Okay, we've officially started the meeting. We're on video, so it's being
recorded. It'll be posted at the end of the day today, so everybody knows.
This is our Finance Committee meeting, to set our budget for next year.
The things I've given you guys so far are a line item budget for next year.
The cash balance is at the end of the school year last year. Bus depreciation, how many buses
we've got, where the buses are at, our bus routes, and then our proposed OPI
budgets for last year and for the proposed for this year. So that's pretty
much what I've given you guys sitting here in front of you. First of all, is there any questions?
So I'll kind of start at the top. Doing a TFS, we went through.
We had kind of a lot of cash this year. I really don't know why. Our cash balances were a
little higher. I don't know if we just collected more taxes. Tammy, did we get more
taxes? I don't know. It just seems like we have a lot of cash at the end of the
school year. You know, the only problem that I can think of that was kind of
out of line was that one where they just put money in to retirement. So we
have a little extra cash to play with. In the grand scheme of things
[inaudible] It sucks up tax-payer mills down. I mean, it does help
our mill because I can give that cash back after we save whatever we need to save.
So we did have a little bit of cash heaviness.
I re-evaluated some of our lines, especially like in transportation. We kind of pumped that one up quite a bit.
So we had a lot of cash last year. I don't know, in transportation.
On the one that I emailed you guys, I did it. What we spent last year and what we spent, what
we're going to propose this year. So I kind of put those a little bit more in line.
I was able to trim like
$40,000 out of that transportation budget.
And the only thing that I'm a little concerned about is if you have to add another route.
If we had to add another bus driver, it would be approximately about $15,000.
I'm guessing depending on the route and how far it is.
As of right now, we don't have that. I still think I've built in enough
fluff because our miles won't really change. There would be a wage that we'd have to
come up with. But I've got still, I think I overestimated $20,000 in fuel and $20,000
in repairs. So I mean, that will slush in that part of it.
The other thing is when they had a transportation meeting, when was that Mr. Hardy?
This is spring, wasn't it? March?
The transportation met and Sean's got a plan for some buses and they want 100%
depreciate on all of the buses. So we put 100% on the depreciation.
That's the one fund you can play with to save mills. Because you can say, we're not going to
depreciate anything. We don't need a bus. We're just going to save taxpayers some
money, but they want to get a bus. So that fund almost doubled. So we've got, that
one's going to be sitting in about almost $400,000, which is nice, because then we'd
be doing my bus as we can. The one caveat with bus depreciation
if you ever needed, you can transfer that money into the inter-local also. That's another fund
that you could use that inter-local if you ever need a roof. It costs $100,000. You don't
need any buses. You can transfer that and use that for that. So that's one of those
kind of funny funds. You don't want to do a transportation because you can't raise
your budget again, where depreciation can always raise your budget. Because you can
depreciate your bus. So taxable value. It went down an issue by $330,000. Were you
surprised by that? You know, it's such a fickle beast. I was kind of surprised that
it went up so much last year. But in the overall grand scheme, it's just under
$400 less per mill, which, yeah, in the grand scheme of things. Yeah. So it went down
$300,000 approximately total mills. So it went down $330,000. So are the mills more
expensive than every dollar we want is going to be more expensive because it's not
worth as much. Basically, is what it boils down too. However, when I finally got the line-item
budget done and the budget in the OPI spreadsheets, we are less mills. And so that
has to do with cash. And some of it has to do with, we got more money from OPI this year.
Our quality educator, we got almost 7 or 8 thousand dollars, which was kind of
bit. And we also got more money in the, not GTV, but the state, the state fund, the
people, the base, yeah, direct state aid, that one went up a bunch.
That was a couple hundred thousand dollars. So our mills stayed pretty
close to this. And they're less by eight. Some of that has to do with 40 grand I
got rid of out of transportation, could still put it back in. If we want to keep
our mills steady, that's kind of up to you guys. So, okay, that's the big overview. Where's your
question? Where do you want to be? What do you want to look at first? When I visit with
Mr. Hardy and Mrs. Buer also a little bit about the line item budget, things to
think in the back of your head. We left a line-item for Home Ec. If we get a
Home Ec teacher, we left the line item in there and budget for you want to budget
for him or her, or just in case. I also left in insurance for everyone. So in case
they come back to do the insurance. I have money in the budget for that. I bumped up
our state travel fund a little bit for the State Basketball, we're gonna be
sending kids. We haven't yet but we will. I bumped that up like five or six
thousand dollars. I budgeted for a copy machine, because the copy machine is
gonna die in the office here pretty quick. And I think that was it. Wasn't I
one of you talking about that? Those are about the big things that I've left in
there overall, is line items. So, again, at the end of the year we might have money that we didn't spend, is what it may boil down to.
I don't think Scott has any huge repairs. He's got one big one he wants to fix out there by the boiler.
I know that one he got a quote for seventeen dollars. The pipe, you know, keeps freezing up.
He's talked to Dale Plumbing and Heating. So that's like, uh, I haven't
line itemed that yet. [inaudible]
Yeah. [inaudible]
Yeah.
We did have to budget a little more for Paula and, cuz, our Title money went down a little bit.
We lost seven or eight thousand dollars on our Title [inaudible] last year, which is kind of unusual.
And other fund that I did that I struggled with. So, we have one one on one student
where they're gonna aim this with that student all the time. Once you put your
money, they have a tuition calculator that OPI provides. Once you put in
there what you need and it looks at all of our spend money, it says we do not
qualify for any funds out of tuition. You can't levy for any. We do have a little bit of cash. So, I've basically budgeted what cash we have left.
It's not a cost to the mills, it's not a cost to the taxpayers, even zero. And we still
had enough money in the line item budget to take care of that person. I did budget for eight, one more para-professional.
I know, it's a lot of stuff. Sorry guys.
[silence]
And there's stuff on the front and back of my line-item budget, too. I did front and back. Sorry.
I guess what I want guidance from you guys is where do we want our mills? Do we want to
leave them on what they were? You want to go like this? You want to go up? Down? You want to stay where you are? The two budget pages on the very far
left-hand side of your stack there are the ones, the OPI budget ones. So, the total mills before the debt service, because that was a fixed
fund. That one your kind of stuck on. Basically, what's on that is. So, our total mills right here is 193 [?]. Last year it was, what 201?
So, we're down eight mills. If you compare line items there, our general fund stayed pretty close to the same. It's 122 compared to 125. So, it went down. Some of that has to do with the amount of cash.
And some of it has to do, because we had another $100,000 in cash almost, not quite. And we also were able to, we didn't need as many because we had more direct state aid, our direct state aid was quite up high. So, I mean, [inaudible] It depends on what they do with this funding formula.
Because sometimes they do when they did the legislature does the two-year thing, sometimes the years are the same and sometimes.
Yeah. They did a three, one in a three-year. No, it's a 3, 2 and a one-point something or another wasn't it? The second year wasn't supposed to be quite so high.
So, we're going to legislate so we don't know what it's going to be next year. They haven't set that yet. So, I'm guessing it's going to be some, you know, some inflationary. I don't know. I don't know.
So, you can leave the same as last year.
This one, they get calculated. So, the general fund is stuck. I can't do anything with that one unless I didn't want to keep on my reserves. Let's say I want to get all that money back to the taxpayers. We don't need any cash.
This is basically that the reserves is the amount of money you need to start school this year to spend, to pay on your bills. We don't go in the hole.
So, I could put it at zero. I could say we don't want any money in our reserves. We have some cash left over and that would lower those.
But then you may have negative balances in your cash for a little bit until taxes start coming in. So, this is going to basically get us from now until November when taxes start coming in.
So, that's what that reserve is. It's just you're checking account balance, I guess this is what you say.
Is it appropriate for me to speak? Okay, two things. Don't touch your reserves.
Secondly, I think that if you guys could get by with the number of mills you've got projected right there, it would be a big bonus as far as taxpayers,they've taken a big hit with two fifty mill increases this year.
And you can be the hero. Oh, ours went down. You know, I mean, that's just a suggestion. But if you're sitting good and you can do with what you've got, if nothing else, just say ours didn't go up. Yeah, especially when taxable value went down.
The transportation line is 20. It was last year, it was 33. So, this is the one that went down 10 mills. And the reason I like this is because I cut $40,000 out of the budget and we had a lot of cash.
I think on that cash report, I've got at the end of the year for transportation, we had $83,000 still sitting in the account. Last year, we only had 40. So, we were a little cash heavy in that account.
We could increase this if you think that we need an under route. We could increase the $20,000 if we wanted to. Just in case.
In the grand scheme of things, that wouldn't even get us to the 33 and probably get us to maybe maybe 28 somewhere in there. I can calculate it and then just let you know.
The other one is bus depreciation. These are the ones you can mess with with the mills. And that just means on that bus depreciation page that we've got here that shows all of our buses.
We can say don't want any depreciation. But again, they wanted to say that transportation, I know that Sean needs a couple buses. I know he's sitting out there with some yellow buses that need to be replaced.
So, that's the place we could mess with a little bit. Tuition, again, is just a cash account right now. We have nothing in there. I have nothing budgeted. I don't even have a person in there. So, retirement is calculated. We have no control over that.
That's basically your Social Security, your TRS and your PERS. It's totally calculated off our wages. So, it just goes in there and then they assess the mills. I never know what those meals are. They never tell me what that actual mill is.
And it's always a $10,000. You can spend a little bit this much. This year we spent $3,500. It's kind of nice.
Part of Mr. Hardy's salary is, because you have to have a supervisor. So, part of his salary is coded to that also.
The Technology Fund, I increased, I gave us our full $50,000 for our levy that we can levy this year.
To get our cash balance back up. We may not do that next year. We may not need it. I know that there's a couple projects that we're talking about doing something with that very, very far elementary lab because that one's in tough shape.
That one's either going to be replaced or shut down or a plan is going to be made for that one, somewhere along the line. And I think Schoolhouse IT gave me a quote that it's going to be like $22,000.
I mean, that's a dream. It's a pretty cool sweet thing. But otherwise, our technology is pretty good. We are okay, I think, in our tech.
Our flex fund is basically just a slush fund. We get some oil and gas. You can't levy for it. You can't do anything with it. It's just basically a cash account.
Right now, what we're buying is for teacher enhancement, I think, is what some of that money was supposed to be for. So we bought some goodies for the teachers this year out of that.
Our building reserve is finally getting up to where we want it, but this is our very last year of the bond. This is the last $100,000 we can get.
Then we have to run another one.
Then we have to run another one. Make a choice.
So, yeah, this is our last year. So next year, if we want another one, we'll have to go on our election. And we'll want to decide what we're going to do with that.
I see that they opened up that, Donations Portal again. There's a dibble-dally of money left in that one.
I got a contact and so I'm signed up and I'm ready to go if we get donations or however that works.
And Mr. Hardy is talking to somebody to say, we can get at least an idea of what that roofs going to cost, but we're sitting very nice in that building reserve fund.
This year, we finally got to the point where we're putting in way less than the states put in, and that's called a small box.
I think we only have to put in $25,000 and they're putting in $47,000. So we're getting $47,000 in the state to help our building. So that's really nice. That's helping.
Our bond is finally getting down. I don't even know where we're at on our bond. I think we're down to a less than 15 years finally on that one.
So how's that building reserve? We've had a plan and we're working. How's that all coming together?
You know, what was our big projects that we started out with? I think we needed bathrooms was our big one to start with.
Most of our projects have been taken care of except for a junior high.
Well, the way they were taken on to some flooring, well then COVID ended up being huge. Almost all of our first wave of that was done with COVID.
Windows is another one.
We did the doors and the door.
Yep.
And all the re-keying, all that re-keying that we did.
Yep.
Intercom was part of it.
The intercom was part of it. Yep. Yep. All the new clocks in the system.
So yeah. And that was $200,000 to get that re-done.
That's incredible. You guys have done a great job.
So I mean, I'm happy with the mills. I think they're good. Like I said, the only one that I was truly questioning was our transportation.
And that's up to you guys. What you think we want to do is that one. If we want to raise it up a little bit, it could take a little slush in there, just in case.
I know. I don't know. I really don't know what to do with that one.
On like, the, on our line item budget, you can see where we are with.
[silence]
So salaries are set. Part of my salary and for Mr. Hardy's salary also comes out of there.
Because we can take some money out of there for that.
It helps free up some general fund money. So that's part of it.
What I changed here is repair and maintenance.
Last year, he spent $14,000 and we knocked to $12,000.
And this is what Sean is sort of, you know, where we're at. And he said he should be okay.
Some of that was some big, big repairs. Didn't we? Yeah, we had a couple of buses that
suburban ran in and we had some, we had insurance, but it didn't total the total amount of repairs on that.
So that was a little bit higher than we thought.
Our insurance is, it's hard that I put some buses, because our buses come out of our insurance.
Our insurance was $57,000 this year, probably in my ability. So I put 20% of that to there.
Let's see here. The other one was Telephone stayed about the same.
DSL stayed about the same. Supplies, he used a little bit more supplies.
I did take some office supplies, because some of that's coding. You put it in the wrong spot,
but you want somewhere else.
And replacement parts, we only spent $24,000 and lowered that to $30,000.
And then the other one was in the old, the old 36,000 that's the last year, this year I put 30.
Who knows, who knows what that was going to be. The election, who knows.
And we didn't buy any minor equipment. That would be something like in a computer,
in a computer or a phone or something like that. That's where that minor equipment falls into.
And then he said that there weren't any little dues or fees or something. What we had in there was
because I put, we paid for all of the bus drivers, DOT physical. So all of his
bills get paid for. It was coding. So. We should have put it up there in professional services.
So if we thought,
this is how the bus drivers are calculated. So I got, I have [inaudible] they're not here anymore,
so I don't have them. I don't know if Ken's gunna stick around, [inaudible]
but I don't know. But there's our bus drivers and their routes. So even at the highest
route, Tammy, with 27 years, 130, even because Sean doesn't really account with 187,
her salary is only 17,000. And we won't have a route that's that big. Even if we get a new
bus driver, that route won't be that big, I don't think. Because all the, he's covered with routes,
he's got. It's just that if you have to add another route in there for [inaudible] kids, I know
Mrs. Buer said, there's at least two more that we, up on the Dana's route. So yeah, up north, Sean
doesn't have that yet. Yeah. So that's, like I said, this is, this is my wild card. This is one I
really didn't know what to do with. I wasn't sure. Did I knock too much off. Without Connie, our
way, even if we hire a new Home Ec teacher,
but it's not going to be somebody like her driving ability.
Right. Right. Last year, we spent $6,900 in temporary in, in sub drivers. Well, I only put
six and we don't have driving this year. So, I mean, I don't, you know, find somebody to sub drive,
it's going to be harder than we realize. So, I don't know. So yeah, that's up to you guys,
[inaudible]
What if, what if we raise the transportation a little bit since [inaudible] mills? Sure.
But we kept the overall mills under the 21.2. We could go down, but I just,
I don't know. I feel like we're down, but maybe not as much. You bet. And then what about like school food?
That's going to be, it's been good, right? Yes. And we don't, we don't, for okay, they don't
care about school food. We, that's where we care. Right now, our, yeah, no, that one has its own
fund, but it's not budgeted, it's not an OPI budgeted fund. I still put a budget together,
but we don't have to tell them what were spending. I did get a ding this year at the end because
we have too much cash in there. So, I know there's, I know Shirley, would like to have one more person cook.
I know she's looking for one more cook. So, I budgeted in a fourth cook. And I also,
I also budgeted in another $20,000 for food. Oh, I put in another $20,000. And right now,
it's in our school food, we've got $134,000 in cash. So, that's not, that's,
that's last year. And yeah, I mean, we haven't spent a penny of it yet for this year, and we'll
start getting into school food money. So, we're almost two [inaudible], hopefully. We might, we might
get dinged by the state on that one. They'll tell us we have to buy something. There's always that
chance. Yeah, exactly. And then all of a sudden, we get all that left here. Yeah, that's true.
Yeah. Now, everything in the kitchen can come out.
So, you're on the school food. Yep. [inaudible]
The way that works is if we wanted to do that, let's say we have that project and it's going to
cost $70,000, we have to put it to the state and then have to approve it. But because we have
too much cash, they're not going to even question that. There are some things, like if you want to buy
equipment, you have to have this over $5,000, you have to ask them for permission to buy that,
mainly because it's federal money. What about that bathroom? You know, you've got to approve of that.
You know, I know it's right there. So, I just wanted to. I don't know. It's a good question.
That's a very good question. That would be very good. So, let's, I might just say like,
no, no, no. That's the way we're supposed to do this. I'm going to increase the
transportation, but I'm going to put another $20,000 in there.
[inaudible]
So, back here, it's reports that I'll show you what that does to our overall mills.
That's the nice thing about this. It's easy there. Let's change the mills.
So, adding that $20,000 only added on three mills. Three mills? Yeah. Three mills.
If I add 40, we can get pretty close to where we are, because that's
361, and last year we were at 385.
And that adds on three total mills. So, then that puts us back to what we were...
Pretty close. It puts us at 195 mills, which is what it was compared to...
201. 201, yeah.
It's still directly tied to taxes, because of our county reimbursement, and also this
our own personal reimbursement from the state. That page right there that's got the totals,
this one right here. That one right there is the one that tells us how much we can get
based on our bus size. It's the bus size and the number of miles. Not how many kids ride the
bus, but the bus size. So, the way we put that in there is we say that big routes have gotten
up to bigger buses than the routes that we were on buses. So, and then you get a reimbursement
based on that amount. [inaudible] Yes, that will
be less money we'll get from the state and from the county in the entitlement as the county
transportation, equalization. That's that county equalization one. Those of both would
go down based on the size of the buses. Doesn't make sense. I know, and then the taxpayers have to pay for it, is basically
what it is. Well, [inaudible]
Um, yeah, and the difference is
[inaudible]
we'll look here and see. Let me show you. Is there a chance, Colleen, that they'll be individual contracts
on that Peerless route? I don't know. Maybe we talked about if we couldn't find a driver or the route
got too long that we were talking about having stop off spots. So, there'd be one in maybe just outside
of Richland, one in Peerless, one in Four Buttes, and kids would have to meet there, right.
The state would then have to reimburse if the people filled out the individual transportation
contracts, the state would then reimburse them to get to the bus stop. I mean, that's that's
worst case scenario and best case scenario if you can't find a bus driver. In that case, you may
need to have a big big bus, but the only thing we're going to get reimbursed from is from the farthest
point down to home. You know, 20 miles is all you're going to get compared to
144. You're paying for a big bus for a [inaudible] That bus could last a long time and you're only driving on the oil.
Yeah, yeah.
I wanted to show you the, I guess what I'm going to use.
And this will show you how, probably, sorry.
So, that is the size of your buses.
The bus, the two suburbans are only 0.5. This is 95 cents a mile, 115. And then,
so all of our buses are 115 and above and less, right? Yeah.
Not at all. No, no, the little white bus, the little black bus and the cruisers,
you don't get any reimbursement all on. You can use bus depreciation, you place them,
you cannot, you don't get any reimbursement on that. Do we do on the van?
I had that request from kindergarten parents. They said, my kid is very excited to be on a yellow
school bus and then I told him he might be in a suburban and he goes, no, it's a yellow bus.
I'll pay for it.
The problem is, the minute it turns yellow, then not anybody can drive it. Then you're stuck. You have to have that endorsement
to be able to drive anything that's yellow and says school bus on the side. Unbelievable. Crazy.
So, yeah, I have no problem with even putting the mills pretty close to what
they are. We aren't going to get there without going over last year's budget, which we really
don't need. But I could even add another 30,000. We can go to 30,000 and then maybe 25 mills,
basically, and we're still under.
But Tim, we just raised a little bit and we can still say, well, we kept it, we kept it down.
We lowered it, that's just great, but we lowered it a little bit.
God, we're good.
We were, they were sweating and all adjusted.
Well, then when we go in and ask for that,
building, building levy next year, said, well, you know, we've been, you've already been paying
this, and we lowered this last year. We're doing, we're doing our best.
I really do hope you guys continue to work on your building through those levies.
It's just not going to get any better. I mean, however you do it.
If I raised it up to 270, like we had, 30 more thousand, we'd be at 27.71 mills is where we
would be at.
[silence]
[inaudible]
I agree with you.
That's right.
You guys' recommendations is what you guys will present..
and then it will be a motion on Monday?
Yeah, and if they don't like it, you have until the 25th.
And you can meet every single day until it gets it fixed.
So yeah.
Now they are dropped.
They fired the boiler up, because it got below 40.
At least the boiler is going to work.
Hot water in the bathrooms, maybe.
Okay.
Any other questions, concerns, anything?
[inaudible]
Things go, but what's going on with the interim legislative studies?
They're still trying to present this new.
Are they getting any input from schools?
Or they just kind of take our legislature, legislators, know nothing about it
I realize that's an opinion.
[inaudible]
The funding formula is ready to be presented.
I think they've already got it in, ready to go to legislation as far as I know.
And then the new insurance, they're still working on the insurance.
I don't know if it's going to make it.
I don't know if they're going to, I don't know.
I hope so, but I don't think so.
I don't know.
They still have to find somebody that's willing to fund it, or to be the manager of it,
and Mark still does not want to do it.
So, we'll see, that'll be interesting.
Very good.
[inaudible]
Colleen, you do such a good job. I'm glad it you and not me.
Okay, I'm going to stop our meeting here.
If I can remember how to do that.
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