Coraggio Consulting
Loudoun County School Board, Finance and Operations Committee, Tuesday, February 21, 2023

Date: Tuesday, February 21, 2023
Place: Loudoun County Public Schools / School Board meeting (see BoardDocs / LCPS-TV)
Length: 55m (video)
Official meeting video (Vimeo / LCPS-TV): https://player.vimeo.com/video/801332151?rel=0
BoardDocs (School Board): https://go.boarddocs.com/vsba/loudoun/Board.nsf/Public

Machine transcript (speech-to-text) produced by Coraggio Consulting. Not an official county record. Names and numbers may be misspelled; check the video at the timestamp before quoting.
Speech-to-text: whisper.cpp, model large-v3-turbo. Produced 2026-10-22. Timestamps are [HH:MM:SS] into the meeting video.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

[00:00:01] Good evening, welcome to the Tuesday, February 21st, 2023 Finance and Operations Committee meeting. We'll start with remote participation. I understand that Ms. Corbo would like to participate remotely. Ms. Corbo, please state for the committee your location, whether you are alone and whether this is a medical or personal exemption.

[00:00:20] - Thank you, Ms. Corbo, I am home, I'm alone. Under policy 2420, I'm asking for remote meeting participation due to an ongoing disability medical condition as recommended by HRTD under federal ADA disability law okay I will make the motion to admit Ms. Corbo to the meeting under medical exemption is there a second that motion will fail for lack of a second Ms. Corbo would you like to participate remotely with a personal exemption I will decline that

[00:00:55] offer because personal exemptions are limited and and I'll say that if if there is a need for me to vote and this is a medical reason not okay thank you all right so at this time we'll move on to item 3.01 uh draft minutes and uh i will move to approve the february 7th uh finance operations committee draft minutes is there a second i'll second that okay further discussion for february 7th no no okay all those in favor of the motion please yeah and raise your - Aye.

[00:01:30] - The motion will carry two zero with Ms. Corpo absent for the vote. As far as the January 31st minutes go, before I make the motion, I'd like to turn it over to Mr. Mahadevi. - Thank you, Chair. So this is probably the only meeting minutes I've been kind of going back.

[00:01:47] So I did see the line item added in the January 31, and I can read the line that was added. There was a discussion, there was a discussion about the committee approval threshold of $250,000 for intra-department transfers before being brought before the London County school board and budget items.

[00:02:14] - I believe that's the line added in this meeting minutes. - Would staff like to respond? - I apologize, Mr. Morris. I think Mrs. Willoughby made some edits to that and she's not here.

[00:02:31] So I'm not sure exactly what items, if you want to call attention to the line you're referencing to. This is in section four, item one, there there are no lines it goes to the line that starts with central support if you read down in the section 4 1 and I think after central support that was a line sort of added since the the last meeting minutes and I can speak to while you're reading that the the discussion I wanted to capture was not about the

[00:03:07] intra departmental transfer of 250k I think it goes back to I think we had the discussion about from awarding the contract all the awards that we were making in that meeting were related to where we're saying minimum two hundred three thousand dollars and there was no cap and then my question was what is a ceiling that we typically make contracts to because this is minimum two hundred three thousand dollars worth of value of the contract but there was no ceiling on top of that so my question in my eye my action item or my request was that we have the ceiling identified in the contracts or at least have some

[00:03:47] understanding what what the value of the contract would be if that's not in the contract just from an understanding saying well if you're gonna award somebody more than 250 like what what is the ceiling on top of that that was a discussion I was trying to have not so much on the internal department and so if we could take it back and maybe I can talk to Miss Willoughby and get that address I'll be happy to work with her and for the next meeting sure and I'm not completely immersed in this but I'm not sure there would be a ceiling I think what this is saying is anything 250,000 or above will require that and so there wouldn't be a ceiling so anything that would be but we can certainly do that if

[00:04:24] you have some specific language you can suggest would probably be the easiest way to do that you know just maybe take and edit one of these paragraphs and put in there what you feel like we're missing that might help us so you know we're not guessing we can just try to get exactly what you're looking for in Okay. I can work with that. Thank you. Excellent. Thanks. Okay. Because of that, I'll move to table the approval of the draft minutes for January 31st.

[00:04:47] Is there a second? Second. Okay. Further discussion? Seeing none. All those in favor of the motion say aye. Okay. So we're going to table that hopefully for the next meeting. All right. We're on to item four, which is approval of consent agenda. Is there a motion, Mr.

[00:05:05] I move that this committee approve the approval agenda of February 21, 2023. I'll second that for the discussion. Seeing none, all those in favor of approving the consent agenda, please say aye and raise your hand. Aye. That motion will carry 2-0 with Ms. Corbeau absent for the vote.

[00:05:21] Thank you. All right, we're moving on to action items. Item 5.01, which is business financial services, revision of policy 8010 fundraising. Okay, we bring this back to you for the third time. It's our lucky number.

[00:05:36] The committee requested additional language to clarify between LCPS sponsored and SSO sponsored fundraising activities So if you look at lines 21 through 24, that does make the clarification between the two school sponsor and the school support Organizations that you had asked for yes that I think that answers my concern from the from the previous meeting

[00:06:16] Thank You chair, so I have a question probably not related this to students think maybe I brought this up last time where school students go outside so for example if they have a club and then they go raise money outside and the dollars so if they were to go raise money outside by themselves for the club would that be it's not done by a student support organization but it's it's a school or a club activity before they do any fundraising do they need to get permission from the principal or somebody to to have a fundraising or

[00:06:52] because I think there is a little bit of because there's a couple groups came to me clubs that they raise money outside the money sort of went back into the school fund or their club fund but now they want to use the fund for some other activities it's kind of causing them a little grief with that so that's what I'm trying to understand like you know hopefully going forward they ask permission before they just go and fundraise that that's gonna so there is permission is required for any school any event that's raising funds for for

[00:07:27] school activities school sponsored activities so that has to be in writing so in order for them to to solicit funds that permission has to be granted in writing as far as the funding goes SSO funding and staff correct me if I'm wrong the support organization funding is completely separate we have no control over that but the anything that's raised for student activities on the other hand is controlled by the school is brought back and is captured in the school's budget I forget what we call that budget but that is the that's

[00:08:06] where the funding goes and then it's up to the principal how it's distributed from that point is that correct if I'm a chair just to clarify my question so you mentioned there's so proven right that's what this is what we're adding now in the line 1617 is that providers that actually is approved in writing in advance and carefully monitor that's where we make adjustments now going forward that's okay I'm fine with that language that's all further discussion seeing none we'll place the motion to vote all those in favor of approving the

[00:08:40] motion to forward this to the school board recommending approval please say aye and raise your hand I that motion will carry to zero thank you chair one more quick comment yes thank you so I think this is we making adjustments or perhaps this it would be great to get the communication out to all the clubs as well that they should request all fundraising through writing before they do any fundraising for their clubs I think there is a little bit of a gap there between the clubs understanding about raising the funds and requesting that they should raise the funds versus going out and raising the funds and so

[00:09:20] and so forth i think there's a little communication gap there so i just some i know miss all green is up here too and um just i always bring this stuff like you know we need to make sure if we change the policy somehow we get those clubs communicated as well that's all yes we will do so and miss loyal has been working with the sso's as well thank you all right we're on to action item 5.02 business financial services ifbi 23323 secondary music instruments and furniture for ongoing needs and i'll make this motion i move that the finance operations committee recommends allowed county

[00:09:59] school board award ifb number i-233-23 secondary music instrument and furniture for ongoing needs as per the attached recommendation from march 1st 2023 through february 29th 2024. okay further discussion on this no seeing none all those in favor of the motion please see i raise your hand aye that motion will carry 2-0 with miss corporal absent for the vote thank you onto item 5.03 which which is business financial services RFP R20251, instructional supplies and related services renewal.

[00:10:35] Make the motion, Mr. Mahedovey. - I move that the finance and operations committee recommend that the Rowland County School Board renews RFP R20251, instruction supplies and related services from March 1, 2023 through February 29, 2024.

[00:10:53] - And I'll second that for the discussion. - I just, maybe if you don't mind the staff sort of kind of describing what this particular award is for what contract that'll be really helpful thank you this is the instructional supplies contract that is used by our teachers to equip their classrooms with consumable materials and supplies to meet the needs of educational needs of students they can be everything from birthday stickers to you name it whatever they need in their classroom and on top of that does this include the extra funding that was put in the budget from the school board they can use their extra funding with this

[00:11:31] vendor as well as other options available to them further discussion none all those in favor of the motion please say aye and raise your hand aye that motion will carry 2-0 in this corporal absent for the vote thank you on to 5.04 which is uh would you like to make the motion mr mehedovie i move to the finance and operations committee recommend that the law and county school board renew rfpr 19 19195 american sign language interpreter services effective march 1 2023 through february 29 2024

[00:12:06] second that further discussion no i don't have any questions okay seeing those discussion all those in favor of the motion please say aye and raise your hand aye that motion will carry 2-0 and 5.05 business financial services rpr 23251 building commission services is there a motion mr madavee uh i move to the finance and operations committee recommends that the long-term school board of our award rfpr 23251 building commission services effective march 1

[00:12:40] 2023 through february 29 2024 i will second any discussion on this okay i did uh observe the 13 percent raise increase in costs but of course somewhere else in the in the package tonight was a like a 14 decrease so hopefully that will be offsetting but uh no further discussion we'll place a motion to vote all those in favor of the motion please say aye and raise your hand aye that motion will carry 2-0 in this corporal absent for the vote and i believe this is the one and with the average price decrease, this is it.

[00:13:14] So on to IFB I-23321, Mr. Madhavi. I'm sorry, this is information item. So we'll pass that over to Ms. Villiel. - Thank you. This is a new contract for our HVAC filters, the various filters we order for the school system.

[00:13:36] And as you noted, there is a 15% decrease over what we've been paying in past years. That is actually a reflection of our volume the strength we have as loudon county public schools very impressed with that number you'll also see under budget impact we have now added as we did with the action items the actual estimated value of this contract as requested by mr mahadavi the estimated value of this contract is seven hundred thousand dollars based on our anticipated usage and we're awarding this contract to air

[00:14:08] cleaning technologies for the period of march 14th through february 29th 2024. very good now i noticed that there was uh it was uh recommendation to go to the lowest bidder in a lot of the other situations we go line item by line item and make that selection why do we decide not to do that in this case at the end of the day on this one any vendors that had a lower price actually bid a substitute not the specified filter that we needed we wanted two ply one of them bid one ply after doing all that it was determined that air cleaning technologies was the low bid and they actually bid

[00:14:45] on all of the items whereas other vendors only bid on certain items so that's why we went that route any further questions or comments on this no you want to place this on consent so this will be placed on the consent agenda for our next meeting thank you lots of merv 13 in there on to information item 6.02 business financial services school nutrition funds supplemental good evening as indicated during the second quarter financial review staff is requesting a budget increase of 2.8 million dollars for the school nutrition fund the budget increase is to cover rising food

[00:15:25] costs many of which have already been covered through supply chain supplementals and continued performance against the spend down plan which has been a focus for 2020 this fiscal year unless otherwise directed staff will bring this back to the finance and operations committee as an action item on march 7th okay so uh a lot of this we had talked about through the budget cycle the pizza ovens and things like that and so we are this is coming out of the school nutrition fund balance correct and so after this is completed what do we expect that percentage in is it going to be a two

[00:16:00] month or three month uh buffer and what is the what is the state state requirement on that uh state requirement is no more than three percent by lcps policy and regulation we need to be within two to three percent or two to three months okay uh at the end of this fiscal year we will be just over three percent and the budget that was just approved brings us back down into the required threshold in 2024 okay so this will this will reset us into where we need to be correct very good do we have a line item list of the things that we think are going to cost the 2.8 million

[00:16:36] we can probably provide one as you said pizza ovens are one of the biggest 1.2 million middle school renovations we're projecting this fiscal year at 3.4 million as well as just higher food costs overall okay so uh the addition of this funding is in addition to existing funding that we would carry year to year so i think all we need to do is identify the extra 2.8 million i think year over year the changes that you anticipate doing uh that would be helpful because everything else is just a carryover from the previous year certainly okay further comments or questions no

[00:17:13] thank you thank you chair just question good question yeah so how much did be i guess i'm trying to go back and I can go back and look at it like how much we budget and so this 2.8 million again maybe mr. Morris question is like what is the percentage increase we're asking because it looks like we're asking additional amount of money for for this versus what was budgeted so I'm trying to get understanding like what was a percentage increase that we're asking versus what we planted you know in our budget the FY23 spend down budget was just north of

[00:17:48] seven million dollars so this is going to be third ish increase um and that's just because as i mentioned earlier the spend down plan has been a focus this year to bring that back into compliance the funding that we received previously for covid was redirected or the i guess it was set for inflation we received some additional funding specifically for food costs so all of those came with stipulations that they must be spent on unprocessed or minimally processed foods okay so those are those are reserved funds and these are these are unreserved or basically open

[00:18:25] current purchase there's other regulations most of which are federal that dictate how we can spend our um how we can spend our fund balance and some of that is not to offset food costs okay thank you uh mr mahelle so i do have i think one more thing and perhaps the the pizza oven are the biggest cost i guess um but it's also for example the cost of food i think you mentioned i don't know that's even if that's part of this or not it doesn't include that simply says renovations replacement of kitchen equipment digital menu boards and other projects but not necessarily

[00:19:00] the price of food food itself i presume so this request is specifically for a budget increase the majority of which is driven by the spend down plan but it's just a budget increase all right and so these will be one-time procurement so they won't affect uh it's a good use of any excess funding that we have because we don't have to carry that into the next year as well further questions on this yeah you want to place this on consent so we'll place that on consent as well thank you on to 6.03 which is the self-insurance fund supplemental good evening also as indicated

[00:19:39] during the second quarter financial uh review staff is seeking a net increase of approximately 12 million dollars across all four self-insurance funds to cover rising medical claim costs and absence and absences pending other direction we will bring this back to the fno committee or as an action item on march 7th okay questions or comments so the the county will pick up the match on this correct for the self-insurance fund we expect an increase uh that's going to be picked

[00:20:17] up by the employee the staff recommends funds will predominantly be paid by or by claim rebate revenues that are projected to exceed budget estimates can you talk us through that that's the first time i've seen that before so we do have uh claim rebate estimates that are within the

[00:20:57] the budget. And then we also have employee and significantly employer contributions that are also over budget. For details on rebates, I'd have to come back to after we've spoken with the benefits team. What percentage of that, I mean, that seems like a really large excess in the budget. So what is the budget pool and why do we have $9 million excess? I mean, it is a large pool. The self insurance fund is large but that that seems like a particularly large carry

[00:21:32] over in excess of the budgeted amount it is and I all have to talk to the rebate team and we'll bring back yeah I think we'll need to have further discussion on that at the next meeting as well further questions on that okay so we'll just leave that on track for action item for the next committee meeting okay on to 6.04 my favorite which is the policy 6350 wireless network facility co-location review mr. Lewis thank you mr. Moore so tonight we are bringing back the wireless communication policy as you know we've

[00:22:11] looked at this a couple of different times and I would just say tonight we have also with us Matt pinning from milestone communication Andy Peter shown as an engineering consultant for them throughout their processes Wes Allen is here with us from the division council and mr. stocks who is our support services guru for this so we just want to talk about what happened at the last meeting where we were looking at or not the last meeting but as we reviewed the freedom high school application the committee took action for us to go back and find another location that would be at least a minimum of 500

[00:22:46] feet from the tower to either the school or any residential units so committee also recommended that we contact FCC which I will tell you is no small feat mr. stocks and his staff get a great bit of credit for spending hours on on whole waiting for that call to be answered and so we were able to gain some information and through that process we learned that I have led you astray and I apologize for that on the most recent edits to the policy so we had made edits and if you have that in front of you on lines 12 and 13 that

[00:23:21] implemented the the establishment of the 500 foot minimum distance what we found found through looking through the 1996 adopted guidelines from the FCC is and it's that on on the second paragraph of the background it talks about that act states that no state or local government may regulate the placement construction or modification of personal wireless service facilities on the basis environmental effects no words we can't say that these are not safe within this distance so if the board wants to to take action on a particular location it

[00:24:01] would be for other reasons besides that so that's one of the reasons we brought our experts back with us tonight because we do hope to get a little bit more guidance on the policy but also on steps on moving forward on how we address the location of these towers so I think for now I'll just focus on the policy as I mentioned on lines 12 and 13 so what we did is we have stricken that area the this the reference to the 500 feet and just left that paragraph to as adequate and readily accessible available space exists that's one of the factors of consideration for the tower and so we just and we wanted to do that to clean

[00:24:39] that up because we brought that last time as a recommendation to add to the policy and now what we've learned since that time is we simply can't do that in policy so the other changes to the policy are also in red and essentially it just talks about that the superintendent does he must consider each of the factors and so these are things that mr. Allen has helped us with with view of the policy and making sure that we're we're clear on the things that are required as well as on line 47 a section on testing that wireless network facilities shall be required to be in compliance with all FCC standards and so that's what brings us back to the other conversation that we'd like to have and

[00:25:17] while we brought our our engineering friends here is that essentially we're not going to bring to the committee or to the school board any tower that doesn't fall within the requirements of the FCC so that would you know eliminate the need for us to establish any any deadline so or any limits from the distance so then the board would then be looking at essentially the location of the of the tower and whether or not you felt it was a suitable location in terms of aesthetics or just logistics and those types of things on on the campuses

[00:25:51] so that's where we'd like to get back to getting this part of the policy revised and put into place but then also get some guidance from the committee on next steps for you know the next applications that come in so I think on this mr.

[00:26:09] stocks do you have anything I've forgotten you want to add um just one other request um by the committee at the last the last time this item was discussed is in communicating with the FCC you asked us if they to find out tasked us to find out if they were going to update or revise their existing guidelines and we did find a document um they did respond to our requests through their work order system and they do have a document that was updated in on october 15 2019 but it reiterates

[00:26:42] that the 1996 uh fcc adopted guidelines for evaluating human exposure to rf fields is still applicable so in other words they have an updated document that didn't change any of their existing guidelines okay and i do appreciate you reaching out i tried this mr lewis knows that i ended up reaching out to an Australian experts because they were the only ones who would respond and

[00:27:13] there was there's very widely varying discussions on the safety of of the towers and depending on the frequency depending on the power depending on the elevation and all the all the physics that goes into it what we were hoping to find is a government entity that would identify or established boundaries because clearly there are boundaries and those boundaries may already be covered within the FCC restrictions, but it's unclear because they make a very generic statement

[00:27:51] about power when in 2019, I don't know that, and if any of this is incorrect, I certainly hope that the folks can correct me on this. But they were making assumptions on power of 3G and 4G, not necessarily 5G. The wavelengths are different. The modulation, I think, is different. The power needed to generate signals is going to be different. So they're all different. And I had

[00:28:28] gone through a lot of challenging reading. I'm sure it's something you guys eat for breakfast, but for me it was it was quite challenging trying to come up with a reasonable approach on how we could look at today's environment which includes the 5g going in on the towers another thing that i discovered since then when i went back to look at the at the presentations that were given for rockridge high school and freedom high school was the mapping that was provided was not really mapping

[00:29:00] of the signal. It was mapping of the emergency coverage. Because when you look at T-Mobile or you look at Verizon, the coverage map is extensive and covers all of the South Riding area, all the area around Freedom High School, with very little exceptions. So the challenge for us was to try to find some kind of guidance that would be up to date, that would provide us minimal safe distances, there are other factors that go in the aesthetics and things like that because putting it right in

[00:29:38] the middle of a community is a very challenging thing. Even on a high school property, those towers would be significantly larger than anything on the field and would be visible from a great distance right in the middle of the community. So those factors go into play as well. And I understand that federal law can tell us that we can't make our judgments based solely on the RF uh rad has i think is that's what we call it i don't know what in your profession what you call it but radiation hazard patterns so uh and combined with the fact that there are some standards

[00:30:18] uh to limit the amount of radiation that that uh the residents would be exposed to you know those two would come together i just you know i'm still uncertain about this whole process i don't have a whole lot of faith in the government's assessment that was done in 2019 that said oh yeah we agree with something that was written in 1995 which is 25 years ago I mean it's it's stunning to me that with technology developing the way it has that we can't more precisely define what what are the concerns and what are the issues other than we'll just go ahead and default to a 1995 standard so

[00:30:54] you know I'm only one of nine as these things come up I can certainly push them to the board for discussion but uh i'm i'm personally very challenged by the whole situation not having definitive uh i mean you need to put the towers up to have the history to observe the history to determine whether they're safe so it's kind of a catch-22 but uh i i just carry a lot of concern with uh with the exposure and if you recall my my biggest concern is the fact that a phone in a pocket radiates more than most of the cell towers at distance so that's the

[00:31:31] real probably the biggest hazard is that our kids are carrying cell phones in their pockets with a tower that's so far away that the energy being radiated is significant. Mr. Mejedevi did you have any thoughts on this? Yes. Thank you chair I echo what you what you just described and what you shared so I won't repeat that but can you maybe this is what is brought to the committee I guess before but can we talk about maybe if two minutes about DVM engineering and what what they were tasked to do and and I mean I see the finding in here but what was asked just to the study for the electromagnetic exposure is that what

[00:32:11] what the ask LCPS did that's one question second does county have any ordinance I mean as I was looking perhaps that let's say if we are not doing it but the city or counties have their own sort of jurisdiction of how the how far the towers should be away from the building like you know I can't build house you know it has to be 50 feet away I can't build certain things you know how the housing ordinance are so does the county have anything regulations on how far those things could be and those were two questions so I don't know right off hand what the county's policy is but I do know that they work with the same

[00:32:50] almost identical contract that we have through milestone communications tool for the installation and they do have a couple installations they have in terms of the engineering I will ask Andy to talk to us a little bit about that but I do want to make sure I understood one of mr. Morris's comments as well as I think you said earlier that something on the lines of clearly our boundaries set and that we need to be able to identify them I'm not sure exactly how you said it but I don't think technically there is a boundary that we are we are essentially dealing with the radiation from this particular tower and how it

[00:33:28] comp how it is measured against or complies with the FCC regulations but that's where I should stop talking and let the engineer go for that so Andy if you want to take that and see if you can answer the questions they've asked yeah and real quick map heading with milestone as far as anything that might limit or restrict the distance Loudoun County's zoning ordinance has a building setback or I'm sorry a property line setback of five to one so for every one foot and

[00:34:02] tower height you be maintained five feet in separation so if it's a hundred foot tower then it's a 20 foot setback and that's the only setbacks other than your typical building structure setbacks to the front rear and side yards and any kind of road setbacks that those are the only ones that we've overseen seven towers through the county process and and those are the setbacks that we're aware of thank you for sharing that I mean I can't build my deck less than 20

[00:34:41] feet from the boundary but you can build a hundred feet tower that's just ridiculous I mean that's something that supervisors should really take into account but thank you for sharing that before you get started I think the zoning ordinance would still would kick in as Matt was talking about so it's the zoning ordinance plus that that setback right because they still wouldn't if you're not allowed to build within a certain footprint I think that still pause and then this would be specific to the towers, correct? No, it's from the tower location to the nearest property line. He said five to one. I was thinking, okay, for a 20-foot tower,

[00:35:17] it'd be 100. It's the exact opposite. It's one to five. Yeah, one to five. That's frightening. That is interesting. And, you know, so the ERP is basically what we're talking about, effect of radiated power. So I understand that we must comply with the law and I do appreciate you Mr. Lewis capturing that within the policy itself so we will make those changes to the policy and I have observed that this policy has not gone through any any public review as well is that

[00:35:54] correct? That's correct after the information I'm then we put it out for public review then we bring it back for action. Okay and and the desire here is to change the language of the policy specifically that's what we'd be what we'd be voting on that's yes sir that's what the action would be and then generally speaking we'd like to get a little bit more guidance on the next tower that milestone would be bringing us to consider is what we can work with the staff to do that and we have I mean I would like to get a chance for for Andy to have a little discussion about the engineering question that you asked what they were tasked to do and to make

[00:36:31] sure that there's maybe we can provide some more understanding about what's consider when we bring these back the next time. Okay. So, sure. Thank you. Andrew Peterson, DBM Engineering. I'm a professional engineer licensed in Virginia as well as a handful of other states.

[00:36:49] Specialty in the evaluation of FCC compliance for electromagnetic exposure. I've been doing this type of work now for about 20 years. I'm also extensively experienced in the design of these types of networks and I've also been doing involvement the design of these facilities for quarter century or so in this case I was asked to evaluate the freedom high school proposal for Milestone for electromagnetic exposure and what I will typically do is evaluate the the worst case upper limit

[00:37:27] exposure in this case after some discussion with with Milestone we decided to evaluate not just AT&T's antenna array but three more potential co-locators on the facility now we don't have what what a potential future co-locator would propose as far as antennas and equipment so what I did was I evaluated three other co-locators with identical configurations and AT&T does as far as the providers that are out there they do they are a relatively

[00:38:05] heavily channelized configuration compared to the T-Mobile Verizon dish network so by assuming that there were three other identical configurations we've got a very you know an upper limit type of configuration here as far as what we could expect to be on a tower like this in the near future or in the distant future beyond that I consider a multitude of worst-case scenarios and And when I say worst case, I mean considerations that would increase the exposure levels to the surrounding environment.

[00:38:42] And then, in this case in particular, because the facility was proposed proximate to some bleachers, I considered an individual on those bleachers at the closest location to the antennas.

[00:38:57] Obviously, the closer we get vertically to the antennas, the exposure level can increase depending on the exact configuration and where the adjacent structures are so through this multitude of worst-case assumptions we come up with an analysis that tends to exaggerate the outcome quite significantly in this case the exposure levels were still found to be less than 5.5% of the applicable FCC standard and that's the standard for for public for public exposure exposure to

[00:39:37] the general public as opposed to occupational limits which are five times less stringent so we have in this case a facility that would have been compliant by a wide margin and that is typical with a tower type facility it's important to note that these types of facilities are regularly installed in more urban environments on rooftops I've been involved in hundreds of rooftop installations where we have apartment buildings hospitals with arguably sense

[00:40:14] more sensitive segments of the populations living in close proximity we have sensitive telemetry equipment oftentimes in the uppermost floors of hospitals so from an interference perspective from electromagnetic emissions perspective these are still compliant facilities in those scenarios So when we have a site like this where we have what's being proposed as an antenna array at a significant height above ground level, when we go out and we measure post-construction,

[00:40:48] we find that the levels are typically on the order of 1% or less relative to the FCC guidelines for human exposure, allowable human exposure.

[00:41:00] So in a case like this and any other tower proposal, my experience, having measured these facilities firsthand, having examined them in a worst-case scenario through these types of analyses, using software that's specifically designed to do this evaluation, exposure levels in a worst case can be typically around the 5%.

[00:41:31] I mean that's generally what we would find whereas in reality that they're they're usually less than 1% important to note the FCC guidelines are considered safe by the scientific community up to 99.9% so we have a significant margin here relative to those guidelines I don't know if there were other specific questions there was a lot of other if we want to talk about ERP I don't want to get too far into the weeds unless there are specific

[00:42:05] questions but I'm happy to you know answer and entertain any and all. Thank you chair so you mentioned 5.5 less 5.5 percent less than the FCC standard and in some that you mentioned some buildings are 1% less than FCC so and again I don't presume to know I'm not an electrical engineer major in this but what's the number what's the FCC number that we're comparing that to? So when we look at this and I say something like exposure will be less than 5.5 percent I'm not saying 5.5

[00:42:42] percent less than as in 94.5 I'm saying we are less than 5.5 percent of the limit the limit being 100 percent so we're about 20 times below the limit in this case even when we stack all of those worst case assumptions including four providers we examine the scenario of an individual on the bleachers um and when i say less than one percent you know usually more than 100 times that's the realistic um and and it's been my experience that that number can be as small as

[00:43:21] less than 0.1 percent a thousand times below because we're not always transmitting at full power 24 7 365 um so when we go out there and measure that's that's not a surprising finding that we have readings that are on the order of thousands of times below the FCC limit for a tower-type installation.

[00:43:45] Got it. You know, when I said echoed Mr. Morse's comment, I mean, I have my own share of concerns about because we always find things after the fact many times. And so I appreciate you being here, so I don't want to put you guys in a hot seat. And so I'm trying to carefully navigate my questions, too, in all fairness.

[00:44:08] so you mentioned that you you also do engineering of towers too i guess or engineering of towers as well or this is just the analysis of what you do you know that's 100 that that's what i'm getting at like is it just analysis you do or you as also help in engineering and building of the towers as well oh i don't do any of the yeah i don't get into the construction or the i'm not a structural engineer or a civil engineer um but the design of it i mean like the design of the towers my degrees are in electrical engineering, so it's, I'm more, yeah, I'm focused on the radio frequency design. The antennas, the radio equipment, the cabling, the, gotcha. It's another tower,

[00:44:48] but the, the, the, the, what did you, the antennas is what you designed and the radio frequency system. Yes. Got it. Okay. And so this, I'll just leave it here. And I think I agree with Mr. Morris. I think this has to be a little more to get more feedback on this thing besides you and I'm kind of working through it and making a decision. But is, is Is there, because I see this, I mean, again, I appreciate everything you're doing.

[00:45:14] So when you say by the code of ethics, like, is there a national, international organization that you are a member of that you're to follow certain guidelines? Because it seems pretty broad.

[00:45:29] That's my last question. I'm a member of the National Society of Professional Engineers, Pennsylvania Society of Professional Engineers. As far as the evaluation of these types of facilities, there's a document called the OET-65, the Office of Engineering Technology Bulletin 65.

[00:45:50] It's an FCC document, and that document provides guidelines as to how engineers like myself are to evaluate these types of facilities. Very specific guidelines. It boils down to some physics equations.

[00:46:07] The freeze equation in particular, FRIIS, which dictates how electromagnetic energy propagates and dissipates over distance. And then the antenna patterns and the specifics of the site, of course, come into play.

[00:46:22] But each and every one of these facilities is to be evaluated on its own merits. So when we ask for, or when I hear the suggestion of what's the proper distance, it depends on the specifics of the facility. We have small cell-type facilities that are very low power, intentionally modest in their design and their coverage objectives, and they're often installed within 15 feet of a residence, and they are examined in much the same way, but their parameters dictate that they can be safely installed and be in compliance at that distance.

[00:47:01] So it's important that we look at them on a case-by-case. So I guess I want to go back to the FCC unit. Can you share with us like what that the guideline unit is that we're comparing them to be like again 5.5 percent what is that they consider safe I guess what the measurements are and what the units are? So the the unit is a microwatt per centimeter squared it's power density and the guidelines are such that they're frequency dependent so the the human body is more efficient at absorbing electromagnetic energy in some frequency bands and others generally

[00:47:40] lower frequency bands there they are the human body is more efficient at absorbing those so the guidelines are more stringent in the lower frequency bands when we get to bands above a thousand megahertz or one gigahertz that guideline becomes less stringent and it's a thousand microwatts per centimeter squared at that point um on on upward uh in the so anything above a gigahertz um follows that guideline those uh those guidelines and those numbers are on they're in the report page eight

[00:48:20] has those those uh fcc limits um and and they're delineated there based on frequency band one more item but uh i would state that uh i agree with the removal of the of the the numbers obviously that we need to be in compliance, so we'll go ahead and pull those out.

[00:48:45] We'll take another look at this, Mr. Mehelleby. Okay. So we will take another look at this. I do want to open this up for public discussion. This is going to be a huge item for the public. So I think what we'll have to do is I'm not comfortable with a two-week turnaround.

[00:49:03] I think we'll have to go for the meeting after our next meeting. So the second meeting in March, we can readdress this and take a look at the public comment as well. Ms. Mejedevi. Thank you, Chair. So I agree with you. I wasn't, you know, two weeks would be less, so I agree with that point.

[00:49:21] But I'm not so warm and fuzzy about removing the distance part yet. I think we need to get some more feedback before I can support this to remove the distance part of it here. So that's all. A question.

[00:49:36] Were the numbers placed into a board-approved policy, or was that our draft? That was the draft presented here the last time, and the way we understand it is we're not allowed to put that in there, so staff has recommended we can't, and I know we can leave it the way it is for now and then put it out for public comment and then, you know, deal with that.

[00:49:58] Well, I would like to leave it in. I would like it shown that it's stricken out and the explanation as to why it was stricken out so that the public understands why we did not include it in there. Sure. Okay, so with that, we'll go ahead and move on to our final item for the day, which is item work session 3.01, which is our grand jury report recommendations.

[00:50:25] And this has Mr. Yes, sir. So this is, we're bringing to you policy 3070, which is safety and emergency related communications. And this was all part of the December 13th action for Mr. Falcone presented that we were going to review a number of policies pursuant to the grand jury recommendations.

[00:50:44] So what we have for you tonight are a first step, we'll say our plan is to bring this to the Finance and Operations Committee as information only because it also goes to the Communications and Outreach Committee because the policy has two things.

[00:51:03] as staff we talked about this in county we want to make sure that everyone had a part of that the first part of this policy deals with definitions of terminologies of things that happen in the school so we have you know the whole the lockdown those types of things and that's primarily what would have be germane to this committee but we wanted to bring the whole changes to the policy so you see there are no changes recommended to those definitions but we do have some changes recommended on lines 95 through 98 and again on 119 through 122 and they are addressing the the process of making the communications

[00:51:39] what what factors are included in that and making sure we talk with the Division Council about what information is going to be released and so with me tonight John Clark and Joan Saugren are here as well as Wes Allen our division counselor who have all had a part of this Joan will be taking this this policy shepherding it through the communications and outreach committee so this was mostly just an information item for this committee as I mentioned we would not plan to bring this back for action at the next meeting but it would go to the March meeting of the communications committee I think I'm on that committee this year I'll double-check okay not sure not sure

[00:52:18] the solver do you know who's on that committee okay that's okay I'll have to look as well okay so I do appreciate the the expanded language I think that's important I think that's coming out of a lot of the discussion we had concerning the grand jury report I think at some point it would behoove us to have examples of situations that may occur all the information you know a fake scenario and then an accompanying example of what we could

[00:52:56] report because I think there's a lot of this that the public doesn't understand what we're trying to say when we say, well, we can't talk about FERPA or we can't talk about, you know, we must comply with FOIA. That means a lot of different things to different people. So I think we need to be able to provide the public with examples. This is the information on a scenario. This is, you know, this student, this teacher, this happened. This is what we can report. This is what you should expect to see so that we can set expectations because right now expectations are all over the

[00:53:27] We just don't have a good handle on what the expectation is coming out of a lockdown or a shelter in place. So I think that that would be an important component of this moving forward. It doesn't change the language, but it is something I think that we need to think about when we push this forward as well.

[00:53:47] Do you have any thoughts on this, Mr. Mejedevi? No, I agree with you. I don't have anything further than that. And I don't know, Mr. West, I mean, Mr. West is here. I know this came out of the some of the feedback as Mr. Louis talked I don't know if you have anything to add to this tonight okay so it's your intention now to take it to the next committee this was just an information yes sir okay well we appreciate being informed so thank you absolutely I am on the committee there we go so I'll get to get re-informed again

[00:54:26] on this all right so seeing as there's no new business we are adjourned thank you very much

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Coraggio Consulting · aguyonx.com