001get this back to you thank you there you go all right well i have to wait 30 seconds nine minutes let's call the meeting to order here at center grove our mission is to develop knowledgeable competent responsible citizens through inspirational and innovative learning opportunities we always start our meeting with the pledge of allegiance mr hubbard would you like to sure honor lead us tonight to do the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you mr harvard we've been presented with an agenda and i know it's been made available to the public also if anyone has any questions on the agenda now would be the time to ask if not do i hear a either a question or a motion to adopt the agenda i'll make
002a motion thank you mr hubbard mr alexander uh mr hubbard is your microphone on and i only say that because i've heard folks at home sometimes can't hear us we don't have our microphones on so all those in favor of adoption of the agenda please signify by saying aye aye opposed the eyes have it 5-0 adopting the agenda next we have a health services report an update on the coven 19 pandemic and the school's response to it i have it's going to be presented by mrs norman are you going to be pinchating oh no i i let her have the evening off okay we're gonna it's gonna be a brief report tonight miss norman did a great job um a couple months last month i guess um thank you mr taylor i'll turn the microphone
003over to you thank you very much sir um just wanted to share an update on where we're at obviously cases are spiking throughout the state and the positivity rate remains to grow as well we've seen positive numbers for center grove over the past few weeks obviously having a fall break reset week was very very good for us and it's uh all right miss parker you scroll down just a little bit to the cases table one more i just wanted to remind folks that on our website at our address slash status ms conrad updates us every week with miss norman's help and you'll see that since we've returned from from fall break we have eight new cases as of today and uh i guess we still have tomorrow to go through over fall break even though
004we were at a session we did we did receive two new cases reported to us um can't really say if those are student or staff but they are cases in our buildings scroll down one more table for me parker thank you and here also we've also put out there for folks all of the covert related absences and for the for us those are folks who fall into two categories they could be isolated because they have symptoms or they have a positive case and they are confirmed positive or they could be quarantined because they've come in contact with the positive case not necessarily at school quarantine's very frequently happen at work or at home or other situations but you'll see because of that fall break reset our covert related absences dropped to 38 to start this
005week we do anticipate with our new cases for it to return back up 100 up over 100 but we we're still fairly pleased um kova 19 as you know has a little bit longer on set and so we don't know still fully the ramifications of folks traveling for fall break we expect some of those cases are starting to come in today and so we will continue to watch it and provide a report as we can each month i just want to highlight real quick at the very top two there's a link to our daily health screening as we enter the cold and flu season this is the most important thing we can ask all of our parents and students to do i think it's on there yeah scroll down just a little bit more there
006you go great little chart there are six key symptoms we want all parents to think about with their students and students of the proper age to think about themselves if their temperature is over 100 degrees or if they have chills a sore throat any shortness of breath or cough diarrhea nausea vomiting a headache or new loss of taste and smell really it's the most important to start doing that now if you've kind of been put it off or relaxing for the past couple weeks we really want to make sure folks are taking those screenings to heart and doing those daily i am very pleased when miss norman informs me that we had a positive case but we do not have to do contact tracing because the student or staff member identified the symptoms and remained
007home that is the best thing we can do it stops the spread it helps us keep kids in school that's it thank you mr taylor are there any comments or questions to the report is this where we do our psa mr daniels remind everyone that you want me to get my my psa yeah i'm obviously we're never happy when someone has coveted but we can't stress enough as mr taylor has please please please if you think you have it if you think your child has it if you think you've been in contact with someone that has it stay home stay home get a test once you are cleared come back but please stay home and just for clarity when we looked at the covert related absences that's two different categories one category are isolation kids
008those are kids with symptoms hopefully waiting testing the second are quarantined kids those are kids that have come into contact with a positive yes so please we ask you stay home stay healthy do all those things that the cdc's put out and i know the stuff on our website that stacy and amy and jason and others have put together is just fabulous please do everything you can we want to stay open we want traditional learning so that's my psa does anyone else have any questions or comments on top of that and if you're awaiting a test the test results stay home yep i do want to say i left one thing out i want to thank the board for their time right before fall break we had an opportunity to meet with the county health
009department i thought that was a very positive meeting we were able to express some of our concerns we also heard from them some positive that we are doing things right and doing it in the way that they expect so appreciate your time and and thank you and i think you're probably under selling what your group has done because from what i heard from them was that we're doing what we should be doing and we're doing a good job of it so you know with all that being said we're all the schools are having similar rules we're out there kind of leading the pack and doing everything we can to try to social distance and do everything we can other than the fact that i keep adjusting my mask and it's really bothering me there let's
010see if that solves it any other comments or questions thank you mr taylor i appreciate it thank you now it's the time on our public agenda for public comment and it looks like we have two individuals who signed up for public comment we ask that those two individuals limit their their time to three minutes we will we will time it up here and give you kind of a high sign when we're getting close to 30 seconds it looks like that they're both here on agenda items anybody with public comment needs to comment just on agenda items and these both are so first i would ask for mr don struby to please come up to the microphone good evening uh don struby i live at uh 2185 bodine place which is directly behind the area where
011we're looking to put the new eoc um first i guess it's always a good thing to have first responders closer and certainly appreciate everything that those guys do for us every single day so thanks for that um the the downside is that you're putting a eoc right in a residential neighborhood i mean literally the my back door to that eoc is going to be about 150 feet that is not a desirable place for it to put it right in that residential neighborhood i think we've sat through the the meetings on the water and the drainage and i think those have been well addressed the the noise the congestion on morgantown road anybody who's tried to make a left turn onto morgantown road pretty much anytime school is in will recognize that the traffic in there
012is is very difficult right turn you can make it out left turn is it's a 10 or 15 minute wait trying to get out of there i can only imagine that the the eoc is going to experience a great deal and contribute a great deal to additional traffic concerns um at the end of the day i i would suggest that there are a couple other places that it could conceivably be placed it could be placed like right in front of the elementary school on that big flat field that appears to be used for uh you know kids soccer and football which could be in fact done back on the open fields where you're going to put the eoc so i i think there are other options would love to see other options i guess that's
013about it and if you have any extra dirt i'll use whatever i can to mount uh because i'm not sure what's going to happen outside the berm you're putting in and so i mean i get a considerable amount of water come across that trail into into my backyard thank you thank you mr street next it looks like i mean if i mispronounced your name i apologize tim cursely thank you mr kersley the microphone's yours good evening everybody and thank you very much for the opportunity to speak and discuss with you some of the concerns we have the eoc building is to our minds placed in a position that's going to impact negatively the quality of life for the people in the immediate vicinity of the new build the issue for us is not only the
014disruption that will take place as that building is developed and comes into fruition but also some significant concerns about noise pollution light pollution and general disruption that in the oc would create immediately in a residential area as don struby addressed dr long i was able to alleviate a lot of the concerns we had about the drainage issues that were associated with it and we're grateful for that but at the end of the day it's it comes down to noise activity and general disruption and then with the widening of morgantown road in conjunction with this we feel that it's going to be a very aggressive kind of environment that we're going to find ourselves living in which obviously isn't the thing that we we want to see for our houses and within brenbridge and within beaudine
015place in particular we have a very nice mixed community we have a lot of senior citizens and we consider it to be an imposition almost although it's not land that belongs to brent ridge it belongs to the school corporation there must be a better position to place this building and that really is our point and the one that we wanted to make thank you very much thank you mr person i appreciate you both coming and expressing your thoughts tonight um there are no other members of the community that are signed up for public comment the next issue on the agenda there are the consent items has everyone had the opportunity to look at the consent items yes sir does anyone have any questions if not do i hear a motion to approve the consent items
016mr president i move that we approve the consensus consent agenda as presented do i hear a second second thank you mr alexander mr russell all those in favor of the consent items please signify by saying i i opposed the eyes have it 5-0 we're moving on to the action items and our first action item is a proposal for a school health care services agreement mr jason taylor i know has been working hard on this agreement for some time and he'll present to us this evening thank you mr daniels um really we began this uh search for a a partner um last year well before this time so it's been going on for over 12 months we identified a need to improve our mental health services for not just our students but also our staff and
017as we started talking to the partners that provide those types of services we realized that there would be some benefit by looking holistically at a a comprehensive health care partnership we currently are in a healthcare partnership with iu health and they were one of the partners that we did discuss and talked to about this last year we also looked at franciscan health johnson memorial hospital we also talked to adult and child who was our current mental health provider last year and ultimately we selected after a couple rounds of interviews and proposals commit to move and look at working with community health network we started down this path and were prepared to bring a proposal to the board last march when kova 19 hit and making a change to the health care provider at that time
018seemed prohibitive and would have been very difficult to find the quality doctor that we were looking to have in our wellness center and so we've delayed that that agreement and we're ready to bring it back to you this evening not much has changed really since march just a few little things a few little areas of the contract that you would have reviewed there's a little more clarification on hipaa and ferpa but nothing significant we're still overall very pleased with the with the agreement we have and i wanted to share overall this will be a cost savings to the corporation we've already planned to budget and use some of that cost savings to improve our mental health solutions including hiring some staff members um on the screens a slide of some of the new additional services
019we'll receive from this partnership that we just currently don't have today or that we'd expand that we may have today really the the driving factor again like i mentioned was better mental health services for our students and while adult and child was doing a great job of serving our students who qualified for medicaid we really had a big gap of other students who were either insured privately or non-insured and we wanted to make sure we had a solution for that and community did offer one and ultimately that's going to allow us to serve all students who regardless of their insurance status and provide them with mental health services um dr long has been working on that all year with our new director school of school counseling i'm heather faustdon as well and community has a
020track record and we've we've referenced we've gathered this from references of filling those positions and making sure that we have folks in our buildings when we need them on the school nursing front which is also a part of this agreement this would add one additional permanent sub to float across all of our schools something that's been a desire of the corporation for multiple years now also because of our student-to-staff ratios communities recommended and adding an additional ma or lpn at the high school and additional part-time at the middle schools so that will give us a second set of hands in each of those clinics moving forward sports medicine there would be an additional athletic trainer so that each middle school would have full coverage it would not be a split position and then the employee
021wellness center the health clinic we'll be able to expand those clinic hours as needed we do see a demand we saw great demand before covet hit we anticipate that demand will return as we made this slide for last spring we only had eap services for people enrolled on our health insurance we did decide to expand that to all employees as coveted hit but this one actually extend it all the way to any household member of any of our employees would have access to the employee assistance program when needed that's some great mental health services for those folks and we can also then look at a mental health health therapist health therapist at the clinic we do have a wellness coach now we'll retain that but we could add this in the future as i mentioned
022earlier this is overall a cost savings we replaced every service that we had and we expanded many we have included those cost savings in our budget designed for the 2021 budget and would continue to include those as we move forward um and that's it thank you any questions does anyone on the board have any questions or comments as it relates to the proposed mental health all right i'm sorry proposed health agreement yeah i was trying to find group sure how long is this agreement uh this will be a three-year agreement from july 21 of this year yes next year but yes starting next year next july at one point in time mr taylor they there there was talk they were going to push the sports medicine piece back into 2022 is there is there a
023driver they pull on why they pulled it forward because we had such a tight window again we weren't going to prove this until march for a start in july that would have been very difficult there's still a clause in there that allows us to um hold off on sports medicine if we choose to for another year or two okay um there would be a slight penalty charge to us but it would be covered out of those cost savings so it wouldn't be an additional cost is that that gives us flexibility for next year and the following does the community feel like they'll be ready to go by then yep um and i'm assuming you know we've had a conversation with our current provider and we're we're prepared for a smooth transition and and handoff we
024did have conversations last year before this began we would issue notice in december given that that notice in the contract were prior um we've seen some transition at the clinic already um our doctor that had been there for a while to transition out on july 1st but the replacement's been really smooth and there's a doctor or an mp there frequently so i know my personal family's had good good results as well i guess i'm head shaking back here from the iu folks that don't don't agree with that so i probably that we haven't given an official notice yet we would need this contract to be um able to be to be made before we could give an official notice got it okay you say cost savings i see that as the the last item here
025on on the list can you give us kind of a scope of how large cost savings we think we we may see in the next two years it would depend on some of those details on whether or not sports medicine moves or not um but it was enough to fund the mental health position that we added already and funded out of our current budget something we give proceeds to that it also is enough money to put aside a pot of money to help with the students who are uninsured i don't have a specific the specific amount right now but it isn't the six figures six figures not five or seven but six okay any other comments or questions with respect to the community health proposed health care agreement hearing no other questions do i have
026a motion i move that we approve the comprehensive school healthcare services agreement between center grove and community health network do i hear a second second thank you mr alexander mrs toomey all those in favor of the health care services agreement with community health please signify by saying i i opposed i 4-1 the measure passes thank you mr taylor thank you thank you jason looks like you're staying up here for the next one this parker did me a favor and let me just kind of stack him up um now we're we're gonna hear a presentation and consider emotion with respect to the statement of benefits and compensate compensation for non-teaching staff mr taylor the assistant superintendent of human resources and technology i turned the microphone over to you sir thank you this is a typical thing
027that we bring this time of year as as we finish negotiations and we're working on getting those retro checks and payments out to individuals we like to take a look at our other employee agreements outside of the master teaching contract and make the appropriate changes that come from year to year there's a nice summary page here you also have a full markup version if you need to reference any of the specifics most of these changes deal with compensation changes or changes to cost of health care insurance and a few are some some typo changes that we've caught or from time to time we will add a new benefit or service and in this situation one of those is the second box on the bottom for the transportation department they would like to change some of
028the way that they compensate the mechanics and establish a level four and five um along and change the maintenance supervisor to a fleet manager so just some some changes in the compensation level there not not a huge cost overall to us but it will allow us to show some growth and honor some growth and experience in those mechanics positions and then the final one the other thing is um we decided uh that may be the other agreement i'm sorry yeah i'll wait till i get to the other agreement i think that's it to highlight from the statement of benefits and changes this also is the uh the new amounts and compensation based off the two percent rates that the board approved for teachers earlier this month thank you mr taylor do i hear any questions
029or comments with respect to the statement of benefits and common compensation is being proposed relating to non-teachers hearing no comments or questions do i hear a motion mr president i move that we approve the revised statement of benefits and compensation as presented do i hear a second thank you mr russell mr alexander all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye opposed the eyes have it 5-0 thank you i think you're still up here yep next we go to the certified staff handbook and mr taylor's going to give us a presentation of the changes that are being proposed and there's fewer here this is uh for all teaching staff and certified staff we added some language to clarify case conferences and how that time would be calculated currently they earn a portion of their
030day each time they serve in a case conference outside of the school day and we needed to make a change to account for that differently in payroll the same was true of covering class periods so in the unfortunate event that we cannot find a substitute or we just need to substitute for a short period of time we may reassign students to other classrooms for a short period of time even a period at the high school and that similarly adjusts that compensation it's to the teacher's benefit to allow them to earn a full day before it rolls we are adding an sel specialist position this year and because of that we wanted to align that with the 204 day certified calendar so there's language called out for that and then in progressive discipline we are going
031to carry over something from that we've had for the support staff for a while to the certified staff that at levels one and two which is the lower levels of discipline those would roll off of an employee's record after three years anything that's level three or higher would still remain thank you mr taylor do i have any questions or comments um i'm fairly certain i know the answer because i said through eighty percent of these conversations this has been fully vetted with you tag and you tag yeah we've discussed this we even gave them the ability to make some edits or suggestions they had many more last year this one's just four this year so and they only really brought the last one so sel specialist just for everyone's edification it's a teaching position um
032to help with those mental health services i talked about earlier it'll actually report to dr long and heather faustov and work throughout the entire district working with students and working with our school social workers and is this the position you said we helped fund by our savings yes the proceeds would be going towards that thank you any other questions or comments um i should add that was a position that we originally had asked for during the school safety referendum last year we were able to fund that this year finally i think we refer to that as plan a and plan b plan exactly the referendum we put things in right away plan b we find ways to pay for them and do them over time exactly and we have multiple in the referendum so this
033is one but it's a start great great any other questions or comments and relating that last topic or anything else hearing none do i hear a motion mr president i move that we approve the certified staff handbook as presented do i hear a second second thank you mr alexander mr russell all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye opposed you guys have it 5-0 thank you i forgot your name is it mr taylor thank you this will be the last one and then i'll see the floor and then you're going to take a seat now uh there's good you're going to give a presentation on a proposal for the approval of the support staff handbook yes mr taylor the microphone's yours again thank you and this one does have a few lengthier changes
034um a number of just employee level changes but then we did add some language that we typically email email out once a year we'll still continue with that but we wanted to firm it up about how the expectation for work on inclement weather and emergency closing days along with delays and how to handle work and time on an e-learning day closure obviously those are becoming more prevalent we needed to make sure that was formalized and in those agreements we had realized that our bereavement leave was not consistent across all employee groups and we wanted to fix that and so this actually adds a category to level levels b and c to make sure that they have a three-day option for an extended family member prior it was either a five-day option for immediate or just
035a one-day funeral and so it'd be a nice benefit for folks to have in those tough times and then we also have changed a lot of terminology change from probationary period to an introductory period for staff just a little better semantics a little better meaning of what that time period is the length of time still 60 days and didn't change that's when employees after they've completed that introductory period are eligible for their leave time and then we also have kind of spread out and provided a scheduled allocation of vacation leave for level c and some personal leave for level b so that cur our current language folks would receive all of the the amount no matter if they started in july or didn't start until the following may this one kind of gradually gives out
036personal and vacation leave depending on the employee's start date finally we clarified some compensatory time to distinguish the difference between hit and overtime for folks who don't work a 40-hour week that was key and then we clarified the eligibility for the experience incentive there were just a few things in there that caused some confusion we realized that we had not been honoring some retirement payments we went back and corrected those and just wanted to clarify that language that's it thank you mr taylor are there any comments or questions with respect to the proposed changes to the support staff handbook i did like the actual handbook it was it was in pink and very drew my height to it pretty quick yeah we moved it all to google docs so we can track all these changes
037every year as well so it's much more efficient yeah i appreciate that thank you the pink there any other questions or comments do i hear a motion mr president i move that we approve the support staff handbook as presented do i hear a second second thank you mr russell mr alexander all those in favor please signify by saying aye opposed the ice have it 5-0 thank you mr taylor take a seat thank you sir next we're asked to consider a motion to approve a joint escrow agreement for the emergency operations center lease with white river township fire department dr bill long assistant superintendent will be making a presentation this evening dr long thank you the microphone is yours thank you tonight we're asking the board to prove a resolution authorizing a joint escrow account with
038the white river township fire protection board and a subsequent sublease agreement with them as we partner with the fire department to construct the emergency operations center our attorney has worked out the details with the fire board's attorney and the white river township fire protection board will approve the same resolution at their meeting on november 4th 2020. the joint escrow account allows the white river township fire protection board to contribute funds of 875 thousand dollars towards the construction costs of the emergency operations center the sub lease then a sublease agreement will allow the white river township fire protection board to occupy approximately 8 700 square feet of the 16 000 square foot building fire department will house an ambulance a ladder truck and a staff of 12 firefighters or emts and will share the utility costs
039with us the lease is real similar to the lease we have with the white river township trustee mainly because the same attorney drew up both leases the initial term of the lease is for 15 years with three additional five-year terms as long as both parties agree um just if you mind do you want to finish this or can i answer some of the questions that you guys had before or that were brought up before i'd be happy to or if you want to finish this then i'd be happy to answer the location why we picked this location i think dr long if you'd like to respond to some of the citizens requests by all means so originally we had picked the orchard spot across the street from the high school and as you know we
040sent that out to bids and the bids came back over over our budget so we started looking at other pieces of property that the school owned we owned several lots there on the east side of morgantown road and those were large enough combined to be able to put that spot there we couldn't put it in front of the center of in front of center grove elementary for numerous reasons one it's not a big enough spot two it's right in the congestion where the center grove elementary and the middle school traffic are the parent drop-off point is that would be a mess and three that's the only point or the only place where they can do outdoor pe and where the both the seventh and eighth grade a and b football teams practice so we picked
041a site that we felt was was less expensive for the taxpayers feel like it was going to save the taxpayers over four hundred thousand dollars close to five hundred thousand dollars by changing sites and by moving it to the north side of stones crossing road it allows the white river township fire department to contribute funds towards the construction of that so anyway we're recommending approval of the joint escrow account and the sublease um tonight the resolution that authorizes that tell you here tonight we're all running out of breath talking in our mind it's the mask thing man i'm doing the same thing so i i you know i feel your pain need oxygen later right i have a question it's north of stone's crossing road yeah why does that matter so the fire boundaries uh
042south of stones crossing is bargersville fire department north of stone's crossing is white river township fire department that's our that's the their fire district boundaries and remind me too why do we want to locate this facility so close to elementary middle and high schools we wanted it on the main campus for a quick response time um for a couple of reasons one when we had michael dorn do our facility our safety assessment one of his recommendations was to look for ways that we can reduce the response time because we all know active shooting events and major catastrophes at schools typically last less than 90 seconds and having a quick response time will save lives that's why we started looking around the main the main campus area to have it close by can you tell us
043who michael dorn is just for those sure he's the ceo of um safe havens international it's the company that we hire to do our safety assessment for the entire corporation now you talked about the sixteen thousand square foot facility eighty six hundred you said i believe about eighty seven hundred eighty seven hundred would be white river township right what's in the remaining the other part is where the center grove police department will will be we'll move out of the the prc old maple grove and into there we'll also create a spot where we can monitor all of our cameras all of our alarms uh all from from one one single location and i know you presented this to us when we consider it for the orchard before sure i'm just wanting to refresh no that's
044okay before we i could probably talk about it in my sleep we've been working on it for so long and i know that you can and i appreciate that i know you put a lot of effort into it um tonight you're only asking us to put money into a fund right we don't have bids received yet no we're asking you to to allow us to create an escrow account that would allow the fire department to to put their money in with ours and we haven't accepted bids yet it's out on the street for bids i think we're talking about november 7th i believe if you'll let me look it up real quick because when we'll accept the or when that will open bids and then at the november board meeting we'll bring those um to
045you for approval yeah i'm sorry november 10th is when we open the bids and we will hopefully bring something to the board at the next board meeting any other questions or comments from any of the board members i have one uh dr long i i understand these gentlemen's concerns and and they're very legitimate um i know you partnered with white river on station 53 have you heard any concerns since that has been built with from neighbors or noise or anything that they kind of alluded to or any other issues with the citizens we have not i don't know if chief pell can answer that oh there you are um but i also know that he's looked at the distances from from houses based on their various um fire departments or where their stations are and
046this is honestly one of the farthest away from houses that that they have but i don't want to steal chief bell's thunder i just want to ask him because i know it's right there on the school sure property so to speak so i don't you might get a lot of questions or people should call you on that so i didn't know if you well the other thing and i am stealing these thunder so i didn't want to get a bias opinion i wanted to oh well the other thing that chief pals talked about doing is when they pull out they don't automatically hit their horns hit their their sirens and everything right they know they're in a residential and quite honestly that's where they build fire stations because that's where people need them you know
047we don't build them out in the country it's like people say to us why don't you build a school where there aren't any houses well because we need to build and wear their kids and and that's the reason why you know having them close by for us for quick response but it also it helps cover the the whole white river township as far as protection for ambulances and fires it's not just for the school they're not only going to respond to school alarms and stuff they're going to respond all over white river township and of course they have an agreement with bargersville and if needed they'll cover that area too so it's it's beneficial for all of the taxpayers not just the center grove um school community chief fell could do you mind answering mr
048hubbard's question you thought you were just gonna come and watch and hear you get called out i thought he was eye candy so in the we had no remonstrance to the station itself in the final step we had to get a variance for signage because it's backlit signage which isn't contemplated in our current our current ordinances and we had one resident that was concerned about light pollution and it ended up being an excellent result they shared their concerns with me and our fire protection district board we went to the contractor we added dimmers to the lights and timers and we added some shielding so that it would shield it away from their property and i even got feedback from them saying they were very happy with the difference that it made is that something that's
049in our design it's not did you want to talk about distance yeah i looked at the distances i've been in fire service 31 years i've worked in all kinds of fire houses from the city in annapolis to down here we do typically put our our firehouses in residential neighborhoods we want to be close to population bases we need to be on roads that provide us good access because that results in quicker response times that improves quality of life at times it even improves property values because of the quality life that it brings to the community people want to be near public safety and in in our current firehouses we have one station that is about 65 feet from the firehouse and i got one complaint in the 13 years i've been here and it was
050because the trash company picked the dumpster up to too early in the morning so that was easily resolved we have a great relationship with our neighbors and i empathize that it can be a little unnerving to not know what a firehouse is going to bring but i would like for the board and people in the audience to remember that we're family people and we're living in a residential setting as well so just as we don't want a police car running red lights and sirens past our firehouse in the middle of the night we're not going to do it with our fire trucks we have down times where we turn the speakers off outside we ask the crews to not play basketball do things that will create excessive noise this is not going to be a
051training ground this is going to be people coming in for shift change in the morning quietly leaving the next morning and whatever calls we take during the shift so i think we have a good history in this distance between brent ridge and this eoc is even greater than it is some of our other firehouses so you've only had one complaint the whole time you've ever been in the fire department that was it the dumpster i've had i've had the two complaints the one about the light for the new house and then the one about the dumpster yes that's exactly right it's i'd say that's i love being part of the center grove community we have fire and ems personnel that have grown up here and they care about the community and they're good they're good
052respectful neighbors and as fire chief anybody in this community can pick up the phone call me or walk in my office and say hey i'm not happy can you please fix it and we will do our very best to fix it while still providing the best service that we possibly can that's what i that's what i like about doing life in this community and i'll make that assurance to anybody here tonight too so somebody had a complaint about this new firehouse you do your best to work with them and try to find a resolution certainly thank you mr hover any other comments or questions so i just i guess just one more of a statement or a comment as we've been you know working with both bargersville fire department and white river township fire department
053and in the county um as a whole the the county commissioners have expressed on more than one occasion their happiness and and all of the organizations working working together for a common cause and both bargainsville and white river protect our school buildings so us having a close relationship and partnership with them moving forward becomes i think even more paramount even as we you know continue to move forward and and investigate you know what do we do down at walnut grove and and some of the other school properties that we have the the other piece of the equation is 185 days a year there's 8 000 people within this two square miles um that's that's a small that's a small town or a small small town in a lot of cases and you know the closer
054we can put the sheriff's department who will have a substation in the building the fire department who have space in the building our own police department who protects those those buildings and the more those organizations work together and create a cohesiveness i think the better off in the long run the community as a whole is going to be when all those organizations work together so i've been asked a couple times what's the driver for combining this and you know when we when we built uh station will they move station 53 to the property there because they were being evicted due to i-69 you know it created some unique challenges for them and and we we began a a partnership at that point that i i foresee is continuing with both departments as we move forward
055i agree thank you mr alexander any other questions or comments for either chief pell or dr long chief pal i appreciate you dr long knew he's gonna be on the spot but i appreciate you uh coming up and being on the spot uh that's what i'm here for seeing no more questions or comments do i hear a motion mr president i approve joint escrow agreement and emergency operations lease i hear a motion do i hear a second i'll i'll second that thank you mrs toomey and thank you mr alexander all in favor of the motion to approve the joint escrow agreement and emergency operations center lease with the white river township fire department please signify by saying i i opposed the ice have it 5-0 thank you for your time thank you thank you thank
056you we're going to do some great things thank you jeremy appreciate it dr long you anticipate having the bids back in a couple weeks and november 10th is the day we open them okay so are you anticipating then at our next meeting it's the day we open bids november 10th yeah they haven't come in yet they'll be delivered that day they'll bring them usually in person and we'll open them that day and okay dr long do you anticipate then having a proposal at the next board meeting yes at the november board meeting that's our goal thank you thank you next we have a consideration of a motion to approve resolutions approving the issuance of bonds and an additional appropriation for the bonds presented by dr paul gabriel cfo thank you this evening we're requesting the
057board's approval of a bond issue in the amount of five million one hundred thousand dollars which we'll use for the purpose of uh maintenance projects and technology i'm sorry dr gabriel let me let me back you up for it a 10 28 hearing i need to officially open the hearing so i apologize i hit the reset button if i may this evening's board meeting has been appropriately advertised as a 1028 preliminary determination hearing on facility improvements equipping equipment and land improvements i'll turn it over to myself to run the hearing first i'd like to call dr gabriel to make a presentation about the projects the financing of the projects and the actions we're taking this evening he'll make a brief presentation then there'll be time for questions and public comment thank you dr gabriel okay
058as i was saying these uh this bond issue is used for maintenance projects and for technology we've been doing this since about 2009 every year as we look at our budget needs issuing a a set of bonds to assist in these areas these are typically paid off in two years so that every year we issue a new set but the the bonds from two years ago roll off as those payments go away so that it doesn't necessarily increase the tax rate to issue these bonds part of this whole process is is a careful analysis of what our needs are and mr taylor and dr long talk with principals and central office departments about what their plans are for the coming year and the result of that is a list of specific projects pam you can
059move to the slides so um these these slides are mostly part of our budget presentation that you would have seen at our last board meeting this slide shows the technology i'm sorry shows the maintenance projects that are needed totaling 2 million five 995 dollars and the next slide shows the technology projects that we are uh needing in the in the coming year totaling two million one hundred and five thousand dollars um and just a few things about the tax rate um our total tax rate is going to be going up slightly next year this slide if you can yeah show the whole slide that's good uh shows that are well our debt service rate has been going up slightly the balance of our rate has been going down slightly and the net impact of those
060two together is that we have maintained a level tax rate less than where we started in 2009 the next the next slide comes right from the budget presentation and shows you where we've been and what we're proposing we expect next year's rate to be just slightly less than a dollar three and then again just for comparison purposes we like to show this chart that shows how we compare with other districts in the county and we are pretty much in the middle of the pack which is the same spot we've been for many years so with that background information i turn the hearing back over to mr daniels thank you dr gabriel this is the appropriate time for members of the public to comment on the facility improvements equipment and land improvements discussed by dr gabriel
061are there members of the public who would like to comment seeing no members of the public um i now close this public hearing are there any board members who have any comments or questions with respect to the presentation by dr gabriel well i just uh basically what you presented are things that uh improve throughout the school district right that's correct this touch is not just one building it touches every building in some fashion or another yeah without raising the tax rate right that's correct thank you mr russell any other questions or comments seeing no more questions or comments may i have a motion to approve the 1028 preliminary determination resolution presented this evening mr president i move that we approve the resolutions approving the issuance of the 2020 bonds for facility improvements equipping and land
062improvements and the resolutions approving an additional appropriation for these bonds do i hear a second second thank you mr russell mrs toomey beat you to it mr alexander sorry about that that's better all right all those in favor please signify by saying i i opposed the eyes have it five zero dr gabriel we're not going to let you go away that easy next we're going to consider the 2021 budget and dr gabriel has a presentation related there too i turned the microphone over to you dr gabriel thank you if you can go to the second slide it shows you a little bit about the the progress of the budget on september 11th this was advertised on the state gateway website and on our website as appropriately needed to be done and then at our last
063board meeting we had a hearing and this information was presented been very little changes since then this evening we're asking the board to actually adopt the the various budgets and the resolutions that are included there i'm just going to hit a couple of of of highlights that are slightly different can flip the slide five our enrollment has changed slightly from when the budget was originally advertised our ultimate official enrollment on september the 18th was 8845 that's an increase of 95 students from last year next slide the the enrollment basis of the budget was actually 88.65 and the reason for that is that we closed the budget to any further changes about the middle of of august and that was our prediction of where we would end up at that time our enrollment actually was ended
064up being a little bit less than that our final enrollment so if you look at the the advertised budget included in enrollment of 88.65 our final enrollment was 88.45 that difference of 20 students impacts us by hundred and twenty one thousand six hundred dollars so that means we'll be short that much in our budget for next year uh and that's i mean the immediate answer to what do we do is that that'll have to come from cash balance uh so then if you could turn to slide 18 just uh i'm not going to go through the rest of the budget because there's been no changes since it was presented last month just like to summarize the key items there and that is that the education fund and the operations fund are balanced budgets our final
065m our final adm enrollment as i mentioned was 88 45 up 95 students from last year our estimated tax rate for next year will be a dollar and 2.6 cents which is up a dollar it was up 1.93 cents from the current tax rate and our estimate of the annual impact on a typical home three hundred thousand dollars is it would increase their taxes by fifteen dollars annually so uh last slide then uh there's a lot more information about the budget available on our website you have the website address here if you want to have any further information and with that i'd be happy to answer any questions we're asking the board to approve the budgets and the resolutions this evening thank you dr gabriel do i hear any questions or comments from the board
066well i just have let's just suppose we're dealing with cowood for another whole year how could that affect our budget um i think that if you look at it from two sides one is the income the revenue side how much money we have available it would appear that that that will have very little impact because the bulk of our money is based upon our enrollment that's already reported and we have built in a small decrease for the for the spring reporting in february when we report it again so on the revenue side i don't see much variation or much concern that covid would continue to impact that on the expense side that's where the big variable is and we have already expended or committed over 800 000 dollars in expenses do the various things associated
067with covid that includes a lot of things like the equipment to monitor temperature and cleaning equipment and personal protective equipment and additional staff to for cleaning when we add up all those categories we've spent quite a bit so the question is what are we going to spend in addition to that in 2021 and if that happens we've set aside additional money in our emergency account for next year and i i would hope that that would cover all of that without a problem if it doesn't i would say we'd have to go into our cash balance a little bit further for that i would certainly hope that won't happen and again uh that we we should have a cash balance over five million dollars so i don't see that as uh you know these are being
068significant issues so hopefully uh unless there's something that we can't see if it's just more of the same i think we'll be in good shape thank you mr russell do i hear any other questions or comments as it relates to the budget hearing no additional questions or comments do i have a motion mr president i move that we approve the 2020 the 2021 budgets for all funds as presented along with the following resolutions resolution to adopt the capital projects fund plan resolution to adopt the bus replacement plan resolution for appropriations and tax rate resolution for blanket appropriations modification thank you mr alexander those were a lot of resolutions do i hear a second i'll say it thank you mr alexander and mr hubbard all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye aye all
069those opposed the eyes have it 4-1 thank you dr gabriel seeing no more action items we now move on to other of business um i'll go around the table start ladies first mrs toomey do you have any other comments i do not thank you mr russell i do not at this time mr hubbard no sir mr alexander i had nothing at this time sir dr arkanov yes sir thank you i just want to give a quick shout out shout out to our students wear the masks great job keep it up shout out to our athletes and our eca's that are out there doing things every day i was really impressed that our superintendent at the last football game i'm sorry not our superintendent our athletic director at the last football game along with the ihsa
070director went out to midfield told the whole fans section to put their masks on i bet we had 80 with him on after he said it i think we had about 100 so let's make it through seasons let's make it through school do the right thing follow the cdc guidelines they're there for a reason folks a shout out and saying kids let's hope we make it through all these seasons and we had a tennis team do amazing things we had some kids out in quarantine and they were still winning sectionals regionals and semi-state ivan smith's a heck of a coach he's been around since i was here so just a couple years ago but ultimately thanks everybody let's keep doing the right thing that's all i have the last reminder i have is november 19
071is our regular board meeting right here in this very room at seven o'clock do i hear a motion for adjournment the move thank you mr alexander mr russell all those in favor please signify by saying aye all those opposed eyes have it we're adjourned