Crete Monee School District 201u COTW Meeting 4/11/2023

001hereby call this meeting to order a roll call please Dr Hall president Mr sawales here Mrs Galbraith here Brown is here Mrs Walters vice president rupe here president Albert here please stand and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance 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 huh okay we do have a couple of public comments tonight the first is Jake Graham and the topic is post-construction Bid And Award right but first we have to empower each student to positively impact the world for a bright new future thank you no that's right so you know that's right thank you so Jake you can have the mic there's your right hand and right

002right hand good evening ladies and gentlemen good evening good evening president Albrecht Madam superintendent serma and distinguished members of the board my name is Jake Graham this fine lady is Lashawn drones and we are with purebrite janitorial services as you all well know this summer like Last Summer the district is planning a lot of work in the district to its schools including asbestos abatement new flooring amongst other things our company purebrite was the contract awardee last year for the summertime post-construction cleanup we worked with our crews of over 60 people in the schools over a two and a half week period cleaning the schools after the construction was done getting them ready for the new school year working with Mr serma's office in the buildings and grounds Department we succeeded in our goals so much

003so that we received praise from principals Mr serma himself the building's grounds Department and we even received a glowing letter and even a lovely Christmas card this year an invitation to bitpack it was sent out again to do the same work with the same goals as last year for this coming summer there were two non-mandatory meetings scheduled regarding this contract as well as the bid packet that went out to the interested vendors two companies responded purebrite us and a company called custom today before you on the agenda you have a recommendation coming from the business manager's office to award custom this year's upcoming contract to do the work performed in Crete Monee 201u the bid proposals that the district received were vastly different and the reason they were vastly different is because there was conflicting

004information which I'd like to quickly share with the board and Mr serma which I believe you're going to just learn of this for the first time tonight the information was vastly different as I said and this would be fine and show a clear winner if if they if everybody had the same information but this is not what happened we are quite confident that Mr surma will be learning these issues again for the first time as well and let me start off by saying working with Mr surma's office as well as the buildings and grounds Department we've experienced nothing but the utmost of professionalism I want to start off with saying that the information shared at the pre-bid meeting and the information shared at the bid in the bid packet are similar but some there are

005Stark contradicting information which of course would affect the prices of the potential bidders we are the only company that showed up for the pre-bid meeting we met our team met with Mr McLean's team for hours and went over not only the bid specs but all the work that was going to be performed this coming summer as well as our team walked the schools and looked around and got all the information that information again is different from what appears in the bid packet our bid was based upon not only in the information that was based in the bid packet but all the information that was shared to us through Mr McLean and his team as well as our experience from last year because custom did not attend the pre-bin meeting and in order to prepare their

006bid they had only the bid packet to go off of as well as an addendum that was sent out after the fact and I'd like to just share just a quick few of those those things that I was discussing the discrepancies for example at the pre-bid meeting Mr McLean and his team shared that almost 90 percent of the district is getting all new flooring something that's called Texas granite this beautiful state of the art flooring that needs very little care uh but there's no mention of that anywhere in the bid packet none so Mr McLean said okay I'll send out a an addendum however the addendum was sent out after the due date for it to go out that was spelled out in the district's packet the district package said it would go out by

007March 9th it went out did not go out until March 11th went out late in addition to the addendum's information uh it just says that there's flooring being put down and that the flooring needs to be mopped swept and mopped however at the pre-bid meeting Mr McLean told our team that not only did need to be swept and mopped it also need to be scrubbed not waxed but scrubbed using swing machines those big janitor machines that people go back and forth with that takes two-man team one guy to do it the guy behind it soak up the water you're talking about a huge difference in pricing between just sweeping and mopping the whole District as opposed to scrubbing them with swing machines 15 machines heavy duty equipment all the teams in the man hours right

008there is one stark contrast in the information that we bid upon that custom did not can I ask for just a clarification yes sir which the scenario and what you just stated that was not in the RFP correct that was not correct sir and there was no addendum issue for that there was an addendum however it did not say that the floors had to be scrubbed okay so just swept them out this is just verbal correct and you did not ask for clarifications in writing to verify what exactly that oh no the addendum was sent out at our request okay yes okay so it got out was it a question and answering period throughout this bidding process from the time the bid was listed out there to the time it was awarded you had a

009question and answering period right correct and our request went in on time however the response came back late and it did not address what was spoke of at the pre-bid meeting which would greatly affect pricing did the response come back before the due date of the bid yes it did okay um in addition to that huge stark contrast on page seven the contract period lists lists Friday July 11th through August 12th a three week almost a three-week period in fact one day more than three weeks which matches up with our experience from last last year however on page 10 it says the work period is from three to seven days well that's a huge difference ladies and gentlemen three weeks compared to three to seven days in addition to that at the pre-bid meeting Mr

010McLean stated that we might possibly be able to start cleaning on June 9th or in the administration building on June 13th when abatement would begin on page 18 under the term section it states that the contract term is from April 18th through August 12th again adding to discrepancies which would of course would affect pricing big difference if you've got a if you turn it in a bid with all this stuff for three weeks as opposed to three three to seven days there is no mention anywhere in the bid packet of asbestos abatement Mr McLean and his team discussed it thoroughly with our team when there's asbestos abatement taking place an arc team is coming in after that to clean up personal protection equipment is very important if that adds cost again I just want to

011ask you the question yes sir and I apologize was abatement a bestest abatement in The Proposal no sir okay thank you and Nora was an amendment set out sent out about abatement on page 10 in the mid-pack it states there's a lot of furniture great deal in fact this is great deal of furniture that will be moved to storing storage that would have to be cleaned before brought back into the schools it ends there in the bid packet however at the meeting Mr McLean notified our team that we would in fact be doing the moving for two of the schools well in our proposal unlike our competitor we added all that extra labor to be furniture movers the other company would not have known about it because they did not attend the meeting on pages

01215 16 19 and 23 there are uh it says that this is not in fact a proposal a bid proposal a pack excuse me for post-construction cleanup on pages 15 and 16. it says this is a proposal a bid proposal packet for asphalt repair on pages 19 and 23 it states that this bid packet is for lawn care and landscaping for the district adding to more confusion ladies and gentlemen we did the work for you last year we want to come back and if we lose the bid fair and square we've got no problem with that however this was not fair and square you've got two companies bidding on completely different sets of information so in addition to our formal protests which will be in writing to the board and to Mr surma's office into

013the state we respectfully ask the board to reject the office offices recommendation to award custom and instead give leeway for the office to clean up all these discrepancies within the bid make clear concise exactly what the district is looking for how many people how many man hours how many days exactly what needs to be done make the meetings mandatory so that the vendors can both be bidding on the exact same thing Apples to Apples and then make a fair determination and uh that's all I got thank you very much for your time thank you Katie we have one other public comment uh it's uh mayor Einhorn and the topic is uh Tiff extensions yep well if I is that working okay um I kind of got pulled out of the Dugout to do this at

014the last second um because a lot of people having scheduling issues but the long and the short of it is we'd like to request the standard 12-year extension to our tiffs we all of our tips are performing but they're not performing very well and we've actually we're coming to the end of one that is very important to us at shift number two which covers a downtown area and if you think about it's been a long time since we've been we've been working on that and now we're first starting to get some traction and we don't want to be bound up with getting into projects and not being able to finance them I can tell you that I probably have in Tif number two alone somewhere in the neighborhood of seven or eight million dollars worth

015of work that I have uh identified and scheduled that would not be able to be completed between now and and 28 which is when it when it expires in Tiff number uh four which is out along 394. uh that one has gone 20 years already and it has not produced anything except two buildings basically and that is another issue that we got going on and there's there's a lot of debt still hanging out there that was covered by Tiff to put eagle nest Road in and the sewer and the water and all the things that go with it and a tip number three which is out on off of burrville road that Tiff has got uh it's got some real challenges because burville road is in very very bad shape however the cost of repair

016burrville road which we were going to use Tiff funds to do has exploded in cost because of federal regulations and things of that nature that require us to do way more by way of infrastructure improvements than we have abilities to pay for not to mention the fact that we we have a well out there that we just got through installing iron removal equipment in which is now up and running but we have incurred a huge amount of debt to make that happen we need to put in Eagle not eagle nest would be old money Road over to Hartman Drive that's another you know several million dollars that needs to be covered in the tiffs and that's just to cover the things that are obvious right now not things that will become more obvious as time

017goes on so I will tell you that um I work very hard at trying to manage the dollars that we have to do these projects and um I plan far far in advance if I can so there's no surprises but I can't plan if I don't have the money and um I I guess I can answer any kind of questions you may have I did do a little bit of a take off because I know that the tendency for the board is to kind of try to compare us to money and University Park but I will tell you that they are completely different municipalities to handle their money in completely different ways and they are also financing their operations in vastly different fashion as an example I looked at the year from March of this

018year to March of last year by way of just sales tax dollars because that's really the only thing that we have to compare that makes any sense income state income tax is done by population and that's another big item but we can't do anything to change with our population our population is what it is so just over those those uh 12 months the sales tax collections for for Crete was one million seven hundred and fifty two thousand the sales tax collections for money 10 million eight hundred and sixty four thousand University Park 2 million five hundred and ninety thousand and both University Park and Monet are now benefiting benefiting dramatically because of Amazon and the sales that are run out of those Amazon Fulfillment centers in one month University Park back in March and April

019of last year went from 89 786 dollars in one month to 172 000 the next month in that same period of time Crete went from 139 000 to 112 000. so you can see that they're not they're not even comparable in any fashion money on almost a regular basis collects almost eight hundred thousand dollars a month in sales tax so uh I'm asking you to think about and consider and hopefully approve uh and provide us with a letter of support to extend our tips because literally that's one of the only saving Graces we have to provide any kind of economic development in our area and I will be glad to take any kind of questions anybody has yes yeah it expires in 2028. we know that there is going to be a bill this year

020coming up surely where the way the state legislature does it they don't I don't think they do it every year but they produce a bill and then anybody in the state that has a making a request they lock they lump them all into that one bill and you get you know 15 towns get approved all at one time so we know there's supposed to be one according to rep Deluga coming up at the end of this session or sometime near the end of this session or possibly in a veto session and we want to get attached to that so that we kind of determine what our Fate's going to be especially if we have favorable support from the board and we're going out to the other we have to go out to all the taxing

021districts Bloom Township Prairie State College and you know everybody else has got a goes through the same thing well we own it the Tif the Tiff that is going to expire in 28. like I said I got I've got probably six or seven million dollars worth of stuff that I wouldn't have to accomplish and in that short a period of time which is which is a lot right now at that Tiff only delivers about 530 000 a year and you can spend a hundred thirty thousand dollars really really quickly especially if you're doing you know improvements so um we you know it took us a long time to get Main Street and Exchange Street going we finally got that going but it cost us a 1.9 million dollars to buy that property and that that

022took that drug the tip balance down the next to nothing so um getting caught up is going to be hard I don't know that we would make it by 2028. so again I try not to spend much more than what I take in in a year's time you know we have we have a reserve so sometimes we go into the resort but you know that I I don't like to I don't like to live on edge because things happen you don't know when somebody's going to come in and say we want to develop North Main Street but we need Tiff help and I don't if I can't guarantee the Tiff help or I can guarantee it for two years or three years then you wind up losing a deal because we like to space that

023stuff out and pay them small amounts every year as opposed to one giant amount at one time because we don't we don't have the cash flow and that's just I think Ken would tell you that's just that's just good business sense to operate in that fashion okay yeah yeah mayor I have it that's sure maybe two quick questions I don't know if you have this information so you said it you're looking that Tiff is looking to expire in 2028 yeah and that would be 23 years no it's it's uh any any uh extension it's historically and I I've never seen it be anything but 12 years 12 years okay but the initial tip was 23 years yes that is correct so 12 and you're looking to go the full 12 years of can you cut

024it short you can't you can't it's all or nothing yeah it's all or nothing there isn't I'm going to do it for five years you know you could you could extinguish the Tiff voluntarily in that 12-year period if you wanted to but you know without I can't say whether that's possible because I don't know what the conditions will be you know sure uh three or four years past in the current ending time okay great and now the question was do you have any idea what the eav will roughly be if it was to expire in 2028 I know that's a another question I have no idea okay I can tell you that based upon my my understanding and the things that I look at the eav that we had in 1999 I think when this

025was first started is greater than what the eav is now oh wow yeah it's upside down wow but you think about what's happened to a lot of the prop for the longest time in 2009 The Villages eav was 210 million last year it was 171 million so we haven't even caught up to 2009 from just not forget about the Tiff just the village itself and this year that's that we're going to get the tax bills you know we just I just got the tax stuff today or yesterday we only we went up some but we are still I think it went up to from 171 million to 188 million or 185 I don't remember what it was but we're still not close to the 210 that it was back in 99 in in all back

026in 2002 2009 yeah okay so and every town is different you know it if you build a lot of buildings and you have a lot of housing take place the eav goes up we haven't we've only Built about four or five houses in the last 10 years so there's no there's no eav being generated unfortunately but that's when you live close to the Indiana border where you can drive three miles and pay one third of their real estate taxes what do you think is going to happen you know you just you can't build anything so you have to you know our economics because of geography is a lot different than monies it's a lot different than University Parks that's just those are just facts that are indisputable any other questions I have a I have

027kind of a little this is a sales tax one and I worked off it today I'll give it to the chairman and you guys can if you want to share it fine if you don't want to share it that's okay too okay as long as I did it I figured I would at least and it's sales tax is not real estate sold if you've got a lot of yeah that's true I mean yeah real estate tax if you're getting all your money from sales sales tax yes okay thanks Mike appreciate it okay Cheryl or there any other public comments okay uh next up is board updates any board members have any updates I'd like to share the only question I had I know Dr Kara sent out the questions today but I sent some questions

028again so I was just hoping Ken you could explain since we're on Village tiffs that if up closes their 5 million and money closes their 1 million is there a burden to the taxpayers so that everybody understands that because it is Tiff's understanding tiffs is complicated right so there is not let me just get so there's there's not a burden on the taxpayer actually what happens is as you know I've explained this before to the board and to the public and it is very complicated it really is but there is this EAD it's called incremental eav that is there and now that becomes part of the district's eev when a tip is created that incremental EAS is not part of it so it becomes part of that what happens inevitably is the tax rate gets

029lowered in our bonded interest fund which benefits the taxpayer so when that rolls off that eav comes over there and so you're able to take your debt payment because the board has kept that constant and you're able to spread it over more eav thus lowering it for anybody as an example of that if I had you know let's say I was owed a thousand dollars from from Dr Hall here and from one person now that would be a thousand dollars but now if Miss Roop and in became a business that becomes a debt now we split that debt to 500 500 so that's how this works it it lowers the tax rate in our bonded interest it will lower the other tax rates but there's other things with the working with the operating funds but

030it does there's a benefit to the taxpayer when that rolls off as long as we are when I say the board keeps that bonded interest payment the same or lowers it right because a couple people ask me the question you know is that going to cost me more money on my taxes and I said no but you know having that explanation hopefully makes it a little easier so so first of all did you buy those shoes with that thousand I owe you secondly uh it used to be the same time when you say we you are part of us it's not just the board so it's we thirdly how why is it so detrimental for a up versus any other Village and when it comes to the tips and what we do with the tips

031we can't live it's almost like we can't run the district without UPS tips but we can run the district without other people's tips and I think that's a decision that we all have to look at we often often what the philosophy is because here my role is to worry about the district up Park Forest monies role is to worry about their villages okay so my question is as I've always asked is when that if they want to extend it what benefit of that that is it to the district right that's why we brought up that money you know following up with them to close their 1 million which is just as important to move up closing their 5 million right but we've kind of talked about them together a lot because they're coming up at

032the same time so what benefit so we haven't we have an agenda item for this week at that time okay so we haven't I'm sorry I don't know what it is yeah um so we're talking um go ahead you do your board update I'll say the comment I actually wanted to make okay I just want to say that we are super excited that we are having our mentoring program is having our first young ladies empowerment event and it is this Saturday we are expecting about 90 young women and we're going to have different topics Be Your Own Boss Empower your voice and I am enough and we're super excited about this um the men they had one already and it ended up being a great event so we're hoping for the same for our young

033ladies and if anyone would like to take one there's some information on the way out um but I just want to say again I'm super excited that we're doing this and this is a great start for our mentoring program so and hopefully this will continue sounds great Sandy thank you yep all right I'm saying this because it's somewhat going to be talked about before King just have to do business and it could go under old business but however somebody asked me today okay when it comes to building an athletic complex how do you keep this how do you continue to push this how do you keep it in the Forefront and I said the best way to do it is for me to continue to talk about it and continue to express the importance because

034not everybody understands that half that's probably a good portion of teachers who are teaching today because one they became they wanted to go to school to be an athlete two they came back to teach because they wanted to coach and a lot of people don't understand the importance of Athletics compared to education most people look at it like oh School Adult the athletes will deal with athletes later um and I think that while I'm here on the board I will continue to push not that you all don't support but what I'm saying is I will continue to push with that because I know that we lose a lot of we're losing more and more students to other schools because of our athletic facilities now please don't be offended by this if you go to a

035place that's predominantly black and brown students usually the athletic facilities aren't that great and it's not because they don't value Athletics because a lot of them look at Athletics as a way out however they don't have anybody pushing for it they don't have the funding we can go to other school districts who may not be as good as we are but their facilities are much better now In fairness around us everybody's improving their athletic facilities except for Crete money High School whatever the excuse is whatever the reason is whatever the setbacks are I think I really think we need to start looking at how we value or not value our athletes and and the facilities that they perform in um it's again you all have been supportive but I want to continue to keep it

036in the Forefront of our minds because we talk about value we talk about property value we talk about retaining our students we talk about retaining getting good staff believe it or not if you're not in the athletic World there are a number of people who will believe that a school is good just because they have a good football team I've heard a lot of people say oh creative is a great school because we have a good foot they have no idea uh if you ask what's the test scores they'll say Mount Carmel is great Lincolnway is great they couldn't tell you what a test score was there but they believe the school is great because the Athletics are great and we have for I tell people all the time and I'll end with this Morgan

037Park Thornton Township High School is where I work I've worked at both schools the facilities are far better at Thornton Township High School but people and we have the exact same programs that Morgan Park has but because Morgan Park Athletics are so good and they've they've built a new stadium they've built a new baseball field and they've done all these upgrades because I'm sure their alumni probably give that that they're so much better because their Athletics are better and their facilities they're in suck really I think part of that though is because we're a unit district so when we're talking about priorities we have so many other things that you don't think it's because we priority people prioritize what they want I always say and I've seen it I don't care what anybody says school

038districts do what they want to do if they decide we just built a wing onto the high school that's because that's what we saw is important not because we didn't have the money not because we couldn't figure it out we figured it out we built it and I'm not saying it's bad it's it's I think it's a value to it but school districts do what they want to do what they see what people see is important that's what they do and I mean I have a friend his cars are important too I have another friend buying property is important so they use their money how they see what how they see fit okay thank you thank you any other board updates okay move on to administrative updates and I'll turn it over to Dr Carol

039um I was just going to reference I've got a few little items on your desk for you to take a look at um these are just some of the newest updates from our Communications Department the district is putting this out for registration we have these great little Flyers that are going out postal uh to start looking for our kindergarten registration as well as just reminding of our new enrollment so take a look at that and this is also the latest brochure on the high school we're doing one of these per building this is the latest one that's come out for high school our recruiters use this as they go to fairs and right now since this is hiring season this has been very important for us to get these done and out there into people's

040hands so anyway I just referenced that for you the other item each of you has a little bundle this is your little gift package as you are aware excuse me where is mine as you are aware we started an alumni webpage uh alumni newsletter which I'll be sharing with you later on this evening but one of our promotions for getting this out there is we have a gift item for the first hundred folks that signed up for our website so we've got about 2 900 users already that have signed up so we've had a good showing on this so we're giving each of you uh just a little goodie bag for yourself as well that we had so it's only the 93 next 93 people who sign up get him or we still get them

041the first hundred got them okay so you're 107 yeah yeah so anyway so we're seeing some good results from that um and we want to certainly get that up and running we've got several class reunions that are out there that we're trying to help promote and socialize on social media and we're hoping to get some traction on that as well very shortly we're going to be opening up our donors portion of that on the website to again to help have money come in for a variety of topics could be the athletic Stadium it could be for other kinds of projects it could be for ELC all sorts of things so um anyway we're looking forward to having that come out as well and Karen I do know that you're also supporting the event that's taking

042place this Sunday at the high school where one of our alumni coming back Matthew lippman to perform a concert and the creep Women's Club has organized it with the symphony and I'm sort of their contact of who they're supposed to go to just because I'm on the Women's Club and they're just thrilled that the school has helped promote it helped it make it a smooth transition and it's a free concert they're just going to ask for donations so this young man um is is the epitome of his profession so if you're not doing anything Sunday afternoon at four o'clock come to this concert and they they said thank you very much for all the help that you've given them because I know they were talking to you about how to how to get it on

043our website and how to do different things and they've had great response from it so thank you oh I'm payoff as we're beginning to really you know get the message out there about what a creek District we do have not can I answer one question regarding the Flyers and brochures that you're looking to send out and you mentioned the Early Learning Center and I believe it was 129 that grad this is graduating out of that program yes yes so there's going to be openings so how do we get the message out how were we going to look to get the message out about these openings there um I mean you're looking to do a similar thing I believe they've got a waiting list already okay it self-promotes itself okay honestly okay and it's never been

044a problem trying to find people's slots okay so let's make sure we get those spots filled yes all right thank you we've got two items under superintendent's report uh the one is just I think our continued discussion on tiffs uh extension I know a lot of tips and many of our communities are coming up and there's been an interest well we've had an interest in some of our communities in asking us if we want to um extend that so we thought it was a good idea especially as you heard tonight to have that conversation I've asked Ken to give some a little bit of an update uh perspective on this and then you certainly can share your inputs on your thoughts about extending them or not extending them thank you Dr Cara good evening under

045board public um I've done some research on tips and I think people sometimes are wondering where I'm getting numbers are so I wanted to share a couple things not only with you board but also with the public on numbers because again my concern is what benefit is this going to have for the district and then I want to look at is what benefit have Villages received on tips okay so for those and I'm doing this purposely just to let everybody know there's a website that you can go to that is under Will County that lists out all of the tips all right and it actually has the historical data all the way back to 2005. on tips and I'm going to go into here and explain it because I want I want to share with

046you some live data of and and how this all works and hopefully it'll help you get a little bit more of a feel even you know it is a little crazy but let me talk about Crete tip number four this is from 2021 this is the latest one the 2022 one has not been completed yet but I'm going to explain what this shows us okay so what this shows us is this is the tax rate of all of the taxing bodies that are involved in this tip all right again this is Crete to fork and you'll see School District 201u if you remember me talking about the base value that base that of where we started and where that base locks at that's what this number is 491 161 that's the base eav that is

047locked when a tiff is started so that number right now is what we are collecting tax wise only on that number at this time until it expires you're exactly right yes the next number is the incremental eav so that is right now in 2021 what the assessor has valued that those buildings or properties within that Tiff is six thousand two hundred and eighty seven dollars seven hundred and thirty four dollars okay 6.2 million 6.3 million okay so can't on that with that date 2021 is it fair to say that that number is substantially higher given the price of real estate has shot up over the last year or so so let me well let me let me let me go a little bit farther Mr right so you can see over the years the value

048of this Pro this Tiff has gone from 491 000 to 6.3 million dollars okay and you actually have to well you don't add them together it's just that this is what the actual value is of that property now so it has shot up substantially okay the tax on this amount is here 852 thousand dollars is what the village is realizing in tax funds out of here and all you have to do really is multiply this times this divided by 100 and you get that okay for those in math class all right that's how this whole thing works now this is the total tax on this property so what that means is I take this subtract this that's what the district is or that's what these taxing bodies are getting not the district all of these

049taxing bodies are getting that which is approximately fifty thousand dollars out of that fifty thousand the district is getting somewhere between 60 and 65 percent of that okay about thirty thousand dollars so in 2021 tax bill we got thirty thousand dollars The Village received 852 thousand dollars okay now here's the question all right and I'm going to show you another document so I went in I went in and went and pulled every single year back to 2005. every single one of these sheets in every Tiff in the district and what I found is Creek to four over the years they've received 11.4 million dollars taxing bodies have received 636 thousand dollars of that the district had received about 60 percent of that 360 through 70. but the village has received 11.4 million dollars okay but

050again that's not unusual that's how it is I'm just sharing facts sure sure but that's good good way you're breaking it down really appreciate it so let me go back again and show you because every tip is on here those that are in our not this is the big one in University Park okay so same thing this is the tax rate this is the base value of 875 000. the eav incremental eav is 79 almost 80 million dollars in 2021. the Tiff tax the village is realizing 11.7 million dollars in those two is about 120 000 so we're getting about 60 percent of that all right I again have gone in and looked that creep or looked at Monique I'm sorry University Park tip five over the years they've gotten 141.6 million dollars in the

051taxing bodies 981 thousand dollars now again as Mr Brown has said that sound unusual that's what a tiff is for the Tiff is to improve the property and move forward and reinvest the funds but my always my question is so what benefit does the district have on this because the goal of this is that when those roll off that we get the benefit benefit of the eav instruction on that so those incremental tax dollars those Tif tax dollars I find that here oh nope that wrong sorry go back to this these dollars if you remember again about 60 percent of that is ours if they were to roll off okay so again I I've done this document I can post this and I've got copies for the board so you have that and you can

052see that now the one number and again I I don't do this please to discredit anybody but I just I just want to share this when I look at all the tips the villagers have received 246 million dollars now this doesn't include the tips that have already rolled off okay to invest in them in themselves we've received 29 Point well the taxi bodies are 29.1 million dollars so I did about 65 that's 18.9 million dollars over the years receiving tax money so again I I I've shared with you before these are these I know I understand these are difficult decisions these are tough decisions but I just want you to be aware of what those numbers are to see how big they are okay yes what are what are what would it look like so

053right now in tip four we'll just take Crete tip four I don't know I just I just picked that one I just picked that one so right now the tip tax is 852 thousand dollars we will get 60 percent of that about 800 about 480 000 I think approximately is what we would get of that if that were to shut down right now okay so we would lose that in Revenue yeah because that's that's forever that's forever yes yes so you lose that okay all right you'll gain it 12 years later it may have increased if they reinvest it may have it may increase yes no no no you know yeah so so I think you know so it's looking at all of those and then again here's here's tip three where they're generating one

054million dollars in Revenue yes real estate crashes and it can go up and it can go up it can go up it can go both ways right now you know we know but you you and I think the thing you have to look at and consider and I think this is something that Dr Hall has brought up you know you've got three communities asking okay so right yeah and there you know again when you look at all the other when you look at the other uh information here there are other taxing bodies affected correct including the village because the village will still get a portion of this they still get a portion of that whatever their portion is so essentially what happens is we vote to extend to agree on our part to extend the

055tip six months down the line when we need to do something something's broken or let's say 2028 when the tip expires we need to do something and and now the community is coming at us mad because we can't do this and the buildings are falling apart and you don't and blah blah now in 2023 they were happy with us but then 2028 when we don't have the the funds and they forget about the fact that we extended this Tiff because we were looking out for the village and then when the mayor comes up here complaining about the school and the kids and you know how messed up we are and we're saying well we need funds to do this to do that no they need to go board members need to go we probably I

056don't think we may not be here as board members but the ones who come they'll need to go because of this decision um I don't see a benefit in it for us I I get that the village sees a benefit in it for them I I cannot I only think I can remember is when that water tower needed to be painted and that was an agreement I'm assuming the district didn't get it in writing so the village said nope we're not painting you paint so then we were left with painting that water tower because they refused to follow up it's their water tower right our that's the only thing that I could say little things like that so I don't know uh what everybody else is thinking I know what I'm thinking I'm just putting

057this out there so do we disregard that the villages do have different circumstances do you say well tough luck you didn't get Amazon so you know I mean because they do have different circumstances and Crete has always been somewhat transparent I didn't know anything about the water tower but um and and done things conservatively and um tries to budget wisely and everything and I'm not saying other communities don't do that I'm just saying they are there are different circumstances it's not Apples to Apples so we do we just completely disregard that or do we take any of that into consideration so so the comparison is what was brought up as you know ups and Amazon and money yeah but we both have infrastructure issues with the Amazons and we both had to add stuff and

058we had to spend money to do that that and and that was our Villages going out and obtaining that and telling that going in and saying listen we have property you can come here and you can go here that's the villages doing their job going to get those businesses so I I don't like the fact that it's used like it's against the village each Village is separate but they have they all have the equal opportunity so Crete has three test districts yes yeah three University Park has three three and I think four right now right yeah yeah and money has how many on there three three podcasts so they all have the equal amount of opportunity to get a business like of that nature and come in here a business wanting to go in across

059from Balmoral and I remember the board at that time and I wasn't on it saying oh do we want something like this right across from our school and stuff so detention no not the detention right Intermodal and I'm not saying all creep residents wanted it anyway I'm just saying I remember the board saying you know the school's right there and do we want something like that and taking that into consideration and so that was part of the issue I don't know and the new construction is a thing too right so if I asked the up board members how many new construction houses are in University Park if I asked the Crete how many and how many are money we have a few more but it's very limited if I asked anybody in Manhattan how many

060they have they can't stop building them they can't so their tax rate they're you know they're getting more tax more people moving in there we're not getting that he is he right and saying that we're so close to Indiana and people are jumping yeah yeah that's the reality but people are moving out of Illinois as fast as they can and we're close to the Border I mean cause of these tests and and and can you can verify this but the last time I looked into this Art District our school district we absorbed I guess a third of the tips in the county of will a third monetarily I believe University Park is the biggest Tiff area in the state of Illinois other than Chicago so we are heavily dependent on taxpayers our district we have

061Revenue issue we don't have a spending issue I think it's a revenue issue so when these tips and I I was you know at the end of the day I was emphatically in a position to say I am not going to vote on any Tiff extension that was my position but I think we have to take it a case this is just me a case-by-case hearing the plight and that's the purpose of a tiff applied that area right they want to build it up now here in the plight that the mayor of Crete came to the podium today you know I listened to it I listened to it do you take it on a case-by-case basis or do you just say we are in a position of the board and we have said it I

062have said it so I'm just looking at it and observing that that may not be the thing to do because we definitely right now we are running a Surplus we are highest Financial score in our history basically 3.7 State financial score so right now we are doing good on paper right now you know we don't know when our working cash is going to be exhausted but at the end of the day what is what is going to be the Boris position here do we listen at the case because all of these municipalities I would think maybe not Monique because they're doing very well financially they are abating taxes to the taxpayers that's unheard of these days but you hear other communities our eav the last I checked again was like 750 million dollars three quarters

063of a billion dollars compare that to Orland Park I I'm not really comparing apples and apples here but their EAP was 58 billion dollars 58 billion to ours 750 million dollars so we need Revenue and this 75 million dollars from University Park I think Bill said at the end of the day we get five million dollars a year that's forever unless and I belong I believe our Council said if that Tiff was to expire that doesn't change the eav if they the business moves out because we had some businesses close up in Monee he said there you go they put in these these temporary buildings up and if the extension of the Tiff is not given to them they're out of there and leaving an abandoned building but that eav still stays I think even

064though there's no so-called tenant in that property so this is a very precarious situation we need revenues we need revenues in the long run if you if your if your community if your town your village whatever we can get new businesses we can get new things you're going to draw people to the area well now you're going to have more construction so then in the long run more construction means more Revenue so at some point you know what I mean I mean we like you said how many new houses have been built not very many but that's because there's not a lot here and they can go to Indiana if we had it here maybe more people would be drawn to the area and now we have more Revenue so I guess you can look

065at it as different yeah but the first is this there you know they're twisting your arms and say we're not going to move in until you give us a tax break into a tip area that's what they're doing that's okay well that's one thing and so so here here there's a couple things here one is you know the creation of a new Tiff area is fine I I don't have any issue with that okay however the extension is a completely different issue because you're passing up revenue and that as Mr Brown said we need Revenue now let me but but even that 23 years the initial term of the Tiff we're only collecting taxes on the base we're only getting relief from the base which is very minute in some cases you put the 400

066some odd thousand dollars there to 6.2 million yeah right it's a big difference yeah exactly exactly so so let me let me just share a little bit of the future and I think Dr Hall was also talking about this about this actually on YouTube your buildings are not done being remodeled you still have to have a capital maintenance plan that we have ready to go yeah once the short-term facility plan is done yes and that is going to cost you somewhere between four million dollars a year to five million dollars right and I'm just going to give you an example the roof at Crete has to be replaced yeah and so forth and so so there's that and then you know as Dr Hall said we do have to do something about the athletic facilities

067and that so there's that but again you don't have any other borrowing power unless you do alternate Revenue buys and get this additional Revenue in all right our budgets are okay right now without the capital expenditures but what got you at the point of our of the buildings being this way is because they were never worked on before and they weren't maintained properly we know that okay and even though you have old buildings they can still be maintained properly right so there there's a lot that's still needed by this District you know from a building standpoint because I think you all know we don't want to let all your work in three years go to waste yes there's no sense in having air conditioning when you have single pane windows that's it there's no efficiency

068there 'll tell you that right out there so again it's just some some thoughts so so Ken is this a discussion item today because Crete has approached us about extending theirs I think it's a discussion I've been because no I'm sorry up has not asked us about extending the tips at this point but Monique and now Creed has so I thought it was just and Dr Kara and I had talked and we thought it was just appropriate to give some more data there to understand and from a vote standpoint when would that come on the agenda would it be next week or is that that would be up to the board when they want to do that okay you know yeah I I I don't know that okay you know that would be up to

069the board discretion I would the only other comment bill you made a comment that you know every village can compete for this but I think there are differences of of where you sit in the district that don't make you as competitive as others money in University Park are alongside 57 creates closer to the state line I mean I I don't think you can make that broad statement that everybody can compete for the same and the only reason it's a broad statement is because when uh Crete trustee reaches out to me today and says that he's throwing that at me that you know we're you know money does conservative and they shouldn't be you know they're not the same thing and why do they have it listen Moni was is a small town just like Crete

070Monee was 5 500 people do they have a tax revenue you know a sales tax from Amazon yeah but that was worked hard on and with that there was infrastructure changes and cost added and there's frustration added to that and now you're reaping the benefits five what five years later so the thing is I understand that but it's kind of being thrown at me being a money uh representative that you know only this I'm like we're all still farm towns and at any point could they pack up and leave yeah Anything Could Happen we're all seeing it now McDonald's laying off everybody's laying off so could they pack up and leave yeah and then we're stuck yeah and we don't get the sales tax so I'm just saying that everybody has an opportunity I mean

071that they take their own opportunity as they can see it but they shouldn't that shouldn't be thrown back at us like like it's something we did wrong I mean back in I I don't know I just I just don't think it's right either okay and I think the bottom line at the end of the day businesses need to pay their fair share and and relieve the homeowners because the homeowners are carrying in the back of this District financially that's why I asked the question if they close it is there a burden to the taxpayer you know that's the question is you know the taxpayers want to know they're getting their tax bills over the next week and they're all going to come here upset right because not realizing if you pull that up in that

072test there was what nine taxing bodies 10 taxing bodies so the tax bill is made up of let's say eight taxing bodies and but everybody how many times have we had something going on in the district in the last eight years and then you have a a forum and they come and they say my taxes went up this amount it did go up a portion because of the school district but the other seven taxing bodies had something to do with it as well so are you saying bill at the end of the day with the initial 23 years of a tiff and we as a school district have a lot to say if that Tiff is going to be extended for additional 12 years and we say no and that business pull out correct I

073mean it's not an easy decision but yeah what point do we be Hill housing for nearly 40 years you know right that's the thing yeah it's definitely and it behooves us to really involve ourselves with the conversations with the leaders of each municipality when it comes to them wanting to extend a tiff right because I mean we've been pretty vocal about and asked Dr Hall we've been vocal about University Park right yeah and we've been very vocal about Monet and if we're that vocal about those two I don't that lends the conversation of treating it the same way I mean I mean we're Ken came up with a plan that if you want to extend the Tiff and money this is the dollar amount right you know that's what it is so I just I'm

074more or less looking at is it's hard to pick and choose if we don't have consistency right it's really hard to to do that I mean it's not going to be an easy decision whatever it is but this good information Ken I really appreciate it thank you okay thank you um I don't think we should I don't get a sense that it has to be decided no could you or Ken check with your municipalities and see when they plan on going to the legislature but what I don't know if every municipality is on the same time time scheduled to try to get in I I understand that yeah I think yes okay same motive that's for extension in University Park I think they I thought they asked too pretty to fight they never formally asked

075for an extension no no said they weren't going to ask oh for for tip five okay just money so far what Tiff was that for Monet I'm sorry what tip number is that three okay to our staff says 20 20. since 2019 and as Dr Dr Kara mentioned we are coming to the end of the plan and we can certainly give the board another update at the end of the uh year if you desire uh this plan has uh six goals 17 strategies and under each of those 17 strategies that a b that we talk about each year or two times a year there are 76 action items that everyone across the district has been involved in every department and every assistance superintendent has been involved in living this plan at this point when we

076do our calculations we're about 76 of the wave finished with our total projections for the board and at your seat you have a complete package of where we are with every single strategy again six goals 17 strategies where we are and then under those 76 action items um it talks about the details for each of those letters from A through p and so I can we'll put this on the website for the public but again it shows our progression of where we've been in building and supporting the plan 2019 was the development of the plan and meeting with our focus groups in um our second phase we were living the plan and then our third phase that we're in now we are reviewing and evaluating the plan we've put some anticipated dates of when we

077expect to finish some of the items and some of the items we will close out and decide if we will put it in the new plan um any questions for me of where we are or any explanations that you want to hear about and again we'll put this on the website for families to see I just I have a quick one I'm just um surprised that for um goal one strategy e and then the I'm trying to get all the terminology right yeah the action item um four that's implemented rigorous curriculum that includes in um inquiry-based learning and advanced coursework we're only 50 I thought we were almost there so what what is it that we still haven't accomplished so we're we look at goal e there are four items that go that go where

078we're at 75 percent we're building a five-year plan on reviewing all of our curriculum um we have another 75 percent for putting in structures for vertical alignment from pre-k to 12 where our teachers meet with one another so we've built in those Transitions and as we come back from the pandemic again we're building in those meetings for you know fifth grade teachers to meet with Middle School teachers as they transition to six as our guidance counselors meet from middle school to high school and then with the rigorous curriculum curriculum where inquiry based we have our two schools that are non-traditional with the IB and so that's why we put in the 50 there and so the total for that is the 55 for goal e right so what's going to bring that number four up

079to 100 so as we we had to build it's kind of like laying the foundation we had to build our tier one instructional materials we had at one point pre-pandemic we had at our elementary level we had two different math programs um that were not speaking and working with one another right prior to the pandemic um our teachers decided a committee decided that we were going to go for one program and so they are implementing that with Fidelity we are just started creating uh common uh formative assessments where everyone on the team decides on what students are going to take for their assessment and then we use that data to compare it so we had to build the foundation get those tier one materials in and we did the same thing uh for our reading

080that right prior to to the pandemic we purchased that curriculum so we're building that capacity and we hope as we go into the new plan we'll be able to report that data and what it looks like as we use those common assessments so everyone is going to be taking the same assessment and again we're building those assessments from K to 12. okay but we we do have the same curriculum in both reading and math at all the elementary schools except for CSK correct I'm just keeping it at a very simple level yeah yeah that's why I was surprised to see 50 okay so it's all the assessments and everything else that that we're building yeah okay thank you additional questions with this strategic plan so we are 76 completed and Dr Dr Kara he said

081he was going to get the community involved at what point are we looking to engage so we're looking to complete it as we sit at a hundred percent prior to engaging the community yeah [Music] so we started off from scratch with the current strategic plan right we started off and did we start off with the community engagement from scratch okay so we're looking just to fine-tune what we already have and this is we'll start completely over okay like I said we'll have probably the format that um our previous consultant used I've liked this format so we're going to continue with this format so we may still have some of the same six bugs buckets but the topics May differ and that's that's generated from the focus groups the community the teachers board members will be

082on that we're basically starting over again and deciding what does this District need now okay we had about 70 stakeholders at the um last that helped helped us build the last plan so the thought is that it would be about the same amount but again it usually comes into facilities curriculum you know it's the same kind of things but where are we in each of them you know like facilities might look different instead of air conditioning and getting new buildings it may be you know getting a stadium ELC building those are some things that would go on that plan okay great great thank you all right thank you do you think you're being a little hard on yourself on some of them because don't we have a creep money Education Foundation established we have that

083at 25 percent um it is established yes all right so you're just looking to bring it to a to a higher level yeah I think wanting to get more active you know I in fact I just uh met with the foundation president just a week ago or so and in fact we were able to coordinate and give them some donations with a community vendor that's going to help pay for some of our our goodies at our Saturday day so so we're beginning to work together and I think the pandemic you know they they did a lot with the hearts program and things like that um what was it uh Queen of Hearts yeah but they I think they want to do some other kinds of things and he's already approached me with some some new

084ideas that they're going to start okay thank you thank you okay next up business Ken you're back on thank you Mr Robert um the first item is discussion to accept the proposal of awarded contract accustomed for post-construction cleaning at Memorial Creek CSK Talala Elementary at the Early Learning Center I will tell the board that CSK is not included in that uh if the uh agenda item comes on next week it will not include Talala that is not included in the bid docs as you heard earlier you say he says I'm sorry CSK I'm sorry CSK uh as you heard earlier there was some public comment on the bid specs in that I will share with you that there were the bit specs and addendum was done uh proposals should meet the bid specifications not verbal

085conversations and should we bid specifications so deliver the bid specifications we did see when we opened the bid the discrepancy between the bids Mr McLean director of building grounds met with custom to make sure that everything uh was good we received he had a favorable discussion with them that they could meet the specs at this price we will hold them to this price so we're comfortable recommending custom for the for the gym have you did any follow-up references anything like that or you do that after being awarded uh no we'll do that ahead of time Keith has done that with references in that so right now right now it's just predicated on lowest bid or not Lewis responsible better right right it's on lowest bidder so we'll be following up with references and all that

086and bring that recommendation to okay do you typically have when you submit or when you solicit your RFP to have non-mandatory meetings there are there are some vids that we do that have non-manatory some that have mandatory okay with that when we had our construction projects those were mandatory and the cleanup you know those are non-mandatory most of the reason for that is because a lot of companies will estimate on the square footage basis so we Supply the square footage and let them know and then all of everything else is in the scope so did the other or the contractor that you are proposing the award to good days solicit any questions to the RFP I am I am not sure that Keith no no questions and we do have a rep from the from

087the company here from Custom here so okay there is a rep here so you know but yeah we're we're comfortable recommending that okay so you're confident that the RFP was comprehensive and I believe that everything that they're going to do is what we need and we're not going to find that we need more based on the stuff that we heard and then it'll be additional costs later no I'm confident that it included that we did an addendum to address a couple other items and so that was done I have a question on the dates that was glaring that one of them was saying April something to whatever and then the actual in different spots to different times and that is a huge difference in time so you're saying that custom knew that there was that

088discrepancy and bid on doing April to whatever that was or I mean I was really concerned about one of those date discrepancies it was huge can you show up to the huge yeah Okay the reason I have April on April 18th on there is because that's the date of the board meeting where they'll whoever beat approved so no no that is not the way it reads no it just yeah we could provide a copy the whole package and I know Canada you're in a meeting and you answer it one way to them because they're there in a different way to somebody else when you're just chatting with them I do have a huge issue with that but because what are they being told I have to go by what's written well because he's got something

089written and it's it doesn't agree with the dates you do have to go by what's written if you have a question then okay the call and you ask that question and that was not okay but the written copy has different dates on it to into has any anything but Keith just said he did put the April April 18th is on there is is the date you know that would be approved that's why I said that the contractors go from April 18th because that's what they you would approve it as a board that makes it don't necessarily mean necessary does they say they have to provide services it gives the start dates and it can be six months and it's hard to get a tight start date because because of substantial completion for the projects not

090being tight we pick a substantial completion date but as all of a sudden you don't have rooftop units and you don't have you know other items just substantial completion gets moved out I gave them there's there's roughly a two-week window that I put in there I said we prefer to have it in a seven day period uh and there's there's a lot of unknowns but the and and as uh Miss Graham was saying and we've done that we did this last year the day I get a uh an open section of a building and the the contract has been approved I will let them in there to start cleaning regardless of the uh start they posted okay so they work together he read the contract was effective April 18th but not the service was needed

091then is that how the contract read that they got the RFP you know I don't have the exactly my identification on that because to me that was huge the reason I put that April 18th is because that's the day the board would approve the contract so that was the start of the contract not the start of certain words that needed to be provided and I think Mr Graham gave the dates for for the work when he was reading off the right right that's why I'm questioning right right because that is huge yep it's got the work dates written in the packet okay I just think there's an awful lot of that so not to get into the weeds but just take one example so the floors so do they just need to be swept and

092cleaned or do they need to be well number one it's going to be up to the contractor how they want to do it but they definitely have to be swept you know you get the debris off the scrubbers you can watch our custodians right now walk up and down the halls with Autos covers they walk right behind it it puts the water down and picks it up and removes the dirt and then they buff and the buff the buffing was the uh the addendum and that was because I got that information in from Texas granite from the contractor or from the manufacturer so but no I mean again it's up to the contractors to know how they're going to do the project there's not going to be two men pouring down water on the floor

093scrubbing into somebody else vacuuming it up there should not be that unless they want to do that then that's up to them okay thanks Keith all right okay next up next is the uh discussion to approve the purchase agreement to buy the property at 690 West Exchange Street in Crete I've had discussions with uh Mr Gleason our attorney and we are going to recommend to move forward with the purchase agreement there are two items that are still outstanding one is a survey and the second one is a splitting of a pin I've talked to Bill about this and he has shared with me that we are not closing on the property until that is done but what we'd like to do is go ahead and get the purchase agreement which he is happy with and

094agrees with get that done and then we'll set up the closing and the other two items will be taken care of prior to the closing happen there will be conditions of Effectiveness the other two items will be the other conditional items it will be conditions yeah so it'll be the survey and the splitting of the pin okay so that'll come to us next week that'll come next week yeah okay and the agreement has not changed at all Mr Albrecht so it's the same one that I've been sharing were we going to have an inspection performer we talked about that and we don't feel there's a need for it just because we've been utilizing the facility and everything is in working order but that's what we can see that's what we can see that's what we

095can touch those are the tangible things but those intangibles so to speak I'll go ahead and research it yeah okay but the other thing that I was I had asked about was who's responsible for plowing doing those Werner winter months did we get an answer to that we're we're responsible for our own property yes we'll be responsible for our own property we have talked to them that if there is a time where that that easement right that easement agreement will plow that also we'll just bring oh we'll take care of that okay so we're going to make sure okay yes okay great um number three and four go together I think as uh the board is well aware last year we had an issue with the scoreboard going out during one of our games so

096uh We've investigated uh purchasing a new scoreboard and the installation of that scoreboard so you will see the amounts there the scoreboard is 64 000 installed about 23 000. I I will let you know that the funds for this are going to come from some Investments that Brian and I have made with some of our working cash funds with PMA we found out that through that investment in June we'll be getting about 250 000 in interest that we would not have gotten if it was just kind of sitting there so uh that money is coming in oh I'm curious what type what type of investment is this well we are at school it's according to the Illinois school code that's all PMA does so we suppose be you know not very careful with it is

097it is that's why PMA does it we don't do it I mean pmas has recommended that we had this money sitting there we had 34 million dollars sitting there doing nothing in in a low interest account like a savings account and so they recommended that we can invest it in in a few things that meet the online school code so we so they meet the cold oh yeah low risk investment no no no no no not at all none at all no risk and all that I can I can get you if you could yeah I would be curious to see yeah you know where the treasury bonds and something like that I'm sorry so the only question I have on this is Dr Hall you said that you were Raven about um Rich Township

098in Kankakee what is this compared to that meaning or it's the same thing I I say all the time if we're going to make the jump and we're going to be able to take it and move it from point A to point B right like the lights are we settling so meaning and what is the opportunity with the other board I'm I'm bringing it up because when we talk to the gentleman we're at uh Miss Calvin and I and yourself was that the last ISB you introduced us to the gentleman from Kankakee yes so the idea is um what is the other like that and where we can advertise or have someone sponsor where it'll help with some of the costs meaning it may be more expensive but you can offset that with something so

099with this one you have a small board similar to that I mean well you can do some small advertisements yeah it's not nearly what like what theirs they can do replay they can do flat they can do major advertisement it's a it's a uh I think I did but that the one that if I sent one that was the one that was basketball but it's very similar yeah yeah yes you can use the same one and just move it over but it's a different you can't take that one outside but that concept is the idea yes that is to say so this one this one has a message board as Dr Holland mentioned there's a mattress board so if you're looking at the picture where it says win trust right in the middle there that's

100a message board uh you're not able to play videos or anything like that I can investigate if you want a video board you know to have a video board on it and I see the idea is just to see the comparison right sure I mean at this point if you're going to if we're going to invest money in building something else it's the same things you invested the investigated the lights correctly and now we're able to move those LED lights from point A to point B so if we're going to do this it's going to be here for a long time I I don't I just if we're going to do it right why settle um if this is going to be long term right because I the other thing I asked Ken was um

101you know like in the in the gym I I actually sent in one of my questions is the field house floor and then you know our main gym May mean to scoreboard like I guess the idea is I don't want to settle on this because when we start moving our projects like not that we have to have the the best and the greatest we have to start somewhere but at least we should see what our options are almost kind of the same way with uh uh metal detectors and and the AI technology with the other there's a difference but there's a reason for each one sure okay I'll investigate it yeah look into that because I Kankakee does have a video board I forget if they showed replays but they they could certainly the graphics

102after a first down were really annoying so and they got a lot of them unfortunately the game that I was there okay I'll investigate it okay I will do that okay um lastly number five is discussion of approval of insurance agreement for the 23-24 employee health insurance rates I that will be coming to the board on the 18th we have an insurance committee meeting right before the board meeting no pressure on that um all I will all I will say is things look very favorable so we're still working out some things and but things look very favorable so uh that's why it's on the agenda so it'll be an item to approve next week yes it will but we won't have no the what the final outcome is until right before the meeting yeah yeah

103so it'll be presented for approval but it'll be very favorable okay why can we not wait we have a little negotiating to do and confident that would be but I if I can get it earlier I because here the other the other thing is is that what has happened in the past is that recommendation has come from the insurance committee to the board right so I want to make sure that the insurance committee has that they've seen it and all that so so and we couldn't uh schedule anything earlier so you're confident that we're going to approve the Very Yes okay okay I like that you're involved with this too doc great thank you okay thanks uh next up old business okay I don't know if this is old business new business or whatever so

104I'm just gonna do it um as you know things have been on social media there have been all kinds of stuff about our test scores and the communities are not happy and I did have a little chat with Dr caglanis when I first started getting accosted about it and it's getting worse and worse and the first thing they say is don't you even think about doing athletic fields until you do something about these test scores and I understand other board members are getting it there's a lot of chat in the communities about the board's responsibility number one is fiscal responsibility and they can't even understand how we would think about athletic fields when we have and I'm going to say it some very horrible test scores now I understand you have to interpret them different

105ways we had a discussion but the communities don't understand that and then they start saying well let's look at some light communities look at look good sock Village let's look at Chicago Heights let's look at Steger and there's a lot of dismay out there right now about the test scores and then comparing it to they hear the conversation about athletic fields because that's all over also because I believe the high school is talking about it so the communities are in an uproar and I I think this is something we need to address and sooner rather than later because it's snowballing and it's only going to get worse as you're looking for more and more monies for things and how we're doing it we need to figure out number one what are we doing about our

106test scores number two how are they supposed to be interpreted the the community doesn't understand you know what you explained to me they have no clue um and there's a lot of uproaring not just in Crete it's it's coming across um people are bringing it up when I see them what are you going to do about those test scores um so I'm just bringing that to the Forefront I I understand the whole idea about athletic fields I've been with you a thousand percent but I get what the community is saying and we have to address that if we're going to go and be able to do anything we really need to address that so I'm I'm just bringing up that is one of my last hurrays here but um I agree with them we need

107some explanation on what's going on and what we're doing we can't we can't keep blaming everything on the pandemic and I know everybody is doing that it's just you know we lost this in the pandemic nobody wants to hear that now they want to hear what are we doing to make it better what are we doing to help our children what is our goal are we trying to raise them one grade level in a year I mean if they're at two grade levels low what are we doing to try to get them to at least move up so that their the teachers are not struggling to try to help these children when they have a group over here that's in the right grade in a group over here that's behind and I know we're doing

108tutoring I know we have all these things but it's very hard to to take when you're looking at these scores what's going on and I think we owe it to our communities they pay a lot of taxes they want to know what they're getting for their money and we need to be re we want our employees to be accountable we as a board need to be accountable for what are we doing to help any of our employees in our schools get a better education to our children and help them get to where they need to be so I I appreciate you um supporting the athletic stuff I want the one thing I'll tell you is we obviously are not using the funds that we put into our students to build athletic facilities so Dr carlganise

109can nobody's talked about taking away funds to build an Athletic Facility so that's kind of like trying to hold it Hostage to get what you want that's that's not right that that's not what that's fine well it is because when people say you better not build an Athletic Facility if you don't approve the test scores they're not taking money from the the students well I I think this is this is I I do get that but most people are intelligent enough to understand once you tell them but what you what you realize about people is they want what they want and they don't nothing else matters until they get what they want and so we definitely have to improve our I'm never saying that that's not important I need people to understand I do think

110that that's important I know that that's important I know that all of our facilities are important that's just what I'm fighting for yeah we need to make it we need to make better contact with our communities we need to work with them they need to unend what's going on and I agree I mean you can tell them all you want that we're not going to use that money and they're not going to believe you it's just the way the human body works so I can say that's a separate entity and we're going to look for um sponsors and all kinds of stuff they can name the field whatever they don't want to hear it they want to hear about this education and how dare you even think about Athletics and they understand most of them

111that it isn't the same money but they think that instead of looking for money to do the athletic fields we should be looking for sponsors to help us tutor or run special sessions or whatever so I totally understand where you're getting it that from but I do think we're not communicating to our communities what we're doing to try to better our education I I think we're failing there somehow we're not making them understand and most of these people don't have kids in the school let's be realistic you have a lot of taxpayers that do not have children in their schools so they don't know what's going on so to me I think we really need to address this it's huge and it's not just in Crete so thank you I'm just bringing that up thank

112you and I agree I mean we've always should be striving for academic Improvement so but at the same time I think we can as a board should be able to walk and chew gum at the same time and address both so well if I'd been more athletic in high school maybe I could walk into gum at the same time anybody else with an old business I've got one um just you mentioned metal detectors and I was down in Disney recently and they have the Evolve and you just walk through you don't have to they don't have to search your backpack you go right through I could see how you know you could get everybody into a building very quickly using those so I think it's something we ought to continue to have security for sure

113and I think the money outweighs the the functionality of the school right so getting all the people the kids in and getting everything and right and is way worth of value now I will tell you and and again I just want to build on that a little bit if anybody watched what happened in Nashville right we are only if you listen to Robin or anybody else talk about this stuff it's a deterrent that's what it is that's all it is is a deterrent of what we can control try to control inside unfortunately the person came in with a weapon and shot on the glass and climbed in the building there's nothing anybody can do with that so I want everybody to understand that even if though we invest this money and we move forward with

114one way or another we are just adding a deterrent to keep our kids and our staff safe without a doubt right but I mean under no circumstances was that District unsafe at all so but but just any deterrent like last year we started doing bag checks things dropped off because hey somebody's going to check my bag it's just another level I'm not going to bring in that squirt gun or that spray or whatever correct I understanding is that Ken has been doing some research on numbers I saw Mr Tobias today and here he comes with the information thank you Ken yes so let me share I've gotten uh I was also down at Disney uh in when I received my award leader of Excellence I just want to let you know Disney Springs also and

115they have the Evolve system and it was great I mean it was fabulous you know you didn't even notice all right so glad you're sitting down so let me do this so I was able to get a quote on the system uh to for the high school and the total is 488 thousand dollars okay that's for one year if you have a four-year subscription it's 771 thousand dollars okay it's just for one entry one spot no this is for like four different networks that we would have plus we would have one that would be movable that we could move like over for athletic entrances and athletic events or anything like that so one would be you said 771 was for a year for a four year subscription yes that includes okay so I've done some

116more research and you'll be happy to know that I found a grant all right uh so that but I mean I found it wait in line wait in line we 40. so um uh one of the things that we are working on it's it's a cops Grant if you remember I think when Robin talked that poison also has the system and I set going how did they oh Brennan Bremen which is yeah but Brandon you're right middle oath and um I wonder how do they do well they got this grant and the grant has a maximum of five hundred thousand dollars uh so I've already talked to uh a place called lexapol that is has grant writers so I've signed up to have a grant writer it's forty five hundred dollars they're going to help

117us write the grant to make sure that all the specifics are appropriate and everything and we are going to apply for 500 000. it's a matching Grant now what that means is that you have to match 25 percent of the cost so my recommendation if we were able to get this grant is to go over to 771 to go with the four-year cover for four years and then you know it would be like 271 or something like that so let me make sure I understand okay going back to the four-year so that's a four year of technical support software support it's all your software all technical support all your Hardware all of that yes okay so we we will get the units right multiple units at four locations 40 high school and we are going

118to get support for that for and that's that's inclusive with the 480 400 some odd thousand well for for the 488 that's for one year though for one year the 771 is four years for all of them concludes like it's like yep that's all included that's all included right now the key to this is and this is something I asked them that we're not able to install this and then get the grant you have to get the grant first then you can go ahead and sell it so it's not like I can go back in time in that so right now the deadline for submitting the grant is May 10th so we're working on this right now Brian and I are working on this so we're working on this right now we already have another

119meeting set up been all of that and then we'll submit they said that they don't think the awards will come out the awarding of the grants will come out probably till August or September than that so we would just have to wait till then I don't think it would be up and running for the beginning of the uh school year do you have any idea what's the installation time so if you were able to get the Grant and all that our cash outlay would be probably 140 000 a round or a little more than what metal the straight metal detectors would have been yeah I think it'll be a little bit more but I think you also have to consider you need less staff so you wouldn't have to have the staff so yeah I

120think you're going to be on the plus side yeah you know in the long run on this on this system and that because again I was down in Disney saw this thing operating it it was amazing six years ago you had to stop you had to drive your backpack on if you had to open every pocket yeah you know in person so and yeah and I I will compare it to uh not take up a lot of time compared to when I was up at Lambeau Field at a Bears game and Packers game they had the old metal detectors and the crowds and everything it was crazy the ones at Disney spring were set up in the parking lot and they just went to the level and just went right you walked right through that

121was it I I was amazed so I I'm a fan yeah and that would be like a standard state right so it would still live a lot quicker but it can handle so the only thing I want to say is even though it's not on the agenda can I appreciate you guys your team and Robin and everybody moving forward with this because it is still in the back of our mind because every time we turn on every week we turn on the TV something else is happening so we can't let it go no but uh so the the grant part of it's great yeah so okay okay thanks again can I real quick but it's a for old business might as well I actually it wasn't a call it was personal and talking to my

122face on this issue of a parent of a kid at CSK that I think Brian I don't know if this came through from you that Brian saved the day protecting our kids of the dogs yeah so and you can't see so I guess my question is and I asked this question way before you got here how often are we checking our surveillance system our cameras is to make sure that they are adequate for doing what they are designed to do because we had issues in the past where there was perpetrators and dissonance and that on the school grounds and hey we had a camera right but they were inoperable well so are we doing a periodic check on our cameras and do we have cameras in areas throughout our system in school because I understand

123you can't see in the back when kids are out there playing of CSK it may be other schools as well so what are we doing about that I don't know if you don't have to answer that maybe you could come back and bring to the board because uh we are being proactive so one of the things that Robin is doing is part of his you know being proactive is that I've asked him to go about and look at all the safety things cameras you know whether it's you know things like this like metal detectors master plan together see so that if we're short on some cameras some places we can we can get those added so that we know that the budget impact is going to be for a full plan I don't want to

124piecemeal right so he's being proactive on it and he's taking care of that and doing that and then he's working also as part of the Safety Committee we're working on part of that too and just make sure that we are doing some type of PMS or periodic checking the system every four months every three months or whatever you think the curiosity is or frequency is on checking these cameras three months however you guys deem necessary but I would like to see that we are on some standards checking our system sure yep you never say that worth an animal job um he's very from what I've seen sitting on the committee and stuff he is so thorough and he's looking into it I've been very impressed with him wow he's doing a great job so lucky

125to have him he's sitting with every principal and the principals are pointing out I need a camera here this isn't working or how are we monitoring it he is spending hours with each school going over the cameras because there was a a point where something happened and we found out that we didn't have any cameras in that area I was at the high school which was amazing yes um so he made it his own goal whatever you want to call it to be sitting with every school and he goes updated the Committees and I know that Ken has been working with him on the cameras because if you're going to upgrade one you're going to upgrade all you're not going to do it piecemeal because that would cost you a fortune just like the Evolve

126system just to share with the board too on this this whole granting so this kind of gives us a little bit of an end with you know a kind of a semi-grant writer here now because this is not just for this grant there are a lot of other grants either on a federal or state level what they are telling me is that there's still there there's a surplus amount of our money that has been left and a lot of that has been gone down to the South to the states down south and they're looking to try and bring that into the northern states just for safety so there are some other funds that may be coming that way and now that we have this you know kind of grant writer helping us they will try

127and identify other grants for us and let us know and then we can start applying for those foreign just on this one but but this will allow us that you know we go kind of on their list serve and so they let us know if there's a grant out there and then we would have to contract with them again but again you know if we get 500 000 4500 is a pretty good investment so that's part of my go ahead you know no that's part of new business um because being down at Kankakee that gentleman had mentioned to us a lot of their facility items were done with grants subscribe so we talked about this two years ago maybe or three years ago but then we took other avenues that were of importance to to

128handle in in the district so maybe think about if we're posting positions or if we use the service we should have an active grant writer here to help with whether it be Athletics or be other needs in the in the district it doesn't just have to be Athletics could be that it could be curriculum it could be special education could be anything but we should definitely have somebody yeah we start looking in that direction yeah I'd like to go through this experience to see how this service is and you know see if it's beneficial I mean boy the next day all of a sudden I got a list of things that they need and we're going so yeah so the thing is is even if the grants 85 not 15 000 right and it costs

129you 4 500 it's worth every nickel yeah yeah exactly exactly right yes okay any other old business any new business okay we do have a need for closed session tonight can I can I get a motion to go into closed session for the appointment employment compensation discipline performance or dismissal of specific employees moved roll call when you're ready Brown is an i Mrs Galbraith aye Dr Hall aye Mr swallis aye Mrs Walters vice president Rue aye president Albrecht aye motion carries we are in close at 8 25 and the only item we'll have after closed session is a German so we can cut off the video feed now so