2020-09-17 PPS School Board School Improvement Bond Committee Meeting

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District Portland Public Schools
Date 2020-09-17
Time 16:30:00
Venue Virtual/Online
Meeting Type committee
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Event 1: PPS School Improvement Bond Committee Meeting 9/17/2020

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um shortly um it looks like we've got introductions first um it would be really helpful for me i mean i know most of the people at pps but any um and kevin i don't know if you let's just go around and do introductions that would benefit me thanks just your name and your your role uh marina do you want to start i'll start marina cresswell i'm the senior director of the office of school modernization i see kevin next kevin spellman chair of the bond accountability committee uh dan dan young chief operating officer um director moore rita moore director miss bradshaw hi karen bradshaw executive assistant for the board mr valentino hi everyone luis valentino chief academic officer is it little um committee thank you david ryan i run david royce senior director of communications superintendent deputy superintendent hertz hi i'm claire hurts and i work with business and operations jackson weinberg hi i'm jackson i'm also on the district student council david mayne hi i'm david mayne i'm the communications manager for the bond program roseanne powell board manager and scott uh scott you're on mute scott can you introduce yourself yeah yeah in case he's having audio issues that probably is the program manager for the officeable modernization so i'll just go ahead and introduce him right now and we can move on okay um superintendent we're just introducing ourselves i think i know most of you um what about stephanie good afternoon stephanie sodan chief of staff have i gotten everybody i think we have okay is there any public comment no okay great so it looks like um we've got a quarterly report coming up from the bond accountability committee um kevin i believe that's that's you thank you um chair to pass and congratulations on your new position here welcome um it's been quite a while since the bac met um it was july 29 and um so some of this information will be a little outdated i think but in any event um at the time we wrote our report um the district had was underway for construction work at kellogg madison and lincoln i was doing punchless work and close out at grant high school close out at roosevelt plus work on the windows rehabilitation and tenant improvements for phase four closeout of franklin multiple uh health and welfare uh health and safety projects and engaged in design work for
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benson and multiple pathways um plus the tenant improvement work at marshall um before we get into any of the specifics we want to note that the office of school modernization is continuing it searched to fill several staff vacancies including director of construction and a new position senior manager of business operations and we just want to say that um osm staff has been operating shorthanded for quite a while and been doing a great job but uh it would really be nice to fill some of these positions recognizing how hot that is these days at the same time the current contract for program management and construction management services um which has been with uh cbre slash hiri uh since 2012 uh expires in uh december so an rfp process is underway with regard to the 2012 bond program closeout and final accounting are in various stages um our ordered subcommittee has received a copy of the closeout cost audit for roosevelt at least through phase three and we're looking forward to seeing the district's response to the question items at grant some late cost issues have arisen with the contractor and osm is working diligently with them to resolve those and one of our recommendations of course is to to carry forward any lessons learned from the late cost issues and adopt those program wide cost projections for the bond include funding for some ongoing work at franklin and roosevelt and a few improvement projects at grant and as before lessons learned on completed schools are shared with the teams on upcoming projects the 2012 program now shows projected final savings of just shy of one million dollars the 2017 bond program as you all know uh remains in the red as we reported last quarter uh a bond premium amounting to 68 million dollars was secured and um was very welcome obviously our recommendation again is that this these funds should be um formally transferred to the current budget for benson high school and it may have been done by now there's been no resistance to that so i don't think that's controversial um projected interest earnings for the program were reduced uh i think before our last meeting uh by from 21 million to 12 million and in addition an error in recording interest for 2019 resulted in overstatement of more than three million dollars so that's that needs to be adjusted the entire program now reports unfunded costs of 210 million dollars and um your committee will remember of course that a projected shortfall of 214 million has been included in the board's 2020 bond referral um challenges to the program the 2017 bond are rise out of uh as as is the case with everybody arises out of the coronavirus pandemic um it's caused some labor challenges slowdowns from social distancing requirements and supply chain disruptions um osm i think was uh very proactive in in working with contractors to identify and mitigate problems but costs are building we have recommended and again recommend that uh osm kind of maintain a current um program-wide analysis of incurred and projected cost and schedule impacts of covet 19 and we would like to see those at each of our quarterly meetings this issue of course is a high risk to the program and we need to stay on top of it kellogg's construction is proceeding
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on schedule to complete in early 2021 the project contingency remains healthy at this time schedule and budget on the other hand remain the key issues at madison there's little schedule float left after delays in the permitting process and and some other challenges and that's been exacerbated uh even this week with um shutdowns due to the air quality situation and and perhaps marina will address that the board can help allay a risk item a schedule risk item of madison to the extent that if the school is to be renamed [Music] that cannot be left to the last minute or it will have an effect on completion of the school of course and i'm sure osm will let you know the timeline that they need to know of any change schedule issues of course at madison will also affect the budget and as you may recall the project started with a a slightly reduced project contingency and so we're going to be looking for an update on the status of that contingency that's been challenged by uh covert costs as well as other issues work at lincoln um is continuing although i think it's been again shut down this week uh the building permit was expected by the end of august i do not have an update again perhaps marina does um the lincoln schedule as you know still predicts completion of phase one for the 22-23 school year uh with phase two work to follow at that point benson high school has reached the 75 design development milestone in its design and work continues on value engineering options so that the next cost estimate will be within budget and with a healthy contingency we all hope sweet uh swingside work at marshall in kempton started this summer um and the auxiliary cte building at marshall for the use of benson is being uh reduced in size for budget purposes health and safety um projects are uh all over the district roof work is underway at six schools fire alarm at 18 ada work at six asbestos at 11 plus lead paint water quality and security work uh are going on um of the 158 million dollars dedicated to health and safety over 74 million had been spent at the time of the report i want to spend a few minutes talking about equity and how we are situated with regard to certified business participation uh the percentage going to certified businesses uh has fallen again to now accumulative at just under 16 percent the district's aspirational goal as you know it remains at 18 and i think this this latest switch is highly highlighted an issue with the reporting protocols which may be um kind of inside baseball a little bit but um it's reported on a payment basis which um which has its uh pros for sure but it by doing that the percentage actually is it's not really predictive of how the program will necessarily finish and so we at least think that we should be also looking at uh percentage on a contract basis to give us that sense the madison contractor gave the presentation and let us know that its participation is only at a little under 12 um with very few additional contracts to be left to make up that difference lincoln also told us that after letting most of its phase one contracts they are also at about 11 um and it was clear from the reporting that the consultants on both lincoln and benson are also falling
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short of the goal we think that this is timely to take a fresh look at [Music] our protocols with regard to certified businesses and the bond program and we know that more than osm is engaged in that purchasing and contracting and community engagement are involved in that and we think this is the time to have those three or me and maybe others i don't know uh work together and take a fresh look at the program before um work starts on benson and mpg and of course if the 2020 bond passes there'll be a whole other slew of work coming there it's not in the report but but since the report was written um staff has recommended some attention to the um to this issue by the uh performance um auditors which is appropriate but we think that that should not delay a a an energized look at how we can improve um kevin can i interrupt you for one second and um maybe instead of discussing this now marina could you make sure that you address this in your report i'm interested in knowing whether um staff is discussing um how to address this problem and my other question kevin is that are those progress payments or are those just final payments that are reflecting the level of participation because if they're progress payments you should have a chance to course correct right that's right the the the numbers on well the overall program of 16 is progress payments the the 12 at madison and 11 at lincoln are contract based so lincoln still has phase two to be let but you know the the the total contract so big that making up um a um seven percent shortfall out of just phase two is not really practical so we're not we're just not gonna get to 18 so marina if you wouldn't mind tucking that into the appropriate place in your presentation that would be helpful and my other question there would be why are these going down because historically on the 2012 and beginning of 2017 bond we had higher levels of participation here or of mwsb contracts sure i'm happy to talk to that in my report thank you all right i also thank you amy i'm also concerned with that too um and just wondering um not necessarily about how we're tracking it but what we're doing on the pre-construction and in terms of engaging with the with the larger general contractors what are we doing um through procurement uh uh to to engage you know the minority contractor community and then i also have um would like to hear a little bit more about the permitting delays at madison what what are the causes and um how do we resolve those issues um i'm just curious if if that's uh if we can address that during during this meeting today too um permitting delays we're at lincoln and they'll be happy to discuss that i was already planning to um on i i want to be clear on the on the certified business issue that we're not necessarily being critical of the work by the prime contractors we had a comprehensive presentation by the prime on madison and and they seemingly did an astonishing outreach exercise uh our issue is if that's not good enough what else can we be doing and that's why we think this needs to be we need to pay attention to it at this point um have we communicated to the general contractors that this is a um this is this is an important you know this is something that we're expecting them i know that on the city of portland um jobs that are happening right now um we're getting upwards of 22 25 um mwesb certified firm participation so the firms are out there um the firms are out there i'm just wondering where in the supply chain you know where we're failing right and that's why we think that that's worth attention
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uh from each of the stakeholders who's involved in this um the safety record in the program continues to be a good one uh madison has now recorded over 300 000 hours and has only had one minor recordable accident and neither kellogg nor lincoln have had recordable accidents even though when uh combined they're at about 90 000 hours we addressed just briefly audits in our report and the mid-contract cost order that madison has been provided and we're hoping to hold an ordered subcommittee meeting with staff in the cost of auditor although we have to address some public meeting rules with regard to that i don't think we can um effectively have a public meeting involving a discussion of um incomplete cost not incomplete in the sense that uh the audit work is incomplete but the work the work itself is income uh we're hoping that we can work with staff to get that done um we addressed some other issues and this followed the meeting rather than in the meeting and i'm happy to see that uh the committee is going to be discussing today um the the these issues that we wanted to bring up um the the reporting framework um from uh staff to the bac and probably from the bac to the committee um that's for you to say rather than me but they're probably no longer as effective as they could be they were developed way back in 2013 when life was a lot simpler and the bond program uh there were just a handful of projects underway at any one time now as as we're discussing there are just an enormous number of uh issues projects and issues and so we need to find a better way it's not to say it can't be done it certainly can and i know dan and marina have been working with the bac members who will be staying on after uh this year but the board can certainly help um i we think it would be helpful if the 2021 bac chair could be identified so that that person could help in in the and i know dan and marina have have raised this as well um three bac members will be leaving at the end of this year and there's currently one open seat as well and so filling those positions is of some importance with that i'll i'll close and uh be happy to take any questions thank you um spellman uh kevin i appreciate that does anybody have any further questions i have um a couple of questions that come out of the bac report that marina you may already be planning to address but one is about the question of sweeping the bond premium into the benson project budget as opposed to or project deficit as opposed to just a program budget i don't it wasn't clear to me from their report whether that was intentionally holding that back or whether it just hadn't been done yet so if you can address that and then also um the error in recording the interest earnings was the first i had heard about that so i'd like to just hear a little bit more as as you provide your budget presentation but thank you kevin thank you members thank you kevin um i also have questions about the um openings in the osm the director of construction and um the other position which i don't have in front of me um if i'm sure marina or dan maybe you'll update us on that but um are we planning on hiring for those positions or what's the status of that of those open positions i will update you on those two um would you like me to go ahead and do
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my reports i i think so if there's if there are no further questions okay uh so as of our last report in june we were three months into the pandemic um we certainly knew that there were some impacts to them uh now we're six months in we've seen a little bit more of what um it's throwing at us in addition we've seen wildfires and air quality issues um all those things are certainly having an impact on the bond program on the flip side of that the schools have been closed to students since march and that has provided us some opportunities as well and so i want to talk about all of those things um i think as kevin noted that pandemic has created some issues from us in differing ways so some of our projects have seen supply chain issues and when we say supply chain that means things like um we may not be able to get certain types of parts uh as quickly as we were supposed to so promised schedules are not necessarily good schedules anymore we've seen that with things like elevators water fountains some very unique and specific items we've seen some work slowdowns due to the need to uh provide social distancing that can be things like um needing to put workers on two different lists instead of sitting next to each other on one list um so that has some impact as well and i think you know probably the one that is hardest to anticipate we've seen more people gone for testing and i think uh what makes it particularly hard to anticipate is that nowadays if somebody doesn't feel well it doesn't mean that they come to the site and continue working until they feel so bad that they go home if they don't feel well that typically means that they stop working immediately and then they quarantine until they can get in and get tested for covet and if there is some suspicion that they might have symptoms that are very similar to covid then it can slow down work for their co-workers as well and i think these are the impacts that it's very hard for us to anticipate we've certainly seen those impacts on our projects with folks having to stay home frankly more than they used to the the good part of having less occupied schools is that many of our projects that work in those schools have been able to move forward more quickly they've been able to move through the schools more easily they had to take you know less considerations of working around students because there aren't students to work around and that has certainly helped us with our health and safety program in particular we did complete um a significant amount of work this summer on our health and safety program and i think kevin talked through in various numbers of that um a couple things i'd like to note our fire alarm upgrades will be completing this fall our security upgrades will be completing this fall our packages one and two are actually already complete we are completing package three and we're also working on signage and sensing small amount of fencing to go with this our water fixtures uh that we are installing that will take water to less than one part per million lead those are starting installation we've started installation on the package of five schools and we'll be continuing those um through the the rest of the district through the end of 2021. uh we do we did quite a few roof projects this summer as kevin noted we have three more we would like to complete next summer with savings from the water quality program we'll be talking about that with the bond committee further and we have ongoing work in asbestos abatement lead paint abatement the modernizations have been moving forward um talk about some of those uh pandemic air quality fire issues in just a minute but they are moving forward some of you may have noticed that we are not offering tours of our work sites it is a risk we don't want to take with the kovit 19. um however many of the sites have a lot of visibility from the fences around them and so we do encourage you to to go and see what things are going on around kellogg in particular is uh furthest along
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of those um sites and you'll see that it looks quite finished from the outside but there's still a lot of work occurring on the inside and there's a fair amount of site work so occurring as well lincoln did have some permitting challenges those are coveted related primarily the city had to retool how it worked in the same way that we had to retool how we work they've made a lot of changes to how they're doing things it is getting better but it definitely did impact our permits for lincoln we have been able to work with the city to move forward and so we are moving forward with work while we wait for a final permit madison uh madison is the project that probably has the tightest schedule of the modernization and i think if you heard kevin say they are struggling with the tightness of their schedule they did have shutdowns related to the pandemic they have also had shutdowns this week due to air quality we'll talk a little bit about that they are currently on schedule as of today however we are looking at what we will need to do to stay on schedule there are concerns we will continue to work through those concerns and we will continue to be talking with you about those concerns as we move forward they one of the things that we'll be doing with the madison project is we are putting together a transition team this is similar to something that we did last year when we move our modernization projects out of their swing sites we typically have another modernization project where the school needs to move into that same swing site usually in the same summer a very compressed amount of time last year we put together a transition team to make sure that we had all you know sort of interested parties of the district available and able to provide input so we can make that transition as smooth as possible down at the marshall site um this year we'll be doing the same thing we're actually going to start a little bit sooner than we did last time and part of that is so we can also talk through this tightness of the schedule and what that might mean in terms of you know are there portions of the school that might still be um under completion for madison when students move back and if that's the case how do we address it so we'll be working with uh representatives across the district uh to talk through those um issues and the implications and and what we need to do to be prepared for that benson is working through design for events in campus in the swing sites they did also do several improvements to marshall over the summer to prepare marshall for benson moving in one of the things that's unique about benson is their their cte programs obviously um those cte programs are not like a regular high school so they require different types of spaces and we we're having to make some modifications to marshall to accommodate those unique spaces to accommodate things like the weight of the equipment that is not common in the classroom and so we've been doing improvements over this summer to kind of get ahead of the game for next summer because we know that we can't be doing a lot of construction while we're also trying to move teachers and classrooms out and move teachers and equipment in so one of the things we're doing ahead of time we're also just a couple notes on uh some additional 2012 projects the grant upper field improvements are in design moving forward um we'll be having a town hall meeting to discuss the scope of the work and the team is engaging with the design advisory group on that roosevelt high school the windows that we were addressing are mostly complete the phase four did do some work over the summer in the main building to prepare for work to occur in an addition we have to be able to connect the addition to the main building we wanted to be able to kind of prep all those connections while there were no students in the main building so that we can continue to move forward with the addition even after the school is occupied and we have minimal impact on the occupied spaces of the main building so they did do some
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work over the summer for that and we are getting ready to bring a contractor on for the addition not so much specific to projects i do want to touch back the air quality issue we did have several days this week where projects were shut down due to air quality some of our projects gave their contractors or i should say that the general contractors gave their subcontractors the ability to do some work utilizing n95 math assuming that they were you know fitted properly and meeting all the safety requirements so we did see some work continue but it was very very minimal for the most part our projects were essentially shut down in the same way that the schools were shut down we anticipate that most of those projects are going to be back up and running tomorrow going on to some general sort of program related items um i'm going to start with our open recruitments we do have five open recruitments we currently we finished our first round of um interviews for project manager one position those are sort of an entry-level project management position that will be supporting different projects including benson team in particular we are getting ready we're in the process of scheduling interviews for the director of construction position for our e-builder administrator and for the senior manager of business operations we will soon be scheduling interviews for the i'm going to get the the classification wrong uh it's our business analyst one position which is essentially our contracts person so um we've had some vacancies the contracts analyst position has been vacant for a while we've had folks there doing double duty to to kind of keep up um the ebola administrator position was a new position that we were bringing on to help us provide better support internally for our e-builder software the director of construction has been vacant but filled with an interim and so we've had somebody in the role but it it needs to go through the recruitment process and actually um bring in a permanent hire the um senior manager business operations is a new position to us it's one that we are bringing on to oversee all of our operations staff that are not project staff and so um it will provide a similar function to our director of construction only it'll work on the operation side so they will oversee our contracts or finance our communications our administrative support all those sorts of things it will actually be a really good benefit to to me in in being able to take on some of the um more administrative tasks and and allow me to to be able to to see more um and and do less is probably the better way to put it um we have good applicants for all of those positions we've had good response and i'm very hopeful that we will be getting through these recruitments in these interviews quickly and we'll be bringing people on before the end of the year in fact we're targeting to get most of these folks on uh right you know depending on how long it takes to do all the interviews and offer negotiation we're looking at somewhere in the november time frame for many of them um director to pass does that answer your question about the recruitment yes it does yes it does thank you um thanks for that i had no idea there were five positions open yes it's uh it is certainly a lot and we had some delays as we were dealing um with the pandemic and so once we were able to kind of move through those issues we were able to get get things moving again so um on our audits our performance audit i i just want to note again that we did already do we had our performance auditors sec provide a presentation on the year 2 audit report we are working on the year three work
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plan and kevin mentioned that one of the things that we anticipate doing with that year three week plan is we've asked them to look at business equity in particular and while we're still kind of talking through the refinement of it we anticipate that they will be looking at not uh not just our our aspirational goals for business equity but what we are actually doing to support our contractors being able to meet those goals so um we do want to take a closer look at that um i will come back to the equity in just a minute i did want to note a couple other things that we're working on currently we continue to work on a number of different improvements within osm we are revising our lessons learned database so that we can provide better and not just better data but actually better ability to analyze the data and to share it and to identify program-wide improvements that we need to implement based on these lessons that we're learning so i'm feeling very good about where we're headed with that and um you know excited about moving that forward in a way that really allows us to continually improve um we are also marina if i can just comment on that for a second i thought that that was one of the brightest spots of the uh recent audit um that they had very favorable things to say about how your team has been implementing recommendations from the past audits um so keep it up that's really important and i think we've all had experience with sort of backward looking reviews where new ideas are brought forward and old habits are chastised and then we don't do a great job of following through so that was i was really glad to see that in in their really exhaustive review um we are you know we enjoy working with our performance auditors i i say that um with the caveat that it's painful as you said it is always painful to find out what you did wrong right uh but out of that is is learning um where we can improve and so often what happens is as they're going through and they're doing their field work they're asking us questions and just the sheer act of asking those questions is allowing us to see where there's gaps or where there's things that aren't working well you know where there's friction and it's and by the time that they've provided us with their audit report we've already been thinking through the things we need to change based on the questions they were asking during the fields so um it's been you know i think it's a really good process and and um my team has really embraced the opportunity to improve um based on those kinds of uh questions that they're asking and then the reports that we're getting at the end so we're excited by it you know it's they said it's hard to um have them look back and say you didn't do that very well but you know we're all about continually improving and and this is how we're going to do it so um we've asked them for the year three week plan we've we've kind of specifically called out some things that we are looking for improvements so we kind of we we kind of know either we we're seeing like with the equity that there's some issues there or the things that we think frankly could just use a closer look um so that we can really focus in on improving those things i appreciate that clue i mean like i keep going back to we're a learning institution and so this continuous improvement you know look back uh look ahead and and kind of our proactive approach in um you know in working with those performing performance auditors is is great if there's something to be learned great that's that's what we're in the business of providing you know education learning environment so thank you yeah um and and speaking of learning so uh one of the things that we've been doing and we've talked about this a little bit is we've been we've been kind of uh restructuring our standard operating procedures these are the procedures that we provide to our staff to give them guidance on how to move
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forward with certain types of actions um we took something that was sort of more like a book that would you would read and we've turned it into individual sops or standard operating procedures we've been going through working with our staff each one that we we draft we sit down with all of our project staff and we go over it we talk about what what might need to be improved before it's finalized and we talk through the issues and then we go and we sort of finally can publish it we recently discovered that we can actually put all of the standard operating procedures on pepper which is um for those of you that are not within the pps system um that's the training software that will track you can assign um trainings to staff individually you can track when they've completed them you can send them reminders um this is uh dan i think um laughs at me because i get so excited about this um but i'm really excited that we can actually assign sops to our staff and track that they've been going through and reading them and that we can maybe even do it on an annual basis um though it might take them a couple hours to go through all of our sops to do that um but this will give us so much a better sense of knowing that our staff have read through these saps and that they they're they're really actively viewing them that they don't just get put in a binder on a shelf somewhere so um this is another thing that we're working on currently uh equity so i wanted to come back to the equity question um i think kevin mentioned we did actually have the madison team do a presentation at the last eac meeting about their efforts towards business equity and workforce equity and you know i apologize because even though those materials are in the presentation i didn't necessarily call that out if you go and look at the materials that have been provided to you and you go to look towards the you know sort of the back part of the presentation where the section is on madison you will find all of the materials that they provided to talk about the process they went through for trying to achieve their aspirational goals for business equity so there are you'll be able to see sort of the extensive outreach that they did um the things that went right the things that went wrong um understanding that with our with our cmgcs um typically what they're attempting to do with their buyouts is best value packages that really take into consideration certified business participation so there are strategies that they're putting in place to try to achieve the aspirational goals uh we did know at the time of full buyout for madison that they were not going to achieve the aspirational goal of 18 um it sounds like we neglected to convey that to the bac and that's that's an error on our part um but i don't think um it was not a surprise to us that they their payments are showing them at 11. um we do know that they are still at that 13 percent and as their conte payments continue forward we'll see that change that's one of the nuances of a payment-based recording system for the certified business with lincoln they are also currently below the 18 percent um i think the number that kevin has is not fully accurate but i am still looking into that and i also want to say that they're not fully bought out and so what we're hearing is that that they anticipate the number will go up percentage-wise when they are fully bought out including the second phase so they have two phases to the project the first phase is primarily bought out the second phase has not been yet and they do anticipate that percentage is going to go up with the second phase buyout i don't believe they are going to reach the 18 even with that so they are certainly doing everything everything they can right now to get there um trying to think what else i wanted to touch on uh with the equity questions did you
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have additional specific questions um directories the pastor director constant just for a time check we are a little bit over time if if if anybody has questions maybe we can quickly tie this portion up and move on to our next um topic i do have a question or it's just really some food for thought and we can come back to it sometime but um i have a question about whether there's any kind of professional learning for our contractors on on equity work and our vision as a district to make sure that our contractors are are aligned with our our values as an organization because i we can talk about this later but i've heard a few i've heard a few comments from some contractors and subcontractors that it's not always a hospitable environment for some of our minority contractors so just thinking about how do we how do we more broadly telegraph our values as an organization so that they're they're present in this side of the work too and i know the district used to have someone in the contracting office or purchasing rather that was focused solely on interfacing with organizations such as the oregon association of minority entrepreneurs national association of minority contractors um and others that uh and and and i'm not sure if we're if we're as a district participating anymore but that was a great opportunity to you know share our values around um contracting and is the place where people go to talk to express those values so i i don't know if anybody is charged with that or if the business analyst person does part of that work but um i think that we can work to get those numbers up which is particularly important right now as we're you know selling this large package of work upcoming hopefully um that's something that i've heard also people are concerned concerned with is is that mwesb uh utilization rate certainly um purchasing and contracting does still engage with um all of those organizations that you mentioned and our project managers are also engaging when they are out in the process of doing these buyouts the contractors themselves the general contractors but just within pbs i'm sorry uh deputy superintendent hurts i think was starting to say something too i i think you expected we we did have a person in that position it was a budget reduction that when the position was vacant but we have um um assigned different places from our purchasing and contracting team different associations that they attend and are participating in so if anything we have more people involved where before we just had one single person now we have many people involved in the work and also probably we could um look and see what is um [Music] one place i think we could improve on is how we're looking in with osm and and purchasing and contracting together and marina probably um knows more about that than i do but it's something that we could certainly look into so i would also encourage you to look at um the bac presentation page 45 is the start of the madison special presentation on on business equity and workforce equity and i think that you'll find that there's a lot of very good information about not just what um the general contractor for madison did but sort of what typical practice these are the same sorts of things that occurred um with the general contractor for lincoln as well so it's helpful information so you can get some background on the types of things that they're doing thank you michelle you're muted i'm so sorry oh i hate that um i still want to get a t-shirt that says you know you're muted um i'm curious if the gcs or what what protocols the gcs have on site to you talked about um work delays and work stoppage due to air quality or covid are there does do the gcs have protocols in place to do testing in the morning when people show up to the site every one of our fully fenced sites or fully controlled sites has a gc specific um covid safety plan most of those have actually been negotiated with
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osha so they are they're fairly finely tuned uh to the specific site into the specific situation each of them is doing something slightly different that's not to say that they're doing um one's doing better than another it's just that they're approaching it in different ways so you know i could not tell you if somebody is specifically testing every morning um i know of lots of different types of things that they're doing but i don't know all of them okay i know there's a preventative approach then there's a you know what to do if someone's feeling ill so i was just curious um how to the extent that those preventative measures were put in place such as you know when you go to the dentist there's something i can tell you there's things that you wouldn't even think of um there's uh we have some where the trailers have uv lights that are basically doing sweeps every night after everyone's left we have some where they have added uh specific um portable toilets um dedicated to crews so they dedicate the toilet by crew to ensure that there's no cross-contamination between different trades for different subcontractors so there it runs the gamut they are doing lots and lots and lots of different things um in an attempt to ensure that they can continue working that's great thank you um can we move on now if um i guess if anybody has questions that would the right place be to to ask you via email marina um i think we typically direct those questions through uh dan young okay dan absolutely yeah go ahead and send any questions to me it looks like our next topic is um open discussion regarding the bac openings that kevin mentioned um the need to identify and seat a chair and to fill one open position um you know like all openings that we have i would hope this is an opportunity to maybe address some of the areas that came up particularly the business equity piece might be great too and i know we like industry specific people on on this committee but to have somebody from one of those organizations i mentioned i mean i think it would be important to put the word out there and i'd love to hear any other suggestions for filling those it looks like there's there will be four seats there will be four members and an open seat it looks like we have students already on our committee so we need to talk about i guess recruitment and how and where we're going to recruit um and what the process might look like for um vetting interested parties i know at the audit committee we're we're looking at this as well and we've created a google form that we can share a link out to people that may be interested and we've done outreach for that committee at the multnomah county auditor's office in the city of portland auditor's office specifically asking um if they could forward names of diverse candidates um so can we have a discussion about where we might go looking for these for four new members and if we have an idea of how we come up with a chair or if there's a process in place for naming a chair so i we don't necessarily have a process in place for naming a chair and i think um one of the things that um director depass you were kind enough to to send us a copy of the the application form that's being used for the audit committee um and we can certainly take that and revise it to to provide an application form for the bac we'd be happy to post that on the web page dedicated to the bac on pbs's web page dedicated to the bac so that anyone can get to it um i think uh when you sent it i think you also suggested that we could potentially put something on there that would allow people to check their interest in being the chair so yeah it might be a great opportunity to gather that information
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sure yeah i mean we we would rather than volunteering people it'd be great to see from from a a pool of applicants who would be interested in that work um who would be interested in sharing kevin i would hope you would be available to um either help on board um a new chair or at least be available um as as we're transitioning somebody on in that position uh absolutely um i think i think there is some urgency obviously we don't want to give the process short shrift but um you know the end of the year is not very far away and there there is a decent amount of um uh indoctrination if one for one of a better term um and you know my guess is that the the most likely chair would come from existing members who are staying on not necessarily certainly but um i would hope someone in that group might have some interest and with regard to the the members um um we've we typically frankly the outreach has been from um bac members trying to find new members and and we have you you suggested someone with us connection to an industry group and we actually have recommended uh one person who has exactly that and i know dan has spoken to her and she would uh make um a big dent in the diversity shortfall that we have and uh she would be a great candidate so one of the things that was not very clear was um whether staff should be um reviewing the applicants and bringing forward you know a smaller group of applicants for uh the bond committee to review or if the bond committee is going to review those applicants all themselves um it would probably be helpful if we could kind of figure out what the review process is and who's doing the reviewing yeah and that's that's why i was asking and sometimes looking at the way things have always been done is doesn't serve us you know in the current moment and so um i just i'm curious how it's happened in the past and if we can improve on that process if it sounds like there is hasn't been a process does anybody have any strong feelings about um who gets to vet the the applicants if if we put a link to a google form on the website that will be available for everyone and so we would want to have some decision-making criteria in place maybe prior to getting um applicants and and by the way we're at we know we're talking as if you know 150 people are going to want to apply i i'm not sure what i find this work really exciting but um i don't know um if others do um and and kevin you have a big shoes to fill so you know which is why i was asking if you would be available for uh for a a long handoff sure sure no problem i mean i guess what i'm thinking just off the bat i just throw it out there is that we um have applicants come in through a google form um we that's on the website we um i i would i would hope that the staff would want to look at those um to see um to vet for experience interest um maybe background um and then present depending on if there were hundreds of applicants or even you know a dozen and we have four positions kind of bringing those um maybe top top candidates to the committee and then extending uh you know i think those committee members need to be appointed by the board and so the committee would forward the names of the um potential appointees and i would just suggest that as a way to sort of move through move through a process um okay but step i also wanna like add on to your i appreciate um how much work you have on your plates as well right now with hiring with covid response just the stress around living these days and so i don't want to pile on more work to you i would be happy to help um just as a volunteer sort through applications
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if if that would help relieve a little bit of that burden i was going to offer dan's assistance inserting through the applicant i actually was too i didn't want to say his name out loud um i think we should probably talk about timing though a little bit because i think we definitely want to kind of talk through the timing of the bond committee meetings and how this um rolls through that so that the bond committee has a meeting on october 15 and then another meeting on november 17th uh if we are putting uh i think we need to be targeting one of those meetings for for applicants for the bond committee to determine if they're recommending them because then it's going to need to go to a full board meeting am i correct i believe so um and so i guess we need to have um yeah i guess no later than the 17th and is does does that be ac does the committee operate on a calendar year oh shoot we're getting a this looks like the city of portland is going to be closed again tomorrow um sorry for that disruption it's so we need to have um by no later than that meeting on the 17th we need to have the committee forward um to the board and then i don't know our board schedule off hand but i can look it up um or or does it make sense to do this by october 15th which is you know less than a month away if i can jump in just for a second i i realize the timeline is very short but optimum i think would be we the bac has a meeting i think it's the end of october our next quarterly meeting and it would be optimal of course to have uh new members even if they're not yet appointed so it doesn't necessarily have to have gone to the board but if there's a short list give them the opportunity to attend that before they you know take office if you like now that may not be doable but that would be optimal i think so that means we have to actively recruit now to get the to get the names by october 15 to get the short list to the bac i think that makes perfect sense is that something we can do i mean well i guess i do have some concerns over whether we're going to be able to get even enough applicants in that time frame i i think we do want to spend a little more time recruiting and i i think what i'd like to suggest is that um we put together uh an orientation of sorts for new members in january and understanding that we're also talking about revising our reporting and our meeting structure it it may be that having them come to the october meeting is is not necessarily a a good indicator of what they'll be seeing in in the new year as we work through reporting differently and and finding different meeting structures as well i'll throw in um i i think i'll reiterate that that there's there timing is coming up quick but there's also a lot of moving parts at the same time with as many as four new vac members coming on board here in the next couple of months a new chair the desire to do a revamp of our reporting materials and documents to have the new chair as an active part of that as well as this committee and uh director to pass herself of course and then we have a vote in november too that could make this all look a little bit different if we significantly increase the size and the scope of the spawn program that's going to have an impact on i think what the reporting cycle in those documents look like so i i might throw out for discussion uh i think we can pretty quickly from a staff standpoint turn around uh an application form that goes on the
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website so as uh as we recruit and as the bac and staff and board members reach out and look for potential applicants they can go to that website um and then i would i would submit that the december board meeting is really when we would want to target having those appointments there that would give us some time to recruit give us some time to review applicants and have discussions uh make a recommendation this committee can make a recommendation in november and then target the december having the new applicants having the new board at that point in time we will know the results of the november bond uh and then we can sort of springboard into new bac member orientation and then into uh getting into the weeds about what the the new reporting document process looks like with with all three parties staff uh the board and the bac okay i like that too um i think you're right about the election that's that's going to be uh it'll be very impactful um on the operations here um does anybody have other feel strong feelings and also um i think for most committees that are um that that have this scope of work um i know the city usually has an open recruitment for three to five weeks um and they do that to get a broad representation of of candidates at some some committee some communities it takes a little bit longer to reach so i would be i would be happy with um the proposal that you laid out dan um and i was just trying to look up i don't know if anybody can look up i just tried to look up our december meeting schedule there are also holidays in there so um but i'm not being very successful finding it right now and now there's a meeting on the 15th of december i'm not sure if there's another one offhand but there's at least that target the 15th and then let's see and probably not on the 29th so that's probably our december meeting at which point we want to have some discussion at the board level about these um awesome candidates that have applied and that will be appointed does that sound good we have on our agenda today to also talk about our reporting and the chair and i think we might just want to move on due to time um to our next topic which which is the subcommittee charter and i'll just say that i have a meeting i have a very hard stop tonight so i can attend a back to school night in in my neighborhood i'm i'm interested in participating in um chair depass this is stephanie i just wanted to confirm there are two meeting board meeting dates in december december 1st and december 15th thank you thank you that's that's that help helps so i guess if we if we work backwards from december 15th dan as you suggested that would allow us time to do a solid recruitment um vet candidates um and and and run through that process and in terms of the uh the reporting and the meeting it i i think it'd be better to have new members um contribute to that conversation i i don't know what you were thinking if if you were thinking you'd like to have our at least our meeting schedule and our reporting in place before we have the four new new members what are your what are your thoughts um stuff about that uh i think it uh staff from staff standpoint marina jump in here too um that we agree with that um certainly you know with a vote in november that could change what the reporting looks like uh we certainly would like new members in the new chair to be able to be uh a significant part of what that reporting process is is they're going to be you know intimately involved in reviewing the materials and reporting to the board so i i think we're going to want uh those pieces in place that said i think over the course of the next few of these committee meetings uh we can we can start to have conversations and prepare uh what that might look like uh as as kevin mentioned earlier marie and i have been reaching out to the individual bond catholic committee members uh to have some discussions of what they think you know maybe some priorities might be going forward uh for the reporting uh and and we can take a look at some other stuff so i think i think we can do something we can we can lay a little bit
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of a groundwork allow the new uh members to come on board do some orientation and then i kind of dive into the details and make sure that what we put in place the changes are in place meet everyone's expectations that's fantastic yeah i think i always think of these um times you know of turnover as opportunities to get to co-create um in a way that that you know really changes the the structure and the the names and the people on the committee will change and it's an opportunity to um at least question your operating the way you've been operating to pass can i just jump in for a second because i i understand all the all the time pressures here but it would be remiss of me if i did not tell you that the existing bac members who was staying on have made it crystal clear to me that they want they don't see a reason to hold off until december to work on a new framework of staff report to the bac now if that can't happen it can't happen but i want you to know that that's the uh the uh unanimous view of the committee i think that's fair and we can also our charter allows us to add um other members later in the cycle right we're not just beholden to that one time a year so if we come up with a less than complete um group of people we can we can bring them in and keep working on it so you're saying we can bring in and they're going to come into an established structure rather than having new people co-create what that looks like well i think kevin's saying that's just the very beginning of the work so is that is that right this this is that would just be the initiation of the work so there would still be an opportunity to be part of creating that but the current crew feels like they should get it underway which that's that's that their clear message to me yes thank you for sharing that and i if i may like from a staff standpoint we're certainly willing to work uh with whatever schedule uh is necessary uh i would i just want to be careful that the the relationship here really is a three-part relationship between staff the pac uh and the board i want to make sure that the board has opportunity to be a part of this process as well so for the board uh and through this committee probably largely make clear what their expectations are as both staff and you know the bac report to the board and so we want to make sure that it's just not a communication between staff and the bac but the board's able to to really weigh in here and say these are what our expectations are this is the value that we feel that we get uh from the bac uh and be a part of that process so i think we can put together some timelines of what that might look like to get there um but we do anticipate that there probably will be some separate meetings between bac members board members and staff to work through the details of that so again those three groups are online that's well thank you go ahead marina sorry to interrupt um i do also want to note that we will begin our report preparation for the october meeting in less than two weeks so to make any significant changes prior to the october bac meeting is unlikely we do want to get input and be able to do a meaningful job uh with this and doing it in that shorter time frame is um is not gonna allow that to happen okay i'm gonna move this on um to our last topic and that is um the committee schedule i'm sorry the committee charter um which i don't know if we have enough i don't feel like we have enough time to get into that but we do what we do have time to get into is a committee's schedule would it be okay if i tabled the if we tabled that conversation it's a short conversation about the charter to another time and talk about our our committee schedule going forward i tabled it for an entire year michelle so i think we can table it for one more meeting
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thank you so committee schedule um we're currently meeting is it every four weeks or once a month and there's been some discussion about extending that out a little bit to so i think it's a six week schedule um just open discussion um i know andrew um i i don't remember what your meeting schedule was i think it was once a month though seems a little bit excessive to me um yeah i think we um we were meeting once a month leading up to through bond development but the the idea was um once the bond was referred we would look at a different schedule and stretch meetings out a little bit so and staff because you're kind of staffing this committee um do you do you have a proposed schedule i'm thinking like if if we met every six weeks um i have not done the math on it um and if we met every eight weeks every other month that would that would be six meetings a year i also don't feel like that's quite enough either um what do we think about go ahead next week sounds good i think after we pass our bond knock on wood we're going to have some important discussions that we'll uh need to have um in the new year but uh until then i think six weeks is good does anybody have any objection to six weeks schedule i think that sounds fine too that's about eight it's a little over eight meetings um a year it comes up with 8.6 so we get 0.6 of a meeting from from a staff perspective six weeks i think works well and and if there's a need to have another special meeting which i think there will be you know we can schedule those at you know uh that's best fit should we go ahead and get those scheduled in and then have new committee members just conform to that schedule i mean we would we would have something to present to uh potential new members you know these are the dates that we're meeting throughout the year and confirm that they can meet you know i don't know 80 percent of them or whatever does that sound cara do you think could you help with scheduling um i can i can create a proposed schedule and send it to you that'd be great um and then there's some flexibility if we have something that needs to be discussed in between we can pull that together um that's all i have today unless anybody has questions um concerns that weren't raised in the meeting talk fast we have about five minutes left seeing none i guess we'll adjourn thank you everybody thanks everyone wish that our volunteer begin members on the line thank you thank you thank you director to pass


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