001[Music] wow [Music] no no no no [Music] hello [Music] [Applause] [Music] yes test one two three four live stream tests [Applause] kind of hard to get used to yeah i walked out the door this morning [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] she should come in [ __ ] so all right the anaheim union high school district board of trustees meeting of april 7 2022 is called to order at p.m the following members are present and al piercy anne-marie randall trejo i know kathy smith is here she'll walk in pretty soon and brian o'neill and al-jabbar staff has requested the following amendments to the agenda page 2 of the agenda item 7.1 replace
002the word business with foundation page number six of the agenda pool item 11.4 and page 15 of the agenda full item 11.8 just want to recognize trustee smith arriving to our seat 11.22 i'll repeat it again yeah so kathy where staff has requested the following amendments to the agenda page 2 of the agenda item 7.1 replace the word business with foundation page 6 of the agenda pool item 11.4 and page 15 of the agenda pull item 11.22 move to approve balance second i have a motion and a second all in favor aye aye opposed motion passes unanimously we will now proceed to the study session perfect um okay can you guys hear me okay so um this afternoon we have um dr tim mcnarney from true north he will be here um with other two
003other consultants as well charles heath from tbwh as well as keith weaver from government financials um he does all the financial things for our district so they will be uh co-presenting this afternoon and and they're happy to answer any questions that you may have afterwards or in between as well thank you thank you nancy and uh good afternoon mr president members of the board how's that better um i'm dr tim mclarney i'm the president true north research and we are a firm that over the last 20 years has specialized in working with school districts and using surveys to help them develop a statistically reliable understanding of the communities and the customers they serve today my business partner i have worked on over 1200 research studies for public agencies and about 400 of those studies are
004what we call revenue measure feasibility studies like what we're going to be talking about today where the goal is to understand if it's feasible for a school district to move forward with a bond measure for example and if it is feasible to understand how they might go about structuring that measure in a way that it's consistent with the type of measure their community is interested in supporting um we've helped our clients have a lot of success over the years to date of the measures that we recommend go to ballot about 95 percent have been successful we've also had the privilege of um having our research underlie about two-thirds of the school bonds that have passed in orange county for schools over the last 10 years and that includes three of your feeder districts with anaheim
005city school district centralia as well as savannah today i have a powerpoint presentation covers the highlights of the survey that we recently completed as i go through this presentation i welcome questions from the board along the way or at the end whichever is your preference okay so before we talk about the actual results helpful to take a quick moment to review the purpose of the study or why school districts go about doing this type of work as well as the methodology or how we went about conducting the study uh in terms of the purpose i see these studies as really being designed to sort of address those three bullets that you see there the first is to answer that simple question of is it feasible and what i mean by that is if you as
006a board were to take the action of placing this measure on an upcoming ballot does that measure have a reasonable chance of success right answer that question isn't always yes sometimes we do this type of work and no matter how we look at the data we just don't see a path to get you from where you are today to where you need to be to have a reasonable chance of success on election day and if that's the case i'll be the first person to tell you that right i don't think it's in the board's interest the community's interest the administration's interest to invest effort in a process that at the end isn't going to have a reasonable chance of success fortunately when you think about all the things that voters are willing to tax themselves
007for education tends to rise to the top of that list um and so when we do find that it's feasible move forward that second bullet kicks in which is how do we go about structuring a measure so that it's consistent with the type of measure that our voters would like to see there's a lot of pieces to a bond proposal right there's what are you proposing to do with the money in terms of your facility plans how much of the is this bond going to be what is it going to cost me as a as a property owner right what election opportunities uh are out there etc what sort of accountabilities might be built into this measure so all of these sort of important decisions that have to be made before you were to place
008a measure on the ballot the survey can help guide and then lastly it's also an opportunity for us to understand the importance of information and communication to voters making a decision about this proposal i'm a i'm a big proponent that if a public agency is going to take the step of putting a measure on the ballot and asking voters to make this decision it's really incumbent upon that agency to inform voters about the decision you're asking them to make as a public agency you aren't advocating up or down right but you can give information you can't educate and what we tend to find is the more informed a voter is about a proposal the more inclined they tend to be uh to be a supportive of that proposal so let's see here all right there
009we go um next slide is the methodology slide just sort of how we went about conducting the study survey was conducted in february of this year and we spoke with 619 voters who are what we call likely november 2022 voters these are voters who based on when they registered in the district what elections they've participated in the past their demographics we expect would actually cast a ballot in this upcoming november election we use a process called stratified and clustered random sampling which i can get into if you like but suffice to say what it does is it guarantees us that at the end of this process we have a random sample that is in fact reflective of your likely november 2022 universe on all of the dimensions that we know are related to voting behavior
010so things like age gender party affiliation household party type where they're located within your district because you are a big district all of those things we control for so that our sample is in fact representative of that larger universe and that's really what allows these surveys to be as predictive as they they are once we had selected voters to participate in the study we used a mixed method approach so we recruited them using three different methods email text and telephone they had the option of participating online or by telephone whichever was their preference we administered the survey in four different languages and on average the the phone interviews were about 17 minutes in length and now because this was a random sample of 619 likely november voters and not a census of all of your
011likely november voters you have about 120 000 of them it has what's known as a margin of error due to sampling and in this case it's just under 4 and what that means is we can be 95 percent confident that the results we'll talk about today are within four percent of what we would have found had we spoken with all 120 000 of your likely november voters okay so on to the results uh this first slide shows uh the results to what we call our importance of issues question and for each of the issues you see on the slide we simply asked voters to tell us how important is this issue to you is it extremely important or very important which are represented by the dark blue and medium blue bars is it somewhat important
012not at all important that's represented by that negative space off to the right and we ask these in a random order to avoid a systematic position order bias but we are sorting them here from high to low based on that combined percentage of folks who said it's either extremely or very important we asked this question really for two reasons one is it's just a nice warm-up question kind of gets voters into the groove gets them thinking about local issues at the beginning of the survey but it is also an opportunity for us to understand how education as an issue stacks up against some of these other issues that also compete for tax dollars and in particular how does the issue of improving the quality of education local public schools stack up against that issue of
013preventing local tax increases right kind of makes sense the more importance that they place on improving the quality of education local schools relative to this issue of preventing local tax increases the better positions you might be to move forward with some type of bond or parcel tax related education and what we find here is at the top of the list we had two issues that were sort of tied for number one one was improving the quality of education in local public schools at 90 saying they're that's extremely or very important along with reducing crime and gang activity and then as you move down the list you see creating jobs and improving the local economy maintaining local streets and roads etc second up from the bottom there you'll see preventing local tax increases that checks in
014at 68 percent so you've got about a 22 point gap between the importance assigned to improving the quality of education and the importance assigned to preventing local tax increases that is very average and what i mean by average is that is right where we've seen a lot of districts landing the last year and a half right we have some or the gaps bigger we have some where the gap smaller 22 percent is like right in the middle the other thing i'll point out though is if you look right above preventing local tax increase increases you have repairing and renovating aging school facilities checks in at 70 percent so a little higher than uh preventing local tax increases but not much i point that out because that pattern is very typical right we always see that
015at the end of the day voters that care about the topic and the end use of of you know in sort of improving the quality of education they care about that overarching goal much more than they do about sort of buildings and facilities and so i mentioned it mainly because although bonds are about buildings and facilities at the end of the day what they care about is what's happening inside those buildings and facilities so we always want to be connecting the dots between what this bond is going to build right or improve and why it matters in the classroom okay so from there we get right to what we call the initial ballot test and the idea is early in the poll before we talk about tax rates before we talk in more detail about
016projects that would be funded by this bond before we share with them arguments pro and con we want to present to them a mock-up of what we think that 75-word ballot statement could look like and get their reaction it is a really good gauge of where your voters are at on the natural with respect to this proposal because all they've seen is a 75 word statement and so the language that we tested is shown here and the results are shown here at that initial ballot test we had 61 percent of your likely november voters say that they would support this proposal we had 26 percent who were opposed with the remainder being uh unsure so in the state of california for a prop 39 bond you need 55 so at this initial ballot test we
017check in six points above that 55 threshold that you need to be successful so that's a really good place to start right you're you're above water you're not under water one thing i will point out just as an aside i know that the district had gone for a bond in 2020. you did some polling we weren't the ones who did it but you did some polling back in 2019 i went back and looked at that polling and the initial ballot test for that poll uh was right if you just was 57 so the good news is we're about four points above in this poll at the start from where you were in that poll back in 2019 so you're a little higher right which is great this slide shows how the support levels vary across
018your feeder districts there on the left as well as the sort of area of residents the main cities and then everything else off to the right and so what you find is there is some variation uh support at that initial ballot test was strongest among voters who are within the magnolia school district right followed by centralia and anaheim then cyprus and then savannah actually checked in the lowest so it ranged across the feeder districts from a low of 47 among savannah to a high of 74 percent among voters in magnolia when you look at it sort of by city though it's not as variable um off to the right three of the four areas had 62 percent support and then cyprus checked in at about 54 now obviously the price tag for a bond like
019this can matter to a voter right the level of support you can expect for a bond measure will depend in part on where you set that tax rate the higher the tax rate is set all the things being equal the lower the level of support you can usually expect and so one of the goals of this survey was to make it really clear that bonds mean taxes just in case they didn't catch that in that 75 words we're going to make sure they understand that bonds mean taxes and secondly we're going to test how sensitive they are to different tax rates or tax implications of this bond that could be part of this bond if when you place on the ballot and so in this first slide here what we did is we tested three
020different tax rates uh that could be associated with the bond thirty dollars per 100 000 of assessed valuation at the top followed by twenty four dollars and then nineteen dollars per 100 000 uh assessed valuation at the bottom and what you see is there's some tax rate sensitivity here when you kind of put the blinders on a voter and you focus their attention on the tax rate right you get some drop off and support at the 30 dollar rate uh we had 43 percent 24 dollars it's 45 percent when you get to 19 dollars it jumps up to 52 percent now one of the things we also know about this question though is it tends to be a very conservative read on voter support for your proposal partly because we're putting the blinders on them
021and we're not talking about the things you're going to do with the money we're just talking about what it's going to cost them and secondly we also know that not every voter knows what assessed valuation means right so when you say thirty dollars per 100 thousand assessed valuation they don't they don't necessarily know what that means if they know what assessed valuation means they tend to sometimes overestimate what the av is for their property and the nature of the question requires that you do math right 30 dollars per 100 000 assessed valuation not everybody's good at doing that and so i point that out because we know that there are some voters that when you convey this tax rate they don't know what it means they know you're talking about price and they hedge right
022they say no and not sure and so we also come at it another way which is we say all right let me put another way if you knew that this measure would cost the typical homeowner about 94 dollars per year that's the left column would you vote yes or no the ninety four dollars per year is the thirty dollar per one hundred thousand assessed valuation tax rate multiplied times the median assessed value for a residential property in your district so it's what that median property owner would pay per year and so what we find is that when you go ahead and do the math and you give them the annual total for what this is going to be for the typical owner you get a better reaction at the 30 tax rate per 100 000
023of assessed valuation we had 43 percent when you do the math firm and tell them it's 94 a year we jump up to right to the right column is the same exercise only here we're taking that 19 per one hundred thousand assessed valuation tax rate multiplying time the median av for a residential property you get fifty nine dollars per year and at fifty nine dollars per year we have fifty eight percent support so all of this information tells us one that your voters are somewhat tax rate sensitive right as a lot of voters are and b it kind of plays into our recommendations about where we think the comfort zone is in terms of a tax rate right where we think that if you choose a particular tax rate you can expect that you're going
024to have support of 55 or above and i have some recommendations on that towards the end okay so we at this point in the poll we ask a couple questions related to the quality of education the first is a question that asks them simply how would they rate the quality of education provided at your local high school right so we're asking them to think about their local high school and what you find is um it's a bit of a mixed bag you had 36 percent who said excellent or good you have 26 percent who said fair you had who said uh poor or very poor and then you have another 20 or so who are unsure prefer not to answer the question what we have when you look at this by the way um by
025sub-geographies what you find is that the percent excellent or good was much higher among residents in the centralia school district area as well as cyprus so the those folks have a higher opinion of the quality of education their local high schools than the folks in the other feeder districts same basic question only this time we asked them to rate the quality of education provided in anaheim high school district overall and you get a very similar pattern here right you have about 37 percent who say excellent or good 27 percent fair so in the aggregate there's not a huge difference between how they're viewing their local high school and how they're viewing uh the district overall one thing i will point out though is you know we do also find that in typically if a voter
026is so disconnected from the district that they can't answer the question right they don't know whether the quality of education is excellent good fair poor or very poor in the district that tends to be a voter that all of things being equal is a little more of a challenge to see their way to a yes vote on a bond because they don't know anything about the district that's going to be sort of overseeing the funds and so that becomes a communication opportunity is to try and get some of those voters in that gray slice right help them understand the good work that you do right in advance of them being asked to vote on a particular bond measure okay so we then move on in the survey to what we call the projects and improvements
027section and the goal here is really two-fold one is we are now going to start to educate this these respondents more about what your bond will accomplish up to this point we only had the 75-word initial ballot test where we could describe what the bond would do and you're pretty constrained in what you can say here we get to unpack your bond into all of these various projects and improvements and in that way we're giving a much better idea about what the bond's about the other thing it allows us to do is understand of all the things you're thinking about spending the money on right how do voters feel about these projects and which of these rise to the top in terms of being their priorities probably the biggest thing that jumps off the page
028to me about these results is everything we tested was popular right there wasn't a single project that we tested where you didn't have 75 percent or more of your likely voters say that they favor spending some of the bond proceeds on those items but at the top of the list we we actually see kind of a combination of projects that we often see being the priorities for voters when it comes to school bonds and it's a mix of on the one hand that top project upgrading your older schools so they meet current health codes building safety codes proper ada access right number two there is providing modern classrooms labs and technology needed to support high quality instruction in math science engineering and technology so that's your stem related facility improvements and then the third one
029there is basic repairs to roofs plumbing electrical right sort of and so when you look at the combination of things that are up top there it's really bringing your older facilities up to new school standards stem and career tech right those were the the sort of three silos of improvements that tended to be the things that voters cared the most about now um if you as a board choose to place a measure on that upcoming november ballot there's going to be an election cycle right and during that election cycle there will be a lot of discussion and debate in the community about this proposal you're going to have advocates of this bond go out and talk to their neighbors and friends and explain why it's needed and why they should vote yes and you might
030also get some opponents who step up and say you know this is a bad idea we shouldn't be doing this and here's why for this to be a reliable gauge of the feasibility of a bond measure we need to simulate that discussion and debate in the space of the poll so we have a good understanding not only of where your voters were today which was that initial ballot test but what happens after they are exposed to positive arguments right and what happens should you get some opposition and so we do this first by conveying a series of positive arguments that you see here on the slide and the nature of the question is pretty simple it says supporters of the measure say blank and do you think this is a very convincing somewhat convincing or
031not at all convincing reason to support the measure as you can see on the slide we've a lot of the positive arguments get traction right they they they are viewed by by voters as being either very or somewhat convincing reason to support the proposal at the top of the list though is kind of a history lesson for them in terms of you know the condition of some of your facilities so most of the schools were built more than 60 years ago when asbestos and lead pipes were used during construction we need to remove these hazardous materials from our schools that was the number one and the second is an equity argument that our students deserve to have the same educational opportunities as others in the region and by fixing our older schools and upgrading our
032classrooms and structural technology this bond will help improve the quality of education in our local schools so some good strong positive arguments and so the question at this point is where are your voters now right they we had that initial ballot test we then got to talk about tax rates which tends to be a bit of a wet blanket right on support for these measures but we've had a chance to come back talk in more detail about the projects that could be funded we got to convey positive arguments and so we circle back with the interim ballot test and we present that same 75 word statement and say now that you've heard a bit more where you stand and the results you see here so we tick up about a point so we're now at
03362 percent we're sitting seven points above that 55 threshold that you need for passage and then in the poll we test the negatives the idea behind the negatives is to simulate a situation where you have kind of a vocal opposition group that's out there and messaging to voters various reasons as to why they may not want to support this proposal it's important that we do this in the poll because we want to pressure test the respondent's support for your proposal so we understand should you get opposition how much damage could that do to support for your proposal so we convey a series of of opposition arguments the number one which probably shouldn't surprise anybody is this idea that now is just not a good time to be raising taxes right local businesses and residents have
034been hit hard by the pandemic in inflation now is a terrible time to be raising taxes right so we convey these negative arguments but the real question is what happens right and that's what we see here so on the final ballot test after we convey those series of negative arguments we see that it cools us down a little bit in terms of support we're down about four points from where we were at the interim ballot test but we are still landing three points above that 55 threshold that you need to be successful right so even with the opposition arguments you're still above water so what does all this mean i've got a couple slides on this and then happy to pause and see if there's any polling related questions so i'm going to circle back
035first to that overarching question i mentioned at the outset as one of the main primary purposes of these poll which is to answer that question of is it feasible right if you as a board choose to place this bond on the november ballot does it have a reasonable chance of success the answer that question is yes provided that you have careful planning and structuring of this bond and you execute on that plan right some positive things that we see in the poll and the reason why i think you've got a winnable measure here is you know we saw that voters ranked improving the quality of education in local public schools is among the top two issues facing the community we had solid natural support for this proposal with nothing more than the 75 word ballot
036statement to go off of we had 61 percent of voters say that they would support this proposal that's six points above that 55 threshold you need to be successful when we tested those projects every one of the uses that you were considering for these bond proceeds was popular right we had 75 percent or more of respondents for every single item say that they would favor using some of the bonds proceeds on those projects the positive arguments we tested resonated right they they gave voters they found them compelling and more reasons to support this proposal and importantly at each point in the poll where we check back in and we say now that you've heard a bit more where do you stand every one of those ballot tests was above 55 and that's even after we
037tested negatives right so those are the kind of patterns that i want to see in place to come to the conclusion that yes you've got a path that can get you from where you are today to where you need to be to have a good shot at being successful on election day that said the poll also did point out a few challenges right one of those is tax rate sensitivity right we saw at some of those higher tax rates we tested that we were kind of well below that 55 percent threshold that we would need to be successful so we need to be mindful about that um we did see that the negative arguments got a bit of traction right that cooled down support by about four points so that is something to consider and
038then thirdly there's these unknowns right um you look between now and election day we don't know where the pandemic's going right right now it seems to be going pretty well but we could get a surge again you could wind up with back to mass mandates and things like that and the drama that comes with with the politics of the pandemic there's inflation out there right now and what's happening with that is it going to continue is it going to get worse is it going to get better and then we have this international conflict that is obviously impacting supply chains and other and other costs and so you know we want to be thoughtful about that as well so with that in mind um you know there's a few observations and recommendations so just to reiterate
039i think you do have a measure that is winnable here right you do have feasibility that said it's important to keep in mind that a poll like this is a snapshot in time it's not a crystal ball looking forward to election day right what happens on election day isn't dictated about where your poll says today it's dictated by everything that happens from this point forward right and so i mentioned that mainly because um it's a reminder that we need to be making smart decisions about the bond and what it is you put in front of voters and you got to put the work in right and by that i mean the communication side of things and so few recommendations on that note price tag this is probably the most difficult and sort of thorny question
040to have to answer as part of these bond proposals because the higher you make that tax rate the more revenue you have to do the facility improvements that you need right but the higher you make that tax rate the more risk you take on in terms of the bond not being successful when i look at these poll results i think that you know you're going to want to keep it in voters comfort zone and at this point i'm thinking that's probably right around that twenty dollars per hundred thousand assessed valuation price tag right so thirty dollars is your prop thirty nine max twenty 20 is a step down from there that seemed to be about where that comfort zone was with your voters in terms of your uh priorities um i think that's the other
041thing that this measure makes clear is that you know like a lot of other areas they're interested in you bringing your older facilities up to new school standards they want to see improvements related to stem right and careertech is obviously a big draw as well so you're going to want to make sure that that those items become sort of central features of this bond proposal and then finally you know this poll was really kind of the it's not the law it's not the last step in your communications it's really the first step right from this point forward if you're inclined to move forward the bond i think you need to start to ramp up the communications so that you can make sure that voters out there understand your facility needs they understand the bond proposal
042that you're putting in front of them you can start to build some consensus around the need for that bond proposal and then ultimately you will need an independent campaign that's not district funded it's privately funded to carry things forward once the board chooses to place a measure on a ballot so let me pause there i've done a lot fast talking see if there's any questions related to the poll there are a couple more slides in terms of next steps that charles heath from tbwbh props and measures will speak to but let me see if you have any poll related items first any questions maybe for keith what are we getting um on the last uh two bonds we went out with uh per hundred thousand yeah great great great question okay so just uh by
043way of reminder uh we have measure z from 2002 that was 132 million and we have measure h from 2014 and that was 249 million so our tax rates were actually doing quite well when it comes to our our tax rates um so measure z and again the maximum that to mention is 30 so that's kind of our benchmark um on measure z our current tax rate is 17. and 52 cents and on measure h our current tax rate is twenty dollars and sixty six cents so you can see both cases were well below that that thirty dollar maximum okay and at the the rate of twenty four per hundred thousand which is the the midpoint on page eight what does that generate in the way of a bond yeah great um okay so again
044just for context what was tested was 30 and 498 million and so um just caveating this with uh with the idea we'd like to do sort of a deeper dive but i can give you some some estimates right now yes so at 24 we'd be at about 390 million okay if we're at twenty dollars which is i think uh as tim described it that was kind of the comfort zone um that would be 319 million maybe we could do 320 million okay oops can i ask a question in relationship to that um those z and h were both advertised basically at approximately up to 30 dollars correct correct all right so this would be in other words if we were to let's say look at 20 we would say up to 20. we are doing
045much better than 30 but i was curious as to what we were promoting when we went for the bond it was up to 30. yes yes exactly so in this case if we went with 20 we'd say be promoting up to 20 and our goal would be to come in you know just under that in in actuality so we also have uh other feeder districts that have bonds too so uh bb would you happen to know anaheim elementary just a ballpark yeah along the same lines would you say yes the most that they would be able to do is 30. okay okay yeah you know i might have and i think did that come up in the polling did anybody who knew uh did did anybody raise those questions they don't i mean we we
046we'll test negative arguments about taxes being too high so broadly but we're not going we didn't go in and say you know there's 20 bond here there's a 19 bond there okay yeah so i think what i can share with you right now so anaheim elementary did have a bond measure in 2016. that was 318 million um i don't have the tax rate handy i can definitely get that um and then they have a as charles said they have two bond measures the second one was in 2010 for 169 million centrally i had one two in 2016. i'm not mistaken and then the savannah i know we did one for savannah a while ago maybe 10 years ago yeah yep uh savannah was did one in 2008 and since centralia did do one in 2016.
047so i think what i could do if it's okay i'll get i'll pull up those tax rates and i can share them with with nancy and she can distribute anybody else questions yeah this um this a poll that you took was uh conducted march 17th to uh excuse me february 17th to march 2nd which is about what two weeks two and a half weeks in a time span and right in the middle of that is when the ukraine war started on february 24th so i am assuming that the results that we got on this really is not taking into consideration what turmoil that has caused in the way of the uptick in gasoline the uptick in in food prices the uh all the upticks that we don't really want to have happening uh i don't
048think though you probably were taken in into consideration this poll so with that in mind i don't know how how we can rely on on this here to make a final decision even if we didn't do another poll i don't think we could use this as a as a finality so with that said i would think that before any decisions made another poll would have to be taken to give us a better idea what's going on in the world yeah i mean i i don't disagree with the the notion that before you have to officially pull that trigger right which is probably in the deadlines in early august um realistically you'd probably be late july before a lot you know a lot of things can happen in the space of a few months and so
049plus i think ideally you'd be out communicating with your voters helping them understand what your facility needs are uh you know in preparation for potentially putting that measure on the ballot and so i think the idea would be yes you'd do a tracking poll closer to when you have to make that official decision and um you know i will say though that the although the fallout from the invasion of ukraine obviously hadn't started until the middle of the data collection period um you know the the idea that about inflation being present and the price of things being more expensive other than gas because that's been more associated with the ukrainian invasion certainly the idea that inflation is out there food prices etc that's been in play for a good six months or more right so
050that piece of it i think is baked in i think you're right that some of the things that happened from the point of the ukrainian invasion forward those aren't sort of built in here yet yeah good good poll thank you good information so one of your recommendations would be to have a poll probably in june yeah i think that and charles has a timeline um and that would be one of the components he has to speak to did you did anybody else have any questions nope okay go ahead i'd just like to thank you i thought the information and how you put it together and it just shows the broad span of work that you do to accumulate this and i thank you well thank you i appreciate that thank you good afternoon my name
051is charles heath i'm a partner with tbwh props and measures we're the strategy and communications consultants on the project so it's my job to take the findings from tim's opinion research and use it to put together the bond proposal that we think is viable but also the communication program so that your community understands your facility needs by the time they're asked to vote on it so the timeline that you see uh on the slide in front of you here kind of maps the big picture steps that will get us from where we are today to being on the ballot uh this november with a bond measure so we're here today presenting the results of our feasibility study as tim indicated you know with some qualifications around the pricing of the bond and some of those
052factors we're seeing the signs that would lead us to believe the bond measure is viable so our next step from here would be to go out and begin that outreach and communications process to make sure people understand what your facility needs are but also warm them up to the idea of a bond measure and explain the uh components of that measure and what they'll be asked to vote on and then sort of concurrent to that will also be building the actual documentation that will become your bond measure so when you vote to put a bond measure on the ballot you're approving a ballot question you know what people actually vote yes or no on their ballot the project list that determines how you how bond funds can be spent in the future the tax rate
053statement that goes into the ballot pamphlet that explains the cost of the bond to voters so obviously we want to develop all of that so that it's prepared in an optimal way and will help us maximize support as tim mentioned august 12th this year is the deadline to qualify for the november ballot so we're kind of working against that deadline to get all that documentation prepared and back to you for approval once the board votes to call for the election then we transition we make an important transition to the independent advocacy campaign so from now until that board vote by law the school district can use public resources and staff time to educate and inform the community about your facility needs and your bond proposal but after the board votes to call for the election
054any advocacy in favor of the measure must be privately funded and independently coordinated not using any school district resources so as we're working towards the ballot we also want to make sure that advocates and supporters of the school district are getting organized and they're prepared to take the baton forward once the measure is is on the ballot and trustee o'neill i appreciate you bringing up the the issue of sort of the volatile environment that we're living in right now we work on lots of bond measures and have for the last couple of decades the last two years has been the most tumultuous environment we've operated in and we've seen some pretty radical swings in support and i think you lived through that in march of 2020 where there were a lot of unknowns that popped
055up late in that election that you couldn't possibly have foreseen six months earlier and you know sort of that roller coaster ride if there's any number of crises around the corner you just don't know which one and how severe it's going to be that we have to be trying to anticipate and engage the impact on as we're planning these measures so i do think that before the board casts that final vote to put the measure on the ballot we'll want to come back and do a tracking poll and just check in and make sure that we're continuing to see positive trends um and that was one of the key takeaways from 2020 is kind of frequent um up-to-date opinion research is really important to measure the ebbs and flows of public opinion because it's it's
056always changing so just looking at next steps in a little more detail you know with your approval to move forward with planning and preparing a measure we will start developing the informational messaging that will be the the centerpiece of that communication and outreach effort part of that is developing a target list of key stakeholders in the community you serve a lot of different cities and you have your feeder elementary school districts there's a lot of opinion leaders within those communities that need to be engaged with to make sure they understand what the needs are and had a chance to ask their questions so there's sort of that targeted research sorry targeted outreach to uh to key opinion leaders and groups and organizations out there then there also has to be a broad-based communication program to
057reach the voters right and the vast majority of those voters don't have kids in your schools and so they don't have direct connections into your facilities and may not understand the need so that's where we have to use mass communication strategies like direct mail social media digital advertising you know those types of strategies to get the message out to a broad audience to make sure that people are developing that understanding of what your needs are so then we would develop that ballot language and the other documents for the bond measure bring them to you i know you have board meetings scheduled on july 14th and august 11th that we would sort of target and work with staff to figure out for bringing back the tracking poll results but also those details for for your review
058and approval and assuming you vote to put the measure on the ballot we deliver those documents to the orange county registrar voters by august 12th and we're on the ballot and we have to make that transition to the advocacy campaign so that's a little bit of what we have in store for us if we move forward with the bond and happy to answer any questions you have anybody else no all right well thank you very much for the presentation we appreciate it and uh mike will be in touch we'll give a direction for you thank you very much thank you thank you all right good presentation yeah it was a very good presentation so um public comments for close session uh is there anyone that wishes to address the board of trustees regarding closed session
059items only at this time seeing none the board of trustees will now hold a closed session to discuss item 5.1 through 5.9 on the agenda and it is now 3 p.m time will be uh we will move to closed session now thank you the director