001okay good evening everyone and welcome to this evening's okay I to Mr Dr bow says I have to do this okay good evening um I'll call this meeting to order thank you all so much for being here let's start with the Pledge of Allegiance IED Al 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 okay do I have a motion and a second to approve the minutes from the February 11th finance committee meeting okay a motion by Mr rash seconded by Mr Casa all those in favor hi any opposed motion carries okay we have some items for um for considerations consideration and I'm going to turn it over to you Dr Boward so good evening everyone
002thanks so much for tuning in at home or those in the audience for joining us for our finance committee meeting the first meeting in roughly 13 years without Mr scroy in attendants I am very pleased to share with you that we have an interim uh Chief Financial Officer Chuck Linderman who is a longtime uh CFO in a neighboring School District in the county um and a well-respected individual in the school business World he's navigate he's driving board dos for us and running a finance meeting um I just have to guess that Mr scy can't help himself that he's probably tuned in from Florida um I I just have to imagine so Chuck whenever you're ready we do have two items recommended for work session uh we have the north monco technical career budget and the
003budget transfers for February yeah yeah attached you have the uh and greetings I met you all but for sake of whoever's the crowd here and uh I I was not in this County I was in Chester County so um you know it's I kind of like mcgomery but I was at Great Valley School District for 38 years 35 of them as the business manager and I've I've done various in aundry roles like this quite frankly because when I retired I was retired for a little bit and then Co hit and couldn't go anywhere so I was the interim at Coatsville and I was the interim at cheltonham and I was the interim at Wallingford and I was the interim at Allentown and I was the interim at place called Weatherly um there's more deer than
004kids there so um but anyway so here I am and I I've done board dos I've never done we we always did the scorecard I always had like my assistant here who she's not here tonight but that's okay my assistant always did it so I I can do it and I haven't done board dos since 2019 but we did board dos for a long time uh there so the first thing you have is the monco northern monco U budget and I wrote in there the the it's increasing by about 4.2% you have a copy of a presentation that was I believe done to the business managers probably before I came and uh Mr shroy had had had shared it and uploaded it uh so you have two uploads one is the whole thing if you're
005interested in reading that whole thing and the second one there the summary basically shows you the two pages with the increases in in our numbers and the increase in um the the line item budget which is included in the budget that I believe he shared a little bit with you last month so boring any questions they will not officially stopt this until March 18th but it's in enough time for you to approve it at your March 20th meeting so that's why it's on the agenda thank you for that explanation um any do I have a motion and a second to move this forward to work session to our next meeting so moved second motion by Mr R second by Mr Kasa any questions or comments about this from the committee Mr R I want to
006I want to thank North pen for for uh considering this I know I've talked about it for a while now we continue to add programs to North monco technical career center we continue to add more students and give them the technical education that they desire and need to make our community a better place so thank you for considering this okay all those in favor I any opposed motion carries thank you next item the next item are your kind of routine budget transfers that you do monthly um you have a copy of them in your in your U board docs so just entertain any questions and we do need to move this forward to our next yes okay um we'll start off with a motion and a second to move this forward to our next meeting
007and then we'll move to questions and comments do I have a motion so move second motion by Mrs McMurry second by Mr Casa any comments or questions okay all in favor say I I any opposed motion carries we'll move that forward thank you Mr Linderman uh we do not have any student Representatives tonight so unless there's anything to cover in the financial reports Mrs ramage I think that will take us to our public comment okay so the next thing is um your revenue and expense projections now I will apologize for the write up in there I kind of replicated Mr shroy from last month it's a little bit different um this is this is the kind of the first time I think you're seeing the projected for the end of the year I have a
008couple things I'll just mention uh some things are adjusted from what he may have given you because there's some economics have changed in the past month or so so uh uh real estate taxes are the same because you had collected all them that's not going to that's not going to grow by much earned income tax still reflects about 900,000 over the budget in U we're projecting uh Steve had had communicated about a million so it's it's just come down a little tiny bit so uh and that that assumes some things transfer tax we we are it's about we're projecting about 500,000 over the budget and that's a a little bit less than what Steve a lot less than what Steve had said he had said a million six and uh we kind of hit a
009snag here a little bit in some of the transfer taxes we believe we'll still make budget but it's you won't have the a large amount over um things happen if interest rates come down and hous start mortgages start going a little better you you'll you'll do better so uh more to come on that uh interest is a little bit the same he actually told you it was going to be two and a half million he he was a little conservative on that it looks like we're going to be about three million over the budget for that so we continue to do as the interest rates have kind of stayed higher on the investment side um and then um your some of your state revenues are pretty much the same they're going to be a little
010over budgeted Because by the time the state did the budget last year which was higher you end up getting more so that's reflected in next year's budget or already the the adjustments and we'll do some some things on that so uh expenditures not not much change in that the uh U so just any question any other questions on that sorry to again I I apologize like like Dr Bower said it's my seventh day here with Neve I was here a couple days with Steve but he was talking like 100 miles an hour at me and and I was trying to do stuff down in where I came from like Steve I could have just you would asked me a question I would even look at these numbers because I knew them all that you kind
011of live these numbers you know them I won't be that good next month I'll be better no that is fine we we're just so grateful that you're here and that you're helping us during this interim period so and I will just reflect that like what uh Dr bow said that you have a great staff I mean I'm you heard my list of interims this is the kind of one of the better places to come to is to be an interim you come here it's you're you're filling in for and Steve was was well known in the pasbo peoples and stuff so uh and he has a he had a great staff and he did a great job we appreciate hearing that and we also yeah hopefully he's not watching from Florida hope he's really enjoying
012that time but thank you for that um any questions or comments about the reports that are on file and board docs okay Mrs ramage if I may I think it's important to just share publicly and do we will uh unpack this more at a Future Finance meeting and as we get closer to the actual borrowing to begin the high school project uh but it did go public just yesterday afternoon that uh we were able to maintain our Moody's ablea Bond rating I believe the number was something like 17 districts in Pennsylvania have a bond rating that High um and the fact that we are undertaking such a large infrastructure project to maintain that rating uh in the upper echelon of the school district is really uh to be commended and to Mr scy and the
013staff who prepared for this Mr scy was doing work on this yesterday because we get the actual review and then you have two hours to look it over and identify any mistakes um and then get back to them so Mr scy is currently down in Florida I hope he's watching the Phillies uh but but he was doing work for us yesterday so uh very proud of that we'll talk and unpack it a little more at a future meeting so appreciate that and we'll look forward to that but really thank you in advance to the team that supported this effort and and we know that this was um a lot went into this um and that we're really grateful for it so thank you okay so we'll move on to um public comment so any individual
014attending this meeting and intending to speak to the committee should be aware that they are being recorded in order to meet the requirements of Pennsylvania sunshine sunshine law it is necessary to record the names of all citizens who speak to the committee during the meeting to assure compliance with this requirement it is essential that those planning to address the committee State their name and municipality as a reminder the public comment portion of the meeting is designed for residents and taxpayers of the district to provide comment and feedback on matters being discussed at tonight's meeting or matters that may come before the finance committee in is not designed for debate or discussion with members of the committee when appropriate committee members may choose to respond to public comments that have been made or request that a
015member of the administration follow up with speakers at after the meeting members of the audience are asked to limit their questions and comments to three minutes this is in reference to board policy 903 good evening Mr patchel yes uh first thing I want to start out with is I know the new uh CFO why did they get a $115,000 raise over what Mr skari was getting uh I think the public would like to say you don't get anybody uh out of the Threshers and move them up to you know playing in the big legs show me what you can do kid you're only hitting 205 you're hardly ready but anyway uh I have thing I was spent time over there in migi's office I talked to uh uh what Kyle Mor Ary I asked him
016if he was trying to catch uh Sherlock Holmes but he said no that's been a joke he had for a long time it's about PA House pass legislation freezing proper taxed for long it was passed unanimously in the house I think they're going to bring it up I fit in but you had to own your house for 10 years and then if you had reassessment on your mine I'd be exempt and I wouldn't have to pay any increase so h out this stupid rebate I spell it R B AI T what is that supposed to get more votes I know you never miss a photo up uh showing up and everything so uh you know we need the world oh yeah uh I know that U Miss Rock oh she should be very happy about
017the 250% Tariff on milk coming in from Canada I wonder how that's going to work out because I heard that joshh purau look it's your state you figured out we're not mailing you any more money okay so what's going to happen is if ice doesn't show up and get all the kids that are illegal here that's what they do they come to the school oh I'm doing pretty well 113 okay you need to understand you're going to lose some money and see I know I know Mr Summers over there would like to read this and you could sit at length with uh uh Steve melari he was elected he's fairly popular why are there so many vacancies in Lansdale for commercial places boy it's starting to look like a ghost town I think Spielberg will
018come up here and do a western again you know only James rst but he's going to look like a hundred years old you know so you have to figure your budget you're not going to get it Department of Education you're out of here they're going to knock the building down or sell it so to make sure the next guy in 3 years or whatever it is no no no it's going to take you a million years to put this stuff all back in place so what we got to do is stop with all this planning and the new uh the shell game that was Mr saraki I don't want to see the shell game what you need to do is have one project it's 15 million Stop Those pfm Bond hounds coming up here oh
019I'll let you borrow a whole lot of money and I can be like a juggler thank you Mr thank you any other public comment if I might add for Mr Patel to his question uh we have a very humble person that's filling in from Mr saraki uh who has been president of the International Business Association for school administrators Mr patchel as well as the Pennsylvania uh uh chapter as well so we feel that we have a very capable uh distinguished individual so thank you for asking I did I payment Mr thank you said I said you know we arue with one another but I do like what you do thank you Mr Patel thank you i000 thank you Mr Patel Mr linear it's your time book Mr Patel thank you uh Jason L near Lansdale
020um I want to kind of jump off where uh Mr bachel was talking about taxes and looking at the the Act One index and what that that projects for us going forward and I know that the the flat percentages you know right now we're at 4.49% next year will be is projected to be 4.0 then 3.6 after that 3.2 and 3.1 when you do the um compounding of that meaning you tax this year and it gets taxed again next year on uh by the additional amount you're looking at in four years you're looking at a 14.6% increase in our school taxes layer that on top of our local and and County taxes and you know that's another 40% on top of of what uh our school taxes are and I want to know what we're
021getting for this money I know we got some nice buildings going on but really great buildings are fine but that's not the purpose of Education it is to educate the kids and those numbers don't don't show in your favor there is a steep decline a steep decline in proficiency and I want to know why who's going to be responsible for this why are we spending money the way we are we you know we quickly look at the some of the things that we talked about here before is you know the the SNS system I think they do a fantastic job with the meals but I don't understand why we're paying for summer meals there's no school there's not they're not feeding it to any uh kids in school you're feeding it to kids at the
022park why are we doing that that it it's not it's not uh uh you're not being gracious you're not being genuis you're not doing charity when you give away other people's money it is not your money to spend and the and the the SNS system needs they they're their budgeted to increase by $460,000 so how much are we spending on the on the summer meal program and why are we doing it I know there was some talk about well kids need to eat in the the summer well yeah kids need to do a lot of thing all the time that doesn't mean it's the taxpayers responsibility to do it we have the the Health Care system and I know [Music] thef the other one how much money are we spending on that and why does
023that cost increase and we're hiring or we're we're allowing uh now monco Tech to pay to come and join our our healthc Care Clinic they pay $3,000 a month that's $36,000 a year roughly and we we've we're paying more than uh our increases we're increasing the the amount we're paying to everide or whatever they're called now by $120,000 so why we're increasing the amount we need from from from everide in order to accommodate additional outside entities I don't this whole thing why are we doing this why is it the taxpayer's responsibility to do the things that you guys want to do that's not what your job is your job is to increase education and we can talk about that more because I have some pretty hard stats on that and we'll see you in the
024next meeting thank you Mr lineer uh Mrs romage if I may just a comment about the North monco and the healthcare center just so everybody everyone knows that we pay proportionally North mono's budget right so the percentage of students that attend North monco technical career center who are from North pen we pay that percentage of their budget they also being self-insured we pay their that percentage of their staff's healthare so if this is a Cost Containment strategy for health care for our employees if our contribution is 48% to North monco then we benefit by saving money for their staff's health care as well I hope that that makes sense so anyway the five sending districts contribute proportionally to their budget and so they also are self-insured much like North Penn is so if the costs
025are less we save money that's how that works not to mention that the proximity of the tech school to our district and to the Health Center also means that our students are not going to be losing out on instructional time it's true because their St their teachers are going to be able to get what they need to then be able to return back to the critical work that they do that's correct Mr so so two points uh when when uh last we heard an update from Steve shrai the healthc Care Center actually made us $1.1 million um in the first year that it was in operation we'll hoping that the uh Health Care Center actually brings us in another million dollars this year uh and I'm sure once the new CFO gets in we'll get
026an update on that um and I believe those numbers are correct is that right Dr B yeah so you would have to separate the monies for Primary Care and instead of going to say urgent care or to another primary care specialist what are the costs just for Primary Care which is provided so someone with a serious health condition is not going to the healthcare center for that condition right it's just primary care so when you separate those numbers the cost savings last year were $1.1 million okay that is not overall Healthcare that is primary care services yes and and according thank you for that and I believe that was what Dr what Steve shaki told us and the second point is is uh Mr lanir keeps on coming and saying that the uh statistics on
027the educational front at on North pen are going down every year that is not the case from my understanding of what's happening in the school district in fact I I think we went from 91 to 92% proficiency this year but I know you know the statistics better than me so so um I could talk for hours on this Mr rush but you could um I can tell you this the proficiency rates across the country nape which is the National Association of Education um put out last year that State uh performance across the country was the lowest it's been in 30 years and Pennsylvania is no different state averages have declined significantly over the years across the county across the state Across the Nation the gap between North pen and the rest of the state has
028maintained so test proficiency and the percentage of students who are proficient and advanced on some tests has declined there's no doubt but it has declined across the state across the country and so forth um there are changes in tests there are changes in curriculum a good example is many students in North in say 8th grade they don't take what is considered e8th grade math based upon State Standards they're taking algebra they're taking a class that is a year two years Advanced and then they get tested on eighth grade standards when they're taking algebra so of course their scores on that content that they took two years ago might not be as good as it would have been if they were taking it right now if that makes sense so it's all relative if you look
029at uh AP exam scores SAT scores the achievement Gap we continue to be about where we've been um and better in some cases the statistic that I often talk about that I think is most valuable to look at is growth so how are our students doing compared to their peers across the state with a similar testing profile that means if I'm an eighth grader I'll use my son for an example he's a sixth grader in another school district you compare him to other students who tested like him in third grade fourth grade fifth grade across the state how how's he doing compared to them that's past growth which is a value added Achievement System so I like to look at growth our growth is very strong um the proficiency as es in flows of tests
030there are tests where proficiency has gone down but it's not as simple as just saying in 2018 it was this in 2024 it was that there's a lot of variables there it's a very good explanation thank you very much you're welcome and appreciate you and your team's effort to really drill down um appreciate that sometimes what can be a simple standard we are I I really do appreciate learning from you all that you're you're addressing this in a layered approach um and really analyzing all of those layers so um I think there's such a model in that data driven approach that you all take and I um we're all very grateful for it Mrs romage can I make a comment so I would just like to say in response to Mr Lan's comments about the
031healthcare clinic Mr lanir as everybody knows comes to pretty much every meeting he attends as many as we do and Mr scroy explained the healthcare center to him and to us multiple times so if he doesn't understand it by now I'm not sure what more we can say no that's right well you'll usually leave comeand oh that's funny coming from youone okay um thank you Mrs stole um so our next um finance committee meeting is on Tuesday March 18th at 6 PM this is a special meeting for um budget review processes and it will be virtual and then the next um finance committee of the full board will be on Tuesday April 8th at 6 PM do I have a motion and a second to adjourn second motion by Mrs McMurtry second by Mrs stole
032all in favor I and then we will oops we will reconvene in about 30 minutes um for our next meeting