001television is online and so is youtube madam president the meeting is yours thank you mr gilmer all right i will call this finance committee meeting to order first up we're going to have um the pledge of allegiance please 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 thank you okay so could i please have a motion for the approval of the minutes from the april 21st 2021 meeting uh for the special finance committee meeting removed by mr roach drive a second seconded by mr mcbean any comments or questions all in favor raise your hand or say aye any opposed motion carries thank you so next up we're going to go to public comment
002so for those of you who are here this evening at the finance committee meeting please know that we have a couple of meetings scheduled for this evening including an action meeting after this one if you wish to make public comment during the finance committee meeting please be advised that it should pertain to topics on the finance meeting agenda if you wish to make a comment that is not about a topic on the finance agenda please know there will be a public comment period at the action meetings we will have about 45 minutes to an hour depending on how many people wish to comment towards the beginning of the action meeting then we will proceed with the topics on the agenda for that meeting at the end there will be a second period for public comment
003for about 30 minutes if after that there is someone that still wishes to make a comment but has not had had up the opportunity we respectfully ask that they email the board at underscore np school board at npn.org and we will get back to them so individuals attending this meeting virtually and intending to speak to the committee should be aware that they are being recorded in order to meet the requirement of pennsylvania's sunshine law it is necessary to record the names of all citizens who speak to the committee during the meeting to ensure compliance with this requirement it is essential that those planning to address the committee raise their hand electronically and state their name and address members of the audience are asked to limit their questions and comments to allow time for all those
004who wish to speak to the committee the chairperson may ask an individual to yield the microphone to the next speaker so with that mr gilmore is there anyone in the attendance audience who would like to make a public comment yes up first is owen wilcox mr wilcox i've enabled your microphone so when you're ready to begin state your name and address and then begin your comments please all right now i want to wilcox 32 school street hatfield i just want to comment tonight as you know begin to talk more about the budget um you know i've spent the last i don't know year or so i don't know less than a year but anyway i've spent most of my comments pertaining to getting kids back to school and since that's happened you know as someone
005who specifically moved to the district for the schools uh every year in the eight years or so since i moved here you know the taxes went up so and i think that's one of the single biggest issues on most taxpayers minds i'm glad that the tax increase has been kept at least to the act one index for most of those years but i just uh would comment to urge the board to really have you know consider everything uh when they approve budget increases uh i understand you know just cost of everything goes up every year um but um the last year i believe there was a presentation about the transportation department and i i thought you know the savings that would have been uh realized you know and maybe contracting that out i didn't see
006that this year um you know i know last meeting it was mentioned like you know where else do we look and you know salary is the biggest driver and you know if it came down to it i just asked the board to consider that as as hard as that might be you know as uh you know unwanted as it might be to actually cut personnel i mean if that's the biggest cost driver and there's nothing else that we've done to you know save costs you know there's a lot of talk about reform and both charter schools and the fair funding and you know as i looked at some of the bills that were introduced past two sessions and you know the state legislature i'm you know just frankly not confident that they'll be able to
007get anything done i mean there was at least a dozen or so bills you know over the last two sessions and none of them got even got out of committee uh as far as fair funding i seen you know our local reps mal gary and uh todd stevens introduced a bill and you know just looking at the winners on and losers on that list again i'm not really confident that our state legislator can get anything done to move that forward and make that a real reality so again i just you know encourage the board to consider everything including you know potentially uh the real hard choices including salary and you know other things that might not look favorably to some people so thanks thank you mr wilcox mr gilmore is there anyone else that like
008to make a comment i was double checking the interface here i do not see any hands at this time um i apologize one hand just popped up two hands just popped up uh we are gonna go next to uh jason lanier jason i have enabled your microphone so when you're ready to begin please take your name and address and begin your comments please jason air 100 oak drive uh i wanted to touch in here against the uh regarding the financing um and all our finances in general and how we're running such a deficit i know there was a lot of grant money that came in for covered relief and i questioned how some of that was spent i know uh mr schrocky made mention that that these these uh vaccine vaccine uh hosting events was
009was paid through or paid for through grant money but i i question whether it was that was the best use of those funds because that had to cost a lot of money from from all of the uh the press i've seen on on it um especially uh you know the press uh how many thousands of people came through over a weekend that had to be uh be a pretty significant cost involved uh also uh i wanted to you know i wanted to know what how much we budgeted or how much we spent on adding personnel regarding critical race theory and and instead of looking at opening the school so you wouldn't have so many kids uh going to charter which seems to be a a real driver of deficit for the the district uh as
010mr wilcox find out that that might you know maybe we're you're hoping too much to make something up of refunding or recapturing that cost uh maybe maybe look at at staying in in the the districts you know stay in the the lane of of educating the kids and not trying to indoctrinate them into into a belief system of uh critical race theory that would that that might be a good thing to look at to and and eliminate some of the costs involved with doing that uh and lastly uh mention of this a couple times in mr rocky i mean as the inflation keeps picking up i know there's no formal increase of of inflation that big war chest of money that that the borough had the borough the school district has saved up it's going
011to be reduced in value as inflation takes hold i mean it's going to have less purchasing power why not turn around and use that money instead of fleecing the taxpayers again for over your overspending maybe stop spending so much use the money you have uh reduce costs of things that are certainly outside of the realm of the district and uh you might find yourself uh in in the financial block again thanks very much bye thank you mr linear and one more comment here from mr patchell i've enabled your microphone so when you're ready to begin state your name and address and begin your comments uh thank you for uh unmuting my microphone my name is william patchell i live at 404 bonney lane it's in montgomery township i'm forced to use the landsdel post office
012but anyway what i want to talk about is the finances you know what's happening there are many many people in this district by the time they get to high school i wouldn't go back to that place for anything it has nothing to offer what you offer is more cost every single year you know why people are going to charter schools because the jobs in the future are probably all going to be siloed you're all going to be working alone online and when they interview oh be really good at high school all online went to drexel online well that's what we can do and i don't know who's going to really um lead your pep rallies now because what i foresee police first responders teachers all at the bottom of the career path that anybody would
013want to take who would want to be a policeman now mr pacquiao i'm going to get back on finance so you listen up okay you're spending a ton of money a ton of money on what what are you gonna get for this money you're spending you get you get a football field i understand that you have a personal liking for the football team you do have a personal history and a relationship with the football team and i brought to the public a long time ago 15 concussions i guess you approved to that but anyway that's your opinion okay what's going to get people through their adult life is their academic standing their academic achievement and academic and you know what you're running all these statements about oh we have to be uh aware of this
014group of people and this group of people you and your socialist social engineering i'll tell you what it's going to be rejected by the people and you want me to pay for it i'm not interested in paying for it you know what you hate it all those people that are on this board hate it but i'll tell you what you're going to have to fish over and over the public agenda and you know what i'm going to show up i don't need a mail-in ballot i'm 74. i enjoy going to the place then i'll cash my vote to cash you out of office there's many many people i've counted the signs out there for this sure you are not talking about things that are on the finance okay you know what you're on the you're
015you're the leader for spending money you spent 30 million dollars i'm not impressed with it do you like that statement maybe you want to maybe you want to censor me on my on my private opinions because in the last meeting we just had you're talking about oh yeah okay we're gonna follow up people around it's wrong that is it for public comment tonight thank you mr gomer i would like to just clarify for mr lanier that the vaccination clinics cost the uh district about four thousand dollars a weekend and that was to pay for our security staff and our custodial staff i personally think it was pretty much pretty well worth it considering how many of our community members we were able to vaccinate so there's that okay moving on we will go now to
016the items recommended for work session in the action meeting thank you mrs stahl we have three items tonight that are being recommended for action meeting first up we have budget transfers for the month of april actually pretty small relatively speaking 205 986 dollars and these are all pretty routine in nature to adjust for changes in spending that occurred throughout the year so we're recommending approval for placement on the may 20th action meeting i have a motion please motioned by mr casa do i have a second second seconded by dr wanda lewis campbell um are there any comments or all in favor say aye or raise your hand any opposed motion carries okay next item we have the propane gas and filling station maintenance bid results i'd ask that mrs johnson bring up that tabulation on
017the screen and we recently conducted a bid for this we did have a two-year contract for the propane gas that is expiring we had a total of five bidders that responded to our bid not every bidder responded for the maintenance piece but everyone responded for the price of propane we did a two-year bid with an optional third year so the apparent low bidder is poised gas and they are highlighted in the aqua color now you will notice though that their rate per gallon of propane is substantially lower than the other vendors and we point that out because we think there could be some potential issues with that bid and we are continuing our due diligence with that vendor we think there may have been some federal excise tax rebates included in that number and they
018netted out the number against the rebates which wasn't asked for in the bid specifications so we are trying to determine if poised is indeed the lowest qualified and responsible bitter we are paying about 96 cents per gallon of propane right now so there will be an increase if poise is not the lowest responsible bidder the apparent low bidder if it is not going to be poised it will be sharp energy they were the second lowest bidder but we will continue to do our due diligence and have conversation with poised and we will have our final recommendation for next thursday's action meeting so we are asking for placement of this item on next thursday's action meeting do i have a motion removed motioned by mr costa and segmented by mrs wesley any comments or questions for
019mr scratchy seeing none all in favor raise your hand or say i any opposed motion carries okay thank you next item we have an update on the real estate tax bill printing and mailing services and mrs johnson will bring up a bid tabulation here also here we actually had sent the specifications to five vendors and we received proposals only from two vendors one proposal sort of bid an alternate that we did not ask for but we were left with two and the reason for this bid was to try to consolidate the tax bill printing right now with our elected tax collectors each tax collector kind of does their own thing works with their own vendor has their own bills printed and we want to consolidate the operations to try to streamline the operations make it
020more efficient and also potentially save money now in this particular case we are going to be recommending next thursday rejection of these bids and there's a couple reasons for that first off only two bidders responded as i just mentioned and we had five that had expressed interest or received the specifications we were hoping for more respondents and in speaking with a couple of the vendors that did not respond they indicated that the reason they didn't respond or one of the reasons was we did have a tight timeline and we we do acknowledge that secondly we do have three elected tax collectors that are going to be in their final year of services they are not electing to run again so for those three it would have been a one-year change for them so i think
021there's some merit to postponing the bid for another time the third item is the timing as i just mentioned the timing between the bid award and the issuance of the tax bills is very very tight so working with a new vendor with a new program for all the tax collectors we did realize that there was a very tight timeline to begin with and recognizing now that we only received two bidders uh probably more affirmation of that concern also we were concerned with the timeline to develop a standardized bill our goal was to develop a standardized bill for the north penn taxpayers in the community and then there would be a separate section in the bill that would be unique to the individual tax collector but overall we are trying to standardize all the language right
022now the language is different for each tax collector that's in their tax bill and also there's another issue regarding the tax collector software that is utilized if we were to proceed with one of these two bidders there could be an issue with the tax software that is used by the tax collectors so those are five reasons all things consider we think it's in the best interest that we reject these bids and we will need a formal resolution on that and then we would conduct a bid process again in the winter and then have a vendor selected for the 22-23 fiscal year thank you mr sparky do i have a motion motioned by mrs wesley do i have a second seconded by mr mcbean any comments or questions mr rush go ahead you're muted yeah uh
023are you looking at uh standardizing the uh tax software or is that uh debt done by area uh that is also done by area mr rash and that's something that we'll have a conversation with the tax collectors about um that gets that gets a little more complicated if we standardize the collection software itself we're more concerned with the the printing and the mailing thank you you're welcome are there any other questions all right we have a motion on the floor so all in favor say aye or raise your hand i any opposed motion carries okay moving on to informational items i did want to give you an update regarding the 2122 budget it is slated for consideration at tonight's action meeting the proposed final budget the final budget is scheduled for approval on june 17th
024but i'm certainly not going to rehash the 90-minute 84 slide presentation from april 21st at that finance committee meeting so anyone from the community that might be watching this that did not have an opportunity to watch that finance meeting i encourage you to take a look at that that provides all the information in a detailed fashion regarding our spending plan and revenue budget for the upcoming fiscal year we did make a number of changes though in the two weeks since we did present the last draft of the proposed final budget and that resulted in a net change of reducing the deficit by about eight hundred thousand dollars so at present with the board's direction the committee's direction at that finance committee meeting we did load the budget with a 2.85 percent tax increase for the
025montgomery county residents and with that now instead of a six million dollar deficit that we spoke of two weeks ago we are now at a 5.2 million dollar deficit and as we mentioned many times in the past we will continue to update that budget up through june as more information comes in you know a big item could be any changes with respect to any state funding what happens with the state budget but right now we're at 5.2 million dollars we did include all known retirements at this point in time so any additional retirements that might come in will help reduce that deficit we aren't anticipating any material increases to the budget at this point in time so that's where we stand tonight the budget that is presented for the action meeting has the 2.85 tax
026increase 5.2 million dollar deficit i do want to make note for the approximate 60 properties that we have in bucks county the state actually does a rebalancing of the taxation since we are a multi-county district that happens every year based on the market value of the two counties of the properties that we have in the two counties and this year the percent of the total in bucks county actually went down and with this complicated rebalancing calculation that the state does although there's a 2.85 percent tax increase for montgomery county residents there's actually going to be a 19.77 percent reduction for the bucks county property owners reduction and that again is all part of the equalization of the market values that has to occur and that's all contained in that pde 2028 budget document that we
027have attached in board docs for the finance meeting as well as the action meeting but i did want to point that out in most years the numbers are very very close between montgomery and bucks county this year it is a tremendous difference and that's because there was a percentage shift that was material in the market value which resulted in that bucks county reduction so the bucks county property owners will be cheering with a 19.77 percent reduction in their tax rate for the upcoming year i think that covers the update i'll be happy to address any questions regarding the budget uh for the finance meeting or be happy to address them once we get to the action meeting as well mr scranky could you um i don't want you to go through your 85 slide presentation
028again but could you maybe give the cliffnotes version of um what the code relief money the 14 million that we'll be getting um why that can't all be used to um cover the deficit that we have sure and and i will say that we're not for the covid relief funding we would had a much larger shortfall in our budget so north penn school district we've received or been awarded about 17.7 million dollars in covet relief federal stimulus funding and we've already spent about 2.7 million dollars this fiscal year next year we have allocated about 5.3 million dollars in fact we actually increased that by another 1.5 million dollars so it's roughly now around 6.7 million dollars that's included in the 2122 budget some of it is specifically allocated some of it is undesignated as things
029may arise during the fiscal year that might qualify for the federal funding so it's roughly now about 6.7 million dollars now this this money needs to be spent we have we had three phases of the federal funding the third phase of it doesn't need to be spent until the year september of 2024 so we didn't want to spend all the money at once which would have created a fiscal cliff in the budget we wanted to be very measured and tried to spread the money out over the three or four fiscal years so we think we're doing a pretty good job with that 2.8 million dollars this year a much larger amount next year and then probably going to be another five six million dollars in the 22 23 fiscal year and then another couple million
030dollars in the 23 24 fiscal year as we kind of wean ourselves off of that federal stimulus funding and for next year there's a combination of money i mentioned that we just added in another 1.5 million dollars for unallocated funding for next year as things may arise but for next year we have what's called we have supplements to the budget and we have supplanting the budget so there's two portions of the money so that 5.3 million dollars that we know we're going to spend next year is a portion of supplements and supplanting so i'll give you a couple examples of supplanting so planting were items that we were planning on purchasing out of next year's budget anyway that we were thankful to receive that federal money because now instead of using you know local revenue
031to fund these purchases we're using federal revenue so two big examples are the student chromebooks 1.4 million dollars and teacher laptops 1.1 million dollars so right there there's 2.5 million dollars that would have been included in the general fund budget that would have added to the deficit were not for that federal coveted relief spending money so our deficit instead of 5.2 million dollars would have been around 7.7 million dollars just with those chromebooks and laptops and then we have a number number of other items that are actually supplementing our budget that you know prior to covid these items probably would not be in the budget things like additional learning coaches and reading specialists uh canvas coaches for the year these are supplements to the budget special education summer programs additional ppe supplies and equipment student
032assistant program uh additional spending there so again there is a combination between the two but you know to address mr lanier's public comment that he made you know that was a specific couple slides in the slide deck that we talked about at that april 21st finance committee because that's a very good question how can you have a tax increase with all this federal stimulus funding and my response to that would be that the proposed 2.85 tax increase could be much much larger were not for the federal stimulus funding and again we are trying to be measured with the spending and spread it out over a couple years so we're not faced with a massive fall off a massive cliff that would lend itself to a much larger deficit when the money runs out thank you
033mr shkraki does anyone else have any comments or questions dr lewis campbell oh i'm sorry i was going to ask uh mr skaraki so since we're saving a lot of money until the all the way up until 2023 what happens to the money that we're saving does it accrue interest and if so where does that go though uh dr lewis campbell any money that we have um in our fund balance our savings account now we have about 38 million dollars in our fund balance in our savings account that money is invested uh per guidelines that are in the law we're not allowed to invest that money in the stock market or equities as an example most of that money is with the local bank uh collateralized with things like united states treasuries or they're invested
034in certificates of deposit or they're invested with united states treasury through a money market pool program so any any kind of balance that we have is always invested and you know i think a comment was also made earlier tonight that inflation erodes that savings and that is true to some extent but one thing with inflation you typically have higher interest rates when you're in a high inflation environment and what that does it helps generate additional investment income for the school district you know one of the major uh issues with our budget in the coming year is that we only have 380 000 budgeted for investment income in the past couple years we were generating two three million dollars in investment income so the fact that we are in a low interest rate environment a low
035inflation environment that actually stripped out about two million dollars out of our budget because we are in a low inflation environment but to bring all that together to directly answer your question dr lewis campbell any money that's in our savings account or balance is invested uh per school code guideline to try to maximize our return for the taxpayers while maintaining 100 safety with that money thank you mrs wesley i believe i saw your hand up thank you president stahl mr scrocky i know you don't have a crystal ball but i totally um always appreciate your responses do you think there's a possibility that there would be additional funding um in addition to the 17 point whatever million it is that we've received um that we might be able that that would come our way over
036the next two to three years so if i had to sign a probability to answer your question of probability how about 50 50. and the only reason is is that if there is some type if there is a probability that has traction and i know the district the administration has done a really thorough job of quantifying how they will spend the money and the period of time for disbursement but is it is it does it make sense to look at what else we might do um should we receive more i don't know if that's a good investment of the administration's time or not at this point but doesn't sound like it is with 50 50 but just putting it out there yeah we'll certainly keep monitoring that if it seems more likely that you know
037perhaps if there's an infrastructure bill that passes you know there could be some implications for school districts with school construction projects that has been brought up in the past so that might be a possibility i i would think that any kind of infrastructure funding that might have a higher probability than just additional general covet related funding as it appears that we are you know starting to come out of the the pandemic certainly not over but maybe we're in the seventh inning of a ninth inning game whereas several months ago we were maybe only in the third or fourth inning so i think more of that relief the greater probability might be more that infrastructure type funding as opposed to just general pandemic related type funding that would be welcome so thanks hopefully that will happen
038and one other comment i'd like to make about the budget in terms of the impact on the average homestead in north penn school district at a 2.85 percent increase the average annual homestead increase would be 113 dollars so to put in perspective for the average homestead in north penn a 2.85 percent increase should the full whose final budget tonight would have 113 annual impact on that average homestead in north bend mr scrocky and with this uh proposed budget that we'll be discussing more in action you please remind me what the average tax rebate for qualifying seniors would be yeah absolutely the average rebate so far this fiscal year at a 50 rebate threshold of the state amount we're at 222 is the average rebate and as you know mr casa the board a couple months
039ago actually approved an increase to that property tax rebate program that we have for property owners and renters in north penn school district and that will increase to 60 percent next year so you would think that 222 average rebate that will increase probably to around maybe 240 250 next fiscal year that's wonderful uh that we continue to be able to not just offset but increase that that rebate you know and these are for citizens who've been here constituents probably for a very long time they've paid their taxes this isn't a handout this is to ensure that those who need this type of uh break actually get it and where a district who can afford that you know with with our elite bond ratings and fifth lowest tax rate in the county this is something that
040i think the entire community can get behind feel very proud about that we're able to help those seniors who need this to make a real difference in their lives thank you and i think more information about the tax rebate is on the npn.org website if anybody's interested right absolutely and we do have a just reminder we have a a video that we had a a town hall a virtual town hall town hall meeting i think it was last october we did tape that and that's also available it's a good q a if anyone wants to learn about the program and we always try to encourage everyone to spread the word as much as you can we budget for a 50 participation level we haven't reached that level yet but we're going to keep trying and
041again just encourage everyone to spread the word about the program thank you any other questions okay so this item was information because the finance committee did already move this to action does appear as the one item for tanak tonight's action meeting but on another budget related item moving on to the gaming gaming fun distribution for 2122. we did receive our allocation from the state we know what that amount is it's going to be five million one hundred eighty nine thousand fifty dollars for the upcoming year that's a reduction of about 17 356 dollars these funds are used for the homestead and farmstead exclusion so we actually have to wait and do the calculation now there could be a small increase or decrease over the homestead exclusion it just depends on how many properties are eligible
042this year compared to last year so even though the total amount went down 17 000 you know there still could be an increase in the exclusion just depends on the number of properties that are eligible if there was a reduction in the number of properties it is possible that that homestead exclusion would actually increase and statewide 612 million 300 000 in gaming funds was distributed for property tax reduction through that homestead in formstead exclusion any questions about the gaming fund distributions hearing none moving on to the health care clinic update i just want to give you a brief update on this because we will be bringing this to probably the june or maybe a late summer finance committee meeting with the final recommendation as you know we've been looking at an on-site healthcare clinic for
043several years i think it goes back four years ago where we actually started the process and did a couple site visits one in particular at lancaster lebanon intermediate unit where we got the idea from actually and most recently we asked the board to waive the rfp requirement and we narrowed down our search to two vendors that were already vetted through other rfp processes so we are down to two vendors i wanted to note that we completed three rounds of interviews with which yeah i can't talk tonight with each of the vendors we do have a committee of 10 individuals that is part of the selection process so we had three rounds of interviews we completed site visits for one of the vendors and we have scheduled another site visit for the other vendor for the
044latter part of this month so once we conclude those site visits we are going to be in a position at that point to deliberate with the committee members and make a final recommendation to the finance committee then ultimately the board so once we have a recommendation we'll start the contract review process with that particular vendor because we have a site selected we have the financial analyses have already been completed by multiple sources we've had four financial analyses completed now for an on-site healthcare clinic the savings are substantial and we're really excited about to provide this level of service to the north penn employees and their dependents while saving district taxpayer money and conservatively it's estimated that we could save 10 million dollars over a 10-year period with the on-site health care clinic we are actively
045pursuing grant opportunities so we feel pretty confident talking about probabilities we think there's a 90 percent probability that we will receive at least 50 percent of the construction cost of the clinic through a grant so we are looking at the possibility of modular construction so i just want to give you an update because things are going to move pretty rapidly now even though this has been going on for four years we are at the final stages now in our vendor selection process which is really the last step before recommendation to the finance committee and then the full board thank you that's very impressive looking forward to seeing it are there any other questions comments mr scrocky i just want to clarify uh because we have been going through this uh over the years at this
046point when we are able to advance this this plan it's it's very innovative uh and i know there are some great presentations with great detail that's been provided is my assumption still correct that this is something that will not only help the um health and well-being of of staff but this is something that also will help to control our costs in the long run i know you mentioned that that 10 million but that that could give some details as to where those savings are derived from absolutely there's really two parts to the savings and you know the calculations are all predicated on a certain utilization and participation of our employees and their dependents at the clinic so when the clinic is finalized and rolled out and open we need to do a really good marketing
047job to bring the bodies employees dependents into the clinic so the savings are generated by uh two ways number one savings from the employee going to the clinic so diverting the care from what could be an expensive er or urgent care or primary care provider to a lower cost solution by having it in house so you have direct cost savings there the second part i think is more important that by having employees go there and having a relationship with the provider on site and we've seen the studies and we have real data from lancaster lebanon intermediate unit to support this they're able to prevent large claims in the future by addressing maybe pre-existing conditions that the employee wasn't even aware of we've heard evidence of those situations when we did our visit again for the
048second time at lancaster and lebanon locations just two weeks ago but being able to address those in a timely manner if certain pre-existing conditions can be nipped in the bud so to speak that they don't grow into larger problems that's where significant health care savings can accrue as well so there's two parts to it direct by providing the service in-house but secondly by avoiding large claims by being able to be more nimble in addressing problems and spending more time with individuals when they are actually in the clinic that's another part of the model that i think is really impressive and that's how the provider can kind of weed out some of these issues that might be you know potential problems looming in the background you know the model for primary care providers to a large
049degree they call it treat and street so you're looking at a 10-minute visit in and out write the prescription get the person out of here so i can bring in my next patient i need to see six patients in an hour to meet my quota that is not the model for the on-site healthcare clinic the visits are 20 to 30 minutes you know the goal is to establish a personal relationship with the provider to get to know the individual get to know the employer dependent as an individual to learn about their health history to perform health risk assessment on the individual and that's really what pays dividends and try to you know be able to diagnose problems or get to the root of particular problems before they might blow up into a larger health care
050claim well thank you mr scracky for for your leadership on this and the rest of the team and this uh i think it reinforces to the community why um you know these are economies of scale and the strength that a district as large as north penn can bring to problems that not all communities or districts can address thank you um mr sraki um do we does this uh increase employee retention i know hiring teachers in this age is a very hard task and and i would think if they develop a personal relationship with the physician that uh it would make our employers employees happier i totally agree i think this is a major incentive for our employees and the site that we're looking at is you know geographically in an excellent place in the school
051district it's where most of our employees work so the the convenience of going either before the school day after the school day or possibly even during the school day you know maybe over a lunch break or a planning period that's we've discussed that um so one of the things this does it also encourages employee presenteeism as opposed to absenteeism and i i think overall it does help with employee morale and overall employee satisfaction by having this offered and by the way i need to mention that you know we are planning even you know with a 10 million dollars in projected savings over 10 years that i'm talking about we still plan on offering this service completely free to employees independence there'd be no copay for these services are there any other questions i see none
052so okay moving on the next item we have a propane bus initiative award i'm pleased to report that north penn recently received notification that we won an award from the eastern pennsylvania alliance for clean transportation also known as epact it was their advocate award and this award is given to a business or school district that helps eastern and central pennsylvania by making a commitment to support alternative fuel vehicles and technologies with their fleet of vehicles so of course north penn is the recipient of this advocate award because of our propane bus initiative so congratulations to the transportation department and thank you again for their leadership and innovation we started this program a couple years ago and you know mr cranach was joking when i let him know we won this award he said that we're
053going to need a pretty big trophy case because the awards keep coming in for the transportation department so congratulations to nick and the transportation department and the entire school district and thank you to the board of course for your support because without your support this program never would have gotten started a few years ago i also want to mention you know we talked about the you know several hundred thousand dollars in grant money that we've received as part of this propane bus initiative and part of that requires us to destroy and have documented the diesel buses that we are putting out of commission that is a requirement for every new propane bus that we receive with a grant we have to put an old diesel bus out of commission so we had conversation i believe
054was that mr cranach's budget presentation i think a few board members indicated that hey that would be pretty cool to see the destruction of the bus and what's involved with that i do want to let you know that we have the first bus of our five that will be taking place this fiscal year yet the first one will be destroyed tomorrow morning at 8 30. so if anyone is interested in going please let me know we can only have one member watch the process at a time okay so if any board member is interested we can only have one board member there'll be four other opportunities but if anyone is free tomorrow morning at 8 and you have an interest just shoot me a message i'll let you know the location and you can watch
055all or part of it it's about a two and a half hour process actually if you just want to come for part of it you're welcome to but again just just send me a message and we can arrange for that for tomorrow morning at 8 30. is this somewhere in the jersey pine lands steve no no it's in it's in pennsylvania it's within a short commute thank you okay next item i'm going to turn it over to mrs johnson she's going to provide an update on the rfp we recently conducted for the student assistance program mrs johnson thank you uh so the board approved the advertisement of an rfp for student assistance program services at the march action meeting i do want to provide a brief explanation of what student assistance program services include these
056services include counseling and support services to assist school personnel in identifying issues including alcohol drug mental health and other behaviors and factors that pose barrier to students learning and school successes so these are really important services that we are providing within our district the district is currently under a one-year contract for these services that is expiring on june 30th so the student assistance program services are anticipated to expand for the 21-22 school year as part of the district's response to covet 19 and the expanded services are planned to be covered by some of that federal funding we received which specifically would be the pa commission on crime and delinquency covid19 health and safety 2.0 grant that the district received so that is federal funding that is flowing through the pcc agency and the federal funding
057component of these services requires an rfp to be completed to ensure compliance with federal purchasing laws and as a result of planning to use the federal funds for this purchase the district issued the rfp for the services for a three-year period we did reach out to five providers to to provide notice of the request for proposal and the redis the district received one response to that rfp uh we did reach out to those providers that did not respond and several of them expressed interest in responding if given more time to fully vet our needs before submitting a multi-year proposal so to allow for that timing to be provided we would like to issue a new multi-year rfp during during the 21-22 school year with a time frame to ensure adequate vetting for the for the
058providers and the district for our future school year needs and at this time to ensure services are available for the next school year next school year 21 22 we will need to reissue the rfp for a one year term due to the federal funding that we had i had spoke about these services cannot be issued under a one-year contract under the original rfp that we advertised which was a three-year term doing so would be in breach of the federal purchasing laws so we are looking to update the request for proposal specifications and reissue them uh in the next week or so and we will provide an update once we receive the responses to those proposals if there's any questions about this rfpp i'd be happy to answer them i just want to thank you for
059your work to to make sure this vital aspect of our district is available for the staff you know as a teacher myself there's been a lot of situations in which we've had to to use these types of services in this process and have professionals that are trained in uh mental health and safety to come in and really assess what's actually going on with a lot of these students and it's so tough to do through a screen so thank you so much for keeping these uh vital services available and getting us in a position where we have good services available thank you mrs johnson so do we have a student representative on this evening i don't see one i do not see casey in there yeah she emailed me i think she was having some issues
060with technology that she perhaps may not be able to make it tonight okay and i believe that brings us then to the financial reports which are summarized in the executive content and board docs i do want to mention that you know we did start the year with a 6.4 i'm sorry 6.5 oh boy let me get this right 6.4 million dollar budget deficit was our starting number at the beginning of the 2021 fiscal year and the way things are trending right now i know i've been mentioning this over the last several months but we are bringing in more revenue than budgeted and we are spending less money than budgeted and the way things are trending right now you know we are in mid-may now only a month and a half left to go in this
061fiscal year it appears that we are going to be close to break even with the budget so that means that six point five four million dollar initial budget deficit is going to be pretty much gone at the end of the fiscal year and that's very similar to what we presented for the upcoming fiscal year you know although what's presented tonight is a 5.2 million dollar deficit we do believe with the budgetary reserves and the typical budget variances we do believe we do have a pathway to a break-even figure or close to it next year maybe within a million dollars next year as well so i think that's pretty pretty good we are definitely spending less money on the expenditure side and we are bringing in more revenue earned income tax continues to be pretty robust
062we're up about 5.3 percent through the month of april which is pretty awesome and also the real estate transfer tax continues to be very strong over the last several months a lot of residential property transactions and i think that's indicative that there's a big demand for properties in north penn school district and that's there's no accident that people want to move to the north penn community so from the financial perspective for the 2021 fiscal year um i think that's pretty good news that although there was a 6.4 million dollar budget deficit it looks like we're going to be somewhere close to break even at the end of the fiscal year thank you mr scraki and thank you for your summary explanations for each report they're very helpful you're welcome does anyone have any comments or
063questions for mr scracky okay then moving on to the summary of items recommended for work session or the action meeting rather um so we have the budget transfers for april 1st 2021 through april 30th 2021 the propane gas and filling station bid results and the real estate tax printing service bid results correct that's correct okay great so the next finance committee meeting will be on on june 8th that is also a tuesday does anyone else have any further comments or questions or anything [Music] and we will be moving on shortly to our action meeting um that will begin at 7. mr gilmer that will be another link correct that's the different length than this one correct okay so we will log off here and um log back on in a couple minutes so this meeting
064is adjourned thank you very much thank you alright everybody well i guess i'll see you in a couple minutes