001the September >> 2025 facilities and finance committee work session. Uh some young people in the room maybe who are here for a class perhaps and thank you for choosing us. Finance and facilities is always the interesting meetings. Yeah. So uh we have first up public comment. >> no one names. Yeah, >> just starting. >> All right, so we can move past 21 and then there's no response. So 22, we're on to item 3.1. Trisha, thank you for the careful minutes. >> You're welcome. >> Karen, did you have anything? >> Accurate. Everything looks good >> as always. Thank you. >> Oh god. Any comments on the minutes? No. Okay. Minutes are approved. So we move on to section four uh consideration of accounts. Emily here. >> Hello Don, please me to take this. >> Sure. Go
002ahead. So, if I could uh just ask you folks to introduce yourself and maybe um for those people who might be observing um for the first time, maybe just a sentence or two explanation about what you're going to be going through. >> Okay. I my name is Emily Ship and I am the assistant business executive for the school district. Um and each meeting we provide something called the consideration of accounts. It reviews the treasures report. Eddie. Um, what I'll be going through is surplus property that we have to have board approved for us to get rid of old things and and things that we aren't using anymore. Um, and tonight we're actually approving the tax warrant because our tax collection season is coming up. And we also do things like approve um donations coming into
003the district and how those donations are going to be appropriated into our budget. So, every meeting I will be here to review these types of things. Um, this is a fairly small agenda tonight. So, and I will have Lori introduce herself. >> Hi, my name is Lori Mudge. Um, I'm the district treasurer of the school and I will usually come to the finance meetings to go over the treasures report for everyone. Um, it basically just states um the beginning and ending balances of the month that shows the receipts and the dispersements throughout the month for each account. >> Good evening. I'm the assistant superintendent, Dominic Lacy, excuse me, the assistant superintendent for business and finance. Normally, I would be discussing important topics like the budget and so on, but this evening I'm here in support
004of this fantastic team >> and still important topics. >> It's still very important topics. >> Yes, of course. Absolutely. So to move on to the consideration accounts and normally Lori would speak about this but I can tell you from sitting in her position for many many years July is really an an uneventful month as is August and as we start into September then you will start seeing our state aid and then in October our tax collection starts. So July and August, we are really just going through the months of um and very minimal collections of revenues um and really expending and getting down to the bottom of the barrel and most of our account balances until we start that new revenue in the new in the new school year. Um so there's really not too
005much unless you have anything you want to add, Lori. >> Not too much. Um as July shows, there's not much activity going on. Um we are in the currently finishing up our audit uh for the 2425. It's not quite finished yet and that'll be finishing up in the next couple weeks. So that's really how we spend our time over the summer is closing one year, starting the next and preparing um for our audit and going through that process. So um the other the next thing is surplus property. Again, uh when we have antiquated equipment, um unrepable equipment, um you will see this type of resolution and in this particular case, it is a refrigerator. Um we also will be doing buses during the year and things like that. But this one is just an old
006refrigerator. I believe it is at the Buon cafeteria, Jen. No, it's at the high school. Oh, it's an Enfield. Okay. So, that is the one thing that I made a mistake on here. I was assuming it was in the main kitchen, but it is a an old refrigerator that is um irreparable, inefficient, and it's it's more costly to repair it than it is to just replace it at this point. Um we have the tax warrant. So, Tomkins County um prints our tax bills for us. So at this time of the year we are uh giving uh permission the board gives permission for us to collect the taxes. Um and in doing so we have to set a tax rate and that is based on our assessed value of all our property. This actually changed after
007I had originally put the chart on uh the original agenda. Um I think Trisha updated it today. The tax rate did drop a little bit with the changes. it with some additional assessments in some of the uh taxable values in some of the municipalities. So right now we are at a 15.129299 per thousand for the Tomkins County. Um and then that equates to the same using the equalization rates for Cander and Richford. Uh Tomkins County finan assessment office is still in the process of reviewing. We're quite confident this is where they're going to be at. I was trying to get a solid figure, but they have had people out of their office and they do all the printing for us. This is fairly solid. There is a possibility, a very slight possibility, this rate might
008be tweaked a little bit before the board sees it, but I'm pretty confident this is this is solid. It would only be Richford and Cander and and that's not going to be that much. number again wasif, >> pardon me, >> the number again was >> uh for per thousand for the Tomkins County municipalities is 15.129299 per thousand of assessed value and >> and what is it currently? >> Oh, you'd have to ask me that. I think it was six. I think it was still No, went it went up. >> So, I'm thinking it was You know what? I'm going to have to look it up, Todd. >> Yeah, >> I got too many I got the new numbers in me. that have >> um I thought I actually had it written on this thing here
009in front of me, but I don't. Let me look that up and get back to you and um let you know what that is so the public can know what that is. >> Um then we also have some uh uh money that has come in, revenue come in from the IPI. Um they support a lot of what we do in the district. Um they're small grants that the teachers apply for and um this is just appropriating these funds into the budget. uh for a total the IPI grants are a total of $4,4164 and then we also received an $840 uh donation for our community closet at the high school. >> So that is all I have for this and if you give me a few moments I will look up that tax rate from last
010year. >> Thank you. >> I put it out of my head because we're in a new year. >> Any questions? >> Questions, comments? Well, um just out of curiosity, why Cander and Richford are higher? >> Um they're high the rate comes out higher, but their equalization values. So their property is Tomkins County properties are assessed at 100%. Whereas Cander and Richford are assessed at uh 61.5% and 70% of their assessed value. It's called a state equalization rate. So even though their rate is higher, if they were assessed at 100% then their rate would be exactly what the rate is that I referenced for Tomkins County. But because their equalization rate and it's a state, it it's it's the area that they live in and how they um assess the properties in those particular municipalities. So
011they're just not assessed at 100%. But they're still paying the same Okay. Well, I'd like to thank IPI and I know you always join in doing that. Thank you. >> Yeah. IPI Ethica public education initiative for always in support of our teachers and students in the various programs that um we do as well as donations come through IP IP uh to the school district which we're truly appreciative of. >> Anything else? Is no one wanting more details on the refrigerator? Well, just that um as a result of the start of the audit, even um those of us on the board who were here as of June 30th, 2025, we received notice um about the audit as well as to make sure that we um verify or confirm that no fraudulent activity has passed through us
012as board members and also the audit. It goes through everyone >> and we'll have those results soon. >> Yeah, we should. Well, uh, October 21st, I think is our next finance meeting. So, we'll have that for for that meeting. Also, just really quickly, we're in the process of final not finalizing, but the the first part of the review of the RFP for banking services. We anticipate seeing those this Thursday. >> So, we'll start to share that information as it becomes available. Well, I think we are ready to leave the four do something items behind and move on to five. So, the first item is strategic approaches to capital project. Um, Dan, I think Dr. Brown has some comments. >> So, we've got Dr. Brimman, Dr. Brown, Chris. You've welcomed me back. >> Yeah, right. I
013think it go up like Yeah. Yeah. >> I'll start again. >> Yes. >> Greetings. >> Start with introductions. >> Yes. Uh, greetings. Uh, I continue to serve as superintendent. My name is Lubel Brown and I'm joined by my friend >> Dan Brimman, assistant superintendent of operations. >> I'm Christopher Glowitz. I work with Tetrate Tech Architects and Engineers as an architect and I lead our project teams. >> Welcome. Yeah, thank you for the opportunity to be here this evening and uh we and others have been enjoying our owner, architect, construction manager OACM meetings for the last several years and uh most recently the last year or so um the conversations have been intense around uh potential capital project that we were hoping to put in front of our board first and then in front of the
014community to for the deferred maintenance and ongoing um challenges that we have with a couple billion dollars worth of assets. So um at our most recent meeting um we were we continued the conversations about timeline and I and members of my team uh continue to reiterate the aggressive nature of the timeline and we also noted um a couple of things. One some staffing challenges that we're having right now. We, as you know, we've had some transitions in the superintendent office and other offices. And what we've learned over the years, um, has always been the case is putting on an election or any type of a vote with this community with the many sites we have takes a significant amount of attention and labor. And some of the staffing challenges that we've had in the past
015have been um, highlighted, highlight how hard that can be. And so, we've been struggling um, with how we could do that. um in December. Uh that coupled with uh we met with our communications team and we sort of backwards mapped what we did the last time we went out for a capital project and the the number of community conversations that we conducted surveys, public meetings and forums. Um we were struggling to figure out how we could fit all of those in between now noting that the board hasn't ultimately decided on the actual scope of the project between whenever that could be. it could be as early as September 30th or in October to do that within a matter of 3 to four weeks would be tough and a challenge for us. So that brought us
016some pause as well. And then uh you know uh Dr. Brian and uh Dr. Lisa and I we've been in many conversations with folks from Cornell University and the group that is working with this RFP that we're immersed in right now and we're learning a lot and we are looking forward to bringing the results and the what we've learned from that RFP to you and the community and we're looking at a timeline December, November, December. I'm looking for Dr. Alicia, but it's going to be November, December, and we know that was going to inform this project. All that to say, um, our last OACM meeting, um, we brought those challenges to the group, and we thought it may be good to start here in committee and then go to the entire board about timeline. And
017I know Chris has some what we have talked about as far as the aggressive approach to what it would look like in December. And we have some proposed timelines that would look like us having this conversation or vote in May. So, just putting it here tonight as a first conversation with hopes and a recommendation that we bring to the entire board and not necessarily a recommendation for me, but I am asking y'all to help me think through this. And if you're like me and you're struggling with how we're going to do all this before December, um, then I would be at that point recommending that we push this out until May. But Chris, do you want to put those up what I just shared in >> Sure. Fant why why you're doing that? Just for
018for people who might be attending their first facilities and finance meeting say the RFP's request for proposal and it is Cornell University uh has agreed to help us understand the demographics of this district 10 20 years out because we need to know how many children will be living where in order to plan appropriately. >> I tried my best not to use an acronym and you caught one. Thank you for checking me. >> Thanks. So what we're seeing now is the schedule that we have been talking about with a public vote date on December 9th and sort of working backwards. And you can see, you know, that vertical red line is kind of where we are in time right now. And that short green bar that is, you know, from now until December 9th just being
019a couple months. So, uh, there's a lot that would need to happen in that time frame. And so on the next slide, we'll see we'll see a longer green bar. So look for that, um, sort of down near the bottom. So I just put this up for you know to set a baseline for what we've been been talking about for a little while. And now we have a different suggestion which um recognizes the demographic study review that Dr. Brown just mentioned you know receiving in that November December time frame and you know wanting to incorporate a little bit of time to digest that and make sure that we're moving forward with that information. Um then we'll see this board of education adoption of the seeker and proposition resolutions. Seeker being the state environmental quality review
020act which is a New York state requirement. Those documents are ready to go from your legal team. But this gives us um an opportunity you know to reconsider that if you know if we need to. uh there is a requirement that that those are adopted 45 days before the vote. Then we move to the green bar which is communications to voters. And you can see that that gives us a much more time to set up um a communication strategy that will allow the district to communicate in all the various ways Dr. Brown laid out and more potentially, you know, uh, following on the communications that were done ahead of the 2019 vote and the 2024 vote, we have, you know, a lot of strategies that that we vetted um at our disposal there. So this
021gives us time to to do all that and uh leading to you know May 19th which is the third Tuesday in May which folks may know is the New York State uh determined date that all school districts vote on their budgets. Um and so many school districts align capital project votes with that with that date as well although there is no you know actual requirement to do that. Then at the very bottom, I, you know, I I put in a uh a project schedule. So, I wanted to be sure that we could still get work done starting in 2027 and not, you know, if if we're moving to the May date, that um reduces the time for us to, you know, being a little selfish here, the time for us to design a project and
022and, you know, get it to bid and get it to construction. um when we're you know taking six months out of that and I think I just wanted to kind of present that as a proof of concept that there is a project we could conceive of to maintain that schedule um so we wouldn't be looking at another year of cost escalation. So that's a little bit in the weeds. Um but those are a couple different um ideas about how to approach this question for us. So I I I believe that the decision for us tonight is if we should make a recommendation to the to the full board as to the revised schedule. Is there discussion on that? >> I I agree. I don't think it's it's possible. We we don't have enough time to
023to get something out by December. It's not feasible. So, um, I'm in full support of making a recommendation to push it back to May to give us enough time to, I think, you know, have the RP come out as well as, you know, do more due diligence, put put forward something I think is um, you know, more well thought out and has we can also get community input from. So, I think we haven't done enough of that as well. Right. And I'm looking at the schedule with the communication to voters that we didn't even start communicating and although knowing that we wouldn't start communicating until the board had voted on it anyway. So I appreciate shifting the timeline along and I have here the um climate action plan the draft that our climate action team
024of educators came to us back in May the proposal which we had stated that we would in include like a committee or ad hoc committee to discuss this and at I recall at one of the OACM meetings um Todd had brought about some points in this climate action plan that um that we had stated in in our um capital project and there might be some things that um need more look into and which um Dan needed to be in discussion around that. So I am in agreement with moving it. I know with the RFP coming out the end of November, the results of the RFP for the request for proposal for the enrollment demographics throughout looking at our bu facilities throughout the school district and that's due the end of November, early December that it
025would be a challenging turnaround for this. Yeah. So I I'm in favor of the shift. >> Okay. So I think we have consensus that uh this committee will recommend uh to the full board that we follow the revised timeline. >> Thank you. >> Thanks. Appreciate it. >> Yes. >> Up next item 52. Thank you. >> Uh campus construction. >> Yeah, that's what I thought. >> Okay. Thank you so much. Bob, when are you ready? I just ask same if you could introduce yourself and just say a sentence or two about what it is that we do with these updates for people who are new and uh take it away. >> Certainly. Thank you. Uh Travis Randall. I work for campus construction management uh group and we're manage the active construction phases of the work that's
026going on uh under currently under the 2019 capital um referendum project. So so thank you Trisha. Um so uh again uh we have a number of phases. I'm going to uh skip through some of the kind of previous phases that are basically in closeout. There's not much change um monthtomonth on these projects just because they are in their they're kind of last little bits of of completion. Um so phase two I'll skip uh Enfield Water basically done. It's in a paperwork process. Um 3B2 is the upcoming project. Uh tentatively bidding that October um most likely looking at uh October 21st for a bid date for that. um for 3B2 uh like to get letters of recommendation to the board um by Friday. It's Friday, October I think 28th 26th board I believe there's a voting
027meeting October is it 30th >> 28th to 28th >> so I might be a couple days off uh on my dates there. So, uh, looking for a a fairly short turnaround from, uh, letter of recommendation to the board after we we, uh, there's a process. We open bids, receive public bids, open read them. Uh, campus and tetr, we do a post bid review where we vet the contractor, ensure they're qualified, and that we're both parties are comfortable accepting the bid. Then we write the letter of recommendation to the board. U just kind of a little bit of a deeper dive uh in into that. I'll uh reach out um to uh to the board with with some more information on that um very soon because that date's uh coming up about a month. So question,
028Travis, we're going out to bid early October or late September because how much time frame are we given for the bid for it to be in the newspapers and publicized and all of that? >> Yeah. Uh uh goes uh what we call kind of on the street uh out to prospective biders. Um to be honest with you, we already we pre-reach out and we start we start uh procuring bid interest. Campus is already in that process for several months now of notifying contractors that there's going to be a project general scope. We can't share the documents yet. Um but working on bid procurement uh that goes to the street uh September uh let me is it 16th I want to say I'd have to look I'm I'm not sure right off the top of my
029head but uh uh yep notice in the newspaper uh gets u put out several plan rooms where contractors uh typically will get the bids, you know, will get the contract documents rather and work on putting their bids together. So, that would give them, you know, a good time a approximately a month um to get their bids ready to prepare their bids. >> Yep. Let's see. So, uh, so moving on, just a couple of quick photo photos there of, uh, the Enfield, uh, domestic water system on the left. Uh, the the old system, on the right, the new system. Uh, much cleaner system. Uh, the old one was obviously quite out quite outdated, very old. Um, so there's that. So, uh, 3B1, that's our primary active phase of, uh, construction. So, uh, at BJM, the only
030work that's remaining there is, uh, work on reinstalling some blinds uh, that have that have come loose. So, we've noted that deficiency. We're working on that. Uh, Boon Middle School Kitchen is complete. Uh except for a few punch list items left to complete there. The work is complete. Kitchen's in use. Uh Enfield uh we did a a lot of exterior abatement and interior abatement. That's all complete. Uh exterior facade work is ongoing. Uh then jumping to the high school, the U parking lot near the uh teachers association building uh behind behind area A. Some new paving there, curb, sidewalk, uh paving striping, signage. Uh we have structural steer steel is nearing completion at both additions. There's ceilings going in. Uh temp partitions were uh compete uh completed. uh rebar for the uh one of the
031additions for the concrete slab uh is also nearing completion. We've also started uh installing exterior CMU uh block wall assemblies for the physics edition. Uh in the new uh in the the boiler room, new air handler unit HU uh is installed and running. just working on some minor uh minor finishes on that. Um that serves the kitchen and cafeteria. As noted, uh high school area G&H, all the uh HVAC equipment has been installed. Uh there's a little bit of minor work for ceilings and uh chases to conceal some of the piping, whatnot still going on there. And I think that wraps up 3B1. Any questions on 3B1 or any of the phases? >> Well, at at Beverly J. Martin Elementary School, the reinstallation of the blinds are the blinds in their library. >> No, though,
032it's it's the classroom. It's the classroom. Yeah, the classroom kind of roller shades. Um the library, different substrate, a different attachment method. So, no issues with those ones. We've had some issues uh that we're working with the principal with. There's several of the shades have came loose with use. These are manually operated with the strings and whatnot. So, we just want to make sure that they're not they're going to be robustly, you know, attached for the, you know, for the life of the shade. >> When's the completion date? Uh we should have them all down within uh a few weeks. We're doing it off hours uh for several hours each evening. I would say within a few weeks, then we're going to turn around and begin reattaching them, which will also take a couple weeks
033to get them back up after they're all back down. It's it's each classroom. So, we're we're doing them all. >> We're doing them all to check in every one of them. Not necessarily that there's reinstallation for every classroom. >> Every classroom's getting reinstalled. Yeah. Just as a just out of an abundance of caution, we're going to re remove them all, reattach each one. Mhm. >> And this is all under whatever warranty or anything like that because when one I would assume that there would be some sort of quality control checks put in place once the blinds were installed. That's exactly right. This is this is no added cost. This is the quality control check that happened and you know uh weren't happy with the install. So the contractors uh reinstalling Yeah. every room as a
034precaution uh just ensure that that we have a a quality install on those. >> Thank you. >> Yep. Uh so uh just a couple photos uh uh structural steel with the additions uh the new AHU. This photo is uh several weeks old but gives a general uh idea of the size of the air handler unit that was installed in the boiler room. Uh comes in multiple sections. uh the paving uh behind area A the high school and that's it questions comments all >> thank you very much >> thank you so that leads us to 53 other discussion items are there such items >> well the climate action plan proposal to do we is our next step to bring it to the board with a motion to get an advisory committee not a not a committee
035advisory council or ad hoc >> I do not know >> we can find out >> okay what >> have we what is happen to >> investigate put that on my task list to investigate. >> So as well, >> I think there was like some talk that we were going to have some conversations with some of the people that were making some of the proposals that were on that committee uh maybe as the school year went on. I I thought maybe that was the next step. >> No, I I think the next step was to include Dan and some other people into that conversation to like a >> pretty adop. Okay. Well, that's a perfect segue into 61. I'm going to assign the following action item to myself and Karen to answer that question. >> Okay,
036which leads us to seven, agenda setting for the next meeting. Therefore, if we um if after talking with Dan and everything, if we pass this at the September 30th board meeting, then we could invite I don't know if we would invite the climate action team back or we we could put it on the agenda for next month. We could and we >> or have some initial discussion with them. >> We should, right? >> Yes. >> Shall's mandatory that we should >> conditional on >> right >> getting the answers we need. Anything else? Which brings us to 8.1, the close of the public meeting. >> Wow. >> Thank you. We're at uh 33 minutes. Thanks. >> That was easy. That was fast. It's faster than it's efficient. Efficient.