By JUDY RATTNER
According to Robert Bartels, the district's assistant superintendent for business, the amount of the proposed new budget is $86,866,580. The main reasons for the increase, he said, other than contractual obligations, come from new staff for auditing services and some special education staff additions. Health insurance, contributions to the teacher retirement system and debt service on the bond issue are other factors in the increase, he said. Bartels said the district plans to appropriate $2.8 million from the general fund to offset the tax levy. He said he does not yet have the projected increase in the tax levy and that the dollar amount on what the district proposes for capital expenditures is not yet final.
"I think we [the board's trustees] pretty much all said at the [first] meeting that the percentage has to come down somewhat," said Mark Masin, board of education secretary. "We're now at more of an information gathering stage - after a few meetings we start making decisions about what stays in the budget and what comes out. My goal is to get down to a number that is educationally and fiscally sound."
"This is the very beginning of the process, an important part of the year," said Meg Koch, school board trustee. "As usual we are starting with a potential increase that is greater than what I am personally comfortable with. Historically as we go through the process we have been able to lower the increase."
The board, members of the school administration, school principals, department heads and citizens attending the meeting spent approximately three hours looking through a 450-plus page document that is different from the budgets of previous years.
"Last year we broke it out by administrator," said Bartels. "This year it's the aggregate of all of the district's schools, by functional area. This is how it's required by the state and how other districts do it. This should make it easier to understand, and easier to make comparisons because it shows how everything ties together in bottom line numbers."
"We read every line in these budgets" said Masin. "We will question and we will try to save wherever we can whether it's pencil sharpeners, a program or textbooks. We're more 'no frills.' When I bring up things like pencil sharpeners it may sound like a comical point, but a $149 multipurpose sharpener does seem frivolous. I can't say that it is unwarranted so I want to know more about it. I would hope that by doing their homework, there would be less expensive sharpeners other than this one from the catalog that could fill the need.
"We as a board are looking at minutiae that we consider important because it brings down the increase. We got that budget on Friday and we met on Tuesday. We covered 300 pages. We covered the instructional budget, and we will hear about buildings and grounds, technology and the central administration budget. There's a whole series of different factors that go into the evolution of this budget. The 7.87 number is where we start. Historically, whatever number we start off with comes down. Just because it's there doesn't mean it stays. And don't think that we won't look at it all again," said Masin.
According to Cynthia Geones, district clerk, the next budget work session - open to the public - is an all day budget meeting on March 8, also at the high school, in Room 103, from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and after a lunch break, from 1:30 until the time they conclude. There is a regular public work session scheduled for March 13 which does not deal with the budget, but if anything is left over from the March 8 meeting, it will be included at that meeting.
"At every single one of our public work sessions," said Koch, "we do give the public a chance to speak. This [the budget] has such a direct impact on everyone and our community. The more eyes that look at a budget document, the better. I would urge the public to attend the meetings and make their feelings known to us. We won't necessarily be able to accommodate everybody's individual opinion on every item, but it is important for us to know what every one thinks."
After the work sessions in March, the next meeting on the budget is a preliminary hearing on April 12, the last time any changes can be made to it. Bartels said that on April 12 he and district school superintendent Dr. William Johnson will outline the final increase percent, the expense budget, revenues (projected increases and decreases), the projected tax levy increase, any assessment changes and what the average household is likely to see. Bartels emphasized that because the budget is not yet final at that time, the numbers in that presentation are always projections.
There is a legally required budget meeting on May 1, ahead of the annual school board election and budget vote on Tuesday, May 15.
