District 86 Board Gives Tentative Approval to Nearly $81 Million Budget

The District 86 Board of Education Monday night approved a tentative budget of nearly $81 million for the 2012 fiscal year, though not without some questions.

District Business Manager Jeff Eagan presented the board with some highlights of the proposed budget, which must be adopted before the end of September.

Eagan said the board’s Finance Committee had helped come up with some of the assumptions used to develop the tentative budget, including general state aid of $218 per average daily student attendance, resulting in projected revenue of $1.1 million for the district. However, he noted that state aid accounts for only about four percent of district revenue. The vast majority of district revenue (nearly 95%) comes from local sources, primarily from property taxes.

Eagan said the district was anticipating revenue of $80.9 million for the next fiscal year, with property taxes accounting for $70.1 million (86.7%) of that total.

The tentative budget calls for $80.7 million in expenditures, Eagan told board members, with salaries accounting for nearly $45 million of that total. Another $14.3 million is projected to pay for employee benefits, Eagan said. Combined, salaries and benefits represent nearly three-quarters of expenditures in the proposed budget.

Education Fund Shortfall Anticipated

Eagan said the budget projects a deficit of $546,000 in the Education Fund. However, the Operations and Maintenance Fund is expected to have a surplus of almost $400,000, he explained, and combined with anticipated surpluses in other funds, that should help the district end with a budget surplus of more than $200,000.

Board Member Dianne Barrett expressed concern about the Education Fund deficit and questioned the projected surplus in the Operations and Maintenance Fund.

“Why wouldn’t we be expected to spend that money to improve the buildings?” she asked.

“This is not the budget that goes down to the state,” Eagan replied. “Changes can be made and will be made before September.”

Superintendent Dr. Nicholas Wahl said that from an accounting standpoint, given the $64 million budget for the Education Fund, it is virtually balanced, since the projected deficit represents less than two percent of the fund’s budget.

Barrett did not appear satisfied with the responses to her question and reiterated her concern about running a deficit in the Education Fund.

“Are we spending more than we can afford in the Education Fund?” she wondered. “That would include the recent teachers’ contract.”

She said she would prefer to see money in the Operations and Maintenance Fund spent on the schools, especially Hinsdale South.

“The State of Illinois, on their budget form, looks at all funds in total when it determines if a budget is balanced or not,” Eagan said. “The state would look at this budget and call it balanced.”

Questions about timing of budget process

Given that the proposed district budget must be available for public inspection for just 30 days prior to its adoption, Board Member Dr. Richard Skoda wondered why it was being considered at this time.

“Wouldn’t we be better off tweaking this and putting a more accurate tentative budget on file August 1st or August 10th than putting this out now?” he asked.

“This is accurate,” Wahl responded. “This is very accurate as of now.”

“The difficulty … is that there needs to be 30 calendar days between board meetings in August and September and sometimes that doesn’t happen,” Eagan explained. “So that pushes this back to July.”

He said the Finance Committee had decided to push it forward an additional month, so that if any problems with the budget figures arise, there is ample time to deal with them.

Wahl said previous boards also wanted to give the public more than 30 days to examine the proposed budget.

Responding to questioning by Skoda, both Wahl and Eagan acknowledged that the budget adopted by the board in September could be different than the tentative one being presented to the public.

“Is that fair to the taxpayer, to look at the tentative budget in August and say, ‘This looks good to me,’ and then in September what the board approves is different?” Skoda asked.

“We have to follow the school code,” Wahl said.

Board Member Jennifer Planson asked if the budget presented to the public would be updated if changes needed to be made to it during the public inspection period.

Wahl said the tentative budget available to the public would not be changed. Eagan indicated that was because the school board would not yet have authorized the changes.

Cooling off time

Skoda noted that board members had received letters recently about the need for air conditioning throughout the district’s buildings.

“I would like us with this current budget, if we’re serious about air conditioning, to start budgeting for air conditioning,” he said.

“That’s an excellent suggestion and we need to have that discussion as a board,” Board Member Kay Gallo said.

Gallo and Planson serve on the board’s Finance Committee.

The board approved the tentative budget unanimously.