Special Board Meeting

001thank you um thank you registered that's only foreign thank you next week Alexa Thirsty Thursday um [Music] so it is now 6 30 p.m I mean calling to order the special board meeting at the alamois Union Elementary School District Board of Trustees uh so uh this meeting is called to order at 6 30 PM uh with that I will start with the roll calls so Maribel would you please call the roll today is a special board meeting of March 30th 2023 at 6 30 p.m members of the board in attendance president Min Pham president vice president Corina aloeira president Kirk Andres Quintero president member Linda Chavez president Shelton uh she is absent doing for an emergency members of administration superintendent Dr Bauer present okay so having called parole I'll go ahead and do uh big

002land acknowledgment uh border Prestige of the Alum Rock Union Elementary School District does hereby acknowledge that the district schools and Facilities sit on the traditional lands of the muegma Ohlone people and the Board of Trustees further acknowledges with respect in reverence the molecular alone people tribe of the San Francisco Bay area for their stewardship of these lands so with that I ask that you join me in the Pledge of Allegiance too much of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay thank you very much uh you know before we okay so uh so with that we will move on to uh part two superintendent board business uh item 2.01 interviews a potential firms for feasibility study and selection

003of desired firms uh superintendent Bauer yeah oh okay yes so with that I will open this item to public comment uh at this time there are any members of the public wishing to comment okay see no further uh desire for public I mean no further call for public comment I'll move to presentation of the item Dr Bauer uh board president I'd like to ask uh assistant superintendent of business to explain to the Board review of the process and also for our audience in YouTube thank you and good evening brother president members of the board and civil Center Dr power and guest um tonight we invited three firms um to attend this interview and in no particular order the firms are dcg ehp and HED um with that I'd like to explain the process that the

004board will be taking um first we'll place all the firm's name into that little poll over there and randomly pulled the firm's name to determine the order in which they will be interviewed once the order is determined The Firm will the funds to be in first will remain in the boardroom and the rest of the firms we will be placed in a waiting room um until the turn comes up each firms will be allotted a total of 20 minutes for the whole interview um a portion of it 10 minutes of it will be uh for the firms to present to the board and then the last 10 minutes is for the board to ask a total of five questions each one will have two minutes to answer each question and each board member will ask

005the same question uh to each of the firms once each firms are this uh um interviewed the board will submit its score on a scale of one to five uh one being the least desirable and five being the most desirable um once all the firms are interviewed um the Administration staff will tally up the score and present the total scores um on the screen uh so that everyone can see in terms of who received the high scores um in the event that there's a tie hopefully not um the board will consider the following options to break the tie the board will either rescore the finalists that are tied or re-interviewed the tide finalists um with that up open up to any questions that you might have okay this is the first oh d yeah oh

006okay will be PhD and then lastly thank you um bgd was the first one so ACD May remain um thank you okay thank you um thank you and just a reminder you have 10 minutes for the presentation and then 10 minutes for the questions afterwards so you may begin um what present yes so uh the HEB has the floor members of the board it's ticking okay I gotta go members of the board superintendent thank you so much for having us for this interview to interview for this opportunity it's very important work work that we take very seriously HED is an architectural planning and engineering firm we practice in multiple sectors so we practice in K-12 and we practice in housing our team reflects the expertise of those two sectors so we have a team that

007is people Advance the slide there we go sorry um so we uh we bring expertise in both of those sectors the K-12 sector and the housing sector I'm Otis O'Dell I am the lead uh housing housing lead for the HED for the firm and uh solely work on housing projects we also have with us Mary ruppenthal who is a leader in our pre-k-12 sector uh Rick Castillo is here who's also a leader in our housing sector Rob fillery couldn't be here tonight uh because of health issues um also on our team is Aaron patica and Christopher coats they are Architects and designers that work in our housing sector we also have a partner who is in the development business so Bridge housing is a partner they have done this type of work they are a

008non-profit affordable housing developer they have completed projects where they have put housing on School District property in the past they have one in progress right now you'll be hearing from them in just a minute uh and uh then we have Catherine defe with KD Consulting as a cost estimating consultant so we think that this is more than a real estate transaction there's an emotional component to really studying housing and what we want to do is drill down with you with your constituents and really understand what the goals are understand what's important and put forth options and planning options and design options for Housing Solutions and we think that's how this should be led I think that a lot of of your constituents may not be completely familiar with some of the details of a development

009pro forma and what we want to make sure is that we lead with design and we lead with planning Concepts that really reflect the goals and aspirations of the district and the constituents and then in that way we're sure that when the development performer gets developed it's responding to the right criteria so it is a financial Endeavor it is an operational Endeavor We Believe first and foremost it's a human endeavor and that we really need to connect with the people that are going to live in the housing that gets put forth and and I think that's a really important mission for this exercise we recognize that your district is rich in history and diversity and HED also shares those same values were founded in 1908 and we are really proud of our just label which

010has has been awarded to us that we've earned I should say that demonstrates our commitment to diversity and and social equity and then in terms of our expertise on the housing and planning side we have over 10 000 units of housing that we have designed and built we have over one billion dollars of affordable housing work across the country most of it here in California and you can see the examples on the screen are really thoughtful site plans and thoughtful design solutions that really address livability and really address the context of where they are so those are kind of our approaches I'm going to turn it over to Mary and let her talk more about the K-12 piece thank you Alice and thank you all this is a very important opportunity for us and we

011commend you and your district for um for addressing this imperative of housing in the educational environments in addition to the housing experience that Otis mentioned HDD is dedicated to and has deep expertise with educational facilities and we understand uh that schools are centers of your community and when your Educators cannot afford to live in your communities that's something that needs to be addressed so when we look at planning educational environments and the environments that support communities Health Wellness inclusion safety these are all things that are important to us to help communities thrive and again commending your project goals as a district we're going to work with you if we're so fortunate to be selected to partner with you we're really going to collaborate with you to uncover the highest and best use of district-owned land

012to shape a collaborative engagement process that really allows your community to understand uh and and be part of the process to have their voices heard and have that transparency um together we'll work with you to establish a critical path to success developing the planning options that Otis shared and maximizing your financial feasibility with the ultimate goal of delivering education through community and so the engagement process um again uh we're going to Foster open communication through stakeholder engagement something we do with all of our educational projects and with housing projects and we'll work with you to understand what the best way to deliver that is we envision um probably a hybrid of digital and in person hybrid digital allows for voices to be heard through online surveys ensuring inclusivity and also you know how to deliver

013that transparent process and then building consensus is always the goal of you know as Oda said sharing options understanding pros and cons and really developing the priorities that align with your District's goals and your vision to establish community that really does Thrive and supports your educational Workforce housing and that'll hand it off to Rick thank you Mary board members thank you again uh I'd like to just say thank you for inviting us to this presentation but um some of the things that we are um looking to to work with you on is what are some of the goals in in um in terms of assessing the viability of the district property for this important uh Workforce housing um feasibility and so some of the things we'll look at are the the different sites uh we'll

014analyze and work through the different um aspects of each site with regard to um with regard to uh topography context uh how it fits into the community is it viable for a particular housing project and a certain building typology and as Otis had mentioned earlier we think it starts with design right in terms of what works for the community and works for the district to meet the objectives that they're looking to to achieve here slide here positions and breakouts in Virginia yesterday if we use there it is confidence it's like cheese it is best for an audience and just be I know we have about 30 seconds maybe maybe a little bit less than that but just a quick case study this this is a what we believe you're looking for in your feasibility we

015we didn't um this exact exercise on a project in Carlsbad California looking at repositioning an existing site for a transit district and so you'll see we did side analysis site visit to look at contexts and adjacencies and the the site features things that we see um the conditions of the site context and then what we'll do is we'll create various Alternatives diagrams as you see on the screen here to test certain building types densities types of units types of buildings that can serve the the workforce that you're you're looking to serve here and then you'll see that it'll turn into a a diagram such as this that starts to go through circulation land use where some of the components of the the housing will uh be located on the site and then lastly you'll have

016a viable site plan with all the metrics all the data that you can assess and see if it's meeting your goals with regard to the the types of units the types of Housing and the um the number of units especially that serving the community here so I think we're done here so I'll stop this questions I'm going to let the time go until you get to 20. that's fine pardon me okay all right we went over just a little bit different yes thank you and the next part of the um of the interviews at the board is going to be asking a total four or five now there's five questions but uh trustee Florida Shelton is not here I think that that question should be asked just the honor yeah how you guys can foreign

017they gave not a clear um answer to my question but help me answer my question so I can ask that's okay okay of course Shelton's question yes yes so I don't know if that's gonna happen with the other two firm troops recipes so it has to be the exact same right so should I just trade I'm wondering because it has to be for the same for each firm so I guess what we're discussing is should I just trade my question for hers or repeat my question and you decide if that's so um board right vice president aware lower if you know so you'll you'll have to read the question verbatim as is on the sheet for the for all of the problems right so do you want me to read it in addition to or

018instead of my she can read two questions okay in addition okay okay sure correct okay okay so okay so with that I will start off with um my question then um okay so uh given the complexities in local zoning and permitting could you please tell the board about how your firm has helped clients navigate the zoning and permitting process to ensure a timely start to the commencement of the Project's Construction well we would start by certainly engaging with you and then hopefully interfacing with the local jurisdiction to understand how the property might be rezoned to accommodate the housing use so understanding clearly what those different Zone districts are and then making sure that we work together to select the right Zone district and then work within the constraints of that dis of that zoning criteria

019to begin to develop some of the concepts and so the idea is that we would ultimately find the right Zoning for a particular site and then follow that zoning criteria to achieve your goals Rick anything to add I'm just going to mention that part of the housing crisis in California there are a number of state laws that allow us to use incentives and way overs to zoning regulations as well that helps the viability of development and we'll study a number of those Alternatives in our initial yield our feasibility we'll call it feasibility of each site so that we can achieve a density we can achieve the kind of community you're looking for and those those state laws really help they really help us they're a great tool for for us as designers to achieve the

020goals that many of our clients are looking for with regard to housing yeah so the zoning District of course establishes things like density like height like setbacks like open space and again we want to find without what your goals are and then get a Zone District that's consistent with with what you're trying to get to as Rick mentioned there's a lot of legislation in the state that allows to achieve increases in density and to get streamlined reviews and those sorts of things we work with those kinds of tools all the time thank you Christy Chavez your question there are always pros and cons when dealing with issues what has been the most consistent issue in dealing with districts while working on a project the pros and cons and how the issues were handled resolved and

021executed well there's been a lot of lessons learned that we've picked up on and one of them is you know understanding the demographic understanding um if in fact the funding sources that are being used are um appropriate for the income levels so there's certain criteria that need to be met income levels that need to be met to be able to live in a a truly low-income housing tax credit type project so that's been one of the challenges that we've faced you probably have some other examples um yes I've had the pleasure of spending a lot of time with um Los Angeles Unified School District and uh Kalima salahudin with Jefferson who recently completed a housing project these are folks who've been through the process um we've put together a workshop together for cash conference recently

022and so in speaking with them through the experiences that they've been through with their district and with claima as a board member specifically kind of sharing you know the community engagement and transparency in terms of of consensus building bringing people along you know having really clear messaging um you know just kind of being unified as as a district and the decisions and and again having that clear transparency that was that was something that was really important to them um as as Otis was sharing you know LAUSD they've done four projects I think they were the first district to have gone through this process so um you know they learned a lot about um kind of the level of you know uh level of Housing and I think their first project um some some of the

023Educators actually you know couldn't afford or were beyond the actual housing limits but it did serve other District staff so it was you know obviously beneficial but um some of those Lessons Learned we certainly could impart and actually at the last page of the presentation that we're delivering there's a QR code that has a lot of their Lessons Learned um uh bullet pointed um so hopefully that would be helpful as well I hope that answered your question yes thank you hi Kirk Quintero uh have you been the subject of an investigation related and your project uh I'm sorry could you repeat the question have you been the subject of an investigation related to your project to any of your projects it's obviously major purposes no no and I'm going to ask two questions is that

024yes uh what is the average timeline to complete complete a visibility report Yeah in our proposal we did outline some of those steps um again it is we didn't have the benefit of working with the district to start off so we made some assumptions right so generally if we have a site that say that we have identified as a potential site that we'd like to look at um it in terms of creating the studies the review time with the district back and forth president interim presentations to the our final feasibility study we can do that reasonably reasonably fast I believe we put in our uh schedule approximately two to three to four weeks I think is what we we talked about doing for a single site right if if it's multiple sites and a lot

025more involved kinds of studies then it's a little different but in general it will be um it's something we can do reasonably fast the example I showed you on the screen was about a three to four week design process back and forth with the client several times until we honed in on exactly what they were looking for and then once that was completed we refined it got all the metrics all the statistics the unit mix the unit type the size of the the units and we were able to um present that with all the the data that helped them uh create their performa so generally um that's a kind of a rule of thumb in terms of um a single site if it gets beyond that it's a little more complicated but uh generally the

026process is the same I think then you know whether or not uh and how we engage with the larger Community um could add some time the presentations to the community could add a little bit of time to that but it's a a week here and a week there sort of a thing so it can happen very quickly thank you NLS the next question based on your organization's experience what are the key roles and responsibilities for the district and for the consultant in achieving a transparent process that gains buy-in um okay so say that one more time please based on your organization's experience what are the key roles and responsibilities for the district and for the consultant in achieving a transparent process that gains buy-in yeah I think the uh the thing to do is to

027make sure that we are being wide open with Community engagement and I think the roles of the district are really about informed decision making and trying to put forth as succinctly as possible what you're trying to accomplish what your goals are for specific housing do you have of all your sites do you have ideas about specific sites that you'd like to investigate um there's really a a period of us engaging and getting to understand what your vision is for this exercise what your goals are and I think that then then it's informed decision making where we put options in front of you and in front of the community at large Mary talked about you know having digital forums and and in-person forums where we can really talk openly about what the goals are of of

028the community and the district and and then we put forth options and we're looking for you to evaluate will help you uh explain what those are and and then you evaluate uh what the benefits are of of each of these and we sort of hone in on an option and get to the finish line that way things to add um I guess just in addition you know we're gonna we're gonna start by listening uh that's kind of our first step is um you know one couple of questions that we are thinking internally are there sites that you have in mind initially we know there there's a certain number of sites but um hopefully if we're selected to work with you um you know we'll start on day one to really understand um any work that's

029come forth or any any preferences that the district has again we start with listening and then going through the analytics with you and really studying as Rick and I know to Shared uh going through the benefits of each site the pros and cons of each site what options are there are to really find the community um that's going to really Thrive for your district and help you shape it thank you very much thank you Dr Cruz the interview um if you can wait in the waiting room um we'll bring the next thank you thank you thank you for your time thank you and um yes thank you that was you that little gem I think whatever I left you also over there you that other presentation thank you there we go um [Music] I'm just

030copying foreign [Music] thank you very much are we giving presenting from there or here um okay over just to confirm so it's 10 minutes of presentation and 20 minutes or 10 minutes so one minute per five questions or two minutes five questions okay okay trying to work through those details are you ready Christine yeah okay can you um put the timer on the screen on the um on the TV or prison yeah how many have to stand up that's fine in advance no worries there we are tell me to go yeah okay ready tomorrow uh good evening I Am Bruce Dorfman with education housing Partners uh joining me is Marlon just Vargas uh also with the HP um I wanted to give a quick overview of Thompson Dorfman Partners which is the parent company um

031we are a development firm that has its roots in Northern California for the past 40 years uh building multi-family housing both on a rental and for sale basis uh during that period of time we've built uh over 75 projects and 17 000 units of housing primarily in coastal California but we've also developed as far uh East as Sacramento or Roseville and as far north as Santa Rosa our Focus has always been on developing high-end Boutique oriented luxury communities and we in the past have managed the operations for tremelker residential one of the larger National firms as well as the Irvine Company we actually brought them off the Irvine Ranch and into North San Jose um and Silicon Valley back in uh the mid to late 90s um during that period of time we had a

032relationship with Santa Clara Unified School District we were building a lot of projects in their school district and as you know the school fees can be pretty considerable so they welcomed us with open arms whenever we came to uh meet with them and in the early 90s and if we want to flip the screen um we founded sorry in the early 90s or late 90s excuse me um we had the opportunity to work with them on the development of Costa Del Maestro based on that we created a non-profit called education housing partners and education housing Partners works with public school districts or other public agencies to help create Workforce housing to recruit and retain employees we focus on bringing the same expertise to our Workforce housing projects as we do to our market rate deals

033and that's really what the difference is we're not a consulting firm we're really a developer and so we want to give you the benefit of our development expertise as you look uh to create Workforce housing the rents in these projects have been set at levels that are typically about a third and less than market rate and that is created by the unique aspects that school districts have number one they own their land for the most part and we take access or Surplus sites in order to build Workforce housing they're not paying property taxes and there's some other benefits that school districts have that make operations of these projects more efficient these projects have uh you know been of particular interest recently particularly as districts have looked to increase the diversity of their Workforce by afford

034providing affordable housing we find that recent graduates who particularly bypoc graduates uh generally are in Greater need of affordable housing and this has helped school districts create a greater diversity in their Workforce next slide um our team is composed of myself um and Joanna Julian who runs our education housing program she cannot be here tonight and uh Marlon just Vargas and here's a little background although it's also in our uh written uh presentation I wanted to go through real quickly uh Casi Del Maestro um and the history there because I think it's uh pretty talent and there's obviously a good track record with it um this was the first project that a public school district built in order to create Workforce housing and what was unique about it if you remember and maybe I noticing

035a few of you are perhaps Too Young in the mid 90s there was class size reduction the state had a significant budget surplus and so uh for any District that was willing to reduce the class sizes for K through five to under 20 students the state was going to cover 90 percent of the cost Santa Clara unified like other districts went on hiring spree all across the country they brought these teachers into Northern California they offered them 40 to 45 000 starting salaries these teachers uh particularly when they were coming from the Upper Midwest um I thought you know how great is this is more money than my parents ever made and I'm getting to come out to California little did they realize at the same time the com boom was occurring and rents over

036a five-year period uh had doubled on an after-tax basis uh these teachers couldn't cover the rent so they started moving into substandard living conditions further away from their jobs leaving the districts all together to go to other areas with lower cost of living or um leaving the professional together the dot-coms were obviously very aggressively hiring college graduates so Santa Clara unified uh was impacted by this over that same five-year period their attrition rate increased 300 percent so as they looked at their the cause of this they realized they had two distinct cohorts one was what they referred to as lifers teachers that had been with the district for 15 or more years and the common theme there was they all owned a home in or around the school district then they had these young districts

037that these young teachers that they had just hired um had been with the district for under five years and that's where all the attrition was occurring from they had a very Innovative superintendent Paul perrotti perhaps some of you know them and Paul came up with this idea of building a Workforce housing community on some Surplus land that was on a Middle School site so he basically went out and retained us basically with the idea of building 40 units on uh two acres of property we had a six million dollar budget and that project Casa del Maestro was completed in 2002. um the project five years after uh the project was up and operating they did an analysis and they determined that teachers that had lived at this community were three times as likely to stay

038with the school district than teachers who of the same tenure that didn't live there so this had a number of impacts number one there was less turnover in the classroom number two um the recruiting and training costs decreased they figured that they saved four turnovers every year by through this project through those 40 units and um their estimate was that it saved them 60 to 75 000 per turnover and so the general fund benefited to the tune of uh quarter million to 300 000 a year um and ultimately they were also at the time where their test scores were improving so this program was so successful that they proceeded to increase the project by another 30 units and that project was completed in 2009 so now they have 70 units there's roughly 100 teachers plus

039or minus that will live there in any uh point in time there's obviously some roommate situations moving forward we've been retained more recently by the state of California and we're working with the Marin County Office of Education to build a 135 units of Workforce housing in Marin County we were retained for a surplus site that state controls that's part of San Quentin and the objective there is to create a again a Workforce housing community that will offer lower rents but high quality housing and attract more bypoc Educators as well as help District employees current District employees they're commuting across the county or across a bridge to get to Marin which has similar to Santa Clara County a very high cost of living moving forward project phases we're going to talk more about this but here's

040the project phases going from feasibility to entitlements permitting construction operations I give that as the big overview and we're going to talk more about feasibility specifically but the first thing is to meet with the district understand uh your objectives are you operating this strictly to offer the lowest rents possible to your employees or are you seeking to um generate uh cash flow the most important things for districts typically is that these be Revenue neutral at uh the worst and revenue positive if possible there are three prongs to um the stool or three likes to the school that we evaluate in our feasibility process one is political zoning the second is the physical due diligence and the third gets into the economics and the architectural design once we complete the feasibility report you will have a

041cookbook that will allow you to um you know whether you retain us or someone else to actually build a project and realize uh the community that is outlined in the feasibility report and with that I think my time is up thank you so I will start off with the first question uh given the complexities in local zoning and permitting uh could you please tell the board about how your firm has helped client districts navigate the zoning and permitting process to ensure a timely start to the commencement of the Project's construction sure um actually it's a more complicated question than just entitlement uh in titlemen and Zoning is one element of it the second element is SQL and frankly with the passage of ab2295 which I'm sure you're familiar with which basically provides the right to

042build housing on your sites I think the entitlement issue goes away however sequa is um and yeah I'm sure you're familiar with the SQL process SQL is the issue that I think needs to be addressed and that seems to be uh for opponents of a project um uh the easier leg to attack but relative to um the entitlement process as a whole and working with the community we do a lot of Outreach uh so that we're trying to bring a community together early on in the process I mentioned about the political uh analysis we meet with the city to understand what their process is going to be and then finally as we're going through uh the feasibility process we will outline what's involved with permitting what elements you need to prepare and um you'll have

043a very detailed uh you know cookbook as I say for actually uh going through that process but we historically have taken the lead on that for the school districts and you know in keeping School Board apprised or School District staff apprised we you know they will run that process and again having done this for 75 different projects on a market rate basis it really is uh somewhat second nature to us thank you so much Christy Chavez there are always pros and cons when dealing with issues what has been the most consistent issue in dealing with districts while working on a project the pros and cons and how the issues were handled result and executed sure um I think I understand the question of what are the biggest issues that school districts have I think the

044single biggest issue is financing and to the extent that they don't have financing then the project seemed to get back burner to the extent that a school district has issued a Geo Bond that's a lot of commitment and that issue or that hurdle is resolved the second thing is um as you know I mean there's always something that comes up at a school board uh or for a school district I mean if it's not a pandemic it's a budget crisis it's not a budget crisis it's something else and what we try and encourage the school districts do is to create a champion somebody that acts as our go-between and with staff they're typically on staff to see this project through we'll carry the majority of the water to get a project done but we you

045know school districts once again when there's a bigger issue and we fully understand that building housing isn't necessarily a core mandate for the school district but at the same time um it we can move forward with that project with that process uh provided we get the approvals that we need periodically from the school board so I think that the main thing is communication and working closely thank you uh have you been the subject of Investigation related to any of your projects Department uh no we have not do I get an extra two minutes of my presentation that's right okay vice president what is the average timeline to complete a feasibility report um and again it's outlined in our presentation our feasibility reports and we've uh worked now with two dozen different districts it will take

04690 to 120 days for a specific site we can do multiple feasibility studies uh simultaneously uh but that's about the time frame uh for getting it and again they're very detailed uh our feasibility studies they will have everything uh from uh an outline of you know all zoning and title related matters to um designs uh budgets uh pre-development budgets that relate both to the construction as well as the soft costs uh and the timing of uh when those dollars will be spent um so again I think that um with our feasibility report you'll be very close to uh having the material you need for an application uh to the city and City these generally are the groups that approve these we don't work with DSA uh or haven't in the past and you'll also be

047able to process SQL so that you're getting either an exemption if you're an infill site or a mitigated negdac um and again there's a lot of technical reports that are also part of these feasibility studies but again between 90 and 120 days that would all be completed thank you I'm going to be reading the next question okay on behalf of my uh peer that's not here based on your organization's experience what are the key roles and responsibilities for the district and for the consultant in achieving a transparent process that gains buy-in um do you want me to read it again yeah based on your organization's experience what are the key roles and responsibilities for the district and for the consultant in achieving a transparent process that gains by me okay so um we work at

048the behest of the school district however the school district wants uh to work with us whatever reporting they want uh if they want us to attend uh regular board meetings to present um uh we're more than happy to do that typically uh actually every school district has been a little bit different on how they've uh wanted to work with us some school districts have been more hands off um some have been uh have assigned someone to uh again I'll say a champion that's been part of our team meetings and um you know reports back uh up the chain um we prepare regular minutes for each one of our design meetings we circulate those there's a lot of communication that we Avail ourselves up um trying to um I I think that's pretty much the key

049elements I would say that major decisions and we set this up also up front relative to milestones we would come back and make a presentation to the board and those are very formal events and um we have again a lot of detailed information we're always available for uh questions thank you all right thank you so much for your time thank you thank you that concludes the interview if you can wait in the weight room and we'll call you when we're ready foreign thank you who all right call me right thank you as a reminder you have 10 minutes for the presentation and then another 10 minutes for the um questions um and just remind there's a display of the time to remind you uh to get your child track thank you wonderful thank you so

050you may start whenever you're ready well thank you we're happy to be here please to be able to present to you our company dcg strategies this is going we're going into our 19th year um we specialize in education entities this is what we do our entire firm is built a service public school districts we're a proud public benefit Corporation means that we have a Social and environmental mission in relation to this work one thing that we're extremely we're proud of is we're California School Board Association csba's exclusive real estate partner for Workforce housing in particular a few years ago casba did an extensive research on different Consultants because they felt that they wanted their members to have access to information and services from their perspective that would protected the district's best interest their process and

051said dcg will you partner with us to be our Statewide partner to provide resources education and consulting services to school districts in partnership with us so we're very proud of that because why that's important is because in in the space of Workforce housing there are a lot of different entities summer Builders some say we'll do the feasibility and we'll build others are are just studying sites as a for-profit mission but no one's really looking out for the best interest of the school district so that's what we do our entire focus is what is in the best interest of the school district so we don't build because there needs to be a check to what's what is a feasible site what are the appropriate numbers what is the appropriate governance and all those other things that

052a school district needs to know before it starts spending money on construction so um we've been around we have over three billion dollars in um assets that we've helped manage and I'll hand it over to Lauren to introduce ourselves all right so we'll go to page three of the packet um good evening everyone my name is Lauren Jennings and my official title is chief operations officer of dcg strategies um and so I just um I'll actually pass the microphone over to our team to introduce himself and then we'll head on through the rest of the presentation sure okay thanks thanks for having us appreciate the opportunity to be here my name is Carl moribito I'm the vice president of development services for dcg and I have an extensive background in residential development both um all

053sorts of densities and product types um in in building homes and and condos and multi-family units throughout California over my 30-year career um on the on the development side of the business but happy to now be associated with this group and open districts do what they need to do for their housing needs and school school property needs thank you now you go next hi I'm Megan McIver and my title is Vice President of real estate strategy at dcg my background is from a very large commercial real estate organization called jll where I was a vice president for many years working with typically International Capital coming into the United States and helping them to to Really navigate those markets understand the subtleties and then look at properties on a portfolio basis so that's really where my

054expertise lies in complex real estate finance and really trying to take a holistic view of many properties at the same time and understanding their strengths and weaknesses and really helping clients work through all of the details and all of the subtleties that they need to consider in knowing how to move forward whether that's investing or developing yeah well good well thank you but we really wanted to make sure that we introduced our team and highlighted um our internal expertise because we really feel that that is what sets us apart from um other entities uh we are all in service of you as a school district we always say that our role as we obviously do not make any decisions that's what your job is for um but we also say that we also um do

055not provide a full-on recommendations we can if you'd like us to but our role really is to provide reliable real estate and development data for you as a school board so that you in turn can make a fully informed decision and so we have the best of real estate the best of brokerage the best of Consulting and the best development in-house and we all work as a team to be able to make sure that we provide you with that reliable data and so we'll go to the next page page four yeah and following on from what Lauren just said um this slide is a snapshot of the services that we offer um this is really a suite of services and this is what we offer to school district clients every day um you can see

056that we offer employee housing feasibility studies development Consulting and asset management consulting so again we're taking a look at all of the assets that you have and looking at it from your perspective and just making seeing how they all fit um together as as a whole so we also you know have a great amount of experience and stakeholder engagement as well which is of course an important part in getting anything done in a school district so again we can offer all of this in-house so thank you next page page five just shows you high level just some of our sample clients we work with public school districts throughout the state of California and so we are extremely experienced specifically obviously in the Bay Area which is where we're located but we also do work with

057Southern California School Districts as well and then so going on to page six the six this is really where we wanted to focus um so our team we do have experience providing um really exactly what you're looking for in terms of the feasibility study analysis I would say the most recent we're working with a handful of five or six school districts currently right now on the exact same scope that you're asking for specifically which I'll call out which is on the page six here San Rafael City Schools our team recently worked with the school district where we analyzed five of their underutilized sites that they have and we determined that one of those sites um I always have to be careful what's public what's not public but we have determined that one of those sites

058um is preliminary preliminarily feasibility for employee housing and so our team has been engaged to complete a further analysis and determining um to the extent of what is feasible um and so this is just a sample of the employee housing and feasibility studies that we have done another recent school district is Berlin Game School District we present it to their board and study session our findings in September of 2022 and it was at literally the exact same scope that you guys are asking for so our team was completely experienced and able to provide that the the page seven is really where I want to focus on this is what we deem in terms of a process flow of how do you get to employee housing right I do feel like employee housing is at the

059top of a lot of districts Minds rightfully so and so it's one thing to say we want to build employee housing but it's another thing of how do we get there what's our road map and we typically say that a a successful feasibility study should really help you as a school district answer three questions the first question is is it physically possible to be able to develop in within my District boundaries that could be either on a school district property that you already own so if you have any sites that would allow for the development of employee housing that could also be perhaps there's not a site that you own but perhaps there's a site that's located it within the district boundaries that's already developed and that you would might want to acquire we're working

060with another school district right now where they have to determine hey we don't have any property that we already own but we're open to acquiring some sites and so it's really determining is there a site within our district boundaries where we can see um development potential the second question is really assessing market demand is there demand in this case the market is your employees and and District staff and so that and the way that we do that is be an employee survey so you might have already have one but really being able to assess what is the demand what type of units so to speak would your employees be interested in and then really being able to get a gauge of what salary levels are obviously you know the salary levels of your employees but

061um really basing it off of the household income levels and then the last and final question that a successful survey excuse me analysis should really help you answer is the financial analysis portion I will say this is the part where um uh I but the most difficult if you have property is how do we pay for it one how much does is it going to cost to build we also we help you answer that and then the second part is okay well now that we know how much it's going to cost to build how do we fund it right what are what are the different avenues for uh for funding and we are aware obviously that the school district has passed a bond but there's um you know districts are using a variety of different

062opportunities to be able to fund the construction of development and then obviously once you answer those three questions and you do decide as a board that you would like to move forward with development of employee housing it's obviously doing the the deeper formal due diligence and then moving into construction and development and so our team is able to manage the entire process from beginning to end for you all Atlantis do you want to do final words I think I just want to re-emphasize where we provide the most value to districts as we operate as an extension of the District staff so we are here to protect the district's best interests as your owner representative so that as you are going forward and due diligence is being conducted Financial feasibility is being conducted you don't have

063to worry about is there some bigger play for us because we want the construction budget which is really where we want to make our money so maybe we will not short change but the data that's done in feasibility there could be some conflict so for us it's always the board is always able to know that whatever data is put before you is the the bare facts and there are no other um incentives for us to find findings that may benefit us a little bit more okay thank you so much so with that I'll start the first question uh given the complexities and local zoning and permitting could you please tell the board about how your firm has helped client districts navigate the zoning and permitting process to ensure a timely start to the commencement of

064the Project's Construction it's a great question so um I spent eight years as a planning commissioner so I'm very intimate with the entitlement process zoning and everything else but really it's part of the feasibility and so one thing that we do early and up front and before you get into permitting is making sure that if there is a site that is actually feasible for development that the land uses can be supported if the if the current land use doesn't match what you want to do in the future then our job becomes is there a path forward so that's Community stakeholders that's policy makers and it's really getting an understanding of is there a pathway for supportive land use or not and then bringing that answer back to you because sometimes land use just isn't compatible

065even if the district wants to build so knowing those things up front saves a lot of time and energy Carl did you want to add anything to zoning or land use I've done a lot of that throughout my career that really is the focus of what I'm doing here um and understanding that feasibility from that standpoint I think you know community outreach is a huge aspect of that I've actually developed a number of school sites kind of from the other side of the table and so I know how important that is in working with the community and ultimately getting you know the um support that we need for for these type of projects foreign there are always pros and cons when dealing with issues what has been the most consistent issue in dealing with districts

066while working on a project the pros and cons and how the issues were handled resolved and executed that's a very good question you know honestly and it's different for each district because different districts have different levels of trust with the community different type of neighborhoods so for us I would say was consistent is the district fighting the tension between spending resources unless just say Workforce housing and others that are internal stakeholders for instance or even Community stakeholders that want to see the district's resources be spent for different priorities so what we find across the board is making sure that there is a very supportive narrative from the day you start discussing like a Workforce housing project until you get to execution and so we find and we often will craft that message because it becomes

067a function of why are you doing it in the first place and then what is the appropriate messaging that needs to carry across every aspect of this project and we start there when we find District's not able to communicate frequently and in a manner that translates to what your ultimate outcomes are then we see a lot of tension because people are competing for different priorities and so for us it's always centering on what is that why getting out early and often setting up very very good stakeholder engagement there are a lot of different tools that we use and then anchoring the entire process to the outcomes that you want Montero uh have you been the subject of an investigation related to any of your projects to reverse no we um by volume we're the number

068one agency in the state that provides these services for Public School District we are a reputation business and so with entities like csba as our exclusive partner um we just really just always are there to support the district so it's not about what's in the business of our firm it's really about helping the districts meet their outcomes and then further we really make sure that we understand from from a District's perspective what are the different pressures of different stakeholders and so we are just all about making sure that we're accomplishing the district's goal so we've never been involved in anything that would be considered controversial um any type of litigation or anything like that we're just here to take care of you as a public benefit company we take that very seriously so it's not

069a for us we're not jumping into school districts Workforce housing space because it's a it's a a function where we can make money this is a service for us okay vice president Herrera loera thank you I have the last two questions what is the average timeline to complete a feasibility study yeah well I would say it really depends on how many sites are included so I can give you an example so uh as I said the most recent school district that we just finished is Burlingame School District um the school district identified in their request for proposal they had three sites that they wanted our team to study and so the way that we suggest is um you know I from your RFP it looked like it said all of the sites are potential options

070and opportunities and so we always say breaking breaking the feasibility analysis into two phases and essentially we say breaking it into two different phases um initially up front because we only want you to spend resources and time on feasible options and so we always say first we have to figure out if there's a there there and what that basically means is you know we don't want a complete deep dive feasibility analysis on sites that you know we can do a high level review and say that's not you know it's not feasible based off of the zoning based off of um you know just contextual influences or environmental issues potentially things like that and so the first phase we typically say um it's approximately 90 days um and that is again it really varies on the

071number of sites obviously one site is going to have a completely different timeline than if we're looking at five sites so to speak um and then the second phase is really where we do a deeper dive after we determine okay of the amount that if if you give us five sites of the five sites so to speak just pulling that out of thin air you know two of them are potentially feasible so we want to do a deeper analysis into those two it really depends on the specific site so for one school district there was some environmental issues where we had there was potential Wetlands on the property and so we had to dive deeper into that to make sure that is the entire property land developable so that has a different time period than

072you know something that doesn't have environmental issues but overall I would say budget approximately two to three months and it could go up or down from there thank you and the next question based on your organization's experience what are the key roles and responsibilities for the district and for the consultant in achieving a transparent process that gains buy-in I'll start we all may have something to chime in but I think it really starts with the board having alignment on what you're trying to accomplish I think that sets up a very transparent and in a process that should work kind of smoothly if the board is aligned and communicates that we also believe inviting stakeholders into the into the conversation once you start getting some initial data having a few study sessions because the public really

073wants to learn and we're conducting study sessions all the time and we really we were on with the district yesterday just preparing for study sessions next week and so I think for us it's a lot of communication to the public a lot of Education to the public them seeing the board is unifying behind a particular why and then preparing the board for things that we believe may come up as let's call it tension areas of tension and understanding how to navigate those areas of tension which is part of the general narrative so for us it's just it is a partnership with us so we're here to serve and so having very clear guidelines up front having very clear desired outcomes up front really helps us craft a particular plan did you want anything okay but

074I'll just say you know we've Endeavor to be an extension of staff and so that's kind of how we like to operate so we're not here to just to to just rush through an assignment we're here to really get you to your outcomes and so that really starts and ends with the board and the board's alignment and making sure that we're talking frequently and then transparent I'm just being redundant but I just want to emphasize it because that's where we see things break down okay well thank you so much for uh taking the time to interview go back to the waiting rooms we're going to tell your schools and invite you back to show you this course yeah can we have a discussion the benefit of each other I'd like to do this I mean

075this is an open yes um yes yes but I I'm very very glad that we got some good firms that seem to have a significant amount of experience um I see the HP um Johnson German company with local experience and so I'm I like that however I'm looking at the in terms of the the compensation and it looks pretty wild like the top of this you know 195 at the highest um we have one the first one at 116 but you know a bunch of stuff is to be determined and then dcg that comes in at the two phases they have a higher professional fees and so it kind of difficult to make a clear assessment so um were you able to look at that at the at the at the freeze the the pre-structure

076that they set up and do like a uh try to do a comparison yes um I did review The Proposal um and again um I mean it's really difficult to cost out the total feasibility part of it um yeah and especially since we didn't give them the like eight years two sides or here's three sites right right that makes it a little bit more difficult and probably that's going to be you know done through the contract negotiation once it's going to be selected um gotcha all right um and so we would potentially if you would have because uh this is my concern that uh some folks here are looking like it's a better deal but stuff might not be much might not be included um and so that's that's right that's my concern is there

077like a cap or something because like let's say that uh this one's at 116 but at the end winds up like being half a million bucks and that's not something that should be we should be coming back with correct it's not going to be that wild of a swinging yeah I mean again that can be still like the contract negotiator negotiation in terms of putting uh a not to exceed limit um and again that all depends kind of you know on the number of sites that were um considering gotcha all right well yeah for me I'm come the ehp it has a local advantage that they've done that working so I'm comfortable with that however I find that they've also done some local work um they happen to have a fellow from uh they used

078to be a vice president Northern California lion homes so they do have the Builder perspective and the expertise there that's a massive firm that was bought up by Taylor Morrison and so I think they got a good team the fact that they're connected to csb also gives them that credibility as well so that's my perspective um I'm torn between those and chamber okay trustee Chavez um I looked at BHP and um and all of them and the one who seems to be the strongest one is ehp and they've done this before so um I I'm gonna go with ehp vice president I'm in agreement I think um the fact that they've done so many uh different projects and um you know they they talk about them they outline them they're up they're running um shows

079their their experience um so I'm in agreement I think yeah yes and they did ask you know what do you want do you want to just like kind of break even or do you want to make this um a money maker as well so I like that they have those two perspectives in mind because we you know you can always offer it to the teachers um at a break even right now but later on you do want to make some profit because that's gonna go back into your general fund thank you oh I'd say you know to to tarot's point you know I like the fact that you know at least ehp may never to flesh out you know as specific as a timeline as possible as to this feasibility setting so I hope that

080that you know that in a sense gives us a sort of a uh a sense of where where the cost of this feasibility study is and I think at the end of the day uh given ehp's extensive experience you know they it could it could you know uh it looks to be a very good for them so with that is there any further comment by members of the board yes Montero yeah well I just I I find the concern that there's such a wild swing between the low and the high and so I just want to reiterate that um I am that is a concern and I I'd hope that we get that under control during the negotiations to really tighten that up and make sure that we don't wind up in the highest amounts

081um because what we're being quoted by dcg is seems a heck of a lot more reasonable um and if in fact these are the actual rates and we'd have a big difference between the two firms I also do respect and appreciate the fact that dcg has told districts no and um it really demonstrates that they're not out here just to tell the district what they want but that they seem to be challenged districts what they need to hear which is sometimes it doesn't pencil out for you and they've actually told West contra cost accounting that it just wasn't going to work after it's like I do appreciate that but yeah if we can get that stuff that Delta they're under control I'd be more comfortable um at this point like I said um the the

082fact that they've done that Santa Clara one makes me like yeah I want to lean forward and however the the big difference in the price is just concerned okay seeing no further comments by members of the board I guess at this time that uh if members of the board have not submitted their votes uh please do so [Music] foreign thank you yeah why don't you write it down and then they can sing with it for you and you have an environment does that work s you want the numbers thank you awesome a person foreign for the memory if you're okay with that you use the core person you know YouTube because they use the time I found because there are still practical problems yes that's what they were okay oh so you can tell the

083audience and for the sake of time wow okay that's fine for the sake of time while we are uh awaiting uh uh a resolution of technical problems uh with the tallying of the votes uh uh I will move through item 3.01 approving the consent calendar so approving the memorandums of understanding uh is that okay with the board yes the Board needs to approve the environment okay okay so I'll for the sake of it so I moved to to consider item 3.01 at this time while we're awaiting the resolution yeah go ahead so I'm amazing second one second by vice president Gerardo era I think he has to make the motion Chief circuits can the president he just made the motion it doesn't matter oh so we have them now there's a motion there's a second

084so um move to a vote I'll call you as I see you trustee Chavez hi uh vice president Herrera aye Quintero aye and myself building I the amendment is approved so with that will uh one second Maribel are you listening to what is happening in the meeting yesterday awesome very good okay so we'll go ahead and move to item 3.01 approved memorandums of understanding uh superintendent malware yeah this is a very uh uh an agreement so that we can accept the offer of an invitation to have a mariachi group coming and playing for our students next week motion to accept second okay motion motion by Percy Chavez second my vice president Herrera Ferrero era I'll open to public comment seeing no public comment I'll move to a vote Christy Chavez hi I'm vice president Herrera

085Louisa hi uh Quintero all right and myself voting I the the item passes four to zero what trusty Flores Shelton absent foreign will consider the transportation plan I believe Colbert had a minor presentation for you but if you go to your uh materials the plan is there for you so with that are they ready yeah they're ready um okay okay good okay so now we at this time we'll return to IM 2.01 as regularly scheduled thank you and uh welcome back again and thank you for your patience um if you can draw your attention to the screen we're going to help you build the scores um Brad can you put the score on the screen please as you can see H is h-e-hpmec the score 70h 78 dcg 74 and HED 45. thank you so

086much thank you okay uh so at the same question questions and comments by members of the board I just want to thank everybody I think it was a excellent group uh that uh were came and presented and the decision was obviously incredibly difficult because of excellent qualifications and so thank you for your attention uh trusty Chavez thank you for your time and vice president Herrero era thank you for your time and all that you're doing for our schools out in the state and wherever you're working and continuing to work thank you especially the woman thank you for being in this I mean serious you know I know it hasn't always been um you know a woman run or LED so it's also great to see the woman um involved so thank you yeah so I'll

087wrap up you know these are what is it volatile uh and interesting times in public education so I do want to thank all all your firms for taking your valuable time to interview with us and also to uh you know uh encourage you you know uh to stay in the business and hope you know and that uh you know who who knows you know uh Never Say Never so again thank you so much for for your presentations approve ehp and second by uh trustee Chavez uh I'll call you as I see you trustee Chavez hi uh vice president Herrera loera aye Quintero and myself building I the motion is approved for the Vera what trustee Flores Shelton absent thank you so much uh moving on to item 2.02 approved Transportation plans for fiscal year 20

0882022 2023 this is I'll move approved okay second okay motion by uh Montero second by vice president Herrero era so uh uh call Vera the floor is yours I'm so prepared tonight he's gonna be very pretty [Music] thank you so um the goal of this presentation is just to provide a a little bit of information since it's a new requirement that's that the state is placing our school districts um starting with the school year um so with that um starting again starting with the school year um the governing board is required to adopt a transportation plan um that are receiving funding under the lcf uh performing funding formula um before on or before April 1st of each year um just a little bit of background about what the district is doing right now um we

089currently provide transportation services to uh 250 special ed students and two McKinney Bento which is our homeless population in terms of the funding last year um the districts actually spent approximately 2.8 million dollars for home to school in transportation costs um in terms of the funding that we receive since 2013 the state has provided us with about 1.4 million dollars and that 1.4 since 2013 hasn't changed this is the first year that the state is actually providing um some adjustments to that funding and what is that adjustment um and so starting this year the state will reimburse 60 60 of our total transportation cost and so what that does is that that adjusts the funding from 1.4 um to 1.7 so just going back to how much we're spending and how much we're actually receiving

090even with the additional funding um you can see that there's a huge deficit already um of a little over 1.1 million dollars in terms of what we spend in transportation costs and what actually this the state is giving us so in terms of the summary of the transportation plan um the plan itself needs to address three populations um the first one um is how we prioritize um transportation services for our tk86 grade students uh inclusives of the um up low income um the second one is how we make it accessible to people with disabilities and homeless children youth we're already doing that and then the third group is how we provide accessibility to unduplicated people um I just want to make a note that while um there's a requirement to adopt a plan there's no

091requirement there's no mandate to expand the services that we have right now it's really just to have a plan together in case there's additional fundings that the district would be able to consider um coming with this requirement is also some potential penalty um if a district doesn't have a adoptive plan by April 1st uh there will be an audit finding um and if there's an audit finding then the district will lose this the additional funding related to the 60 um so the base we will still get but the additional funds uh will have to go back to the to the state itself and that's about it I'll take any questions that you might have oh um before that before I have uh questions from the board uh open it up the public comment uh seeing

092no public comment I will move to questions and comments by members at the board so uh trustee Chavez you had a question uh yes how much do we get for each special ed student approximately so um her Ada special ed kids and regular ed kids receive similar funding they go through the lcff model it's about it changes from here to Europe right now it's about thirteen thousand dollars per Ada um assuming that one student goes to class every single day of the year thank you so that times 250. students 180 students I thought it said 250. oh the number of students sorry the number of special ed students is 250. no we have close to over 300 special ed kids although not all special ed kids requires Transportation how many are requiring it now 250

093250 50. okay thank you all right any referral questions and comments by members of the board uh and Montero yeah um you know just to talk about some of the concepts that are out there this really perverse word in in the area of Education referred to as encroachment that has kind of been thrown around there by individuals who perceive children who have special needs as something different and something strange that is encroaching upon the district and I find it sickening and Despicable and I think that it needs to be removed from the language in uh in in K-12 education anywhere because the children uh rightfully deserve the education they do that they get I'm proud of Alum Rock in the work that we do here to provide education to all of our kids and so

094I bring that up just to make sure that as a board we send a clear message that that term is not welcomed in Alum Rock uh because I it immediately alienates and makes it seem as if uh these children are not entitled to the education that they rightfully deserve so again it's not like a happy go kind of topic but I want to take the opportunity to make sure that we get it out of the system of individuals who still throw that term out there in the sense that it's a personal type of thing and so I find it very uh not nice yeah I'll just say you know I I'm in complete agreement with board clerk Montero you know I I myself have you know spent some time in special education but not for

095academic issues but uh physical issues actually so uh you know I I always believe that you know the district is all greater than the sum of its parts and uh you know all children uh all colors of the rainbow but all backgrounds whether uh you know should be welcomed our job is simple it is to provide uh kids opportunity an opportunity to better themselves and to uh you know hopefully uh end up where they would like to be later in life so you know I I share that sentiment that you know we you know uh we must all you know hang together as a community you know otherwise uh you know it wouldn't be a very very it would not be a community in which we would want to live in and you know we

096you know for reasons outside of pers you know or you know that we leave people behind our job is to you know bring people forward together so with that uh you know I you know completely and in agreement with those sentiments uh yes trustee Chavez so with that guy there was already emotions oh that's right previously sorry yes so so that I'll move we'll call you as I see you trusty Chavez hi uh vice president Herrera Valera aye uh Claire Quintero all right and my cell phone I the item is approved four to zero when Christy Flores showed to Babson closed session too so so with that we moved to uh close section four post session uh recess item 4.01 recess the post session the board will reset the closed session at approximately 8 15

097p.m Open Session will resume at the conclusion of closed session uh so with that uh item 4.02 uh superintendent about would you like to make the announcement regarding items to be discussed in closed session sure so 403 Public Employee discipline dismissal release 404 conference with legal counsel Council the existing litigation okay so thank you so seeing that I will uh open to public comments regarding items to be discussed and discussed in closed session uh seeing none uh we will at this time uh resist the closed session will take a five minutes break uh so with that we the board will reconvene in closed session at 8 22 pm thank you thank you this can you unmute um Brett or MJ can you guys unmute the um the audio um foreign um so there is a

098forum the board is reviewing open second at 9 23 PM uh so five reconvene to open session I'm 5.01 report of action taken in closed session Mr Louise yes um closed session item 4.04 this is the matter of office of administrative hearings case number uh the board by a vote of three to one to one approve the set selection and designation of Chris D Funk as the district's panel member representative for the commission on professional competence in that matter um member uh Flora Shelton was absent absent and member Quintero recused himself um from the consideration and vote on that matter there are no further actions to report okay thank you so much Mr Ruiz so with that the part six German I adjourned this meeting at 9 24 pm thank you very much