School-Budget criticism focuses on state-mandated budgeting format
By Bobbi Mlynar
Wednesday, August 1, 2007
So few people came to a public-comment session Tuesday evening on the upcoming Emporia school district budget that school officials outnumbered the public more than two-to-one.
Four district administrators attended the meeting in addition to school board members Glen Strickland and Angie Schreiber and Nancy Horst, community relations director.
Former businessman Bill Barnes, now an Emporia State University business professor, retired educator Sue McKinney and Emporia Area Chamber of Commerce director Jeanine McKenna attended from the public sector.
“We don’t have a lot of people here, but we have the tried and true ones,” said Susan Hernandez, associate superintendent of business for the district.
Hernandez and Superintendent John Heim spent about 90 minutes explaining how decisions had been made about the proposed 2007-08 budget and answered questions about specific line items. The information was a recapitulation of discussions that had been held at an earlier budget workshop.
The district is proposing to reduce its mill levy by almost a half-percent for the coming school year. The total budget would be approximately $31 million, if it is approved by the board of education at its Aug. 8 or Aug. 22 meeting. The budget needs to be filed with the state before Aug. 25.
Barnes reiterated his dissatisfaction with the complex budgeting format, which is mandated by the state.
“The school budget looks like a piece of Swiss cheese, there’s so many holes in it,” Barnes said. “… I’ve never seen any type of organization budget that way.”
“This whole thing is the result of political decisions,” Heim responded.
Barnes suggested that the board adopt a resolution to ask the state to fix the budget situation.
“If you want to hide things, this is the perfect budget in whatever school district across the state of Kansas,” Barnes said.
Heim told Barnes that the irony of the situation is that the changes made by legislators had been an attempt to correct confusion; instead, the confusion has worsened.
Barnes questioned why the district had budgeted only $345,482 in income from motor vehicle taxes, compared to $411,827 the previous year.
Hernandez said that she would check again with the county to determine the cause of the drop.
Barnes also asked why bond and interest costs had been reduced 1.1 mill, while the overall budget was reduced less than .5 percent.
“In this case, the bond and interest goes down, but the other piece goes up, but at the same time we’re bringing in more (state money) because of the lawsuit,” he said.
Heim and Hernandez talked about problems that could arise for the district and taxpayers if expenses are underestimated. The district tries to err on the side of caution.
“The danger in underestimating is that if you’re wrong, then the mill levy bounces next year,” Heim said. “… If we’re right, that $170,000 rolls right back in next year to reduce the levy.
“If we’re wrong, we can’t spend the money. So it’s just a philosophy. It’s a ‘pay me now or pay me later’ kind of thing.”
“I’m in favor of pay me later,” Barnes said.
Barnes said he believed the state has created an unworkable situation for the school district.
“… (A)s a taxpayer, I’m unhappy that we’re having to pay extra taxes, whether it’s at the state level or the local level, because of the system,” he said.