Coraggio Consulting
Loudoun County Public Schools, Finance & Operations Committee Meeting, Tuesday, September 16, 2025

Date: Tuesday, September 16, 2025
Place: LCPS Administration Building / School Board Room, Ashburn, Virginia
Length: 10m (video)
Official meeting video (Vimeo / LCPS-TV): https://player.vimeo.com/video/1118848575?rel=0

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 2026-10-13. Timestamps are [HH:MM:SS] into the meeting video.

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[00:00:03] - Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you all for being here. I'd like to call to order the September 16th meeting of the Finance and Operations Committee. My name is Arben Estreffi, I'm the chair of this committee. I'm joined by Mrs. Griffiths, and Chair Mansfield is absent for this committee meeting, so it'll just be the two of us.

[00:00:25] We'll start off with any public comment for this afternoon. Seeing there's no public comment, we'll move on to the approval of the meeting minutes from September 2nd, I'll now entertain a motion to approve the minutes.

[00:00:41] - Second. - That motion has been properly moved and seconded. Is there any discussion? Seeing none, we'll now go ahead and vote on the motion. All those in favor, please say aye.

[00:00:58] - Aye. - Aye. That motion will pass unanimously. The meeting minutes have been approved. We'll move on to the approval of the consent agenda. Are there any questions about the consent agenda from last time? Seeing no questions, I'll now make a motion to approve the consent agenda.

[00:01:19] Do I have a second? - Second. - Seconded by Mrs. Griffiths. Is there any discussion? Seeing no discussion, we'll now vote to approve the consent agenda. All those in favor, please say aye. - Aye. - Aye.

[00:01:34] And that motion will pass unanimously. The consent agenda has been approved. And we'll move on to the few information items that we have for this afternoon. We'll start off with business and financial services, RFP R25310, construction support services renewal, presented by Ms. Filia.

[00:01:57] - Good afternoon, I'm sitting in for Ms. Filia. This is for the renewal of construction support services to provide consulting services. Last year, this is an increase of 3%. This is the first of three one-year term renewals of the five vendors for the period of November 1st, 25 through October 31st of '26.

[00:02:22] - Thank you very much. I just have a quick question, and we've probably kind of touched on this in the past. This is a contract for services that come up when there are time constraints or other considerations.

[00:02:40] How are we using this contract? And then on that basis, then, like how do we select vendors, or how are they actually, you know, what is the criteria for the vendors on this type of a contract? So I can help with that, Mr. Streffi.

[00:02:56] So this contract is used for general support of construction, so we may use these firms for help with schedule management. Oftentimes, if there's a complex change order, they may help us with working through those kinds of things.

[00:03:14] Site surveys they may do for us, conditions of buildings, that kind of thing. So we use them when needed. And when we do need someone, we try to be fair through the different firms we have on contract. They all have the same hourly rates. So we'll decide which firm we're using and then, again, try to spread out the work across those firms.

[00:03:37] I'm sorry? Yeah, the facility condition assessment is one of those things under this contract as well for the CIP. Okay, that's helpful. And then the way vendors are selected is the hourly rate, I guess, and then a combination of that and qualifications or past experiences?

[00:03:55] Yeah, so this is a renewal of this contract. But when the contract is, there's a competitive process where many firms will solicit towards. And in this case, these firms were selected through that process. And in that case, pricing is not part of that. Pricing is negotiated after.

[00:04:12] It's more based on qualifications. And then pricing is then negotiated with these firms afterwards. Okay. Thank you. I appreciate that context. Any other discussion? I was just looking for the list of firms. Is it in here or did I miss it?

[00:04:28] It's under background. Oh. Pardon me. Right under background summary, it lists all five of them with the location. Thank you. Any other discussion? Seeing none, thank you.

[00:04:46] We'll move on to 5.02, Business and Financial Services, IFB I-26016, Stream Mitigation Credits for High School 14. Real quickly, if you don't mind, if I could interject, on that 5.01, would the committee like to have that brought back as action or consent at our next committee meeting?

[00:05:09] Um, that's a great question. Thank you. Um, would we like to put this on consent? Um, thumbs up? Okay. So maybe we bring that back for action. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Um, so we'll move, move on to, um, uh, stream mitigation credits for high school 14, 5.02.

[00:05:37] Thank you for this award, the stream mitigation credits for high school 14. The estimated value of the award is 884,000. This is to purchase stream mitigation credits and it's only one vendor, and that vendor is CBAY-Virginia, LLC.

[00:05:58] Thank you for that. And I understand that we have to purchase stream mitigation credits, but maybe you can explain what that is and why. So in general terms, when you're developing a piece of land, if you have wetlands or a stream, in our case we have both, if you have any impact to that part of the property, then you have to purchase these credits, which essentially offset the area that you are disturbing.

[00:06:31] So there are companies out there that maintain, they create and maintain wetlands and that kind of thing, and those are set aside. So essentially when you remove a piece of that type of property, it's offset by this purchased property.

[00:06:52] Got it. Thank you. Any other discussion? Seeing none. Yeah, I agree. I was just going to ask, how are we selecting a vendor based on credits, maybe just a little bit more context?

[00:07:16] Yeah, so this was put out for bid, and unfortunately, we only received one bid, but it was put out there for bid. Okay, so do we want this on consent? Yes, so that item will go on consent.

[00:07:33] We'll move on to 5.03, support services, easement for proffered Gumspring Road sidewalk. Thank you, Mr. Straffi. So, Van Meter Companies has been proffered to construct sidewalks along Gum Springs Road.

[00:07:55] This will require an easement from LCPS to allow them to construct this sidewalk against our property on the backside of the site. Our civil engineering staff and legal counsels have reviewed the proposed easement and we do not see any negative impacts to our site.

[00:08:11] Therefore, we recommend to grant approval of this easement. - Thank you, any discussion? Just to understand, easement is putting the sidewalk down. It's not doing anything else with it, like putting anything underneath the sidewalk.

[00:08:31] Can you just verify? Yeah, so the nature of the easement is, so the developer is going to build the sidewalk, and essentially the sidewalk is not on our property, but it's our property line. So most of the easement that they're requiring, and the easement in this case is really just us granting them permission to be on our property because they're going to have some construction vehicles and that kind of thing. You have to do some grading against our property.

[00:08:57] In addition to that, sort of at the end of Gum Springs Road at the intersection towards our school, there is some area that we're granting an easement for drainage. So when you create any kind of impervious walkway in this condition, then you have to have some drainage. So we're granting them that property to do that work there. And this is sort of in the back side of our site behind the baseball field and yes um i understand that obviously the sidewalk is not on our property and they're we're granting the easement um to do the work is the how far is the sidewalk and is it complimentary i understand it's not uh um it's there's no issue with it but is it complimentary

[00:09:37] to to to the school and where it's placed i think you know i think it it doesn't connect to our school directly um but i would say it's it helps the community at large in that area in general Any other discussion? Can we put this one on consent as well? Yes. So that item will go on consent.

[00:10:00] That's it for our information items for today. Is there any new business? Seeing no new business, we'll now adjourn this meeting of the September 16th meeting of Finance and Operations Committee. Thank you all very much.

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