All right. Good afternoon. I'm calling this meeting of the Finance and Operations Committee meeting to order. Chair Griffiths is not able to be with us this afternoon, so I'll be presiding. I am Amy Ricardi of the Sterling District, and joining me today is Mr. Pepper of the Dulles District, and that will be a quorum for the committee. I do not believe we have any public comment, so we are just going to move right along to our meeting minutes. May I have a motion to approve the minutes of the June 16th Finance and Operations Committee meeting? Yes, Madam Chair. I move the minutes of the June 16th, 2026 Finance and Operations
Committee meeting. All right. And I will second that. All in favor? Aye. Aye. And that will be passed with two yeas and Ms. Griffiths not here. We'll now move on to our consent agenda. The consent agenda contains one item, it's 4.01, support services, adjustment to grant of sanitary sewer and treatment facility easements to Loudoun County Sanitation Authority, Loudoun Water, and Lucketts Elementary School. Madam Chair, I move the consent agenda. I will second. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. And that passes two to zero with Ms.
Griffiths not here, not present. All rightie. We have no action items for this week's meeting, so we're going to move on to our information items, 5.01, business and financial services, award of RFP R23250 printing, graphic design, mailing, and related services. Good evening. Have before you this evening the printing graphic design contract. This is actually a renewal of these services, and these are services that are used across LCPS for large print
jobs. Some examples may include the annual guide and directory, bond referendum postcards, employee benefits materials, as well as our central copy center here at the administration building uses these vendors to outsource large jobs that have a rushed turnaround time. The anticipated spend across the school system for these services is $355,000 distributed in budgets throughout the organization. We are recommending renewal with the vendors that did respond. This is the fourth of the
four renewal options. We did have one vendor, Custom Graphics, who chose not to renew for this year. Our current contract is scheduled to expire on September 30th, 2026. We're bringing this before you this evening to either move forward as an action item on your next finance committee meeting or to move to a consent item, followed by school board consent on September 8th. Great. Thank you so much. You have any questions? Just a couple questions really quickly. First off, how do we decide which printing company we're going to use? Are they specializing in different things?
For example, is one better at brochures, are other better at posters, or is it just luck of the draw? I would say yes. It depends on what services you're looking for, the turnaround time of said services, the expertise that they have on staff, and the availability to get the work done. And our print shop knows which one would be their go-to? Our print shop uses Copy General- Okay ... for their work when they have large print jobs to send outside of our copy center. Okay. Appreciate that. And then, and maybe this is a bigger question that you may not have the answer to.
Would LCPS have the capability at any point to in-house all of this work? And if so, would at some point this go towards some sort of savings in the long term? So for example, if we were able to have someone in-house to do all this work, obviously we'd have to buy the machinery, the equipment, all that stuff, and it would be an initial outlay, probably a relatively expensive outlay. Is there a long-term savings, or does that not seem like something that's feasible? I would have to defer to Mr. Trainer or Mr. Stocks, who's not here this evening.
Mr. Stocks oversees that program. That's part of his area, but I will defer to Mr. Trainer for additional information. A lot of what's is outsourced is very specialized type printing, and so it would not be cost-effective to try to pull in very expensive equipment to do very small numbers of specialized work. The other area that Ms. Fayall talked about us outsourcing are those rush items, where it's very large volume in a very short period of time.
We have a very capable print shop, and they do an amazing amount of work in-house. But there come times where we just can't support it because of the huge size of a print load, and so those we outsource to a private vendor. And sometimes we just don't have the luxury of having more time to print an item, which is what it would take doing it in-house. Appreciate it. Thank you so much. Great. Thank you. I was just curious about the $355,000 figure. Since it's described as an estimated value, do we know what the actual spend was under this current year?
That $355,000 is based on past spend as well as anticipated future spend. That is incorporated into the number, and this item was brought before the committee last year as well. And have the rates maintained? There was no change in the rates that they were charging for their services under this renewal. Is that unusual for the print market to keep the rates the same? It's contingent upon volume. If you bring them the work, they're going to work with you on the rates. The only fluctuation we really may see from time to time with this
contract is paper costs. As you know, paper cost is one area that goes up and down depending on the economy and current things going on in the market. But there was no change in rate or no price increase for this contract. I think transportation too, considering cost of fuel and whatnot too, but they're maintaining their costs? They're maintaining their costs. Interesting. I think that's all I've got for this. Let me check here real quick. So you all are recommended that this goes on the consent agenda for the school board for next week's meeting?
Consent agenda for your finance and operations committee meeting on September 1st, followed by school board consent on September 8th. So are we good to move this to consent? I am fine with sending this to consent, yes. Okay, great. All right. Thank you so much. Thank you. We'll move on to item 5.02, business and finance services award of RFPR 26024, dental insurance services. This was a new solicitation that the recommended awarded vendor is Delta Dental. We did a competitive solicitation for this, working with our consultant, Aon,
to disseminate this out and also get the responses, evaluate the proposals through the proposal analysis group. And after all the scoring was completed and consolidated, Delta Dental came out on top, and they are proposing a 3.84% overall increase in the annual cost compared to the current year. As you know, they are our current vendor for these services. And we, once again, are bringing this to you. The first contract term would be from January 1, 2027, to December 31st, 2029. Of course, we need to make sure we have this in place and
ready to go for open enrollment. That comes up later this year. And then there'll be four one-year optional renewals. The current contract we have with Delta Dental is scheduled to expire December 31, 2026, and we are asking that this either be brought forward to your September 1 finance and operations committee as an action or consent item, and then on school board consent at the September 8th meeting. Thank you. Do you have any questions? Just quickly, I assume this is part of the self-insurance fund as well. What's the relationship with Delta and the self-insurance fund?
It's a little bit more complex question. I have Ms. Brown here who is the director who would be happy to answer those questions. Yes. So the dental expenses are paid through the self-insurance fund, and it works very similarly as our medical coverage. So Delta Dental processes all of the claims and makes sure everyone's paying the deductibles, the in-network or the out-of-network costs. So they administer the program, and then they invoice us, and we pay it through the self-insurance fund. And so the $16 million-ish figure, is
that for the life of the entire contract, or is that just one year? I believe that's one year of dental costs for every covered individual for Loudoun County Public Schools. That's one year of dental costs, or that's one year of what Delta is charging us to process the claims? It would be both the administrative cost as well as the dental claims themselves. Okay, so maybe I'm confused here, and I need a simplification of this. We pay the claims through the self-insurance fund. So I go to the dentist, I'm an employee, I go to the dentist, I make a
claim, say they cover $700. That money to cover that claim comes out of the self-insurance fund? Or does it come out of this contract? I'm a little bit confused here. The way this contract works is the value of this contract says what services are covered, paid for, two exams a year, for example. Right. The cost of that as established, $150. I don't know. But that $150 is paid to my dentist by Delta Dental. We then pay Delta Dental for that 150, plus we pay the administrative fee on
top of that for them to process our claims and handle our claims processing and everything for us. So this is all-encompassing value of this contract because all of our payments are going to Delta Dental. I understand that. Mm-hmm. I'm going to let Ms. Riccardi ask a question. I'm going to think about the flow of money and why, in my mind, this is not clicking. Unless somebody wants to explain that a little bit. I guess, well, I have a couple. So the initial term plus the renewals is seven years.
I'm trying to understand the rate guarantee period, and who governs the pricing after that initial term. Do they come back and give us an increase each year? I think health insurance does something similar, but how does that work? That was part of the negotiations for the best and final offer, and I can get to that information, but I believe that there were at least three years of a price guarantee and then with an escalation potentially for year four. Four to seven? Mm-hmm. Yes. Okay. And then you all received three proposals for this process? I'm very familiar with Delta Dental, so I know they're-
Yes, you do. ... a well-respected- Mm-hmm ... dental provider, but I'm assuming there was some kind of evaluation process in the bids that were provided. In your packet, in behind this packet there is the evaluation results, is part of that packet. There should've been a table or a grid in your committee member only information, not in the public packet. I didn't even know there was one, so that's good to know. Yes. In behind the scenes, there's executive information that's only available, and there is an evaluation sheet in there. Okay. I didn't take a look at that this time around, so thank you for letting me know.
You're welcome. Did you have a chance to... Anymore? I think I'm okay with it. It's weird because for me, when you're taking money out of the self-insurance fund, it seems like this 16 million, part of it is from self-insurance, and part of it is from payment of a contract. But I've processed it. I think I'm okay with it. It's a little bit tricky and a little bit confusing because of how we pay things through the self-insurance fund. So that 16,326,368, I believe is the BAFO offer, or?
That was the estimated value based on their best and final offer, and basically, your self-insurance fund's covering all your expenses. Okay. It's covering the dental visit, plus your administrative fee. Understood. Yep. If we get to a point where our employees, say, need extra dental work this year for whatever reason, could we end up spending more than this best and final offer? This estimate is based on calculations that Aon did for us based on the number of employees that were covered, based on the fact each employee and their family member goes to the dentist twice a year, figuring in there's a
whole analysis and calculation they do based on an estimate and past experience. So they could've taken our claims for last year and said, "These are going to be this many root canals, this many these things done," and then they calculate this to their best estimate possible. Do we know, do we have any estimate of how we've done on these projections in the past? So for example, I see the current plan year was like 15,723. Have we gone over, under? Do we know where we're at on those? So I will say that our dental coverage does have a maximum
benefit per year, so there is a control on the dental plan itself for costs, and then the escalation would just be the differences in the reimbursement rates between the agreements with Delta Dental and the dentists that provide in-network service. And so that would be some of the analysis behind why the number is higher this year, as well as number of employees that are participating in the plan and the number of covered individuals. I'm not surprised the number's higher. Everything is getting more expensive. Let's be very clear on that. I just want to know if we were hitting those targets, if we were over, if we were under.
For example, they've budgeted 16 million, but if we only spend 14 million on dental, I assume, is that a cost savings for us, or do we still owe Delta the extra? I think there are multiple ways that you can look at that. Okay. Cost savings, yes, but if there are more cavities in the future, maybe no. So we do want to encourage everybody to do the cleanings and utilize the benefit that is covered. And so if they don't take that up, yes, it would probably save us money in the short term, but may have health impacts down the road that we would pay for later. Okay. You good? Yeah. Okay. The recommendation here is to have this go to consent for the school board?
Either consent or come back as action for your finance committee meeting September 1st. Okay. Which one? I'm okay with consent if you want- Consent? ... to send to that. Yeah. Okay. Yep. All right. Then we'll move this to the consent agenda for the next meeting. Great. Thank you. All right. We're on- Thank you, and thank you, Ms. Brown. Thank you. Now we'll move on to item 5.03. This is the support services easements for Evergreen Mills Road widening at Heritage High School, Simpson Middle School, and Evergreen Elementary School. Thank you. The town of Leesburg is seeking easements in order to widen a section of Evergreen Mills Road, which is adjacent to Heritage, JL Simpson, and
Evergreen Mills Elementary. So this widening project will add two lanes to the existing road from South King Street, Route 15, all the way down to Battlefield Parkway. A sidewalk will be constructed on one side, and we'll have a shared use path on the other side through this widening. The lighting in the roadway will be increased, stormwater management will be addressed, and this road widening project is in alignment with the county's long-term Evergreen Mills Road corridor widening project. So the LPS engineering team and division council office has reviewed this, and we recommend approval.
Great. Thank you. I have so many questions. So I happen to be taking a look at the, there's a new data center coming in here on Evergreen Mill. I think it's north of this or south. I can't remember. There's some proposals, but they're all further south. Further south. Okay. There's no room north of the schools between- I know it- ... the residential areas ... sits on Evergreen Mill between two sets of schools. I just couldn't remember if this is the south. No. This is definitely not my part of the county, that's for sure. Okay. And so is this widening and these easements is part of extending out
... power to those areas, or is it just purely electrical? No, this has nothing to do with electrical, actually. So the easements that they're requesting are for construction easements, which are temporary, as well as storm water management and expansion of the road itself. So there's no utilities that are being put on our property through this process. This is taking a two-lane. It's effectively a two-lane road with a center turn lane in some places. It's going to make it a four-lane road from basically King Street all the way down to the Heritage High School. It's being done by the town of Leesburg, so it's running to the town
boundary and then stops, and then the county has plans to pick up from the edge of the town and continue south along Evergreen Mill to expand it to a four-lane road. Okay. And I know there's a lot of homes along that route, too. Are they offering any compensation for those easements at all, or they're just straight asking for the land? Yeah, typically, we don't provide compensation for it. What we do is we look at, will this have a negative or positive effect on our schools? And we looked at it, and we think overall, it'll have more of a positive effect than negative effect in terms of what they're asking for.
Helping with traffic and flow? Yeah, pedestrian access, traffic for sure. If you ever travel up and down that road, we think this will help a lot. Great. Are there any neighborhoods across this street? Are we going to look at any crossings at all, or are we going to need any of that kind of thing expanded? So right now, the crosswalks that were there, the ones that are existing, we have a light right beside Simpson. So that, as far as we're aware, that light would stay in place with the crosswalk. And then for Heritage, it's on Battlefield is where the crossing point is for that light. And then right at the entrance to
Heritage High School, there's a traffic light. And so you'd have the crosswalk there. But from what we have seen of the drawings, it doesn't appear to be additional crosswalks planned. Great. Thank you. Do you have any questions? Just two really quick. One, having driven this route a lot, I'm intimately familiar with this, and this seems like a good thing. I would assume this would improve walking routes to school for many of our students with the addition of the pathway and the sidewalks. Is that correct? Yeah. So there is an existing sidewalk on, I think it's the west side of Evergreen now. When they build a new road, there will be a new sidewalk, of course, as it widens,
and there'll be a shared use path on the other side, so it will improve pedestrian access. Awesome. And then, is this going to impact, just knowing where Heritage sits and it's a little bit tight in that section between perhaps Battlefield and the synagogue, if you will, down there. It gets a little bit tight. Is there still going to be room, one, for turn lanes off of... Do you know if there's going to be turn lanes in the center there, either into Heritage? Yes. There's turn lanes there now, and there'll continue to be turn lanes there. Okay. And then, is this going to impact parking at Heritage?
I know the parking lot kind of abuts Evergreen Mill. Are we still okay on that? Yeah, we're fine. This piece of the road widening actually stops at Battlefield, so it won't impact Heritage in that way. Okay. Even that front lot that's right there along Evergreen Mill? Correct. Yeah. Okay. All right. Seems easy to me. Okay. So would you like to see a second on consent? Consent. Yeah, just go right to consent. We'll move this to consent for the next meeting. Mm-hmm. Thank you both very much. And we'll move on to item 5.04, which is support services authorization for school board chair to sign easement documents related to Waterford Elementary School renovation and addition. Me again. Thank you. So as we look towards starting construction at the end of the year at the Waterford
project, we are seeking a blanket easement approval for utilities which will serve the school. So we do this oftentimes. We do this all the time with new school projects, because we'll get requests for heavy easements for water, for sewer, for fiber, that kind of thing. So we typically request a blanket easement, which allows us to bring those directly to the chair for signature. And what that does is it minimizes the number of times we have to come here for those easements because they are quite frequent, and then it helps us maintain the project schedule as well. So with that,
be happy to take any questions. Okay. Thank you. Do you have any questions on this one? You're good? I know that we just approved Policy a couple of weeks ago, and so do we have any issues with the policy and these easements? Is it... So we did note that in the board item. I did note. Yes. Thank you very much. So, no. And if there were to be an issue where there was a request for a power easement that served something other than our school, then we would bring that back to this committee as a separate item. Thank you so much for doing that. I appreciate it.
Based on that, do we want to move this to consent next time? There we go. Yes. All right. Do we have any new business to take care of? Talked about a quick and speedy agenda. All right. If there's no further business, then I move that we move to adjournment. And our next meeting will be, when will our next meeting be? We're not meeting this month again, right? So it'll be the September meeting? Yep. September 1st? All right, great. We'll see everybody then. Thank you so much.