001Good evening. My name is Sria Chhatur and I'm president of the City School District of Albany Board of Education. There's a feedback somewhere. On behalf of the board, I welcome you to our meeting. So in today's special meeting we have uh Miss Savage, Miss Smith, Miss Bolson, myself attending um in person. We have Miss Crerachche attending virtually. Um [Music] and we have uh superintendent and members of the cabinet joining us too. This meeting is being livereamed. Instructions to view the meeting as well as a link to the agenda including all the documents we will discuss are available at albony schools.org/bee. Um there is no public comment today. Uh but we will have that on Thursday when we meet. With that introduction, I invite those of you who choose to join us as we stand up
002for the pledge of allegiance. 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. In addition to the pledge of allegiance, we always focus our meeting by restating the mission of the city school district of Albany, which is to work in partnership with a diverse community and to engage every learner in a robust educational program designed to provide the knowledge and skills necessary for success. Um today we don't have any report right superintendent. So we'll get right into our discussion action item which is the proposed budget for the next school year. Mr. Caris Good evening. Um, thank you for the the early meeting. I apologize. Uh, we're just trying to make our timelines here.
003Um, so as always with our budget, we uh strive to continue our district vision, mission, and goal as a district. uh what the budget supports, the advanced placement and university high school courses at the high school, the CTE pathways at Albany High, the social, emotional, and mental health supports at all grade levels, the athletic teams and inter mural for students grades 7 to 12, uh including two unified teams, um the STEM enrichment, fourth theme magnet elementary schools as well. We also have the band chorus and orchestra that start in the third grade. We have the Alb Marching Falcons and indoor percussion ensembles, the full day prek and 12 elementary schools and 10 community locations. Um the list of community schools are the Albany High, Arbor Hill, Delaware, Gifin, Myers, North Albany, Roots, Sheridan Prep, and
004Toast. Um we also have our Albany International Academy K12 and our TCCE Tony Clement Center for Education Grades 7 to 12. Uh this slide here is the staffing ratios of the past and the estimate for next year. Um one of the biggest things you see is the uh expectation for the enrollment to decrease by about 300 students. Um but one of the goals of the board and the cabinet were to keep the gross ratio um on the bottom right hand corner uh similar to what we currently have. Um our legislative priorities and budgetary impacts. Uh we keep asking for fair prek funding um 2.2 to $2.7 million. The support for teacher pipeline grow your own initiative of $300,000. The charter school oversaturation support for ENL and refugee students about $3 million. And to see the
005full document the link is below. Uh the state has still not adopted a budget. Um so we are waiting for that. Hopefully that will be in the upcoming weeks. Uh usually in the upcoming slides you'll see that we have some numbers in there as the executive budget. Um usually when the state adopts we do get a little bit more. So the numbers will change a little bit we hope going forward. Um the health insurance increases our tax cap that was finalized in February which was 5.06%. the tax levy that we're hoping to set tonight with the adopted budget and the impacts of on retirements. This slide here is our estimated expenditures for the last three years which is inclusive this year and the upcoming year. You can see that there is about a 4.9% increase
006in the budget from 2425 to 2526 of an estimate. Uh, a couple of the bigger items are the benefits, the charter school tuition. Um, the contract services as well as one of the bigger jumps for within this budget. Um, this is a newer slide just to break down the general fund expenditures in a little bit more compacted um, categories. Uh, again, it's the programs including transportation. You can see about an $8 million increase there. The charter school tuition about a $3 million increase there. Um the administrative support is about a million. The capital debt services is a decent increase of about $3 million. And that's because we're paying more on our um capital projects and our maintenance and our operations about just a little bit over 1.1 million. Here is a slide for our executive
007uh state aid run. You can see overall we did get an increase of about $14.5 million um to help offset the growth in this the budget. Uh the estimated general fund revenue for 2526 again you can see two years prior the current year and the projected for next year. Um there is a deficit which we'll see in the upcoming slides. Uh the property taxes at this current uh spot is flat until hopefully we decide tonight. Um here is the tax levby history. Um so you can see that over the past nine years we are at 79% as a school district. All right. So balancing the budget we're about $1.6 $6 million deficit. Um, and with a tax levy increase of a point 1.33%, you can see, uh, we would use a little bit less by
008about $6,000 of, uh, fund balance and it balances out the budget. Um, the total tax levy at that point would be 123,978574. um on the current proportionate value and the current um total assessed value that the city puts out in July, a house at $243,750 would increase their taxes by $4646. Um option two is a.9% tax levy increase and that that was a purposeful part to put on option two. Um, with that, our 10-year average for a tax levy increase would stay about 0.8. Um, so it's it's a nice number to stay under 1% over the 10 years. Um, and you can see we would have to use a little bit more savings, but with state aid run that when the state does adopt a budget, usually we'll get a little bit more. With that
009little bit more, we would use a little bit less savings. So, um, right now we would have to use another half million dollars out of our savings to help offset that difference. Um, with the current numbers again, um, a house assessed that $243,750 would have an increase of $3144. Now, with the, um, the common council did adopt a new proportionate rate, which does help offset. Um, so these numbers can fluctuate hopefully downward. Um but that also depends on something else that we can't control which is the total assessed value that we get from the city in July. Um so hopefully this is the worst case scenario. That's what I'm putting out there at that at this point. Uh this slide here the reserve funds um these are our savings accounts that are very strict in
010how we can use them but this is a list of what we have and how much money we have within them. Our new voting location uh the eighth ward districts one through four and the 14th ward for all districts will be at Bethany Reformed Church at 760 New Scotland A. This replaces uh Stephen and Harry Myers Middle School that we used last year. The early voting by mail. Um all eligible voters can also vote by mail again this year. Uh you can visit our website achools.org org/vote to download the application or you can pick one up at the um at Academy Park or District Building or the Al Public Library branches or you could call us at 5187 I'm sorry 4756015. Uh you can pick one up at Academy Park, complete the application, but it
011has to be received by May 19th at 4 p.m. That's the deadline. Uh May 13th is the deadline for requesting the early ballot by mail just so that it get back to you and then you could get back to us. Uh we will continue to mail absentee ballots to people in to the county board of election design as having a permanent disability or in the military as well. Um all absentee ballots and early voting ballots must be received by May 20th at 5:00 pm uh to be counted within the vote. Any questions? you go again to our website alnschools.org/vote or call 518-4756015. Um included in the ballot proposition one would be the budget. Uh proposition two is the HVAC proposals for our three schools, the New Scotland Monatory and Sheran Prep. Uh these are three
012buildings that we do need to upgrade or to fix um outdated equipment um prior to our five-year plan. Uh as you can see, New Scotland to upgrade the air conditioning system there is about $3.6 million. Monatory to replace two aging units is about $610,000 and shared and prep for one unit is about 820,000. The total prop uh proposed cost is 5 million. um it would be funded by our capper reserve funds so there's no impact on our taxes for the school district or for our community. Proposition three, uh this would allow us to sell a small vacant parcel in the south end located at 877 South Pearl Street and 13 Bingmpington Street. It's onetenth of an acre. Uh the district has owned this property but never has occupied it. Uh there's no district-owned structures on
013this lot. The voters uh we're asking the voters to approve to allow the district to sell the property for a minimum price of $1,000. Here is a great list of the upcoming budget presentations that Mr. Leco has helped set up for us. Uh you can see um communitywide virtual presentation. Tuesday, April 20th at 5:30. Monday, May 12th at 5:30. We have our budget hearing Thursday, May 8th at 5:30 here at Harry Given. Um, we also will have virtual Q&As's Friday, May 9th at 9:00 a.m., Wednesday, May 14th at 2 p.m., Saturday, May 17th at 10 a.m. Monday, May 19th at 9:00 a.m. Uh, our upcoming community presentations are Thursday, April 24th. Uh, we have the NAACP at 6 PM. Um, we have May 7th, Wednesday, the Common Council, I'm sorry, the Council of Alb Neighborhood
014Associations at 6 p.m. Uh, Tuesday, May 13th, we have the Beverwick Neighborhood Association at 6:30. Wednesday, May 14th, the Alme Common Council at 5:30. Thursday, May 15th, the Pine Hills Neighborhood Association at 7. Um, if you'd like to schedule a presentation, uh, please contact our director of communications, Ron Leco. Uh his email address is there or you can call him at 518-4756065. I'm open to questions. Thank you Mr. Kes colleagues as of usual practice uh we'll go around with one question each and if there's more time we'll add additional questions. going to break protocol today and go to Miss Cerchie first just because she's uh remote and in case the connection drops. Miss Ki can't hear you. Oh, am I can you hear me now? Yeah. Great. Uh thank you, President Tur. I have no
015questions. Mr. Elmeni. Uh thank you, Mr. Caris. I appreciate the presentation. Um, it looks like you covered um, a lot of ground and I look forward to attending some more of the in in-person public meetings um, and hearing what our public has to say about this. Thanks, Miss Smith. No microphone. Thank you. Thank you very much. Um so good evening. Um and thank you Mr. Caris and and the staff. I um a couple just a couple of things that may be I hope they're not petty but um one of them I wanted to come to was um on the page where we talk about our budget priorities. Um see go back there. Yeah. And so um the I don't know whether it's it's just me but the structure is like I can I get you
016know there's money associated like fair funding there's money associated support for support for but the charter schools oversaturation I'm I feel like I want to verb there. What does that what does that say to people? I mean I if they go into the text I think it makes sense but if you're just if that's one of the first things you see I'm like oh what is that exactly and what do you want us to do about it? So, it's it's like it may be a fact, but what are what are we voting for or how is it impacting this budget that that is important for people to know? Um, I guess I just I think we should maybe even start taking these slides out because while this is really pertinent at the beginning of the
017budget cycle because it's us raising concerns to the um legislature and looking for additional funds, it doesn't have any direct impact on spending within our district. um except in the miraculous experience where for example our teacher pipeline program were to suddenly materialize in the state budget which is absolutely not expected because it was in neither the executive h budget nor either one house budget. So it would be you know magical thinking to think that it might appear um but with the exception of something like that um these don't have a direct impact on our budget in until and unless they're in the state budget. Um, so yeah, I can totally see what you're saying in terms of just the way that the summary was done here. Um, consolidating what's essentially like an eightpage document or
01812-page document into four bullet points. We could do better on that in the future for sure. Um, but maybe as we present it to the community. It's not really pertinent because it does I can see why that that question is raised is like how does this affect how you're spending money? And the answer is it doesn't. it affects how we're trying to raise additional revenue which we were um yeah I just possibly successful and we don't know yet because we haven't seen our prek money. Yeah. Thank you. I just wanted it to be clear and again I didn't know if it was me because of just my own experience with all of this but Okay. Okay. Um but however folks may see it here. I just I guess um my other thing is um and
019I'm not sure I think I heard you say it but I'm not sure I can distinguish it. who um is are there they're virtual. Okay. these first district communitywide presentations the location all of these a link right so all of these are virtual the the first slide yes um okay and maybe what I would just suggest is putting the word virtual I mean again maybe it's something I missed but um so the first two bullets virtual district presentations something like that because I see it down here later with the virtual Q&As's but I just wanted to connect it And again, this could just be me. No, I'm sorry. The one in the middle is in at Harard Gibbons. That is in person. Okay. The first one which is a communitywide is virtual. Is it it's
020I'm sorry. Is that what is that the word right there? I I can't I apologize. Okay. I am really sorry. I did not see that. I can't tell you how many times, but it maybe it is the in person one, right? is that but okay I I take that back and I apologize I just wanted to make sure it was very clear okay okay uh just on that so I I see what you're saying that we have two slides that talk about uh the community presentations but one's primarily virtual it looks like with the exception of that one in the middle but then there's another one slide 20 which is a actual um in in-person, you know, location. So, I don't know if you want to combine them or put them next to each other,
021but it might three of these are are virtual. And and then on the I'm sorry. And then on that second one like the NAACP council community council of Albany and neighborhood associations those are all the NAACP one we are joining virtually on Thursday virtually. Yes. Okay. Those are the first three. Okay. Okay. So, again, I apologize. I just want to make sure that what I'm seeing on on page 17 and page 18. I don't know. Did yours say 18 or am I on the wrong Hold on. 19 and 20. 19 and 20. I just wanted to make sure that it's clear if they're virtual, in person, where they are and so forth. So, it just and again, I apologize because it could just be me, but I think my one of my questions is for
022these community presentations, usually the community the community the hosting organization um presents that to their membership and the larger community. But do we also on the district website for example are these open to the general public so that we could include the link or the physical location to these ones that are hosted by the community or is that not part of our normal practice? I can ask the groups if they are okay. Yeah, I would like that if they could. Yeah, if they're willing. Miss Milson, I'm just building on what Ann was stating. I think that helps in terms of sometimes people have a tendency to find out or hear about the meeting at the last minute. So, it would just help in terms of amplification. the other um not a question but just I
023understand we're going to remove the slide six but I was just curious because when Vicki asked the question I was curious if if we would rephrase that bullet to like disproportionate charter school impact or something of that line and I was also curious if maybe a negative number would convey just because I do see this slide as useful for voter education you know throughout what do you mean about fair prek funding and that would allow us to dialogue so I was just curious serious about that too. Yeah, I mean we as a member of government relations, I welcome your input on that as we um go through this. Um we have never tried to put a dollar figure on the impact of charter school oversaturation except in the sense of calling out the specific amount
024for charter school tuition expenses as part of our budget presentation. So, um, that is a way we do call that out, but we have not done further on that. And I think it would be pretty hard to do because some of that is the, um, you know, as we talk about in the longer piece, the unpredictability that's created by the potential opening and closing of charter schools. as I if Miss Crerache is still listening, you know, our our need to create the E+ design for our middle schools where we really didn't know when we decided on our middle schools whether we were going to need three middle schools or four middle schools. There's clearly a cost to that, but it's not um it's not like a specific dollar figure the way some of these other
025things are. So, I hear that suggestion. Um, and I do wonder if for community education purposes we could um talk about the the direct impact on the budget, but you know, we also recognize and support um, you know, all families in Albany with whatever choice they make for school and we don't want them to feel like they're being targeted or point called out, but it is a practical reality of our budget process. I mean, if you if you look at the uh brochure that we have for the advocacy, there's a onepage thing just on charter school and that has more of the salient points that would be useful for uh talking to the people, right? Yeah. And that I think that's fair, too. But it's getting people to go I'm just getting concerned about people
026not reading. And so these bullet points if we have them become really important and they become uh if we're participating in those discussions people are going to ask us more about those things and that's what they're going to see. Yeah, that comment that I was making goes for us in case we are the ones. Yeah, I'mware that conversation, but I mean this slide, like I said, doesn't really make a difference for a community presentation. But I I could see to Vicki's point about community education. I could see a title change of this slide to be like CSDA advocacy, right? like these are the kinds of to be so that you're aware you know we have sometimes put the slide in um with showing the increased percentage of our budget that is be being um paid
027for out of the state and the reduction in property taxes that's clearly as a result of the fulfillment of the promise of foundation aid and the advocacy work we've done around that. So, it could be sort of an introduction to one of the roles of the district and the board, which is this advocacy role. We've advocated for an increase in state aid that's decreased the pressure on property owners, which is why we're able to serve our students without these very large property tax increases that you're seeing in the suburbs. And here are some of the specific kinds of things that we've advocated for. And then we definitely would need a verb in that third bullet. And Miss, if I might, Mr. President, Miss Savage, I like that because and I and I don't know if
028it needs to go up above, but here we go. we talk about what the budget supports, but then it's what are we still asking for kind of thing. I don't know if it's in the right place if we re label it, you know, but I I like that and having some sort of, you know, u sentence that explains what that's really about. Yeah. Okay. Okay, Miss Men, I do not have any questions. Thank you, Miss Savage. I have two quick things. I wanted to make sure um when you talk about the tiny parcel, the postage stamp as I like to call it. You spec you have some adjectives in there that I think are um not necessary where you say there's no districtowned properties, structures on the lot. Since the lot is owned by the
029district, any structures that were on the lot would have been district- owned. So, I think this actually means there are no structures on the lot. Yes, I believe it's vacant. Okay. So, there's no So, I think it would be more clear to just say there are no structures on the lot rather than no district owned structures because it leaves open the possibility of some strange situation where there's a structure that's on the lot but that's not a district structure. And then I did want to just comment as I've been reflecting on the need to adopt this budget prior to the state budget that one of the things that we all know and we're going to talk about more on Thursday is the governor's um cell phone proposal is coming out on Thursday or coming out
030with the state budget after we adopt and we are setting our policies around that over the next couple of weeks. But we know that the executive budget included $13 million which I point out is for the entire state. a very very small portion of which perhaps might come to us. Um but that might be some additional revenue associated with whatever additional costs um you know we need to bear. So unlike most years, we do have quite a bit of fluidity both in terms of the um regular state aid and that specific aid and there will be some offsetting. We hope there will be offsetting revenue for the costs that we are going to have to bear to implement this new approach um that's going to be mandated. So I just wanted to call that out.
031Yeah. So you already mentioned the postage stamp. Uh so that was a remnant of I guess way back in history when Albany County managed the school districts and then they broke up into Albany school district and Bethlehem school district. There was this tiny patch of land uh in the postal in the by the port that is part of us and it's been there. No one uses it. It's landlocked. Nothing can be done with it. So when we're when over the past few years when we were looking at all the district properties and making sure we have the right paperwork and the lease agreements and land ownership agreements in our hands, this is this is identified and then if you're not using it, it makes no sense to to bear that, you know, to hold on
032to that and have a liability at some point, right? So that's why we we're trying to get rid of this. It's it's not really useful to the district for much of anything. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't I don't know in terms of communicating to the larger community how much um and how how we can convey this, but I think it is a real credit to this administration and this board that as of today, the City School District of Albany actually owns all of the land on which our schools are are cited, which was not true when this board came to be. And we would find these um we'd find these surprises. Oh, surprise. The land underneath um Albany High School is still in the hands of the city, right? Like surprise. Um so you know
033we took a very proactive approach in identifying all of the um facilities that we use and and verifying the ownership and working collab collaboratively with the city and it's a great credit to the city. Many many years ago there was much dysfunction between the city and the school district and we've been working on improving that and the city and the school district did the necessary paperwork to get that all straight and it is straight. It is actually straight now. Um, with this one little last bit of land that we do own, it's clear the ownership, but not clear what the purpose of the ownership is. And once that's no longer in our hands, we should be in in a really good shape. The challenge with not owning the land was like if you have to
034do anything to any construction work on it, be it power or water or what have you. If you don't own it, then you got to find out who owns it. And just so much more work uh which takes away from the stuff that we really should be doing. Um the misschi you know the discussion about the legislative priority slide I think I think I can see the point about that potentially being removed at this point because it's unlikely we would get more money for those things and also if you go back to the slide honestly you look at the dollar amounts if I was seeing this for the first time I would think that those dollar amounts listed out after each item were the amount of the district budget that's being spent on said items.
035Like I would think if you go back if if if one were to go back to that slide, I would think, oh, part of our budget includes $300,000 for grow your own initiative rather than that's something we ask the state for money for, but it's unlikely to happen. You know what I'm saying? That I think that either we explain it a little better, but at this point it's not really relevant. Um, and I think I might that's a and I agree with Miss Smith regarding that consistency in the bullets and think maybe if we were to say for example limit charter school oversaturization saturation that wrong but that might be a way to put it. I think there's no easy way to simplify there's no easy way to simplify that one. Maybe just to other
036than if you were to give a parenthetical just maybe the percentage of of the overall budget that goes to charter school tuition. Don't know but but I think it may not need to be there at all that this slide may not be need to be there at all for the community presentations. It's not relevant. Thanks. gonna go off camera for a minute and then I'm going to get back in the car, but I'm still here and listening. Okay. Um the other thing that I had was the uh slide that you had with the u the levies, the proposed options. Um, you know, this board, um, I have to say this board has worked very hard to keep, um, since we all pay taxes, we want to make sure that, you know, we keep the burden
037on our city's um, residents as low as possible. And we've maintained um, you know, less than8% over the last 10 years or so, n 19 years. Um it's hard to do that because price of things always goes up and when you make sure that you you have no increases in your levy, you're still drawing that you still have to pay for things where the prices are rising. Um so we I'm happy to say that we've been successful in in keeping any extra monies in reserves. So um you know even when we have a 0% there are things outside of our control that fluctuate whether it could be less than zero it could be more than zero when it comes to the actual cost a home owner has which in this case is either $46 or
038$34 based on those $31 based on the math that you've shown. um because once those other variables are placed in put in place by other entities that's when these numbers can go down or slightly up. Uh but but I'm glad that you presented the worst case scenario so people can expect um you know this the most that I'm going to be hit. Um the um I I personally speaking I would like to keep it less than you know.1% less than 1% or or keep it at where we've been for the last 10 years. Um a 31 $31 $31.44 $44 increase in tax for a house that is $243,000 um is a reasonable expectation be considering that the price of everything is shot up significantly. And if you if you do a zero but 0% that
039means you're not in even if you get more money from the state, you may not have enough for future years. And given the way the economy is behaving right now, it's hard to predict what's kind of what what kind of federal, state or any funds that we might be getting for future years. And so, uh, anything that we do have in surplus, it' be good to have the reserves like we've done in the past. So that all these things like the HVAC system at at New Scotland, $5 million. Well, we have managed to put that in our rainy day fund so that we can use that money for what we put it now without affecting any of our um budgets. Um so I'd like us to keep that practice in place and and be fiscally
040responsible. That's that's my take on where I would like it to be. Uh but any other questions, Mr. Almani? I concur with everything you said about the levy. Um I think both options are actually very reasonable with everything at the market place going up in price. Um people people's um personal rates of pay have not increased as much as these things. Um and we understand that and that's why we are keeping it under at a reasonable rate, you know. average under 1% over the years. Um, off the levy and back on to the presentation. So, I'm in terms of just editing this, just a thought that I had would be the two images that we have on uh 17 and 18. They don't really I mean they're very nice, but they don't reflect what is
041actually being discussed on the slide. So, A thought would be that, you know, for 18, you put a little image of the parcel, not necessarily go there and take a picture, but get an actual, you know, sandborn map or whatever they are, parcel map. Um, just so people know what we're talking about and where we're talking about. and you know 17 maybe put something HVAC related. Mr. Yeah, thank you. Um so I had two things but I I did want to pick up on that. Um I think I understand what you're saying. On the other hand, I want to continue to remind people of what we're making the who we're making these decisions about and for. And so I personally like the images and I for me I don't need to see a parcel section
042um because it's also very minimum amount of money but it's just it's not my focus. I'm I'm focused on that child and other children in our district and what their needs are. So I'm I you know just to respond we could absolutely still yeah I yeah absolutely still keep the pictures on different slides but I mean I think it would be a service to people to say hey this is what we're actually talking about on this slide you know if it's a space that um we're trying to sell people should know where it is what it looks like what the, you know, area around it is. Um, if the rest of the board doesn't feel the same, it's not going to it's not going to How about a link to How about a link? I'm
043sorry. I don't want to I I I sorry, I want to Mr. uh President, if you can come back to me if this is a point to be addressed because I I really had one other thing and I was just responding. Yeah. Before we move on this point, can I just ask a question? Just a process question. typically between the time we see this presentation and the time it's shared with the community there's a fairly extensive remodel of it for the community um sides and I wonder Mr. Leco if you could talk about that a little bit um you know what what what this what it takes to get from here to something that we share broadly with the community and at what opportunities the board members would have to provide some additional input on
044um the presentation if they felt that that was helpful. These come from the main road show presentation. So they're they're lifted directly out of there and and all of the slides in the presentation include representations of uh of our students primarily and our staff as well for exactly the reason uh that member Smith cited to because that is to to remind people on every slide no matter what we're talking about uh who we are making these decisions for and and uh and who we are all working on behalf of and that's that's that is the goal there. Uh certainly wouldn't mind linking a Google map to the address that's there. So folks want to go check out on a a Google map where that specific property is. Uh we can do that. The uh we
045have our first presentation on Thursday. Uh what your first order of business will be at some point tomorrow you'll get the budget newsletter. Uh so and we need it back we need it back by the following day noon. So, uh, and the the presentation is based on, uh, the budget newsletter is based on the presentation or they're based on they're based on each other. So, if you're good with the content of the budget newsletter, you'll the content of the of the budget presentation is is going to follow. So, um, that's where we are. They're both the budget newsletter is a little more done because you need it tomorrow, but they're both mostly done. I yeah, the reason we're having this special meeting today to get this approved is especially because of the budget newsletter that
046needs to go to the printers to be printed and then be mailed to every household in Albany. And given all the unpredictability with mailing and and whatnot, that's why we're having this meeting uh as a special meeting. Um anyway, having said that, Miss Smith, thank you. And so again, I don't want to I'm not quivaling Mr. Monawi with you but I do I just wanted to keep that um the focus in mind. The other thing whether it's in the newsletter or in this presentation we can also make a link to the last presentation around the HVAC at um uh for the in the other buildings for the um you know for those schools that are having you know capital uh campaign things. So I I I think that's one way to do it and there's
047certainly a multitude of ways to do that. Um, I don't know if folks are ready to go back to the levy. I just I did want to I'll just say one last thing on this question is if you do decide to link to something, the tax map is way better than the Google map. The Google map is very hard to understand. It's like you can't quite figure out where you are, but the tax map shows tiny little square postage stamp lot surrounded completely landlocked. Um, so I know Mr. Caris has that if if you want to have just an image to drop in at any point in any of your things. I tried to find it based on the address and I found it very hard to figure out where where it was in the
048real world. But the tax map is super clear. If you look on Pearl, you'll never find it. Correct. But when you look at on the tax map, you can actually see literally it's like a tiny little square. And and the another suggestion I have with respect to linking uh documents in our presentation is instead of the big long text that would link it to board docs for the presentation is if you could make a QR code because most people will have their cell phones ready and they can just take a snapshot of that and have access to wherever they need to go. So I miss sure thank you. Um and I think on the tax levy um um I uh I would I think I prefer personally um option two um and yet I also
049I understand the issue around unpredictability for not just our immediate future but years years out um but but just like you know I think what we were able to do um let's see if we go back to the um tax levy history you can see why in maybe 18 and 19 and 20 why those things were above uh one um you know 1% and there's a reason for that. So, I'm not opposed to like thinking about maybe something differently different down the road, but I personally would like to keep it under the 1% for this go round and let's see, you know, where we are. And I think we're going to have to continue to tighten our belts and um you know, and prioritize uh maybe in a different way than than we have in
050the past. and and that's going to include on I mean even though we're reimbured but I think that even is going to happen around capital project things you know um and that depends on how long we can stretch something out give life to something that does need repair um but again for our children we're going to do the right thing um so okay thank you what's the 2% DAX cap actually work out to 5.06 06, right? So, we could go under the 2% tax cap, which would be 5 point something, and not require any supermajority or anything. We're trying to do our best to keep the prices down. I'm I'm proud of the work that the cabinet does has done with this budget and with the support of the board. Um, we are providing everything
051that we are currently providing to our students. uh including with the ratio slide. I think that's kind of an important slide to look at um where you can see the unions on the bottom the ABSA which admin the ABSU which is our support staff ABSA which is our teaching staff our MC and cabinet and the lunch aids. You can see where even with um what we're doing and with a decrease in enrollment and some right sizing of our our staff by um looking at the vacant positions that we have have had and some of the retirement positions you can see that the ratios are actually a little better with the expectation of the enrollment to go down. Um, so I think that's a lot of work that the cabinet has done to try to make
052sure that we aren't taking from our students and to make sure that we are providing every opportunity for our students going forward. Um, but it's tightening our belt, making sure that we do provide what we can in a fiscal manner for our community as well. Absolutely. So my hope is that you guys will adopt with a 0.9% tax levy increase. That way we can stay with a 0.8 average over the 10 years. Any other questions? Do you have something to say? No, I was just going to say I think that the 0.9 is very reasonable, especially because it would be an unusual situation, not unheard of, but an unusual situation for the executive budget not to be increased at least slightly so that the um we would essentially be offsetting um property taxes with um
053state aid rather than having to reduce services to students. Um we also do have very healthy reserves due to the fiscal care that we've taken over the last few years. So I don't see that that 0.9 is creating a risk. Um, you know, I think the the only other questions are what happens if something truly unexpected happens, right? You know, if we were to suddenly not have 300 fewer students next year, right? If something unexpected were to happen and there were a huge influx of refugees, for example, or some other significant enrollment increase and then we would have to react to that in the time. We do have reserve funds. We do have some opt options there. Um but it would that that would be something that we would have to you know it would
054be a fiscal challenge but a very unlikely I'd like to remind us to what happened during co right because all of a sudden the state told us that they were going to withhold 20% of our budget out of our control we can only spend what we have right so we had to take some drastic steps unfortunately um and then eventually things didn't work out the way that the state said and we tried to hire back But but so I'm glad that we're at least trying to keep the staffing ratios constant to the best of our abilities. Um and and trying to be prudent and fiscally responsible. Um, so if there are no other questions, I will entertain a motion to adopt the uh I'll entertain a motion to adopt the uh budget as presented with
055the 0.9% tax levy. Miss man, Miss Wilson, all in favor? Okay, that's unanimous. So, thank you guys. Okay, and that brings us to the end of the meeting. And so, like to entertain a motion to adjourn, Miss Smith, Mr. Wilson, all in favor. Boy, that was quicker. Good night, everybody.