Okay, I want to call the meeting of the Arlington Finance Committee to order a couple of notes. I try, if at all possible, to keep one or both of the doors at the end meeting open because this is a public meeting. The only time when we can, as if the noise outside is just too bad, and then even then. So, I believe Gloria is in charge of the doors on that. But anyway, I like to try to keep those open. Okay, first order of business is the minutes. Are there any corrections? Charlie? Yes, a primary thing is a misspelled about six long time, it says late April, very, very, very, it should be very. And the community protection action, the community resolution. Same, same one. First Peter? It's the same one, over to the right, it says community protection. The line begins with late April, that's where the primary thing is, is in the arc, right inside. I'm sure it's protective too, but. Okay, our first order. Article 54, it's perpetual care, not permanent care. And two lines after that voted to transfer 150 from Lawson-Gray's firm to DPW Cemetery Division, not Cemetery Commissioners. Okay. So I was here on Monday. I'm sorry. Okay, anybody else? I don't know if Charlie corrected this, we just in here. Rich Viscay, I believe his name is spelled B-I-S. So it's throughout here. Okay, Paul. About two-thirds down the first page. It talks about an estimate of 1.26 million Arlington Capital Assessment. Should that be annual Arlington Capital Assessment? That would be more accurate. Okay, any others? Okay, so go ahead with motion. Second. Okay, movement seconded to approve the minutes as corrected. Any further? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay. On the calendar that you have, I was hoping not to have a meeting next Wednesday, but I think we are going to. The CPA is going to make a presentation to us. I have them down for 735. If we're efficient, I can get everything done on the 28th. I don't think it'll be a long meeting. But it is their first. They started late, so I thought we should fit that in and give them the opportunity. And they're enthusiastic about coming. At least they said that in the mail. Okay, and then the 13th, we'll wrap up everything. That's when the House Ways and Means Committee is coming out. I confirmed that so we could finalize the final numbers. Charlie? Yes, thank you. So I sent an e-mail out to the members today and passed out a two paper with a corrective change of the recommended vote. All thanks for the fashion request meeting. All the other tables and charts that were in the presentation were accurate. And the total number that we voted as a tax impact were accurate. We just should have not had the $6 million agreement in 19,206 as part of the vote because it was already voted. But all of these things are part of the fiscal year 17 in a budget and the five year capital plan. Okay, any questions? Okay, thank you Charlie. Okay, Peter gave a handout on the changes. So the only thing that we have to vote on on article 44 is the Arlington Tours of Economic Development. They're doing a presentation at 7.35 on Monday and we could put this article together. Okay, group health insurance rule. Take care of that. Wait, so the main topic of discussion and presentation today is on the end. I want to divide this into two separate, I want to divide the presentation and all the Q and A's into two separate issues. The first one course is the Minutemen budget and then once we finish all that, we'll go on to the building project. Now the building project, the subpoena created a task force on this, so we're not going to actually vote on the Minutemen project. Now, all the way to get the process from a task force. It's certainly immediate for the last year anyway. And I'm on it and Charlie is on it and Stephen is on it together with one select and the manager and representative on the school committee. And so they'll be making a recommendation to us that will probably be April 13. So with that, now that's not amplified for us as the TV, so you've got to speak loud. All right. Is that a good sound for you guys? So there's a Minutemen FY17 budget presentation. I'll just go through that. First, I'd like to say thanks for having us here. I'm here with Kevin Mahoney, my assistant superintendent. I took a nap before I came here, which was great, but I'm forgetting things. First of all, the assessment's down about 300,000 over last year, but if you want to go through this fairly quickly and I can take questions. On page one, slide two, the regional agreement was approved, which has had an impact on how we assess folks for next year. The commissioner approved the new regional agreement as of March 11th, and there were components of that agreement which went into place immediately upon approval. And one of them was how we assess our towns, and so those revisions are included in this latest assessment from us. On slide three, this is an overview of the changes in the agreement in terms of a four-year rolling average, which we employed this year. The debt assessment was changed, operating assessments. Our guidelines for our FY17 budget that's before and now is that we wanted to have no net increase in staffing. We've actually had a reduction in staffing in this budget, level funding, level dollar funding of all supplies and services, and began planning for long-term needs in regards to instructional equipment. One of the things that we've done over the last really eight years is federal Perkins money. We get about a quarter million dollars a year, and when I arrived at Minuteman nine years ago, almost all of it was being spent on personnel. We've been able to wean all the people off of that, and now it's basically 100% equipment, which is what we believe is a real important source of funds going forward from the feds. Overall, our FY17 budget is $19,700,000. That represents a dollar decrease of a half a percent over FY16. Our assessments, our total assessments to the member towns is about $11 million. That represents an increase of half a percent. When we looked at our revenue plan, we've made a few assumptions and they seem to be holding true. Our chapter 78 increase of 19,000, fairly modest. A transportation increase of 115,000. As we're transitioning to a smaller school with fewer out of district students, we've seen a decrease in prior year tuition of almost $972,000. And that caused us in this revenue plan to utilize more of our excess and deficiency account to keep the total assessments to the towns down as far as we could. On page four, slide seven, some other considerations in this budget. Not knowing right now if we have a fully approved MSPA project or not, we've allocated $500,000 for debt service. This would be year one of debt service. If the project is not approved, that $500,000 would be reallocated to long term repair and capital improvement projects for the current building. We're intending to keep an excess and deficiency balance somewhere between three and a half and four and a half percent. By law, we're capped at 5%. And we're completing some short term repairs with this budget that we need to in regards for access issues to the building. As well as some repaving that we have to do, which would not be undone by a building project. We're also doing some engineering work on our softball field. We just can't put these things off in regards to safety and health of kids. In FY17, we're continuing to transition to a smaller school, 628 students. 10% of our utility costs are going to be coming out of our revolving funds. Our revolving funds are where we put all the money we get for rental income, rental of the fields or of different parts of the building. Summer school, we also have some properties as you know. MIT Lincoln Lab rents 16,000 square foot building that we built for them. The revenue for that goes into our revolving account. So we felt it was the finance committee of Minuteman and the school committee agreed that it was appropriate to be using some of those funds to offset our overhead and utility costs. We're going to be leasing to school activity buses. And as we transition to an academy model, whether we're in a new building or not, that's requiring some additional professional development. Continuing on slide nine, our health insurance, we're anticipating about a 5% increase. We're transitioning to a self-funded model for members of the health trust with four other vocational schools. And a little bit of transition as one of them merged with another school, the Essex Agricultural High School merged with North Shore Regional. And Peabody boat, I believe. And so we're transitioning there as well. Our general insurance is up about 3%. We're continuing the fund, our stabilization fund. Our school bus transportation contract, which was renewed. We have a new three-year contract. It's up about 8%. So transportation for Minuteman is quite a significant expense given the width and breadth of our district. We're going to continue to fund our OPEB liability with $50,000 out of this budget. Staffing overall is down 11.5 full-time equivalents in this budget. One administrative position, eight teaching positions, and two and a half paraprofessional or support positions. We've been able to achieve this without active layoffs. We've been very mindful when folks are retiring. We're transitioning that we not fill positions that we anticipate we will not need as we transition to a smaller school in a new building. Enrollment on page six, you can see it right now. We're about 624 high school kids. In addition, we have another 35 to 40 adults. Our freshman class this year was about the same. We're seeing some increase in applications for next year. As a matter of fact, we're up about 15% from our member towns at this time compared to this time last year. The Arlington enrollment has been up and down. We have about 33 freshmen applications for next year. And then the assessment compared to last year to this year on page seven, it's slide 14. You'll see the total assessment of about $3.6 million down $360,000 from the previous year. And then our budget overall on the last two slides by state function code. You can see a decrease in student instructional services. That's mainly in our reduction in staffing, a reduction in the asset and acquisition improvement. And that's been moved to the debt service line item for this budget. If the project is not approved, we would reallocate that back to the 7,000 line item. And then our revenue plan. And you see the big increase there is from our excess and deficiency appropriation to offset the reduction in out of district tuition revenue. So that's a rapid fire overview of the F1 17 budget. Any questions for the chair? A couple of questions. First off, how many students do you anticipate for next year if this budget is based on? About the same, about 600 and whatever it is. We have, like I said, our application rate is up, but I really have to rely on the October one before we make any budgetary changes. We're looking at a school of about 628 is where we're trying to get down to. The second question will permit me. What is the career academy model? How is that different from how you have been operating? That's a great question. It might be more appropriate in the discussion of the building, but generally speaking the building's been designed around a career academy model. Where Minuteman would divide itself, not divide, but organize itself in two academies. One being a life sciences and services academy. And the other being an engineering construction and trades academy. And so all our academic staff have risen in their hand and chosen to be in one of those two academies. And we've been planning for over a year on how we're going to implement this. But the basic premise is that all the academics are taught through the lens of the occupational area that the student is interested in. So math is going to be taught in that academy by a math teacher who's assigned to that academy. English, science. And then we have some shared folks, guidance is shared, languages, AP classes, obviously we have kids from both academies. But the staff's very excited about it. We have a 15 member team. We met today for about the eighth time. And identifying what our non-negotiable items are, how we can adjust our scheduling next year to incorporate common planning time. Which is the core piece of an academy model is that the teachers plan. And the kids have been involved in it as well. Identifying in the building what program should be adjacent to one another. Where the academic classrooms should be located. Where the science class labs should be. So it's a really, a lot of it we do naturally at Minuteman. But we're doing it more intentionally, more planfully. I call it a true academy model. You know a lot of schools have changed their name to academy, but they don't. Haven't changed the way they do things. Thank you. That's a long, short answer. What's the balance in the E&D exam? Your accessibility exam? Kevin, right now, 843,000. That's after this H25 goes out or before? Before. So when the H25 goes out, will it be zero? Until we have our new E&D certified, which would be in October, we anticipate being able to replenish that. What's your book that's unfunded? Total. I think it's close to 20, 17 million. And how much is it funded? In this budget, 50,000. We put 50,000 in it in this current year as well. I mean, it's been a short way on the road. You were making tiny steps. Yes. It's true almost that everything exists the first year. Second. Second. FY17 is the second here. Another question on the reduction of your 11.5 FTE position. Yes. Does that have an effect on what you call the disciplines of special teams that are in the program? No. So you said that you put these funds out there from the E&D account into the program because of an anticipated drop in out of district students. So is that going to get made up in the future? Is this a... Do you expect to have additional drops? How does that look in the future? We don't have 825,000 or 850,000 in your research fund. Well, as we move towards a smaller school, we're expecting our operating budget to decrease as well because we're going to have fewer staff through natural attrition. I've mentioned it a few times over the last couple of years that right now we're carrying staffing and vocational technical programming that is on a closure plan because it's not part of the new building, it's not part of the educational program plan. So as those programs officially close and the last senior graduates, those staff would not be rehired. So we're anticipating some other reductions in operating expense. Whether it will offset the full reduction in the tuition revenue, it's hard to say right now. The commissioner is continuing to lower the rate. I believe next year he hits his 125% level. So we won't see any more reductions in the tuition rate itself, but we could see continued reductions in the amount of non-resident student applications, mainly because of a change in the law. Which requires those students to, like Medford and Waltham for instance, they have vocational programs. The students are now required in ninth grade to explore those programs, even if none of those programs are the programs those students want. So they would come to us as tenth graders in that world and we haven't gone through a full cycle of that yet, so we're not really clear. But it's had a negative impact on out-of-district applications all across the commonwealth. And there's five or six other schools that have a significant number. So who do you have or are you played for in additional reduction in out-of-district students when the capital burden is added to the tuition? We're not anticipating that at this point because although the towns may be unhappy with it and I know there are several larger sending cities that have threatened legal action against the Department of Education for the institution of this capital plan, it's up to the students and the families themselves if they come, it's not up to the town itself. And so we see a tremendous, we actually see a growing interest from families. I think, I'm hoping at that time as we bring our operating costs in a line with other vocational schools our size, the new buildings online and some other things happen in regards to the property itself, we're going to see some of these larger out-of-district communities actually join. As you know, that was one of the intents of the new regional agreement. The capital fee, I think, just pushes that a little more. Other questions? So how many students do you have now? How many within districts and how many outside? I think just high school kids, it's like 225, 625. Total? Yes, and another 40, 35 or 40 adult postgraduate students. Okay, so you've in effect already had to drop? Yes, this year was... Because you've lost the ninth grade. You were losing the ninth grade from the end. Yes. Okay, now it's even going to get harder because now you're going to go from eighth grade to a ninth grade high school program and have to regularize it naturally from here. Socially, emotionally, it's going to be very difficult for a young person to leave once they're established in another high school, whether they're in a vocational program they want or not. I think it was wrong-headed decision, but it was the State Board of Education. Okay, other questions? Okay. Six hundred and some odd students you have. How many of them are sending tenants? The original three. Almost 60% this year. 59%, I believe. Of the six... 382. 382? I think that's around 58, 59%. Other questions? Okay, thank you very much on that. So, how do we go to the lucky ball? I'm making four. Five. So there are two handouts around the building project. One is the presentation. And the other one I'm going to want to cabinet explain when I go through the slides. This is how the assessments are done. And we were required to provide MSBA with a FY20 projection, an operating budget and a capital cost. And we've utilized the new regional agreement to develop these. And so we'll go over those in a little more detail. If that's okay with the chair. So I slimmed this down. Steve DeCorsi suggested that I get away from the 39 slides that I had earlier, which really had a lot of nice pictures in it, though. So page one, this is what we're using as a template when we go to town meeting or we go to meetings in towns about the building project. Page two, slide three. It's just a high level overview of the features of the project. The student design is 628. This is resulting in a school of about 258,000 total gross square footage. 119 million of construction costs. 145 million of the total project. MSBA increased their original 40% reimbursement rate to 44.75% of eligible costs. And that resulted in a net effective reimbursement rate for this project of 30%, or a dollar contribution from the state of about $44 million. We're also, the building is going to be lead silver certified. The goals of the project overall was to implement, I'm on slide five, page three. We wanted to implement a research-based data-driven academy, as I was able to answer earlier. We want to protect our accreditation from the New England Association of schools and colleges. We want to provide a facility that motivates students to find their passion and purpose. Intensifying our career and tech programming with our, I believe it's a very innovative educational plan. And really look at creating a campus. A campus environment that's compelling and it's also affordable to our member towns. We believe enrollments would increase. This is what we're seeing right now. We're up about 15% from our member towns from last year. That means about 155 applicants, eighth grade applicants for next year. We're seeing increasing elementary enrollment in our member towns. Arlington is dealing with that phenomena as well as some other of our member communities, Lexington to an extent, Concord and Belmont. We're seeing increased interest in career and tech ed as reported by our member town guidance counselors in a survey that was done. Dave Palliogos of DAPA Research did a survey in, back in August of 2015 showing 68.5% support for the building. Only 8.5% were against building a new building. And as we talk with parents around our district, we're really seeing parents start to look at the investment, the return investment of a career and technical education high school experience. As it relates to what kids do in college where they go after college and that sort of thing. There's a picture of the campus on slide 7. You can see the new building is proposed on the far western corner of the property. We have 66 acres there. That is in the town of Lincoln. The next slide is sort of a snapshot of our academies and the programming and the career majors that are offered in each academy as well as what we call shared services in programming. Some of that will be located distinctly within each academy. And some will stand on its own as it needs to. When we look at the considerations of a building, when you're designing it on slide 9 on page 5, you're really creating two schools within a school. It's based upon the small school research with some flexible learning areas. Similar curricula is located near each other. We're sharing a lot more resources. Teachers are really struggling with this idea that they won't have their own classroom that it's going to be shared spaces. I think that's causing a little anxiety. Collaborative applied learning spaces, practical sustainability, that's been designed with sustainability in mind, not only in materials and layout but also in how we use spaces that they can have multiple uses, they can be practical as we go through it. Supporting workforce education, real world project based learning and we have spaces in the building that reflect that. We have something called a toil lab. When we look at MIT Lincoln labs, it stands for technology office innovation lab. It's where employees at Lincoln lab can, if they have an idea and want to design a product, they can take it from design to prototype to full production. We wanted to replicate that because we've seen that in some of our life sciences employers who are represented on our advisory committees and we also have project based learning space where students from different vocational programs would be able to work on a project, leave it there and have a space for that. We have some of that now but it's really an excess space. It wasn't designed on purpose for what we are looking at in the new building. We talk about the need for the building which most of you are well aware of. We kind of try to overview what we've done with MSBA with a feasibility study that we've looked at many models. As you may recall when MSBA first invited us into this pipeline we had two design enrollments. One for 435 one for 800. We had to do an analysis of schools for each of those which was renovation addition and new for each of those design enrollments and then we also had a subgroup of our school building committee that looked at let's just look at repairing what we have and what would that cost. We've taken a long time, longer than anybody else in the history of MSBA to look at these options and the new building was the most least disruptive and most economical. Some folks still look at new construction versus a renovation and we sort of highlighted on slide 12 what we would get in each of those in a new construction we're getting a net reimbursement rate of 30%. If we go to renovation really what that means is that our building project has failed and MSBA steps away from the plate and getting back into the MSBA pipeline is first of all difficult, takes time second of all if you're lucky enough to get into the pipeline again your reimbursement rate is a 31% minimum we were grandfathered in a 40% minimum so that was one of the advantages of taking so long I guess we're looking at 10 years of construction to renovate what we have continual disruption our building as it is just doesn't fit the educational program plan higher operating costs we doubt it would be attractive to students or members and it just continues the uncertainty I think that the district has suffered under for a number of years. Slide 13 we talk about housing we compare Minuteman and vocational technical schools to regular traditional high schools of course we have a full academic and a full vocational staff we have a very large special ed staff at Minuteman because of the high percentage of kids on IEPs we're also trying to compete in the metro west area and that's especially true when we hire new vocational technical teachers we try to hire industry experts and many times especially in the engineering robotics areas they're making a pretty good salary in the private industry and some of them are taking significant pay cuts to come into the education field but we're trying to attract the best for our kids our transportation costs are high special ed population as I mentioned and what about vocational technical schools they are larger than a traditional high school for the reasons I just outlined we have complex spaces within a vocational high school we have to build laboratories and shops that don't just meet MSBA requirements but also meet industry standards because the licensing and credentialing that our kids get in a vocational technical school is based upon approval by industry groups so we have to have some pretty unique and expensive places the square footage why is the building so big for 628 kids of a design enrollment we have to accommodate all the academic space requirements of MSBA that a traditional high school would have and then on top of that you add the department of education chapter 74 square footage requirements they have minimum square footage requirements for shops they have minimum square footage requirements per student and so all those add another 180 square foot per kid 226 square feet per student that the MSBA requires so the cost per square foot is higher but when we look at this project on page 8 and compare it to other brand new vocational schools in today's dollars you can see that Minuteman is in the range at 562 dollars a square foot Essex Aggie at 477 Putnam and Springfield in the western part of the state 567 Worcester which was almost 10 years ago if it was put into today's dollars it would be almost 700 dollars a square foot and with today's dollars I know Charlie is probably going to ask me because he always reminds me how to do this we didn't just apply a simple CPI index onto it we actually went through the annual construction actual construction cost summaries of each year people were opening bids and construction costs were 7 or 8 or 9 percent below what they were being scoped out when the building was being estimated so we applied those up and downs to this today's dollars for construction so the cost to the taxpayer the total project will not, it cannot exceed 144.9 million the state share is there the annual tax impact the median homeowner is between 1750 and 117 dollars in Arlington it's the annual debt assessment our projection is 1.2 million and we're estimating that about 75 dollars per median homeowner tax bill our next steps once we get approval from all of our 16 towns even though only 10 are going to remain in July we would appoint construction manager at risk we're doing that because we got an extra reimbursement percentage from the MSBA if you go this route and also it gives us some flexibility to prepare bid documents earlier and hopefully reduce costs or at least get more out of the building we're going to start construction a year from August at the latest depending on the winter if we have a winter like we did this past winter we may be able to start earlier September 2020 once we put a shovel in the ground it's 24 to 28 months before the new building is done and remember we're building it in the far western end of the property so it's not going to disrupt kids it's just going to go up and then we all hold hands and walk over the building at some point here's an artist rendering our website we actually have some pretty cool fly-throughs and drone shots and one of the things I put in here was Charlie Baker's in the state of the Commonwealth and he's been very generous with vocational technical education since well he came in and a Minuteman was the recipient of $500,000 we received a few weeks ago for equipment to increase our advanced manufacturing program but we're seeing a lot of positive messaging in his proposed budget there's almost $83,000,000 $85,000,000 for vocational technical education over the next five years so we think we're in a great place to be right now and the other sheet has to do with the breakdown of how capital costs are assessed under the new agreement and Kevin can answer questions about our bond assumptions and projections about some of the other assumptions that went into those projections I have one quick question the debt service and this is a million 262 192 the debt is capital the debt sheet is about a million four and the last debt too yes if you click the page over to the back side of the sheet you'll see that the blue box on the left hand side the ESCO lease is about 153,000 current debt that's currently outstanding that needs to be added to the what we're projecting to be a million 262 for the building project for a total of a million 416 do you see the 153 under the ESCO debt underneath the blue box the fourth column down and then if you go over to the second to last column under the blue box it gives the million 262 which you were referring to earlier the debt associated strictly with the building project so if you add the million 2 and the 153 it gives you the total of the million 4 okay, questions our understanding is that it simply can't we would have to value engineer it to that number what we bond my understanding is that it's how we bond the project as well we're going out to bond for the full amount which we have to under the MSBA rules and I'm committed to keeping it at 144.9 we've built in some escalation into this project if it delays much if it doesn't get approved that's a whole world I don't want to think about but the more it gets delayed the more we're going to have to take out of the building because we may use up that escalation the sooner we can get going it's one of the powers of having a CM at risk is if we get our approval on May 9th which is the last vote I think although I'm hearing different things the CM at risk could actually be contacted earlier we go through the process of getting them on board the process of bid packages this summer you know for arrival next spring and save some money there the reason I ask this you know is we all know probably the prices of people who need more love right now and steel and concrete are also one of these that are being constructed that we're not heard of you know over the course of two or three years those things have changed dramatically and the bids are based on current pricing they're not these estimates were submitted as part of our package to MSBA under module 3 I believe in the fall of 2015 and we didn't make any adjustments on the pricing of oil or the current pricing historical pricing of the last couple of years Skanska our owners project manager is actually concerned that there's so much building going on right now that that may be the cost driver more than the energy pricing but we've been told this is going to be an attractive project to build because it's new construction where it's located and there aren't many new schools being built so we're hoping for a pretty competitive bid process Any other questions? John? Back on slide 3 on page 2 what accounts for the difference between the construction budget and the total project budget? Those additional costs are primarily in what I would call escalation costs and contingencies they plan in construction contingencies owner contingencies and there are some other things not associated with construction itself I can't think of any insurance bonding fees permitting fees which are outrageous in the town of Lincoln absolutely outrageous and sinful Once you move into the new building It's a great question About 3 years ago the school building committee and the school committee tasked me with starting to look at what's the potential for repurposing the building and that evolved into an idea of what's its greatest highest use to send the district at large Kevin and I have met with some I would say subject matter experts in the area of public private partnerships and have gotten a lot of good advice about what we could do what we cannot do there I think generally speaking in the construction costs in that $144.9 is about $4 million to demolition and remediate the building so the building is going to be gone we've had several conversations with some private folks for many many many years that they're interested in contributing contributing money and establishing an Olympic size swimming venue there the town of Lexington is also interested in participating in adding more recreational and wellness space so beyond that we've also tested the market what that means is that we've called some developers we've also spoken to some folks that I describe it as being mission compatible and campus centric as I said one of our goals is to create a campus so we've talked to some institutions of higher education community colleges as well as four-year institutions that have expressed some interest when we get ready of having a presence on our campus I don't know if that means share it or what not but we have some great potential I mean if you've been to the site I mean I can't walk away from my career having had 66 acres off of 128 in Lexington and not maximized them or monetized it in a way that perpetuates the school district for a lot longer and from the so what we're intending to do and we're going to have a meeting with some folks about this in a few weeks our plan is once we get our MSBA funding in line because we've been told that if you start to develop other revenue streams for the district the MSBA in some cases have reduced their contribution based upon revenue streams that the district realizes so we're not doing anything until this MSBA project and bonding is tied in a nice little neat bow but when that does happen we're going to look at putting out on the street requests for letters of interest from potential partners partners who are committed to learning K through life partners that are committed to having a campus and being a member of the campus this superintendent has no interest in carving off a chunk and getting three million bucks for it and walking away I don't want people on that campus that aren't committed to what we're doing and that aren't committed to the district as it remains going forward so I think I'm very excited about it and I'm looking forward to exploring that some more like I said we're getting some great advice from some people who've done it before with the MBTA with MIT in the Boston area Steve Steve a couple of questions I'll make the slide that discusses the reimbursement available for some of the cost that aren't eligible for reimbursement Kevin mentioned a couple of permitting fees if you build a field house or swimming pool anything having to do with seating for people there's a whole long list of ineligible costs that the MSBA has stuck to I can't demonstrate of district offices which is kind of weird for us because our district office is in the building but that's not the case and there's no real accommodation for vocational technical schools at all at the MSBA level they're trying to figure it out as they go along with new vocational schools but I think site development costs what else your site development costs are capped at 8% and above that is ineligible so in our particular site where we have 66 acres and we have a long driveway that's going to be improved and we have to bring in all of our water and sewer from Lexington almost 3 quarters of a mile we're going to exceed that 8% cap and that's been calculated in our estimates but anything more than 8% and you're done with our plan we only have one athletic field being renovated in this MSBA project we're hoping that we'll be able to create more athletic fields with these public-private partnerships but we have to shrink back those athletic fields next question just as a point of comparison new building constructed about 257,000 square feet of gross lower area what's the current building that's 305,000 I believe have any town meetings taken any action yet? well as you know in this case no action is good action and Lincoln took no action on the bonding on last Saturday they were the first town meeting we'll have all town meetings completed I believe by the 9th of May other questions of course Lincoln's not going to be here in the new ones I have a question once you tear down the old building is there any ability to carve off the gym and pool from the old building and not build a new one? not build a new gym you mean? well the pool and the gym are all the far western side of the building is there any way that you could save those from the old building and use those and reduce the project cost? we didn't look at that specifically but as we go through this process of looking at repurposing and partners some of the partners may want to look at that as part of a phase 2 of a project we didn't mix it in with the existing because when you get a pool into the mix MSBA just they don't want to hear anything about that now won't you have to repurpose the old building site for client fields? all that's budgeted for is to take the building down remediate it and plant grass so you'll need that for client fields? yes other questions I might as well throw in my couple what is the building itself? yes I must count about 15 roofs it's not as complex as that it just looks like it would be an architectural master piece in engineering and maintenance disaster with all those roofs and connections you just built a big rectangular building would you want to know about that? we could come out and see it we have it staked out my major concern with this is that you have less than 400 students from the district you're going to lose 40 of those so now you're down to 345 maybe you get 20 of them back so now you're in the 360 you've already lost a significant section of your out-of-district students because of this change in the law which I was really aware of so you've got to get from 360 370 to 628 now all of a sudden you're going to dump $9000 of additional capital cost on top of the 17000 tuition you're going to be looking at $26,000, $27,000 and now the other towns the Bedfords, the Walthams which you're already thinking about building their own schools are going to be really desperate to pull their kids out of here and I think you're going to be in a very difficult situation to fill this reduced-sized school you'll pull out some more kids because the school looks nice you've got to want to go to a vocational education no matter what the school looks like so if you're only filling this with 500, 550 kids you're going to have to reduce programs to build a reasonable budget that the remaining towns can accept the more you reduce the programs the fewer kids are going to want to go there and then it ends up in the death spiral and the member towns end up with $150 million school they're paying death service for that either closes or is incredibly for student expense I'm really afraid that this building project is too big for the size of the district we have and it's going to really hurt that I think the school has a better chance of surviving using the campus they have putting in a new roof on it a few other things and start going that way this is $150 million $100 million for MSBA you'll even have some of the member towns now paying $24,000 for student now it's going to go up to $32,000 and they're going to be wanting desperately to get out of this by the time this all takes place so how do you respond to my fears well my grandmother used to say Eddie, there's two ways you make decisions I won't use the Irish Broke you make decisions out of fear out of love and I believe that we can increase our percentage of 8th graders applying from our member towns because we've seen it happening already if you take just if you look at our overall 8th grade application rate we've been pulling about 3 or 4% of the 8th graders from the member towns now with fewer member towns we have to get up to what the average of all the other voc schools are in an urban environment which is about 8-9% if we're at 8-9% of our 8th grade application rate we fill a school of 600 just from those 10 remaining member towns the survey we did of our guidance counselors from our member towns are seeing an increase in interest in vocational technical education if you look at the three most recent or if you look at all the new schools that have been built on the list that I gave you within two years of opening they all had waiting lists from their member district communities Worcester has a waiting list of 400 Essex Aggie North Shore has a waiting list of a couple of hundred Putnam and Springfield has a waiting list of 400 so we're seeing that a new building does more than just attract a few kids it gets people thinking about vocational education differently and the design is intended to reflect that I think there are opportunities as I alluded to about monetizing the debt that's going to reduce the nut if you will for our member towns over the long term I think that has tremendous potential the other piece that we haven't talked about here yet today is the attractiveness to some larger non-member towns that do not offer any vocational technical education Watertown the application rate from Watertown is as strong as it ever has been I have a meeting with the mayor of Everett our third meeting in two weeks or so our application rate from Everett has doubled in the last year they offer no vocational technical education in that city so I think if we look at the region and the needs of the region we look at the experience of other vocational schools that have been renovated or redesigned or built new and you look at the general overall interest in vocational technical education I think we have risks absolutely out we have tremendous risks but we have tremendous upside potential now I don't believe for a moment that the building we have is going to have anything to do with the survival of Minuteman the building we have now is beyond repair the repairs alone are 106 million if we come with MSBA and adding their 44 million in we get a brand new building for 100 million so and I think when we look at the tax impact on all of our member towns between $17 and the little town of Lancaster is $116 a household I think people are going to be willing and join us in this process to a new Minuteman if I could just add a couple more comments on work as we mentioned it's $300,000 square feet and it really is a very efficient building in terms of the utility utilization and the space allocation given the vision that we have of the academy problem and I think it's important to know as Dr. McQuown just said the cost of renovation over the 6 or 7 or 8 year period will exceed what the cost of the new building project is with MSBA participation we will charge a capital fee to non-resident students which is part of the MSBA project but if we have to renovate on our own looking at 5, 6 or 7 years there will be no capital fee charge because the regulation doesn't allow capital fee to be charged unless it's an MSBA project number 1, number 2 once we start hitting those certain construction levels where we get a certain percentage of renovation we now have to start with the coal compliance all the ADA compliance codes so the project cost will sat to escalate very quickly as we go into year 3, 4, year 5 and I think during that period of time if we're trying to renovate over 2 to 3 to 5 year period maybe it's going to be on the barn every year looking for another bond authorization for another piece of work and not only that on top of that it'll be very disruptive for the staff and the students and we haven't you know, 7 or 8 years of construction going on in the building so I think if you look at the alternative of trying to make the existing building work versus the new building from a cost side and just from the learning environment it seems to point to the new school as a favorable alternative thank you other questions, Allen just from returning a perspective of risk management I guess one thing that he said is that if there wasn't incremental renovation in repairs of the existing building you're only committing a certain level of money per year so if something bad happens and you get into the dust pile that I'll talk about you're only committed to that piece rather than committed to the entire obligated all the time so the entire not all at once so even at the end of the day it goes well and may have cost more and not quite as good a product it certainly is going to be a less risky approach so there is a judgment call as to how risky the current approach is now could you just review in light of the new regional agreement what are the possibilities of the town remaining towns you know, let's say there's a referendum one vote overwhelmingly against it the town thought we said we're out of here what's the mechanism is there a mechanism for any of the other 10 towns to either drop out of the district or just sort of not be obligated to pay off the debt well there's a technical opportunity for one of the remaining 10 to depart but it's very it has to do with section 14 D chapter 71 16 and let me just lay it out for you I don't know if you want to hear it but the if one of the 16 member towns votes no on this bonding authorization vote that the school committee took a few weeks ago then the district would be forced to go to a district wide ballot under chapter 71 16 and in this case we would have a on June 18th or abouts we would have a district wide referendum the polls would be open eight hours all on the same time in different locations in each of the 16 towns at the end of the day the aggregate vote a simple majority would inform the school committee if their authorization was approved or not so let's say we get that we get the vote has been approved and in those towns Lancaster voted no there is a trigger within the new regional agreement that simply reflects what's in the statute that that town could seek to withdraw from the district at that point in time and I believe it or not the statute says that if they are refused withdrawal because now in the new agreement they have to have a majority of the towns withdrawn withdrawal then they could stay in the district but they would be unencumbered by that debt however their students would not be able to access that part of the building which was purchased with those funds could you not this is what it's that's how it practically works so it doesn't work practically so but if it was a small town that had no students then what would be their obligation well we don't have any of those towns anymore but theoretically if that was a town that had no students they would have the obligation for no capital debt so for example Lancaster Lancaster was targeted against it and then the referendum approved it and Lancaster said we would like to drop out Lancaster Lancaster is our third largest I think who's out of the ten Bolton or something I'm just trying to put myself into the position of a town that really doesn't want to do it their towns voted it down and they sort of forced into a referendum what are their options and is that option a big risk I mean could you talk to that Desparo I'm very able to risk it yes I've learned to be I don't think the risk is that if you look at the rest of the regional agreement as a whole and if this case ever come up obviously the lawyers would be at the table with us but the parting town has to give the district three years notice and so during those three years they would be obligated until their final attempt to withdraw was denied I don't think anything would kick in so people think there's a practical way out or a practical way to stay in without paying the debt that was never the intent of the new regional agreement I don't think it's the intent of statute and I don't think the commissioner would approve it because the commissioner has to approve even that the commissioner approved these six towns getting out in this one time exit initial withdrawal strategy and he was pretty clear with me verbally anyway that this is a one time thing he also said some other things but he doesn't expect to hear from me again other questions in this estimate of the new in 262 debt service for the new project how much out of district of that is if I could refer you to the one page sheet on what I'll call page 2 you'll see the page that was noted in the lower right hand corner yes the one page sheet page 2 this is a calculation for the capital assessment and if you look sort of in the middle section on the right hand side you'll see a blue bar that indicates a capital fee calculation and what that calculation does it looks at the enrollment capacity of 628 it subtracts the assumed in district enrollment of 458 students which results in out of district students of 170 now if you take the 628 students and you divide it by the total debt that's incurred by the district that year which is $5.3 million which you'll see in the box to the left where it says capital allocation debt service year $5.3 million you divide that by 628 students it comes out to roughly $8400 per student you multiply that time to 170 students and it comes to a million 440 that million 440 is deducted from the $5.3 million debt service so that the net debt being assessed to the district is 3.874 and that capital allocation with that reduction of capital fee is in the box on the left hand side of that sheet as well when do you anticipate financing the project so in other words one year would the debt service start to hit we were initially expecting full debt service to kick in in fiscal 20 we'd be doing three bond sales as Dr. Boquella mentioned we're looking at going with a CM at risk which will allow us to get on the street quicker with some of these bid packages so we're trying to capture the favorable market and issue debt in fiscal 17 we were looking at a second bond issue 24 months later once we've once we've gone through our design in preliminary materials costs that would be the construction phase and then the third bond issue would be we were planning our fiscal 20 depending on the schedule the cash flow the favorability of interest rates that would be the final debt we have a plan in three phases okay so the first you wouldn't anticipate any new debt service next year as a matter of fact we have planned on 500,000 in fiscal 17 that's in our budget to be the semi-annual interest payment on the fund Charlie so the if I did this calculation right the out-of-district students would pay about $8,500 per student in the actual allocation correct so is there any we heard these stories about the Department of Education lowering tuition charges or lowering the ability of regional districts to charge tuition is there any rule that limits how much capital you can charge them the regulation that was adopted is just enacted a year ago March it hasn't been implemented by any other regional school district in fact they haven't even really issued the guidelines for the calculation outside of what the regulation says but the regulation is clear that it needs to be calculated based on a per pupil cost and conversations that I've had with the ESE indicates that the method that we're using is consistent with the intent however they haven't done it yet we need to meet with them and they will determine what that capital fee will be annually as part of the tuition fee as well they could come back and say it can only be $4,000 per student there isn't anything in the regulation that I saw that allows any means of capping it or anything like that however we have to see how they will be navigating those guidelines thank you other questions ok so you'll probably see do you have any sense of what kind of debt service we'll see at fiscal 18 for Allenton I would anticipate about $350,000 associated with the building for fiscal 18 maybe fiscal 19 they ramp up to $848,000 and then then the final fund will move it up to the main too ok so for the next two years the debt service is fairly modest when were the six towns that are weaving will their students still be there next year yes all the departing towns their students are held harmless even those that are currently in the 8th grade that are applying for admission next fall after next year their effective data withdrawal is July 1st, 2017 so in FY 18 they will be charged as much as humanly possible and as out of district students ok so for fiscal 17 they just go with the standard yes in FY 18 they have to have an inter-municipal agreement inter-municipal agreement well they don't necessarily have to have an inter-municipal agreement if the students who attend from those towns would attend as non-member towns ok so they have to pay a capital yes absolutely that would be the purpose of an IMI to make sure that they do pay ok I have other questions ok Charlie your interest of recruiting towns like say water towns do you anticipate that there would be any incentives given to one of these new interests so that they would have to pay the same capital per route of burden that existing towns as you recall the regional agreement does allow the school committee to negotiate a transitional period of time for three years where the first year they would pay 25% of what their capital burden would be 50% 75% by the fourth year they would be at 100% of their capital burden ok are there any other questions for the superintendent for the assistant superintendent ok well thank you both for coming we appreciate the information be glad to answer any questions in the future ok so is your number on the sheet you have mine ok thank you now so the building project we will be voting hopefully on April 13th from that Wednesday so this is a big deal we've heard fears versus hopes where you come down I'll have to give some thought to it however we can do the minute man budget which will be where is there some place it's age 7 3 million 649 349 so they're basically using all in the way I didn't expect that the out of district enrollment would go down that fast but it's understandable under the new law regulations or whatever they are what is the will of the committee last year it was a little over 4 million I believe the number came down it's in that first project called 4 million over half right the enrollment dropped from like 150 down to 120 well there it is there 152 down to 120 so it's those ups and downs that'll make huge differences now they won't make as much of a difference because it's a 4 year rolling average so that'll sort of smooth things up in the short term they probably boosted our assessment but in the long term it'll go up okay Stephen I do favorable action of the 39649 349 second okay we've been seconded for favorable action for the assessment discussion Charlie according to what Kevin Mahoney said $500,000 of this budget might be used in the new building right endorsing that new building with the explanation of the $500,000 capital I wouldn't think so because they, well Stephen what do you think Charlie if the new building does go forward that $500,000 is going to be transferred to repairs and maintenance so you can look at it as being neutral in terms of if you believe it goes an existing building or and they can't bond it without the, they can't finance it without the bond authorization so I wouldn't think it would other discussions questions Stephen well I think it would be more of a comment if we are to discuss you know I think we talked about this at town meeting I guess I would I would just point it out again finally operating under the new regional agreement where I think we feel like we have a better deal with this school no matter how enrollment goes long term that it really took a lot of years to get to the point where we are and I think we're remiss without you know noting the fact that our chair our vice chair get us a new agreement and then he hand it off to Mr. Foske one of our vice chairs and so I will once again sort of add my heartfelt thanks to both of them for at least putting us in a position where I felt like I could just sort of enjoy the presentation don't we have after a while more fun next year so thank you and I will point out that our chair forgot to acknowledge himself before town meeting when he was thanking Mr. Dunn Mr. Foske because he was the original person who went out there and Foske just helped to get the work done okay any other discussion all those in favor of the assessment of three million six forty nine three forty nine please say aye opposed okay unanimous three twenty three okay eight fifty two let's get some other work done well if I could make a comment about the the building and the candidates and I will select them and the school committee candidates were asked what they thought of the minute van project they all said well we've got a word that the building is falling apart and I was disappointed that none of them said that having minute van to the town they really do give good education that we should use and when it comes time to present to the building plan I think that's something we need to emphasize to the time okay it's uh going to be a complex project complex next couple of months it's almost like somebody would just turn it down and enjoy it but I don't know if that's going to happen by then okay well the big budget, the big item that's still here is the group health insurance and we've just gotten the hand out and who's going to be presenting oh he said he was he said he was going to be here I guess it's not Brian do you and I want to do this yeah I didn't bring the revised one but I can I can model for it I think it's been passed it's been passed around yeah it's got the wrong number in it sorry look at the top line for the offset no no this is the revised one they sent me a revised one in 722 yeah the offset the offset's a different number the email the email that's been but I didn't even know it was presented the water and sewer well why don't we just put this aside for a minute rank and recreation can you do that I know because Sandy just sent me the revised things and for a third I haven't looked at them okay and Grant's not here so we can't do water and sewer those are the budgets left water sewer, insurance and rank and recreation you know I think we should just do this what if your concern is the difference between the offset of 741 and the 722 that's in the they sent us a revised copy of the budget with 722 in it did they send it out today Brad? I looked at it I said oh good it's there and unfortunately had I known I would have printed it I have my computer what if we go into something else and I'll pull this up there is nothing give me 30 okay Gene I'll make a moment I think I make this every year and it's mine for anybody who's new when we go to the budget we vote exact dollar amounts which means when anybody named Al putting the budget books together they see these like $5 problems here or there on the budget book they have to come back to us to vote like $10 things like that which is a complete waste of everyone's time and so every yard man of motion which I'll make now which is that we grant to the chair and vice chair the authority to make administrative corrections to the budget as they're putting the budget books together and then come here with a whole list of little small tidbits that they have in fact and the comment I always make is if you don't have the trust of the chair and vice chair to make administrative corrections you're a much bigger problem okay is there a second to that motion? second any discussion? all those in favor please say aye thank you we'll try to keep the changes to a minimum Al has been working with Sandy because we want to have a five-year plan and here also to make sure everything is set up that's the area where the dean's motion doesn't go correct with two or three different numbers we can't force one or the other because it breaks everything so Erin Margaret will you have the rank in the recreation ready for Monday? the sewer won't be ready on Monday I'm sorry? sewer won't be ready on Monday okay water? yeah sewer okay Alan did you see all those changes in water and sewer we need to make so they they match? I don't want to have that question again especially when I promised I'd fix it just to make sure I have the most recent and accurate water we just got it updated once a day okay good and Gloria why don't we chat for a minute after the meeting about the postings for next week I think they should be pretty straightforward but Gloria did you get that number for the board article? okay I think we'll have time on Monday or at the worst on Wednesday to finish up who sent that now? I think Karen did I got like three or four emails from her I can explain the confusion about the library reclassifications when Carolyn was here and I didn't know the answer so if anybody's interested I can explain that anyway okay so the team librarian was made in LS2 because that's considered technology librarian and then the other part that Carolyn mentioned I think was a misunderstanding there wasn't a second person that was made in LS2 that was voted last year at town meeting to make that person that so that had already existed in the budget which is why there was no reclassification of that it was already voted from last year so I think that got confused and it's just the one team librarian who's LS2 okay thank you so if there's no more business on Monday we're going to be hearing the tourism article back I'll make a new presentation of the tourism commission and then we're going to hear a short on why we should pass that proclamation on local aid then we'll do these four budgets get them all forward done and I'll go through everything and Monday also you should have the budgets from Alan and I'll make copies of the think com report you know today so people can start reviewing it and then on Wednesday we'll come in on the CBA presentation I sent you the Excel spreadsheets on it so it's not really very huge and we'll vote that and that should be it except for the 13th so any other business before the meeting? I just asked if the budgets haven't been approved yet insurance, water, sewer if you could get those to me before Monday then I can incorporate them in the spreadsheets otherwise I'll just be using out of the mechanical report if you're wrong, I'll send an email okay, whatever the latest is I'll send it by Monday okay, sir, yeah you can get those out if you appreciate it you won't see so you can work with me I'm sure about the rest of the discussion well, it's good to see you I should I put it myself sometimes okay