001Conference will now be recorded. Okay, >> call the meeting to order. I'm Mike Ziggler, chair. Bo Gibbs, vice chair. >> Tony Sassy, trustee. >> Frank, trustee. >> Tessa Hopper, trustee. >> Stephan Rabbi, superintendent online. >> Jay Failen, trustee. >> Okay, takes us to consent agenda. We've all taken a look. If there's any questions, we've been going have a motion and second. >> A motion to approve. >> Second. >> It's been moved and seconded. Any further discussion or comments? If not, all in favor say I. >> I. Any opposed? >> Any opposed? Motion carries. That takes us to communication. Is there any public comment for anything not on the agenda? uh takes us to reports we taken a look. Is there any questions or anybody like to add? Okay, takes us to building updates. >> A
002lot begins. Yeah, I mean I have most all it in my board report. I mean does anybody have any specific questions? Might be easier to answer questions. >> So there's a lot of work being done. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Yeah. It's all going pretty good though. The high school bathrooms um biggest thing we'll wait on there is the flooring. So, so we get that in then that'll be pretty quick. And Washington School same time for that'll be earlier because all the way for blinding. So, um >> it's pretty hard to get a good flooring guy in this town. >> I know actually uh looking for the least expensive flooring product back in, but something that's still going to last, you know, decades and stuff, too. So, but uh yeah, >> a lot of it's coming
003up here. Action items anyway. >> Yeah. Yeah. So, >> also kind of >> Yeah, I guess if there's no more questions on building updates takes us to action item A, adopt resolution for permissive levy December as required by law. Yeah. So, every March um I don't it says on the the plan when this started. I don't remember when it was. It's on the um report, but they started getting us to in March letting the community know basically what we are planning to do with permissive levies. For those of you um you know permissive levies are basically ones that the district can't impose that there doesn't go to vote um so like transportation, different things like that. And so um building reserve and we we don't have anything that we're either increasing or decreasing at this
004point. Um and so basically you can see that you're just a lot of zeros. But this goes you guys approve it. It goes in the range of review saying hey this is what is um you know coming and then what happens. It doesn't mean that it cannot be increased or decreased. it just means we are trying to plan that out and and typically we we don't we really try to manage this really well. Um there have been times where emergencies come up where we've had to increase that and that is allowed. Um but it's um you know that's what's there and so we've been doing it for years like this and so that's basically unless people have questions on that one. I'll >> move we adopt a resolution. I'll second. >> It's been moved and
005seconded. Any further discussion or comments? If not, all in favor say I. >> I. >> Any opposed? Motion carries. Takes us to action item B set 2627, general fund budget amounts. All right. So, this one's a little bit different. Um, this is different than what we've done in the past. Basically, um, hard job. If you remember in December meeting, we um we made a resolution to go to our voters with a general fund levy in both the elementary and the high school because you don't have numbers at that point. And so if you don't put it on then you even if you needed to do that you can't. Um so and that usually was done in January and then they moved it back actually February it used to be moved it back to December. So
006that makes it even harder. So every year that's what will happen in December we'll ask for those the election of general fund levies just in case and then once count day happens um and then they get all their stuff and they send us stuff. It's usually middle of the week last week is when we got it right before this board meeting. So we're always scrambling to try to get stuff done for the board report. Um and so we put it in this um format for you guys to kind of show you what the state is saying that we can and can't do. So DCHS um even with the declining enrollment um just with everything that's there and the different things the legislature has done, we are at max capacity for our budget. Um and we
007we operate at the maximum that you can the highest. Um and so when the highest with a vote is the same as the highest without a vote, then you you can't run a general fund levy. Um and so so we're kind of where we need to be on that one, which is good. We don't have to ask our taxpayers to vote on a a levy. So that's where we that's where we want to be. Um the hard part is when your enrollment drops to a certain point to where there's this gap between your um your what they're giving you and the one with the vote. And then that tells you how much you can levy from your taxpayers. If so, so when you look at the elementary, that's what's happened. Um you can see that
008we're about $8,300 um short of our maximum budget. So we could go to our voters for $8,300, a little over $8,300 um and maximize our budget. Now um the hardest part with when you're talking about budgets, um educ like school budgets are just really difficult. They make it as hard as they possibly can. But one thing that is to me a little bit better if you understand what budget authority is. So budget authority is the amount this this m max budget whatever we set that at whatever we go to and so this proposed adopt budget of a little over 7 million there um with this 8300 that would be your budget authority. So if you don't go for this thing your budget authority goes down and that now becomes your ceiling. There's no way to
009get that money back unless you get more enrollment. And so by leaving it on the table, you're basically making a decision that you won't ever be up to that point again unless there's other things, right? So sometimes you'll go above that um if they put like an inflationary increase or something else in the budget goes up. So I mean there is other ways that it goes up, but for the most part A and B is usually the biggest thing. And so um so typically you always want to try to go to your voters with your levies and say hey this we want to maintain our maximum budget our budget authority of of operating because that's what the state has allowed us to do. If you don't you just leave that on the table and then
010that becomes your new ceiling and and it's hard to get it back. And so, so typically we would say I would be recommending to you guys, hey, let's go to the voters and, you know, let's leave it up to them and hopefully we can convince them that this is important, right? All this money, we're not just spending money to spend money. I mean, we um, you know, this is what the state allows for us and um, this is what we really need to be able to operate um, for next school year. When you start looking at something that's 83, a little over 8,300, now all of a sudden it's like, I don't know. We we discussed this as to what our recommendation was going to be coming to you guys because we don't want a
011drop in budget authority, but we also don't necessarily want to always be coming back to our voters if we don't have to. And we're like, can we operate without the 8,300? Would the 8300 be nice? The answer is yes. Like money is money, right? We can use that wholeheartedly. But we also start thinking and saying, okay, how much does it cost to run an election? It's about $3,000 and can go up. I mean, it has gone up in the past with different elections. And so, you start chipping away at that number and it's like, okay, so we're really right around $5,000. Is it better to just say um hey, you know, we are we going to operate um without this so we don't have to go to the voters um and and this is what
012we're going to do to help. I mean, there's times where we are asking for other things. you know, is this one of those times where we need to ask our community or do we just say, you know what, we're going to deal with what um what we have that's going to be our new budget authority and we're going to move forward with life and and deal with it that way. That's going to be our recommendation. It's not the first chart. It's the one with with red. And so we've taken out that. And so you can see the um it's it's just 8,300 a little over $8,300 less than um what the top one is. And so we're recommending um the one that's circled in red um for to be done as a motion. You guys
013as you know um as board members can do it differently and you can go with the the top one if you wanted to. Um but one more thing I wanted to go over. If you look at the very bottom of that um just for information we we thought we would this was in the spreadsheet that they gave to us the highest levy authority or imposed in the previous five years. You can see that um the last time we asked our community to go for a general fund levy was in the 2122 school year. So when you see 2022 that's our fiscal year which is a 2122 school year. Okay. So it's a little different than like business fiscal years and stuff but um you can see that was the last time that we ran one
014both in the high school and the elementary um because we weren't quite at our max budget there. And so we did have one in the 23 24 school year in the elementary district for about 14,000. And that year was the year that um we were going I think that was the building reserve levies and the bond here >> and and we decided not to go for that one. So we left budget on the table that year because of all the other things we were asking our community. And so um so even though it says it's there, it's not. We didn't actually go for that. we had we adjusted the number below it um to to account for that but um so that's kind of the picture of the last five years so we we haven't
015which has been good but we have been dropping enrollment so for us that I really thought last year I was like okay it's we're going to have to do them both this year I thought we're going to have to do them both and so I've been really surprised that it's because of all the other pieces that the legislaturator has been doing to kind of help support the other things not necessarily the A and B um but the other pieces that's allowed for us to um stay where we're at. Um and but but if you look one thing you want to look at is the if you look at that number you can see that we have not increased very much over the last five years right our budget's been pretty much the same and so
016and when you're looking at millions of dollars um you know some people be like oh look at this but every year and if you look incrementally yeartoear you can see that it hasn't been much so maybe if you went from the 2122 school year to this you're like that's a pretty decent an increase, but that's not how it was, right? It was incremental. And so, you're having to deal with um all the cost of inflation. Um salaries and benefits are always going up. That stuff doesn't ever decrease. Um you know, you're always having to pay more and more. That's just because of inflationary costs. Our employees need to paid more. So, we've been operating pretty much and and this doesn't show we could have went back a couple more years, but you're looking at about
017seven, eight years where our budget's been pretty much the same um each each year and and that makes it tough and we've been doing a really good job of trying to do that. But this is why you don't see a whole lot of us doing a lot of frivolous things. I mean, we are getting to the point now where we have to really start looking at different like everything that we do. Um, and but but that's what we try to do and we're going to continue to do that unless we get a an increase in enrollment or the state changes their model like they're looking at where they they base it off of something else. I mean, this is kind of where it's going to be for a long time. And so, yes, we would
018love to give our teachers all more money to um get more things for their classrooms and things like that, but when you when your budget is 89 to 94% salaries and benefits, depending on what district you're in, um that makes it hard um to do other things, but we um we do our best to try to get the things that we need and, you know, move forward um to that. And so, you can kind of see that. So that's just kind of a view of what we have been dealing with for the last five years with budget wise. So >> another consideration was opportunity cost of say the labor and the time that it would require everybody to go to the community for this as well. So it's so I'll make a motion to approve.
019I'll >> second. >> It's been moved and seconded. Any further discussion or comments? If not, all in favor say I. >> I. >> Any opposed? Motion carries. That takes us to action item C, approval of fire alarm purchase and installation contract. So I I'll start it off. That's okay. I'm gonna let you I'll hand it off to you, R. Okay. Um so the next three are all bond projects. And so, um, the best place to look at our bond stuff is going on to our website and, um, on the front page, there's a a button that says, I think, 2023 bond projects stuff. And so, you can get on there and then you can see all the information from that, but there's a screen that kind of shows the um, you know, totals and stuff.
020You also have in my board report, you have the um the document that um has everything updated. Every single before every board meeting, I update that and you can see a month by month thing. We learned this from a while ago where people were saying, "Oh, there's no information. There's no information." And so we're like, "Okay, we'll give you information." It's a lot of work. um and a lot of you know pieces but we you know it's I think it's really important and I'm really glad we started doing that and so people can actually see month by month and what this what this looked like. Um, we tried to, it was hard because we try to figure out how are we going to update this? What is this going to look like when it's a
021living document and so we try to use the highlights to see what's new that month and different things. And so, um, there's some things that once the HVAC project goes, the top part will start looking a little bit different because we did kind of combine the electrical and, um, the HVAC and stuff. So, we've made notes on that, but eventually that will go together. Um, so there'll be some changes. I just haven't yet because it's just like I'm still trying to figure out how to document that but change it at the same time. And so um so we'll have that but but all three of these are um from the bond project and you can see the totals and our job is to try to you know with the Hback being more um than we
022would have liked to that went up. We've been trying to figure out how to offset some of these. So sometimes when this happens is like anytime you do a bond almost always you're you don't get everything that you told your community that you were going to get because of things like this. Um things costs go up. Um different things happen. And so what we're really working hard to do is still get everything we told them we were going to get. It might be not exactly what we thought it was going to be. And so we changed some things and you guys know this from some of the past board meetings and how we've shifted things and in some cases we think that has shifted better. Um and so that was good. The fire alarm um
023is one that we do not have to go out um you know to bid for because we were we were under. There's some really good being able to stay local on on this, but it is something that needs to be upgraded and I'm going to pass it off to her at this point for for that. But I miss on the firearms. Uh, no. I think all that sounds good. And most of you already heard my uh preaching and stories, but like for some who haven't, the fire alarm system in this building is from 196368. You know, the two halves of the buildings, and they're basically 95 98% these little silver balls right there that are heat detectors. So, it was before they had smoke detectors that were um smoke detectors became um installed and readily
024available in the 70s and they weren't really so much around in the late60s. So, our building has pretty much all heat detectors and each heat detector is supposed to have a shelf life of 15 years. So, they're supposed to be replaced after every 15 years and these are all still original heat detectors, sorry, heat detectors. Um, and so we have very very few smoke detectors that were put in and they're dumb smoke detectors. They're just a heat detector taken down and a smoke detector put up. Um, and so it's a it's a dumb system. So if this heat detector were to go off at the fire alarm panel, the fire department shows up. They look at the panel and it just says, "Yep, your building's on fire." So the fire department would have to search
025this entire 154,000 foot building to find where and if it's a false alarm which has happened. >> We're around searching to figure out how that >> Yeah. And if you know if they don't have keys to get in classrooms they're kicking in every door, every closet, every custodial room to find and clear that room and make sure that there's no fire in there. So, um, so the, uh, the in and the, so the funny thing is when we've been going around because we've had we have like five faults on the system right now. Um, our system is still operating and and working, but there's trouble. So, um, if if a ground kind of wiggles loose, you'll get a trouble alarm. And so, we have five alarms going right now. And to try to find where
026that's at has been looking, it's like looking for a hay stack. So going through and trying to find where these troubles were really kind of got to look at how they wired the building with these heat detectors. And uh it's kind of funny because you can see what was put in originally and again if you remember like say part of the school was in ' 63 before the other high school burned down. And so then in 60, well in 64 it burned down I think it was. And so then when they built the second half of it, you can see they put heat detectors everywhere. And then they went back to the 1963 part of the building and ran more wiring just like random wires, not in conduit, not anywhere, and just put more. So
027it's like, huh, you can really tell that the a high school burnt down here cuz they put a heat detector every every I mean a two foot by two foot closet. They had a heat detector stuff. So anyway, it'll be really good to it'll be fully code compliant upgraded um addressable smart digital fire alarm system with um uh speaker strobes annunciate. Uh we're putting in an extra annunciated panel. You've got your main fire panel, your the big brain, which we have over by the boiler room, and then there's a panel, an annunciate panel in the principal's office for them to be able to do fire drills and things like that from. So, but with this building, if a fire the fire department showed up, what door would they even go to? And so like if
028they came to the cafeteria doors or the Maril Avenue doors, they'd have to go clear down to the principal's office or down into the boiler room before they could look at the panel to see where the fire's at. So we're going to add another panel over by the district main office over here um to be able to give fire department to at each end of the building. they'll be able to come in and check things if we have false alarms, which actually, you know, happens more than an actual alarm, but uh it'll give admin and stuff greater access to it. So, it'll be a good updated system that is well needed. >> Also move to approve it. >> I'll second. >> It's been moved and seconded. Any further discussion or comment? If not, all in
029favor say I. >> I. >> Any opposed? Motion carries. That takes us to action item D, approval of auditorium lighting, purchase, and installation. Why don't you jump into this one? I think I said my piece about the bond project. >> Jump into it. that kind of take itself um with the >> with the improvements in the auditorium and the lighting improvements and and things that we're doing. Um basically again I think I mentioned this before but in in ' 68 when the auditorium was built the um emergency lighting code was very uh small. There wasn't much required in that part of the code. So basically in essence we don't have any lighting in there right now. So in order to if we you know are doing these upgrades you have to upgrade and meet current
030code. So it just was another part of the um auditorium that we needed to address. So, this will be uh again code compliant and it's actually going to be pretty cool because um we're tying it in with the POE lighting system since that's the system going in. Coming up that system with POE lighting is just the the obvious next choice. So, we'll be able to do all different colors um dim and bright um and it's going to be it'd be pretty cool. So, >> seems like a bright idea. Wow. >> My god. >> So moved. Seconded. >> It's been moved and seconded. Any further discussion or comments? I'll just add one more thing. Um we're still looking at being under budget for this stuff. So I think that's important to note. Um you know, you
031have part of the auditorium pieces in this and we are given what we cut everything down to, we're still going to be under budget for that. Um which is what we've been trying to be. So that we because it's going to it's getting taken over by the HVAC and stuff, but um but it's it's important and it's still going to be last a long time and pretty neat. Any further discussion or comments? If not, all in favor say I. >> I. >> Any opposed? Motion carries. takes us to action item E, approval of roofing purchase and installation contract. Let's go again. >> So, uh, in my board report, I think I did put a typo. I said at after this we would have R30 and we have R30. it'll be um uh 15 to 20
032depending maybe 25 because I don't know if you know about flat roofs but um you have flat rope that we built and so this is a a rubber membrane roofing that goes um and how they built these flat rope commercial buildings installation sitting on top of your your roof decking which is actually good that's still the preferred way of doing it today but in order to get So water runs off. So you don't just have a big swimming pool up there. You put um the rigid insulation that is put up there has a slope in it. So the roof is flat, the insulation has slope. So where the insulation is thicker, you have more R value. Where it's shrinks down into a a rope drain, then you have less R value. So overall, I think
033the R value is going to be 20 25 somewhere around in there. But um if we were to strip off all the installation on top the price. >> So it's just not feasible. The payback isn't there. Um the nice thing with our high efficiency furnaces that we put in, we we you wouldn't see the payback on it. So um it's just not not feasible. And we're we're all this is in compliance with the state and the code on the state. So, um, they're all approving of the plan that we have and and be moving forward. So, um, I can throw around it's carile, which I'm sure prank stuff knows. I don't know if you like, but I like anyway, that's a older with um, ke. But it's uh you know we're like with everything even
034with the furnaces went with an inexpensive way of putting heat in the building but we went with the Cadillac actual furnaces there the higher end. So the uh the membrane that that we're going with is a 90 mil versus you know we could have gone with something less like a 60 mil but our warranty and everything will be much better. It will be this roof will outlast I think everybody sitting in this room. Um, but the cool thing with this new Carla product is it's basically like a uh uh oh, they have a patent on it, but it's basically like Velcro. So, it's a peeling stick that they put this um Velcro piece down and then the roof gets attached to it like that. And it's proven to hold up better than any glue, any
035adhesives or anything like that. that provides better um uh passive air through there for suction vacuum sucking it get down um and if there's any moisture that where get in there the moisture can wick and evaporate out and they'll actually put in vents um in the in the membrane >> anyway we can pass that around. >> Thank you. So other than that, I guess everybody kind of understands. You saw my little map picture. Um, so it's basically everything is white up on the roof. >> So So roofwise, you should be good >> for quite some time. >> Yeah. Yeah. again a dead horse, but roofing was put up there last time it was run, which when you think about it's been pretty much equal time. Same with like a lot of the carpeting in the
036auditorium. It was replaced after 30 years and it's been 30 years and replacing. So anyway, the roof up there was done in two sections. 1998 and in 1998 the architect speced um hyperon white and at that time HD or EPDM was cheaper but the architect still made them put the white hypolon on and the white hypolon is not lasting in 2001 just three years later they put on the EPDM and so it's you know 25 years old and it's got another 30 left in it. So, um, yeah, and that's another reason why we're going back with the EPM. So, we've got it'll be 30 years before anybody should have to worry about the roofing up there. >> And we were able to do it under budget, which was good, which that the excess of that
037um will, >> you know, be put into the HVAC project as well. So, >> yeah. >> Motion to approve. >> Seconded. It's been moved and seconded. Any further discussion or comments? If not, all in favor say I. >> I. >> Any opposed? Motion carries. Take it. There's no gold curtainer. Okay. >> With that, >> I just Googled it. >> Meeting adjourned. Thanks everybody. >> Thanks everyone. >> Thank you