COOP Budget Meeting 6/26/2025

001call this meeting of the co-op budget committee to order at 6:36 p.m. This is a regular meeting of the co-op budget committee which takes place on the fourth Thursday of each month. Um, I'd like to introduce myself, Darlene Man, and the members of the budget committee who are present this evening who include Tom Solon, Tom Enright, Brian Rder, and Tony Stinzy. Ron is um on route and will be attending a little bit late. He's stuck in traffic. Um Dave Flynn and Melanie Lec have um excused absences for this evening. And I'd like to thank um and welcome Lance Finear, our facilities director, and Kelly Seely, our business administrator. Um welcome them to this evening's meeting. If you could all join me in the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United

002States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Um, I'll ask at this time if there are any agenda adjustments. Seeing none, I'll appoint Tony as our process observer this evening. Um recognizing there's no public present, we'll skip over public input and get to the um main um agenda of uh Oh, I'm sorry. What do you consider to be a quorum now? Um we're going to go I I I've always tended to in the past we've done four, but um we have five this evening. I was just curious because thought you required five because you wanted more than 50%, right? There's nothing that um designates the quorum and we can maybe make have that as actually a conversation amongst the board. Um

003there's only seven members now 294 passed. It did. And was it effective immediately? No. All right. I'll check that. And that's the one that removes the voting privileges of the school board member. Makes school board representative exeicio. So a non-member. Okay. I'll look into that legislation and we'll piece 294 294. Okay. And um yeah, we'll check the effective date of that and determine how to move forward with that. Um at this point, I think our first agenda item is the facilities overview. That's a topic we have carried I think for the in the in the June agenda for the last probably five years or so. And I am laptop free because mine is over here um with presentation on it ready to go this evening. Is it up and ready? You have it? Oh, you're

004okay. Great. I feel like I don't know what to do without the laptop. Okay, great. Well, at this point, Lance, I'll just invite you to take it from here. Is it the first time we use a poweroint? Do you have any idea why it's gagging when he goes to do the slide presentation? It shows when he's on full screen, but when he indicates when he hits the the button to go to Oh, that's Right then it shows now he's going up to what's what's this what does it say it's effective July 1st 394 okay July 1st July 1st might be It's 394. It's 394. Yeah. Presentation. Just if you go to one to the left of the of the score where you were that one more over next one the other way. Is it maybe

005it's not share screen mode? I don't know. I don't think it is. I think that's presentation mode. You click that. Not sure what that is. Okay. So, well, Lance, just let us know when you have that going. So, it is House Bill 394. Brian looked it up. It goes into effect July 1st. I'll send everybody the link. And it just unfortunately does move your capacity to a non voting. Stop attending. I will probably stop attending this meeting. Okay. Because um and pretty much all that I do is communicate what's going on at the um board meetings and that's all available at presentations and things and I'm not um a voting member any longer. So not doesn't make a difference as far as having a quorum or being able to influence that aspect of things. I

006think if people are really interested in finding out what's going on on the board level, there's a lot more available by them attending the board meeting than by me attending this meeting. I mean this was this was a a useful interface but the real reason that the board felt it was important is that we we were a participating member of the I I understand that that the language um amends uh RSA 19512A which are includes um specifically cooperative school district budget committee um respons responsibilities and it and it retains the shall language. So um chairperson of the cooperative school board shall appoint a member of the board to serve on the budget committee in an exeicio non voting capacity. Um I still think you know your role here is important and integral to especially as

007we develop a budget to understanding um and influence you know influencing and sharing information that enables us to make you know address topics that come up during the budget cycle that address curriculum staffing changes and things like that. So um yeah I just I'm not that I want to be the person. Okay. So, is that something you'll follow up with Holly? Yeah. About Okay. I'll speak with her as well and share the language. Valuable to have somebody come and summarize what the school board is, you know, what the school board is doing, what they're concerned about, and so on. The I mean, going to the meetings, yes, but those meetings take a long time. I appreciate having the cliffotes versions of that. uh somebody who goes to at least three or four meetings a week,

008but but I can appreciate it. Frustrating. Okay. We don't have an opportunity to override that, do we? No. It's a state law. No. It was It was sad. It was put through by a single representative and there was a lot of testimony against it, but leadership was behind it. It was signed into law by the governor. Well, I think the one who was behind it is was I think it got pushed through by DOE, but I'm not sure. It's unfortunate and I you know I I think um well, doesn't matter. Yeah. Okay. All right. So, I will share that um language, the um bill language with everybody after the meeting and I'll follow up with Holly as well and we'll see how we proceed from here. see Raul attending um at 6:46 p.m. just for

009the minutes. Glad you made it, Raul. And you're just in time. Thank you very much, Lance, if you're ready to go. Yes, absolutely. Thanks for having me. Um also share that I I turned the air conditioning on cuz I was kind of running around and was getting a little little sweaty here. So, yeah. Um so, again, thank you for having me. I I come here every June. um to just give you a view of the co-op um facilities and what we're doing and looking forward. Um I will try to make this as quick as possible because I think I just won't talk forever if I don't um go quickly or try to go quickly here. Um so our goals, my goals in this uh presentation are to let you all know um you know the

010state of the facilities, what we're trying to do. um also share and also discuss long-term discussion of uh co-op projects and priorities and what the vision may be or um what we uh envision the uh focus to be in the future. Um we incorporate uh facilities department as long as um as well as the entire SAU um uh administration and co-op administration. Uh we try to include the community and stakeholders as best we can. Um when taking on um again our vision for the future um areas of concerns um from discussions again from all the ver administration uh or how we evaluate uh our ongoing uh path forward. We also use the facility audit tool um that pretty much is a um we go through every uh well in this case we go through all

011six buildings but in this case two buildings middle school and high school and we grade our uh current state of you know all the facilities in the building ground up. Um and that gives us a sense of you know gives us a you know a set of data to go off of what is what is good what is great and what is you know could be lacking and where we can improve uh on that. Um, also the crop facilities committee um is a large part of um the ongoing energy um enrollment plan. Uh we'll discuss that a little bit. Uh facility audit tool again is just a a sheet a guideline what we go through um from the ground up. um everything in the building, HVAC, uh roofs, flooring, uh ceilings, windows, doors, everything you

012think of. Um that's just a glimpse of um can't really see it that well, but this is a glimpse and our grading criteria um that we do every year again to use for budgeting for the um ongoing operations budget for the year as well as capital planning uh maintenance uh maintenance trust planning uh all of that. um talking about the call facilities committee a little more. We formed um I feel like it was two years ago, the last two years uh to discuss what again our grand vision is for uh the co-op facilities in general. um high school being 30 30 almost 30 years old uh around there. Middle school a little older and what we can do to make these facilities um not only last longer um but how we can make these facilities

013in general better for the entire um community. When I say community, primarily focused on stakeholders, students, teachers, staff, uh but also community as well that can use the buildings um as they see fit as public u public use. Um the um specific topics have which already taken place are for energy efficiency um and alternative energy solutions um for both buildings. Uh again we meet we try to meet every first Wednesday of each month uh same time four o'clock uh same place four o'clock um just roughly middle school areas of concern um and again some of this some of these things we are in the process of some of it is in the future so um and any questions just feel free to ask um uh HVAC again we have aging units which we are addressing

014um in the next year or two. um duck work cleaning which we've been doing last fiscal this fiscal it's continuing as you'll see in the next chart um going forward has all of the line items um and where they fall in line in each fiscal budget um like electrical panels we're doing currently um plumbing parts of this building are older so as we go can we ask questions or should we wait till the end um we can ask questions What would you Yeah. So of those topics wishes are planned to be be line items in the next budget. All of them. Uh no no it's just a general so some like the agent electoral panels we're doing currently in fiscal currently I mean um next Tuesday July 1st. Um, so that's it might be a

015good idea to kind of create a little matrix that shows these are the items and this is the investment strategy or plan or something like that. Okay. Yeah. In the next slides we have um you know the budgetary numbers for each of these things and you know where it falls line. It does have a fix fiscal 26 line that's uh why that's on there. Uh building grounds, roof sections, classroom, flooring, pavement. Those are just our general guideline, general areas of concern. Uh in general, high school areas of concern, uh we three three four years ago at this point, I can't keep track of time. We replaced the majority of the rooftop units um at the high school. At that time we didn't replace the existing main office um cafeteria gym units uh because again at

016that time we were trying to focus on majority of classroom learning environments. So that's what we did. So that's always we say areas of concern. It's kind of something we don't want to lose track of. It's not, you know, the end of the world, but we like to put it on there as um, you know, punch list items that we can get at some point in the future. Um, electrical lighting controls. Um, there's a lot of existing lighting. It's a long story. There's a lighting control box at boxes at the high school which are I don't really get into it, but they're they're interesting. Um, safety. The elevator is existing elevator from the original building. Um so we are budgeting over the last two fiscal years. Um so we will be ready to go in

017fiscal 27 I believe um to finally um it it won't be it won't be a new elevator per se. The cab will be upgraded. Um but the you know the shaft way is all going to stay in place. Just a elevator um re ref reurb um refab. Um emergency egress is all we saw in there. We're trying to we're trying to hit that um with a lot of creative ideas in the next year or two. Um hopefully this year. Uh building your ground, same thing. Flooring, parking, paving um are always the general guidelines what we're looking at. um at the high school as well. Um capital improvement plan, I call it capital improvement plan, the vision for the co-op. This is just uh a review of what we've done. Again, phase one. Um so that

018says fiscal 23. So it was three years ago. Um that's when we did all the a rooftop units in the high school. Uh phase two, um which was last summer um we took replaced all the oil piping which was the initial area of concern that um pretty much I want to say form the uh co-op facilities committee um I don't want to get into that but we replaced the oil burners on the boilers and replace them with propane burners um got rid of the underground tank um that was last year so I I like to call that phase two and then I have here phase three which is will be taking place fiscal 26 which is this summer um we're replacing um the same thing we had the oil piping issue here at the middle

019school as well so we're addressing that so the underground tank will be gone co-op will no longer have any oil underground tanks um which is a good thing because there will be no more um de New Hampshire dees um let's say restrictions or guidelines or testing requirements. Um with propane there aren't any there's no there's no um underground storage tank testing. Uh with the underground storage tanks we always we had to take testing operator testing every two years. Um you know visual checks monthly checks on you know we had to pop the lid up. It was, you know, it's time consuming but also a liability. It it was liability on us. Um this way there's no liability with the state. Um we don't need tank inspections from a vendor. There'll be annual testing and um

020that's what really hit us hit us hard is the requirement for uh pneumatic testing, hydrostatic testing. So, Lance, did we end up going completely with tanks owned by the co-op? Yes. Yeah. Yep. For the middle school. Yep. High school and middle school. And there was Was it the generator or something that was potentially still running on oil? The generator is still running on oil. That's not underground, is it? Nope. No, that's above ground. It's actually a um it's a c it's a cube. It's a square cube um that is above ground on a slab outside the generator. It's a tank, but it Yeah. No, I just I remember from the conversation there was one hold over item. Yep. Just something we kind of lost track of late in the game um last year. But when

021I say late in the game, I wasn't like May or June of last year. But maybe it'll turn into a battery. Correct. It could. Luckily, no generator. Well, I shouldn't say luckily. No generator here. So, don't have that issue here. Um, but that um that worked out well and that's that's our only oil there, you know. Um, but again, you know, you're talking 3 400 gallons compared to 6,000 gallon underground tank. Um, and then uh fee I think that's it for phase three. Oh, solar panel install, which again we've talked at the co facilities committee. Um, I don't really want to get into it unless there's questions. Um, we could be here all night. Um, phase three, fiscal 27 and beyond. Um, again, we would have liked to hit everything this summer, but it's just

022not realistic with, you know, new rooftop units, new ducting. Um, all the summer programs, summer work we have. Um, it's it was decided that's probably better we do it. Uh, fiscal 27. I put fiscal 27 beyond but I'm hoping it's just fiscal 27 and we can get the remaining done. Uh I'm being optimistic but that is uh what we have planned which um driver is the fact that we need to get the roof done before we do the rooftop units solar panels and the roof and the rooftop units as well or is that roofing already done? You could do the rooftop units and we could just do the roof around it, but I think the more the the bigger concern is the solar panels because it's absolutely bigger real estate. Solar's not because we don't

023want to take them off if Yeah, we'd have to move the panels. We don't move the rooftops. They stay in place and we just, you know, membrane around them. Um um so this capital improvement plan um slides going forward are just um based off of what Raul will said you know we're going line by line the best we can and uh budgeting for the best we can going forward uh all of our uh line items that will be addressed or you know again from the facility audit tool and all our um input uh the items that we want to track. Um, these are just the totals by uh year. I probably should have put this slide at the end, but um just to get you ready um so these are just line items. I don't

024want to go through all through them all unless you have questions feel free. Um again everything that we talked about any facilities related things um this is what we're trying to get um you know on paper for not only what we've budgeted for last year which is fiscal 26. So fiscal 26 is everything we're going to do July 1st Tuesday and after. Um and a majority of the stuff will be done in the summer. Um, but a lot of the stuff can hold over for vacation periods or whatnot. Um, I I I think we're pretty ambitious here with what we do. Um, because again, just remember, I'm not looking for sympathy here, but this is just co-op. Um, and we have four other buildings uh in the SAU, but this is our best attempt at

025trying to get things done um that we that we find um need to need to be upgraded, replaced, or added. Um Oopsie. So what you see by looking through the the five-year view of things is that you do put a lot and and have over the past few years put a lot of effort into breaking up phasing projects over time to um you know enable part you know at least some of the work to get underway and then um continue to you know yeah and I think you know myself I've been here five years I'm again Maybe I'm more ambitious to put things in fiscal 27 and you know as we go through the budgeting process we're you know either um go forward with it or I just no other way to say denied. I

026don't get it and that just you know we like to say it carries over but also we don't want to lose track and that carries over um to fiscal 28. So, a lot of this stuff is, let's say, ambitious slash, you know, optimistic, but that's just the way I feel. Um, it's it's front and center now. And I know one of the things that's been on in Q that I know just keeps get getting pushed further and further is the um water system solution. Correct. So that is pushed to an anticipation of 28 um FY28 uh because of the obvious prioritization of other of other items, but it's eventually going to I think and I I won't lie because of the potential headaches that um that takes as well because just the unique system that

027we have with Rock I don't want to get too much into it, but Rocky Pond literally runs through this building to feed the town. And so I never really thought about it until about six months ago. How do we divert that if we go off ourselves? You still have this major line of infrastructure. So that hurt my head that day in a toll booth. Yeah. But it's like it's like it's still run. It's Yeah, it's it's a cluster. Um tennis courts, huh? Yes. Um, again, we're trying to account for everything and anything that um, as we go through the budget process, which again, I I've been here 5 years. This budget process is um, like none other that I've been in. Um, Kelly knows I came from the private sector. Uh, I will get all

028this stuff and say thank you, but it's very I understand how the process works and Kelly's done a amazing job at, you know, keeping us realistic, doing what we need to do and uh, her budgetary prowess has been amazing. So, it is is there is there a way to highlight what's already been budgeted because it's been passed? Well, that's fiscal 26. Yeah. at least for the public to I mean for example differentiation in text boldness versus not say just to say the 26 already been paid for the rest of it is uh to be introduced in in future budgets you know good point yeah I could and I think that's something I think I can do going forward is just having Yeah, you know, fiscal 26, you know, this is the the snapshot of it.

029It gives us an idea too for 27, which is the next budget we'll be budgeting for will be FY27. 3.4 number of days. I'm sorry, you have a couple of days. Couple days. Um, but just even kind of having that advanced look and just having a a sense of where things are and um, you know, it's it's that it's that first it's that first look of driver on 27 that's bumping it up to millions. Well, you said tennis courts. Tennis courts is on there for half a million dollars. Um, we have the roofing sections. Um, student paving lot. Tennis. Yeah. Tennis pickle ball row. Forgot the pickle ball. Um, I wish I was young again. Facility set. Okay, that's it. Oh, no. Is that it? Yeah, that's the one. I forgot that was on there.

030Tom, thanks for pointing that out. Uh, cool track resurfacing is a big one. Um, I don't remember the last time that track that's been a very long time. Yeah, I don't. Um, we should replace We're going to turn it into a gravel track. Mhm. The U facilities audit tool. Could you send me a copy of that? 100%. Great. Thank you. Um, so yeah, that's the list. Um, any questions going forward, feel free to reach out. Um so one of the um things that ca that uh passed and has been under review as a result of the Hollis town meeting is the establishment of a capital expenditure advisory committee for the town of Hollis. um that's been a committee approved by the select board and um there's a specific um composition of that committee that includes

031a Hollis member of the co-op school board and a Hollis member of the co-op budget committee in addition to a m um member of the municipal budget committee um for Hollis the select board of the school district in Hollis and excuse me, two community members. I I think that's it. So, at this time and the and the the um that group is specifically going to be looking at um putting together an overall view of all entities and what the projects and potential spending looks like for the foreseeable future. Um in an effort to kind of just put everything in one place. Um and in um eval to some degree evaluate um you know just how things are are falling, what things um run the potential of needing to be serviced through bonds, what that does

032to the potential um tax impacts and things like that. Excuse me. Um so it's been taken a little um time to kind of get up and running. As I said, I just received a notice today that there's an advertisement that went up on the Hollis Town website to look for the volunteers for the community members to participate. So, it looks like we're moving forward and I don't want to let the summer go by. Um I you know, I don't think anything I'm not sure when things will get started up. So, I wanted to bring it to everyone's attention tonight. um the person who would be I believe we the we're moving forward with the um the Hollis budget committee representative being the chair. Um I'm I'm honestly not sure if that language um it's not

033co by the way took a test this afternoon. Um really the person the person um from the Hollis budget committee would be the one um identified as chair. That individual's name is Mark Cost and another role in another community. He um was on a capital um expenditure advisory committee and has experience kind of working with with groups of this nature. Um, and again is going to kind of do this overall assessment. And I would say we're in a great place for the co-op because we have, you know, this five-year view. We know the bonds that just got passed on the project's uh scope of the bonds that were just passed at the annual meeting. And it's really just that opportunity to give, you know, make sure everything's being looked at so that the citizens are

034informed as new projects are brought forward. It doesn't um in any way um the group isn't going to direct any entity of what they can and cannot do or make specific re recommendations. Again, it's an place to just make sure all the information is housed and and discussed in in some form. So I would ask um anyone here to consider uh the Hollis members to consider um if they would like to uh be a member be our representative to that committee. I do not know that the um meeting structure timeline once a month twice a month I don't know those details yet but if um you have any interest please let me know and we can nominate someone um yep we can certainly nominate someone. The problem that I'm having with this is that uh

035I t you know I still work full-time and I even have a hard time at going to the four o'clock meetings on Wednesday on the Wednesdays because I work full-time. Um if the meetings were a little later I I I think I could find time to participate. So, I mean, I I I rather not volunteer until I know exactly, okay, I can get that information when this would happen and so on. Okay. But I'll be more than glad between you and I. It's Tom, right? Yeah. M I'm sorry. Don't forget Tom. I'm shrink. He hasn't. Do you know if there's never gave me your address, darling? Do you know if there's any intent to move towards uh setting up to be able to collect impact fees with this group? I'm not sure if that's something

036they're going to It could be something that comes up. It could be something that um we bring up as a topic. Um I think I think Brooklyn is doing that, right? Impact been doing it for a while. Yeah. So, it is something that I'm sure could be discussed. One of the one of the things that the co-op is not doing or has not been doing in support of that is really uh forecasting potential facilities uh changes specifically for potential enrollment. we we sort of wait until the shoe drops before we start acting. But from a standpoint of impact fees, they want you looking 5 to 10 years ahead on that. Mhm. So I know that Brooklyn has asked us to uh become a little bit more uh um forward thinking looking at it because we

037do talk about it but we don't do anything around putting numbers on it because there's there's been a historical fear that people are going to get all upset that oh we're coming forward with a a warrant article and that's that's not it. It's just the the idea with impact fees, you've got to plan a long time ahead because it's establishing it for developments that might be built that might have a 5, 10, 20 year total buildout time. And uh so I I think that this committee will probably when I say this committee the budget committee will probably get involved at least in in a review of that because it it also impacts budget planning. Mhm. Mhm. Are you going do you personally going to be participating in this committee as one of your roles? I

038was not planning on it. No. Mark Cost is the I'm I'm serve on the other budget committee. He's um the part the representative for that committee and I'm going to look to my Hollis u community members to see if any of them would be able to um jump in. Again, I don't know the timing. If it were evening, it would be easier for me to participate, but I'm not I'm not sure. to the degree it's possible if if you can keep that view in front of them that from a co-op standpoint um if we could access impact fees to help offset costs of enrollment growth due to development. It would it would certainly be helpful for you. I'll do that and then um I'll I'll bring that um to the next meeting that we have

039just as a Hollis budget committee as well. I'll share that with the we want to keep that front of mind as we can't force them to do anything right. Um so this document is going to be really helpful uh to that whole process um in addition to the overall um funding amortization schedule of the the projects that we have. um currently in place that are paid for in the community. The ones that are upcoming um aortionment obviously affects the impact to just Hollis and you know so there are lots of different you know aspects to it there as I said there will be a co-op school board member um participating as well. So um I'll get you whatever details I can get as soon as I can. Um, while Lance is here, I feel like

040we have um probably most of the co-op facilities committee sitting around the table as I look at the participation. And um I don't know if anyone has any specific questions for Lance with regard to this capital improvement plan. We might have we'll obviously have more questions as we go through the budget process. The audit tool will be really helpful, but thank you, Lance, for putting this together. And again, I I really do think the same way we handle technology and things like that, I think, you know, doing things in phases, the way the roof phases have worked, it it really has helped from a budgeting perspective be a to be able to plan and and spread out the the phasing of those types of projects. So, thank you very much for that. Personally, when I

041see charts like that, for each cell, there should be at least a simple little explanation that suggests why we need to, for example, budget possibly $250,000 for water system. Uh, what is it? Exploration. Explorations. By the way, from where I sit, I would like to see a larger font, but that's that's just me. No, I I we could barely get on the screen real well, so I would um Yeah, but for example, just as a little background, you know what I mean? Yep. Like that is like a phased approach because it's going to be, you know, Yeah. I mean, for example, the system is corroding and it's 40 years old and waiting. Well, I think and I think that's the information that's in the audit tool. That's the backup to this. Yeah. So that information

042is is there and I think it's this is just consolidated for for kind of I'd be here all night if I explain but I think what what Raul's describing it might be helpful is similar to what is done on the budget where there's one p one sheet that is the numbers and then there's the one with major impact ones and and and it just breaks it down and says you know this one here like says special education was x amount of dollars and it was because of empty pos unfilled positions and out of district. It doesn't have to be on this chart, but it could be a a companion and I think that'll be important maybe during the budget process. Right. Right. I may if this was an Excel spreadsheet, it would very easily to

043add that as an you know, I'm just saying eventually plus you never be able to see it. This is part of the education process, not just for us, but for the public. you would wouldn't necessarily display it parallel to it. It's helpful because looking over here, I see it's not snow truck. That's easy. It's a snow plow. It's a device that fits on the truck. The truck we look at and say, "What does it need for ongoing maintenance?" So on then I look at the Komodo for $50,000. Someone's going to drive it, someone's going to maintain it. What is it being used for? I mean, these kind of questions come up. You ongoing cost of operation whatever it is that we're buying and I'm not sure if that's included in the 50,000 or is there

044other you know that's it so now we got another expense on top of that's not 50,000 right it's an ongoing expense I see things like that I have questions and I don't know what went into it things even like just throw this out the solar panels who's going to maintain them they have to be washed When you look at Paul, I got a scraper off the windshield. My god. This is really just for the acquisition of the item. I'm saying yeah, just that's just for the acquisition, but knowing that there costs involved with the ongoing maintenance of whatever it is that we've considered it and we know what it is. It's under control, whatever. Because dollar amount is not the dollar amount, right? Anytime you make a capital purchase, it is the amount that's capital.

045Mhm. Right. And anytime you make a capital purchase, whether we're upgrading it or a new piece of equipment, you're 100% correct. Like there will be maintenance fee that'll be down the road ideally. Right. I think this is this is just a You're both right. This is not intended to be the explanation and the presentation. This is just it's it's an it's a June view of where we are reminding everybody what we've what's been approved for 26 a heads up of some things that are be going to be coming for 27 and a look ahead three in for three additional years. So I fully anticipate there'll be more details for FY27 and that'll that'll be the area of our primary focus as we go into the fall. and um work on the the budget development. You

046see 3.4 million, you know, it's not going to be 3.4 million. Exactly. Yes, that's exactly true. You probably want me on a mechanics for me. I mean, you bring up a good point. All these items have a sustainment cost as well. So, I'm that begs the question, should there be a backup chart that is the sustainment estimate for all these things? It seems like that may be too much detail for what this this is a highle visioning thing. Um when you start going into the specifics of we want to budget for some things like that. That's when you need to be looking at the maintenance costs um for because especially things that are that are put out there two or three years in the future that cost is a rough estimate and the maintenance is

047going to be even rougher. That's fine. But again, I'm looking at it from I'm a citizen of the town and I follow this. I want to be educated. I want to understand the process. Mhm. I I understand that this is today's view, but there is insight into it behind the scenes that we need to discuss maybe in two or three or four months from now. I'm just saying that the questions that are being asked are raising other aspects that we might consider coming up with an estimate because people will ask in the same. So I have faith in our budgeting process and our operations bud what what I call an operating budget is your yearly expense budget not your non- capital. So everything every time we add a piece of equipment whatever it may be

048you know like I said upgrade new piece of equipment we have that operating budget. Now that operating budget as a whole is, you know, I don't want to curse here, but you know, when stuff really goes wrong, we can fall back on that operating budget because built into that budget is the the O crap days. Um, so like when you have contingencies, contingencies, I love it. Contingencies, you know, that could happen on any given day. So, anytime we have a piece of equipment like this, we hope that that operating budget contains contingencies in there to pay for those maintenance, you know, those holy crap moments. Um, and hopefully they don't happen, but we have that budget operating budget in there for that, you know, for those specific reasons. And we do have the line items

049for the anticipated costs. So along with this the stuff that's coming in from FY27 as capital you're also going to have your FY27 operating budget and there will be a link between the capital proposed capital expenditure and the cost of staff and the cost of maintenance maintenance expenditures and contracted services that are all associated with that. So that if the capital expense gets pulled out, so will those portions of the operating budget. But this what Lance is putting in front of us right now is think of it like a to-do list as opposed to Oh, yeah. I totally agree. Yeah. But I I understand what you're looking for, Raul, and I I I think it's it's good to have that that linkage. It's just like when you put an expense or a policy in place

050or an expense in place and it's directly tied to a new RSA. It's nice to see the note driven by RSA XYZ123 and and um I think that's really good input. Yeah, 100%. And you know again the operating budget you know for some reason you know it's looking you know a little critical you know we'll budget for it on this on the on the capital improvement plan as a capital budget uh going forward but you know that day-to-day ops of you know budgeting on a daily basis of what comes up you know what happens what doesn't um I have faith that that's built in there because you know we've done it long enough um because you're responsible for giving the numbers correct And that's what I have to do here. I have one just one

051comment on the presentation itself, which is that I would strongly recommend using presentations that have a white background because if anybody tries to print this out, it's going to use an enormous amount of seriously expensive ink. That was a change I made this year, Brian. I I know. Good, good, good feedback. So, yeah, please use white back. I just wanted to be different this year. I appreciate it, but they make magic. So, we are ridiculous facilities heavy tonight. And as I said, since we have I don't know, one, two, three, four, five, like all all of you, right, are on the facil the co-op facilities committee. So, I have like six members here. So, this is fantastic. Um, I wanted to take a minute to just talk about um Is this the end of Are

052you Oh, yeah. We're off. That was the end, I think. Thank you. um to talk about um the finance that kind of where where the current projects um and the bonds stand for the projects that were approved at the um district meeting. The board met um on June 11th um to talk about and approve the financing which they did. Uh it's going to be a com it's actually a very interesting approach um that I've never seen before. So the expenses are combined into one bond. um when they were past district meeting one was a 15-year not one bond though it's a one combined amortization schedule. Yes, but I Yeah, but one one element um the the project that passed with the 15-year um time frame is has 15 years. It's for 15 years is a

053higher payout than the last five for for the one that has just the 20 years. So I don't know how the bond bank is consolidating them into that schedule if why they didn't present them separately. I have I've I've never seen anything like that before. So So they do have I think your what the what the bond attorney told me. Okay. And the same thing I said there, he said that they give preferential rates based on the total value being being um considered. Y so uh that's why they combine them. Okay. However, they how they actually fund it, we have no insight to that. They it may go all to one investor or it could be split among 20 investors, right? So, it's just it's like getting a jumbo mortgage kind of thing. Mhm. Um,

054so that was passed and um, and Tom, you're going to have I was reading through some of the minutes. You're going to have to help me explain many aspects of this, both Tom Enright, Tom Solen, and any of you who were here. Um, because there was some discussion about changes to federal legislation which would affect um, our ability to qualify for rebates. Um, there's a vote uh, federal vote scheduled to take place on July 5th. If passed, the rebates would expire with by um within a 60-day time frame, and a certain percentage of the project needs to be um complete complete um within that 60-day window. Um and project completion also includes the purchase in this case the purchase of the solar panels which we can um would be able to purchase and accomplish and

055be able to qualify for the rebates. So, so the understanding is that they the house I believe passed uh a change which would end the rebates effective for any that did not qualify within 60 days of the vote. The earliest vote will be July 5th, but it may be later, right? So, the 60-day window brings us to the beginning of of September. And what EI told us was that uh to qualify under that extended period it needs the project needs to be at 5% completion level and five and completion means either work that has been done or items that have been purchased and delivered on site. So, I have two questions. When you say July, you mean the Senate passing or agreeing to pass the version that the House passed? Uh, therefore, I'm not sure

056who's the vote who I don't the continuing resolution. I don't know specifically what vote is. July 5th. That was the vote that that was the date that was expressed. I don't I don't know. That's when the Senate is apparently scheduled to vote on the House's bill. Okay, I'll take your word for it. And so there may be a difference in the Senate version versus the House version. Correct. And so that's that's one step. The second step is let's assume that in order to achieve the 5% uh is decided to buy all the panels. Do we have a place to store them if we're not going to deploy them right away? Well, we are what what because the project as defined by the rebate program is the co-op project. The work on the high school um

057can can contribute towards the overall 5%. And do we have it and do we have enough plan already or uh the the panels for the high school alone would constitute more much more than 5% okay of the entire project value. So the that's why you saw in Lance's schedule that the FY26 part of phase three is the solar activity on the high school roof. So in theory if if the if it comes out to be 5% say you don't necessarily have to buy all the panels right away but buy enough to 5%. That is correct. We had a meeting the other day and it, you know, the House bill was put forward to the Senate and the Senate could make changes, right? And there's a specific change and I I forget the details of the

058Senate change that that could be. Mike said that there are people on the Senate who are pushing to make it more than 60 days, right? But the worst case is the House bill seems to be the most restrictive one, right? Anything like that to work, there has to be a reasonable transition period. Don't say that. There should be there should be I forget which one, but I believe it was December December of 25. But so there's a year. So it does seem though that there's still a reasonable we we can still reasonably maintain the scope of the project. High confidence. Yes, we're shooting we're shooting for the worst case, right? That's our plan going forward. Okay, good. Okay. Um again, facilities heavy. If anyone um has any additional questions, the meeting was livereamed and the

059minutes include kind of a comprehensive discussion of of what took place um during that meeting on the 11th. Kelly also included Could I could I just ask so where did the uh discussion where is the discussion currently on net metering uh slash um battery battery? Where is that discussion? The discussion is that uh the call board is supportive of uh anticipating the potential use of batteries for the program at the high school if that is the uh only path to getting the permits in time. But EI is still pursuing the um uh permitting path for net metering as well uh either in parallel or uh serially depending on what I'm not sure who it is who it allow whatever source will permit and there's a a reasonable possibility or probability that we won't reach that

060junction um before uh Eversource gives us the the feedback on that because the battery even if we it doesn't change what you do on the roof. What it changes is the controllers. So we we are keeping our options open, but we approved the battery option. Okay. But I just um I don't think there's been uh much of a conversation about that piece at all. The batteries don't just magically appear. There's a substantial cost to them. Yeah, there was a strong discussion at the board meeting. Well, that's what I was trying to to get at. Has there been um has it progressed from the facilities committee? is the discussion further along because the the the number I had heard uh was the battery cost was going to be at least half a million and the half

061a million uh would uh come from uh solar panels so there'd be less solar panels and I'm not saying I'm against that but that conversation needs to be out uh that conversation we we spent about a half an hour at the board meeting. So, so, so tell me it's it's the basically the same discussion we had in the facilities committee, which is there would be um there is the expense of the batteries, which is partially offset by a $200,000 um offset offered by Eversource for using batteries as opposed to uh grid storage. So, so the the 500 would be 300. Yes. Taken away from the solar component. Yes. And then there's a other potential offset that would come from uh a cost avoidance of replacement to the generator at the high school which is anticipated

062to be coming up in the next few years because of its age and condition. But even without that that was moved into the fiscal analysis and it resulted in a estimated 7 to nmon increase in the payback window for the project. It went from 9 years and some odd months to 10 years and some odd months. Okay. Now now that piece of information was not available at the facilities committee. So that's useful, that's good information. And then the other aspect, excuse me, is that the um the goal with the bonds was to ensure that the uh payment on the on the bond or the the annual cost of the new bond would not be greater than the amount that's dropping off because of the bond that's been retired and that was like the 600. That

063was about 600 and the bond payments are going to come in at around 400 and change. So there's a we're well below that even with the added cost of the battery moved into it. Okay. Have a question. Uh the batteries, and I'm not an expert at this, uh are rated by kilowatt hours, and if you don't use all of the battery power the same day that it's uh charged, it discharges at the end of the day. No. And so it doesn't work that way. No. No. It it it's a storage. It is it's it and the question if we choose to purchase batteries the question that will come up and will have to be evaluated is how much storage we want because there is the option of going for maximum out projected output of the

064of the um solar array. Okay. But that's that's a much bigger number than would likely be advised. You go for more what the need is on average rather than on peak. Um and the the uh downside of that is that you lose you lose some of the benefit of the solar panels during um peak production and minimum use. So you got production and you got use. Um there's an offsetting benefit of the having the batteries is that you can do load leveling so that even when you have a an so that you you end up pulling out of the batteries during peak use time and recharging during um lower use time because you can recharge off the grid. you don't have you don't have to only charge the batteries off of the solar. So, you

065can almost use it as a load leveling where you uh take less from the grid during peak rate hours and recharge the batteries. So there's a there's a whole it's a complex thing, but the but the that will be a decision point that will be brought perhaps to the facilities committee, perhaps the board. I'm not sure how how the the the project managers will want to do it, but ultimately if we're buying batteries, we will make a decision as to exactly what we want to buy when we get to the critical point that we have to place that order. This is almost like a control a classic control theory problem. You got three inputs. You have a transfer function. You got the feedback. And you can change the variables and figure out what percentage you

066need from whom when. Right. The cheapest way is net to eliminate the batteries. If you can do that, it isn't necessarily the cheapest. Well, so cheaper than we half million dollars of batteries again because there's offsetting costs offsetting monies available to the purchase of batteries and having the batteries um gives you the option of of cost avoidance both in the purchase of other items and the load leveling to change your rate structure. It all depends on there's upfront cost and there's total total ownership. There's battery benefit that we lose uh with the net metering which with each of the inputs you have pros and cons and the idea is how you balance all these factors in a strategy if you're correct on that. They don't have to discharge if you don't use them. They discharge

067on their own but very slow rate extremely slowly months. But but it is a a backup and an option and it gives you flexibility. It's not percentage wise, it's percent over weeks like um in evaluating whether or not to go the battery route though, you don't want to just stop at the payback period though because if you've got batteries as well as your solar um that's going to lower your electricity costs beyond the payback period. So you'll have lower pay, you know, you'll have lower electricity costs going past the payback period if you've got batteries versus if you don't have batteries. Well, with net metering, you have you have the two because it it's a question of do you want local storage or do you want cloud storage? I mean, either either way with with

068net metering, you are you are able to um sell back to the grid in your peak times and buy it. It's it's interesting. You sell it, you sell it back at at at a higher price than you buy it. But the net metering changes year to year. The laws that govern it change year to year and the laws that are in place now may not be in place a year from now. Um, and the rules, you know, the rules do change regularly, whereas if you've got batteries, um, you've got a more predictable situation. But anyway, that's that's open up. This is why it was a half hour discussion. Yeah, she opened the box and you encouraged discussion. I just thought that the budget committee should be tuned in on these not not to solve the

069issues but that there were these last minute issues uh that have have some significant consequence and we need to get up to speed from a knowledge point of view. That's what I thought. Yeah. But they weren't last minute by us. We brought it forward proactively. What's that? It wasn't last minute for us. We we felt the need to bring it forward quickly because that's what we were dealing with. Yeah. like from the SAU side because we found out about this federal legislation. As soon as we found out about it, we brought Well, yeah, I know. As soon as you found out about it, it was last minute by the government. Yes. By the government, not by the we wasn't trying to uh take a killer there. Um I was I was Yeah, it was last

070minute. Not bad. Keeping keeping on our facilities. um conversation. Kelly um provided a fuel savings report um as a followup to a question that Raul had about um the current the savings from the current project that was implemented. So, Kelly or Lance, I'm not sure who was going to take it. Oh, great. Thanks, Kelly. I appreciate that. Awesome. Fantastic. Oh, I'm not displaying it. I love this report. Um uh I see I can find it. It looks like it's all good news. I just couldn't figure out how to read it. How do you do the guy know how to read it? You wrote it, right? No. Who wrote it? Oh, it came from EI. Yeah. Oh, I have it. Yeah. Is there going to be display on the screen? Yeah, I'm going to I'm going

071to find it. Oh, please make it a little bigger. I got to find it first. Oh, wow. This number is still green. That's still standby. Stand by. Then I have a little zoom indicator, I think. Oh. Excellent. Is that good, Rob? Yes, sir. Perfect. Um, yeah. And like Tony says, he's not a solar expert. Neither am I a solar expert. Um, I'm not a um, uh, HVAC savings expert. I had to look up what a um a heating degree day um consists of. So I actually don't know. Um basically I I I Googled heating heating degree days and it's 65 degree day minus 50°ree day is a 15. Again, I don't know what that really encompasses, but um yeah, this is the uh this is the report. Um performance versus guarantee 144% excess over guarantee.

072Thank you, Kelly. I appreciate this. Um uh pre who's the guarantee from right that was their guarantee from pre- project. Yeah, I assume. Yeah. And do we split the excess or do we get all the excess? I like we get the excess in our budget, right? Some agreements there's a split. So wait, so Lance, before you scroll down, so what that's telling us as what we projected with the project was that we would see $45,000 worth of savings from the baseline that was listed previously up there. And what we actually realized, Can you scroll down? Yep. What we actually realized is $65,000 worth of savings. Is that correct? So would does would that show up, Kelly, in the calculation of the um budget, the uh unanticipated fund balance because it that money would contribute to

073an excess of or or is it considered do you capture it in revenue or you capture it as reduced expense? Reduce expense. Thank you. So, it's working. Again, it's working better than we thought it was. Again, this is this is a story that needs to be told to the public. I'm just curious does do we know if it's because of lower propane costs or lower usage? That's what Well, and that's what we were there the heating degree days look to be lower. um on the on the next chart down there. So if we projected $7,000 7,000 heating degree days, but we had only 6,200, then we would see more savings because we're not using as much energy. Yeah, that makes sense. I'm just wondering whether we whether there was also any savings from savings or

074additional expense from deviation of of actual energy cost. Right. Right. It's probably a little bit of both. Right. Yeah. Probably the best solution is at some point in the future have Dave talk about this like maybe with the next report scheduled into this meeting. So if Hold on one second. Yeah, because I actually don't know how they calculate. Yeah. So it's probably driven mostly by the reduction of days because the 48,000 which is the actual cost is 64% of or 65% of the projected cost as opposed to us being at 88% days. So that to me looks like um yeah he's reporting cost might have been a little bit higher, but the use the usage over the number of days was lower. That got us to the like a net 64% ratio from the original

075estimate weather normalized. I think so. Yeah, maybe a conversation with Mike at some point. we can add him to the June agenda and um for the for the facilities committee with the facilities piece doing and we can see an overall assessment of of do we have an ongo like a standing contract with EI well for now yeah because of the projects that we're involved in and everything okay if I call him now he can be here like No, no, it's not necessary. So, it's all good. It's all good. Okay. Well, as as always, if anyone has any um follow-up questions or concerns, throw them my way and we will um direct them back to the SAU office and we'll get those questions answered. So, thank you very much for providing the uh the data. Sure.

076Appreciate it. Um, so we can move on then to the results as of mid June. Before I get there, I forgot to mention something to you. We need a SAU budget committee representative before your August meeting. So, okay. I don't know if you want to discuss. I'll ask right now. Anyone's interested in being the SAU budget committee representative. It involves basically uh three Zoom meetings um that take place in the fall starting in September, I guess September, October, and November because the SAU budget is presented at a public hearing in early December. I've been the standing representative for for several years. Always happy to share the responsibility if anyone's interested. It is easy. It is via Zoom. I'm also happy to continue in the role because it is something that takes place over Zoom and

077it's um a manageable process with uh the documentation shared in advance and a good overview of um where the SAU budget is going to stand. So, seeing no representatives really rising, I I would I I will be happy to stay with the SAU budget committee because I'm going to look to my Hollis um rep uh members to be jumping in on the capital advis expenditure advisory committee. So, I'll be happy I'll I'll take the I'll take the SAU budget committee and um we'll move on from there. Okay. Okay. Thank you, Kelly, for bringing that forward. Sure. Yeah. Thanks. Um, so I'm going to fast forward to the as of this day, this report was created on on June 10th, and on that day, we had an unreserved fund balance of 1,323,000. And then we need

078to subtract from that the placeholders for FY26 that the voters approved to be funded by the fund balance. And those total those are the maintenance trust, the retained fund balance for FY26 and the contingency fund. So those total 765,000 and then we um end up with a a new projected balance of 500 basically $500,000. And because we I'm just noting the prepaid expenses that we have to make sure are covered by our fund balance. We do this every year, but we have a really high amount this year because we preppurchased um devices and interactive flat panels due to co known cost increases that were going to hit us in in April and May. So, um we we have to essentially subtract that amount um to get to the total that we would return to the

079taxpayers. And those were the items we discussed last month. Were those the items that were included in that overview that went to the board in May? Oh, no, no, no, no. These are are budgeted purchases for for FY26. Oh, okay. We the auditors allowed us to purchase them in advance. Okay. Because of the known cost increases, but we can't use them. We can just purchase them. Okay. So, they will be charged to FY26. What's the net total? 200,000. The net total. Well, at this moment in time, the net total is 214,000. That does include three of the I mean two of the three things that the school board approved. They approved uh the ADA re renovations. They approved lab tables and they improved approved um a roof an additional roof section. And um so the

080ADA renovations and the tables are included in our report here, but we don't quite have enough to include the middle school roof and return $200,000 to the taxpayers. Now, that could change because as we start releasing incumbrances, that number will increase. That's something a little different than what So that's part of the meeting. What did she say? Um I thought that what was said is that all of the maintenance costs were covered. All three. I thought so. Well, I don't think she said that because on the report at the bottom it says that the one is not there. But so the prepaid expense is on hold. Won't that money revert back? It will, but you have to take it all the way to through to the audit. It's going to be there and you'll see

081it revert back when they do the next year's audit. That's not because um that's not what I want. We're going ahead with the roof, right? Either way, was my understanding. Well, I think we need to make sure we have funds to secure that because that was viewed as a key element to being able to do meet the schedule as proposed for the HVAC stuff on the school, the solar also because they what they want to do to get their roofing done and all that before they start ripping the duct work out next year, right? Um and if we don't do it this summer, that's the wrong then that would push some of the other work out another cycle was what we were told. Correct. But I don't want to get Yeah. too. Yeah. So, I'm

082um so the items that were approved were in the in May by the board were in the you know 236 to 236,000 to $250,000 range. Sure. So, where are those in this summary? Well, the roof is not in there. Okay. At all. Right. and the um the ADA renovations and the lab tables are in encumbrances in the um expenses. Okay, got it. Okay, that's how they're accounted for already. They are encumbered. Okay, they're encumbered. Okay, got it. Got it. Got it. Got it. Okay, great. Okay, so that's the report. Um and so the most one of the more significant contributors is savings in special education and student services. Most definitely. We we have savings in every category with the exception of our vocational program and that's uh in the negative only because there were uh

083more students took advantage of that program. And were they split among Milford and Nshawa and Alvin or I don't know. Milford is no longer um one of the we use. It's okay. It's uh Nasha and Alvin. Yep. And I believe that this current year we also uh had someone going out west. Is it Jaffrey or something? I forget what which district it is. I don't think they're in the plan for next year and that group that we've joined is we're primarily going to be focused on NSHA based on the new agreement that we entered into. Okay, great. And that's expected to reduce cost, right? Um it's not so much to reduce cost. The issue is that we got agreement to align schedules that Milford would not agree to. So our students But it's more mainly

084the days off, the days of closure. And we were running into problems where Milford was not closing and opening on the same days that Right. There's only a maximum number of days that your calendars can be out of sync. So, and so we we we signed a a regional agreement with a four-year commitment. So, this was prompted by a schedule to conflict or synchronization issue. It was prompted by new legislation uh with restrictions on CTE programs. Um the other thing that Kelly shared with us was the um and which took place at the board meeting was the expendable trust public hearing which is an annual exercise. And so that enables us to release the funds that were that get um put into the expendable trusts and get authorized at our annual meeting and then get

085utilized. And um this uh summary um explains the requested items in addition to identifying the fund balances, starting and ending points of each of our um maintenance trusts, which is a document I want to remember because every time we come around to the budget cycle, I always forget what the balance is, especially in the special education expendable trust. So um do you mind, Kelly, just talking about that a little bit? Yeah, sure. Um, as far as the maintenance trust goes, the items you see there, the in the high school, the roof section and the elevator retrofit as well as the roof section for the middle school, those were all anticipated uh to be on this list because they went through the budget process. They were all in the maintenance trust section of new items. But

086um the the um middle school final elevator expense, that one was outside of our budget. That was just final expenses related to the inspection of the middle school elevator which is now running and those we asked everything else about that elevator came from the maintenance trust. So we just asked to include those final costs and then the then we do end with a balance at at least anticipated at this point of um 151,000 in the in the maintenance trust. And the special ed trust, we have no uh plans to use that trust at this time. So, it has a balance of 290,000 and that's obviously more than the 225 or I think it's 225 that we um plan to keep in there, but that's due to interest basically accumulate over time. Great. Okay. Any questions,

087concerns? No. Okay. All right. Um Tom, are there is there any other schoolboard update? I'm not sure what other topics may have been um addressed during the meeting on the 18th. Nothing of sign did a lot of policy policy activities and uh it was really good presentation on the language arts program. It's going on. Some really uh effective things are going on there. Um and was there another there was a second presentation. Oh uh a review of advisory. uh and staff has uh put together a really nice presentation and are very positive about the the work that's being done and the impact the uh relationships that are being built between the uh high school and both the middle school and the elementary schools where uh they're getting um the community and the uh it's the

088the trying to foster relationships among the students that wouldn't naturally occur by things such as course selection or sports involvement. so that there's a better understanding of among students who may not otherwise um interact and then more importantly to get the one trusted adult program going. Uh what was relayed to us which was good to hear is that majority of the staff even those who had initially been hesitant concerned andor resistant to the program appear to have embraced it. Um much of that due to the initial uh work that was done during the pre school and early phases of professional development to give them the tools to to to deal with it. And that staff have seen the positive impact in that students are at reaching out to them and asking for help, advice here.

089It's not just about school work. It's about coping, which was one of the desired outcomes. Is advisory just at the high school or is it Yes, it's three 15 minute sessions a week currently. Well, the program that was discussed was just the the advisory at the high school. There has been an advisory component at the middle school for quite a while which we have been calling rock, right? Kind of like that home room in the in the old days. Yeah. And it the basic idea is number one grouping students together um in a non academic focused uh environment. Doesn't mean they're not learning but it's not like Cavlock where people are focused on getting an assignment done. And the other part of it is giving the students a certain amount of autonomy in directing the

090activities. So some part of it is I'll call it curated and it's not they call it a curriculum but it's not an academic curriculum where the there is a topic it's going to be discussed or there is going to be um an activity that is planned but there's also components of it that are what do you need today and and it can be very responsive to immediate things that have gone on in individual or community life. Great. Any other questions for Tom? I'd like to know a little more about the details behind all that, but not tonight. I mean, I don't there's probably more information if you watch live stream. Yep. There's that and there's also the whole advisory thing developed over a course of two years. Uh, and there are there are published meeting

091meeting notes on that. Are the admitting minutes going to have a link to uh perhaps the uh it's it's in the pack. It's it's it was in the I I sent a link in the I haven't had a chance. Oh, that's okay. And if you go to the agenda packet from uh the last board meeting, the entire presentation is there. Uh if you watch the stream, you can hear the staff discussion of it. Uh and in the notes, there's a pretty good summary in in Don's notes. Very comprehensive. Did they survey the staff and students to see what like to just summarize feedback or Yes. Great. Good. Any other questions? I realized um without my laptop in front of me, I skipped over our approval of minutes from our May meeting. Skipped over that agenda

092topic. You were waiting for me to show up, right? So um at this time, I'll take a motion to approve um the minutes from our May meeting from Tony. His hand went up first. Seconded by Raul. Any conversation or discussion? Okay. All those in favor of the minutes of the May meeting? One, two. My last vote ever. Don't say that. 6 0. Thank you. It is. Are we I'm not allowed to vote. Well, that's Oh, that's true. You are. You It is your last vote. That's right. Tom's last. I thought you meant your last participation. Are we Are we done? Uh we will be in a moment. Okay. Well, I have a comment when before you adjourn, please. Okay. Um I'm gonna about to move to Tony as a process observer. So Tom, if I

093if there are any other items or things we'd like to bring up. Well, yeah. I I'd just like to say that uh that I'm really rocked by the thought of uh a school board member not being here, Tom in particular. If if you take tonight's meeting as an example, without Tom's input, this meeting would have sucked. Um, it sucked even with my input and and in a bigger picture sense, um, it's important that the budget committee be uh in alignment with the school board when we get to that uh when we get to that annual meeting. Um, and I think we are because of uh what goes on with uh with Tom in particular, but uh but with a schoolboard representative. So, I'm really rocked by this. I'm not happy with it, and I wish

094we could find a way to um to include to do something. Um, there's nothing we can do to change legislation, but I I but I agree with that it it's it's exceedingly important that we have schoolboard representation at up our dynamic here. If we just uh No, I I I agree. I Tom I respect and understand the p that perspective about your participation but I am going to look to the chair to say we have to have some repres representation here or or our annual or we're we're going to wind up in tr we're going to wind up fighting each other which is not what we want to do. So let me uh on that point let me uh this is I believe in where there's a will there's a way. So let me let

095me let me go from there. So we have a challenge in front of us that will be very disruptive and will reduce the effectiveness of what we do. So let's assume that we ask him to or someone in the se the school board to send us some uh sense of some highlights of the meetings that they had that we can use as an input maybe something in writing ahead of the time. Is that allowed under the law? The other one would be what if we ask Tom or a representative to give us a public input of two minutes every time we have a meeting. I just want to clarify there's nothing in the law that precludes participation in the same way it has been and exists currently. other than the fact that they have um

096disempowered the board from having any voting participation on the budget committee. You can still participate. I I I still can and and I don't know. I apologize. I don't know that I'm going to stop coming. I'm just really disturbed and frustrated by what's gone on and and and the We are too. I I sent testimony to it when it was being considered and I I saw public testimony about it as well. I have I believe that this is a concerted effort to disenfranchise um the citizenry from the decision-making process. Um, I I can't I heard heard nothing that explained it other than they said it's not necessary. It's unneeded. and uh was sitting on a freaking budget committee and and I mean I even wrote to to the to them of the fact that sometimes

097the the school board member is the enabling member allowing a quorum to to be present to have it exist and that's that's critical in a lot of communities but I Guess I guess that was this is sort of my protest. Um, I do think it's I do think there's value, but I think what this is saying is that maybe not in our community, but in communities in general, they don't think that the budget committee should be answerable to the school board because I think the places that it's being driven are places where the budget committee is adversarial to the school board. And in those cases, they don't want to upset that delicate balance where they've gotten people on budget committees to defund public education. That's my personal opinion. Um, so what they have done is

098said, "Okay, you can still be there, but you don't have a vote." And in doing so, a board that might have gone 44 now goes 43. Mhm. And those four that that majority of people who are uh trying to slash budgets uh without concern for impact or maybe with with desire with the desired impact can push more things through as they are doing within many aspects of our state government. So, um, I apologize if it was a little bit of grandstanding, but I do want people on this committee to be bothered by it. I want them to feel the pain of it. Well, you you succeeded in that. Yeah. And and and ruined my entire meeting. I get that. But, uh, I agree 100% as well. So I agree a thousand%. Make it if that

099would make it feel better. I see what's going on out there of New Hampshire and I agree with you 100%. There are more people that are more anxious to slash budgets just because then understanding what their money goes to and what it goes for. And I agree with the dynamics of Hollis Brookline Co-op and in that we have an exceptionally good school system with exceptionally good students. And I look at it is it's it's our opportunity to preserve that and it's I think the community in general are not settlers. They seek to do better. We see that in the students and the school pro provides the educational process for those students to be all they can be the best at what they can be and just looking at the graduating class this year. I mean

100it's unbelievable when you have kids going to MIT study astrophysics where else does that happen? And we do it at a value the cost per student is much lower than the state average. So we get to the best of the best at a at a cost that's below average. We're above average in everything we do. We're below average in cost. That's a value. That message just not getting out there. It's not by accident either. No, it's not. It's not. Just just to build on what Tony said a couple of meetings ago, I brought to you the information that we had learned about the this the state testing and the performance. And I I asked questions at the subsequent board meeting for further clarification on how much our proficiency rating is skewed by the opt out.

101And at the high school level, uh I think it was I think it was the science the the science test, we had a 30% opt out level because it was taking place the same time as AP tests and SAT tests and it's an it there's no impact to it. Doesn't it's it's a a zero stake uh test. So parents are supportive of saying you don't need to take this test but the net result is that instead of being at the 95% participation rate we're at about the 60% particip well we were under 70% participation. So to that more than 25% of our scores were scored as zeros. So you've got a scale of one to five and you've lost a third of that. So the maximum score you can get is about 3.5 average. And

102if every if all the other people taking it don't get perfect, you know, that's that's what's killing the proficiency. It's not that our students are not proficient. It's that they don't take the tests. Mhm. Mhm. When you look at I think it's uh the English portion of it, we're up in like 94%. But then when you look at math and sciences and that sort of thing, it drops down because that very reason you don't have to study for the English portion reading and a lot of kids just take it. But then the other stuff that's difficult like you say they're visiting colleges trying to make decisions and so on that keeps them from participating in state one. So the I to those people who are looking at those numbers and panicking the problem is the

103test. It is not the education. And I said what other metrics do we look at? They said a lot of it is is professional evaluation of the students. Do the kids do well? But then you look at SAT, AP testing, and some of the other standardized tests as well as as the grades. I think that every school has a certain level of grade inflation, and I don't think we're immune to that. But at the same time, as as Tony stated, look at the outcomes. Are we getting positive student outcomes? Are the kids getting the opportunity to go to the next level that they want to? And the feedback that we're getting is quite positive. things such as um admissions to the um the militarymies, uh the opportunities for internships, the uh choices that they're offered

104for post-secary education, and a significant not large but a significant portion who go on to go direct into the workforce, many of whom do it in an entrepreneurial nature. you know, we um I'll hold them up as an example. Uh Eddie Arnold, who is the chairman of our select board, who when he left uh HB, started his own business, worked in it for a while now. He has since moved on, he sold that business and uh got employed in in another activity. But I mean, these are bright kids who just are ready to enter enter the workforce and they do so and they do so well. I think I think that's I'd like to see the focus on that rather than the focus on numbers which are very artificial. That's why I think representatives of

105the senior class should have an opportunity to be at the article meetings and have a display to have an opportunity to speak and say what has been their educational experience really so the people in town can see where their money is going. It's hard to discount these students when they're in front of you telling you about all the accomplishments and there's lots of them. What we do for students is we give them opportunities to go to Nashville and learn some skills that are not taught here. So there's tremendous amount of opportunities even sending kids to that may want to study agriculture and things like that. We offer a lot to everyone. Yeah. And you guys, you folks here get a lot of credit for it because we do have a a system in the co-op

106that is collaborative and um I've been on the co-op board now for I think this is my 18th year. You were on it for over 20 years, weren't you? And you saw there was a there was a period of time when there was a very adversarial relationship between the the budget committee and the uh the school board. And when the school board finally got the message that they don't own the budget and started saying, "Okay, we're going to give you what we want, but it's it's your budget, it became a whole different game." And and uh I give an awful lot of credit to Darlene for having I know because I was I was board chair at one point and she was I think the vice vice chair of the board and she really took

107charge of building a budget in a um formulaic repeatable and defendable way. And once that started happening, the process that you use now, you may not agree with it, but you can follow it. And when you follow it and you understand the root of the of the proposal, it allows you to make a decision that's not just emotional. And that's why education of the public is critical. Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, and it's education of board members, too. So that's why we're gonna go circle right back around to why you still need to be here, Tom. I I thank you all for for what you're doing and and the overall support. And even even when we get into these uh oh yeah kind of discussions, uh they're productive and they're done, I think, out of respect, not

108out of uh out of conflict. It's all your fault again, Tom. You triggered one of these long-winded discussions. Well, I'm glad I did. Damn it, Janet. Strike that. Strike that up for the director. Lance, did you have something? Yeah, I'll be quick. Two minutes. Um, she hates when I do this, but Kelly Sely took a chance on me five years ago, and she's the best thing that could ever happen to me here. Um, I just wish I came here sooner. Um, you know, under her leadership, um, it's been a pleasure to work here the last five years. Um, she's been a champion for a lot of people here, everyone that reports to her. Um, she's a titan, um, that we're losing. and um I just want to thank her for everything she's done for all

109of us uh in the district and everyone here um you know I feel and just thank you for everything and um you're here. Yes, we said it before the meeting and Kelly we can't thank you enough for everything you've brought to our committee, the support you've given us through the budget cycle. Everyone talks about a budget committee, building a budget, but it's based off of everything that you and the business office provides to us. Um, so thank you. So, thank you so much. It's been over 10 years and you'll be missed. So, thank you. Thank you. One one last thing, I don't mean to derail it, but Joe is moving on to other things. Oh, congratulations. Thanks, Joe. And if if we play our cards right, he's going to go gain some new skills and

110bring him back here someday. All right, that'll work. That'll work. Well, thank you for all your support. Okay, I'm not leaving yet. Um I'll have a reminder for everyone that we have an our uh the basically the summer off and our next meeting will be August 28th. We'll have um our auditor there. will meet um our new business administrator and um I'll turn it over to Tony uh for a process observer readout. Yeah. Um let's see. The meeting was called audit time 6:35. We probably will have a few minutes in traffic. Uh with no public input, we move right into uh general business. Thank you, Kelly. And good discussions on quorum. I did learn a lot about that uh SP394 and what that means ramification. I think that was helpful for everyone in the facilities

111overview. I didn't realize there were six buildings in the water over 30 years old, which really to maintain. Seven buildings. We have senior building. Seven buildings. I'm sorry. put six down because that's not that's what he said. It's all your fault. Correct. About the advisory committee. Thank you for reminding us. We'll figure that out. So people apologize. Um and uh with that being said, Paton gets turned over to David from the office meeting just as the advisor just little reminder, something to think about over the summer. And uh I guess Great. With that, I'll take a motion to adjourn at 8:27 p.m. from Brian. Brian, seconded by Mr. Solon. All those in favor? I I 6. Thanks very much. Have a wonderful summer, everyone.