some information about that. So, this takes the the funds in the technology levy back from fiscal year 2021. And I'm just going to walk you across that first line. So, we had a a technology levies revenue of 2.6 6 million and
008costs of $2.4 million in that first year. So we were adding to the technology fund balance about $200,000 and ended that year fiscal 2021 with $1.279 million. As you walk your way down, I want to just go to that yellow highlighted. This has been updated based on what we know so far today for fiscal year 2026. We ended um we have a technology levy this year of $4.145 million. So that was um taxes payable in um 2025 um which was a 5% increase in in that levy because this is tied the way the technology levy works is it's a percentage of net tax capacity. So revenue does go up with net tax capacity but that rate is slowing down a little bit. Um, so we then had 4.7 mil, we anticipate $4.7 million of technology
009costs this year. So our revenue versus expenses looks like we're going to draw in fund balance by $597,000, which will draw down that fund balance to $225,470. So just like the general fund, we're we're digging into fund balance. and we talk less time about some of the costs that have changed in technology, the growing need for staff and and technology items. Um, and you can see then going into next year, we've already set the levy for taxes payable in 2026, which is the revenue for next year. And incidentally, this election will not change next year's numbers. This is going to be for fiscal 2028. So, we are set at and at $4.157 million. hardly an increase at all. So, we won't even be able to afford the tech levy we have in place right now,
010the cost that we have in place um out of the tech levy because we're we've already driven fund balance down. So, I wanted to just breeze through this. Nothing has changed here. We talked a little bit about all our needs for safety and security and how much that is driven by software use, cameras and um card readers and and door locks. Those types of things and the needs in that area are growing and growing in safety and security and a lot of that involves technology. Um, we've got growth in online learning and needs around online learning, growing needs for connectivity and bandwidth and the and the use of devices all over our buildings and for more and more staff and students. Um then when we put devices in place including the non-traditional devices like a
011a laptop um including cameras and um radios and all kinds of technology that we use for safety and security they have to be replaced and um the lifespan um is sometimes less than five years. We talked about safety and security. There's a growing need in the area of cyber security and risk management. That contract alone just for our a simple cy cyber security um software system is nearly $100,000. There's growing needs for parent communication and student communication. all kinds of communication not needing to be faster, more online, more accessible and those things all strain our technology budget and more and more of our operations just like in our own personal business or at home more and more things are online. Our HBAC systems require a lot of technology. our business office and HR tools are
012more and more online and um staff members and and personnel expect us to have online tools available to them. Um for parents, online enrollment and registration requires a lot of online um support from our um enrollment center staff as well as software to handle that. And then the growing need for online payment systems and you know simple ways to pay online. Folks expect that. We didn't have this last time but I wanted to walk you through sort of the two extremes of what the potential tax impact can be. You can see at the bottom I have a link um to the actual document that we got from Ellers and Associates our financial advisor who have generally um calculated our tax impacts and will advise us through this process. if you'll if you um ask us
013to move forward. But this shows if we just raised enough to get to the average per student amount of the districts that surround us, the tax impact on a $400,000 home, which is about the median in St. Louis Park would be annually $42 and monthly $4. and to get to the amount um which would so that would be an additional $1 million. Um the other extreme would be to get to our highest neighboring district which is Hopkins which would add $5.6 million. It would roughly double our current technology levy. The annual cost for that would be $241 per year. A monthly cost of $20. So, those are just some things for you to think about as we consider um whether and how large the technology levy should be. Um whoops. I think I'm trying to
014go backwards because I just wanted to make sure I covered everything there. So, that's the capital projects levy for technology. A little more information about that. Okay. Okay. So then I wanted to just keep Did I cover this one already? I did. Okay. So here we go. The next conversation. We didn't talk about this the last time we were together, but as we started to review um the costs for deferred maintenance and the projects that are coming up, we want to talk to the board about this as well. The last time we ran a bond issue in 2022, we at the time, because you can't really ask a future board to do anything, but we tried to loudly say in five years, we're going to need to continue to do something with deferred maintenance. It
015hasn't quite been five years, but if we run this technology levy now, which I think is prudent, um we I think it would be wise for us to run the deferred maintenance bond issue at the same time so we don't come back in two years and exhaust our voters coming back so quickly time and again. So, I'll tell you how we got to the 15 million um dollar amount. Here's a little bit of history that we pulled together. Um, in 2017, deferred maintenance was a portion of that bond issuance. I couldn't, this was before our time here, and I couldn't find in the materials exactly how much was deferred maintenance, but we do know that in 2022 of that $135 million bond issue, 39 39 million was set aside for just deferred maintenance. So, that
016was the thinking behind that one. This is the bond issue in total um of 135 million from 2022. At the end of last fiscal year, so on June 30th, 2025, that bond issue had a balance of about $53 million. We know we have expenses that are committed to through the end of the year of of about $25 million. So this includes the close out of Aquilla, the close out of the turf field, the close out in the stadium project, the close out of um the park central operations center, all of the projects that we need to do our final um checks and walkthroughs and pay the final I can't think of the word. >> Yeah, >> the final dollar amounts we haven't paid yet. But then we also know included in here is um Lennox
017Community Center. we um are in the middle of planning for that project. So that's included in that estimated cost, which would leave about $28 million. Most of our deferred maintenance projects have been deferred throughout this project because our staff have been very busy with these big construction projects. So that's going to be mostly deferred maintenance projects. Oh, and some bathrooms as well. There's another set of high school bathrooms that are in that $28 million. Um, so I asked Jim and his team to start thinking about the things we just know in the next two years have to be taken care of. And that total $62 million. We don't have enough. And so we do need to start talking about that deferred maintenance bond issue as we had um foreshadowed to the board three years ago.
018But we thought um I don't think um the high school and middle school boilers Jim can tell you a little bit more about that. Maybe I'll just let Jim explain what's going on with those two boilers and then we'll talk about it. >> So, currently, um I know we did a lot of work at the high school this last two years throughout this last bond. However, as part of that initial project which was designed before I actually got to the district was not part of a lot of mechanical work that needed to be done. The middle school high school has still have like this building used to have still have the original boilers. The boilers are anywhere from I think 70 years old to 67 years old. And we're on an average pace right now
019spending uh anywhere between 20 and $25,000 a year per boiler. We have that in totals five total boilers between the two buildings. Um we are due to have those burners replaced in the next year. Maybe I might be able to stretch it out to two with some good maintenance and some good tuning. Those are going to run us anywhere from 50 to $100,000 per per burner. Um, one of the other challenging things we see here, and we all know, we all live in St. Louis Park, how hard the water is here. Um, yes, we do have softeners. However, they only do so much. And with the two main projects you see up there, this is a total piping replacement for the building for the heating system loop. Um, and that means crawling through all our
020tunnels, cutting out all the old steel lines and replacing them with new. Um, for instance, the pool over at the at the high school this last year, we lost a main line over there. I think we spent about $19,000 just replacing a section of about 10 feet just to get that. And they showed me the pipe. It was corroded almost all the way through. Now, this piping is pretty thick. It is a schedule what they call a schedule 40. Um but it has served its life cycle. 70 years has more than exceeded its life cycle. Your average life cycle for these boilers is anywhere from 30 to 50 years. So we're living on excuse me borrowed time with these boilers. Fortunately enough I was in the building early enough that this building has been done.
021So we have new boilers in this building. These were the oldest ones. I think they were around 90 years old that we replaced under this last project. Um, we were able to put it together with the other work. So, we got some uh um value there because we had them on site and we were doing a number of other things. So, it only made sense to add that to the bottom line of this because we're not going to be because these are new projects. Um there is that's part of the reason why you see it kind of a staggering number to see $30 million although I don't think that's out of the realm. My estimation was between 25 and 30 for the high school and between 20 and 25 for the middle school. Um and
022then there's the list of other things um that we have going on down there. The hot water heaters um if you walk around you notice that there's a lot of painting that needs to be done. I like to have our dis our buildings on a cycle of anywhere from seven to 10 years of the entire building gets repainted. Um now that doesn't include touchup. That's the entire building from top to bottom. Um $500,000 would get us about three or four buildings right now. So that's going to start that cycle. And then with other deferred maintenance that we money that we have sitting there, we will continue that cycle. So, we're always constantly painting one building or two buildings at a time. Um, roof repairs are going to be a constant obviously with uh now that
023we have solar on what the middle school PSI Susan Lindren central and um I'm trying to think what else. I think that's >> Susan Lingren Central High School >> Middle School. Yes. um the roofing uh that they will help uh to increase some roofing repairs and then standard you know our be our beautiful buildings are brick and that tuckpointing is something that wears out uh over a time so we need to be looking at that district-wide bathrooms uh after next year the high school will have all its bathrooms upgraded we have four more going this summer um the bid is due I believe this week tomorrow or Thursday actually and then it'll be going to the board in February or sorry February yes we'll turn that over to the board for approval on that. So,
024uh, B-wing is done. C-wing will be completed this this year, and then, sorry, A-wing is done, C-wing will be completed this year, and then we're moving on to B-wing to complete that the following summer. Um, you know, high school irrigation. So, we went through and with that great new uh field in the back and all the nice uh uh stuff we did over there, we didn't uh didn't have time or you had the dollars to start off with irrigation, which was originally always under the deferred maintenance. Same with the the middle school. When we added the pack center over there, the irrigation was abandoned and never never brought back up to grade. So, now we're going to bring it back up. So, the two the softball fields, the uh the soccer field, the uh lacrosse
025field in back, and then along the front will all have irrigation going to them, as well as the tennis court uh out there. We're going to look at resurfacing that tennis court. Um I was out there late uh in the fall and noticed that we're starting to see some separation, some large cracking in the tennis court. Um, general equipment. We are in the need of replacing vehicles. Uh, cleaning m cleaning. Our scrubbers are now sitting on a five-year cycle. We're looking at replacing four to five of those. And then a field striper that we just had found that died last fall and we were able to get it through the fall, but now it's time to replace it. And then this big one, the fence repair. Obviously with everything we've got going on, fence repair
026is is key. One of the bigger ones I'm looking at is the fence on the south side of the high school that runs parallel with the tracks. I haven't found out if that's the district's fence or if that's the railroads fence. Nobody seems to know the answer on that. So, I'm working with the city to try to get that figured out. >> So, obviously, this is more than we have remaining in our deferred maintenance funds. And with what I see as emergent issues with that high school and middle school boiler, um that this is the opportunity to if we stripped those off and got separate funding from a bond issue, we could have the remaining funds from the last bond issue to cover these deferred maintenance items and ongoing deferred maintenance over the next several
027years. Items that aren't on this list that we don't know will pop up over time. This is what the tax impact of a $50 million bond issue looks like. $120 annually and $10 monthly. There's some slides here that I must have put in after they got pulled to put into board book, but I wanted to remind the board that long-term facility maintenance or LTFM is another methodology that districts have to pay for deferred maintenance. Um, and we were just in a training on Friday and the Department of Education's LTFM guru did a great presentation about LTFM, how it can be used, but also showed a chart that shows the difference between districts like ours who don't have access to the old uh who aren't under the cap who are under the cap versus districts about
02820 districts in the state who are not under the cap and the gap in funding which continues continues to be a problem for St. Louis Park and it's another reason our deferred maintenance has not been addressed that we've got original boilers still in some of our buildings. It doesn't make sense to spend $100,000 plus on these old boilers but we can't afford to replace them. Um and as our skilled staff that kind of know how to run these old boilers um be you know move through their careers it put we're really at risk with those those boilers. So LTFM is our only source. Even if we had access to the to the cap that other districts have, we couldn't afford to do something like those those two boilers at this time. U so we are
029recommending that we just at least get those two projects done um with some new bond issues so that we can attend to our ongoing deferred maintenance from the remaining funds um from the last bond issue. So, $120 annually, $10 per month. So, this is then what that might look like. If we went to $120 annually for the bond issue to the top tech levy of $241 annually, that gets us to $361 on a $400,000 home or $30 a month. And the reason I put it here this way, um, I think the the $50 million bond issue speaks for itself. The tech levy, you know, it's it's difficult to emphasize enough how fast technology is changing and how much it comes at the district with needs for software, hardware, safety, and security. And then the staff
030that understand that and staff that understand technology as you know are expensive staff. Um so we really want to be sure that we are set and we are a district that um needs to be competitive with our neighbors. We sort of owe it to our students and our families to be sure that we can communicate at the same levels, that we can have safety and security systems at the same levels. we can have deferred maintenance and access to technology. All of the things that you will see in another suburban Minneapolis school district. And so going to the level of where one of our neighboring districts, which is certainly now the top level, I think is reasonable. It allows us to build up a fund balance again in technology so that if another big purchase comes
031up like school nutrition, like community education, technology can fund a big purchase out of a fund balance amount. It also allows us to grow to allow our staff to get raises over time to allow us to get support staff in place around technology so we can fund these systems in a way that's um that's streamlined and allows us to get the top-notch technology in here that our kids deserve. I I just think it's a it's a bold ask and I think it's an important ask in this period of time. And the most important thing underscoring all of this is if we don't do it here, the general fund pays for it. And we're already cutting budgets for a third year. Well, second year in a row. We had a little skip in there, but we've
032been cutting budgets like crazy. And one of the ways we've been able to avoid further cuts is we've pushed every technology item that we can into the technology levy and we've pushed every maintenance item we can into either long-term facility maintenance or into that bond issue. and we just can't stretch it any farther. And so we have to keep a robust funding source in those ancillary accounts. It's the only way we keep the general fund intact. So if we wanted to go ahead with this, you'll also need to think about what do you want ballot language to look like. We can either have two questions or one question. So you could have a deferred maintenance question and then a tech levy question. Last time we combined these two we did not >> we had it
033as separate. Okay. >> In 2022. >> Yeah. >> It was two. Okay. So I do have some sample language um that I didn't load into board book but I don't know if you want to just I think there's 15 copies so maybe every other person but it's just a preliminary idea of how it could look as one question. You know, I think conventional wisdom used to be that you ask two questions so you can have a throwaway question. In my mind, neither one of these can be thrown away and we'd probably have the biggest chance of success with one question. Now, that's for you guys to decide, but I think that would be um a way to be most successful is to um because they're all essential and I don't know how I would rank
034them for our voters. Um and we want language to be as broad and flexible as possible. So, you aren't going to see us proposing language that says deferred maintenance for the middle school and high school boiler because if our numbers come in lower, that's going to leave us some money that we could put into bathrooms or other kinds of of um upgrades that are needed in the district. And we're trying to stretch that technology levy, that capital projects levy language as much as possible. the bond attorney is, you know, Josiah tried some things with her, but like there's really not much flexibility in how you can ask those questions. We did add a little parenthetical and safety and security technology. We can't go we can't go beyond that for safety and um security beyond sort
035of technology related things. So, and we want it to be inclusive and adaptable. So, this is an idea of what a one question ballot could look like. Um last on Friday we were in an AMSD a lot of you might have been there um session with uh legislators and Senator Suazinski said is there anything we can do for you guys that does not involve adding money and so I don't know if it'd be too late for us because you'll already have set the language but get that technology levy available for safety and security. It's a mechanism that's already in place. But if that passed and we had a large technology levy in place, we could come right in and start to supplement our safety and security items. That would be very very helpful to us.
036Um, so that's a language item that wouldn't cost anything. Changing ballots. So even though they say if you vote yes for this, your taxes will go up, but on the other hand, remember you get all these other benefits. So like balancing that language or removing that language altogether. It's a really biased sentence on our ballots that wouldn't cost us anything to remove that language. And there was something else I was thinking. Oh, and to get that LTFM cap lifted so that all districts have access to the same amount of LTFM. That's a local levy question. Um, so I don't know how the state would look at that as far as far as costing, but those are some items that would really benefit us and many other school districts um for the legislative session. So, here's
037I think where we're at. we'll get some guidance from you today and try to complete the um ballot and and if you want us to move forward, we can work on some ballot language and I think maybe as early as our next board meeting, we could call for the election or sometime in March. Um, so we have a little bit of time on that, but we want to be done by the end of March for sure or even earlier so that we can start informing our voters even before spring break so that we have a really informed electorate that's ready for this question when it comes up in August. and we'll need to re complete a review and comment um which is a process we go through with the state to make sure that um
038we've complied with all the regulations um to run a ballot um run the ballot language and if we want to include language that has larger items in the tech levy we'd have to have a review and comment on that as well. So that's just something new that you might have not have seen before. A lot of districts have started doing that just to cover all their bases in both um types of levies. And then of course this will help inform us about the budget that gets approved in June because without these items in place um we ought to be forward thinking about deeper budget cuts. So that's where we're at on those two questions. Okay. Uh so now we'll take questions and I just want to remind our board members that we have so we're
039trying to operate from an idea that we are going to get done at 3:00 and I am committed to that. So um if there are questions that you can ask and take the answers later that would that would be helpful. Also maybe paying attention so we don't ask the same questions would be helpful too. Um but our student board members, you are since you're newbies, you get u the privilege of asking whatever questions you want to um ask if you this would be a good time because we have all of the cabinet here so they can they can answer um questions about it. I I did have just a couple clarifications if I may. So for deferred what what deferred maintenance means >> is maintenance that we put off doing, right? We defer it. >>
040We deferred it. That's the word deferred means. So, we put that maintenance off in order to take care of other important um items. So, that's what that deferred maintenance kind of looks like. So, we had a lot of construction projects that you're probably aware of since you went through the middle school and the high school. You're probably aware of that. And then Colin, maybe um >> I want to also just add that not only did we have other construction projects, but we didn't have the money. >> Yeah. There. >> So, we couldn't just pluck $50 million. So we keep saying our guys can keep these boilers alive, you know, one more year. So, >> and I just had two other clarification questions. The first clarification question on slide eight, so our current levy, tech levy
041dollars will not cover our current costs. Is that what I'm understanding on eight slide? >> Exactly. Yeah. And they haven't for a couple of years now. >> Oh, okay. So, I'm gonna if I can figure out how to do this backwards, >> you can kind of see how we're drawing down that tech levy fund balance. >> Gotcha. So, we have been having to general fund >> since 2024. >> So, just quick, the state tells us how we have to spend our money as a as a school district. There's one area that they don't like dictate and that's the general fund. And so most of our expenses come out of that general fund and we try to keep that healthy. And the reason why is because we want to pay our staff the the salaries that
042they deserve and we want to have all the cool stuff in our district. So that's kind of what general fund means and that's why we want to keep that high. So thank you for that clarification. And then the last question I think is more for Colin and um and new board members because I still don't really understand the um long-term facility maintenance the cap. Um so we we can't go to the voters for that. The state has to change that. The state has to change the law because it used to be called alternative facilities funding and it was only available to districts that were a certain size square footage wise and then you had to be a certain age as well. St. Louis Park was never near large enough and there's only about 20 districts
043in the state that actually qualified for that. So then a few years ago, gosh maybe it's been 10 or 15 years by now. Long-term facility maintenance came into place that and so it it soaked up a a few different funding sources into one. But like sometimes happens to keep the costs down um on on vote on uh community members because it's a tax levy. It's a voter or board approved levy once you have access to the funds. So St. Louis Park boards can only go this far, can only go to a lower limit that was artificially set. Other districts who had already qualified for all facilities, the old alternative facilities funding could continue to go to the this other cap. >> I understand that >> we were held at this new artificial cap like all
044the other districts in the state. And I would say the challenge politically is that I think Hopkins, Minneapolis, and a lot of our neighboring districts because they were larger, >> Minnetonka, Eden Prairie, >> we're all in that area. So we are this tiny little district in here amongst the giants that can't that don't have access to to increasing that. >> So they do, but we don't. >> They do, but we don't. And there's only like 20 schools out there that have this cap. And again, a bunch of them are right next to us and that's why sometimes they're able to do the things that they do >> um that they can do. And that's where it's been really frustrating. And >> and and for me politically, like with AMSD and other organizations that I'm part
045of, we're an outlier. This is a thing that doesn't rate for them. >> Oh, is that why we haven't had movement? >> We haven't had movement because none of the other districts, they sympathize, but they don't really care that much. They are looking things are compensatory which aren't a bigger which aren't a huge issue for us. This is where I'm saying we are an outlier here where we need to get some change done. And I brought it up to representative Yuim and she's like that's a tax issue not an education issue. So that is where we've also been trying to learn where do we push on this a little bit. >> But isn't she also serve on the tax committee? >> Yes, I think right. I think that's what she said. But anyways, we still
046but she's not the chair of that. But still I think that's where we've got to traditionally. But that's where I think we need to get smarter about how we do that as a district. And I don't know if anybody else like St. Anthony and Brighton as a smaller district would be somebody that we could pair up with to to potentially raise this or if there were a small coalition of some other things. Anyways, this is a soap box I get on this issue. It's a small one, but it's a huge deal. It was interesting that at MASBO Sarah Miller the MDE LTFM guru spent two slides at least 10 minutes with a group of business managers saying there's this problem and we have worked to try to take this away for you but like let's
047tell you guys all to to be really upset about this. I think Department of Education sees it. >> Yeah. >> Thank you. And um Sarah has a question. Um, I do have a question. It's um about the not the technology levy, but the um really the cost, the capital projects. So, I heard you say $50 million and that encompasses hopefully the boilers and the piping. Could you break that out? Because I hear the boilers are an emergency. I don't necessarily hear the piping is an emergency. I'm not saying it's not, >> but I'm saying like they seem like they're separate and they would be helpful to know. >> Sure. I think I had given you. So approximately 60 to 70% of that total for the high school would be piping. Um the challenge you have
048because currently we have steam boilers. Um and if we go to the new high efficiency hot water boilers, the piping is a different size. So essentially you're going to repipe anyways. We've made you can go to a converter in there which creates bigger issues and that which we don't want to get down because deferred maintenance money will be higher if we don't replace the piping than if we did it at this time. >> Can you say more about the converter? >> So what it does is it converts steam to hot water. Um currently right now in I'll use this building. When we redid this building, um we had a number of converters that we we had previous and previous um deferred maintenances. They had started converting steam to hot water here. So throughout this building,
049we did have a number of steam bundle converters that convert the steam to hot water. When we converted this building from steam to hot water, we removed those so we didn't have to remove as many as as much piping. We don't currently have that at the middle school or the high school. So, we will be needing to do further piping than what we did in this building as well as what we did in um I'll say Aquilla because Aquilla was upgraded as well in that project. >> I think it would be helpful for me to better understand the like the breakdown of the costs, right? Like I hear you on 60 to 70% but I also hear you saying we have to do some of it or do this converter. And I think just kind
050of seeing those, you know, $50 million is a big ask um and especially when I think we need to make a big ask on the technology level side. So just >> so you're looking for a breakdown of the costs but also the urgency of both or what the tech technical cost would be to >> keep old piping with a new boiler. >> Correct. Yeah. What's So if we said, well, we're just going to do the boilers. I hear you saying we have to do at least some >> piping. I don't it's not my area of expertise. So like what are the costs to do that? >> Yep. >> Thank you. >> Colin, >> I have a question that sort of piggybacks on that. Um I'm assuming and we have not talked about this is all
051deferred maintenance. Again, I get that idea because it's all things that we're doing to keep things the regular maintenance is things like mowing the grass and taking care of things, right? Okay. That wasn't my question. My question is these are all also operating efficiencies too, right? So, I would presume that some things that we don't see here is that we would see a decrease in the cost. It costs to heat our buildings and to take care of our properties and stuff too. Is that something that we ever quantify or is that >> I did quantify it for here, but it didn't make it up. >> Um, the return on investment for replacing the boilers we have here and the cost we spent on that, the return on investment is six years. uh that would just
052through efficiency of what we've installed we'll see the return on that cost in six years time >> sorry can I just since we're having discussion so that's just on the boilers or also on the piping >> just well it's it actually would be inclusive of all inclusive on that the return on investment would be >> because if we're not repairing older piping that we had to uh do further um the it takes it all into factor So, >> so could we just add that to the list of things that would be helpful to see? Thank you. >> And is that >> a piping question your comment on the piping? >> Just try try to understand the piping. The piping that you referred to at the high school with the pool, you said it's all like
053corroded on the inside. Is that the same issue with the boiler or the boiler? Just the pipes don't relate to the boiler that you want to install. So at the high school and and uniquely to these buildings is our pool is heated through our boilers, our current boilers. So speaking of that tube bundle and that it takes the steam from the boiler, runs it down through the tunnels, cools it down to hot water and then it goes into the pool and heats our pool water from there. So yes, it is it's all inclusive with that. So >> I think my issue is I don't understand the is the are the pipes that we currently have all corroded and throughout the building? Yes. Okay. So ultimately we have to replace them soon anyway because they are
054failing. Thank you. I think one question that might come up um and I'm just speculating, I don't know this for sure, is we might have some um maybe some community members ask, well, why did we not take care of some of this? You know, because we had the extra um we had extra money. I that's not the right word, but we had extra money in order to do the work at Aquilla. Now, I'm a 100% not regretful that we did that work. That work was necessary and we're really glad that we did it. I'm just wondering what my other board colleagues think that maybe we have some community members who come forward and say, "Well, why didn't we we had that extra money and we spent it on Aquilla and we think that enrollment is
055going down at Aquilla, but we because that was like the main kind of thrust of the Am I remembering this right? the main thrust of the people that did not want us to do construction at Aquilla was because enrollment was potentially dropping. Um, so I'm just wondering like is there do we have kind of an answer to give them? Initially my response would be um well twofold. This is these are $50 million. Even one of them alone is 30 20 to $30 million each. So I think we added $7 million when we got additional money for Aquilla there. It's nowhere near putting a dent in this. And what we did to Aquilla >> allowed students to get off of stages and out of hallways to do instruction. So that's why deferred maintenance is a thing
056because we've got kids learning in hallways. And incidentally, we didn't make um we didn't move children out of Aquilla into another school because we thought where enrollment was growing was at Susan Lingren and it indeed has we've been growing classrooms at Susan Lingren. So ultimately um we're be we're able to fill up both of those schools. So um I'm really pleased that we did what we did at Aquilla um because we needed all of that space at Susan Lingren um and it wasn't going to raise enough money to touch a boiler. Um, and the funds, there was $39 million of our last bond issue was set aside for deferred maintenance. We couldn't do either one of these and still get to all the other emergent items, including boilers in other places. We did wrap the
057Aquilla boiler into the project over there. So, where we could find efficiencies in this building as well, we replace the boiler. So, it's just that these are such giant >> projects. >> Yep. I just What about the other? So I know this building is good and you said Aquilla is good. Y >> So that would leave a few other buildings. What's the status of? >> Correct. Um so Susan Lingren had already been converted over to hot water previously. So we're good there. So we're essentially down to Peter Hobart and PSI would be the two remaining original boilers in the district. Um you know and they're going to be coming up. But just the overall general size of those buildings and the qu the length of those is not going to be I'm going to say
058you're probably at least half the cost of what this would be to do a total boiler replacement. >> But when >> when it's a never it's an ongoing thing. Um they're in better condition. They're they're a little bit newer. Uh and they don't have as many. So Peter Hobart has two boilers. Susan L or uh um PSI each have two. Um like I said, you would the high school has three gigant just the size of them and the total linear footage would be a lot less. Um you know, they're in a lot better condition than the middle school and the high schools are right now. So I anticipate at least another five to 10 years out of those. Taylor. >> Um, I guess well, real quick, I don't have another question on the bond. Uh,
059so if there's any more questions on that, I can wait. >> It's going to take me a minute though, and this is risk because I'm going to uh uh admit some ignorance on property taxes. But it was particularly on the tech levy here. if we so we have this this median $400,000 market value home, right? And and everyone can kind of see, okay, this would be my annual or monthly to get to this 5.67 million, whatever. It would be helpful for me and I'm not expecting this now and it maybe it's not even possible to project this but like another column of of the 5.7 million how much of that money ends up coming in a projection from each range of values? Does that make any sense? >> No, I mean >> it doesn't make
060Sorry. >> Well, I I don't know how we could get to that. Um because the what the way the tax levy works, I'd have to get I I'd have to get from someone the breakdown because it's not only homes, it's business properties that >> So it's really the entire amount of our tax levy, including these voter approved levies, get divided by the entire >> Yeah. >> tax impact. So it's it's difficult to break it down. This is the way it gets broken down is here's the impact of your prop, you know, on your property taxes for this value home. Um, we'd have to split out the entire tax. I'm not even sure if there's a way to do that. I'd have to ask um our elders and associates to see if they could help us
061with that because we'd also you have to build in all the commercial industrial um burden of taxes as well. We didn't even go into that here. This is just for homeowners who are voting. For the most part, it's people that, you know, live in homes, apartments, and all of that is not even included in here, >> right? >> Because that's a commercial industrial property. >> Yeah, that's why I had a hard time formulating my question. And to be clear, I don't think any of that like changes my opinion on how we're going to move forward here. I'm just thinking it would help me articulate this to other people. But if I can't even understand my own question, >> carry on. I did have one thing relating to the operating um which and I think it
062folds into the future discussion too. I've had two things to say about but I can only remember one which is I'm wondering as we were saying about some things here about efficiencies and how that makes improvement. I was wondering do we add that into the language here? And my answer is probably no because this is already dense and nobody's going to see that. That's going to be messaging that we'll have to do when we do a referendum. And for those I mean maybe for those student board members that that's what we have to do is bring this forth and that operates there's an there's anformational thing that's done by the district to say these are why we we're asking for this. But then there can be a separate campaign that is run by community that
063says you should support this and they have more ability to say more things why they think it's important and people in support of that. So that's where I would say like it will be important for us I think at some point to incorporate that into some key messaging that this is not just about what we're doing right now. It's about the future which we did a little bit with the facilities too which we said this isn't just about us like buying new desks. This is about us being ready to teach every subject you want to learn in the way that people are learning about it in the corporate world or in colleges and things like that. So just some of those other points that have come through because this is already dense and who reads
064this who goes in that ballot you know people read it >> that closely it's valuable for us to answer the one question two question but some of the language I think is probably no I don't I'm being presumptuous here but I don't think a lot of people this looks boring when I see it right now >> so I'm thinking let's not get too word smithy here >> and think about some of the other ways that we can communicate That's my plan, >> Taylor. >> Thank you. Um I I guess the so I'm I'm generally in favor of uh the tech levy where I'm not necessarily stuck on it. Like I I understand uh that costs continue to rise at kind of a rate that is extremely hard to project. Um, and I understand that uh
065we we are currently on the lower end and that we we at least need an amount so that we can stop digging into the the um the the tech levy fund balance um and hopefully start to actually grow it instead. So, I understand all that. What I what I think is tough for me to to wrap my head around um is just where in that continuum of 1 million and where Hopkins is at is the idea is it where Hopkins is at? And I guess the the question that I have is then >> what is what is Hop why is Hopkins at that level? because what it looks like to me is currently and obviously maybe they just had their tech levy this year like maybe it's a timing thing but they look like an
066they look like an outlier compared to everybody else around us. So I'm just that's kind of where I'm I'm not necessarily stuck but I have a question of like how do we how do we ensure that that amount to get us on the level of Hopkins is is what we need moving forward. You know, I just want to like just as a thought process, one of the things I think about with the tech levy is we're the majority of the tech levy goes to pay for staff. So, it's the technology staff, the media center staff, some staff in the central office areas that that work on technology. Um, and the cost for staff rise over time. It's just inherent in having people. Their costs rise over time. And the technology levy is a percentage of
067net tax capacity or it's a fixed dollar amount. So it doesn't have an inflationary increase built in. So we're hitting a time right now where um tax capacities are flattening out. And we could hit a time when they start to decline if if the markets continue to do what you know we we fear they might do. So then our dollar amount for the tech levy goes down. And so the only way to guard against it is to throw your, you know, your fishing line way out and grow into that dollar amount over the next 10 years so that you can then be ready for the next um, you know, for the next time you need to to get growth. So it's like an insurance policy against the future and you maybe grow fund balance to
068do some bigger projects over time. Um, maybe you don't levy into the full amount. You don't have to levy the maximum every time. I hate to even say that out loud because from the beginning of time it's like if there's funding available take the funding that's yet your voters have made available but that would be another strategy around that. I just don't know another way to get some inflationary increase without going full boore and getting a full 10 years out of it. It's just a it's a strategy around growing costs. Celia, did you have any questions or quick? >> Uh, this one's not related to that, but thank you for that answer. Um, I don't know. It's to me I I still I don't know. It would be helpful to know exactly like what is
069what is the difference and I don't know how we quantify that, but to me it would be helpful at least for going out to the voters and explaining why why we need to be on the level of of Hopkins. And I do understand to protect ourselves um against that um >> what did you call it the tax um >> the net tax capacity. >> Yeah. Tax capacity. >> Um but the other question I had and sort of uh director Cox's point was about this wall of text. Um, I do I do wonder if uh if maybe because it is a wall text if it does make sense to separate it into two questions. Uh, the reason I say that is because I mean like director Cox said, who who can read all of this? Um,
070and that might make it easier to potentially attack um, and more difficult to defend and explain for voters who who go to the to the ballot. Um, and then the other wonder I have around two versus one is again, is it easier to uh, poke holes into one rather than two if there is opposition for it? Okay, >> I have a question to Taylor's point, which is how let's say we want to move forward and and we vote to to do this. Do what is the process and to like how do we sell this to the voters? Do we hire a PR firm? Because I feel like we need experts to say whether or not it's better to do one or two like we don't I don't know. We just know what our own opinions
071are. So, how what is the process and I don't know who answers that. >> I mean, I think Colin can maybe speak a little bit to what we've done in the past. Um I I just wanted to put an opposite opinion out there on the two versus one and then I do apologize I have to leave but um I think to Colin's point earlier whether you have one or two like the language is so regulated that it's going to be dense and hard to read and I worry that if there's two out there people will be like well we'll just like give them something but not everything right and split the difference. Um, and I think in terms of like a calm strategy related to it in the past at Leeds has been like this
072is just like it's this is what we need to be able to have what our students deserve in our schools for safety for whatever else it is that the the talking points are. And so um as it sits now I personally would be in favor of one I'm not but I don't know in terms of the amount yet because I want some of those questions and to the question around like what's your best guess at where we should land on a tech levy and I hear you though I totally agree with that inflationary increase especially because we've heard Tom come multiple times and say we need another person at least you know and so um anyhow >> I apologize I have to go but thank Thank you. This is really helpful. >> Thanks, Sarah. >>
073And Colin, maybe you could speak to how >> I think um Ashley's going to speak to um Sus's point or question. >> Yes, thank you. So, uh I'll just speak to my own personal experience. So, I have um have run a little bit of referendum in previous district. Um we are a very small communication team in our district. we would probably solicit some level of help in um working on the referendum campaign itself. We have been working closely with director Magnuson so that we can think about what are the best ways to strategize which is part of the reason we've from communications we've recommended putting the two questions in one for that reason. In which case that informs us on some of the strategy piece of how do we communicate this to our constituent base
074so that it makes sense to them because that's where on our end we'd think about how do we market the questions and share with people so that they understand at a fundamental level. It's ultimately up to your discretion of whether or not we do one or two questions. Um, so that's yet to be decided, but either way, we'll take that information and go what are the um what are the pieces in which we need to do to help show our community the potential need um and you working with our uh firm so that we can figure out what is the best language for us in this space. But yes, because we are a twoerson team, we will probably solicit some level of help. that's ultimately up to us on what that help looks like to
075help us build out the campaign. Um, but that's also why we we've advised for moving our timeline up a little bit earlier so that we can figure out what does it look like for us to move this forward >> and just as a person who helped with the campaign. So, um, Director Davis and I were appointed in March and it was like one of our first votes was to to um do the levy referendum. And just from my perspective as a longtime teacher that the sooner we can get it out there the better because when you have the opportunity for the um superintendent and possibly the board chair to connect with families before school gets out for the summer is critically important because once school gets out nobody checks nobody reads their I mean I
076don't know if people read their emails now but nobody reads their emails kind of out um outside of school because they're not really is not on their radar and um Marameid I just passed um our bond and levy referendum and um in that district it has been super difficult. So I've been there for 25 years they've passed two and two have failed. So some of the things that I've learned is like getting out there sooner rather than later is really important. um those videos, but the just the just the superintendent and the board chair going to so many events and just sharing the message is so was so important and it was I for a conservative community they passed it overwhelmingly in the fall which I think is really in large part because of the
077communications team at in Monomid. >> Yes. I just wanted to add one more thing which is as we're thinking about that timing right so to what chair Mancini shared about getting out before the end of the school year is going to be really critical for us especially if we want to go for an August timeline if we are looking at a November timeline like if we were even to push out later we'll be competing with many of the other general elections that are happening at that time which also increases our cost for communicating so when we're thinking we're being really intentional about when we even go out for ask because there's a cost associated with how much marketing and promotion that will go into running a referendum itself or a a campaign, a tech levy
078or bond. Go ahead. Yeah. >> Okay. So, um we're in a state of emergency right now in our communities. We have businesses that aren't opening up regular hours because of um what we're enduring right now. Will that affect the amount that we're that the referendum will be for tax um for homeowners and other businesses? And do so two-part question. And do homeowners realize that like right now we're talking about homeowners specifically, but do homeowners realize that businesses will be taxed as well? >> Yeah. The second part, I don't know how much folks understand that anyone who owns property pays property taxes. So that I don't know and certainly if you link into that Eller's estimate there you can see it goes into some business impacts too. Um since businesses don't vote. I didn't put it
079here or just to shorten the slide. So that part I'm not sure um if businesses close and then and shutter them their doors and sell off their businesses and we're not and they aren't a taxable or a going concern anymore and don't generate property taxes or don't generate um tax capacity are not part of the the denominator in our tax impact. tax rates would go up for everyone because um the the value of St. Louis Park be shrinks and so you're spreading it over a smaller dollar amount. I I'm not sure if we have home um business owners who are shuttering and abandoning their businesses. They'll probably continue to be paying property taxes and keeping their their buildings afloat until they can open again. But that's what we can hope for. But, you know, that's
080sort of, you know, long term. I suppose it's possible if we're if we end up completely shuttering businesses and not generating property taxes, >> um, so and I think a lot of businesses probably rent too. So, it' be somewhat about the landlords too in terms of that. Back to the thing about voting, I want to say one thing that I can't say enough. It's that our community has always been supportive of our referendums. And I think our past ones have passed at least 70% or higher. Which means to me that we have a very supportive community, a community that has come to us frequent times and said, "What more can we do?" And so that's where I'm a strong advocate for going for the most we can and being and putting a lot of energy
081into it and not getting hung up on whether it's one or two questions because our community really does. They want to trust us and I think we're laying out information where we're trying to say we will communicate exactly what this is about, why we're doing this, not just vote yes, whatever, because we can't really do that. But we say we're offering this thing because we believe this is an important thing to do. And that's what I've heard my peers say here and everybody else saying um is that like um that um people want to know what this is all about and if we do a really good job communicating a lot about some of that stuff I think our community will understand that and so if we can get there I think they'll be pretty
082strong and supportive about that. The second thing I wanted to say was go back to what I mentioned earlier which was that we do have a vote yes campaign that is actually has a little bit of money. um it can do some of its own fundraising. I've talked with the with uh with the treasurer of that group. So there is some money there and there would be some opportunities for people to fund raise for that so that they could get the word out. And I just want to distinguish one more time for people that like there's what the what the schools can do which is very like this is what we're talking about what's doing. They cannot go to the point of saying vote yes on this. They can say we believe this is important.
083Where that has to come from is from the community. I look to some of our students here who have connections to the community that can be parts of vote yes campaigns or get their friends to be parts of that or their parents or other people that they know that are key leaders in the community and that's where we just try to really make it clear to everybody that why this is important why we keep going to them why this why we say vote yes and whether you know whatever the questions are and stuff. So, just I just want to speak to I have that experience because I've been through uh as a committee member. I've been on a vote yes that was on the initial one that started some of the construction about 10 years
084ago, whatever it was and to current times and through some of these votes as well. And I'm willing to share some of that expertise. But >> um Patricia, have we shared with a board the impact of not going out for a capital projects levy? meaning how quickly our general fund would decrease, how quickly we would get to um our 6% um minimum m minimum as far as our general fund. >> You know, one way to look at this is that we in fiscal year 2025, we spent beyond the revenue generated by a million dollars. See that number? million83 the negative number this year we're currently estimated to be over by $600,000. So all of that would go to the general fund. Um it would take two years to deplete the entire general fund if we
085don't figure out how to catch up or we'd have to cut out of technology. So what? Okay. So last year we had to reduce by >> two million. >> Our upcoming status for as we are approaching June. >> Um I believe you said it you're recommending another 1.5 >> yes >> million. If we project forward at our same pace, will be will we continue to look at budget reductions year after year after year? >> And are there cost drivers that are impacting that? Because I know when we talked about, you know, our comparisons to our neighboring districts and the things that they have and, you know, dot dot dot. I think that there are some things that are we also have to consider when it comes to cost um that is not um a scale
086tied to student enrollment i.e. we turn on our lights. That's a steady it's a fixed cost. Some of these are fixed cost that regardless of how many students we have, it's still the same price that we would pay as Hopkins who has deeper pockets when it comes to their capital project levy. So I think that there there's some of those variables that I think also have to you know we have to do a good job in communicating to our constituents that you know it's it's not the because we have all we have all these people but there are some things like for cyber security we need to have cyber security there is a fixed cost for cyber security as opposed to um okay, we're going to buy a 100 new iPads this year. Totally different.
087>> And I think I think that is much more palatable to people than buying iPads. Like people can understand that. And the other thing I was going to say earlier is like it seems like um August is a much more a much better election because more progressive people vote in those elections. And so if I would say like we should absolutely go for a primary election and not the general election. >> Okay. Any other questions, comments? Um, so I guess I'm curious what I would like to get a feel for is are we do we feel as though we have enough information that we can make a vote on the 25th or do we need more information before we can vote on the 25th? What are is that a am I allowed to do this?
088Am I allowed to take a feel like I don't know exact because it's not a vote. I'm just trying to get a I am ready to vote yes on this. I am ready. I feel like there are some details that will be worked out in the in the process, but I think that giving our staff the go light now so that we can be super proactive and we can be we can kind of hit the ground running after spring break is um would be my ideal timeline. I don't know what um anybody else's timeline is, but I I that would be I would be really encouraging us to make an informed but urgent decision. >> I guess not to speak for Director Davis, but I know she had a few details that she wanted cleared
089up and I think maybe that's what you were speaking to about >> Right. I think there are details that need to be worked out, but at least they we are giving them the go. >> Yep. Yep. So, yeah. I I guess to that point, yeah, I'm I'm in favor of moving forward and yeah, just giving those details that I think are more helpful for us to be able to to sell it moving forward than the details. >> And I and I don't think that I don't I think if I'm remembering Director Davis's questions, it was more getting to the dollar amount and some of that, but it wasn't a question of whether we should do it or not. It was more the details. Okay. And and I guess just one thing, can we have some
090time to mle over this and have thoughts about language? >> Oh, yeah. I think the big question is, do you want us to draft it in one or two questions? When you call for an election, we'll have to have some ballot language. So, there might be a preliminary vote to move ahead so that we can start gathering communications and then maybe a future vote to set the ballot language. There won't be a lot of wiggle room on language. Splitting it in two will probably, you know, do the most. You kind of, you know, you can kind of see where the split is in there, but there's not much wiggle room. So, do we um So, does that mean that we need to have on the 25th, would we be just deciding to go ahead or
091would we would you also need to know if it's one or two questions? Can you bring both? Can we see that option? Is that too much work? >> I guess I I might be the only one who suggested the two at this point and I'm I'm okay with going forward with one. >> My experience is one is better. That's and I'm just coming from the past campaigns that I've worked on. When when we're talking about details, are we talking about the amount or do we decide that we were going full fishing line? >> We we'll have to know the dollar amount, one or two questions. Yeah, those two things. >> Well, the room felt like one question was the way we were going to go, but I don't know that we had full consensus and
092we're not voting on anything here. So how do we do that in two weeks >> to get the dollar amount? I mean that is something we can talk about. >> You I mean presumably you could present both you could but you've done some of that here and that's where I'm saying where I believe that like maybe people want to see some of the details and understand it a little bit better. But I think what Patricia has said is it's really kind of up to us like do you really just want to get by and then we're like well maybe we'll just try to renew this again sometime or something like that. you want to be really advanced thinking and I think it's really and you could split hairs and we've done that before as a
093board where we were like well it's going to be you know I don't agree to 99 million but you know and it was whatever it was sorry it was something else but but I think the point is how you know are you ready to be that progressive and to be that aggressive right both of those words I guess um and is that kind of the energy that people want and and I'm saying I I mean I got theense said some people were saying that and I'm saying I think that's based on how I try to represent the community. Oh, our our friends left or they're not here right now to hear me talk about the different colored people. Um some coding that we learned about this morning and um in a retreat, but like some
094people need more of that information and stuff and want to understand some of that stuff. So, how are we adjusting our communications for for what people need to understand that, right? We know that there'll be resistance to some of this stuff because people are like what you're raising my taxes. But if we are thinking about what are the things how they are, you know, interested in the things that we're talking about like are they really about St. Louis Park being the best school district that it can be right now, you know, and that could be whatever we think that is or however we define that putting their students f, you know, first and that's what we're trying to do is we're doing everything we can to put our students first. I think about those kinds
095of things and trying to lean into that stuff and being able to say yes, we understand this is a hardship for some, but you've said to me as I've been at the door, you've said to me as you've watched our board meetings, you want us to do as much as we possibly can. So that's me getting up a little bit on my soap box there, but but that's where I kind of feel like what I've heard and what I'm careful of is that splitting those hairs takes a lot of time and sometimes doesn't result in what we want it to do. We want to be fiscally responsible. We can do that. We can show numbers. We can talk about how much of this is being used for active things and how much is being set
096aside for for future use for, you know, deferred deferred deferred work, you know, and stuff like that. And we can even talk about what we're doing to to increase other leverage so that we can do that, too. Celia, >> just want to remind you all that I went to the um bond referendum session at MSBA. So, I have this here if anybody's interested in following the QR codes on the back. They go over the research, planning, engagement, messaging, advocacy, and timing of this all. I'll leave it here and then you can just scan it and follow along how they kind of went about this and how they got their community involved. They had some really good points on how to get the community involved. Going back to Patrick. >> Yeah, just a couple quick things.
097I wanted to clarify Director Cox's statements that we were talking about different colored people. We were talking about our personality aspects that we learned about this morning. And as a blue, I'm not advocating for splitting hairs about financial. I just want to make sure that we're doing the process right so that I'm ready in a couple weeks that no, no, no, we're right. So, I'm trying to be flexible and to yellow here. I mean, I think that there's um so I think there's two ways of thinking about the details is that one go for throw cast our cast our line out really far. Hopkins far let's cast it all the way over to um but then giving us information the some of the detailed information that we can when we advocate for this in our
098community that we have the right wording. Right. So there's that element of it and then and that is what I am in favor of that I would especially since Patricia explained the um the inflationary costs. I mean I think that if I mean I I just anybody in education should pay attention of how much money we lost because we didn't have an inflationary tool that was baked in there um in order to to do that. I think um so that would be my recommendation is to have it cast out and then when it comes to the board table on the 25th, you know, board members can make amendments to it and we can amend something to lower I mean I don't know I don't know how to go about getting two different costs um because
099yeah I don't know how to do that. I think it just makes sense to say the recommendation to the board is that is that this set levy amount. Um I don't know what is the labor involved in you giving us two different >> what I'm hearing that one question so we can continue to work with our um bond attorney on that language and then I'm hearing like not strong opposition to the dollar amounts we're talking about so we could come back with a presentation on that but at the same time I see some questions that might change somebody's mind on the board like the breakdown between the piping and the boilers. We can bring that back. We can um get more information on the return on investment for the boilers. Um get costs and timing
100of the PSI and Peter Hobart boilers. So we kind of know that we've given ourselves enough time to wait another five years from today to ask for more funding. Um if we can find out more about what might be different about Hopkins, I think that might be a little bit different and I think Dr. Hines might have answered some of that. Some of these infrastructure needs are required no matter what. But we can see what we can find about that. So we can bring back the presentation with more details so that the board's ready to um call the question at the second meeting in February with some of this more information. But if that disrupts anybody's ability to to be supportive, we can come back at a later date. Um we've given ourselves a little
101bit of time. The sooner the better for a myriad of reasons, but we have a little bit of time here and I think these are reasonable questions and I didn't actually hear anybody saying it might be a deal breakaker, but it's really important information. >> Go ahead. >> I guess my follow-up question is for board members. Is there anything that you would any additional information that you would like to make sure is a part of the presentation before the call to vote so that um it can be recorded, it can be shared, it can be noted that we have presented all of these data points in order for you to make this decision. >> I just I do um and then I'll uh and then Susie can have the floor. one slide, possibly one slide
102that just goes into a little bit um just a tiny bit of detail to let our public know that we do not have a stabilized funding mechanism for safety and security. >> I think that is it that's important because some of our community members only see safety and security as getting into the building. We haven't and God bless him. I love my husband, but he probably isn't thinking cyber security. He's thinking about the security at the doors, which is very important. But we've got so much data that we need to protect. And so if we don't have a stabilized funding source for safety and security from the state, then we have to it is our it's our responsibility to make sure that we have funding in place that we can continue to make sure our
103data is safe and our cyber and we have cyber safety. And so just letting the public just briefly know any you just could do a slide and just say director Mancini is going to speak at this moment and I will just share with them that we don't have that stabilized funding and it's part of the reason why we're trying to be very proactive and protecting our community. >> Susie, >> I I would add to that also the um like the fire alarms. Remember we spent a lot of time talking about that. That that's a important security concern for people too. And I I would also probably think it would be helpful for people if you include a slide like not like a highlight but a slide about what happens if we don't pass this. >>
104Yep. That would be my that was also my second one. And and as Colin I'm getting my bottom re but I think the vote the vote yes campaign from last time I think we one of our flyers did have like this is what we would be getting. This is what we'll be losing, right? Didn't we do that? >> I can't recall. >> I think it might have been Monita when we did it, too. I don't remember, but somebody did it. >> That's that's the will of of that committee. Again, the regulations, so to speak, on that are way looser because it's sort of like we're asking we're concerned parents in the community or whoever wants to be part of that. And like I said, I can help people connect to that if they want to.
105But um I encourage some of the people who said, "What else can I do?" for uh former um people who ran for school board and were not elected. You know, these are great opportunities. But yeah, so like however they want to kind of position some of that stuff, they can be and usually just having some connection between them and and the district so that that information is correct. We also don't want to mislead or not have some information that would be helpful for that group to do its work, which I think some of that stuff. >> And I think that it's important for our student board members to know and recognize that you play a very important role because number one, some of you are 18 and you will be able to vote in the
106August election. >> You might be 18 by August. I don't know. But like but also I think that students when they can speak um when they can speak from authenticity and from a pace of knowledge and tell adults in the community like no like this is the reality of what it's what we need because I'm sure you're aspirational. You're a high school student so you have desires to be you know get great jobs in the future and to do so you need to be um ready and prepared through technology. So, but also board members, just so that you know, you can be a part of the vote. Yes, you just can't use your um school email address. So, it needs to be your personal email address. So, it's not you're not prevented from it, but
107if you're representing the district, you can't say vote yes. But you can be a part of the campaigning if you're just have to make sure that if you're wearing your little like tag that says schoolboard rep, then you can't be telling people to vote yes. You can you can be loudly or vehe meanly talking about this is what we'll get when we pass this and this is what we'll lose. >> So you can be realistic. >> I believe we can advocate at the table for people to vote. Yes. But but the district itself can >> I that's yeah board members have a little bit more >> I think right. Yeah. I think the point is sort of just people want to be involved in a community and we would just encourage that to be a
108pretty broad group of people because again it's speaking to all the different people that have different perspectives on this. We do as a board and people believe that and there's maybe a perception that people think that the board just always wants more money, right? Of course we do. We want to pay for really great schools, right? And we only have certain levers to do that. But what we need to know is where is the community at in this and how do they understand? How do they approach it? Again, if they think it's just like we wouldn't want us to put out something clever, we think and we use an iPad as the backdrop and they're like, "See, I told you it's all about iPads, you know, right?" Like, like I'm not saying you would do
109that, Ashley. But that's the kind of stuff that where if there needs to be a different message or we need to counter something, then we need to have that. Or if the message gets corrupted in some other way, then it's just helpful to have >> and it's important because there are there are some community members who are just like, "Well, kids have too much screen time." And so the only they're so limited in viewing technology as just kids on screens. Um but it's so much more than that. So >> to say I guess that is kind of part of my concern about just like the messaging not whether or not I would support it. So the the presentation is is great and I like that the the um the the bond question has the itemized
110but when we talk about the tech levy there's there's not that and there is this this thought out there that it's just about the iPads. Is there any way we can get some sort of like I understand again it's it's really hard because we're talking about like projected costs but like some way to some sort of pie or something that that shows that it's not just iPads. >> You mean more than this line? >> Yeah. >> So somehow graphically >> Yeah. Or are you looking for >> are you looking for cost associ associated with these things >> proportion or something? >> Yeah. >> Proportion. Yeah, I think that would be helpful because again I I think that the issue I assume is that it's hard to project out exactly where all the costs are going
111to be throughout the 10 years, right? But if there's some sort of proportionality and and just so it shows that we are it is about um and some of some of the the answers that you've given today about where these costs are I think is just helpful to go into the presentation in two weeks with >> and just to Sus's point like I'm looking at those safety and security door locks cameras visitor management that's not including the the system that you and And I that's so I don't know if we're but that might be like too sensitive to go out to public so that might be part of the reason why it's not up there. I don't know. Awesome. Are there any other questions or comments that anyone has? I just want to do we
112think it's helpful to um when we when you do your presentation to kind of highlight some of the things that came out of the 135 million so people like understand because I I think it could be important to say like this is why you know and talking about you know adding more classrooms and providing the space and then then talking about the actual mechanics of the needs and how you know we we we're focusing on different things and maybe highlighting that so it provides some context as to well you just asked me for 135 million and now you're coming back for more but this is the reason why and I'd be curious too just that's a great point Jason um in 2022 was there also some talk of catching up from the uh co online
113learning things like we didn't because we had to shift so many I don't remember we had to shift a lot of funding from because when we went online there was a shift and so then part of the reason why because we had we had just passed the levy referendum I thought and we had to go back for it and it was because we had depleted a lot of our previous No >> I but you were there right >> there was a 2017 bond issue and we couldn't complete the projects because the cost >> that was bonding though that's not the projects exploded during co so we couldn't complete the list of projects from that bond issue. So, we did another bond issue and then added some projects in 2022, but then at the same time,
114we renewed the capital projects levy for technology, but only increased it by $500,000. >> Oh, and so we need Yeah. >> You're so naive. >> Okay. One one thing I'll say is that we did a really good job of not overusing our federal dollars that we got to for those who were missing that context. Uh other school districts did that. They depleted and then rely they were reliant on that extra money and then they were in a real pickle when they and when it came out of that. But that is just other context for people. >> All right. Going once, going twice and we're adjourned at 2:33. Clerk 233, buddy.