001Good, J. All right. Good evening, everyone. Welcome to the special meeting of the Hampton Board of Education for March 19th, 2026. I'll read the open public meeting statement. New Jersey open public meetings law is enacted to ensure the right of the public to have advanced notice of and to attend any meetings of public bodies in which their interests may be discussed or acted upon. In accordance with the provisions of this act, the Hampton Board of Education has caused notice of this meeting to be published by posting the date, time, purpose, and place thereof on the Hamilton School District's website under current legal notices and posted on authorized premises, ensuring compliance with the 48 hour online notice requirement. This notice has also been maintained on the website archive for at least one week. >> We'll have
002a roll. >> As Mrs. Baronado, >> she's excused. >> Uh, Mr. here. >> Mr. Dano >> here. >> Mrs. Blue should be late. >> Mrs. Fallon >> is excused. >> Mrs. Gerald is attending >> on Zoom. >> Miss Hunter >> here. >> Mr. P >> here. >> Mrs. >> is excused. >> And Mr. >> is also excused. >> Mr. Lions, >> I am here. >> Okay, let's go ahead and have the flag salute. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all. >> Okay. This is the first of two opportunities for anyone in the public wishing to be heard. You can come up to the microphone, give your name and address. Seeing no
003one, we will close the first public portion. Um the purpose of this meeting was to adopt is to adopt our tenative budget. Uh for those of you watching at home, there are two separate votes. There is a preliminary vote on the on the you know upcoming budget. Um the budget will then be submitted to the county office for technical evaluation. Once it comes back, the board has an opportunity to make amendments to the budget and the final adoption will be uh at a meeting in roughly 30 days. In addition to that, we also have some presentations that we're going to talk through in public session. So, do you want to you want to just >> whatever works for you guys. >> So, I think we we can go through the agenda. >> Okay. >> I
004think and then we'll have the presentations because I know we have three tonight. Um I'll entertain a motion on f finance items two and three because one was removed. Motion >> Mr. Koya first, >> Mr. Kia second. >> Mr. Koya, >> yes. >> Mr. Dphano, >> yes. >> Mr. Alo, >> yes. >> Mrs. Hunter, >> yes. >> Mr. Po, >> yes. >> And Mr. Lions, >> yes. Motion carried. Next we'll go to personnel item number four. I'll take a motion. >> Mr. Fleet. >> Second. >> Mr. Koya. >> Roll. >> Mr. Koya. >> Yes. >> Mr. Dphano. >> Yes. >> Mr. Geralo. >> Yes. >> Mrs. Hunter. >> Yes. >> Mr. P. >> Yes. >> And Mr. Lions. >> Yes. Motion carried. Next we'll go to program students and miscellaneous items five and six. Take
005a motion. >> So move. >> Mr. Koya first. >> Mr. Fuya second. >> Mr. Kuya. >> Yes. >> Mr. Dphano. >> Yes. >> Mr. Talo. >> Yes. >> Mrs. Hunter. >> Yes. >> Mr. >> Yes. >> And Mr. L. >> Yes. Motion carried. We'll move to the addendum. I'll take a motion on finance item number seven motion. Mr. Stephano first second. So on the question on this again this is the initial introduction of the budget. There's an opportunity for the board to meet in committee and evaluate discuss and make changes. This is by no means locking us in but rather getting the bulk of the budget evaluated for technical appropriateness and all the things like we normally do. So that's where that is. Um there are things that there are items to discuss. We transmitted
006two days for board committee meetings to happen so that we can dis people can you know be a part of that process in a committee meeting and talk through it. And I've asked our business administrator for folks that can't make either one of those two days to set up a one-on-one appointment to talk through all the things um from the budget as far as any questions folks may have and all that. So, we will make that happen and then we're going to have a second final vote on the budget once we have a few more things figured out in about 30 days. So, um >> Okay, I'll have a roll call. >> Mr. Koya. >> Yes. >> Mr. Dphano. >> Yes. Mrs. Geraldo. >> Yes. >> Mrs. Hunter. >> Yes. >> Mr. Poa. >> Yes.
007>> And um Mrs. Antonio, >> is this just a roll call? >> Roll call on the budget on the introduction of the budget bill. >> Sorry, I was >> You're fine. You're okay. >> Yes. >> Thank you. And Mr. Lions. >> Yes. Motion carried. And I mentioned we had a couple small items on the budget. one not small being the introduction of the budget. Small items in the agenda. The budget introduction will vote a second time. So we're not locked in. We get another budget gap. Okay. So that takes us to the end of the the published agenda. Again, we had a board meeting about a week ago, so these were just a couple small items to clean up. In the meantime, now we have the folks from DCO here to provide us a presentation
008on the ESID program. We have we're having three presentations tonight. This is the first of one. first one. So, we'd ask you to keep that to uh you know 10 12 minutes if you can, maybe 15 tops. Um try to be okay. We said 15. In that case, you know, it's fine. Um we run a pretty >> quick. We run It's okay. We run a pretty collegial board here. Uh I would say to the board members, if you have questions, just shout them out. You don't have to wait till the end. I don't you know, we'll just ask them as we go. So, I will turn the floor over to you all. the meeting. This is a public open public meeting. This meeting is being recorded and will be posted on YouTube. However, the other
009firms that are um presenting uh in the same space are not here and will not be allowed to sit in while you guys make your uh presentation. So, with that, come on up to the microphone. >> Thank you so much for having us tonight. My name is Fedra Leard and I'm a business development associate with DCO Energy. Um, I have a couple of my colleagues here today. Try to talk into the mic because I know you're recording. So, I have Greg Burns uh behind me. He is the vice president of business development and Matt Adelfio who is our manager or engineering manager. Um, as I said, we're with DCO Energy. We are a DPMC qualified energy services company or ESCO. Um, and we have done more than 90 EIPS or energy savings and improvement programs
010throughout the state of New Jersey, primarily with public schools. I know that we're limited in our time, uh, and we'll try to keep it tight. So, to keep things moving efficiently, you'll just hear from the three of us, but we do have a couple other members of our team. Uh, since we are so close, our office is in Maze Landing. It's literally 20 miles doortodoor. I said, "Come on by on your way home from the office and sit in so you could see the team that you would be working directly with if you were to choose us to partner on this project." So, we aren't just an ESCO, we are your neighbors. Um, and that's why we're really excited to have this opportunity. So, thank you for bringing us in tonight. Um, Emma, Bill, they're
011on the engineering side. I figure I should give them a shout out. And Dan oversees all of project implementation. So, just so you know who these faces are. If you do choose us to work with you, uh you're going to think that we're members of the district here because we will be here all the time. So, DCO Energy, we have all the capabilities of a large national company except we are New Jersey based. We have more than a thousand employees and all of our decision makers are local and they understand all the nuances of doing business here in the Garden State. One of the things that I personally love about Hamilton besides Bag Manny's um is the pride that you all have living, working, and raising your families here. It's truly a tradition of excellence.
012You have the print out. This is the same thing that's on the screen, but you can just take notes if you want to uh or any questions that you want to shout out that you don't want to interrupt. Um it's truly a tradition of excellence here, and that's something that we really value and respect. Uh at DCO we have the same pride and work ethic that Hamiltonians are really known for and we hope that throughout this process and this presentation you'll see that hopefully we are the right people to partner with with this job. Uh tonight we're going to talk about the EIP process, what you can expect for us and our performance and ultimately that it's really about your priorities as a district. This is your project. So, let's dive into what EIP really
013is all about. It is a it's simply a funding mechanism. It is a budgetneutral, which I'm sure you're happy to hear, Terry. Budgetneutral financing mechanisms that allows big public entities like the school district to make capital improvements with no money out of pocket, no upfront costs, and there has to be guaranteed energy savings. I don't have to tell you that as a school district, you're very limited in the options you have when you want to make capital improvements. Um, EIP is really the only one where there is no taxpayer impact. And the great thing is, uh, if you ever consider say going down the road to do a bond referendum because EIP does tackle a lot of capital need, uh, facility needs as far as energy related, but it doesn't touch everything. So if you
014see down the road maybe you want to pursue a bond referendum, it's really great PR piece really to say we did everything that we could to be fiscally responsible before bringing this to the taxpayers. So I'm going to turn it over to Greg who's going to talk about the process and kind of the steps that are involved. Fra. >> Yes. Good evening. Um thank you for having us. So, as Fedra mentioned, this is our proven process that we've used to help over 90 public entities here in the state of New Jersey alone. So, how do we get from where we are today to a fully implemented and saving on your your energy utility bills right now where you get new facilities, upgraded facilities? So, we start at phase one. So, that phase one is where
015Emma and Matt behind me will be leading up the project development, scoping out the items with Rick and really having variety of workshops, understanding the district's goals. We we got some previously, but just refining those to make sure we're really addressing what Hamilton public schools wants to see achieved. So, we'll go through phase one. We'll develop what's called an energy savings plan. So, that's a massive document. It then once you pick the scope of work, it becomes a massive document. We have to submit that to a third-party engineering firm that has to review and approve it. And then and then the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities also has to review and approve it. Then hopefully we come back into another public session like this. We present what the project looks like for you and
016then we execute the implementation agreement. So that's where we move forward into construction. So once we're done phase one, we enter into phase two where you do two things. It's financing the project now and then working with our operations and maintenance team and design team to design the scope of work you select. So you can finance an EIP in two ways. One is an taxexempt lease purchase. ESIP law allows you to extend financing to 15 years or 20 years if we include a piece of technology called combined heat power. You can do refunding bonds, but it's it's the same process and it's the same 15 to 20 year requirements. The difference is it just depends on the market rate at the time. For example, we just financed the project two weeks ago. We got a
0173 and a half% interest rate. So, that's still better than you get in the lease market rate. That is determined, the financing route is determined by your financial adviser and bond counsel. uh Bill and Dan and Matt and Emma work on the design documents. So we design it, we get ready to go out. So once the design is done of the scope of work you select, we then go into procurement. The one part I want to highlight on procurement or phase three is the only contract you have is with DCO energy. So we become your general contractor. So as Feder mentioned, we're a national company, but we hire local subcontractors. We're local. We hire we hire firms that really work here in the state of New Jersey. Um you know we work we work closely
018with some of the existing contractors Petersons of the world of Alaska's different entities that all work and live in this area as well. So we we get through procurement all the subcontractors are awarded after your approval to they're awarded by DCO um through our subcontracting process again with your approval. Then we go into construction. So that next phase is then the implementation where Dan takes over. We're installing the lights, the HVAC equipment that Matt will touch on. Um, that takes a little bit of time. You can see at the bottom, approximately 11 months. Once we get through the implementation of the measures, then we enter the performance period, which is the energy savings guarantee. So, I'm going to jump to the next slide. Um, and it's a little bit difficult to see from here, but
019the so the the table to the left is your ACER. We compared what we had from the baseline period um of your your most recent ACTUER toward towards the EIP um RFP utility bills we had and they're pretty close within 50,000. So the gray column that 1.4 almost $1.5 million that's what you spend as a public schools as a district to operate Hamilton public schools every day. If you don't do an ESP project or you don't implement anything that's going to continue to rise as you either consume more energy or your rates continue to rise. The middle part is is where the EIP comes in. So you see the blue and the green part. It's about $425,000 a year savings plus the $3,000 of excess cash flow. So that's where you're able to now use
020that $1.5 million to invest in your existing public facilities. So that's a massive win for not only for the district, for the students and the community, but really right the taxpayers. It's funded through those energy savings. Then over the term of the project, right, there that that those energy savings keep keep to go through that throughout the 20-year period. Again, EP energy savings are covering those costs on an annual basis. There's a few project scenarios. Um, again, the middle one is the one I wanted to focus on. There's a 15-year 5% that's required by the Board of Public Utilities RFP. The middle one, the case one, case two, I know we talked last year about some solar and the absorption chiller. We we walked last summer with with Rick to look at some issues you
021were having. Um but you can kind of see the numbers. We're going to work with the district to get the utility rebates through South Jersey Gas and Atlantic City Electric. They go directly to the district. Um and I'm going to turn over to Matt now to talk about those energy conservation measures that are so important to the district here. >> All right, Matt, before you start. >> Yeah. >> Are there rebates? So in in this calculation for base case are there rebates through South Jersey Gas Lang Electric? You're assuming that we get them all and it all goes fine. >> Correct. >> That's baked in. >> Correct. Now those rebates are funded by the BPU or by the power company. >> Those are by Atlantic City Electric and South Jersey base independent. >> Correct. But
022in other words, the is that is that like a flow down from the BPU or is that like an annual appropriation? I guess >> it's based on the scope of work we do. >> Okay. My question, where I'm going with my question is, is that a guarantee or is that the kind of thing where they have to >> It's not a guarantee, but we in it's because we can't dictate what utility companies do. Great question. But we've been overdriving our rebates and incentive projections by about 25%. Okay, good question. >> Good answer. >> Good to continue. Awesome. Thank you everyone. Uh now hopefully to answer the question that I think is the reason why we're all here and it's what is this project going to and uh impact for the community and for the facilities
023of Hamilton public schools. And I want to stress Hamilton public schools because this is not your architect's project. This is not DCO energy's project. This is Hamilton Public Schools project. We are here to hopefully be selected to be your trusted energy partner to help guide you through the ES EIP process and deliver the amount of facility improvements that the district needs without impacting the taxpayers. Now, included within our RFP response was a slew of different energy conservation measures. I think there was 19 different measures included. Um, and this is really just the starting point. This is not the end all beall for energy conservation measures. We are uh this is a living and breathing document that we are going to continue to modify throughout the investment grade audit period with the district. We know school
024districts are dynamic. We're flexible to increase and add priorities as the district changes to make sure at the end of the project that Hamilton comes away with the most impactful project possible. For the sake of time, I don't want to dive into all the technical um measures that we evaluated, but some of the key six that talking with Rick and the facility staff, walking the sites, and reading through the local government energy audits, we determined were some of the most impactful in our eyes. Starting off with LED lighting upgrades and lighting controls. Uh as you can see, there's a bunch of existing fluorescents throughout the district. These are high energy users. Fluorescent lights compared to modern LEDs use uh 2/3 the amount of or 2/3 more of the amount of energy uh compared to modern
025LEDs. Uh any light that's typically a 2x4 or 2x two fixture would be replaced with what we call the doctor's office look. So it's a modern flat panel LED kit. It's a smooth light. It adds improve uh improved visibility to the classrooms as well as an improved look to the school district. So it's something the community would see the first day they walk in and the project's underway. All lights come standard with a 10-year warranty. That is something the district would not have to pay for out of pocket for the next 10 years. There's also attic stock that's included. So, if a light were to burn out for any reason, the facility staff would be able to go take a light out of the attic stock, replace it, ship it back to the manufacturer, and
026get a new one free of charge. Next is the absorption chiller plant conversion with dehumidification. I know that is a lot of words, uh, but this absorption chiller plant is something that DCO has brought in previously in the summer to take a look at some, uh, humidity concerns within the high school. So this absorption chiller is a very technical piece of equipment. It really does three things. It provides the heating load for the building, the chilled water which provides the air conditioning to the building and it also supplies the domestic hot water. This is one unit that does three different uh three different processes. So there's one point of failure. If this unit were to go down, it it proves a difficult impact for the facilities uh to try and maintain and operate this this
027unit. Our solution to this humidity problem that was caused by this absorption chiller that is known issues throughout the district. We've seen a bunch of them fail in other school districts is to replace this unit with standalone condensing hot water boiler plants and an electric chiller that you'd see in other school districts. This provides an improved redundancy so you don't have one sole unit as well uh as well as serviceability. So you can have a common technician come serve all the same school districts. You don't need specialized technicians for this absorption chill. Next is the energy management system. The district does have an existing energy management system from a couple different manufacturers, couple different controllers. So, we've replaced any uh proprietary controllers with non-proprietary, allowing for the serviceability to be improved as well. You're not
028tied into a single sole source. DCO is manufacturer agnostic. We do not uh manufacture any pieces of equipment ourselves. So, it's really the district's priority of whatever companies they want to use as as a provider. Next is split system HVAC replacements at the middle school. This is provides the cooling. These are Dyken BRF heat pump units. Uh these units are 12 years old. Parts are hard to source. So they use older refrigerant that is less environmentally friendly. So replacing these will allow Rick and facility staff to be proactive rather than reactive. Improve comfortability in the classrooms and more reliable. In addition to that, those units only do the cooling. They do not do ventilation. So, these heat recovery units, there's six green heck uh heat recovery units at the middle school. These provide ventilation. If
029these are not functioning properly, they bring in hot humid air, make the classroom feel sticky, decrease the learning environment because you're uncomfortable in the space. Replacing these with new high efficiency units that are able to dehumidify before that ventilation air comes in is critical to making sure that this is a comfortable in uh learning environment. So, replacing these with new DOS systems, dedicated outdoor air system will improve that functionality. And lastly, I want to touch on safety. I know Greg mentioned that safety is huge with DCL. We've read the strategic plan as well. We know safety is huge in Hamilton. The addition of field and parking lot lighting. As we were walking through the sites, Rick pointed out that there was some uh visibility concerns with the parking lot. It's very dark at night. So,
030lighting up the parking lots and the field after middle school is another key point of our project. Now, we'll turn it over to Greg to close it out. >> Thank you, Matt. Um, one part of one part of our projects, the end of our projects, we call it an energy conservation measure, but it doesn't conserve energy, right? The construction part of our projects make an impact within the facilities. We receive energy, lights, HVC upgrades, but the other part we do is, right, we're local. We're neighbors. We're here. We want to make an impact in the community which we work live. So, we offer quite a few opportunities. Um, we've had scholarships and internship programs. We we give back to the to the district to work with students, any any students interested in a construction career
031path. We also offer live classroom and women engineering and construction. Um I have two daughters that are five and three. So I really push the women in engineering and construction. So try to bring them into the field and give opportunities that students might not have otherwise had. The other part we really really are proud of is DCO is recognized nationally as a a strong supporter and hirer of veterans. So the veterans that go out and serve us and our community and protect us back home. We we look to take care of them when they get home. So that's we're we're fortunate enough to be able to do that. Again, we do look to work with local partners. Um and then for transparency, if selected, we do create a specific project website that can be uploaded
032directly to the Hamilton Public Schools website so you can see what's going on from a construction standpoint, energy saving standpoint, and a community outreach standpoint. And then just finally, just wrapping it up here with a couple more things is our EMR, our experience modification rate. This ties directly to safety. So the average score for an EMR of a good firm is one or half of that. So it's like golf. The lower the score the better. So we are we are in a pretty good standing. You see the top 4% in the country for this. So it just relates really to the safety aspect of it. Um you could see how much the experience we had implementing ESIT projects here in the state of New Jersey and and it's it's we're really appreciative of that. But
033we've been successful because we've been able to listen to our clients and take care of them and develop meaningful partnerships. Um, a lot of these are pretty close and local to the area. Um, but I just wanted to sum up our presentation and end with a quote here. Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress and working together is success. And I hope this is the beginning of a successful partnership between Hamilton Public Schools and DCL Energy. So, I really appreciate the time this evening. If there's any questions, we'll be more than happy to answer it. Thank you all. >> Thank you. >> Questions? >> So, I guess one just somewhat short out of pocket cost for the district upfront. Out of pocket cost, >> $0. Yeah. So, >> no. No bond council. No,
034you're going to pay for my attorney to look at your contract. >> So, so >> I don't pay for anything. >> So, the way it works is we the the IGA is a the investment grade audit is a $0 break fee. the bond council and all soft calls get modeled in the project. So you don't get they no none of the professionals get paid until the project finances. >> Um and just one thing I want to point out this uh was started back in October and um just so the board can hear um because it's we're behind the deadline. We're way late. Um will you need to update the proposal in any way? >> No. >> Before we finish our evaluations, >> we're extremely comfortable with the proposal. think we can deliver maybe even more
035than was initially what was proposed. Um I think some things have changed in terms of interest rates from previous and before. So I think we're in great shape. So we're more than happy to keep it and everything would be obviously cleaned up and we would in the IGA the investment grade audit. That's where we would really refine this RFP response and give the the school district and the board what you want as a as a public entity in terms of upgrading. >> Thank you. Can you can you explain that again? what started in October. >> So their proposals I think are dated from October and because of the change in the business administrator that was kind of put aside. So there is a timeline within their proposals in the RFP packet but because of the
036delay we're off that schedule. So I just wanted them to either say they needed to re uh propose before we do our final evaluation of the proposals or if that proposal stands. Thank you. >> Okay, questions. >> Looks good. Thanks for coming out. >> Thank you very much for your time and opportunity. Appreciate it. >> Appreciate you guys. >> Two things before you start. One, the board's an open we're in open session. This is an open public meeting. Uh it's being recorded. It'll be broadcast on our local our YouTube channel. Just so you know, we're evaluating the proposals in public. Um but other than that you take about 15 minutes and have at it >> happy to hear. >> All right. >> Thank you so much for uh inviting us here today. We appreciate the
037opportunity to present. My name is Joshua Smith. I work for AVM as the regional account manager. >> I am Tim Kernan with Kier Engineering and Design. I'm a regional manager. >> I'm Tom Verizon. I work for Tim. Yes. So, I'd like to open the discussion by saying congratulations. This district is really wellrun. So, I I applaud everyone here uh and the efforts that you guys have made towards the the work that has already been completed. I think when we evaluated this opportunity, you know, we look at the the strong leadership that's already been in place, the decisions that you've made on the facility side. We took a look at your strategic plan and and really looked at how you're looking to engage with your students safety and security of your facilities and and the focus
038on financial responsibility. And I think that this program really is a great parlay into some of the work that you've already done. I think the goal for us is to really understand the board's goals in in doing this project and to help you really achieve those goals. And and and my job is really to help uh you define what this program is. It's it's the district's project. It's not ABM and Collier's project. We want this to be something that's beneficial and transformative for the district. You define what the programming looks like. We just want to be here to help you fund it and to execute it. So, uh, with that, you know, I I think I'd like to start with some of the unique approaches that ABM takes in in evaluating a district and how
039we think about these projects. Um, everyone can go in here. We can tell you, you know, light bulbs, boilers, equipment. Uh, the good news is that your district is already in really good shape when it comes to that stuff. You've done a lot of work. Your solar field has really isolated the impact that grid uh tariff increases have had on other districts throughout the the state of New Jersey. Um, we look around facilities. They're in great shape. Your facilities team does a fantastic job. So, what are some of the other things that the district may want to bring to the table that I think AVM is a great partner for? Um, when we think about how to transformatively impact a district, I think about things that benefit the students and the faculty and helping them
040learn and grow into the jobs of tomorrow. So, what we do uh that I think is a a unique opportunity for a district like you to partner with a team like ABM and call yours, it's really focus on the programming. Um, so what does that mean? We want to help you fund steam labs, robotics labs. We want to help you build out programming for students, whether that's a coffee shop and a barista uh POS system that they're learning how to manage cash flow and do transactions. We want to work with you on building vocational programs, whether that's nursing, uh vehicles, maintenance, whatever it may be. Uh our goal is to help you achieve the goals that you're looking to get out of the district, right? Uh we do a couple of other things that we've
041worked with throughout the country on on districts and specifically New Jersey. We like to think about spaces and how they're being utilized. So whether that's making reconfigurable classrooms so that we can kind of take spaces and turn them into different usage cases, giving community spaces for students to be able to come here and hang out, right? Spend time here, video game labs, after school activities. How do we fund those programs that keep the students here really engaged and really active in the community? The other piece of that is how can we bring the local community uh businesses and programs that you have here and build a pipeline to keep those students in the district, right? We want them to graduate from the district, but hopefully we can keep some of those students in the district
042growing, raising families, being a part of this community. So, we work a lot with uh union leaders and and partners that we do a lot of our work with on building vocational programming to basically set those students up to stay here. We want to work with the local communities and and um uh businesses within the community to say, "What are your needs? What are you looking for in your students coming out of the high school experience? And how can we train them?" Right? Jobs of tomorrow, jobs of today, it doesn't matter. You tell us what that looks like. We help you build it. Uh, you know, I have two projects that we're doing in Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania is a really interesting state right now. Pennsylvania has what's called school choice and and what that means is
043that the dollars follow the student. They don't stay in district. And so they're losing a lot of students to what's called cyber charter or to, you know, charter schools and in in plain English um as well as other districts. And so we've worked with two districts in the state of Pennsylvania on building the programming with a goal of retaining or attracting new students. Uh one of the programs that we did was in Messen School District in southwestern Pennsylvania. The whole project was $18 million, $11 million of which was spent on this programming thing. And we basically said, "Hey, if you can retract five attract five more students that you have lost to Cyber Charter, bring them back. it would pay for the $11 million project. That was last year. This is the first fiscal year.
044They had 120 students that were out of district and cyber charter. We brought 45 of them back. And so I bring that up because we have an expertise in helping you build these programmatic things, attracting students, keeping students here. It's really important for the district to think about that now and in the future things may change. We don't know what the environment landscape is going to look like in education in the state and nationally, but we can help you plan for the future. So our goal is to really build the environments that support the outcomes that matter for the district. Um I want to kind of now parlay into why AVM and Collers. Um so we have a really strategic alignment on how we think about our clients and our relationships. We don't want this
045to be a one-time transaction. Uh we look for partnerships. That's our goals. I will be completely honest. ABM sells other services, maintenance agreements, service contracts, custodial, uh, all kinds of different services. I want you at the end of this project to say, Josh, we had such a great experience. I want you to kind of come in and tell me more about what you can do. So, with that long-term mindset in place, we're looking for partnerships and and partnering with callers, they are the same way. And that's why we've uh uh come here as a teaming agreement in in a goal, right? They would be our engineer of record. we would be the ESCO, but this is the team that I think would like to be here long term. And so we don't look at this
046as transactional one time. We're going to do a project and then we're never going to see each other again. I'd love for this to be a long-term partnership and for it to start now. >> Uh and team with other existing partners you have. >> Yes. So, so that's the other big piece. Uh our goal is to always utilize the vendors and services that you already have in place. You got a mechanical person that you really like to work with, great. we want to use them. You've got an electrician that you like to work with, great. We want to use them. Any any services or existing vendors that you have within district, I want to use your people. We're not going to dictate who to use, what to do. Um, if you don't have somebody that
047can provide those services, we're happy to bring multitudes of partners to the table, but ultimately if you're happy and you like the people that you're working with, we want them to be the case. Um so on on the Collier side I want to kind of hand it over to Tom so we can just give you a little bit of background on. >> Yeah sure. So um look to go forward with an EIP project you really need two components. You need an ESCO an energy services company and you need an engineer. And what we do is we engineer public works projects. EIP projects are related to building improvements and building systems and controls and all of this kind of stuff. That's our bread and butter. That's what we do. whether we're working in an ESET project
048or we're working for a public school district through the summertime to replace boilers, it it really makes no difference to us. That's where our strength is. That's what we do every day. So, I while ABM is a huge company, $8 billion a year in annual revenue. I mean, they're gigantic compared to Kers. um they don't really need adult supervision, but we like to consider ourselves sort of their adult supervision in how they move through the K through2 public New Jersey, you know, environment. It's uh uh they're a national international company. We're a New Jersey company. We're national, but we're a New Jersey company. And we we really spend a lot of time paying attention to what resonates with school districts and and how to navigate processes, how to streamline procurement and things like that. you
049know, we when when you decide to go forward with an ESIP project, the first thing you do is drop, you know, 10 to 20 projects in your in your purchasing agent's lap, um, we get that and and we we have a a a documented track record of success in scheduling and planning and ultimately implementing those projects with with a lot of a lot of success and happiness from our clients. So, I know uh Tom was gracious enough to talk a little bit about Avian, but we also have a local presence. So, uh we work with a lot of school districts and and higher ed uh clients within the state of New Jersey. We have about 5,000 employees in the state of New Jersey. Uh we manage Newark airport. We manage uh Red Bull Arena. We
050manage the Credential Center, right? We do facilities 24/7, 365. That's what our business is. Uh so while he did say yes we are a big multinational company we do have a very local focus. We work with a lot of districts nearby. We work with Kain University. We work with all those clients that we talked about. So we have the expertise here in in state but the nice part is we also have those niche expertise right we have a client who f or a team that focuses specifically on uh correctional facilities. I know that that's not something that you need but some counties or municipalities do need that stuff and we could draw in that expertise. So, anything that you're looking to implement, we probably have someone on staff who's already ready and able to do
051that work. Um, you know, I I'll kind of stop uh wrap this up here by saying the most important thing to consider when we're talking about these is fiscal responsibility, right? That's what it says in your strategic plan. We want to agree with that. We go after every grant, rebate, and incentive dollar available. The other component that we really want to evaluate is how else can we pay for this? I want to give you as much funding as is possible and let you to decide whether you want to spend it, whether you don't, and how it gets spent. Uh I looked at your, you know, ACFR from 25. The district is in really great financial shape, $28 million of net surplus in 25. You got a great uh number from the state aid, 5 a.5%.
052So it looks like the district is in really good shape. That said, I've evaluated some of the stuff that we look at. I expect that I could make $27 million available on day one. And I'd love to explain to you how. Now, you don't have to spend that, but I can make it available to you. The other part of this that's really interesting is how do we generate revenue, right? There are strategies that we can implement throughout this process to help the district generate revenue with your existing assets and your existing asset base. Uh that's something that we specialize in as well and we're doing throughout the country. It's really um proven to be beneficial to a lot of the districts and municipalities that we're working with today and we'd love to explore that option
053further with you. Um you know with that I would say that uh we're happy to take any questions that you might have and and go through any uh additional comments >> questions question. >> Right. I do have one question just to clarify um as you guys are well aware you submitted back in October. Yes. And um because of the changes the business administrator was put off, we just want to confirm with you that uh whether you need to resubmit or re-evaluate your original proposal or if that one still stands because we're going to go through that next process. >> Yeah, I I I don't see any reason that we would have to re-evaluate or resubmit. >> Agreed. >> Thank you. >> You said you could get $27 million in funding on day one. >> Yeah.
054Now >> I would love to disclose that with you and discuss that with you at a close session meeting. >> Close the session. >> Look, I wrote it down. >> We'll follow up. >> Okay. >> So So this EIP, if we were to do it >> Mhm. >> out of pocket for the district >> out of pocket, how much would it cost the district out of pocket to to look at the measures that we've responded to in the RFP? >> Correct. Uh so our our proposal right now shows $1.9 million is self-funded measures. >> So no no dollars out of pocket. >> Okay. >> Yeah. >> Thank you. >> Okay. Well, I thank you all for this meeting and thanks for putting so much in the time. >> Thank you everybody. >> Thank you. >>
055Yeah. So we're going to resume the regular meeting here at uh 6:50 and we'll have our last presentation on the ESIP program from Honeywell. So the floor is yours. >> Great. Hello everybody. Thank you so much for um for having us today. My name is Caroline Jackson and um we prepare our presentation for you our RFP response. Um I have with you the team here. I'm going to introduce them in just a second. There's a lot of information. I'm not going to go through every slide one by one, but I want you to have some backup information. Um, we're going to do an introduction, a review of our financials, some new programs that are out that we were coming place, but now we have the actual figures and numbers, the good news about, you know,
056taking the project and then um I did put some information for you as well. So, I don't have like a technical review because of a shorter time frame, but it is there. Karen, before you go further, I'll tell you that we had two prior presentations tonight. They were they were all done in the same format. This is a public it's an although there's not a lot of people here. This is an open public meeting. The meeting is being recorded. It'll be broadcast on our YouTube channel. Um so I just I told the other folks that came in the same thing. So I want you to know that as well. >> Okay. Thank you. Thank you. All right. So um lots of acronyms are in industry. So I put a plan for you. So um I
057sometimes say you know like pay a dollar if I use too many. We try to make this um you know understand like it's new to you guys and for us we talk about this every day they're doing looking at doing energy savings improvement program. We're escies and um we're working with utilities BPU. Again I just like to put it in there. So my name is Carolyn Jackson. I have um been working in this industry since I moved to New Jersey very long time ago. But I have three children that Southside and um I love what I do because I my job is to help and listen to schools to hear what their needs are to understand our priorities to help them implement these programs at improving conditions in schools, saving energy and recently so much
058community and bring more to school districts. >> Was I loud enough for you guys? It's because it's being reported. >> Okay. All right. So, um so with here with me today is um some members of my team. We do have a lot of other team members. With Honeywell, you get the people that work on your projects and a lot of other resources. Um Paul Peters, my solutions development engineer is here. I'm going to let everyone introduce themselves. >> Hi. Uh my name is Paul Peters, uh solution development engineer. Uh my role in this project is basically to uh put the energy conservation measures, your energy conservation measures together for the district. Uh come up with a good project. We calculate all the energy savings. We're responsible for rebates. are also responsible for um uh costs
059of the equipment. >> Tim Lambert is our project management lead. >> Hi, I'm Tim Larry. Um I'm the project management leader for New Jersey. I've been with Honeywell about 14 years. Uh that whole time has been spent doing ESIP projects. So myself, my team, we have a lot of experience working in schools. Most of our customers are school districts. My role is and my team's role is to make sure the project is delivered smoothly, on time, under budget, safely. um minimal disruptions to the school day, coordinating all that stuff with you guys. So um that's my role and I'll pass it over to my team. >> I'm Sar Biratkar U. I'm the grants and incentive senior adviser. So I have a pretty unique role where I track down incentives and grants but also help with
060like navigating policy for the state and nationally I uh impact national uh projects. And then I also find all kinds of changes in the market. So we want to be ahead of everything else that's going on in the market. So try to change internally and externally using these different programs. So I'm trying to bring some additional services here and this project is very unique and we wanted to get all the best possible grants available. So Caroline will get that information. >> Hi, I'm Alex Herman. Uh, I'm part of the project delivery team. Uh, my role would be to basically be the on-site uh, representative of Honeyball to help ensure that the project goes smoothly, safely, and to make sure that we stay on our timeline. >> Thank you, everybody. All right, so we're a New
061Jersey team. We um are all um right around near New Jersey and um looking forward to hopefully work with you guys on this project. All right, I think you've probably heard enough about two other projects, but as you know, this is a project that uses future energy savings to help pay for needs today in a holistic way. This this ESAP um is really good for some of the problems that we solve. We'll talk to it as we go forward and look at the look at the um solutions. Again, this project is um monitored by the BPU, the Board of Public Utilities. There's a verification process. So, you don't have to just look at our calculations and say, "Great, that works." A third party would review and verify that to make sure that everything was um
062was calculated correctly. Again, this is um basically again this is a basic slide. You're basically taking the energy savings, rebates, grants, and investing them today to get a bigger project. So, your savings would pay off a debt, right? So, you would take a debt for this, but the unique about this is you can do a municipal lease purchase or a funding bond for this and um you don't have to take on use your capital or take on new debt. You can because you're basically that money is already in your budget. You're paying into utility companies. Sure. Makes sense. All right. This is just kind of an overview of the baseline projections. We have two scenarios for you. Um we're going to talk about it in a slide. There's a base project which is um what
063you saw in your RFP and then there's a risebased project which is a little more energy savings and utilizes the New Jersey retrofit grant. I gave you a a handout of that. That's a grant that was just we knew it was coming but it was just published in January. So we're able to update our projections based on that grant. So how does the process work? How where will you where are you now and where are you going? Right now, we're in the discovery phase of this and um that's the part where we we we listen and learn and hear about your priorities to find out what you're interested in doing and how you want to move forward. Then um and I'm like part of the process all the way along helping listening and learning and
064telling you what's next, helping you figure out how you're going to do your financing, getting the BPU um approvals, etc., etc. Then Paul takes over um you know he's kind of the lead of the energy investment grade audit in New Jersey known as energy savings plan that continues through um doing the final costing and design and then we move on to um Tim's team implementation team for procurement and for um construction. So everything will be procured as New Jersey law and we will like have a look at that for you. So you're purchasing Honeywell for all the services to bring you but then everything is procured and all the different subcontractor solutions and then if you should choose to have a guarantee which you can get a guaranteed savings 50% of our projects are guaranteed
06550% are happy with third party review that would be um Frank Peptoino the M&B specialist so I just put this and I don't always use this slide but you're probably thinking well we know what a um you know construction project is this is kind of a a list of the differences right in a construction project if you were to say oh what's your existing conditions you would hire a consulting engineer we're going to do all that for you as part of the ease we've already done a lot of work already and then we would like come to you with a menu basically of measures that you can do what the cost what the savings are how the rebates and grants work do the grant applications the rebate applications for you that's all included you're getting
066a turnkey key solution that um you don't have to it's simpler in the sense that you don't have to work with a number of different people. You don't need a separate commissioning agent. Um it'll be simpler than what you think. One of my um clients or our clients I should say north 140 is up in North 100. And she said you know I had so many questions. I had never done this before. She was a new VA when she did this. She's like you guys handled everything. the previd meetings, the walkthroughs, you know, we are the partner to do that with you and help you design and decide. So, you're going to find that a lot of things are included in an ESCO project or in the ESAP. No change orders. You're taking a loan
067based on the savings. We can't change the cost of the project, right? So, that's another thing that our districts really do appreciate on these projects. All right. So, in your RFP, there were three scenarios. Um, like I said, scenario two and scenario four. that's like updated with this New Jersey retrofitted grant um that could be available to you. As soon as this grant came out and we started to understand what the parameters were, we mapped this project onto it because of the uniqueness that you have three of your schools are all within a very small radius. You can qualify as a campus and you can meet the 10,000 metric ton reduction that this grant qualifies for. So this grant brings you over like seven. It's like $7.9 million. It would you would need to to
068get the carbon reduction. I know you do have some solar, but there is opportunity for more solar. It would require you to own the solar, but then you have all the control of that and you have additional revenue streams that will be available for the district. So again, I know I can't get into all the details of that right here now, but it's a really good opportunity and we're very excited about that and solving some of your other problems. So, um, the first scenario is a $10 million project. The scope is not very different. I'm just going to talk about the base project and the New Jersey retrofit project. The, um, it's just the cost for the owning your panels, but the savings is much higher. And then with the, um, retrofit New Jersey project,
069you're able to have the ESR revenue go right back to the district. So, I'll go over that a little bit more going forward. Again, we always like to show where these numbers are coming from. Are they real? Can they really happen? We we put you on benchmarks, the little red stars, and then after the project to show where you can go. So, you are in the lower tier for your um performance and energy, but that's because you have some humidity problems, some control problems, and you're running some humidifiers and fans, and there's a lot of things you're doing to make up for the um mechanical problems you're having in the buildings. So, we're excited about the opportunity there. Then we benchmark you next to other projects that um we have done and show where your
070savings are, right? So we know that the savings that we're predicting, again, this is preliminary right now. The best for your daughter will be done. We know that you're in great shape. You fit right in the benchmarks and the savings we're projecting make sense. Good. All right. So the rebates and grants again, this is um supported by that. We've got um the P there's a lot of columns here. It's a little bit of a puzzle, but it's that's what we do. We look at every single program to bring that benefit to you. Um prescriptive custom rebates, cool things like lighting and building management, direct install is an opportunity at the ECE, which is a smaller school. Um retrofit grant like we've been t I've been talking about because I'm so excited that you have the
071opportunity for that. And um there is also a direct pay tax incentive depending on the timing of the project that could be an additional payment for you and um total under $10 million. This is more information about the grant. Again, there's very specific criteria. We are um one of the first and we're about to get approval for Camden County Technical Schools for just under $10 million. So, we've already done it. know what to do and it is a competitive grant and there's like a limited amount but there's enough still so again our references speak for themselves these are just some reports I know you can't really see it but just so you know like diff these districts I just did presentations of their final projects and all their projects we exceeded what we what we
072said we were going to get for the rebates and grants again this money is there for you and it's so great to take advantage of Now I want to get into the technical aspect. We're going to ask um Paul for some help with this one. But um so basically these are the primary areas where we saw problems and wanted to bring solutions. The first is that you still don't have LED lighting which is great because that's such a big savings and that savings can help fund the other mechanical needs you have. Now in the high school that um oh in all the schools you do have different control systems in each one different vintages you kind of have an overlay which is looking at some of the older systems but you're at a period where
073you're going to start having oh the controller's outdated and it needs to be replaced you know and that's that's not it's not like an inexpensive thing when a controller for controls becomes obsolete. I know manufacturers of controls, but we're not always doing controls for our districts. We're bringing expertise to bring the right programming and um savings with these controls. What we saw is that you need some upgrades in certain areas, some um standardization and updates in your graphics, and then some control sequences to help with your humidity and um condensation problems we're seeing in the buildings. Did you want to talk about the boilers? So when we uh did our walk through, one of the things that was brought up was a high school and the condensation issues you're having um and of course the
074broad chiller. So broad chiller is probably you know close to the end of its useful life. So our solution is basically to make you efficient plus fix the condensation problem. The way we'll do that is we'll go with uh chillers. We'll go with uh condensing boilers, high efficiency condensing boilers, but we're also going to add reheat to all your air handling units. So, uh to help eliminate that that that condensation problem. Um in the >> Yeah. Yeah. So, I love that and then you can talk about the middle school. >> So, the middle school um you have a a Dykan um VRF system uh barrel refrigerant flow. I don't know if you're familiar with those type systems, but they can heat and cool. They're very efficient. Uh the system there, as you probably already know,
075it's probably at at the end of its useful life. There's a lot of issues. Uh we've actually worked um real close with Dyken and uh we're looking to replace all those condensing units uh along with controls to basically give you a new system, better control uh better uh temperatures in your classrooms, etc. Great. >> So those are the main like problems and solutions. There's other things that we will look at in the investment grade audit. Um obviously the solar which I have a couple slides for looking at um domestic hot water. We'll utilize CHP combined heat and power which is a green technology and lets you go for um a 20-year loan to get more solutions and very comprehensive. The type of problems you're seeing in the high school middle school are more than just
076maintenance problems. I know your facilities is is handling it now and making it work and fixing things if they break, but there's some design issues and there's major replacement needed. So, this is the perfect type of program to to handle that without having to go into your capital. Um so, um again, we're going to look at a lot of different things and there's lots of information packet on the different things. Um, terms of the solar, we verified with um, Atlantic City Electric that you do have more capacity for solar at the schools. I know you have some solar and I'm sure you have lots of questions about that. If you can get this retrofit grant and own your solar, all the benefit will go to you. So, we did two analysises in our RFP. Um,
077one is for additional PPA, which would be another $200,000 of your savings. The other is for sold PV system that was owned which would be like 300. But more important than that would be your SREx. SREX are solar renewable energy credits that are paid over 15 years. If you have a PPA now that all that benefits going to your PPA provider. If you owned it, it would go to you. So again, you have to have some maintenance and operations costs in there, but um you know, it's a really it's a really good opportunity for the district in terms of project design and implementation. So again, we work in schools all the time. We've provided you a lot of references or some at the end of the pack or some in the in the in the
078um the RMP, but um we work in schools all the time. We make sure that when we're working in schools, everything I think everyone has background checks. We are working after hours, not interrupting. Very um important to make sure our project is priced and current marketing conditions are taken care of. We're buying material where we can with vendors that we might have um buying priorities with, bidding it, and procuring it for the best way possible. Um, again, we're going to in this process, we're going to prioritize doing applications for you for utility rebates, see about getting this retrofree grant for you, giving you all the opportunities, putting it up, and letting you choose your project. Um, you know, we'll prioritize the bid strategy so that we're doing the things that save energy as quickly as
079possible. And then good communication. We always have an interactive online website with all our material. There's twoe look ahead schedules that can be published to the board. and also gives a chance for the district to know what's coming and then if we have a schedule change we work around that. Make sure your education needs are always first. We always have an education enrichment program. This shows our commitment to your to your um to your mission. Um we're doing a solar ribbon cutting there. Another one in the bottom is um a um solar workshop where we're teaching some curriculum. We often do um you know we'll talk with you and see what your needs are and where we can support and motivate your students about STEM careers etc. Again you can look talk to all our
080references um you know we have a lot of projects and a lot of experience in Jersey and we're all local. Again really looking forward to the opportunity to be able to dig in more with you to listen to what your needs are and what your concerns and questions are. Um and being able to And like I said, we can just see this is such an amazing opportunity program for you guys. >> Is there any questions? >> I um want to talk solar in a second. So we have some solar now and I'm only one board member so I'll speak for myself. I I would like to I'm not happy with the solar we have now. There's reasons behind that. What I'm at, why I'm bringing it up is in these grant scenarios and these EIP
081scenarios, is there a scenario where I could where we could, excuse me, the district take the existing solar field that's out front and convert that to like parking lot canopy solar and take that out, put in new parking lot canopy solar like does that >> put it on a roof like your slide showed? >> Yeah. >> Right. Right. Um >> I'm sorry if that's a >> No, no, no. I'm trying to think what the answer to that is. It's you're in a PPA. Is that correct? >> Yes. >> Yeah. So the PPA is structured where how many years has it been in place? >> About five years. >> No, it's been four years. >> Yeah. So they've structured your >> Yeah. They've structured the PPA in a way where they need a certain number of
082years to be able to get their payback. So they have in your PPA contract will be a a buyout. >> Yeah. >> And you can look what that is and then determine like you know what I mean? like it would it's not necessarily not doable. It's just you have to look at all the intricacies. >> And again, >> we we all do the same thing when it's an RFP and we don't have the information right from you. We kind of look at the maximum. There's also smaller programs where you don't do solar, but um you know, you can minimize you can make this smaller and not do solar, but it does give you lots of opportunity. >> That was my followup. In other words, in your opinion, do you feel like an ESIP project for
083this school district works financially if there's no solar component in it? >> It would just be a smaller project. We'll have to pinpoint and look at what would work, you know, because you have a lighting savings, which is great. The thing with solar that's so attractive right now is that there's money to help you with this retrofit New Jersey grant and that cost of utilities going up at such a high rate. Anything that you're producing or have solar and have a lower rate like protects you from those increases. Like if you own solar and we're paying zero cents per kW, what do we say there were 14 cents back now? >> Um like that's a big chunk that you wouldn't that wouldn't be going up 10% every year, right? It would be zero for the
084next 20, 25 years as long as you own that soul. So again, we'll put it together. We'll put it in spreadsheets. We'll we'll go over the options with you so you have the right information to make the best decision for Hampton schools. >> That's great. Other questions? >> I just question uh for this gentleman here with the uh Dykin units you mentioned over at the Hampton Middle School. Uh what what is your proposal for them? You had mentioned change the controls and the uh condensers. >> Yeah. So when we when we walked the the school, you know, we were basically >> Can you hear me? >> Yeah. Yeah. >> For that. >> Oh, so when we walked the schools, uh we basically told that the the condensers were failing. >> Correct. >> Uh the units
085are I think they're close to about 15 years now, basically at the end of their life. Uh but your infrastructure is good. all the piping, you know, um is in place. The classroom units are in place. So, our proposal would basically just change out the condensers. So, they'll do two things for you. One, it's going to give you another 15 years, but also you'll go to the uh to the uh uh low global warming potential refrigerants and new refrigerants out. So, that's going to be a bonus and that's going to help us uh getting more uh rebate money for you. >> Whether it be rebate or grant that's good or grant money, I should say. You guys don't think it'd be beneficial to instead of those dyken units to use what you're recommending for like
086this building the big chiller and boiler >> or no because because we are >> Yeah. I mean you're you're looking at uh a lot more infrastructure you'd have to put in to put a hydronic or a water type system in um >> in into that you know into that building. >> Paul I think too when that was originally put in that was one of the first systems right? Didn't we talk about that in the cave? Like >> Yes. Yes. >> I just know they're they're constant issue with them that those like in units. >> Yeah. >> They're always breaking. There's always one down and waiting on parts. There's only so many people that can work on them. >> Yeah. Like you had said, you need, you know, certain technicians. You can't just get anybody. >>
087And part of that is the price of of technology. It's it's the price of efficiency. uh you know to make us to to you know do the mandates that you know we're mandated to do become more efficient. >> Sure. >> Uh you you need you need you know be techn technology has to be advanced. >> Okay. >> So so that that is an issue. Um in the case of the high school um you know the absorption chiller that you have there doing heating and cooling was a good idea but it turned out to be not a great idea. Right. So we we want to kind of you know but your your at the high school your infrastructure is there your your hydronic infrastructure is there so it would kind of be you know easy because
088we do have a chill water system we do have a a a heating system >> right >> uh that we can connect into uh I think the the technology is is just getting better and better and uh it's more predictable so by going to this next generation I think that's going to be probably your best fix kind of for that school. >> All right. Thank you. Bas based on the resources that we have. >> I have a question. >> Go ahead. >> So my question is I'm relatively new to all of this and it's a lot of information to digest um with this EIP. And so the way I understand it, EIPS allow districts to upgrade facilities without raising taxes. And that something you mentioned Carolyn was taking a loan based on savings. So if
089let's say we have a project that we want to do, how do you explain this in a very simple term to the residents of our community? You know, oh wow, it sounds like you guys have a lot of projects going on. How do we explain that to somebody to say, well, no, there's all this savings and we're going to take a loan on the savings. Explain that a little just in, you know, a few sentences to kind of like simplify it. >> Again, I came out of the the racing here. I'm going to go back to this slide right here. So basically >> because I'm not sure if people would understand exactly what and we often get like it sounds too good to be true, right? >> So right now your bill with Atlantic City
090Electric and your gas bill and all your utilities is about 1.4 million. And this is running on older technology lighting, very old controls, you know, a chiller system that's giving you problems. So, you're doing extra things to keep it kind of working for you. Um, and this the BRF system again that there's it's and there and there's like inconsistencies like the gym isn't one of our ECMs which I really didn't even talk about was like putting in air conditioning in the gym in the middle school which would like even things out so it wasn't being pulled from the classroom. Like there's a lot of humidity and issues. So anyway, you're paying 1.4 million now. you when we look at your benchmarks, you definitely have room to save based on an average high school, an average
091middle school, and an elementary school. So, we would look to reduce your cost from 1.4 in this example to the other blue part of the circle, which um bring you down to about 700,000. Right? So, that's a savings. And that savings would then pay off your loan. So, right now, that money is already in your budget, right? It's paying to Atlantic Electric. puts out after gas and then it will then pay your funding bond or municipal lease purchase whichever one we decide is the right solution for you. So, do the EIPS help with that loan funding? Do they >> So, so the the um you know, we'll decide with your financial advisor, you know, you'll decide which is the best option based on what size project and what the rates are. If um if it's
092a funding bond is one process, if it's a lease purchase, it'll be a bid for financing. And just like you would finance like a addition on your home or doing your basement with a home equity loan, you take a loan and then >> that loan is paid back from the savings over 15 to 20 years again depending on what you try. So, and then what helps and why I made such a big deal about rebates, grants, incentives, that reduces the amount of loan you have to take or it's like a like a down payment like year one we're going to get the rebates, we schedule a big payment so you're not paying interest on that for the whole time, right? So, we're trying to use those rebates and grants which are programs that are a
093lot of them come from societal benefits charges or in your utility bill. You pay for them a little bit every time you pay your bill. everyone can look at their bill and find that that line and you're basically that's where that money is coming from and it's to make things more efficient. They want to incentivize you to make things more efficient. So um so that reduces the amount of loan you take or let you pay it back quicker to have less interest. >> And last question and maybe this is for um Terry. If we enter into a partnership with an EIP, what is the term like is this a three-year partnership one year or is it just project by project? How does that work? If we >> um it's through the life of the project
094and through the whole savings like so if it's a 15 years or 20 year you're basically we're there our partner >> for that entire time >> and again it's um depend like usually what happens is we're very active during the development of the project during the construction of the project then during the measure and verification period. If you just select the guarantee and move forward with that typically after one, two, three years you said you know we've made this because there's a cost to do the measurement verification and select that guarantee and um you know usually after two or three years you're like you know this is going great you know we don't need this anymore. So like you know and some you know no service is involved in this any service would be separate
095or decided separate. So sometimes our our partnerships, you know, we're still there for you. Call them up when you have a question. Like we're always coming back helping. You know, every district calls me, "How much should I raise my utility?" I'm like, "I don't really know. I know, you know, maybe I know a lot of things, but anyway, you know, we try. We're there for you. We help you." Um, but the partnership hopefully we're done and leave and you're happy and moving forward and everything's working well. You know, there's many problems. So it it could be um but we're always like I said we never lose leave our districts. We're not always providing service and you're not always in a we have to pay anymore. The project is a project and once that's done anything
096is a choice after that. >> Thank you. So I just had one question because of the delay in us making a decision because your proposal was from October. We've obviously missed all the deadlines. We just wanted to officially uh confirm that the proposal that you had provided for the RFP for the team to evaluate is the proposal. You don't need to make any changes. >> No, that's correct. That's correct. >> Thank you so much for concluding that. >> Any other questions? >> All right. We appreciate you coming out. Appreciate you submitting. We'll uh deliberate for you know Terry's office. >> Okay. Great. Well, we look forward to your decision. We look forward to um helping you brainstorm this and and come up with the final project and all the best to you. Thank you so
097much for the opportunity. >> Thank you. >> All right, back to the regular agenda. We're going to go to the second public portion. Anybody wishing to address the board, come on up to the microphone and give us your name and address and you'll be heard. Seeing none, we'll close the second public portion. Um unless anyone has anything we'll go right I'll take a motion to adjourn >> motion >> Mr. Koy >> Mrs. Hunter. All in favor? I. >> Any opposed? All right, we are journed. Thank you everybody. I know two meetings and one month is done. Thank you.