10.15.25 Special Board Meeting Presentations - 2025-10-15 22:14:25

001Thank you. Um, I'd like to introduce, uh, Jim Whi, he'll introduce his colleague that's here with him this evening from Performance Services. Um, we finished the first part of our meeting, and so the board has had a few moments to take a look at, um, the presentation that we have in our board packet. Thanks for bringing the booklets with you. Um, if you'd like to use the podium and stand or say whatever you're most comfortable with, we've got a microphone and a vailable. Yep. And welcome. Great. Thank you. Appreciate it. Talk on that. So again, Jim Wheaty with Performance Services, my counterpart, Jerry Dezi. Uh, good evening and thank you for letting us be here to present. We're very excited. If you have any questions, you can run 'em at the end or we can

002go as we go. So, uh, let's get started. Um, so who are we? Who's performance services? We've been around for 27 years now. We're in, uh, 16 states. And we've done over $3 billion worth of design build work in Wisconsin. We focus solely on K through 12 schools. That's all we do. So we don't build gas stations or warehouses or anything like that. We're experts in K through 12 schools. Some of the things that we do for districts are, uh, facility studies. We look at your buildings and physical, uh, aspects of that. We do feasibility studies. Um, we build new construction and then we also do renovations. Overall, our number one goal is commitment is a hundred percent customer satisfaction. So you can go to any school that we've ever worked with and give 'em

003a call and ask some help again and make sure by the time we leave that customer's happy. We're a little different than other firms out there. Um, we have everybody under one umbrella on our team. So we have our own architects, our own engineers, mechanical, electrical, plumbing, our own project managers, our own controls team, uh, educational consultants, performance assurance. So at the end of the job, we make sure the building's working perfectly. And then we also have community engagement specialists if you need help with fins. So again, we're a little different. Uh, we have one point of contact and one contract. So oftentimes in a construction project, you have your architect firm, you have your construction manager, and then maybe an engineering firm. They're together, maybe not. So you're gonna have at least two contracts,

004two different points of contact. The problem with that is if there's an issue in a construction project, which a lot of times there is, um, the architect's gonna say, well, I designed it right? And the construction manager's gonna say, well, I put it in right? And you get this. And the school district's going, I don't care. Just fix it. And that can take sometimes weeks or months to get done with us, since we're all on the same team. If there's an issue, my construction manager calls Jerry, who's the architect, and he's sitting right next to him, MCC cube and said, listen, there's a beam here. It's not supposed to be here. Can we get that fixed? Yeah, he designs it in a couple hours, sends it back, and it's done. So our speed of delivery's

005a lot faster. 'cause that, and this version, the construction manager can't touch that because the design's not done. He's legally, he legally can't change it. He has to wait for drawing speed and things like that. And there's two different companies. And again, that can take weeks. Sometimes I've seen a month just to make a small little change. So our speed of delivery's a lot better than anybody else out there. And since we are all under one umbrella, since we're designing it, we're implementing it. We have the controls team, we can guarantee no change orders. Now that's just not a pat on the back saying, Andrew, don't worry about it. Uh, no change orders. No, it's in the contract. So no change orders. So if you look at a big job, $10 million job, and a

006lot of times change orders can be sometimes up to 10%. That's a big number. So you're saving a lot of money. Again, we're a little different. One chef versus multiple chefs. If you're eating some soup and 10 chefs are putting ingredients in there and you go, it doesn't taste good. Well, whose fault is it? Does the guy put this and this and this? And you don't know. One point accountability. And then our cost rate is a lot flatter than most. So none of our subset subs and none of our subs buy equipment. We remove a lot of layers of markup that way. Usually a construction manager will have a mechanical contractor. We will have subs underneath them, buying equipment. By the time it gets to the school district, it's been marked up three or four

007times. We buy all the equipment, we save, we get that savings onto you. So chillers, boilers, things like that. We purchase that and we don't mark it up to you. So again, a little different. Uh, we guarantee the performance. We guarantee the price. So once we give you that price, that's the price you're gonna get. There's no change orders. We're not gonna get charged more. Um, we have subcontractors. They're the best. No change orders. And then long term accountability. We stay with you for the whole time. So programming is what we're talking about today. Feasibility study. Um, we have our own team of architects that only work with schools. And then we have educational planners as well. We have ex superintendents who have retired, who have been through the wars, been through multiple referendums, been

008multiple school districts. They help with their architects 'cause they know schools. And what we look at are many different things. So the educational needs. What are the needs of the district? We go through the, we go through your enrollment. How many people per class, how many students per class do you have? How many classes? We go through all that. We interview your teachers. We make sure we're doing the right thing there. Growth. Are you declining? Are you growing? 'cause that makes a big deal on what you want to do. Um, the current infrastructure, what your buildings look like. Um, physically, and I'll talk about that a little later. Uh, the learning environment, when we're done with a project, if we touch the classroom, we guarantee the learning environment. So we'll guarantee, guarantee light levels, il

009humidity levels, temperature, things of that. Uh, also learning environment. What is your learning environment? I gotta fly. It's killing me. What is a learning environment like in your district? Is it from 1980? Is it from 2000, which doesn't seem that long ago. This is 25 years ago? Or is it up to date? We're gonna look at that. We're gonna look at the physical aspects of the learning environment. Do you have a, uh, unit ventilator in the room that's loud and then if a kid's sitting by it, sometimes it's hard hearing the teacher. We're gonna look at those things, right? Um, safety, accessibility. A DA, uh, curriculum enhancement technology, community areas. Is there something that you guys are looking at that the community can use? Is there a room that the community would like to use

010or this community saying, we'd like to use this room for whatever. Uh, we want to get them involved. And then if you're touching a school district, if you're adding on or taking away physical spaces, you always wanna look at site traffic flow. It's pick up, drop offs. Always a big deal when comes to schools. Every school I talk to. Um, and then special ed. So the way we go about this is review the situation, established goals. So we're going to work hand in hand with you and your team to make sure we are trying to hit your goals. This is your school. We're newcomers in here. Now. We've been in this district many times, but what are your goals? Right? Um, and then we're gonna interview the stakeholders. So we're gonna interview, this may seem

011like a lot to you, but it has to be done. We're gonna interview your science teachers. We're gonna interview your gym teachers, your band teachers. 'cause the last thing we want to do, let's say we're talking about new science room, just for example. And we talked to the superintendent, we talked to the board. We build you a new science room, science lab. It's great. We don't involve the science teacher. And they come in that next summer and they go, well, what is this? This is not what I need. This is not what I wanted. Right? That's the last thing I want to do. So we interview most of the people in the school. We also talk to the community members if you want us to. Um, I'll talk to a, an issue we had down

012the road with a, with a district where if we didn't talk to a community member, we were in trouble. Um, we're gonna survey the fiscal conditions of the building. Uh, we've done a facility study here in this district years ago, five, six years ago. I'm sure things have changed. So we'll review that. But we're gonna look at your facility conditions, um, and then we're gonna identify your needs. We're gonna talk to you. Is this what you're looking to do, for example? Yes. Okay, then we're gonna give you drawings, renderings, then we're gonna give you costs, right? Because you want to know what, what is this gonna cost? We'd love to do it, but it mean cost too much. Again, different things working together. The physical conditions, the programming conditions, and the safety and security. Make

013sure it all works out. This is what I was talking about. We've done a facility study for you in the past. So our guys, our architects, our engineers know your buildings pretty well. Um, we've actually come up with some ideas for you in the past. Uh, so this is not gonna be brand new to us. Um, again, there's gonna be changes, but, uh, we've been there. So why a feasibility study? We've talked to a lot of districts, and this is usually the reasons they give us, determine the feasibility. You could have a ton of different ideas, right? Uh, we want to do this, this, this. Is it feasible. Our team will know that. Our architects, our engineers, it's the mechanicals. Like, if you want to change this, well, Jim, it's gonna be a problem because

014we've gotta run ducks this way, this way, this way. Is it feasible to do? And if so, what's it gonna cost? Right? You can give us pie in the sky. The best ideas. And I'm gonna tell you, uh, school board's gonna cost you $70 million. $70 million. We can't afford that. Okay, let's move that around. Let's give you different alternatives at this district. You wanted this. We've seen this. And so we can do different things that'll get you almost the same thing. Let's talk about that. Right? Does it align with your priorities and then plan for the future? 'cause I'm assuming that's kind of what we're looking at, right? We wanna make sure this is right for the kids down. So some of our experience, again, all we do is schools, uh, in Wisconsin. These

015are just some of the school districts we've worked with. Um, some examples of feasibility studies. We've done PE to Go school district. We did a $40 million, uh, referendum with them. Uh, they failed for referendums in a row, and they wanted a brand new high school. By the time they got to, they met us from fifth time. It's been I think seven or eight years. We did a lot of work for them. And we found out they couldn't build that high school. They couldn't afford it. So all they could borrow was for even the only referendum in the high school they could do was 40 million. And by the time we did this before, they could have got a new high school for 30 million. By the time eight years went down the road, 40

016million, we showed 'em what you could get. It's gonna be a real small high school. The gym's gonna be small. You're not gonna like it. It's, it doesn't have any bells and whistles, but here's what you can get. Or we talk to all the teachers. We talk to everyone in that school district. Here's what we can do with your new high, with your old high school. We can add a gym. We can add some science rooms and we can renovate your entire high school. We're gonna paint it. We're gonna give you new furniture, new flooring. It's gonna look brand new. Um, by the time we got done, and this was a good six months, eight months of work with them interviewing every teacher, finding out what they needed, we were able to renovate their old

017high school, make it look new, add on the things that they needed, and not build a great high school. So that's just some of the things that we do. Wisconsin Heights is a totally different, uh, animal, but the feasibility study worked. They had a high school and a junior high in one campus. Then in one town they had an elementary school and another town, they had an elementary school. And these elementary schools needed a lot of work. So we talked to the teachers, the superintendent, and then the community. And we said, okay, we can upgrade these two elementary schools, but it's gonna cost you X and a lot of money. Or we can build you a new elementary school. Attach it to, uh, your junior high and make it one campus. It's gonna save you

018a lot on, on busing and, and a lot of things. And it seemed like the right thing to do. And, uh, I agreed. The superintendent agreed, the board agreed. But when you got to the community, they said, listen, these are my elementaries and my community. I, my kid walks to this school. I don't wanna get rid of this school. Same with this one. And they saw it came down to a lot of months and a lot of work. But, uh, working together, hand in handed, uh, ended up they went with point hands. So they got rid of the two elementaries. Ruby Elementary building, brand new Elementary Avenue campus. Um, but that was a lot of work. And if that was the one I was talking to, we didn't get the community involved. They wouldn't have

019been happy and they wouldn't have passed the rough on. Right? So a lot of behind the scenes work goes on. Uh, then finally, just an example. Let's spend more that we're finishing up right now. Um, we're building 'em a new CTE building that they weren't sure that they needed until we got into it and did the study and talked to their teachers, talked to their community. They have a tech ed college down the road that a lot of kids go to. And so they wanted a more prepared to go to this tech ed, and they needed a new CTE building. We found out they needed a new wrestling room, which was huge in the community that we didn't even know about. Um, so by doing our studies, we find out a lot of different things.

020And sometimes you and the board and the district can be going this way, and then you have to turn this way. And it's all by doing these studies, figuring out, we think this is what we need. Do we need this? Yes. But can we do it a different way? Maybe we keep costs down. Yes. I'm just gonna skim through this real quick just to let you know that we do have rough running services because if you're going down this route and you're going to do a building project, every school in the state has to do a referendum, do building project for the most part, right? So we do have an entire team referendum team, marketing team that helps with referendums. Um, we do videos, backpacks on flyers, renderings unit. Just some examples. The cost for

021doing all of our work for you is zero. So let me explain. This is not a okay. What's, what's the deal, Tim? There's gotta be some something. Um, our owner, Tim Thoman, um, said this right away that, that all we do is work with schools. We know your budget constraints, right? We know the pressures you're under. We do not charge for facility studies or feasibility studies. Um, we take the risk on that. We know what your budgets are like, we want to help. Um, we did a facility study for you five or six years ago. We didn't charge it for it. Um, the only thing we ask is that if you do pass a reference or you, you do construction, we get a fair shot at at winning the job against competition. Um, so it

022may seem like, all right, Jim, you know, $0, there's gotta be some hidden trick in there or something. But I can give you a hundred schools that we work with at. That's just our go market. That's our plan. Because all we do is work with schools. We understand we could charge you $40,000 for this and it would be a hit. Um, but that's the risk that we take, uh, to hope that we can serve you and that be a good customer for the future. Can I ask a question? Sure. The rest of the schools that you work with, I'm sorry, For most of the schools you work with, how many feasibility studies are they having done? What do you mean? How many? Like your would be one company? We're gonna hear pitches from other companies.

023Yeah. Yeah. Is it normal that they, would you, that feasibility studies would go like with two or three different companies? I've Never seen that. I've always seen them choose one. Okay. Uh, just, I'm just Trying to wrap my mind around the process of like, what this brand new to the school board, new to this process, like, what that process looks like. And then also, you know, when you're talking about money, right? Like, you know, and, and I'm assuming, which I, we haven't seen the other presentations, but that different firms have different approaches. Like how do we, So I'll give you an example. Um, I'm sure, and I don't know. Yeah, I'm sure you're gonna see architects coming here, right? And that's an architecture firm. That's, that's mostly our competition. So they're gonna charge you, um,

024for the most part, and they're gonna bring in their architects and they're gonna do their job. If you're having more than one firm actually do the study, uh, it's a lot of work and it's a lot of double work on your end, right? Maybe not you, but the teachers, the superintendent. Yeah, because we're gonna be interviewing teachers. We're gonna be interviewing school board members. We're gonna be, I mean, it is, it's a really hand in hand, uh, sit next to the table and tell me what you're thinking. Now if you do that and you, you hire us and we're gonna do that, and then you hire a b, c architecture firm, they're gonna come in the next week and they're gonna ask you, not the same questions, but similar questions. It's just kind of double

025work. You know what I mean? So, um, that's kind of my, that that's why I've never seen anybody else do it. So if you're asking how does it work? It, the basic steps would be our architect and engineering team would come in here, listen to you first, say what? I mean, you're doing this for a reason. You have some ideas of something, right? What are your ideas? Okay, let me hear 'em. Okay? Then we're gonna look at your buildings. We're gonna walk through, and this is without anybody where your facility guy would've to walk with us. And again, we have maps of your buildings, we have diagrams, we have drawings, we have everything. So it'd be more of a cursory look, but we look and then we bring back our ideas. That's a good idea.

026But if you did it this way, what we sell at school, district X, Y, z, it's a little better. And here's y Oh, okay, that makes sense. Now what's it gonna cost me? It's gonna cost you x. Now what do you need in here? Is this, does this work? And we're gonna talk to your, like I said, your band teacher, ceiling heights, reverberate, you know, sound, things like that. So we're gonna talk to everybody. So it's a, it's a lot of work. Um, I don't want you to think it's just a crossover. And then they, I mean, some firms, it's a, uh, cookie powder approach where they just slap your name in and then they can do a couple things and there you go. Or we, since we have everybody on the same team with

027our engineers and controls guys, we really get into the weeds a lot of things. Almost too much. But at the end of the day, we come back with a report, it's very detailed and it kind of gives you a good direction on what it's gonna cost you. Different ideas, pictures, diagrams, three images. But long story short, that, that's why I've never seen two firms do that. Now. Facility study, that's different. I mean, that's engineers walk in the buildings and looking at things. I've seen for, I've seen people do different facility studies every five years, but never at the same time either. Sorry, does that answer your question? Does, and then, and then we also have a facility, like a facility study already. And so, which you probably know about, right? And so that data would

028also get plugged in. Yeah. Okay. I'm just, yeah, I'm trying to understand The process. Okay. So since nine, um, 1998. Yeah. You worked with 24 districts in the state and there's No, those are just some of 'em. Okay. I just put up some, okay. Yeah, because they're like, there's 400, Right? No, 21 districts. Sorry, I just put Nope, that's okay. Just, Just to show that that's, that's all. We Sounds good. Many were multiple jobs too. Yeah. Okay. We, I'm on phase seven of, uh, Menominee fault, just for example, mom Paul one. Okay. We've done seven projects with them. So, um, and, and just to rely uh, add on to that, uh, we get so many add-on jobs because again, customer satisfaction for one of us, we, we have these school districts do a survey for

029us. We send it to you four times during the project, beginning quarter, second quarter and final. And you rate us, and this goes all the way up to our order, what you respond. And, um, we take these very seriously. Uh, so, um, we do that for every job because if there's something even small, wrong come visit, we're just different. You're not gonna see another firm like us. Maybe there's one or two in the state, um, that do it this way. And I've had superintendents asking me, Jim, if what you're saying is true, right? If you're saying you, you're faster, you're cheaper, you're, you have everyone on the same umbrella that works better. Why isn't, why isn't everybody this? Right? I was just gonna ask then obviously, Because it's the old school method, it's always been

030a architect driven industry and a construction manager, they're big, big firms, right? So, and the difference with that is you're gonna get an architect in here and he's gonna be the president, and he's gonna say, okay, we can do this, this, this. And then when the work comes, they have a hundred architects. And you don't know if you're getting architect number one or architect number 100, right? You don't know with us, this is our, I mean, I'm gonna be your leader of your team, but we're gonna have, our architects are gonna be here. And it's the same guy that does that. So, um, it's just, it's different. Mm-hmm. Which makes it really difficult for us then to try to figure out how to compare apples to apples. Right? Exactly. We're different. So what's, what's your

031percent of, uh, the total project that you would expect to take is that's how you 3% how much? 3%. 3% of total project? Yeah, that's our project. Walk me through your, your bid and, uh, how do you get your subcontractors? All you have is a superintendent or a project manager on site, and you have a bunch of other companies running around doing work. Right? So we bid out every piece of the project. So mechanical, electrical, plumbing, sheet metal, drywall, or not drywall, um, um, everything. So you'll see it on an old book pricing sheet. And we're gonna get the subs that we've worked with before, but we're also gonna get subs that you guys know that are local, right? So we're gonna have a list of subs for each piece of the project, and we're

032also gonna bid out the equipment. So we're not equipment specific. We don't, I don't wanna say I don't care who you use, we're gonna give you who we think it should be, but then we're also gonna be out trained. I can, you know, whoever, we're, we're gonna get three bids for that too. We get at least three bids for every piece of the project, right? So, um, again, you're gonna tell us who you want to bid, but then the other thing is you can tell us who you don't want to bid. If there's, I've had that in a handful of districts. I don't want this person stepping foot in my district again because they did such a lousy job. Okay? We won't put 'em on the bid sheet. And then you are gonna see all

033the bids and we're gonna go through 'em with you. And the best part is you don't have to choose the loads bid. So let's say mechanical, I got four bids filled without mechanical work. And it could be a million dollars if mechanical A, B, C is at 1.2 million and the other guys are at one, 1.1. But the 1.2 is in the community, does a lot of work for the school, it's great with the boosters. We can choose him, you know, so you don't have to choose the lowest bid with us 'cause we hold a contract. Does that make sense? Yep. Are you hung up on union or non-union or you don't have a preference? Doesn't make a difference. Everybody can work together. Yep. Okay. Important point too is, uh, with us having everything under

034one roof, um, we don't self perform any, any of the work. So for some companies, the construction firm may come in. Yep. Uh, that's a big part of their business is self performing. And, uh, they have to work with these other players in the state. So more bid. And what Jerry means is, is self performing. Like I can be a construction manager and I can do, let's say I do concrete as well. Mm-hmm. Right? So they're gonna give you a bid on that concrete. But you, and you can say, well, I want other bids. And people are gonna come in and be like, I'm not gonna want this bid, because they do their own concrete. So the numbers are gonna be whatever they're gonna be, they're pull from somewhere else. Make sure everything is pencil

035sharp bid. So that's gonna, We got some shady local contractors. What other questions? There's gotta be some. So anything I didn't get more in detail? I didn't, I guess like, I don't, again, I don't know a lot about this whole process, but when you give like a cost estimate and we say like, okay, that sounds exactly like what we want, the price sounds fine, we go to referendum and it, let's say if it becomes a reality, how often is that price actually accurate? Like, how much Is that? So, yeah, that's a great question. We are really good at this. We have our own estimating team. Uh, it's five people. Um, and again, since all we do is schools, we know what a boiler plant costs in a school, right? We know square footage wise what

036things are costing these days. Now we're gonna set these prices for two years out, right? And usually we're pretty close. The only time we wasn't was during COVID, which yeah. You know, everything doubled, tripled. But it, it was crazy. Um, we were actually in a rough room. It was crazy. But usually we're pretty spot on it. I can't envision that you're gonna give us something we haven't seen before. Now every time I say that and I walk up building with our engineers and go, there's no way I haven't seen this before. Then there's some, I haven't seen that before. Um, but when we're talking construction or renovation again, we just added a CTE building. I know what that costs. And so we're going put some elevation there, effort two years out. If you're thinking front

037in a year, then construction starts after that. So we're gonna make prices like that. So we're, we're, we're pretty good when it comes to. Okay. Good. I didn't go to a lot of detail with the process 'cause we only have 15 minutes. Um, so I didn't want to take up your time or go past my time. So if there's other questions you have or Jim, tell me more about what are your architects you are or how does this work? Uh, I, I'll be happy to go into a lot more detail. You may want to explain the benefits of the design build versus the design bid build for those that don't know. Right. And I try to get into that a little bit. Um, the design build, again, you're not gonna see that very often. So,

038um, and we can talk about bidding, we can talk about low bid. You have to have, um, we don't have to choose low bidding here. Again, the other thing we did for a small rural community, um, they had a plumber that they wanted to make sure he got the job okay. Again, this was a million dollar, uh, uh, worth of worth of work in his area. He came up and told us, he goes, we can't do $1 million worth of work. We can't handle it. So we broke out the boiler plant for him and we said, okay, we need three boilers. We need piping, we need this, we need this, we need to do that. And we gimme a couple bids on this. So we found him and then we found one other guy just

039to make sure you right. So we included him on that. So he got that job. And then a bigger firm got the rest of the plumbing jobs throughout the school. So the bidding process is different with us. And again, the one point of contact is different with us. How many employees? How many, how many employees does performance services have? Uh, over three. Oh, okay. Yeah. And I don't think you're gonna find another firm that has their own, will have their architects, but they won't have their own engineers. They wanna have their own project managers. One of their own controls team. So with that performance that I was talking about, we're gonna come back. If we do a project with you, we're gonna come back four times in the next year. We're gonna come back in

040the summer, spring, winter, fall. 'cause buildings are different obviously in the summer than they're in the winter. I'm gonna put a boiler plan in the winter or in the summer. And then we're not just gonna disappear. Sometimes that happens and your boiler plant doesn't work. Come winter time. You're like, well who the, who do I call now? I, you know, do I call the plumber the HVAC guy? Do I call the construction manager? We come back four times a year, make sure the building's running the way it should be. Our controls guys are gonna, if we do the controls with you, are gonna oversee your building all the time. They just hook in from where they are. They can see if there's issues. Well, we're not getting heating in room 13, why not? Boom, boom,

041boom. We find out, we call your facility guys, say change the damper, do something. Um, but we guarantee a performance and they're not. Many other people do that. What else should we know that we're not asking? I could talk forever. Passionate. I I could talk forever on this. Um, let's see. Some of the things that I skimmed over that could have gone into more detail. Um Hmm. You know, I think one, one of the main things is we really know schools. We are experts. Again, there isn't much we haven't seen when it comes to the bidding. That's all we do every day. I mean, that's, that's our work. So we have, we have our own estimating team that we keep files and files and files and it's roofing. What is the square foot? What does

042roofing, I mean roofing's no on roofing's gone through the roof lately. Um, but it has, and so we know we've just done two roofing projects. So for you to, if you guys wanna do a roofing project, we know what it costs. Now some areas are different, right. Um, where was they? It was hard to get bidders. Uh, actually in fe and that's way out on the west side of the state. It's hard to get some bids. Masonry guys are hard to get right? Sometimes you get one bid and it's, wow. So then we, you know, we have to tighten up our chin strap and we go find beards that we've worked with before. But, um, we know schools so, um, we're really good at it. That's, that's what we, that's what we do. So, um,

043yeah. And I maybe add, um, the companies invest a lot in technology. So, um, in terms of, you know, drawings for your building, we'll get within an eighth of an inch. Uh, I don't know if you like lidar. Yeah. We have lidar now. We, I mean we have drone deployment. We have lidar that can scan your building and like Jerry said, we, if we're building that we can get with an eighth of an inch, which is crazy. Um, 3D modeling, we have it all. I mean, um, we've really invested in this. And so we do all the work up front so that we don't get caught in the end that no change order thing is big. Um, we've, we've got a 40 page list that our engineers have to hit because one time, and this

044is one time, the as belts in the school, which kind of show what the, the uh, mechanical room looks like. We're gonna put in a new chiller or new boiler, I think it was. And it said the room was 20 feet by 20 feet. Okay, we're bringing a new boiler and we needed that 20 feet by 20 feet. Well, it's actually only 15 by 15. And when we're putting it in, we're like, uh, what? So we had to knock out a wall and do this and build this and we had to go above and beyond and we weren't charging the you 'cause there's no change orders. And that was on us. So now we have a checklist that says, I don't care what it says, go measure what the room is. Right? I mean, we

045got burned, you know, and we stand our, our owner's very ethical. Um, and he stands by his word and which is my word. And if I tell him we made a mistake, we made a mistake. And so that goes on us. Um, yeah. Okay. What is the timeline? So like, Right, so looking At our timeline for referendum, um, it feels like if you're still looking in the summer to figure out what facilities need, that probably is too slow. Like how fast, I guess How fast, right. Our feasibility studies. So lemme take a step backwards. Yeah. I think, I believe that referendum should be a year out, right? I think it should start a year out. The referendum portion of it, not the feasibility study. Right. I I I've seen it done six months, eight months,

046but a year would be good. Nice. If you can't that's fine. The feasibility study itself can take anywhere from four weeks to eight weeks. Okay. Yeah, that's fine. I was just wondering if, Depending on how easy it's, I mean if it's, if you're, if you said Jim all put anion on, it's, you know, and if we talk to everyone and everyone agree now if we're looking to move that elementary over here, that's something that we're gonna have to delve into it and do a lot of work On site and for like that type of thing. Because I do think I might be speaking wrongly for the board, but I do think to make a good decision that has to be part of our feasibility study. Probably. Like, we probably need to run the numbers for

047Yep. Those two parallel Projects. Yep. So I think you're looking at 12 weeks. Okay. And then, you know, and if you're really gonna do that, we have to get site involved in civil and make sure, if you wanna put a building over here, let's make sure we can, first of all and then, you know, that's all the, what we do behind the scenes. It's just helpful to understand where we're at. Right. And you have those people on staff as Well site? We do not, that's one of the only ones we don't, um, just 'cause those guys specialize in that. And we, we just, we hired them as Sure. There's not a long time, you know, time obviously was how long. Yeah. But building wise, once we get going, we, it, you wouldn't believe the things

048we get done in the summer. I mean, 'cause we, all we do is work with school timelines, so we know it has to be done by school. So our design team's very quick. How far are you guys booked out right now? We have capacity. Yeah. We're not, we're not. Great question, Steve. What else? No, I'm good. I'm good. I think that's, I've liked everything ever. It is zero cost all the way through the feasibility study. Getting an estimate going to referendum if the referendum fails for without Nothing. Yeah, we've, and we've had that, um, I've only felt one and that was Petco and it was during COVID and we lost by 13 votes. Oh. And they were so happy with what we did. We ran it back, the very next one and we won overwhelming

049invite 500 or something. Okay. So yeah, we take all of those. Okay. I wanna say thank you to Jim and Jerry for joining us this evening and, uh, for sharing your presentation. Um, the board at the end of the third presentation tonight, we'll have additional discussion to determine our next steps. You have my email, uh, please forward it on, if you have specific questions, I'll get on it right away and have you answer anything. I hope we did a good job. Um, again, any questions we're here for you. We appreciate the time. Thank You very much. Thank you. Have a good night. Thank you, sir. These guys. Thank you. Hello everybody. Hi. This you cannot rise. Thank you. We, um, So I'd like to welcome the members of the Cross Anderson team. Um, John, um,

050I'm gonna ask you if you've introduced, we brought with you this to me and then, um, there's a clicker and a microphone and, uh, the presentation is up on Screen. Perfect. Thank you. Ready to keep going? Sure. Alright, Well, we'll, we'll get right into it and introduce ourselves again. I'm John Ick with Carl Anderson. Uh, I've been at KA for, well, it'll be 31 years this January. Um, graduated a small little town in Baldwin, Wisconsin. That's where I'm from. Uh, and what I've done over the 31 years, 90, if not, excuse me, 95% of my career is what we're talking about today. We do a lot of, uh, feasibility studies. Uh, we'll talk about that a little bit more. And so we possibly turn it into a referendum. And at the end of the day,

051we are construction managers of what we do for a living Because it's us. There we go. Um, Jenna here, I guess, um, communication and project planning is really where I live. So, um, as far as our team goes and, uh, work with only schools throughout the Midwest here, um, I come in when, uh, we're really in this stage right where you wanna make sure you bring the community along with us as well as the referendum campaign. I have, um, a team that I can kind of lean on, lean on and, um, lock arms with you guys whenever that does or if that becomes a thing and a reality in this community. So thanks for having us today. I'm James Ramstead, silly subject manager, cross Anderson. I've been with the company for two years and just

052going back in time, I've actually been through your schools twice with two different other companies. So, um, that said, I do have, I knew where the library was, the whole nine yards, but, um, yeah, I, I actually lead the effort here in Wisconsin for facility condition assessments. I know you guys just recently completed one, but that information is paramount to making these decisions as you look forward. So, Okay. There's more to the team, right? When we do a disability study, we have Nate, he's an in-house designer. Um, we'll be a part of your team. We have Kevin, he is our sustainable. So let's say if you are interested in, um, energy, right? It could be solar, it could be geothermal. We will do lifecycle costing. Is that good for your district or not? So we'll

053as part of a feasibility study. He's brilliant with that. Along with Kyle, he's the mechanical engineer. Andrea, she's been our 3D modeling community. Do some modeling. John Porter is our in-house, uh, architect and structural engineer. His passion is exterior envelopes and Jay's our safety director. Just a little bit more about Cross Anderson. There was information in our proposal, um, offices, Madison, Milwaukee, Minnesota, Iowa. We're Midwest based. Um, we've worked on hundreds of schools between Wisconsin and Minnesota. We're just gonna talk about a few of 'em later in our presentation. That's just a little bit more across Anderson. We're in a lot of school districts. Uh, I decided on this one. Normally we end up with references, but they are important. So we started with references, um, Ellsworth, we actually have two people in there. Barry

054Jane, who's now retired and now Brian. So we started and we've done a lot with Peter Ka, new superintendent and Brian NA's there. Now both good references along with Grantsburg. We're gonna talk about, uh, Bayfield, Hayward, uh, Cumberland, uh, and Lady Smith. Um, how did we finish? Not too long. Do you have dates on those, like projects or what are those? Just current, are those fairly current projects? Is that why they're Included? Yes. Okay. Yeah, Yeah. Please ask us any questions that just jump right in on us. Um, so we're gonna get right into it. We're gonna talk again about our feasibility study. We understand you've done a facility condition assessment. Uh, by the way, if I call him James Jr. Same person. Everybody calls me jr. So, So jr's gonna, um, talk about that.

055Uh, we'll talk about educational adequacy and then we'll talk about communications and general, we'll get into that and how we pull everything into a nice little bowl and put that package together. That, So with that, the feasibility study really is a multi-phase process. And in this case, we're looking at seven, uh, different phases of that process, about 19 weeks in total. Um, this is, so we're actually gonna break it down into each step and go through that as part of this presentation. Sorry. No, you're good. So step one is really just, if you were to choose Chris Anderson to do this work, we would sit down with Andrea and a committee to understand the facilities as you, you've done several studies, let's go that way in the past. But we also wanna understand what you,

056what your needs are, uh, currently and gather that existing information. Oh, thought I heard something, gonna say something. Step two would be actually reviewing the existing, uh, uh, facility condition assessment. Um, I did look at the one that was just recently done, and there's some, I'm gonna say some holes, but nothing major. Uh, the biggest issue is that they gave you dollars, but it doesn't incorporate any design work or anything else. So there is it, you're, you're missing a piece of the puzzle when you look at, at budgeting for any other type of project. Um, but we would also review the space utilization. How are the, is the building or buildings in this case being utilized? How many kids are in the classroom, square footages, things like that. And then at the bottom is our

057portal. Now, we would take all of the information that we have, we would actually put it in our portal. Um, the, where it says example deliverables, our spreadsheet is very robust and it's designed to be used ongoing for the life of your facility. So if somebody, or if we input all this data and you decide to do a project, at some point you want to incorporate that data as well. Or if you do a project soon thereafter, you want to know what you still, what wasn't accomplished in this project. So that way it allows you to manage that ongoing and that's updateable in, in and real time, we'll say annually, so that you can then manage your infrastructure for the life view that you stay, that the school district stays in the buildings at the

058bottom left, it sits FCI. So this is one area that we feel is really important. It is a pretty standard, um, calculation, but it's basically deferred maintenance divided by the cost of replacing the building. And that will give you a score. If you're over that 30 to 50% range, you're in a, in, in, not in a critical, but you're an alarm state. And basically that's what it's doing is giving you a percent of how much you have to invest to get your building in a fully functional or in, not necessarily like new, but in a favorable condition. If you're over that 50% mark, now you have to consider way the options of does it make sense to actually maintain what you have or does it make more sense to actually build new, because you're putting,

059we'll say, good money at, at potentially back. So those scores are something that we pull out of our, um, uh, FCA process, but we can utilize the data you've already collected to help speed that process along. Can I ask a question about that? Absolutely. So I think one of the things that's on the table and that the board wants more information on, um, especially as we look at referendums, is the potential of moving the elementary school on site here. Um, and but one of the components that we've talked about, I think as a board that is not included. So we need the facilities part. But the other question is some of the administrative savings, right? Potentially. Yes. Um, do you help with that? I mean, I guess okay, you would help with that. Like, you

060know, if we're talking about like we would not need maybe the same photocopy or contracts, so like, you know, we can talk about people and labor, but there's also this other overlap. You do some of that like things that would no longer be replicated if there was a central office or Absolutely. That would, and that would be a team effort with the administration team. Yeah. Interviewing and Yeah, could be transportation. Yeah, right. With operations, what you need in. Absolutely. Okay. JR or I, we, I related, but we could speak 30 minutes just on the specific condition assessment and feasibility study. And they're really important, neat data that comes out of your, even JR alluded to it, but even if you don't do a project or even after a project, you're gonna have a nice 10

061year plan. Hey, in 2035 we maintenance up, you gotta replace the with ice school. Or we have windows or we have doors. So we have parking lots, so we have sidewalks, so we have plumbing, HVC, you name it. So this is a really cool user friendly Microsoft tool. It's not a priority. Anybody can use it. You know, basically I call it Excel and steroids, um, that you get. Then you get used as part of the study. So this, this is just snapshots of the portal. If you want it, it lives on our website, but it can live on your own Platform. That, that's actually key consideration because it is a Microsoft platform. So it's not proprietary, you're not buying software, you're able to use the software as is and it's downloadable. So it's not our

062information, it's your information. We keep it in a SharePoint site, which is our portal, simply because it's security. And other than that, it's, it is completely up to you to, you want to manage that information, give it back to you. Okay. Now we are going into the operational side, um, and along with educational advocacy study. So it's the curriculum, I call it more the educational advocacy study. Not only, uh, what courses, what are you offering, are there other things at the high school we look at career tech opportunity. What are the other things that your staff, um, want or need or the students need or the local business and communities want project? Uh, we talked about, we just redid their career tech area. They've had a lot of local businesses we're part of the referendum

063plan and now have bought into it. And then they worked with Jenna when they got into the community campaign. Uh, but there's, I understand elementary school is a big piece of this. Um, and what are those savings? What's technology, safety, uh, transportation, a DA community use of the building. There was a lot, a number of things we're gonna look at. Um, one example we have in the school district, um, just across the border in Minnesota, they, they're going from four buildings to two and they're saving between four and $500,000 a year on operating costs. Um, now it took us a year to get there on that one with that community engagement. Um, but they're there and it's going great. Uh, and every state, Jen's gonna talk about this a little bit. Um, you as leaders

064in your district are gonna help develop that plan, but you do want community task for buy-in, right? Because ultimately you gotta bring this into the community. Sorry. Uh, but again, this will be the educational adequacy review. It's basically on a separate set of tracks, but jr's on those two tracks are gonna come together from a facility condition assessment for an educational advocacy study that includes operations and those will come together that help us develop a plan for you. And, but that's feedback from the community. Um, and then this, this is just comparing, you know, once, once this kind already talked about this slide already, once it all comes together, operations and building, we're gonna start developing that product. Um, we'll work with your financial advisor. What's the tax impact, right? There's gonna be a lot

065of projects in Grantsburg and we had a lot of ideas. Some cost this and some cost. This, they land here, but it worked in the past. And that basically what what this step five says is, is bringing you viable options that works with the new budget, that works with the community, that make you operationally efficient, uh, efficient, taking all the deferred mate setting. So there's a lot of words on this. Um, I know we've got 20 minutes, so I don't want to take up too much time, but this is bringing everything together in presentation. One of the things that, so in un under step one it says do nothing renovate. So those are options. They're not options we're bringing to the table now. But those are some of the options that honestly you may be

066up against in terms of when it's said and done, you may decide that do nothing is the right choice, or you may decide a new building is actually the best choice for the history of large. You have to make that determination because it's your school district. We're just here to provide the data to allow you to make those decisions in an educated fashion. We were, yeah, like Jay was saying, we were tempted to come up with some early ideas. 'cause 'cause we did have a meeting and we talked and what would work, but that would be that, you know, the process deserves to be the process, right? We need to go through and do all our homework and bring ideas to do. So we don't want be presumptuous, we gotta go through the process. I

067think one of the main reasons to have a process and make sure that we're taking the right steps and gathering the right data is to make sure we're bringing the community along with us as well. And there's breadcrumbs kind of throughout the feasibility study that we're able to communicate as far as some of those pieces. So, um, we talked about kind of that leadership committee or a steering committee that helps us through some of those pieces with the FCA educational adequacy study as well as like enrollment numbers and all those things, the operational numbers. Um, but really at, at a certain point in the process as options are starting to, um, come on the table. And that's kind of the exciting part, right? Um, we'll be working with you on the backend to figure out

068who is that representative group of community members that, that do cover your eight townships, I think is what you said here in Athens and just make and have kind of different networks that they're connected to. And also, you know, go through some of those lessons learned on some past campaigns that I know, I know you've had in, in, in recent years, the last three to five years. Um, and really kind of gather a group to then bring along with us. So, um, just within the step we would have a series of meetings that we would bring that community along. We'd go through all the, I mean, we'd kind of take the same step through with them, but we have the data already. We go through the FCA findings, we talk to them about the programming

069and ask their input on what, what, what does the vision for Athens school district look like for to you and what programming are you really wanting to see? Um, so we review a lot of those findings and, and start to provide some of the scenarios that we're working through as well as knowing that they may have some other ideas and maybe an option three or four comes to the table just through that work as well. Um, and so I know Andrea, when we first met with her was like, when's the best time to have really community voice be the main center of this thing? And I think it really is after a lot of the data is collected and we, we kind of have these different buckets that then come together and okay, now we

070really need community to understand what this all means and then react to that, right? And I always think it's important you're kind of already wanting to communicate some of those things out, right? So every time there is one of those meetings, here's what this group that represents you as a community is thinking about and talking about through that process as well as, I mean, do we wanna tour some buildings and some other things that maybe just bring in some of those other ideas because next slide. Um, really we're wanting to, um, not only like deliver a report to you guys and we have thoughts of like how involved you all wanna be. I've had a few board members tend to be part of that task force meeting as well, just so you have a couple

071of you that are fully embraced, but maybe that doesn't make sense. Every community's a little bit different. Um, but we don't wanna necessarily stand up here and give you the report to what this feasibility study is. At the end of the day, you really want it to be a recommendation from this task force of representative group from your community that's like, we've done this alongside, um, your consultants and the experts in the room. Um, but this is really, we've gone back and forth on all these things and this is where we landed. Um, and so that as a board you can ruffle with that a little bit and figure out what makes sense. But at the end of the day, it makes our job easier in the referendum side of things when you can really,

072um, put a flag in that this was a community vision that you guys are moving forward with. And it's not just the board heard your feasibility report and with that information, this is what we're gonna do. And so, um, that's kind of the, I guess bo on that side of it as far as just, um, kind of having that culminate into some board work with that facility group or with that commu community group A little, um, show and tell. I talked about grants with a little bit. Um, they're familiar with them. They, they went from four buildings to three i o'clock. They had a lot of options. They had one bigger option. They were going through four to two, which was gonna close the elementary school also besides the primary school, which was pre kk.

073And, but they got to be fairly expensive and they built, they still wanted dollars to fix their high school too. So they came to the high school and did some refreshing some things that, you know, some flexible learning honors, some career tech. Um, there's some floor plans, very excuses me. Very simple plans in how we came up with those options. What was going to be done. Obviously the costing everything that, so that was Grants burden. That's not that long ago. Covering Berland schools, 50% built right now. Um, so they, they had, uh, more issues at their high school where this old two story, if you walked into this two story academic one that been on building, oh my goodness. Huh uh, so the FCI that we're talking about facility condition assessment, when we looked at

074HVAC plumbing finishes, LED lighting, um, exterior envelope issues, a DA issues, the cost to repair this old two story, it made more sense to tear down building. So they weren't going down the less buildings, but they spent a lot of time, do we try to fix this building or do we replace it? And ultimately the school board made the decision, uh, q said, yeah, we agree, let's fix that. So choice. Yeah. And there's, there's the plans for that one. We, some, some, there's some community. It just, yeah, it shows some, like throughout the time, once there was really a plan that we were around, start to kind of get people to think through what could that look like, right? I mean, renovated buildings, sometimes people think, oh gosh, a renovated building, how much to really

075change. Um, so that's what we were up against a little bit in Cumberland. But we leaned on those task force members. Um, I don't know if communication is the next, um, I think they're, uh, facilities director. Um, we did like a tour with him 'cause he was just like really respected in the community. Um, and so, um, just to show us all the different kind of pieces that, um, put a visual to some of that facility condition assessment pieces. But, um, again, I could do a whole presentation on this. I just want you to know that we have a team that can really help on the communication side and have worked with a lot of, um, districts right around you with that. So I believe this is that QR code, if you scan that QR

076code, you follow Brandon Johnson around the director of facilities and who from Cumberland knows everybody. And then it got a ton of watch Mean, I think it says 9,000 views in little cover, Right? 9,000 views. We probably follow them around all day and they turned it into a three minute View. I don't even think it's three minutes. Yeah, It's a big commitment. Yeah. But a really important three minutes where he's shown around some mechanical things that don't work. So that's all part of the communication classes. Um, and we have hundreds of examples like this. Um, our fees for that feasibility study is $9,000 for, for everything we just talked about tonight. And then last, um, so we have our facility condition assessment. I know you've done one, but we're still gonna do it in a

077little bit. Uh, we're talking about the feasibility study, the community sounding board community survey, that will be a part of final scope. The referendum campaign and, uh, referendum vote. These are tentative guidelines. We're not saying you should go to vote in November, it's an option, But it just, I took that from our conversation and just, I'm like, sometimes it's nice to see a visual, what the roadmap is. I mean, what we talked about tonight would get you up to that community survey. 'cause I think the next step in our point of view is like, should we survey on, on, on what the tax threshold is at some point? Um, but knowing that we have services to bring you all the way through if it makes sense. And if we could be your partner for That

078and you know, timeline and schedule, we're gonna know what we're Right. So, um, at the end of the day, we are, But this could ebb and flow depending on what makes sense for you guys. Can I ask a question? So if we decided to go you on moving forward, I mean this is my opinion, but I feel like uh, we need to be working on community engagement. Um, especially coming out of an operational referendum that people don't fully understand, um, now. Mm-hmm. And so I'm wondering how much flexibility and support there is for something like that. Um, so like obviously we would be foreshadowing, right? The feasibility study wouldn't be done, we wouldn't be having those community meetings. But is there support like on doing, you know, the pre messaging, um, to get people understanding

079what they had paid for before, for instance, and how that will be different? Yeah, You're speaking my language. Okay. I mean, I wish every district was doing that all the time, right? But I think you can strategically celebrate certain things and even bring up some challenges with certain things. But just to start kind of laying those breadcrumbs as well as, I mean, having a letter written that talks about these steps that you guys are, I mean, I think there's a whole thing that doesn't have to be tied to a referendum. And we're a team that if we're on board, we're all in and whatever kind of resources you need through that. So. Okay. Thank you. Any other questions? Yeah, that's our presentation and our, our core purpose, I didn't get it, but building and during

080risk relationship with strong communities. The neat thing about our jobs is we get to work with school and communities and the widgets we get to be a part of is pretty down needs referendum passes and we cut that ribbon. Uh, we just had one in Ellsworth a couple weeks ago and that's, that's why we do it. Neat job that we got. So we appreciate your time. And I got, I got a couple questions, one punch of 'em. So what's your uh, uh, a fee, you know, if we were to get referendum passed and we, I mean is this just a feasibility study we're having 'em do or are we looking, have them be the project manager of our project or not? I don't know. So right now we're give you $9,000 to do a feasibility

081study and we could go out, pick somebody else to be our project manager. Yep. At this point you asked us to do a feasibility study and we've all of the real rules of the RFP. Yep. Okay. At the end of the day, we are construction managers and I'm happy to answer Yeah. Question. Right, right. And we're typically one point a half, less than 2% as RFPs are for the construction on construction only. Not furniture and fees, but less than 2% is what our fees are typically. And what about the bidding process? What does that look like for you? So, bidding process, got experience there. Um, glad you asked that question. We cross Anderson does not self perform. We are professional managers of construction. We bid out a hundred percent of the work. So let's talk,

082let's use this room and pretend we're remodeling this room, whether it's HVAC, electrical and carpet casework, door knobs, whatever, glass. We bid it out to the trades. 'cause you're gonna have a lot of local trades within the region that are qualified to work on your project. And the more local people that work in your project, the better. So we basically publicly bid everything out. Once a competitive bids come in, we sit down with the school board and say, we got four electrical bids and uh, John Doe is a low electrical contractor. We recommended water, the bondable to have the right insurance, da da da da da. You'll go, yeah, I know John Doe. He's good. Or it could be carpet, could be paint. Um, and then we tabulate those, we'll hold the contracts and then

083our fee would be that less than 2% on top of those trades. So yes, we publicly bid out all the work and you know, you know who's working on job, whether it's earth work or ING tiles. That answer your question? Yep. Yeah. Okay. So you, you do the design work yourselves as well, your architects through all this study? We, with the team, we have, we do all the preliminary design and set up, uh, our recommendation is we like the three related stool. Um, we firmly believe that the architect and the construction manager should not be the same firm. And you should select a design firm that you like. Um, we can be a part of that process. Ladysmith, for example, uh, they interviewed three firms. Um, they selected a firm, but then they said it

084ended up being a design build. So you're probably familiar with that. Yeah, yeah. And so, um, it just, the school board shares idea and they said, John, we want you to hold a contract with the architect. 'cause if I have a problem I'm calling you. Um, Grantsburg was separate. Um, there's a separate contract with the architects that the contract with us, I called the three legged school is year one. One year. Your one leg architect's, one leg one. There's a good set of checks and balances. So we do not do inhouse architecture. And we work with dozens and dozens architects between Minnesota, Wisconsin. So we can tell you the good ones and a on no questions. Thank you, John. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much, much the representation. Thank you. So thank you.

085Talk soon. No, jump around. No, I had to not. Yes, absolutely. I was thinking about that. It could be just like a, like, it's like there's that Eagle Nest one and it would just be like a GoPro toilet situation. What is our next one? Official start. Okay. So we're I was like on track, basically. On track? Mm-hmm. Okay. Yep. Just tell me you don't yet. Yeah, I get lips, blue lips. I feel like every time she swims, she would be, yeah. Yeah. It's, yeah. Although it's a systematic problem with me as a person. Yeah. Because I feel like I'm a cold person. I was a, I was teaching the same thing. Like, I just think the buildings are like, what are we doing? Well, it's also like, I feel like simultaneously I was opening our

086greenhouses and I was sweating and I was like, shivering outside. So yeah. So shift. It's that shift. Year shift. Like what? And the fall didn't prepare us adequately because it didn't get cold. No, it's just, it was still summer. You're making me cold. Sorry. I It's so warm. We're all very warm. Warm, warm. Um, maybe Higher. Next one. Okay. This is the one. Happy because like the thing was help you the other way Everybody Yeah. Just don't have that picture. Whatever that is, that cannot be On our Yeah, we need like a metal chair. Folding chairs looks too nice. Whatever that is. It looks fun. I know. I'm not personally discredit, Nobody Knows. Fun option. So I would like to, uh, welcome Our, uh, next vendor presentation. Um, it's a combination of Myron and, uh,

087brave architect. So, um, Craig, if you don't mind, I'm going to ask you to introduce Members of the team that us see. Sure. Sounds good. And we are just asking Becky, then again, as we're talking, should we be fire mic or hold the mic? Or is it okay if it's here or? I think you're fine. Just where you're at, like to grab the mic, but you absolutely could do As well. I do like mics. No, I won't, I won't do it though. But no, thank you again for the opportunity. And, um, yeah, we're gonna start actually, we'll, we'll use the, uh, the slide right there and go through and, and introduce each of us. So we'll, we'll let that start and go from there. Good evening, Matt. Re architects. I've been with the company almost

08830 years now, um, leading K 12 educational projects around the state. So excited to be, uh, here tonight. Excited to have a chance to work with Andrew, guys to work together in Wasaw. So excited to be here. I'm Clint Sell, uh, executive vice president with the company. I've been with Ray for 20 years, again, focusing on, uh, K 12, um, across the state, uh, while doing schools. Um, one of my interesting roles of my company. I wear a lot of different hats, but I, I do, um, handle all of the scheduling, um, kind of for all of our projects throughout the company. So, um, obviously, um, have a kind of firsthand ability to, to meet deadlines and, and kind of commit to, uh, different timeframes for the project. And I'm Elise Spindler, uh, very familiar

089with the Athens area, lifelong resident of, uh, Stratford. So I've competed here over the years as an athlete. And then, uh, great coming back, uh, to my kids', uh, activities. So, uh, felt it was fitting tonight. Can, um, so as far as my role, uh, I'm a pre-construction manager. So I started, uh, back in 2003 with my room. Uh, been with them, uh, throughout that duration of time, 18 years as a project manager overseeing, uh, the construction build and the last years, uh, overseeing the pre-construction component. So budgeting, scheduling, working with the design team and with, uh, the district. I'm sure that, uh, we, things hit the nail on the head, so to say. So thank you for having us here today. And last but not least, I guess, uh, Craig Lenbrook. Uh, so my,

090my title at Myron is Senior Vice President of Loss Operations. So I am fortunate and have the privilege of running our wassa office, uh, like Matt. So I've been in the, in or been with Myron for 30 years. So, so even though, you know, it's hard to believe with Matt and I only being, you know, 26 years old that we, uh, but, um, so we came into this industry together. But, um, but I am fortunate to have the opportunity to work with Myron for that period of time. And of that 30, about 29 years, 25 of that have been in the educational market, so working with, with school districts throughout the state. So again, thank you for the opportunity and we're excited to get started. So, so we'll jump in here, just give you a

091little bit of introduction about both of our firms again. Um, so from Myron's perspective, we are the largest, uh, K 12 builder in the state of Wisconsin. So you can see with all the dots there. We do a lot of work all over the place. Uh, of course, you know, with the emphasis here being in the WASA area, we've worked with a lot of the school districts like, uh, like Matt had mentioned with the Wasaw School district and so forth. So, uh, we've got a great relationship with Gray, uh, having worked with them on a lot of school projects throughout the years. And so the partnership here just made a lot of sense for us from our history in Wasaw. Good on that. So, one thing I I just, I always think it's important to

092bring up, and I know that you're from, at this point, you're not ready to move on dirt or put a shovel on the ground, right? You're in the very early stages of doing this study. But, but when you look at engaging a, a architect and a construction manager at this point, we just wanna make sure that you understand how that process would work if we would get to that point of looking at construction. And a lot of you probably know Myron or know people that work at Myron know a little bit above us being a, a union contractor. But when we look at a construction project like this, technically what we end up being is a construction manager, which means that you're hiring us to manage the project. We competitively bid all trades, so that

093doesn't even matter. So if my wants to do masonry, if we want to do carpentry or anything like that, we have to submit a bid to the school district. So you, there's no guarantee that we would be doing any of the work on the project. We, we definitely wanna work with the local contractors and the local subcontractors in the community. So I just wanted to make sure that the board and everybody understands that if you're selecting Myron, that doesn't mean that, you know, Myron's doing everything. We potentially could do a little bit of the work, but you're really hiring us as a manager. Uh, everything's bid out. And then the union, non-union. So when we're a construction manager, it you, we work with non-union contractors as well. So there's, we are, do not have to

094use union labor and union trades, you know, for that work. So if it's, if it's, uh, painting or drywall or mechanical, electrical, all that type of stuff, we can work with any, any contractor, union or nonunion. So I just don't want anybody to be scared and think that everything, you know, has to be union from that perspective as well. So just give you a little bit of info again, I can answer any more questions on that, that you would have later. So a little about Ray. We've been in business doing school since 1962. So, uh, the image on the screen is actually the first school we ever did. And at that time, a father who was a superintendent of schools could hire his son to be his architect. I don't know if you could get

095away with that today. Um, but that's how we began doing schools, uh, and, and really the longevity of our K 12 relationships. This is a client, um, more finished up a project last summer, um, and it would've been probably our fifth project in about 60 years with 'em. And so, just like a great example of our foundation and our commitment to K 12 schools. I want to touch just a little bit on the Meyer partnership. As, as Craig noted, we've worked a ton together, uh, probably 50 plus projects together as organizations. We think it's important to have both entities at the table, but we also think it's important that you contract separately with the two of us because that allows us to challenge Meyer and allows Meyer to challenge Ray throughout the process, whether it's

096a budget, whether it's a schedule, whether it's a proposed product usage, whatever it is, you're getting the best of both worlds. You're getting the expertise of both, but you're also getting the contractual independence that we think really allows us to be truly an advocate for you and allows Myron to truly be an advocate to you. We aren't relying on Myron to pay Ray, for example, so there's really no reason for us not to be advocating on your behalf. Same with Myron. So just some examples here. Great experience with some similar projects that may be relevant as we walked, we heard you had some ag needs, potentially some CTE or, or tech Ed needs. So great work at Wild Groves. Black River Falls. Uh, Sebastopol was a great example of a client that, uh, had a

097single K 12 building and wanted to build a new building, but there was no way the community was gonna afford that. And so we worked on a very, very small site with a pretty limited budget, uh, and created a, I think is a fantastic, like, new building for 'em. Other examples, Dolin, uh, Denmark and Westby. So enhanced, secure entrances, new CTE spaces, renovated CTE spaces sometimes as well. Um, and then over in Dolin really was kind of a, it was only a 20-year-old building, um, but had a lot of infrastructure needs already, unfortunately, and we were able to address all those while enhancing the educational spaces at the same time. And then just some more examples of, of indoor athletic band choir spaces. See a lot of wrestling rooms these days, especially with kind of

098the increase in, in girls wrestling and, and just a renewed interest in the sport in general. So building a lot of those as multipurpose rooms, getting batting cages in 'em, uh, making them usable for dance and other experiences as well. So they're not just purely a wrestling space, they're really usable for a lot of things. And then that East Troy image was actually a community fitness center, so it doesn't really show here. So on the back right side of this image was a secure vest to deal with parking outside, and there is a bathroom attached to this space. So they're able to keep that open during the day, evenings, weekends, without opening the entire school building up. So do a lot of that type of kind of planning, strategizing, how does the community get in

099while keeping the building safe at the same time. And then if you just click back one to that Denmark example to another good, uh, thing with that is similar to what you're looking at is how to address the elementary needs. And is that, you know, renovating the existing building or connecting it onto your existing middle high school. You know, Denmark had that same discussions and ultimately made the decision that they connected that onto their one campus concept and left the existing elementary school. So a lot of these projects have dealt with that, that transition of how do we handle our elementary needs in a smaller district. If you've got the opportunity to, to see the wrestling room over there, I got to lead that on a volunteer basis. We put that up with volunteer. Lee

100always makes us put wrestling pictures in everything. So we're gonna talk process next. So please ask questions as we're going if you have them. Um, we think it's important to, um, engage, explore, and then eventually execute. If we don't do all three of those, well the process won't be successful. We could have the best engagement process, but if we don't explore the right number of solutions and find the correct solution that aligns with your community's goals and meets your needs, we're not gonna find success. And then eventually we have to execute it, meet the timeline, meet the budget, if not, exceed them and, and deliver for your community and, and on behalf of you as a board, what you've committed to the community you would do. So these are seven steps of the process that

101we have found successful. We don't know for sure that they're exactly the steps that you're gonna wanna take yet, but as you can see here, engagement happens throughout the entire process. We can't engage you as a board, your staff and your community enough, because you as a board have to feel confident with what the solutions you're proposing. Staff have to be knowledgeable of what's going on so that when asked in the community, uh, they can say, yes, we're at least aware of what's going on. They may not have every answer. And then finally, community, community engagement's critical. And that doesn't just start when we want to go to the taxpayers for a referendum. It has to start much earlier in the process, having those conversations. So touch a little bit on engagement strategies. We've, first

102thing we would do is staff engagement. We think survey's great. Send 'em a quick Google doc. We're gonna get their responses. We're gonna find out that the heating and cooling doesn't work perfectly in the room and that they don't want enough storage. That's great. We learned that we got it, document it. But we're gonna follow that up then with an engagement and listening session where we're gonna meet with, with each of your staff or your whole staff together. Some districts do it both ways, um, and really learn what their needs are. How can we enhance teaching and learning? How are the facilities, if it all inhibiting the way they deliver curriculum on a day-to-day basis? So getting staff buy-in right from the beginning of the process, uh, through that engagement process. We'll also want to

103talk to you about what community engagement looks like. This is a 45 minute conversation all by itself. Um, but we have delivered probably a hundred led about a hundred community engagement sessions in the last five years alone in a variety of structures. Whether you put a citizens committee together that meets for six months, whether you host a few focus groups, both are successful. I will say we're seeing more of the focus group model than we are the citizens committee model. Now. It's more efficient with time. It allows you as a board to control more of the narrative in the message. What we ended up getting with Citizens Committees is we get a bunch of wrestling boosters and, uh, a bunch of parents that are vested in different activities and have agendas. We didn't get people

104there advocating for roofs and boilers and plumbing systems. And so we ended up offering these aspirational projects coming out of the, is not a blend of things that we need and things that we want. And so, again, I'll talk too long on this if we keep going, but I really think this is an important piece that we wanna talk about as a team when we get together, hopefully next, and, and talk about what the right structure is for you. Can I ask a question? Please? You haven't missed our, well, I asked a million questions already, so I feel like I have a lot of my questions answered. But one thing that we've been talking about is engaging, um, the community in fundraising, which is something the Athens district is traditionally very bad at doing. Could

105I say that? Like, we're not good at bringing in community resources other than on a volunteer basis, right? Um, so we resources will come in, but we're not good at asking or creating opportunities that are very easy for businesses unless the businesses are taking a leadership role and kind of offering. And so I would love a perspective on, I mean, how that has gone with projects and how that interfaces with that community engagement. 'cause that is something we have talked about as one of the, you know, there's a lot of different messaging, but there also is this creating opportunities for people to invest. So I would say we tend to see private donations come to enhance a project that the school district and or the community already is planning to pursue more than we see

106those dollars come as, I'll give a million dollars to Bill X. Yeah, we tend to see them come as enhancements. So Basto pool, I went back to on purpose, that's an example. A local business came forward with almost $3 million to expand and then to equip the CTE space. That's an unusual example. Normally we don't get that out of the blue. Um, but that was a relationship that took two to three years to build throughout the process. The other kind of just administrative side of it is to make sure you as a board, uh, develop a policy of what you will accept donations for or from. So I'll give you an example of working in ris. They have a big brewery there. As you're probably aware, the brewery wanted to donate a lot of money

107to help support their outdoor athletic facilities. And the board had to say, you can't have a liquor beer company as our primary sponsor. And so they've worked through that with the family getting the same money, but they didn't have a policy in place. So the administration was all excited, like, we gotta move information. And now the board had to say no. So that's one thing. And then the third I would say is forming a, uh, public education foundation or something that allows the contribution to be tax deductible, uh, is another critical piece of the process. So we can talk again, how we support that process, how we'll help you engaging potential donors, but obviously those are kind of the three keys to getting those efforts started. So Clint, I think I'm handing it to you

108here. Sure. Record. So facility studies, um, we, um, often these are fact finding kind of forensic, uh, experiences. I'm gonna just share a couple of ones that we have done recently. I think what I, what I biggest takeaway is we're really proud of the process that we've developed for this. We've created a really highly, uh, graphic document. Um, when we used to do these back in the day, we created a, a very detailed list, and they were pages and pages and they were great. And then they could put on a shelf and no one would ever look at them. And I think a little bit of the proof in the pudding, uh, Matt mentioned the, the Denmark Project. Um, we just, uh, completed a project with them and they asked us to update the facility

109study for them because they saw the value in it. It was a roadmap that they, uh, looked at in the, the, uh, time between doing, you know, major projects where they were checking off things themselves, um, in the process. And then as they got to a point where they're able to do a larger project, they took it on. So we, we did update theirs. Um, fall Creek is another example. We completed a project with 'em, I think back in 2018. Um, and we've just re-upped their facility study as a lead in. So, uh, again, we're, we're looking at at several different layers of, of, of need, both interior, exterior roofing, flooring, ceilings, all of those good things as well as the space needs within the, the, the project. And again, that, uh, starts out with

110the community surveys and, and we dive into that with, uh, with your teams in terms of identifying spaces and space needs. Uh, just a few examples. Um, roofing plans are, are often, um, something that is a, is a, something people can understand because you have to do your own roof on your own house. And so, uh, again, I think these convey can often convey a lot of needs. We have districts where the whole entire roof is red, red is bad. And then we have some districts like this where we, we, you know, you can use this as an example. Hey, we've taken care of a good portion of our roofing, but hey, we, we still do have some needs. So it's a quick, uh, easily understood document that anyone in your community can, can quickly

111look at and see what the need is. This is, uh, back when I went to school, they called the CliffNotes version of, of books. Um, and, and I say this is kind of the CliffNotes version of our facility study where, again, you have a very quick analysis. Anybody in your community can say, okay, the, the, the district has done pretty good in some of these areas. There might be, um, um, some, some, some spots where, where we have to address the, the poor conditions. But again, it's a very quick, easily understandable, uh, digestible document. If, uh, I think in those documents, if you flip to the back, we do have the more detailed, uh, engineer reports, which again, we do summarize as well. So get, we, we've kind of revised this document over the years

112to try to, to meet that happy medium that anyone can really, um, engage it and understand it. Uh, just on a, based on our quick walkthroughs, I think this is gonna be one of the rooms we have with communications. Two buildings are very well maintained. They're clean as you walk through them. Are they a little aged? The bathroom tile kind of lets you know that they're a little age, but the reality is they look like they're in good condition. We have to be able to tell a story of things below the floor ceiling and the walls are really giving us a challenge. And, and how do we address those? So this is another great tool to help with that communication. So from a little bit more of the mundane aspect to, of things to that,

113the more detailed, obviously the option exploration is, is where we get to get into a little bit more of the fun part. Um, this brainstorming, uh, we start off often with spreadsheet architecture, so going through a number of different scenarios. And what's critical for this is that we do explore, you know, a, a wide variety of different options from simply, again, addressing our boilers, our roofs and, and our most immediate capital maintenance needs to maybe just exploring what maybe a, a, a far reaching project would be. Because again, when we go through this community process and the question is, well, did you think about X, Y, or Z? And we can often say, yes. We, we looked at it, that was option seven B, and we, uh, didn't pursue it because it didn't meet enough

114of our needs. And it was, it was too expensive. And people thought, thank you. And, and we appreciate that. So this often helps us to narrow down an option, um, and, and look at things in a big picture and get us to a point where we can start to explore things, uh, and, and, and get in graphic detail as we look at, uh, site plans and site concepts. One, one of the main drivers of, of this in, in school design is, uh, addressing site circulation. So parent and bus drop off, um, sure works perfectly here now. So there's probably nothing to improve. Um, but, uh, again, exploring a number of different options, uh, in graphic form and also exploring things from a master planning perspective. Um, again, a lot of times in districts there's always

115the, um, needed to classrooms. So we added to classrooms to the most logical place, but then that becomes a roadblock for future development because it may impede, you know, this a wonderful CTE expansion or something that would've been great in that location. So having that master plan, uh, that maybe extends a little bit further beyond what, um, the immediate need would be. Uh, four plans are, are, are critical. This, again, it helps to inform the budgeting process, but also again, understanding, uh, the overall master planning, uh, of, of the project. Uh, starting to interlay some of the, um, you know, potential furniture needs and, and so forth. Again, helping you inform that budget at a very early, um, phase. Um, and also understanding how far we're really taking the scope of work. Because renovation, when

116you say you're gonna renovate, there's a start and a stop point generally on any given project. So we wanna make sure we're really communicating and articulating what that looks like. And then again, a final piece we've found very helpful in the budgeting is there's a lot of information on those plans that we're not showing at this point in time. So we, um, typically will do a, a preliminary project description, which, um, is, is a, a, a document that we really list out what we think will be in each of the rooms. So each classroom will have, uh, carpeting or some type of tile flooring. It'll have a certain amount of cabinetry within it. So as Myron is budgeting that work, they're not guessing. They have a kind of a list that they can go through.

117And, and, um, the other critical part of this is maybe you, you know, you want a certain type of roofing or you want a certain type of flooring, like terrazzo. Some of those things are difficult to add post referendum 'cause they're very expensive. So if we know some of those, um, really important issues for you, we can track those very early and get them included in the budget. So as we go through all of these options, we brainstorming of course, you know, it's the financial piece that comes to it and how do we go about the budgeting process. Really what we do, just as Clint was describing what they put together for a narrative and working with the district and ourselves is we take that narrative and we do conceptual estimating. And how we go

118about the conceptual estimating is we're utilizing historical, uh, values. We're also utilizing subcontractors and vendors. A lot of times we're using local subcontractors and vendors and that would be a discussion that's had as to, you know, what is considered local. 'cause we want to engage those individuals, um, through the budget and process to assist as well, so that we're putting together the best information for you to make informed decisions. So you can see just on the right, uh, by the graphic here, basically you've got all different ideas. It's kinda like an a la car list in the cafeteria, right? And from there it's narrowed down so that you can define your scope based upon budget and needs. So the next piece we, we strongly recommend our clients consider that as a process of community serving.

119We will do a lot of community engagement work, but none of it will give you a statistically valid sampling of the community. We'll probably get 50 to a hundred people that show up, which isn't gonna be representative of your community. 75% these days of most communities are non-parent, non staff. Meaning they may have graduated from here and they may still live here, but they don't have kids in school. And so, so they have less direct connection and, and we have to help them understand why we have to go through this process. So we have done probably a hundred surveys. Now this is probably a little bit old, uh, with, uh, school perceptions and we work with 'em. Their, their outcomes are about 92% accurate and predictive of a referendum outcome. Uh, and so really as

120a board, this is the referendum. For the referendum, it's an easy way to test some ideas, whether it's an operating referendum and or a capital referendum or both. You can test it in a less challenging way than a, than a referendum and go through this process and get really concrete data back. Where is the community at? Where are they at regarding solution, regarding tax impact, et cetera. So really an important piece of the process we think. 'cause it's gonna give you confidence as a board to say go or don't go depending on what we get back, um, with data, not with how we used to do it 10 years ago, every board member would say, well, my five neighbors told me they're in for 9.9, so we're going for nine point. I go 9.9. Mine

121say 10.2 literally was how we would make some of those decisions. This doesn't, this really is a tool to prevent you from having to do that. You wanna relate, I relate back to your project here as to use the elementary as an example and a survey. You can test multiple options and you can ask the community, okay, here's, here's what would happen if we renovate the existing elementary and it would cost x what it would look like and here's what it would look like if we put this addition on. It would cost y. You can do that in a survey. When you go to referendum, you can't give 'em options, right? Yeah. You have to, you're, so once you dig out with the survey, then you can pick the right option and take that to

122the community. Can I ask a survey question? Mm-hmm. Um, does your, so we need an operating referendum for school no matter what. Yep. And so one of the options is infrastructural operational, the other one is a two for one. Yep. Yep. Um, is that, uh, that's a thing we can do in That survey. Yep. We do that all the time. Have one of those going in right now. I just had a call today regarding the operating capital combo. Um, and the question for them will be is if they need the money, and this is gonna be the same question you have, you need to levy for the operating dollars, I'll say November of 2026, or sorry, the following November. If you do go in November 26th, you might, you can just ask two questions because

123you don't ask two a calendar year. Yeah. So that would allow you to still then come back. Let's say the operating isn't successful, you could come back in 27 and ask it. Yeah. But we, a lot, a lot of our projects in the referendum phase have two questions. One, operational, we're, we're at Wisconsin Rapids right now. A survey goes out in the next couple weeks and it's talking about both. There's a whole operational component to that survey and then there's a capital component. So I bet half our projects now have that same issue. And it's because of the funding challenges that all a 12 schools are facing. You're not unique at all. You can present that to all of our community effectively, that all schools in all areas. Absolutely. Other than the suburbs of Milwaukee

124that this Brought, I think there's a handful left that haven't had one. So. Yep. Well, and you, and you do work with Baird, which is a great partner of ours. So we, they're fantastic. We work with Baird, you know, as long as the two of us have work together. So, and they're a big part of that, having that discussion 'cause they do a very good job of sort of helping people understand that. 'cause school finance is very complicated for people to understand. So the other part is preliminary timeline. We did, this is included in your book as a tab so you can see it a little larger. Um, just wanted you to see kinda what does this look like? This is not as detailed as we would likely get internally between leadership, but for me

125with a little bit of a DHD, this is perfect. It just gives me a little bit of a roadmap of where are we today, where do we need to get to if we were considering, uh, a November 20, 26 referendum and what are some of the big picture buckets of time that as a board we should think about. Um, so happy to talk more about this, but you can see the one thing with the community survey is it does take time. It's mailed to every home. It takes usually six to eight weeks with 15 to 20 drafts to create. It takes basically two months to print, distribute, allow time for responses, data to be evaluated. So we have to make sure that we can't at the last minute say let's survey, we have to commit

126kind of from the early stages that we're gonna do that so that we can be targeting, getting our survey out basically what were we saying next spring, late next spring. We can survey in the summer, but you don't get as good a response rate often. So we ideally would survey, get survey results back right before summer hits. That gives us summer as a board and team to work through any revisions that need to be made. We adopt resolutions to go to referendum or referendums depending on how many questions you ask in August. And then we start the, the robust community engagement communication campaign, um, from August through November. And you think that time timeframe is reasonable? I just, to me it feels like a lot of communication in our community very fast. We often find

127having, uh, an aggressive 'cause there's momentum, right? Yeah. If, if, if you take too long, sometimes people just, they get tired, it get stagnant. So, um, I, this, this is a very doable timeframe. It it and, and it, it's also one of those things where we can get to a point where we're, we're not where we need to be. We need to pause. Um, so it, you always think kind of going towards, uh, the most reasonable next date makes the most sense, again to keep that momentum. But I would say this timeline right now is not, it's not completely aggressive. There's other ones that we've done where we we're trying to work even faster. So I think we got reasonable time. The year to 18 months is typically what we would say. And, and a

128year when we have two buildings to evaluate. If you, we had 10 buildings here that we were gonna be talking about. That's a little different. What Was our timeframe on the, I know it was a disastrous timeframe on the operational, first operational and do not pass. Um, when we went to November of 2022, um, we had an aggressive communication plan like August, once the reservations were approved by the board. Um, and the termination of, that's when we want the two questions. So very similar to this, which is an industry standard, um, uh, subject of the past and different experiences. So, okay. And as CL said, we can all, we, we kind of recommend charging forward. If we hit a hurdle that we can't clear as a team, then we just press pause. That's okay. But

129it's, I think it helps all of us to frame what is a potential finish line. And if we can't get there, we don't get there. That's okay. But without one, we tend to see these drag on, we lose momentum as was noted. And the community may get a little sick of hearing about it too at some point. So mm-hmm. You mean 'cause obviously within the time for me, eat, sleep and breathe that And Yep, yep. What what's nice about this is let the community get through the holiday season and then let's come out of the gate in January, February starting to do that pre-survey engagement where community listening sessions, conversations, whether we be focus groups, whatever it is, that's a really good time. We'll have enough information for first part of 2026 to really engage

130well with the community and they'll have information before the survey comes out. But the survey really is an informational newsletter. It's eight pages long, it's gonna describe all the needs. Even those that say I wasn't part of anything. They're gonna get educated if they take the time to read a pages. Um, which is why that model of mailing to every home may feel antiquated, but it's far better than the phone poll surveys where they get 30 questions that can't keep it on their kitchen counter and read it a few times. And so we found that process to be far more predictable and some of the other models of form forwarding. Matt, if you could gimme just a moment. Yeah. Um, have to also explain, um, last time we did our community survey, the timeframe was

131May, June report out July. Yeah. So if we take a look at surveying here, we, if we were looking at the initial year, it would be earlier in the spring, which would gather us some more time. Um, so we were somewhat, um, I understand the pressure was not ideal. I will tell you, people are still gonna say it came fast. That's What I'm concern. We can't prevent that if people don't feel that way. Mm-hmm. We'll do the best we can, but not everybody comes along on the journey with us as hard as we try and we have to acknowledge that concern and, and help bring them along more quickly potentially. So community engagement is critical. Um, we've got a, both brand and Meyer have a robust team of community communications, community engagement, graphic design specialists

132have been involved in hundreds of referendums a as a team and really know what it takes to help support you. Again, this is a lengthy conversation, uh, but we would support you in a operating and or capital referendum if they're both on the same ballot. We would be supporting you with creating all the graphics, the brand, the messaging, the mailers, the boards, anything you can think of. And the goal with that really is to make sure that you are out in the community having the conversations, not worrying about, oh, I have to create a graphic for a social media post for our open house tomorrow night. That's done. Your job is to post it and then spend the rest of your time having the conversations one on one or in groups with community members. 'cause

133that's the most effective way to bring people along and, and get them the yes. There's a lot of other things we'll do too if the project goes ahead and we'll do a written monthly progress report. Once we get their money, we can't stop communicating with them. We used to do it that way. That's silly thinking that we actually did it that way. Um, so we've changed that model and we're writing a monthly progress report for you now that you can distribute to your parents and community members, groundbreakings constructions, tours, et cetera. So really a robust community engagement strategy from the day we're hired until the, the dedication and then finally fee. It's always an exciting thing to talk about. Um, but we have three phases of our fee. The first phase one, uh, is the

134facility assessment and master planning. So that's really this, the services that we talked through, the seven steps with the exception of the community survey is not included in there. That would be another contract that you as a board would engage with. Uh, school perceptions does not want to contract with an entity that has a vested interest in the outcome of the survey. Um, so they want to contract directly with you as an organization. We're still gonna work alongside 'em, creating everything in support of the survey. Um, so our fee, the 14,000 is for all the facility assessment engineer tours of the building's, written reports, option solution exploration, community engagement, et cetera. The next phase is if a referendum goes ahead, the communications community engagement support work is a fixed fee of $4,500. And then because

135we don't know what the project is, how big, how small, um, a sliding scale percentage for both brand Myron, you can see as the projects get larger, the percentage fee gets smaller. Um, the other note under there is if the project does go ahead, uh, and I can't see the note from here under two, under 2 million would be negotiated. There's just a couple of notes there where we credit some of those first phase fees back. We do know that some entities come in and say they'll do this all for free. Um, we've tended to find that if you do it all for free, we can't then pay our engineers to come in and do a detailed evaluation. So we're gonna end up hiring a subcontractor to come in and they, they don't know current

136codes. Our building codes changing in Wisconsin in the next two months in theory. So that'll be a whole new set of codes that we have to be up to speed on. And you also, we tend to see that there's a lot more cost on the back end. So you end up paying more in the long run versus making a a small financial commitment up front to your partners. So with that questions please, Steve All in Here. Yeah. What else answer for we do, Matt said we, we have to fly through this. We don't get to dive into detail on any one thing, but, but hopefully we did a good job. How much does that survey cost in your experience? I know it's probably based on population obviously. So Printing and mailing is probably the very

137variable Couldn speak too. Yeah. Um, but we can easily get up a whole for, I wanna say it's around 10, $12,000 in that neighborhood. We have The average three different companies across multiple small ones. And that's, I was gonna say 10, 12. And I know it's, it's, it may feel expensive in the grand scheme of an operating budget, but one unsuccessful referendum. Yeah, you're paying 50 times that inflationary impact. So really I, that's why we really encourage clients to use that model to make your decision with data versus what you're hearing. Can we ask you a question? So what, so tell, tell us what, what, what scares you the most about this process as a board member, you know, going through this and knowing that this is gonna be happening. What, what is your biggest

138concerns or fears? I don't mind. Community. I was, That's by part number one. None of this happens without C buyin for sure. So Casey back the room to write us down for Casey posted right? This was a special meeting. So we don't have the record of newspaper watch. He'll be watching it Hopefully. I think, yeah, I think community engagement is hard. Also coming off of an operational, I don't know if you're, you've seen this, but our operational referendum also, um, overlapped with an overdue assessment of property values. Um, in Um, it did, but it was in our time I feel like town policy specifically, people don't understand what happened. And so we had that to like we, in the last meeting we had someone here very angry and honestly very angry if you don't understand

139the breakdown, totally reasonable because he thought he was signing up for one thing and he got an a hundred percent increase in property taxes. But I think we have that in our district, which I think is what scares me the most. I think we have have like pre-homework that has to happen to get our community understanding that. Um, because I think there are people that said yes who were like, yeah, we can do that 30% and then they, for them like elderly people, the storm, I'm thinking that obviously they were being like, so unfortunately we had the perfect storm and so that makes us a little apprehensive. It doesn't make you feel any better when you're not alone in that challenge. Right? Everybody saw those huge increases and we get a lot of survey data

140that came back saying it was supported and we got really nervous 'cause those assessments came up after that data had been collected and the ability to educate people on your taxes aren't going up by that much. So you guys know the story, but it is a really hard educational thing and it, it's hard to get people to actually come in and have the conversation. Exactly. You can't put it in writing. Exactly. It still don't work. Yeah. And it's always helpful to include Barry, you know, they do a great job. Even the the finance 1 0 1 with some of the community engagement that we'll do. Um, so we'd always encourage inviting them to be part of that. 'cause at least hearing it from somebody, uh, you know, kind of an expert in the industry, it's

141more than, you know, no offense but hearing it from you guys or us or anybody, anybody else. So the benefit you have with your operating is it's renewal not correct. Am I remembering that correct? It's, It's Not operating. So you, they are already paying that, right? Correct. So it's, the hardest ones are the ones that basically say we're starting this for the first time. It's all new tax. If you go for the same amount, it'll probably be a little different. It'll just depend on all those variables. But the renewals are far more successful than the original asks. And so that is a benefit you have going for you because people are conditioned to pay that mill rate already. Yeah. If we could keep it at that same rate with the infrastructure, which I think is

142impossible, but if it was possible, that would be really agreed. But I think that would be the easiest sell. Like look, we were so responsible, we're going to now Start thinking of your messaging of all the things you've been able to offer or maintain that you would've had to give up if you didn't have that too. That's an important piece. People we to start seeing what they're getting from that investment. Mm-hmm. Yes. But that whole community piece of you talk about again, we, we couldn't spend a ton of time on tonight, but agree a hundred percent with you, that that's critical. So I mean, we have, we have staff members within our organization that, that, that is our focus. And as we start working with the board and the administration, we have separate meetings just

143dedicated to the communication side, just to developing that. What does it look like, the timeframe, what tools are we gonna use? You know, so that, that's a whole piece that really runs parallel with just the planning of the, the facilities assessment and stuff like that. So, uh, definitely, definitely a critical piece. So we recently worked with the Sparta School District, so did a facility study. Um, operational is part of it. So they went to survey, um, had good results for the, um, uh, operating and had good results for a capital project. But because of their situation, they had failed a prior operating, they were being, uh, penalized by the state with some of their funding. So they prioritized the operational first. We supported their effort there during referendum for operational. They were successful. And then

144we came back with, uh, with the capital. So again, it was all communication, it was all understanding priority and need and working through with each, each particular situation. What's in your best interest? Well, we could hire you to do this survey, help with the referendum, and then not hire you to build a bill. No, our fees are contingent. So let's go back to that for That's a good question. 'cause we wanna make sure. Yeah, because like, why don't you go first? Well, yeah, so, so it's a, it's a three phase approach, but it's a commitment that you're, you're signing on phase one, signing that commitment to go all the way to the end with you. Well, yeah. If, if it could do so, like, let's say at the end of, uh, you know, phase one

145usually doesn't end, but sometimes at the, well, I guess at the end of phase one, it can end at survey. So let's say for example that we go through this whole process and the survey results come back and there's no support for anything operationally or capital related, and you just put the whole thing on pa pause, you know, we will just walk away. Uh, if there's, if there's success and the community is supporting these things and we're moving on to the next phase, then yes, you're making that commitment that in phase two, then we're gonna help you through the communication planning for the referendum. And then if the referendum does pass, then you're committing to our team that they would be doing the design. And again, that's why I brought that first slide up though,

146that we would be the construction manager. So it doesn't mean that, you know, Myron is doing everything and all the work and all that kind of stuff. You're just saying we want Myron to lead that construction process and provide the supervision and stuff like that. But, well, and the main reason for that is we're, we're probably collectively between the two teams gonna be almost a hundred thousand dollars invested in the district by the time we're through phase one, two with time. And, but if we came to you and said, it's a hundred thousand dollars to get a book that you put on the shelf, you're gonna say, well, I can hire staff members with that. I'm not gonna do that. So we do treat these as a commitment to you. We're hoping the partnership and

147the commitment is there that you want us on your team the whole way through. Um, but we have skin in the game too. Um, we're not gonna come and propose a referendum that we don't think is gonna pass, or it's so expensive because again, we're really invested in you as a, as a district by the time we get to that phase three effort. Does that make sense? It's pretty typical with a lot of the school districts that, you know, if they, if they take, start with the process up front and get the team assembled early. Right? Right. It's typically not. I I would, I would think so. Yeah. But my, my, I guess my question is, yeah, so do we have a contract with both of you separately? Two separate contracts? Yes. That's what we're

148recommending. I mean, again, there's, there's at times when people will come in, they will, they will suggest the, I call it the one stop shop where you'll have the design and the construction, everything under one contract. We personally don't think that that's the best for the, because where's the checks and balances for the school district? So even though we have a great relationship working together, like we talked about, I still think it's in the district's best interest to say we're gonna contract with Bray for the design, and then we're gonna contract with Myron and manage that construction process. It's two separate contracts. Um, instead of one who's inspecting your work, if you're doing work on, on the project. So we are, and that's, we have onsite construction personnel who would be on site every other

149week, typically reviewing any. So then if the subcontractors doing work under, if Myron was the project manager, yep. Mm-hmm. You're inspecting the work. So, and, and we are our engineer. I'm just trying to checks and balances. Well, exactly. That's, that's what we say. When you're doing the well one stop shop, I don't know how you have the checks and balances because you design and your construction is all one. So are they really, you know, one watching out for the other in most cases where this is. Yeah, I mean, Ray, you know, Matt and I are good friends, but Matt's gonna tell me in two seconds that, you know, what you just put in there is, is is not gonna work. You know, and you better, you know, fix this or replace this or, but, but

150we also hold the subs accountable too. So, you know, we as the, the superintendent and the project manager on that, on that job are watching the quality of the work that's going into, because the reality is we're working off of repeat customers, right? We're gonna want to show, showcase whatever work is done for your district. Yep. Can I ask a follow up money question? 'cause you're the most expensive upfront for us, and we have no money. I dunno if you've seen our financial situation. We are not, we're not cash flush. Um, right. We have very little money to like fix stairs and things like that. So the one thing you talked about, which I think most of us would suspect, is that the projects cost a similar amount. Like, it's not like one person is

151going to have a plumbing contractor no matter who bids it out. Or plumbing contracts are gonna look similar for whoever we go with. Um, how does that, like right, you go with a one shop stop, if they take 3%, their overall cost of the project is higher in somewhere. So how, talk a little bit, I don't know. I'm not giving you a real question, but a little bit about that because I know when we had the evaluation site evaluation done, um, you know, we were talked through at the state level kind of, you know, that when you do a design build, it's often more expensive than, um, so that's a place that I have no expertise. Yeah. So I can give you an example. So for the one stop shop model, what, at least the

152architectural engineering fees, let's say it's a $10 million project and our fee is 6%, we're gonna charge 6% to the, to the one stop shop, and they're gonna mark that up. So you actually will probably be paying anywhere from seven to 8% for architectural and engineering services. You won't really see it, it'll all happen behind the scenes. 'cause they're gonna tell you we're the one stop shop, here's your number. But they're marking our fee up and they're doing that with everything along the way. Every subcontract, land surveying, geotechnical commissioning, all of that goes into the one stop shop and gets these layers of cost on top. And then they typically put what they call program management fee on top of all of that. So we've typically seen, when we've reviewed the one stop shop contracts

153that the overall additional cost anywhere from 10 to 20% more in the end, clients just don't know it when they hire 'em so early 'cause you're not seeing it and we're getting a free study or a very cheap study, but you're paying a significant premium at the back end, so you don't mark up your sub. Then our, our engineers, we do not mark them up. No. They're, they're within our cost. We've already factored our cost associated with managing our engineering sub consultants that's already in this cost. And then from our perspective on this $10 million example, at 2%, that's our, that's our overhead profit. That's our markup on that project. So if it's a $10 million job, that's our percent. Right. So if it comes in, you know, if I was to give you a

154subcontractor or Beck is to pour the concrete, right? Yep. You're not marking our number up. No. Other than other than the fee. So we get the fee on the overall project, but we're not, sometimes somebody, some people will do additional markups on the subwork. We do not put any additional markup on any of the subwork. So, so, you know, who's ever doing the work you're seeing? All right. So you're, so, so I'm getting that, but at the end of the day, if there's a $10 million project, you're getting 2% correct. Right. And, and just add the one stop shop on a $10 million project is going to have, let's say Myron bids to the one stop shop. Myron's bid is $5 million. The one stop shop is putting a markup on the $5 million, and

155Myron already would've had a 2% number inside of their $5 million bid. So you're getting these layers of percentage of ads on top of everything that filters into the, I would've been with a markup myself. Well, no, you have to, I see. I don't see how you're not getting a markup on top of our numbers. So, but, and then the other piece, and again, we're getting more detail here, which is fine, but you got, you understand what we're talking about. Well, right. But I mean, you are still getting, you're still 2% of the total project. Yeah. But you also have, you're familiar with general conditions, right? Of course. So, so the other piece to that, for the firms that you're talking to now, they're also gonna charge you for general conditions like here. So you're

156gonna pay for the project manager, you're gonna pay for the superintendent. The games that are played a lot of times on this front end is that everybody does that front end stuff for free because you're, you're bought in, you're locked in contractually then to take it all the way through, once you hit that phase three for construction, I can guarantee you what you're paying in general conditions for all those additional costs, for all the project management and people in the trailer and all that kinda stuff is gonna be a heck of a lot higher than what, you know, somebody like Myron is charging for that. So I, I just, I always want boards to be cognizant that nothing in life is free. It definitely makes it difficult when it's not. How, how do you compare

157apples to apples 'em, right. I know. And that's, we gotta talk about that. Yeah. And that's part of, I mean, part of the challenge here is that, you know, you're, it's fairly open-ended at this point yet. And I don't even know, I don't know if you got, did you get the level of detail on the percentages? Like phase three? Did you, did you get that information? We Got their markup. You just got their markup Total. Total markup. The total markup. Like not like what The whole project, the same as what yours is. Same as the Myron column. Yeah. Just for another, some minor point of clarity, the percentages you're seeing on the screen for us are on the construction cost, not on the total project. So, so there's a $10 million referendum that passes within

158that $10 million. You're gonna have usually 15 to 20% of that are gonna be what we call soft costs. Our fees, land surveying, soil borings, commissioning services, furniture and equipment acquisition, et cetera, et cetera. We don't take a fee on those. Myron doesn't take a fee on those. So you can't, I just wanna make sure you don't take a $10 million project and say it's 8% for Bray and Myron on $10 million. It's not, it's probably gonna be percent, you should change that in future presentation. Yeah. But yeah, to be fair, it says construction costs. I know, and that's just an educational thing for you as a board. The construction costs and the referendum dollar amount are not the same number. They're different and they're usually 15 to 20% different for all of those reasons.

159Now, the budgets we prepare for you will list everything on all, you're gonna see all the construction dollars above the line, subtotals fees, bond costs, general conditions, the architecture, engineering fees, dollar amounts for furniture. You're gonna see all of that broken out to get to a potential referendum amount or survey amount first. So I did, again, I just wanna make sure you're not applying the eight saying, well there it's an $800,000 fee on 10 million. It's actually gonna be probably 8% on more like $8 million in that case. I mean, companies aren't able, I don't how they can stay in business if, and again, I don't know exactly when you say hire, some people are doing it for free or Well, I mean, I think if people are doing phase one for free as a

160district, we know that it's, I mean, I feel like as a business person, we all know it's coming from, Some can't, you can't function as a company. Agreed. You have to cover some, I I don't think $14,000 covers their fee. No. Phase one. I, I know it doesn't, it covers our out of pocket costs of paying engineers to be here. And it covers a little bit of our travel costs. We're not making a profit, we're making nothing on 14 grand. I'm telling you. No, but again, cumulatively as, as two companies, we work with a lot of school districts throughout the state and work through this process. So yeah, I mean, if we were just living on that in one district, that wouldn't be, uh, it wouldn't work real well. But again, you, we have to

161have some skin in the game on the front end as well. Because again, you're in a position where you can't spend a hundred grand to get into a referendum. I mean, it's just not feasible. So, and if we do a 10 million construction cost project, and remember, really our first phase is seven grand, not 14, because we're gonna credit half of that against the project. And if the timing of, if the, if it's an issue of timing and not having funds available to pay, we'll be more than happy to front that until you get to the point where you can't afford to pay that. Well, I'm just glad you asked the question because we go through this interview process at times and we'll leave and we get a call the next day saying, yeah, sorry,

162we really liked you guys, but uh, you know, XYZ is doing it for nothing. And we never really even have then have a chance to explain to people what you just make sure that you understand, you know, what you're right, what you're buying and what you're paying for. So, and Again, this is construction process, isn't it, on? So who buys the furniture and the, the, the, uh, boilers and who's paying for that? Everything that's fixed in the building traditionally. So boilers is a good example. That's gonna be engineered design specified and then bid through Myron. So we will design it and engineer it with our team, specify it with a lot of input from your team, and then that'll go out to bid. Uh, and that will be installed and warrantied and, and held under

163the Myron contract. So can that be bought, can the school district alone go out for, for that you wanted to buy something direct or for that material and then you still bid out the labor to install it for the plumber? It can be so the plumber can mark it up. Yes, it can be done that way. Now the thing to recognize in that scenario, 'cause we had clients do that the past, if there's a warranty issue and it's purely on the mechanical supply side of things, now the district's responsible for that direct. You don't have that, that layer of support from the company that did the install or say there's a warranty issue. And it was because of the, the install. You know, now you've got two different parties that you're trying to work through

164versus having a mechanical contractor who procured it and installed it one entity. So it's just something that they fall, we had a client do that with air handling equipment, large project with air handling equipment back and folded possible. Yeah, they went out and bought the equipment but come, comes after the fact that their legal counsel would mind then you still have to have a payment and performance bond on that. You're legally required as a public entity to have a payment and performance bond. They ask for the payment and performance bond from the supplier and the supplier's bond cost was three times what would've been to carry underneath it the construction manager. So we pivoted and figured it out, but there's just kinda layers there. We're happy to have discussions about pros and cons of all

165of that stuff. We're not saying the way we do it is perfect if there's ideas as to how to do it differently to save a little bit, we want to hear 'em, we may say here are three considerations if we go that route or things that that falls to be aware of just 'cause we've experienced 'em. But we're not here to tell you, no, you shouldn't do it that way. We'll just help educate you on what we've seen and you have the benefit of our collective experience having been through hundreds of these kids tall projects. But the other piece that you asked in your initial questions like furniture for example, is, so he talked about all the fix. So I always explain, you take the building, you turn upside down and shake it. Anything that

166falls out is that loose stuff like the furniture and all that type of stuff that again, we don't, we don't, you can contract all that directly if you want. I mean, bra has the ability to, sometimes furniture selection is a, is a beast in itself. So they can assist in that and provide services for that. But, but any of that loose type stuff, uh, you know, the district can contract all that. Right. Go through and move our cell. Correct. We think you benefit to like just looking at this wireless access point here, you don't need us to specify that, right? You're gonna, your IT people are gonna tell us we need a data cable in box in that location and then we as a district team are gonna go buy that and put it in

167place. You don't need our markup and or an electrical contractor's markup or a miron markup on that. We don't think that's smart. We don't do it that way. Another example of you maybe have a carpenter or a cabinet maker in the area and all, all the cabinetry, you want to work with them specifically to do the work or figure out how bidding an aspect of that is. If you want to kind of parse that part of the project out to work directly with them. We've done sort of situations like that as well to, um, allow for that to happen as well. Like preferred vendor. Yeah. Write that right into your, your synopsis. Absolutely. What we sometimes will see is just that the board can know that they're getting a good number is you may have

168a list of here the preferred vendors so that we make sure that we're doing great outreach to them, that they're getting kind of preferential access to the project, but we still require them to bid. And you're gonna be part of the bidding process, right? Drag team? Yep. I mean you'll see all the bids. I was just gonna say, I mean that, that's probably one of the biggest things that Myron prides ourself in and we can speak to it, but is that we're very open book and very transparent. So when it comes to the bid process, you're gonna see all the bids. You're gonna help us pick who you want to have as a subcontractor. You don't necessarily always have to pick a little bid. It could be somebody local, it could be somebody that you

169have history with. It could be somebody that you have a horrible history with and you're like, we're not, we don't wanna work with 'em again. But we don't just come back to you with a number that says, here's $10 million, cut me a check. You're gonna see everything. Especially we know on this board, you guys, there's people on this board that have experience in construction. So, so we wanna leverage that and we, we would want you to be a part of that process. Plus Lee will see you at the, at the BA baseball game or basketball game. You doesn't want to get you yelled at Basketball. Great question. Glad you're, it's good. You can. Any others? What do districts do with buildings if they go from multiple buildings to question two? Good job. An abandoned

170elementary school, what do you do with an abandoned element Happens? So I'll give you an example. Park Falls, anybody's been up in the Park Falls area. Um, they had a 1955 elementary school that was converted over to a city hall. Um, we were selected to, um, the city park Falls joined with the YMCA. Uh, we were selected through the same process, um, to go through, uh, the pre-construction, the design. And from there we converted that 55 elementary school, uh, to A-Y-M-C-A. Um, that one I take a great deal of pride in 'cause I was involved with the process. Um, one of the things that, uh, I thought we did a really good job on was we went in and, uh, did a lot of field commissioning right away. And what was interesting was in the

171masonry, all the doors were, were the residential height. So they were six eight rather than commercial height seven foot. Um, one of the things that we challenged our design, uh, team on that one was right away outta the gate, the drawings all showed the doors at seven foot commercial, you know, standard. But we would've had to take out masonry, re rework all the masonry openings. Um, and we didn't feel that it was worthwhile. So what we did instead is took field measurements incorporated in the documents. They went with six, eight doors rather than a four inch standard head. We went to a two inch head to give it a six 10 door. So we, we looked at it from a constructability standpoint, what made the most sense financially? So that's an example, a recent example

172of what a community did. You guys talked, it really varies on building type, building, age building, location, community type. So in the larger urban areas, most of the older school buildings that are being closed down turn into residential. Um, or now we're seeing a trend, especially in Iowa with older school buildings being bought by parochial schools and moving their parochial populations now that they have vouchers in Iowa into those. So those, that doesn't really apply here, I don't think from a parochial perspective. Housing may work, but we're typically seeing that more in the multi-story, more historic type, uh, older billings. Uh, then they get grants and tax credits to do that work. Um, denmark's turning theirs into a library. That was a partnership they developed with the regional library system, uh, to put a small

173library in there. But I would say we, we did plan for the worst case scenario, meaning we did carry costs in the referendum to tear the building down. That's because the one thing we, we have seen in a lot of this districts or communities is there's, there's the old school house still sitting there, you know, derelict and probably a home for many different types of roads and whatnot. But, um, but, but to to to have that in the budget so that, you know, again, kind of worst case scenario, we can't find a reuse for it. We can um, you know, tear it down and probably make it more, uh, in your case, you know, could be part of, you know, talk with the, with the baseball field and Everything there. Great. And then lacrosse, we

174support them through a process where they send out for a request for a proposal on their old school buildings. And what they do is if they get a reasonable use back, right, they take, they sell it for a couple hundred thousand dollars, but they hold that money in escrow. If the project hasn't started within a year, it's, they're contractually allowed to buy the building back for the same amount they paid for it. And then they can either go back through that process or they can raise the building. The key is if we do walk away from a building and don't have an exact use for it, we have to be transparent that we're not gonna just sell it to the lowest bidder and let it turn into that eyesore and or we're not just going

175to, uh, sell it to something that's not desirable in the neighborhood. Those are both hurdles to getting referendums passed. S is, And it's a really hard communications title rope to walk because we're gonna spend a bunch of time talking about how the building needs all this work and it's expensive and, And then around somebody really that is a challenging Take rope to walk when it comes to those Buildings. Okay. Alright. Thank you Board, really appreciate This opportunity. Appreciate the time you, nice to see you. Nice meet you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Question. Thanks. Thank for your very much. Thank you very much. Okay, good. Good. I told yeah, I got that. He was like, he was like just a heads up on the meeting tonight to, and I was like, and I was

176like, you are sending the wrong person this message. Right? I was like, this has gotten be the wrong message. I was like, Ben, I'm not on. But I think I do do amazing things from our United Ways. It's working with them trying to get them to apply hundred grant from the Puerto Rico. Well we're excited that, you know, we went through this election process. Yes, I know. Executive great. I know. And then they hired a great assistant, so I'm excited about that. I just read the profiles, but I feel like I tracked the number of applicants. Thanks. Ate. So we still have more items we're gonna take quick pause the break. We'll be back if anybody needs a, a little break. No, you get to the table. Come we sign a note. Live is not

177paused. Are we, are we selecting a vendor tonight? Is that the goal? Well consideration and if the board agrees, yes. Okay. We do. I ain't gonna happen. If there's hurdles to discuss drink water. Yeah, because it's what I'm more who's actually gonna be the person and say something. They just gonna say, here's the stuff, here's the information each, Which Do we discuss it down here? Consideration. Okay. Or do we just discuss it now? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Alright. What's on the agenda? Sorry. We, we, so what we're gonna do when he gets back is we're going to discuss, um, so we're still gonna be like on five C, so we'll discuss the, the presentations and then we'll move to action items once we're done fully discussing that. And then the action, um, we can take action

178tonight On this, Ultimately on or both on that. And then also item C, which is the, the vendor. Yeah. So Are we in discussion? We're in discussion right now, so I, yeah, so collect your thoughts, just that's a lot of information. Can I ask a Future or current question? So if we were have, If I have like things I'm interested in talking about Sure. Do we have to put that on the Agenda? Okay. I'm just wondering Like if it fits under this, well it fits under this, like talking about like the Pre PR Specifically, like, oh, that would probably be a different agenda item. That's my question. Like, Unless it works into the contract, Perhaps that could be under our next, um, finance facility and operations agenda. We started about next week, first week after

179Next week. Yeah. And if you're considering that also under the umbrella of communication. Yeah. Um, so last time we were together, um, in September, we got a lot of information our team has met multiple times, almost weekly. Kind go through that to determine what could be a current communication plan. Will be a future plan. Yeah. So then we'll bring some draft information to the co committee meeting, if that's okay. Sure. And then, um, we can discuss as a committee and move to the board. And then, um, we determine future. There are specific agenda items you Yes. So let me know if there's any agenda items, but I think that's a good one for the facility one. Okay. Um, but on the other one, just let me know at any time and we'll get it on

180the agenda for future meeting. That's a good, uh, plug anyway for everybody. So anyway. Yeah, yeah. No, that's, that's a good question. Um, so the, so chum, um, I had mentioned like, we're gonna discuss, we'll take this time to discuss the presentations and then we'll have an opportunity to take action on it after we accrue, like take action on the cash flow stuff. Mm-hmm. Okay. So thoughts on the presentations? Were favorites, leanings, dislikes, or likes? I just could toss one out there. Just in my experience, I mean, I can see the pros and cons of being a one stop Shop, But I can also see the pros and cons of having two checks and balances. Yep. Mm-hmm. As a, I mean as just what this looks like, but then also as a lender, because sometimes

181these projects in construction, I mean there's, there's different things that get thrown in there and you really kind of wonder how that happens. Mm-hmm. And now when I have it kind of explained, I mean, other than like living down a little bit more, it makes you really, I I feel like it is definitely important. You're talking about this kind of money to have a checks and balances. I think one thing important to consider, because this is how about as up my wheelhouse as it gets professionally seeing what a, a mock, a previous school's construction, um, quote, estimate, whatever looks like. I'd be very interested in if any one of these companies doesn't wanna send one. I think that's a lot of proof in the pudding. So if not Only estimate, but final, What does, what

182does this look like? Because we owe it to, we owe it to ourselves, the school district community members to to, to, it should be something that we're throwing up on the board and saying, look at what this look, I mean, there's no reason to hide any of this. So there's, if there's transparency issues across the board in the beginning, then uh, then I think that's a huge red flag. So I think, I think we have to give everybody the same opportunity to provide what the real world looks like instead of the the pitch. Right. Well, I agree a hundred percent. A hundred percent. You need a precon estimate and you need a post-construction final tag. Yes. And the change order amount in between the time it was left until the time was Complete. I agree

183with this, but I have no expertise. Yep. Yeah. Could we give Andrea a clear list of those? Like before, like, because it does, I also feel similarly uncomfortable taking action. Yeah, absolutely. Out that agreed is like, can we make sure that we give her the specific language to ask for? Yeah. It's, it's simple as this. What does it look like to your Oh yeah. Customers. What? Can you give me an example of what you gave to all these school districts? Yeah. Or each one of them? What did you provide to them that's going to be, in your opinion the most? Um, close to what we may be asking. And I think some of them were given parameters of what to, what to talk about today and if, and if give each one the opportunity to

184show us this is what it looks like. Because if there's red flags then, I mean, and, and issues with, well don't worry, we got you covered with an obviously that's like, hey, come on, what are you selling me here? Right. People Need to put caveats on it, otherwise they're gonna pick and choose their Special best ones. So great. So It's, uh, it has to be an enrollment of under a thousand kids or under seven 50 kids. I Mean we do very, very comparative. The Athens Make it, make it something that's as, as close to us as possible. Similar district size, similar population, similar. Even a construction cost pick 10 to 15 million is the construction cost range. That way it's apples and apples. You have that. And how do they do oversight? I anytime you

185have two enemies, like with Ray and Marion at the end, sure there's qa, qc oversight, but if something's wrong, what's their fault? It's their fault. Whose fault is it? Yeah, we're still third leg. It ends up getting all the way for Across all still data, across all. One thing that's not solid, and we've touched a little bit on with, on it, with the Myron thing is the soft costs. Mm-hmm. Who is doing, there's so much. Okay, so he, they have broken down for us the construction costs. Right. But what concerns me, and this isn't just strictly on Myron, it's here because they're The only people that put the number in. Right. So it won provides us with the discussion of, well who does the front end? Is this here? Right. So that's what we need

186to see from all three. Because if, if one's saying, so we all know the percentage, Hey, I I need one and a half to two, that sounds great. What's that on? Right? How much out, how much furniture are we buying? Or is there furniture in here because he don't have furniture? What does this get, you know, soil borings, all the, all pre investigation to a start construction project to be hundreds of thousands of Dollars. Yeah. I have a big question mark. What are general conditions? Yeah. So, Right, because like that sounded like a big deal. It is difference. It's as simple as a, it can be as simple as who's, are they providing a dumpster for the project and all the waste? Or are they doing the pre investigation soil testing, soil boring, very high

187level Who's, who's supplying the forklift? Who's supplying, you know, spring Core potties. Exactly. Which I have to say, okay. So I was also really confused in on this, on this presentation when they were like, we don't own the, we're, we don't let people bring in the equipment, we own the equipment. And then they were like, now we bid in the equipment. And I was like, where's the equipment coming from? Because I feel like you just told the equipment was not and coming from, I think she was, they were talking about the the boilers and the hot water. Yes. Okay. Work. I feel like they were like not made. I like we don't buy skid elevators sounding like to me, you guys, They're not bringing their own crane in to set things. They're bringing in the

188machines. That's they're bringing in the items to set with the crane. The contractor's responsible for bringing the crane into 70 Materials, right. Assembly, let's call it. Yes. Two different approaches to the, to the end game. No, I agree. So I want to know intimately And also could we get special provisions from each of 'em for the contracts because, um, if we set a working day contract or a deadline contract date, what are the, uh, liquid damages that are gonna be able to be charged? Who's covering those? Who's responsible for punch list items? Can I All kinds of things. Is it possible, I'm still gonna say this because I don't know any of these things. Is it possible for you three to put these in a list that goes to Andrea? Is this helpful for you?

189That one is going to be Recommendation if, um, or you can write it down. Let let you two do specific Do it. You couldn't speak it and I hear exactly what you're saying and it makes sense to me why we would ask for those. But how do I mean just write bullet points down. What Okay. Do You want me to do I, I'll I'll chat. We can, we can get here if we're allowed to chat. That's another thing. Are we allowed to chat? I don't know how that works. It's two, can't be one. Two is okay. Twos okay. Three is fine. Is we can't have four. Alright, I'm sorry. You want we can put together a draft. Send it out for everyone to review there. No, they Can can't respond. Don't do that. We can't

190respond. But you can send it to Andrea to request to request that she, But if it's technically a document that we're sending out, I don't feel comfortable for the two of us to draft without you having looked at it first. Yeah, I I, well I personally would send technically, Technically that's what it's a legal board, a board action at that point. Is it you're commenting on something We're requesting for information. It's an RFI from the board to firm. Okay. Yeah. How So the way we have, um, and this was intentional, our action items tonight says consideration in action because I give to the board the opportunity to either consider and have future conversations, which is what we're starting right now. Or take action. So I think I'm hearing an tells me different as a board

191you'd like more information and continued discussion before taking action. Right. Actual that presentation is not, and it would be Great if we could, if this information could come back before the next meeting. Right. Is that Impossible? Or perhaps the recommendation I could make is because you received a lot of information tonight, it was very good dialogue. I think I'm hearing a lot of questions then that still need to be answered. I'm wondering, um, by the time we come up to our regular meeting meeting on October 27th, for those of you that have the expertise and would like to draft some specific questions, bring those in draft or we could have them submitted and we could, I could combine them into a document. We can have it as a discussion item to confirm the board is

192in agreement that these are questions that still need to be answered. And here's what we're looking for from each of the three pre presentation mentors tonight. Then I would, um, as I did in the past, every vendor, um, that was presented tonight, an option to come. They get the same letter, told exactly what, um, we were going to be looking for. I would do the same thing. And then in November I would essentially invite them back with additional resources conversation. Um, I think what I hear from the board is that, um, we should probably go a little bit slower in this process to make sure we have all the information so that the board is comfortable making the decision. So if that timeline is applicable, gives everyone, not, gives everyone an option if you'd like

193to draft a specific question. Um, but then we come back on the 27th and we continue the conversation, make sure the board is all in agreement with what you would like for additional information. Does that sound Absolutely perfect? Specific questions come to you To be put into a document. Um, they to bring back probably both of us. Okay. They come to both of us. And, um, if we could them Monday, Because We meet the week before on Monday, correct. 27th And afterwards. The last Sunday. Yes. The fourth. Monday and October. Um, so our meeting, um, meeting on the 20th, is it possible for those questions to be to us by 8:00 AM on October 20 Monday? Next Monday. On Monday. Monday. Monday, Monday. When's the meeting? Monday they have a meeting before meeting. We plan

194it on the 20th, the agenda and then they, and then the actual meeting, she should do it on the 27th plan. The meeting on the 27th or the 27th? No, I can, I could get a long list for sure by, we would do Anybody on the board who has additional questions, send them to us in an email. We will just capture them within a document. Um, bring them forth to the board for discussion and conversation on the 27th. The board will then potentially be asked to take action on the next set of questions. So we're all in agreement. Then those would go out to each of the three vendors. And I would anticipate in writing them back, I think they should be here in person to be able to present and have another q and

195a in November. The board would agree? Mm-hmm. Sure. Can I ask another question? To the construction experienced people here, is there any apprehensions, I know this is a personal opinion question of apprehensions you have about working with any of the people, like the, have you worked with any of the people? Clearly? Some, some overlap? Yes. I worked with two of them. Have the experiences been okay? Nobody wants to say, I would like to see their quotes and there more, more information. Okay. Have you worked with two of them as well? One, we Okay. It's really obvious. The one that nobody's worked with In a construction aspect or a construction management aspect? Both. Okay. That's with this one, you have to clearly define that because they're two separate entities. Absolutely. So there's the construction portion and

196construction oversight. So they can be Oh yeah. Great. Contractors for construction. They might be, I use, for lack of a better term, it's for oversight managers. Correct. Or things get lagged. You, you don't hit deadlines. Critical paths get missed. Send everything back. Change orders. That's a change orders. Okay. Good to know. I mean, no, you Do not want a change order on a project like this. You wanna know what you want and you want to Plan. Can that also be in your questions? Change order statistics. That's perfect. Okay, great. Mm-hmm. Maybe a second. So you may have apprehensions, but you want more detail what they're, because I wanna give everybody a fair shot. It it, I think that's what We needed. There's some apprehension, but it sounds like they're willing to work through that and

197put that Yes. Which I, I think is respectful. I can be sold on anything as long as I can. Yeah. I'll get the questions. Okay. I'll work on my, And I, I trust, I trust the experts to put those questions together. Mm-hmm. I as a Yes. That, that will just be great. Anything else that we'd like to air out before, um, we move on? I think that's a good plan. Yeah, definitely more info. Okay. It's a great start though. I will fill out, which I previewed already, but I do think as a board we should really consider moving, creating our own or working really on a detailed communication plan that starts sooner than later. Um, especially about the past referendum. Um, and like the positive things, because I really think we need to start, I

198really feel like there's the, the buildings and what kind of track do you want? Those kind of things. But I think for us to be moving public opinion in a positive direction as soon as possible and being really proactive would serve us well. So, and I think as a board, we also need some sort of leadership on communication too, because I feel like we can give you a lot of that, but I think the board should be, it's stronger if the board is part of the communication in opinion, and then we're all on the same page Right. About what we're saying. Yeah. Yeah. So that'll be facilities meeting. I think we're gonna talk about those pre communications. That'll be a good, good timing. Okay. And I also think it would be helpful to have like

199a plan if that's the case. If we're gonna propose the one campus idea. I think people would really like to know, okay, what are we gonna do with the empty building? Because if we have a plan for that and we talked about, you know, I mean like, then it would be an easier sell. But then I'm also thinking about the different things that are obviously in motion within the community at this point. And you don't wanna put the cart in front of a horse, but if we don't want to wait and so like, there's so many different things. Like you're thinking about a fitness center. Yeah. Yeah. I mean that I keep on thinking about that. 'cause that money exists already. Exactly. And it's like we could Yeah. Right. Another layer. Mm-hmm. And I mean,

200and if it does make, I mean, and again, again, these were pre conversations before our referendum the last time is we have had conversations with the YMCA to come to town. So there are, there were, I mean, things have to fall In place in order to do that. So it's all about communication, but we, it it's about the plan forward, everybody. Yeah. Put a pool in. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I, I suggest not pool. No one wants to pay no one to take our kids. If the YMC came, they put a pool in. Agreed. Deal with the maintenance nightmare pool. That's the YC. Yeah. Pools are maintenance nightmare. Anyway. Anyway. All right. Okay. So it sounds like we have a good plan to keep gathering information. Keep moving. Okay. So let's move to the action items. And

201the first one is we're looking for a motion, um, to prove the resolution authorizing the issuance and sale of a $400,000 taxable gener general obligation promissory note. I'll make a motion. I will second it. So, and we will do a roll call. Vote please. Yes, Steve? Yes. Jessica, can I vote? Probably not. I need to. Okay. Tom? Yes. Angie? Yes. Tucker? Yes. Kat? Yes. Kim? Yes. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. And then I'm looking for a motion to approve the resolution authorizing temporary borrowing in an amount not to exceed $1 million pursuant to section 67 points while 8 8 1 Wisconsin statute. I'll make the motion. I'll second Tucker. All right. And we'll do a local vote again. Steve? Yes. Jessica. AB Tom? Yes. Angie? Yes. Tucker? Yes. Kat? Yes. Cam? Yes. Thank you. Okay.

202And it appears at this time, um, we do not yet have a motion to select a vendor, and that is going to be tabled for future action. Okay. At this time, we're looking for a motion to adjourn. I'll make the motion. I'll second it. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? You're adjourned. Thank you.