Mario Martinez, director of facilities for the Chappaqua Central School District, presented the proposed facilities budget and a list of capital and maintenance projects the department plans for the coming year.

Martinez described the district’s building portfolio — the high school campus exceeds 400,000 square feet; each middle school is roughly 175,000 square feet; elementary schools are about 100,000 square feet — and said the district maintains more than one million square feet of space across campus buildings and grounds. He outlined planned projects including a guard booth and two arm gates at Horace Greeley High School’s main entrance, major paving work in the Horace Greeley senior lot and the main Bell Middle School entrance, replacement of electronic gym partitions with curtain systems, continued roof replacements at elementary schools, and localized renovations such as courtyard work and storage upgrades.

Martinez described security and equipment investments: upgraded exterior cameras with battery-hybrid power packs, an electronic gate behind Douglas Grafling (Douglas Grama in presentation), and an upgrade of the district’s two-way radio system (the facilities five-year maintenance line showed a large, one-time increase tied to that radio system replacement). He said the radio/system security line increased from 100 to 350 in the presentation slides (units were not explicitly stated in the meeting slides). Martinez told the board the district had FEMA COVID-related funds available to help cover part of that cost.

Energy and sustainability work includes replacing older HVAC equipment with heat pumps, purchasing a second electric vehicle for the district fleet, replacing some gas/diesel-powered UTVs with electric equivalents, and acquiring a hybrid "spider" lift for indoor and outdoor work (presenter cited a purchase price of about $140,000 for that lift). Martinez also said the district had signed an all-inclusive maintenance agreement with Atlantic Westchester for HVAC upkeep.

Staffing and workload details given in the presentation: the facilities department includes 10 supervisors, six maintenance workers, 37 cleaners/custodians (transcript reference: 30 7 cleaners), and one secretary; the district maintains more than 700 HVAC pieces. Martinez described several in-house renovation projects the department completed to save contractor costs — he estimated one office renovation saved about $55,000 compared with an outside quote.

On the budget totals, Martinez said the facilities request adds roughly a 3.3% increase districtwide ("a little bit over $400,000" in the facilities presentation) driven largely by the one-time radio system expense and contractual increases in electricity and contractual lines. He said the largest planned increases in the five-year facilities plan related to the two-way radio/system replacement and that the cost would be a one-time jump rather than an ongoing annual increase.

Board members asked about parking impacts at Horace Greeley (current lot has "almost 200" spaces and a potential loss of 20–30 spots if spaces are widened), training and certification for heavy-lift equipment operators, charging locations for electric vehicles, and whether in-house work could be used to lower contractor costs. Martinez said some projects will be done over school breaks when possible and that the department is also continuing to evaluate in-house work to reduce costs.

No vote on the facilities budget occurred at the presentation; the items will be reflected in upcoming budget review and adoption steps.