And in order to create the conditions that we want to have in Lakeville area schools, we have to have the best learning environments that we can afford to get.

We do survey our community when we talk about levies or bonds of any kind. Um we do that using Morris Leatherman which is a uh uh polling firm that does scientific surveys and uh want to share some of those results uh from this most recent survey.

The one thing that I feel strongly tells our story in Lakeville uh in in our school system is the growth that we're having not just in Lakeville, but Elco New Market and in Credit River.

We are going to grow and continue to grow as a community and uh as the city lays out their plans and hands out permits or authorizes permits um that implied re situation is that we're going to have more kids in our system and uh that doesn't get talked a lot about when these permitting decisions are being made.

85% is what we use as the marker because uh the other balance of that to the 100% is we have to fit in special ed and uh any other um space requirements to fit our students and staff in a building.

So uh, if you're Elco New Market City Council or Credit River or Lakeville City Council, these are things that are should be front and center as you're talking about it, but always implied is that we're going to have to grow. And growth means you have to have space for those those students to uh to come into the system.

If it fails, uh, our biggest challenge is going to be uh increased class sizes and some challenging u overcrowding is about the only word I can articulate for it.

The ballot question asked for 139,600,000 to do the improvements and the uh uh additions on these schools.

The cost of that my estimate would be if the the way you would build another middle school is and be as responsible as you can be with that is you would take one offline, maybe build a new middle school bigger, but you have to do land acquisition for that. You have to obviously in a contemporary environment build a new school that takes 36 months minimum. And then you would have to be repurposing a middle school to maybe take some of the lease space that you have in the district offline or put some other things into that building and that would require a tenant improvement or a major renovation to fit something else in. in that condition, I could see you doing it. That my estimate on that is between 230 to $250 million. I don't think the numbers support that.

The Lakeville area continues to grow and that growth is something many of us see every day. Lakeville itself is the thriving popular community recently named the fastest growing suburb in Minnesota.

Since 2018, with the support of our community, we added space at the elementary level to accommodate enrollment growth. Those elementary students are now moving into our middle schools. All three middle schools, Century, Kenwood Trail, and Maguire, are already crowded.

The proposed plan is designed to alleviate the capacity strain on current students and teachers and make room for the students who are on their way. This plan will create functional spaces that support learning for all middle school students, regardless of the school they attend.

The estimated tax impact is approximately $14 per month on a $500,000 home.