Owosso school board: new bus, audit report up Wednesday at the PAC
The Oct. 28 agenda puts a bus purchase, a building automation contract and the district's audit report in front of the board as first reads, with the votes waiting until a later meeting.
Owosso Public Schools' board will spend Wednesday evening on things it cannot yet vote on. A new bus purchase, a technical building automation service contract, out-of-state travel for Owosso High School's athletic trainers and the district's audit report are all listed under "For Future Action" on the Oct. 28 agenda — the stage where the board looks at an item before it is put to a vote. The next regular meeting is Nov. 18, so that is the earliest any of the four would come back for a decision.
The meeting starts at 5:30 p.m. at the Owosso Performing Arts Center, 765 East North Street. The posted agenda does not carry a price tag for the bus or name the company behind the building automation contract; those details sit in packet pages the district references as Reports 26-46 and 26-47. The athletic trainers' conference travel is to Wheeling, Illinois.
What the board can act on Wednesday is the consent agenda: minutes from the amended Aug. 26 regular meeting, the Sept. 23 regular meeting and both the open and closed sessions of the Oct. 14 committee of the whole, plus current bills, financials and the Capital Improvement Investment Fund. Consent items are approved in a single vote unless a member pulls one out.
The front half of the meeting is recognition. Student Representative Mackenzie Hayes gives her report, Bryant is up for Celebrate Kids!, and the board recognizes retiree Heidi Ellsworth. The agenda also lists "Venture" among the building reports with no further description. Readers who followed the former middle school may notice the name: The Current reported in August that a developer called Venture was seeking more time on its agreement to buy the closed Owosso middle school and convert it into 53 affordable apartments. The agenda does not say whether the two are related, and the district has not posted a description of the report.
The audit report lands in a year when the district's finances have already been in front of taxpayers. The Current reported in September that Owosso's debt levy holds at 4.7 mills and that the district planned a negotiated bond sale before Dec. 1, with bonds issued in roughly $12 million rounds. The agenda does not include the auditor's findings or a fund balance figure.
There are two public participation slots, one before the action items and one near the end. The agenda carries the district's standard note that the session "is a meeting of the Board of Education in public for the purpose of conducting the School District's business and is not to be considered a public community meeting," under Board Policy 0166.
What happens next: the board meets as a committee of the whole at 5:30 p.m. Nov. 11 in Conference Room 112 at the Washington Campus on Alger Street, then holds regular meetings at 5:30 p.m. Nov. 18 and Dec. 9 at the Performing Arts Center. The bus, the automation contract, the trainers' travel and the audit are the items to watch for on the November action list.
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