001Mhm. >> I've got to adjust the settings. >> Mhm. >> Call the special meeting of the governing board and executive session relative to the agenda today just the special meeting to order. It is 6:00 p.m. Can we please stand for the pledge? Correct. I pledge allegiance to the flag 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. And if we could do roll call, please. I'll start. Donna Lewis. Mike Sharkey. Amy Carney. Karen Moyer. Matthew Betensky. Thank you. You're welcome. I make a motion to approve the agenda as presented. I need a second. I second. All those in favor, say I. I. I. Approval 5-0. Superintendent Dr. Menzel. Good evening, President Lewis, Vice President Sharkey, members of the governing
002board, staff and guests who are here this evening. Just one item to highlight and that is on Friday night we celebrated with the Charros the 39th annual Charros Education Awards. Four of our five board members were able to join as uh teachers from each of our buildings were recognized as the charter teacher of the year. We had students recognized from each of our high school and other scholarship recipients. It's truly a special event where you see community come together to celebrate excellence and the support that we have in Scottsdale for our system of public education. And so, it was a highlight of my entire weekend and thanks to those who were able to join us for that event. Thank you. As we move into the body of the agenda, the information item first is the
003Scottsdale Administration Association, the Scottsdale Education Association, the Scottsdale Support Professionals Association, and the Scottsdale District Administrators Association. Updates from those four organizations. How would you like to have them? Can all four come up? Yeah, if they all four come up, then they can decide who's going to go first. Maybe they've already done that. Great. Welcome. That one. Okay, great. Got it. Um thank you for having us this evening. Um I am Dr. Janelle Dansky, president of the Scottsdale Administrator Association. Um and as Shelly and I have reflected on this past year, uh the SAA is proud of the strength and unity demonstrated across our membership. We continue to see high levels of engagement and participation, a testament to the collective commitment of our administrators to support one another and lead with purpose. We are grateful
004for the 2% salary increase, which represents an important acknowledgement of our work our members do each day on behalf of students, staff, and the broader community. We continue to see high levels We continue to see high levels of engagement and participation, a testament to the collective commitment of our admin in stereo. >> [laughter] >> Uh through the IBN process our employee groups have come together in meaningful and productive ways, building trust, strengthening relationships, and focusing on shared interest. This collaborative approach has allowed us to engage in thoughtful dialogue and work toward solutions that support our staff and ultimately benefit our students. At the same time, we recognize that this year has not been without difficulty. The closure of Echo Canyon K-8 and Pima Elementary schools brings a sense of loss to our community. These schools
005have long been places of connection, history, and pride, and their absence will be felt by students, families, and staff alike. We recognize that a repurposing brings new potential and new opportunities, but want to acknowledge the work of the leadership teams of those buildings who are long-standing members and even some who have served our association with pride. As we move forward, the SAA remains committed to supporting our members, our students, and the district as a whole. We recognize that we are entering a challenging phase two of discussions, and we approach this work with the spirit of collaboration, professionalism, and resolve. We will continue to work alongside our colleagues and district leadership to ensure that decisions are made thoughtfully, with teamwork at the forefront, and the best interests of our learning community and our district as a
006whole guiding the way. We are also proud of the work our members do each and every day, leading our schools, supporting our staff, and creating environments where students can thrive. Our focus remains firmly on the future and preparing our amazing students for opportunities and challenges ahead. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening, board members. Um real quick, if you notice I have this sling. Um so, about 2 weeks ago, I took a fall, um and I I did not go to urgent care. So, quick plug for Prossano and the New health care because of the much lower cost and the very easy you know to get in and and meet when you can. I don't think I'll be waiting two weeks to find out I have two broken elbows. So I have a sling on one
007because it's more broken than the other. So just a quick plug there. So first of all good evening as I wrap up my first term as SEA president I wanted to take some time to focus on the accomplishments of our association and district while also setting the stage for success as we look into future years. First I want to go back to all the way to spring of 2024. SEA and in the spring of 24 signed a belief statement calling for three things. We called for no increases to employees for health insurance benefits. Fair and competitive salary increases as compared to surrounding districts and a commitment to reducing case loads, class sizes to ensure a safer and more supportive teaching and learning environment. We had a thousand five 1005 certified employees that signed the belief
008statement. The governing board's response at that time was to increase the salary increase that year from 1% to two year to 2%. Last year through the IBM process we successfully lowered the class size of secondary science lab classes to a maximum of 32. We were also able to get significant stipend increases to special education and CTE teachers. However, the cost of insurance continued to rise over the last two school years even through the movement of $1 million to set off employee costs to offset employee costs of insurance and district administration opening up premium setting to negotiations with all board recognized associations both of which were unprecedented and heavily appreciated. In spring of 2025, SEA signed an insurance petition stating the following: decrease premium costs of employee health insurance plans, ensure there are affordable plans for
009each category of plan, that being single, spouse, children, and family, and maintaining the same quality of care with the decreased cost. 1,145 certified employees signed the petition. Following that petition, we also had a high participation governing board walk-in at the April 1st governing board meeting with speakers focusing on personal stories of struggles that we face as employees dealing with these increases. Following these actions, the board called for a request for proposals to look into the best insurance for our employees. In fall of 2025, in another unprecedented event, the governing board heard from all IBN teams to discuss negotiation priorities in public at a meeting. We were able to share overall data and individual cases of hardship caused by insurance increases and compensation below cost of living in increases. In late fall, we met as a
010district and association leaders to review the insurance RFP and we were able to identify Blue Cross and Blue Shield as the best providers. Further, we again met as leaders to set premium prices. We now have no cost increase to any current insurance plans for next year and a new insurance plan, or an additional one, that represents real and meaningful savings for our employees. In my eyes, we have met the demands of our employees that were made when I first stepped into the role as president. This year, we met a 2% increase. We made budget cuts without harming certified case loads and class sizes, and we have lowered insurance costs with better health care. The reason I wanted to go through that short history lesson was to show that what we can do together when we
011respect each other's voices, concerns, and interests. This year has been very difficult, but we have collectively met the challenge, and I am optimistic that we will continue to meet the challenges we face as long as we listen and value each other. One difficulty of this year is to meet to the it was to meet the challenges of working conditions through the budget through all the budget concerns that we had. Um let's see. Lost my place there real quick. Um to set others up for success in the futures uh through this challenge, um SEA has started elections for our positions in um on interest-based negotiations, and I'm proud to announce that we've elected eight leaders to IBN so that we can have two teams to engage in talks with the districts. One uh team will be
012able to continue to focus on the district budget concerns while the other would be able to be focused on working conditions. Uh and working conditions and standards uh and the improvements for our certified staff. We are confident that the district can find members to join this new team and the space to make these improvements happen. I want to thank the governing board and district administration for meeting the needs of our workers and helping make this work so rewarding. Thank you. Donna. Uh Mr. Buckley. Yes. Hey, that was a great update. I really appreciated the the insight and and the successes. How many members are part of SEA? How many members do you have? Uh we officially have uh five It's about 575. Okay. Also, how much is your membership fee? Our membership fee is um
013800. I believe this year it's 850, um which is actually much lower than many of our competitors. Okay. Thank you. Thank you for the update. Very exciting. Thank you all. Good evening, President Lewis. Can you hear me? Yes. Okay. Good evening, President Lewis, Vice President Sharkey, members of the governing board, and Dr. Menzale and Ms. Wagner. Thank you for the opportunity to speak today and for your continued partnership with SSPA. We would like to begin by acknowledging the collaborative effort with our associations that went into the 2% raise across the board. Through this IBN process, we were able to come together on an increase to base pay that supports all employees. At the same time, this step also highlights the importance of continuing our work, particularly for our classified staff, where wages remain an ongoing
014concern. As we consider the broader context, the cost of living continues to rise. This serves as an important benchmark as we continue our shared efforts to ensure that compensation keeps pace in a meaningful way. Our classified employees remain the backbone of SUSD. Their consistency, dedication, and daily contributions are critical to the success of our schools. Ensuring that compensation reflects both their values and current economic realities will be an important part of maintaining a strong and stable workforce. Looking ahead to next year's IBN process, we see a clear opportunity and responsibility to build on this year's progress. Continuing to prioritize compensation will be key not only for supporting current employees, but also for retaining and attracting the staff our district depends on. SSPA would also like to recognize the HR department for successfully placing all surplus
015employees, classified and certified. This was a complex process, and it was carried out with care and coordination. The limited concerns raised to SSPA reflect the thoughtful approach taken and we appreciate the work behind that effort. Thank you. As we move forward, SSPA remains committed to ongoing collaboration beyond formal IBN meetings. We believe there is value in continuing to refine the classified agreement to ensure clarity and consistency for both employees and the district. For example, we would welcome continued dialogue around other duties as assigned to ensure that expectations remain aligned with employees primary roles. Also, developing clearer pathways for transfers, lateral moves and professional development opportunities can help employees feel supported while also strengthening retention across the district. This has been a very challenging year, particularly with repurposing of two schools and the possibility of additional
016changes ahead. We appreciate the collaborative approach taken thus far and recognize that the decisions made moving forward will continue to have a direct impact on employees and school communities. SSPA looks forward to continuing to work alongside the governing board and district leadership to build on our progress and address the areas that still require attention. Thank you for your time and your continued partnership. Good evening. I'm Patty Bilbrey and I left it on. Did you want to speak? Okay, no problem. Please go ahead. I'm sorry. I left it on. Thank you very much for the update. Appreciate it. I'm Patty Bilbrey and I am the president of the small but mighty and new Scottsdale District Administrators Association. This past quarter has been a busy and productive one for SDAA. We've had the opportunity to engage in
017several important areas of work that directly impacts our members and staff across the district. We are proud of the way our team has showed up with focus on collaboration, advocacy, and thoughtful decision-making. One of the most important and significant efforts of this quarter was our participation in the district's insurance RFP committee. Not sure I'd ever want to do it again. SDAA, that's my little insert, SDAA had representation at the table along with the other three associations and district leadership. The level level of collaboration was awesome. The work remains centered on finding solutions that best serve employees, and the resulting recommendation reflected a balanced approach to benefits that support access, quality, cost, and long-term sustainability. SDAA also actively participated in the insurance premium discussions with the associations and the district. These conversations were required careful consideration
018and navigation of a complex and challenging reality. Even so, the process remained very transparent, respectful, and solutions-oriented, resulting in outcomes we believe represent a huge win for all staff members who enroll in district insurance policies. Our continued work through the IBM process was another key focus. This past year has brought some tough decisions, but it also highlighted the strength of relationships at the table. The work remained respectful, focused, and collaborative with a shared commitment to listen listening, problem-solving, and moving forward together for the best interest of all. SDAA would be remiss if we did not thank the governing board for their support of the 2% increase in pay for all employee groups. That decision instilled trust, and it also means that you You a meaningful investment in all staff, and that is deeply appreciated. In
019addition, we want to recognize human resources and district leadership for their work in supporting a smooth transition in employee placement following the two school repurposings. Surplus staff members were addressed in a thoughtful and timely manner, ensuring that all staff who wish to remain in the district were successfully placed for the new year. That's a huge accomplishment. SDAA has remained committed to supporting our members in their day-to-day work through communication, responsiveness, and advocacy. Our members work in a significant and our members work is often significant and very overwhelming. And it's important that they continue to feel informed, supported, represented, and above all, appreciated. Overall, this quarter highlighted what can happen when people come together with a shared purpose and a willingness to collaborate, even when the work is very difficult. We are grateful for the partnerships
020at all levels, proud of what we've accomplished together, and look forward to rolling up our sleeves and getting the work done in the years ahead. Thank you. Any comments or questions from our board? We thank you all, and we appreciate you all. The hard work, we know this time of year is extremely intensive, and to stop for another evening out and to have prepared for tonight means a lot. Thank you very much. That brings us to item 4B. Uh we'll be listening to a presentation on the potential of a bond election forthcoming. Do you want to go straight to Yes, we'd like to invite Mr. Rayler to the podium, and I just want to say a few words of appreciation for all of the work uh Mr. Rayler has done uh over the last few
021years to make sure that we were prepared for tonight's presentation. Uh the close to 60 meetings individually that he held, in addition to all of the other work uh and on top of his day job is pretty significant. So, thank you, Dennis. We look forward to having the conversation this evening. Thank you, Dr. Menzel. Okay, we're ready for a marathon. Good evening, President Donald Lewis, Vice President Mike Sharkey, members of the board, Dr. Menzel, and Ms. Wagner. I am thrilled to be here, hoping hoping to get past this little hurdle uh today, uh answering a bunch of your questions, and uh waiting anxiously for May 12th to have yet another discussion. Um Let me make this big. Oopsie. What happened? IT? Is this a bad omen? No. >> [clears throat and cough] >> All right.
022So, tonight uh we're going to share with you um the work that we've done uh to get to this point. Um some work from our friends at Noble Predictive Insights and at Stifel uh that they're going to share with you some PowerPoints uh that they have, and um hopefully get to a point where we are looking at a a good position to um for a bond initiative in November of 26. So, I have about 46 slides and I do not seriously want to read every one of them to you. I sent them in advance. So, we're going to breeze through some stuff. Obviously, our audience will be able to see it. But why why a capital plan? We have to be organized in some way to make sure that we are taking care of our
023facilities. A facility that air conditioning doesn't work, the roof leaks, the IT doesn't work, whatever the case may be is a facility that kids aren't learning in. And so, that's what we're going to try to achieve in this next bond. Um Last bond in 2016, we rebuilt six schools, refurbished one that caught fire. And our focus was really on rebuilding schools. Um this year or this time around, I feel like it is more important to take care of the infrastructure, the bones of the buildings that will continue to serve our students so that they can have every opportunity to learn. Okay? Using my own mouse. So, [clears throat] first up is Mike Noble with Noble Predictive Insights. Let me tee up his uh presentation. Mike. Thank you, Dennis. Perfect. I appreciate it and I have
02482 slides I'm going to take you through. I'm just kidding. I have like six, so I want to be mindful of your time, so thank you, Dennis. And by the way, it was for being a professional researcher, I was pretty impressed with how much outreach he actually did ahead of it. It was was really helpful in his discovery meeting when we put together this survey instrument to test the basically feasibility of the bonds. And I do this with um a bunch of other educational organizations such as like Arizona Border Regions or the major universities or a lot of the other school districts in town, so but don't tell anybody, but this was the most prepared I've seen anyone come in, so I appreciate it. There's a lot of good insight that we were able to
025glean upon. And thank you, President Lewis and Superintendent Anzal for having me here. So, anyways, with that further ado, let's get into it. It's my third presentation today, so it's like my day job. So, all right, research methodology. We'll start off with the boring stuff first and we'll get into the fun stuff. So, boring stuff in a sense more of the technical side of it. First off with survey research. What makes a good survey research? Let's start with that. And first is understanding like what makes great survey research when George Gallup kind of started this way back in the day is that making sure you have the right composition of your audience, right? And so with your audience you want to make sure it's reflective of them. So, again, am I just getting any person
026that's coming up or do I have the right mixture of those folks in there? So, for example, the goal of this one was test the feasibility of a bond. Well, as I checked, when a bond goes, it goes and gets put in front of voters. So, first off, who's our target audience? Well, you can pick a few, but this one the best one for that is a likely voters, people that are likely to turn out for an election, especially if it's looking potentially in 2026. We're going to want to pick something in a midterm year because not everybody shows up in a mid-term. They'll show up in a presidential, just not in a mid-term. And so, anyway, so we made sure likely voters, we had 408 likely voters from across Scottsdale, and we were in
027the field March 16th through 20th. So, that's the time where we snapped those opinions. Um and we did it with a a mixed mode approach with a bit of opt-in online panel and text online, so phone-based and online. And the main thing is though is making sure your sample demographics, which I show up here, were accurately you know, we have the right mixture that reflects that likely voting electorate based on some key demographic criteria such as like educational attainment, which you notice like for example here in Scottsdale, the likely voters are very much more educated than probably other cities compared to some other ones like where only 35% have no college degree. I mean, 65% have a college degree, it's pretty impressive. And also look at age. Age-wise, which again, 18-29's a decent group, but
028again, you see the biggest bulk of it 65 and older is 31%. Your next biggest group is 45 to 64 is another 29. So, right there you got six out of 10 of your voters right there. And then party affiliation is well because and again, as I go through some of this stuff because we're talking about bond feasibility, I'll talk a little bit about Republicans, Democrats, Independents, but know that again, there's just different teams, different groups that are out there. Again, I'm not advocating or going against any of them. And the final thing about this is the data, it's how do we come up with those numbers? Well, it's through a mixture of the voter file with the Arizona Secretary of State site, but also a census data to get things such as like educational
029attainment, which the voter file or Secretary of State does not have, but we're able to get it through that. Anyways, making sure it's the right mixture, but if you were to look at the likely electorate, I would say this lines up pretty darn well to it. All right. Ready for the fun stuff? Let's go. All right, so First off, what do they all you know, and by the way, when you see these slides in the bottom middle, you'll see some light gray text. Some of the stuff might be paraphrased up there, but we actually put the exact question verbage that we're citing the data from. So, if you're curious about what that says, so for example, on overall, do you think the city do you think the Scottsdale Unified School District is headed in the
030right direction or the wrong direction? I want to see how you how you all are doing over there. Interesting is that uh when we look at, you know, here's the total top line up top and I break out these subgroups right there, parents and non-parents. And this is one of the takeaways from this is that it's not a polarized electorate, it's a segmented one. And those closest to the district are supportive. And you can see that with the parents right there. But those further away are not opposed, they just are a bit more disengaged, as you can see, because in the gray, gray symbolizes that they're not sure, cuz you either have a positive opinion, negative opinion, or you kind of don't have an opinion, right? And so, you see that with a higher rate
031there. And so, for example, among registered independent voters, independents follow that same pattern, 23% right direction, 28% wrong direction, 50% of them are not sure. Again, a little less engaged. And so, the strategic implication of this is that the district does not have a perception problem, it has a relevance problem with some of the non-parents and lower engagement voters. But again, if you think about it, it makes sense, because again, it's maybe not directly impacting them compared to someone that has kids going to school or etc. that are closer proximity to the district. All right. Moving on down. And so, property values So, there's different things that we tested throughout here. So, one is like, "Hey, overall, what's their sentiment of the district? Where do they think it's going?" But then also, we get into
032messaging, we do some ballot testing. We actually did three ballot tests throughout as we injected more information, and I'll get into that later. But first off is one of One of that in in messaging talking specifically about um you know that hey if there's a school bond there is going to be what some financial impact, right? Uh there's going to be an increase uh uh you know there's increased tax but also there what are some of the benefits for it is that the most powerful finding in the survey was that there's near universal agreement with the statement strong public schools help protect and increase property values in Scottsdale. So the top line of that when respondents these likely voters in Scottsdale heard that 93% agreed with that with only 4% disagreement. I do a lot
033of message testing that's about as high as you can get. I have yet to see a message at 100% to be honest. And so there's even bipartisan agreement which is incredibly awesome because in this polarized environment you really can't get them all to agree on anything these days. But you can you see agreements among Republicans, Democrats, and independents which is rare and it had over 90% agreement among parents and non-parents. So this reframes the the bond I think from a uh a school issue into a community investment. And so that strategic implication here is that you know parents understand the educational case but property values is how the district makes that case to everyone else. People that are less engaged with the district. So moving on is that uh cost don't break support but defines
034the persuasion battle. So this is when we start injecting in some other stuff like questions like if a school bond required the typical Scottsdale homeowner to pay approximately roughly $17 more per month in property taxes, would you support or oppose it? And you notice so okay so before overall pretty positive but again you still have a majority that are on board. So the the support still holds even once you still injecting like oh yeah by the way you're going to pay a little bit more. 60% support, 30% oppose. So six in 10 support which is pretty good place to be in. Um but that coalition kind of shifts. Is now parents are at 84% support of the idea of a bond, whereas uh non-parents, you still have a plurality, not a majority, a plurality, 48%
035support with 39% in opposition. Uh but Democrats are very much on board, eight in 10 or 82% support. Independents, those folks in the middle, 43 support, 41 oppose. And those 65 and older, plurality support at 48% with 38% opposition. So, this is a strong result, but it introduces a clear line of tension. Is that support remains intact, but becomes more conditional among non-parents, independents, and older voters. So, the strategic implication of this is that cost is not a barrier to passage, but it is where the campaign will be won or lost. Uh and messaging must consistently demonstrate value, necessity, and fiscal discipline. And I'll get more into that as well. Like, what does that look like? >> [sighs] >> Uh so, first off is like funding priorities, right? So, support is broad, but it it
036strengthens the more voters are educated about like what the bond does. So, the bond performed strongly in both abstract and detailed testing. So, I realized I probably could have added that slide, but they told me keep it short, so uh so, I'll verbally tell you. So, note that it didn't show, at least on the slides, we didn't show uh uh slides due to time, but we tested the concept uh the concept of, you know, Scottsdale Unified School District uh school bond at the beginning, and then giving them a little bit of information about the bond, what it actually funds, but no cost were tested yet. And both those initial concept, it was 70% approval of Scottsdale voters, likely voters, but then 73% after some details were given. So, in both instances, both were very popular
037when talking about the concept and the idea. And so, the strongest funding priorities though are clear. So, of the different aspects of it, which ones are maybe resonate better? Uh where do they think the bigger pain points are? Like so when asking these funding priorities to the voters like do they think if it was they indicated and blew up there in the chart, they said it was too much funding. If it was green, it was about right. And then yellow was that's a hey, there's not enough funding there. We got to get more dollars in there. Of course, gray is not sure. They didn't have an opinion. And so the strongest funding priorities were clear when we asked voters, it was that uh school safety. Uh school at 33% said there's not enough funding. That's
038a big one. But then classroom technology was right up there at 34%. And additionally asked a separate question just on modernizing uh facilities separate from um this question. And 97% said uh modernizing maintaining facilities is important. So Dennis was talking about just before like hey, the the bones of this may not sound super great. Well, like it's important and also the voters see it as important as well. So the strategic implication is that the district should lean into the specifics. And the strongest case is kind of built around safety, technology, modern facilities. Cuz again, you have all these things here. Can you really talk about all those things at once? Usually you only have a limited amount of time. So if you're going to have to pick, you know, areas of focus on, those would
039be uh the ones that would resonate the most. All right. The the one you've all been waiting for. Uh so now as we take them through the cuz again, survey research or at least how we conduct it, it's kind of like game theory, right? So when you go through, you start off very broad, but as you inject information, but you kind of wait till the very end of what you're actually getting at, which I think is, you know, the bond, right? And feasibility. And again, what should the bond look like? Should this be a 5-year bond? Should this be a 10-year bond? What should the amount be? Should we do a lower amount, higher amount? If we do the higher amount, like if we do the lower amount, is it incredible support and then just
040support drops off a cliff once you go up to the higher amount, is there sticker shock, etc. But anyways, we'll be able to test that stuff out ahead of time so you can guess or you can know. So, when looking at the funding levels is that first is 350 million was the first one tested which 67% said yes. If it the sticker price was 350 million, yes, I'm on board with only 22% no. So, it's kind of a slam dunk on that one. But then saying, "Hey, the 475 million which could do a lot with that is that 54% said yes. So, you did have some drop in support but not off the cliff as one might expect. So, 54% yes, 30% no, 16% were undecided. And the higher amount is is clearly softer but
041it remains viable. And critically, when you're looking at that higher amount, parents were at 76% yes. So, much higher than the baseline. And Democrats were at 72% but even Republicans who are typically more fiscally prudent compared to some of the other demographic groups out there is that even 54% a majority of them were in favor as well. So, the presence of that 16% undecided at the 475 million is important because these voters are not locked into opposition and they represent a persuadable universe. And that strategic implication is like roughly 350 million is the safe option but 475 million is definitely not out of reach and with a disciplined you know, campaign or messaging how it's packaged and again, I know you guys don't do all that other you know, other powers that be may do
042that and the district has a credible path to securing funding closer to its full need without it. And also, I I got to mention that I have time to put in here. We also tested another part of the survey where we tested about some of the school closures, right? That was that made some news etc. So, we went in there. One, we found out two things. One is awareness was high. Likely voters in Scottsdale were aware of the schools closures. Like it's you know, people are aware of it. What was interesting when testing of the reason of why they were closed saying, "Hey, like we you know, cuz of cost etc. like not really being used. Again, it's just more efficient. Basically what the district's been talking about. We saw that a lot of voters
043were saying, "Yeah, that makes sense." So, I guess one of the questions was like, "Hey, should that be a big concern or keeping you up at night?" Not really, basically. Was one of the takeaways from that. And then finally here, uh key takeaways, and then of course I'll answer any questions, which I'm sure you have some, is that all right. So, with the data Basically when going through this is that there the data presents a clear path forward from all the different aspects, not just asking like, "Hey, just the bond question." Again, the question is, what are the parts that are the you know, the people really care about? Is it viable? And also, uh you know, how are you going to get there? And what do people want to know in here? And so,
044a bond is absolutely feasible. And so, the support is strong at every stage of testing, and closures are not a liability, the school closure part that I verbally referenced. And the district's core coalition is highly supportive. Uh and the key strategic uh dynamic is expansion. So, parents and uh Democrats provide a strong base, but non-parents, independents, and older voters require a little bit of more reassurance or in relevance of why it it applies to them. And again, kind of going back to that uh property values. Like, "Hey, this is good for your property values. So, you may not have a dog in the fight, but you actually kind of do." And so, the recommended approach is kind of uh at least from the research is that I would say like the one it's almost too
045easy, frankly, at that lower amount. I mean, frankly, I think the the I would the research suggests on my end is that I'd recommend probably more of the 5-year bond uh for the timing. So, 10-year or 5-year, 5-year was uh seen as a bit more viable. Um plus 10-year, it's hard to probably gauge out what things are going to look like in 10 years. So, I'd strongly consider pursuing though a funding level near the upper range of 475 million. I think it's very palatable. And also anchor the messaging and safety, classroom technology, modern facilities, and property values. And, you know, the position the board as a responsible, time-limited investment. So, leverage parents as validators validators and mobilizers. And with the right message and campaign structures, Scottsdale Unified School District is well positioned not only pass
046a bond, but to secure the level of funding it is seeking in the future of your students. Anyways, most important slide here. That one. Thank you. Thank you, Mike. What was the raw number of surveys? Oh, of respondents? It was 408. >> Thank you. And likely voters. And to think about this, the you have the overall general population, right? 18 plus. But again, we're talking about a bond, so voting. Then you stamp that down, registered voters, gets about this big. Now we're talking about likely voters, it's about that big. So, again, um it's a more targeted group. I've seen folks where they've done it with registered, but frankly, if you're trying to make strategic decisions, you want to go with directly with the decision makers. And if you did, let's say any of those universes
047outside of that, I think you could be going off some bad numbers, basically. Members of the board? Um you've done this before with different districts in Arizona. Yeah. >> Correct? Yeah, yeah. So, the two slides before the the support comparison, the numbers that you see, Mhm. how does that square with research you've done in the past and then seeing the outcomes? How I guess today's wording, you know, what would you put the Cal-She contract at for a passing for this? It's Cal-She. It's funny, I'm doing like a like a 10-minute interview tomorrow on predictive markets. It's funny. Um anyways, Cal-She. You can't get out of a room with people asking me about it. I was kidding. >> Talking like 91 cent contracts? >> Yeah, yeah. 60 cent contracts? I don't partic- partake in those things.
048Um but when it comes to where the numbers are, I think you're compared to other districts I've been from my experience, I think you all are in a very good position. Again, we kind of tested two levels. Like it was really cuz again, you could test like seven different levels, but then you're just giving way too many options of folks and it's like, "Hey, if there's a $30 million difference, it's hard to really take it away." So really you want to take usually your your your your your your floor and kind of your ceiling. So like, "Hey, what's kind of like what we need? Like or or like basic to get by or like what do we want, right? Like an ideal world." And of course, in there and so like I think anywhere in
049that 400 million range, I think you're in a good spot, frankly. Um, and what I've seen in the past with folks that the same type of numbers, you're good. The one part that I can't predict is again, how the folks will end up going out there cuz let's say you put it on there, there's usually some groups that will go over that and and back that, you know, support. You know, I can't ensuring if they can stick on the messaging, I think they'll be just fine, but if they go, you know, off kilter and other things like I can't control that aspect. But based on the numbers I see is that I think you guys are in a good spot and that my clients have had great success with it. And I know all politics
050are local, but if I recall this past November, just looking around Maricopa, Bonds did pretty well. more passed than did. Not by a huge margin, but in general more. Um, is that trending in that direction? Like what are you seeing as far as the last few >> return back. People want to invest in education right now before they weren't doing as well on the bond ballots, but also I think part of it too is just, you know, messaging it correctly. Like for me, for my perspective, I think one of the core messages go with like, "Hey, an investment in the schools is an investment for for homeowners and for Scottsdale." Like I think that's a huge message uh, to put in especially those folks that don't have a a dog in the fight. Um, so
051yeah, I think the the the trend is is turning especially with AI etc. I think people are really starting to notice the need for interactive education with real humans. So, thanks for that, too. Ms. Warner. Thank you. Hi, Mr. Narbo. Hi, Ms. Warner. >> being. >> [laughter] >> Pleasure. Um could you send us the actual questions you did? I just looked through my emails, I didn't see them. I'd appreciate that. Thank you. Yeah, no, we we have all that, just cuz of time, I didn't I get it. >> There's ton more, and and if you ever want, happy to walk you through all that, but um yeah, happy to show all that stuff, but it wasn't anything um Let's just say the result, like we weren't gauging, cuz when you do these things, you have
052to shoot it down the middle. Like, you can't sit there and like, oh, I'm trying to get to this result, because that's how bad things happen, uh especially when you're making big decisions that impact a lot of families and students. So, anyways, yeah, happy to share all that, and you can um dissect it all you like. Thank you. Happy to do. Thank you. Ms. Carney. Thank you for that. I just have a question. Have you ever done this for Scottsdale Unified before? No, because it's well, 10 years since bond, and I've been doing this professionally for two decades, so I don't think they'd hire a 30-year-old. >> [laughter] >> So, but now I got enough gray hair and receding hairline that, you know, I think I I think I qualify. But no, we've done work
053As I said, a lot of our school had done ton in the education space, anywhere from Arizona Department of Education, did about half a million dollars of research with them. Did a ton of stuff with the Board of Regents. I've worked with ASU, UofA. And like, Board of Regents, by the way, with the research, all the universities have to sign off. They're all like tier one research institutes, so I'll feel nervous, but you know, it worked out. And but yeah, so I've done a lot in the space in and around education, public policy, and and also we're non-partisan, too. So, >> [snorts] >> we don't we don't bat for any of those other teams. Okay, great. Um I just have a question for Dr. Manzo on then on why we saw a need to uh
054spend We know we spent 16,000 on this. Um the PO is 24,000. Are we looking to spend more? and why did you feel this was a good use of funds? So, in my past experience before you're going to ask the voters to make a significant investment, it's important to understand what voter sentiment is. Before you bring something before the governing board, you want to be able to provide exactly what Mr. Noble did tonight in terms of the the feasibility of even proceeding. There are certain environments where you don't get over a 50% threshold and so you could pursue the the the bond proposal, but without a likelihood of success you spend a lot of time and energy. I think thought it was really important for the governing board to have data with respect to not
055only the need which Dennis will talk about later, but also the feasibility of of the ask. And so for something that's that's between 350 and 475 million, 16,000 to 24,000 seemed like a reasonable expense to get that information. And may I interject Ms. Carney is that Should have been 24,000 but Mr. Menzel apparently is a shrewd negotiator and anyways got a quite a good deal on it. So anyways Money back to the taxpayers. Yeah, two two quick questions. One as you described sort of um kind of how parents respond is a important cut of the data. When you say parents, do you mean about 45% of our families with school-age children don't attend SUSD schools, they attend other schools. So when you say parents are you talking about SUSD parents They're all parents. >> All
056parents. All parents. So anyone with children under 18 residing at home is what we Irrespective of the school they got to. So I think that's a very helpful fact. Yeah, we we didn't have I mean probably could have in hindsight asked if if they were district parents or not, but it was just anyone 18 or under children. So whether they're going private, charter, etc. So I think that's a helpful fact. >> Yeah. Um Or a positive fact. And then the second question, when you think about the funnel of sort of all residents and then registered and then likely Yeah. you know, um as a New Yorker who's come to vote by mail here and it's like five pages and you get to the end is there any um research on kind of the difference in
057profile of people who vote on bond questions specifically within the overall ballot? In other words, is there a lot of drop-off from the top of the ballot to those final questions and is there a particular swing in profile of who actually votes? >> Yeah, there's there's some drop-off like let's be honest like this year the the big ticket since we don't have president on the ballot also we don't have we had five US Senate elections in a row which you know they spend hundreds of millions of dollars on those things and so we don't have any US Senate elections either so the highest profile one is governor. You do see some drop-off when you get to the bond question but there again they're typically more like the seasonal voters that typically don't come out and
058that's why for example when we go and ask about these questions we want to make sure we talk to people that we're like we're like with 90% certainty that they're going to come out and vote and especially like in a midterm year which is what we you know look for is that we want to make sure not only based on their vote history but also them self verifying that so kind of a double verification process make sure they get in there and so demographically again it's more fly-by-night cuz you just have inflow and outflow of different demographics like they'll change from each election to next so from my experience is that you know, you'll see some drop-off but not a ton. I mean a lot will get down to the bond. That's why again when
059you ask like you don't do registered voters or you do folks that are kind of might be showing up etc. Like we're basically testing folks like we're like pretty positive no matter what happens they're voting either way so and again with that they're a pretty consistent group. Thank you. I don't need this tonight but if you might be able to get to the governing board, maybe Dennis or Dr. Menzel, the history of our past bond elections proportionate win. If you have it on the tip of your tongue, great, but if not, I don't have it on the tip of my tongue, but I do have it in a file in my computer, so we'll get that sent out. Send that out to us. Thank you. Any other questions, comments from the board? Thank you, Mr.
060Noble. Thank you, Dennis. Anything you want to add as you are bringing it us to closure? Ha, ha, there's more. You you think there's closure. Thank you. Thank you. Kids take care of it. Yes. So, we will now move on to Randy and Megan. >> Yeah. Um, to the you got your questions um, for um, Mike, and now we'll move on to the tax implications of passing a bond. And and while they come up, just want to point out that Randy is an Arcadia alum and Megan has a student at Hopi and and Randy also went to Hopi. So, they have Scottsdale connections. So, we have a dog in the fight. Good evening, President Lewis. Vice President Oh. Good evening, President Lewis, Vice President Ms. Sharkey, members of the board, Dr. Menzel. I'm Megan Burke.
061Randy Stein. Thank you for having us here this evening. We have the pleasure of um, going over tax implications and kind of summarizing what Noble Predictive just presented to you and kind of the cost of doing that and I'm short over here, so hopefully you can see me. How do I move it? >> All right, this is the history of the district's tax rates. This is broken down uh for the last 10 years. Total tax rate, the primary tax rate is that the golden or orange bar. That is your M&O tax rate. Then you have the the next three colors, your maroon, gray, and blue. Those are made up the blue is the bonds. The maroon and gray are your DAA and your M&O overrides. There are a couple years in there where you see
062DSEG and that's flip-flopped from year to year. Sometimes it's in the primary, sometimes it's in the secondary. So we've kind of highlighted the last couple years the DSEG is fallen into the secondary category. To note a couple things here, the last time there was a bond election was in 2016. So the first time that bond, that $229 million we we sold it in phases, but the first time that $220 million bond hit the tax rate would have been in that 16-17 fiscal year. So you see that in the blue section there. Kind of stayed in that 40 to 50 cent range over time. The last bond sale under the 2016 bond election was in the in 2021. So in that fiscal 2021 bar. So you'll see kind of there's been a decline in your bond
063tax rate over time because at that point in time all bonds were sold under the former bond authorization. The other thing I think just to note is there your your total tax rate kind of stayed constant from 22 to 23 with the increase even with the increase in your DAA. So you went out that in in November of 2022 kind of with your increase in your DAA right there. So, that kind of stayed constant. Dr. Lewis, you may you asked a question and down below, this is your successful passage rate. So, we can get you the history as well on other elections that were unsuccessful, but here is the successful history of all of your MNO override, DAA override, and bond elections. This is just a quick snapshot of the district's debt currently outstanding. Roughly
064about $30 million annually. Blue bars are your principal repayment. The maroon is your interest component. Existing debt, all the debt that was sold previous to the 2016 election and then the 2016 authorization, all that debt is paid off by fiscal 2036 2037. All right, Brandy's also going to jump in here with me, but what we did based on conversations with both Shannon and Dr. Menzel is to try to summarize some scenarios for you based on the research that Noble Predictive did. So, we ran the first scenario is at $375 million. The second scenario is at $395 million and the third scenario is at $475 million. And this is a summary of the tax implications of each of those bond programs. Each of those scenarios were for a 5-year period. So, sales in 2027, 2029, and
0652031 as as previously as mentioned in the previous presentation. What you see over on the right, the expected tax rate of bonds outstanding, that's the expected tax rate of your debt that is currently outstanding based on an assumed assessed valuation growth. So, with no additional bond program, that is what we would estimate your tax rate for bonds, not your total tax rate, but your tax rate for bonds to be over the next 11 years. Then scenario one, scenario two, and scenario three kind of lay out what the tax implications would be under a 375 million, 395 million, 375 million. So, with the additional, for instance, with the additional 375 million, if scenario one was kind of the the presumed or assumed number to go out for, your tax implication in 2027, 2028 would be an
066additional 12 cents. The bottom number below is an average tax rate, so that's an average increase of what the cost of the bond program is. 395 average tax is 27 cents, and 475 is 33 cents. Brandy, have I missed anything that you think I should point out here? No, I think we're I think we're good. Okay. So, those numbers that we saw on the bottom of the previous page, the average tax rate is a key number because that is carried through in the voter pamphlet. That's not the tax rate each year, it is the average for each of those new programs. Here, you're looking at the information for the 375 million dollar program on the left-hand side. This is just to identify the tax impact in that top bar. You see the impact on a
067100,000 dollar home, as well as the average value home in the district. These are for tax purposes, not the what you think you can sell it for price, but how the assessor values these properties to identify using that average tax rate what the annual impact is. So, for the average home in the district, the annual impact is approximately $157, $13.10 per month. Similar for the commercial property, and then also for the agricultural or vacant property. All right. There's There you go. And so, this is we we've got this example. It's the exact same example for each of the scenarios. Here you have it for the $395 million scenario. The average tax rate being the 27 cents carried through the exact same table for the $100,000 house, $27 per year, and for the average value house
068in the district, that $165 per year, $13.81 per month. And then finally for the $475 million scenario, you see the average tax rate of that 33 cents at the top and carried through to on that table. I want to also take a minute and discuss the unique real estate circumstances that most of the state is facing. Um This is for fiscal 26. You saw the average value home at about $607,000 for fiscal 27. I'm showing you fiscal 26 here. Uh it was approximately $570,000 for tax purposes. What we've done is we have found three actual houses in the district that are valued by the assessor at approximately that average level. For each of those properties, we're then identifying the assessor full cash value, which in assessor world they consider to be akin to market value,
069but it is commonly known to be about 85% of market value, give or take various parts of the state, various years. And then I've got a very scientific method. I probably learned it at our Katy High School. Um Zillow. But what I'm attempting to show you here, Zillow is a stand-in for market value. This is not always the case, but what I'm attempting to show you here is that the value for tax purposes right now because of the conditions of real estate and what's been happening in the real estate market literally for 10 years, there is a huge gap between the market value of property in most parts of the state and the value for um that is used for tax purposes. Um seemingly somewhat important to convey so people can properly analyze the impact
070of a proposed bond program. Which one? Uh just a quick look for you just at the election cycle. Uh we're sort of getting into the period of the year where school districts that are planning to do elections in November are doing the exact same thing you are contemplating and ultimately uh will or won't make the decision to call for an election. Uh Of course this won't surprise you. Of course, the statutes are a little bit confusing on this point. The whole thing works um a lot more smoothly if the district calls for the election by mid-May, there is a later drop-dead time, but it does make the provision of the public notices a lot more cumbersome and confusing. Um so typically school districts are in the April-May time framing time frame making that consideration. Once
071the resolution has been adopted by the governing board, part of that resolution is to uh uh transmit authority to your district administration to work with the county elections department, to work with bond council, and to work with us to complete the information that is needed for the voter information pamphlet. As you're well aware, despite the fact that election day is November 3rd this year, it is 35 days before November 3rd that voter information pamphlets are mailed out, and it is just a very short week later that the mail-in ballots are mailed out. So, the whole thing is really happening um by late September or early October. Uh I think that's what we've got for you. We're certainly happy to answer any questions. Our Stifel team and we have a nice disclosure. Mr. Sharkey. Thank you
072for this. Appreciate the detail. Um in trying to anticipate a message to a homeowner, um it the numbers of it'll be an extra, you know, $16 a month, you know, on your um or whatever, you know, depending. Given the 2016 bond, is there a drop-off? Is there amount of money that will no longer show up on your bill because it's ending? Yeah. So, to answer your question, yes. Um so, back here on this chart um the 2016 bond, if there was no future bond issued, the 2016 bond would pay off by 2037. So, that is this green box here. >> nothing is if if we do nothing today with the new bond next year nothing changes for me not until 2037 will I see a change because of the previous bond. >> Right. You'll see
073a slight decline. Do you see the the cents here? You'll see a slight decline each and every year. The other reason that's also happening now is your we're assuming assessed valuation growth because you've had continued assessed valuation growth. So, as that assessed value growth occurs and your debt uh let me go back. Your debt slightly declines each and every year, you would see a slight decline in your uh current bond tax rate until it would pay off and the final maturity of all of those bonds is in 2037. >> it's a 20-year pay off on this 2016 bond. What what statute says is when you issue a bond um and here we've contemplated you see we've we've assumed scenarios in '27, '29, and '31. Each one of those series of bonds cannot be under statute
074more than 20 years. So, the repayment of the debt would be anywhere between 15 and 20 years of each of the of those bonds. >> Correct. So, that's part of the messaging too. If you vote yes on this bond if it happens, you're saying you're going to pay whatever the number of $13 a month for the next 15-20 years. Correct. Okay. Thank you. I'm not sure if you're the right folks to direct this question to, but can you speak to the investor side of bond issuances? We heard kind of how voters are thinking about it on the supply side, but what is the demand side now for school district bonds? >> Um, it's very heavy. We've sold several bond issues in the last month. Um, several bond issues that have been in over a hundred
075million for schools. And we have had um six times level of subscriptions, meaning there was six hundred million dollars of orders put in for a hundred million dollars in bonds. These are big bond funds um that are buying these, so the demand is very is very there. The the interest rates are very attractive to bond investors, so there's high demand on that side of things. There's a lot of money going into um into the muni market, so bond inflows given kind of the, you know, um fluctuation in the stock market, the equity markets. There's been a lot of money that's been by bond investors put into the muni market, so there's that's one of the reasons, also. Thank you. Other questions or comments? Thank you, Randy. Thank you, Meg. >> Thank you. So, they've covered
076a little bit of history, but I wanted to share for those that have never seen a bond pamphlet um what we did in 2016. The bond is um specific enough to identify the different places that you will spend money. Um, and so we will um on our May 12th meeting have the new uh pamphlet uh uh wording uh for you to review. Um couple things to point out is security was identified back then and it'll be identified this next go round. Um technology and security, um as you'll see in a few slides, very much are hand in hand. Without one, you cannot have the other. Um security rides on the network, uh requires all of the things that our uh information technology department has to offer. So, um we may choose to uh put that
077question together or or that verbage together so that the security and information technology is all one amount. Um you'll see that there was a an amount set aside for transportation. And most importantly for me uh on this next election is this last line uh for administrative capital improvements. We have not done any administrative capital improvements of any significance for the 10 years that I've been here. It is not in my known knowledge um ever been on a bond ballot. And so, that is something that I want to talk to you about in a later slide about the dollars that I think we need to tie to. Now, uh I came up to the podium for a quick minute a couple months back and we talked about Choya and Apache and the abysmal shape that they're
078in. Um I would prefer that I don't leave a legacy of buildings that are not worthy of human occupancy. And so, um I would like to have a number, um, in that administrative capital improvement. Um, we do not intend on any extra square footage or building a Taj Mahal. Uh, we simply want to take care of the buildings that we have. >> [clears throat] >> This is the, um, trifold that was created by our communications department last time around. This time we will not have a capital override, but it gave a breakdown, uh, to help better understand in a very handy way, um, how much the bond was going to cost and how it was laid out, uh, which we'll be able to do that again for this next one. And then, uh, very nicely
079done, they were able to identify all the different kinds of projects at every school. So, someone had a reference that, "Hey, my school's getting security upgrades." Or, "My school's getting, um, uh, PE uh, enhancements or something like that." So, um, this this particular document, I used it all the time. As we were progressing through from 2017 when I took over, um, till now, I've shown this document again and again and again, and everyone seems to have a pretty nice appreciation for it because it is pretty self-explanatory. So, as Dr. Menzel mentioned, um, in August, um, Dr. Dansky was my first victim at Arcadia High School for our, uh, capital planning meeting. Um, unfortunately, it didn't, um, go well, was not well attended. So, we did a redo, um, and at that point it was much,
080much, uh, better attended, uh, with a lot of great input from that staff. 59 meetings. Each campus was afforded an opportunity to have two meetings. Uh, one for the staff, one for parents. Um, the parent meetings were hot and cold. Some of them had just a couple of parents, others had 40 or 50 parents. So, it really just, um, depended on the campus, depended on the parent involvement. Most of the time we did them around 6:00 p.m. So, try getting past dinner time and allow people to come, but in, you know, today's day and age of soccer and piano and dance and everything else, um, I can understand where parents get busy. So, um, the following slides are just three examples, a high school slide, a middle school slide, and an elementary school slide of
081what we did with menti.com. And, um, I took this information and you you all got an email earlier in the week and I took all of this information from mentimeter, dropped it into chat GPT, they turned it into a an executive summary for me, and it is absolutely uncanny. And I'm going to share each one of those executive summaries with the, uh, principal and for them to share with their uh, community and their staff. Uh, but the things that are said in this document ended up in that executive summary, and now we've been working to build the bond, um, so that it's reflective of all of that work and all of that input. So, this was Desert Mountain High School, uh, plumbing and air conditioning, no big surprise. Um, bathrooms are are uh, mentioned a
082lot, security. Um the the front side of Desert Mountain, if you're familiar with Desert Mountain, there's really no outside perimeter fencing. Uh there's side doors on the east and the west that have no security fencing on them. Um so that was a big concern for that staff. Uh Mojave Middle School um cafeteria I'm not exactly sure what's wrong with that cafeteria, but we're going to find out. And because it's a it's a great cafeteria. Um and it was partly um probably because they um did not rebuild that building. That's not a 2012 construction. That's an older building. And um so there's some work to be done in the kitchen. And we'll talk a little bit about our facility condition assessment that uh manages through all the cafeteria kitchen uh work. Um technology, raining in the
083office, small roof leak, but obviously it irritated that person enough to put it on there. Uh the gym floor, we actually just recently redid the gym floor. We recently redid the air conditioning on the gym, uh painted the gym. And so that gym is now in really good shape. Uh but the locker rooms and some of the other areas around that building uh still need some work. Sequoia Elementary School, and I know um that um in your executive summaries that you got, you did not get a a Sequoia uh mostly because chat G B T started changing the format on me. I went to the bathroom, came back, put the information in, and poof, it's all different. So I just skipped that, and I'll I'll get that to you guys. And and the school, of
084course. Um shaded parking is always popular. Although they have shaded parking, so we'll have to figure out how we can make more parking. And some of these things that that landed on here, I have to go through with a fine-tooth comb to better understand what it is that they're asking. But that campus had a $2 million parking lot project done where we had a traffic engineer come in, rework the parking lot, build the back parking lot. And so it is light-years better than it used to be. But when you have 400, 500 parents showing up to pick up their kids, that's going to create a traffic jam any way you look at it. So, pardon me, my allergies have been just absolutely nuts lately and I just can't seem to break this cycle. Questions on
085that? First, thank you for your work. I've had the chance to visit a number of schools in the DM community and one of the questions I asked during the tour is, you know, talk about the physical plant, your needs, and they all sing your praises and appreciate the way that you've engaged them and and how it's reflected. Um you know, I cut the data around how we'd use the bond money in a few ways and the one way that I didn't do it, which was sort of a dumb moment, is aligned to the polling around what voters are most comfortable with, right? Which we talked about earlier. And it strikes me when I look at the uses, some kind of line up, security obviously does. Um it didn't strike me that a lot of what's
086discussed here is technology. And a lot of what's discussed here isn't necessarily instructional or at least not in the most kind of direct sense of the term. That isn't to say it's not not needed and not the right things to do, but I'm curious, how do you think about going back to the slide on the pamphlet and the color-coded, you know, here's what we're doing in all of your schools, how do you think about these uses versus what, you know, a voter uh prioritizes in terms of physical plant. In other words, you know, selling toilets and uh shaded parking. So, um that is why, and you'll see that a little bit later on, um we don't just do the physical plant stuff because that's not exciting to anybody. Um there's no one that's going to
087sing my praises because I replaced the toilet. I bet a lot of people Maybe maybe John Andrews up there at at Desert Mountain. But generally speaking, the stuff that we do is not that exciting. Now, if they didn't have air conditioning in August and we had a rental unit and we finally got it working, well, they might be pretty excited about it. But depending on when we're asking, they might be less excited about it. So, you're going to see the way I've laid out my um my Excel spreadsheet, what I think is absolutely necessary and then the things that people want for their buildings. And that is all based on the information that we got by doing all of these meetings. And it sounds like part of kind of the art along with the science
088is those sort of core infrastructure asks, but also sprinkling into them other really valuable, useful things, but with an eye towards kind of their attractiveness to the voter. Is that the right way to think about it? >> Absolutely. Yeah. Thank you. >> Um we we want to make sure that every school is touched. We don't want to leave out any school, even the brand new schools, Pueblo will still need some things. It won't be nearly as much as, say, Redfield or Laguna. Um, but we want to make sure that everyone can recognize, "Hey, that's my school and this is the work that they're going to do at my school. I need to get up and and go fill up my ballot." And then, the question that I guess is the elephant in the room is
089we're in a phase two and as part of phase two, there's uncertainty around kind of which buildings are going to be used in which ways and at what level of capacity and so on. So, how do you how do you think that through? You know, I presume it would be embarrassing to put forward requests associated with schools that then end up being closed or or repurposed away from active use? Well, thank you for bringing that up. That's a great question. Um, and we are all painfully aware of trying to ask for a bond trying to identify the projects that are necessary and knowing that we may or may not um, close, repurpose, do something else with that building. Um, I think if you go back to and if I may divert for just a second,
090um, when I took over the bond in 2017, um, the bond oversight committee was absolutely adamant that we show every ounce of work that we did. Every project, every PO, every invoice, everything. And that is currently housed in our smart sheet document. Um, still available to the public for them to go look. We are we are working on closing it out, getting all the dollars accounted for. Um but it's super important as we go in that direction because the timing really is imperfect. We're going to ask for uh the opportunity to go for a bond but we're also going to be talking about possibly closing another school or two or three or whatever it is. So that phase two work in that discussion um is ongoing right now. Hand in glove. And it's it's just
091uh that's the difficult part. If you go into um that spreadsheet that smartsheet document um there's a lot of projects in red that are projects that were never on the original bond. And so we made sure we accounted for even the projects that weren't asked for. And so this case we would have to if we're asking for dollars uh for a school that ultimately gets repurposed um we would have to then account for those dollars in one way, shape, or form. I can tell you with every bit of confidence that we could ask for $700 million and and not have enough money to get it all done. So I want to I want to just address the the question a little differently. There is a cost for maintaining the district asset whether or not it's
092used as a school. So in envisioning a school that comes offline in 2027-28, you still need to take care of the roof. You still need to make sure that the the HVAC system is functional. What you don't do is you don't invest in the other things that are the nice-to-haves as though it were going to be occupied. And so there's there's a balance there. So knowing before voters cast their ballot in October or as close to that as possible which buildings will be coming offline allows us to provide assurance. And we we don't have any rebuilds proposed here. And then so I think that would be the the most obvious thing is if you rebuilt the school and then didn't use it, um that that would be the concern. But, you calibrate the amount of
093the investment based on the intended need. And so the primary investment will be in the schools that are going to be full and thriving. And then the additional potential investment is the minimum necessary to protect the taxpayer asset. And what we put in the case has flexibility, I guess is the short answer. >> Yes, that's that's where ended up, we would just reallocate dollars elsewhere. Mr. Sharkey. Um on the bathrooms, they come up a lot. We hear about it from SAB, um you know, rightfully so. In setting expectations, how much will money fix the bathroom issue versus it's a behavioral issue and we spend money and then next year they're, you know, vandalized again. I just want to understand it in not going to solve the problem today, but just from an investment standpoint, is
094this AO it'll fix a lot of the problems or is it more behavioral that money won't quite fix? Stop laughing. So, um behavior is a big part of it. I send pictures to cabinet all the time. I don't know if we shared with with the governing board at one point, our plumbers took 10 combination padlocks out of the sewer that we had to cut out a 6 by 4 section of concrete in the boys locker room to access those 10 locks. Um and so behavior's a big part of it. But, we've seen more failure in cast iron pipe in the last probably 3 years than I've seen in my 30 years in schools. Cast iron is failing at an alarming rate. Um, it could be the soil that it's planted in. How old are those
095cast iron? So, at um, Desert Mountain High School it's 30 years old. Okay. So, we're seeing um, cast iron um, failing at a pretty alarming rate at Desert Mountain High School. We have a location by J600 at Chaparral High School that's got a cast iron pipe that is um, corroded to the point. We have a cast iron pipe section about 20-ft section that we replaced at Tonalea for the fire main. So, it's not just sewer, it's not just uh, water supply, it's all different things. >> So, that So, the investment will help a lot of the foundational problems. It won't solve everything because of behavior, but it will definitely improve things. >> Absolutely. And and the um, the dollars that we spend in M&O fixing those, if we could just use the bond money to
096get it all fixed, then the expectation is we'd have 25-30 more years before we'd start messing with that again. Thanks. Okay. So, um, and and uh, Dr. Petinsky, I'll I'll address um, your question even a little bit more once we get to um, the spreadsheet for the bond. Um, next up, campus security. Um, campus security is probably um, more important now than I've ever um, experienced it. It seems like every other day there's something in the news about um, bad happenings on campus. And so, I'm going I'm going uh, Josh Friedman up to uh walk through his uh, uh campus security. Good evening and thanks for letting me come speak. Um the uh things that we're looking to upgrade first of all is our notification systems. Um this encompasses things uh that are not part
097of the emergency systems but used every day such as bells, paging, um the classroom audio enhancements that the uh teachers use to uh amplify their voice in the classrooms. Um but then it also brings into account the systems are all compatible now for wearable alerting um and the emergency management lockdown systems. Um and new things that we're going to bring in uh is visual emergency signage. So, for kids that are um hard of hearing or if we have uh loud rooms like cafeterias, gymnasiums, lights that go off currently, all we have is the audible alert. So, that's some of the stuff that we're looking at. Um and then our camera systems, um more than 50% of our cameras are past their life expectancy at more than 9 years old. Um typically you want to try
098technology moves so fast as quick as we put stuff in there, it's outdated, but our cameras especially um our cameras uh that we have today, more than 50% of them cannot even um use AI overlays as I'm sure many of you have heard about where AI can now help um you know, look at various things through cameras to help with investigations. Our cameras can't do it. We've tried because they are so low so old that they can't even take an overlay from an external source. Um so, that's one of the things that we uh want to upgrade with the cameras. Um and then the last big piece is access control. Um we would like to uh do things to allow for quicker response to emergency meaning we can lock doors right away. We can the
099system that we have has been in place for over 9 years and the company will not do any additional upgrades to the system. So we're looking to go One second. We're looking to add some new access control systems that will allow for automation with our a lot of our technology systems that we're not manually entering people as they get hired. It would automatically link with our active directory. And accountability for the doors and the users and which doors are left open and not left open and then the ability with one button to lock down the school immediately as opposed to having to use a key or do some other method. So those are the big things that we're looking to do with this bond. And Dennis There we go. So the security piece for this
100at the 15 elementary schools you can see the costs in there. Eight middle schools and the five high schools is roughly 51 million for the security piece of this. All of the security enhancements as was said before will not be possible without upgrading our information technology piece because everything that we do rides on our network and our systems and so with that I'll turn it over to you Miss Harrington. I do have a question though on the security piece. I don't know if you know answer this or if someone else can but are we doing anything to to help the schools that have mentioned to me when I'm touring them when they've got open glass windows at the classrooms. I think it's Pablo's one right there there a lot of glass. Are we doing anything
101with in the bond to protect better protect those classrooms or do anything different? Did that come up for any of the schools? Because I know when I tour it has. You'll see in a later slide that I've got window coverings in there and and we'll be doing some combination of different things to enhance our windows. Enhance or for security measure? Yes. Okay, thank you. Appreciate it. Good evening everyone. Uh we're talking a lot and Dr. Patinsky I heard you mention technology. This is not student devices. This is not this projector and screens. This is the network upgrades that run everything operationally, the teaching and learning, the safety and security. Every bullet point that Josh just took us through is reliant upon a network. Right now those cameras are not a reality in our system quite
102honestly because we don't have switches that have the PoE, the power, the data to be able to support those. So that is how we get to now this breakdown as it relates to the technology infrastructure that really powers performance in our district. Again, relating to teaching and learning, every classroom, every device, classroom audio amplification as you heard Josh mention, safety and security cameras, access control, those alerts and lockdowns. But even from an operation standpoint now all of our phones are on the internet, our HVAC systems are on the on the network as well. So it truly does touch every different aspect of our business enterprise as well as the education system. So the problem we must solve is that we also have a number of legacy systems that are end of life. Um many of
103them will be end of life in the coming um in the coming school year. So, those are items that will need to be addressed. Um we have wireless access points is probably one of the few things you could see in this room that would be um addressed as part of this bond, but wireless access system um points and then additionally switches, servers, these are things that typically um have a lifespan uh refresh cycle of 4 to 6 years. We stretch it to 8 to 9 in some cases. Uh we've had a server go 11 years. It is not ideal. Uh we had a server at Redfield die this year. Um not on a Saturday or a Sunday, not over winter break, um but on a school day. Uh thankfully, we actually did have another server
104in the warehouse that we could turn to because we've already been working to refresh some of these things. Um but typically, you don't just have servers sitting on a shelf. They're expensive and once you buy them, the warranty starts ticking away. So, having this sort of refresh cycle in place um will hopefully hopefully help prevent some of those um unfortunate last-minute um uh immediate needs. Also, uh there is an increased risk of um cybersecurity risks, malware, um virus attacks if we're dealing with some end of life um items that are on the network. So, those are the kinds of things that we want to address in this particular bond. Um what we've done recently in support of safety and security our phones now RingCentral being on the internet is um provide for LTE backups at
105all of our sites so that if internet was to go down, there would still be a backup for our phones. Also, we're already starting the refresh with um Ion UPSs so the battery backup should the power go out, but to be able to complete that work um would be reliant on a bond. And then the new Ion UPSs are really really really reliant on um reliable cooling. So, making sure that the IDS and the MDF said all of our sites have adequate cooling is going to be very important to extend the lifespan of all of this infrastructure. Um so, this really is about the core network infrastructure, the backbone that's making everything else work. I can click on this. Across the top, you see essentially an overview of what things cost. Um you had mentioned,
106you know, the potential you know, the potential for additional closures. Um but also, it depends on what use of sites like Oak look like moving forward. Um and so, when you see some of these prices, they could be rolled back depending on the use of the facility. So, if it wasn't a fully operational school, clearly we wouldn't need um the same level of investment. We'd be able to sort of do a little less. Um and make it stretch a little further without having the same volume of activity on the campus. On this particular link, oops, sorry. Uh this if I can get it. Oops, was somebody trying to help me? Oh, it's this one? Yeah. This one, right? Yeah. Okay. There we go. Um so, this nifty little link will show you, you know, a
107school cost breakdown, um which is the screenshot you saw on that slide. But then, what it looks like for a high school versus a K-8 versus an elementary. Um Desert Mountain is a is a special place all on its own. Um it's going to require a little more attention than some of these others. But if you scroll across, you'll be able to see what some of these other, um, district buildings um, also the needs as it relates to there. And these prices are based on, um, some of the work that we've recently have priced out. Um, you may recall as a consent agenda item earlier this year, we're working on what will be an e-rate project here for Mojave MDA to refresh at least part of, um, the network here. So, we were able to
108have some some pretty relevant numbers to be able to build this out further. And of course, you know, when the time comes to do this work, there's a lot of walks of the campus to make sure we're identifying the exact numbers, um, and the exact need as those continue to evolve. But what success looks like with this bond would be reliable Wi-Fi in every classroom. And also what we've heard from our sites is reliable Wi-Fi in the parking lot, on the playgrounds, the fields, in the gardens. Those gardens are essentially outdoor classrooms. And so, um, they're getting used a lot. Uh, we've received that feedback. Um, systems that support the safety, the learning, um, communication without interruption. Infrastructure that lasts that 5 to 7 years and a district that remains competitive and future-ready. Um, so
109this bond is about maintaining that invisible infrastructure that is oh so critical to keeping our students safe, our classrooms connected, and our district operating every day. If you'd like me to go into any additional detail or answer your questions now or at another time, I'm happy to do so. Mr. Sharkey. Uh, thank you for that. And thanks for the sheet with the details. So, down to the, you know, number of access points, switches, UPS, um, who did that? Was that us walking buildings? That a consultant? Like who did the actual counts to get the estimates? So, it started with us and our networking team. Um, uh, specifically they go out and, um, for the Mojave MDA, I did the walk with them. I was learning as we go. Uh, as time I was looking at
110those kinds of things as well. We've done it at Desert Canyon as well recently foreseen the need. Um, so for Desert Canyon Elementary and Middle School and then here at Mojave and the MDA we do the walk. We put together an initial quote, but then, um, get some information back from a potential vendor. Then depending on who gets, you know, the, um, the job essentially, they would come out and do additional walks. Sometimes we count too many, um, wireless, you know, um, hookups that are necessary because they're getting better. You don't need to have as many now. Um, and so those kinds of things, you know, sometimes you're going to see numbers go down, sometimes you might see them go up. But the biggest thing right now is the lack of PoE. I hear about
111PoE every day. Um, our cameras just demand a lot more wattage and we can't get those new cameras until we get, um, upgraded switches. So that's why you see a significant, um, a significant cost associated with upgrading the MDFs and the IDFs, uh, because it's the infrastructure as much as it is the switches. Also, our internet provider is making upgrades, so this will really enhance the bandwidth and the internet that's available to our users. Uh, so that will be hopefully noticeable too with our end users. Thank you. What's PoE? Um, okay, so the exact term is >> it's essentially the power and the the, um, data that goes toward powering the camera. So it's the electrical and it is the data, um, but what PoE actually stands for because I knew somebody would ask me
112is is is wait for it wait for it wait for it. Dr. Potensky's answering this. >> Power over Ethernet. You win. You Oh, did he say it? Yes, he did. He's whispering it. >> hear you. >> It's okay. He's still celebrating. >> there, too. And I was going to have a proud Yeah, well, you got it. Um, but yeah, so essentially it's the wattage that's necessary to drive all of these things. You might think you can plug in many more things and you just can't. That switch is maxed out. And then I don't know if this is factored in at all and what might be to secure our student information cuz I know of some threats that were in Tucson and in Flagstaff districts for ransomware. Is that factored in anywhere in our cost to
113be as as thieves become more sophisticated, I imagine we need to be more sophisticated to protect our student and employee. It is why all of these upgrades are so necessary, especially as we start to talk about the items that are that are end of life, especially they start to create a vulnerability as it relates to malware and bad actors and such. So, that is absolutely um a consideration in why these um these moves are necessary. Thank you. Other comments or questions? Thank you, Ms. Harrington. Thank you. Those those question slides, I guess just aren't necessary. I just wanted to make sure we had a little break in between to to get those questions answered. So, in 2025, we embarked on a facility condition assessment. We hired a company that um came out with their staff
114and they looked at all of our property, every square inch, every piece of equipment, everything that we have that has a life cycle and will eventually die. And so, uh we now have a facility condition assessment that actually goes out um 20 years, although that can't be reliable for 20 years. Um you will have to reassess uh throughout the years, but I'm showing a 5-year segment of our facility condition assessment for each one of our learning communities. I've got here just as a reminder of what schools are in each learning community. And then this is the total spend just for the facility condition assessment for that that learning community. That 28 million 902, you'll see is the biggest number of all the learning communities because it's Desert Mountain. Desert Mountain is the big one. When
115I originally did a 10-year cycle, Desert Mountain alone was 36 million dollars. We had a parent in one of the phase two committee meetings last week or the week before asked me, "Well, for that much money, can't you just rebuild the school?" Well, today Desert Mountain would probably cost us about 200 million dollars to rebuild it. So, no. It's worth investing in it. So, I'll roll the roll through these pretty quickly. Again, the learning community, the schools that are included. One thing that I that I would like you to take note cuz it's handy later on um is the schools that have been recently rebuilt. Chaparral in '08, Cocopah in '12, Copper Ridge is an older school, 2000, Cherokee in 2000 or 2022 right at the end of COVID. Um Sequoia's one of the old
116girls in in this one. And then Cochise was rebuilt in the late 90s. So, that does or becomes reflective Hello. in some of these and you see that because those schools in that learning community are much much newer, half more than half of the price of the Desert Mountain. Now, Desert Mountain learning community also has more schools. They have more square footage in that learning community. Saguaro, here's another one. Now, Saguaro, about half of Saguaro was rebuilt in '08. The media center, the cafeteria, the gymnasium, and the auditorium were not rebuilt. They got a little bit of remodel, but for the most part, they were not rebuilt. So, it's the two two-story classroom buildings that are what was rebuilt and the front office building. Um, so not as old, but Saguaro is a little bit
117iffy. Mojave got rebuilt, although the gymnasium building, cafeteria were not rebuilt. Um, that was in 2012. Navajo had that tremendous fire and was refurbished, um, but not fully rebuilt. It's got a little bit of work to do. Uh, Kiva's uh, fairly new and Pueblo was fairly new. And you see that number is a lot different from the schools that have older schools and more square footage. Only $3 million. A good majority of that, um, is for Saguaro and and it's, um, its needs. Arcadia, um, again, a with the exception of Tavan, a group of schools that is not all that old. Um, they're old enough that you're starting to see some end of life for some of the equipment, but generally speaking these are not considered old schools in any way, shape, or form. Tavahn
118[clears throat] has one building. Um, I think it's building 11. It's kind of a E shape. Uh, all classrooms. That's the oldest building on that campus, built in the '60s. And again, these are just the numbers associated with life cycle work. There's no honeydews, there's no special anything. This is the boring stuff that nobody's going to get terribly excited about unless they were just in the bathroom that didn't didn't work. And then lastly, um, administrative support. That's that line that was a zero on the pamphlet that I believe needs to have a number so that we can take care of these. Um, one of the ones, um, particularly interesting, the materials distribution or the warehouse on 95th way, that has all of these departments operating out of it. And oh, by the way, the district's
119knock, which houses all of the district's servers, all of the brains of the district, um, not the people, the the machines. Um, and so this is a busy place. This is a busy building that deserves attention. Air conditioning, swamp coolers, roofing, the paint job has got to be more than 20 years old. It's not even holding back rain anymore. If we get a a a rain that's directional, uh, it'll just rain right through the building. That's $10 dollars. >> [cough and clears throat] >> Now, I mentioned that there are buildings that we've not for years taking care of. And in this $10 million is um Choya and Apache. Now, Apache for the most part has purpose. That's our bus barn. That's where we have mechanics and um bus drivers and and the leadership down there
120that takes care of that. That serves our southern end of the district. But there's a two-story building that we talked about a couple months ago that is a dilapidated horrible building um that we need to, in my mind, just tear it down. Just get rid of it and not spend a bunch of money trying to fix it. Because I took Apache and Choya off of this search and all of a sudden we're saving nearly $6 million dollars by not continuing to play around with those buildings. They The buildings that are empty have very little purpose. And so, um to spend the money to just tear them down and not spend the money to do the work that that is required in this facility condition assessment, I think is the wise bet. And I'll I'll show
121you how that plays out um on my spreadsheet. Questions? Um on the DM, um you know, building-wise it's eight buildings to five or six in the other communities, so it's, you know, 60% larger. But the net spend is 100%. It's 2x. Is that square footage? What is it about DM that makes it proportionally more for maintenance? So, DM is 100,000 square feet bigger than any of our other high schools. With the whole across the whole community then? No, just just Is really just the high school itself? >> DM, if you compare DM to the rest of our high schools, it's much bigger, okay? Um it's 30 years old. And that amount of square footage, and again, this is the plumbing that we're seeing cast iron failures. Um a lot of those things. DM has never
122really had much as far as any renovations, upgrades. They had when they did the technology once upon a time we used abacuses and you know, different things. Some genius when it was time to do computers and have a network system for computer support decided to put all the IDFs and MDFs in telephone rooms that were also electrical rooms. A transformer generates a tremendous amount of heat and is only beating up that network equipment. It is there is there was no air conditioning put into those spaces. So, you've got a transformer, you got a punch block, which was copper wire that really didn't need air conditioning. And then somewhere along the way they put in these IDFs that all generate heat themselves. The transformers are generating heat. You walk into the room and you could pass
123out just as soon as you open the door. So, um that's a big part of uh DM and not only the um what Christine presented and Josh presented, but DM is just one of those things that has a lot of work. And then when you look at the other schools, they're not they're not rebuilds. They're all schools that were built in the '80s and '90s. Mountainside was '91, very big school. Um so, that just that Desert Mountain community um is just a lot of square footage, older buildings. Thank you. Thank you. Uh who did you say did the facility condition assessment? Um that was Bureau Veritas. Bureau Veritas. Okay. We did a we did an RFP um and we interviewed uh six consultants. And um they gave us the best price and the um I
124think it was about $300,000 um that we paid for that. Um we had other prices that were over a million and a couple prices that were 6 to 700,000. Okay, then I have a question under the Coronado learning community for uh the Pima level D. What costs do you have associated with the changes that need to be made to make that a level D? Are those included in this? So, they are not. Um those will not be part of the bond. We'll take care of that through uh district capital that we have right now. Um that that team is still working on placement uh knowing where everything needs to be, but I don't anticipate that being a uh a big dollar amount. Um so far from what I've seen from the conversations, um maybe a
125a wall here or a door here, um but what I've seen is very very minimal. Okay, thank you. Not seeing any other questions or comments. Mr. Raylor, is the word conclusion Anywhere in there? >> Ready now? Uh not quite yet. >> Not quite yet. Um I'm not going to go deep into fine arts and athletics except to say that the those are two groups of voters um that are super important. So, we have to make sure that we're keen about the work that we do um to make sure that they know that they're being taken care of as well. We'll have more for you on that uh later on. Um so, we've got energy air quality projects. The big thing is we have all of these solar projects and I won't spend a ton of
126time on this. But, we pay um a capital lease on some of our solar projects. That's coming to fruition in about 3 years. Um we we pay um the provider um 8 cents, 9 cents, 10 cents, whatever it is at each every contract's a little bit different. I've got all of that information. I'm sure Mr. Sharkey would love to devour that. We have an absorption chiller. Total crazy. It actually takes hot water, turns it into cold water, sends it through the system. It services Mountainside and Desert Mountain. That is coming to an end. Um we can buy that out this year for $619,000. Um we currently pay just over $100,000 a year in fees to them. So, that will pay itself back pretty quickly. Um Midstate Energy in 2016-17 we did a uh lighting and
127water savings project and um that one's got about $6 million. I can show you in the spreadsheet. Um but, we'd like to pay that one off as well. Air purification. Uh clean air is important to everybody. Um, so we do have a project in there um, to provide clean air for all of our classrooms. Can I just add that that like with with the Midstate Energy and the others, we're spending M&O dollars now, million dollars, that would free up that to be able to put into other expenses. Well, that was going to be like at the end of everything, uh, the last question that I have, which is you know, and for normal person, it gets so confusing to know that like if you sell a building, those dollars can't be used to kind of
128help offset the operating budget. Um, this will look like a big number and yet somehow we don't have any funds and doesn't this then alleviate the need and we have to explain to people, no, you know, these are these are kind of walled funds, special purpose funds, but is there any kind of relief that this will bring to the M&O budget? >> So, there's the 2 million in there. This past year we spent 600,000 in temporary AC when HVAC went down at Chapparal. So, when you can invest in in current technology in terms of our heating and and cooling systems, then when you you don't have the need for the temporary. So, you do save from the M&O uh, component and there's some other savings. I think Shannon's ready to to give even more specific
129detail. Uh, so one of the items we have in there is for Midstate. Right now, we have two lease options that are out there. One is a solar project. It will end in 20 uh, I'm sorry, in uh, 20 the 28 year, 28, 29 year. Um, we we can factor that in, we have it in this one, uh, but it's about 3 million dollars that we pay um, I'm sorry, that's owed still for that project is a little over 3 million. Uh, we also have a Midstate project. That one is factored into what Dennis is going to show. Um, if we were to pay that off, it would be about $6.7 million to pay that off. However, that would save us even there's a penalty for paying off early, but even with that we would
130save $1.5 million in interest. So, that's I think worthy of being able to save dollars, but the other part of it is that we move funds from M&O to what's called energy savings to be able to pay these leases and and principal payments on these on these projects. So, it would free up if we were to pay one or or both of them off would free up M&O dollars in the future because that's money we're transferring over. Right now we've been using we get some rebates, so that's kind of helped offset some of those costs. But, we're moving about $2 million or more a year. In fact, we're this next budget revision will have a $2.5 million move to be able to cover those leases for us. So, definitely paying those off saves money because
131we're not paying interest on some of those things, but it also saves M&O dollars because we pay them off and we're no longer having to shift dollars from M&O over to another fund for those those payments. In addition to I mean we are putting a lot of money into from M&O trying to put band-aids on things, repair things. Those will come from M&R. >> Yeah, that's Whereas if we could just replace it. And that's true from transportation with our buses, with fuel tanks for transportation. That's true for our AC units at like I said what was it? $600,000 $600,000 this year for a generator to help with AC until we could get the new unit in or repaired. So there's some big there's some big ways that we could also help our M&O budget by
132taking some of these these repairs up. I would be interested to see that as we get you know closer with details quantified sort of over time. Like how much do we think will come off of M&O or be saved from M&O you know, one year in, two years in, three years in as a result of the investments that we're making. Yes, we can do that. Thank you. Okay, coming into the home stretch. >> [clears throat] >> So, um I've color-coded. Some people criticize my color-coding, but um it makes sense to me, so it must make sense to everybody else. Um security, information technology, student transportation, life cycle. Those are things Those are four areas that we must take care of. Um and in total, uh that's a few pennies. That's over two mi- $200 million
133all by itself. So, that's the That's the we really need to do. Then we get into learning environment, and when I talk about learning environment, um it is all of the things that make our campuses attractive. Shade, landscaping, hardscaping, gates, fencing, interior refreshes, which typically means paint and carpet, exterior refreshes, typically paint, um window coverings, that's your question there, uh Ms. Carney, um restrooms, media center, and furniture, fixtures, and equipment. Um a lot of the schools, the high schools, the middle schools, when they were rebuilt, they did not get new furniture. They recycled um basically everything they had. So, some of the furniture in some of our schools could be upwards of 30 years old um from its original um construction. So, we've got some numbers in there. One thing to keep in mind is
134our capital override has a line item for FF&E and so I've factored that in that we know that each year for the next four five four more years we'll be getting about $500,000 to also contribute to FF&E and making sure that we're we're turning over the furniture as we need to. So one of the questions Well Dennis what about these schools that are um closed Echo Canyon $0 Now when I talked to Paul Goldstein and Christine earlier today they did have about $2 million attached to that campus but if we have a renter come in the network is not our responsibility that network becomes their responsibility. And so um would like to take care of the facility condition stuff but otherwise not spend the money on Echo. Then we have the well what about the
135other schools? Um what about the ones that are in the conversation of Redfield and Laguna and all of those Desert Mountain Learning Community? Well those all have dollars attached to them and it does uh it's like kind of painful because it could be a significant amount of money. Um so we need to be cognizant of that that we have to plan but at the same time we need to recognize at what point we are going to close those and make sure that we're handling that money responsibly. Okay? So um couple of areas of interest. Um solar. We have it. It's there. It's operating. It's generating electricity, but it still costs us money every year. Two campuses that um are not always performing as well as they could. Massive systems, Copper Ridge, Desert Mountain. I have
136it in here right now that we could buy out in our 15-year term. We could buy them out one at uh $1 million. Oh, wait. Oh, that's not Copper Ridge. Um yes, I'm sorry. $1,381,000 is Copper Ridge. And then um $2,621,000. Well, I was working with our consultant yesterday. We were talking about that. And there's a clause in our contracts that we can just tell the provider, "Take your equipment back. We don't want it. We're not going to spend another dime on it." Now, we haven't made that phone call because I'm sure they're not going to be happy with us cuz if you look at an aerial photo of Desert Mountain High School, there's a lot of solar on there. And imagine if you had that solar, you've been getting paid for it, and now
137the owner says, "Hey, get rid of that stuff. I don't want it anymore." So, we'll see how that negotiation works out. But if I um well, I guess I haven't shown you the bottom line. Right now, I'm at $416 million. I do not want to be at $416 million. I think that we need to be south of $400 million. Um and I I have a way to get there. Um and by chipping away at some of these projects that I think I wanted to illustrate where we could be um but I think we get rid of and not have to have that conversation and get well below uh $400 million. So, I'm going to leave it there. I know you have all had a opportunity to look at this. I'm happy to answer any questions.
138Um there's still more work to do as um Randy and Megan pointed out, uh there used to be a time when you could go all the way to June 15th to get your your resolution in. Um Shannon knocked me in the face and said, "Well, we can't do that now. We've got to We've got to do." So, I lost the month of May. I've got a lot of work to do in about 8 days um to get things ready cuz I'm I'm going to Zion National Park on the 7th, whether you like it or not. Um and so, I've got a lot of work to do to fill in all these blanks. I've got placeholders now um so you can see what what that looks like, and I'm happy to walk through that. Any questions,
139members of the board? Uh Ms. Kearney. Um what is the cost for the pamphlet and to go to ballot? We um actually have that in our next presentation talking about selling a property, but um there we we we're going to ballot no matter what because we have two governing board seats open. Um so, that it alone but 82,000. Um for the other portions of it, there's I'll cover a little bit more in detail, uh but you're looking at basically um 62 68. Um you're 70-ish on top of that. So, you know, about 100 and yeah. But we'll go through it a little bit more in the next presentation. Yeah. Thank you. >> Uh Uh, I would just like to commend the entire team for its obvious collaboration and the breadth and depth of tonight's rich
140discussion. The thoroughness was, um, commendable. Uh, the cross-department teamwork was obvious and the professional use of external resources helped us with objectivity. Uh, from surveying likelihood of passage to tax implications to the various uh, statement of needs uh, thoughtfully scoured across our district. The financial responsibility and stewardship we have to our taxpayers keeping in mind the optics and the context of our recent uh, decision. How to be sure we're clear on safety uh, and uh, technological safety and infrastructure as well as maintenance of our facilities. Uh, just a a big shout-out to all of you for your rich hours and hours of of preparation and I wish you all the best in your next eight days before you go to Zion. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. All right, that brings us now to our uh,
1414C and Shannon's given us a preview of that uh, as we look at the presentation regarding the potential election. This one won't take nearly as long as as the one we just went through but we thought it was important uh, as as the board knows I've talked about um, not wanting to part with district assets as uh, as a concern with respect to how do you ensure down the road um, future boards have opportunities to have facilities available even when we have to shrink our footprint now but we do have some properties uh, that haven't been used for school sites for a very very long period of time and so in conversations uh, that we've had and then talking with counsel uh, there's an opportunity here that uh, we want to at least get the
142board's feedback on before we take the potential bond issue to the voters. We can add more. Are they is this Doesn't IT usually >> [snorts] >> It's right there. Yeah. Okay. Well, I'm so used to it just automatically appearing. So, okay. Um President Dr. Lewis, Vice President Sharkey, members of the board, Dr. Mendoza, guests, this has come up actually a couple of different times. Um I know as we looked at um you know, closing schools and repurposing buildings, um one of the questions that's come up is what kind of properties do we have? Do we need to sell them? Do we need to look at other options? Do we need to look at leasing them out? And so this is just going to go briefly over the properties that we have that are not school
143use, um what we're using them for, and then open it up for discussion if if we want to move forward with some options. Um these are all of the schools that we sites that we currently have right now that are non-school use. I did include Pima and Echo Canyon in there because they, you know, well, not that we are in any way, shape, or form talking about um selling those properties, but those are properties that are included that are non-use school properties. Um Copper Ridge is also on there. Again, not because we're thinking of anything with Copper Ridge. However, there is I'm calling it the annex. There's a small parcel of land that's off to the side from Copper Ridge that is is leased out. As well as some tennis courts. Uh we have the
144district office, which we know we're looking at that possibility right now with the city of Scottsdale. Uh this building here, Mojave District Annex, Oak, San Salvador Annex, and the warehouse. Um this just looks at how those sites are utilized and the revenue that we're generating off of them. Cholla is one that we've talked quite a bit about in needing some uh TLC or money put into it if we're going to continue using it. Um right now we have Miracle League, Stars, and the city of Scottsdale's got a temporary firehouse on it uh that will last for a couple years. Apache, uh we have one one lease that's there, that will end in October. Um then it's primarily used for transportation, fuel station, bus barn. Um they do their DPS training at that location. Um Oak
145just went into the um a lease with the city of Scottsdale for uh I think it's like 2 years that they'll be using that as they renovate some buildings. Nutritional Services, however, that catering portion will be moving, as well as the instrument warehouse, and Athletics Department. Pima will be utilizing as a level D school, special education will be moving over there, as well as the nutritional services, uh and the musical instrument warehouse. Echo, we're still working on, um and I know there's some more discussions tonight. The Copper Ridge Annex, like I said, that's being used right now for a landscape yard, so just a very small amount coming in from that. And then the village uses our tennis courts. They're tennis courts. Um how are these sites used? Uh Main Street, we know that that's
146a sale pending right now, that's Human Resources and uh the Finance Department will be moving over here, hopefully to the Mojave District District Annex. We have San Sal, which again is facilities, transportation, and our northern school bus barn, so we have a bus barn up north for schools up there, one in the south so that we don't have our drivers driving a half an hour just to get to to a lo- you know, from the north to the south to a location. And then warehouses very utilized with purchasing IT, warehouse, grounds. Um we have a nutritional services freezer up there and then our print shop. Right here, we just look at what are the requirements to sell district property. If you're selling to um a another municipality like we are looking at with the city
147of Scottsdale, that does not require uh going to the vote or going to voters to sell that property. However, um if you are doing something outside of that, so selling property to a non- municipality, um that does require an election for the voters to say or the community to say yes, we would like to sell that property. And I forgot to mention that we have Jim Gill online um who is uh an attorney for elections, and so he's also been helping in um Laura Blanco's server with some of this information. Um but it basically goes over what are what are the things that are needed. And again, board action would be required if you wanted to sell property uh or put that on for the election. If it is successful having it on the ballot
148doesn't mean you are required to sell it. It means the voters have given you the authority to do that. It could happen now, it could happen 5 years from now, it could happen 20 years from now, it could happen never. It doesn't say you have to sell that property. It just gives the authority to do so whenever you would like to, and that authority does not expire. Leasing is a little bit different, and I didn't go into a whole lot about leases, but the authorization to lease expires if you're going past a certain amount of time. So, we do like 5-year leases, that does not require a vote. If you're doing a much longer term lease, that does um that does require a vote, and those expire in 20 years, but they can be renewed
149after another 20 years with an election. Um for this purposes, we're really talking more about if there's properties that we want to consider putting up for sale. Um one of the benefits is that if we're already doing an election, you can add this on if you would like to and kind of combine it within the costs. Um, but again, it does not mean that we we have to um, sell those properties. It just is getting the authority to do so. Uh, the cost for the election, um, um, Ms. Carney had asked about what it would cost and this kind of looks at we're doing an election anyway. So, this would be bond or selling property. Um, we know that we have to do an election anyways because it's the uh, a midterm, it's not as
150expensive with the amount per voter. This is it's 50 cents per active voter. I'm going off of the 25. That was the last time we had an election. How many voters we had. It obviously could change. We'll know when it gets a little bit closer, but that was roughly $82,000 for that. Um, so we will have that fee regardless of any decisions about a bond or selling property. Uh, there's $500 per question. Um, if you were selling property, this is my and I Correct me if I'm wrong, hopefully Jim. But, um, it's $500 per question. However, my understanding with the with the sale of property is you don't have to do a question for each. Like, if you wanted to sell multiples, it's not like one question for this property, one question. It's just a
151question um, to sell the property. Um, so if you were going to do a bond, it would be $500. If you were going to be a a bond and sell property, a thousand. Um, we have to do pamphlet printing and postage. Again, this is going off of our last election, but roughly 62,000 for that. Um, translation services, we have to do that through an outside company, so about 2,000 for that. And then legal fees for the election is about 15,000. Now, the legal fees for election is covered through our budget. Um, so if you were going to do a bond, it would be $500. If you were going to be a a bond and sell property, a thousand. Um, we have to do pamphlet prints Um right. Uh that is paid the legal fees for
152the election are paid through prepaid legal so that's not something that really would hit our M&O budget per se because again that would be covered through our prepaid. Um but it is it is a cost um that is part of the election. So all in if you were to do um nothing and just have the gov the governing board election it would be about 82,000. If you were to do bonds or bond and um want to move forward with potentially selling a property you're looking at roughly 146,000 147,000 for that. And again those are rough estimates based off of um the last election we did. So with that I'll open it to questions. If we if you do want us to move forward with possible sale we would need to bring that as a resolution
153at the next board meeting in May because again as was talked about earlier there are some timing in there of when we need to have information to the county and and ballot language and that kind of stuff. Um so that is why we are bringing it forward. No action tonight just need to get a feel of if that's something the governing board is interested in doing. Mr. Sharkey. Um two things one detailed on the pamphlet printing and postage is that the fine print legal ease pamphlet or a marketing or both? That's the the legal ease. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. Mhm. So it'll have like the pros and cons statements and what the ballot will say and what it means and Okay. If there is any marketing if we like for the bond if we said
154we really want to do it you know is that something we do? >> So so we can communicate uh factual information about what's the bond is and what it would be used for. There would be an outside organization that would uh be responsible for any advocacy. We can't use taxpayer dollars or district resources for advocacy. Thanks. Uh and then just more generally is are you or the are the district going to come with suggestions about buildings? I just like this is the good context. Seems like there's a So so they You saw two or three uh potential uh Apache, Cholla, and then Oak. We've got a lease agreement with the city for 2 years with the potential to extend that. And we may or may not want to sell any of these at any point
155in time. So, the first thing that's most important is we're simply asking for voter authorization for this board A or A board in the future to have the authority to sell those properties. So, in in my mind, uh you could even put all three of them on there and it's not a commitment you're going to sell them, but it gives you the ability to do so. Thank you. Dr. Petansky. And so that I understand kind of the financial benefits of doing that, we do elections every 2 years presumably for for governing board members. It's the fact that the bond carries with it the $62,000 a pamphlet production that is the thing that we're kind of piggybacking on. And if we, you know, you outside of a bond year decided we do actually want to move
156forward with a property sale, we would then be incurring that $62,000 for the sole purpose of of the property sale. >> Absolutely. Yeah. Um if you do it on an off election, the cost gets quite a bit higher for doing um for doing an election. So, again, this says doesn't say that we are going to do it. It says we that it gives the voters the option to tell us we want to. Um it hinder if we Doing it now is good cuz we're going to have an election anyways. It's a midterm if we're talking about a bond. Um we do have an election every 2 years that you but you would be basically you couldn't do anything until you you put that on that if if we didn't deal with this right >> an
157extra $60,000 or so. Um so, you know, I I don't know if you're looking for a sense of the board. This is something, you know, that I raised. Um I think it makes a ton of sense. I think we've all been very clear that we care about every dollar that's spent. And so, I don't see why we wouldn't leverage the the if we move forward with a bond. Obviously, if we don't, then it doesn't make sense. But if we move forward with the bond, I don't see why we wouldn't leverage that same expense to address the property sale knowing that it doesn't oblige us. It just gives us that optionality and um you know, and flexibility. And you think all three? I mean, if we're doing it, I would give us the max I mean,
158I you don't want to be disingenuous with voters and give yourself, you know, we can sell any school, right? There is a reason why you go to voters and voters have a right to kind of assess and kick the tires on the thinking. So, I think it should be credible and these three are certainly candidates. Um so, yes, I would give ourselves the maximum flexibility within that construct. Ms. Carney. Thank you, President Lewis. I I just think it's a little difficult to make a decision like that when we don't really have the the proper uh financials on this or the proper Like I went uh and thank you to Dennis cuz he toured me around Choia. And so, he had mentioned there were different um even interest in in that property as far as like
159the Aquatic Center, City of Scottsdale was looking at building. Um another AZ Aspire uh is interested in in you know, I think in autism school. So, I feel like we don't have all the information of even the interest, the current interest on these properties. Also, does it make sense? How much is Choia costing us right now? With, you know, and how much I don't know, are we breaking even? Where where are we at with the leases that we currently have? I just feel like we don't have the proper information to make a decision to put it on the ballot. Even though I do agree with you that we absolutely should, and if we do, I also think that we need to discuss uh lowering the bond. I mean, you can't wouldn't this be a way
160to help the taxpayer as well? Well, I think the spirit is we're not deciding to sell the properties. We're just seeking the authority to have that flexibility in future years without having the additional expense and process of running a new election. So, that's why my bar for proceeding was a little lower is because it's a two-step process, and we wouldn't be triggering the second step, which I agree with you would require a lot more understanding for each of these properties. But, we haven't even discussed why why only those three, or why, you know, or why those three. I mean, and I've heard you talk about um workforce housing coming to Apache. I don't see anything about that on here. I just feel like we don't have enough information, although I am for putting it um
161out to the voters, but let's put them all out there then. I mean, why are we choosing >> you say put them all, what do you mean? You mean put Pima and Echo Canyon and any potential, you know, so that that the what we've done is we said, "Here are uh facilities and assets that we have that haven't been used as schools for a long time." Apache was an elementary school. Choya has been used as a school by us before, but that's been decades since those have been used. We we have uses and rental for them, but the question that we would be able to explore if if the voters were to give authorization to sell is what's the market value. And is the is the benefit of selling that asset large enough to offset
162what we might get through some lease arrangement with some other provider. So, we'd still do our due diligence on what's the best long-term benefit for the district. It just gives us an option that we don't currently have. The sale of any property is not possible absent voter authorization. And so, if we can piggyback on what we know is likely to be the cost for for a bond a couple with our regular election, it gives us that flexibility. We'd still do the homework and I don't know how quickly that would be done, but I think those are the three logical locations to seek voter authorization for because they haven't been used as as schools for quite some time. Can I just end with this? Let me just confirm. So, each property would be a separate question
163to the voter? One question. Three properties. So, you could add six properties. You could add eight properties and it's the same cost? Uh Madam President, Ms. Carney, it's my understanding that you can combine the sale of the properties in one ballot question. And that was from review of an email from my partner, Jim Geel. So, we can get um further clarification about what that would look like if the board decides to proceed further. So, you could add six properties. >> So, you could add six properties. You could add eight properties and it's the same cost? Madam President, Ms. Carney, it's my understanding that you can combine the Can I make that as a plug for the bond? [laughter] Jim Geel. Jim Geel. Um so, we can get um further clarification about what that would look
164like if the board decides to proceed further. So, you could add six properties. You could add eight properties and it's the same cost? Okay, yeah. If we could get further clarification on what that would look like. How that that would be worded to the voter in May. >> Yes, we'll we'll have that in detail for the May 12th meeting. And and for the agenda before we get to the 12th, so you can ask clarifying questions before then. Yes. Thank you. >> Mr. Sharkey. So, love to get a a feel from my colleagues on I'm a voter, I get a ballot. I have two questions on it. One says SUSD bond. Um, do you agree to pay for a bond of $390 million to pay for these things? Right below it, hypothetically, says, do you give
165SUSD the authorization to potentially sell these three buildings, let's say? Um, I think that's a positive interplay to say that we want to raise money and also we're liquidating unused assets. So, I think those two play if I'm assuming we're in support of the bond. Apologies for not saying that up front. If one is in support of the bond, I think that second one plays well with it. Um, I don't know if anyone has any differing opinions cuz that's where it's going to come into play when someone opens up that [clears throat] ballot and marks those fields. I I think um Ms. McClain can probably speak to this as well, but there are many other districts that have done the same thing where they've asked for a bond issue or authorization or an override at
166the same time they're seeking authorization to sell property. Uh, Dr. Menzel's correct. You can ask for both things, but they would be separate ballot questions. Right. And I agree. I think it'd be positive. I mean, we heard over and over again during phase one from families asking, you know, why do we have these properties and these three particular properties, which I think gets a little bit uh how they are the ones put forward. You know, why do we have them? Why don't we consider selling them? You know, and again, that gets into then the issues, you know, hopefully the state gives us the ability to use property sales to support M&O. Um, but um yeah, I think it's a positive that we're being good stewards of of assets personally, but I guess that's a question
167for the pollster. Mr. Sharkey. Um, we can uh this, you know, other properties on there as well so that future board can decide what to do with closed property. Yeah, if there are other closed properties that aren't being used for instructional use, that makes sense to include, I think. I think so. That's when I looked at slide two. And then you filter down to the ones that aren't being used, those are the three, but if there are others that make sense, I would agree. Madam President, um I did hear back from my partner Jim Gale by email and it is correct that you can include multiple properties in one ballot question and he also indicated that our office has not seen one of those elections fail to date. Thank you. All right. Really nice job.
168Thank you, Ms. Crozier. At this point, uh guess we will be probably going into executive session. I'm going to make a motion to enter executive session pursuant to the statutory citations listed in the agenda and for the purposes stated. The governing board may recess into executive session pursuant to ARS 38-431.03A3 and A7 for the purpose of attaining legal advice and instructing its representative regarding proposed leases at Echo Canyon K-8 school. And the governing board may recess into executive session pursuant to ARS 38-431.03A3 and A4 for the purpose of obtaining legal advice and instructing the attorney for the public body regarding the superintendent's contract of employment. So, I need a second. Second the motion. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Motion passes 5 to 0. Thank you. So, we'll just move into executive session down
169the hall. >> All right, I'm reconvening the special meeting. And we're going to move into action item number six. I make a motion and request a second for directing the attorney for the public body regarding potential potential lease options at Echo Canyon K-8 School. And I move that the direct to the direct the attorney for the public body as discussed in executive session. I second the motion. All those in favor? I. I. I. I. All those opposed? I abstain. Okay, we have a four and a zero and a one. And as we go to 6B, um I make a motion to direct the attorney for the public body regarding superintendent contract of employment. I move to direct the attorney for the public body as discussed in executive session. We need a second. I'll second. All
170those in favor? I. I. I. All those opposed? No. Okay, we have a three-two. All right, uh I'm mo- It's not a motion to adjourn, I just announce it's adjourn, right? Motion to adjourn, I need a second. Second. It's 9:38. All those in favor? I. I. I. It's a five-oh.