Construction Committee | PSRC Board of Education Meeting: 8/25/26

001I'd like to call this uh construction committee meeting to um a start and we'll start with a moment of silence. Thank you. Um for the committee, we've got Go ahead, Mr. J. >> Good evening, everyone. Um, in order for us to have this meeting, we have to have a quorum of four people. Um, Mr. Trey Brit is going to fill in as the fourth person here um until Mr. Henry Bour gets here. >> Thank you. Um, and we've got uh Dr. Terry Lair on the line virtual. Anybody else? [snorts] That's it for the moment. [clears throat] All right, we'll get this started. Uh, first topic, um, third party reviewer for energy performance contract. Um, Jonathan Lclair with LLJ. I'm new to your podium, so you'll have to let me know if I'm speaking too loud

002or not loud enough. >> You're good. >> Okay. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Uh I certainly appreciate you guys for uh inviting us and selecting us for for being your third party reviewer. Um and uh I think this is a very exciting time for the schools. I was over at your uh groundbreaking ceremony on Friday. I'd like to get about 10 more of those schools up and going. Good. Um, I was, uh, Bobby asked me to come and speak tonight and just go over what our position would be in this process. And as I was talking to some of your, um, council about what this process was, I don't think uh, it's hard for me to explain our role if if you don't understand the performance contracting process. So, I brought with me tonight and

003sent Bobby over a presentation of a uh I call it performance contracting 101. And it's something that I we've we've worked on six different school systems doing the same type process. Matter of fact, the first one we did was over in Hope County back in 2014 and Dr. Freddy Williamson was the superintendent back then. So, I I knew he understood it, but uh I I want to just start at that point. And as I'm going through this uh as I'm going through this presentation, I'm sorry about that. I got a N or something up here. Keep trying to get on me. But, uh as I'm going through this presentation, if you would, if you've got any questions, by all means, ask me. I want you to understand it. And I know you guys have been

004uh you've already had a an ESCO or rep come in and go through the process with you. But as I tell uh my constituents, I like to put it in layman's terms. Uh I'm from Red Springs, so uh sometimes I have to uh put it in terms that my people can understand. And so as I'm going through this, if there's something I say that you don't understand, just please stop me and I want to make sure you understand before I leave here tonight. That way I can explain our role in the process. Tell me uh how do I control the Oh, okay. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I didn't even see that. All right. Again, this is just performance contracting. We prepared this and I pulled this. A lot of this information doesn't go through here.

005The thing caveat I need to give you on this is I've pulled this over the years I've been doing this. So, I had to pull from some of my other ones since I didn't have updated information on school systems um uh systems and your uh your energy bills and whatnot. So, I had to pull it from some of our previous projects, but it's still the same. It'll run the same lines and and as I go through, I'll explain that to you. All right. Uh before we get started here, like I said, there's a few things is that you just need to they're going to be acronyms as we go through the presentation. The first one on here is performance contracting. It's just PC. That's just what everybody calls this type of process. the energy service

006company. That's the ESCO or that's the company that you'll be selecting as your next round to help you along this process. Uh, by the way, there's only eight of them that are allowed to do this type work in North Carolina right now that are licensed to do it. Uh, energy service performance contract. It's called a ESPC. I think right now the if you go to the energy uh NCDQ's energy office the UC website I think they've got a G in front of that now because they want it to be guaranteed energy uh service performance contract and I'll explain that as we go down through here. The investment grade audit that's just when you're sitting down and auditing your your process your schools and evaluating that to put your project together. the energy services agreement. That's

007just an agreement you'll be signing into with between you and the the ESCO to get your work done. Monitoring and verification, that's at the tail end of this. That's to monitor your project after it's been put in place and then to verify and you're getting the savings that you're that they said you were going to be receiving. Uh operation and maintenance, the on&m, that's straightforward. uh the local government commission. Uh I don't know if the school board's been in front of them a lot, but I'm Mr. David Ed is sitting here and he could probably attest to this. Uh they probably been in front of them quite a bit with the county. Uh but uh anyway, that's what those acronyms are. There's one more, I'm sorry. Qualifier reviewer, that's us, LJ. And again, as I

008walk through this process, I'll explain to you what our role will be as we go along through this. Uh the next slide is just more or less what I'm trying to uh get across to you. What it is, what how does it work, why use it, who has used it, what is the cost, what are the county b I got county benefits because that'll be a key to this as well. And then also what are the safeguards and guarantees and the reason I say county benefits you are a school board but [snorts] technically you don't have a credit rating. So, anything you do, you've got to go to the county to get that uh to get them to help you fund this process. This is going to be a little unique, but there's also benefits

009for the county and also for the school. As we go through this uh the next sheet here, what [clears throat] what is performance contracting? It's just an uh evaluation of potential savings from upgrading existing infrastructure to new more efficient infrastructure. And the most the one that everybody tends to see first is the lights. Everybody knows incandescent lights. You're going from incandescent to LED lights. That's the quickest possible solution. Not I shouldn't say solution, but that's your lowhanging fruit on a PC contract. If they walk into uh Esco walks into a school system and they've got incandescent lights, stars and lights start to bail start to go off in their ears because they're saying that's low hanging fruit. That's easy repairs, easy money that the schools can get uh with that process. But there's other items

010as you go through this that that is not so uh uh lowhanging fruit, but you have to work a little bit to get at it and stuff that you need like boilers, chillers, uh other uh controls and whatnot that you need. is the stuff that you don't walk into the room and see, but it's what makes it function. Uh the monthly savings on the utility bills, water, electric, sewer, and gas are realized through upgrading your equipment. And that's the money you will be using to pay for your process. I've got another slide in here that sort of breaks that down for you a little bit. So, I won't spend a lot of time on this one. When we get to that one, then I explain a little bit more. And then the uh I think

011I've just summarized what I was getting ready to tell you. The savings are used for finance and pay for the improvements. the new light fixtures, boilers, chills, HVAC equipment, etc. All right, the the next uh slide here is just put on is put in here just so you know that this is a legal process and it was made part of general statute by the government uh by the North Carolina government government because there was a big need for rural and lowincome communities to have access to upgrading their equipment where they didn't really have the money to do that. If you were Meckllinburgg or uh um Wake County or over in u uh Greensboro or somewhere where you cash plush, you wouldn't be doing this at all. You had the money to keep your equipment upgraded

012and changed out like most other places do. I shouldn't say most other places. People that have plenty of revenue, they have the revenue stream to do this. We I wouldn't be standing here in front of you today, but you're in Robinson County. you're like u 90% of the rest of the North Carolina. You're a rural community and you just don't have the funds to get done what you need to and every day that goes by your equipment just gets older and older and you just pay more and more for because of the less efficiency you have on that equipment. Um general statutes again that this is just showing you that it is a uh viable option and is is legal by law. This next slide is the one that I was just explaining a while

013ago how it works. The first column you see here, if you want to say that's your first, that's where you guys are at right now. That's your baseline. That's before you even started doing anything, replacing any equipment, any lights or anything where we sit as I'm standing right now in your facilities. And how you come up with that baseline is you collect all your energy bills, water, sewer, uh, electrical, natural gas, peock natural gas, the propane tanks you've got out there, anything that you have that is feeding into that facility that you pay on a monthly basis. I guarantee Miss Erassets has got a line item in there that shows you what you pay at school for. Not necessarily for every utility, but you got one that's combined for u all your schools. All right,

014the next part, the next column is what I call the IGA phase. That investment grade audit phase. This is where we're sitting down taking a look at what you got, coming up with a design of a system. Just like I just got through talking about the low hanging fruit. If I take out one of these, looks like they're le these are these Z fixtures. These are these used to be incandescent fixes fixtures hanging up in here. But these are some of what I'm talking about. Before these fixtures were put up, there were older light fixtures in here. And all we were doing be doing is take a comparison of what those fixtures were using versus what these are using on a daily basis. And that's where you start to see your savings come in at

015these lights here versus the old ones. And I remember we did this uh Bobby when we first came out and worked on this building. Uh, I would be willing to bet you on a daily basis each one of these lights, these probably run uh4 to $5 cheaper per day to run than your other lights. Now, I might be exaggerating that number, but it is cheaper to run the LED versus the old incandescents. And those were older. I think this Bobby, this was the u the old cafeteria had those uh >> gym >> the gym. [clears throat] So, they had those high bay. That's why I was talking about this high bay uh light fixtures up there. I I pretty sure these are these fixtures are probably $5 a day cheaper than the other ones. And

016you start adding that up, that's where you start to get your savings coming into play. And that's just one room in this in this facility. All right. And the third column would be after the fact when everything's installed, everything's up and running, you've got all your new equipment in, everything your PC can potentially fund to get your new facilities uh well, I shouldn't say your new facilities, your existing facilities up with more efficient equipment for what all your project will fund. This is how this process works. All the savings that came out of that goes to paying for that equipment instead of going to your utility companies. Instead of paying Duke Energy, LRMC, Pedmont Natural Gas, um I don't know who you guys get your propane from. I'm sure you're on that contract. But whoever

017you're sending that money to now, instead of sending them a $500 check per day or per month for a light bill, you'll send them 250 to them. 250 the other off for that goes to pay your bills that you for equipment and whatnot you just got. Does that make sense? All right, I'll move right along then. Again, stop me if you got any questions while I'm talking about any of this. Now, the next [clears throat] slide is just showing you how this works. You are the owner. Public schools Robins County is the owner of the project. Your financing on is to one side, we're to the other side. Now, we work hand in hand, but I'm I've got it set up like this. So, as you can see, I don't work for the ESCO. I

018work for the public schools Robinson County. We are your third party rep on this. We don't actually go do the design. I don't pick out the equipment. I help you as your team help with the esco selecting the equipment. We bring you a smorgish board of, hey, here's what you got. We take a look at what you got. Then we start bringing in these different avenues. We got some people that like uh train. We got some people that like Seammens or some schools that are set up to use their equipment or controls. some that are set up to use uh uh Train, Seamans, uh there's four or five other name brands that are out there. Carrier that they have their own line of equipment. They have their own controls. Some schools are set up to

019use them. Some are not. They're Square D versus the uh the uh other panel boxes that they have out there. So, you can't always take go pick a a unit off the shelf and come back and say, "Well, we're going to use this one. We're going to set it here." That doesn't always work. You have to go with what your system is already set up for or go in and replace that system if you've got the money to do that. You got to change the infrastructure to support that system. And then the uh the ESCO and then there's engineering admin on there. That's up under their wing, the subcontractors and then the materials and supplier. So once you get your ESCO, they are responsible. It's like a like your school that you just finished up

020the planetarium. You get them on board, they go through, they take care of everything from start to finish of your entire project. And again, it's our job to oversee them and work with you as your liaison to them to help make sure you get what you need. All right, moving on. This is another slide on just how the uh that how it works. That end your services agreement will be what the public schools will enter into as you move forward and you get to the end of your project and you said, "Hey, this is everything we can afford. This is what we want to go in our project." That energy service agreement is what you sign into to say, "This is what we're going to do." And the financial company uh First Bank or Lumbi

021Bank or uh BB&T or Bank of America or whoever, they will be the company that you would enter into a contract. It' be just like the building you just got. If you're financed, well, I think that one was paid for, so that was a bad example. But this will be a project where you're using your savings to go out and finance a project to get your equipment. And again, you will not be paying any more out of pocket than you're paying right now. That's how this is set up. That's why the state set this up such that the money instead of sending the money to the utilities again, you're using that money to pay for this contract or financing this project for this. All right, the next slide. This used to be uh a lot

022more dynamic than this. I won't go through and read all the steps that are on here, but the the line the item on here that I want you to see is the red line. Right now, we're up at line item step number one. And inside of step number one through eight, I think you've already selected us. So, that eliminates one of these checking off the boxes. But step one through eight is where you're actually going out, you're sending out an RFQ, you're selecting a company to come in and help work with you to get get you a design, get you a system in place that will potentially work. >> Hey, Mr. Jonathan, we got a got a question from Mr. Brewer. >> Mr. Chair, first of all, I want to say apologize for being late,

023caught up in traffic. Um, sounds like the finances of what we're doing here with the lighting is on target. It's going to be a matter of trying to figure out which is the best company to select to put the base equipment in. Is that correct? Like um Allen Bradley or Seammens or whatever. >> Yeah, but there's a there's a Mr. B. There's a lot more to it than that. The first thing you got to do is you've got to gather what y'all have 40 40 schools or 41 now. 40 41 schools. That's a lot of schools. There's a lot of information there. We have over the years because we've done a lot of work for the school system. We've over the years we've gathered a lot of this information. We don't have all the information

024and we don't have up-to-date information like your utility bills. When you sit down and you start this process, you're selecting a company to come in to gather all that data. If I go back to I back up a slide or two here. If I go back to this slide right here, that column to the left hand side, that green energy and onm cost, that is what that company's got to come in and do. They've got to establish your baseline. And in order for them to establish that baseline, Mr. board. There's a lot of work and due diligence that has to go into that. Not only do they have to collect your bills, they got to know about your schools. They got to know what kind of systems are in them. They got to know like

025over at Lumberton, you got children that are 30, 35 years old. They got to know that Long Branch some of the repairs and whatnot you've already done out there at some of those schools. Some of the the children over at Pernell Sweat got changed out five, six years ago. They got they got to come in. They got to evaluate all that information, get it all plugged in. There's a lot of every school's, I would say, has got probably anywhere from 50 to 70 different variables per school. That's lights, that's controls, that's units, that's the piping that's getting there. That's the that what what you have access to. Do you have access to natural gas? Looking at the propane tanks, looking at everything that's served out there, Mr. B, that's getting your baseline. That's why I

026said there's a lot of work that has to go into that. And then once you do that, then you start that process of trying to see what works best at each school. [clears throat] Excuse me. >> So that one company would u be able to handshake with whatever whatever business they needed to uh depending on the problem at the school or issue at the schools. >> I I don't understand what you're talking about. >> In other words, they're not just set up to uh represent like Seamans. >> That's That's right. >> Okay. >> That's right. Yep. Any of these escos. Now, don't get me wrong, you're dealing with say Schneider Electric. Schneider wants to sell Schneider equipment, but you're not handcuffed to buying any piece of equipment that Schneider sells. Just like you selected Seamans

027to do this. You're not select You're not handcuffed to buy Seaman's equipment. You're not so handcuffed to buy Johnson Control. They can buy any of them. They have access. Matter of fact, they buy them in such boat. You'll find out these companies are huge. They buy them in such boat that they're get them cheaper than what you can buy that equipment for. And the controls and it again, you are you are in control of that. What they would do is sit down and say, "Here's brand A, B, and C. Here's how this works. Here's the energy efficient we're getting off each one of them." If there's A and B and both of them got the same energy efficiency and you start looking at the price and both of them are similar in price and they're

028trying to sell A and you want B, you can go with B, you can select B no matter what. If B is less inefficient, what it does, you'll see when you start going down this rabbit hole of selecting different equipment, it changes your baseline and what you can get. If you want to get the higher up in lights over here, that means you may or may not get this chiller in your project or you may or may not be able to replace this boiler. You so you get to pick and choose. And as you plug in those items in a formula, I can show you that spreadsheet, but I'll tell you, we'll be here for a long time with that one because you put 41 schools up there and you start plugging and chugging, it's

029going to be there. That's why I said it takes a long time to put these together. And that's why when you you start this process, it takes anywhere from six months to a year before you see I'mma call it the lighted dental tunnel before you see boots on the ground. And that's and actually uh the they just made some rule changes where it actually sped this process up. I'm going to say by at least two months. And that was one of the things I was going to go over. I added this slide, but I was going to explain it to you on this one. U did that answer your question, Mr. Okay. Um, going back to this slide here, again, if you you're reading through these, I mean, these are just technical items that u

030LGC and UC say you have to do step by step. You've got to submit an RFQ. You got to do all that good stuff to select an ESCO. But what they did uh before this year, this I think this will be the first year this going to take place. Before these changes, we used to have to send out a RFQ and gather all this information, put it out there for all the ESOs to come in. And as you can imagine, they would come in, they'd have 10, 15 people per team coming in, and they would literally have to go to every school and take a look at what you got out there. And when all that was said and done, you can imagine how much manpower that was. When all that was said and done,

031then you're on to selecting one of those ESOs. So all those escos that came out with their team, whoever was the winner, they come out smelling like roses. Whoever didn't get, you imagine there's four or five of them, they got they got $200 to $300,000 that they've spent on your project that they got to go recoup. And what was happening was they're going to recoup it somewhere. So as soon as they got a project, they would tack that in on that project and it would just fall. You you might not have done a PC here in Robinson County, but if you selected that esco and imagine they lost three times when they got here, you were going to get hit with that price tag for that. And that's just that was just the nature of

032the beast and everybody understood it. And we fought that for years. Um I like I said, I've been doing this since 2014. I told them from day one when we first started it that I thought they need to do away with that process. Now they have streamlined it where you can select. All those escos on there are going to be qualified and you'll see it. You'll see it from their staff when they send in their submits. There'll be more information you possibly want to look at. I promise you that. But all of them are doing essentially the same thing. It's just a matter of who you as a school system feels comfortable working with. Who knows your system best? Who you feel comfortable working with? And that's what it boils down to. It's just like

033you selecting us, you know, it's it's the comfort level of the people that you're working with and and how you feel about them when you when they come to the table. Um, I put the red line on here because that is a what I call the line in the sand. Once you get up to step number eight, you know, right now we're just talking. It doesn't cost you anything to talk and and get to, you know, selecting doing all this stuff. But once you get to line number eight, that's where the rubber will meet the road and you're you're making a commitment that we're going to start spending funds no matter whether we move forward with the project or not. And I I will give you a uh my definition. This is like you came

034to my office and said, "John, I want to get a set of plans to go build a house. Give me a set of plans to build a house." I say, 'Okay, we're going to sit down. Here's what it's going to take to get it done. I got to go through all these steps. I'm going to give you a set of plans to build the house. And you say, 'Okay, go ahead and move forward. I'm saying, "Okay, sign the contract. Here's where we're signing the contract to do the project." Whether you build the house or not, that's what that red line represents. Whether you build it or not, once you get to that point, you're making a commitment to do something. You're either going to pay them for it, gathering all this information, and putting together

035for you, and you can use it down the road. Now, some of it's going to be outdated, but that's what that red line means. That's your line in the sand where you're making a commitment to spend money on behalf of the public schools, Roberts County. Now, if that money that you're spending, if you move forward and do the project, all that gets rolled into the project, all the everything that you're spending on that you spend for third party engineering services, which is us, your your rep. what you're spending to pay the escod to do the design of that project, what you're spending on the equipment, controls, everything, all that comes out of your savings, none of that comes out of your pocket. So everything that you're paying right now to your utility companies, again, when

036that gets slashed, that's the money that starts coming back to pay for these bills. And we're talking, I've been involved in these projects where the first payment wasn't made for three years. That's just the how big some of these projects are. So, it's not a a small and something you can just, you know, turn around overnight. This is a this is a process, but I wanted to point that out to you. So, you you can read that, but there's other things on there that that that that as you read through it. And some of it, you know, it takes a little while to get used to all the the lingo on the items that I'm pointing out to you, but it it becomes cookie cutter after you do it so many times. All right. Um,

037why use it? I think I started off with this. Uh, if the school system had enough money to go out and implement all the required changes that you need right now, again, I I'll use example because I know uh Lington, I was in involved in some of that stuff over there. And my partner Robbie works with uh with Bobby and Mr. Ernie them and they're working on these chillers and whatnot. We've been putting band-aids on stuff for a long time. And it is what it is. You don't have 500 700 $750,000 sitting around to go replace a chiller. If you had it, you would already been replaced it. So that's where this comes into play at. We don't have the money as a local school system to go out and replace the equipment as it

038breaks down. We've been robbing Peter to pay Paul and now it's starting to catch up with us and this has been a long time coming. And then the uh you know the again it goes back to the adage I keep saying you're already spending the money instead of sending to Duke now you're getting better upgraded equipment better lights in your school for your kids. All right. [clears throat] The other thing that's good about this process is and this is one of the biggest proponents that I like about the project. Not only we getting new equipment, but you get you're involved in the process to help get to select what equipment you're getting and also who's going to be installing and working on that equipment. One of my biggest pet peeves is these companies come in

039and they get people fly in out of Arizona or Oklahoma or these other states or even in state. They come out of Charlotte or they come out of Wake County into Robson County. The only money they're spending here is the time they came here and they stayed tonight and the food that they ate. if they stopped anywhere and they normally they're not doing that. Well, as part of this process, you get to help pick and choose. We got local contractors that are that can do this work. Now, again, take that with a grain of salt and they got to be within budget. They just can't come in and say, "Yeah, we can do this or we can do that." They got to be qualified. They got to be able to do the work. We got

040a lot of people that can put XAC units in. We got a lot of people that can put lights in. We got a lot of people that can do the plumbing. we can we can help pick and choose local contractors because at the end of the day when the project's over and done with five years down the road we've got an issue. You can pick up the phone and call uh you know Bryants or Lars Plumbing or somebody out here to come BR to come in and help you fix what they already worked on. That's the part that uh intrigued me the most about it using local people that to to solve the problems that you've already they already been working on it. they if they installed it, they know what's going on with it.

041So, that was one of the uh items I wanted to make sure I point it out to you, too. And then there's open book pricing. You also get get staff training. Um and I've had this conversation a couple times with uh with some of the school staff. We can put you the best. We can build you a rocket ship, but if nobody can fly that rocket ship, there's no good even having it. We can put in the best systems in the world, but if you don't have the personnel to operate it and run it, it doesn't do you any good. So that's where the training aspect of it comes in. And I know the school system's about like everybody else. You get them trained up and as soon as you think you got somebody who

042can hunt, they off to bigger and better. It's just the nature of the beast. Everybody's facing the same thing. But uh hopefully we can get this set up and this will actually entice some of your employee retainers when you do stuff like this. They see that you're trying to do better for the system instead of just putting a band-aid on it. it actually entices them to to stay around a little longer. [clears throat] >> And so and so John, you and I have talked about this as well. So part of that training or education as well is not only training our maintenance staff, but also training school staff, the importance of making sure lights are off, the importance of when air conditions or HVAC units are running, the windows aren't open, outside doors aren't open.

043So that training or education piece is going to extend into the adults in the actually in the building as well. And John and I have talked about that too. >> Yeah. I can give you a perfect example of where he training comes into place at and I wish Dr. Williams was in here. He could attest to this. Over at one of their older schools when we we did their PC project, we got a part in here is called measurement and verification. That's where you're when we put this in. Somebody's got to measure it. Somebody's got to verify that you're getting the savings that we said you were going to be getting. Well, what was going on at one of the schools, they had got so used that the unit wasn't working. Soon as they walk

044into the school, you know, it uh April May, they go to the end of the hallway, open up the door, prop a chair up to it, and just let air just blow through it all day. Well, when we got the door in them verification, you know, they had never nobody had ever told them. They said, "Look, you can't have the door open. That's what's killing the HVAC unit. is sucking all air out. Well, the end end of that month, their light bill was about $1,000 more. And I'm just throwing that out there. I don't I'm not going to use but just say it was $1,000 more than what it what we were anticipating it was going to be. We got a problem here. So, we go out there and start the guy was out there

045checking the equipment and whatnot. And sure enough, he was out there and the young lady was going over there propping the door open. He was she said, "Yeah, we do that every day. We're starting at starting at April, May, whatever it was. We just pop it open every day. Come in school and we pop it open. So that there's a training process. Not only do you have to get your controls and whatnot, you have to train your staff. You just can't go there and open up the windows. We're going to leave the windows open all day. I'm I'm cold in here or this or I'm hot. There there's a training component that comes with this because you'll see as part of this they're setting these control levels. You will control where these levels are going

046to be set at. And there'll be you'll have a time to sit down and say, "Okay, we set it to 72. here's what our savings are going to be. If we set it to 73, here's where our savings are going to be. We're not saying you've got to keep them set there. This is a baseline that we're starting. And those can always be tweaked because, you know, 72 in your house won't be same 72 in my house. And that works out across school systems and cross rooms. And hopefully at the end of the day when you you you know, it takes a learning curve there of six months to a year to get that stuff ironed out. and you'll be able to tell that measurement verification will take you exactly to where you've got an

047issue at. And I promise you, these escros don't want to give you a guarantee. If they see something is off, they're going to be throwing up red flags. Hey, you got a problem. Somebody's over there running that toilet or that flush valve stuck or something's going on at that school. We need to go check it out. >> Hey, Mr. John, looks like we got a question from Mr. Terry online. >> Mr. Terry, >> um, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Bradley. Um, I appreciate you uh coming in, Mr. John, and and presenting. Yeah, the way you put it, I mean, it made it crystal clear for me. I mean, it's a it's a no-brainer that we probably need to move forward with something like this. But what you were just talking about earlier with the person

048propping up the door, maybe think about a situation. Um, I walked up to a school. I want to say it was maybe back in June. And this school, um, I'm not going to, you know, say where it is, but it just had a bunch of doors in the front of it because they have a heavy floor traffic. But I think it was probably, it was in the 90s, you know, that day. And when I walked up to the place, when I walked up to the school, I could feel the cool air. I could feel the the the air coming out of it two feet before I got to it. And I was thinking and I mean when I walked in the the place was I mean it felt wonderful but but I was thinking why

049in the world don't we put some weather stripping around around these doors or something other. So would would uh would what you were talking about would that in just ensuring that that we're not losing all this air just through the the most basic way to save it. Would this include that as well? >> Uh yes sir. Yeah, they definitely take a look at weather stripping. We look at uh window replacement, single pane windows, look at windows, looking at doors. You don't always have to necessarily, it doesn't have to have power or energy going to it to save you money. We're looking at insulation, uninsulated pipes when you start looking at those chill lines and how far they're running. Uh border lines as well. Uh there's a number of different avenues that I I could go

050down and if id have brought one of my notebooks in here that I've got off one of our projects, they're going to come in. The ESCO is going to come. We're going to be looking everything from solar panel lights to solar panel tables or solar panel trees all the way up to uh uh high efficient chiller units that are million dollars a piece. I mean, there's there's all types of savings items out there, but you can all get all the way down to the insulation, the weather stripping, uh the again going changing the windows, there's, you know, as if you've ever built a house, there's four or five different grades of windows you can put in there. You you want to you have enough money to put it in now and save later or you

051just have enough to put them in and then you just reap the benefits of whatever you're putting in at that point. Again, we're gonna >> perfect sense. I appreciate it. Makes makes sense. I mean, there's no need to to put in, you know, this high dollar efficient, you know, air conditioning system when you got windows and doors from the 70s with the air running out of them. So, I was concerned about that. Thank you. >> Yep. No problem. Thank you. And, uh, I'll just caveat off of that, too. One of the the other things that most people don't understand is when we start doing this, one of the other components they will have to start looking at is the the North Carolina energy code. We've got older buildings and we still have to try to

052comply with that as best we can. Um, one of the projects that I know that was closest to here was RCC did a PC project, uh, I'm going to say seven or eight years ago, and they needed a lot of help. But one of the they were doing a good job with saving energy, but what they weren't doing a good job as was air quality. If you know anything about HVAC units and anything that's going on in a school or facility, that air in there has got to be rotating. It's got to be circulating. And if you go and screw the damper shut on a uh on a piece of equipment on a HVAC line or whatnot, yeah, you're going to save energy. You're not recirculating that air. All you're doing is heating cooling air

053you already got in there. But the problem with that is, as we found out with uh with COVID, that's not moving. It's not getting out and it's not circulating. And that's what causes that that's what causes mold and bacteria and other items to to start taking effect in your schools. So there's there's good and there's bad that we'll find out while we're doing this. And some things you are doing it might be saving you money now, but it's actually not meeting code. And if they put go in and put anything back, it's got to meet code. So if we've got to add additional vents or we got to do things like that, there'll be some things that'll be I'm not going to call it detrimental. I'm I'm going to call it getting you up the

054code to where you need to be. So you know, there's there's no bucking that. You just got to do what you got to do. All right. Uh, moving right along. Uh, this slide here starts to get into some of the slides that I've got. It's not quite updated as as like I want it to be, but I can tell you that $485 million approximate that you see right here. I pulled off LGC's website uh uh last night. What I couldn't find is they used to have a a formula or a chart out there that would give you the breakdown for public schools and other uses. So those numbers, the 59 million and the 49 million are off the 485 million that has been done over the years is about accurate. Your surrounding counties I know

055well county school has been through the PC process a minimum of four times. That's just letting you know that it's been used. I know Hook County has done it one time. Matter of fact, that was the first all LED school in North Carolina. Their school system was the first allled LED schools uh system in North Carolina. Um, it's it's been used a lot. It's it's made it's perfect for Robinson County School System. It's perfect for rural county systems. Um, this is another good slide. Uh, what's the cost? Again, it's it's zero cost to you. Unless you get to that red line and stop the train or you move on and you stop the train and not don't move forward with it, it's going to cost you whatever that engineering fees was to to get it

056designed. But if long as you move forward, you don't pay anything. This is all covered by the savings from your uh inefficient equipment and uh controls right now. U and again this this just goes right through again and tells you about how the money is getting shifted. Now again this points out some of the items that you will be required to provide. You got to provide staff to help understand what you got. We'll have to form a committee. You'll have to have members on that staff to be able to sit down and talk about each individual school. We'll go through every single school. You'll have to have people to help identify them. You'll have to have uh again go back to some of the changes your your routine habits. They're definitely going to have to

057be changed. We'll have to be lock we'll be locking out thermostats, controllers. Again, we don't want anybody to be uncomfortable when this happens. But it's like uh the difference between me and my wife. She likes it uh 74, I like it 68. So, there's going to be a happy compromise in there somewhere. You just got to figure that out. And uh and that's the part that we're talking about here training because if you let them constantly go and keep tweaking the system, you're never going to get it nailed down to what you need. You can't please everybody all the time. So, we're just going to get to something that we can live with is what we're shooting for. Um the uh the other part on here, it talks about the training on the new equipment

058and whatnot. Again, that's that's a given. And I I'm I'm a big proponent. I I have tell people in my office every month, I want you spending time training because the more you train, the more you learn, the more efficient you get, the more money we can make. I'm a for-profit company. So, I'm that's the way I always look at it. But it goes the same here. The more your personnel can learn, the better they are at their job, the easier it makes their job and the more efficient they are with doing it. And it saves the school system money over the long run. Um the next slide and again forgive me for the the numbers but this was just showing you how the financing on these projects work. This happens to be a project

059again this was I think this one come from Hornet County when we did theirs a few years back and we sat down and this is the the numbers that when you get an esco on board and we start gathering all your information Mr. Henry, that green chart I showed you. When we start, we get all that compiled, then we could start piling sheets like this to see, you know, we we'll come up with something that says for every dollar you save here, this is how much you're going to have to put in scope. For every dollar you can put $10 in scope, for every dollar you save, it's like financing the car. You want to go get a a Mercedes? Well, you might not be able to afford a Mercedes. You might have to end

060up going and get you a a Chevy Coupe or something. you have to get something that's a little less uh than a Mercedes and you cannot afford a $500 per month payment or can I afford a $1,000 per month payment. This is what this formula right here will be doing for you and this is how you start to figure it out that again you're financing this over a 10 to 15 to 16 year term and we can go over that some and I can talk to you a little bit about that or I mean we can or we can cover that once we get the somebody on board with us. Got a question from Mr. Brewer. Go ahead. >> In your experience, what is the um estimated time of from start to finish as far

061as um getting everything set up, install, ready to go? the I'm going back up here to this slide that I'm gonna show you. And I just took this off. This slide right here before I updated this again. They just changed the system. Uh this they've got they haven't even published it yet on their website. The the the checklist that I've got right here is hot off the press. They haven't even published it, but it just got changed. My old chart that I had on here from start to finish had you done in about 52 weeks. That's just to get all your paperwork and your ducks in order. That's from the time we start and you select an esco to the time we take it. We got to go through LGC. It's got to go through

062you. See who is DEEQ. They got to review it. It's got to go through LGC. If you ever been through that process, just going through LGC will be a two to three month process. You got to go in front of their boards. They have to sign off on it. You got to get on the agenda. There's documents, applications you got to fill out. You got to get the plans ready. The plans got to be reviewed. Permits got to be put in place. That's before boots even touched the ground. Again, the old process about 52 weeks, Mr. Henry. And again, that's put boots on the ground. If you're doing if you're going to try to do all your schools at one time, if you and and I'm not telling you how to do this. I'm just

063saying if that's what your plan is, that's going to take a longer process than if you came in and said, "Okay, we're going to do 15 schools at a time versus 20 schools or 30." The process that you select to go down will will start changing your schedule of when you get started with boots on the ground. Now, when those boots hit the ground, I can tell you it'll take you about a year from after the boots hit the ground. So just say right now if you say you want to do all schools I tell you you've been in the range of 18 to 24 months but I but I want you to understand what I'm what I'm telling you there there's a lot of paperwork and red tape that's got to take place before

064you get to that point. Once they get this contract in hand trust me those escodes they're going to man up. They'll have people, you'll see trucks coming for days just like when that u what was the funds we just got there funds coming. You've seen people all over the place scrambling around. Once that they you get that check in hand, you're ready to go next. We got money. They'll flock to the table to do that work. You won't have a problem with that. The boots on the ground won't be the problem. It's the red tape part that I call it from getting from here to the getting the plans in hand because there's going to be a there'll be a there'll probably be a 100,000 changes between now and then when I say that picking

065lights and controls and who wants what and what we're going to do here, this school wants this. We want to do this over here. There's going to be a you got 41 schools. So, you think about that. Take that 41 and multiply that by about 200. That's how many variables we're probably going to have. That answer your question. I'm sorry I couldn't be more specific than that, but I didn't I don't want to sugarcate it for you. This is a process. All right. Get back up to my slide here. Um and and again some of these slides you can see this is a you see how we got this is uh for uh Hornet County schools again uh let me see actually yeah this was a this is Hornet you see all their different schools

066here and how this chart set up. Robinson County have a chart similar to this with every one of your schools set up and you can see the pre and the post those EUI. Think of that as your your uh efficiency dollars that you're looking at. So just looking at Anderson Creek, they went from 44.6% efficiency to 32% efficiency. So they had a 28% savings at their school that they could use to go towards their project. Now, we've done it where we set it up like this. Every every individual school was treated as a unit. We've done it where we set it up where every all of them just got 30 in one pot. And here's the money we've got. here's how we're going to spend it. So again, that'll be processes and questions and stuff

067that have to get answered as we move through here. But this chart is just showing you how much savings uh they had and and an estimate of that and how they use they chose to spend that money. So whatever just say your energy bill right now is a is a million dollars. What this right here is telling you, you have $300,000 that you could use off of savings to go towards building the project. You take that 300,000, we're going to make that every yearly installments over 15 year period of whatever interest rate you get. That's how you build your project. That's how you get a 15 to$20 million project. You're buying you're buying a car, you're buying a vehicle. All right. The uh the next item here is actually what I just got there telling

068you. This is exactly how it's set up. you're uh you're using that to build a contract. And again, there's a there's a big appetite for contracts like this from the banks because they get uh credits. When I say credits, it's credits that the schools can never use. It's it's credits that they get u it's like green dollars for them, you know. They get credit like U Duke Engine, LRMC pays people to put solar panels or do whatnot, get on geothermal wells and other things. They give you incentives. The same thing the banks have that those incentives too. They they want to fund projects like this. So nine times out of 10 they're going to come in and try to help you get a good rate. If there's a local bank that we can use that

069has appetite for this, more power to them. Normally these are bigger banks like the Bank of America or um what is it Suncom or some of the bigger banks that are out there. Those are the uh those are the ones who are looking to finance these projects. there. Every now and again, we'll get a local bank that can that can um finance it, but normally those are going to be your bigger banks. But again, they're looking to give you a good rate. Right now, interest rates aren't good at all. I'm going to tell you, it's a I think that the last one that got closed out was like 4.41%. And that might might sound good, but when we were doing this back in 2014 to uh 20, we were getting them in like 2 and

070a half 2.75. Those those are good interest rates. And and that doesn't seem like much, but uh you work in the finances enough, that's that's a lot of money. But uh again, that's what this slide is just showing you. It's just showing you the the financing on how it works. Uh this is the part that I was talking about some of the county benefits and this goes back to when I first started off this conversation. Uh not only does the school not have any out- of- pocket expense, the county doesn't have any pocket out of pocket expense. Right now the school doesn't have a a a rating. you don't have a bank where you went to the bank, the first thing they tell you, hey, you got to get somebody from the county's got to

071come in here and sign off on this loan for you. Well, the general statutes where this was set up was would allow the school systems to sign off on their own note. Now, don't get me wrong, the way this is set up is the school has to pass a resolution that says we know we're going to be saving money on our engine bills and we're not going to take that money and go over here and spend it on new turrets for the football field. we're going to set that money aside and we're going to pay your bill with it. But it also tells the the county has to pass a resolution that says, "Okay, we know you're saving money on your utility bills. We're not going to go there and ask you or cut your

072utility funds for that year or the the years for this project. We're not going to cut your funds that we're already giving you. We're not going to cut your funds because you're getting these savings." There's two resolutions that have to be passed and it again it's it's saving the county money. They don't have you fund you any more money for that. Plus it's also saving the school system because again you're getting new equipment and whatnot and you're not spending more money. The other good benefit for the county. It doesn't go on their risk of you know your your credit score. It's based off of what you guys have which right now again is zero but your school. If you go belly up, there's going to be a lot of other places going be going belly

073up. But the banks look at it that way. It's not going to be that there's no issue with it. But this the county has a a bank rating. This doesn't it doesn't add to that or go against their bottom line on their books. This is the only contract vehicle that the school system and the county has where it never shows up on the county's books. The only thing they have to do again is pass that resolution. >> [clears throat] >> And uh I think the rest of this they also got a few other caveats that are that I could talk to you about on this. But that's some of the stuff that they again they haven't even posted on the website yet. So I hate to start saying stuff that's not you can't go out

074there and verify on the uh UCI's website. When I say UCI I'm talking about NC Der. It's their utility sav savings initiative. That's the acronym that you see. That's what I keep referring back to. It's their website. And if you any of this information I'm sharing with you, you can go to their website and see it as well. U and again this last slide that I've got here, I know one of the things they were talking about is um you know the ESCO came in and they presented talked to you about this. Again, if you read this and per general statutes, you've got these four entities, North Carolina Energy Office, that UN utility savings initiative, the local government commission, LGC, you got B bond council that review this, and then your owners rep, which is

075us. At the end of the day, we're reviewing everything that they're doing for you. Me not so much looking at the finances, I'm looking at the nuts and bolts of it. That's why you got the bank and the bond council to look at financing. But we're looking out at that entire contract to make sure at the end of the day, okay, this meets what we think what what they say it's going to do. And now they're on the hook. If you don't you have a shortfall for any reason, unless it's catastrophic. If a uh I'm trying to think of something that would be cat catastrophic because most times if it's catastrophic, schools going to be shut down anyway. You're not using any uh energy whatsoever. So, you should have additional funds. But uh I was

076trying to think of a cat catastrophic events beside leaving a door in the hallway or somebody going out there and busting a water man and it running right into the river and you didn't know anything about it that that ran. But you'll know that within a a day or two, you'll know you got something going on. That guarantee they're giving you at the end of the year. You come up your accountant's taking the savings you've had, you put in your account. If you don't have enough to make that bill, I guarantee that ESCO has got to give you per general statute says that they're going to make up the difference. And I guarantee you there's not many of them. There's not many companies out there that want to be eating a bill for somebody because

077they didn't do what they were living up to. They're just not in the business of doing that. That's why there's only eight of them in the state right now that are allowed to do this. That they've got good at this. They've been doing it for a long time. And they're not going to come in if you say you can save $10 a month on something, they're not going to tell you you got the whole $10. They're going to say, "Well, you got seven." They're going to put some cushion in there that to allow yourself that that room to breathe. So that's how they can give you a guarantee on this. Well, I think that concludes my presentations. Questions or comments? So, Mr. [clears throat] Chair, I think it is our intent. We uh voted last

078month, I think, for Jonathan M to be our third party reviewer. So, it is our intent to bring the contract for back to the board, the contract to the board for approval in September. >> Any questions or >> that was the purpose in having uh Mr. John here tonight just to uh give another insight of his roles and responsibility. uh in the performance contract. >> Got hand raised. Mr. Cherry, >> do we need a motion to um approve to bring it to the full board? >> That's what we're looking for. Yeah. If >> I'll make that motion >> and Dr. Terry, that is just a contract. >> I I'll make such a motion. >> All right. We got a motion on the table from Dclair. Oh yeah, he's got to be a committee member. >>

079I'm on the committee on his list. So he's he is >> Oh, new list. Okay. >> Yeah, the committee list got updated this morning and I was added to it. Thank you. >> Gotcha. So we got a motion on table from um Dr. Oclair. >> All right, we got a second from Mr. Brewer. All in favor say I. >> I. All right. Now, will um Mr. Lleair be uh the one that will explain to the board basically and answering questions to the con in relations to the contract or will we have a separate session for this? So that would be up to you guys if you want him to come back and walk back through this presentation again or this presentation enough. >> I don't think >> Go ahead. >> I think sometimes you know

080the recommendation of the committee is just a recommendation but I don't think the whole board would want to hear this entire presentation. >> I I will agree. >> I mean we done this a couple times. I would hope so, but here lately we've had a lot of questions, so I just be prepared to do e do either. >> And you've got these packets for everybody. >> Yes. So, I've got I've got John's presentation and for the board members who are not here, we will have their information ready for them at the board meeting, but I also have the PDF of the presentation that I can email out to the board after this is over. Okay. >> And uh I'll just say I don't have a problem with with being there. I don't necessarily have to

081go to presentation. There's any questions. If you need me there, I can ask whatever questions you need. >> And John, I think that is September the 8th at 6. >> All right. No more questions. Appreciate you uh presenting, Mr. Lair. >> Okay. Thank you for having me. >> Thank you, John. All right, next topic we got uh NCDPI um facility study by Mr. Andrew. And >> so while Mr. Laroo's walking up, uh this is a study that is required every five years. It does not take board approval. Um it is for information only if additional information is needed at our board me board meeting. We can definitely walk through that if that's the committee's desire. But I've asked Mr. Edge, our county commissioner to be here tonight because our final report has to be submitted

082to DPI and both chairs have to sign off uh that they at least have knowledge of of the report. So that is the reason I've asked Mr. Edge to be here tonight. For those of you that have been on the board, I think this is our second time Mr. Laroo using his company. We did it back in 20. So again, we we love the partnership we have with him. He does a thorough job he and his team coming through and looking at our facilities and our needs. So, uh, I'll stop there, Mr. Lur. >> Okay. >> Ends. >> Yeah. Go ahead. >> Can I ask a simple question? This is before you even present. >> Okay. >> At the very end, do you make conclusions as to what we should do as far as our

083existing facilities? opinion, >> it would not be the subject of the of the survey. Uh we're not here to make recommendations or conclusions. We really were here to collect information, organize it into the form of the state survey and help with getting it completed. So, it's a lot of data, a lot of information. >> Yeah. [clears throat] >> But not necessarily. It's it's information that you can use to make decisions, but it's not there's not a recommendation or conclusions that are coming from FAC. >> Thanks, sir. >> And say I'm sorry, Mr. Lur. And for the folks online, Dr. Terry, unfortunately, we do not have an an electronic copy of this. It is a notebook. I would say probably 150 200 sheets. So, again, we will have a hard copy for all board members at

084our regular meeting. And we also, Mr. Edge, I've shared with Mr. as we have a copy for all county commissioners as well. >> Well, thank you very much for having me here tonight. Uh members of the board and chairman Edge, thank you for being here representing county commissioners. Um Mr. Phillips, I think you're the construction committee chair. >> Yes, sir. >> Um once again, my name's Andrew Laro. I have a company called BASA. I started it in 2012. Uh, I retired as the assistant superintendent for Guilford County Schools. I was their chief operations officer. I was director of maintenance for Winston Salem County Schools and started out being a shop teacher back back when history began, I guess. Um but we uh when we started up this company, one of the primary things we wanted

085to do, this is a huge effort that happens every five years for school. All all 115 school districts have to fill out this survey. It's very time consuming and what you're left with sometimes is a report that doesn't really you can't understand much from it. And we felt like if we designed a report like the one that you have in front of you that the information is a little bit more concise and and useful um beyond what just meeting the requirements of this state report. This is a general statute is is required every five years. We we started doing them in 1988. Uh and we we had to do it twice uh in years 94 and 95 because we had a state level bond referendum for public facilities. And this study was in a very

086big way of one of the things that helped carry that state bond through. And when this was being generated this time, there was a there was talk of from the governor a $5 billion u u state bond uh that I I think it's probably at this point lost in committee long enough that that's not going to happen. But but this study can often uh fuel uh funding coming from the state for facilities. And so it's something that we feel like has has to be done well and and put a lot into it. Um I want to mention to you that the way that that we conduct this it's information gathering. It's not I want to be really clear for everyone is a facility needs survey. It's not a master plan. It's not a it's not

087a a capital improvement plan. It's not a budget. These numbers are very very high. It's not a budget that you're looking at and considering approval of. It's basically an opportunity to to get information from the school system that helps us understand what is needed at each school. And we have a unique way of pulling that together. We we we feel like that the people that know the most about your school buildings are the people that are inside of them, on top of them, underneath them every day for years. They have a great idea of what needs to be done inside that school. The state breaks building systems down to about seven categories. We break it down to 70 building systems. So, when we first start meeting with your district, we ask, "Who in your district

088knows the most about your roofs? Who knows the most about your boilers and your children? Give me that person's name." We're going to interview them and other people in the maintenance department or other people in the district about what are the needs at each school. We go school by school, system by system, and ask questions about how's that roof, how are those windows, and we we work with the district to determine that there's a need for upgrades, replacements, or everything is okay in that regard. Um, and we work on what a a rough estimate of cost would be for completing a project. And we also work on prioritization. All of this is based on the way that the survey is set up. So, it's easy for us to take our information and carry it over

089uh onto the state forms. Uh we prioritize. We say, is this needing to be done years one and two, years three through five or years six through 10. I want to talk a little bit about what's happened with the with DPI's uh um what what they have actually done with this software that they use. This was supposed to have come out last July of 25. It's the 2526 facility need survey. It didn't come out in July as expected. We were ramping up for it. We we have 23 school districts that we do this for, including Wake. I always say including Wake because it's 204 schools and it feels like it's more than a district uh when we start working with them. but um it didn't come out and so we worked very closely with school

090planning and DPI. They they told us that they were redoing the software and it was going to be a delay. Um that delay h um lasted all the way until May 4th of this year. So instead of coming out last year, we were collecting information and working with everybody, but we didn't get the new survey document, our system until May of this year. They converted from an old Microsoft Access system that we've been using for years to a web-based system. Um, and as you can well imagine, when you start something new like that, it had a lot of bugs and a lot of problems. So, um, we were given from May 5th till June 30th of this year to get all of the information entered into their system. I can tell you that we had

091already collected the information. We were organized with it. Um, we we were able to get all of Robson County's uh information into the database um by June 30th. The next deadline that we had was July 31st to get signatures. They require they have a you all probably have a copy of it in your books and thanks uh Bobby for making copies of all these books. But um there's a there's a signature page for certification that's required for every district to get signed by the chairman of the school board and the chairman of the county commissioners. It's not approving. is saying that we are aware of this and we've seen this report. We've had an opportunity to look at it. One of the interesting things that happened with this one is that when we got all

092of the information in, they had no way to print their forms. So, we had no way to to to give you something to look at. Uh, which is okay because we had the base go workbook, which is what you have in front of you now. So, you do have something to kind of look. I can tell you that all the information that's in this book has been entered into the state system and it's ready uh to be finished up. The the deadline for the signatures was July 31st. Uh we filed for an extension that they allowed. I suspect that just about every school district filed for the same extension and so they allowed us until August 31st. um to to get the signatures in and to complete the survey. Uh Bobby asked me to come

093tonight basically just to to to kind of give you an overview of what's in it. It I don't usually take much more than 10 or 15 minutes to do that and then I would answer any questions that you have. Um if you turn to this tab one and look at our executive summary front page, it's one that I would like you to to kind of be aware of. It does list the general statute and it lists who we are and what what we are doing, but we list for you what your numbers were since the 202021 survey and every five years since then up until this one. And it's kind of interesting to look at now Robson didn't actually perform the survey in one of those particular times. They just didn't get done. We don't

094know why. It's been a long time ago. It's not something that we need to dwell on. But I I do want you to kind of see how they they divided up. This is for years zero through five. This is a five-year facility need survey. So you can see where that there in the 20201. You can see where there was some estimate of a new facility put up there. And more importantly, you can see the one and we did your 202021 survey. So we know that that that money for that new facility is is actually five years later the one that you just you have just opened up. Congratulations by the way on the new career center. Um there there were additions in that study. If you see the renovations cost going up, I would tell

095you that when when you had 162 million and then 99 million, but then when we did it, it was it was 339 million. It's because we do a deep dive. We really ask a lot of questions about everything. Alarm systems, intercoms, all your technology, your child nutrition, your furniture, and it's very very deep look at what you need. Um, you can see that this year we don't have we don't have new schools, additions. we have a lower amount of of of um funding this that came out of our process uh for renovations and furniture and equipment. Um we look at that as a good sign. We look at that because we know that prices have doubled since we did this study two uh five years ago. If that's a lower number, it represents to some

096degree that you you have been able to get funding and you have been able to get work done on a lot of needed systems. Um, so that total 297 297 million is what will be in the state report. You if you if you wanted to see it when once they publish it, you can see every school district in the state and where where that number lands. Looking at a paragraph below that, you'll see that there's an additional 12 million that's added in because not only do they ask for years zero through five, they also ask for years six through 10. So when we're interviewing your folks, when we say, "Is that priority A, B, or C?" A lot of times they'll say, "I know that boiler is going to need to be replaced, but but

097we can we can wait on it." And it shows up over in C. So that's the amount that add brings it up to a 10-year window. And the last one that's on there, the state doesn't ask for information on your non-instruct non-instruction or your support facilities this place. And we feel like if we're going to go to the trouble to do this, then why wouldn't we go ahead and use the same process to collect information about renovations for your non-instructional facilities? So there's an additional 22 million that's that's added into this report that brings a total to $332,421,883. I did that with without my glasses. I'm proud. Um, if you turn I I want you to see how we balance this out. If you turn that to tab two there, there should be a fold

098out uh spreadsheet there. And if you look in the bottom right corner of that spreadsheet, you'll see that same number. That's the total value of the of of the study, the 332 million. And I call your attention to this one because if you don't have anything else, this this one paper will tell you school by school down the first column. And across the across the columns, you can see each of the categories of building systems and and what was what was listed for each school. Those same values are in the back of this book. Very detailed. So, I I'm not going to spend any time on it, but those that every every school, every building system, uh we have information that that you can drill back into this and see where where did those numbers

099come from. Um I'm going to there's a a couple pa pages here on our methodology. I'll skip past that. I've already mentioned kind of how we go after this. Um, I do want to go p right past that folded foldout sheet and there ought to be a colorful pie chart um in front of you. Renovations only, not furniture, equipment, some other things, but there's a there's a total of 301 million. And we like to kind of break it up for you a little bit and show you where where is all that money resting at. And so unlike a lot of other districts, um the biggest piece of pie on this one is building exterior and structure. And you'll see in a moment that's entirely a result, well not entirely, but in a very great part

100a result of roofing. Uh roofing is a one of the biggest needs that from our study that you have in the district. You can break these down. If you just turn one page over, you'll see that we go from the highest and and we subcategorize it a little bit. So you can see within that building exterior and structure that that total of 135 million 75 million of it nearly 76 million is roofing. That's that's the thing that's interesting to me because that five years ago we had the same thing, not the same exact cost, but one of the biggest things in the district was um that that there was a great deal of money that needs to be spent on roofing. And I do want to mention just from my experience that it's one of

101the ones that if it lasts too long, it's one of the best examples of pay me a little now or pay me a lot more later. Um if if roofing gets away from you, you're no longer repairing or upgrading or replacing or what you end up having to do is instead of just the roof, you have to go into the deck. you have to replace a roofing deck or you have to replace the the systems that are that are getting damaged because they're wet, the ceiling. I see a little bit of a, you know, some moisture issues in this particular room right now. And you see those tiles kind of buckling down just a little bit. But when when you have to start replacing the damage of lofen oops leaking roofs, then is something that

102that you got to be mindful of. Um, that's a big number. It's one that I feel like deserved a little more attention. The place that we usually see the big numbers is HVAC. And I think this district has made has covered some ground recently and over the past five years of of bringing your HVAC units up and what rather than seeing boilers and chillers, the big dollar ones up rising up there to the top, you're in better shape there than you have been. >> And Mr. Andrew, got a got a question from Mr. Brewer. >> Go ahead. >> Okay. on let's see they're on a page number but looking at the environmental >> yes >> um we have some new items of interest coming out uh PFAS and Gen X um produced by industry chemical

103industry in the future will they be do you think they'll be added to this list because right now I know like 3M and DuPont put $12 billion in a a trust fund for the courts to award um damages. Well, the way we gathered our information, we didn't have input that would have sort of forecasted whether or not and I think that those the environmental damage that could be incurred by a school system for what you're mentioning would be water uh water supplies and the only question that we really are equipped to answer from the state's perspective right now is not some single things like that unless you really had a dollar value on something would be lead drinking water and if you probably are aware that there was there has been a program federally funded

104program that helped test for lead and drinking water but I can't speculate as to whether that's going to be an upcoming issue. It's a good question. Um and and this I think I think in Robson County kind of the center of where some of the source of that material is or is it fail I got the same math that fill ahead. Um so I I don't need to go through all of these. I just wanted to kind of give you a way of breaking that cost down. And you know, with in building code and life safety, ADA toilet renovations, we have people in your maintenance department that that are dealing with this every day and knowing that there's cost that needs to be incurred in each of your schools to have more accessible restrooms. And

105it's not a cheap thing to do because you have to kind of do do a lot of replacement. Uh I turn a page and there's site improvements and the biggest number up there's parking and drives 25 million. And I suspect that from your own experience of going out to your schools, you're probably aware of of some quite a few paving issues. I'm going to stop there. Um no need to go through every one of them. You have the report. I'll be happy to answer questions on that. um that the there's a final page on it that brings us back to looking at the non-instructional facilities and then the total tenure and there's that 332 million. We work pretty hard to make sure that what's in the state system and what we have in this book

106and the other ways of looking at it that we keep coming back to that same number and it balances. Um there's some supplemental reports. I'm going to go pretty quick just saying there's a prioritization report. It's kind of an interesting one to look at in terms of how many things were a year one and two and in schools only there's 88 million as compared to years three through five where there's 200 million and then in category C 12 million. We're looking for a bell curve. We're looking for not having people in the room say we need a lot of money for a lot of things and we need it right now is an unreasonable way to pro proceed with this. So we try to do a little coaching there and and the the folks that

107work on this report um have have gained some experience. Some of the next reports are just showing you answers to questions that we have to put into the survey and not necessarily ones that we have to get too too into. But right now there's there's a facility condition index report. The state uses $450 a square foot to place a value on a school, a replacement value. We can look down that list and know that you can't replace some of your schools for $19 million. But it gives them a rule of thumb to be able to say if we come up with one way of value coming up replacement value, we compare that to the total renovations cost that we saw that we could come up with an FCI, a facility condition index. Most of the

108time when you when somebody does this and it's they can be kind of confusing, but when you start seeing numbers that are up in the 30s and 40% level, think of it like a car. You got an old car, it's got a lot of stuff you got to do to it. And are you going to buy a new car or are you going to keep pouring money into the old one? you know, and if it's I got a 39 Ford pickup and I'm pouring more money into that thing than I can imagine, but I'm not going to drive it to California. Uh, but you've got a couple schools down there that are showing 40 50%. And that's one of the things that you as a board can kind of take a look at and say

109if we need to do that much work to that school, is that a school that maybe we need to be thinking long term of a replacement? It's just it's just one of many factors. Um, if I go to tab three, there's a there's a report in there on the ages of your schools. And we do something that the state doesn't do. They simply go by the a the original initial construction as the age of the school. I've been doing this for a long time and I know how many schools I only thing left was the old gym and we built a whole new school around it or something. It's not fair to keep calling it a, you know, a 1929 school or whatever. So, we take a little extra step in that chart on the

110right. If we looked at the square footage of the buildings at your school and the construction dates, and if it was more than the initial, then we moved them up to to to a a newer status. And by doing that, anything that's in bold there, and this this board's to be commended, you know, looking at 2001, you moved a whole bunch of your old schools with with upgrades up into, you know, becoming a newer school. You went from an average on on the left column over there of average age was 69 with a school that is 101 years old. Uh and over here we were able to improve it to an average of 49 years. That's a remarkable effort. One to be commended. Uh we do this for a lot of districts. On one end

111of it, Wake County, their average age is like 20 or 25 years right now because they're building five or six schools a year to accommodate a thousand new kids a year, you know. So they're they're not in the same class as this. But we have some other districts. I don't need to name them, but they've got their their average is like 70 and 80 years old and they haven't upgraded and stuff. So, it's something something to bear in mind. Um, I'm going to I'm going to go most of this building condition report is some of the same information broken down further. Um, there's a if you if you go back, I'm sorry these aren't numbered. There's a five-year capital expenditures report. The state asked us to to get from your finance folks uh what are

112the previous five-year capital expenditures on your facilities at each school and um I will tell you that it's an an ambiguous question sometimes and it varies between school districts as to how they approach that. We've coached them on it a little bit, but um here you can kind of see a total of what over the past five years from the finance department's perspective of what what has been spent on your buildings and then we compare that to what we came up with in this study. So, it's a pretty it it I I don't want any of this not to be taken seriously, but I would say sometimes to temper yourself a little bit on this one and just kind of look at it from a from from a higher level and look at it saying,

113"Yep, we we're going to need more at some point." Um, there's a utilization report in here. I I always want to make sure that that we have a some conversation about where where do we come up with these numbers. The 2425 ADM we have nothing to do with it's embedded in the survey out of their their principles monthly reports. Um there's a formula that they that they use as far as best of two for the 2425 school year. Um, it's always a little different than what somebody else has. I I can't explain it. We've talked to DPI about it, but they seem like they can't explain it either. But capacity is one. If you ask five people to tell you the capacity of a school, you'll get five different capa numbers. It just it's it's

114a hard one to get to depending on what their approach is. We purely use the approach of the state. They have a worksheet for us to fill out the number of classrooms of each type at each school and they grant capacity based on what type of room that is. We get that information by sending a floor plan out to the school and have the principal write down on each space what do you use that room for? And then we use the state's worksheet and apply those numbers to get to that capacity. This gets confusing because a lot of people say, "Well, that school was built to hold 500 kids." And you're saying it's only 327 or something. But we have to remember when the princ the principal is giving us his program that he has

115right now in the school he or she has in in the school. is the program capacity is what what does it take right now to have school classrooms that would have been granted um for for a full 26 kids for a fifth grade classroom have been converted to ESL or special pullout spaces that do not they don't get any capacity because they're secondary spaces then and so it changes the capacity of the building as program requirements change so it I I don't know that this is the best system, but it's a better system than a lot of people have. Uh and it's backed up by, you know, the state's recommendations. So, we we do our best to adhere to it. It's still subjective. Sometimes a principal handwriting is not good or whatever, but we do

116our best with it. >> And Andrew, can I add can I jump in at this report? So the utilization report report can be considered fluid from year to year as we make principal changes as we make program changes within the building. We could see here at deep branch uh has a capacity of pro of 345 but if we go in and we have to add an ECS classroom there Dr. Carr where we've added a lot of our schools over the last couple of years and in some places we've had to add two. So, we're losing capacity if we add an ECS classroom to uh or if a classroom I think Mr. Andrew you and I talked if there's an art classroom, there's no capacity assigned to that art classroom if I remember that correctly. >>

117So, again, I would not as as we're looking at this, the the warning sign I would put here is let's not count this as being the gospel and in stone from year to year as the needs of that school or community changes. So does the principal's ability to have capacity in that building. >> A good example of that too is uh we had two another district they were asking the questions are these two schools are the same design they were built at the same time why do they have different capacities and we went back and took another look at it. one of them had seven uh EC classrooms and so a classroom space that usually is granted 26 uh students for capacity was only granted 10. A EC classroom is only has 10. So it

118was seven classrooms converted to ECUs and the other one only had one. So it it it it changes. Um there's a mobile report right behind that. That's a pretty That's 105 mobilebiles is is a pretty high number. Uh Wake's got 670. So you're you know got a ways to go to catch up with them. But uh there's, you know, from our understanding, your mobile units aren't going anywhere. They're they're needed. Uh they're they're not moving around. If anything, you might need more. And but but um we it's one of the things that we report and the report right after that is core capacity. What the state's looking at it they've they've really made this less than it used to be. We had a lot more questions that we would answer like parking spaces and that

119type of thing. They boiled it down to how big is your media center and how big is your dining area to look at core capacity. look at at, you know, if if you've got, you know, 10 15 mobilebiles at a school, are you able to accommodate in your core capacity enough to be able to have have children be able to go through how many times they have to be served lunch or whatever. Uh, and fixing is on there as well. There's a several pages now. Every school has 52 questions that we have to get answers about. And so we we just put them in one spreadsheet like this to kind of show um where where that information is. And it's it's a little it's a little different in the state program. Tab four. I've already

120mentioned it, but the uh there's a there's a sheet behind the one that says state forms. It's a it's a one of the user updates that came out. We were disappointed about it. Uh but they basically said that we're not going to be able to print out the state forms. We used to give you a state forms book to show you exactly what had been input. Uh so the best that we can do is to give you the basic book. Um and uh we just wanted to to speak to that a little bit because we had a lot of customers that used to get two books and now they only get the one. Beyond that, uh, all all of the schools, every building system, every answer to every question, uh, is in the following pages

121so that you can kind of look back and see where did those numbers generate from. Um, I think I covered everything that I had meant to. I'd be happy to answer any questions you might have. And I just want to remind our committee and uh those folks who may be listening, we were able to reduce our HVAC needs over the last five years because as you recall, we spent approximately $25 million of our ESER funds to address HVAC at seven individual sites. And I also think we were used the remaining money at all of our high school sites. So, uh Andrew and I talked about that as well. That could be why we see that reduction where other districts may see an increase in HVAC. We were able to address our HVAC some of our

122HVAC needs with our ESER funds five years ago. >> I just want to brag on your staff a little bit because there you got a really good staff and you certainly had a great superintendent. He's been a friend for a long time and I congratulate him on being able to retire. But uh some big shoes to fill. But thank y'all for for uh all your helping us out to get this done. Any any questions? >> Everybody good? You good? Mr. Edge, >> thanks a lot. >> M um Mr. Edge, uh do you have any questions or and I also want to add I can't remember if Mr. Andrew included this and he may have we interviewed PR his team not we his interview interview team interviewed principles as well. >> We did. >> So uh

123there was our entire maintenance staff sat down for interviews. It took us uh probably four or five days somewhere give or take. We were on and off quite a bit. And then we come back with all the principal comments and go back to to staff and say they say that they need a new blank or they say there's a problem with something and out of that we were able to to get more of their their perspective into the report as well. Thanks for bringing that up. >> Yeah. So again so again we appreciate Mr. Andrew and his staff because again I don't know that our staff would have been able to complete this report and get it submit submitted to DPI uh with the proper documentation. So thank you. >> You're good. Appreciate it. >>

124And so again as I mentioned before it is not our intent unless it's the intent of the committee to bring this to the full board. This was just for you guys to have information. Again all the board members will have a copy of this book by the next by the next board meeting. Uh the only document that needs to be submitted is a signature from both chairs that they have knowledge of this report and we'll get we can get that turned into DPI. >> Okay, appreciate it. >> Thank you. >> Move along. Next topic, future plans for old career site um Hilly Branch. Um Mr. probably likely I think at everybody's uh table you should have a um a print out of the layout at that old hilly branch site for reference. So good good

125evening chairman Phillips, Chairman Simmons and construction committee. Um, everybody's so was so excited about the new school last week and and the potential. I don't some of some folks were able to come out on Saturday. We had a good crowd on Saturday walked through probably very similar crowd to what we had on Friday. Uh, community is excited. I think parents are excited and definitely our kids are excited. So um a few months back we started thinking and everybody knows this if we leave a building vacant what that what's going to eventually happen to that building. We have to have movement within our be within our buildings in order to keep that building alive. So, I've walked the campus of the old career center um several times and visualized what we can do with that space.

126And again, understanding that we have limited I'm going to say limited to no funds to make any changes at the building. Uh all of us in here know what Hurricane Matthew and Hurricane Florence did to our transportation department. Uh and it is of my opinion with the work that is taking place at 95 and the way drainage is occurring anytime we get a heavy substantial rain the potential for flooding is there for our transportation department. So for me it become quite obvious and apparent that the best thing for us to do is to move all of the departments located at the transportation department other than transportation out of that building into the old career center. So uh what I have laid out here and I've tried to color code it. Uh it is our intent

127that our first move would be to move techn the technology department out because again that's just it's really just a matter of moving people from one location to another location. So our technology would occupy the main office space and this is an old drawing from from uh our maintenance department. All we have new programs so please don't pay attention to the labels on there. I just want you to pay attention to the colors. So our uh current technology department will maintain or be housed in the main office complex there. There are enough offices there for Mr. Teal and his land uh cyber security office in WAN to occupy that space. I also had the thought of uh the other two classrooms. We do have a help desk set up at the old transportation or at

128the transportation department. It's not old. uh help desk set up at the transportation department that we can move those individuals into those two classrooms. Again, minimal to no cost, a matter of just moving individuals. Uh also housed in the transportation department is our testing department. Again, a a area that needs to be secured. The front part of the um classroom building here has one entrance. we can secure that area and allow the testing department to uh move into that area where Herman, I think it was Herman D and Pam may have been in that office space there. Uh the next department that's attached to that same building, uh we would move our student information which uh is Infinite Campus. Miss Angela Jones and Miss Tanisha Spencer would move in would move into what I've labeled

129there in the green area. If you look to the far left on the screen uh and on your paper, I've highlighted the automotive lab, as most of you may know, we have a warehouse. I call it just a simple ninth street warehouse where we have uh Mr. Manny repairs lawnmowers and tractors and different things like that, things that need to be worked on. Um that I need to get I need to get the folks out of that building. And so it is my intent to move them to the automotive space. There's there's tools, there's things in there that again um no cost that would really assist our maintenance department. So uh this is our plan. Uh our and then as we begin to progress there will be other other department there may I'm not going

130to say there may be other departments here. We may be able to to develop a conference resource room for other trainings. Uh we may have a conversation about moving records. Again, uh but for right now, uh two purposes. We need we need individuals on this campus to keep this building alive in lack of a better term. I also believe it's vital or before we get deep into storm season. and I pray and hope we never experience what we've experienced before uh that for the benefit of the folks at the transportation department is that we need to go ahead and move those. So, we wanted to bring this to you so that because I know there's been questions, what are we going to do with the building? What's going to happen? What's going to happen? Uh

131so, again, we believe this is the best plan for that space at this time. >> Uh Mr. Bobby, with with uh looking at the proposal here, what what would be left at the what we call the bus garage now besides the actual bus maintenance? >> That's it. >> Okay. So, that would move all servers, everything. >> No. No. So, we are not moving equipment. Equipment is going to stay. There's a server room at transportation. It is lifted off the ground. So, uh I'm not going to say we're waterproof there, but it is elevated. We also have a data room at the warehouse and a I want to I would say like a a a warehouse there where technology comes in and they go through it at the warehouse as well. Those two places will stay

132will stay in place. This is just the individuals who are currently uh housed at the transportation department. >> All right. Got a question from Dr. Emanuel. >> Clarification. You may have hit on it. Okay. You you're saying moving, which I don't have a problem with it, moving um computer services to the Hillybranch site. And my question was, what about all of their equipment like servers and all? And you were saying leaving it there? Leave the equipment there at the bus garage. >> Right. So, there is only one room at the bus garage that has a server technology equipment in it. That equipment cannot move. >> All right. Now, my question is, can they do their business at Healy Branch with the server at another site? >> Yes. >> So, they wouldn't have to have it

133every day going to it and picking it up or anything? >> No. As long as I've got internet access at the current site, we can we will not miss a beat. >> All right. Now, how about wiring or anything at the career center? I mean, the old career center. they have to do anything to accommodate them, anything, telephone service or anything. So, they can just flip right in there and go to work. >> Yes, ma'am. >> I I really don't have as a person, it makes sense to me. I don't have a problem with it as long as that we don't have to worry about that server thing. >> And and I I met with the folks this morning. Uh we walked uh walked through the plan locations with technology. Teal's exciting. It's a matter

134of saying me looking at him and saying here's the keys to the building. Let's rock and roll. My question came up. Do we have to move anything? And actually again where the where our main servers are at, we cannot move those. >> Correct. M I ask question. Uh so the testing center will be there as well. >> Correct. >> Now how about the security? Are we any is it any worse or better off than where it was? pro we're probably probably better because there's one door the that pink area the only way you can get into that area is right underneath where I've got the word testing that is the only entrance into that building uh there is an egress door there is a door uh in the second room where it says office on

135this one there is a door there but we will figure out a way to make that an egress door only not an entrance door. So, so security is probably it will be better here than where they were currently at. >> And it's because I don't know. It's not because I'm trying to be picky. Do we survey do we have a surveillance man or officer that surveills those sites? So we uh sometime back when when uh we moved from our security guards who were on staff to use it after our SRO's to provide our security they were stationed at transportation once we make this move we will alter their schedule to spend part they will go back and because the sites are only less than a mile from each other so that individual officers who's assigned

136that night will go back and forth. Okay, >> that would be their schedule. Probably end up at this site in the morning time because of course transportation goes in a lot ear earlier than the folks who would be here. >> Personally, I don't have a problem with it. I mean, as a member of the construction committee, I think it's a logical feasible solution. >> And this um this location is also gated. Correct. >> Correct. >> Okay. I got another question. Um Mr. Brewer and then Dr. All clear online. Go ahead. >> Uh Mr. Bobby, the uh building that the uh lawnmower and repairs um who who owns that building is that county commissioner building or >> that that was part of the Lon City School system. It is of course everything when we merged came

137to us. So that is our building. >> So what will happen to that building? Uh that building is that building is in really bad shape. Uh I I don't know. We haven't gotten to that point, but I really need to just in all honesty get the folks out of there and get them in a more stable location. >> What's our future plans for u for our yard maintenance? Are we going to continue to contract or or I know we're doing both. We're taking part of we're taking care of part of the schools and we're contracting some of the schools. Am I correct? >> Correct. Our crews are responsible if I'm not mistaken for only three sites. Three sites. The rest are contracted out. Those contracts expire at the end of this this year. So if

138it is desired the board to do that again, we would open the we would go through the same beating process as we have we've done in the past. >> Dr. Her you still got a still good question? >> Well, so I was going to ask um how is the connectivity there as far as the internet up Mr. Bobby? >> Right. So my I had this master plan in mind months ago. So when I knew we were transitioning to the new site I ensured Mr. Thiel Mr. Thiel left this site live and assigned it as an annex ever what needed to be assigned Dr. manual knows through so that we would not lose any connectivity or any communications at this particular site. >> Right. >> Okay. Um so as far as the employees that we that

139that you're asking us to to move here, is is anybody being briefed on this? Is everybody excited? Um what what kind of com is there any complaints that we could anticipate hearing from maybe somebody that's not happy? Do you do you see that >> after I would after spending 17 15 17 years in that building myself I think uh meeting with the department heads this morning all of them are excited uh to be able again they've got their own dedicated space uh my first and I I'm not going to say all of them aren't important but again maintaining security in the testing department was important and also again separating ating those spaces and also having the availability if if Angela needs to meet with five or 10 data managers, she's got two rooms, she doesn't

140have to worry about who's in the transportation classroom. She's got an available space where she could meet with those folks. Same thing with Cindy in her department. If she needs to meet just with high school, she's got enough room where she could bring in those five or six high school um test coordinators and have their meeting there. >> Okay. Now, when I when I zoom in on this map, it looks like there's three exits in that pink area >> and the P all of the those again, this is an old map. I think you see it goes back to 2010. There's been some modifications made to that area. >> Okay. All right. I just wanted to make sure. Okay. >> Right. >> Thank you. >> So, again, I can't take the doors out as an

141egress. I can take them out as being an entrance. So where you may see an it may the door may end up being an egress. It may not be an entrance. >> Just a exit. >> Yes. >> Okay. Uh do we have cameras out there? >> Yes. >> Okay. And they're working. >> Yes. I need we will that's another thing we will evaluate to see if additional cameras need need to be placed there. >> Okay. How's the lighting at night? the I would that that would be something that we could work on through the I don't want to get in the parking lot parking lot light business but it definitely something we could work that's probably would that be Duke or EMC you know Mr. We could work with either power company and see if

142additional lots need to be put up. >> Okay. >> You said you think who? >> Yeah, that's what I mean. I've only been by there once at >> any more questions. >> And I also think it would make the Hilly Branch Association happy to know that we're just not walking out of the building and leaving a building sitting there uh vacant. So again, we presented this as information tonight at the pleasure of the construction [clears throat] committee. Do you want to present this to the full board? So you're you're looking for a motion, Mr. B. Move it to the full board. >> All right, we got a motion from um Mr. Brewer and a second from Dr. Emanuel to move this to um the full board. All in favor say I. >> I oppose. All

143right. Good. >> And we'll just present this again as as information. >> Okay. >> All right. That's it. >> That's it. >> Motion to adjourn. >> Oh, yeah. Go ahead. >> Oh, hit your hit your button, Miss or Dr. Man. >> Would move forward with this. It is our knowledge that we don't we I can do more research and if need to at the board meeting move it from information to action if that will be >> why on earth don't you come do it and get it do it right that right Miss John do it right yeah >> okay >> as an action okay motion to adjourn >> yes >> all All right. Thank you guys.