001I call the July 24th, 2025 regular meeting of the Board of Education to order. Anita, will you please call the roll? Here. Ms. Tim? Here. Mrs. Nanegar? Here. Mr. Goldberg? Here. Mrs. Warren? Here. Ms. Maloney? Here. Dr. Pinter? Please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, which it stands, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Good evening and thank you for joining us tonight. Please note that Dr. Pinter is not going to be in attendance as she is currently out of town with her family. Kate, Julia, and Angela are also out of town as well. And thank you to Anita for taking Kate's place this evening to support us with our meeting. I want to give my fellow board members a reminder to please
002complete the requested information related to your preferences to tour the high school spaces next week. If you are unable to attend, please let Dr. Galt know. Also, I very shortly ago, I think today, sent out a survey from our retreat. If you could respond with your comments by August 1st, that will give Dr. Galt time to synthesize them and get feedback to improve. So thank you very much. Anita, is there anyone signed up for public speaking? There is not. Thank you. The next item on the agenda is the consent agenda. Dr. Galt? Thank you, Mrs. Maloney. This evening, I have for the board the approval of minutes from open and closed session board of education meetings held on July 9th and July 17th, 2025. The approval of the bills payable list, district activity bills payable
003list, as well as the purchase for data center servers, and then acceptance of the treasurer's report, approval of the personnel report, which includes employment of non-certified staff, employment of certified staff, resignation of non-certified staff, and I just want to highlight that you'll notice a name on there from Mrs. Malik's department. Domi is leaving us, and she has a wonderful opportunity to work alongside Dr. Karner at the regional office of education. We're very proud of her. We look forward to working with her in just a different capacity, a different role. So congratulations to her. She served the district for nine years. We will miss her, but we're excited for her new journey, and Mrs. Malik will be working diligently to find somebody to replace Domi. And that is all I have for you. May I have
004a motion to approve the consent agenda as prepared and presented by the administration? So moved. Second. Thank you, Doug. Thank you, Peter. Are there any questions? All right. Anita, please call the roll. Mrs. Danniger? Ms. Maloney? Yes. Mr. Atian? Yes. Mrs. Warren? Yes. Dr. Pinter? Not here. Ms. Timm? Yes. And Mr. Goldberg? Yes. All right. The next item on the agenda is the superintendent's report. Dr. Gault? Thank you again. Just a short report for the board tonight since we were here last week, so quite short. We did not, you did not receive any communication from individuals of note right now. We did meet as a board committee for facilities and business services and had some lengthy conversations in a few areas. We did talk about our long-range facilities plan. Dr. Romano shared alongside Mr. Erstad
005that we have about $3.5 million in costs that we can expect for the upcoming school year. Please recall as a board that $3 million of those dollars are annually set aside. Additionally, we have about $500,000 that will come from interest earnings that we're anticipating this school year. And then Dr. Romano will continue to keep us updated in that regard. He's currently right now working on merging two pretty comprehensive documents to create one comprehensive document. And so all of that information, really looking at the dollars involved as well as the items that we have planned for at least the next five years and up through the next 15 beyond that. He'll be sharing much of that information in August. As the board knows, you have a few decisions that you need to be contemplating. And so
006we want to make sure that you have all of that information as you look to make those kinds of decisions. Additionally, we had some good conversation about construction. Specifically, we talked about the culinary lab at the high school. It is on target. We also talked about the design lab that will be completed prior to the culinary space. So when you do take your tours, as Mrs. Maloney indicated, you'll have an opportunity to really take a look at the facility. And we'll show you all of the spaces. These are just the spaces that we spoke about this evening. The kitchen serving area, we're about two days behind due to some equipment that was ordered that we'll be waiting on. We should be ready to serve kids as soon as they return. So no concerns in that
007regard at this time. And then again, as you come, you'll have an opportunity to see all of the spaces that have been renovated. We also had some conversation about historical, historic financial data, our budgeting process. You have that report. If you recall, I did email all of those documents to you as well as they're posted in our board agenda from tonight's committee meeting. So if you haven't had a chance to review all of those documents, please make sure that you take some time in the coming couple of weeks to do so. But really, it just underscores just the incredible position that we continue to place ourselves in because our board of education is thoughtful and plans well as far as the monies that we spend on a yearly basis as well as we have some
008excellent administrators specifically working in the areas of facilities and certainly our business department who really monitor those dollars and ensure that we're getting the best possible prices. And that's why some of our projects have come in under budget. So we appreciate their continued work. Upcoming dates, I shared this with you. We are really excited about students returning on August 13th. That will be here before you know it. I definitely want to be at the high school when I watch students walk into some of the new spaces. Most especially, I think they're going to be excited about the Tonelli Gym having air conditioning. They'll be surprised when they enter the main gym and it's fresh paint and it just looks new. And then of course, our field house, our bleachers on one side of the gym
009have been installed. They are in black and blue with LZHS on them. I know that our kids are going to be excited about that, but even more so the audio within that facility has been a struggle in past years. No longer will that be the case. And I think as our student leaders lead our assemblies at the high school, they're going to be amazed at what that new system can do. So again, just really excited to be able to tour you. I cannot wait for our students to return. And I know our staff will be extremely happy to work in some of those newly renovated spaces. That is all I have for you, Mrs. Maloney. Thank you. Thank you. I'm moving on to the reports to the board. The first item is the financial dashboard
010and fourth quarter financial data report. Are there any questions for Dr. Romano? All right. Moving on to the next item, cash flow. Are there any questions for Dr. Romano? Great. The next item is the special education programming report to the board. I hope the board was able to read over the FAQ provided by the administration. Are there any additional questions for Dr. McArdle? I just want to thank Dr. McArdle for the work to put together the FAQ. I thought that was awesome that answered all the questions I think we've received from both the public and the board as internally. So I think this is a very helpful document and hopefully this will be posted in a place where folks can get to it readily because I do think there's some great material. So thank you,
011Lauren, for all the work it took. I know it took to put that in. And I think based upon the inputs that we got from parents and others in the community that this is an important thing we want to keep our eyes on. So we'll look forward to regular updates as we roll this program out this year and I'm sure keep us informed as to how it's going. Thank you. I just have a quick comment that this rollout of the adult day center or the day center will be three to four students to start this year and I think that's very reasonable and manageable and a great soft start to a new program and I'm excited to see how it goes. And I feel like you've been very detailed in all the concerns of the
012community and we will just keep monitoring. So thank you. Thank you. I also want to say that, you know, obviously this issue we received some feedback from that we didn't expect and I thought the administration entirely reacted well and addressed the concerns, the way the information is presented to us now and then ultimately presented to the community is great. I think you did a phenomenal job of not just addressing the issues but anticipating issues as they thought may happen. And so I think great job, great job in addressing this and I hope the community has an opportunity to review all of the information that you put out and appreciates the effort because I really do think that you did a phenomenal job addressing their very legitimate concerns. Thank you. Mrs. Maloney, just to add, Dr.
013McArdle is working with her team, especially at the Young Adults Center for that program and we will be utilizing our school improvement process a little bit differently for some of our other programming. So I'm excited to see what Dr. McArdle and her team come up with and share with us through that process. And so that'll be another opportunity for you to gain some feedback. And yeah, I just want to echo what my colleagues have already said. Sorry to affect you again because I read those, those were very well done and you did meet, like you said, like she said, she's near. But the three to four students, you're on track and do you, I would anticipate that, you know, since school is around the corner, for starting that's probably where you're going to land or
014do you see any change from between now and then? So to clarify, it's three to four students within the first semester. We have two already enrolled and then we have two that we're monitoring and that's what we know right now. We would anticipate potentially a few more throughout the course of the first semester, but we're comfortable with that four number at the end of first semester. Oh, okay. Thank you. And I also want to say for our vast viewing community, we truly want your feedback. And I use this as a great example of when we get your feedback, it is something every member of the board was very interested in learning and addressing and dealing with. And I thought our administration did a phenomenal job reacting to the feedback that we got from our community.
015So thank you. All right. Moving on. Next item on the agenda, our discussion is discussion without action. Dr. Romano, please share an overview related to the consideration of solar projects. Okay. Thank you very much. I know at our last meeting we had a huge opportunity. We kind of fast forwarded to the content I planned on speaking about this evening. So if you could scroll up just a little bit. One of the things I just wanted to highlight is that we did create not only a net present value analysis of all of the projects, but we also have the profitability index which provides us with the rate of return, our best rate of return for projects. So that's there. We also talked and have talked several times around scenarios. First scenario is that we would actually
016start a solar project in 2025. Then it would be a delayed start, which would be in January-ish, in that first half of the year. And then there's a final window based on current legal components. However, we have an expert from Baker Tilly here this evening. I'm going to have him come up to the mic, introduce himself. This is where you want to pepper all of the questions about is it really going to happen, because this is our expert. He has been a key instrument for us in understanding the legislation if there is a level of assurance. This is what I would recommend that we lean on as far as what we can do. So not to put too much pressure out there, but thanks for being here. Thank you very much. We'll see what I
017can do for everybody here. Bob Huncheleski. I'm with Baker Tilly. I'm out of our Milwaukee office, but grew up near Lake County, so I'm very familiar with the whole area here. You know, and we're talking about the major aspects of what we need to look at under the bill right now is that there is basically a few different cliffs occurring here. The most favorable cliff to realize is trying to place beginning of construction during 2025. If you do a project beginning construction in 2025, there are going to be no other limitations to having to purchase non-Chinese solar panels, non-Chinese components to the project. If you start a project in 2026, there then becomes a requirement of having to have more than 40% of your materials coming from non-Chinese components. It's a very difficult threshold. There
018are American components that exist out there. The contractors you're working with may have a hard time actually being able to be supplied by the American solar panel producers that are there. When I'm looking at a project, I'm right now advising clients that you can establish a beginning of construction in 2025. You'll be able to avoid that. You also have four calendar years to complete the project, and that means you can complete the project all the way through 2029. What does beginning of construction mean from a technical side of things? It is either physically beginning the project, it might be a bit challenging to physically start doing the work, but it's possible you can start doing, if it's a rooftop system, you might be able to start doing some of the racking on the roof itself.
019If you're redoing a roof, there is actually incremental cost of a roof that could be added into a project. If it's a solar array field ground level, ground mounted system, you could actually begin construction by driving posts into the ground that are part of the racking system that's there. There's ways you can actually create the physical construction side of the test right now. The other is that has been a lot more preferential for projects, it's called 5% safe harbor. 5% of your project costs are incurred before the end of 2025, and that would be for services and purchase of materials that have been transferred to your ownership within your contract. So it could either be what you've received during 25 in the way of services, could be engineering on the project, that you would have
020to meet that 5%, or the receipt of the product itself, then there's also one further factor there you could work with is if you make a payment, you have three and a half months to receive those products to then bring it into your 5% side of it. So if you make a payment, call it December 29th, you'd have till around April 10th in order to receive your supply of panels, your supply of racking for the project itself, and now you've made your commitment of at least 5%. And we'd only have to receive 5% of the product, or would we have to? You'd have to pay. 5% of the money could be spent on services, planning. But if we did product, we'd only have to actually receive 5%. You'd have to pay for 5%, and you'd
021have to have the services and the receipt of the supplies within that time frame. Bob, thank you for coming tonight, I really appreciate it. I'll have a follow-up question I asked you before, but my first question is, you just mentioned something I wasn't aware of, in that let's say, for example, we were going to put solar in one of our roofs, however, in order to make the project long-lasting, we wanted to refurbish or replace some of the roof before we did that, would the money that we spent towards the refurbishment be applicable to the 5%? An incremental piece of it that is, that you're paying to have maybe a reflective roof system to enhance your solar recovery off the roof. So a lot of white roof systems are reflective for the purpose of enhancing your
022recovery on the solar. We see a lot of projects where they will re-roof a project to have a 30-year warranty coincide with the life of the solar, so that incremental cost of a 30-year warranty compared to say a 10-year warranty, that would be eligible cost. So if we had a roof that was near the end of its life, a few years left, and we decided to put a new 30-year roof on that was compatible with the lifespan of the solar, the cost of putting that new roof on would be applied towards the project cost? A piece of that would. So it's the additional add-ons to make it, say, a 30-year warranty over a 10-year warranty. That piece of that would be. You'd have to help us with figuring out how much we can actually pay
023for that. We could work with your roofing contractor to help determine what that is. The other question I have is, well, two other questions. Let's say we had a roof we wanted to put it on, but the roof needed to be reinforced. It wasn't structurally sound enough. That's an incremental cost that would also be eligible directly to the project. Okay, good. The third question, which is a follow-up to my previous one with you, is it's my understanding and I might be wrong, and so I'm looking for your professional advice, is that if we delay and we're in this issue where we have to have the 40% of components non-Chinese, there's some kind of proration to that. It's not a binary thing, all or nothing. If you have 20%, for example, that are non-Chinese, you still
024get a good chunk of the credits. And you said you weren't sure yet about that. Correct. I'm not certain. I've not read anything or heard other commentary about that, but I have reached out to my crew to see if we can come up with an answer. Yeah, I think that would be helpful, because again, we're looking at obviously potentially making some decisions and timing is critical for us, but I do think we'll have to stay in close contact with you to make sure we understand all the parameters associated with this. Sure. Are there any, like have you seen yet any pitfalls of this that we should be aware of, like, oh, by the way, you know, don't do this or make sure you do that. What have you seen so far? Because obviously, I'm sure
025you're talking to a lot of folks that are scrambling right now. Right. You know, pitfall-wise is, you know, being, you know, would be just simply delaying not being proactive enough to try to meet a beginning of construction criteria in 2025 here. There was a executive order launched right after signing the bill that this is going to be re-examined for how to establish beginning of construction. Right. I've pulled out my crystal ball. I have all kinds of opinions around it. I think the most relevant thing would be when we're talking about that physical test before, how do you fully, how do you actually substantiate it better for the perspective of the IRS? Right now, it's substantial physical construction. So as I always use as the example, Dean and I are in a photo with yellow vests
026with shovels that might not be substantial on December 30th. So instead, what you have to do is you have to show some sort of, like, better commitment to a project. So you use the word physical. So it isn't just us signing a contract and having a bunch of engineering work done, like you're looking at the structural drawings and such. We actually have to physically have done things. It's an or item. It is an or. Okay. That's important. So it could be the 5% test, which could just be engineering services. Yeah. Which is likely. It's a project. And then you, or you could have a physical test. Okay. It's going to be hard for anybody, at least at this point in the year, to receive any goods and start doing things. But certainly doing engineering work
027and planning is very likely. Exactly. That's the reason why I focus on discussion on engineering work. So I'm going to throw a question out there, which I haven't thought about until literally right now. Let's say that we decided to do all of the projects on the list, being extremely aggressive. And we completed the engineering for all of those projects on the list. And once we've completed the engineering, especially structural, we find that there is a problem or a challenge with regards to one of the buildings. And we choose not to do that project or move forward. Okay. I recognize we'd not be reimbursed for the project, but is there a negative to have, to pull back? Other than your spend on the engineering side of it, that would be the one negative. You're not going
028to get any credits associated with it. Right. So there would be a 5% cost of the project that would be lost if we chose to pull back. Correct. Yes. Another scenario similar is that if we made a commitment to move forward with all of the projects, and we expended the 5% on the engineering so it qualifies under the scope of the rules right now, and we have a financial concern, and we stop moving forward with one of the buildings or half of the buildings or whatever it is that we choose to do because of a financial concern, we would still have until the end of 2029 to actually execute. Correct. And still be able to claim the credit through the end of 2029. If you wait until after 4th of July of 26, besides the
029Chinese componentry issue there, you would have to have a project placed in service by the end of 2027. Got it. If we expended that 5% on any and all of the projects, and we decided to wait, we can wait, but we're still under the existing... Correct. Are you done? Oh, sorry. Go ahead. Thanks again for coming there, and I appreciate it. And I think the last minute I mentioned that the president had issued a memorandum, we're making sure all of the requirements apply, but it seems like the memorandum he issued after the law was signed was really focused on federal lands, so like making sure that they have environmental review and all of that list of items, and so, but from what I'm hearing is that there is some distinction that people are making between
030like residential solar projects and projects such as this school and huge projects that may be on federal lands or other type of projects, right? So those are more disfavored than what we're doing. Is that your sentiment as well? There's... I mean, first of all, the residential solar projects, they have a short time frame. They have to be completed by the end of September of this year. So, just any solar projects with the availability for credits, they're all operating on the same deadline. So when you're talking commercial, which a school building is considered a commercial project or a gigawatt project out in the prairies of Illinois, they're considered the same. So the treatments of both of those projects are the same. Right. Right. I know ours is in the same bucket as the residential ones. Which
031is good for us because, you know, it's... I think we're in the commercial. It's... Yeah. Whatever, but there are like the residential one, the commercial one, and then there are like the really, you know, much bigger projects like they were talking about on federal lands, which is a little bit different than putting something on your office space. But what about material availability in 2025 if everybody's trying to meet the deadline? I think, you know, just to be clear, I think we should start as soon as possible and to take advantage because that's the option one and that provides... That gives us the most flexibility. Yeah. So I would look at the concept of the really big projects, the big developers, megawatts, megawatts of power they're looking to produce, they've seen this for years. They have
032a backlog of multiple years of projects that are out there. So they've already established their safe harbor of mostly a physical work test because their projects are so big they either have huge supplies of panels that they're designating off to each project or they're special ordering transformers that become part of a physical offsite test. Your project's more basic. You're not having anything you're using for the project is just inventory materials. It's not custom at all. So there is still unavailability of those materials to be purchased. Again, you're looking at early April, you put your payment in, you can have those materials as being part of the project. The developer, excuse me, the contractors, if they are doing the engineering work and that's going to constitute more than 5% of the project costs here, those under
033historical guidance that have been out there for 15 years, those would still make, still become part of a safe harbor for a lot of projects. So I guess the short answer to my question then is you're not too concerned that material that... I have not heard anything about material availability being a problem yet. And then this discussion about the substantial physical construction and so on reminds me of what we deal with sometimes in construction related to environmental projects. There is some similarity in the language to make sure that you start the thing or if you start the thing then you're in trouble. So there is some similarity there. But you know, just thinking in terms of what we face in that context is the definition of the project, which gets me back to Dean's point.
034If you have four buildings or five buildings, can you call them one project or they have to be five projects because they're on five different buildings? For projects beginning construction in 2025, there's less of a likelihood of combining those separate projects into a single, into a single, excuse me, the separate properties as we used to call it, into a single project. So there's less of a likelihood. If you began construction under the Section 48 code prior to 2025, there might be a reason to group all of those properties into a single project. There's a big benefit to not having to group everything into a single project because there's this megawatt limitation that's there. So if you're over a megawatt combined, then you'd have to meet prevailing wage and apprenticeship, which is an added cost to
035a project. A lot of it could be, in your case, just from the compliance end of it on a project. But by keeping separate projects out there as being separate, you won't have the added cost for prevailing wage, keeps the project cost a little bit lower, and then each of them stand on their own for their beginning and their completion to claim the credits. Thank you. Thank you for clarifying that. That's very helpful. I mean, I understood that the idea of starting all of them is purely hypothetical. I would be surprised if we start all of them, but what do I know? So likely we'd probably start one or two or something like that. That would be what I would surmise. But so the general sense, though, is the option one is a good idea.
036Make some decision on that and start as soon as possible. And then if for some reason we have reason to come to a different conclusion, we have a little bit of flexibility after we start. But the best approach is to start sooner rather than later, right? The only thing is that that's the absolute consensus on any of these projects right now for solar, is that start as soon as possible, make your commitments, be confident with your contractor that they are going to be able to fulfill that 5%, you know, spend on a project that's going to meet the criteria. They should all be aware of what those details are, but I certainly would be helping you guys also make sure that's fully documented within your contracts, too. Well, thank you. Natasha. Well, with any of
037this, it requires a lot of change. There's just not, you can't throw up another executive order and change the world again. So that, they'd have to come through with another bill that would change that. Now, the likelihood that they're going to change how they've already created this again, they're killing the solar at the end of 2027, effectively anyways. They know from the lobbying of large utilities that they had to give some level of runway, and that's what the Senate's version that ultimately passed and was signed by the president came into play. So now there's a little bit of this giveaway with the president saying, I'm going to have an executive order that we're going to, the IRS is going to be commanded to present a more definitive establishment of beginning of construction. And again, what
038seems to be the case, it would be historically, the physical on-site test has a lot of nebulousness to it. It's the 5% safe harbor that was established by the IRS previously. That would be the standard that has been established for a long period of time. They have good, I would say have great lobbyists be able to continue their projects along the way. Yes, I would say that. Forty-five days from the executive order is the middle of August. I know as a school board, you have to make decisions and so forth. So probably by the time you end up making a final, final decision to sign contracts, we will know what the executive order became as the IRS, you know, providing additional guidance. Alicia? I just want to repeat my concern about federal funding being withheld,
039and I feel like this is a separate bucket. Like, is that, that is what I'm understanding, there's a separate bucket of money that's been promised as these incentives and... It's actually not a bucket of money. This is, this is a law. This is credits that are there. This is not a grant program of any sort. Just, okay. Yeah. All right. That's all. Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you. I've had to answer a lot of this to many different organizations over the last year and a half. Well, because the reality is, if we were a tax paying entity, we would get tax credits. Correct. We would not get a check. The only reason we get a check is because we are not a tax. And that's actually a really good important point. The whole direct
040pay process that was left untouched. Okay. So, as I... So what you're doing for us with our previous May Whitney return and expecting to get a check has not changed. Correct. Yeah. Nobody wanted to take away the money for their churches who were putting solar on their projects and their buildings. Wonderful. I just want to clarify, we're talking calendar years whenever we talk years, right? Because we have a lot of different fiscal years going on here with the different entities. Correct. Yes. Okay. And then if you're doing improvements to the roof, is that allowed to be part of the project cost that this rebate is based upon? I think it's an incremental feature to the roof that is there to enhance the solar or to be supportive of the solar. So if you're structurally need
041some bracing to the building and you have to go through and weld up some braces to the roof structure we see here, that would be an added cost to the solar. You would get a credit based off of that. But if you were replacing the roof just so that my roof replacement wouldn't match my solar replacement, that does not qualify. Not the whole cost of that replacement, but if you're trying to, if you went with a longer warranty to match your solar life, that incremental piece, and it's surprising how much added cost that can be to a roof. Okay. And then I just wanted to comment to Peter's question I know in dealing with another contractor and I'm sure ours does just as many projects. They're pre-ordering a whole lot of solar panels right now
042because they have so many clients that are going through this discussion right now that they're putting the orders in now preemptively for solar panels and the bracing and everything. So getting the equipment is still going to be, it takes time because there's only so many places you can get it from, but I'm sure they're proactively ordered. We have four years for that, which is the good news, right? It's not like we've got to have it. Well, two years. Well, no. We have to, yep, if you start now, this year, right? Right, but you need a 2027 completion. That's if you start your construction after 4th of July of next year. Oh, okay. I'm sorry. Establishing and beginning of construction now we have till the end of 2029. So you've got your ear to the ground
043much better on this because this is your livelihood. Are you hearing any other chatter about any, I mean, we had the Senate come with their version which we were hearing about and you had to do it within 30 days and now the House came and changed some things and then the bill got signed. Are you hearing in this reconciliation process any more changes or are you thinking this is pretty much what it's going to look like? We have not heard anything that they want to go through this all over again. They came through a reconciliation bill and the part of a reconciliation bill is that the Senate doesn't have to go through filibuster procedures and get 60 out of 100 senators to sign on to something. So they wouldn't be changing anything until next year
044if they were to try to do another reconciliation bill next year. Okay, wonderful. That's good to hear. Thank you. Thank you. We have nothing further. So thank you very much for coming. Dean, I don't know if you have any final comments that you want to say or? So based on some of the conversation this evening, I'm going to do a little bit more thinking. I also wanted to share that the group that we had used for our servery, the architect that led us through the process to do design build, they are queued up at this point to do the analysis because there's another analysis that we have to validate that what we had gotten from PSI is accurate. I'm actually going to have them move forward. It's generally a small sum of money, about $8,000
045or so to get going on all of our projects to have that verified, and I'm going to work with our attorneys to see if we can be ready to go. The reason I'm saying all of that is that you mentioned the 45 days is mid-August. Our next board meeting is August the 14th. If I had everything queued up that they took action on, signed, sealed, delivered, all of the analysis done, is there any advantage to taking action on that specific date? Or we can talk about it offline. If there is an advantage, you would probably have to have a contract signed in hand, meaning any new guidance is more likely to be a prospective guidance rather than retrospective. So 45 days kind of puts you around August 20th to have ... Well, his executive order
046was the 7th, so 45 days is called August 22nd, something in that ballpark. So if you were able to sign a contract before that date, that might give you a little bit of comfort. I think if I were to, again, pull out my crystal ball as to what could happen, I would prefer to be cautious and wait and say, let's see what the executive order is really stating just in case they decide to, oh, beginning of construction needs to be 10%. It's not been historically the case, but I would say that that might be ... There was something I wanted to be cautious about. That would be one thing. So taking action on the 14th is not to our advantage? I'm hesitant to say because it's an IRS notice, they'd have to change an awful
047lot of things to make it different going forward. So 5% ... You're really looking at your 5% safe harbor of costs right now. I don't see a big difference between signing a contract before August 20th versus waiting until understanding if there's any nuance to that guidance a week later. I don't mean to put you on the spot. So we can touch base after, and we'll bring that. That's still a target date, but we'll take a look and see where everything falls. Go ahead, Doug. Dean, I had a follow-on question for you. We had some conversations last time about concerns about putting solar panels on the Middle School South Complex. North. Or North. Was it North? The buildings you were concerned about, there was some preliminary engineering studies that showed that there would need to be
048some reinforcements. That was actually more about the history of the Middle School North building and whether or not adding anything else additional to the building. So sure, my question is we need to make sure all that kind of information, all those studies and analyses need to be complete before we could render a decision because those could be additional costs, which may or may not count as part of the five percent. But the other thing is you had mentioned also relative to the high school that after preliminary analysis some of the panels were moved around to other parts of the roof that were in better condition and better able to support the weight of those. So my question is, given that new layout of the roof, what is the age and condition of those roofs and
049when would they normally have to be repaired? Because from what we just heard, you know, if those roofs only have a making numbers up a couple years of life left, then it may be prudent if we decide to do the high school, for example, to actually replace the roof, maybe put roofing material on it as a longer life and or as more reflective of solar energy to raise the efficiency of the panels, again, to accommodate the fact that we can get some credit for that. So before I think the board's able to make a decision, we need to have all that information laying flat for all the buildings, right? So we understand the full ramifications of this, right? So I would tell you that with regards to the conversation at the high school, the field
050house was the largest roof space that we originally wanted to put solar, but it has one of the worst timelines left on it. So if we were to do the field house roof now, there may be some advantage because we typically look at 30-year roofs. That's what we typically do, but if we were to look at doing that there, we could say we were only going to be putting it in a 10-year roof, but then get some of the advantage for extending it out. Yeah, I mean, you're just looking at the facts of you're putting a roof on that is going to have that incremental cost to it. You know, regardless of what your standard policy is, that would be how you would look at it. Got it. And then the other component, though, is
051I know that the way that the contracts work with PSI, who is the partner that we were looking at, they will not do the structural engineering without a contract. And so we won't have the ability, if we were to go down this path with PSI, to know that, and nor would I think it would be a recommendation that I would give because that's the engineering cost that will help us get to the 5%. And we just don't know the real costs, all right? For example, at the high school, if we say, gosh, we actually need a million dollars of roofing to make this work, the project is now a $5 million or a $6 million project versus a $5 million project, right? 100% correct. And that was why I asked that other question, because if
052we determined that we wanted to step back because we found something that was unanticipated, we would have the ability to do that. We would lose the 5% engineering cost. Yeah. I'm a little confused about the discussion because it keeps circling back. I mean, I'm confused. I was thinking we don't have money anyway to start all the projects, so maybe I'm confused about that. And so we have to pick a project or two that we could afford, which means that it's not just because we can't do all, we can't do any. So if there is one that we know that is safe, like we had thought of before, where we do not need a roof, doesn't it make sense to proceed with that one rather than, because I'm still confused about why, is this, is doing
053all of them really on the table? I'm confused. So I think what the reason Dr. Romano asked the question that he did was that if we are anticipating it all, that we may want to do more than one project, that you must put forward – please correct me if I'm wrong – you must put forward the 5% on any of the projects that you're anticipating the potential of doing. They would be then geared up and ready should you want to do one, two, three projects over that time frame to get us to 2029. I believe that's why you asked that question, and I believe that that's how you answered that question. I'd agree with your assessment on that. Thank you. I think that the conundrum is, you know, we have some preliminary estimates on cost
054for the various, and in a business case analysis in that present value, but they don't account for any other costs that may be encumbered to bring the project to fruition. So again, I'm going to use the example of bicycle. We have to spend a million dollars on the roof because we need to do that to make it, you know, last a reasonable amount of time. Well then, that changes the calculation. And I appreciate what you said, Dean, that, you know, it's difficult, but at least we need to get to a point where we have some reasonable degree of feeling like we know how – well, last time we replaced all these roofs, and we know, therefore, what the general life expectancy is. That's unknown. We know all that, right? So we can say, oh, by
055the way, to your point, at the field house, it's only got – whatever it is – three years of life left. So guess what? In three years, or maybe a little longer, if we cover solar panels, it'll last longer. But we need to have some kind of idea on the risk associated with executing any one of these, and each one should have a risk factor. Okay, we did middle school north, the risk factor of additional cost is 20 percent because we've got some uncertainty. We just – I think you need to put a risk bar around each one of the projects based upon unknown unknowns, right? We have known unknowns. We have unknown unknowns. So I just think, you know, because, you know, where we're at – now we know, for example, at middle school
056south, that roof is only a couple years old, right? It's going to last – should hopefully last another 25 years, right? Yes. So that's a little less risky from that perspective. But I think at least at a high level to understand what you, the team, you and Lyle and your teams think the risks are associated with each one of those, that's going to be helpful for any decision-making process. I agree. Some of the things, just as a reminder, because it's been a few years since we put the May-Whitney process to the street and went through it, we actually went through the process for a guaranteed energy savings, which means that they have to give us a guaranteed price. They do take on some level of risk. I will be having a follow-up conversation with them
057tomorrow, and I'll start that conversation about if we were to move in this – what would be our potential risk and how does that impact the pricing models that you've given? They will be at our board meeting on the 14th, and I'll have them be prepared to be able to give a response that evening. I'm also going to have a conversation about if we can bring it to the second meeting in August. There's still a long runway of questions. I just want to let you know I'm still targeting the 14th, but I am going to make sure that we have – I think that that makes sense for the board, especially after the conversation, Mr. Goldberg, during our facilities and business services meeting in relationship to the amount of work that has to go into
058ensuring that the budget, the fund balance analysis, etc., is all completed as well as now this work. I'll bring up one math point as hearing the discussion to think about is that if you're the fieldhouse as an option, it needs a new roof. Say 25 percent of that final cost is incremental to be added into basis. That also needs a 5 percent of that piece to be put towards your safe harbor as would be any structural addition to that. So as you keep building up your number to a higher, your 5 percent becomes higher. I appreciate the additional work, and I appreciate Dr. Goldberg trying to help me understand. I still – but we'll have a separate conversation separately. I'll just be blunt. Why are we talking about a high school? I know we need
059a new roof. We know it's going to cost more money. We know it's the highest one when you look at total present cost, so initial cost is going to be the highest. Why are we even talking about it? Because part of that roof can be used as a basis of the cost, which increases the rebates that we get from every single one. I fully understand that, and I heard what he said, too. But we have to be careful, number one, because we're a public entity and there are laws. So we have to be careful about how we characterize activities, whether it's associated with the solar project or not. So I understand the thinking, but I'm just saying that we have to be careful. I don't disagree with what you're saying. I think what Dr. Romano
060shared, and he was soft spoken when he said it, was that he needed more time to bring back his recommendation, and I think part of that reason is to make those kinds of considerations and reflect on that piece in and of itself, as well as what Mr. Goldberg shared, as it relates to understanding the risk involved with each one of these projects and which ones make the most sense over time. So I think the three of you are actually on the exact same page. You're all going about it in a different way, but I think what it comes down to is we need to give Dr. Romano a little bit more time to be able to share more information with the board, and that's what I would request at this time. I think I'm beginning
061to understand what's going on. Thank you. Thank you. Anything else from board members? All right. Thank you very much. We appreciate your time tonight. Thanks, Bob. Appreciate everybody here. Thank you. Thank you. The next item on the agenda is the closed session, and we are going into closed session for the following reason. The purchase or lease of real property for the use of the public body, including meetings held for the purpose of discussing whether particular parcels should be acquired, 5ILCS 122C5. May I have this motion? So moved. Thank you, Doug. Thank you, Natasha. Anita, can you please call the roll? Ms. Timm? Yes. Ms. Warren? Yes. Ms. Danniger? Mr. Goldberg? Yes. Ms. Maloney? Yes. Mr. Raetian? Yes. Thank you. Thank you. We will not be taking any action after closed session this evening.