Board of Supervisors - workshop

that if something comes up

All right.

I'll call this joint meeting of the Board of Supervisors and the School Board work session to order. Call for a roll. Call, please.

Mr. Holroyd?

Yes.

Mrs. Noll? Here. Mr. Drury? Present. Mr. Rohn? Here. Mr. Shepard? Here. Mr. Chairman, you have a quorum.

I'm going to ask Zoran Pavichuk, Chair of the School Board, to do the same.

I'm calling on the meeting of joint special meeting with the Board of Supervisors of York County School Division to order for September 1st, 2026. And I would invite Ms. Yacouba to do the roll call for the school board.

Mr. Schaffer.

Here.

Mr. Pievich.

Here.

Mr. Richardson. Here. Mrs. Goodwin. Here. Mrs. Fairman. Mr. Chairman, you have a quorum.

Thank you. So it's welcome an introduction. I'm going to start with, we have a delegate in the room, Mr. Virgil Thornton. has joined us. So thank you, sir, once again for joining us. Looking forward to tonight's meeting. I think we are all bated breath in anticipation to hear more from the consultants on the school. We do have one item ahead of that. We're going to call on Commissioner of Revenue Sarah Webb to come forward. This topic is a series of letters that went out to 1,500 people in the in the community regarding taxes. And I'd just like some explanation on how that all came about and really what we can do differently in the future. Several of us have been receiving many calls that I think it's probably unnecessary if we had more information. So please.

No?

OK. No.

It's on. Is the button on for the microphone?

OK.

I can try to project. Okay. So starting off, I wanted to give just a quick five-minute presentation on some information on the commissioner's office, see if I can answer some of the questions you've had throughout the week. So first off, as you know, in the beginning of the year, in January, we send out our business license renewals and our business tangible filing forms. So with that, ahead of the new year, we do a data review of our personal property Sure.

I thought it was.

No, that's what I asked.

Where's our audio-visual people? Yeah, here. Fix this thing. Now we're going to have to have a mic.

It's not coming across on me. So the whole purpose of this is for people to hear it on TV.

It's just not amplifying here.

OK. All right.

Thank you.

OK. Ahead of the new year, we do renewals for, excuse me, we do data review for personal property accounts, our business tax accounts, and we do taxpayer portal creation. With that, the personal property tax relief is allocated to all eligible vehicles. So ahead of the new year, we remove the ineligible properties so that we can distribute the pot of money we get from the state equally. to eligible vehicles. The business tax accounts, for those, we make sure that all the information is up-to-date and accurate, so when we send out those filings, we're sending it to the right address and to the right business. The taxpayer portal accounts, for that creation, we make sure that you have a taxpayer portal, if you would like to use one, so that when you do your filing, you have the option to do an online filing and payment, if you would like.

I've had examples of somebody living in your county... This isn't. Sure. Why would they get a letter from York County for a business that isn't in the county?

Yes, so on the letter, so we don't receive the actual filing for your Schedule C. So the 1040 form that I have up on the screen is just for demonstration. We do not receive it in our office. We just receive a text file from the state that has information transmitted. So if you did not put your business address on your filing or a CPA on your behalf, did not put your business address, it'll revert back to your home address. So if you're a York County citizen living here, your businesses say Newport News, if you do not put it or your CPA does not put it on your behalf, it will revert back to your home address because the state doesn't have any other address and the FIPS code that they use is for York County. So it just means that if they have no address, it'll revert back to your home address. So if you were sent a letter, there are two reasons. We had two variations of the letters, one for personal property accounts and one for business tax accounts. So if you filled out part one, income, it just means that you have had business activity or an income in your county. And as I said, it doesn't mean that you owe taxes. It doesn't mean you have a business in the county. It just means that the state has said that you have grocery seats and income in your county, but it is not attached to a current business license. So when it flows through, we send inquiry letters to make sure that if there was a business operating, they had a business license ahead of the new year, and if you did not have a business or maybe you're at 1099 and the account maybe is attached to another business license account that doesn't link to your name specifically, then we just reconcile that and make sure for next year when that filing comes through, we make sure it's noted so that you don't get another letter in the future. then for the second portion um you see uh portion two section two uh you see line nine uh says car and vehicle if you put a deduction if you have a business used vehicle um if it's more than 50 it's considered a business vehicle if you are taking a deduction for that you cannot also have pptr from the local locality so if you if you have a business use vehicle it invalidates at the local level you can have one or the other you just can't have both so we sent out a letter asking folks if it was a business use vehicle they filled it out if it was more than 50 percent then the treasurer eventually will send you a bill for the relief that you received from the locality and that is true even if it's a non-profit or a I can't speak to every account, but I would say any business use vehicle would not be eligible for PPTRA. So I can't speak to every nonprofit, but I would say typically if it's a business use vehicle in the code, we're not allowed to give PPTRA to a business use vehicle. They may use it for a business, but it doesn't mean it's a business use vehicle. If you use it 49%, it's not considered a business use vehicle. It's considered a personal vehicle. We had about 1,900 mailings go out, which is a very standard mailing amount, very manageable for our office. Unfortunately, it had a high call volume and higher than expected foot traffic. Typically, our response is about 10%. This had a 60% response. So we've sent... When we have a business filing, our renewals, we send about 6,500 mailings plus the additional business tangible filings, and it's very manageable. So inadvertently, we had more calls than expected. So next year, for other mailings, not just this one, we will stagger the letter dates. We're going to make sure we have more personnel devoted to this task. We're going to update the letter clarity. Some of our tax types and modules have letters already coded in the system that we can't edit, we can manually send them out. But in the future, we'll make sure that any letter that we can edit, we'll make sure the language is clear. Anything that we can't edit, we'll take a look and see if we need to do a manual send or it can be automated. And then finally, system updates and revisions. We want to make sure that our processes are streamlined. This year, we had a new update, version eight of our tax software system. It changed the way we do schedule Cs. So it did take a little, it was a learning curve and it took a little longer to process than usual. That also hurt the call volume and foot traffic. So we've put a few efforts in to change the process for this mailing in future. But that's a start for now.

A couple questions, follow-up questions. Some people received more than one letter. Some received one letter that said they owe something, but then didn't itemize what they owe. So they're waiting. Why is there a difference? Why are we seeing some people asked to come in directly to the office and solve within 14 days? I just don't understand why we've had this variation across the community. And frankly, I don't know, and therefore I'm not at odds to understand or to give advice, and that's probably a follow-up. The supervisor team needs to understand when something like that comes up so that we at least can address it and send them to the right person.

Ahead of any next mailing that we do, large mailing, even if it's not this one, we can give you a briefing beforehand if you'd like it. For this one in particular, any account that is attached to, any business can have more than one account. So you can have different lines of business within your one business. So let's say you have an LLC, you can have a retail license. So I would say, without speaking about any specific accounts, you could have different business lines within one business. So that may be a reason why they received more than one. It may also be because they have more than one business attached to that home address. We've had circumstances where a husband and a wife have had two businesses. They received two letters. The letter is vague because we are asking for you to reach out to us for more information. It's the onus of the taxpayer to pay taxes if they do business in the locality. We were reaching out ahead of time to figure out why there was untaxed income. The alternative in other localities, maybe they just send a bill. And then at that moment, they send the bill. That starts the clock of penalties, interest. We reached out ahead of time so that we can figure out maybe if they need a business license, if they need it to have closed, so that we could figure that out before time. So we're not giving them only 30 days to file before.

Eventually, they would see a letter from you advising this is how much you need to pay.

Yes, the 15 days was just to reach out to us and say, you have a business. We would need more information to either close it, help you do a business license application. And from there, then we'll send a second letter after 15 days. So after the 15 days, the recourse is you'll get a second letter.

Is there any way to simplify the process?

Yes, there are many ways that we can use the Schedule C information. We just get a text file from the state. So the only way we can do it this year with the limitations of the system is- But next year you will- Yes, next year we're- Have some improvements in this. Yes, we're gonna look through each and every account Each year we do this, it will lower the amount of businesses. The first year, this year we did two tax years. Next year we'll only have one going forward. So it'll already, it'll half the amount of businesses. Thank you.

Let me ask one last question. The tax being collected is the state tax that you're not receiving, is that correct?

It's the localities, business license, and business tangible. So you may have... So if you file income on your Schedule C, you may say that you have $2,500 in income. So you'll have our first level business license, which is a dollar license. So you may owe a dollar to the locality. You may have already paid at the state, federal level, but you didn't pay at the locality level. So it's just indicating that that income was not taxed at the local level.

And on vehicles, how do you calculate that tax?

Sure. So the vehicles, there's no tax associated with it. It's just the amount that the treasurer's office would bill you would just be the amount of PPTR that you took from the pot that wasn't for your business vehicle.

If you're over 50%.

Over 50%, yep. You can use your vehicle for business, but if it's categorized as a business vehicle and you're taking a deduction, then you can't also have...

The president won't ask for that money back.

Yes. I got you. Correct.

I'm glad you addressed messaging quality because some of the feedback I got was related to I'm confused, do I owe taxes, do I have 15 days to pay a tax, what's going to happen? Felt like the message was a bit aggressive. I don't feel like they're doing anything wrong, so I'm glad you're addressing that. That will help smooth things out going forward.

Yes. Multiple of our tax modules have reset forms already, and we have to pay to override them or we have to find a workaround. We did find a workaround for next year, so we already have a mock-up of the new letter.

Do you do this every year?

We do data review every year. This is the first time since I've been in office that I have used this particular data. I think the last time it was sent was 2022. We are required to tax any individual that has a business income. That doesn't mean that we have to use this method to do so. So in the future, we're going to look at if this is worthwhile, if it takes too many man hours, And if it's feasible, we don't want people to call in and not be able to reach us or have to wait in line. So we do have to weigh it against the folks we have in the office and the hours available.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you.

No, I believe I have. I'm asking Mr. Bellamy.

Excuse me, thank you, Mr. Holroyd. Board members, as you're aware and at the risk of repeating myself in my last visit with the supervisors, last fall county staff requested we move from a six-year to a 15-year capital funding model to better forecast the broader picture. We agreed to this longer horizon because basically what is out of sight is out of mind. New projects six years out seem to feel more like surprises when they pop up in the out years. But the clock is always ticking, and maintenance deferred is maintenance that only gets more expensive and can snowball into other projects. We also believe that if we were going to go with a revised forecast, then bringing in a third party to evaluate our facilities and make some recommendations was a good idea. So we received funding approval in January and contracted in March for a study with HBA architects working with Sturtz and Associates. One of the components of the HBA study was to create a division-wide long-range facility plan recommendation for the school division to consider. Last time I was with you, I shared what HBA found were our six critical issues to address. Now we receive the final recommendations. So members of both boards, I think it's important to keep things in context here before hearing the highlights of the report. First, what you will hear from the consultants is a recommendation for the next 15 years. Expanding from six years to 15 is bound to look overwhelming, excuse me, both in project scopes and funding. Second, the report works from past data and projected enrollments, but we all know that things can and will change over time and with changing context, the best laid plans sometimes. And I also want to make it abundantly clear. We embarked on this study well before any knowledge of the 1% sales tax being made available to Virginia's counties this past summer. Now tonight we are deviating from our normal processes. We're here in this venue and full transparency to hear our consultant to report to us also because for us to fully explore all the recommendations, we may need to discuss our current MOU, you'll remember from 1993, which would restrict us from even considering some of the possibilities, especially the most pressing, which is do we go another direction with the Queens Lake Middle renovation now in very early design? But I want to share some reminders with our respective boards and our citizens. What follows is a recommendation. We will then do as we always do. School division staff will identify our needs and establish priorities. We will make resulting capital recommendations to our board after working alongside county staff on what appears fiscally possible. The school board will approve or not approve our initial CIP recommendations, and then we will submit those that are approved by our board to the board of supervisors as the funding agency that determines funding levels and timing. We all need to be mindful of our individual roles in that process. And one final reminder, no decisions will be made tonight. So with that, I would ask that we hold all questions to the end of the presentation to get its totality and that we would then be limited to clarifying questions on the consultant's work while they're here with us tonight from out of town. In the coming months, the division will make final decisions on how we'll proceed with the Queens Lake and Waller Mill projects. We will then annually evaluate what future projects the school board will pursue and what level the supervisors will fund. And so with that, I'd like to introduce Lauren Perry of HBA Architects and David Sturtz of Sturtz and Company for their presentation.

Thank you. Good evening. Thank you very much for having us here. I'm going to go through a presentation which we attempt to limit at about 25 to 30 minutes of talking at you and would like to have this be engaging so to the end here, we're trying to tell the arc of the story and the data and what it tells us. When we get to the end, we're trying to leave plenty of time for Q&A discussion clarifications. Okay. So we're going to talk about first of all, always looking back, what do we see in the data? How did we look at the data? What did we look at? What did it tell us? We're going to look at part of that main or part of that as a facility condition assessment. We look at every major system. We look at when it's expected. It's it's expected useful life. It's remaining useful life based on its current conditions. How much does that cost to replace that thing in that year when it ends its useful life? And then when you sum that up. What is the sum of the deficiencies, we call that, in time mean relative to replacement for what is the best investment strategy in a building for its long term?

We'll talk about what you have been doing.

and also how your principals are using 50s buildings for today's education. There's mathematical ways to show that, and it's really to their credit. We'll talk about what all of this means for options development, what was considered in everything from a CIP only, which is capital improvement plan, we're just going to keep everything the way it is and keep on going on, to a transformational approach. What does that mean? and then a final wrap-up. Before we get into this, I have done this a bit. I've been able to do this work in about a hundred different divisions, counties, districts across the country in this career. I always like to tell them what you're going to tell them, tell them, then tell them what you told them. What we're going to tell you is that you have invested your dollars to replace in time, and that the average building being built in the mid-50s, you've done that quite a bit. There gets to be a point when doing that same strategy provides you diminishing economic returns, financial returns, because the needs keep accelerating. Once you get to 70, 75, 80 years in a building, a building built in the baby boom was not built like the buildings or God willing, hundreds of years. Baby boom school buildings were not built that way. They were built with 50, 60 year lives, assuming a level of investment almost nobody has done because buildings don't beg for money at board meetings. And so they don't get to the level that they need. They need about an average building in that 50s, 60s era needs about 2% of its replacement value invested every year to keep up with how it was designed. Almost nobody does that. And so you get to year 60, 70, 80, and you've piled up what we call deferred maintenance, which is that maintenance that would have been on the 2% schedule, but was not actually invested in, yet piles up. And then you start looking at other factors. Okay. So we're going to say is you've done that very well. And that for a good portion of your buildings, starting at your secondary level, we recommend a different tact, which is start to identify the buildings that should be rebuilt, not renovated next. Hence the Queens Lake discussion. Okay, next. History of the facilities. All right, so this chart here gives a visual of your portfolio. Here's your schools. The dots are the diameter of the construction, year constructed along this timeline. So here's your pie, seven buildings built over 52 years, 184,000 square feet. 1954, 59, 61, 62, 77, 78, addition 2006. You go down the line, you can see where buildings started way back here, and we've been tacking on additions over time. This line is your Grafton line. This is the last time you built a full school. And then to the right, you see lots of tiny dots because you put lots of little additions on since 96. So just visually your portfolio of campuses are in And that is an economical way to address adequacy needs. Hey, we need a gym. Hey, we need a theater. Hey, we need more classrooms. In that time. And then 30 years goes by, and then they start to have their needs start rolling. All those little things, and you're starting to play whack with the needs as they come up across the campuses. And then you've got redundant systems Okay, but just visually, descriptively, this is the description of your portfolio of schools. Next. Here's the praise, part of the praise. When we just looked at the age of those systems, we expected to see a little over 400 million in deficiency needs in the next 10 years. We saw 262 in the field which means we're going in the field, I was in the field, Lauren's in the field, and two of our colleagues, and we're looking at roofs, boilers, HVAC, electric, floors, ceilings, lighting, everything, we're poking around. And we ended up making a visual check in the field how much useful light standard useful life have left and it's extended past what we would normally see because you've been taking care of those systems a la carte and a lot of your buildings so that's good you are stretching those pennies in these buildings and that has a benefit next slide is a wonderful graph that Lauren's partner Mike Ross put together that shows a facility condition index. That is the cost to repair all those deficiencies over a reasonable timeframe. I choose 10 years as the demarcation for most projects divided by the cost to replace that building. Okay, so if a building costs 100 repair divided by cost to replace.

Okay.

If you take a building, and we're going to get to this later with renovations, you do a major renovation, you take that thing like Seaford's renovation, right? We worked with David and team and quantified how much that cost by light item, 80% the cost of new of a new school. scrape everything off that isn't bolted in, and then you redo it, you're three quarters, 80% the cost of a new building, almost every day, almost everywhere. Okay, so what that tells you is when I'm at an 80% FCI, I might as well do a Seaford. Big major renovation, because if I just a la carte fixed everything, I'm gonna spend the same amount of money as if I just went in there and just reimagined the interior. in one case. So the closer you start getting to that amount, the more you start thinking, am I in a renovation era? Or am I in a just a repair era? What makes sense? As buildings age, you get to the 20 to 25 year mark, roofs, windows start to come due, right? You take care of those things, your FCI dips down, but you got other things that are building in the background that aren't a problem today, But in year 40, 45, 50 of that building, electrical, HVAC, some other MEP needs start coming due that have longer life cycles, and they're not cheap. Oh, by the way, now you got to do the roof again. So that FCI has gone up. Now you do the major MEP, the major HVAC, the roof again. Your FCI goes way down. And it creeps up for its second round of 25, mirroring this, but you start at a higher point. And then you do that and it repeats the cycle. And then you get to this magical year 80. And you do that major renovation. If you do that again, now you're left with the shell, the foundation that had a 50-year life that you could stretch to 70 and that's now in its 80s. And you're nipping and you're pointing and you're keeping things, jimmying things together. And then the other needs start coming due And now you're in, next click, now you're in the diminishing return zone where you're at the point where just continuing with that it's fixed, break it, you know, it's fixed, break it, it's broke, fix it kind of approach starts to not be so economical.

Okay.

You got a lot of buildings here. Okay. In this, we're approaching this point where the economics of continuing to renovate it don't add up so much as looking at a replacement. And there's other factors besides just the condition and cost that go into a decision of replace versus continued modernization. And I'm going to get to that here in a minute.

I think it's also important to note that it's not just that 80-year range. We do typically see the buildings get to that point at 80 years, but also that 80% of useful life left over. So some of the buildings that we've seen are doing better for their age and some are doing worse for their age. So it's not just, you know, at 80 years that's perfectly when it turns over. It kind of depends on the building and the amalgamation of the different buildings within it.

That's right. Are you, uh, what, and that goes back to the earlier discussion. Are you built with stone or are you built with brick that likes to expand and contract and expand and contract over time? Okay.

Next quick question though, is Grafton and Seaford identical? Grafton was completely rebuilt after the fire. Would that be a, would that be your 80% case?

So, so Grafton after the fire, so I don't have the numbers for what the deficiencies caused by the fire were, but that was just a full rebuild, unless I'm mistaken.

No, that was not a full rebuild. That was a renovation of air conditioning, I think roof at the time. The actual fire was just in the electrical room and we had smoke damage that had to get cleaned. That's what. And the insurance covered it.

The insurance covered a lot. I was just wondering whether that was considered a, as much of a rebuild as what Seaford was. I didn't have. Yeah.

My, my apologies. I was wrong. I was thinking prior to the new construction in 96, but no pose that little fire. That was not apples and oranges.

Okay.

Uh, Seaford is much more, you know, thank you. You have the insurance.

Seaford was a heavy renovation and addition. Right.

Is this, is this charge as an example, or is this,

Lauren is going to talk a little bit about our facility condition assessment. So you get a little pop under the hood about how we did it, what we looked at and how it went from the observations to the cost.

So here's kind of a back end of what we looked at and there's a lot of information on here. So I'm going to kind of dial down by each. So we did a facility condition assessment or sometimes we refer to it as an FCA, but that's a facility condition assessment of each building. And we took that and we further broke it down into each year of each building. So for example, Bethel Manor is up here. There's actually four buildings within Bethlehem Manor. The first one was the 1960 to 63 portion of the building. So we look at if it's an addition that's built in a certain year or a major modernization. And when we speak about major modernization, we're thinking completely soup to nuts, as David mentioned, Roof replacement, new HVAC, new electrical, new finishes, truly everything except you really kind of just stopping at the structural exterior walls. That's the only thing that you're not making any modifications to. And the facility condition assessments that we do look only at the physical condition of the building. It says nothing about the number of rooms or how large the rooms are or how they feel and some of the more intangibles that you want when you're coming into a classroom. It's specifically the physical condition as it stands at that moment for the building. So we gave each system within each building, each sub building of each building, a score from zero to five. Zero is your most immediate need. So things from, you know, maybe within five years you need to replace it or yesterday. Five is excellent. You really don't need to worry about this until about 25 years from now. So if there are purposes of this planning period, we're not going to consider it. We had two pieces of information when we were in the field that was particularly helpful. So the first was the age-based score, so you'll see that on the left side. So for roofing systems towards the bottom, the age-based score for this specific part of Bethel Manor was a five, but we also had the client score and that was York County School Department score for that specific area of the building and that was a one. So the way that we use that information is that tells us that the roof itself is pretty new, but there must be some problems. They must be experiencing some leaks or there must be an area of that building that is not doing as well that we want to make sure we pay particular attention to.

So then we would use the field score. So go back one second. So then this was just a reference point and this is where that $400 million in that we use that as a reference. And these were just reference points for us. And then we would say, based on our observations in the field with this data and what we're seeing with our own eyes and talking to the building principles, we're giving this a three, we're giving this a two, we're giving this a four. And that's what generates the score.

Yes, so thank you. So again, a lot of numbers on this screen. So this is the scores that we actually did. So as David said, when we went through each space and each subcomponent of each space, we would look at the age-based score. then the client score and what we see in the field and we might upgrade or downgrade things based on what we see. So you know a roof that was older but was well maintained that maybe would have had a 1 as an age based score but we're really not seeing any evidence of holding water or plasticizing of the TPO, we would upgrade that too. So that would you know push it out a little bit longer or maybe in the case of finishes The score might have been a three, but man, you know, there's they've really seen some heavy traffic down that hallway. Maybe it's backed by the locker rooms or physical education. And so we've seen a lot more traffic there than we would have expected. So we might downgrade that to a two. So that is all compiled for each of those areas of the building, each of those pieces that we assessed. into a large chart. So we wrapped all that information up into an overall facility condition index. That's that FCI that you see at the top in the middle with the yellow bars for each building. And that's also weighted. That's an average of the scores that's weighted by the square footage, but also the cost. Obviously the cost of your ceiling tiles versus the cost of your roof are not the same thing. So we don't want to treat them the same. We rate that average. So we've done an FCI for now until 10 years and that's that left yellow bar. And then we've also done one for now until 20 years and that's, that's right piece. So that's just further projection for you guys to see in another 10 years. What is that building going to look like?

top line Bethel Manor Elementary FCI score 10 years of 23%, 23%.

23% of its useful life. So the further it gets to the right, the closer to a hundred percent, the closer, the more of its useful life that it has.

So that's saying over the next 10 years, it will consume 23% of its useful life. in the next 20 years, and I'm assuming .

Another way, specifically, what it means right here is that we assess 8.6 million in need across the next 10 years. Some of that's due today, some of it's due the next five years, some of it's between six and 10. We assess its replacement value at just under 37 million. So the deficiencies are approximately a quarter of the replacement value, hence the FCI is approximately a quarter.

And then some of those aspects, you know, if it has consumed all of its useful life for its major subsystems, you're not going to replace things like a structural wall or structural roof or structural foundations. That just doesn't make good financial sense to do. So once we see buildings getting closer to that 80, 90 percent, that's where we go back to that original graph. And we have a decision to make.

And you can see that on the right hand, you can see here. that deficiencies or deaths, zero to two HBA model, what that is showing is over the next 10 years, this is the 418 million we expected to see by building. And you can see for most of them, there's less that we saw

Yes, so again, major takeaways. The age-based, what we expected to see and what we actually saw, it was less what we actually saw. So you have done a really good job of staying ahead of things. If there's a leak, it's fixed quickly before it's able to get down into the insulation of the roof. You're not letting things linger, so you have maintained your buildings very well. We did see six campuses that had facility condition indexes of 40% or more within the next 10 years. And we've highlighted those. And then also, once you get to 20 years, that number jumps up to 14.

Is this before the current funding for TAB? Yes. Okay. So TAB should look like Bruton when we're done with the project?

I'd have to defer to you. So if we do the full renovation at TAB,

Yeah, that is correct. Would you feel that would come back? Yes, that is correct.

Build at the same time, same models?

That's correct. You would see a commiserate FCI. It would come down because you would take care of all those needs.

Because Bruton were working on the HVAC now. We did the roof recently.

Well, Bruton and TAB are basically structurally the same building, but they're built six years apart, right? Yeah, that's why I was asking earlier. Well, I mean,

Yeah, so that's a great way to point that out. The investment that you're making in TAP high school will then push it down to look more like Bruton. We assessed based on solely what we saw that day. We didn't want to take into account things that may or may not happen or things that could change as they're in design. So we just specifically looked at what we saw when we were walking the buildings. So again, you see like the Taub High School or Queens Lake Middle School, once you're getting back to that original chart, you're getting into those 80% facility condition indexes. That's where that diminishing return for doing the component replacements or modernization starts to happen. So you might put a lot of money into it, but it's only dropping your facility condition index down to like the 50% range. So that's a consideration.

Another consideration as we get into, okay, so what do we do with the condition data? Lauren mentioned the FCA was purely the condition, but we also looked at capacity and we measured functional adequacy. I'm going to give you the three different metrics that we used and how we did that. Okay. So first of all, observation. If you're going to build a new school today, an elementary school, to school funding have this as a standard. 125 square foot a student for an elementary school. That's a solid average amount of space per kid. 25 for CareerTech School. These are general amounts of space per child needed for classrooms, needed for resource rooms, cafeterias, hallway widths, offices, blah, blah, blah. It gets more as kids get bigger because they get to do more stuff. Chemistry labs, bigger gyms, locker rooms, that kind of thing. we looked at every single floor plan in every single room. How was that designed? And said, okay, what's the capacity as this school SNC is my company. How like stirs company what's the design capacity. And then we said, all right, well, what's that design capacity divided by the square footage, average elementary school, 93 square foot, a kid. 60s, 70s school. One corridor, homogenous classrooms, a cafeteria and a principal's office. Today you have art, you have music, you have special education, you have computers, you have other things that start to spill into spaces. And that is why the average today for an elementary school, then we looked at your master schedules and we matched your master schedules room by room how many kids are loaded in what classes at what sizes doing what things you're using your buildings at 126 square foot kid your principals are using the buildings because they're gobbling up classrooms that were designed to have 23 kids in them to have music to have special So your buildings were designed in a different era. Your teachers and principals are using them for today's needs. And so that's the key thing here. You're taking a regular classroom. This is music. This is not designed as a music room. It's being used as one, because you want music. Okay. So, Here, we looked at all of these class, 58 elementary classrooms that were being used for something other than education. Half of them are being used for special ed, because when the buildings were designed, special education was not a thing like it is today. The lot of the remainder are VPA, visual and performing arts, art, music, dance, computer science, and then miscellaneous. So one of the things that I look at doing a master plan is how efficiently and effectively are buildings being used? Are there lots of classrooms that are sitting there as storage? Do you have three teacher lounges? Are you spread out and have lots of extra room? Or are you the converse of that? Are you jammed in and overcrowded? Your elementary schools are full on the net. And they're being used appropriately in so far as we could say, and we quantified it to the room.

What are those numbers in the boxes?

These are by element, by school, the count of classrooms that we observed based on the master schedule and how their regular classroom is being used for something other than regular instruction. So at Dare Elementary School, there are six classrooms that were designed as education. There are five at McGruder.

Okay, why wouldn't every school have at least one in general instruction?

Okay, so what that means is there's 338 classrooms, 58 of which are being used for something other than general instruction. All right, so adequacy. That's we looked at capacity, we looked at how is it designed? How is it being used? Is it being used for a design for a specific purpose to directly support or educate kids? And the answer is yes, we have that down, we have it matched for every every schedule for every room. The next thing we looked at is adequacy. And this is can be squishy. What is an adequate school? We're not talking about the quality of instruction. We're not rating people. We're looking at space. And you could do this in a hundred different ways. And I've been involved in projects that have done it literally a hundred different ways. And when it comes down to it, what matters, how big are your classrooms? Do you have resource rooms sufficient to help kids who need acceleration or remediation? If you got those two things, you got a lot. Seeing natural light is really nice. There are lots of other things you can put into adequacy. Bare bones. How big are your classrooms? What kind of resource rooms pull out acceleration or mediation do you have access to? Look at size two different ways. One is an absolute 700 square feet. Lauren's gonna show a visualization of why this matters in a minute. But I will tell you that in doing this work for a number of years across the country, generally speaking, when you get a classroom under 700 square feet, you are almost ensuring lecture-based instruction in the room. It is very hard to do anything other than get kids to sit in a row and listen to somebody talk. You can't rearrange working in small groups The other thing is 36 square foot a kid based on use. So I matched, I said we matched the master schedule to each room. So this is what kind of space does the building provide at the classroom level? This is how many kids are actually in those classrooms per square foot. 36 square foot a kid is generally aligned to this number to give an idea about a room that is right size for 23, 24, 25 plus kids to move around a little bit and do more than sit in a row. And so we gave, and the final one is the students per resource room. How many resource rooms do you have? How many kids are in that capacity of the building relative to those resource rooms? The higher the number, the less access those kids have to a resource room. So we just did a composite ranking. It was the lowest numbers is the best and the highest numbers the worst. Elementary, middles, highs. Red is high. You can just see, by and large, your elementary schools are more functionally adequate on this base standard than are your middles and highs. There's a couple reasons for this. One of them, quite frankly, are bad design standards from decades ago. That said, hey, guess what? When kids are little in kindergarten, they need to move around, they wiggle. So we need to have a reading part of the room and we need to have a small group part of the room and we need to have everybody over here and there's where they're gonna build blocks. So we need 900 square feet in a room, at least if not a thousand. But as kids get bigger, their little keisters can sit in a row. and we're gonna make them sit in a row and listen to us. And so the rooms got smaller, the kids got bigger, here you go. You got legacy schools, you haven't built a new school since 96. When the standards were in that pyramid logic, as kids got bigger, the rooms got smaller. Okay, next. Um, wait, wait, I'm sorry. Go back a little bit. I key takeaway here. Uh, the big picture yet it's your middles and your highs on average, 57% of middle and high school classrooms offer less than 60, 36 square foot. A kid 44% are under 700 square feet and relatively few resource rooms. Lauren.

So I think it's helpful to have a visual of what this means because most people don't understand when you talk about 700 square feet or 800 square feet, what's the difference? So what we've shown here is an illustration of four different scenarios. All of them are classrooms for 24 students. All of them have the exact same number and type of pieces of furniture. They're just arranged a little bit differently. So on the bottom left, you've got your lecture across here. And you've got 650 square feet versus 850 square feet. The reason we use 650 square feet versus 700 is that's what we saw. There were a lot of classrooms that were in that 650 square foot range. So just to illustrate kind of the differences. So again, 650 square feet here versus 850 square feet here. So at 650 in a lecture style arrangement, which is kind of the most traditional learning style, this is really tight. This poor student is really right up on the teacher's desk. It's pretty difficult to walk around the perimeter of the classroom if the teacher needs to get to a student to give them a little extra help or answer a question. Once you get to that 850 square feet, you can feel a lot of extra breathing room. So it gets worse when you move into the small group aspect. So that's something that when some of your secondary schools were built, that was not a pedagogy that people understood or people were pushing. Now we know that there's a lot of what you do in your career that is presenting or needing to work together as a team, not just sit in a lecture style. So in the small group arrangement at 650 square feet, it's almost impossible to get around. You're gonna be on top of each other if you're trying to walk around the classroom if you're a teacher. Once you get to 850 square foot, it's a lot better. There's a lot more breathing room. You might actually be able to function with the building set up that way. And the other piece that, you know, this is just furniture. This is an empty classroom. Imagine adding 24 kids, 24 backpacks, 24 coats that are strung on the floor, 24 water bottles. That starts to really cramp up spaces like this. So I just feel like this is a helpful visual for us to show you what the difference is without it feeling so arbitrary.

Most of your elementary schools are right size because the which then starts, now this is the dizzying slide. This is for a later reference too. But this has all of it. And that is when adequacy matches with condition to say, well, if I have a high FCI in an old building with a low adequacy score and I renovate that school, I'm going to want to use it for 20 or 30 plus more years because I spent a lot of money. But if I'm baking in half of the classrooms are too small for more than lecture-based instructions, I am baking in decades of kids who will go through in that high volume of undersized rooms without the resource rooms and all of the things. So that's when adequacy converges with condition to start to elementaries, middles, highs, division-wide operations buildings, what high school network planning area is that in, acreage, the year built, how old is it, when was it the most recent renovation, what is its gross square footage or its size, adequacy rank, lower numbers, blue, better, higher numbers, red, worse. How many classrooms are used for non-capacity space? This is those 58 for elementary and there's relatively fewer per capita. should get older here. Um, count and then average students per class. This is based on your master's schedule, how you're actually using classrooms, current enrollment, the instructional capacity, which is how your folks are using the building, which again, I think is quite, quite appropriate based on the standards and what we observed to the room level, what the building is designed for, which is far more kids and far less room for them. And then the current utilization based on this instructional capacity. Your elementaries are full, your middles have some room, your highs are in the sweet spot. Generally, I like to see 85 to 95%. It's a nice utilization target to reach for. You're too high, you got a little more room, but you're okay, it's just imbalanced a little. And then the highs are the same story with Bruton being a little bit on the low side. FCI, we've talked about over the 10-year horizon, 10-year capital need. Divide the 10-year capital need by its replacement value right here. That's how you get the FCI. Projected enrollment over five years and that delta of that enrollment over five. So that gives you a full picture by school, by grade configuration. Take homes. Although elementary designed with more capacity than they have based on current use, achieving that design capacity would mean eliminating going to squeeze more capacity of your elementary schools without displacing something that you're not going to do. Condition ranges range from like new to moderate need. It's your middles and highs that the data are calling out in need of a refresh over time. Those have the lowest adequacy scores. Queens Lake, York Middle, TAB High have high condition needs. You have a plan for TAB. discussing plans for Queens Lake, low adequacy scores. And there's a significant range in enrollments. You have middle schools, 586, seven kids. You have middle school with a thousand. You have big ranges here. And there's our different economies of scale, which can literally afford different things over time. All right, so by network, I'm taking a little bit along here, so I'll try to accelerate. Root, elevators are full. McGruder has a moderately high FCI and a population expected decline. While its very close neighbor, Waller Mill, is overutilized, expected to grow, the net gain of only 80 between the two. When you take out the decline in McGruder and the increase in Waller Mill, you're net plus 80 over five years. Um, current CIP calls for an addition of Walter mill. Queenslake has the highest FCI, lowest adequacy scores and a small middle school enrollment. Bruton is underutilized with a moderately high FCI. Grafton, um, Coventry, Coventry, gosh, darn it. Uh, Coventry elementary and, uh, and Grafton Bethel are full while a DARE has surplus capacity, even despite 12 classrooms being used for other purposes. So DARE's, DARE has a little extra room. Um, Crafted Middle and High is the newest building, moderate growth projection at the middle school level, capacity to absorb it, no harm, no foul here. Newest school in the division as we know. TAB, Bethel Manor and TAB Elementary are full, and Mount Vernon is mostly low. TAB Middle has lowest adequacy score, but a fairly good FCI, while TAB High has a moderately low score and many additions over time. I lovingly call these Franken Buildings. that are just built on over time. The CIP calls for converting TAB into the current Cuba library into six classrooms, adding some capacity, new main entrance, security, office, multipurpose room, adequacy, learning commons, adequacy, Bethel Manor, four to six classrooms for capacity, new gym, expand and renovate the cafeteria.

Jorg.

Seaford, shiny like new after its renovation, projected to be full through the projection of 31. While York is full and in good condition with slight enrollment decline projected, York Middle has 17 classrooms used for non-capacity support and specials. Still has surplus capacity with those classrooms being repurposed. A moderately high FCI and a low adequacy rank. And York High is a patchwork. It is that Franken building. Over time, it has surplus capacity, low adequacy rate. The overall campus, the FCI on its own at the aggregate level is moderate. Individual buildings, some of them need to go. And when you look at the campus as a whole, in adequacy, you've got room to build. That is, all of those things have filtered into our division leadership, we ask, what do you hear from principals, teachers, and students about your facility needs and what do you see? A lot of it was we need to renovate, but a lot of the interior spaces have not been renovated so much as the bones, the pipes and the roofs and the stuff, the bones of the building have been focused on because that's the big, heavy, expensive stuff. You've been very penny wise on that stuff. the furniture, the inside of the classrooms, those have not gotten the love like the other hard things have. There are inequities between the school experience based on that, those that have been renovated of late and those that have not. And then other comments focused on common operational challenges, storage. Nobody ever has enough storage. No temperature is ever correct. And there is a desire to expand pre-K. Yeah, we don't talk about temperature. All right, how did the condition review confirm or challenge your impression of building conditions? I asked what surprised you, what didn't and why? Leadership emphasized how the data highlighted the need for a future focus on middle and high school conditions and adequacy, talking about, quote, breaking the cycle of continuing to operate buildings that maybe are beyond their useful life. Data review confirmed assumptions about which schools were in the worst condition and helped determine that rebuilding that renovation was the best strategy for those buildings in the worst condition with the worst adequacy scores. So, we're crescendoing here. The recommendations, almost done talking at you. Bottom line, we spent the last decades getting the maximum value out of aging buildings. That was the right strategy then. That made financial sense. For many of your buildings, that is no longer the case. To double down on the point, you have been good stewards of your system at the cost of school replacements. Again, here's that number of over 400 million we expected. There's over 262. That's a $160 million gap that you saved. not without costs. This is my favorite floor plan. This is York. All of the different eras of construction. This is the Franken building. The portfolio is a patchwork of buildings. Nobody sat out when the schools were starting to be built in the early 50s and go, this is exactly how all the schools were built over the next 60, 70 years. Nobody did that. No, it was build what you need, needs come arise, you plop them on, you plop on the new building, so on and so forth. You go as you go, right? It's time to start looking at different strategies for your secondary schools first. And you got a decade plus before you need to start thinking about your elementary schools. Refreshing. It's first to secondaries. You're designed, with about a third less square feet than modern schools. That's the 90 square foot per kid versus the 125. You're using them at the elementary level as you need to. High schools and middle schools are harder to jimmy with, and you see that they're closer to their design capacity. That strategy of modernization first, repairs first, no longer resets that FCI curve that we talked about in the diminishing return zone. and Bethel, they're all in that diminishing return zone. You're going to pay the full price for a partial extension of that life. And that's not where you want to be from a financial standpoint. And then baking in some of those inequities at the middle and high, that's not where you want to be at education The math no longer supports renovation first for some buildings. That's the Seaford example, the 80%. That's a good bar to remember is that you're gonna do a major renovation, 80%. Is it worth saving that 20% to keep the core of this building's inventory the same? You're just gonna make it shiny, bright, new, and great. From a condition standpoint, it's gonna look really nice. The load-bearing walls, still be there, right where they are, chunking up the space exactly how it is. Most of your schools, here's the sort of another version of that FCI curve graph. It's at 80 years you're in this zone. Most of your schools are right here. You're getting there. You're knocking on that door across the division. Okay, so I'm just going to blow through this a little bit now. So you bought time, time's up. Major renovations, we talked about that, the cost relative to new construction, you lock in 1964 plans. And one thing I haven't mentioned, lots of single story buildings, you are spread out these long hallways and small sites. So when you have lots of single story buildings on some small sites, York High is an exception. You don't have a lot of green space. You can be a lot more efficient. Going up a little bit. The middles and high adequacy already trails modern standard. Of the 367 classrooms in York High middle and high, 166 are 45 or less than 700 square feet.

All right.

Recommendations. One, keep on keeping on with your current plan for Tap High in Bethlehem Manor. complete the project as planned for TAB, complete the project as planned for Bethel Manor, federal grant offset, which I understand you just got. Congratulations. We'll absolutely help with that. Next, and we didn't discuss this before, but you have 20 modular buildings.

I have four trailers.

Yes. Trailers. Yes. They have a useful life of 20 years. that are still here. So what we just say is like, look, over, and those aren't free. You got to lease those things. And so our recommendation is take the first five years, eliminate the first 10 modulars that are the oldest and the poorest condition. You have, where you have the capacity, and these are the older modulars that are, that are They've done their time. It's time to move them on. Get kids into the bricks and sticks. The main part of the building. All right. This is the diversion from the current plan, CIP. These are the major projects. Queens Lake staring at us. And I recommend it strongly that we look at rebuilding Queens Lake because of the inadequacies that if you did a full renovation kids need today, quite frankly. And you'd still be spending a lot of money to do it, just to take care of the condition. So Waller Mill Magruder, right next to each other. Magruder's population going down, Waller's going up. They don't completely cancel out. But you were planning to do another addition to Waller Mill. Our recommendation is you have a nice little building that is just north of it, right? North Griffin Yates. That is mostly empty. And the classrooms are just begging for kids. It's storage or it's basically empty. And we walked and assessed it. The bones are good. Put a little bit of money in there. Liven up those classrooms that are empty. Move early childhood pre-K from Waller Mill and Magruder and fully utilize Griffin Yates. That's where the babies are, right? You have ECC Center. That expands your capacity within Waller-Mill and Magruder, and then you balance the boundary between Waller-Mill and Magruder, and suddenly you took an operational change and saved $30 million that you can put to this guy, replacing Queenslake. Phase one, the primary driver for most of phase one is condition. But several of these have capacity and adequacy considerations as well. All right, so we've got rebuild Queens Lake, you can do it on its current site, it's one of those sites that gives you flexibility, Lauren model it out, you could do that, or you could get a new site, right? That's the estimated construction cost, you need to add what I understand you're used to using the construction costs. This is a 2027 inflated construction cost only at 20% for the full. Rebuild Queens Lake, Bethel Manor addition renovation. That's your federal grant. This line item can flex with the amount of the grant that you get. Dare Elementary partial renovations to expand ECC. at just under 4 million. Complete the tab renovation as planned. You're almost done there. Just leftover change. Eliminate your trailers. 10 oldest trailers. We have a line item for that. Rebuild the operations center. I didn't know if you saw that, but the FCI in the operations center is really high. And when we walked around that, that is a building or set of buildings that you do not want to just try to keep going. You're Your, your FCIs are the highest in your office buildings. Cause that's where the adults go and the money went to the kids, which is good. It's how it should be. That building has reached a time. It's time to rebuild that. Um, and then on top of that, we looked at the projected needs over the coming years for, for buildings that are not being rebuilt, which is most of them are not and took, half of the identified needs and said, well, you should at least put into your budget half of the projected needs. Rarely does a division have enough funds to fund all of them. But this is a budget logic that we said, let's put in half. Flex with everything, but that was the logic there. That's 111 million. Capacity, you add some capacity, Griffin-Yates, that's a smaller figure, because really, you're just refreshing the interiors, the capacity is there, you're just getting the classrooms that are classrooms right now, ready to be FF&E and all of that stuff, furniture, fixture equipment. 112 million, phase one. Then, my recommendation was, you're not going to touch the elementaries for a while. the classrooms are right-sized. They're good-sized classrooms. There is a disparity in the student experience based upon what has or hasn't been done to renovate an elementary school. Because the classrooms are right-sized, if you refresh the furniture, fixture, and equipment, the FFNE, across the division, you can have every kid have an equitable educational environment because the classroom sizes are pretty good. projections and all of the things, right? Clean it up. That could be a scope to budget exercise that we estimate sort of all in high end 15 million down, you know, to about half that. And that what you have available. That's phase one. Here is HBA's concept concept right now for the addition. uh, for Bethel Manor. And here is a concept, not the design, save that for the record, a concept for how a Queens Lake rebuild could proceed on its current site. This is showing it can be done.

Two stories. Two stories. Phase two. Rebuild, um, tab middle on Ilm Creek Park.

was originally designed. And it can still, there's enough room on that, that park, 22 acres, if memory serves, that you can still have public park buildings on that. It doesn't have to be a monolithic use, right?

You could be both.

So Tad Middle School, if you're going to rebuild it, you cannot rebuild it on site. The site is too small to rebuild that school. the idea is that you cannot reasonably rebuild it while school's in session. Well, then you got to move all the kids and that's a huge disruption and huge expense that's just evaporates. So you don't want to do that. Well, Kiln Creek Park was originally conceived for middle school site. It's adjacent to TAB Middle, and you could build it two story and still have a lot of the park being used as a park, even during construction and so forth. So the idea was, well, let's use it. Let's go back there. Let's use it to rebuild TAB Middle while TAB is being occupied. So you don't have to pay lost money for Swing Space. And when it's done, you move the kids in there. Then what do you do with the TAB Middle school site? You have two options. We'll talk about that next. Well, you have more than two, but there's at least two. Then the signature project of you can rebuild York High and York Middle together like Grafton on the same site going up, when you look at the total population projected for York Middle and York High as a ratio of acreage, York Middle and York High on the York High site has the same ratio of kids to acreage as Grafton Middle High does have acreage to kids. Almost to a number. 44, I think. It works. They both are going to need it. in the near-ish term. It's a major project, but you go up and you have a project, a school that's going to last 75 to 100 years.

What do you do with the kids in that respect?

You can rebuild this without disrupting current education. The York High site is sufficient. We'll show a concept for that. There's a geothermal field you want to avoid, but you can go on the back side of that and rebuild up. Then you can renovate a portion of the middle school for pre-K or anything else. This is a plug number there for an adequacy-based renovation. Eliminate the remaining trailers that at that point will have reached their end of life or already be past it. You could build, this is another line item, you can consider in this York Middle High rebuild, tacking on an additional, we estimate $8 million to build an annex for the York Academy, Yorktown Academy. And then another budget number for half of the projected next five years deferred maintenance. Okay, so that's phase two. The bigger number, because building a middle and high is not cheap. model that Lauren did. If you want to show, explain this.

So we know you've put some money recently into your auditorium and your gym, so looking at trying to maintain that so we're not replacing something that you just invested in. So using a two-story high school at the front, a middle school at the back, we would be able to phase. You see the dashed line, that's what the existing building is. we would phase this so that the students would not be disrupted.

How long were you talking about phasing? How long is this? What's the kind of common projection time?

For construction?

Well, you're phasing the project. So that means you... It's got to be a little longer than just straight up building.

So the design would all be done at once, but the construction would be phased. So we would make sure that a certain portion of the building was built before the remainder so that students could move around as needed. Like we would build the middle school portion first, and have high school students in that portion while we built the two-story high school at the front. There's different ways that you could phase it depending on priorities and when it hits for the summer where you're able to do a little bit more intrusive renovation when the students aren't there.

Three years is a planning average.

Forty years in the first time.

Well, yeah, we're not going to be a little different than the first strategy, right? Yeah. So three years is a benchmark. It could be probably not less.

And so in this concept here, you would build like the first floor and then have kids in there and then you start building a second or you build on one end to the next?

Yeah, you would build certain additions, certain portions, whatever made sense based on, you know, this is very, very conceptual. Whatever made sense based on where the electrical switchgear and kind of the heart of the building was or whatever was needed first. You never want to take away the, you know, the gymnasium or the library while there's students there.

because you've got a little extra room in york high you just deactivate a portion of the building the kids are in the other part and then you're just chasing you're just chasing it around constructing and then moving kids in and constructing and moving kids in it allows students to be in physical classrooms rather than in a farm of trailers during This is where we're saying it's time to get out of the current admin operations. This is just a concept just to say, bring the adults together in one building. It's going to last for a while. Get rid of the buildings that need to go.

And you're saying move the people from their road where the existing admin building is. Am I looking at something?

No, this is just for the operations.

The operations. The operations. The vehicle maintenance. Operations.

The operations building, all of those buildings that are over there by the stadium, there's several of that.

Mm-hmm.

And they're in pretty bad shape.

We have maintenances over there in an older building. We've got the bus garage. This is a separate building. We have the IT warehouse. So three separate buildings. Good question.

And then the outer years, as we were saying, Dr. Carroll was saying, this is the 15-year arc. Looking out to that 15-year phase three, if you think of every phase as five years, that probably takes seven to button up everything, but five to seven years. This is that outer phase. And all this is saying is at this phase, this is where you start to think about some of these elementary schools 15 years from now that'll probably have their need for rebuilding. And the recommendation I'd have for doing a facility master plan like this is do this kind of effort every five years for 10 to 15. So you're constantly looking down the road. You're not reevaluating it every year because you never have a plan. But every five years, you're taking a fresh look. You're calibrating. How's our enrollment? How's our finances? How's our conditions? And then you do that 15-year look ahead, and you just keep going.

Well, you don't build a 1950s building in 1990. In other words, you're incorporating the new strategy and education. Yes, sir. That's right.

So... Can I go back for a second? Yes, sir.

You took the money away on Waller Mill by opening up Griffin Yates. Yes, sir. I never saw it come back in at any point for construction. What happened?

So the budget number for Waller Mill, that $28 million or so, is offsetting the cost to rebuild Queens Lake. for Queens Lake renovation at like 30 million?

I understood that. Oh, okay. When do you put money back into Watermill? It never showed up.

Ah, well, Watermill got a refresh. When was it? 2016.

It's got 29 million against it for a reason. How do you suddenly not do that and then not even make it into a 15-year plan?

Because that 29 million was not to take care of the building as it is, but to add on new capacity to it.

You're saying you're going to recoup that with the wounds at Griffin-Yates because you're moving them.

Yeah, it's a two-pronged strategy. You recoup Griffin-Yates early childhood pre-K. You move those kids early childhood pre-K from Waller-Mill and Magruder and you put them into Griffin-Yates. Then you even out the boundary between Magruder and Griffin-Yates and you now have sufficient capacity without doing a major addition. So yes, we did eliminate that capital strategy to address condition by doing an operational of capacity by doing an operational strategy to address capacity.

Good.

Not completely sold, but I understand your.

Yeah, yeah, that's the idea.

Yeah, you did bring.

Can I make a suggestion real quick? Yes, sir. While we're here. Because we're planning out 15 years, which we should be doing, I think we should have budget estimate numbers planned out for 15 years. Because if we look at 41 million now, 15 years from now, that number is not even going to be close. So how do we plan starting today for 15 years out financially? Because if we if we plan like this, we could be caught in a trap. Oh, sure. So I think we need to have some real, some logical numbers.

And yeah, if, you know, doing master plans in 2019 and trying to project inflation rates and then COVID hit, you know, So their numbers are what they are right now for apples to apples comparison. We absolutely can take an assumption and say if inflation goes back to sanity, which it is getting there, I think, and we say 3%, 3.5%, this is what that would be in 15 years. We can absolutely do that. You need to do some kind of modeling of that.

With the thought in mind that there could be something happens, that's where our five-year re-look comes into play. Absolutely. That's exactly why you do that. Now, we've got a different set of plans. Yes, sir. Moving forward.

That's correct. I would think the financial gets refreshed every five years as opposed to trying to figure out today what will 15 years look like. Let's do it with today's numbers now. Five years, we take another look at it. Now, what are those new numbers? But still the same idea, but just trying to estimate what inflation will be in 15 years because if you and I could do that, we would have a different job.

Yeah, we would. When we approve a 15-year CIP, we'll do it very much like we we do, our current CIP, is that you'll have a projected amount for that whole year. I mean, that to me is one of the things that's kind of missing out of this. What is it going to cost over a year, over a year, over a year? Because those years will dictate tax rates, our budget, and obviously As it is now, the schools are a huge part of our budget. This laying us out over 15 years and seeing this, and then hopefully, looking at the lady over here and their budget folks, is that you're going to have that inflation value in there. Then we can see, it's going to look like 15 years, it's going to be a whopping big number because you know what you got now, but guess what?

We got a plan for it.

If you look at the outer beads, one thing that I glossed over in phase three So I like to say if you're looking at building a new school or any kind of master plan, I like to target 85% utilization as a good rate, meaning if I know I'm going to have 1,232 middle school kids, I want to have 115% of that in capacity because I don't want to spend a boatload of money just to be 100% full on day one. That's not, that's not operationally fun or smart. So 15% is a standard number that I use, which means if these projections pan out the way they do right now, you would build a 1400 capacity middle school. Do you want a 1400 capacity middle school? Your current, enrollment capacities, it'd be larger than, you know, Grafton 12, Queens Lake currently 700, 12, a thousand. How big do you want a middle school to get? I am not coming with a recommendation for that. This is an outer years. This is not urgent. This is watch your demographics. Think about the operational implications. Do people run large middle schools? Well, absolutely. Do some people choose not to? Absolutely. But it is something to chew on and watch over time.

The demographic point you raised, you're seeing it today. We have a city of Pocosin that almost closed one of their schools because of lack of kids. Today I heard that Cleveland has shut down 29 of their schools. Think of it, 29 schools. And in one case, one community has taken, and they don't have enough kids for one school, but they have more than enough kids so they can compile them together. and they have 40 kids in a classroom. How do you manage something like that? So it's the demographics I think is going to be critical. You could build 14, 17 kids, and then all of a sudden you don't have the demographics to support it.

This is why every five years to look at the demographics, the condition, and the finance are so important. while you keep throwing that dart out there for 15. So you're doing exactly the right thing right now. So I'm way overshot my half hour of talking at you. I know I haven't put my watch but I know I blew that. Phase one, the big point right here. Think about refreshing your elementary school classrooms with a budget that's reasonable for you when you take care of the major condition needs. We're recommending that that begins with rebuilding quickly. Expand pre-K capacity, which is in demand. You have the space to do it for low cost to offset a big addition expense that can be used to help with rebuilding. And with the budget of deferred maintenance that we have in there, beef up that deferred maintenance budget every five years to continue being what you have been, which is proactive with your capital renewals and replacements so that you don't have a cascading deficiency needs at your school as you're keeping up with it. So that concludes our presentation.

Thank you.

Thank you. I actually have a question. When it comes to the pre-K, Dr. Carroll, if you can update our Board of Supervisors just kind of where we are right now with enrollment on pre-K and what are the needs of the community for pre-K, if you have that.

I don't have that offhand. Dr. Skinner, are you able to take a stab at that? If not, we can get it for you. But I think a general statement would be we are not meeting the need of the community right now.

enrollment in pre-K, but I can tell you we have 13 classrooms currently in our school division serving our students who aren't considered pre-K. Yes.

But as far as the need for them, as far as the need of the community for pre-K, there would be more than 13 classrooms.

Yes, we do have families that are on the waiting list for classrooms. Yes.

So here's a fundamental question. We have a niche magazine, and it says that York County is the best school division in the state of Virginia. And I'm hearing this, and I greatly appreciate the report, the way it's laid out. But I get this, oh my gosh. We're going to be missing a couple hundred million dollars worth of stuff here if we stump our .. If we're the best, I need to see what the worst looks like. I mean, what are the rest of the school divisions doing to address this? Because they've got the same issues we've got. They built the schools at the same time, old schools.

Well, I'd say a couple of things. First of all, the county has been supportive. And as Mr. Sturtz said, you've been supporting us. We've been able to patchwork things and keep things up well. You take some impoverished communities, ones out west. That's one of the reasons why the state has been putting out grants for school construction is to help them catch up there. But they're not doing it as just a comprehensive program for all schools. And that's why we've really struggled. We took our fifth pass at the SCAP grant. We didn't get it again. And I think that is somewhat because our community has supported us. But the answer is we've done it despite the limitations that we had in our classrooms, from the quality of our teachers to the support of our parents, And, you know, the great kids that we have.

And I feel sorry for you guys because you're going to have to come up here and ask for money. I mean, we're going to hear it. I mean, I don't know about you guys, but I'm sitting here and hear a lot of stuff about education and art and extra space and all that. I'm not an expert in this, OK, by any stretch of the imagination. I mean, we know a little bit about construction and all that, but you've got to go figure out a 15-year flow that keeps the schools number one or thereabouts. And then you've got to come up and convince us or whoever the board is. I know you do it every year. But I mean, this seems to me like it's one of those times where you either lurch forward or lurch back. In other words, the 90s or whatever, the 50s, when we started building, we went to a really big building phase, put a lot of money in investment infrastructure. And then we kind of cruised for a while, patching up, and now here we are again. Now it's caught up with us, and it's time to do the investment.

And I will say, you know, just from, you know, my district and going into the schools and touring and my experience going back to the 2000s and being in the school, I can remember, you know, space being very tight then. And as counselor, being in an electrical closet or HVAC closet combination, very small, But it was either that or go on a cart and you don't put counselors on a cart. So those were the things I struggled with in my last few years there because space was a premium. And I walk into schools now and I see our principals, New York Elementary school principal got furniture, somebody donated furniture to put in the hallway. people can work with kids out in the hallways on things because we don't have classroom space. So, I mean, they're doing a really good job of trying to cover all those needs, and we just do what we have to do for the kids to make the kids get what they need. And we do that, but it's kind of a question of how long can you keep doing that, right? When does it come to a point where it's just like you've got to stretch?

Well, the issue on the table, though, is money.

It's always money. Yeah, it always comes back to money, and nobody wants to have it.

And a little bit of takeaway, too. I'm going to make the comment, and I made it already at the state and the county. This referendum coming up is the question of, do we want to maintain the quality of York County schools? That is the question. That is the referendum. And I need some help, because I'm out there pounding the pavement for that. I don't see the school board coming out with a collective answer on, do we need a referendum? Do we need a yes on it? I don't see the PTA. I don't see signs in front of the schools that say yes. I don't see anything being done right now that drives that decision.

I think it's come up pretty quick. I think it was a pretty quick referendum, too. It doesn't matter.

That means we have to move quick. It does mean we have to move quick, no doubt. So my answer to you is that kind of revenue coming in year over year over year over 20 years will make this work. We don't have an answer if you present this to us.

Well, it's 50% of the payment that's coming from other people outside the county. That's exactly correct. Not just the citizens.

That's important to keep in mind. Underestimate how important that is.

Well, and the other factor is, let's just say, you know, you don't pass it. I'm just looking at both sides. I appreciate both sides of the argument.

There's no passing? No, no.

I'm saying if the referendum doesn't pass, okay, well, the schools are still going to need those replacements. Right. So the money's going to have to come from somewhere. Right. And so where does that money come from? Then you're looking at... Or it doesn't come from real estate taxes. Bingo. And then people don't want real estate taxes to be raised. So you don't want real estate taxes to be raised, which just hits your county people. You've got this referendum which says, hey, anybody using meal tax in your county, or not meal tax, but sales tax, is going to get taxed. It's not just county people. Anybody coming into your county, tourists, all of that. So there's that argument. I look at it as pay now, pay later.

But somewhere you're going to pay. It's not pay now, pay later. It's taking advantage of getting twice as much pay.

Well, true. True to that, too. But somewhere there's going to be

And if it's half, which is the long-term, have to do it through property tax, you're going to suffer because we will not be able to afford that.

I briefed a group on this. I talked about the 1%. And the idea that it was going to generate, what is it, $12 million? I believe that's the number, right? So $12 million a year additional revenue. We've stressed the fact that there'll be more people participating and paying that $12 million, not just the people who live here. So we've made stress on that. The challenge, though, is the picture's not complete because, as you pointed out, If we don't get that $12 million, and that $12 million is just part of the answer. It's not the total package. Because it's going to be still a bill. I can't say, well, we can say for this year that if we get to $12 million, you won't get a tax rate increase. But you cannot say that for the other years, the other 19 years. And what's not clear, and we need to really come up with this, is that what is that number going to be if we don't get to $12 million now? What is that tax rate going to be? Because I guarantee you, when you get on the other side of this and you've got a number that you put on that, then people start paying attention. Now, we know what 1% gives us $12 million and a bunch of other people helping to pay for it. But what's on the other side? You know, you got to get the, you got to, Dr. Carroll, you guys got to get together and come up with this in a kind of a rough order of magnitude so that when we talk it on the other end, when we get on the other end, what is that tax rate going to be? Or how much are we going to back up? Because every one, every time we delay this, it gets more expensive. It doesn't get less expensive. It gets more expensive. And it's a bill. And the citizens of your county are going to have to understand that. OK? They're not going to understand it if we don't tell them what the numbers are. So that's one of my frustrations.

DAVID ROSENBERG. Dr. Carroll, talk a little bit more about that grant that you were talking about. Tell us more about the grant that we've got for TAB.

So the SCAP grant is a new grant that's we've there's been five passes at it and I think in the last three years and it's based on your quality of the building that you're submitting for and the age of the building and you know the items that Mr. Sturtz talked a lot about today and so we're competing against the rest of the state and they haven't this is a state grant right yes and the legislature has put the money in every time they haven't expended all the money then they've re uh reconfigured the algorithm of how they're going to judge it but that gives schools our school systems a next chance at it and we haven't scored high enough for those projects that we've put in for with TAB-HI and . What are the points that they scored on? They put out the criteria ahead of time.

So an example of what the criteria is.

I could ask Mr. Bowen to talk about, but just before I end there, every time they've left money on the table, this last time they left $77 million on the table. Then I think they add more, and then they redo the calculation. But Mr. Bowen, you'd be.

So a couple of things that they changed in the evaluation criteria was they were looking to see if the project incorporated some STEM activities or opportunities for academies.

And so we did have that. We were looking at some of those things at Tab High School.

They also look at the local composite index, which in your county, we have a very low composite index compared to some of those school divisions that actually did receive awards.

And then if you've never received an award before, you were given qualifying points.

And so when we went, several of the staff went through the evaluation criteria based on what The evaluation was, but we kind of did our own assessment in how we should play out and whether or not we should receive some award. And we thought that we had qualified. But we have not received that information and feedback from the Department of Education.

So we will be following up with them.

Again, there's about $77 million still on the table to be awarded in a subsequent application process. And we'll continue to apply for it, because we believe that our projects qualify based on the current evaluation criteria.

CHRIS RODGERS. And as part of the whatever committee does that evaluation at the state level, do they consider the investments that have been made into the school systems over the years?

Well, another component of the locality is they look at the fiscal stress of the locality. So I don't typically look at that information, but I think as far as when you look at communities across the Commonwealth, your county has a very low fiscal stress. So I don't believe we received any points under that, but it's a very small criteria for that. So I think it's five points that you're evaluating on.

What I'm getting at there is that county over the years and the school division over the years have done a really good job, backed up by your evaluation, of making investments over the years to keep the lifespan going and having good schools here. That is behavior that should be rewarded and not punished because we could have just simply sat on it, let the walls fall in and go, now we need help and have to get the help. That's why I was asking that question. Is that part of the evaluation? Do they go, hey, y'all have done a good job here. Let's reward that behavior and keep that going. Instead, we're getting punished for being good stewards.

That's not the way they take it.

You're punished, almost. So that's kind of what I thought I was hearing, and that's kind of where it buzzes. So your evaluation was just on the buildings, not the grant, right?

We did look at the sites. So we looked at the sites, the green space, we looked at the parking lot, the cement, all of that.

Because we have some real problems that some of our schools with drop off and pickups. You do. Huge problems. You do.

So you have some capacity problems with that. You have some condition problems with that. We noted, we did not note the capacity problems. We didn't say you need to expand your entryway, your egress. We need to add more parking spaces. We did not do that. We did say you need to replace this parking lot in the next five years or

uh, you know, you need to condition the condition of the asphalt conditions, drainage for the ball fields.

Part of the big picture consideration is we, we, we don't want to replicate those same type of drop off pickups situation we have now and wherever we can, part of the valuations would be how do we eliminate that and, and mitigate that. Yes, sir. We have today. Yes, sir. Space. The space that we put schools at is too small. But as we're talking about those spaces, that should be part of the equation. Hey, this is going to fix this problem as well.

That comes to the design phase. Whenever you work with an architect, like how do you use the space? What's the need of the community? That's where we're going to get community involved. Our staff would provide it to us, and then the team would come up together with that design idea. from concept to the plan. I'll do it. And I think that's, you know, for their job is not like, yeah, parking lot definitely is not.

Because we already know we have more kids that are dropped off now than ride the bus.

We know we need a bigger drop off, better design for the parking lot, for bus loops and that sort of thing.

So we look back in the 50s and you see your town road and you see the development of neighborhoods all along your town road. And so you now have neighbors that are getting residents getting wedged in between three schools, Taft High School, Taft Middle School, and Mount Vernon. And that's still that old country road, two-lane road with no sidewalks and deep ditch on both sides still there. That's got to be part of the equation here, what we do in our schools.

and i think that's the important point that you made time because like the future of the schools of building like this 15-year plan you guys doing the same thing on your county side uh facility studies and i think this should be part of this major development plan that we can collaborate and work together to develop uh going back to your point about how we finance this referendum is important I think for your kind of like you say, how are we going to finance this? It's very much needed. We are known as a bedroom community and we shouldn't be. Like I believe that we need to economic development to step up game, bring more businesses, develop those revenue income. So that 1% can make a huge difference. $12 million is not a lot. It may be sound like it is, but 12 million for the county, our size, it's pennies on a dollar. So I think like what we need to look into, how do we service our community? bring more businesses, bring more revenue on that economic side so we can, as a resident, benefit from lowering tax rates because we can increase the revenue on a sale thing. So that will come up with that long-term planning that we are doing right now and that I think in the future your county has to continue to do.

That $12 million covers the debt load.

Oh, absolutely. It makes a huge difference.

And that economic development is part of the big picture. That economic development is happening. We've seen, I want to say, I'll call it tremendous growth in business here in the county over the past couple of years. Not big. Business is coming in, but we're seeing stuff happen, and where you have one, you'll have two, and when you have two, you'll have four. You'll continue to see that growth. So part of this equation is timing. And we've been living with this problem for a long time, so can we catch up with the economic development? They help support it. No, absolutely.

That's all happening right now. Absolutely. I think we have so many talented people at this table and within our county that I think we can have that plan in place really fast and all of us tune into getting there. I'm a business owner, so I know, like, if I'm having expenditures coming up, I'm trying to increase my revenue. Our revenue, it shouldn't be taxpayers. Our citizens, it should be more bring it in for men. We go shop across the border. They're going to increase their taxes, so we're going to be paying for their schools. We need to find a way to bring them here more so they can spend money and pay for our schools to help us out.

Well, I'll get back to my original point, is that We sit at the table and have to make decisions that our citizens understand. And what we've got to be able to do is make sure we tell the story that they understand. We give them the pros and the cons. And that's what I'm looking for on this. I mean, everything we're fighting for here, I know Doug's been hammering it. We need you guys to help us out with the 1%. If we're going to support the 1%, help us out. get the people involved, make sure they understand.

But here's to Doug's point, I just want to comment kind of where my thinking is on that. So, yes, I'm all for the schools. I love the schools, love our kids, and want the best. And, of course, I want to think long term. Also, the community of people out there that are taxed, feeling taxed to death. I gotta consider those people, too, and their input. And in doing that, while I can't come out and say, okay, this is how I feel or this is what we're gonna do, is I need all of the information so I can make sure we're building a compelling argument. So if I'm gonna say and get behind and say, yes, well, I gotta make sure I can defend that and it's a compelling argument of why we should do it, not just saying, sounds good to me, let's do it. Because there's a whole buttload of people out there that are like okay well we just got a tax increase on our property now you want another one percent you'll have it in my newsletter tomorrow you know and so they're saying okay we're going to do this and then next year y'all going to raise our taxes again and this is this is the other side.

But the flip side is, if we don't do that, then we're raising property taxes by 10, 15, 20 cents.

No, I understand that. My thing is, like, we just need to make this a compelling argument.

A lot of people had a comment to me as far as, they made a comment about the lottery money used for school. I mean, you heard that.

Lottery bills, tax, you name it.

I think it's important for used and how you guys are in charge of that appropriating that money and guaranteeing that it will go to this thing. We know it's going to go for the capital because we see the tab that's going. So any money that comes in is going to help out this bottom line, what's going to be invested in our schools.

CHRIS JERRAM, JR.: That's a good point. And for those that are listening, yes, that's total construction. Basically, it's the remodeling, new construction, and paying the debt with that, but not old debt. So this is all going on to that 1% goes on to the new. And you've given us a great example of the requirements that we're going to have that are new over the next 15 years. It's a lot of money. I mean, just five years is going to be about $300 million.

So we shouldn't have to go this alone either. If I'm hearing this $77 million sitting at the table at the state level, they don't know what to do with. Mr. Thornton.

you know, can help spread the pain outside. I'd just like to make a couple, two comments. One, I've seen the argument of, you know, why don't they use the money that you have? Well, one example of that is the CFER project. We went into that with $11 million. By the time we were finished, it was 23 million. We were using the money you gave us, but with construction costs, labor costs that went over the top during COVID and all that. We used the money you had, but it went over the top. We couldn't control that. So we're using the money we had, but we had to use more. And so we used more than we had to, but it was out of our control. So I'm going to come out of the closet and say, I'm in support of the 1% tax. I'm not a tax person. I don't want to be taxed. I do not want to be taxed. I do not like a tax. I like a tax. But I'm going to tell you, 10 years from now, or probably less than five years from now, when my house is paid off and I go to stroke that check to the county for my personal property tax, I do not want to stroke that check a little higher than I have to because this 1% sales tax did not pass because my personal property tax went through the roof because we've got to build our schools and we didn't have the people from outside the county helping pay for our school construction. And that's me as a citizen that wants to support this and as a school board member that wants to support this. So I'm in support of the 1% sales tax. So I'm coming out that I'm in support of it for that reason.

I think what you have to look at is the people who came before us paid for the schools we now have. Now it's our turn. Sure. To continue.

And I'm not a taxing body. Y'all are the taxing body, but it's up to the citizens to make the decisions, not me. But I'm just saying I'm in support of it.

I don't favor taxes either, but I know a smart decision when I see one.

That's me. That's me. I'll say right now I'm in favor of it. Going back to Tom's original point about the niche study, yes, money is an issue, but it's not an insurmountable issue. We are number one in the state as a school division. We, per pupil spending, we are in the bottom 25% of the state. So we, yes, we're fiscally responsible with our operations and our buildings, but we also are with our people and the results that we get from our people. You were talking about what do these other ones do that their buildings are falling apart. They have a lot more problems, Mr. Drury. What their problems are is they have whole middle schools that have no one reading on grade level. We're the top in the state. The way that we want to maintain that, yeah, we're going to need money to build buildings to keep up what we have. The harder thing is going to be to maintain the standards that we already have. And to keep getting, making York County School Division the district, the place that people want to come work. Because we get the best talent of anywhere around. We are the best school division in region two, best in the state. We have the number two level teachers in the entire state. You're talking about 131 school divisions. We have the best school division and the number two teachers. Also, when you're talking about, yeah, we're number one in the state, but translate that to the country. Virginia is number seven in the country, and we're number one in that number seven state. So we're doing the best that we can possibly do.

But we need your help on the financing side.

That's why I said, hey, I'm for it. I am for it.

Doug, just kind of to the point that you need our help on the financial side, we proved to you guys and the community with the TAP project, from the beginning where the budget came in, it was significantly high. how much our team worked so hard to reduce that money. I agree.

Absolutely applaud you for that. But we have a huge hill ahead of us. And we need everybody swinging the same bat.

One of that was we challenged you guys on those numbers to go, no, those are not good numbers. And we challenged Dr. Carroll to go back to the table and go, we've got to get the M&E numbers. If we hadn't have done that, I don't know where that number would have been.

I applaud you for challenging. But like, and I've been working with them in background, and I've seen how much they challenge themselves. And I'm not just talking about from Dr. Carol, but I'm talking about everybody below under him who's been working on that project. They look and look and look. I'll review all of their plans and strategies, how to do it. They were doing the plans that we would pay millions of dollars for the consultants to do, architects to design. They were playing on their PowerPoint presentations, putting the different concepts in there, trying to estimate the level of the commitment that they put in that. I just have to commend them and tell them, thank you for doing such a great job. And with everything like you were talking about, like we need to bring the plan to you guys, we will. And we never come up as like, all right, let's just go and throw a number in there. So we have in mind our community, our children, our constituents, you guys, your position, because we are limited in funds. It's not flowing. This 1% would definitely help. We need help.

CHRIS JERRAM, JR.: One of the things that I why we look at you for help, because one, this is in your bailiwick. I mean, this is all for you guys to help our whole community. The challenge over the years has always been the fact that of the population that we have, or the homes, only 20% have kids in a school system. That means, or it's actually 30%. That means 70% of the households, they don't. But I guarantee you, they got the uncles, the grandfathers, the grandmas, all the good people that have education. They understand the value of it, because that's why we've been able over the years to put money towards our program. And we've made it very, very efficient, obviously. I mean, just the briefing alone just showed that. We stretched this dollar really, really thin. So now we've got to step up. So it's getting every, not just the 30% and the PTAs and all that, but we've got to get the voice of the school board. We've got to get the voice of the schools. Because we had the supervisors. You know, we're saying what we need to say, okay? We're talking to the public. And that's why it's going to be a team effort. If we're going to get this, it's going to be a team effort, okay? Not everybody's going to agree with it. We understand that. But it's going to be very, very important that we educate our public. And the public's going to be looking to our school board members to say, well, do you really need this? I mean, that's how I look at it. If we're talking about school buildings, school this, school that, then I would like to hear, as you've done tonight, that the school representative for the population of your county are going to speak out and say, yes, we need this money.

One thing while we've got everybody here too, wherever we go with what we've talked about here, it's not just education because those facilities, those grounds are used by the entire county for other things beyond education. Once those doors close at 2 or 3 o'clock, school lets out. We've got to make sure we're also planning for those other activities that happen with everybody else. classroom size, but instead of having to build 20 parks across the county for people to go do stuff in, we have a school property to do that with too. So that's got to be part of that big picture as well. So that's where the other 70% comes in. That's how they benefit from the school's property because they get those type of facilities and uses that we don't have anywhere else.

Great point.

Well, not only that, but the 70% of which I'm one of them has the ability to have your property values go up because of our schools.

And then your taxes go up because of that.

That's what happens when you live in the best place. You also have a very safe community because of the environment that we create because of the great schools. The parents, the teachers, the community, everybody's pitching in and saying, this is what we want. Well, I always think of the schools as our franchise player. Because of our great schools, people can work over in Norfolk okay or virginia beach but they live over here so their kids can go to school here and um and it's it's kept us safe uh it's kept kept our environment safe i mean we got a great we got a really great community personal wealth of the citizens of york county has gone up and up and up and that's not true of every municipality around us i just saw i just saw assessed values in a city next to us drop uh in the last rating so it's

It's the value of the schools and the values of everything else that we're doing is driving personal wealth. We're rich because of it. Unfortunately, we have to pay tax on that. But there is a cost to maintain that level of quality, and that's what this referendum is about. Should we maintain that quality? That's the referendum. I think so. Are we done? I think so.

Well, thank you very much for the briefings.

Really, really good study.

I appreciate the time and effort that's gone into this.

The question was, does Griffin-Yates only need a million dollars to renovate? It just needs some of the furniture and stuff to furnish out the rooms that are currently unoccupied. The building itself is

we get out of that building?

8 to 10, I think, if I remember correctly. But, you know, as Dr. Skinner mentioned, I'm sure there's...

There's only two occupied in it right now. Depends on what you do with that store. So is your briefing, does it come in a report? Or is it just a briefing?

Good question, sir. There's a report

When do we make a decision about Queensland? What are you looking for?

Well, yeah, I'll go ahead and field that. That's going to be in the normal course of what we're doing. We will now work with the board, I'm sorry, the county to talk about the 93 MOU review that, because if we don't change that, then I think that closes doors based on that. Then we've got to look at the Griffin Yates. And if that's agreeable, then we start to move that direction. And that unlocks the ability to do all the rest of the upper county.

So it's you guys, I guess, sitting together and say, this is a good idea. And then you come over and say, you figure out how much you need.

It would be in our facility master's plan in November, our capital improvement program, which would present December. It's the natural course of the work that we do every year with the capital spending.

Well, we can either take a recess and allow you to leave at this point, or we can finish our consent calendar, which is about three minutes long. Go ahead.

There's no closed meeting.

We have one more topic, and that is the consent calendar. We have one topic on it. And I don't have it in front of me. That was the workforce.

The reason that they have to be redone is because they pulled out Gloucester, they added the other after that and Northampton to it. And that was the best part. That's the only big thing. Otherwise, I will visit you. Thank you for doing this.

Was there any other questions on it? I don't have any questions. More questions?

The motion made by Mrs. Knoll is to approve the consent calendar as submitted.

The revision.

R-26-138.

R-26-138, R. R. Let's see, R was changed. Mark was originally being authorized.

The chair signs it, not the county administrator.

Oh, okay.

All right. She needs that information.

Mrs. Noll?

Yes.

Yes. Mr. Drury?

Yes.

Mr. Rohn? Yes. Mr. Shepherd? Yes. Mr. Holroy? Yes. Motion carried.

Skip open discussion. Call for adjournment.

Real quick before we do that. A lot of good information in here. Not easy to digest or disseminate. I'm not sure if I'm looking at Susan or your counterpart or somebody. How do we turn this into something that is easy to share and explain? He's going to report. Am I sure that's from y'all? We've been talking about this with the team. Mr. Rohn, because you know how we do a good job with our infographics, and we need to apply that here. You want a one-pager? Is that what you want? Well, I think you fit on one page. Yeah. But do you understand what I mean? Yes, sir. Some of these eye charts are good for details, but for conversation, you can't get into it.

We want to see the financials boiled down to what's it going to cost and what's our downloads. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for the review.

Again, thank you guys for having us here.

And our delegate is walking away with full pad of notes.