County Board - Regular Meeting

Yeah, hopefully I can be able to... Yeah, that's fine. I'm actually trying to get our system up because it's not working. We got you, though.

Currently there are four school board members and four county board members here, which means, Mr. Takas, please come forward.

I don't mean to be, it's not a crisis. You lost.

Oh, man. Good afternoon. We, I just want to make sure, we will need to eventually make sure that everything's good with our deputy clerk and he's giving me the head nod. So we'll go ahead and get started. Good afternoon. I'm Matt DeFranti, chair of the county board this year and Our team of staff is here, both our schools, and we're happy to welcome school board members at whatever height your chair is at the moment. But we're thrilled to welcome you. And I will just make one remark before we get started to give Mr. Karantonis just a minute to... I'm sorry, Mr.

Chair, I wasn't there.

That's okay. Okay. So the only remark I'll mention as we welcome, and then I'll send it over to you, Chair Zecker-Sutton, is the County Board and our community as a whole has not, has made a change in our typical process over the last 12 to 18 months, and I'm looking at, I hope that our finance team will correct me, is we did not last year go to our voters for a bond. and so that is a is a reason why we would like to a particular reason why this is a great way to sort of show our emerging work not our final work as we will go the county board just approved some bonds on our side of the whole piece I think at the last meeting for the process not I don't think the final language which we will take a look at a little bit and we both have capital improvement plans and we will work together in this session and over the coming days and weeks to adopt capital improvement plans which is infrastructure for our community which means schools actual physical schools as well as all the pieces that support schools and then on the county side a number of different lines of business as the manager might suggest so that's All I need to do to filibuster or give context, hopefully give context, and it's over to you, Chair Zecker-Sutton, for welcoming remarks, which you, I know, have rehearsed in detail.

Thank you. We are very pleased to be here with you all. I enjoyed hosting you in our offices earlier this spring, and now we get to be over here where we... pay for parking. It's okay, shots fired.

We give 40% to IP. I'm sorry? There's a question coming to you, Mr. County Manager, on that front, but continue first.

Thank you. We have been hard at work on our CIP, which we anticipate approving by the end of June. I think we are on a slightly different timeline from you all. And I will say we always talk about how our school buildings are both the learning environments, learning spaces for our students, our 27,500 students, and also the workplaces for the vast majority of our employees. And of course, in addition to buildings, we have fields and playgrounds and sidewalks and all the other accoutrements that go along with having school buildings. So many thanks to our team, many of whom are here for the work that they've been putting in quite diligently for weeks, if not months, if not the past year. because the CIP, like the budget, never really goes away and it's a continual process for us. So we're pleased to be here, looking forward to having this conversation with you all and I have read your presentation and I'm excited to pepper you all and the county manager with questions when we get there, so.

Great, that sounds, we might join in the peppering, but the way that we have sort of structured the conversation today is first to our schools for a conversation, and I assume that that preface might take us directly to Dr. Duran. The only thought that occurs to me in this moment, and I'll beg forgiveness, is that You forget when you're 52 that being two years old is not easy. And I'm rediscovering that on a daily basis. And that can be true for every age that you are in, I believe. And so for those who are growing up, we are thinking keenly of the importance of great facilities for our outstanding public schools. I think Dr. Duran.

Yes, thank you very much. We could bring up the presentation. I'm excited to be here to present our information about the CIP. As many of you know, and for our public to be aware, this is a CIP that we're no longer having to invest in new seats because of our enrollment. We'll talk a little bit about that. So this is really a CIP that we put together to really think about balancing some very important factors. One, we want to think about our infrastructure needs, our educational priorities. Safety and accessibility are very important to the work that we're doing. And then also being mindful of fiscal stewardship as we put forth the plan. On the next slide, you'll see our agenda for this presentation where we'll kind of talk a little bit about the major renovation projects connected to school board direction. I'll just briefly go over the continued projects that are still happening from the previous CIP and then talk about some of the proposed new projects for this new CIP that the board will be adopting on June 18th, give you a little overview of the enrollment updates since it has been such a major part of the previous CIPs. a little snapshot of the project funding and timeline and then what's the schedule for us to move forward. So on the next slide you'll see the school boards has adopted the proposed CIP at the last school board meeting where there is a commitment to invest in major infrastructure and the safety that I talked about in the excuse me, the inclusive learning environments that are needed. Also making sure that we're continuing the ongoing projects that we have already started or that are in the works and responsible use of bond funding. And I thank County Manager Schwartz and his team for working with us closely on how we can best manage our bond funding. And we're doing it very differently this year. That's been helpful in our budget. Really also thinking about the investments in new projects. You'll see that we have in here that again are really focused, I'm going to say this a lot, and hopefully it's a broken record for a reason, infrastructure, safety, accessibility, and educational needs that we have. And then of course we do have some joint initiatives with the county that we'll reference in some of the mutual projects that we have. So real quickly, we'll go through the next couple of slides on the current projects that we're working on in the existing CIP. So on the next slide, you'll see here are some of the ongoing projects in the current CIP. We are very, very pleased and we look forward. Hopefully you all will be there with us in August. to welcome in the new Grace Hopper Center that will be completed. The MPSA project, which I'll touch about in a moment. The Hoffman Boston roof replacement that's happening currently right now. And then we have several roof projects and HVAC replacements at Dorothyham, Jamestown, Oak Ridge, and Williamsburg that are currently happening. And we're finally getting towards the end of all of our kitchens being renovated, so we do have a couple more that we're finishing, Ashlawn, Arlington Science Focus, and the current one, current CIP, and the future one, we have one more that we're proposing. And then the ongoing partnership that we've been working with, Safety Security Management, APS Police Department, the Arlington Police Department, in terms of all of our notification systems and public address systems. And then the joint partnership we have in our turf projects. So on the next slide, you'll see just a picture. If you haven't driven by, I encourage you to drive by and see the great work that's happening at the Grace Hopper Center project. We are on target and we thank you for all the partnership in that. We also will then moving after the building moves in, we do have a couple of other phases where we will be thinking about how we demolish the base shops on the existing and construct a parking garage. And then, of course, moving forward in concert with what you see on the next slide with regards to the MPSA project, where we will be working on having that move into the Legacy Career Center, demolishing the existing MPSA former Patrick Henry Building, and then restoring that as green space. So those are all current projects that are in the works in the previous CIP. On the next slide, you'll also see just a highlight of the work that we're doing at Hoffman Boston. I really want to mention that we are thinking about how we can be more environmentally sound, and so the geothermal well system that we're working on there, and it's something that we are really focusing on sustainability, and that long-term focus on our environment. The next slide, you can see the synthetic turf projects from the previous CIP that we're partnering with the county on, the Kenmore Field and the Thomas Jefferson Park Lower Field. We had completed the Greenbrier Stadium already at Yorktown. The next slide you will see now moves us into thinking about the new projects in this CIP that are being considered. Again, as you said, Mr. DeFerrante, these are still being discussed. These are not final. These are all discussions that the school board is still having. The previous slides, again, were stuff that we've already moved forward. So really, in addition to the projects I just mentioned, we really wanted to think about how do we move forward with addressing the infrastructure needs and the safety and accessibility needs of our schools while being mindful of the fiscal realities that we're currently facing. And we have to be thoughtful of that because we have a limited amount of dollars and we have a large amount of needs. So in this particular proposal at this moment, in the proposed school board CIP, we do have synthetic turf projects I'll talk about. We'll continue the work on the critical notification and public address systems, finalizing and finishing up our kinship renovations. But the real bulk of this new CIP is the discussion around Thomas Jefferson Middle School and Swanson Middle School, and then how we can address some additional major infrastructure projects where funding may allow. So on the next slide, this is the proposal that we're working with county staff on to think about Gunston Park Field, Wakefield High School Stadium, Washington Liberty, and Williamsburg Middle School and Discovery Fields in partnership with you on those synthetic turf projects for approximately $4.6 million to make sure that that takes place. The next slide is really, again, the major part of the CIP in thinking about the long-needed recommended renovation of Thomas Jefferson Middle School. The CIP is gonna make significant investment in our dollars in the renovation. We've looked at various options, but the recommendation moving forward is renovating, and in addition, not a complete brand new building. Because this project, again, is not about increasing the capacity of the seats. We're not adding new seats, but we're making sure that we're addressing many of the major infrastructure and accessibility and modernizing the classrooms. Many of you may or may not know that our classrooms are very small there. There are classrooms that were built in a building that was initially an open concept where there were no walls. And so as we worked to think about how our enrollment continued to grow at Thomas Jefferson, that building was not built for that amount of enrollment. We've adjusted. And so project completion in fiscal year 31, and there would be necessary bond funding in the 2028 bond referendum. This proposal would include construction of a new three-story addition designed to provide appropriate size and flexible learning environments. It would also have all the necessary infrastructure needs, which are HVAC systems, roofing, electrical distribution, ceilings, sprinklers, lighting, flooring, and a variety of long necessary improvements. And again, this is also a focus for working on energy efficiency, sustainability, safety, and how do we incorporate all of those in a way that is fiscally sound and also in a way that meets the current capacity of that school. So there's still ongoing discussions with the board in terms of what that amount would be for us to work towards. But it would include some significant interior reconfiguration of the existing building. So we would look at the spaces that are there now, reconfigure them to meet as much as we can educational standards and the programmatic needs of the school. But then also making sure we're having that new addition that would allow us to have larger spaces and appropriate classrooms for science labs, things of that nature. And importantly, what we've heard and what we know about Thomas Jefferson is a ADA accessibility concerns in terms of how we make sure our spaces provide equitable access for all students, staff, and community members. And we also will be, and have been discussing with, I have had conversations with Mr. Schwartz and teams about how do we think about the community center space, safety there. There's proposal around a wall that potentially could be put in place. for separation as well as some other concerns. But we have had a lot of questions and concerns about safety and obviously you heard the timeline of this. This is not something we're waiting to talk about in terms of safety. We are having current conversations now with the existing building to ensure that there is proper safety for students and community members as they're using it during the day. So Thomas Jefferson, you'll see, is a major part of the proposed CIP. It's a necessary one that has been waiting for quite some time, and we're very happy that we're able to come forward with some proposal that we're finalizing and we're working through over the next few weeks. Swanson Middle School on the next slide is also one that is in the CIP, but it is one that takes place much later in the CIP. It would be bond funded in 2030. The cost amounts that we have set aside for an addition and for all the other infrastructure needs I talked about, like the HVAC, the roof, the flooring and the lighting, all of those are discussions that while we have put forth a placeholder for and we are very clear about the needs, one of the clearest needs for us is the temporary classroom trailers that are there and wanting to make sure we can bring students into the building, which would be the necessary reason for the addition. We also know that since this is not the immediate project right now, but it is in the CIP, at the next CIP discussion, we would really need to look more about what the cost might be. One, we're going to need to understand and ensure what is the actual need for enrollment. We're going to need to do an assessment of our middle school enrollment. We do have other middle schools nearby that potentially could alleviate through a potential boundary change. Not saying we will have one, but potentially we do need to look at that because the amount and the size of the addition should be considered based upon the deed for the actual enrollment. And as I stated earlier, we are not in this CIP proposing to add new seats. We are looking at how do we modernize, provide more safety and educational upgrades to the current seats we have. So we do have a dollar amount in here that we've put forth, you'll see, but that is one that will definitely need to be reconsidered as we look at the upcoming CIP for Swanson. The important thing is that we are making a commitment in this CIP to invest in making sure that Swanson students and staff have the spaces that are high quality, safe, and accessible in an environment that meets all of what's expected for a true middle school. The next slide, you'll see that in, you know, obviously those are two schools, but we know there are a lot of other critical infrastructure needs across our schools as a whole, not just within modernization projects. Matter of fact, based upon our facilities condition assessments that we have available online, we face approximately $67.7 million in needs for systems that allow them to operate safely, reliably, efficiently, and have students and staff feel comfortable in those spaces. So this proposal in here is to make sure that we're also thinking about major building systems that are reaching the end of their useful life. So we're looking at our HVAC systems in some schools, lighting in others, stormwater situations, building envelope, roofs, et cetera, to make sure that while those may not always be visible to the community as such an immediate need, they are among some of the most important needs of buildings for us to maintain them. And they definitely, of course, direct they affect the quality and safety of the learning environment for students and staff. So we have a very good, clear data-driven framework that prioritizes these needs strategically and responsibly, and it will allow us to focus resources where they have the greatest impact on system reliability and operational efficiency. And so while we will we've set aside some dollars you will see in the school board increase this in the their proposed CIP to have funding available to address these major infrastructure needs as we look at our framework, but also as things may pop up during that time because things may become about that will need us to have the addressing of their maintenance right on time. So this proposal does protect the community's investment in our schools and also let them know that we're not just focusing solely on Thomas Jefferson and Swanson. We are mindful of all the other major infrastructure needs that we will need to address. On the next slide, you may have recalled that we didn't just have Thomas Jefferson and Swanson as two schools that we had looked at. There were three other elementary schools that were identified in the previous CIP as projects to look at. When we addressed all five of them, we recognized Swanson and TJ needed to be prioritized. And Barrett, Taylor, and Randolph, we saw that based on what we're seeing and the feasibility studies that were done there, it was really the aging infrastructure systems as the primary drivers for the capital needs for those schools. We also are aware that we do not need to create new elementary seats, and so creating some of the feasibility studies you saw some of the plans showed additions or brand new buildings that increased seats we recognize that was not something we needed to put our resources towards so what we did need to do is make sure that those schools had those aging infrastructure needs addressed and so as a result the proposed cip does really for these three schools target the replacement and modernization of the conditions and the needs of each building so that we're making sure that they are safe, accessible, and also mindful of the fiscal constraints. Because if you looked at all three of these and the feasibilities that you saw, very large dollar amounts. We chose not to put them into the priority as a whole school project, but to look at those actual needs at each school and to invest in how we would move that forward in the outer years of the 10-year plan. So thinking about enrollment on the next slide, you can see that we continue to show relatively minimal overall change across the division over the next 10 years, but there are some important shifts within grade levels that continue to influence our long-term planning and our facility divisions. At the elementary level, enrollment projections show a gradual downward trend that is consistent with what we're seeing in lower birth rates and some of the changing demographic patterns. At the same time, though, what we're seeing in secondary enrollment is it is expected to experience near-term growth as larger student cohorts continue progressing through our system from elementary into middle and high school. These trends directly shape how we're approaching the CIP and also where we are prioritizing our investments where you see the middle schools as the primary drivers. And at the elementary level where we're seeing that downward trend, you saw why we did not propose to have large infrastructure changes there other than the necessary ones that are needed for safety and for accessibility at those schools. But we need to make sure at the secondary level that we plan for those programmatic demands associated with larger student populations. And so we're looking at that. And that's really a driver for thinking about Thomas Jefferson as we're seeing that happening there with those smaller class sizes. There's really a need to address that larger middle school population coming. There are three primary factors that continue having the greatest impact on enrollment projections over time. Obviously our historical and our projected birth rates, our partnership with you all in the future housing development that we see, and then the cohort replacement patterns as students move from kindergarten through 12th grade. But taken all together, these trends reinforce the importance of maintaining a flexible and data-informed approach to our long-term planning while also making those strategic investments

for the current needs that we know of in our buildings.

On the next slide, you will see that we decided, we took a little moment to think about our financial approach to the CIP. And we're operating in a more constrained financial environment, we all know this at this table, which means that we can't just think about the traditional way we funded our projects. So rather than relying primarily on new bond issuance alone, which is what we've pretty much done, and even though we've had the change to how we do that, our approach in the CIP emphasizes flexibility, disciplined planning, and responsible use of some of the available resources we already have. So what does that mean? That means using some of our capital reserves, our project closeout funds differently where appropriate, as well as capturing savings by issuing debt only when the project funding is actually needed rather than advance. And that's the partnership. that we've been working with Mr. Schwartz and his team on. We're also gonna continue exploring a grant's energy incentives. We are looking forward to some of the energy incentives that we will get through our HVAC replacements and roof placements, et cetera, and some strategic partnerships that can help support capital investments and reduce long-term borrowing pressure. So our approach is really thinking about responsible stewardship, investing in safe, reliable, and modern learning environments, and thinking about the long-term financial stability for our managing of our public resources. So on the next slide, it's very hard to see when you look at the numbers, but you can see on the next slide that this shows the project funding timeline and a detailed outlook over the next 10 years in this project. Under the funding sources, you will see 167.1 million in approved but not yet issued bond funding. This reflects the bond authorization that we got in the 22 and 24 bond referendum. And so for specifically for fiscal year 27, we are projecting a need to issue only 46.25 million of that. And so that's helping us to reduce in what we have for our debt service. With OLAT, you'll see additional funding sources that reduce our reliance on new debt. So our capital reserve, we currently maintain a capital reserve balance of approximately 25 million. And in fiscal 27, we're proposing to draw down 4.9 million of that reserve to fund some of the projects with useful lives of less than 20 years. Those are things like the athletic fields that we are partnering with you on, Gunston, Wakefield, Washington Liberty, Williamsburg, as well as like some of our new PA systems that we talked about. So that will help us from the capital reserve. Using the capital reserve for the shorter lifetime projects help also avoid financing them through the long-term debt of bonding. And in future years, we will use this reserve to help reduce some of the other projects that we might see that are under the 20 years. The capital reserve would then be replenished through bond premiums, which we typically receive at roughly $1 million for every $10 million in bonds that are issued. So that would help us to replenish that. We also see for the budget debt service savings. In fiscal year 27, we are recommending using $8.5 million in unspent debt service funding already included in last year's budget. These savings were achieved through close coordination with the county to better align construction spending with the timing of the debt issuance. And so we do not, we didn't issue the debt just to have it. That has helped us to have $8.5 million to address some of our needs. We also will be thinking differently about how we use some of our closeout funding. So we're proposing the use of 9.4 million in project closeout funding in fiscal year 27, again, to further reduce the need for borrowing. The third quarter financial report, which will be presented at our next school board meeting at June 18th, will confirm whether allocating these funds at this level remains prudent, but it does at this time seem that it is something on track that we should be able to do. The other thing we're very proud about is thinking about the federal clean electricity investment credits. And the funding source that you see on this chart is coming from that credit. It's supporting energy efficient and sustainable construction projects at Hoffman Boston, Jamestown, and Oak Ridge. And through those projects, we are expected to qualify for about $18.79 million in reimbursements in fiscal year 28 and 29 through that energy project. credit that we can then use for future projects. The remainder of the spreadsheet you can see documents the projects to be financed and completed. The color coding that you see is connected to the bond referendum that year. So if something is not color coded, those are the items that we are not and I want to make that clear. because we do know that enrollment is not going up, and we've heard a lot of concern and questions from the community about let's not invest in new seats, and we are not. So none of the projects listed here does that. These investments again are solely focused, and I've said it again and again for a reason, on improving learning environments and in bringing our facilities in alignment with standards, accessibility, and safety. As shown on this slide also, the plan remains well within the county board's debt service ratio guideline of 10% of the school board's total budget. You can see that line there and you can also see the projected debt service for our fiscal year budgets that we would have to be addressing. So on the next slide, another important part of this work is how we strategically fund and deliver these projects over time. So as we move forward through the CIP, we're gonna be looking at a range of financing and delivery options rather than relying on single approaches I've already talked about, not just traditional bonds, energy performance strategies, and some of the other ways that we would capture our budget savings and our reserve. Each option comes with its own benefits, considerations, and the level of risk, so our focus is really on matching the right strategy to the right project. And so what we're trying to do is take a more flexible, coordinated approach. We're trying to prioritize those high impact investments. We're trying to manage our costs responsibly. We're trying to be sustainable and energy efficient so that we can then reinvest some of those credits back into our projects. And again, the broken record here on this and the tagline here is not having to use all of the project funding from solely bond issuance. The last slide here is just simply to talk about the schedule. We've already talked about that June 18th is our next opportunity where the school board will act on their proposed CIP. And I'm sorry, there's one more slide after that, which outlines for our community how they can engage with us. And if they have any questions or concerns, we do have a page with all this information. We had a public hearing last night with 10 individuals who spoke primarily speaking around Thomas Jefferson as their main concern. And we are going to continue to move forward and the school board will be taking more feedback and comments and they'll be making decisions on the final CIP and I'll turn it over to our chair Zechra Sutton for any last comments before we open it up for questions.

Thank you, Dr. Duran. I just want to highlight a couple of things because again our timeline is a little bit ahead of where maybe yours is but the superintendent proposed his CIP on May 14th a couple of weeks ago and then this past Thursday, one week ago, yes, one week ago, the school board, our process then has the school board propose and approve our own proposed CIP. So this past week, we made two amendments to what the superintendent proposed on May 14th. They were both related to the costs of things, estimated costs. So one of them was to go from a $60 million bond to an $80 million bond. And the primary purpose of that was to, if you were to look at the chart again, there was sort of a little bit, it looked like a pause before we would resume funding for those kinds of projects. And we know that we can't, pause on those kinds of projects. So while we have the HAM and the Williamsburg and the other projects outlined, there are ones that we know need to follow immediately after those. And so the increase in the bond for this coming year was to allow us to make sure that we could continue that momentum and the trajectory of that work without any interruption to it. And then the second change was really about the options that we'd like to explore when it comes to the funding of the Thomas Jefferson renovation project. So the superintendent staff had provided us with a range, and I'm going to It's 168 to 182 million, something like that. Something along those lines. So what was in the chart originally was 168 167 and change million for the Jefferson renovation project, the board came back and said we'd like to look at some options at a lower cost estimate. And so we dropped that down fairly significantly. We dropped it down to 130 million and then if you were to look at our work session yesterday, we began the conversation with staff about where might we land with that project. Is it gonna be at the low end, at the high end, somewhere in between? And so we're exploring all the details of that right now. So those are the updates. So with that, Mr. Chair, I will turn it back over to you.

Thank you very much for those framing comments, proving that even if I haven't watched every minute of the CIP work session, Text messages can work where I learn. And try not to surprise anyone. We are thrilled that you are here and came. And I'm struck by the thought of the easy opportunity to thank you for the partnership and criticize Fairfax, which has an entirely different process, which you referred to, which like to be regional partners, but it's also the case that at our last work session, we talked about the partnership that we have and grateful for that. So we have, a loose outline, and I'll certainly see if there are questions. I do want to start with one on TJ, which just to get a little bit of a sense, it's the interplay between slide 13, which is the one on TJ, and slide 19, and picking up just where you, where you kind of framed us on your working through the details and the options on TJ. And just so that I understand the context of when decisions might all have to be made because we have not seen the scaled spreadsheet that we get just yet. We are all eagerly anticipating the county side of this. but, and you guys have all looked at it maybe, but I have not gone in detail and it will get iterated again and again. The decisions on how you would calibrate TJ, I see the green in slide 19 on the three green boxes that would come after the 2028 referendum. are there decisions that could be time flexible in the sense that you need to have more certainty but not total certainty perhaps on some of the components of this because I really appreciate that you're looking at tiers and you're looking at you know these four bullets on slide 13 of what you want to address there are physical necessities for it to be safe for children and then there's much discussed the desire to have natural light, but how do those fit together and more specifically when do those decisions need to be made or are there some that need to be made now and some later?

So serendipitously, I asked of staff for our work session yesterday to talk us through the timeline of how these projects go from this moment now to fruition. So I will speak from memory from yesterday's presentation, although I'm a little tired, so. What we do at this stage, obviously, these are not project budgets, these are not baked plans. It's really cost estimates at this point, and it's sort of the range of factors that we want to make sure are going to be addressed. Once the board moves forward with essentially what's often just a cap that we say to the staff, we will say, And if you all may recall, none of us, I believe, none of us were on the board at the time that the cap was set for the Grace Hopper Center, and the school board said, you may not spend more than this amount of money. 182 million, and we are under 182 million for that building. So thank you to the staff. But we will at this stage reach a point where we have essentially what is a cap and and a strong sense of the elements that we want to make sure that we are including and as the superintendent said all of the work we are doing right now is prioritizing building systems safety and security accessibility and our favorite phrase, ed specs. The ed specs are really what are the best classroom and educational space designs for whatever type of school it is, if it's an elementary school, if it's a middle school, if it's a high school. With the Jefferson Project, there is a lot of There are a lot of different possibilities of how we configure the interior space of that building. What we know is that when we start to reconfigure the interior space of that building, we're gonna lose seat capacity. because what we have right now is a building that is not designed for what it's being used for and the classroom space, the ed specs are not meeting the needs of the middle school. So the addition that you see is to provide new classroom spaces to account for what will be lost in seat capacity when we actually redesign the interior of the building. So I think what's at play here in the decision making will be some of the decisions about how we want to spend the funds, whatever the cap is, to address as many of the needs in that building as we can. So we will go through all the phases of design and permitting and all of the different things that take us several years, as you all know, because you do this too, several years to get through. I will say one of the things that is not currently included in the 167 million is the geothermal wells, which we would like to do on the property, but it's not in that funding yet. So there are some things where we are still considering what that cap, what that large number needs to be in order to make sure that we are meeting as many of our goals as possible. Is that helpful?

Very helpful, and I did not know that you asked that question yesterday, so that's serendipitous. That's very lucky. Colleagues, I'll certainly open it. The only thought that I think hopefully is relevant for our public, just to say out loud, the CIPs both have 10-year horizons, but they work in two-year chunks because of when the bonds are passed. So you lock in the next two years, and that's the process that both the schools and the county are going through, Then you iterate on and you iterate more on the three and four years than the nine and ten years and so With that colleagues open for your questions. I see I share coffee and mr Spain will start with vice chair coffee today and then mr. Spain and then we'll come back to this side Thank you

And to go against what Matt just said about the out years being perhaps less the focus, I just noticed that the referendum years in 2032, 142, and then a pretty precipitous drop down to 20 million for the final year of referendum within the CIP, and I think I don't fully remember everything from last CIP, but I think that's a substantially lower number than we've seen in the school CIP for quite some time. And I just, as we think about how our out years look and inflationary pressures and how the school CIP folds into our CIP, I'm super curious how confident we can be that that number stays close to 20 million.

I would not be confident at all. Zero, Ms. Turner's indicating zero. I think we, it is a question of as we revisit our facilities conditions over the next five to seven years probably, we will start to surface what kinds of things are gonna need to go into those farther out years and I don't know if others have comments.

I would just add, We received in 2023 a really comprehensive facilities report on pretty much every facility. We went forward with five feasibility studies. There are a number of major infrastructure projects and probably arguably bigger projects that approach full-scale renovations that may need to be done that we just haven't identified yet because we were spending effort on five feasibility studies. In addition, we have received feedback from the community at various times that it ought to be a little bit more clear about the order of priority of any project that's been identified at any point in time. And we are undertaking some effort to do that in a more digestible way. I won't say transparent because arguably the information is out there. It's just hard to understand and hard to dig through. and not necessarily key to what a community member who just wants to send their kid to school would wanna know about. So that's something that we have underway with our new advisory councils that we encourage everyone to sign up for online.

And I'm sure that everyone interested will follow your advice, and they will sign up, and they'll get the information. We have 100 applications in the past couple weeks, yes.

I would also add, just to go to another point that you made, which is that we certainly are aware of costs, and I think there is a standing, I would argue we have a standing joke among us that any time we have members of our facility staff in the room, we ask them, how much is a roof cost today? because maybe that's just Ms. Bryant, but there has been some ups and downs in the past year or two on the costs, and so we anticipate also when you get into those out years that you're adjusting for those kinds of shifts that we know are coming.

more or less the interpretation of the 20 is filling out the currently identified needs without attributing for what will certainly be soon to be identified needs.

Yeah, I mean, I think I might view it as 10 million is in the major infrastructure line for the foreseeable future because we have a foreseeable future of major infrastructure needs and we have five identified renovations that may eventually get done and then we would have more after that because our buildings are ever aging.

Yeah, absolutely. No, I think that's really helpful for just understanding what we need to read from this table. I don't know, Dr. Drawn, if you want to. Great. And then my second question is around the public-private partnerships concept. It doesn't feel like this is a fully-baked kind of thing, but I guess I'm wondering what conceptually that means. Are we talking about Arlington Community High School being co-located with the Amazon headquarters, or are we thinking co-locating with affordable housing development, for example? I think that would be of interest to us as a board, but I know it's super preliminary, and I know that there are not a ton of details, but I just think that's an interesting, as we all look to innovate together.

Yeah, I mean, you've heard me say many times over that the co-location of housing, workforce housing in particular, would be so incredibly desirable. At the same time, we're not building schools right now, and so the opportunities that we would have to do things like that that particular example would fall when we were building schools. It's funny, we just were, the other day, referring to the Arlington Community High School partnership with Amazon really is a public-private partnership. There's also the funding model that most people talk about when they're talking about P3s, they're talking about the funding model of public-private partnerships, and we, I think, at the moment, don't anticipate using that, for example, for the coming year, we're going to use traditional bond funding, but certainly we have been thinking a lot about and talking a lot about what might come down the road in future years. There are upsides and downsides to that, and some districts, Prince George's County, Maryland is one that is often cited where they built, I think it was 16, eventually 16 new schools. Again, we're not building new schools, and there was a lot of different circumstances in that project, certainly there are possibilities down the road.

And just to add a little bit in terms of the financing model and what it means to your question, I was very happy to attend all the facilities advisory committee meetings during which FAC brought in external advisors and companies who do this for a living. So some officials from Prince George's who worked on the project, the private companies that worked on that project, other speakers who are just experts in the field. And basically what that model entails is that rather than going to taxpayers and getting public funding and adding to our public debt, you're going to the private market. So and looking at a longer term horizons. So P3 models tend to be 30 years or more. The deals are structured in such a way that the company basically takes over the construction and maintenance of, yes, new builds, but also remodels. So I think it's also important to clarify because this has been raised a few times and was raised yesterday in our work session. It's not just for new builds. that was made very clear to me by the same companies that while they recommend what they recommend is new builds because they tend to be the ones that reach, there is a dollar threshold for those models to make sense, which are in the hundreds of millions of dollars, so that tends to be new builds, but it's not that it must be a new build, it's that it needs to reach that financial threshold for this method to make sense. So in theory, yes, I mean it could be applied to remodels, if you have a number of schools being remodeled at the same time, or other major infrastructure investments, it can apply, but the important thing is to meet that threshold.

I'm just gonna add, not specifically for schools, but yesterday the same question was raised, that potential, as my colleagues say, other major infrastructures that as we are looking at the carbon neutral by 2050, the resolution that was adopted by the county board and the school board, that potentially could be, knowing that we have fiscal realities, potentially could be a partnership for P3 to build parking garages that would allow sustainability if we were to change our county and school board fleet to electric buses or electric cars. So that magnitude of a project might be creative financing and something we could look into, not for today, but something we could think about because 2050 will be here before we know it.

Thank you. I'm mindful we have a balance here. Our agenda, we both wanna get the issues out like that issue on P3, which I don't know a ton about, so it's very helpful. And we have some time at the end wherein we can get questions. So colleagues, still we'll keep going and we'll go to Mr. Spain and then come back here and we can take fulsome time and we can consider making sure we put Mr. Schwartz on the hot seat. I mean, sorry, turn to Mr. Schwartz.

He loves the hot seat. One, thank you to the school board and everyone for being with us today. I just have a few, one question, but first let me start off with some accommodation, I would say. As I look at your CIP, I think about Hoffman Boston and the investments you're putting there. Last major renovation I think is in 2000, so you're talking about 26 some odd years. So thank you for doing that. And to the aspect of geothermal, be interested to know like what type of credits, if anything, comes out of that as well. But that's just something I want to kind of tee up because it's noteworthy. And to Grace Hopper, you know, Mr. Superintendent, when you started your conversation, I can't help but see that building every day when I go home. but I like what they're doing. There's two questions. One is gonna be kind of generalized about, there's a lot of conversation that is going on in this community about MPSA. So as we have denoted here in your CIP, If there are any concerns or remaining kind of like concerns out there about MPSA, despite what you've put or laid out in your CIP here, we'd love to have some conversation or hear those concerns openly from you. And lastly, again, I want to commend you with TJ. TJ of course is another hot topic issue within our community But I will tell you when you're dealing with the building itself that is very old That has a lack of windows small confined space And then honestly in one of the most diverse areas of our community I commend you on what you're trying to do in that regard It's not that whether we need to invest. It's about how much modernization we're gonna actually put into this, right? So whether we get to three stories or whatever it may be. So thank you there. My question about TJ is because it's somehow garnered a lot of conversation, would you say, Mr. Superintendent, Madam Chair, that TJ, where does that rank against other APS capital projects? Is it your number one, two, three? If you had to roll those out. Just want to hear that.

Want me to go first? Okay. TJ is number one.

Thank you.

And what I would say. He's inviting you to stop. What I would say regarding MPSA, and I think my colleagues would agree, and of course, if they don't, they can speak up, but I would say we hashed out a lot of our concerns about MPSA when we did our direction last fall. We had a lot of conversations about it. We had a lot of conversations with community members about it. In our current conversations about the CIP and getting to a vote on June 18th, we're not really talking about it so much anymore because we really worked out those concerns in the fall. But I will defer to my colleagues if they have concerns lingering that they'd like to mention.

There are no additional pathways to consider a different location for MPSA. The only thing that might change will range between 41 and 45 million dollars in terms of the numbers that go on this chart.

That's good to know. I would just close by saying, you mentioned earlier about that sweet spot, whether you're between $130 million, $170 million as relates to TJ. Figure out what that delta is going to be, because you're talking about a larger sum of money, and also what are we not gaining, depending whether we do $130 or $170. It'd be good to kind of understand that in the big scheme of things, because it has a significant amount of money, whatever way you decide to go.

I would just like to clarify that just because we landed on the numbers, that doesn't mean the community is there or ever will be there. And that does, we as a board weren't around when the Heights was built. And we very much have to deal with repercussions of the Heights building. We were under different circumstances. Circumstances around the county and the budget have changed. The financial situation has changed, and we need to be mindful of that. And that mindfulness is what's gonna help shape how we handle things as a board in the future to come. I say it all the time, but I grew up here when we closed schools the first time. And that had a direct impact when the enrollment grew. Our enrollment is going to stabilize. You're going to see the replacement ratio. But at some point in time, people like my parents, who still own their house, are going to either move into assisted living or they're going when they pass. There is going to be generational turnover. So we need to anticipate the fact that this is temporary state, and it will continue to grow in the future, and then it will level out, and then it'll grow again. It's cyclical in nature. And so we have to keep that in mind as we're thinking about the buildings and the facilities. We're not just making decisions about today, five years from now, or 10 years from now. We need to be mindful of the fact that some of these decisions that we're making are to impact things 30, 40, and 50 years from now. So we just need to be considerate and mindful of all those aspects.

That's why you're our auditor. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for adding that context. I'm open to either of you. Mr. Karantonis.

Okay, fine. So first of all, thank you for everything. The presentation and the updates and the continuous dialogue, this is always very good. I want to always preface that by reminding all of us our role here is not to scrutinize the CIP, is to be informed about your CIP. Our role is to see whether it fits in the overall fiscal projections of the county, and this is where I'm going to start. So the debt service that is added now over the next three years about, you know, over today, but plus five, plus five, plus five, so it's about a, and knowing, and having seen how our budgets are forming right now and how flat our revenue is, best case flat, actually, tending to be you know, challenging as we go. This would add a, you know, to start with a, you know, half a cent, 0.7 cents to our tax rate. That should be very clear. There is not, and we have that with our own CAP, the additional debt service, even if it's completely managed inside the next budget, et cetera, we have to assume that we will have to ask directly the taxpayer to support that. It's not the other revenues that we'll do. So for this reason, I just ask both our county manager and the superintendent, how do we plan for that, and how can we be best strategic about that? It has to do a lot with cost containment, strategic thinking, et cetera, because just the revenue source is more challenging to deal with, obviously.

Well, first, a couple of the things that we showed on, what slide was that, the slide where we talked about some of the changes we've made, I think that's been a big part, working closely together with the county in terms of when we actually draw down the bonds, thinking about those energy efficiency credits, how can we work forth projects to where and we're designing them to make sure we're meeting the requirements so that we will get those credits back to invest. And then we will need less funding from bond and debt service. How do we think about how we can try and get savings so that we have capital? closeout funds, so we have capital reserves being more intentionally used, and what we've done in the past with our closeout funds, we have not dedicated them towards our facilities, we've put them aside in budget reserves. How do we maybe identify some of that, thinking about some of our reserves, we've also, I know the board is considering, bring forth their final budget? Do we think about some of our reserves that we're using towards some of our minor construction, minor maintenance projects? Because that would help us for long-term issues, addressing it now. So there's a variety of things that we could do. But number one, and Mr. Swartz can comment on this, we are working very closely, even that timeline that we did in the project funding, we worked very closely on all those numbers so that we were not putting out numbers that were gonna be in conflict with some of the county. but if you want to add a little bit about that. But I think it's exploring other financial options of how we are approaching it, like I mentioned on that one slide.

And I would say that, and this will be part of my presentation, schools have been very intentional, at least the superintendent has, about making sure that the year-over-year increase in debt service falls into a more sustainable range so that we get the bill from schools about what it is that they have to pay for debt service. And the superintendent and his staff have worked very closely with us to make sure they're aligned with what we presented to you.

Yes, I just wanted to say that I really appreciate that, but we all together have to recognize the challenge here. The growth patterns of Arlington don't support the automatic adaptation of the budget to the increased demand that we are already front-loading right now, because we have to front-load. Because we have to fix the schools. We have to finish the projects that are ongoing right now. A couple of very quick remarks. So DJ is a huge project. I mean, I'm interested in the details of actually pulling it off. I also hear... A school member, Tapia Hadley's reference to P3 projects. This is interesting not only for schools, it's also interesting for us in general. It's also a completely different financial system to manage there. There is one thing on Grace Hopper. Grace Hopper will need in phase two, or I believe phase two, an additional parking garage. We are right now looking in our CIP whether the current overflow parking in the future location of the Columbia Pike Library will be available for a longer time. Because one project that we had contemplated there may be materializing far beyond that. further down the road, which would produce, would alleviate the pressure to build, or partially, to build the parking garage now, it's another $15 million. I mean, that's old numbers. So just think about that. These are the little synergies and adjustments that can happen, but it's completely on your side to decide that. Finally, on Taylor Barrett and Randolph, We have been hearing constantly that there are too many elementary seats. I mean, there is a huge oversupply of elementary seats, especially in North Arlington, less so in South Arlington. Does this influence your decision, especially on Taylor? do you think that these are still consistent with the discussion about the current enrollment demographics as they set up for the system? That said, I would agree with Ms. Clark that we have to have in mind a number that is realistic, but but bigger than today, like the 30,000 student system, and act accordingly. But right now, we have this discrepancy, and I wonder whether this plays a role.

I wrote down your phrase, huge oversupply, because I always take objection. to characterizing our elementary seats in North Arlington with a huge oversupply. So average across the county is 88% capacity. So we are a small county, which means we can make adjustments and even things out if needed. But I think to the specific question, we do not at this time have a strategy related to Taylor that would involve not doing a renovation of Taylor. It's also pretty far down in the out years, so I can't say that we will not be tracking enrollment very closely and that we wouldn't consider different options, but it is not something that we are looking at right now and saying we're not gonna do that project because we have this huge oversupply of elementary seats. I don't believe that we do, and we certainly don't have anything that would warrant making a decision of that nature right now. So I don't know if my colleagues want to chime in on that at all.

Or not.

You don't have to, but you, just go ahead.

I guess I was just going to refer to the closer at hand example. which Dr. Duran presented in connection with Swanson. It's still two years out, and we are going to take a look at the size of the addition that needs to be built for Swanson in view of what may be seat capacity in other middle schools that could be redistributed. As Dr. Duran said, we are not committing to doing a boundary change or committing to not doing a boundary change, but in two years, we'll have the information closer at hand to address that issue. In four years, when we start looking at elementary school capacity, we may have new or different information or we may have the same information and a new or different approach to it or the same approach to it. But I think for that question, it's still a little bit in the future.

And I'll also add, we are in the CIP doing the Taylor Kitchen. So we are looking at some of the systems that are needed in terms of any HVAC, any electrical. There will be things that we'll continue to do because we wanna make sure that the experience for students and staff are appropriate. So we are gonna make some investments over time, but we're not looking at the large major changes in investments, as Mrs. Turner said, until appropriately when it comes up. and then also making sure that we're looking at the enrollment at that time. And so even for TJ with the project, we're looking at the current enrollment of TJ. The addition that we're adding is not adding new seats. It is making sure we're addressing the current enrollment and the current enrollment projections. So we're looking at it each time as it's appropriate to ensure that we're not adding more and that we're not having to change it in a way that would negatively affect our population.

All right, thank you. Thank you, Dr. Duran. To be clear, I never insinuated that we have to take a school out of the system. I still support keeping all the buildings to the best possible usability here. What I'm trying to think through is what other uses we can see in this building. So I would never raise a flag on the kitchen interior because if it's not for a school use, it can be for so we have enough needs to manage here.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Karantonis. Ms. Cunningham.

Thank you guys for coming over and being with us today really appreciate it and it's always nice to visit the Syphax as well I had question about Kind of the construction approach and swing space approach for projects So I know for the last couple decades in APS. We've wanted to keep buildings occupied all the way through and not move to swing space We've also not always wanted to build up very far. And so I'm curious, I couldn't find it in looking through the TJA scenarios, but did you consider a scenario which would have a smaller footprint and go up higher rather than trying to retrofit a very challenging building that has solid but old bones that are configured differently than we might do it now?

I think that probably falls within the next couple of phases of design work. I see. This model's one that's a three-story. But when we move through the project, we certainly would potentially look at other models.

To clarify, is there a possibility of a complete replacement, which is often cheaper and easier to do than retrofitting a 60-year-old building?

A complete replacement, like a brand new site? Is that what you're saying?

Yeah, take the building down and reconfigure it for modern use.

That is much more costly in terms of the projected amounts. We also have to look at the land was an issue that we've discussed. So that has been something we explored, but thinking about what was most cost efficient and what we could do within the current.

So you did look at a scenario that would swing kids out of TJ for a few years and allow a complete rebuild?

No. No. Maintain them in where they currently are and having to build somewhere else on that side. Okay.

So just lifting that up because, you know, renovation is harder than new construction. Moving kids is, you know, is a challenge, of course. But I think Alexandria's new high school, which is 5,000 kids, was something, it's a couple years ago, but $150 million hard costs for a brand new building. And I think... We've all had renovation projects at work and at home, and they don't always go as planned, and you don't always get the end product that you're looking for. TJ, I feel like, is a very dramatic example of that, because what you're showing right now is a very large addition just to keep the same number of kids. I as a taxpayer and as a board member would be interested in that analysis because if it's the case that we need to find 40 or $50 million sooner to get that space really right for the next 40, 50, 80 years, it might be the right thing to do.

Okay, you wanna ask a question of all?

Thank you. Thank you for your comment, Susan. I actually have a similar question that just came up from a constituent of ours that ties into, I think, Ms. Cunningham's. I guess this is more for the county manager and superintendent, and actually just maybe a polling question to our colleagues. The feasibility studies that we were presented with did have some different new build options, that range from like 187 to 200 million, so it's, to your point, yes, it's more, those were the numbers we were given, but not like drastically more, Would you all consider, I mean, I don't know, from the county standpoint, would there be an option, and this was the question I got from a constituent, to start a new build in the land next to TJ? Is that an option? And I would welcome feedback from the county board members.

I mean, I would say always can be. I think some of that was studied long ago with the fleet options. But again, I would be willing to consider that. But I'd also encourage us, you can take the children to another place for a few years and put it back on the same site or not.

But that sometimes... 1,100 middle school students is what we have right now at Jefferson. We have no... We have...

We've got a lot of office buildings.

We have nothing for serving 1,100 middle school students.

Okay, so you're still assuming you always have to keep kids on site. There's no swing space.

In this particular, not we always have to for every single project ever known, but in this. For every middle school project. In this project. This particular project. In this project that we are looking at right now, we do not. If we see an urgency, it is our number one priority. We do not see a way that we could swing 1,100 middle school students.

So you've studied options and none of them are palatable.

Yeah, and the other thing, as we've studied the options, is the actual existing building does have some elements that are positive in quality, so thinking about how we can adjust those, we recognize that we wanna maintain the cost by lowering the cost, excuse me, by maintaining the current building, because it actually does have elements. We've invested in it over time. What it does not have, good spaces, educational spaces, the small classrooms, But there have been other investments that we've done that we've countered that to say, well, should we tear this down? We've already invested this. We can add on the addition. And so the lowering the cost and being able to provide a quality environment, we did look at that.

Great. And my second question then is about the additional maintenance. And you'll see this on our side. We have this conversation as well. What known maintenance challenges are not funded in this 10-year period and are on the next decade that we know about? And there's always surprises to boot. Is there like a, not specific projects necessarily, but is there a dollar amount that like you were constrained by the debt service amounts to not do this time?

Keep in mind, we could not answer that question precisely for, I could not answer that question.

Those are at least two questions.

So I guess I would say that one, One question is, you could total up everything that's in our facility conditions assessment report and say, here's everything, here's the things that we have undertaken. Those are 2023 dollars. So when we would be doing them 10 years from now, we don't know necessarily what those dollars are gonna look like entirely. We also have... We have ongoing minor construction major maintenance work that happens, so things shift over time. So a project that is in the FCA from 2023 that says, you know, I'm gonna make up something. Wakefield High School needs a new roof. We may mitigate factors with the Wakefield High School roof over the next 10 years using MCMM funds and extend the life of it and it shifts. So that would be one way to respond.

I don't know if Ms. Turner wants to jump in or if that's... No, I mean, I think the answer is the FCA report from 2023 is what we have now in terms of identified project needs and total identified cost, which is very large because we would do it over time and dollars would change and all of that. And along the way, we will probably come up with new things because that was in 2023 and time is continuing to march on. So I think it's all out there. It's known beyond what's in this document. It's probably not in a digestible way in an order of priority that allows us to go beyond these $10 million placeholders in the far out years as Ms. Coffey was identifying. But, you know, we have a baseline to assume that when most of our facilities were constructed when they were constructed, they're gonna need a lot of work over time. We have some hard dollars associated with that that may change, and I do think once we get to a place where we're able to have a priority list that's understandable to people, nevertheless, things are gonna move up and down that list because things change, sudden issues are identified, which has happened to us in the past couple of years, our staff constantly works to mitigate so that we can extend the life until we get to a point where That project has made the top of the list and we're ready to do it

Great, thank you. Just one last question is really, I think we're seeing across all the school districts in the county as we try to do a better job with accessibility, with special needs, the ed specs go higher and higher square feet per student across the years. And I just want to name that because I think it is a burden for you then to cover the costs of the debt service, of the maintenance, of the energy costs. And on the county side, we've been working hard and maybe too hard for some of our employees in terms of how little space they now have to work in, but to try to reduce our footprint. And I think that'll be a conversation over the next couple of years. It's not just us at all. It's just, you know, we have invested pretty royally in the past and want to continue to be at the top of the heap, but that curve, alongside the curve of energy costs rising, of construction costs rising, of healthcare costs and technology costs, at least on our side, we're seeing that may need to shift programming expectations and sort of the mix of capital and operating, so I want to flag that and we'll talk to it a little bit in ours, but if there's anything you know, in terms of setting expectations for the community or rethinking.

I've found a way to get to yes. I also can't help but think about the conversations I heard from students and families about TJ and the current conditions that they are put in. And to any consideration. $50 million.

I would note that this reflects no new facilities. This investment is solely for maintaining what we have. We have 90 facilities in the county with about 2.2.

By the way, MS4 is municipal separate sewer. Something. Storm sewer system that the four S's are for.

Sure, Ms. Clark.

We're gonna allow Ms. Turner to speak briefly.

Oh, sorry.

Yes, sorry, thank you. Thank you for the presentation. Thank you for having us. I don't have a question. I just want to commend you on your excellent programs for our teens because I'm about to take mine to one at one of our newer, more beautiful facilities for training so that she can volunteer for the summer. Oh, thank you. Thank you for having us. I apologize. I'm gonna excuse myself a little early.

This isn't her program watching us?

She's sleeping in the back row.

Thank you, Ms. Turner. Sorry, back I think to Ms. Clark.

I guess my question comes down to, as we think about our aging facilities, which we both have, we share the burden of older facilities and the need for maintenance. When we think about it, I guess the aspect of this, it's a little different, is when we think about usage, all of our schools get used every day, even when the kids aren't there, because somehow we perpetually have stuff happening at our buildings. Are all the facilities equally used? I mean, you shared a couple that were of higher usage, detention centers and such that are 24-7 operations. I'm curious. if there's a ranking order for how these projects are prioritized, similar to ours, because in reality, our tax base, that's what pays all of our bills. So I think it's, as we think about this going forward, we presented ours, you presented yours, but really it's ours, right? Our students are your constituents, they're just not taxpayers yet. So I want us to think about in the future perhaps too how we can do this a little differently to share that burden because I think we get too frequently into the us versus them. This is our need, this is their need. It's all of our needs. They're all of our buildings. And I just would challenge us to think differently on that.

I mean, there's the how we can think differently, but first, we see different prioritization. Mr. Schwartz, do you wanna talk a little bit to how you think about prioritization?

Because I don't have the list off the top. Yeah, and so I think there was some conversation. We also do a facilities condition assessment. We haven't had our facilities work session yet, We're due to refresh our facilities condition assessment because I think for many of them they date back to 2019 yeah, I think so and so yours is from 2023 and you even said that information is aging and So we do try to rank our facility Conditions and we also and you saw some of this our board saw this with our parks we've also included an equity lens and looking at Not just the condition assessment, but where they're located in the community to try to build that into making our investment decisions. But to just say, Ms. Clark, I agree with you overall, which is that for our community, they don't particularly care. They think they're all county facilities, and they just want to make sure that all of them are working well for them. So I agree with the premise of what you're saying. And we're open to figuring out how we could do that in a different way. I think we're getting very close on it, but always room for improvement.

You want to make a comment? Sure. I don't have any questions because I plan to keep asking them. But I will make a comment. I love your strategy, Mr. Schwartz. I'll start on a high note. Congratulations to the county. I saw that the governor announced the IT firm's new headquarters will be here in Arlington, and that potentially will bring 450 new jobs. And so with that, hopefully it brings new families. which will allocate some of those seats, and we know that it's gonna be in Crystal City, which we may be looking at what that looks like in our CIP plan. I will just say publicly that I hope the community continues to give us grace, as it is Wednesday, June 3rd, and we still do not have a budget from the state. And as we work through contingencies around fiscal uncertainties, we do know what is certain. Our standards, our accessibility, our safety, our ed specs. And as our colleague Mr. Spain pointed out, our equity framework, and as you just said, making sure that we have the lens of who benefits, who's burdened, who's missing, how do we know, what do we do and what did we do? And I will just say that, thank you, Michelle, you pointed out about the alignment with the county and APS CIPs, and I think Ms. Coffey said it as well, that as we continue to collaborate and we continue to come around the table, recognizing how privileged we are here in Arlington to be able to have these conversations collectively.

And if I could add one thing, and I know I'm speaking for the superintendent on this. I know sitting behind me are a group of people who they promised none of them would roll their eyes. But Michelle on my staff and we have excellent staff for the superintendent. They work so hard together to make sure, because our one goal in life is to make sure that we don't bring issues to our respective boards. I'll let you figure out why. We work really hard on that. Thank you, Mr. Schwartz, that's very helpful. No, but we try very hard and I think we are very successful in working with each other and I think it shouldn't be taken for granted that the superintendent's CIP proposal and the county manager's CIP proposal worked well with each other, not by accident, but because our staffs have worked really closely with each other. And what happens every day in the use of facilities and the collaboration, it is no small feat to make sure that those things work really well with each other. So I know I'm speaking for the superintendent about how our staff is, and I'm speaking to you all for your staff. They are fantastic.

Thank you. There may be other questions. I do see Ms. Coffey's light to add.

Well, I was just going to comment on the Commonwealth's budget. We are being told there is a date. Well, hopefully June 15th, the conferees will meet and confirm the details, and they should vote no later than the 22nd.

Our board meeting is June 18th.

Yeah, it's not so helpful for most of us, but. We'll vote on a budget and then we will amend it.

Yeah, and there may be other.

We got it, we got it.

Are there other comments or questions? I do.

I do have a question. Go ahead. I. And then we'll come to you. A quick comment, I'm very, very pleased to hear about the work being done, and I understand it's long-term work on the redundancy in the water supply because there are people in this community where that keeps them up at night, including, apparently, Ms. Cunningham. Thank you for raising your hand over there. I'll send my friend to you to have a conversation. I also want to comment, Mr. Schwartz, you opened by saying this was a reasonable and balanced CIP, and I just want to say that I agree. I think that this is a reasonable and balanced CIP. I think we have a fairly reasonable and balanced CIP, and I think, again, it has testament to all the folks in the room that we've gotten to this place. We are also in a space of having these facilities that are quite and I'm very, very proud of the fact that we've prioritized getting the work done at Hoffman Boston and that that is approved and underway because that is a very valuable facility, very meaningful to us, and it's an old building. I wanna ask, and I sort of, I'm taking a deep breath in asking because I feel like I'm bringing up a source subject. It's also a subject that predates me on the board, which means it predates all of us on the board, But what is the status on the Trades Center? I'll turn off my mic.

Good question. What part of it?

Good question. Yeah, I'm going to start, and I'm going to ask Michelle to weigh in on that. So the Trades Center has had two optimization studies during my tenure with the county. And so there are various things, smaller improvements that are going on there. But I think that the biggest change has been how we're going to address the bus fleets. But I'm going to let Michelle sort of take a crack at that.

Sorry, Michelle. Yeah, no, it's a, we have done two different studies. I was just talking with DES recently. Do we need to do another, a third? And I think, you know, Mr. Chambers and Ms. Harbour were involved in the most recent round, which was a few years ago during COVID. I mean, it was, it is prohibitively expensive to make the improvements that we would want to make. I'm talking 300 to 400 million. And I think we all collectively realize that I think we collaborate well from an operational perspective at Trade Center. We make room for each other. I mean that, like, literally. And so it just didn't feel like making that investment, given what you all were facing, what we were facing, was the right time to do that. We are talking about kicking off a warehousing study to look at other options. So I would just say we're, like, picking away at... Chunks of the Trade Center and how we're you know, how we're functioning. I do think that with the construction of the The new art O&M facility that's helped a little bit on trades and a lot but we're and we also do some small minor investments like in the equipment Bureau and little things like that, but it is not the full-blown strategy yet. Do we have it on our work plan to restart talking about that? We need to. It's a tough conversation and a long one, but I think we need to get through some of the priorities again that are here first. I hope that makes sense. It's just a difficult one.

Yeah, I understand. And again, it's been going on for a long time. And we are happy to collaborate and be part of conversations. And we've had our own particular pain points. I think the parking for the bus drivers has been a perennial pain point. But there's a lot of larger scale issues as well. So I appreciate there's a lot of challenges. I get that.

Thank you. That's detail that I had. The art facility moving buses over there, there's still some finishing touches. And so that's a piece that I had been interested in. Ms. Cunningham.

I was actually going to comment on the same question. I think we, two years ago, I guess it was, during CIP, had a lot of conversation about transportation systems. Because part of that $400 million, and I'm sure it's more than that now because that was many moons ago, is the need for two separate bus systems currently, and those things are not small. They take up a little bit of space. So kind of to that question of longer term space utilization, of using everything that we have in the county to benefit everyone in the county, it's not an easy fix, and we talked through it two years ago about how not easy it is, but I think both boards need to stay engaged on that, because before we spend anything like $400 million We owe it to ourselves to have tried all the operational challenges and changes and innovations and challenges. I think a community member was riffing the other day saying, why don't we just have the middle schools compete for who can have no cars or buses, and we'll give them a cash prize or whatever. So I think we need to stay really focused on that and for each of us as we interact with other jurisdictions, steal liberally any successes that folks are having and invite our communities and families and students in particular who will inherit this bill to ride walk and innovate alongside us.

Thank you, we have multiple board members who are interested, on our side, are interested in weighing in, and I'm mindful that it's you guys to ask questions. I think we'll go briefly to Mr. Karantonis, and then Mr. Spain, and then Ms. Coffey. Is this on the same topic? Yes, it is on the same topic. Okay, Mr. Karantonis, same topic.

Yes, on the, the most, what I've seen in the last three years is that, I mean, I write 45, for example, and the number in the number of HB loan or heights school students who ride with me every morning has about tripled in the last three years. iRide is a huge success. and we have to really say that. I would love to see how many yellow buses we didn't have to add to the fleet because of that. 75 is full of kids. I mean, we ran three additional services to move students on that. And I think that we need to have a better, I mean we say that very often, but now it materializes because I see the students, the most important customers here, taking the services. It's not just us theoreticizing this, it is actually the students choosing to write the system, the art system in this case, and the WMATA system. So I would love to see this data coming back. We have seen significant reduction of pressure to upgrade the trade center on this side. And that's huge, because this three years ago, or two years ago, the narrative was a completely different one, and now it's a more manageable one.

That's what I want to contribute this. Thank you, Mr. Karantanos. Mr. Spain.

Yes, and I'll have a question. Look, Madam Chair, thank you. I just want some clarity because you stated, is your question germane to bus fleets or all things trade? Yes. Sorry. With that being said, the chair and vice chair has said it will talk sidebar because there's a lot of work that's being done down at Trace with the county manager who can talk about as far as infrastructure modernization that we got going on. Thank you, Mr. Chair and Vice Chair. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Spade.

Are there additional questions? I do have Ms. Clark asked a question regarding the levels of integration and I started out perhaps in politically critiquing and adjoining jurisdiction, but I do think that we are in a far better space, and that is to your, but I do think there's much more we can do. The law is the law with respect to accepting the CIP as it comes. And we're all human beings, and so the sum total of the conversations as we get into detail are very helpful. So this context that you shared, your framing, Madam Chair, about the 20 million is helpful. And I think that there's also a follow-on question that I will have for the manager on the amount set aside for TJ and what's next in light of the 60 to 80 million. But we have more work to do there, and I want to acknowledge that. I don't know that I have... of grand silver bullets as to how to do it. But I do think continued engagement is big. And I think all of us try to do a one-on-one once a month in addition to all the other pieces that we're trying to do. But there's the investments that we can put into the relationships and understanding is super important. So go ahead.

Let me just add to that. I think that the times that we have been able to identify keyboard members to work together on something and keep something moving forward I think is really advantageous. I mean Ms. Cunningham and I had a conversation on a walk about three years ago probably about buses and students riding art buses and if you know if we were in agreement that we would take that on and keep that going you know we could do that kind of thing a little bit more intentionally than we have been and I think there are plenty plenty plenty of areas in which we could take that approach. So I'll just toss that out there as a way to think about. The partnership doesn't necessarily need to be epically big. It needs to start with just some direct conversations and then moving things forward.

Great. We are fast approaching time to conclude, and I do not need to be the only one to conclude. Go ahead, Madam Coffee, Miss Coffee. Miss, hold on. I have an announcement to make. It is Vice Chair Coffey's birthday, so please recognize.

Yeah, as a new 31-year-old, I fear I can no longer represent the youth of Arlington. That's out of order. I've crossed over.

You are now in your 30s.

I know, it's a little less fun than 30, but no, I mean, I think my concluding comment is I really, We've moved on a capital perspective into just a bit of a different era these days around what we need to be doing and I think it's a different mindset to really be so focused on maintenance and reinvestment but that is what we need to be doing that is the correct thing for both the schools and the county because as we look at the lifespan of all of our assets and what we're doing deferring some of this necessary work is really going to cost us more in the long run and so Even though I know that there are a lot of people wanting us to dream big and add new things and come up with great, wonderful new future plans. And I think there's space for us to have those long, long term conversations right now. I really think on both sides, the focus is where it needs to be, which is at the phase of life that our community is in, it's reinvesting in what we have to make sure we maintain the quality and standards that our residents and our organizations expect out of our county services. And so I am very grateful that you all came out to visit us today and look forward to more conversations as we go.

Well said by our birthday leader. And I would just say... I do also think that there's, I hope you continue to remember that on the county side there is an appreciation for the value of facilities. I knew someone who grew up in the valley in Texas and literally she was told there were two schools on top of each other. Latino kids went downstairs. white kids went upstairs. That was her lived experience. So when I think of facilities, that is a painful story that is on my mind that I hope folks will tolerate as we work towards 530. But I think all five of us understand the need to invest to make sure are reinvest to make sure that facilities that are existing there are quality so that education can continue. With that, over to you, Madam Chair, to conclude us.

Thank you. Well, we do have a very strong commitment to doing all of the work we do, including our facilities work, with an equity lens. And in Arlington, we know that there are many reasons to do that. So I think Ms. Coffey made an excellent summary statement, so I'm simply going to say I agree. And I'm gonna thank you all for hosting us, and thank the county manager for organizing things here, and we are I'm delighted to keep at it, and wish us luck as we navigate graduation season next week. It will be quite intense.

Thank you, and both of you, thank you for concluding as well, and we are adjourned.