001Are we good? Oo. get started. >> Hello everybody. Uh thank you for all those many that attended uh in person and for all those watching online uh and for those watching perhaps uh a couple of weeks from now. Uh welcome. This is our first Capitol Project community forum. Uh my name is Brendan Cardi. I am a member of the Cornwall board of education. I'm also the chair of the communications committee which is the committee that puts on these events. I just want to do some brief introductions. I'm joined on the deis by our interim superintendent meio, our assistant superintendent for business John Frink. Uh the chair of our facilities committee Jim Craig and also uh other communication committee member Loft and Riser. And uh also a quick shout to Jamie Fox, our other communication member
002who could not make it tonight uh for a work commitment. So uh tonight we're going to go through, you know, there's going to be a lot to cover. Um I want to talk broadly about what's going to be in this uh upcoming capital project and kind of set the stage for what the next couple of months are going to entail. want to answer like the biggest question of why are we doing another capital project? Uh what projects are being considered? We took a uh we sent out a community survey uh over the last few weeks and we have the results of that and we're going to share those. We're going to talk about what the next steps are both in the next couple of weeks and then also uh really the next couple of months
003as we get closer to the vote which if everything goes according to plan and everything gets uh stays on track gets approved uh the community would vote on May 19th. So give you a sense of like what that path is going to look like and then we're going to open the floor to Q&A. Um we'll have questions anybody in the audience that wants to ask a question we'll uh provide our best answer. We also have questions from that were submitted through the survey and time allowing we'll go through some of those and uh answer as many as we can. Okay, so we'll start at the the very high level. Why another capital project? I know some people might be thinking to themselves like, "Hey, this kind of looks familiar. I even recognize some of the
004fonts in this presentation. Didn't you just do this a few years ago?" And yes, we did. That was uh 2022, so four years ago now. Uh here are some of the the best ofves from from that goaround. It was a $23.8 million capital project. Uh did not increase taxes. It passed with a a a great majority and it did a lot of important work throughout the district. U a lot of those projects you could probably see if you drop your kids off, you know, you see at the high school, it was uh a lot of pentup needs that were addressed. But you might ask yourself like, well, 23.8 $.8 million. That's a lot of money. How how do you need to do so much more only four years later? And there are really two big
005reasons why we are pursuing this second capital project. Number one, despite the fact that we just did one, we have a lot of needs around the district still. We're going to go through those in a second. The second reason is we've been planning for this all along. The plan was to do more capital projects. Uh we'll talk more about why, but uh there were so many needs throughout the district that we always knew that one project was never going to be enough. And if you followed these presentations four years ago, you'll recall that this was discussed and it was always meant to be uh the first step down a much longer path towards reinvesting in our facilities. I want to start with reason number one though like we have a lot of needs around this
006district and I want to just give you a sense of like how many needs we have. So first of all a little process point. Uh after we completed the $23 million capital project we had a another uh building condition survey uh done in 2025. So every five years districts have to go through this process of uh having a building conditions survey. They identified many many needs that were not addressed in that capital project. What is a building condition survey? Uh it's done by a u third party. So your architectural firm and they'll come in and basically give fresh eyes around your buildings and say you know create a list of things that you really need to tackle. This was uh the result of those of that survey. This is just the high school. I'm not
007going to go through line by line. We'll go through a more granular look at the projects uh in a minute. But this was the high school identified almost $17 million of of projects at the high school. This is the middle school. Even longer, $30.1 million of needs. Cornwall Elementary, 10.5. Willow 7.3 CO 7 buildings and grounds district office rounding it out to almost $78 million of needs identified in that building condition survey after even after the the capital project. The fact is a capital project is the only way that you can address this amount of work in a timely cost-effective manner. It's I one of the uh questions that we got from the uh the survey and this comes up in different forms fairly often. You shouldn't have to do capital projects because you should
008be investing in your facilities every year. And the fact is uh if we were to address these large level projects out of our operating budget, you have to remember our operating budget is well over 50%. It's keep me honest, it's between 70 and 80% is your programming and people. It's salaries. So if you were to pay for a large project out of your operating budget, you would have to let people go, frankly. like something would have to some meaningful line out of your budget would have to come out and nobody wants that. If you were to increase uh if you were to add it on top of it, it would be such a dramatic tax increase that you would need a supermajority to pass it. The community wouldn't probably wouldn't be able to afford it,
009etc., etc. So, capital projects are set up to encourage school districts to tackle their largecale capital uh investments this way. there are financial incentives to doing so. And so, and from a process standpoint, it just makes more sense to do all of these in a bundle because you get architectural firms and u ma um construction management firms to streamline the work and it's just much more efficient. Um now you may ask yourself like again like well go back to that uh the idea of like we did 23.8 8 in 2022. I just want to remind people before we had done that capital project, the previous capital project we did was passed in 1999 to build the high school. So 23 years went by without a major capital project approved in this district. And that didn't
010invest in the other four academic buildings. It just built the high school. Um history before that gets murkier when there was even largescale investments um in these buildings. Point is the buildings are old. Um they had not gotten largescale work in multiple decades and we are just now digging out of that hole. Um but we are making significant and meaningful progress and this is part of that. Okay. Reason number two. Uh we've been planning for this. So, in the spring of 2022, when we passed the capital project, we also there was something else on that ballot. We asked the community to approve a new $5 million capital reserve fund. The community did approve that. As a reminder, a capital reserve fund is essentially a savings account that is separate from your operating budget that allows
011school districts to save for large capital improvements. Many of the capital improvements qualify for state aid up to almost 75%. So every dollar in your capital reserve fund would be matched by roughly $3 from the state on those qualifying projects. I say qualifying projects, you can't just do pay for anything out of the capital reserve fund. You can't um another thing that came up, you can't add programming, for instance. It has to be something that uh is tied to your physical facility and even then to qualify needs that facility needs to be tied to instruction essentially much more complicated formula but that's the gist but if you if you match all of those if you you hit all that criteria it's a great deal. State kicks in $3 for every dollar that you have sitting
012in that capital reserve fund. So, if you have a fully funded $5 million capital reserve fund, that will be matched by roughly $15 million in state aid, which allows you to fund a roughly $20 million capital project without raising taxes. If this sounds familiar, because this is the formula we used last time, it ballooned to 23.8 because we had some expiring debt that was coming off the books, which is a theme you might want to pin for later because we will get to that. This time around though, we're doing something more. So, not only do we have the fully funded $5 million capital reserve fund that we opened in 2022, which puts us in the same position that we were for that capital project. But in the spring of 25, we asked the community to
013approve an additional $5 million capital reserve. It is currently about halfway full with $2.5 million. Which means with our roughly 3:1 aid ratio, that 2.5 in this new capital reserve fund will be matched by up to $7.5 million in state aid. If your eyes are glazing over because this is so much math, let's break it down in review. Once this clicker, what am I standing in front of? There we go. Okay. So, in review, we've got that capital reserve fund from 22, $5 million. That's full. Capital reserve fund from 25, $2.5 million. Total capital reserves, $7.5 million. We multiply that by three for state aid and we get $30 million in purchasing power, which is more than we had the last time we did this in 2022, which is great. This is the ability to
014tackle a $30 million capital project without raising taxes. But what there's even more. This is hardly possible. So, if you remember, I just mentioned it. Back in 1999, the community approved a $44.6 million capital project to build Cornwall Central High School. The school district has been paying this debt each year since. In recent years, that means something to the tune of about $3.5 million in debt service each year. In 2030, that debt will be paid in full. We will no longer be paying for the high school, which means the school district will free up about $3.5 million per year in its budget, which it can allocate towards capital improvements. This dramatically increases our purchasing power, which will allow us to fund a capital project of up to $55 million without raising taxes. 2030 is significant.
015It would align almost perfectly with the schedule for this capital project because if it were approved in the spring of 26 in this May, it would take a few years before we were starting we were actually issuing those bonds. And at that point, the high school bonds fall off. This one kicks in, which was allow you to maintain that same level of spending. So that same tax levy essentially. So you'd get much more uh you'd be investing in new projects without having to increase what you're getting from the community. Okay. So, we have $55 million space to do about $55 million of work without uh increasing taxes. That's great. Um, but like we said, there's more than $55 million of work to do. So, this is where uh the projects themselves become important. So, what
016projects are being considered? Uh, all of them. So, that's uh remember that big old BCS report, building condition survey. There it is. Uh, and there's a lot on there. Uh, and we're considering all of them. So, the the give you a little insight into the process. There's the facilities committee uh, in conjunction with administration uh, principles in each building. The, uh, building and grounds itself, our department of building and grounds here in the district, our architects, our construction managers have organized the projects into two general groups. tax neutral proposition like what can we do without raising taxes essentially and then tax increase propositions other things that we could do which would be which would be beyond that kind of tax neutral umbrella um but may be worth doing as well and we're going to talk
017through them and I want to clarify I'll I'll say this over and over again nothing has been decided yet that's why we're having forums and surveys and all of that uh we're trying to get a sense of what people that what the community wants to uh would support and we want to we're very sincerely taking that information in and this is part of it. Okay. So the tax neutral proposition this is where we get kind of in the weeds on the uh the buildings and the the different needs. Last time I did this it skipped ahead several slides. There it is messing with my flow. Okay. Uh so the tax neutral proposition is a combination of necessary building repairs, site work, and renovations that would address long-standing critical needs while improving the safety and sustainability
018of our buildings, which sounds great, but what does that mean? Uh at the high school, I don't want to go through everyone line by line, but real quick hitters, uh construct bathrooms and concession stands next to the tennis courts. That one requires a bit of explanation. So, when we did the uh multisport athletic facility at the high school last time, uh we did not include this item, the bathroom and concession stands. We have to build that state the state education department will not allow us to build anything else until we build that. So, they will literally not approve this project unless we include that. Uh so, we are and it's also bathrooms and concession stands are a good idea. So, we don't have to be convinced, but that is why that is listed right right
019there right off the bat. Uh, some other projects, replace the pavers at the front entrance. Uh, repair some roof sections. Uh, replace floor decks. Uh, that's the, uh, the retaining wall near the bridge. If you're familiar with the the high school, the bridge is the what goes from essentially the lobby to the library. Um, install magnetic hold opens at remaining bathrooms. This is stuff that you know just wear and tear has uh just deteriorated over time. These last two uh are important and you'll see them on different buildings. Replace the entire fire alarm system and replace the PA system. Those aside from the concession stands are the two most expensive items here. It is very important to understand the these are safety measures. Obviously the fire alarm, it's easy to connect that to safety, but
020even the PA system, these systems are old. They there are entire days where they are spotty don't work at all. Just imagine the vulnerability that a building is in and all of the the occupants are when you cannot communicate through the PA system throughout the day or you cannot communicate reliably. Um this is a big safety issue and which is why uh you will see this item listed in uh all I all but one of the buildings I believe or to some extent to some extent all the buildings not a replacement in all the buildings but it's a line item uh in all five. All right middle school uh there are some big items here which I'll I'll go through in more detail but uh pave the rear service road and build a new parent
021drop off. That's the the well the second biggest item. So, if you recall, uh if you are familiar with the middle school, there's that whole road in the back that's not really a road. It's kind of gravel. People go on it anyway. Um that's what we're referring to there. paving that entire thing and then building a new parent drop off in the rear of the building. So that currently you have buses and parents dropping off in the front of the building in the morning, which if you've ever sat in in line there, you understand um how not ideal that is. Um, so this would be taking the parent portion, moving it to the back of the building, only having buses go in the front of the building so that you would alleviate that that traffic.
022Uh, you would make it safer for those that are jumping out of their car. Let's say your parent pulls up and you don't want to wait and you know, the entrance is right there. It's so tempting and you just jump out of your car, but here comes another car and here comes a bus and it's kind of the wild west. Not ideal. Uh this would take that parent traffic, put it in the back, keep the buses up front where things can remain orderly. I'll show you some pictures that'll make it a little clearer in a second. Uh that bus loop, repaving that. Uh Walter tells Walter Moran, who's our uh head of buildings and grounds, director of buildings and grounds, uh that hasn't been paved in 30 some odd years. So um if you're familiar
023with this building, CES, we're at Lee Road. uh the that this similar project was on the last capital project. It had not been paved in 30 some odd years, too. So, uh the time for the middle school is up. And uh replacing the sidewalks, uh apparently those are even older. The rest of these uh moisture penetration, uh if anyone owns a home, you know how uh how it gets your attention when water is getting into your house. That is a drop what you're doing and fix it kind of issue. Uh same here at the middle school. Replacing the water service and backflow pretor. Just another necessary repair. Replacing the sanitary sewer line. Replacing the D room D-wing roof for similar reasons as listed above. Here's another big item. Kitchen and cafeteria addition. Going to go
024through this visually in a second. This is part of a larger re-imagination of the middle school space. Um, this would be, you know, I'm not even going to talk about where it is because we have a picture that will explain it. I'm just going to repeat myself. Um, as part of this, we would also renovate the existing kitchen. Uh, convert that to classroom space. Uh, build staff bathrooms, both male and female. Provide some gutter downspout support to address again another moisture issue. Install drainage, another moisture issue. replace dated mop receptors, which I will admit I don't know what that means, but I have it has been explained to me and at the time I know it made sense. I have since forgotten. Uh replace the fire alarm system. It's only I say only, it's one
025of the smaller items on this list, so forgive me. Uh replace the fire alarm system and the PA system here as well. So again, more safety issues are uh kind of themes here. Now, I want to get back to that uh the pavement and drop off. So, uh, the day before we were buried in multiple feet of snow, I went out and I took these pictures and it looks like just a long time ago, but this is the if you're standing in the Lee Road parking lot, this is the view you're looking back at. It again, it's kind of a road. Is it a road? Not sure. Um, it's not meant for, it was never designed for what it's being used for today. It was always meant to be a service road, but it gets
026used by parents. um it gets used by uh athletic teams, you know, like it's it's just used whenever it's available to be used, which in my mind is kind of like water finding its level. Like the cra the people that attend the middle school or or any middle school event understand that only going in through the front is not always a feasible way of accessing the school. So they're almost nature has tried to uh force its way in through the back and this road is just not built for that. This is a grally uh I mean it looks as if it has taken like shrapnel fire if you go up and down it. It is a very rough road. Again I calling it a road is being generous. Um and it leads here. This is
027uh in the back. It's uh another parking lot area. This is where the uh we would be building first of all we would be repaving all of this. So it is a functioning road that is built for the amount of traffic that is it is already getting but then it would be uh functional enough to take on even more traffic so that we could build this. This is the uh an overhead rendition of that road. Starting on the bottom left, that's the entrance from Lee Road. Then it wheels all the way around. Again, this imprint is already there. It's just kind of gravel and dirt in most of most of those places as you just saw. And then it hooks around, approaches the building. And that last shot you saw, that little parking lot, that's
028where we would build the uh the back the rear drop off point. So now parents could come in through this back road in the morning uh for something that is purpose-built for exactly this. Drop their kids off at the back, wheel around that that little uh loop that you see on the the top right and then come back around exactly as they came um in the other lane. So this would be more efficient. Uh it would be uh safer than all of the cars and buses cramming into a small space up front and it would again uh make a road that is already being kind of used already uh much safer and more efficient and built for that purpose. Now, you'll also see the there's a large red, we called it in the very early
029parts of planning the blob, but it is the the one that is marked $9.2 million. This is the proposed cafeteria addition. And then on the bottom right of the uh the building itself, you see that blue section. and it's kind of looks like a uh an L or like a little little Tetris block. That's the renovate. That's where the existing cafeteria and kitchen are. Now, there's a lot of lot of reasons why we would want to replace the cafeteria and kitchen. Uh we'll start with the existing one. The it is in structurally not great shape. The floor of the kitchen has a lot of issues. um it is been recognized it is not it would need to be overhauled completely anyway in order to keep it functional. So the discussion was if we're going to
030completely overhaul this um that creates a lot of problems because you can't have your cafeteria completely offline for really at any point certainly not for an entire year roughly that it would take to fix it. So, you would have to find some alternate space to feed your your students. And there's another wrinkle to this. The middle school cafeteria is also used to uh supply meals to the other schools. Fill me in on CO and Willow, which adds to the not only the burden of the uh the cafeteria, but also the impact of taking it offline. So we know we have to we have to do something drastic to the existing cafeteria. We can't just take it offline without a replacement. So then the thought became why don't we just build a replacement at the middle
031school which you can have you can build that while the other uh existing cafeteria is still functioning. And then when that's done, you'd have all of this extra space in the existing cafeteria which you can now turn into educational space, instruction space, classrooms. So it doesn't only become a added benefit for the the facilities, you know, you have a larger cafeteria, more modern cafeteria, which is great and a huge benefit, but now it also funnels back into your instruction. you get more instructional space which as someone who anyone who works in schools or or it's associated with schools that's the ultimate goal whenever you can add instructional space um that's becomes very attractive. So that's the the explanation of those two items and and how they're connected and again another explanation of the that rear
032service road bus loop. Okay, that brings us to uh Cornwall Elementary. similar themes here. I don't want to go too deep, uh, but a lot of backflow preventers, uh, additional fencing at the playground, uh, repaving driveways from Lee Road. Uh, that's the the road that you come on right when you come in. Uh, that would be tied to the rear service road project. It kind of be all done at the same time. Um, there's some some classroom upgrades that would be made here to uh to a particular classroom to make it more functional. Uh, replacing stairwell and cafeteria doors. Uh that's a safety thing. Uh fire doors are needed. Uh replacing the curtain wall at the bridge corridor. That's the if you're familiar with this building, it goes from the office there on the left
033side of the building when you enter the main entrance. It's the the little bridge that takes you from the office area to the classrooms in the back. Uh address chimney deterioration. Uh replacing cafeteria and stairwell doors um with fire rated door fire rated doors and frames. And then again, the fire alarm system and PA system at the school as well. Willow Avenue, a lot of the same work. Um there's some roof work that uh hasn't been touched. 1972 roof edition. So that's uh that's beyond its usable life. I I mean, if you again, if you're approaching God, how many my math is failing me this 54 years? That's Yeah, I'd say that's time. uh replacing the gym floor, reinforcing the composite slab under the kitchen, adding air conditioning to the auditorium. Uh that's again that's
034a uh these are old buildings and uh you you don't feel that any any more powerfully than when you're sitting there on a a late spring day uh wishing there was air conditioning uh during an assembly and replacing the PA system uh here as well. Hormalon Hudson. Uh replacing the uh sprinkler compression system. I don't want to get too technical, but this is all stuff in the the kitchen. Adding air conditioning to the auditorium. Again, another uh backflow pre moisture issues. Uh bathrooms and again that PA system. District office. This is a uh one of the oldest buildings in our district as well. uh needs just a lot of upgrades. It's not ADA accessible. Uh a lot of these it has really not been addressed in the recent capital project and and a lot of
035other work because frankly we always funnel that money towards academic space. What's that? Oh, I did. Yeah. No, no, that's next. That's next. No, maybe I did. Yeah, I did double tap. It's easy to miss. It's just the one. So, uh, installing the four bay garage. This is interesting. It came up during the, uh, capital project, uh, community survey questions, um, portion that, um, the district should do a better job of maintaining what it has. Um, and this is exactly what this is. So the four bay garage would be used to protect our service vehicles essentially that uh help maintain our facilities from things like you know winter storms that drop 2 ft of snow on the ground. So uh this would be a an investment in uh long-term cost efficiency essentially and the kind
036of thing that would pay for itself. Okay. Um so that's a the tax neutral portion. All of that work I mentioned totals about $44.5 million, which you might be saying, didn't you say 55 million before? I did. So, we would likely add another project to this tax neutral portion. We did not get from our financial uh advisors the final calculation on 55 until literally this past week. So, more on the theme of like this is all being built, you know, we're in the process of of putting this all together and this is why we want to have this input. Um, but this is good news. So, we would likely be able to take another 10 or so million dollars from projects you're about to see and put this into the quote tax neutral proposition. We
037just don't know what it that is yet and frankly we're interested in taking the public's pulse on what that would be. Okay. So, what are those tax increase propositions? In these propositions, we could add classroom space to our elementary school, elementary and middle schools. We could improve our athletic fields, or we could do both. First, I want to talk about the classroom uh additions. So, here at Cornwall Elementary School, we would add eight classrooms in what's called a four on top of four extension to relieve space. If you're familiar with this building, that would probably instantly make sense. The buildings are the classrooms are all stacked in two floors. Top floor mirrors the bottom floor. So, it would be four uh classrooms up top, four classrooms down below. I'll show you a rendering of where
038that would be in a second. That addition would be just south of $12 million uh in Cornwall on Hudson. The uh caf it would be an addition to the cafeteria and renovating the current space. kind of a similar idea in a way to the middle school concept but at a much smaller scale. Um so during that renovation you'd get additional space. That would be 2 million $2 million. At the middle school we would be connecting the B and the C wings. Again I'll show you what this looks like. Uh and in the process adding space for three classrooms. It would also improve the flow of the building. That would be just north of $7 million. This is what this is where it would be uh for this an overhead shot of the building we are
039currently in Cornwall Elementary School. So that is the uh you're in the parking lot or if you're in the baseball field the softball fields out back this would be kind of jutting in that direction. And again that would be four classrooms up top and four classrooms below. Just a word on CES. Um this is a we we mentioned in the previous slide it would relieve some uh space issues. My daughter is in seventh grade now. when she entered kindergarten, I remember it was a big thing like two weeks before the school year when they had to add it there was they had four classes per grade and it was so crowded. They were like, "Oh man, we that the the studenttoteer ratio is going to be way off, you know, and and at the very
040last minute they added a fifth class." Everyone was just like, "Hallelujah." And there was an exception because I think at the time and Megan would know this that might have there might have been one other grade in CES that had five classes but it was the norm to have four. Seeing it from the board perspective and as a father's perspective every year since we have been adding another teaching position and here at CES I've seen my my both of my daughters go through now every grade at CES has five classrooms. Not only that, the students in each classroom keeps going up each year. So a studenttoteer ratio at with four classrooms per grade in 2019 uh would would have been lower than what we have in 2026 with five uh classrooms per grade. That's how
041much this school in particular uh has started to grow. And the reason that and this is another question that was asked why why does the overflow why does CES always have to shoulder the burden the other uh buildings Willow and CO are much older they're they're not uh they simply don't have the capacity there's no way to even creatively come up with more space um CES has had more space but now it's maxing out you can't add keep adding more classroom more classes is and expect there to be more classrooms to put them in. Eventually, you run out of space. That's where we're hitting now. And that's the impetus for uh this plan. At CO, this would be uh adding a a cafeteria addition and again uh renovating that space to add some classrooms. It
042would be in the back of the building there. And this is the middle school. So, the part we're focusing on is the top right. So, that's the B and the C-wing. So you would be connecting those. It would kind of like adding space at the back of the building and then connecting the two wings and in that connection uh you would be building space to add three classrooms. So that would be jutting out if you're looking at the the bus loop from Main Street that would be on your right hand side. Okay. Uh now what would the athletic field uh portion of this look like? Again, this is the potential tax increase propositions that would be on top of the tax neutral work. Uh, and what what are the options here? Well, at Cornwall Central
043High School, you could relocate the baseball and softball fields and then basically turf it. In the process of doing that, you could create in the outfield, which you'll see in a second, a where the two would merge a multi enough space for a multisport field for soccer, lacrosse, things like that. At the middle school, two options. You could add turf to the existing football field and then replace the track around it. Or you could kind of do the same thing as the high school. you'd build a multi sport athletic field for baseball, soccer, lacrosse, um, football, etc. Uh, which you'll see in a second. So, this is what the imprint would look like at Cornell Central High School. So, you'll see where the the fields are currently, and you'd be moving the uh, baseball field
044to like the reversing the softball field essentially, and then uh, having that multisport athletic field. You see the outline. I don't know if it's coming through on the video, but the out the um the space for the multisport field would be in the outfields that connect the baseball field and the softball field. That would be uh $14 million. And for uh orientation, that's the soccer fields to the to the right and then the uh football field to the uh upper right. So, you're getting closer to the building there uh with those fields. And then at the middle school, these are the two options. So that's the existing football field footprint at the bottom left and that would be what uh that new baseball field/multisport would look like. So occupying the same footprint as the existing
045baseball field, but then in the outfield you would just be turning that into uh a multi-use turf space. I want to stress that when we talk about these propositions, I got the formatting a little messed up there. Um, we're not saying it's like all of the all or nothing. These are the options. So, we're trying to get a sense of what does the community support, where where are the priorities, etc. Um, so when we say, you know, two fields at the middle school, we're not saying we would do both. Um, we're just getting a sense of where support generally lies. Okay. So, um, uh, to review the numbers here, I apologize, it got a little skewed, but the tax neutral prop would be 44 million. Uh, that's what scoped what I just shared with you.
046Now, with the understanding we'd likely be able to add about 10 million to that, the tax increase, the the classrooms proposition. Currently, there's about $21 million of uh or those three options would total $21 million and those three fields would total $33 million. Uh but again, we could pick and choose and kind of construct this really any way that the community decides. Okay, so speaking of community input, uh we had a survey that we pushed out a few weeks ago and we got some pretty good results. There were 264 responses. Uh most uh great majority were uh parents of Cornwall Central School District kids. Uh we asked how likely are you to support a capital project that does not increase local school taxes? 81% highly likely, 13.6 somewhat likely. So combined, you're north of 90%.
047Again, this is among parents. We we shared it out in in other ways, but I I understand when a school creates a survey, they're more likely to get parents that respond. Um, so we considering this in in the when we look at this data, but then we we asked u to rank the areas you would like to address in order of priority. This probably looks a little confusing. I'll I'll share a simplified version of this in a second, but I think it's good to see the raw data. So blue is upgrading infrastructure, red student safety, the the bus loop, uh orange adding classroom space, green improving the athletic fields. The upgrading the infrastructure was the clear number one choice when people ranked that number one. Uh it was by a landslide and for those they
048also ranked number two as adding classroom space. Then for those who added who this is now choice number two for whom classroom space was their number one infrastructure was their number two. Safety bus loop that kind of stuff was number three. Athletics was number four for those that for whom the safety bus loop stuff was number one. Classroom space was number two. Aging infrastructure was actually in fourth on that which is interesting. And uh the the fields were were third. And for those that valued the fields most, uh, safety, bus loop was number two. It's kind of inverted, frankly. Um, classroom space was third and infrastructure was fourth. So, just interesting how different groups shake out. Ultimately, though, the if you just you rank out what were people's top choices by the vast majority of
049top choices was upgrading uh, aging infrastructure, plumbing, roof, alarm systems. The second was adding classroom space. Third was that bus loop and fourth was the athletic fields. So interesting results. Um which area would you be likely to support if it required a modest tax increase? So this goes exactly to the question that we were just talking about or I'm the only one talking but uh about the extra propositions and like what would the community support? So 33%, that's the blue one, uh would support adding classroom space to our elementary and middle schools. 25.8% would support uh improving both or or adding both classroom spaces and improving athletic facilities. So you combine those two, the classroom space has on this poll almost 60% support with, you know, a small taxing or modest tax increase, I'll say.
050um improving just uh the athletic facilities for a tax increase about 12%. And neither was 25.8 which is frankly a uh an opinion I understand you know maybe maybe that your your top option isn't on there. Um so that uh that would make sense. Okay. So what uh what are the next steps? I know that was a lot of information. Um and for those that are still with mentally uh and physically, thank you. Uh but where are we going from here? So the board of ed has to decide which projects to include and then submit paperwork to uh SED which is the state education department. Um there's a whole process that they need to go through that they need uh you know a little few months to u it needs to be submitted a few
051months in advance of your vote. So that deadline is coming up. So, which is why we've, you know, had this survey and we're having this forum really interested in getting a sense of where the community lies. Um, and again, over the long term, the vote is May 19th. So, the way the process will go, we'll decide which projects to continue to pursue, submit that to SED, and then sometime in March, John, keep me honest. We as a the board would vote for what is actually going to be on the proposition. So there's still time between now and let's say mid to late March where the board would decide what what is actually going to be on the ballot on May 19th. And that's the first very important decision because those are the true options that
052the community will have to decide. Okay, which brings us to Q&A. Um talked a lot about how we're interested in getting public feedback and then I keep talking which seems disingenuous. So, this is the chance for the public to tell us what they think. Potential things you could say is um tell me again how this doesn't impact taxes or when it could impact taxes. It seemed a little confusing. Uh you want to know how the projects were chosen. Uh maybe you want to voice your opinion on whether you would support classrooms andor fields with a tax increase. Uh or anything else you'd like. Uh, we have some questions that were submitted through the survey which we can get to in a second, but I want to give a chance to anybody who's in the audience
053right now. You have a question. Uh, we're all ears. Thank you. Greg Roby, Mineral Springs. Uh, these are numbers so that I can think clearly. um what is the total student population? What are the populations at each of the three elementary schools? And what is the population student population at the middle school? Um and the reason my question is being asked, I'm looking at optimizing uh student uh psychological needs and CLA and school populations as we move forward. And as background, which I mentioned the other night at the board meeting, um it is plausible that rather than putting money into our oldest buildings, uh they could be taken down and we could build two additional middle schools and then reduce the addition to this school which would bring it more in alignment. Um, I know
054that's not going to happen this time around, but if if those other numbers are anybody has them, total student population, population, age of the building. >> Thank you. >> So, our total population, we have 2,966 students as of January 28th, 2026. Uh, at the high school, we have a total of 1,04 students. The middle school is 91 students. CES, this building houses 589 students. Willow Avenue is 226 and Cormal on Hudson is 246. >> Mr. Roby, do did you have follow-ups? I know that you that was the specific ask, but just wanted to be sure you were satisfied. >> Yes. That's that is the next question. Great configurations what they were 5 years ago. And and I'll I'll just to to address um a point that you made um Monday and and I think continue
055tonight and it's a very fair point of um we've got you know twice the student population in this building that we're sitting in at Lee Road um compared to the other two buildings and we're adding potentially looking to add on to Lee Road. And I would say that the goal there is not to add more teachers and students there. It's to service the students that are already here. As Brendan said, we've added a bunch of teachers both through COVID funding um and regular budget funding. Uh since that co money has been exhausted in this building and we now have lots of students in non ideal locations like converted gym teacher offices are now being used for small classroom space. So >> yes >> I >> desperation is the mother of invention and I don't want
056to >> Yes. So I >> So we're I just wanted to just say to you and to the public, you know, on you know, we are aware of that disparity. The building, you know, CO we are one of the things there is to expand CO as much as you can. CO and Willow are both very constrained on small properties and they don't really lend themselves to adding more students to that building. Uh CO would be adding a couple classrooms through this. Um but again it's really to service the students that are already in this building. >> I was aware that in 2022 there was like a $50 million which I now understand my other page whatever that is the state mandates every five years. So, we did 23 of a $50 million uh list. We
057have a 77 million and we're looking at doing um uh how how to figure out how to do most of it um depending on the population's votes on that in the board's decision relative to what the feedback is. Um I got one comment today that I will pass along because I was instructed to do it. Um when we passed the uh new high school, we went with the option of of the pool with the understanding that the public would be able to use the pool and then the pool died and now it's rehabbed and this person wanted to know why isn't the public being allowed to use the pool. So in terms of selling that's that could be a question that is going to possibly come back and haunt because the last big cap capital
058project was that school the school the the uh what was second or third gym station was if proved to be the pool as a separate proposition and it's not being allowed to be used by the population. So, I don't know. Uh, I was I've been on the board what feels like uh forever, but I have not been on since 1999. Um, so I don't know what promises were made at the time. I would be uh it seems like an there's an interesting story there and I will do my best to look into it, but uh none of us were privy to those conversations. So, I'll have to follow up with you on that, but I I will look into it. It seems like there's, you know, some interesting soouththing that could uh that could be
059in my future. >> You know, just even to expand a little further with the classroom space because, you know, I was the building principal here for six six or seven years and, you know, the needs of our students are changing in all of our buildings. And so currently in this building we have um AIS providers, uh early intervention providers, related service providers, and we might have three or four uh staff members that are sharing one classroom and there's a capacity around that. So we might only be able to serve, you know, five or six kids in a small group at a time. Um so now you're breaking that up, scheduling conflicts and so on. So, you know, that is definitely something to consider as we're looking at that um four on four space. And then
060even earlier today at CO, I was there and um you know, we're we're having AIS outside the elevator. So, having that additional space for the cafeteria would lend to be uh you know, supporting kind of that small group pull out that we um are increasingly needing on top of ENL space. So, it's it's incredibly valuable to be thinking in this respect. Anybody else? Yeah, we'll get you a mic. Yeah. Okay. All right. Uh, thank you. Um, I know the middle school has like two cafeterias. Which one would be like torn down for the classroom space? >> The main the main cafeteria. So the one that uh would be abuts that courtyard area. >> Mhm. >> In the middle of the building. >> Okay. >> Both. >> Yeah. Um >> the one that's like closer to
061the gym. >> Both. >> Oh, so both. >> So >> both would get renovated. Okay. both would be so that the the kitchen itself and then the two cafeterias I guess you call them large one, small one, what however you want to call it will be all renovated into classroom space. >> Okay. >> And again we to assign just concept wise we assigned art and music to those classroom space and we are also looking at adaptive PE space um for our students with special needs. >> All right. Thank you. Um there's also I think we put in there conceptually uh bathrooms so that we we have um uh gang bathrooms for uh people using our theater uh in the auditorium over there. Um so that we we can isolate different parts of >> And then
062Arty, do you remember like where the locker rooms which are now redone? They don't look anything like when you were a middle schooler. They're gorgeous. Um when that hallway there that would lead to where the new cafeteria would go. >> Okay. Yes, I do remember that. >> So, just to Yeah, for those you know here and watching at home, if you look at this uh part here, the the light blue is the current both cafeterias and the kitchen. And that the red space um up top there would be so you know taking uh what Brendan had a picture of which he called a parking lot. I will tell you that used to be a basketball court. um some of us graduated high school on said basketball court. Um that um so that brand new kitchen
063and cafeteria and is uh you know the current space uh the kitchen is structurally unsound and even if it's shored up from underneath um it's still not functional. The equipment is not right. The layout isn't right. It just designed you know 40 50 years ago and isn't meeting today's needs. So moving that kitchen space also allows to revamp the flow and the way that works. And as Brendan said, it'll service just not just this building but two of the three elementary schools. Um and it, you know, as we've said, the existing space would be turned into um classrooms, you know, rooms for band, chorus, um and potentially adaptive PE and other usages. >> Very much think of how centrally located that is too. Um, and John brought up how it would be uh the early
064ideas would be to use it um to expand the the arts footprint in the middle school. You know, that space is not only right in the middle of the building, but then it's also right next to the auditorium. So it just gives you a lot of great possibilities um while also giving uh the students a more how do you say intuitive uh flow or you know a better experience at in their new cafeteria. So this is the kind of thing where it's like if you were building this building all over again how would you design it? And I think it would look a lot more like what this proposition is uh versus kind of the peacemail approach that we've had that that we are uh have been left with. >> Hi everybody, Oscar. Um Deian
065Cornwall. Um thank you for the presentation. Um as I'm looking at some of the numbers for the athletic fields, I remember from the past project redoing the whole high school field and putting in stands and doing a lot of the things. it was came in like around $8 something million and yet I'm looking at some of the numbers that I'm seeing here and it doesn't seem like I know there's inflation and prices go up and things like that but it doesn't seem like we're getting quite quite the same amount of value um that we did for the high school as we're getting for like let's say this field right here or the old middle school field or we do the softball fields in the high school. Can you speak to us to how why that's
066we're getting less save value? And also keep in mind when we doing this bus loop, you'll see some parking spots right there near the practice field. Um if you keep if you could probably add a few more parking spaces because I know it gets used a lot by the youth program and there's always chaos and people moving in and out when they're dropping off kids and stuff like that. So that would be something I would recommend to keep in mind for when you're doing this. >> Over to you. Yeah, I think um Oscar, as you mentioned, we're dealing with cost uh escalations. So um one thing we've talked about in facilities committee is doing a capital project now versus doing a capital project 5 years from now. We know we're going to have cost. We
067also know that once we start working on this particular property, we're going to have drainage issues that we're going to have to get into. Um and water mitigation issues. Um we're we're confident of that. Um there is some electrical there. Um although what does it look like underneath? We don't know. So as Brennan shared throughout the presentation, we could have aged electrical under there um that requires upgrades. So um the worst thing we could do is underell something and say um okay, we're going to promise you X Y and Z, but we can only deliver X at this point Ario for the community um because we know this particular field gets heavily used by community youth sports just like you mentioned. So, I think your point about uh additional parking would be wise as well
068um even if we were to add that along the roadside um as pulloffs um as we go along because I think we've all seen that people just pull right up onto the grass, ride all the way up to the fence line and and voila, we're good to go. So, so yeah, I think coupled with a number of those issues that we're forecasting um we want to plan appropriately. I think I'll add to that too, John. You know, first uh double down on your point of you're not really actually looking at the price of this today in 2026. You're looking at the price of this in like 2030 when it's completed because the price is going through, you know, as you're building it. So really, you're looking at it, you know, five almost 10 years later
069than the other project. Um and you're just looking at with the except you know this one field um would be a new track in a field that's an existing footprint. It matches the footprint in a high school more or less. This other field of the middle school that's a lot more turf there. There's just a price per square foot there. So you see all that additional baseball space. And if you go to the um this is a tricky I mean that's just a lot more turf right there because you see the field that soccer field you know it's roughly the the the footprint of a football field and you've got a lot of extra turf there. So that's the the price on this one as well as ground work and drainage. >> Yeah. And um
070I'll I'll I'll echo the drainage on this one. And you'll also see on the left hand side um where the old baseball field is. There's a heavy kind of black line there. That's retaining walls. We have a significant drop off there. So retaining walls will cost us a lot of money. Make sure that we are protecting any issues that that go out that way because our drainage does come out that way. We will have to mitigate that. You'll see, you know, um subservice detention areas. So we will have to take care of all of that. Um and I will share this is one concept we have um for these fields. Um as long as the square foot kind of stays the same, we can reposition these. So um there we're not married to the baseball
071field looking in this position or the softball field in that position. If we want to reimage that, we can. We just want to get a concept out for our community to see what we can do. Anybody else? Hey, we do have some uh some questions that were submitted and I don't want to I I think the uh a lot of them have been answered throughout the flow of the presentation. It was uh getting these questions uh in was helpful because had an understanding for what people were interested in knowing. So, I'll just kind of reiterate some of the the themes that have been touched on just so uh for the everyone understands, you know, what was brought up and and uh what has already been addressed. Um so, one of the one of the questions
072would uh would the capital project facility upgrades include real restrooms and concessions? Yes, uh they have to. So, uh that would be a mandatory. Uh there were a number of questions about the baseball fields. Uh I know that this has been a uh a difficult time for the the baseball program because of the the issues with the field. So I think that what we've been uh talking about here uh would directly address that. Uh would the bond be broken into separate propositions to vote on uh you know one for athletic fields, another for building upgrades. I think that we tackled that pretty headon. Just to reiterate, I think ultimately the logic would be and all of this is subject to board approval, but um likely a you would see a proposition that would be tax
073neutral. So without an as getting as much done essentially as you can without increasing taxes and then if there were additional propositions, it would be broken up by theme. So you'd have one that could be maybe just for classrooms, maybe one just for athletic fields. That's one path. Um but just so everybody is uh the public I know not everybody reads the minutes of facility meetings or you know goes to every uh board meeting but that's that's I think a rough summary of where the the conversation is right now. Um there was a um one question was about uh and I kind of addressed this before but feeling like some of the capital improvements is due to neglect from uh buildings and grounds and I just this is a sentiment that I've heard uh in
074other places and I only want to bring it up so that I can refute it uh very clearly. our buildings and grounds department. I have compared their office uh their facility in on the middle school campus to Santa's workshop. They are the most resourceful people that you you ever want to meet. Uh their dedication is really second to none. They are led by truly great leader Walter Moran who's been in this knows this district probably better than anyone he might be approaching knows it better than anyone who's ever been in the district. I mean, certainly more than anyone who's currently in the district. Um, and they get everything that they can out of this uh these facilities and have been doing their their best for literally decades to uh ensure that kids can safely show
075up every morning. But there are certain things that a buildings and grounds crew is simply not designed to do. Uh buildings and grounds crew cannot rebuild your facilities. They cannot add classroom space if your classrooms are busting at the seams. Um, a lot of like the backflow pre stuff that is going to save us so much time and work because instead of having to put band-aids on those repeatedly throughout the year just to keep the doors open, you would replace them once and for all and then uh you can actually the buildings and grounds crew can start focusing on more highlevel work uh as opposed to constantly putting out fire. So um just again bringing it up just to clarify but also you know to understand that like any investment you will you're not it's
076not an expense it's an investment and when you make an investment you get more out of it than what you put in. Uh and the same dynamics would be a player. Uh other questions um do outside users of the facilities actually pay fees to use them? Yes they do. Um there's a whole tier system that I'm not going to bore you with, but depending on what uh organization you're with, if like you're a PTO level organization and you're in a certain tier, you know, the closer you are to the school community, you may have different fees, but yes, outside organizations do pay fees to uh use our facilities. Um sorry, I'm just going through questions that have are, you know, more about the baseball team. uh more about um okay how is it possible to
077do another capital project without raising taxes I think this was u addressed I'll look to anyone else did did we want to add anything to that explanation of tax neutral >> no I I mean I think you said it very well Brendan and it's a a wonderful presentation you put together I'll just reiterate it um that we have uh $7.5 million of taxpayer money that we have put into two different capital reserve accounts. Um that capital those capital reserves are only allowed to be used to spend on capital funding. Um so it's you know taking taxpayer money and a thoughtful allocation of that. In addition to that, it's um just using the expiring debt coming off of of paying off the quote unquote new high school um which is not new anymore, but it's still
078new in in my book. Um so just those two factors combined uh are going to allow us to do 54 $55 million what you had in the slide there. So >> and one other uh so one other question that was brought up was um and this is a a question theme. So it was uh reflected in in different questions which was uh that we should focus more on curriculum. Just to clarify uh capital projects are only for the physical plant. So, as much as we would love to spend every dollar on on programming, um this state is not kicking in 75% of it's literally called building aid uh to fund, you know, a new French class or something like that. So, that is a separate issue and that's why you don't see any straight curriculum
079investments. But John, you wanted to add? Uh yeah, just another comment that kept uh reoccurring a couple times throughout here was um handicap accessibility, which I think is good. So I think that the community should know that if we are upgrading it, it has to be up to um handicap accessibility codes. So we recently with the the most recent project redid the bathrooms here. You see that the bathrooms are nice and wide um and handicap accessible. So anytime we do paving or curbing projects, that will all be handicap accessible. So um wanted to make that comment because I see that a number of times throughout questions. >> Great. So, uh, last call for any anyone else who's here for questions, maybe change your mind. Okay. Uh, so final bit and just like next steps. Um,
080I would just encourage anyone who is watching this, whether it's right now, whether it's in a a few days, uh, you've now seen what the the board, the facilities committee is considering, please, uh, our email addresses are on the website. Reach out to us. Um, if you have opinions, if you have further questions, you have preferences based on what you've seen, uh, we would love to to hear about it. Um, and again, we encourage you to continue to follow meetings. Our next meeting is February uh this month. It's February Monday. It's Mon this Monday. Uh, February 9th. Uh, so yeah, that's another opportunity to uh to come out and get your your voice heard. >> All right, with that, uh, >> can I can I just second that? Yeah. >> Um and just say, you
081know, I think Brendan kind of summed up, you know, where we are um with this project. We are not finalized. Final decisions do need to be made um within the next month. Most of that work is going to happen uh in the next week here. And that's going to happen tomorrow night at a facilities committee meeting u CCHS room A21 at 7 p.m. So that's tomorrow night uh Thursday the 5th. And as Brendan said, uh, Monday the 9th at 7 PM here, um, in the Lee Road Auditorium. So, we certainly welcome your comments. Um, you know, come out to the board meeting next Monday if you really want to dig into the nitty-gritty. Uh, facilities committee will be next week. I would say probably the biggest thing we're we're we're looking at the way that
082we plan to structure this uh, the current thinking is to do that revenue neutral portion. Um, as Brendan said, there's another 21 million of classroom. That would be a a second proposition on the ballot. Some of that 21 million will be will be pulled into the proposition one and still be revenue neutral, no tax increase. Um, as we got some great financial news this week. And then a proposition 3 will be athletics. Um, so let us know, athletic supporters, if you would want to see uh this high school concept or one of the middle school concepts. um cuz that's something that we're definitely looking for community feedback. So, if you have uh strong feelings either way, um please come out and see us at one of those two meetings or as Brenda said, email us.
083Um you can email just BOE Cornwallschools.com. We'll go to all the board of education members. Um so, we certainly welcome uh those thoughts. >> And with that, thank you everybody. Good night and we'll see you soon.