All right, Madam Clerk, we have got quorum.

We're going to call this meeting to the emergency evacuation plan announcement and public speaker.

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And Madam Chair, all members of the committee are in attendance today, and you do have a quorum.

All right, Madam Clerk, thank you so much.

Um we're gonna move right on into public comment period and then our first presentation.

Public comment is now open.

Is there anyone present who wishes to address this committee regarding items not on today's agenda?

Madam Chair, seeing none and no one signed up to speak virtually before the 10 a.m.

Bant line, the public comment period, it's now closed and back to the committee.

All right, committee members, we're gonna roll through the we're gonna do it's called a rocket docket today.

If anybody of you have ever um been in been across the read at the General Assembly, because it is snowing, I'm gonna try to get us on out of here in under an hour.

It's blizzarding now.

Um, all right.

So we've got our first update from RPS, and I see our wonderful new COO in the house.

Hello, welcome.

Um, to talk about the maintenance part of the facilities and maintenance planning report.

Good afternoon.

Uh my name is Patrick Harrell.

Uh, I'm the chief operating officer for Richmond Public Schools, and I was asked to speak a little bit about our facilities planning.

Um, I'm not sure.

Is this does this advance the slide?

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

Um, okay, so three things that we were asked to discuss today.

We wanted to talk about the facilities condition assessment overview, the capital improvement project overview that we have, and an overview of our maintenance work and the progress that we've been making there.

So to begin, I want to start with the facilities condition assessment.

As you all know, uh, about a year and a half ago, we consider uh completed a comprehensive assessment of our current facilities.

For every one of those facilities, we had an outside firm go through, look at the useful life, the current lifespan, and estimate what the large projects were that we would need to be completed.

Um, when that was completed in 2024, they identified uh about $7 million in urgent capital needs for that year, and then they projected likely deferred maintenance costs into the future.

For this year, they identified over $36 million.

The following year it was almost 40 million dollars.

And so you can see all of the ways that the deferred maintenance that we have experienced has been catching up to us.

The other thing that I wanted to point out from this slide is that there is, even though the funding for our capital projects comes from a different ultimate source than our operating budget, the two are very connected because for every time we do not get money to do a large capital project.

Imagine, for example, on a wet day like today, if we have not been able to update a roof from capital money, today that leads to more leaks in that roof, which comes from operational dollars.

So even though they are two distinct pools of money, I think one way that we think a lot about it is every time we can't do a large capital project, we know that that is going to increase the pressure on our operational dollars for the ongoing maintenance that we have overall.

Is your um is your CIP threshold 150,000 or more?

Or what's the CIP?

What's the dollar amount that differentiates CIP versus operating?

You mean when we can account for something as a capital improvement project versus to my knowledge, we haven't identified a strict line.

The way I've interpreted it is because the capital dollars come from the city based on debt obligations, we should be using that toward long-term projects.

thousand dollars or more or what's the CIP what what what's the dollar amount that differentiates CIP versus operating you mean when we can account for something as a capital improvement project versus to my knowledge we haven't identified a strict line the way I've interpreted is because the capital dollars come from the city based on debt obligations we should be using that toward long-term projects so a project that could last 10 15 years or more rather than a repair which doesn't guarantee that long term lifespan but I've I've not seen at a specific articulation of a dollar threshold uh as it relates to capital improvement plan annual budgeting we put forward as you all know a little over a 10 million dollar request to the city but knowing that we were expecting to receive closer to two and a half million dollars on this slide I have what our most highly prioritized items are based on a combination of assessments that is a combination of the highest and most urgent needs the highest cost to our operational budget for the items if we do not replace them as well as what we're seeing in terms of enrollment trends although frankly because we don't have enormous money for new construction we end up having to pretty aggressively triage the highest need and highest impact items.

The second slide gives additional if we were to get more than two and a half million dollars some of the additional projects that we would be interested in using additional money beyond the two and a half million dollars for ultimately of course this is part of the budgeting process and is certainly not yet finalized but want to do it at least share our initial thinking the last piece that I wanted to share with you was our 10 year roofing schedule maintenance schedule I think one of the things to point out that you will see very quickly is this is an unrealistic roof replacement schedule.

I'll point you for example to Armstrong high school replacing that roof alone is over three and a half million dollars and if we are to expect two and a half million dollars per year for the next several years there is no year during which we would be able to replace the Armstrong roof and so we want to have this we want to be as proactive as we can but we also recognize that we need to be subject to the budget that we have available I also wanted to share there were there were questions around how our annual replacement value compares to the operating dollars that we put in all told uh so this year for example we uh have about six and a half million dollars dedicated to our annual operating dollars for maintenance I have uh next year's projections in our proposed budget uh that is obviously not final one of the things that you'll find out really quickly is when you look at the six and a half million dollars that we commit compared to the five million square feet of space across our 52 buildings that means that we are typically sinking between 0.7 and 0.8% of our budget into operations and preventative maintenance.

When you look at industry standard it is typically significantly higher than that but that's not been within our our realistic budget.

Is that does that have anything to do with the sheer number of buildings that we have to maintain I think it's I'm sure it's part of it.

I'm sure it's also primarily driven by the age of those buildings.

But there's 52 of them not 52 schools 52 buildings 52 buildings for how many students?

22000 students.

Okay.

I'm sorry.

We also uh a couple months ago we instituted a maintenance prioritization system recognizing that our operational dollars are limited so we put together a high medium and low priority item high priority items are health life and safety items so very broadly there anything that could impact negatively the student experience the student safety or be an issue that causes long-term implications for our infrastructure so you can imagine something like a giant roof leak not only does that interrupt instruction but it could also if not addressed lead to enormous costs if we do not address it and so those are high priority items we set a performance standard of addressing those concerns within two business days within 48 hours I've I have more information later on that and then lowering expectations around the timeline for our medium and low priority requests.