 public comment. We'll move on to the consent agenda. We're going to pull out the fourth item on the consent agenda, which is the new teacher contract, and we'll take that up after the executive session tonight. There have been a couple of additions, which are new teacher contracts that will be the addition for. Is there a motion to approve the consent agenda minus the new teacher contract and with the new teacher hires? Motion to approve the consent agenda with the additions mentioned by Bridget just now. And minus the contract negotiations. Second? Second. Any opposed? Because we approved the tax anticipation note, we need five signatures on that. I'm just going to be passed around here. Apologize to the three separate pages. Oh, three pages? So when it comes to you could sign in. Okay. Learning focus. Oh wait, actually before we get to that, which is appropriate because we're going to turn it over to Emma and Hope. I did want to say that this is our last regular school board meeting of the school year, which means it's the last time that we'll be joined by two of our favorite graduating seniors, Emma and Adam, who's been with us for years. So we wish you guys all the very, very best. Thank you very much and thank you for all the service that you've done for board. Anyone else want to say something? Thank you. Congratulations. Yeah, I second that. Thank you too so much. So we're just going to format it with celebrations and concerns. I can start. So we recently had the Empower Vermont Festival in this very courtyard and it was sponsored by MHS Club Action and the proceeds went to the sexual assault crisis team of Washington County and we wanted to give back to a more like local group and we felt it was really befitting of the name Empower Vermont and we had music and some speeches and Emma was also there and so I know that she had a really good time and people tabling and yeah it was just a good way to bring the student body together a bit. And also can I just add that the students that worked on the Empower Vermont Festival worked so hard and it was a small group of students and I thought it was like so much fun so congrats to them. Oh and so the end of string sports is officially tomorrow I think and that's ending with the finals games which both our varsity ultimate teams are participating in here so that's really exciting. Emma is on the girls ultimate team. She's a star. And also all of our other teams have done really well this year in spring sports so yeah just congratulations to them as well. I heard you had a pep rally for spring sports. Yes we did. That was the next item actually. So it sort of took so much effort to plan it but I know that some members of student council worked like really really hard to try and organize the pep rally and it was outside and it was by the track and I know that our school doesn't our school had a pep rally this past year and it was pretty small and so it was short and so I know that like we're really trying to build up our school spirit as a way to just bring the student body together a little bit more and get them out for games and just like make them feel proud of going to MHS and so we had a relay race and tug of war between faculty and staff and students which was really interesting and I had fun, Emma had fun, everyone else seemed like they were having fun so I'll just say that. Yeah it went really well and we even decorated the hallways a bit for it. Yeah and today was senior day of service. That was a lot of fun. I know that some people got injured here and there. Just me, it was just me. But we cleaned up the basement of elementary school. I haven't been there in a long time. That was really fun. I know the custodial staff there, I just have so much respect for everything that they do. That was a lot of work and they were there like loading up the trailer and running to wherever they're taking all of that stuff so that was awesome to see. And the fire was crackling and pizza was baking and it was great. And tomorrow after school something that, it's a partnership between I think it's community based learning and some of the classes at MHS and the Vermont Folklife Center and another organization, I forget the name but it's called the Blueprints Project and I'm part of it and I'm one of the only not sophomores who's a part of it because it's mostly sophomore classes and then orchestra which I'm a part of and we basically had to schedule a 30 minute interview with someone in the community and it was more of a casual sort of interview in which we would just choose a topic we wanted to talk to them about and then just sort of connect with community members and I was able to interview the legislator that I interned with, Molly Burke and it was really, it was just really nice to be able to connect with her on her upbringing and her career and after we had those interviews we turned, we sort of turned them into art and it was based on what class you were in and I know some people made maps sort of like their art project was maps and for me and for orchestra students and some other students we had to make a song on garage band so we had to make music and so the exhibition for that will be tomorrow night at five I believe I'm not entirely sure but it's tomorrow night and it'll be in the library and I think the squires room so that's exciting you're on the art walk, you're in the book on the art walk for tomorrow so you know the art walk so you go to various places and you're on the mainland oh that's really cool oh the blueprints I didn't, okay cool I think that's on MomPillier Alive's website right I didn't know that you're there we are there good to know okay so we just have a few concerns I'll just talk about some middle school concerns that I've run into during play mentoring so I don't have any hard data to like present to you I don't have any like surveys or anything so I can't say that this is like a shared experience but I do know that there's some concern about the middle school bathrooms that the gender neutral bathrooms took only the girls bathrooms and that the boys bathrooms are all still like where they used to be and everything and if a girl say feels uncomfortable going into a gender neutral bathroom which is, which might happen then she would have to walk to wherever that is in the school and that reminds me of something that Michelle said a long time ago at another meeting about a concern that a parent I think had about that and yeah and a student brought that up with me so there's that and also at the beginning of this year there's some resistance against the dress code at the middle school with the, I think it's there's some critiques about how it targets the female students or female identifying students more heavily than the male identifying students whether that's with like their skirt length or their spaghetti straps stuff like that and basically I think it would be really great to have some MSMS students come to a school board meeting and talk about that because it seems like something that they really care about in fact they even started a petition that got a lot of support to change the dress code but they ended up not presenting it to the administration so yeah and then moving on to Montpelier High School do you want to talk about this? I know that some recent freshmen I think they brought it up to Emma or something or how would, yeah some freshmen who had just recently been through the health class at MHS had some concerns about it and I think their concerns that I share and Emma might share just in that it's hard to explain I just think it needs a lot of work and I think Emma can talk a bit more about that yeah what we discussed so one of the places that I talked about this I talked about this with club action actually which is an activism club so that's yeah basically they were concerned about the curriculum not being adequate just especially in terms of sex education and inclusivity and like equity around gender identities and sexual orientations which is stuff that we have discussed on the board I believe and so I'm just kind of like echoing that because students seem to want to prioritize that or they want the school board to prioritize that I feel like it's been, there's sort of a general consensus that if there is a class at MHS that needs improvement it's health just from people who've been through it years ago and are people who just went through it like the freshmen and just to add like when I went through it my main two concerns were sort of inclusivity in terms of different identities that are represented and have to be educated in that space and also sex education and I think it's lacking from what we have right now room for improvement so yeah any questions are welcome any questions for this guest? no questions but we did spend I want to say an hour at the last meeting hearing from a couple of parents and Mike McGrath and the other Mike I don't know I don't want to over, isn't Mike working on the health curriculum now? the curriculum director is working on it our next meeting is about health too, isn't it? is it our retreat? retreat? has a... no no? I thought that was one of the things we were doing one of the actions that came out of the admin's talk after last board meeting is that one of the things we'd like to do is do what health index that we have and that's a much longer process so we're looking into how do we start that and who do we need to do that with us and all that kind of thing we were talking about an asset map to show which is going to do that it does the same thing except it's already a published document it goes further into what we would probably do just brainstorming you know what I mean? yeah so yeah, that's what we're onto we just need a little time to gather it what is an asset map and a health index? so an asset map is so a lot of times in community development people talk about communities needs and an asset map is a different way of approaching a community problem where you start with what do we have what are our strengths, what are our assets what are the resources that we currently have available and not necessarily within an institution but surrounding an institution so a community, what are the community's assets and in that process oftentimes when it's used as a community development you realize oh we have all these resources but we're only engaging this resource and this resource here but we could be engaging all of these resources or oh there's a gap here this is where we really have a need kind of thing that helps decision makers and implementers and communities address challenges you can also help you sometimes focus the community's efforts on real problems versus perceived problems if you can map it out because we might be putting tons of resources into an anti-smoking program and if we did an asset map we would be like hey, we're the school in the state with the fewest smoking kids maybe we should put our efforts somewhere else yeah, not into our strengths what we have is from the CDC the Centers for Disease Control Prevention and the School of Health at NEX and it's a self-assessment and planning guide so it will take us through a process so right now it's a little packed with to-dos so this is marked for summer work but Mike Barry said is working on the health curriculum for K-12 it's on the docket so what Mike said to me after the board meeting was we don't have a reading curriculum we don't have a writing curriculum we don't have a math curriculum like it's on the docket to work on and he's meeting with teachers and we have a lot of curriculum work to do it's not a butt, it's an actual hand we have a lot of work to do in that area because we have very little especially in the K-4 spectrum on the middle school bathrooms there is a big bathroom renovation project going on this summer, right? yes but that will mean more gender neutral bathrooms I think, right? yes I don't know specifically which bathrooms they're concerned with but I think that and you're right on one of the floors I think what they did is they left the boys and they turned the girls into a gender neutral that's the one by the gym that was getting renovated to an all-gender neutral as well as on the ground floor but there will also be an individual stall available but one of the things that Pam had said at a previous meeting and I just want to confirm this with you Andrew while you're here is that there still will be for those students female identifying male identifying who wish to use a female or male restroom those will still be available, correct? not on that floor so on one floor it will be all gender neutral there will be a single stall I mean a single bathroom correct so they can go into the single bathroom I don't know the individual I don't know the building is well enough but there's an individual room down the hallway kind of thing that I can't, I don't have a plan in front of me the way that they'll be set up is the the restrooms will be a large restroom you'll actually go through a solid door so you'll enter into the room there will be a row of sinks common area of sinks and then you actually go through a solid wood door into a toilet stall but it's more of a room the walls go up to about eight feet, seven and a half feet and then so those will be all individual we have accessible solid, free-standing room that will be gender identified will there be gender identifiable bathrooms still at the school there may be one or two but not as the common the used ones and the only reason I say that is there may be in a library a small restroom tucked off to the side when I think of the sort of main restrooms that will be used to ensure I have to pull out the plans and double check that I've heard those same concerns from some parents and their kids too mainly actually and this is all anecdotal it's just been the parents of some girls who feel uncomfortable going into a gender neutral setting at the middle school I have to say as a woman who often has to wait in long lines for waiting for a women's room to open up I find it a little my whole life the idea that somehow I'm going to lose even more stalls to boys who want to use a gender neutral bathroom a little bit of a lack of planning if anything women need more bathroom space than men do so that the women's room is the one that was taken up to become the gender neutral women they're all there there's one on a floor I don't know how many years ago that happened I think it probably happened three or four years ago okay this is a decision that's made before this school year yeah okay it's because of the urinals too I understand there will be some individual bathrooms that are around the school thank you alright the next issue on the agenda is the discussion of the mudlot we have Grant Geisler and Andrew LaRosa joining us business manager and facilities director to talk about the mudlot no it's okay it's okay thank you thank you so good evening so this is both of us because it's a two-part thing but I'm technically asking for a fund balance adjustment so I'm asking for a motion eventually to increase the committed fund balance to $664 or $115 in 7 cents that is an increase of $350,000 that $350,000 is what I would like to commit and set aside for a project to actually replace the mudlot with an actual paved parking lot and it could be either one of you just like a 60 second explanation for the public about what the mudlot refers to as you're pulling into the high school kind of on the outside of where the auditorium is there's a kind of a parking lot but it's not paved it's just dirt, some gravel we call it the mudlot because in a lot of seasons that's what it is so it's used a lot for overflow it's also used right now for the bank the VSECU uses it for their overflow parking it's been a discussion for a long time that that is an eyesore needs to be paved and look nice for a while we were in discussions with the VSECU because they were thinking about making it a capital project that they would pay for and it would be this long term agreement would have to work out because it's our property that they would be doing this project and so that would give them the ability to use it for several years for free but they VSECU delayed their project and now it's sounding less and less like they're really going to move forward and I think they've got other priorities perhaps the parking lot's been expensive than they anticipated so right now there is no plan for VSECU to do a parking lot project anymore so we could just keep waiting but it's been something that's needed attention for a long time so I was looking to set aside $350,000 in your board back there were a couple of kind of drawings one was a couple of pictures of the mud lot what it looks like now you all have seen it and you know what it's like the second kind of diagram was this big parking lot that was initially planned that would take up almost all that green space we're not talking about doing that the last page was kind of what VSECU was considering which is basically paving the same kind of footprint as the mud lot not encroaching on the green fields that's more like what we're talking about doing but I'm not here to tell you that we have a plan set in place we need to figure out what we're going to do it will probably be more like the VSEC VSECU plan but but we still have to go through some of the details and figure that out but the reason why I'd like to commit money now is in order to do that work we're going to need some design and engineering money to start figuring out exactly what this is going to look like so if we set that money on the site it would be available we could have some C money to start with planning development of it and then at some point you will all get more information about what we actually plan to do when that time comes so like I said for now I was just looking for a motion to increase the committed fund balance we still have over 2.4% of our budget is fund balance uncommitted fund balance I've talked to a few of you especially on the finance committee that I anticipate this year we're going to add to the fund balance as a result of how we finish up our 19 so I think we're in good shape this makes a lot of sense to me but obviously we've expressed my love so if you have questions about the law itself I'm sure Andrew will be pleased to start with you do we want to hear from Andrew? I think Grant we'll do the questions I'll look at that I'm just going to recuse myself from the conversation because friends of the Winnowski where I work is working with the district on the stormwater management of this lot so that gets into a question that I had which is we're adding impervious surface to an area by a waterway that goes into Lake Champlain do you want me to answer? yeah so I was like how are you I'll take the burden here I think that by most consideration that would be considered impervious surface we've been driving on it and impacting it for the last and if it was 10 years ago I would have absolutely said there's no one in the state that would call that impervious as I get the understanding they're loosened up a little bit but still I think on first blush people would say you've been driving on it for five years that's impervious now I also understand that the state is also more flexible about regenerating it used to be once it was impervious it was never going to not be considered that but my understanding is that now you could actually fluff the soil back up and turn it back into impervious surface but you have stuff driving on it so what is the need for this because we have parking lots all around the school what is the need for this lot you know when I go by in the day seems like a lot of folks who are doing construction are using it right now but I don't necessarily see that lot totally full regularly but this is anecdotal so that's why I'm asking I would say that and we haven't done a formal study of this but anecdotal talking with folks that last time I talked with Steve Avery he said he had about 8 folks from the credit union were parking over there on a regular basis so on any given day there's probably 20 people parked out there when construction is not happening about 8 of those are probably credit union folks the number of students and faculty is very small 4, 5, 6 maybe the balance are people using the bike now or using the green space so we're talking about $350,000 plus ongoing maintenance and repair over time not that we don't have maintenance and repair right now for potentially 12 people who may or may not be using the school I do see our schools as a public asset but also there are state there's a state law department of labor that generally has quite a bit of spaces there's also a rec field area that is right near right near where the bike path is so it seems like VSEU they're using about 40% of those spaces do they pay us anything they pay us not all for you yeah it's a very small amount something like that but that's based on that it's a large lot and I do there are times when there is no parking out here in the paves lots I can attest to that myself because I've come to work if I leave and come back there are new spots so there is a need and I wonder about as we get more high school students from Rocksbury if we're going to end up having even more students driving yeah right now it's not an urgent need but we're also not talking about putting a parking lot out here with 100 spaces we're talking about maybe 40 spaces so it's not adding a lot of parking spaces but one way or another something needs to be done with that it's the first thing you see in your program and it's atrocious well I was going to say it's actually used quite a bit on weekends of various things so if we're not going to pay this let's put grass on it and prevent people from driving on it it sort of has to go one or the other because it's so ugly I certainly like the green space approach when I look at these drawings my question is with regard to the $350,000 parking lot absolutely if we put trees if we had another recreational field there, had walkways that weren't muddy in the winter or spring or fall we've talked about that piece because when the credit union pulled out the three of us were sitting in my office it happened to be a day that that lot was closed because it's closed for several months of the year because of ice or mud one of the two and we couldn't find parking there are multiple people coming to the high school that couldn't find parking because all the parking spots especially in the winter when the snow piles and you lose additional parking you can't drive there at least we did this year I don't know if that's always a common thing because of how it's planted we're in parallel park and so it may have been that we went in this direction because on that day multiple people were complaining about no parking but that day is common do we do anything to encourage carpooling at the state level for example they have the go commuter challenge and restaurants and stores and things like that if you commute we probably don't do anything like that to cut down on the number of others to do this No, and do you like to make that like you like to add that on too that's going to be difficult that's going to be difficult so I will tell you that even if we something needs to be done whatever we do is not going to be cheap if you say it's truly in that grass field that's still going to be probably well over $100,000 just because we have to get everything out of there all the issues you have with the urban soils and it's still and they're not beyond $100,000 it would still be a sizable amount of money to convert it back to green we're not just going to put a chain up in grass as well but I would agree with Grant that to make it look good. We'll have to go in there we'll have to scrape six inches of soil off and we'll probably have to go up to Coventry and we'll get some topsoil and I'll get a couple trees up there but I'm thinking it's not we're not going to just pull it out of our pockets but it's going to be probably closer to the $30,000 range if we do decide we've got this green space and we've got new sculpture going out front and we want to do a few other things that scope can grow or shrink I don't know if you answered this question because we didn't dive into the green space idea very much but would you still have to have a fire lane? we would still have a fire lane, that's true too so we would have to construct if we wanted that to be green could you have a walkway that connects the school to the path there that was large enough we've talked about that my concern with that is that field gets used for smart baseball and stuff like that once you put a strip of asphalt through or a strip of concrete through it will ruin your field but if we were going to do with some sort of engineered grass path for the fire lane it would be easy enough to do that sort of treatment at least for the first 50 feet into the site for traffic less in a little bit people start to come in different directions that's a good point that some sort of structural grass out there structural system underneath the grass would be a good idea to help make that path a little more sturdy my 5000 foot perspective is I'm sympathetic to folks who are looking for parking spaces and have things to do throughout the day and come in the middle of the day working here and our students but I definitely do think in this age of climate change when the state's actively seeking to reduce its carbon footprint and transportation and heating are major areas I just kind of question if we have $350,000 if spending it on a parking lot is the best use of that money going to something projects at the middle school that we've heard require a lot of attention and those types of matters so that's my general thought I don't want to take up too much time from everybody else because I have questions over there we'll just ask a quick clarifying question so when the credit union had their engineers come up with this plan, this study what was the price tag? it was about $300,000 in construction and I think the engineering fees were going to be around $25 reduced it up a little bit for permitting and things of that nature as part of the overall storm water we had to get a little more creative than what they originally budgeted on the back of an apple but $350 could get us that something close to it and the other thing is the credit union pays us a very nominal fee now when they were debating doing this project because they were going to pay for capital expense they were going to use it for free for years until $300,000 was kind of equaled out but if we do this ourselves and they still want to use that parking we would significantly increase the amount that we charge for parking to recoup some of that money what's the average for a parking spot? well a winter spot in Monterey was about $100 a month so if you do the $12 and you're talking $1,200 that's a 24-hour spice it gets $350 it's not going to be less than that but we would be raising it from them and I would assume they would still want to use it I talked to Steve and they said that I didn't want to catch them watching it on TV that we were taking their parking spot away in there the idea of renting spaces from them and you can see this perfectly so one concern that we have to think about if there's consideration of not having to be a parking lot is that that's actually removing parking spots from Monterey which I think is a problem I'm sorry I didn't hear that if we decided to transform it into green space that's effectively removing parking spaces from downtown Monterey that are currently being used including by downtown employees so it's just going to add to the parking crunch and I take Andrew's point that maybe that's not our financial responsibility but it is not going to be popular to remove while we're building a huge parking garage downtown nice and we are and like I said what we're considering is that we would put painting pretty much on the space that is currently among lots so we're not talking about adding spaces we're not adding a parking lot we're taking something that's a muddy lot in an eyesore and creating a true parking lot with lines that isn't going to be an eyesore but I mean if you want to go in a different direction you can certainly do that but I just think we need to set aside some money and do something I was going to ask having heard all that for a little more data in other words where's the proof that we need it except on the day you talked about it I mean what's the do we have any data that says we actually do need this or we're in trouble how would we get that and so I'm a little hesitant with Andrew to put this money into a parking lot that the credit union is going to use well I think we need to pay for it though even so although I'm absolutely all for doing something I meant so yes I think we need some money to do something but I'm wishing now I knew a little bit more about do we really think we need that parking or could we do great space and could we find that I think you consider when it's mud and ice which I from my short time this year here that has been at least two months if not three full time periods we lose in it's snowback time right we lose approximately 40 to 50 parking spots so that means our employees can't park here for the most part not everybody can fit with students and with the employees and if we have district days there's not a chance that all of our employees can park here so if that's you know it's available is that important or not that is absolutely available is parking spots a right it's hard to collect data because we don't assign parking spots so there's a period in the winter this three month period where it can't be used essentially spring winter yeah and there are other spots that can't be used because of how they cloud the parking and maybe that can be fixed I don't know to be blunt we will not build our way out of a parking problem we will be here in five years if we build a parking lot out there we'll be here in five years saying there's no parking because people will who otherwise might not park in the park in the mud lot will say hey there's a new parking spot I'm going to park there to use the bike path or use whatever and it's we don't have a lot of control over our parking lot we've got probably six cars that show up to eight cars that show up on any given school day and get mad at us if they don't have a parking spot no so it's not an easy topic because it's funny a lot of cities now when you build a hotel and I think Burlington is gone this way they don't have parking requirements because they know no matter what you do so they make it so tough that people will be forced to carpool because they know they can't find a parking spot so that doesn't make the conversation any easier this isn't making any easier but if we knew that we had 20 public folks on a nice sunny day like today 10 of them going for a walk there or using the bike path or playing pickleball that's 20 spots but for those 20 spots what do we do about those so there's no decal there is an intro I don't think you guys don't we can certainly make a more stringent parking piece for next school year to be able to collect data because we don't currently right somebody would have to do that which is fine we can make that happen it's an automated system you could use like a laser system of sorts probably a laser system or maybe maybe I mean our state forest and parks service uses that on trailheads for example to count people and there are parking facilities that use similar automated systems I don't know I know in S6G at the high school in S6 they have parking permits and they actually charge people for the parking permits because they have to print them out they have to maintain a roster linking that to the cars so they know whether it's legit we had two part-time parking lock tendons and we would go out there and check and call tow trucks and have people tow away and it was super fun I see those community relationship designs so backing up again just a touch here Andrew in the past you've talked about putting together a capital plan because we now have capital funding where does this fall on the priorities of the capital plan it doesn't I wouldn't want to take anything off that capital plan is infrastructure stuff that's needed that's been perhaps deferred and we've built that and we didn't have this in the plan because we thought it was going to be done before this and so to your point about priority we didn't see this as wow this is a higher priority than what we've already got on our capital plan and this amount is more than a full year of our capital plan so we would defer a year and a third worth of requirements if we were to squeeze in to the capital plan no that's not what I'm suggesting I was saying we could use this for those capital plan projects is what I was thinking you mean if we didn't put a parking lot in because we do have a capital plan that's why 20 is 260,000 it's projected to go up maybe 5 or 10,000 dollars each year we just started this as a first year we voted for the capital plan we did have a capital plan we had a fund project in FY19 as well so we do have an ongoing capital fund that we've started building that we're tweaking and this was kind of a late to the party and we didn't see it as being important enough to open any of those up list of capital funds I wasn't suggesting that what I was thinking is if we have $350,000 that we want to spend on capital construction have we considered where this falls in the priorities of our capital plan um that's a question I probably should be asking you guys it's a question yeah I mean I look at the spaces around the middle school and think that could be a priority for outdoor space like Trump having a parking lot repairs at the middle school like basketball court and all that that's a next year's capital plan but if you bumped it up a year that's the next year okay how much would it cost to get two plans you said this wasn't our plan this was their plan and how much would it cost to get a plan for a parking lot but also to get a plan for a green space this is going to cost more than I like I know it already but to get those two plans we say we have to do something right one thing or another how much would it cost to get those two and then for the board to continue this discussion about which of those to do um it would not it would not take a lot um I guess my question would be would that information help make the decision that's a good question because it sounds like you're pretty clear that the parking is about 350,000 and the green space is significantly and again those the more money you spend to find out what you want to do the better the number you can get the better you can understand it I could have a I could call up a civil engineer tomorrow and say we got 8,000 square feet and we want to scrape I could talk to ECI tomorrow during our construction meeting and say put down topsoil and grass seed what's that going to cost us and we need to have a number 4 supply in the afternoon and nice trees and nice trees and a fire lane and you know the back of the envelope stuff can be generated but if it was $200,000 if the differential was $200,000 would that change people's minds because that isn't what we've been talking about particularly about the money and it's on their way since the credit union is such an integral part to this whole discussion you said anecdotally Steve has mentioned to you that yes they'll be interested in the future and continue to use the spaces and they would probably pay more have we thought about having a conformal lease that they're willing to commit 10 years of paying this amount we have an agreement with them now that we'll have to discontinue and then we would have to create a new one and then there is a I don't know if there's a binding agreement already we were looking at adjusting that if they were to do the projects so we could get that out of writing but then that kind of fell through so what we would have to do is we would have to notify them we would want to discontinue the agreement it's in place because there's a termination amount so our termination period of time and we would do that and then we would do the project and then we would do a new agreement with them and that decision to let them know is November 1st they're about 60 days but by November 1st we need to if we are going to change our agreement with them we need to let them know ideally sooner than that so I think I need to get a sort of sense of the board because this discussion started with an ask for a specific action and I'm hearing a lot of interest in more information or more time so does anyone want to make a motion for the commitment for the amount for the parking lot does anyone want to voice support for putting this off what I'm hearing is that we'd like to continue this discussion with a little bit more specifics around the options maybe some more specifics from the credit union maybe everyone has a little bit more time to think about it so pretend I'm sitting over there with Andrew and Grant just timing wise Grant that friends of Buminooski has to do design, stormwater treatment on the campus the designs have to be final by early August which means engineers need to know what they're designing well before early August and right now this is if this is going to be paved this is definitely a priority for design if it's going to be turned into green space it's a whole other kettle of fish but it would be if the board doesn't make a decision you can not make a decision and that is fine I understand that but if you don't then we will have to shift those resources elsewhere and this is with regard to stormwater projects at Von Kilder High School and what you're saying is adding a parking lot like this would incorporate the design of that stormwater system this into that so we have funding to design three interventions there are 13 opportunities identified on the campus but if this is going to be paved it's obviously a major opportunity so what do you view as the timeline for when the board needs to make it if I if you had said one way or the other I would have gone out and did an RFP got some proposals had some preliminary meetings by September to kind of get a sense of where we're heading to get the engineers to go we want to be out to bid by January to get our best prices because we probably bundle this with the work that means green middle so it needs to be it needs to be soon needs to be within the next six weeks at least May 4 my general thought on this is not one of indecision my general thought is I'd love to see us try to optimize the space that we have the SECU and their eight cars I don't think that that should be a major factor in this decision and I think we should consider how could we take $350,000 and apply some of it here to create outdoor opportunities for our students and community and take the rest of that money to enhance educational and recreational opportunities for our students whether through capital construction projects or otherwise that's my general sentiment on this but I understand this is a board decision and I'm just one component of that I just have a question are you saying such as the need as money? No, that's not what I'm saying is use some of the money to turn this into green space that can be used for any number of recreational opportunities by students, by the community and take most of this money and apply it to an area of need for our students I was not coming here just to be clear I was not coming here trying to find out if you'd be willing to give up all your fund balance this was just for this project I think it's great to have fund balance it bails us out a lot so I was not looking for ideas on how we can use up our fund balance just to be clear the $350,000 if that's not what you want to do that's fine but we would need a consensus with green space or are we going with paved once we know the answer to that we can come back and tell you this is what we need from fund balance and try to make that happen so to be clear the question before the board would not be what to do with the money if it weren't spent on it the question is parking lot I understand that's the media question but I get ready just to be clear I appreciate it but you might be able to answer given the wintertime problem with parking I'd be willing to spend some money to move the snow and I say that laughingly but the senior center is a good example of the fact that they plow the snow to the back of the lot and you lose a whole bunch of parking spaces and the issue is moving the snow that now takes up the parking spaces to somewhere else $350,000 is what I'm thinking could we solve the parking problem in another manner I don't know that you could say to me no this is my first year with regards to the snow management but I won't say anecdotally but according to talking with Tom Allen I think the snow management was not optimum this year I think it has been better in the past I think we've lost up to 68 spots as well as whether it was snow storms how could each other or something it was a bad year for snow management that we would certainly be more conscious of next year that's like 75% of the spots that the SCCU isn't the same I tend to go with Andrew and do a green space not do nothing but then figure out the snow and do it better before us though what decision we're going to make on the $350,000 proposal for paving the parking lot that's currently being used as a midlaw and this wasn't a consent agenda item this was just something that I was suggesting you would make as a motion so we could change the proposal on the flight I mean if the consensus is green space then I could say well I'm about increasing the fund balance by $50,000 to $364 that would allow us to go down that path and it might be enough it might even be more because you know what happens if we don't use all the money I come back and say I'm going to give it back to the fund balance because we need it all so if you said $50,000 and then we want a green space we could start watching down that road see how far we get and for some reason $50,000 isn't enough I could come back and ask for more if $50,000 is too much I would give it back when the project is done and say hey it only costs us $35,000 so I'm asking you to put $15,000 back into uncommitted fund balance which I've done in the past with the projects my reservation has said it's a lot of money for not really knowing what else might be on your list of priorities and it's just being kind of sprung on me tonight I don't know the parking lot and the decision on tonight it's hard to prioritize it's hard it's very hard and then we were ready in our hands with the credit we've been doing so much at least in my hand so I know this is a bit of a surprise I just and to me this was the kind of the lazy way out to me instead of trying to figure out what fell into priorities because we already looked at all those priorities instead of trying to squeeze in there and see where the dominoes all fall the idea was well we've got the fund balance we can just not mess with priorities at all just take care of it out of the fund balance no file but $350 is a big number and if we wanted to do green space I will tell you there are times when there's no parking we don't have basketball games music store all the time plays or performances but like Andrew said if you build it's like storage if you build more you never have enough so I'm not advocating one way or another but I am advocating that we decide if that makes any sense I would encourage the board to think about what we talked about earlier Andrew pointed out that we need to take something away from the community that they view as theirs which I would argue that that's something I bet this parking lot would be fall under that yeah will you have a major we care about it for sure yeah a major challenge with the community and again and I'm kind of with these guys I just want something done with it because I don't like that I would say that I'm a little bit concerned about the six of us that are here well I was on the 5% deciding tonight but there's not going to be parking there anymore yeah I agree so although we have a full schedule on the retreat we do have a retreat in two weeks so we have a chance to warn this one issue to make the final decision and it sounds like that works with the time frame June 19 do you get a final decision one way or the other I get in that time period mark up a drawing and get it to the ECI that was very awful and it won't be anything you're going to want you know Grant's going to come back he's going to add 30% to it and say if we're over we'll give the money back but I think we can get you at least a better sense of that because if I'm totally wrong and the number comes back at 250 that might change people's minds if it comes back at 50 it may change some minds I think that information is important I also think the opportunity for interested people to weigh in in between now and then putting out the fact that this is under consideration we're ending that as a parking area we shouldn't hear from the people cut strong opinions both ways I think we should have some opportunity for those to be aired and then we'll make the decision I think though that it would be what we're talking about here what is under consideration is not to leave the mud lot what is under consideration is to turn this into green space that can be used for recreational purposes by students, by the community or to do a hybrid where you have recreational space and you have a 40 car parking lot roughly and those are the two options that we're considering we're not considering doing nothing at all that's my understanding okay we're putting this off one last piece that they are concerned about the larger parking lot but there is a safety issue you have public parking on your property that you can't really see we're hoping to get a camera out there but you've got what do you mean you can't see most people when they're coming into the parking lot the majority of our parking goes past the high school administrative office there's a lot of passive eyes out there we kind of look out there that was one of the issues that was raised when it was a larger it's less of an issue when it's smaller but it's still an issue you've got a public coming in using your lot and you don't have much supervision of it and you don't know what's going on the other things we were warned about it's too much vegetation from the police chief because they can't see from that and provides hiding spots so fruit trees that are separated kind of like on the state house law put the top say it over I did want to say to the both of you this was a logical conclusion from where we had been before so thank you for doing this it's just that before we thought somebody else was going to come in pay for it and they wanted it we never really had this discussion before it's not your fault I'd love to see a picture of what that was the first year it was put in because I can guarantee it was 20 feet shallower than it is now and every day it creeps further and further so if we don't do something it's a whole lot of fun so I appreciate your time I'm sorry to spring on you I'm having a conversation and I appreciate that you're taking on and we'll thank you thank you very much so folks can get these on their calendars so June 19th is a full day just so everyone remembers starting in the morning full day retreat um 9 o'clock 9 o'clock 9 o'clock we've got the historical society for us it was a nice space there are many problems with all of the other normal oh right there's many problems with all of what would be the normal summer meeting dates including a wide range of vacations and one of them would be July 3rd of course we can't meet in October it's not sacrilege so the proposal from the chair and the superintendent is three meetings this summer July 24th August 14th and August 28th July 20th can you say that one more time July 24th August 14th and August 28th and all of those would be regular starting at 6.30 right August 29th is the first day of school yes it is so they'll go out to the whole board by email too but that's the plan after this meeting many people can't make them I would say we don't need to do it right now but we'll put it out in an email to the whole board and if you can respond about your availability if it turns out that those dates are impossible of course they'll have to be revisited which will be in Roxbury well since we are doing it was supposed to be every fourth and it's supposed to be the 19th of June was supposed to be the Roxbury board meeting but I think what we were talking about today is just have a full day board meeting and then not have it in Roxbury so it would make sense that the first board meeting in July there starts out in Roxbury July 24th in Roxbury to middlebury right it depends on the time of year in which gaps are open summer July 24th 40 minutes I'm just that might be 35-40 minutes that's not too bad the only thing left on the agenda is the executive session for which we need two motions we have a motion to find discussing contract negotiations in open session would put the board at a disadvantage so moved second any opposed motion to enter executive session for the purpose of discussing contract negotiations so moved second any discussion all those in favor