001I 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 everyone for coming this evening and I'll turn it over to Mr. Rao to go through the presentation. We're going to follow the agenda. The first item is we're going to look at the projected final 24-25 general fund. Then we're going to review the capital fund balance, then go through where we left off in the capital plan last year around this time, or maybe a little later, it was more like February when we finalized it. So first, so the 24-25, so we're going to go over preliminary numbers of 24-25, just so everybody understands, 24-25, our fiscal year, it does run July 1st to
002June 30th, but there's an accrual period that runs actually to the end of August. So the accruals actually run through August 31st, so books have just kind of been closed. After we close them, we do make our adjustments, but then the auditors, the local auditors come in, they look at our payables, receivables, and there's adjustments made to those numbers. So none of these numbers are final. They're as close as we can get them at this point. That's why we waited until today. We're finishing up on it, getting as close as we could. They will change. We know they're going to change when the auditors come. We made our best guesses on some of the accruals that we're going to have to book for the end of the year, but we're pretty confident that it's not
003going to be a wild swing. So we're going to be in the ballpark of where these final numbers are, but they won't be exact in all cases. So with all that being said, I'm going to go through them, because you'll see when we get to the bottom, there's a variance, there's always a variance in every line, but it's nice to talk about why there's a variance on some of them and understand that. So the first, the biggest number we have in our revenue side and our budget is our real estate taxes. Out of the $83 million, we had a budget of $51 million is just the real estate taxes. So that's our biggest number. We have to have that number right going in, and our collection this year was $50.9 million. It was a variance
004of $62,000. That's a 0.1% difference. So there is guesstimating in that, though, too, because we know things come on the tax rolls. So we are making adjustments. It's not just we get the tax bills, do the math, and that's what it is. There is some massaging of those numbers because we know when we get, we're setting the tax rate in May, beginning of June, there's still additions and subtractions to the tax roll before they get those bills out in July. So it's small, but we have to make those adjustments before we even make those estimates. The second line, interim real estate. So those are the interim real estate. We always talk about that when we approve that in June. Those are the tax bills that go out for people that made either improvements on their
005property that increased their assessed value. So they're paying the proportional amount for that year. Or let's say a house is built and the occupancy permit is for January 1st. Interim allows us to send the tax bill for half the year that that house was occupied. So that's a real guesstimate number. Usually when you see that and you see we received $150,000 more than what we had budgeted. And the attributed, when we set that budget, we actually looked at the previous three years to try to get an average and do our best guesstimate on what that's going to be. And we just had more houses come online. And when we get to the next real estate transfers, what we're also seeing is the houses that are coming online are coming online at a higher value. So
006you're seeing maybe the same volume, but higher tax amounts coming back to the school district based on those increased assessed values. Income tax, that's another big number in our budget. We talked about that last year and we knew we were, we talked about that in the preliminary budget phase saying we were lagging behind budgetarily, we knew we weren't going to hit the number. The good news is at that time we were lagging almost $200,000 behind. This last quarter has picked up in our EIT, but it wasn't enough to bridge the gap that we had in the budget. So we still came up a little short on our earned income, but that's another one where we're taking our best guess. Real estate transfer tax, that's the tax that's paid on house sales. And we used our
007three-year average to try to get an idea of where we're going to end up on that. And you'll see we actually collected almost $1.1 million. I'll just point out it's a little deceiving because we did have the sale of the Richcrest Senior Home down here, and it just sold corporate entities. But when it made that sale, that triggered a transfer tax to us because it was a new owner. And that one sale generated $116,000. So that's one that just comes out of the blue, throws that number off. We would not be able to anticipate that. So it's good news for this year, but that's nothing that you're going to see going forward. What we are seeing though in the real estate transfer tax is the same thing. Even this July, we look at it every
008month to try to see what's going on. And we're seeing the same amount of sales that we've seen the previous couple years, but the dollar amount has been higher. So this is all based on a percentage of the sales. So the district is collecting more, even though you're not seeing as much movement that we've seen in previous years. Other local revenues, so that's everything else, short $119,000. State basic-ed subsidy, we did get an increase of $164,000. And I'm going to say this on a couple of these state items. Remember, when we adopt the budget, there was no state budget. So when we adopted our school district budget for 24, 25, the state did not have a budget in place. So we budgeted just a flat dollar amount from the state. We didn't budget any increase.
009When the state budget did get approved, it did have an increase for us for $164,000. And that's what that reflects. And the next line item, the same thing. They actually put a charge school reimbursement into the state budget last year that was not in any part of the state budget over the last 15 years. So it wasn't anticipated, but it was an additional $91,000 for the school district. State payroll tax, we do get reimbursement on our social security and retirement at 50% of the payroll. You'll see when we get the expenditures, our payroll is down. So those reimbursements are down. Transportation reimbursement. This is one that does lag, too. We didn't have a state budget. They set a new transportation reimbursement rate. That rate's driven by the CPI. But everything we look at the state,
010there's always a big lag. So we weren't sure if they were going to give the full CPI, even though they were two years behind, and that was the big numbers of CPI increases. So we didn't budget for that. We just used our historical averages, and we did see an increase on that. State schools grant, in previous years we weren't budgeting for it, but we've been doing a good job of getting those state schools grants that we actually budgeted for a portion of state schools grants. We just got even more than we budgeted for. So that's more good news on the revenue side. Other state revenue, small increase. You see a small decrease in federal revenues. That has to do with our Title I, Title II, and Title IV. When we approve the budget, we get
011preliminary numbers, but they get revised, and there's small decreases in our allocations on that. Another financing, that is prior year refunds. We had some of those this year. And also the sale, when we replaced the buses, we only budgeted for 15. I think we got 20, so that was why we outperformed that number. So any questions on the revenue, preliminary revenue numbers? On the expenditures, we're just going to bucket these in the big object buckets. So salaries, that is our big number. On the expenditure side, 36 million out of the 83. We came at 35, just about 36, only $255,000 less than what we had budgeted. Obviously we're going to budget conservatively, especially if there's some of those line items that we don't know. They substitute teachers over time. When we do have vacancies in
012different positions, we're budgeting for the full amount. So when we have those, we're getting some savings on that. That relates to the benefits. You'll see a decrease in benefits because you're not paying the social security, you're not paying the retirement. You're seeing those changes. It's not reflected one for one on that, the benefit pieces, because we did make some transfers during the year that cover some of the costs that were related to having vacancies on our salaries. So those numbers were transferred from salary budget and the contracted services budget. And that's why you see a bigger negative or a bigger gap in variance in salaries than you do in benefits. We did not touch the benefit budget. Contracted services, that is one of two line items that we actually spent more than we had budgeted.
013And that relates to IU special education services. When we budget those, we're budgeting based on previous experience. But when you get anything that's required, we can't just say that we don't have the budget for that. Those services are still required. So we would do those services. And they were more than previous years. Property services is very close to the budget. Other purchase services. This is a good thing. We were we were under budget by a significant amount. So we you know, we dug in on the transportation, the van costs from the previous year when we talked about it. Our actual contracted transportation costs were one hundred and fifty thousand dollars less than we had budgeted. So, you know, we set a budget based on trading with those transportation. It's a lot of moving, you know,
014moving people, vans and paying for those additional days. We were able to maximize that to save one hundred fifty four of what we had budgeted. And the bigger piece is our cyber enrollment. Our cyber enrollment decreases last year, and it was to the tune of two hundred seventy nine thousand dollars less than budget. That seems like a lot. But if you remember a special education student, one special education student cost the district thirty thousand dollars. So even a difference of five special ed students make makes a big difference. I get to that side. Supplies is one hundred forty two thousand dollars less less than budget. Those aren't school supplies. That's not where we got our savings. We actually got our savings from we got our savings from. Actually, that's the place where you budget gasoline
015costs for the buses. Gasoline prices came down a little bit during the year, didn't go up as much as we anticipated. We saved fifty six thousand on that. And then also in books, when we approve the budget, we know we have curriculum budget. Jenna might continue to try to negotiate those books, those costs. And they actually came in forty five thousand less than the curriculum on the on the books. So that's what that's what that hundred forty two thousand represents. And then small decreases in equipment and then debt service and transfers. So one point two on the expenditure side that we came in outperformed the budget. But when you add in the deposit of the revenues, we're looking at a one point nine million dollar surplus for the year. Questions in the big reason we
016want to talk about that tonight, because it rolls into what we got to do for capital projects. We've talked before the capital reserve account does not have a revenue stream. There's nothing dedicated to it tax wise. It's just our balance. Now what sits there is surpluses that we've moved in the past that our savings, we kind of built that up and we're using it for for smaller projects. And then all the money that was left over from the high school project, we finally finished that project. We kept showing two columns because we wanted to keep that money separate. Once we were finally done with that, we were able to group it all into one account. And our capital reserve at the end of our August 31st this year was three and a half million dollars.
017We know we got the Byer Hill roof grant that we're going to be able to submit paperwork for to get reimbursement on that project for three hundred thousand. So that three hundred thousand dollars will be coming into the account. But we still have three hundred and two thousand left on the roof for a final payment. And then just I put a placeholder for a hundred thousand dollar miscellaneous capital projects. We're always looking at the elementary schools, that carpet, just small things that might come up that we might have to make improvements on. So I just wanted a placeholder for that. So at the end of those coming into this summer, we have three point four. If we move the one point eight that we had in surplus for twenty four, twenty five, that gets us
018to five and just under five point two million dollars. But all that said, you know, where we left off of the capital plan, it was four point five million dollars of expenditures. So, you know, we're going to talk about plan next. But that would just doing those summer projects that would leave us a balance at six hundred fifty eight thousand dollars. Questions? Yes, actually. The roughly three hundred thousand dollars balance owed on the roof. That's after the grant is applied. Correct. We're showing the grant, getting the reimbursement for the grant and then paying the last three. They just happen to be close to the same dollar amounts. It's they're not related. It had three hundred and two is just the final payment we owe on the roof. And the three hundred thousand is just what
019we've got in the grant money from the state. OK, thank you. That's one point four. OK, thank you. So it cost the district one point. So now I think what we wanted to do is just go through the capital plan on where we left off. And we started with the roof one point four million dollars. We just talked about that. We got a three hundred thousand dollar grant. So the net cost to the district was one point three. So that was a two thousand twenty four twenty five project. I think we talked about that at the last board meeting. Mr. Neil gives an update. Everything seems to be pretty good. And we're just about punched out. Yes, exactly. Twenty five, twenty six. The big projects we had on there were middle school and stadium paving
020and then LED lighting upgrades. So this would be the whole stadium parking lot, middle school parking lot. And then some of all those, some of those, not all of them, but replacing 18 parking lot fixtures. So that wouldn't get all our parking lot fixtures to be new. But it would, you know, there would be 18. I think there's almost 50. So not not quite half. You get it. We'd also included the PV access drive. So this is the drive that goes up to PV and then all the way up to the PV field, the outdoor basketball court at the middle school. And then we talked about the middle school paving and just seal coating the middle school or McMurray. I'm sorry. The McMurray paving parking lot and sealing that. So that would that gets us
021to the four point five. And that's where we left off last year. At this time, we do have some pictures. Do you want to do pictures now or at the end? You know, pictures, pictures now. So we did have, you know, we talked about last last early last February when we got the thought these were the pictures of the driveway going up. And I don't know if these do that great of justice and how deep those holes were when we got the thought Mr. Dale was there actually. Yeah, I mean, they were sizable. I mean, the amount of damage from the freeze thought. Fortunately, we were able to get some help from township. They came out with some patch materials, some rollers were able to flatten things out. But it was definitely, definitely significant damage
022to the road that would need. They did a patch on it and a fix that's holding. But I don't know how long that's going to continue to hold for. Exactly. So this is the patchwork that was done. This is right after the thought it is holding. We keep monitoring it, but we haven't had a freeze yet. So once that happens, I'm sure things are going to change. These are the other piece of the middle school parking lot is the actual drainage system. And you can see there's concern. I know, Brandon, we've had a, you know, we scoped it out and there are parts that we believe are collapsed with the drainage. Yeah, you can see right here, this one completely filled. There's a few of them that look like that over there that I imagine
023there has to be a class pipe somewhere underneath for this tobacco to that extent. So whenever we do have lots of rain, we do get rain coming. You know, you get a lot of water coming down that hillside and that's OK, I guess, in the warmer weather. But when we do it in the winter, it ices up and that becomes an issue. We do dump lots of salt there just to make sure we keep that safe. The light poles, we've tried to repair a few, but these are the condition of those light poles. You can see that, you know, a lot of rust. I know the one that was by the flagpole at the middle school, Brandon, we had our main guy. They did a really great job of just putting it in and kind
024of fixing it up. These ones are a little worse. So that's why we say we will replace 19. You know, we would still try to repair some just to try to keep the cost down on that estimate. But there are some that definitely needs, you know, repints. And the 18 that we're putting in LEDs, those are the 18 that we're going to try to repair? Are those two things go hand in hand? Yes. OK, so then in the future, if any additional light poles need attention, would we then also, I'm assuming, upgrade those LED at that time? Yeah, and I think, Brandon, you can correct me if I'm wrong. And, you know, even though we don't upgrade the light poles, we have upgraded light fixtures to LED. Oh, OK. So, yeah. All right. OK, thank
025you. So it's good. Do you want to talk about, before moving on to the next picture, sort of this project piece first, or do you want to go through the rest of the picture? Yeah, OK. And I know, Mr. Allen, I've talked some. These numbers are the estimates we got last year from SiteLogic, correct? Correct. OK. We're going to get them to sort of refresh these and see if, OK, see if any changes can be made potentially. Is it included at all, or is that, was there any kind of estimate thrown into that from that $1.4 million? I believe there's some. I mean, they've been out on site, I think, multiple times. I don't know how much, but we can get that broken out. That's why we want them to refresh and really, you know,
026if this is going to be the next project, do the deep dive on it and really get a firm estimate. Yeah, that's what I'm worried about. Yeah. Right, same thing with the roadbed up there. I mean, if we have that set at the freestyle, I mean, I question what compaction looks like under there. I mean, there could be a lot of issues. If approved, when would we be looking at doing all of this work? Next summer? Thank you. I think one of the reasons we wanted to, you know, start it out early this school year on this is if we do plan on going forward, you know, talking with SiteLogic, we would want to be out the door a little early for bids because, you know, everyone's going to be wanting to do their paving
027work at the same time, especially school districts. So we would, you know, we'd want approval a little earlier than you would think for being a summer project to try to get out the best number we can. Along that same line, would you hold off on, say, doing the basketball court in case everything at, you know, a higher priority item like that paving comes first? Yeah. You get a firm cost on that. Yeah, I agree. That would be a separate project that sort of see what's right now. I mean, it's I guess what the courts cracked through. And so we've been using it or I don't think that we try. I think the decision we'd have to make is get an assessment whether or not it's safe. It's not safe. And what we want to do
028is just shut it down and find another court. We're not using it, Jen. I thought you might have looked into this. We're not using it for class. We don't need it for classes. It's kind of a luxury to have, but they don't need we don't need to have it with the amazing gym that we have. So it could be something that we we pause on. And this is that the middle school. Now, when this was first put in, tell me if I'm wrong. The Booster Club is what initially paid for that basketball court, correct? It was many, many years ago because I think during that time there was there was some discussion about who's going to continue to maintain it afterwards. As I recall, yes, somebody intervened. But my recollection is it was an adult
029rec group that did that that repair that we're probably both remembering. Yeah, I don't know. But I could have sworn that it was a booster group that initially donated the money to have that done. But it was it was a long time ago because I know that there were discussions at the time and I don't even I'm trying to think, I guess, if you don't know, then I wasn't on the board then. But there were discussions about, OK, well, who's going to maintain it going forward? I don't believe that it was during my tenure that it was I believe it was here when I got here. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So if no one if they're not using it for class, right? Gym class and like, what's it for? What purpose is it serving? There was
030an adult group. Don't they use it for gym classes or they have? They have. They can. They can. It's not like it. And they do like it. It's not it's not essential. We could do without it if it came to that. We just had to lock it out. I think the decision we just need to make is if we're going to do it or if it's sort of locked down, if it's the point where we don't think it's safe. So it's kind of just on here as a placeholder because it's sort of tangentially related to the rest of the projects going on there. But yeah, I mean, this is when we see what the estimates come back in on the other ones, this might be something we have to look at saying no, we'd rather
031just close it down. Yeah, this is a good discussion. I like how Jen said it's a luxury for the public school offering. I thought there was something about maybe the youth basketball association. I'm going to reach out to them to confirm that one way or the other, just so we have that data point. And then if we get to the point where we don't really identify any users, then it ultimately comes down to safety. And if it doesn't pass a safety test, I would argue it may get the same fate as the tennis court. And I guess one other thing to consider that Mr. Allen, I talked about that's not on here. We talked before about the bleachers over at the middle school. And I think Mr. Wilmer got a recent updated quote on those,
032which was a lot less than we discussed last year. So it might even come down to a decision of do we want the basketball court, do we want to fix the bleachers? So there's there's a few options we could look at. Talking about stadium bleachers? No, no, no, no, in the auditorium or in the gym. In the middle school gym, when we were looking at the capital project last year, there was a project to replace the bleachers at the middle school. We knew they were old. The mechanics of it are pretty old. Brandon had someone come out. We have them closed right now. We don't open them up because if we open them up, we're worried we won't be able to get them closed. So, you know, we just took the we closed Brandon's team
033disabled with the ability to open them up. We just had a quote for replacing the whole nuclear everything. It was I think a half a million dollars or close to that. Yeah, just that side was over two hundred thousand on the big side. I called the big site. And so we pushed back on the vendor to see, can we do can we get some type of just an up, you know, kind of the guts of it? Just kind of get it cleaned up underneath there and workable. And I think last year, Brandon got a quote for it was under forty. Yeah, it was under forty thousand. It was motors and wheels and a lot of work and a lot of pieces and parts to make it functional again. So that yeah, that does change the
034discussion because, you know, the discussion last time was replacing it. Now we're at, you know, for thirty thousand, you're not getting all new bleachers. You know, it might break again, but it would give us the a little it would give us the confidence to be able to pull them in and out and think that it's going to work. And that. And if we had to make a decision between the basketball court and the bleachers, I mean, that's something we made you look at. You might get a better return on thirty grand on bleachers than you would one thirty on on a court that doesn't get used all that often. Who knows how much that court is used like can can individuals just enter at their leisure? So we don't really know how much it's used,
035but we could find out if it's a school group who's using it. I could lock it up tomorrow and we should we'll find out pretty quick. Yeah. If it turns out that court is a safety hazard and people are using it outside of school hours, why wouldn't that be a huge liability at this point? OK, I did. I could not remember. Yeah, I would want it to be assessed. OK, that was correct. Why? And if we're not maintaining. Right. And if for some reason I'm not saying we would, but if we decided to sunset that court and remove it, what would that cost? Do we know as we do the stadium or the the paving over here, both that court and the tennis courts or something? We've talked about just getting part of the bid.
036See what will be just a demo and replace tennis courts with grass and I don't know basketball court. I don't know if we'd plant grass there or do something, but same thing. I mean, we might as well get demo quotes while we're looking at this. Yeah, maybe before that figure out what is that area best used for? Yeah. And me being me, if we know we're not going to do that until the summer, no matter what, and we know it's unsafe and we're not going to leave it open for play. That's a great experimental classroom for the physics department to look at the freeze throw cycle and see how that happens and how asphalt degrades over time. You don't always have the luxury of an experimental classroom like that. Physics is not the only course
037that would be useful in. Physics is not the only course that would be useful in. Indeed, collaboration. So I think we need to find out how much it is used. I don't know if we could do a Shelley blast just to get a pulse of the people to read that. I'd be interested, Jen, how often the gym classes are going out there. I mean, look, if it's not used, it's not used. My kids don't use it. My gut tells me some kids do use it though. And that's where I was going with this. Like, we're always saying, man, the kids are always on their phones too much and we're going to kill the one basketball court. I mean, sometimes, even though it doesn't completely fall within the public education realm, we got to ask ourselves
038what's best for the community. Yeah, I was going to ask the same question. Mr. Geier will know who's using it. Mr. Geier will know. But if rec basketball uses it, they should have a schedule also. I mean, the rec department would know that. I'll be able to get information about use. I mean, I can't even imagine that demo costs wouldn't be somewhere close to that anyway. Like, I can't imagine you'd be saying, and you would have maintenance costs on grad. I guess the only reason for looking at what demo is here, if there's going to do other work, the demo costs might not be as high. But I agree as a standalone project, knocking that down. Probably going to come. Yeah. Yeah. We have McMurray's paving on. The last piece of this year we looked
039at just doing ceiling work of McMurray. And Mr. Romer, you had some more recent quotes on that, correct? I've got a much better price than that. And I only got one company that I just know, you know, if we put that out to quote, they said that they would lock in at the price that I get. And it was under twenty thousand dollars to do all of that work. It was crack filling, ceiling and striping. Most of like the lion's share of McMurray, if you look down on it from an aerial photo, if you stop before you get up to where the bus garage is driveway and don't do out to the road and don't do the bus garage. But that's most of what we were talking about doing in the first place anyway, was
040at McMurray. So, yeah, they said they'd lock in the price if we wanted to do that next summer. But I would just have to get two quotes and I won't have that if you want that. I will not have that ready for September's board meeting. So I would have I could have it for October's if you're interested. I think it's worth it to get the quotes, especially for that price. That seems pretty reasonable. I guess the only question I have is, are we responsible from their cutoff point up to McMurray Road? Is that our ownership? That is ours as well. Yes. Should we get them to refresh with that? I don't I don't know the condition of that stretch that needs done or not. I can't remember. I've driven over it. I don't see anything
041glaring over there, but I don't know if it's it's not bad. Okay. As long as it makes sense to cut where we're cutting and not do the last lot has some maybe some more age issues. I know the bus drive by the driveway now. Okay. All right. As long as you're comfortable cutting at that point. Anything else on 2526 projects? Twenty six. Twenty seven was earmarked as the Bower Hill project. You know, inside logic came in and did their facilities assessment. A lot of the Bower Hill heating and cooling systems were just noted as being beyond their useful life. So this was taking all those and lumping those all into one year. Twenty six. Twenty seven replacing all those at Bower Hill. That's a bigger number. Seven and almost seven and a half billion dollars
042when you include the buses that we'd want to replace at the time. And that's my my thought on this from talking with Mr. Rao is the equipment's past their useful life. But, you know, Mr. Romer has been maintaining it very well and it seems to be functioning that if we could spread this over two years and sort of do a half and half and push things back, maybe a possibility. But I think we just kind of got to watch and see how it continues to perform. And if there there's, you know, if issues do occur because with the chiller systems, the most critical of those. Right. Yeah. And it biggest nuisance with it, it seems to trip off. We probably reset it four times since school started. I don't know why every time it's a
043little different, but we were able to reset it. And I think we will be able to reset it for quite a while. We had some pneumatic airline leaks here and there. They can pop up because those plastic lines get older. So it can just be a little disruptive and time consuming to find them when they happen. So we've had a few since school started. And this was the other thing that we're potentially going to have site logic come look at, maybe try to do a little deeper dive and get a more sharpened pencil estimate. So financing question, right, because here's where the math gets a little difficult. Obviously, six hundred thousand dollars surplus after you do all the 25, 26 projects doesn't go very far here. I mean, you couldn't even do a tax increase
044probably big enough like it up to the statute probably wouldn't even cover this. Even if you were banking on a surplus similar to what we have this this. Right. You're not going to cover it. It's not going to cover it. So what? That's right. I mean, that's why in my mind it's if this can maintain you try to push and you try to go maybe even get a gap here if you can and try to build up some. I know from my perspective, and I don't know if this is feasible or not, I look and go, we have debt until 2042. That's a far time, but it's not that far that in my mind I'm like, hey, I would love for us to never take on any more debt. I don't know if it's possible,
045but that's my perspective where you pay ten million dollars a year in debt. And it's like all the projects we could do with ten million a year. That's kind of where I was going with. Right. So it's hard. It's sort of like accelerate some of this into one big right. Try to get it as economically as you can now. I mean, presumably like the cost increases over time and the financial situation doesn't change. We never catch up in these items. I mean, again, they're past their useful life, but we maintain them very well. And so if they keep functioning, maybe you get away with not replacing them for a little bit longer. The issue will just become as if it breaks, how bad does it break and how quickly do we need to respond to
046it? And so that's where you have to keep close eyes on that and see and monitor. Well, that's the question is, you know, if a roof leaks or whatever and you could put a bucket underneath it. But for all of these, what happens, you know, like was being said is, you know, that chiller is that work is over a million dollars. I'm guessing that's where you would have to rely on your fund balance to to cover that. And when you say I'd like to not, you know, get into any further debt. Like, I would say I would think that it's impossible with these numbers and based on how much you could raise taxes, how much salaries are going to increase and those sorts of things. I would venture to say that that's impossible, even if
047you go three and it'd be what? Three point seven million and three point seven million twenty, twenty six, twenty, twenty seven and twenty, twenty seven, twenty, twenty eight. And then you can't even, you know, put off that bus. But I'm saying that's scary for us not necessarily saying that it's what's going to occur. I mean, and even if interest rates fall, we got such a great interest rate. The ability probably to refinance at a lower interest rate isn't there, but it would be possible to save money to extend those. Yeah, I think it's a fair point. And this is a great discussion. I never like saying the word never. I mean, if we fly to fail on these things here at Bauer Hill and they last for decades, maybe we got a shot. You know,
048I know I own three air conditioning units, two in my home and one of my mother's home. And the fly to fail methodology failed me twice this summer. One was in the hottest period of the summer. Luckily, that was my mom's just joking mom, if you're listening. And I'm currently waiting to get the other one. One of the two replaced in my home right now, which God shines on two and I'm only for, you know, the cold weather we've had here for the past few weeks. My point is, when we go back to site logic, I think we should ask him if we're going to fly to fail the Bauer Hill stuff. Like, I think for each one of these, hey, if this thing breaks mid school year, what is that contingency planning cost? And
049then I think that will be another aspect of the context as we go to deliberate on the requirement if it's valid for 2026, 2027. I'm going to throw something else in the mix. And Brad, you may have more recent numbers than I. But the last time I tried to buy our 22, it was up to $800 pound. And it's only going to go up. And my anticipation would be that in the next five years, it will simply be flat outlawed. You will not be able to buy it anymore legally. Who would have thought that would be a contraband product? Right. So that is the in my opinion, like I said, Brad, you're free to disagree with me. That's the most risky. What did you call it? Fly to fail because the impact could be exponentially
050larger than we're looking at right now. The refrigerants that's used here as it is, it should be sunsetted. A site logic thought that it would be right for one of the Plan Con replacement grants. I keep looking to see when they're going to come out. But this is this is exactly what they want to find. Just to just to that's one of the things they want gone. And unfortunately, there's no there's no state budget. So there's no money set aside for these grants. But we're if we this is one that we really would run out when they open up because we'd have a good chance for it. And then the idea of, you know, the capital requirements for for our plan. Alex is going to go through the work, work with Brandon, work with SiteLogic
051to validate these requirements and to see what we can spread out longer, if it makes sense to do so. I think that's prudent work. I think the finance committee, three of us, you know, should look at this through the lens of kind of the approach you mentioned in an ideal world likely not getting there. Like no additional debt and then an additional debt path through a bond. My gut tells me without looking at any numbers, and I may show my ignorance here, my gut tells me if we finance the right way for the right amount of projects, the impact of the taxpayer could actually be less. You know, I don't know if that's true. So don't don't hold me to that. But I think we should model that because without a finance option, you know,
052we're looking at Max index for a while until that debt payment, you know, falls off. Would you say 42 or whatever? Yeah. When I said that, that's my ideal scenario. I don't know if we could ever get there or not. That is zero. So in the end, yeah. I just hate looking and saying 10 million a year going out in debt service. Like what could we be using that for? I agree. We need to model all the scenarios and see what's feasible and what's not. I think that's what the finance committee should model just so we come back here and understand what what our options are more than do nothing, do a bond squint. I mean, squinting is nice, flying to fail. But anyway, I've said enough. Thanks. I do have a quick question. Would
053something feel and our schools then have no heat during the winter time and then we're spending millions of dollars in the middle of winter live without air conditioning, but you can't live out in the middle of winter. Okay. Thank you. I didn't have AC in elementary school. I'm not saying that's the scenario we should have. I'm not saying that's the scenario. But I mean, on those projects, though, that is some stuff we could potentially look at splitting over two years. I agree. We need to see the grand piece. I mean, if we get some sizable funding on that, then, yeah, we need to jump on this and do what we can to accommodate getting that done on the 2728. Once we finalize all that bar Hill work, the thought was that we would do some
054miscellaneous painting outside of our Hill, freshen that up. We also this is where we put the stadium upgrades so these were replacing the metal bleachers on the way stands. We know when we did the turf replacement we didn't do the track replacement. The track was still okay so we you know we left the track where it was but that is getting closer to its end of its useful life. And this is a renovation of the press box for two point four million. The one piece that wasn't on our plan when we left last year in February was some of the technology pieces, and it came to light, we you know we were doing our budget discussions. We had a big technology expenditure and this year's budget that we absorbed into our general fund budget for
055the new servers here. And it was a good idea to maybe reach out and try to get those technology replacements on this capital plan to, and the ones that did, you know, stand out when we talk with Swinshok was camera replacements, our camera system is an older system it does work. You know we got a new system at the high school with the new build, but the middle school camera system is is on its way as being outdated so we that was, we feel like we can get to 2728 with that but at that point we would need a replacement. This is for $143,000. There are other options. And, you know, this is replacing kind of in kind the way we do it now, and we own the camera system so you know the way
056that things are moving technology wise on these cameras surveillance is it's kind of stored in the cloud and they kind of give you the cameras for free And then you pay the annual services and that you have no control over those services but then they get forwarded into the general fund budget so what we asked for was just replacing in kind so that was an estimate of $143,000. So that's just under $3 million and 2728 and then 2829 we finally would get to the Bowery Hill paving work. And that would be the McMurray camera replacement, along with the buses so that drops to 2 million. And what we did last year, you know we were looking really for a five year plan but we didn't want to make sure that those things that were even
057exceeded that that we would keep a list of those things just so they might jump up. We know that you know even though we were hoping that there are seven or eight years out they might jump up to one or two years out. So we had the McMurray boiler replacement. I know talking with Brandon, we do inspect our boilers every year. He feels confident in that that's enough, the far end of our plan still McMurray ventilator replacements, emergency generator, PV, the split systems, the middle school P locker rooms, and Bower Hill interior lighting the LED. I would think that that emergency generator replacement would also fall under the potential grant funding because they're now so much more efficient. Yeah, they would be a good grant opportunity. The other item we did add on to this
058list and I know we, you know, some we've talked about it, and then we forget about it because I think we hope it kind of goes away or slows down, but it's at McMurray, we do have the pyrite issue there. We get it looked at every year. Brandon had gateway engineers come out and do their annual walkthrough with a report that we got was on all the, you know, structurally the buildings fine. It's because the caissons that are in the building, they are not moving. And the thought is that they're so deep that they are below the pyrite. But every spot in the building that sits on the slab that is moving so like you would actually walk in the hallway, you'll see that you can see the column coming down and in that base
059and it's still there but then the force a couple inches higher than that base. We actually had a couple pictures of that. And right now we don't have a number for it in the engineering report says you know the building is structurally safe. I can't say how much it's going to move on a yearly basis. And all you know their report is says the building is okay. And if you can live with it, it's fine. It does, you know, these are pictures of the office area and that's where you see like every year we're repairing drywall fixing drywall. And you'll see like on the doorways, Brandon's guys usually are trying to have to either shave the doors down or twist them a little bit. And if you're ever over there and you stand far enough
060behind the back, you could actually see the entrances a little off. Experimental classroom. You're in a fun house or something but we just want to make sure this was this got on the list. You know we're not at you know we don't think it needs any attention right now but at some point or some time, it might happen so we don't want anyone to be surprised or we never talked about it. We'll leave it on here so it's there. Hopefully it stays at the very end of the list and has the chance to jump up to priority one. I'm actually probably not that probability is quite low as long as we do not open it and expose it to air and water. And that, Brandon, I went over the engineering report, and the engineering report
061said, I loved everything I mean it was accurate it was complete it was thorough. The picture you see right here with the crack in the corner. That's at the conference room in the front office. What you can't tell from this photograph is that crack is all the way through. So it's moving on both sides of that of that wall. That's not scary. It just is. What drew me in the civil engineering report is that their suggestion was that we drill cores. And last time I checked that was opening it up. So that seemed like a very strange proposal to include, and I would strongly recommend against it our best protection right now is just like when you cover up asbestos, and you don't touch it and it's okay. It's not unlike that as long as
062we keep it cut off from air and water. It's, it'll wiggle but it's not going to go poof. You drill cores. You've opened it, and that just that seemed very peculiar to me. Did they say why they recommend the drilling cores just so that we would know how deep it was, and then watch it get worse. Okay, they didn't say that. But I, I happen to do a study on expansive soils this past year and so I was looking very closely at the McMurray report. And that was very odd. Before the meeting I brought this up, but I want to share it with everybody for the year 2829 when we're looking at Bower Hill paving and site work. I would recommend we also at least get an estimate on what it would take to build
063some outside stairs from the outside door at the end of the newer wing of Bower Hill down to the back parking lot. Because apparently people do use that as an egress, they just walk down the hill. So I think it might be prudent to at least find out what it would cost to put stairs in there. That, Brandon, might also be a juicy project for the masonry class at Western area. That's nice and contained and a thing. And if it could be done sooner, more people would appreciate it. And on the subject of Bower Hill paving, there are some potholes at the entrance. If you drive by there, that's something we continue to patch year after year. Especially if we start shifting projects out a little bit, that's one that might need a smaller short
064project to address the worst areas of it at some point. Maybe we look at it with some of the paving, especially if we got a decent quote on the ceiling over McMurray. Maybe just looking at the first few hundred feet of that entrance just to address some of the potholes. The rest of the parking lot is not bad, but the entryway is. Yeah, exactly. I have got to throw this in the pot. There is one of the challenges with asphalt repairs is that you can do cold repairs, but they don't integrate, which is why they fail relatively readily. You can do hot repairs, which integrate by feathering the melting around the issue. But asphalt by its nature is not green. It's bad. There is a new experimental asphalt like material that has come out in
065the past six months that incorporates biochar, which is what is left when trash is burned. It is a cold application. There is no need for heat. You can do it any time of the year, and it doesn't release toxic fumes because it's green. And in fact, the material itself is a carbon capture. They are presently looking for beta sites. If the board instructs me to, I would be happy to reach out to the company and explore the possibility of using us as a beta site. Not only would it be a good thing to be a beta site in that regard, in some obscure corner or something, but again, experimental classroom. I guess I'd say it's worth exploring to see. If we get a free project out of it, we take a free project out of
066it. I'd be curious to see more on it to see how it performs over time. And I guess beta sites, there probably isn't a huge track record of time performance, but one understand we'd be putting down first. Leave no stone unturned. I would actually push that further. And if no one objects, have them come out here and ask them what they could do for us at all of our sites. Because I'm assuming it wouldn't, even if it totally fails, we wouldn't be in any worse shape. There may be, there may be areas where they would say, yeah, we can do that too. So I wouldn't want to limit them to one site. Does this integrate with existing asphalt or is this completely rip out and put in new biochar? I am not clear on that
067aspect. So if no one objects, I will reach out and invite them to chat with us more about what the options would be. I mean, I'm totally fine seeing options, but I have to be honest, I am skeptical of being a beta site when children are involved. So what I would want first before I would vote on anything is kind of a primer on what it is, how it works, that there are no environmental hazards. I know you said green, but like there's, you know, it doesn't cause cancer in children and all of those great things. So maybe I'm a little bit more cautious, but I would, I wouldn't need that right before I could vote on anything. Got it. And I was thinking it does sound too good to be true. So I would
068love more information. All right, I'll see what I can get. Actually, I have one, if that's OK. You know, I'm always looking to build the team and I thought I could bring up something that every board member in here will disagree with what I'm about to say. So you want us to all like work together and seal the driveway? No, no, maybe we can biochar it up. Well, I, you know, when I look at this list of capital projects, you know, the one that I think is missing there is kind of aspects of the sports experience at the stadium. In my assessment right now, I think we are unable to meet the current mission requirement in three areas. That is locker room, both in capacity and capability. That is the press box, both in capacity
069and capability. Brandon's going to hook me up with a kick-ass tarp here, hopefully. And then seating capacity. I know it's not an everyday thing. It is my assessment. The more folks I talk to both within the community and in other communities across the country, families are putting a higher and higher focus on the sports experience. And I think if we continue to put our head in the sand about these types of requirements that we're failing to meet, it is eventually going to adversely impact property values. Again, I don't think that's a today problem. I don't think that's a five years from now problem. But at some point, I think it will happen. And then I know we are grandfathered into the ADA compliance nature of the seats. I'm telling you, every single time I'm there,
070I'm helping someone get in and out of their seat. And because the attendance is higher, I'm going to say it's higher than it's ever been. Janine, you can correct me at 100%. It just feels, in my three years living here, it feels like attendance and participation at these events are increasing. I'm seeing elderly folks get ready for fisticuffs for the front row seats. It's not a one off. I see it every single time. So I know no one here wants to entertain those discussions, but I'm getting continual comments from folks within the community. And like I said, I believe those three areas, we are not meeting today's mission requirement, let alone future ones. And I'm happy to take any shots you guys want me to take. All right. I was surprised that SiteLogic didn't come
071back saying that our side needed work in the bleachers. They said the other side needed work. Am I not reading that correctly? The other side was just because that's where we told them to look. I mean, this past game, the sky opened up and started raining hard. And just seeing these folks, even not like the folks that need the front row seating, when that water hit the stadium, I mean, I saw folks that can move very well slipping and falling. And if you think I'm making this stuff up, I think we should arrange. We should all go to a game together. We could sit there. We could go to the locker room and see how it's busting. I mean, again, in the fly to fail, Cameletti HVAC land, this wouldn't be a great time to
072see that the HVAC isn't a thing down there, but if we can get a hot day, we can all go. But the sports are growing. I mean, I don't know what the football team was 10 years ago, but in seventh and eighth grade alone, there's over 40 kids in each of those grades. Now, you're going to have attrition here over the next couple of years before they get to the high school. But I'm sure the ABC's how much that program is growing. And that's one example. It's not the only sport that's growing and gaining prominence. But isn't that why it's hard to be a board member? You have to balance all of that. And that's that's the difficulty. I mean, my kids went through and I had stadium envy all the time, all the time.
073And then you have to back it up with, you know, the maximum amount of income tax. Only the last couple of years have we even done a little less than maximum. And that was the time before we had to go up the maximum. And that was because retirement went in a period of 10 years from 10 percent that we had to pay on top of the salaries to 36 percent in a period of seven to 10 years. And so everything ate that up and you had to go above the index to, you know, deal with that. I mean, I agree with you 100 percent, but then you have to back it all up and the pressures of whoever. I mean, there's going to be new board members who have to deal with that and whatever
074pressures they have or or, you know, whatever positions they have. But there was a period of time before I got on the board. That was probably about 15 years ago where the board was adamant they would not. And this is before the retirement cost went up. So they did have an option, but they were adamant. We are not raising taxes. And what happened is, is that backed up all of the maintenance and repairs to what we have had to do over the last 12 years. But they were adamant. They were not raising taxes. And then you just push that out onto future generations. So I agree with you. And that's the hard part. And that's I think the importance of what you said, modeling everything, modeling all the options, because that's that's all you have.
075I mean, you have a little bit of ability to go to the end users and some of the booster groups, which have always been very generous in helping out. But you're talking big money numbers and and that's the issue. And then you're going to have some people who are going to say, why are we putting all of that money here? We want to make a new stadium at the new high school. So there's all kinds of pressures that are going to be on. And I mean, that's what makes it difficult. People don't. Oh, my God. We're going to end here. Here's where Mike, I think that the cost of that is the number of houses that one time cost five hundred dollars. Not five hundred dollars a year in perpetuity. It was five hundred dollars
076per one time. Some household that's a lot of money, some that's thought to change. I'm not getting into that. My view on that was if you have a high performance school district that has doesn't have a pool at the high school. Less people don't want to go there. Does that affect how we value five hundred dollars? In my mind, we can argue about what that's right wrong. So in my mind, it was very simple. Yeah, I think that that is I can't prove that. But I can see where that can do it. This is the same thing. Maybe not five, maybe ten, maybe twenty. But when people look at, oh, my God, you're going to spend twenty million dollars. It's not. It's something less than that. And does that affect the value of your property,
077which is more money in your debt? Does it have a positive impact on that? Everybody's going to have a different answer. Everybody's going to have a different opinion. But you've got to look at it different than, oh, my God, I'm going to spend five million dollars. That's my, I'm just telling you the way I look at it. Yeah, thanks, Dan. That's a great point. Lisa, I agree with most everything you said. The one thing I'd push back on is I don't have stadium envy. Actually, being from West Virginia, being a military kind of what I believe is a blue collar kind of dude, I take pride in that. But the reality is I take pride in us not having the shiniest penny. But the reality is, like I said, I don't believe it's meeting mission
078requirement. And while I agree, it's difficult for the board, for any public official to weigh those competing variables. And there's always competing variables that that's what makes governing hard. Although my words landed more favorably with the eight than I was expecting up until this point in the journey, I don't think the board acknowledges that there is a problem. You know, and up until this point, it's all right. The noisy Cameletti guy keeps talking about locker rooms and ADA seating and we're bursting at the seams. I would love it if the board would just acknowledge that there is a problem, maybe a problem that we need to define collectively. And then if we do that, then eventually maybe we work there at some solution weighing those competing variables. But up until this point in my journey
079on the board, I feel like now, man, it's not a problem. What are you talking about? And you guys could correct me if I'm wrong. I can't say I'm not saying it's not a problem. And I mean, we do have upgrades here on the schedule. And I know when you talk about capacity, I know one thing that jumps out to me is like even the brand new swimming pool, Oregon Swim Meet, that thing does not hold nearly all the people you need it to. So, I mean, even a brand new structure doesn't. And so I get it. I mean, it's a good thing for our school that we have school spirit. We have people showing up at these events. People are coming out. I mean, even some of the smaller fields like next to the
080high school for smaller kids games. I mean, there's no seats there. It's a hillside. You're sitting in weeds. I mean, unfortunately, it's it's kind of in my mind needs and wants. I mean, there's just other items that we've got to address first that I'm not saying there's not an issue there. And this is just my perspective. I mean, I see issues a lot of the sport events in terms of capacity. It's it's hard to address that before addressing some of the other things in my mind. I mean, faces a parking lot is not the the coolest of projects. But I just think there's other things probably need some attention. But I mean, it's just just my opinion. And I get it. I mean, I know there's things over there and you make valid points on
081what some of the issues are. It's just the part we have. I mean, basically, we all just got to pick what is that priority project? If someone says on here like, hey, Alex, you're you're wrong on this. We need to move this other one up to the top. Let's do that and talk about it. And I will tell you, you would be very proud to know that when we were scoping the middle school renovation, locker rooms got what Lisa seven or eight hours of discussion in terms of trying to find ways to fit some additional locker room space in there. So the newer members of the board would not have that history. But we are very much aware of the fact that the locker rooms are not OK. And I know myself and Miss Binsay
082did go toward the locker rooms with Dr. French and Mr. Guyer and go looking. I get your point. I see the issues down there. And I understand, too, when they went through the renovation project of how could you realistically fix that without just knock out an entire basement starting over? I mean, there was I get the decision was made because it's bad. But I don't know how you fix it. So no, I'm not. At least my mind, I don't I don't think you're making up a problem that doesn't exist. I see the problem. There's just I think problems everywhere. No, no, no, no. There's a lot of problems we need to address challenges, challenges, no problems, opportunities. We haven't discussed this in a while. But after it was discussed many months ago, I also asked
083Mr. Guyer to take me down there. And, yeah, I was I haven't been down there in many years, but I was shocked how bad it was when he was showing me everything and what the capacity actually is. I was surprised how limiting it is. But I also don't know what you can do other than digging that out and remodeling everything. And that doesn't seem practical. I don't have a solution right now. But to recognize that it's a problem. Yes, we do. Thank you. Anything else? Any public comments? All right. Well, if no one has anything else, meeting is adjourned. OK, can I adjourn? All right.