thank you i'm calling to order the March 20 the April 10 work session of the Vernon Township Board of Ed mr slam can I get a roll call miss Bach mr saglia mr canino here mr mr fischer here
mr krauss here miss Pellet here mr sweeney miss Varela here mr zimmerman here we have a quorum awesome it is recommended that the board enter close sessions for the purpose of discussing student legal and personnel
matters can I make a motion so moved second Bethany all in favor i we are enclosed start with the super yes yeah your offer happened that's our honey team over there with
Joe okay it is recommended that the board return to open session uh can I get a motion second Stephanie all in favor i Mr
slam local i used to have an extra binder sorry miss Bach here mr smagley here mr canino here mr fischer here mr krauss here miss Plet here mr sweeney here missella here mr
zimmerman here we have a quorum thank you um please rise and join me in the pledge to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands one nation under God indivisible
with all of the meeting notice please the New Jersey open public meetings law was enacted to ensure the right of the public to have advanced notice of and to attend the meetings of public bodies at which any business affecting their interest is discussed or acted upon in accordance with provisions of the act
Vernon Township Board of Education has caused notice of this meeting to be published and adequate notice has been provided and notice this meeting has been properly posted in accordance with the New Jersey open public meeting law uh just a quick note our next public board meeting will be Wednesday April 16th uh again just just reminder you're
normally on Thursday so this will be Wednesday April 16th which is next week thank you item E public comment just a reminder this portion of the public comment session is for comments related to the agenda only u Mr slam can you read the
please during the course of public meeting of Bernham Board of Education the public is offered the opportunity to address the board on agenda items and any issues excuse me any issues regarding the school district board reminds us individuals who take this opportunity that they must identify themselves by name and section of town
and limit their comments to agenda items and are issues that directly relate to the operations of the school district issues that are raised by members of the public may or may not be responded to by the board of ad of board administration at the time of the meeting or at any time all comments will be considered and the response be forthcoming if and when
appropriate the board requests that members of the public keep their comments to a limit of five minutes be courteous respectful and mindful of the rights of other individuals when speaking specifically comments regarding students and employees of the board of education should be thoroughly considered by the speaker and may or may
not be responded to by the board or administration be advised that students and and employees have rights of confidentiality and other protections under the law students name should never be used the board bears no responsibility nor will be liable for any comments made by the public during the public portion of a board meeting
members of the public should consider their comments in light of legal rights of those affected or identified in their comments and be aware that they are personally legally responsible with potential liability for the comments that they make to the board thank you Mr slam the floor is open for public comments do we have anyone in the
audience who would like to make comment anyone online we have Barer awesome mr paringer and all right you can hear me yes good uh
first I want to wish Mr rogers good luck in his retirement as it's stated on the addendum of today's um agenda and I would like to take the opportunity to
uh suggest to the BOE we have had uh a new superintendent every two to three years for the past six superintendent I think so over the past 15 20 years we have had no one serve for
more than three years it seems if I'm correct this is Mr rogers fifth year a third year so I would said this is not consistency we don't have consistency because every superintendent pretty much
has his or her own ideas so I think the board should think long and hard if there are some ways to maybe give administrators that stay long as like principles
uh more power or some voice to give us consistency for the future to allow us to continue because for the last couple years we did Mr roger's way before that we did Mino's way etc and now we're
going to get somebody new and I also hope uh we have had some retirees in the past when you guys hire somebody hire somebody that's a little bit young and has a chance to stay for a
while so that's what I wanted to say and on an offsite comment nice to see everyone in the picture you changed the tables good job thank you Mr paringer um do we have anyone else
online who would like to comment nope that is all okay closing the public comment session on the item F review of the public meeting agenda for Wednesday uh April 16 does anyone have any questions regarding next week's
agenda everyone have chance to look at it or do we need a minute let's do some paging going on a minute about the appointment says they're pretty high up on the uh teaching guide for uh can teach you the social
studies and math I don't know have anybody out of college step one maybe I think we have some on the first couple of steps as Well um it depended on what uh specific jobs you're looking for a lot
of them were were English math and science positions that we'll use for the higher uh levels but uh we we when we do the uh or uh when we do the interview process we are looking for the strongest candidate and we do take that in consideration but uh our number one
priority is to uh uh find the the best best possible teacher thank you i think and the conversation is I think there's a variety based on the different different positions any other questions
question i'm recovering stephanie I'm good you're good okay all right great all right item G we're uh ready for our presentation on the EIEP um Mr beast from Honeywell is here to
tell us all about um energy and we we need to move right energy savings should have added the word savings very important here it's usually both take your time there's another pres
[Music] all righty thank you very much well thank you so much for having us here today we're excited to present and um before we start I just want to introduce with me have a few colleagues so to my left here is Emily Lee he is an energy engineer who's been involved in the
process for the entire time as well as Paul Peters our senior energy engineer delivered many projects throughout this great state and I am John Bonavist well nice to meet you all and thanks for having us thank you again so basically we'll cover the high level
overview of what an ESIP is so you have a good background on how it works uh touch upon some projects that Honeywell has delivered for reference base um and experience and then we'll get into the actual steps that we've completed to date and I have to I'll give an an early
thank you to both to Ray Slam on the financial side as well as Joe Vancerk sitting behind me uh from the facility side they've been great to work with we've had a lot of progress and a lot of collaboration that really really helps these projects to become successful then we'll jump we'll actually jump into the actual measures that we've gone through
from our investment grant audit process to inform what your project looks like and touch upon next steps and of course have time for questions and by all means this is meant to be interactive so if you have questions at any time please feel free to interject we're happy to to address or if not we'll discuss at the
end so the program or as as shown the energy savings improvement program uh exists underneath the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities so I always like just to mention this this is not a Honeywell invented uh endeavor if you will right so there's a lot of healthy competition throughout the market and
Honeywell is a leader in this space but um you know again it's not just us and essentially it's designed and under statute allowed where you're able to utilize energy savings like we'll get to momentarily that actually pays for and carries all the improvements so like the
equipment you're looking to upgrade as well as the cash flow covers the debt service to help that whole program work so it ends up being what we call budget neutral or taxpayer neutral um and it allows these benefits to flow through your schools uh and improve the life of
students and faculty and the community any questions with that okay great high level uh benefits obviously energy efficiency is a big part of what we talk about it also allows us to look at things from a renewable perspective
uh contemplate solar the benefits there is therein with that with saving energy as well as reducing your carbon footprint um it's very important nowadays there's a lot of focus on us not just doing that but then be able to calculate that and share the results with you and and with your constituents
um and within that too it's it's it's a focus especially coming out of the pandemic with focusing on indoor air quality making sure your systems are working properly upgrade where need be and really support the environmental aspects of of what we do um the last bullet is you know when it comes to
actual project development we discuss uh local subcontractors as well as as long as they're they're vetted and meet the the criteria of um the process we're happy to to bring them on board and have them involved in the bidding process some examples of projects and there's
it's there's a mix here and the following slide as well um the the project probably closest to you here is the Sparta school so second from uh top on the right side similar size project a lot of a lot of the similar measures as well um and a good example of working
together within within the district and and really putting a collaborative approach into drive um you know the left side of the screen clearly Hudson County is a very large project just goes to show that combination of um you know from larger to to districts that may be
from six buildings to 12 buildings it really doesn't matter our approach is still to focus and and strategize with you have a master plan together have a working relationship and and deliver what's best for for your district at that time following suit um this is there
these are two examples in in a bit more detail the left side Again a project that is similar to what we're discussing today here with similar measures um I added these just to show on the second half of the page going down what the typical measures look like between lighting and and some mechanical
upgrades and solar as well and off to the right is just an example of us really trying to help maximize a district that was able to put a lot of extra money forward to to aggregate a project that was over 70 something million dollars to get a lot of need done as a response to the pandemic and and getting mechanical equipment
situated okay any questions with any of those great thank you um now the program itself as we discussed has certain steps that we follow to make sure that we're in compliance with the BPU process so
I'll call out a couple details of what we've actually done to date the Honeywell team with I'll call the Vernon the Vernon project team essentially Ry and Joe and Russ has joined a few meetings as well um but ultimately the first step is there's a process that the
BP requires for local government energy audit and there's a few ways to do this one is actually you can hire a third party and pay out of pocket for it to expedite the process but I really wanted to commend uh you know Ray and Joe on this and Joe did a lot of the leg work for reaching out to the um to the firm
that actually performs these and no charge in the district but there could be a long waiting list and Joe was able to really just do I think just be diligent and stay on top of it and I call him the squeaky wheel in a good way and uh he got the process going and that ended up saving the district about
$70,000 right so that's that's great the audits are done they're they're published down on BPU's website and um that was a job well done so we you know that was great within the process the next piece is how do you legally right through statute select a company like Honeywell to work with you and we went
through those motions last year actually so June 24th this year so almost a year ago in fact I think our first conversations dated December 2023 in beginning the conversation with Honeywell and Vernon this has been obviously it's some time in the making getting to know each other going through
the process steps and making sure things were done at the right time and not rushing anything um item number three there is what's called the energy savings plan which has to be reviewed by the board of public utilities that's been completed there's actually a third party engineer and um in item number five to skip ahead for a moment that has
to review those and make sure they're sound and they provide acceptance which that's all been done um item four to step back for a moment i'll sh I'll share that momentarily about the actual measures how it lines up in this project but essentially it's it's all the possibilities of the work that we
contemplated and discussed at length with with both Ray and Joe to to hone in and prioritize uh where we are now is really item number six those the ECM selection has essentially happened with with us with Joe and Ray we're working now on the final steps which include getting
things ready for contract which is working with your bond council with your uh municipal adviser as well on on all the financing aspects of things lining those up with the important dates of of the board as well so that you have time to review and um to go through motions etc that are important for process and
we'll go from there our target our target date to wrap that up as you see is uh is July and and likely uh the second half of July and then we follow the rest of the process according to the to the law uh with bids and construction begins and
that construction would again would begin after contract execution in the summertime after the July finalization okay this slide just shows a 3D view of like a school building and the boxes starting from upper left and moving
around would be the measures that or you know the actual work that when we perform an investment grade audit with our engineering studies we'll assess and look at and then discuss with you you know with you to come up with the best plan so it contemplates many things on the screen and then we try to hone it in
from you know a macro world to a more focused micro world for what works for you and you discuss um your wish list items as well right so it's just not about Honeywell's recommendations it's it's also you know with you and Joe and his staff that have been very helpful and knowledgeable to explain where they
might need some um you know some improvements that would be critical for them and where they'd like to see equipment get put into place we take that into account and and the green box upper right is when we work uh with with districts uh especially where we're able
to to bring solar into the project and whatnot um we helped we'd like to talk with faculty and and introduce the STEM education program um also there's some tech technical training we can we can discuss with the district as well on
controls and whatnot so we again it's kind of it becomes a bit of a community focus and we would do that in palatable group sizes it could be done across all age groups from elementary middle and high school as well so with that last chart in mind of the 3D view of the building this table
is actually uh a showcase of the measures that we're planning on on uh reaching a contract with you for and then ultimately delivering so obviously you see your schools across the top and on the left side all the measures that are included in the scope um from LED
lighting all the way down to solar you you'll quickly see if you jump to the right to the high school every measure on the board is included including solar um and otherwise lighting and building controls and building envelope or elsewhere and this is really just coming down to where where there's needs and um
working with Ray and Joe on right sizing the project based upon the available cash flow from the engineering studies so this chart here now will will then look at your spending on an annual basis which these these numbers from
electricity propane and oil are your actual bills so we uh we collect your information again thank you Joe for all the help you've given us with this um so as you can see they sum up to about $1.1 million for an annual spend that's ending calendar year uh December 31st of
2024 based upon that um we have savings which equates by measure into the numbers listed here so you see the lighting on the top line as well if you jump down to the middle and building management control um and then the last line of solar are really like you know
the three major drivers to to produce about $316,000 of annual savings and that is that's the savings that's going to bolster the project and and carry the cash flow to pay for the debt service as well so what we do then is as a comparison we
look at the pie on the left and I rounded the numbers to make it a little easier more palatable for discussion but if your utility costs are about 1.1 million which is the the large blue pie on the left and we're going to save in this project about 28.5% of your savings
of your energy spend into savings um that becomes on the right side that green slice of the pie $315,000 what that means is if you add the 315 in green with the 785,000 reduced utility cost on the right it still equates to the 11 one what happens
is that 315 flows to the operating budget and that is that becomes your debt payment right so it's the same dollar for-doll spent but on the right side you have all the equipment delivered and everything's turnkey but you also have the money to pay for that that debt financing so that $315,000
over a 20-year term uh equates to about a project size down below of $5.5 million and that's that's where we are today um in terms of a rough order of magnitude pricing that we put together for for Vernon any questions with
that okay so next steps uh to to get towards the end here um separate from the Honeywell project is a solar PPA which is a third-party project um Ray led the bid process honeywell helped
there was a solar consultant involved as well that all happened uh back early February we had site visits there was a whole you know full process questions and answers addendums and then the bids themselves were due back on March 18th um the finance committee along with the
buildings and grounds looked at that on Monday or sorry Tuesday rather on the 8th and think you know that process is is looking to go forward i'll let I'll let Ray handle that you know going forward i won't you know further comment on that but um that's a big part of the project so we're happy to have that in
in place um the next pieces as I mentioned um what Rey is doing already is working with your bond council as well as your municipal adviserss to get the structure and the timeline and all the needed documents in order uh for the bond process to be put together and be
put before this board and then ultimately we'll get to the contract execution work things out and um solidify terms and agreements um at that point it's firm fixed price so uh whenever we contract with you Honeywell honors that price if we own the designer
risk uh we have we cannot put change orders forward so any any issue if we miss something is is on us to absorb and to still deliver um the only change orders would be if you as as a as a district decided you wanted to change part of the scope and you wanted to work
with us of course we'd modify the scope accordingly and that would just flow through uh as need be but um otherwise it's it's full turnkey and um construction will begin and the process uh Yes sir um really back one slide how
firm are you or how sure are you of the 5.5 million uh interest rates the current financial craziness so great question um how sure I I would I would say that within those numbers there is
um consideration for some of the turbulence in the market um turbulence is much better yeah no absolutely and so you know it's not unparalleled to the pandemic right the early part of the pandemic when supply chain was was severely constrained and price gouging
was probably everywhere and it was it was challenging labor rates really skyrocketed um so it's not that we're unfamiliar but to your point um this we're we we think these these are valid I should say at least representative numbers but when we get to contract
which again is going to be into July um we'll we'll have that pricing locked obviously it's fully disclosed so it's not where you have to sign the contract but we'll talk through it and work through terms at that point though those numbers will be firm fixed and you know there won't be any changes that's it
thank you certainly i I have I have a similar question i ask I think we were thinking similar oh god so time to leave right John
now so you you're looking at current cost of 1.1 million right and then you have projected savings of 315 right and that that pays for the project right what if the savings isn't 315 it's a
great question so within this um and we we discussed it on Tuesday with the finance committee in Billings Ground as well Honeywell will offer a performance guarantee to to guarantee those savings now we pay for that it's a separate contract correct um now it is
cancelellable at any time so if you think of it like as an insurance policy and you wanted to go year one with it per se and then re-evaluate you know the cost benefit if you will and that cost is about $38,000 so um so it's about 12%
about 15% just yeah correct um again so if you went through with that um there's a measurement and verification process a lot of time here spent we put together a full report we sit down and review it so if there's a shortfall Honeywell has to write a check back to the district to make you whole if there's more savings
some excess savings that just flows through your operating budget there's no sharing with Honeywell in that regard to make us whole annually or on the total 5.5 million it would be an annual performance guarantee so as long as you had the performance contract in hand
right so you didn't cancel it you you reuped it every year you'd be covered for the for the 20-year term okay now if there was a shortfall and I'll be honest in New Jersey we've had none other states I know we you know there are there are some through a big portfolio um we look to rectify it so we're going
to look to try to come in and do the work or if there's something missed perhaps it's a little bit of horse trading we'll do more work for you to satisfy you know part of a problem but um it's an insurance policy that you know that you can consider and I know Ray and I have talked about it and um I
want to be neutral about my opinion but it's um obviously it's it's there from a statute perspective as well okay thank you certainly yes question about the bid process do you guys do the bidding or do we have to do that yeah actually Paul do you want to discuss the bidding process for Yeah so we're gonna uh we're going
to hire a uh an engineer speaking of people sorry just so uh we're going to hire an engineer to do uh design and we usually have that engineer or or architect it's usually an engineer uh run the uh the bid process so they'll take care of
everything so it actually Honeywell kind of steps to the side uh to remain neutral uh during the bid process and it's all um basically all New Jersey bid law uh so we just follow New Jersey bid law like you would bid any project that the district does thank you all right
thanks i just had a question about um so you're saying this is a 20-year term right the return we're going to get in within 20 years so how much savings do we get first year and con you know years are we
getting are you guaranteeing us we're going to save this much of money so Ray could just write that off the budget and just pay that towards um that because obviously you can't finish all the projects in two months you know no so it's a great question okay so um that say so if we execute a contract in July
the construction period is essentially 12 months which puts us into July 2026 completion Now there's actually a we call it a year zero um savings that is not not not nothing part of the guarantee um so let's say for example the lighting
project lights to um convert into LED drive a lot of savings if we do that in the first months of the contract that savings will flow through your operating budget naturally and now that's not part of the guarantee that's part of construction so after the construction year is over year one of full um running
of the project if you will after that year is where the guarantee comes in okay and so but to your first part that guarantee number is against that savings so Ray can if Ray budgeted savings off a guarantee he'll he'll be sure to make his number the challenge though is the
MV contract the performance contract has a cost to it and that's that's where there is a balance so um just talking out loud let's say you have the if you had the guarantee for two years and every year you've exceeded or made the guarantee um then you may be more confident to say maybe we can opt out of
it but again that's that's the discretion of of the of Ray the board and and and Vernon to make okay i have another question too yeah um because it's sort of solar we're talking about solar here and we're only
looking at one one school and I know there's been discussion about it but can you explain why to the especially for the public to know why we're only looking at one school for solar now across the district yeah absolutely so um we actually took quite a bit of time
in solar analysis before the PPA came out and obviously the existing system that you have um rolling hills and Lounsberry right basically is offsetting both those schools and that's a great project in fact I think from us digging into it we've realized that you have about I think another five years left on
on on that term so it it's it's doing well for you um but the high school on is on JCPNL's utility and that program is still open you know based on solar map availability uh the challenge that we had on the other schools including
this one they're on the Sussex Royal Co-op and based upon how the interconnect looked and and the the availability um unfortunately did not seem that that would be plausible we do we had some background calls and and spend time into it but um and I think a
further challenge with that even if that solar was able to be put on but the roofs are in poor condition so it then it comes down to challenges within finding you know the right areas to construct so on a positive um the high school solar system is quite large it
will it'll be over 80% of the usage um it's actually canopy structure in the parking lots and it's a nice design that's put together um they also that will also include LED lights underneath those those structures so it'll have a safety variability to it right and also have a nice aesthetic to it so I think
that's it's a good outcome for a lot a lot of time spent um going through that that analysis does that answer your question yeah okay thank you so just to and please jump in with any more questions but already went through the the Honeywell project list this is
just an overview again of you know just from a standpoint of of who you may have in a partner here we've been around we're in our second century of business as an entity um you know we've seen a lot of market disruption we've we're in a good financial position which matters for a company you want to engage with
long term um and we've done a lot of these projects so you know we're happy to to discuss again any any questions or references need be but um very excited about the opportunity to to deliver a great project for Vernon um you know in closing these are the the benefits i
won't read off kind of address them but just to close on that note and um that's my contact information as long as as accompanied by a list of acronyms that we we tend to gloss over here in in New Jersey actually one more question I think sure
how come the high school had was checked off for everything i mean isn't that our newest building and it seemed to have how how were the older buildings more efficient it's not our newest building it's not no ma Okay then Glenn
Meadow Lbury and and then just another thing to consider is that the high school's fully electric uh too so and it really comes down to equipment needs so obviously every school has lighting building management controls
building uh uh building envelope as well the high school with solar you know we we've discussed right so that's that's a positive thing there especially it's fully electrical school um the codegeneration piece is a small device that's added um it'll be helped for I
think a domestic hot water and it actually is part of how the BPU will allow a project to go from a 15 to a 20-year term based upon that technology being incorporated other otherwise it's really a matter of prioritization on some mechanical equipment in the scope
that again you know Joe and Ray and Honeywell spent a lot of time going through to to formulate yeah so this is a process so there are things that obviously things we would have liked to have included but u you were held back by the size of the project that didn't quite make it in so
then it came down to you know conversations about maybe some of the bigger impact things we could do um one of the things that you Mr vancerk was uh pretty excited about was the ability to replace the rooftop units uh for the high school auditorium like that that
was a big item we we said we'd really like to be able to do that those are big units though so there's a big cost associated with that any any more questions anyone and I just wanted to add a couple more things i'm sure everyone I think everyone probably
has heard that we've been um harassing Elizabeth Town Natural Gas for like about the last year now uh so we're still doing that um so we did receive an update that there's another project along that road um that seems to maybe be pushing the needle more kind of in
our direction for that um but the response we said we we got was essentially we might get a commitment in the next 6 to9 months um so with that being said that's a might it's not a
definite and um we didn't want to wait on this project because if we did wait that will be lost money um for taxpayers and you know for the district obviously because the longer you wait to do like some some of these um energy efficiency
um can't think of the word right now ECMS right measures um obviously the longer you're paying more because they're not in place um but with that being said if we do uh if we do get a letter emphasis on if um there could be
an opportunity to kind of do a phase two uh to this that would include something we've talked about a little bit include um bringing the natural gas lines into the buildings um if they run them to our schools um converting burners and
boilers which would be a pretty big deal right phase two of the EEP there could be a phase two of the EEP uh it would it would really relate back to whether that those gas lines come because when those g if those gas lines do come to the district that you know it's obviously a
big savings over oil right um and then with that being said uh you asked the question on solar for the um the other schools uh part of that issue comes down to and it was kind of mentioned um by John uh that essentially the cheapest
place to put so is a roof but we can't put solar on roofs So then you have to start looking at where could you put solar and when you're talking ground mounts or um the the canopies it's more expensive because there's more steel right and
then once you start looking at that what you're saying it's more expensive to build therefore this it increases the cost of the project so there's less savings and then you look at how much what's the possibility of how much um how many kilowatts would be available right and then it it reduces the
viability of that project right it is still something that we're looking at there's a couple of new programs that are available that we're also keeping tabs on um I think it was basically called remote net metering uh where it's essentially a program that's available
and if I say this wrong feel free to jump in um essentially it's it's very very new um it's a program where essentially you could enter a PPA to purchase solar from a field that's located somewhere else and you would get
the net metering effect you essentially you would get the the contract for that kilowatt price right so you would get that reduced price whatever that PPA competitive process would bring you would pay that price for the same amount of years the only difference is it's not on your property it's built somewhere
else and you're contracting to use it and it's for um public um entities only so that if natural gas went and maybe that we could pursue that those are a couple things that could potentially be a phase two that phase two planned out
or would you have to go through the whole process i mean obviously it wouldn't be finalized right now but do you have a phase somewhat in progress so you have to go into a process again so one of the things that we discussed uh with our bond council and our municipal adviser would be is there a way to
structure this bond where we could kind of say we'd like to go up into this amount if natural gas comes through and essentially the answer was no so basically we my understanding is we could still go through the EIP but we'd have to go through a second bond process
uh which would have uh you know a bond council and a uh municipal fee but that would get built into the debt service and we would only pursue those projects if it made sense to pursue those projects in terms of savings for the district right because that will go in as a cost to the project
just as say you know construction of um the you know the the the pipes getting the pipes into the building or converting the boilers are all cost of the project and the savings would have to be high enough to carry all those costs and still provide us a positive cash flow uh before we would even pursue
the project i mean Honeywell would come back in or I know we have to do bond process to come back in and do their whole audit and I uh I so they did the investment grade audit so there's two
there was two audits was the U LGA audit um which were able to we were able to go uh the route where we didn't have to pay the fee which is great uh and that was Mr van Kirk stayed on top of them where we're worried we might have to wait quite a long time to get that and uh it ended up being uh not the delay where we
were worried it would be right um so my understanding is we could still stay through the ESA process but I'm not 100% sure so I will throw this one over to John yeah sure um so we would we would look at where it is when we get there for if if Honeywell was still your
partner for that the audit that we've done the investment grade audit we we have all the information that we need we've talked to Joe quite a bit about what those boilers and burners would look like so that's we'd be ready to go right it comes down to just following
the right procurement law so we need to know BPU perspective if we need to have another say bid process to reselect Honeywell or a competitor for that matter and go forward um and quite honestly you you have you'll have our IG right agreement so if you decide to go
elsewhere you have the information it's not you know it's not where you're starting from scratch and just there's a lot of audit talks to maybe just get a little bit of of um of definition around that the the first audit that that Joe was very instrumental in getting that's a requirement from the Board of Public
Utilities to be able to go forward with these projects um they're they're very helpful they're more high level a lot of building assessment square footage writeups the the measures that that entity sees as as as prudent right which they do make sense but when Honeywell comes in or any company like us we have
to do our own what's called investment grade audit which is Paul and his team and our project managers as well spending a lot of time with your staff in your buildings going through your system doing a lot of measurements and calculations existing conditions against what you have what we'll propose it's a large book it's a lot of it's a lot of
time and and a lot of insight and also as I mentioned the guarantee aspect if Honeywell is going to guarantee the performance of the of the contract we need to be standing up against our own diligence and measures to make sure that it's going to do as we say it will do right not take a third party's worth it
that their savings is going to be there so there's there's two different want to kind of spell that out all right is that it everyone any more questions um I want to thank John and his colleagues for coming tonight and spending some time with us we're really appreciating that thank you thank you
thanks for all the good questions and um any more we're happy to answer so thanks for your time appreciate it great thank you and I also want to thank Ray and Joe for all their really hard work on this project i know it was a long one and a heavy list so thank you thanks everybody
and thanks thanks to Honeywell team we really appreciate the support thank you good night thank you wait for lights to come back or just We can do it all right Mr rogers you're up item H
informational matters uh I just wanted to let everyone know uh publicly I announced my retirement as superintendent of schools for Vernon School District earlier this week effective August 1st 2025 the decision was made for personal reasons and it came after careful consideration and
reflection serving this district was true privilege i'm deep deeply grateful for the opportunity to work alongside dedicated educators supportive families outstanding students and a board of education committed to excellence in teaching thank you for your support throughout my time at Vernon Township
School District always be proud of the education we provided to our community letter uh A harassment intimidation and bullying reports for March 16th 2025 to March 31st attachment WS1 letter B random drug testing and
school safety reports for March 2025 attachment WS2 letter C the enrollment report attachment WS3 uh recommendations we talked about this uh when HIV was moved it's recommended that the board approve the revised harassment
intimidation and bullying report reviewed at the March 20th 2025 meeting attachment WS4 um is it B yeah we have to Sorry that's an important one that's very important sorry so no it's recommended that the board
accept the superintendent's resignation due to retirement whereas Mr russell whereas Mr russell Rogers has submitted his letter of resignation as superintendent of schools for purposes of retirement effective August 1st 2025 to the Vernon Township Board of Education and whereas the board wishes
to thank us I guess yeah that's why you go ahead Ray i'll take it from there whereas the board wishes to thank Mr russell Rogers for his years of service to the Vernon Township School District including serving as its superintendent of schools and now therefore it be resolved that
the board hereby accepts the resignation of Mr russell Rogers from the position of superintendent schools for purposes of retirement effective August 1st 2025 see you almost got out of that because u can I get a motion to approve recommendations H2A through B so move
second hold on through yes okay got it all right who was my second carl was my second okay questions or comments i have a comment um I'd like to take a minute to recognize Mr rogers for all he's done
for the district during his tenure as superintendent he was thrust into this role unexpectedly during an extremely difficult time for the district and the commitment and dedication he demonstrated in stepping up to the task of getting us back on track financially and restoring morale cannot be
overstated um I was thinking of an early example of that when he first started uh making decisions for the district and he got in his car at like 4:00 a.m to go check the roads because we were we had a snowstorm and he wanted to make absolutely sure he was making the right
decision for the district and that just is an example of the lengths he would go through um to inform his decision- making and make the right call for us um we thank him and we wish him well and thank you for your support over these three years it's much appreciated
thank you you look great okay any other um questions i was joking i said I'll save mine for for his last meeting okay yeah well we have to recognize now too um any other questions or comments about the
superintendent's um recommendations no okay uh locov Mr canino yes Mr fischer this is on the recommendations
right just on two A and B correct right so no A yes b mr krauss yes miss Plet yes mr sweeney yes miss Varello yes mr zimmer yes Miss
Brock yes Mr smagalia i'm not happy with me but um but yes I accept motion carries item I Mr slam i'll just start out with um information matters uh so just quick update on the
budget um we are waiting to hear back from the division of early childhood uh on the pea budget so um now that we're a part of PA there's two budgets uh that are processed each year um that uh interconnect completely right uh one is
for the preschool expansion aid um and that affects our operating budget right uh so long story short there are certain positions that were approved in the current year that now they uh are taking issue with so therefore I am fighting it
out to see uh what that resolution will be so um have not heard it's been some time now i'm trying to put some more pressure on them because obviously we'll be advertising our or sending our our budget in for advertisement uh towards the end of next week um county BA is
involved as well uh so he's also making some phone calls um so once I get that information uh I will be taking a look at that um making any required changes uh and uh I have been speaking with the county BA and other BAS that also have
uh the preschool program so there are potentially other allowable ways that would help say offset maybe some of those things um that they're disapproving uh for next year's budget which again they had approved for this year's my thought process being that if
it's approved it should be approved again uh but they do not agree at this point we'll see if they agree with me after we meet so just a little bit of an update on that uh more more information um on that to follow uh and then on the
addendum uh we have uh two uh uh sorry item two uh recommendations uh we have letter A uh is recommended the board approve the submission of the application for additional expenditures and tax incentive aid whereas in the proposed FY26 state budget certain districts have
the opportunity to apply to the commission of education to increase expenditures including an allocation of tax levy incentive aid in order to satisfy the thoroughess and efficiency standards established pursuant to NJSA18A 7F-46 whereas Vern Town School District is below local fair share and
spending below ad to be eligible to participate in this program whereas we're intended to school district eligible to increase expenditures by $1,265,950 and qualify for tax living incentiv,220 $60,283 therefore the Vernon Township Board of Education is approving the
submission as application state measure of education and then letter B is recommended the board approve the proposal for professional services from New Jersey School Boards Association for an executive search for superintendent of schools in the amount of $7,000 and
that is attachment WS5 okay um I'm going to get a motion to approve recommendations uh 2 A through B so moved second question wait wait first uh I guess thank you John
questions or comments stephanie after reading this on the agenda I started thinking I was thinking about I guess the first time we saw it was June 24 where we're talk when you were talking about what will the in tax
increase that was what 9.65 it's like 4.4 million right that we that we in we we increased the taxes and then we have a laundry list of things that we were going to do for the district okay my question is and I may
be repeating yourself so forgive me if that's the case i keep going back to this list and wondering if we did what we said we were going to do first being the 16 teachers keeps just ringing in my head i don't ever
remember us discussing hiring 16 teachers which came from this i think there was staff 9.65 correct staff members um there was well go ahead I believe it was uh n I believe it was a
total of 19 positions um so there was an update on that there was a presentation I don't remember the date uh so it's I kind of went I went far back and I just couldn't remember what the answers were because you know we
keep asking for money and it's like a kid coming to your parents my daughter asked me for 50 bucks and then the next day it's another 75 and when are we going to stop asking the taxpayers for money for a tax
increase i mean it just keep it never seems to end so I'm looking at all of these you know and did we finish all of these items on the maintenance projects i know some are done um I know some are in the works i'm wondering if the ones
that are done that there's an estimated cost do they actually cost that amount of money so I know I'm throwing a lot out there but these are just questions that I can't help but think about before I go ahead and say yes to another one yeah so uh let me try to go through and
address those if I miss one just bring it back up because I'll try to address them all uh so uh we had a presentation i have it on the website for anyone that wants to look at it at home too right um I'll use this as an ability to plug the business office website which I redid
when I started uh and I just want to remind people it's there because I I wish I had a counter so I can know if people are looking at it but I got to talk to I need to talk to see if I can get it you got to be a member for this or the membership um so I so I I try to put every business um office
presentation I've I've done uh since I've been here so there's one from September 19th 2024 uh I also that I remember yeah so that one had the information on the staff i don't remember if I included that in I'll pull it up i don't remember if I include the staff because at that point they were already all hired back in September so I
don't know if I reput that in this year's budget presentation i can't remember off top of my head i'm searching right now i think the project no this year I just did projects because as of September of 2024 all the staff had been hired okay um those questions Charlie asked in detail in past meetings
about the staff and you have to forgive me after yeah I asked it over and over again you weren't on the board then either yes so this is back in September so forget everything you Yeah let's see
pull and it's good that the public hears it again too haven't heard it so I pulled up on the slide so I can go so I uh so I can refresh what the positions were too right uh so uh there were 16 teachers to reduce class size and support uh students through prek through
12 um so that was uh I have a breakdown here two at Cedar Mountain two at Rolling Hills two at Lounry Hollow two at Glen Meadow three at the high school three special education and then two districtwide um then there was increased security staffing um so that that was
also hired uh for Glenn Meadow and High School glenn Meadow is that Yeah we have Glow and High School here but did that end up being Glitter High School and we're splitting it or is it just high school for the security i don't I'd have to ask Scott about whether they're fulltime or part-time
position or part-time so these are people that work under Scott at the high school uh Scott's the director of security yeah so for the district so for the entire district though yes okay but is there anyone other than Scott at the high school i mean Scott does the whole thing there are but I don't necess uh I
don't necessarily want to go through like the number of like RPOS's we have at the high school just for security reasons yeah yep yeah so they're they're hired um there's uh restored two additional counseling staff uh for support for uh student mental health uh
so that was a student counselor and a social worker uh those are positions that were cut previously um that were brought back through the revised budget uh there was a skilled maintenance position which was hired um and then there was a couple items here um that
are not um they're say we'll say staff adjacent are not positions but they were stipens that were brought back so the wait room stipen was brought back um the sophomore class advisor stipen was brought back and the Glen Meadow trip stipen was brought back and then the uh
high school late busing uh was brought back did we go for we how many buses did we have originally that we cut and then how many did we take back was it just it wasn't the same so it was it was before my before my time in district but we we
have four buses right now based and that's based off of just how large geographically we are right um because there's really no way to really do that without four routes just based off of the different directions and the length was it always four okay there might have been more buses because of volume of
kids gotcha And we had two late buses right we had an early late bus and a late late bus so we started out cutting the earlier one we had a 3:30 and a 5 yeah we cut the 3:30 first and then we cut the So now we just have the one and now we just have 530 and those were 19
positions and I believe there was approximately 50 that were reduced the year before so we brought back 19 out of 52 yeah um and then for projects uh you guys Yeah yeah i'll go through it though
uh so I will try to hit the so I have all the projects we've done on this list so that includes projects that weren't also on that for budget but let me see if I can go through based off time so uh one of the items was the facilities uh Y assessment which
uh you guys have some reading to do before uh you're welcome uh door access control uh right now the the purchase order has been issued for that um and they're scheduling uh that installation right do you know if the 50,000 was
accurate uh it came in higher uh that was board approved can't remember the exact it might have been maybe around two meetings ago it was sometime within the last month or two that that was board approved it came in higher i think it was let me see if I have my sheet i think it was somewhere around $80,000
okay so uh we had to reallocate funds for that um so um let's see we upgraded building management system that was complete as of September uh we repaired the chemical storage tank at Glen Meadow that was complete uh I'll say as of September but
it was probably complete sometime before then okay um but I'm just going off of the slideshow in September right now and then the ones that have updates since then I'll I'll provide those as we're going through um so Glenn Meadow for payment restripe that was completed as of September um Rolling Hills uh that is
scheduled for spring break yeah so uh since we we didn't want to work on the parking lot during you know while Yeah on a day where students and staff would be there because it' be very disruptive uh we uh we had scheduled that in spring break uh back in the fall
so when we repaid it's said at Glen Meadow the 296,440 did that at least cover that let me go on my sheet so they did a Yeah so let me pull something up
real quick [Music] yeah so so initially um you're fine no this No you're you're pointing out a win right here so initially uh the quote we got uh was
$296,000 for a partial repave okay a seal and a restripe um so and this has come up a couple times so it's a good time for it to come up again um so one of the things that we um we kind of figured out you know through you know communicating with the town we shared services and and and we uh we had a
meeting lately we got to got to link up again uh but through those meetings we found out that the town was also paving okay um during the summer right so it's a co-op that we're part of but they wouldn't normally come up to do a parking lot but because they're already
doing road resurfacing and they were already in the area they're like "Hey yeah we'll we'll throw in your parking lot too." Right so instead of paying $296,000 $296 $440 for a partial repave a seal and a restripe we paid
$210,000 for a full repave um and and and a restripe um and then that allowed us uh I don't know uh if I'll point it out though i don't know if everyone uh noticed so the athletic area where the um ADA parking is at the high
school um kind of when you go up the Oh yeah you know to the right yeah so we that allowed us to actually reallocate the savings from that and reallocate a little bit of of savings from another project and we did a full repave there in addition okay to just working on Glen
Meadow and that was also a restripe um so we turned one partial project into a fully complete parking lot and um a partial repave at the high school and Mayor Town continues to reach out every
summer yeah he he reached out recently uh and we spoke but you know unfortunately you know we don't have the funds right now to do any paving right um but I I did say that you know I I appreciate that he reached out uh and that uh want to keep the line of communication open where in the future if we we are uh in a situation where we
have to and can do some paving we like to link up because they're doing paving every year as well and there's a nice savings with that um and we actually uh worked with the um town engineer uh for coordination on those services um let me
go back to my other sorry going back um so the fire alarm replacement that was reallocated because there was a change order with the fire alarm at the high school um that was about $100,000
change order um that one I think is let me go to my latest presentation and that'll have it in there um so that those funds are reassigned and they reassigned to like I said the high school fire alarm replacement change order and then also um the high school
fire pump replacement so that one um we couldn't complete because we we had to the high school was already in process so we had we had to finish that project so that's something that's still on our we need to we need to complete that for 25 cover what had to be done
uh the 100,000 did yes so it there's a kind of a uh background behind this one so initially uh was budgeted for 134 uh we got a quote for 297 yeah so uh we had savings on a
number of different items that we reallocated to that and then we had to reallocate those funds to the change order and the water heater sorry not the water heater the water the fire pump replacement which also had to include a hatch has to include a hatch being
installed on the roof um to actually get the fire pump into the pump house so I'm not I think I recall and Mr vancer's in the audience so he could jump in if I'm wrong but I think uh they built the pump
house around the pump is that right the first one the first time is that right yes when the um you know to remove the pump of the fire pump it has a 12T shaft so it doesn't allow it to be
pulled out of out in place so we have to cut a access hatch in the roof so they can drop a crane in to remove the fire pump and install the new one uh so the funds basically got re um reallocated to that
um so that project is currently in process of being scheduled uh retaining wall at the high school I think that was on the original list too that was complete that's completed as of September
um locker room water heater replacement uh we're doing that in house uh in this upcoming budget those funds are reassigned to I think it was district boiler repairs um district
oiler oil tank repairs and the high school grinder pump replacement so essentially we had three things that were unforeseen that happened and we had to reassign funds uh to complete those repairs
um what's the next one I have on there you the fire doors you said uh fire fire doors are complete um and then the generator replacement okay so that that's that was what happened so the first project that
got reassigned was a generator replacement that got reassigned to the rolling hills fire alarm right because the rolling hills fire alarms came in higher um and then when we got hit with the change order um for the high school I think it was originally 138,000 um we were then able
to uh we negotiate it negotiate down to 99,000 uh and then we used the remaining funds uh for the high school fire pump replacement which is the roof work and the replacement of the actual fire pump okay
thank you yeah a lot of those with our our last architect right and now we have RP with the new architect correct which are the new items in in this binder yeah and there's a significant so one of the things you'll kind of see and I think
you know especially the fines on the grounds committee have seen uh and then you know the full board once it gets reported out um you know there are things that I think pretty obvious that you you can't foresee happening right and um as those
things happen we have to pivot um you know so we had you know I mentioned the um the boilers I mentioned and you know the oil tanks another big one was the septic tanks at Warner Ridge and Glen Meadow um so I don't know if anyone
noticed but there used to be at Glen Meadow uh you'd have very high risers there and there was kind of like orange fencing around it off to the fields while we were working there we had the there was also damage to the concrete there right so we had that replaced so they're lowered now which is
good for safety point of view uh and then also the concrete was damaged so we had to replace them anyway so we we took care of both and the tank had to deal with that it took them about three or four days but they are now empty um and uh
there's there was speculation by the vendor that they weren't sure uh when that had been last been pumped so we're finding things that normally would be done every so often uh that might necessarily not have been done so as we
catch those things we address them um unfortunately that those are usually unforeseen items uh and we have to find ways to fund them so that's why some of those projects get re those projects get re reassigned okay now correct me if I'm
wrong the fund balance was February 25 because I think that's can't remember what I was reading um so the last official fund balance would have been June 30 uh June 30th of
24 from the audit you mean um yeah it would have been June 24 okay i can go through that too no if you have questions on it okay torture for me ray enjoys it yeah he really loves going through these things and I have that I
have that in the presentation too i have the fun I have the So if you want if you have questions on it on that so I just wanted to I guess answer just wanted to answer those questions because just Yeah no problem um did I me did I I want to
make sure I I got all of them though and then in terms of you know so I think the thing that's kind of tough to see unless you're looking at the budget you know year to year you're kind of living in the numbers
um so kind of short explanation is the tax levy is a portion of your funding and you can have the tax levy go up 2% right which we've already Yeah no I'm just I'm not uh I'm talking about just in general
generality of okay of like the difficulties of of of school budgets not just for us but really anywhere anyone in the state really um and you'll see it in almost every district um so you have a essentially just kind of top level you have a portion of your your revenue that
can go up 2% it's not your whole budget just a portion of your revenue um and then we're in an environment where none of the costs are going up 2% all of the costs are going up more than 2% uh whether you know it's uh contractual for
staffing right whether it's busing whether it's um insurance whether it's the cost of supplies whether it's energy which that's why we're doing the ESEP because that'll provide us some budget consistency going into the future um because when we have that PPA with solar
uh it tells you each year what you're going to pay per kilowatt right uh as opposed to when you're not in that situation and you get an email saying "Hey expect a 17% increase." You know um so um long story short though you have a portion of your revenue going up 2%
is that right uh let's see i think I have a percentage in my presentation let me go through it because it's not 2% or the whole budget no uh I should have a slide on it uh so it's uh so so 68% of your budget of your revenue 68% of your
revenue can go up by 2% um but but your whole budget 100% of your budget is going up by more than 2% in terms of expenses like 38% so you know one of the things I think that's come up a couple times is um people say "Well why don't why don't
you why don't you cut?" We are cutting we do cut um you know one of the things that um I thought was important um was the change in health excuse me uh change in health benefits um so that was where
we left the state uh we went to Horizon Private and then we went to a self-insured for prescription through Kroger um and that saved over a year period it's it's going to save approximately $700,000 right so that's that's a big savings and that's only
that first year uh because what I am seeing right now um from our broker uh who still monitors the state program is that they're they're in probability for another large increase in the state so not only did we avoid this year's large renewal but we would then therefore be avoiding what is probably going to be
another large renewal this coming January in the state program so we see that 700 plus whatever those future savings would be because those percentage increases are aggregate over time um so there's things like that transportation you'll see that transportation as actually less in this budget um this proposed budget than it
is in our current budget uh and that has to do with a lot of planning um in terms of routes um a lot of working between departments to see you know what's feasible for the students what makes sense to the students while we're still you know paying close attention to the dollars and cents being spent um and you
know part of the transportation to be honest part of it part of it has to do with luck of the draw too um like when it has to do with say out of district student right uh if you have an out of district well I won't say it's all luck of the draw because you have out of district students that come back to the district and to me that is you know a
testament to the strength of our growing special education program right so that's a lot of hard work that's not luck of the draw I just want to be clear for anyone from CST that's listening you guys do a lot of hard work and you're you're getting you're you're getting students into environments that are less restrictive uh which is great for the
student and financially it's it's also good for the the district than taxpayer uh but then there's also instances where sometimes students just move out of town um that's more of a luck of draw situation but on the other side the luck of the draw is you could have a student move into town that's already out of district and you you have to pay
wherever that placement will be and whatever that transportation would be so you could have one student move in or out and that could be an impact of maybe $200,000 in your budget one way or the other right so so transportation's down there's a lot of hard work in it but there's a little bit of little bit of luck in there too right um but when
you're projecting a budget out a year there's always a little bit of luck involved things could go your way and things could really not go your way and the hope is that some things are going to go your way and some things are not going to go away you're hoping that it's about somewhere in the middle right the projects yeah okay Joe it seems to me
that all of these adjustments that you've had to make because of different things falling apart you know during the year we should be putting more money aside too and our buildings are getting older yeah so one
of the things um and this is a good another good plug uh so one of the things that um we'll be having another presentation on uh next Wednesday uh will be the facilitywide assessment so the architects will be here to present um they're going to present to the finance and millions and rounds
committee on Monday at our committee meeting um then they'll be presenting to the full board and the public uh and you'll see it's a pretty it's a pretty thick uh binder uh there's a lot in there uh and some of it is you know it's very expensive uh but there are things
that we need to be cognizant of um for planning purposes to know you know what can what can become down the road what's the next thing that we don't want there to be a lot of unforeseen things it's it's a it's a truth of life sometimes things are going to happen that you're not going to be aware of but if there's things you can be aware of you want to try to plan
right um and then and then the flip side of that kind of back to that tough environment that we're in um where you have 2% increase on party of 68% of your revenue but then you have everything else going
more so historically when I first came here I think the district was down about 8.5 million in state aid right now we're down probably about 6.5 million from 1718 um because we got a million back last year and a million back this year um because one year they fully funded
the state formula for the first time and then this year they changed how they treated special education funding uh where and it sounds ridiculous to say they based it off of the actual number of special education students in your district
we have a large percentage i think it's around 25% I think i thought it was then it was so that helped us with CD because of that large percentage because we were getting underfunded in my opinion underfunded based off the number of special education students we had based the way they calculated previously but
but long story short you you you had a over a pretty short period of time a large chunk of your revenue go away the expenses of everything else going up and there was an adjustment that adjustment was those staff that were let go that was the big adjustment
but even after that adjustment you then are struggling to put a budget after budget after budget together um with making the least amount of cuts as possible and trying not to cut staff just because you know part of the re revised budget was trying to recover some of those staff for the students
right and we want to try to take keep taking steps forward and and try not to take steps backwards right every every year we're trying to maintain what we're doing and everything's going up in costs less than our ability to raise our revenues but I
I know you wanted to speak but Brian also had his hand up so um did you want to say something first who else wanted carl I think Carl was up before you if you don't mind yeah I don't mind speak i just So my question is
we're in a budget that we already voted on submitting we're going up 2% which is the normal amount right so this 1.25 sorry my brain is spread this 1.2 million that takes us to what percentage if we're at 2% already does this take us
to like 4.4 4.4 that's the tax levy mhm yep okay what would that impact be um so for the average house um it'd be about so if you look at what the taxes would be for an
average house assessed house which is um $320,533 that's assessed value not market value um and you look at what 2% would be versus what that 4.4% would be uh I' I'd say it's roughly about $50 to $60 higher a year okay and my other
question is um why did my question just fly out of my head that's so awkward i I had like two questions and I had them lined up in my head um when we Oh now remember we are voting just to submit this tonight
we're this is dependent on whether or not the state accepts our application and then we still have to vote on approving it afterwards so if the state approves it and then people have other opinions there's still another vote that has to happen before this is concrete yeah absolutely
right yes absolutely so this so yeah there's a number of variables involved here so this is just a resolution to approve the submission of the application then the department uh the commissioner of education would review and either approve or disapprove
and then assuming that all or part is approved then it kind of comes back to you know the committee and the board in terms of what if any would you want to use right and if you and second part of that if what if any you'd want to use
what would we want to use it for yeah so the 4.4% is the maximum amount that we could possibly approve and that the state could possibly approve it's what we're submitting that does not mean that it's concrete these numbers are what's the word I'm looking for they're not
final they're not final they're It's just for authority it's just for authority that we could potentially use yeah preliminary that's the word I was looking for the number these numbers are preliminary we're approving them to be submitted for approval from the state
then we'd have to approve them again based on what we'd want to use so people should not think that this is the board voting for a 4.4% increase by any means correct so basically that so the vote on uh this is for the submission of the
application the vote on what if any were to be utilized would be at the public hearing um and because I would need to have it in the public in the budget um and that would be something where I would work closely with the finance buildings grounds committee um and kind of figure out you know what the
committee and what the board overall would like to do right and then I would present a budget that reflects that um and then there'd be the public hearing and then we you know that's when the actual vote which would authorize that authority would occur i think that makes
perfect sense i just want to make sure everyone knows what's going on because Oh sorry a lot of words sorry i get carried away when I get the opportunity to ask a bunch answer a bunch of finance questions sorry all right well I mean I have my own thoughts on this and
um yeah I I can't support it at all and I don't even think we should be submitting the application um you know I'm on record already as having to to try and prevent the the annual 2% increase this year and I'm certainly not
going to back another 2.4% on top of that for a total 4.4% increase i think something you know that we need to take into consideration too is is increases that are happening away
from this table that are going to in uh uh affect the taxpayers of Vernon this year so I'm already hearing that there's going to be a municipal increase this year that we didn't have last year and a county increase this year that we didn't have last year and when you add our 4.4%
4% increase to the increases that are going to come at the municipal and county level you're looking at a potential tax impact to the to the Vernon taxpayers this year of over 10% all right and and that's a big ask on
top of uh what happened last year now to me the state trying to incentivize us to raise our taxes by $1.4 $4 million by offering us $60,000 in additional state aid it It's
ludicrous i mean to me that's like me saying to a homeless guy "Hey if you go buy yourself a steak dinner I'll give you a cookie." You know you you're not it's it's an incentive that doesn't make sense to me and I think part of the
problem is that we have nine intelligent people sitting around this table who think that the state of New Jersey actually cares about Vernon Township right and that's not how things work does anybody here think nobody thinks that
54% of state aid in New Jersey goes to 31 districts that account for 22% of the state's population right that's a funding formula that helps nobody right especially not Vernon especially not Vernon right but do you want
So AVID took effect in 1985 right that's 40 years ago those 31 districts were the worst districts in the state 40 years ago and they're still the worst districts now right the money that goes to those districts doesn't
help their students the money that goes to those districts buys votes right if you look at how those 31 districts voted over the last 40 years you can see why the state keeps sending all that money to those districts while districts like
Vernon had to scrabble around like mice trying to get the crumbs dropping off the Murphy table you know I get that our schools need work i get that there's projects that need to be done but it
seems like what we have to do every year is we try and figure out exactly how much the state is going to allow us to raise taxes so that we can address those projects that are at the top of the list right and and there's so many other
things that still aren't getting done right and to me that's like buying a new seat for a toilet that doesn't flush right it's going to look good but that bowl's still full of crap right but what's the what's the alternative
you want the just what do you want i think what I think we need to do I think we need to make the number one priority for our new superintendent to get a laundry list of everything that needs to
be done and put this before the voters of Vernon we need to to But this is what we have in front of us we're sitting here with that right in front of No what I'm saying is instead of doing it peacemeal instead of sitting here every single year and trying to figure out
exactly how much the state is going to allow us to raise taxes we should be doing a catch all referendum and let the voters of Vernon decide instead of you know hanging our hats on these corrupt career politicians down in
Trenton by voting their representatives i think the board members are going to have to decide this this is where I am at this is where I came in three years ago if you're not gonna But we haven't done a referendum in in what 20 25 years the state has taken $6 million away from us so if if we're not if we're not going
to raise taxes and fill those money the board needs to decide what programs and teachers they're going to cut but you're you're just you're just kicking the can down the trail you're you're not fixing the problem long term are you that's what I'm saying so we we cut 52
positions two years ago so that got hired a year before and and we did I mean we are fixing the problems incrementally um it's it what if you do what you're saying and you you get a no vote then you've got all these projects
and you've got nothing done and you've wasted by the way let me just finish please and you wasted by the way oh but I thought we were all I thought we were discussing okay you want to go i got two more paragraphs I wrote okay i'm sorry we're all talking to you then go ahead
what What I'm saying is it's no secret right that good schools increase property values all right whether you're someone like me who has kids in this school system or
whether you're somebody like some of my colleagues up the Highland Lakes Fire Department who have never put a kid through school here right better schools are still going to benefit you as a property owner right and if you put it
to the voters in that way and say this is an investment not just in the schools not just for the people who have kids in these schools but this isn't an investment in the community that's going to directly affect your property
values then they get to decide right i don't I don't think that it makes sense for us to every single year try and figure out how much are we going to nail the taxpayers for when we're not making a long range
fix what I'm saying is it should be a long range fix every once in a while you got to build a new school right the old school falls down you got to build a new school right i'm not saying build new schools but I'm saying let's address all
the major problems in one go why keep peacemealing it every year because you're going to keep falling behind you're never going to catch up are you like with a referendum are you Wait wait let's just make sure are you seating the floor to Mr rogers i'm done
but you're talking about a referendum i'm talking about a referendum okay so can I talk okay yes right go find so referendum is a great idea for all the buildings and the structural thing if we want to kind of risk it but
it does not deal with operating costs so the operating cost with inflation salaries all that keeps going up the 2% doesn't cover that so right off the bat if we never touch the building again the formula still doesn't work our nine job
here is to take care of the kids in Vernon for the best education in a safe scenario so that means maintaining the buildings maintaining staff those are the main two functions of it what's going on in Trenton we could sit here
all day and say how bad it is but in the end we all live in this state and we got to deal with it one way or the other i mean I was crazy enough to leave New York to come here which might be the only state worse than this one when it comes to certain things but you know the referum doesn't deal with any of the
operating costs which are what exceeds the what we could do with the 2% the reason they're giving us these abilities to raise more money is they finally realized if you look at the um emails we get all across the state all
sorts of districts even the abbots of cutting falling apart closing they're all struggling so the state in their own way slowly is going to try to fix it probably make it worse knowing them but trying to do it but where our concern is
what's going on here and you know we've done tremendous amount of repairs in 5 years the problem is a lot of these repairs have been building up for the last 15 years when their main concern was keeping taxes at zero and that was
great for me when I lived here i didn't pay more my kids are out of the district but like you said having good schools safe schools helps property taxes all over for everybody but we have to keep moving along i don't there's no solution
one of the biggest problems I've said about school finance if you ran your business like school finance legally has done in New Jersey you'd be out of business in six months you know you'd be homeless in six months after that because that's the system they've
designed but we need to keep moving on and be concerned what's in front of us which all nine of us were elected to and that's Vernon and our old schools that we need to fix i mean the schools are better shape than they were parking lots
were done when I first came in the pre Joe's predecessor basically stopped putting in submissions to do things because the board just came with no money we're not doing it well this is what happens down the road when you do that because when I first came into this
position when I interviewed as an I worker in the city I loved school work cuz they let it get to the very bottom hired you August 1st says you got to be done September 1st overtime everything it was just the way schools worked it's
crazy but because you can't plan ahead we can't have a fiveyear 10-year financial plan to fix kind of what you're saying because we can only carry money a little bit at a time for a couple years so you know my concern is
we should at a minimum be sending in the application for this money we could decide what we want to do after that point but not to even apply for it to me is just the wrong thing to do u Melissa did I'm done thank you melissa did you
have a comment i think we're all on the same page with what Brian is saying we all agree and and we need to get our buildings up to code we need to do everything we need to do it's just that the money isn't there like that's that's just the plain cold hard facts i'm not necessarily in agreement with raising
taxes again just after we just did it um but I agree with Rey i I feel like we should put in the application see if they even approve it and at that point then we can have a real good discussion about what that might be allocated for and whether or not we actually want to
do it um yeah I mean like I I see all the points it's just there is no money so when we talk about we need to you know prioritize this prioritize that that's all well and good but as Ray just explained to us we prioritize three or four different things and then three or
four other things just decided to crap out on us with no warning so like I get where everybody's coming from but I think in the end there's just the money isn't there the money hasn't been there for 10 years at this point so we're doing the best that we can like Ray said to just give what we can to our students and and to just keep our heads above
water i think we're finally getting to a point where again the state is realizing that some of the things they did were not the greatest idea but that's at the state level and the only thing that we could do to affectuate change at the state level is our vote at the state level here in Vernon we have to kind of
just worry about Verdon you know I don't know i don't really know where I'm going with that that's kind of my question no you made some good points carl I know you had something to say but Joe hasn't No Joe hasn't spoken yet you've already spoken once let's let Joe go i have it or not Brian has a lot of what he's
saying has a lot of belief he does i believe it why do you have to believe it or not though i was just You said nine people say we're smart i wonder if everybody else was surprised too
this this plan that we got today just that the roofs alone is 24 million there's no way we can do a roof replacement we need new roofs they're leaking all the time so we have to seriously consider something like that i
do it's just that's the way it has to be and our debt service is nearly down to zero right now we do have to consider it but I don't think that that means we should stop making what headway we can and it's the same burden putting it on the taxpayers but Carl wanted to say
something brian I wanted to say what you were saying sounded so much like the rant I had with myself in the car this morning like the same exact talking points because like Ry was saying the
even if we do 4.4% that's mostly covering operating costs that's not really going to do a whole lot of this but leaving we used to do if I'm correct me if I'm wrong but I did some research new Jersey switched to
having a 2% cap and the board approved the budget when it used to be every year the schoolboard budget had to be voted on and that's kind of what you're getting at is that an increase like this to have us do it it feels wrong because
we can really only go to 2% without normally getting the approval of the voters you'd have to put that on the ballot if you wanted to go above the state has for the second year in a row allowed us to go above that cap and I really part of what I'm really hurt by
well not hurt but what I'm bothered by is the fact that the state told us last year this is a one-time deal you can go above the cap this year you can't do it again and that's part of the reason that we increased what we did but with inflation the way it is with the
uncertainty of the future the way it is and the fact that I mean at the end of the day when we vote on this we're deciding on whether or not the students in our district get something or not that's always a gut-wrenching decision to make which is excuse the diet coke
which is what I'm just I still haven't really fully digested this i only heard about it maybe a day or two ago but I'm in the same place that you are and I I find myself a lot in agreeance with you
charlie first and then John sorry i mean I really want to go back to actually question right so John if you're com really quick i mean when we first started the budget process this year and the amount of money we got from the
state we were shy about $1.2 million weren't we something like that uh before we got our city numbers I think it was higher than that higher than that right so then that comes up to what they call budget adequacy what you were talking about before that we should have been 1.2 million more you had to make all of
those cuts millions of dollars in cuts to the budget that you know that we're not real things that we don't have but by adding this if we could and I'm not saying that we should but that brings us up to an adequate budget I think i know
so stuff that we cut if any of the funding would be used my recommendation would be to decide maybe some of those one-time projects that are important uh that are prioritized to get those done cuz one of the things that
I'm not sure that yeah I think about the budget all the time so like I think obviously right uh but um so one of the so for example last year with the projects right we had one-time projects in there we did those
projects you'll notice in this proposed budget we don't have any projects that are being funded by the tax levy the only projects we have are being funded by the capital reserve and that's because the additional tax authority from that revised budget that went into
funding those one-time projects this 2526 proposed budget is going into balancing the budget right so that's being absorbed by all the other cost increases so instead of saying hey these are for projects again this year we're saying we don't have the tax levy money
in 2526 to fund budgets through tax levy that went do things like energy PCR increased cost everywhere else so if anything at all gets used I would recommend it would be a priority project
or projects whatever the amount would be uh that's a onetime cost and then that way it can help us absorb increases to things like the PCR in future years right pcr energy health benefits any of those things that we don't have a lot of control uh but as a school district you
need those things to operate right in terms of urgent safety related infrastructure projects that need to be done that are not currently budgeted for and if we don't do something like this we just won't be able to to to do that and that and and as angry as we can all
be at Murphy because believe me I have been very angry at him for many years now um we have a district to uh and it is our job it's our job to take care of this district so we can be all uh up in arms about the state but we have to do
our out um Charlie okay yeah as long as I momentum down a little bit I can uh I don't want to take everybody off the track of what we were talking about because I mean I I do I I I I'm This is terrible two years in a row that we're
doing this this This is I It's unheard of because and what I feel like is the taxpayers hear this and say "Oh here they go again." And they don't remember that we didn't do it for three years prior right because we couldn't do it for three years prior all they remember is two years in a row are they going to
do this every year to us and and I think it's I it's that's it's just horrible situation they put us in but we know the state that the problem with the state is you know what they they they let us take have you go up to we used to do whatever
you wanted right it's kind of for the budget right yeah there was no 2% cap before when it was voted on you could and then they there was no cap yes they put the cap in place and then they took money away and they did all these things but they never did they know that we're getting less money and then they never
said here's more money i mean like Brian pointed out we we're 60 60k and I'm going to ask you we're not getting we're not getting that 60k next year extra right it's just this one time if we take it if we do the maximum right we get 60k
I'll double check but I was going under assumption that it would be every year but I'll I'll check on that okay well I guess it's not horrible i guess to Mr fischer's point it's not a large amount of incentive right but kind of to what
you were saying it's 5100s of a 4.4% and I think I you know I think I mentioned it last uh when we did the revised budget essentially kind of what happened was the state put the S2 funding formula it was a law S2 law in place um which
hurt a lot of it helped a lot of some districts a lot and it hurt a lot of hurt other districts a lot we were one of the districts got hurt um and then at the same time you have a 2% cap so all this revenue goes away and then the state turned around last year and said oh wait a second that's unsustainable we
took away all this revenue from them but what they really did if you think about it right if you really think about it what they really did was they took away state aid and said "Oh don't worry you can increase your tax levy higher." So they pushed it onto the local town when it used to come from the state yeah they're pushing so I'm I think I
mentioned it last year when we had the rise i'm not happy about this either but it's one of those things where we only have a certain number of I'll call them like tools in our financial tool belt right um so that's why I have to bring these things to the board to talk about to decide you know how you want to
proceed and that's that's what you talked about Mr fischer the state is taking more of Vernon's money away from them giving it to other schools and wanting the local tax levy to make up the difference exactly how do you make up the difference when your budget goes down it's tough and then you're put in the middle with a good right and that's
that's why I'm saying I think you know there comes a time where you have to put things in your own hands and not rely on the people down in Trenton and you know by your own example right we we
looked at this list of can I see that we we looked at this list of of projects that were going to be done right and we saw the money got spent but not on all the projects that needed to be done because other things came up and needed
to be addressed and and that's what I'm saying you know if if you have to rely on the state sitting there and saying we'll let you raise taxes by this much more this year and this much more this year you just you're just constantly
chasing you know you're never catching up so you just sit there and say "Okay what's the what's the one that's at the top of the list we'll get that one done." Right and then there's 30 below that that aren't getting done so at some point you you you take the bull by the
horns right that's why I say do a referendum we we have planned to do a referendum in in the past we talked about it last year and then we had that 9% opportunity and it felt like too much to do at the same year like we're going to do we're going to do this 9% and then
we're going to do a referendum people will definitely vote no there's no point so we didn't um I think we're going to have to do a referendum for the roofs there's no way no matter how much the state lets us you know we're going to have to do it but in the meantime it's
going to take a while and it t it's a hard cell and a lot of them get voted down i think we need to put our faith in the voters of Vernon right and and let them know you know it it's not just us it's it's now on you it's your house
it's your it's your property value they did elect us you know they did elect us to represent their interests and that's why the people steeped in this information come onto the board and they think "Oh I guess now I understand." Right because and so you're asking
people who aren't steeped to understand and vote that way and we all know you know you tend to be busy in your life you're not going to dig into the issues of the school district you're going to see possibly a referendum and think I don't want my taxes to go up so I don't know i mean I'd love to believe that and
I think we're going to have to do it anyway it's it's we're we'll be doing it for the roofs there's no other path but if they vote no I don't know what will happen taking that that small tax increase to keep operations in the meantime without making Yes we have to continue to run
our district in a fiscally responsible way and it happens that being fiscally responsible and delivering a safe education to children involves raising taxes and that is an unfortunate thing for the nine of us who get blamed for it so many people now I have a very I just
want I just want to finish my questions real quick oh i know usually I'm the one talking all the time so all right i get it i'm sorry all right uh let's see um I just want to make sure so we're This is the max what you're asking for is the max that we can
we can get out of this and we could go lower if it gets approved it hasn't been passed yet into law is that correct so it's part of the um governor's budget so where last year where the um remember
when there was a revised budget uh you can see it uh on my presentation on the business office page if anyone wants to check it out uh office godness of marketing uh so uh so if you look on there I actually have the two laws cited i don't remember them off the top of my
head anymore at the time I did uh but essentially those were in law um so those are more detailed in terms of you know the process and and everything right so this is uh essentially line items in the governor's proposed budget uh and that proposed budget has not been approved yet right so we kind of have
things running concurrently um but they say this is the deadline so where it comes to us we we basically either are submitting the application and then having a conversation about it um and then figuring out what we want to do essentially so what happens if it doesn't the budget doesn't get passed
before our budget needs to be passed do we go with what we the 2% and then have to do a revised budget again at the end of the year you know a month later if we wanted to or is it just dead is it so my
so my honest answer to that is going to be we're that's Uncharted waters right um because this is a little unusual in itself i have I haven't seen this before um it's a good question i'll ask the county BA and I'll be honest with you I
have a feeling that even if he reaches out to the state they may not 100% be sure on that yet right um I will say I think it's a little unusual at least what I've seen for governor's budget not to pass it's possible definitely it's possible not not possible but anything's
possible this year oh yes yes i mean anything's always possible yeah so um I can I can I can find out but I would I would think worst case scenario since in our instance we would be looking at one-time projects it just means we wouldn't do those projects if it turned
out we know that authority even though there's a lot of here oh if this if this submission if this resolution to submit gets approved if the commissioner approves the submission if the board decides they want to use part of that
approved authority and then if the governor's budget doesn't get passed I think worst case scenario for us would be we would not be able to do those projects and we wouldn't have that tax authority moving forward Right um but
that is to be honest that's conjecture right because I'm not even sure the state hasn't answered that question that you just asked so but I would say worst case scenario we wouldn't be able to do the projects is what I'm thinking but okay that's just a trying to logic it through and you all know the state's not logical
so and this is the last question so I'm hoping I'm I'm I'm actually I'm going to I'm asking for it um I'm sure you might have said this already we you know it's probably going to go to the budget committee first or finance committee and
um but you will provide us with a a list of what you feel we should we well both of you guys what we feel we should be spending the money on and with in that list because like what everyone's saying we can't sustain this right we so are we
going to have more projects like we just did with the EIP that builds in efficiencies so we can fix our efficiencies And actually even though it might cost us money this year for let's say a project it will also save us money maybe next year but a lot more the safety and
security issues that even brought up earlier yeah so what I'll say is even say when you're for example say um you're replacing something let's say you're replacing like say a PA system or a fire alarm right if you have an old system
you're spending money to maintain that system so there will be some savings in terms of maintenance right true but when we're talking EIP we're talking energy efficiency so that's a kind of a different type of right uh so there would be some savings but it would mainly just be whatever money you'll be
spending on upkeeping an old system versus the lesser amount of money you'd be spending to upkeep a new system right and then there's other things that kind of come into place with like you know older systems now coming in being compliant with current code like things like that right um But I don't know if I
really answered your question but yeah I'm looking at even like workload you know like if if we some of the Yeah so even if it's a so even if it's like in-house say something gets replaced that we maintain in house with something that's newer and needs less work that
means that our in-house people are working on that list they can work on other things that need to be also fixed and there's a lot of things that need to be fixed so so there's always some kind of I guess pickup from replacing something with the measurable almost but it it's
it's built in with fixing it somewhat measurable so in the E said part of the savings uh would be they looked at how much money we're spending on upkeeping certain things in terms of maintenance costs and they built that in that's a lesser amount of money obviously than a savings on energy but
they account for it and it's basically looking at historically what you spent on that specific thing um and then it's projecting that well if you've historically spent that then most likely you'll continue to spend that or more as whatever that system or thing being replaced continues to age you know but
it's not uh it's it's not per se going to be something where we replace something and it's going to make like a one thing being replaced is going to make a huge impact on our say our op our maintenance budget overall right most likely it's going to be one of those things where it be a savings and to be honest something else breaks and we
reallocate the money to fixing the other thing that broke that's kind of you know what we've been doing to kind of address things as they come up there are questions yeah okay i'd like to move forward to a vote on this unless somebody has something new to add or ask
can I just ask how much is left of the tax levy from general fund from this 2425 the revised thing that it was 49 million 932 after you added in the 4.4 million
so that goes into the budget overall with other revenue sources like state aid like everything yeah so if you look at the so each month if you look at the board secretaries report and you look at say fund if you look at the general fund which is fund 10 you'll see what the balances as of that month being closed
all right so what was it in February um we are currently going to have March on for next week okay just um I don't have a copy of it in front of me um that is in the attachment yeah what's
that that should be the uh Sorry that's the sound that our accounting system makes you can tell it's I might get more traffic if that was it that'd be cool um let me see uh no it's
not in there yet because um next week they're still closing so still working on the bills list uh what we I could go back and look at um February february i could February yes so you're right that's what she asked about uh
uh sorry let me pull it up and while I'm looking at this um that's the general fund you're talking about right yeah so tax levy goes only into the general fund and what about the tax okay that's part of uh the general
fund so general fund is um fund 10 and fund 12 so fun yeah so certain projects that are consider like maintenance projects will be under fund 10 under the maintenance lines okay like repairs and things like that all right my voice a little um and then um projects will be
under fund 12 thanks thank you done um so everything else will be under you know there you go um any projects should be under fund 12 which is also considered part of the
general fund okay it's just 12 versus 10 and for example for the upcoming budget we're funding it on capital reserve withdrawals okay have a vote before quick everybody i'd like to get a roll
call for uh as soon as Ray gets his um Andy and and sorry everybody thank you i'm all good i yell at kids my voice can handle it all right and just as I'm pulling this um I think a lot of great
conversation um and um we we're kind of face the district and all districts are kind of facing two different problems at the same time one is facilities and capital projects and the other is living in an an environment that is not a 2% increase environment in terms of
operations and only having a 2% increase in your tax levy and trying to as Mr fischer said you're constantly playing catch up figuring out what you can cut without harming staff and students or what harms staff and students the least to to make
to make the budget balance um and it really comes down to just the cost of everything are going up and um I forget what year the 2% went in but it's been 2% for you know a very long time and then along the way if yes was it Christy and then if along the way if there was
any authority that wasn't used after 3 years it's called bank cap it expires so anything that expired over that time period was is lost and can never be used so that just kind of puts you farther behind and you're already kind of in a losing race because you have 2% increases and you're racing cost
increases that are significantly higher than 2% you just have to keep to try to make it work operationally.5% increases on the total budget because it's only 68% of the revenue in the budget being increased at 2% so that's why you come relying on state aid and when state aid gets cut and there's no other way to make up the
money you have to cut staff or programs i'm looking for your tax same thing he is scrolling as scrolling can I stop i had just one little point and it's not a question so you don't
have to answer it after what you just explained which we all a lot of us have experienced dealing with this over the past couple of years improving these budgets um for them to say ver whereas Vernon Township School District is below
local fair share that's the terminology that the the state is using local fair share i can what that is if you'd like but it's just like that term to use that after what you just it's like so insulting that we're below fair share when they make it so we can't increase i
don't even want to rant no I Yeah yeah that's what that means fair share no so are we able to do a roll call now yeah or do we have your Well he doesn't he's scrolling he's still scrolling because he was talking that's because there's so many regulations and policies on here oh my god who's in
charge of that wonder not for me this month so it wouldn't be so bad that's a check register mhm we do a budget report i mean we are I'm doing my report and you can all sit here and listen to me for
all right to the board secretary's report so as a Sorry as of February actually it went this is as of uh January
31st um there was $3.6 million left and that's on a um believe it was a $72 million budget yeah another thing I want everyone to remember and I I know I talk everyone into oblivion
um um part of what we create each budget year with is balance from the year before so for example got my slides up still um this year for 2526 we're using uh
2,519,711 that's a com combination of about 2 point I'll give you approximate about $2.2 $2 million in excess surplus which is that year- end balance and then um we're allowed to carry two thing there's two adjustments are allowed over our 2% fund uh unassigned balance and
that is extraordinary aid over received over what was budgeted and nonpublic transportation aid so essentially for this year I used the 2 approximately 2.2 two in excess of surplus which is what the endear balance would have to be and um those two adjustments to make that
2.5 of revenue um in the 2526 budget which if that didn't exist we either need to find 2.5 million revenue somewhere else which is unlikely uh or you would have to make whatever the difference that you don't have up at cuts so while it's in January it was
that 3 point whatever million number if we don't end with around say 2.2 2.3 that's going to negatively impact the next budget which is 2627 that includes the capital account
uh so the capital um is separate yeah um so that's you're probably thinking capital reserve account yeah so right now as of June 30th it was about 1.4 4 million and then after we take out the five um 20 actually I think as of June 30th it was
2 over 2 million and then we took 900 and something thousand out for the window project and um a couple of other projects that were in the current year budget window 20 comes out of cap reserve so
cap reserve goes from year to year it's a reserve I can pull from and then that brought down 1 and then we're taking 520 25 out for the two elevators and the PA system at Glen Meadow so that'll bring it down to about 900,000 um unless we're able to end this year with a balance
that can support the excess surplus requirement for the uh 2627 budget um and provide us the ability to deposit some funds into capital reserve that's a pretty small amount of cap it's basically a capital reserve on life support my uh wife's district is a K8
and she has like $10 million in cap reserve so okay can we move to a roll call sorry that's okay we're just trying to get you on track thank you R sorry thank you Mr b yes
mr smagle yes mr cantina yes mr fischer yes mr krauss yes miss Belllet yes mr sweeney yes on a uh B I'm myself
good use of the word recuse that's great thank you that's the first time yeah yes yeah melo um for both or I should have asked Mr fisher too for both
okay uh Mr zimman yes motion carries um okay so item J board report summary mr cino you're up okay my community relations meeting report is short and sweet i want to make sure everyone can
hear me so we met yesterday on the 9th in attendance were myself Mr fiser um Principal Young and Principal Van Orton almost there so we just discussed updates on the state of the district
address um we are going to have this event showcased in the May issue of Vernon Living magazine and we were shown the sample of what will be in the magazine so I'm looking forward to seeing that that magazine has been awesome to anyone who's been following it i'm so glad that we have something
like that in Vernon um and we did not get any applicants from the community to be on our committee so we are going to be sending out the application again this f um this Friday in the digital backpack and also we're going to be
making posts about it on the social media for the high school and putting it in the newsletters that go out from the high school and Glenn Meadow because we really want to make sure that there's community involvement check with Mr schultz he may have gotten some people applied we asked yesterday in the
meeting but we won't I was there that's right okay so we'll double check and make sure that we didn't I I was told we didn't get any applicants yesterday but maybe we have gotten some um but we certainly want more so never a bad thing we really want to make sure that this is
up and running and has a lot of people involved in it going into next year we're really going to go full steam ahead with it but we have a lot to look forward to with the state of the district address and be on the lookout on social media and inverted living magazine because I think this is
something to really celebrate nice when are you meeting when would people need to be available to if they wanted to be involved so we meet on Wednesdays we don't meet every month we're kind of not we're moving to kind of meet every other
month because we don't want to overdo it it's not um the same as like curriculum committee um so mostly once every other month on a Wednesday and obviously depending on the applicants that we get that can always be revisited and
depending on the level of like if we end up doing a lot more than we're doing right now then we'd probably move to meet monthly it's not okay set in stone okay gotcha all right great that sounds awesome okay curriculum committee um we
met April 8th in attendance were Vinnie Gaglaststro Dr halis Chef Russ Rogers Carl Cantino Ryan Fischer John Krauss and myself uh we talked about the New Jersey Cusack update the district is in the midst of CUSAC and uh most districts
in the county did not pass this year but we have a chance so we're hoping for that when will we find out um that is a good question Vinnie do we know when we'll find out we didn't um when uh Cusack when will we find out how we did if we pass it will probably be this
summer or a while yeah it takes a while but they'll be finished they're coming for their visit the first week of May okay uh update on curriculum change decisions the district has been evaluating changes in curriculum for some time now which we've been reporting
on uh with math they're going with the KDUm platform and illustrative math did I get it right illustrative illustri I get it wrong every time illustrious math i'm just going to start calling IM everyone else calls it IM that's why I can't get it right um and
uh it was between Eureka Squared and I am and the teachers uh sampled both and 100% of them were um chose IM in with English the pilots started in March um they'll be finishing up after spring break and then they'll get insights from the teachers uh through surveys and
grade level meetings um they'll discuss the pros and cons of each and make a decision the ones that we're looking at um we for phonics we were using foundations and are looking at Hagerty and UFly uh for reading we were using HMH into reading and are now looking at
CKLA units of study by Hinimman and Hagerty and for writing we were looking at CKLA Hagerty and units of study um item three for us was grading committee update and decision and that's the grading committee that was at the high school working on um changes in waiting
of course levels and the idea there was that students that were taking more demanding classes weren't getting enough of a bump in their um in their GPA for the waiting of the courses in order to justify them taking on that heavier um course load and possibly risking getting
a poor grade so previously uh courses were weighted at uh CP was one ACP was 1.02 honors was 1.0 06 and AP was 1.09 now it will be CP at 1 ACP at
1.33 honors at 1.67 and AP at two um the grading committee looked at other districts and felt this waiting more fairly characterizes the weight of each of these uh course levels and these will be implemented with the incoming freshman um students this fall uh and it
will not affect the sophomores enough because it would mess with their um current waiting um they also looked at transcripts from high performing schools and decided to switch from a numeric model which we've had for a while now to an alphabetic model so grading will
change from you know 0 to 100 to 8 plus uh to F to A+ to keep it in line um we were the only district that that they kind of looked at that were still using numeric so that's kind of a a big change i have that both scales if anybody wants
to look at the committee report it's in in there um standardized testing we talked a little bit about SAT scores vernon had a combined SAT score average of uh,00 um the average nationwide was 1024
and the average in New Jersey was 1049 so we're pretty good there uh STEM curriculum we talked about the district um how the district's incorporating teaching technology and uh incorporating um technology and uh all the other things covered in STEM science
technology math um into lessons and curriculum at each grade level we were talking really about the younger grades because we wanted to get a sense of what is being done in the younger grades to kind of expose kids early on to STEM topics um so we talked about some of the hurdles of some of the things they're
doing um with digital literacy in the younger grades and rotations in the middle school of topics like robotics and engineering um and then we also talked about uh the potential the hurdle of kind of bringing first robotics back into um Glen Meadow which you know would be lovely to do but we have not been
able to uh do yet um so then committee goals we talked about a goal for the board of promoting and celebrating academic success and achievement and we discussed some ways to do that john had a a lesson to share about his old his district his former district i forget
sometimes that you're retired um that celebrates students with these um kind of life you want life-siz cutouts of the students with all their achievements on them and all throughout the hallways of all the schools so when they achieve great things they but we had we had a print shop that could do that so I I don't know if we have something like
that here to do that but you walk down the hall and there's all these accolades of the kids you know got a grade point average of 4.0 you know and got this scholarship you know did this great thing in sports and each board with each kid has that on it it's pretty impressive feeling it's a little creepy if you walk into school at
night but other than that it's it's pretty yeah so just ideas we have for that yeah right and curriculum so I know we're looking at our writing any chance we could bring scripts back oh penmanship we do script third grade
script third grade yep oh good really i knew my kids are you sure he told me he told me they didn't yes your children they choose not to yeah i'm like I'm like "Sign your check." They're like "My kids learned it." Really where my kids definitely learned
it charlie told me they got rid of it after my guys had it my guys so maybe we need to do more of it if it's only in third grade i don't Well I think the problem is you probably don't You don't keep using it you don't use it after you yeah I can barely write
look at my writing program yeah yeah all right any other questions about curriculum yes i wasn't there oh gosh you weren't there that's great i'm sorry i thought you were there aren't you Weren't you called in spirit you were
there you were there in spirit you guys were there in spirit i was at the one after that thank you i think I left that in from last um time and I just didn't update it prop house there after the proceeding oh you were at finance that's what that's why I'm confused i'm I'm combining because it was the same night
and I was at both yes yeah I had back to back um thank you for correcting me there okay uh so I'll fix those the minutes are still in draft i'll fix that um so finance John okay um we met two days ago on the 8th the meeting was conducted online through Google Meet in
attendance were Ray Slam Russ Rogers Joe Van Kirk myself Jen Pellet Ray Zimmerman and Brian Fischer we I'm going to keep this quick i mean the financing the budget of it we just talked all about for an hour and a half on the tax levy incentive aid application and we did
that pretty much yesterday in the committee meeting or two days ago in the committee meeting and as you know we voted on the resolution to be in today's um agenda so that we could vote whether to put the application in which we did and to decide later if we want to raise taxes to use it okay the next thing is
the PEA and the PCR mr slam included certain positions in the new PEA budget that he used this year and the state came back and said to remove them for next year he mentioned it earlier the state's guidelines say to include them so Mr slam is working with the county and the state people to try and resolve the issue is also working on alternate
ways to make the budget work if we cannot use their funds to finance these positions number two we got a local recreation improvement grant award of $86,000 thank you Ray and Russ and Joe and whoever else and Vinnie I think worked on this right um we got $86,000
towards a Rolling Hills playground replacement we did not get the full amount that we asked for so we'll have to add around 50 grand to complete the project is that correct okay uh number three under finance the rest of the meeting was a presentation on EIP from John Bonavis which we all saw tonight
one thing in buildings and grounds there's a change order for the Walnut Ridge front entrance they encountered a block wall that they didn't know was there um so it needs to be taken down and we decided to let them proceed with the change order instead of stopping work until the next meeting and approve
it retroactively at the April 16th meeting it's about $6,100 okay so this way they they don't stop working they found the wall that they did they tore down the sheetrock and there was a concrete wall oh okay all right and that's it thank you
all right awesome mr fisher oh anybody have any questions for Okay fisher okay uh technology and AI we met on April 1st with apologies i didn't type up the minutes so I'm just going over my notes
uh meeting April 1st it was at Walnut Ridge and um online in attendance was myself Nick Lasso Russ Rogers Jen Pellet and Charlie Simaglia uh Nick Lasso mentioned that we
had our first teen awareness night uh he did say it was a little lightly attended but there'll be another date in May uh there was a presentation by Heather Franklin from ScreenStrong uh talked about the effect of video
games on teenagers one of the things that I thought was interesting that came out of that playing video games produces the same amount of dopamine in a teen brain as opioids do
uh we talked about the AI survey and uh we finalized questions that were going to go out on the AI survey and the survey did go out um I checked on it earlier today we've gotten over 600 responses so far and we're going to send
a reminder out I think again on Monday um out of those 600 responses I believe I saw over 400 from students awesome but I think there were only two from administrators was that you two guys or Oh jeez
that was probably Is that portal all right so that was the the survey the the results will be collating and organizing and report back on on the results uh we talked about uh there is
an AI conference uh what does AI mean to your district on June 6th the cost I think was $114 um we wanted to send the chair of the tech and AI committee to the conference but we don't know how that
gets financed uh I don't know if I responded back i don't know if you saw an email um if if you can just send me the title I can register you okay um and then we also talked about uh backups for our computer system uh Nick
had mentioned that we got a a brand new server right that cost $13,000 right and that replaced a 13-year-old server was it yeah or something yeah it was all there
he had when he first specked out getting a backup system the initial cost that he was being quoted was $105,000 and he actually went to a uh cloud-based subscription service which
costs uh $6,000 a year so I did manage uh substantial savings on that uh and he also talked about Chromebook use and care this is the same issue I brought up at the last meeting uh
where uh at at any given time they have something like 14 or 15 Chromebooks that are being repaired uh there are a substantial number of issues where the Chromebooks are being purposely vandalized and they are trying they
they're having issues uh recouping cost from the students who vandalized their Chromebooks that's it for me okay anybody have any questions right you said he would save the money from under 30 with the cloud base who Who's the he
nick Lasso oh all right thank you i missed that okay great um everyone done with committee reports um okay item K public comment uh the prior public statement will apply to all public comments um do
we have anyone in the audience who would like to comment no penny wants to go home um do we have anybody online we have Martin Paringer mr paringer okay number one and second part on the
superintendent you know you guys have not much time to find a new one because usually in my experience you have to bid on hiring a company to help you find one that company then has to write out the
application unless you place somebody from indistrict in this position etc we in the past we had a vantage that we had an assistant
superintendent who picked up the slack we don't have that no more so I might suggest that in the meantime you maybe find somebody with the proper certification make him or her a temporary assistant superintendent to be
able to bridge the gap until you find somebody uh number two regarding the um the uh regarding voting for uh whatchamacallit brought in voting for the bonds we have talked about that in
the past i want you to be aware if we get we I was on a committee once where we said we need to repair our schools and that was about before COVID we need about six million minimum 14 million
ideally to repair everything and replace everything that should be done if you go with an average value of $10 million and you do get a bond for that you will add between5 and $600,000 a year to your
operating costs in making the payments so I want you to be aware of that too you voted for the for applying for the extra 1.4 4 million the 4.4% tax levery increase that it would
be here would only be about 2.8% of the budget which is by in coincidence last month's uh consumer price index for last months that just was published
and every m amount of money that you can add to the uh tax base will also be available next year whereas any kind of bonds that you're going for with a referendum that
is by no means sure to uh succeed the last time we were talking about it before COVID we made a survey and the survey came out with no and it caused a lot of stuff in the usual places like Facebook and stuff like this where
people say just fire the administrators cut the teachers and cut the salaries which I am not a proponent of but you have to know what kind of town you live in you have and what you have to do
is everything you do I want to stress this again and again is for the kids and this is why I'm talking here too the kids don't have a voice they don't know the value of an education and to Mr continue if you want
to talk about community stuff I volunteer i'm always available maybe not in person depending on when and where it is uh done so please contact me i sent you an email i hope I got it in within the five minutes you know how to get a
hold of me all of you thank you thank you Mr paringer um do we have anyone else online we have Jessie Palini mrs paladini good evening um I just want to say pretty shocking that you voted to uh
have that tax increase yet again but um my question is um I found the document that was referenced earlier tonight that said that 16 teachers will be hired to
reduce class size and um I just want clarification because when the question was asked Mr slam referred to staff so was it in fact 16
teachers that were hired to reduce class size or was it a total of 16 staff members meaning teachers and other we're not we're not going to get into a back and forth if you just like to finish your comments we'll answer if we
can that's all i just wanted to know is it teachers or is it staff i I wasn't quite sure about what I heard okay thank you oh I thought she was done i thought she
was done as well i'm sorry Mrs paladini if you're listening um can we get her back we can get her back uh can we just ask her to raise her hand if she wants to continue talking mrs paladini if you can hear me can you raise your hand hi back again sorry about that
i was done but what is the answer is it 16 we're not We're not answering questions during public comment so um we'll wrap up public comment and then if we can Excuse me excuse me so you're not even going to
clarify Mr slam's response not during public comment no but interesting so is that all you had okay thank you Mrs paladini um no one else on line that was it okay
thank you so closing public comment u moving to uh Oh my gosh I've lost my thing here item out what are we open board oh open board forum i I have two things before I I do want to see if we can address her her question but um did
we definitely read the addendum about hiring because Martin asked about um hiring reference hiring the contracting with the search firm and we did read that right and voted on okay i thought we got all so involved in the other thing that I thought is it possible we skipped it so that's why we put it on i
just wanted to make sure that we really you know we have that covered because we we do want to move forward with I definitely read that cuz I remember attaching WS5 okay so I'm just going to state for the public since it was obviously missed that we we have contracted with the New Jersey School
Board Association to uh start the superintendent search and we will be presenting um someone from the New Jersey School Board Association Kelly Mitchell will be coming next week to present um just to the public about how that process will unfold um and then I
did want to see if we could address Mrs paladini's question since I think we do we we will address public questions public comment questions after the public comment session if they are something we can easily address otherwise it may happen in the following meeting mr slam you're up if you want to
try to um so we're excuse me we were talking about it a little bit earlier um Mr had brought up some uh good questions um so um the 16 teachers uh were to reduce class size and support students from PK
to 12 preK to 12 uh and um this is based off of we kind of talked about this back in September of 2024 um I'll plug it again uh business office website under business budget under presentations uh so this is actually the facilities update from September 19th
2024 where we talked about the revised um budget projects but we also talked about um the other items that were in the revised budget as well and provided an update at that time um at that time all staff uh and then the late busing and the stipens have been um either hired or put in place so it was 16
teachers and then there were additional staff yeah so so what I clarified was that it was 16 teachers and there was additional staff on top of that so it was 19 staff 16 teachers staff al together and 16 of whom were teachers okay and Jen I I said staff i'm the one who brought up staff yeah it was me who
said it so I just want to clarify that okay do we have anything else for open board forum okay eenie meanie I'm going to go with Miss M i just have two brief questions okay the the first question did we decide
on whether we're going to keep the desks like this for Oh I thank you for bringing that up um what do you guys think i mean everyone can be on camera this way but is is it too un like sometimes we do have I know we don't have an audience that often but
sometimes we do and when we do have an audience for public it's sometimes nice to have a um Are you going to comment on that yes that's why I'm raising my hand go ahead um I don't think that this makes sense for a public meeting because
you can't see everyone's face i think seeing the side of someone's head is not really the same thing i think for a work session where we're supposed to be talking with each other and asking questions and we're really you know working on something it makes sense but for a public meeting where you're voting
on things primarily and you're making the decisions I think everyone should have their face to the camera and I trust that the that we're it's totally possible to do this in a C semicircle that everyone's face can be seen okay um
I know we talked about it last time so I like this setup for a work session but this is my opinion i'm one of nine i think I I kind of agree with you because also sometimes there are people presenting that want to present to the board and this gentleman presenting tonight was looking you know
he couldn't really see us so I don't know that's my opinion as well but um I I I get what you're saying and and I didn't even think of it that way but get me on camera yeah that's I'm off I'm I'm off camera completely
this way because I don't want to be on camera you know no I I mean I can start bringing my picture put it over here you know right behind my You could do a video yeah yeah a little video screen right
put it over there but I mean if if for the regular meetings if you are watching the video the the two people here and the two people there are off screen no I know i was off screen for two years it's great i love it no I know i'm joking it had its pros and
cons so um I can switch with it if you want did you have a question yeah totally i'll be there it used to be in there but I noticed the last two meetings it wasn't so it really hasn't come up but I'd like if we can put it back in on the left folder with
the committees oh yeah is the list of the approved schools that we send kids out to it used to be there just I haven't seen it lately so that could be because you stole your binder i can bring them back
i don't have an old No it's not i'm just kid i'm just messing with it i don't have it oh you have it i feel like they're taking advantage only special people have it i don't have it
oh I have it i have it it's just you right just the guy who asked for it so I correct can I also Yeah you're going to have to leave a reposit there i know a guy i know a guy yeah you need a deposit exactly that is all right is that it did you have
something else i I had a second question sorry it's always um when are we getting our board of bed IDs i Yeah I've been asking about that as well we did ask that question i'll have to follow up tomorrow did you get your whole business you got your You got your
FOB right i got my FOB i don't have an ID okay the fob is more important but the idea is follow up on that during the uh technology committee meeting too we're going to need it to get into um graduation parking lot i'm sure we'll have more than one
meeting before graduation all right uh so wait it German yeah but I just don't know the the letter because I closed my me too does anyone have any more finance questions yeah okay so item adjournment uh can I get a motion to adjourn Carl
can I get a second thank you Ray um all in favor everyone wants to go home the