001everyone and welcome to a special edition of your school board. Uh this is Friday, June 27th, 2025. The time is now 3:30 and we're going to call the meeting to order and begin with the pledge. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Uh before we get going tonight, we do have a remote participant, uh Mr. Dit is uh actually enjoying some vacation and is kind enough to join us remotely tonight. Uh so with that uh Mr. Dit if you could just explain who is with you and the reason for being remote. Uh good evening. I am enjoying some camping with my family in uh Midstate New Hampshire and I am currently
002alone. All right. Thank you sir. Can we entertain a motion to allow Mr. Dit to participate in voting today? So moved. Motion by Mr. Mr. Shoemaker. Second. Second by Miss Ames. We'll do a roll call vote. Mr. Plansky. I. Mr. Shoemaker. I I'm an I. Miss Ames. I. That carries 40. All voting tonight or this afternoon will be through roll call for remote participation. Uh thank you for that. Uh we have community comment on agenda items. Seeing there's nobody here from community, we will close community comment at this time and we are going to move into new business. Before getting going into new business today, I want to again specially thank not only the administration but also the board for meeting on a Friday afternoon. Uh certainly as we look to close the books uh
003for the end of our fiscal year with the school district on Monday, June 30th, we want to make sure that we have absolute clarity and oversight into the end ofear balances. uh and with some changes that were brought to my attention over the past week since the last board meeting, we wanted to make sure the board was aware of those changes and we came together to talk about those. Uh with that, I will turn it over to the business administrator and superintendent to get things started. Um so I um as we were calculating the year end balance um we did have a miscalculation um in estimating that number when we u met for the board meeting last week. Um there are a lot of things that go into calculating the fund balance. Um this is
004certainly not um an easy task to try to really whittle this down. Um I have certainly tried my best um to make this first year as successful as possible in this role. Um it has been challenging at times and um so I apologize if there have been errors. Um I do want to make sure that you know by having this meeting that we're able to um have a true understanding of the fund balance that we have um so that we can have conversations about what we need to do next moving forward. Uh we do have um at the last meeting we did estimate our fund balance at being um about $780,000. Um that is not the case. We have learned and looking more carefully at the budget. Um, we are looking more at a 1.5
005I'm sorry, $1.4 million anticipated fund balance. Um, there are lots of things that contribute to that. Certainly, I understand that is not a number that we were certainly hoping for. It's certainly not the number I was hoping for at the end of this first year of being in charge of this budget. Um, but we are that's kind of where we're at. Um certainly if you have um specific questions on um anything that we currently have outstanding or um how we got to this number um certainly I think we should very just pause for a moment and just clarify that that's under spend. That is correct. Yeah, we're in a town where they've heard those numbers before and it was the other direction. So I just want to pause. You are correct. Is there someone watching
006YouTube right now that's firing away on Facebook and we'll pause them and it's not that direction. That is correct. Okay. So, just to recap, last board meeting we were uh the underspend was about $780,000 of which the board took action to do several incumbrances. That starting balance um has changed. That 780,000 is actually now 1.4 million, which has changed the end ofear uh amount to return uh estimated to return to to the taxpayers at this point. Uh, as of this moment, um, we were, uh, anticipating to return approximately $275,000 at the end of our last meeting. Currently, where that sits right now is $894,000, uh, dollars and change. Um, with that being said, some questions I have are what is the direct association of that 1.4 million to to um to positions and to underspend
007on positions? So, with regard to positions, um, we had, um, let me get the correct spreadsheet up. Um, so we had about $800,000 with regard to to positions um that were underspent in this current budget. Um, again, I understand that's a very large number and that is something that we tried to deal with um when we were budgeting for this next school year. Um, which is why we did cut several we offered to cut several power positions because we knew we're not using them. Um, there are a lot of positions that are unfortunately just very difficult to fill in education and we are not unique to that. That is certainly something that is a statewide issue. Um, and that's something that we're going to need to be more creative going forward and how we look
008at systems and how we look at positions and what we can do to make that um, gap close um, close a little bit more. Um, so that is certainly a significant part of the unspent. And out of that 800 or so thousand, just to confirm, that includes salary and benefits. That's correct. And out of that 800,000, what specifically is special education? Do we do we know that like even a percentage like approximately a lot of it right a very high number it's the bulk of that is the pair of professionals when it comes to the salary portions of it um the health insuranceances there's there was about a difference of about under spend of about 96,000 on health insurance and that was essentially comes down to three people not taking health insurance for example I
009don't take health insurance with the district where I think the previous superintendent did um so it can just swing a little bit like We have we have to budget for that because you someone can elect to take the health insurance like we don't know until they Yeah. I mean I and it could change from year to year, right? I mean I'll just take myself personally like in my family I've traditionally been the one who has carried the health insurance for my family. Um we ended up switching this year when I came here. Um I won't get into some of the personal reasons for that, but we ended up switching to my wife's job because of reasons and uh so you would probably carried my health insurance and now it's not there. So yeah. Yeah. And
010in looking at that um specifically, there's um essentially three positions that are vacant that are not um special education. This this was a budget committee question asked last night and I had estimated like 90% of that number of the of the unfilled positions was approximately um special education related. I don't know if that's about I I think it's a little bit lower. One of the positions was was a teacher a regular ed teacher position that we eliminated next year already you know um and then some off some of them are positions that we just didn't fully staffed throughout the year like our custodial staff that was something that some of those positions started empty we filled them during the year so we did carry some of that open salary you know because we had budgeted
011for the full year was that not did we not offset with contracting out we did some right so we have that huge number for personnel then we have a contracting number we So there was a delta between the two. We had a we had a positive we had a uh still had excess funds. Yeah. Even it wasn't like dollar what we contracted out for wasn't wasn't dollar for dollar. Um so with respect to like with respect to positions obviously like a taxpayer is going to look at this and say that's a big number like you're you're way off on what you need for employees. Can you just like quickly talk about in terms of I know you've made some cuts for the future budget, but can you just like give us an idea of the
012import like are these important positions or should we be like are should we be because the budget committee is going to look at it and say you should be slashing this, right? And if we don't we're going to have hard conversations with the budget committee in the fall, right? I I to answer your question with just like a precursor to it. This was a budget that we we certainly didn't develop like that was developed, you know, 18 20 months ago. And I'm not trying to use that as an excuse, but seeing it from our perspective now, seeing the whole budget, I do think there is personnel that we can be more strategic about and look at cutting. Like when we proposed our budget for next year, we made reductions of I think it was a
013total of 10 paraprofessional positions and then in January with you as a board, we ended up cutting a teacher position because as the year went on, we felt confident that we could deliver the services without those positions. I just want to clarify, you said personnel, but you're you're meaning positions, right? Positions. Yeah. Not personnel cuts as in firing. Correct. I just want to make sure we're clear. So I think we have to be strategic when we see positions that remain unfilled that we can't just carry that money with us. And I think that's just a you know a change in mindset from at least myself for me personally and I think in the education field in general I think a lot of times you know in I won't say better times but in previous times
014when it was easier to fill positions in education we would carry open positions from year to year with the hopes of yeah we'll eventually fill it right now. There are critical positions that we have to carry, right? For example, currently, right this second, we have two open case manager positions at the high school. They're our last two professional positions we have open. We have to deliver services. There are kids assigned to these case managers. I don't know if we're going to find two case managers at this point. School districts all over the place are looking for special ed help, right? these and not this is different than a par profofessional which is an important role as well but these are the people executing IPS writing them and doing everything like that if we can't fill
015those we are going to have to contract those services out to get that support for us and we will carry those empty positions into next year and it will look like those positions are open but our preference would always be to have a person in that role not a contracted service in that role because ultimately that will save us money over the long run over the long run yes so so we have we have a bucket positions that we have to carry because of our legal obligations particularly with respect to special ed and what we do is by carrying those we it it's still in we have to deliver the that money has to be paid used to deliver this these services to the kids. So whether it's used to deliver the services through employees
016of the district or through contracted services we are still allocating that money. Yeah. So that money then it would be safe to to assume that that money is not um largely representative of the underspend other than if there was underspend in special ed which as we know can happen from year to year because you have one placement change or one student move out of district and yeah and give to give you a little more context for example one of the positions that remained open this entire year that we just finished was beef p speech pathologist position we're about to actually fill for next year. So even though we carried that open position all the way through last year and we had to do contracted services for some of our speech services that we had to
017do, we found someone now because we've kept the position. We didn't reduce it, which will be better and cheaper in the long run than the speech services that we we were doing. So they'll hopefully get to know students better. But it's it is challenging and we have to be cognizant of when there's positions that we can't fill that we can put out there and cut. Like when we did that this fall when we proposed our budget and we were like we got to be honest, we're not going to fill these pair of positions, right? There's just too many open, we don't have to do it contractually via via the uh students IEPs. Would it be great to have additional support always, right? Like we can always use support for our kids and stuff like that,
018but the reality is is we weren't filling them. So we have to we have to propose a cut to them and stuff like that. And it's kind of similar with the regular ed teacher position we had. Now that we're here, we were a little unsure in January where it was going to be. We're confident it was going to come, but it's a science position at Campbell is what we cut because it hasn't been able to be filled in a couple years, right? It would be great to have an additional science teacher in Campbell, but like science teachers are really hard to find. And so, we just had to recognize that that's not going to happen and we had to reduce by then. So, how many pair of positions are unfilled from this past year? Yeah.
01924. And that that's including that's including the those that you've cut for next year's budget. Correct. Great. And what how many do we cut for next year's budget? 10. And what's the dollar amount associated with that? Do you do you have a rough idea? 2006 I think or something like that. So looking at So looking at the big picture right now, we're looking at a number of 1.4. Your cuts already have reduced. Next year that would be 1.2 to if everything else stayed the same because we you've already made um proactive cuts in that and we already cut that science teacher which is like another 110 right there. Okay. So 300 So of the 1.4 300,000 is already factored into next year's budget. But because we're default is that default back to what the previous
020year's budget was? No, because we already proposed to reduce it. So in the law that changed probably about five or six years ago, if you make a recommendation to reduce positions in your proposed budget, it falls into the default budget as well. Okay. Can I Oh, sorry. Oh, no. I've asked plenty of questions. You go. I I want to ask I'm going to shift it. So, if you have more questions on that, I was also going to sh I'm going to shift backwards, though. Are you shifting forwards? No, I'm shifting backwards to ask how like Okay, that's what that was my question. I'm going to ask the hard question. I'm going to ask what I hope is not an offensive question, but I'm going to ask it anyway. How do we know this number is
021accurate? It's a great question and I wish I could tell you with 100% confidence. I'm sure Julie feels the same way that it's 100% accurate, but like we're still getting bills that are coming in, right? Like, and things are still happening in our buildings. Like impact fire was here yesterday. There's a heat sensor in one of the classrooms that is broken and malfunctioning and we have to fix that right now. Is that a massive expense? It's not, you know, um but it's something we're going to have to fix. Now, we're close enough to next fiscal year where we can like pull that money and do that repair technically out of next fiscal year because we're not in that room right now, right? So, like we can kind of cross that bridge over to it, but
022the things and bills are still coming in. Another good example is where we got our Pinkerton CTE bill uh I think it was Tuesday or Wednesday. I forget the exact day that came in and we have about we have four students who go to Pinkerton and our CTE bills while we budget for it does we pay specifically on how often they attend school right and how often they self transport and versus take our transport so on and so forth when it comes to CTE so we got this the the Pinkerton one which is four kids but Alvin is our predominant CTE center we're not going to get that bill until July or August right because that's when they send us the bill and stuff like that once they get through all their records and everything
023we have about an estimate. First semester it was about um I think don't quote me say 50,000 um cuz the total for both of them was 59. So I think it was about 50 for Alvin. So we're anticipating roughly the same amount of money is going to be for semester 2 for Alvin right but it could be 49 it could be 52 something like that. Are you planning for the the highest number that it could be in in the sense that they attended 100% of the time they took transportation is that's what we budget for right and last year looking at the CT and how that was expended it was actually a match for the you know the beginning the first and second semester so our first semester was 56 321 we understand that you're
024you're dialing in final bills right like that that makes sense to me can you can you just help us and by the way like first year doing this Right. I think I said to the superintendent, you know, this is a hard job and it's not like there's all these people raising their hand like, I would love to do that. Right. So, like, thank you for doing this job. We appreciate you being here and we we're fully aware of the fact that you you haven't done this before. So, you know, look, I mean, I it could have been in the other direction and that would have been a really hard conversation. Um, but can you just help us your job? I mean, we're looking at a spreadsheet that has 1,900 lines on it. Okay. Uh but
025can you help us just understand what what you found that jumped this that doubled this and you know sort of just kind of give us like a just a general idea and it's this is not a blame thing. It's just a I just want taxpayers to understand like how we found this. I will tell you cuz it's it is my fault. Julie it's I need to listen to Julie more is one of the things and I need to stay out of the business stuff sometimes and I think that's a dynamic that we're working on and like we'll continue to get better at. While we've worked together in the past, the dynamic we have is different for for us right now. And to be honest, we have the same spreadsheet you see right now, and there's
026an incumbrance outstanding line there. The number that was there previously when we were preparing for last week's board meeting. I failed to recognize, and this is why I need to stay out of the financial stuff. Sometimes that that money was already accounted for in the available balance stuff that was coming out of the that number right there. like the available balance there. I shouldn't have subtracted the incumbrance number from that was remaining because it's already accounted for in that last column there. And that's my mistake. And when we were talking about prepping it and Julie's like, "What number are we telling them tonight? This is the sheet." I'm like, "Well, we got to subtract the incumbrance. We're going to put 780 there and we'll be good and we go from there because we still got
027that stuff's still being paid out and stuff like that." So, it was a total misread for me and it was a total mistake on my part for not staying in my lane and getting too involved in some of the financial stuff. Um, and I need to be involved in the financial stuff, but I also have to recognize for myself to stop and to respect the role other people have and to stick to my role, which is um to be support when it comes to this stuff and not try to drive the bus on it as much. So, to answer your question, I'm an idiot. That's why you had the wrong number. Um, can you just explain? And so looking at this spreadsheet, so we've got, you know, we've got a bunch of things across the
028top. We have uh but getting toward the right side of it, we have budget period expenditures, incumbrances outstanding, which is what you're talking about. Um yearto date, I'm assuming that's expenditures, and then available balance. Can you just quickly tell us like what what did each of these columns mean so that that way we understand? Yep. So the budget column is what was budgeted in that particular line. Um, and this is sorted currently the one you're looking at is sorted by account number um, right now and by maximum available balance left in that particular account number. So the budget line is what was in Yep. Can you share this your screen on the Google Meet? I can let me try. Yeah. Give me a second and I will. Yep. Thank you. Yeah. as you go through
029that question and as we look at this spreadsheet and explain explanations like I see 1.7 at the end of this not 1.4 for so help me get back to that. Yeah, it's a good question and that's partly where the mistake was last week that I was trying to do and stuff like that. So the budget is the budget period expenditures is this is taken from um a detailed expenditure report. So whatever particular we're in period 12 right now. So we're in month 12 of the fiscal year. June is month 12. That's how much money we've spent this month in those particular lines. Um all right, that makes sense. So, and there'll be one more of these because we actually have a 13th month. July counts as a 13th when you close your books for the
030fiscal year because you do still get bills in in July that you need to go back. So, like that CTE bill would be there's something there that's going to show up in a in a period expenditure in period 13. The encumbrances and this is where I screwed up last week. Encumbrances outstanding is stuff that we have still encumbered that we expect to still pay out. for example, out of district tuition bills. We're still working on out of district tuition bills and uh or may I that actually don't go to that line right the second, but you want me to use that as an example. So, as of last week when we were dealing with this, we were still working on our L district tuition bills. So, we had certain money encumbered still in that line
031because we were expecting a certain amount to pay out for those bills. Again, what you were encumbering in that line was the what you thought was the maximum. Correct. Okay. Yep. Um, so and we do that to prevent us from spending it elsewhere, right? So the line the budgeted like available balance looks like zero because we've encumbered a bunch of it. We know not to spend out of that line because the money is already like reserved for some sort of purpose already. So we have a number of lines here that still have encumbered balances to that. My mistake is I didn't think that those incumbrances were already subtracted out of that last column, the available balance line. I thought we had to do that math ourselves where it's already accounting for that in this particular
032report and that was where the mistake came in. The year-to- date expenditures that next column is literally that how much to this point we have expended out of that particular column and then the available balance is as of right this second how much is available in that particular line that does account for stuff that we've encumbered in that line as well. So that's where those five columns in this particular spreadsheet are in in looking at these columns. And this this could be my ignorance of Google everything because I can't stand Google. But um these don't look like these are formulas in these these look like they were manually entered. Yeah. I had Does that mean that you guys have manually entered all of these? No, no, no. This is a report run out of einance,
033our reporting document, stuff like that. Okay. Okay. So, so we know that these no there's no like math errors in this unless einance who probably has pretty good insurance screwed up some. So, does that explain why it's 1.7 in the corner? So, the 1.7 if you scroll all the way down here on available balance, you're going to see it's right here at 1.7. This is where we have to do some estimating of stuff. We know we have to pay out still that is not already encumbered. For example, we have hourly employees who have worked who still are working right in this particular year that we don't know how much we're exactly paying them out because they haven't worked those hours yet, right? Like we have custodials, we have administrative assistants, we still have a number
034of hourly people. We can project if they work their schedule hours that they're going to be about $50,000 worth of stuff still. That's going to encompass salaries. It's going to encompass benefits. It's going to and everything kind of associated with it. We haven't encumbered that cuz we liquidated. Is that the term? Yes. Liquidated all of the salary encumbrance lines over the past week. So, we know that's going to come straight from that available balance in those particular lines. Another example, we just had teachers in for summer PD this past week. Um, last week and this week that we'll have to pay out from a professional development line here. We didn't encumber that money in advance because we didn't know which teachers were coming. I mean, we we did, but we didn't set aside the money
035through an incumbrance. So, that will come up a certain amount of money. If you go to CTE tuition line, you'll see that there's a site amount encumbered to account for the Pinkerton students that we got the bill for, but we haven't encumbered the Albert kids yet that went to CT and stuff like that. $360,000 is a big difference. It is, but we do think those are the bills we're still getting here at the end. We went and we looked at um like last year's unit 13 or like thing and tried to do that. It's a number that's similar to that. But to answer your question if we think this is 100% correct. I think we learned from last week, we don't know quite yet because it's our first time doing it. We're anticipating some of
036these things that we're still paying out, but and we're hoping that number we just told you, the 1.4 is much more accurate than what we told you last week, but it can still be different than what it is. So, I'm just like auditing a line here mathematically just to see if this makes sense to me. And I can't come up with a number. So, I need your help. Um, not to put you on a math project on the spot. I'm on line 922, which is uh out of account 330 DW special education professional services. It's a It was budgeted for 4224992. My initial inclination was, okay, well, we have period expenditures, we have incumbrances, and we have year-to- date expenditures. And if I subtract all of those from the budgeted amount, it should equally available
037balance. That's not the case. Um, so then I just tried to say, okay, well, what if year-to- date expenditures is period expenditures plus incumbrances plus whatever else, you know, if the 371 is the total number that also um, so I'm I'm thinking that you have to subtract in in outstanding incumbrances outstanding and year-to- date expenditures. Correct. So year-to- date expenditures is including period expenditures. Correct. Okay. Yeah. Now also part of this which is tricky sometimes which is challenging is like that 422 number there. It's not what we actually budgeted for that stuff there. It's because we've transferred money into that line for various things as the year goes on. So like when you look pull this report now we're getting super into the weeds right here. Like as the year goes on, we'll do transfers
038of money to different accounts, right? Like if we're going to do something like contracted services, for example, or we need to get evaluations done from an outside person, whatever the case is. If you think back throughout the course of year at various meetings, we've come to you and said, "We're going to transfer money from this line to that line." So on and so forth. So some of this some of it you can see the transfer and it's slightly different than what the budgeted line was. So like that line for example, we ended up with $41,000 of available balance. Yeah. So are you using that line specifically that there was guessing? Okay. Okay. So I I would imagine that that line we wouldn't have transferred unless something crazy happened where we had all of a sudden
039like a student bought a district or something after you transferred money anticipate. But y whatever that's fine. I'm understanding that there's a lot of moving parts that you this at least makes sense to me now. I just said that because if someone's like looking at the spreadsheet pulls the entire budgeted thing that we did from last year which is up there on the websites and stuff like that. It's like these two numbers right in this line don't match. Yep. Because we transfer as the year goes on different things that different things. So when do we expect we would get a a a final number? Next week I mean we'll be in again a little bit of a better spot. Um I mean really what it comes down to is the audited numbers right? So when
040we get our once you know that that process starts and we really have um you know solid information that backs up the information that we have and it's not uncommon at this point in the school year to have this number be changing and be fluctuating right because there is a lot of unknown still um and so we have kind of the ballpark estimate and whatever is remaining will in fact go to the taxpayers as a return. It'll just increase whatever the number we think is going back. It'll be in addition to that. Yeah. So, I mean, we went back, sorry, cut up. We went back and looked at last year's stuff as well. Um, back at last year's minutes from the last June meeting you had and stuff like that. Um, and like you you
041I'm not trying to this is not pushing back, but like you used an estimated number there as well, you know, like obviously I think it was probably more accurate than the number we gave you, but um it's still an estimate at that point um right now because of these. So the sum at the bottom of the incumbrances outstanding is 195 28795. Yeah. If if you were not if if that was the number you that was the column that you mi that you miscalculated or mis included or whatever. Y that's not $700,000. So no cuz we did a bunch of stuff between that meeting last week of like liquidating that account. So paying out the bills associated with it so it's no longer encumbered, right? Cuz it got paid out. I see. And then there are
042certain lines like you get to a point where like let's say we encumbered $100,000 for a salary line, right? And we only end up need to pay 90% of it out. So like 90,000 of it. Well, then we can once we release and done paying that out, we can no longer encumber it and the incumbr kind of released back into the available balance line. I understand. Okay. I think I I now have a full complete understanding of what the fixes that you've already contracted for that were part of the incumbrances. Those are already in process. Some of those projects are already in process. Correct. Wait, was that for the end of year? For the end of year. So, we've we've encumbered as much as we can on those. Obviously, we're going to wait a bit
043before we're But I don't think they're in here yet. That's what Oh, that's correct. That's not part of that's not part of the 1957 then or the five. What are we agreeing to the amount that we the amount we voted to the the ones we voted on last week? Yeah. We haven't encumbered. They're not encumbered in this spreadsheet you see in front of you right here. So So this 1.7 is well again you've you've already said that there's 300,000 of that that you're expecting to have to pay out out of this budget and then there's another whatever we encumbered last week could also come out of that. Y okay. So, for today's purposes, I mean, I think I definitely appreciate you updating us on the new number, how it came to be, where the error
044was. Um, I think maybe in the next month or two, we need to dig in a little bit to figure out how we don't have that happen again in terms of next year, how soon we can have a somewhat reliable number. And again, understanding that there will always be up until June 30th and even in month 13, there will always be some amount of variation to it, but I think we can do that in other meetings. I my understanding is there's a hard stop today of 4:30. Um, and so I guess I just want to clarify and understand has there been any further thought as to what this money should be used for for end of year? Yeah. I mean, ironically, maybe ironic is the right word. You know, we walked in Monday to a
045sinkhole in the LMS parking lot, you know, um by one of the drain pipes and and one of the catch basins there. It's goodiz hole about, you know, this big and straight down into the whatever. I mean, we've talked about this on and off all year. That parking lot that parking lot has to be addressed and um it's going to be a huge project. Continental was here um Monday. Monday, Tuesday, Monday, Monday, Monday. Um, trying to get us an estimate. They're still working on it, but they're like off the cuff estimate. It's between three to $400,000 to redo that parking lot. You know, now they were there doing the the drilling down or whatever they do to figure out what needs to happen underneath and everything associated with that. They're trying to get us to
046us today. They weren't able to. That's okay. You know, they're very, very busy. uh and are gracious enough to even come out and help us this week, you know, and then we're told Monday we're supposed to have it, but like that rough rough estimate is between the three and 400,000, you know, closer to four. Yeah, closer to the four. And does that resolve all of the problems that are happening with the LMS parking lot or is that something that is like a part one or is that My understanding is it would resolve the parking lot as it is. like it's a complete tear it up and redo it all. Right. As is. As is. Yeah. Right. So, not adding another egress by any, you know, we've talked about that at different times, but Okay. The
047other option um that we we do have a quote for um that I actually reached out to the town on was a uh was a new police cruiser for the SRO that we have. Uh the the police are um in a position where their fleet is um at Edwards quite a bit as you probably all noticed. Uh and this particular cruiser would be directly of the benefit to the to the school resource officer uh and assigned directly to the school resource officer uh as committed by the boarding chair. Uh that estimate that came in and we have the actual quote for it um is uh 65,859. Can we spend money as a board on something that isn't like that wouldn't be owned by the district? So, I did uh have that conversation with uh chairman
048Bernell and um initial conversations between chairman Bernell and and the town administrator and there weren't any concerns raised because it's directly associated to the school resource office. I'm not concerned on their part. I'm concerned on our side. Like, do do we run a foul of anything if we're if we're encumbering part of our budget for something that is not owned by the district. Well, I I think we're owning it. Like, I think that's how that works. We would we wouldn't own a police cruiser. No, we wouldn't own a police cruiser, right? So, that's something I I do want to ask the DRA. And I think we would have a thinking about it as does it uh impact no means no, right? because there was one in the budget that one in the budget that passed,
049one is a warrant article and maybe two. But that that's where it gets hairy because it's not that wasn't a that was a town warrant article that was not as that's another school as I was driving in. Is is that is that even doable? I mean, don't get me wrong, I would I think you know they do so much for us in terms of like helping like they really have a huge presence at our schools. They've been really um amazing with respect to like emergency management and stuff. So, uh, I would I I would absolutely be all for helping them, but I just there's a lot of questions on that. And if we have to vote on it today, I don't know that we have the answers to those things. Um, you know, the the
050parking lot at that parking lot is is problematic and I think we've known that that's going to be a big project for quite some time. Um that's why we had the study in there in the budget for a period of time before that was removed and that was 75,000 or so for just the study, right? Um I mean I think it's uh Continental's constantly doing things for our town that we don't I think we don't often realize how lucky we are that they're doing these things for us. But um you know I think if we start to look at our trust funds for for things like maintenance, right, we're we're working towards planning ahead for a roof for Campbell. That's one thing, but like we already know that just if we could even continue to
051fund at the rate that we're at, we're only going to pay for a roof. We're not going to have like bunch a bunch of money to do all of these other things. So, I think that, you know, it's kind of weird timing that the sinkhole opened up. Um, thankfully like there's not a bus in the middle. Uh, but I I I don't necessarily think that that's a terrible idea to address that and get it taken care of. that school we've done a lot of the other work at. It'd be nice to have one that's like [Music] I would be remiss if I didn't bring up CHS again. Um, I walked away from the last meeting after having looked at it pretty disappointed that there was very little money in the underspend that we had earmarked
052for CHS. And I I not because I I think there was just some some people were advocating a little bit more um for the projects at GMS and LMS. And I think some of the ones that um under spend would be a useful helpful tool for um at CHS. Those just didn't get advocated for in terms of the final like which the auditorium. So last year we put $35,000 towards the auditorium and we left it up to the school to best use that money in terms of the sound system and in terms of which they did but that only went so far. Um this past weekend re they've been saying all along and I I'm saying they in terms of friends of performing arts um I think Mr. Lambie, I think the whole performing arts
053department has said that the back, correct me if I'm wrong, the scrim, is that the right word? It's the white there. There's a screen in the back that is on its last leg that is a fire hazard that is $7,000 to replace. I mean, this is not a cheap thing. And that was on the list, but they didn't get to it. So there's these types of things that you know I was just briefly looking you know we put over 100,000 over towards GMS on different things and I think we did LMS as well for different things but we didn't some of some of but a lot of the GMS stuff was required of us though right like like the ramps for example we don't have a choice we have to back portables y I understand
054I understand not that I'm not that I'm saying that that's not I mean if this is a fire hazard I'm just kind of wondering why that wasn't on the list it was last Sure, but it wasn't on this year's list, right? And that and that's I guess the disconnect as well, right, with a new administration and not realizing that I should have looked back to see that, but I also we have to figure out a better way. But was this list put in front of the administrators for the at the building levels? We discussed this. We did. Yeah. So, we have a building level administrator who could have pointed that out. Yeah. And I think it was tricky with the transit. We're obviously in transition at CHS. I don't really care about transition. I mean,
055that person is employed in this district until the last day that they're employed here. And so, I don't really care to hear I I appreciate that you're you're always trying to protect everyone else, but the bottom line is I don't why are we hearing that on the the last Friday before we have to vote on these things, you know, that's that that is why CHS is I completely agree. I mean, as we were talking at the last meeting, there was an email in February of 2025 where a professional sound person came out to the auditorium to suggest specific upgrades for the auditorium. We have a wide open box, you know, where they control all the lights and stuff. That's open. That equipment could be taken at any time. That is an open box where there
056are microphones, where there's thousands of dollars of equipment. Usually, those are sealed off with a door. None of that's happening. And again, I'm not necessarily advocating for that to happen right now, but what I'm saying is there was a list with a priority level with quotes of three things that went out in February of 2025 that said if there are end of the year monies available, these are things that would be useful and that didn't make it to us. I don't know that it made it to them either. So, I I'm concerned about that. Um, so I'm throwing that out there for conversation. in terms of encumbrance in the process. Going back to the parking lot for a moment, um what's the process for requiring or needing a quote in order to do an encumbrance?
057That's a good question. Um, with regard to the DRRA, I would assume um that is something I I'm not 100% sure if the quote is um if like a verbal estimate correct is going to be sufficient. Um I think in years past like I don't I don't think we had a quote for absolutely everything last year. I think there were a couple of estimates that we had. Um, can I can I This is like, you know, I mean, I know you have to leave in 18 minutes, but I don't know if DR is open till 5:00, but I don't know if you want to step out and try to see if you can call them. I've had on the real estate side, I have luck every time I call. Okay. Um, it may be worth
058asking that question because we're about to try to vote on something that we should probably have the answer to. And we still have a quorum. So, I guess if you had to leave or not, although it would be nice for you, it' be nice for you to be able to participate. We do have to think about the public reaction to what what's when this becomes when it doesn't come out on Friday afternoon is do we have this underestimation that it's it's not going to be good in the public eyes. So, what's also not going to be good is the dramatic spikes in taxes, right? And I hear you. I agree with you wholeheartedly. And I'm balancing the other side of this which also isn't good. Yeah. And and I don't and I don't know at
059least from my perspective I don't know that the that the big fluctuation in taxes is a major issue for me per for me you know for for some people very well could be I think from a PR perspective and to show goodwill back to the taxpayer we got big things coming next year. We have the teacher contract. We have whatever is going to happen with GMS. Um, and to end up with this much money left over through no through nobody did anything bad or malicious or it wasn't like the LMS thing with the solar. It's totally different from that, but it's going to leave a bad taste in in the mouth of mouth of the public. We're we're perpetually in a really tough spot, right? Because I think people think it's easier to oh, this
060is easy. You just return to the taxpayers. But there's other components, too. Like for example, that parking lot, right? like we don't have these massive I mean it probably doesn't seem like it because this year we have a huge uh return coming or over under spend but we we don't typically have these massive budgets that we can just absorb $400,000 for a for a parking lot right so that's also going to be a problem for the taxpayers like at the end of the day that's where it's coming from regardless like they're going to like the taxpayers will there's no way around it they will have to pay for that um and so if that comes as like you know a huge increase in the budget because we have to budget for that or whatever it
061is it's going to it's going to hit them regardless. I think that where I I I totally get where you're coming from and I I know that that will be the reaction. Right. But I also understand that from from like what Andrew is saying is we're going to hit them with that regardless. But if we hit if we artificially lower the tax rate right now by doing this return and then not only does it go back up because it was artificially lowered but then on top of it we have to hit them with by the way this parking lot has to be hit now. So now you have got like a double whammy in terms of the impact right and so that's the I think it's a savings one year and an expense the next
062year it's the swing whatever that swing may be right and I and I agree with you that that is that is functionally what it is but from a tax But from a tax rate. Yeah. But from a tax rate perspective, that's my point is, you know, there there are plenty of people who they're kind of like this is the tax rate and then if it goes like this, it's like that's very disruptive financially. I think it's a savings one year and it cost an I don't I don't think it's as big an issue for that for that many people in the field. I hear what you're saying. I I don't necessarily disagree. Um, I struggle with what is our role as schoolboard members. Um, in terms of the duty we take to the district as
063a whole, as a total district. Um, and so I'm not advocating at all for not returning a good chunk of that money back to the taxpayers, but I do think that there are needs that our district has, the parking lot particularly being one of them, that it's we have a duty to provide safe areas for our students, for our teachers, including parking lots. Um, and I would struggle with returning this much money back to taxpayers when we have these projects outstanding and when we're in a default budget next year. So, we're not going to be able I I'm going assume we're probably not going to be able to just tackle those budget with end of the year funds next year. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't know that. Well, we may not we may not
064be able to wait until the end of next year because yes, we have we have to provide safety for our students and our teachers, but we also that's public space. So, we also anyone can drive in there, right? any private citizen can drive in there and fall into a sinkhole and sue us. So, you do have responsibility to the taxpayer, too. It's Yeah, I'd like to turn it over to Dan. Dan, any thoughts? So, I I guess a couple questions I have at the says 1.7, right? And is that replacing the 780 number that we saw last week or is that replacing the 59 number? 780. It's temporarily replacing the 780, but we're anticipating about 300 of it, a little more than 300 of it to come off the books still for this fiscal year.
065Okay. So if I look at that, the difference that we're looking at is about an extra 460 above what we were expecting. No, it's about 700. So right now where where we stand, Dan, for unassigned fund balance uh after incumbrances that we've already taken is about $900,000. Great. Okay. So, we're expecting well, we sent 250 back to the taxpayer. We're going to go spend 250 on a bunch of stuff right now. There's 700. We're at about an extra 460 from that. No, no, the 900's already taking all that into into consideration, right? Yep. I completely understand. But I guess I I mean I I like the idea of hitting the parking lot and maybe doing you know depending on what it was those the uh and I think if I heard you guys correctly the
066police car and the three things for the LMS or sorry CHS but that's going to consume all of it. So, I don't know if there's something that we can do with like we can use roughly a large chunk for color like the parking lot and then give to what Peter is thinking because I'm kind of thinking along the same way. We can give a little bit more back to the taxpayers. I think we could still I think I think we're all advocating for giving more back to the taxpayers. Yes, that's that. Yeah, we we absolutely are going to be able to do that. I think I think from I think unfortunately given the where we're at right now, I don't think we can make any sort of decision on a police cruiser. I do also
067agree with Peter that that's something that the town did express some if we could do that, I would be supportive of it and I'm more likely to support the parking lot because it's a super safety issue. But other than that, I don't know that I would be supportive of anything else. I I don't Are we talking about anything? I mean, I know we talked about the high school. if there whatever other projects might be the CHS stuff which is not huge money but I'm sure if we were to sit back and we could go through a whole another list of I would be supportive. I'm on the fence about the parking lot. I I I hear all of your rationale like to me this is something that I think we should ask the voters on
068uh through through a war article. Um we would we would we be asking the voters on like seal coding it if we were seal like or would we be asking the voters no I understand that but like part of the problem we have is that like we are also tasked with trying to maintain these things right um you know I I agree if we were like going and we were saying you know we could really use a few more classrooms is such a big ticket item I understand I agree with you could we get a quote on fixing the area in which the same exists. Yeah. And and then put the rest of it on as a warn article going forward. Parking lot say for the the start of the next school. Just replacing that
069so it's usable is going to be less than $10,000, right? Because you're just replacing that one or not even replacing, you're addressing that one spot, right? Or at least that's what they they told us off him. Then then I think a we do that and then we put it as a warrant article for next year. Can I say that's patching though and that in order to actually address the project, they'd then have to undo the $10,000 of work that they just did when they addressed the parking lot as a whole. So, in a way, I sort of see that, correct me if I'm wrong, as a waste of $10,000 this year if we're going to put on the warrant, the LMS project or the LMS paving as a separate warrant article, which I don't know
070that we can do next year against a school and a contract, but that's a whole other aside. Um, I feel like that could be a waste of 10 grand. It's not a It's not a like, hey, we think we could really benefit from more classrooms and we're not going to ask. We're just going to do it, right? Like I I think this is something we have a parking lot. We have a duty to maintain the parking lot. The parking lot is failing rapid. We knew it was failing, but it's now showing that it's failing like outwardly. And we're going to have to solve like it's not like we can say, well, we don't need it. It's just just parking lot, you know? That's the difference for me in terms of like the the warrant article
071versus also we don't have a quote. Right. Right. No. Well, well, so did you did you reach D? No, I they both went right to voicemail. I just sent four emails as well to other people. So I'm That's fine. I mean So do we have to encumber everything by June 30th? By Monday. I have which is Monday. Yeah. And we won't have time to post a meeting at this point. I mean, well, what if if we encumber it and then the DR up to 400,000, which is what the We just don't know if the DRA permits encumbering, right? That's for the cruiser, right? No, no, they were saying for Oh, yeah. No, we were talking about as far as whether or not you needed a quote to be able to encumber, but correct. We also
072need to um I Oh, hesitant to talk right at the second, but I'm going to because I probably should, right? I do think the parking lot needs to be done, but we we're losing $500,000 in revenue. Like if you look at next year, like if you go back to the fall when we went through our budget stuff through the whole harmless grant and the different funding formulas that they're there, we lost a lot. like our tax rate. We anticipated the tax rate even on a default being like I think it was a $165, you know, and that was returning about $200,000 to the taxpayers. And that big swing was not solely because of this loss of revenue that is out of our hands, but like certainly contributed a lot to that significant increase in in
073what we're doing. I do think now that we've gone through it for a year, we've seen how how our spending is going to go from a district standpoint that when we look at our budget proposal next fall, we can be reflective of the lessons we learned this school year, right? and then have a budget that is responsible, that addresses our needs, anticipates other potential big ticket warrant articles so the voters can really vote on those big ticket warrant articles, right? I don't want to say that our proposed budget is going to be x amount of money, but it's certainly not going to be wild, you know, or anything like that. Um if you were to return this money or large a lot of it to the taxpayers, it does offset that loss in revenue in
074that capacity and that might be helpful for a long-term just long term for people to see that kind of cons more consistency in the tax rate over time. Say that again. The it would offset the loss in revenue, right? So like this so we we get grants from the state, right? there's swept, there's adequacy aid, and and there's other things as well. They adjusted the formulas. If go back to to October when we were talking about all this, there's a there's a um one of the grants called a whole harmless grant that is being phased out by the state that specifically is costing the district a little over $350,000 of loss of revenue. So those grants come to us as revenue, right? And every two years we're losing that $350,000 from the state and we're
075not getting anything to make it up. How does returning the money to the taxpayer offset that for us because like we're returning that money will offset the it's like it's not a it's not apples to apples but like by returning more money it helps lower that tax rate that was increased because we didn't have the revenue to offset our spending. So, so it's already it's already uh in factored into the tax rate that we don't that we're not going to Right. Like those that those that grants from the state is set like that's money gone already. But if this year's tax rate, no, because we this is the first year we lost it, right? Do we we lost Okay, so we lost we lost 20% of it and we lost 20 and we'll lose 20%
076every two years of that grant till it's completely eliminated. No pressure, huh? Can you can we vote on things contingent upon the answer as far as cruiser? Yeah. And the quote of the you can make it contingent upon DRA approval, which the administration will have to figure out. And if it if the DR it'll be returned to the taxpayer. If the DR says no no quote, no whatever, it has to go back to the taxpayer. That's just it. Well, that at least solves that problem. That's for the That's for the parking lot, correct? That's for all. That could be for all that we don't whatever the board decides to action. But we still we need an answer on the cruiser. The cruiser to me seems legal. Like there seems like there should be legal questions
077because I have concerns about ownership. I have concerns about use. Um, so if at some point there are seven, I'm hopefully that never happens, cruisers that are in and they decide we're going to need to take this SRO vehicle and use it because we're down enough cruisers right now. I can't imagine that that legal is going to say that that's permissible. I I'd be shocked. But if we're buying it with our money, who is the owner of it? And then therefore I get into liability. So could we buy or gift it to the police department? Can you buy it and have anou? I I don't know. But I don't know that I feel comfortable voting on that without answers to those questions. I don't think it's a bad idea if we had, you know, researched
078it a month ago. I I agree with you. I don't think we can structure a motion to in to properly encompass all of the considerations that we would it would need to be contingent on. Yeah. Then I I think our safest bet is to encumber some money to do the repair to the parking lot. I'll make a motion for discussion. And I guess, you know, everyone can, but I'm going to try and word it correctly. Um for up to $400,000 of um underspend to be used for repair and restoration of the LMS parking lot pending DRA approval and pending a quote from Continental. Does that sound about right? I'll second for discussion. Um, I think what's in hearing you make the motion, I think what's also challenging is are we are we just repairing it
079in like kind I know there were some issues with the way that it's currently laid out, right? so that there it it doesn't meet uh ADA standards. And so I mean I think at some point again I'm going back from stuff that was before us there was talk of like doing stuff with the fields there in conjunction with when you did the parking lot. We didn't want to do the parking lot until the if we were moving fields they got to be moved. I mean maybe that was when that new building was there. in discussion with the GMS. Okay. GMS the new GMS. Never mind. I just remember um so I just am wondering are we if we if we have to word it that way are we putting ourselves in another position where we
080can only replace it exactly how it is and not fix not make it ADA compliant which we may need to. How was how was it not? I don't remember the ADA compliance. Was it not? Was it what was it? It was It's because of the way that the handicap spots are not actually accessible to the building in the way that the it was like the parking it should be reconfigured redesigned. I can also I may be way off on this but I also think you have to get like up and that was also a problem. So you'd have to put parking places on the same level as the door. Correct. Which would then design. I mean, what what what is your I know I I already know what your thoughts are on this. So, what
081what are you are you thinking that we should be encumbering some of this to do some of this stuff or are you kind of leaning towards just returning all of it? I'm return I I am leaning towards um certainly the repair because it's necessary, but I am leaning towards this. We should be asking the voters for this. I am. Dan, what um what are you leading towards in terms of all of this? It's so the LMS parking lot needs other changes to get up to call it 100% code for the ADA compliance. I guess I would be in I would be leaning towards making repairs to the parking lot. But if we have to change the parking lot in the future anyway to make it ADA compliant, then I don't think it makes sense to
082redo the entire parking lot if we're just going to rip it out again and call it 5 10 years. Well, I think that I think that the idea originally of encumbering this was to to take care of it fully, but that in hearing Heidi make the motion, I think that it raises open to amending it. I But yeah, I mean, I see your point. I I don't know what the quote because we don't have it in front of us, right? What it is it for bringing it up to compliance? Is it just for Well, I mean, even at that point, if it was like if if the quote was to do, you know, tear the whole thing out, regrade and and lay down asphalt, but then it was like, okay, well, it's going to be
083another $30,000 to make it ADA compliant, that would be something we could pull out of our trust fund. So, like that's not I think my my only issue with the way that you worded it, and again, I'm still on the fence on this, but my issue with the way you worded it is it could pigeon hole us into making modifications to the, you know, Yeah. Um, well, the time is now 4:30. I know Mr. Plinsky has a hard stop here. Um, are we going to amend the motion and call a vote or what's what's the plan? I'll amend the motion to address the concern, but I Well, I not sure what the language language is. Before you amend it, I guess like So, so Dan, your your your feeling is just fix what's fix what's
084going on. Andrew, your feeling is fix what's going on. Peter's same. So, I mean, I'm I'm thinking like if that's if that's the will of I I have no like I want to do what's right for the taxpayer, too. Like, I want to make sure that we're we're doing what's right to them. I think my concern is that they're going to get we we are going to have to keep coming forward with big expenditures that they're going to have to keep funding because we have these big issues that we have to address. So, it's just a matter of and the parking lot is on the CIP, right? Both the school and the town. We just keep running into these issues where things are on the CIP and then all of a sudden it's like, well,
085it's been on the CIP for 20 years and now we uh have to do something because it's falling apart. So, um I think I think that was Dan Dan were you saying and sorry. No, no, please. Dan, were you s were you saying you're not behind the repair and restoration of the parking lot. I guess I'm just trying to understand what your point was. So, my concern is if the motion is to include bringing it up to full compliance, I will get behind it and I will be and pending upon DRA and quotes and all of that other stuff. But if it's not, I don't want to spend 400,000 to put new black top down and fix to be in when we're going to have to redo it again anyways. Yeah, it's a one and
086done. I'm all for it. I'm just I mean I want to I'm I'm strug I'm just struggling on this side. You know what I mean? Like I don't want to I I think I also I Peter's point about like we are coming forward with a teacher contract and we are coming forward with a you know we are going to have to do something about GMS like maybe the right thing right now is to fix the hole and return the rest of it. You're like this man I know but like yo-yo but that's the nature of this right? It's like we have there's a million considerations in this. It's not just like an easy thing. I think uh well, and you're saying that you're not inclined to, you know, at the end of the day, I
087don't want to sit here and have a split vote on this. Like, I'd rather just all be aligned in what our strategy is of what we think is the right thing. And so, that's what I'm trying to I I think the repair might get us a couple years, get us past the school, get us past the contract, and be able to put something forward or we put it on this on on this March. But I I think we got to this is a maybe maybe there's an economy of scale if we are doing something with if we're putting something on for GMS. Maybe there's an economy of scale in a quote to do whatever has to be done at GMS because that area needs that parking lot area needs work too. Yeah. Once certainly any
088equipment's there y doing whatever that's going to be addressed too. Okay. So I am now firmly planted in the idea that I think there's it needs to get done but maybe it makes sense to try to try to tackle that at the same time. See see if there's some economies of scale with that and in the interim we can return this money to the taxpayers because we want to we're trying to build trust with the taxpayers to be able to give us the authority to go fix the things we need to fix. That's where I'm firmly seated. So I am now ready to vote. Okay, we have a motion in a second, but we going to amend the motion because I don't want it to be up to 400,000. So, it's Heidi's motion, right? Yeah.
089I'm going to just withdraw my motion at this point. Do you withdraw your second? I do. Motion withdrawn. Second withdrawn. So, I make a motion to expend up to $20,000 to repair the sinkhole at the LMS parking lot. Okay. Motion. Second. Second by Mr. Shoemaker. Additional discussion on the repair of LMS sinkhole. Okay. We'll do a roll call vote. Mr. Plansky. Hi. Mr. Shoemaker. Hi. I'm an I. Sames. I'm an I. Mr. Dit. Hi. That carries 5-0. Additional discussion. I I just want to let I just I feel like expressing my frustration for a minute. I feel like we're letting down our students. And I'm just going to say that we are No, not the parking lot. We are returning how much? $900,000 to taxpayers. We did not spend our budget. We as a school
090board oversee this budget. And we as a school board, and I'm not pointing fingers at anyone else, did not spend our budget this year. And that is money that could have gone to there are definitely needed projects at at GMS. Even if we're looking at a solution, we're still years away from that actually coming to fruition by the time it's built and done and executed and all of that. Um, you do realize we only voted on $20,000. I I'm expressing it overall because I'm not hearing any support for anything more than that today. So, well, I don't have any quotes to go off of. I and I'm not and that's why I'm saying I want to express my frustration. I agree with you. I think that if we if we look big picture, right? Yeah.
091Sorry, Peter. You can go. It's okay. If we look big picture at I would be supporting do something about the police car if we can do it legally. If we look big picture about supporting the students and doing the right thing for the students, right? We have this bohemoth of an issue at GMS and one of the biggest justices we can do for our district is fixing these problems for once and for all. And part of that may be hedging and saying we need to continue building this rapport with the taxpayers. we have this new administration that's doing a great job and if this is a showing of good faith of like hey look we we need you we need you to support us and in turn we are going to we are going to
092continue to try to do everything we can to support you then that will s serve our students I I understand that that's playing as we call the long game right in the short term we are returning $900,000 our budget to taxpayers which hey it's their money so I'm not opposed to it and by the way I'm a taxpayer so Yay. Yay. Great. Yeah. No, I I get but as a school board member, I am disappointed for the the students that we have a budget that if you go back to the actual number of 1.7 at least or 1.4 that we did not spend this year that could have been used if properly planned to help some of the projects that we need to tackle this year. And I'm just expressing that disappointment. I understand and
093frustration because I feel like I didn't do my job. We didn't know. We didn't know about the number. I share your frustration and this is where right and I understand the administration knew getting up to speed but this is where like gez I wish we had a bit more line of sight into this advanced notice into this but we will next year it would have been a different discussion right that's all I'm going to say is there anything else that we before we make any sort of you don't have quotes is that what you mean to spend money I wish we had quotes I wish we had firm quotes for these things. Yeah. All right. Um, anything else to discuss this evening on encumbrances? So, we are looking at returning about 800. So, with the
094$20,000 motion this evening, that will be approximately $874 $875,000 back to the taxpayer approximately given some last minute end of year adjustments. And just very quickly, just so people can like see ahead tax rate wise, right? So, we know that this is going to lower. We do not You've made roughly $300,000 in budgetary adjustments, but we're not going to be able to offset like an $800,000 swing. We're not going to be able to offset another $500,000 in the following tax year. So, so taxpayers very we don't know but very likely will experience what will appear to be a jump in the tax rate again as a result of the schools. There will be a swing. Yes. Yeah. I think from this grant stuff it's two years from now. It will be every two years is
095when that swing is coming and then Well, but there's a swing regardless because we're Well, then the swing next year for whatever we put out. No, but I'm saying there's a swing because we're artificially lowering the tax rate by $800,000. So 300 you've already accounted for in the budget. 500,000 is going to just be in the budget again. So they're going to see a tax increase. It's going to look like our budget went up by $500,000 unless you're able to find more cuts. Does that make sense? I just I just I think we just have to get ahead of that because I just don't want to, you know, this is all well and good, but people's memories are short when it comes to returning money. I said it last time, I'll say it again this
096time. They don't I don't feel like people understand or notice as much when we return money. They feel it when the tax rate goes up. That seems more expensive. And so, yeah, I do think there's an education component to that. But at the end of the day, anytime anyone's taxes goes up, that's they're going to complain. They're going to look at it, though. They're going to say, "Wow, our taxes went up by, you know, that was $500,000 increase in the I I do think I understand what you're saying." And if we were to come back exactly with everything as it is right now, then yes, there would be a tax increase rate. So, that's the work we have to do, but I don't make sure that to Heidi's point though, we can't gut our district
097to hit a certain number, right? Yeah. And so I just want to like there's going to be like four people that watch this, but for those four people like you never know. They'll go back and rewatch it in like a year and pull it back up when it's tax time. So but for those four people next year when they see our budget. Yeah. All right. Any additional school board comments? No. All right. Community input. Second round of community input. I see no community joining us this evening, so I'll close community input. Uh the board does not have any non-public um uh business this evening. Uh, and so we will not go into non-public. Uh, and with that, we will close our public session and I'll entertain a motion to adjurnn. So moved. Motion by Mr.
098Shoemaker. I will second. Uh, we'll do a roll call vote. Mr. Shoemaker. I I'm an I. Miss Ames. I. And Mr. Det. All right. Thank you very much. Time is now 4:43 and we are adjourned. Thank you very much all. Have a great fourth. Bye D.